Category Archives: language

Emptiness is All

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Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub,
By vacancies joining them for a wheel’s use;
The use of clay in moulding pitchers
Comes from the hollow of its absence;
Doors, windows, in a house,
Are used for their emptiness:
Thus we are helped by what is not
To use what is.

Thus did Lao Tzu encourage us to look to what is not to find meaning for that which is. Now I’m aware of how crazy that sounds. I think it is highly relevant to our current flirtation with the Hoggs Boson particle, that particle which might explain why there is something and not nothing. Ok, ok. I’m aware that that sounds crazy.

But let me put it into plain English. Lao Tzu, Jesus, et al were merely saying, “Hey guys (and gals), things are not as they seem. Look beneath the surface. There lies Reality. Just deign to look at things differently.”   This is relevant to what the philosopher Ricoeur said, “You can’t have a perspective on your perspective without somehow escaping it.”

Shakespeare and Self Restraint

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“There’s nothing good or bad but thinking  makes it so.”  This is one of my favorite lines from Shakespeare.  He recognizes the role that reason had in ascribing value to our behavior and formulating social parameters so that we did not ever retreat to our violent, primitive past.  (Oh, let me be honest!  He saw that we could with reason sublimate our nastiness and pretend that we are civilized!)

Where would we be without this filter, though  I’ll take sublimated violence any day of the week over murder and mayhem.  I heard someone quip recently that the U.N. ought to solve recurrent outbreaks of tribal violence by giving th0se tribes N.F.L. franchises.

In another one of Shakespeare’s plays he attributes the beastly behavior of one of his characters to having his passions “outrun the pauser reason.”

And I’ll admit that my “pauser” has not always been operative and it has sure led to some poor decisions.

Beware of ideologues!

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It is now about a year ago since Harold Camping had his 15 minutes of fame with his end-of-the-world insanity. Like all of his predecessors, he proved to be wrong and he and his followers were left with egg on their face. Religion Dispatches posted an article recently in which followers of Camping were interviewed about their life in the past year since they got “egged.” A few now totally denounce their former “apocalypse now” style of faith but most of merely reformulated it, offering revised interpretations of the “end of the world.” In other words, they now adopt the pose, “No, it didn’t happen as we anticipated. But, in a way it did happen and here is what I mean….”

In other words, they cling to their lunacy. And that is how we humans tend to behave—we get something in our heads and then hold on to it for dear life. Tearing someone away from a lunatic idea is like trying to take a piece of red meat away from a hungry mongrel. But, I think it goes further than that. We cling to all ideas as if they were ultimate reality and fail to look at what the ideas have reference to; we fail to “wrestle with words and meanings” (T. S. Eliot) as such an enterprise would be too scary. W. H. Auden noted, “And Truth met him and held out Her hand. And he clung in panic to his tall beliefs and shrank away like an ill-treated child.” Decades ago I read someone who noted, “Our thoughts are the belated rationalization of conclusions to which we have already been led by our desires.” In other words, we think and believe only what we want to.

Now let me clarify and be honest. The temptation of being an ideologue is not the exclusive domain of conservative religious zealots. It is a temptation for all of us. Yes, even for the “literarylew” ilk! I have seen egregious examples of this obnoxiousness with liberal, educated, “enlightened” people. It is all the same.

And I close with the oft quoted Buddhist observation about words: the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.

Silence is Golden

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Aeschylus once said, “The gods create tragedy so that men will have something to talk about.”  Well, I want to update his observation and append the following,  “And then cable tv news was created so that the chatter could go on endlessly.”  Actually, I’m hoping that in about ten thousand years, this wisdom will be,  “The gods originally created tragedy so that men would have something to talk about. And then sometime later they created cable tv news so that the chatter would be non-stop”  and that the wisdom will then be attributed to “Literarylew.”  You know, Aeschylus could be forgotten as will ultimately be the case with all of us, small fry or large fry!

Seriously, I’m so conscious of how much my mind is filled with chatter.  This is so very apparent since I started to seriously attempt to meditate and discovered the Buddhist “monkey mind” always chattering away; a blog-o-sphere friend recently posted re “the rush of a thousand voices”.

We are so afraid of silence even though it is only in silence that we find our Source.

We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.
Nicholas Spark, The Notebook
―

Paean to Ignorance

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I really believe in ignorance!  I guess I watched too much of Hogan’s Heroes and remember the wisdom of Sergeant Schultz, “I know nothing, nothing, nothing.”  I remember a wonderful pastor from my youth who would quip, “If ignorance was bliss, we would all be blistered.”

Yes, I’m intelligent, well educated, erudite as heck!  I can throw 35 cent words around for nickle ideas like anyone.  But, to quote the observation of Paul, the “wisdom of this world is come to nought.”  We don’t know jack!  For, words are but means to an end, they lead us to the truth, they lead us to the precipice of Truth,  but we can never cross over and apprehend the truth in a definitive fashion.  The Truth only glimmers our way and then only on occasion.  For example, one such “glimmering” was the life of Jesus.  And in the course of my life I have seen a “glimmer” or two but admittedly nothing that matches the Light that Jesus brought into the world.  And the “glimmerings” that I have been privy too have never been cognitive;  they have been the Light of Christ manifested in the life of other persons, some of them not card-carrying, born-again, USDA certified “Christians.”

So, let’s get ignorant today and hear a primordial word.

For example, Gerard Manley Hopkins noted in The Habit of Perfection:

Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorled ear,
Pipe to me pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From where all surrenders come
Which alone makes you eloquent.

And then there is William Butler Yeats who wrote:

Throughout all the lying days of my youth
I waved my leaves and flowers in the sun.
Now may I wither into the Truth.

The “Peace of Wild Things”

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I have a penchant for worry. I tend to try to control myself with my mind, anticipating the future and making sure I’ve done everything possible to make it work out for me. This has been my orientation as far back in my life as I can remember. Yes, I’m a control freak. I must admit that at this point in my life I am learning that life is beyond my ability to control and that the very effort itself reflects the machination of my ego. Therefore, the old wisdom of Jesus is having additional meaning for me at this point in my life:
Matthew 6 25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[e]?
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?

I love watching the flowers coming to bloom, this process starting prematurely this year due to the very warm winter in North America. Daffodils are strutting their stuff already. (I recall plucking one of them years ago and having a very powerful subjective flash—-“Am I plucking this flower or is its exquisite beauty plucking me?”) And I thoroughly enjoy watching the birds cavort about in the yard, queuing up at the feeder on my deck, dashing in and out, soaring high in the sky, dancing to a nearby tree but sure to return for another bite. I’m struck by their intensity, by their striking colors, and their relentless determination to articulate “bird”in this corner of the world again.

These above verses from the gospel of Matthew reassure us that it is not necessary to worry and fret any more than do these birds and flowers. The Grace that they live in and emanate daily is available to all of us. I’m sure that this peace they have is related to what Wendell Berry had in mind in a poem, ascribing to the world of nature, “the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.” Berry understood that they do not live in terror of the inevitable end that is in store for them and the rest of His glorious creation, the stark finality of death.

But the teachings of Jesus (and other Holy men and women in our history) teach us that death is something that we should not fear, that it is not as stark as it appears, and something that actually can be accomplished before the end of our physical life. People like James Hillman, Karl Jung, Richard Rohr and many others posit the notion that the real issue, in the depths of our heart, is a willingness to let the ego die. They teach that the crucifixion represents symbolically the “death, burial, and resurrection” of the ego.

And I close with an observation from a psychologist of yesteryear, Irvin Yalom: those who are most afraid of death are actually terrified of life.

“Teach us to pray”

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T.S. Eliot declared that, “Prayer is more than an order of words, or the sounds of the voice praying, or the conscious occupation of the praying mind.” He recognized that prayer is not a perfunctory performance “because it is what Christians do”. You know, “Wind me up and watch me pray and therefore I’m a Christian.”

Prayer is a mystery and I’m not for sure how to define it. I think it always starts as a “perfunctory performance” but at some point in one’s life it needs to go beyond, to become more of a meditative enterprise.

I love what Shakespeare had to say about prayer in Hamlet. Hamlet’s step father, Claudius, is on his knees praying and lamented, “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” Shakespeare recognized that when we merely throw words around, when we trot out the usual “prayer” verbiage, when we are consciously choosing our words so that we “pray right”, then our prayers “never to heaven go.”

I recently started reading Thomas R. Kelley’s book, A Testament of Devotion, and he noted the following re prayer: We pray, and yet it is not we who pray, but a Greater who prays in us. Something of our punctiform selfhood is weakened, but never lost. All we can say is, ‘Prayer is taking place, and I am given to be in the orbit.’

This is an overwhelming notion that I am presenting here. And I don’t have it figured out. And I don’t think the right thing to do is to wait until I have it figured out. The right thing to do is to pray and always remember what the Apostles asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.” (See Luke ch. 11))

Musings re “The Secret”

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As indicated yesterday, Rhonda Byrne‘s book, The Secret, has been helpful to me.   But, I do have reservations.

For example, I do wander about using the “Law of attraction” to obtain a parking spot or
fabulous wealth. Though, true enough, perhaps if I felt differently I would be
wealthy and would readily find a parking spot each time I needed!  Oh me of
little faith!

The issue is the unconscious dimension of our experience. The real, the
essential negative self-talk takes place beneath the surface in the form of old
recordings buried deep in our neurological structure. And, yes, since they are
“unconscious” we can’t see them because then they would be conscious! BUT, we
can be self-aware and be honest about the images that flutter through our
conscious mind and about the poor choices that we make. Then, we can ferret out
what these old recordings are.  Or at least some of them.

I’m casting doubt on just how much impact “the power of positive thinking” can
play when our wounds are buried deeply in our subterranean depths. But, it
can’t do any harm to become conscious of “stinkin thinkin” and practice new
refrains or mantras. In other words, it can’t do any harm to attempt to
re-program our brain. It won’t do any harm to attempt to “brain-wash” ourselves
anew with positive and affirming thoughts. For, “brain-washing” is what
happened in the first place.

Let me share something that has been personally useful. I think it was Rumi who
noted once, “The only antidote to depression is praise.” Here, I’m going to
exercise literary license and replace “praise” with “offering thanks.”  Then I
can apply a couple of admonishments from the Bible, such as, “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

What Rumi had in mind was that when life gets grim, we can still exercise choice
and focus on the many good things that are present in our life, even if it is
nothing but the blessing of the very breath of life itself. It has helped me,
when despair beckons, to “pray the alphabet” which Mary Karr taught me in her
memoir, Lit. “Praying the alphabet”, in this context, means going down the
alphabet and making yourself find something or someone starting with each letter
of the alphabet for which you can give thanks. This gets interesting with X, Z,
and Q; but I manage! The beauty of this strategy is that it is on some level a
simple cognitive behavioral therapy strategy. You can’t whole-heartedly focus
on more than one thing at a time. So, focusing on the wonderful things in your
life can pre-occupy you for a moment and take your attention away from that
gnawing despair.

Emptiness and religion

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I’m sure you have noted that my posts have a heavy emphasis on Eastern religious, Zen-themes, emptiness and “such.”  This is the result of, first of all, the alienation that has been my blessing/curse all of my life.  Second, it reflects the extensive reading I have done in world religions and philosophy.  These two considerations have left we with strong convictions (i.e. a “bias”) toward the notion that this world is ephemeral and that reality lies beneath the surface of day to day life….or “out there” or “beyond the grasp of cognition” or however you wish to put it.  And to “find it”, you have to “lose” your own grasp of reality or, in the words of Jesus, you have to lose your life to find it.

Western Christian culture often fails to consider that Christianity itself is an Eastern religion that has been dragged kicking and screaming to the West.  And we have done a thorough job on westernizing this spiritual tradition, i.e. reducing it to dogma and mindless ritual.

I’d like to share with you two different translations of one of Lao Tzu‘s verses relevant to the subject of emptiness:

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use

 

Thirty spokes are united around the hub of a wheel,
but the usefulness of the wheel
depends on the space where nothing exists.
Clay is molded into a vessel,
but the usefulness of the vessel
depends on the space where nothing exists.
Doors and windows are cut out of the walls of a house,
and the usefulness of the house
depends on the space where nothing exists.

Therefore take advantage of what exists,
and use what does not exist.

Wrestling with God

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One of my favorite contemporary novelists is Marilynne Robinson.  Housekeeping is my favorite of he novels and it has been made into a movie with the same name.  It was a wonderful movie and the novel is even better.   She has also written Gilead and in that novel she made the following observation:

In every important way we are such secrets from one another, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable – which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, intraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us. (my emphasis)

It is the “spaces between us” that intrigues me and compels me.   Human culture is the contrivance that unites us, it is the “veil we spin to hide the void” (Norman Brown) but spirituality is a quest to delve deeper, to penetrate that very necessary and essential fiction of our enculturation and dance, from time to time, with the emptiness.  I insist that it is in this “emptiness” that we find our Source.  Or, better stated it is in the wrestling with that emptiness, i.e. “wrestling with God” that we find our Source.  Technically, it is not even “human culture” that unites us, it is the emptiness.  Very Zen, huh?