Myths for our time

 There was a post on another section that basically asked why so many people were depressed these days. This was my answer:-

Many thoughtful people recognise that Western society no longer has a viable, functioning myth which would give a sense of place and ultimate meaning (and maybe not just western society) The breakdown of a central myth (that Christianity once provided) is like the shattering of a vessel containing a precious essence. Meaning is lost.

The secular conception of the human appears unable to genuinely offer a viable option or alternative, saturated as it is by positivism, materialism, reductionism, and atheism.

Well, "thoughtful" or not, Carl Jung would certainly have agreed, having said himself:-

"....those who think they can live without myth, or outside it, are an exception. They are like one uprooted, having no true link either with the past, or with the ancestral life which continues within them, or yet with contemporary human society.”

I sought to relate all this to my own living without beliefs and have come to see that a myth is not a belief as such. I have tried to make sense of my own "myth".

It is that Reality-as-is expresses the immanence of the liberative potential, or buddha nature, in the heart of our earth, as well as in the inner, psychological ground of being, always ready to spring forth and benefit beings when called. The Reality I live in represents the fertility of the earth itself and the wondrous, healing, natural power of creation, or the phenomenal world.

This comes in part from the study and reading of Dōgen, the 13th century Japanese zen master, who himself had a strong lifetime's allegiance to the Lotus Sutra, and thus an approach to awakening as a function of the nature of reality, intimately connected with the dynamic support of the earth, space itself, and a multidimensional view of the movements of time.

As is now being recognised more and more in the West, Zen Buddhism developed and cannot be fully understood outside of a worldview that sees reality itself as a vital, ephemeral agent of awareness and healing, and also the liberative qualities of spatiality and temporality.

As I see it, much of this can relate to, and correspond with, Christian Universalism, the hope that eventually all things and every human being will be redeemed and gathered together in Christ. Nothing and no one is left out. Those who see this as a soft option should try to see the world around them like this, and thus the demands made upon them - it is always easier to judge than to think, to condemn rather than seek to redeem.

But this is obviously associated, in Christianity, with a future, even a future world. Myself, I am more into an eschatology of the present moment, this itself within (as mentioned above) "a multidimensional view of the movements of time."

I find it more and more life giving to live within this "myth". To see every human being not as "other" but as already potentially "one" with me. To see nothing as totally alien, but as having the potential to fulfil, to redeem. I'm really seeking to give voice to that which has already taken shape in my own way of no-calculation.

Whatever, Thomas Merton saw all this when he spoke of "true communion".....

..... the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. it is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear brothers and sisters, we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.

Well, that is my myth. It is not there to "believe" in, but to live within. It gives support to me, even as I live upon the firm ground of emptiness......

Just to add, I'm reading bits and pieces about Jung at the moment. The last thing I need is another set of jargon words like "anima" and suchlike, nevertheless the thrust and significance of his thought and life is relevant in this entire context.

Jung distinguished between the "spirit of this time" (this age) and the "spirit of the depths". For Jung our own “spirit of this time” represents the scientific-materialistic worldview, while the “spirit of the depths,” which has been from time immemorial and "for all the futures possesses a greater power than the spirit of this time, which changes with the generations.”

One of Jung's paintings

Jung:-

The spirit of this time would like to hear of use and value. I also thought this way, and my humanity still thinks this way. But that other spirit forces me nevertheless to speak, beyond justification, use, and meaning.

The New Testament (Romans) says:- "Be not conformed to this world" which in this respect is good advice, at least as I see it. That is, not to simply accept the suppositions of our own times, often simply presumed and "worn" by ourselves as some sort of given, unquestioned.

As far as the "spirit of the depths", as I see it, such is not some unchanging formula that can be put into words and learnt by rote, but itself is something that is truly alive and even itself changes with the times. It is ever new.

Merton (again)

 

I was looking up Merton's Asian Journal, the one he kept on his final pilgrimage, to Asia. He mused quite a bit.

On the "self" and its existence or non-existence......Some pretty heavy stuff.....

Buddhist dialectic and “alienation” might be a good theme for my Bangkok conference. Like Marxism, Buddhism considers that a fundamental egocentrism, “providing for the self” (with possible economic implications in a more modern context) leads to dogmatism about the self—either that it is eternal or that it does not exist at all. A truly critical attitude implies a certain freedom from predetermination by economic and sociological factors. The notion of “I” implies the notion of “mine.” I am “my property”—I am constituted by what separates me from “not I”—i.e., by what is mine “and not anybody’s else.” As long as “I” assert the “I” dogmatically there is lacking a critical awareness that experiences the “I” dynamically in a continuum of cause and effect—a chain of economic or other causations and coordinated interrelationships.

Well, as dear old Robbie Robertson wrote in "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down":- Just take what you need and leave the rest Just who or what (if anything....) is taking it is another question. Sometimes you just have to laugh.

Merton was often dismissed as merely an intellectual, this often by ardent western zennists proud of their hours spent on the cushion. But it is pretty evident, from various notes in his Journals, that Merton would spend many hours in meditation in the woods around Gethsemane. In fact, he notes that certain monks in the main monastery grew suspicious of his activities in the Hermitage, where he lived alone. Some suspected, even asserted, various parties and carousing. Which appears fairly unlikely. The ardent "religious" mind often appears suspicious of any genuine freedom of heart and mind if not packaged according to their own taste.

Anyway, Merton spent much time in "zen meditation". But again, in one dialogue (correspondence by letter) with a Muslim Abdul Aziz he actually went into some detail of his own form of meditation, as it was then (1960) where he sought to speak/write in theistic terms:-

My prayer is then a kind of praise rising up out of the center of Nothing and Silence.......It is not “thinking about” anything, but a direct seeking of the Face of the Invisible, which cannot be found unless we become lost in Him who is Invisible.

I also like the way he describes his life to Mr Aziz:-

My life is in many ways simple, but it is also a mystery which I do not attempt to really understand, as though I were led by the hand in a night where I see nothing, but can fully depend on the Love and Protection of Him Who guides me.

Anyway. Maybe enough.

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

Theodicy

 Quite a few claims that God, all loving and all powerful, cannot exist are made, this after some sort of logical syllogism is pronounced according to some sort of post-enlightenment display of rationality. Anyway, I'm the first to admit that logic is not my strong point - which is possibly why I don't like logic to totally determine my actual experience of this life, this Reality, our Cosmos. I'd rather let it speak for itself.

The greatest argument against an all powerful God of love "existing" is obviously the prevalence of evil and suffering. Case closed. Myself, I find the so called "free will defence" (i.e. suffering exists simply because free will has been given to created beings and therefore they must be free to choose evil - in fact have done, and thus this whole mess of pain and misery) unconvincing. I would go more for the "all powerful" angle - this that God has freely chosen to limit his power, this for a greater good.

This derives from the "O Felix Culpa" of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches of the Christian Faith. Explaining this in almost non-theological language, that the Fall (sin) , the immersion of created beings in the opposites, was a necessity for God's Will to be fulfilled. That Will being to share his own freedom and creativity ever more comprehensively, His Being being infinite.

Such a view falls in line with a teaching that was quite widely taught in the Early Church, among the early Church Fathers ie. Universalism, or as found in Ephesians (NT) ".....as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth". That ALL shall eventually be saved.

Anyway, all these defences of God in the face of evil and apparently innocent suffering fall under the name "Theodicy". Some quite thick books have been written on the subject. None of the most common defences can actually be found in the Bible as such, which is often far more existential than "theological". In fact only one "defence" is taught, and can be found in the OT book of Job, where God speaks from out of the whirlwind. You can read the words God spoke in Job 38, but a quick precise is "Who are you who know nothing to question me? Just shut up and grovel".

Which is obviously the sort of thing that gets up the noses of the Richard Dawkins of this world, yet when transcribed into non-theistic language has much in common with the so called "Silence of the Buddha" when he was faced with metaphysical questions. Silence was appropriate because as the Buddha saw it, any answer at all, any conclusion was not conducive to the actual living of the Holy Life, the path to the end of suffering. Such a life must be lived, not thought. Just as Truth can only be lived, but never be able to be put into a formula.

It is about finding new eyes; more about questions than "answers".

Well, I've waffled on a bit. Sunday is not my best day and I have tapped this out in-between various chores around the house. Now I'm in McDonalds again, with my coffee.

My apologies to those whose attention span doesn't run to this length of post - but then again, if such is so, they would never have got anywhere near this far.

The Gift of Freedom

 I have often read through and pondered the following, written by Thomas Merton, in his book "New Seeds of Contemplation":-

The mere ability to choose between good and evil is the lowest limit of freedom, and the only thing that is free about it is the fact that we can still choose good.

To the extent that you are free to choose evil, you are not free. An evil choice destroys freedom.

We can never choose evil as evil: only as an apparent good. But when we decide to do something that seems to us to be good when it is not really so, we are doing something that we do not really want to do, and therefore we are not really free.

Perfect spiritual freedom is a total inability to make any evil choice. When everything you desire is truly good and every choice not only aspires to that good but attains it, then you are free because you do everything that you want, every act of your will ends in perfect fulfillment.

Freedom therefore does not consist in an equal balance between good and evil choices but in the perfect love and acceptance of what is really good and the perfect hatred and rejection of what is evil, so that everything you do is good and makes you happy, and you refuse and deny and ignore every possibility that might lead to unhappiness and self-deception and grief. Only the man who has rejected all evil so completely that he is unable to desire it at all, is truly free. God, in whom there is absolutely no shadow or possibility of evil or of sin, is infinitely free. In fact, he is Freedom.

I don't tend to agree or disagree with whatever I read. More simply absorb, leave the words to bear fruit - or not - in the way of no-calculation (hakarai)

Maybe what I have absorbed is that true freedom only comes with the surrender of the self and its "will". I think that this is in effect the way of the Dharma (Buddhism), the flowering of not-self (anatta) But in theistic language, here is Meister Eckhart from his "Talks of Instruction" on "True Obedience":-

When we go out of ourselves through obedience and strip ourselves of what is ours, then God must enter into us; for when someone wills nothing for themselves, then God must will on their behalf just as he does for himself.

So as I see it, true radical freedom can only be a reality for us in union with the Source, Reality-as-is, the Tao - call it what you will.

A condition of complete simplicity
Costing not less that everything

T.S.Eliot

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.

(St John's Gospel)

From the "east", zen master Caoshan:-

When studying in this way, evils are manifest as a continuum of being ever not done. Inspired by this manifestation, seeing through to the fact that evils are not done, one settles it finally. At precisely such a time, as the beginning, middle, and end manifest as evils not done, evils are not born from conditions, they are only not done; evils do not perish through conditions, they are only not done.

Well, that's it, I have waffled enough, perhaps clarifying my own mind if nobody elses.

Beginning the search - where to begin.

 I tend to like the approach suggested by these words of Thomas Merton, from his "New Seeds of Contemplation":-

The purpose of a book of meditations is not to teach you how to think and not to do your thinking for you. Consequently if you pick up such a book and simply read it through, you are wasting your time. As soon as any thought stimulates your mind or your heart you can put the book down because your meditation has begun. To think that you are somehow obliged to follow the author of the book to his own particular conclusion would be a great mistake. It may happen that his conclusion does not apply to you. God may want you to end up somewhere else. He may have planned to give you quite a different grace than the one the author suggests you might be needing.

Maybe I can hear some say "well the Bible is different, it is not a book of meditations, it is the word of God." But to me all reality is "revelation". Maybe give some sort of pre-eminence to some things, or books, but don't turn them into a formula, a formula determined by others. The Living Word is ever new. It is unique. Personal. Life-giving. As Merton says again:-

If you want to find satisfactory formulas you had better deal with things that can be fitted into a formula. The vocation to seek God is not one of them. Nor is existence. Nor is the spirit of man (or woman I would presume.....)

Me, I go to Amida and fortunately he (or she, or "it") is not a "Jealous God". We tend to turn into the Gods we envisage. Which for some is not a pleasant prospect.

Dukkha

 

Often the Buddha is considered a pessimist. "All is suffering" he declares.

The original Pali word is dukkha which is variously translated. "Suffering", "anguish" etc. In some Pali texts the words actually used as a synonym can run into double figures - the whole subject is complex.

A pessimist? I do not think so. In fact I find the Dharma very optimistic, in as much as what it declares is that if we see and think correctly we shall be free of suffering. Not in some future world of reward or compensation, but here, now in this world. Our world is not betrayed for some imagined "other".

I was recently reading an Introduction to one of the Theravada texts, and the subject of Dukkha was spoken of. I cannot really explain any better:-

The pivotal notion around which the Four Noble Truths revolve is that of dukkha, translated here as “suffering.” The Pali word originally meant simply pain and suffering, a meaning it retains in the texts when it is used as a quality of feeling: in these cases it has been rendered as “pain” or “painful.” As the first noble truth, however, dukkha has a far wider significance, reflective of a comprehensive philosophical vision. While it draws its affective colouring from its connection with pain and suffering, and certainly includes these, it points beyond such restrictive meanings to the inherent unsatisfactoriness of everything conditioned. This unsatisfactoriness of the conditioned is due to its impermanence, its vulnerability to pain, and its inability to provide complete and lasting satisfaction.

Reading this I think of the lines of W H Auden from his poem "The Time Being":-

As long as there is an accidental virtue, there is a necessary vice:
And the garden cannot exist, the miracle cannot occur.
For the garden is the only place there is, but you will not find it
Until you have looked for it everywhere and found nowhere that is not a desert;
The miracle is the only thing that happens, but to you it will not be apparent,
Until all events have been studied and nothing happens that you cannot explain;
And life is the destiny you are bound to refuse until you have consented to die.

Or as T S Eliot says:-

A condition of complete simplicity
Costing not less than everything