Art, Anticipations and Epitaphs

At the moment I am reading through Volume 2 of Joseph Campbell's "Masks of God" series, "Oriental Mythology". Typical of many ebooks, the whole text is plagued by typo's. We have "got" for "goat", we have "gin" for "gain", these among many others, and the whole book seems unable to distinguish between "form" and "from". Quite amusing at times and sometimes the whole context of a passage is lost or changed. That aside, the text is constantly engrossing.

At one point Joseph Campbell quotes Ananda K Coomaraswarmy who is speaking about Art and the difference between the Occidental and Oriental forms:-

Where European art naturally depicts a moment of time, an arrested action or an effect of light, Oriental art represents a continuous condition.

Or so Mr Coomaraswarmy has it and he may well be right. I tend to shy away from any definitive attempt to differentiate between "east" and "west", but maybe he has a point. 

Manet catches a moment of time, "an effect of light"

"A continuous condition"?

What this made me think of, in my rambling wandering fashion, was a long gone quote of another, who spoke of our lives being one long sequence of "anticipations and epitaphs", never resting in the moment where, according to T S Eliot, we "are the music while the music lasts", the "still point of the turning world". 

"We are the music while the music lasts"

Anticipations and epitaphs? I find this true and sometimes I am sceptical of the hip voice of some who drone on about "living in the moment". Allowing myself to be judgemental, such people often give evidence that they actually do anything but, many living in anticipation of the next puff of weed that will transport them to Never Never Land. Eliot himself speaks of a "condition of complete simplicity costing not less that everything". There is a price.

A condition of complete simplicity

That's all folks

Where Are You Spending Eternity (with autobiographical details)?

I often think that questions are more important than answers. Words (remembering that "the Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao") are part of the created order of things, and therefore fundamentally circular. Questions, consisting of words, cannot help but contain or at least suggest their own answer. However, they do perhaps tell us where we are, our current conditioning.

Our questions?

A question:- "Where will you spend eternity?"

An image of eternity?

An even better question might be:- "Where are you spending eternity?" given that samsara and nirvana are "one". But then, as T S Eliot asks, how can time be redeemed? Another question!

T S Eliot grapples with his questions

Leaving all that aside, are words suited at all to any quest for "answers"? Or are they only useful for an "appropriate statement"?  ("the teachings of a whole lifetime" according to Yun-men), useful as part of our response in each moment to the unfolding Reality in and around us?

More quotes on the same theme:-

"The present has no extension but intensity" (Lama Anagarika Govinda)

Lama Govinda

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" (Wittgenstein - and hopefully about something that could be spoken of)

Wittgenstein prior to being ABLE to speak at all, yet perhaps not silent

Well, after all those quotes I get back to what I have suggested myself many times in days long gone, that life can be lived but not thought; or rather, Reality can be lived but not thought - at least not as far as explanations go. 

Anyway, enough of this. My brain is beginning to ache. To get back to the "Where will you spend eternity" question, this was in fact the question raised on a placard used by a group of "born again" Christians I was once acquainted with; a question posed often by one of this groups more vocal members, a man who said once that while he knew that God was a God of Love, God was also "a God of wrath and judgement and that's what I like to talk about". And, oh boy, did he like to talk about it! The trouble was, he never seemed to know when to stop. 

Perhaps a typical sermon

Once, in a Hospital Ward, where many were lying in bed, stretched out, with tubes running into noses and out of other places, he chose to open his sermon with the observation that Jesus "spoke more about hell than he did about heaven" and he then proceeded to expand upon his theme with great enthusiasm and evident relish. In the hospital ward he had a captive audience but often he gave voice to his spiel on sunday street corners, seeking to call all to repentance. 

His opening gambit went along these lines:- 

"People say that they will be happy to go to hell because hell will be where all their friends are" (Here he would pause, to chuckle, to demonstrate that he too had a sense of humour despite all evidence to the contrary) "But hell is where God is not, and friendship is a God given gift. No my friends (friends?) you won't have any friends in hell." Again he would pause to allow the full depths and subtleties of his theology to sink into the ears of his listeners. Sadly for him, not being in a hospital ward, his listeners by this point would often have been reduced to a stray dog or cat, all two legged beings having disappeared down the nearest side alley or some other safe haven well out of earshot.

I was once, in my dissolute and misspent youth, a member of this man's congregation. One fond memory of that time was when a rather drunken man staggered by us as the sermon had reached the point where we are told that "those with the Son have life while those without the Son have no life" (1 John 5:12). As the drunken man stumbled by he just said the one word "bastards", directed at us, and then went on his way. I remember we all tut-tutted at his expletive. Then he turned slightly, looked back and shouted "we ALL have the Son". 

So, there are sermons and there are sermons. Those who have ears to hear let them hear. 

Postscript:- a better question......."How are you spending eternity"?

Related Quotes:- 

Far from wanting to escape to a "higher" realm, Blake.........sought richer apprehension of this one. 

(Leo Damrosch, from "Eternal Sunrise")

Joseph Campbell, Symbols and Signs

I am currently dipping into a little ebook by Joseph Campbell, a man who writes (or, rather, wrote) much about world mythology. The book is "The Symbol Without Meaning". At the very beginning Campbell speaks of the "provincial character of all that we are prone to regard as universal". He gives as an example that many Americans "believe that the world was created in 1492 and redeemed in 1776". 

The beginning of the world?

Then he moves on to a more Euro-centric view, the belief that the world was created in 4004 BC ( as per the calculations of Bishop Ussher ) and redeemed in the first century AD. 

Well, maybe. I once thought that camels were more exotic than cows, pagodas more exotic that a church spire. But some thoughts and beliefs have a greater potential for deception and danger than others. Nevertheless, when we insist that our way is the One Way, or, as Mr Campbell has it, mistake the provincial for the universal, then we are on the road to Inquisitions - or whatever form intolerance takes in our own times. 

"They do him wrong who take God in one particular way; they have the way rather than God" (Meister Eckhart)

Moving on to symbols and signs. Apparently Jung saw the "sign" as a reference to something known, whereas the "symbol" is a figure by which allusion is made to an unknown. I have yet to read the complete book by Joseph Campbell so just how it all plays out I do not know. Maybe others can think about it if they have stumbled upon this, my latest blog. 

A sign - plain enough

Here, a selection of "symbols":-

As Jung has said, symbols make allusion to that which is unknown. I would just say that if we are not careful we shall merely turn them into signs, interpreting that which calls us to greater self knowledge into that which is already "known". That said, perhaps a symbol of Carl Jung would be a better example than the previous three.

Whatever, as I see it a symbol should call us into the unknown.

Strangely, or perhaps not, some lyrics of Bob Dylan have popped into my head.......

In the dime stores and bus stations

People talk of situations

Read books, repeat quotations

Draw conclusions on the wall

Some speak of the future

My love, she speaks softly

She knows there's no success like failure

And that failures no success at all

Bob Dylan

Anyway, I will continue with Mr Campbell's book and find what he thinks. A "symbol without meaning" indeed.

Postscript:- Joseph Campbell understands the mystical NOT as the knowledge of anything but as an "evocation of a sense of the absolutely unknowable". Like Jung, he sees the task  ( of modern man ) as being the recovery of wholeness. To assign meaning to any particular thing is to miss such unknowableness and wholeness. First there must be a "sense of existence" (which is the function of art) then the world appears as it is, each thing in its suchness. Assigning meanings (particularly definitive meanings) prior to this is thus counter-productive.

Hence "The Symbol Without Meaning", which is the entire Cosmos, our world. Reality-as-is.

Thus all things are a by-product of wisdom - wisdom defined (perhaps) as the "mind/heart thirsting for emancipation seeing direct into the heart of reality." (Conze)

For me "wisdom" is grace. 

The Juiciness and Messiness of Life Itself

I was reading recently about Carl Jung and it was said that he was never "compulsively consistent" in his thinking and writing. Which I would see as a good thing. As another said, many academics, philosophers - not to mention theologians - can become far too systematic and rigid and therefore miss the "juiciness and messiness of life." 

A juicy orange

I think this was in the mind of Thomas Merton when he wrote the following:- 

But the magicians keep turning the Cross to their own purpose. Yes, it is for them too a sign of contradiction: the awful blasphemy of the religious magician who makes the Cross contradict mercy. This of course is the ultimate temptation of Christianity. To say that Christ has locked all doors, has given one answer, settled everything and departed, leaving all life enclosed in the frightful consistency of a system outside of which there is seriousness and damnation, inside of which there is the intolerable flippancy of the saved - while nowhere is there any place left for the mystery of the freedom of divine mercy which alone is truly serious, and worthy of being taken seriously.

(From "Raids on the Unspeakable")

For me this all has to do with the Pure Land way of learning around the kitchen sink where things can often get messy. I think sometimes we can insist upon a "solution" or system and then force it upon life itself according to the system's theories. But life can have its own lessons which are then missed. Well, I'm waffling but I know what I mean!

Trying to bring together a few thoughts from previous blogs, for me I see that it has much to do with first beginning with Being itself*, then allowing diversification. Or, in "religious" language, beginning with faith, that all shall be well, then branching out into life itself, where we can let go and possibly agree with Antono Machado that "Mankind owns four things that are no good at sea; rudder, anchor, oars, and the fear of going down." 

Where does such faith come from and how do we get it? In the Pure Land Rennyo said:-

Faith does not arise within ourselves. 

The Entrusting Heart is itself 

Given by the Other Power  

Is this "election" as in some forms of Christianity? No, in the non-dual world of Buddhism it is Universalism. ALL have the gift; all ARE the gift. It is in how we come to realise it that creates the danger of systems, paths, and the battles of religion and inquisitions - this when diversification comes first, and we seek to piece together a "one way" for all.

O Saichi, will you tell us of Other Power?

Yes, but there is neither self power nor other power.

What is, is the graceful acceptance only.

Saichi, the Pure Land "saint"- myokonin - was a cobbler by trade

Here we have in picture form two "ways", of dualism and non-dualism:- 

The very first verse of the Tao te Ching explains......

The Way that can be walked is not the eternal Way.

The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

The nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth.

The named is the mother of all things.

Therefore:

Free from desire you see the mystery.

Full of desire you see the manifestations.

These two have the same origin but differ in name.

That is the secret,

The secret of secrets,

The gate to all mysteries.

Or not.

*As amplification, the words of Thomas Merton, drawn from an essay in his book "Zen and the Birds of Appetite":-

 "....let us remind ourselves that another......consciousness is still available to modern man. It starts not from the thinking and self-aware subject but from Being, ontologically seen to be beyond and prior to the subject-object division. Underlying the subjective experience of the individual self there is an immediate experience of Being......it is completely nonobjective.....not "consciousness of" but pure consciousness......".   (Merton's italics)

Keef and the Flower Ornament Scripture

Some say that we all make our own reality. Not really sure about that - maybe we just have some say in how we react. 

True?

There is a Buddhist ( Mahayana) text, the "Flower Ornament Scripture". I rarely get beyond the first chapter, which is rather long. Long because it seeks to list all the various Bodhisattvas who grace samsara with their presence, seeking the benefit of all. The text also tells us the various ways in which they themselves have realised enlightenment. One way only? Maybe the one way has infinite variety. 

The bodhisattvas have such beautiful names  as "Celestial King Banner of Miraculous Displays", "Delightful Universal Illumination" and "Sound of the Polar Mountain".

Bodhisattvas. Though wishing us well how do they appear to us?

So we are surrounded by such. And they all wish us well, and work for our well being.

Others though may well prefer to think themselves as being the target of Satan, let loose by the Sky God to taunt, test and trick us, this because the Sky God "wills that all be saved". Possibly they prefer the drama of it all and the concentration of the mind that such a belief demands. 

Dualistic battles certainly create drama

We all create our own reality?

 Just what is our "shadow"? Wild and ultimately benign? Or savage and destructive? A necessary part of us or that which must be destroyed?

Here is Keith Richards creating his own reality......

Rock on! In his autobiography "Life", Keef warns of those who want "a frozen frame". Yes indeed. Maybe a video would be better......

PS. Just adding a bit more, a few words of poetry read recently:- "Mankind owns four things that are no good at sea: rudder, anchor, oars, and the fear of going down". (Antonio Machado)

Beatrix Potter and the Meaning of Life

In between looking at the pictures of my "Collected Works of Beatrix Potter" I have been dipping into a couple of books by Richard Tarnas. In them he asks what is the impact of experiencing existence as a conscious purposeful being in an unconscious purposeless universe. It would seem to be the "impact" that Nietzsche foresaw following "the death of God" and the Copernican revolution that set our earth in motion around the sun.......

The question is asked

........"are we not plunging continually" Nietzsche cried......."do we not feel the breath of empty space".........."has not the night become colder?"........before going mad and weeping at the sight of a horse being whipped. 

Nietzsche

Tarnas sees our basic assumption being that any meaning and purpose the human mind perceives in the universe does not exist intrinsically in the universe but is constructed and projected onto it by the human mind. Tarnas goes on to question this assumption........

Might not this be the final, most global anthropocentric delusion of all? For is it not an extraordinary act of human hubris - literally a hubris of cosmic proportions - to assume that the exclusive source of ALL MEANING AND PURPOSE IN THE UNIVERSE is ultimately centered in the human mind, which is therefore absolutely unique and special and in this sense superior to the entire cosmos? To assume that the universe utterly lacks.........what we human beings conspicuously possess? To assume that the part somehow radically differs from and transcends the whole?

(Emphasis is as per Tarnas)

"When consciousness ends in the skull, how can joy exist?" asks the Blue Cliff Record.

"Whoever told people that 'Mind' means thoughts, opinions, ideas, and concepts? Mind means trees, fence posts, tiles and grasses"

(Dogen)

Well, this is all something to think about when seeking to digest the turkey and stuffing. Or in between enjoying the pictures of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle or Jemima Puddle-Duck.

Happy Christmas everyone. Sincere best wishes to all. 

Holy Books, the Christian Mystics and Other Ramblings (not for the fainthearted)

Browsing through the latest offering of ebooks "inspired by my browsing history" ( as the saying goes ) there was a book concerned with demonstrating that Islam was, lock stock and smoking barrel, a religion of war. From the blurb it appeared to argue the point by copious quotes from the Koran. Well, Holy Books are not really my thing ( at least, not nowadays ) and my reading of the Koran, while reasonably extensive, is not accompanied by pleasant memories of inspirational passages; in fact  I would use the word turgid. Maybe, as some suggest, it must be read in the Arabic, "God's chosen tongue". So I am not seeking to defend the Koran.

Will the real Jidad please stand up

Nevertheless, in defence of Islam, if to read its Book, assess its content and from such insist it can only ever be a "religion of war", then, given my own  reading of the New Testament ( about seven times right through, plus various commentaries by all sorts - from fundamentalist to liberal scholarship ) I would have to insist that Christianity can only be a religion of world denial; this in as much as the entire NT is written in the atmosphere of "these are the end times, get ready folks, the game is up".

The End Times, or "Up, Up and Away"

Yet the many Christians who now live affirming the value of this world ( the "we believe in a life before death" folk ) would argue differently. And, just so, the many Moslems who live lives of peace, and in seeking communion with all - no matter their faith - argues against the thesis of the book I mentioned here at the beginning. 

I only add that I leave it with the beliefs of the various adherents of Holy Books as to how they equate their lives and attitudes with the actual text of their chosen "word of God". The mind, the intellect, is certainly capable of many twists and turns - not to mention rationalisations - in seeking certitude. Often I think it would be advantageous to throw the various "holy" books into the bin and start again from scratch. But perhaps not - who knows just where some would end up starting from! (Having said that, the rank and file, the "common folk", will perhaps always confound the academics and the professional theologians who seek to direct the paths of their flocks in more "orthodox", even logical, directions)

But moving onto mysticism (for no particular reason), a word that often causes misunderstandings. From my own experience on various forums, the word "mysticism" suggests to some minds such things as rabbits being drawn from hats and magic wands. 

Is this mysticism?

No, the term is to do with those who would seek to experience the divine or ultimate reality, know their own nature, rather than merely talk about it or exhort others to "keep the faith". This does not necessarily mean they have no time for the word as text, but does mean that they are more interested in the living Word, variously known throughout the world of Faith......Tao, Atman, Brahman, Allah, whatever. 

The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart is a case in point. All his sermons given in the vernacular revolved around Biblical verses. His sermon on the Biblical verse "Blessed are the poor in spirit", part of a beatitude from the Gospels, is a profound example. Eckhart speaks of true poverty, which he says is to "know nothing, will nothing, possess nothing", this to the point where he asks God to free him from God....."Let us pray to God that he might rid us of God." In the sermon referenced he speaks of the "emptiness of spirit" that is required:-

 If it is the case that someone is free of all creatures.........if God finds a place to act in them, then we say: as long as this exists in someone, they have not yet reached the ultimate poverty. For God does not intend there to be a place in someone where He can act, but if there is to be true poverty of spirit, someone must be so free of God and all His works that if God wishes to act in the soul He must Himself be the place in which He can act, and this He is certainly willing to be. For if God finds us this poor, then God performs His own active work and we passively receive God in ourselves and God becomes the place of His work in us since God works in Himself. In this poverty, we attain again the eternal being which we once enjoyed, which is ours now and shall be for ever.

It is words such as these that make the "zen man" D T Suzuki (and other Zen Buddhists) see Eckhart as a "Dharma brother." At one time Eckhart also said that "Nothing that knowledge can grasp or desire can want is God. Where knowledge and desire end, there is darkness and there God shines." I would see such language as the bridge between "east" and "west" which some suggest will never meet. Perhaps "experience" rather than words/texts is the key to the meeting of Faiths?

Another of the Christian mystics is St John of the Cross. Once he offered the following:- "If you wish to be sure of the road you tread on then you should close your eyes and walk in the dark". I think here we get back to my previous blog, concerning diversification, and even further back, to Eliot's universal substratum, belief in which "is empty." Just do not try it when seeking to cross a busy road.

St John of the Cross

Closer to the heart and certainly closer to my own experience are the words of the English mystic, Mother Julian of Norwich, who insisted that eventually "all manner of thing shall be well." She has comforted others with the words:-

If there be anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.

Here we are in the much the same climate as in Pure Land Buddhism and some words from a "Hymn of the Pure Land Masters" by Shinran:- 

My eyes being hindered blind passions, I cannot perceive the light that grasps me; yet the great compassion, without tiring, illumines me always.

This is to drift away from "old men in the sky" and it must be emphasised that Pure Land Buddhism shares with the entire Dharma a non-theistic base. But given the words of Eckhart, perhaps words, creeds and doctrines - belief - will always divide, all part of the diversification that the Buddhist texts refer to as "a tangle of views, a thicket of views". I think love is there in all, and Eckhart said that love has no why.

 

Nor a "why"

Does love have a prescribed path that could be called an "only way"? To finish with Eckhart:- "They do him wrong who take God in one particular way; they have the way rather than God." Maybe we just need to lose ourselves along the way?

Where am I?

Postscript

Creating the Kingdom of God on earth, as it is in heaven, is the basic message of Islam. This is the true meaning of Jihad................Acts of terror are not Jihad. They violate the explicit word of God, Prophet Muhammad and the reasoned concensus of all believers. The greatest jihad is the war on injustice in one's own soul, the injustice that can conceive of terror tactics and lose all restraints and respect for the sanctity of a human life. Jihad is the reasoned struggle of each individual to work within the bounds of moral action, to extend the protection of justice equitably to every human being, irrespective of colour, creed or place of origin. Jihad is the obligation to make peace a lived reality for all human beings.................The faith I hold, the faith of Muslims, the justice we seek, is an obligation to promote and make real in each life freedom from tyranny, neglect, need, dearth and suffering. The justice we yearn for is the life blood of a humane society with dignity and freedom for all. It cannot be found by blasting innocents apart in an inferno of twisted metal and concrete. When the innocent are murdered, we all go into the dark with them. When the innocent suffer, their suffering is our own

(Ziauddin Sardar)