Universal Mysticism

East Asia: Tradition and Transformation, was published in 1973, and is the product of leading historians adding up finally to 969 pages.  Recently my total ignorance of the history of most of the planet, was brought back to me.  I was not surprised to find the following statement, however, in my newly acquired book.

[Taoism is]...in large part a philosophy of retreat and withdrawal on the part of thinkers who were appalled by perpetual warfare, instability and death..."  A philosophy of retreat does not describe at all accurately what could be argued as the greatest literature on the planet, the Tao Te Ching, and Book of Changes.  Actually the response of mystical empiricism, to the world, is the only sensible avenue to knowledge.  It is the only knowledge offering objective truths.  The alternative to this path is not any "advance," into the external world, the alternative is to be a bumbling staggering pawn of forces one does not glimpse or control.  To be sure, the mystic is in the same situation except for the knowledge he has of his situation.  He is no less blown about, but he can learn from his situation.  Not so those who are NOT appalled by warfare, instability, and death,( which features hardly isolate one historical period from another.)

And these simple facts eluded some leading historians.  My point is not the writers of the above quote, but for rhetorical purposes let us look at their educational background.  East Asia lists three authors:

John K. Fairbanks, graduated from Harvard University, and taught there also, starting in 1936.
Edwin O. Reischauer, graduate of Harvard, also faculty member there. Author of many books.
Albert M. Craig, also a Harvard graduate and professor there.  Together these guys wrote a lot of books.

The point in this little aside is not these fine scholars, but the binary mechanical mind of man.  (Readers of Jan Cox will appreciate the special status of the natural sciences and no doubt soon I will again review that aspect of man's knowing, which is only superfically a contradiction to the points in this essay.)  Only by hanging oneself on the forked branches of ordinary mentation is it possible to find statements about a man's retreat into philosophy of any useful import.  The mystic philosopher has at least the possibility of finding the knowledge, a vague sense of which haunts man's being. It is the mystic philosopher alone who can seize life by the throat and interrogate it.

A breath of ....?

It occurred to me again, especially after noticing in todays science headlines (plants absorb MORE carbon dioxide when it is hazy, that is, polluted, out) that Jan Cox said the planet will take care of itself.  Right now, for instance with the economic slowdown, one effect is that there are more green spaces, where construction has stopped, more woodsy cleavages left, for a while anyway, where feral cats can hunt rodents, less exhaust in the air as people do not commute to jobs they do not still have----it is like the planet is taking a deep, needed breath.

Of course I do not KNOW this, it is a possibility, and this aspect of my comments points up that it may not be WHAT you think, ----HOW you think may be the saving gasp.

The Silliness of Academe

Okay, these thoughts are about how silly it is to pay attention to academe, or to value any degrees from the academic world.  My tack here is to take some arguments from a book called something about Noble Animals, the author is David Salter, and the book is his doctoral dissertation, published in 2001. Now Dr. Salter, I am in no way insulting your research, and I am confident you will do fine in the academic world. Merely I am using one of your arguments to illustrate a point about the way EVERYBPDY's mind works, and if you by any chance come across my comments, to reassure you, I will state right now that I only read a few pages of your book, and so you can argue I have not given you a fair chance. Insulting anyone is not my intent here, and could it be proved that I did, I would certainly have failed in my purpose.

 

And that is (my purpose) to examine an argument and point out how this argument from a typical academic, quite misses the intent of the literature he discussed. The literature here is a kind of Aesops fable:  there was a story common in the medieval world called "The Lion and the Man." I need to tell the story first: so a lion and man were talking about who was stronger and the man proved his point by showing the lion a drawing of a man putting an ax into a lion.  The climax of  the storyis that the lion responded, "Who painted the lion?"  In other words had the lion been telling the story the ending would have been different.  The author of the book above, the exact title of which I still do not have to hand, says the point of this fable, is that depending on what part of society your are in, your insights will change. 

 

My own take on this story is that "The Lion and the Man," was mainly about this: the rational intellect is incapable of coming up with objective truth.  Because my take may sound abstruse to someone who has not looked at my blog before, does not mean that Chaucer, and/or Aesop were not capable of the mental delicacy my argument assumes. 

The Job of Job part 2

Perhaps, since I have been pushing the Book of Job, as an up to date exploration of the mind of man, though written in the 5th century, (that timelessness would not have surprised Jan Cox of course) a few words should be directed to the prose beginning and ending paragraphs of that part of the Bible called Job.  The fresh and creative pointing to achieving a certain insight by pushing human mentation to its limits---exhausting words, not trying to ignore them, constitutes a demonstration of a technique for (can't think of a fresh way to say this at the moment) spiritual growth. Teaching by showing.  ("Spiritual growth" sounds so wrong.) Anyway the poetic form of Job has a prose beginning and end which so obviously conflicts with the message of the poetic form itself that the question is forced on us: what is the purpose of these stories about satan chatting up god, and then Job gets to have his sheep back as a grand climactic denouement. What the heck is that about.  Either this part was added later, perhaps an attempt to ensure that future generations got to read Job, by sugar coating the important poetic part, for the 5th century BC burghers. Or the original author of Job knew his work would be discarded, as incomprehensible,  if he didn't make it apparently conform to the prevalent myths of his audience, so this is his little trick to ensure the preservation of his work.  This assumes the original author of Job, like Jan Cox, well knew the importance of his words, and the significance of his enlistment of words to push beyond them. Something like that.

A Job for Job

Recently I got to reread the Book of Job.  Jan Cox did not encourage new students to read spiritual classics: the possibility of words tainting certain new experiences is a common dilemma.  That is not so much an issue now, and I was amazed at the delicate insights of this essay.  And a great surprise, the Book of Job has nothing to do with man's suffering or understanding god, or evil.  This, the common view, is no more accurate than describing Schrodingers thought experiment with a cat, as advice on feline health.  Nor was the Cliff Notes version which preceded my copy a good preparation.  Some fellow who was involved with the Jerusalem Bible's reader edition had summarized the lesson of Job, to this effect: Man learns to stop talking before God's majesty. Not even close---rather the exact opposite, in a way, of what the Book of Job describes. 

 

The Book of Job is an examination of the mind of man, the human intellect.  Naturally one discards any thought of reading about evil once the quality of insight in this prose is appreciated.  Evil is a discussion for children.  Our 5th century B.C. author has no use for the quality of thought which sees in natural processes something antagonistic to humankind.  The author of Job, is interested in how man can achieve self-knowledge, and the method illustrated is running the intellect ragged, following every logical thread no matter where that logic may lead, push push push with the intellectual busyness, let it run wild, go to extremes, play with every possible consequence of each thought.   This method is one used in the twentieth century by Jan Cox, and it was just as effective in the 5th century, at elucidating --- a certain border, a margin, an edge...

 

 

And exactly what ARE heroes?

Again we have the news and now two linked names as recent heroes, "Sully" and Captain Phillips. They arouse a thrill and thus the question I put in the subject field. What constitutes a hero. One thought is this: they are ordinary.  Not just normally, but their deeds are 'ordinary.' This surprising possibility (surprising since one might have defined hero as someone NOT ordinary in his deeds) arose from thinking about this thrill one gets from considering their stories.  People, that majority who are satisfied with the canned answers Life provides, are yet aware that their world is actually consituted of mere fantasies filaments floating around. This awareness cannot be too clear to anyone (as we all are all the time, or often anyway) or they woud be provoked to hunt for real answers, and this is not practical for Life, as a whole, -- a bunch of people searching for answers would in fact make life too holey to procede as the majestic spectacle it is. Yet this fundament of dreams cannot stay hidden all the time.  So we have heroes who accomplish exactly that which our dreams predict, and thus these heroes are reassuring the sleeper, pulling those blankets closer in the dark.  (This last picture is one that Jan Cox used on occasion.) The fact heroes actually do accomplish that which ordinary life projects as competent, aware, activity, obscures the fact that the ruling flows of life are (and must be, for the health and progress of the whole of humanity)--mechanical and not the product of man's initiative, or conscious action.

 

I am encouraged to view the possibility above as worthy of a second thought because of Wesley Autrey. Why do we not hear HIS name linked with that of Sully and Phillips? What could be more heroic than jumping in front of an oncoming subway to rescue a person fallen on the tracks?  Is it because it happened several years ago?  Is it because this saint was not of the majority race? No--- possibly we appear to have forgotten Wesley Autry because his heroism was beyond that bell curve of the ordinary which life supports by anointing some mens actions as 'heroic.'  Life wants men being able to land planes on rivers, to risk their lives for their fellow workers; one has to wonder if Life wants folks jumping onto subway tracks.  This last is not that about which men dream.

The Clatter of Jackdaws

Does the chatter of jackdaws in the ruins mean there are no owls in the tree?