Monday and feeling it, but spring is coming nonetheless. I could ponder the workings of nature endlessly, but the enjoyment comes in what it wishes to show us. A pastoral scene is pleasant because it strikes something within us, and is made no more magnificent by knowing that the blue sky is made blue by the solar spectrum refracting off dust. It is not necessarily made less by this, either, but sometimes we are pulled to the detail and disregard the whole. I believe the expression is "missing the forest for the trees."
Thanks for the comments, Cal and Rooson - such make the blog a living thing rather than merely an exhibition of my own thoughts (taken from others thoughts). But onward with the 'forest for the trees - and a tangential comment on the comments:
I think I've written before about the inevitable draw of gravity in this world - not only the planetary kind, but its corollary in the psychic/spiritual realm. That is, no matter the exaltation of one's experience, no matter the awe that may come one's way, bidden or unbidden, we are always drawn back to our feet of clay. With a very few saintly exceptions, biographies of all the greats show weaknesses regardless, some of them as dismal as their accomplishments are great. Name the man or woman - Lincoln and his depressions, FDR and Martin Luther King in their mistresses, and even - I was told, but must read myself - Gandhi and his callous treatment of his family. It is obviously a condition of the world, no less so than the gravity of astral masses, and it brings to mind a conundrum we always faced in Anthropology: that is, WHO first formulated a cultural system? This is such a hard road to travel that I will approach it from an angle that was much used in the then-new field of cultural philosophy known as "post-structuralism."
Here, I can recall one professor always going back to the term "co-option." That is, say, when an apparently good and pro-people alternative to the current system is proposed, it is often taken up by the very people and organizations that the alternative was meant to change, which then uses the new idea to promote the old. This is everywhere - for instance, BP, or British Petroleum, had become a great promoter of "green" technology, its obvious contradictions being exposed in the New Orleans oil spill fiasco. Too, everywhere "junk" food labels proclaim that they are healthy, that they use sea salt or do not using hydrogenated fat, but they still remain fundamentally junk food.
Now, there are real people behind this commercial form of co-opting, but where are the people behind greater, more subtle forms in culture? In my own lifetime, I saw the hippy ideals of the 60's - those of peace and love and spirituality over materialism - turn rapidly into an excuse for drug and sex parties, and into rabid, very materialistic radical politics (as I mention time and again in my book Dream Weaver. It was the dark side to the New Age.) Bigger still, in the course of centuries, religions of peace were turned again and again into instruments of war and imperialism. Who in each case did all these things?
The Christians and Muslims call this "who" Satan, the Hindus and Buddhists Desire, but here I will simply call it Gravity. It cannot be pinned on one man or cabal, or even on one culture. Rather, it is the universal call - the natural law - that is at the very heart of our existence in this world. What draws the individual back to the sod relentlessly also brings groups of people back, regardless of the ideals they may have experienced or been given. Jesus (or any of the other spiritually perfect) did not create wars, people did. And they (we) would do it with ANY ideology or belief, for we are (almost) all drawn back to the sod. It is not, then, Islam or even or any other large idea that are primarily responsible for creating an imperfect world, but rather the very nature of being in this world itself (I was going to add "even capitalism", but capitalism is really not an ideology but rather the expression of man's imperfect nature itself. My brother calls it the "Tao" of the world, and in a way, he's right. Like the weather, it is neither good or bad, but reactive to wants and needs, which might be good or bad. Marxism, on the other hand, seeks to perfect humans and is thus a perfect example of an ideology. That it is solely the work of Man is clear in its inevitably deeply flawed expressions).
Time and again, in Peter Matthiessens's book on Zen (Nine-Headed Dragon River) we are reminded of this. The rishis, or holy men, are almost all flawed, either by cravings for sex or alcohol or by ego, even though they go to great lengths to practice what they preach. Thus it is for almost all of us, and of all things human-made.
Which brings me to a conclusion I had not anticipated: if all things made (or formulated) by us are necessarily flawed, then who and what do we turn to? The answer for my Traditionalists are the "Revealed Religions" and those who (imperfectly) serve them. And I think that is at the heart of the materialistic perspective - to disprove any form of "revelation," for that has moral certainty, and moral certainty they abhor. This brings up problems for both the materialists and the traditionalists; for the former leave us with nothing, no ground work for society that is not the work of a specific person or committee, and so guaranteed to be flawed and to favor certain groups or very limited ideas; while the latter lead us to the question: how can we know what is truly "revealed?"
So, I have come to jump into a shallow pool and landed in the bottomless pit. Off the top of my head, I would say that a "revealed" religion 1) does not cater to one segment of society and 2) it is new, that is, at the time of its revelation, it is a quantum leap beyond the society it comes into. But I am not certain about either - and I welcome any input to clarify this. I will keep searching myself. Perhaps it is self-evident to the enlightened - which obviously brings up other problems (who,m for instance, determines for sure who is enlightened?). Perhaps only time can tell. Hopefully, more on that later, FK
Thanks for the comments, Cal and Rooson - such make the blog a living thing rather than merely an exhibition of my own thoughts (taken from others thoughts). But onward with the 'forest for the trees - and a tangential comment on the comments:
I think I've written before about the inevitable draw of gravity in this world - not only the planetary kind, but its corollary in the psychic/spiritual realm. That is, no matter the exaltation of one's experience, no matter the awe that may come one's way, bidden or unbidden, we are always drawn back to our feet of clay. With a very few saintly exceptions, biographies of all the greats show weaknesses regardless, some of them as dismal as their accomplishments are great. Name the man or woman - Lincoln and his depressions, FDR and Martin Luther King in their mistresses, and even - I was told, but must read myself - Gandhi and his callous treatment of his family. It is obviously a condition of the world, no less so than the gravity of astral masses, and it brings to mind a conundrum we always faced in Anthropology: that is, WHO first formulated a cultural system? This is such a hard road to travel that I will approach it from an angle that was much used in the then-new field of cultural philosophy known as "post-structuralism."
Here, I can recall one professor always going back to the term "co-option." That is, say, when an apparently good and pro-people alternative to the current system is proposed, it is often taken up by the very people and organizations that the alternative was meant to change, which then uses the new idea to promote the old. This is everywhere - for instance, BP, or British Petroleum, had become a great promoter of "green" technology, its obvious contradictions being exposed in the New Orleans oil spill fiasco. Too, everywhere "junk" food labels proclaim that they are healthy, that they use sea salt or do not using hydrogenated fat, but they still remain fundamentally junk food.
Now, there are real people behind this commercial form of co-opting, but where are the people behind greater, more subtle forms in culture? In my own lifetime, I saw the hippy ideals of the 60's - those of peace and love and spirituality over materialism - turn rapidly into an excuse for drug and sex parties, and into rabid, very materialistic radical politics (as I mention time and again in my book Dream Weaver. It was the dark side to the New Age.) Bigger still, in the course of centuries, religions of peace were turned again and again into instruments of war and imperialism. Who in each case did all these things?
The Christians and Muslims call this "who" Satan, the Hindus and Buddhists Desire, but here I will simply call it Gravity. It cannot be pinned on one man or cabal, or even on one culture. Rather, it is the universal call - the natural law - that is at the very heart of our existence in this world. What draws the individual back to the sod relentlessly also brings groups of people back, regardless of the ideals they may have experienced or been given. Jesus (or any of the other spiritually perfect) did not create wars, people did. And they (we) would do it with ANY ideology or belief, for we are (almost) all drawn back to the sod. It is not, then, Islam or even or any other large idea that are primarily responsible for creating an imperfect world, but rather the very nature of being in this world itself (I was going to add "even capitalism", but capitalism is really not an ideology but rather the expression of man's imperfect nature itself. My brother calls it the "Tao" of the world, and in a way, he's right. Like the weather, it is neither good or bad, but reactive to wants and needs, which might be good or bad. Marxism, on the other hand, seeks to perfect humans and is thus a perfect example of an ideology. That it is solely the work of Man is clear in its inevitably deeply flawed expressions).
Time and again, in Peter Matthiessens's book on Zen (Nine-Headed Dragon River) we are reminded of this. The rishis, or holy men, are almost all flawed, either by cravings for sex or alcohol or by ego, even though they go to great lengths to practice what they preach. Thus it is for almost all of us, and of all things human-made.
Which brings me to a conclusion I had not anticipated: if all things made (or formulated) by us are necessarily flawed, then who and what do we turn to? The answer for my Traditionalists are the "Revealed Religions" and those who (imperfectly) serve them. And I think that is at the heart of the materialistic perspective - to disprove any form of "revelation," for that has moral certainty, and moral certainty they abhor. This brings up problems for both the materialists and the traditionalists; for the former leave us with nothing, no ground work for society that is not the work of a specific person or committee, and so guaranteed to be flawed and to favor certain groups or very limited ideas; while the latter lead us to the question: how can we know what is truly "revealed?"
So, I have come to jump into a shallow pool and landed in the bottomless pit. Off the top of my head, I would say that a "revealed" religion 1) does not cater to one segment of society and 2) it is new, that is, at the time of its revelation, it is a quantum leap beyond the society it comes into. But I am not certain about either - and I welcome any input to clarify this. I will keep searching myself. Perhaps it is self-evident to the enlightened - which obviously brings up other problems (who,m for instance, determines for sure who is enlightened?). Perhaps only time can tell. Hopefully, more on that later, FK
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