tariki

Salvation from what? Or for what? I peep in occasionally then withdraw. But this thread and its question seemed to align with some rambling I have indulged in elsewhere under yet another screen-name....i.e. "Telegram Sam", this in honour of the glam rock star of the 70's Marc Bolan, who was "born to boogie". 

Well, whatever, I'll cut and paste my two posts from this other forum as my contribution to keeping this Forum alive (or maybe killing it stone dead given the reception of some of my rambling)

Here we are:-

Under my thread title of "What is the point' I wrote:-

Way back when I broke away from an extreme form of Christianity (the usual "born again" onewayers) I said to one of the brethren that I subscribed to Universalism. ALL were to be saved (whatever "saved" might mean......😀 ) His response was then "what is the point"? If such is so, why evangelize? Why a Bible?

Whatever I now think of this man, he had a good question. Why? In fact, why anything at all?

The same question, yet in another context, another culture, another Faith, was that of the 13th century zen master Dogen. If the teaching of Original Enlightenment is true, if all is Buddha Nature, then why practice? Why did the Buddha's of old still meditate, still teach, still reach down into samsara with gift bestowing hands, minds and hearts?

I always love finding correspondances between our World's Faith Tradition (in fact across all traditions, philosophy, whatever, even atheist) As I see it it brings forth one meaning of the (itself) widespread idea that in "every particular is the universal". Every question involves all questions. Find one answer and all are found. Which may sound mystical mumbo jumbo - perhaps it is - but I see it as pointing towards truth. We all have our life koan (both problem and answer, yet beyond concept)

Jumping forward, I think the answer is simply Love. The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart once said:-

Love has no why.

Which kills all questions stone dead. There is no "why" to love. If we love then the questions are over. Only the actions that come forth from our mind/hearts remain.

Now, I put love with Universalism. The base is that we are all one. What comes to one will come to all. If our minds divide, if they judge, if in any way at all it is "us" and "them", then there can be no love. The Great Way is beyond differentiation

Letting go of my own questions is the difficult part, yet I see now, more and more, the significance of the Pure Land myokonin Saichi, who wrote:-

Not knowing why, not knowing why! That is my support, not knowing why! That is the Namu-amida-butsu!

May true Dharma continue.
No blame. Be kind. Love everything.

(A break, before posting this.....)

I've been trying to process a few thoughts about all this, but difficult amid certain confusions and demands of my day to day life. Obligations and demands. But really, not much to complain about.

But thoughts on "meaning" or the lack of it, of Love having no why. What is the alternative to there being in fact, NO meaning as such? The alternative to our not knowing why?

In some quote that I cannot trace there was some guy who said that he would rather pursue/seek Truth than to know it, or be handed it on a plate. I get his drift, and yet this still seems to imply that there is in fact A truth out there somewhere waiting to be discovered. And what when it is? When it is found and known?

I think of dear old Spike Milligan who would often at the end of a comic sketch in Q6 simply stand still, hands by his sides, and mutter:-"What do we do now? What do we do now?" Very funny. But after discovering truth, what then? Is our own purpose determined?

These questions suggest to me why I find the more "eastern" ways of seeing/knowing more suggestive of answers. Where "Being" is more "emptiness" than substantial in any sense.

For Dogen mind was at once knowledge and reality, at once the knowing subject and the known object, yet it transcended them both at the same time. In this nondual conception of mind, what one knew was what one was —and ontology, epistemology, and soteriology were inseparably united. (I thank Hee-Jin Kim for this summation)

Or:- "We are what we understand" and our acts flow accordingly.

Hee-Jin Kim again (deep stuff, but I have found it worth pondering in between cracking further levels of Soda Candy Crush Saga).....

To cast off the body-mind did not nullify historical and social existence so much as to put it into action so that it could be the self-creative and self-expressive embodiment of Buddha-nature. In being “cast off,” however, concrete human existence was fashioned in the mode of radical freedom—purposeless, goalless, objectless, and meaningless. Buddha-nature was not to be enfolded in, but was to unfold through, human activities and expressions. The meaning of existence was finally freed from and authenticated by its all-too-human conditions only if, and when, it lived co-eternally with ultimate meaninglessness.


"Love has no why" (Meister Eckhart)

Atheist nihilism meets the Faith Traditions of our world! True seeing, true knowledge is not to believe some Truth. Faith is not belief. Faith lets go, belief clings. Faith unites, beliefs divide.

About 20 or so years ago I read a quote, this from a zen guy Yun-men. He was asked:- "What are the teachings of a whole lifetime" and he answered:- "An appropriate statement." I never really understood and yet as Dogen has said, where we do not understand, there is our understanding. I think I can see it now. Each moment is new if within radical freedom, we answer each moment according to our understanding, and the answer we give is absolute, there, then - but for no other moment. Which in a certain way answers the conundrum of "absolute" v "relative".

Well, thats it. The grandchildren will be there when I get home. Chaos! Lunches to get, dinners to cook.

To anyone stumbling upon this waffle, and perhaps thinking "what a load of crap", that is just the way it is. Complex? No, I think the Bible is correct when it predicts that "a little child shall lead them." Things are very simple, yet sadly we tend to complicate everything.

END OF CUT AND PASTE

Well, that's it. As I've said before, not much interested in debate as such or even in defending anything I've said. Things move on and I simply find expressing myself therapeutic, which in the way of "no-calculation" is very much the prime objective. It sure beats screaming or jumping in the river, which is often my first instinctive reaction to the ways of this world.

Thanks.

Hope you are all doing fine. 

As you asked for a Progressive Christian view I'm not sure - as a Buddhist - if you are interested in my own perspective. 

However......

ANY metaphysical speculation is deemed inimicable to the "holy life" i.e. the path to the end of suffering (dukkha), to "unshakeable deliverance of mind", the heartwood of the Dharma.

Beyond a fundamental trust in Reality no "belief" is needed. 

😀

Back in my old McDonald's haunt with white coffee after a Grandchildren Day (while Mum was taking a well earned rest up in the big smoke watching the "Back to the Future" musical, which she said was awesome!) Simply had to get them to school this morning and now in McDonald's.

Mentioned recently somewhere that Quotes can have their place......to quote (!) A A Milne, they are handy things to have around, "saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself". Ha ha. But is that necessarily so? They can clarify the mind, concentrate the mind. I have a Blook of quotes gathered over time, all illustrated. I often browse through it and sometimes wonder why I thought certain one's were worthy of remembering. Yet such ones can change, which makes me think. A time and a place for everything.

Here is one I found....

The mystery of the Dharma. Truth. The Dharma as "teaching" speaks of avidya (ignorance) being at the heart of suffering (dukkha) Which is a very positive, even optimistic thought in that it implies that if we knew/saw/understood correctly then we would be free of suffering - here, now and not in some future world.

As I understand it, our ignorance is not innate but is more simply the compiled thoughts and impressions gathered since birth, piled on top of each other, clouding our perceptions.

Getting back to Wittgenstein, there is a fine biography of him by Ray Monk. I have always loved biographies, particularly of "thinkers", poets and the like. It puts flesh and blood on their thoughts - just as we put flesh and blood onto quotes if we truly absorb them, just as Jesus put flesh and blood onto "God". In the Ray Monk biography he relates a story of Wittgenstein saying to an acquaintance that he thought that his, i.e.Wittgensteins, teachings had done more harm than good. He asked his acquaintance:- "Do you understand" and they replied:- "Oh yes, they had found a formulae" and Wittgenstein responded:- "Exactly!"

Thomas Merton has suggested much the same, saying:- If you want to find satisfactory formulas you had better deal with things that can be fitted into a formula. The vocation to seek God is not one of them. Nor is existence. Nor is the spirit of man. (and woman too presumably.......   😊)

Ray Monk records Wittgenstein as saying that an expression "has meaning only in the stream of life" and I tend to agree. The Living Word, not the Word as Text beloved by fundamentalists of all persuasions.

We simply cannot capture "truth" and put it into definitive words, into doctrines and creeds. Doing so simply creates a climate for conflict, wars, Inquisitions, "us" and "them". The spirit blows where it will, as the Good Book says. No one owns it. And it belongs to the present and the future, never the past.

Well, I suppose I have waffled enough. Back to the real world this afternoon, picking up the two little kiddies and shepherding them home. Duty calls.

2 hours ago, PaulS said:

It seems to me that none of the above comes naturally (i.e. without effort)....

Yes, much the point. If "enlightenment" (whatever we want to call it) is the bottom line, then what is the scope of effort? What is given, what is earned. If "earned" in any way, what of "grace"?

Some Christian sects assert that God arbitrarily elects some to salvation. Pure undiluted grace. And heaven help those not so elected! No arguments. God does what He wants (always a great big HE in this context and for those sects - the mere thought of a She, a mother, and that whole line of thought becomes more and more absurd)

Then you have the lines from "Amazing Grace", "twas grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved". Hearing such, I've always thought......" Hey, why not cut out the middleman" and save a lot of bother? In fact, save any "creation" at all, any vale of tears. Simply decree a state of misery and one of joy and throw sufficient numbers in each. Then shut the doors and look for your next project. 

Dogen, the zen master, was troubled by the Mahayana teaching of "Original Enlightenment". If we are all born in such a state, why did past masters study the scriptures so assiduously? Why did they study at all? Why did the Buddha keep meditating after his own enlightenment? "Out of compassion for the world" he said. Suffering. We suffer, no matter the conundrums created by our feeble attempts at logic. 

But, "cutting out the middleman". Why is there a middleman? Why anything at all? I think we can dispense with logic. It was never my strong point anyway.

Koans:-

Why is a cat when it spins?

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

A clearly enlightened person falls into the well. How is this so?

Just as I have thought that the entire Bible is a form of Roschach Test, I see the Cosmos, Reality-as-is, as a giant Koan. Reality is beyond logic, yet what we see is what we get, which has its own strange logic, even ethics if we want to push it (but not too far) "We are what we understand" as Dogen said. Nothing in the entire universe is hidden, nothing is concealed. The present moment is the only moment, present "practice" is all, yet there is a movement toward Buddha. A deepening intimacy. Reality will always reveal more as it forever unfolds into novelty. 

Sorry, I am waffling. Rambling. I genuinely never meant to write so much, but I sit in McDonalds with my white coffee (just £1.29, what a bargain) and already I feel some of my morning blues evaporating. Therapeutic. 

 "Then, there is no suffering?" "That there is suffering, this I know"

Be kind. Love everything. 

(Oh, I am progressing with Thomas Mann's "Joseph and his Brothers". I would recommend it. Heavy going yet in a strange way, quite light. I just wish the font was larger)

Thanks Paul. I find everything that relates to "desire" very problematic. It seems to get right down to brass tacks as far as our relationship to the world is concerned. 

That guy Merton (!) speaks of the return to innocence (the reversal of the Fall) as being the end of all willing/desire, a state where the good and the true follow spontaneously from our own "being". This in contrast to our self-conscious efforts to do the "good". There is implied a switch over of our consciousness. Sanctification?Enlightenment?

In Buddhism, the Dharma, "desire" (Pali "Tanha", referring to "thirst, desire, longing, greed" and more) is seen as the cause of "suffering" (dukkha) and it is often asked if the desire to end suffering is therefore in some sense self-defeating. It all gets rather messy, bringing in Grace and Not-Self (Pali "anatta") as the Interfaith Forums heat over!

As one bhikkhu (monk) has said, "at the moment of emancipation effort falls away, having reached the end of its scope."

I think "letting go" entirely has much to support it, especially for a couch potato like myself.

😊

Well,I did - looking back - say that mentioning Blake's "Songs of Innocence and of Experience" would act as the intro to my next post. It looks likeI was diverted. But no matter.

Many of William Blake's best lyrical poems can be found in his "Songs of Innocence and Experience", songs that show the "two contrary states of the human soul."

These "Songs" are found as pairs, one of "Innocence" and one of "Experience", as in:-

The Lamb

Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice!
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee

Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
Little Lamb I'll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Little Lamb God bless thee.

The corresponding song of experience is The Tyger (which often stands alone in examples of Blake's poems - "Tyger" is Blake's spelling of Tiger. His spelling was idiosyncratic to say the least!)

The Tyger

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Obviously the two poems, as a pair, ask profound questions. But I mentioned previously the "social conscience" of Blake, and this is found in another pair of poems from the "Songs", both called "Holy Thursday".

The poems are about an annual event held in London in the early 19th century when the orphans/unwanted children of the Poor House were paraded through the streets of London by their elders and "betters", and taken to St Paul's Cathedral where they took part in a Service, singing hymns.

The song of Innocence:-

Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean
The children walking two & two in red & blue & green
Grey-headed beadles walkd before with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow

O what a multitude they seemd these flowers of London town
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own
The hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs
Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands

Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of Heaven among
Beneath them sit the aged men wise guardians of the poor
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door

The song of Experience:-

Is this a holy thing to see,
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reducd to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?

Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!

And their sun does never shine.
And their fields are bleak & bare.
And their ways are fill'd with thorns.
It is eternal winter there.

For where-e'er the sun does shine,
And where-e'er the rain does fall:
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall

Relating "innocence" and "experience" as a simple contrast doesn't really cover it for me. It rather involves our whole perception of the world around us, our grasp of ethics. And more.

Time to go.

How do others here see "desire"?

I'm reading a book at the moment (having fallen away from my attempt to restrict myself to just two books at a time.....😊) that is about the subject "desire" as it is found in early Buddhism, in the Theravada Canon. One startling fact was that the word "desire" as found in various translations of the Theravada texts has actually 17 different Pali source words! Astonishing!

But anyway. Desire. Good or bad? How does it differ from "willing" - if at all. 

William Blake was a man of vision and of the imagination. He saw the world being ushered in by the Newtonian "billiard ball" universe as soul destroying. When Blake painted Newton he is depicted as circumscribing the world with a compass, another way of Blake suggesting the "mind forged manacles" which represented for him pure self-limitation and the denigration of the human imagination. Obviously, we still live in a Newtonian universe and we haven't caught up with Einstein et al.

"May God us keep From Single vision & Newtons sleep."

A poem of Blakes on the same theme is "Mock on, Mock on".....

Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau;
Mock on, Mock on, 'tis all in vain.
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.

And every sand becomes a Gem
Reflected in the beams divine;
Blown back, they blind the mocking Eye,
But still in Israel's paths they shine.

The Atoms of Democritus
And Newton's Particles of light
Are sands upon the Red sea shore
Where Israel's tents do shine so bright.

Getting back to mysticism, rabbits and hats.......

Mystic:-definition

a person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or who believes in the spiritual apprehension of truths that are beyond the intellect.

I think William Blake can somehow be shoved into that definition, but he was more of a one off.

His "social conscience" (for want of better words) belied any thought of his own mysticism being in any way other-worldly.  He saw the strands of realities that led inevitably to young children being used as chimney sweeps, that led to the hypocrisies of the Poor House, and raged against them. 

John Higgs, an admirer, has written well of Blake's "visions". See "William Blake v The World".....

Spoiler Alert:- Blake wins!

It seems as if the Progressive Christian Cohorts have gone into hibernation......😀Which suits me in many ways. I don't respond well to direct questions, nor to overly contentious challenges to whatever waffle proceeds from the dustbin of my mind. 

 "Oh, you see it that way? Interesting. I see it this way" is contentious enough, at least as I see it. 

Anyway, I thought I would ramble on about William Blake. I won't describe him as artist, poet and mystic, because some seem to think "mystic" has to do with pulling rabbits out of a hat - which just goes to show. So, artist and poet. And a bit of a nutter. He claimed to speak with angels, this among his many visions, and when his brother died he said his saw his soul rising up from the body, ever upwards, "clapping his hands with joy". 

Way back when I had little love for poetry (meeting only boring quatrains in school that spoke of the glories of British Empire builders strutting the poop deck, or being buried with all honours, bugles playing sad laments - not really my sort of stuff. Maybe if I had known some Spike Milligan it might have all been different) but did read a bit of this fine wordsmith Malcolm Muggeridge, who often weaved into his writings a few couplets of William Blake. I was quite taken by them and once, seeing a cheap copy of "The Portable Blake" I invested. Such is life. As Keith Richards has said, all he wants on his gravestone is:- "He passed it on". The Blues that is, not the cocaine when busted by the police.

Well, whatever, I found many of the couplets quoted by Malcolm Muggeridge to have originated from Blake's "Auguries of Innocence". One such I have always remembered as:-

" The widows mite is worth much more

Than all the gold on Afric's shore"

Which is not quite right, as you will see if you plough through the Auguries. 

Here it is. 

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage
A Dove house filld with Doves andPigeons
Shudders Hell thr' all its regions
A dog starvd at his Masters Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State
A Horse misusd upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fibre from the Brain does tear
A Skylark wounded in the wing
A Cherubim does cease to sing
The Game Cock clipped and armed for fight
Does the Rising Sun affright
Every Wolfs and Lions howl
Raises from Hell a Human Soul
The wild deer, wandring here and there
Keeps the Human Soul from Care
The Lamb misusd breeds Public Strife
And yet forgives the Butchers knife
The Bat that flits at close of Eve
Has left the Brain that wont Believe
The Owl that calls upon the Night
Speaks the Unbelievers fright
He who shall hurt the little Wren
Shall never be belovd by Men
He who the Ox to wrath has movd
Shall never be by Woman lovd
The wanton Boy that kills the Fly
Shall feel the Spiders enmity
He who torments the Chafers Sprite
Weaves a Bower in endless Night
The Catterpiller on the Leaf
Repeats to thee thy Mothers grief
Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh
He who shall train the Horse to War
Shall never pass the Polar Bar
The Beggars Dog and Widows Cat
Feed them and thou wilt grow fat
The Gnat that sings his Summers Song
Poison gets from Slanders tongue
The poison of the Snake and Newt
Is the sweat of Envys Foot
The poison of the Honey Bee
Is the Artists Jealousy
The Princes Robes and Beggars Rags
Are Toadstools on the Misers Bags
A Truth thats told with bad intent
Beats all the Lies you can invent
It is right it should be so
Man was made for Joy and Woe
And when this we rightly know
Thro the World we safely go
Joy & woe are woven fine
A Clothing for the soul divine
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine
The Babe is more than swadling Bands
Throughout all these Human Lands
Tools were made and Born were hands
Every Farmer Understands
Every Tear from Every Eye
Becomes a Babe in Eternity
This is caught by Females bright
And returnd to its own delight
The Bleat the Bark Bellow and Roar
Are Waves that Beat on Heavens Shore
The Babe that weeps the Rod beneath
Writes Revenge in realms of Death
The Beggars Rags fluttering in Air
Does to Rags the Heavens tear
The Soldier armd with Sword and Gun
Palsied strikes the Summers Sun
The poor Mans Farthing is worth more
Than all the Gold on Africs Shore
One Mite wrung from the Labrers hands
Shall buy and sell the Misers Lands
Or if protected from on high
Does that whole Nation sell and buy
He who mocks the Infants Faith
Shall be mockd in Age and Death
He who shall teach the Child to Doubt
The rotting Grave shall neer get out
He who respects the Infants faith
Triumphs over Hell and Death
The Childs Toys and the Old Mans Reasons
Are the Fruits of the Two seasons
The Questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to Reply
He who replies to words of Doubt
Doth put the Light of Knowledge out
The Strongest Poison ever known
Came from Caesars Laurel Crown
Nought can Deform the Human Race
Like to the Armours iron brace
When Gold and Gems adorn the Plow
To peaceful Arts shall Envy Bow
A Riddle or the Crickets Cry
Is to Doubt a fit Reply
The Emmets Inch and Eagles Mile
Make Lame Philosophy to smile
He who Doubts from what he sees
Will neer Believe do what you Please
If the Sun and Moon should Doubt
Theyd immediately Go out
To be in a Passion you Good may Do
But no Good if a Passion is in you
The Whore and Gambler by the State
Licencd build that Nations Fate
The Harlots cry from Street to Street
Shall weave Old Englands winding Sheet
The Winners Shout the Losers Curse
Dance before dead Englands Hearse
Every Night and every Morn
Some to Misery are Born
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to Endless Night
We are led to Believe a Lie
When we see not Thro the Eye
Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night
When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light
God Appears and God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day

The perceptive will perhaps note that Blake's spelling left something to be desired, and his capitalisation was idiosyncratic to say the least. 

 And:- 

The Bat that flits at close of Eve
Has left the Brain that wont Believe

More than just bats perhaps!

But anyway, some great couplets there. enough for a lifetimes reflection if we do not reach for final conclusions. But the word "Innocence" leads to one of Blake's most well known Illuminated Books, "Songs of Innocence and of Experience", which show the two "contrary states of the human soul". Which will serve as the intro to my next post, whenever. 

Thank you. 

1 hour ago, romansh said:

Here's a case in point:
 

Is this forum somehow better for asterisks?

Ah ha! In fact the asterisks are my own! The forum on which I posted the original actually allows all cocks and fuckings et al. 

😊

I mentioned somewhere another forum I am on, one for Mental Health. To be honest, the most welcoming and supportive community I have experienced. 

Anyway, just posted this and I will share it here, untouched (I'm exchanging posts with another who has his own problems)

Hello again. I find you - or at least, your posts - more primal than I am capable of. I approach most things via a dustbin mind full of quotes from books, from others. I am always afraid of treading on toes, of misunderstanding. So I apologise if I miss the mark. Trying to make connection, words, sometimes not communion - they can miss the mark and only invite confusion and discord.

You posted:- "The question seems to mistake mindfulness with mindlessness" and that clicked as a starting point, at least for me. It brings me back to the "contest" held in zen, around the 7th century, when the zen community in China were seeking the next "patriach" to hand on the banner.

People were asked to write a verse/poem, explaining/expounding zen/insight.

One wrote:-

The body is the bodhi tree.
The mind is like a bright mirror's stand.
At all times we must strive to polish it
and must not let dust collect.

This understanding failed. The "winner" was Hui Neng (apparently by some accounts a novice with no training) who wrote:-

Bodhi originally has no tree.
The mirror has no stand.
The Buddha-nature is always clear and pure.
Where is there room for dust?

All this can simply be academic, of no interest. Yet we are what we understand and there is a vast difference between them. As I see it, the first betrays this world, seeks to wash it away, this to reveal another, better place. Much like most religion with its promises of a life beyond the grave, with promises of compensation for the sufferings of this one, rewards for those who have persevered, "believed"! and often, punishment for others who have believed falsely.

.My daughter actually works with all sorts (not a saint!) and says - as I do - that we are all "special needs", that we need not know what is "wrong" with any child, we must simply treat them for the child that they are. Now she has two of her own to test the theory! Often another matter entirely! Just recently she has hit some rough patches. One guy, just 29, with cerebral palsy, who she has known for about twenty years, died suddenly after suffering a fit. I knew him vaguely, from way back, prior to his teens. My daughter had been with him, on and off, through the Music Man Project and other such things. She tells us the story - when she is still able to laugh - of a trip he was taken on to Disneyworld Florida, of when the swimming pool heating had broken down. But this guy loved the water, offering more freedom of movement, and he insisted on taking a dip. Put in he cried out:- "Cor, its f*****g cold!" which made everyone burst out laughing. Anyway, my daughter was devasted by his death, and then just a day or so ago a lady she works with told her that her daughter - with her own two children - had taken her own life. Sometimes it all gets too much.

But mindlessness, empty minds. As I see it, clearing the mind, washing it clean, is not the way to go. It seeks to get rid of suffering rather than "redeeming" it. It betrays our past, rather than giving it value. The Jewish Faith has it that without the past there is no redemption. I'm much more conversant now with the Dharma, but enough for now. I tend to sit myself down in McDonalds and start waffling away. To me, harmless stuff, certainly not intended to offend or confront, more almost talking to myself, a search perhaps for clarification.

All the best with your own challenges.

Thank you

20 minutes ago, wanderinglover said:

As one is the process of becoming, perpetually, what is it we arrive to, at which point do we make that distinction? 

Ask me another. Is there a final culmination, one destination for all?

There is a fine dialogue between Thomas Merton (Catholic) and D T Suzuki (Buddhism, zen, even Pure Land) and the only point of real disagreement was on the subject of eschatology, the "last things". Suzuki only spoke of the eschatology of the present moment, or as others have said, the "only extension to the present is intensity"; poetically, "the journey is home". Dogen, another zen guy, speaks of a deepening intimacy, this despite nothing in the whole world is hidden, of the primacy of the present moment, yet there is "a movement toward Buddha". 

Merton though, speaks of a final consummation when the Son hands over all things to the Father, all "beyond our ken" as it were - but all shall be revealed! Or not!

I'm with Suzuki.

Hello

Basically I'm here talking to myself, which is not the best of starts as far as seeking "community" is concerned. But life is full of surprises. Plotting a course has less and less appeal.

Your personal situation seems very oppressive to me, I would not be strong enough to think my own thoughts in such a home. 

 "Belief" I have no trouble with, as I see beliefs as the polar opposite of Faith/Trust......in Pure Land Buddhist parlance, shinjin. In faith/trust you let go, not seek to find the belief structure that "suits". What self, in becoming, are we trying to suit?

Sorry, sunday is not my best day. Hopefully you can find a home, here or elsewhere. 

Welcome. 

Trying to head for simplicity. I don't often try to chart a course, but there are always exceptions.

Simplicity. I no longer listen to the news or visit News Websites. Fortunately Mrs Tariki is with me on this. Once the headlines have been spouted then its switch over to any Quiz Show on offer. Hopefully we can hit one that we have seen before and therefore get a few correct answers.

And giving up on soccer after a lifetime of following certain clubs, going to away games, stewing over results. I think VAR helped finish it off. Enough said.

And reading. Often I have had about 10 or so books going at once. E-books and "real" books - I love the heft of them, and actually prefer a well read one, the pages ruffled, well loved. 

Now just two. One in Kindle, another to touch and feel. My current e-book is "The Letters of John Keats", a Penguin edition with various notes and commentary. I don't actually like much of Keat's poetry - I find it a bit turgid, which probably says more about me than the poetry - but there you go. But I find his life, in biographies, ever fascinating. His friendships, his commitment to "beauty" and "truth". So ardent. And his letters are fine. 

It was in his letters that he spoke of negative capability, which he saw as a contrast to any striving towards "certainties", or as you can find in Wiki....

......to pursue a vision of artistic beauty even when it leads them into intellectual confusion and uncertainty, as opposed to a preference for philosophical certainty over artistic beauty. The term has been used by poets and philosophers to describe the ability to perceive and recognise truths beyond the reach of consecutive reasoning.

Keats said that no worthwhile truth could be found by consecutive reasoning, and thus he would have appreciated the central philosophy of Buddhism, the Madhyamika, which speaks of the eternal conflict in reason, and therefore the need to rise (or is it "dip") to another standpoint - this not a position as such, but a no-position that supercedes all positions. The Middle Way. 

Well, enough of that. My "real" book is a rather weighty tome, Thomas Mann's "The Brothers of Joseph", which is a re-telling of the well known Biblical story. Weighty? Yes, about 1500 pages, Mann's magnum opus.

I was actually trying to read (the second attempt) Mann's "The Magic Mountain" but alas found it above my head. I was getting nothing from it, its themes and allusions lost on me. But the "Brothers" is a story, although the text is pretty dense and convoluted. But this suits me. I can read just a small section at a time, yet just one paragraph often offers much to reflect upon. And humorous at times. Joseph is presented as fairly "pagan" in outlook. Much to ponder. 

SPOILER ALERT:- Joseph ends up as top man in Egypt and they all live happily ever after.

One exception, is that I continue to dip into - on and off, mainly off - Thomas Cleary's translation of "The Blue Cliff Record", a collection of 100 Zen Koans. Cleary's book is called "Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record" and contains commentary by two old zen masters. Most - if not all - of its secrets remain such to me. Looking up my records, I see that I downloaded this book on 22nd March 2014. So far I have reached "Case 69" , called "Nansen's Circle". As I have indicated, I make little of what is on offer, but have persevered. Just once or twice something "clicks" (consecutively or not) and I feel as though the hefty purchase price was not entirely wasted. 

Here is "Jansen's Circle" (why should I be the only one to suffer?)

With no place to sink in your teeth, the mind seal of Zen masters is like the works of an iron ox. Having passed through a forest of thorns, a Zen practitioner is like a snowflake on a red-hot furnace. Leaving aside piercing and penetrating on level ground for now, when you do not fall into conditions, then what?

I do think that this has to do with "radical freedom" and the possiblities of its existence, of breaking free of our conditioning in the only way a finite being can. But I may be wrong. The commentary by the two "masters" simply adds confusion, at least to my mind. Hakuin, for instance, who says 'when consciousness in the skull is exhausted, how can joy stand,' which is hard to get a bite on".  Well, it certainly is. 

Anyway, enough for now. I feel better for tapping this waffle out, even if no one else does from reading it.

This second memo prompted by a discussion on the purpose of monks.....

I think if we simply judge according to how anyone contributes to the GDP then the "purpose" of any monk is questionable. but if we have some sort of trust/faith/belief in any form of "salvation/enlightenment" then the question takes on added dimensions.

From way back I always had a suspicion of monks, of anyone who sought "salvation" simply by seclusion from the world. It implied - at least to my mind - the pursuit of a pseudo enlightenment, maybe the production of a cultured pearl rather than one produced by the natural environment.

Yet the reality has been that two of my greatest mentors and influences, those who have spoken most sense in this mad confusing world, have been Thomas Merton and Nyanaponika Thera, both monks. One a Catholic and one a Buddhist Theravada Elder. Me, I'm pretty "low church" as far as any pre-adult influences go, so the pomp of the Catholic Church is more Monty Python to me, but Merton is simply something else entirely. And Nyanaponika Thera, born a German Jew, was the one who first made me truly hear the heartbeat of the Dharma.

I have gravitated away from Theravada (which is very monastic based) towards the Mahayana, and particularly Pure Land Buddhism. Pure Land, ideally, knows no "masters", is very egalitarian, and holds that our Dojo (training ground) is around the kitchen sink, immersed in this world, not any secluded or even monastic environment.

Anyway, maybe a key verse from any text ("holy" or not......) can be found in the Christian New Testament, from Romans:-

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God

Fortunately (maybe unfortunately, who knows?) I can transpose words, bend them, place them in various contexts. The heart of that NT verse is of relevance to anyone who seeks something other than the often accepted ways of our world. Whether a theist or a non-theist.

I certainly have faith in the whole idea of "enlightenment", that there is a way out, that it can be found. And yes, that the various monks of our world can offer great insight and support.

But to finish, just to confuse, mentioning the Mahayana. It is a quagmire. One of its many dictums is that Samsara (our world, as known, of birth and death) is Nirvana. So when I speak of "escape" then such has to be kept in mind.

As Thomas Merton has said, in his introduction to his translations of Chuang Tzu:-

For Chuang Tzu, as for the Gospel, to lose one’s life is to save it, and to seek to save it for one’s own sake is to lose it. There is an affirmation of the world that is nothing but ruin and loss. There is a renunciation of the world that finds and saves man in his own home, which is God’s world. In any event, the “way” of Chuang Tzu is mysterious because it is so simple that it can get along without being a way at all. Least of all is it a “way out.” Chuang Tzu would have agreed with St. John of the Cross, that you enter upon this kind of way when you leave all ways and, in some sense, get lost.

What I love about the Mahayana is that at heart it does not betray this world, the only one we have known. Most Religion, at least as I see it, is simply a betrayal of this world for some imagined "other".

Six mornings out of seven (grandchildren permitting) I head for town. First stop is McDonalds for a large cup of their white coffee. Cheap and cheerful. I quite like the ambience of the place - downmarket, children making noise, a few regulars, always busy, a few spillages uncleared. I find my time there very therapeutic, my usual morning blues being blown away. By the time I hit the place I have usually ruminated on a post or two on a Mental Health forum I now participate on.

Always best to ruminate upon something as I walk along, despite the advice of some "masters" that when walking we should "just walk". To think is to help avoid seeing the multitude of discarded drink cans and cartons thrown aside in the subways and along the paths, this despite quite adequate litter bins provided by the authorities. This is Global Britain. One other distraction, besides the thinking, are the swans as I approach the first shopping centre, beside one of the two rivers that flow through the city. This year we have been graced with two large broods and all seem to have survived. Now, just into the New Year, the brown feathers have all virtually turned to white. They sit preening themselves beside the path - one sometimes actually sits right in the middle of the pedestrian/cycle track, almost as though it owned the place. I wish it did. 

Anyway, I waffle. This is a preamble to what I will call my McDonalds Memos. Tapped out while drinking my coffee, "inspired" by posts on another Forum. Pretty spontaneous stuff, yet produced in part by my ruminations.

Here is the first, which I shall call "The Hidden Ground of Love". No debates please. If anything triggers discussion please open a thread elsewhere just so I can avoid it. Thank you.

There is a sutta in the Buddhist texts where after a lot of terse, involved instruction on how to quiet the mind, the Buddha simply says that we should just grit our teeth and try robust effort! I suppose that there is a time for silence and a time for speech, for simplicity and verbosity, a time to let go and a time to hang on, make effort. (As far as verbosity is concerned, I certainly hope so!)

In the past I have often opened threads on "Wisdom" and what it actually is. I often quote a Buddhist scholar, Edward Conze, who defined wisdom as "the mind/heart, thirsting for emancipation, seeing deep into the heart of reality." Such seeing is not conceptual or even self-aware, or at least I do not understand it as such.

All definitions are just words, some simpler to understand than others. Sometimes, reading the latest "philosopher" I reel away in incomprehension. It all seems far away from the OT phrase "a little child shall lead them"

But I think wisdom is grace, gift. It is never our own. When the gift has been given/received then we are totally unaware of having it. It simply becomes part of us, to be given to others. To think we "have it" is to lose it.

I think of a letter Thomas Merton once wrote, which contained that beautiful paradox, a letter written to E.D.Andrews, an expert on the life and beliefs of the Shakers (or the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing). Andrews had sent Merton a copy of his book, Shaker Furniture, and Merton was responding to the gift.

This wordless simplicity, in which the works of quiet and holy people speak humbly for themselves. How important that is in our day, when we are flooded with a tidal wave of meaningless words: and worse still when in the void of those words the sinister power of hatred and destruction is at work. The Shakers remain as witnesses to the fact that only humility keeps man in communion with truth, and first of all with his own inner truth. This one must know without knowing it, as they did. For as soon as a man becomes aware of "his truth" he lets go of it and embraces an illusion.

Such a paradox as I see it, supports Faith. If we follow some sort of path, way, of "no-calculation" and yet we find the gift of love flowering in our mind/hearts, not of self, then there is only one source - that which Merton called "the hidden ground of love" (for which there is no explanation)

Thank you

Hi Jim, hopefully you will not make the same mistake I have made in the past, that is, trying to argue with such "believers". I have learnt the hard way that it is best to just leave it. 

As far as eschatology is concerned, this was the one subject that Thomas Merton, the Catholic monk, and the zen man D T Suzuki disagreed on in their dialogue "Wisdom in Emptiness". Suzuki spoke only of an "eschatology of the present moment" while Merton - thought concurring in a certain way - sought to speak of something more, a final consummation of all things in Christ, beyond our current imaginings. I'm more with Suzuki. 

Anyway, welcome again.

Religious convictions seem just another form of our tendency to reach after certainties in a very uncertain world. Alas (!) our world is one of becoming and not of being. Seeking certainities, and then claiming we have them, is like claiming we have captured the wind - which of course as the Good Book (!) says, "blows where it will."

 When our own certainties hit the brick wall of anothers, then we have fireworks - especially when our eternal destiny is thought to be at stake. Yikes! if they are right then I am wrong and all hell can break loose - which often results in our certainties becoming harder, cement, to be defended at all costs. 

Reaching after certainties is a mugs game.

(maybe Romansh would say...."are you certain of that? ")

Anyway, a rather short post as I have shorn it of various quotes to support my esteemed thesis - from the letters of Keats and various other Good Books that litter our world.

Thank you for bearing with me.

I wasn't proving a point, I was making a point.

😐

9 hours ago, David Sundaram said:

That's you  self-reifyingly putting your words/ideas into my mouth.

PROVING my POINT: Avoiding REALLY engaging with someone who understands/sees/thinks about things, in this case Jesus's widsom, in a way different than you do.

Bye-Bye

I posted:-

I'm sorry you see my point of view/faith as "esoteric" and "irrational". 

because David said previously to me....

At this point, given your tendency to embrace (what I regard as being) wildly irrational/esoteric statements, I doubt we will find common ground to meet on.

I would say that it is the widsom of Jesus that is esoteric.......at least, I've never heard of it!

😊

5 hours ago, David Sundaram said:

I appreciate the engagement and the invitation. tariki. I hope you appreciate the fact that I think-and-so-opinionated that your idea of of "coming to die" reflects a gross, to the point of being absurd in my view,  misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Jesus's words and actions.

Given that you did not deign to respond to quote about Jesus saying he 'came' here so that others could/would have more 'abundant' Life, but simply further rationalized' your expressed positionality, I think it would be a waste of my energy to attempt to communicate further with you or your cohorts here.

"In what place soever ye enter into an house, there abide till ye depart from that place. And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them." (Matthew 6)

I am accessible via email and/or phone should anyone else here think/feel they have something to gain by engaging in conversation with me - I can be reached via the 'message' feature here in that case to set that up. I suggest anyone interested peruse my website to get a sense of what I am about first, however.

Sorry David, but I DID explain fully and comprehensively the context in which I agreed with the claim of C S Lewis that Jesus "came to die". As a precis, I sought to say that therefore, as 

a consequence, it was for the purpose that ALL should have life, and have it more abundantly. This simply by reason of His death, and not because of any human beings intellectual grasp of His sayings. Thus, many paths. 

Apparently you are seeking to insist that only via analysis and understanding of various "sayings" of Jesus can a human being find more abundant life, and not, as I would claim, via universal mythos, via infinite ways, means and paths in a Reality that is itself a vital, ephemeral agent of awareness and healing. 

I'm sorry you see my point of view/faith as "esoteric" and "irrational". 

Thank you. 

There is a deep insight/understanding/revelation in the fact that we cannot know. Why there is an eternal conflict in reason, why there is absolutely no end to the dialectics of reason. Why one must therefore"rise" to another standpoint, one that supercedes all standpoints and views. And simply saying "oh, is that your view/standpoint" simply does not cut it. 

Faith. A dirty word. Misunderstood. Associated with "belief without evidence" and therefore not actually experienced as a complete letting go of all beliefs, views and "positions".

Oh yes, but as Neddy Seagoon once said so eloquently, "everybody gotta be somewhere". 

Thus Dogen:-

"Therefore, if there are fish that would swim or birds that would fly only after investigating the entire ocean or sky, they would find neither path nor place. When we make this very place our own, our practice becomes the actualization of reality (genjōkōan). When we make this path our own, our activity naturally becomes actualized reality (genjōkōan)."

 And from Saichi's Journals:-

Not knowing why! Not knowing why! That is my support, not knowing why! That is the Namu-amida-butsu!

 "Love has no why" Meister Eckhart.

The hidden ground of love (Merton)

Thank you. I will not be back for a while. I get tired of being compelled to spin around in pointless circles. The revolving wheel of samsara. 

2 hours ago, romansh said:

I'm not sure you do Derek.

To be honest mate, I have no idea what you are on about. 

I'll take a rest from this.

All the best.

2 hours ago, romansh said:

It was not me you were putting in a box.  

Oh, I get it now. YOU are putting me in a box "as understood". 

I am running much the same thread on the Mental Health Forum and getting some fine results. Just to share, a cut and paste of a post I have made there:-

I'm at the edge of my own understanding here, I am still - on and off, mainly "off"...  - trying to understand/assimilate the thought of Dogen, the 13th century Japanese zen master. He wrote in an old style of Japanese (imagine reading Chaucer's olde English) and therefore evenst the Japanese find him difficult to interpret. Again, he wrote much in poetry.

Yet his reputation grows in the West, among those seeking to relate human consciousness to the advances of theoretical physics - relativity, string theory, chaos theory, quantum leaps and all the rest of it. Mind boggling stuff. No "privileged time" either to form a backdrop - and obviously, at the moment, with our cosmological knowledge in flux, a mixture of both proven theories and speculation. The new paradigm sought, the grand "theory of everything" seemingly far distant.

And so Telegram Sam flounders ar times, but as I say, Dogen and his thought hold my interest - using suitable commentaries.

First, an idea associated with the "dropping of body and mind" which of course has nothing to do with having an empty head, or "not thinking" and all the rest of it. The idea of "ultimate meaninglessness". Over to a commentator:-

To cast off the body-mind did not nullify historical and social existence so much as to put it into action so that it could be the self-creative and self-expressive embodiment of Buddha-nature. In being “cast off,” however, concrete human existence was fashioned in the mode of radical freedom—purposeless, goalless, objectless, and meaningless. Buddha-nature was not to be enfolded in, but was to unfold through, human activities and expressions. The meaning of existence was finally freed from and authenticated by its all-too-human conditions only if, and when, it lived co-eternally with ultimate meaninglessness.

This seems, in a strange sense, to nullify "nihilsm", suggesting that "meaninglessness" is in actual fact a necessity if meaning and freedom at our human level is to be possible.

And in Dogen ontology, epistemology, and soteriology were inseparably united. If we are indeed part of the world, then knowledge of the world, in the final analysis, means that part of the world knows itself and consciousness is woven wholly into Cosmos.

Perhaps I have to add that one fine commentator (Hee-Jin Kim) suggests that such creative practice-expression is not a matter of some refined understanding, but of deep trust in the activity of Buddha-nature:- “(Dogens thought) cannot be fully understood apart from consideration of faith" , the trust in the liberative qualities of spaciality and temporality.

Anyway, I plod on. I never meant to rabbit on so much. In many ways I'm a simple guy, and in the end I think it IS all very simply, that finally, as the Good Book (!) says:- "A little child shall lead them".

"Love has no why" Meister Eckhart.