Positive nihilism

Will Durant

 Recently I downloaded one of the volumes of Will Durant's "History of Civilization", the volume on the Reformation. It was only 99p, cheaper than a McDonalds coffee! Quite a bargain. 

Anyway, it begins:-

Religion is the last subject that the intellect begins to understand. In our youth we may have resented, with proud superiority, its cherished incredibilities; in our less confident years we marvel at its prosperous survival in a secular and scientific age, its patient resurrections after whatever deadly blows by Epicurus, or Lucretius, or Lucian, or Machiavelli, or Hume, or Voltaire.

What are the secrets of this resilience?

The wisest sage would need the perspective of a hundred lives to answer adequately. He might begin by recognizing that even in the heyday of science there are innumerable phenomena for which no explanation seems forthcoming in terms of natural cause, quantitative measurement, and necessary effect.

 

A wise sage

Well, I'm hardly the "wisest sage" (needing paroxetine to even cope) so I can't really answer the question. 

 

On the same theme, Erwin Schrodinger - of the both dead and alive cat story - has said:-

Science cannot tell us a word about why music delights us, or why and how an old song can move us to tears.

 

This made me think of a "case" (or zen koan) in the Blue Cliff Record - case two. Which goes:-

 

Joshu spoke to the assembly, saying, “The real Way is not difficult. Just avoid choices and becoming attached. A single word can induce choice or attachment. A single word can bring clarity. I do not have that clarity.” A monk asked, “If you do not have that clarity, what do you appreciate?” Joshu replied, “I do not know that either.” “If you don’t know, how can you say you don’t have that clarity?” Joshu replied, “Asking the question was good enough. Now go.” 

 

Well, whatever you make of that, one comment found on this goes:-

 

In the old city

at the head of Grafton Street

a busker plays his fiddle.

First Brahms, then Bach

and a little Paganini for fun.

Fingers run up and down strings.

Is it the vibrating air,

his skill, or the old melodies

that bring tears to my eyes?

Tell me, I need to know. 

 

Do we really "need to know"? Maybe we do need to try to understand, however futile the effort. 

The closest I get is the pre-eminence of Grace. The word covers multitudes - from the offer of a transcendent Deity that must be "accepted" to gain His approval, to the pure rest in the "nihilism" of Buddhist "emptiness" and "suchness", known in the West only as nihilism - belief in nothing. Multitudes - an unbroken seam, with all points in-between, the Circle of the Way.

"Love has no why" Meister Eckhart.

 

Anyway, it is my wedding anniversary today. 46 years! Which reminds me of the old joke, of the guy who says:-

 "I'm more in love now than on the day I first married..........the trouble is, my wife won't give me a divorce!"

Blooks - again!

 I've spoken before about my Blooks, a cross between a blog and a book, created on free Google blog space and printed off (after editing) in France by Blookup. 

 

My latest is "The Illustrated Notebooks of Dookie" (Volume II)

 

Rather than describe the contents again, here is the "Preamble" that opens the blook:-

 

One of my Blooks that I turn to more often than not is "The Illustrated Notebooks of Dookie". A pretty random collection of quotes and excerpts from all the books that pass through my life. 

My Notebooks are filling up again and therefore another volume of various odds and ends is called for. So this it it. 

Section headings will be as random as the quotes and excerpts,  as often the notes put into the various notebooks are pretty random themselves, resulting in a glorious jumble that will often make no sense as such - but that is the way I like it. Correspondences can follow in life itself, as lived and experienced. As John Keats once wrote:-

I have never yet been able to conceive how anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning.

Which - at least in my mind - is from the same family as Oscar Wilde's:-

Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

How do we learn, grow? Through life itself - the hidden ground of love that has no explanation. The love that has no Why. Only Faith is needed, which itself is a gift.

 

Such is the Preamble. As said, the various quotes are very random and as I was quite lax in keeping note of where they came from, many have no citations. Which brings to mind the thought of whether or not the source of the quote makes the words more - or less - likely of acceptance, or agreement; and whether or not it should. Maybe the answer for me is that it "should not, but it does". 

 

There are "Poetic Interludes" in the Blook, 5 in number, some of my favorite poetry. Here is one, by Philip Larkin, called "First Sight":-

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasureable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

Not really typical of Philip Larkin, who often wrote of darker themes. So much so that when I first read it the thought of an abattoirs popped into my mind regarding the "surprise" (utterly unlike the snow) But I'm fairly sure that such was not the surprise in Larkin's mind. 

Whatever, the poem this time has brought to mind another entry in the Blook, this from Picasso:-

 

Every child is an artist; the problem is staying an artist when you grow up.

 

......which itself suggests the verse from the Good Book, that "a little child shall lead them" (while the wise are sent empty away)

Talking of trees

 Sad sight this morning walking across a nearby Recreation Park into town. My very favorite tree, an ancient horse chestnut, was being "dismantled" - chopped down by the look of it. A dog walker I spoke to said that it was suspected that it was diseased. Obviously no one wants large branches snapping and falling upon the unwary! But a rather sad sight. Not exactly a tree hugger myself but often as I have crossed the Recreation Park I have admired that tree, throughout all the seasons - and yes, just lately I have reached and touched its ancient bark and felt "one with the earth" from which it has grown, helping my mental health issues. 

Anyway, maybe a chance to share a much loved poem....

Binsey Poplars

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

(felled 1879)

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,

  Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,

  All felled, felled, are all felled;

    Of a fresh and following folded rank

                Not spared, not one

                That dandled a sandalled

         Shadow that swam or sank

On meadow & river & wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

        

  O if we but knew what we do

         When we delve or hew —

     Hack and rack the growing green!

          Since country is so tender

     To touch, her being só slender,

     That, like this sleek and seeing ball

     But a prick will make no eye at all,

     Where we, even where we mean

                 To mend her we end her,

            When we hew or delve:

After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.

  Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve

     Strokes of havoc unselve

           The sweet especial scene,

     Rural scene, a rural scene,

     Sweet especial rural scene.

Obviously my favorite tree is not being felled for so called "progress" but I do love that poem and the flow of the words.

All the best to you all - and try to truly SEE the beauty that is around us - look up now and again from the mobile phone.