Chapter 6 in Basket of Reeds has been posted.
A comment by Roosen that demands to be answered - that is, why is this blog so high-faluting and opaque? Much, I suppose, has to do with my own writing and thinking. I had long years in grad school where intellectual obfuscation was revered. Our masters were the German and French philosophers, and we did our best to out-obfuscate them. It is perhaps telling that anthropology as a profession is dying on the vine.
I speak of that only partly in seriousness, for the other part of it is, some things are necessarily obscure. Some ideas are so illusive that you have to chase them down the rabbit hole, only to find yourself at times seated with the Mad Hatter. Such are the fundamental ideas behind religion. How is the Trinity one and three? How is the Absolute "nothing"? How can we win by losing, and lose by winning? These cannot be answered simply, and language can only be a sign to the meaning, for the meaning transcends sign. What can you do? Roosen must try his best in understanding as I must try my best at explaining what I can't fully understand. That is the nature of the beast. I will continue with the essays, hopefully one a week (I am behind, I know) which, like the parables in the Bible, sweeten the medicine. But many of our theological topics here will continue to be difficult. Such is the nature (or meta-nature) of the beast!
Much of what I try to deal with here is the idea that our quotidian reality - that is, what we take to be reality - is only a thin film lying on top of the great sea of reality. I did not become fascinated with this idea because of books, but read the books because I have gotten glimpses of this sea. And once you have looked into this sea, living on the film is simply not enough. You seek ways to remove this film from your thoughts to witness the greater reality - in meditation, in song, in exercise, in books - whatever works and does not kill you. But it is a hard idea to impart, and just as hard for me to stay focused on.
It is also hard to define for those unaware, and in this perhaps I have been inadequate. But I did come across a good piece, put in a footnote in Marco Pallis's book "Peaks and Lamas." It is the best
description I have of the relation of this "film" that most humans inhabit most of the time to Truth (this film is, really, what original sin is - the loss of the ability to see the infinite in all things. All humans are capable of this sight, but we deny it to ourselves as part of our learned ancestry. Thus "original sin.") So, here it is:
"One must remind the reader that the current loose speaking has practically converted the word "illusion" into a synonym of "unreal"; and this in turn has given rise to the frequent misunderstandings on the subject of the Buddhist teachings about the illusory nature of the world and its contents. Nothing can ever be opposable to reality: something that is truly unreal cannot enjoy any kind of existence, not even in imagination; whereas an illusion is something that makes game of the senses of an observer by seeming to possess a character other than its own; typically, by appearing more self- sufficient than it really is." (my emphasis)
That is it in a nutshell - our reality is not unreal, but an illusion, because it stands as self-sufficient - that is, all there is. But oh, no, there is much more. And it affects everything that we think about and do. For instance, I had an episode with my son years ago when he was messing up his grades in school. Afterward, it made me think of our concept of success. Yes, this is an old chestnut, but, as one wise man said, all the best stuff has already been stated - for Truth is always there and unchanging. What the best of us do is to relay this Truth in a package more comprehensible to the current audience. I hope to do that in the next essay. For here, I want to add something short and apparently ridiculous that has something to do with the "film" and our notion of success. In short, it dawned on me that great success with my writings would be a disaster - not of the Whitney Houston variety - I am too old for that and, besides, that is not the kind of fame writers usually get - but in the sense of sin - that is, of keeping one from the prime objective, Realization. Success as we define it clouds the issues and strengthens the film - our ego-sense - within us. It was not for nothing that Jesus said, "The first will be last and the last first."
Which brings us back to Roosen. Much of what Jesus said is indecipherable from our quotidian standpoint. The first will be last? The meek shall inherit the earth? What the heck? He and the other wise prophets can only be understood once a greater understanding of reality is understood. To do that, one has to step outside that which blocks us from understanding - that is, our "film", that tiny piece of reality that we take as the whole. And to do that, we have to go outside the readily understood. In dialogue, there is no other way. FK
RSS Feed