Anyone for Psychiatry?

 

Just to add my own thoughts, as I'm once again in McDonalds where I tend to ramble and waffle, which I find therapeutic for myself (if not for others......)

As far as looking towards the "ancient wisdom", rather than psychiatry, a good guide is Karen Armstrong. Sadly today, many associate religion purely with what I would see as Fundamentalism, i.e. belief systems rather that Faith systems.

Here is Karen Armstrong on revelation:-

"There is much to be learned from older ways of thinking about religion. We have seen that far from regarding revelation as static, fixed and unchanging, Jews, Christians and Muslims all knew that revealed truth was symbolic, that scripture could not be interpreted literally, and that sacred texts had multiple meaning and could lead to entirely fresh insights. Revelation was not an event that had happened once in the distant past, but was an ongoing, creative process that required human ingenuity. They understood that revelation did not provide us with infallible information about the divine, because this would always remain beyond our ken."

Ms Armstrong is not making this up! She provides deep analysis and relates this to the long history of all our world's religions. The key is "creative process", this for anyone seeking some degree of insight into the human condition, their own condition, rather than simply learning some creedal formula by rote.

Psychiatry itself is a very mixed field. My actual knowledge is limited, but I have followed more the leanings of Carl Jung, who split from Freud very early on. He saw Freud's ideas as basically reductionist. Jung was more into psyche and soul, the universal unconscious - which itself was a way of bringing in the ancient wisdom, the universal, yet applied to himself/ourselves as unique individuals. Jung spoke of the "spirit of the age" (the conditioning we soak up and breathe in purely by being born in a particular time and place and virtually assume before we actually begin to think for ourselves) and contrasted it with the "spirit of the depths" which we have to seek* and explore for ourselves.

(*I tend to think that "it" seeks us, but that is me)

I lean more towards the "east" and Buddhism (the Dharma) and have found that a lot of western seekers decry "faith" (as virtually "belief"), this possibly because many are on the run from a lot of Western religion, which has been rejected - possibly as factually unbelievable.

Yet going to the heart of the Dharma, no one there is afraid of the word "faith", and informed commentators insist that zazen meditation, for instance "cannot be fully understood apart from consideration of faith.” Dogen, the great zen master, spoke constantly of Faith. Trust. In reality.

Again, this from "Visions of Awakening, Time and Space" by Taigen Dan Leighton:-

"Contrary to present conventions, Zen Buddhism developed and cannot be fully understood outside of a worldview that sees reality as a vital, ephemeral agent of awareness and healing."

I have heard many say "I believe there is a reason for everything" and I see faith, trust, that "all things" work towards the restoration and reconciliation of "all things", is the heart of all genuine spirituality; more a letting go of our preconceptions rather than any clinging to belief.

Yet it is ALL things - both what we see as good and what we see as bad, and our experiences also, good AND bad.

"Flowers fade even though we love them, weeds grow even though we dislike them" 

(Dogen, from his "Genjokoan", the actualisation of Reality)

But what are flowers and what are weeds? Can we ever know? Perhaps with hindsight!

Sadly, still I grasp the flowers! Faith is thus lacking, but I stumble on.

Anyway, I have rambled on a bit. I am having a bit of a rough time mental health wise, good times come and go. I wish you all well.

May true Dharma continue.
No blame. Be kind. Love everything.

Just to finish:-

"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."

(A modern response - Terrance Keenan - to an ancient Koan found in "The Blue Cliff Record" - Case 2, "The Real Way is Not Difficult")

When Summer Comes

 Hope is a constant - hopefully. There are so many in our world who hold opinions and beliefs at variance with our own. Is there any point in arguing? As has been said, you cannot argue someone out of a position that they were not argued into. Something other than strict logic is at work. At work in all of us. 

My own way of seeing things is that fundamentally we are all in the same boat, driven by winds beyond logic and conscious decision making. No one is of another "type" fundamentally, though we are all unique. 

As I see it, we must see this deeply before we seek for differentiation between ourselves and others. Which I also see as the nature of Reality-as-is, which is unity and "one" before differentiation. 

Anyway, I ramble. But the main objection I have to many - in Religion or anything else - is the insistence upon division, not just now, but eternally. "Them" and "us" forever. The saved and the lost, the sheep and the goats. Sadly, this outlook is projected upon "God" or whatever - whereas I would see Reality-as-is as always "working" towards "restoration" and "reconciliation". The "working" of wu wei, effortlessness - when logic subsides and the love that "has no why" can arise. 

Elvis Costello - holding his breath?

 Maybe a chance to quote here my latest love, the lyrics of Elvis Costello. I like these, from "When Summer Comes":-

But as every day still succeeds the darkest moments we have known
When seasons turn
Springtime colours will return
And as the first pale flowers of the lengthening hours
Seem to brighten the twilight and that melancholy cloak
Then a fresh perfume just seems to burst from each bloom
Until the green shoots through each day
As it arrives in every shade of hope
When summer comes
There will be a dream of peace
And a breath that I've held so long that I can barely release
Then perhaps I may even find a room somewhere
Just a place I can still speak to you

 

Good stuff....."a breath that I have held so long that I can barely release"

Accepting our mortality

I have heard it said that "existence just is" and that we should "accept our mortality".

Existence certainly just "is" but what it "is" is the question. Myself, I tend to think that once we settle upon a final answer, reach a conclusion, then we are as good as dead. 

 "Our Mortality" can be such an answer, a conclusion, certainly today when such is the "spirit of the age", breathed in the air around us - with all its implications. "When you are dead you are dead" and all that's left is "tales told by idiots, signifying nothing." Making the most of nihilism. Sorry, saying this is by no means a " judgement" or an "accusation" against anyone,  just  the thoughts of my own mind. 

But to me "embracing our mortality" are only words, but the words are weighted with assumptions. The assumptions then create our very own axioms....

 

That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
   Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

(W H Auden)

 

.......or others.....but whatever our axioms are, we begin to solidify as "selves", set in our ways, our anticipations, and finally the world simply comes back to us as echoes. 

 

Conveying oneself toward all things to carry out practice-enlightenment is delusion. All things coming and carrying out practice-enlightenment through the self is realization. (Dogen)

 

How do we allow the world to come to us, without our imprint upon it? Is it possible?

 

Why is their Something rather than Nothing? What is our very own Cosmology......which introduces a passage from "Zen Cosmology" by Dan Berringer:-

 

Affirmation of God does not require projection of a macro-substance, an impregnable identity, a secure foundation, to which one must cling, and which constricts the freedom of the spirit. The Buddhist deconstruction of such a God could be a service to biblical faith, overcoming a God who is substance for a God who is Spirit, and who is thus more, not less real.

Our cosmology functions as the very foundation of our conduct. We think, speak, and act in the world in accordance with what our understanding of the world is. The more our view of reality diverges from the way reality actually is, the more unreliable our thoughts, words, and deeds in reality will be. One does not need to be a scientist to recognize we would do well to establish a more reliable cosmology – and sooner rather than later.

Later on, Berringer writes:-

......as Zen contends, knowledge (epistemology) and existence (ontology) are not two different things – our ‘cosmology’ is not simply how we see the universe it is how the universe is actualized. The significance of this point is succinctly illustrated in the following observation by Hee-Jin Kim concerning Dogen’s (hence Zen’s) view of the unity of knowledge and reality: "To Dogen, mind was at once knowledge and reality, at once the knowing subject and the known object, yet it transcended them both at the same time. In this nondual conception of mind, what one knew was what one was—and ontology, epistemology, and soteriology were inseparably united."

 

The point is, such is not fixed. It is always "Now" but Now is always on the move and can never be finally captured. At least, not by words. 

What is the difference between saying that "meaning" is inherent in Reality but such meaning is unique to each, ongoing, not fixed - and saying that there is no meaning except what each unique being chooses to believe and live? Is there any difference? I tend to think that there is, but my thoughts lack clarity on the issue. 

But I am a good little Buddhist, and seek the "heartwood of the Dharma":-

So this holy life.....does not have gain, honour, and renown for its benefit, or the attainment of virtue for its benefit, or the attainment of concentration for its benefit, or knowledge and vision for its benefit. But it is this unshakeable deliverance of mind that is the goal of this holy life, its heartwood, and its end.

 

Anyway, having questioned the word "mortality" and its possible implications, I am not sneaking immortality in by the back door - in fact I'm not sneaking anything in. No conclusions. Which I can trace to the so called "Silence of the Buddha" on all metaphysical questions - any conclusion, belief, answer, is inimicable to the Holy Life , the road to the end of suffering.

There is a Biblical Proverb:- "Those who answer a thing before they hear it, it is a shame and a folly unto them."

What is it to truly "hear" a thing? Is there a "thing" to be heard once and for all and the job is done, and we wait for our eternal reward when we have said "Yes"? Or is what is to be heard constantly on the move, yet with a direction toward Buddha (as Dogen claimed). The Circle of the Way. 

Well, my rambling has taken up a half hour or so while I drink my coffee.