tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46420820334412513412024-03-13T12:52:50.573-07:00Sash RapWriting for spiritual renewalSasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.comBlogger127125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-38320301959481783922018-06-10T17:17:00.003-07:002018-06-12T00:34:22.029-07:00The personal God"Do you believe in God?" It’s a question that I hear seldom these days, but when I was younger it was common enough on people’s lips. Those curious about the nature of our world and of reality often came to ponder the existence or not of a "maker". <p>
In recent times it seems the issue is settled: God is a fiction. Science has won. The Big Bang explains how we got here. There is no longer need for inquiry into first cause. Belief in God is now decidedly fringe, confined to religious fundamentalists, the elderly and people cracked open by personal crises seeking to put themselves together again. <p>
But is God really dead? It seems to me that what has been rejected is a particular image or understanding of the divine. As a "supreme being", as an all-powerful father figure dwelling somewhere in the sky, God ultimately stood no chance against a secular culture bringing the benefits and sensible certainties of science. At least, not in Western countries. And being a He his authority was bound to be eroded by the modern move away from male dominance in society. <p>
Interestingly, while rejecting God many people in contemporary times are not prepared to abandon spirituality, not content to entirely embrace scientific materialism. Writers like David Tacey and Hugh Mackay have identified the "spiritual but not religious" identity trend which incorporates a rejection of established religious forms with an opening to and exploration of different spiritual traditions and pathways. People don't want the old heavenly father, but they do want depth and meaning in life and some means to approach the timeless questions of who we are and how we are to live in this world. <p>
We are living between times. The collapse of the Judeo-Christian tradition does not immediately herald another to take its place. Ours is a period of uncertainty in spiritual matters, of the dying of old forms and search for replacements. It is a time of exploration and groping forwards in the dark. At some point in the future the prevailing spiritual tendencies may coalesce into a new "religion", but we need not be too concerned about this word. The Latin root of "religion" means "to bind" and a religion is essentially a system for binding the individual and group to the source of their being through whatever myths, rituals and sacraments are fitting in their particular time and culture. <p>
If we probe the supreme being, father-in-the-sky myth a little, we may get some important clues about patterns in spiritual observance. The extraordinary thing about the myth is that no religious thinker of any depth in the West has subscribed to it. Scratch Christianity, Judaism or Islam and you find a God that defies description, that is an unknown synonymous with the mysteries of the universe, and that cannot ultimately be talked about or represented. He is certainly not an anthropomorphic image, not the bearded old man of a Michelangelo painting. <p>
So why has the popular image of God persisted for so long, perhaps since the beginning of the great religions? The answer is in the relationship between human and divine. A personal dimension helps us greatly in making the connection to God. We need concrete, direct ways to build the link, allowing us to see the work of divinity in our lives, to communicate with it through prayer, to understand what it asks of us. When God takes on personhood in the scriptures and is ascribed qualities such as love, goodness and mercy, it is for our benefit to be guided by the divine and to live full, decent lives. <p>
But the personal God is, in the end, a device only; merely a convenient trope. The deeper the relationship that is built in an individual, the less is God anthropomorphised, the less is there of the simple human characteristics in the divine image we hold. At the same time, human and divine, matter and spirit, move closer to one another and the hard distinctions between the two gradually fade. We start to see something of the emptiness, the ineffability of divinity, even as we realise it at the core, the very building blocks of our being.<p>
I suspect a future religion will again have to face the tension between the human need for a personal relationship with the divine and the reality of that very divinity, but perhaps the demise of the father-in-the-sky opens new possibilities. Could He become a She? Could the strong pull towards immanence result in a religious reverence for the Earth? Do we go the way of a mystic appreciation of the Universe? It seems, at the least, that many people are now prepared to let go of some of the cruder elements of the personal God towards a new, more refined understanding of the divine.
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-85638086184424986872018-04-15T23:03:00.000-07:002018-04-15T23:03:26.883-07:00Golden-orb weaver<i>I often go back to the poetry of Judith Wright, whose appreciation of nature is deep, sympathetic but not sentimental. Her ability to see beyond the apparent opposites of this world into the realm of Mystery still holds for me a deep attraction. I wrote the following poem after a summer spent observing a particularly majestic spider.</i><p>
<b>
Golden-orb weaver</b><p>
Within the stand of mulga trees <br>
A net is swaying in the breeze,<p>
And on the net a spider rides,<br>
Crouching and waiting for what collides.<p>
A beast that lives to hunt and kill<br>
By guile and poise and dexterous skill,<p>
The bees it traps, what would they give<br>
For one more day that they should live,<p>
Among the mulga, tussock and creek,<br>
The scented flower to yearn and seek.<p>
Oh traveler, stop and ease your breath<br>
And find the shade away from sun,<br>
Then see the place where life meets death,<br>
Where life is lost and life is won. </p>Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-49254612394924412752018-03-22T20:50:00.001-07:002018-04-03T16:25:06.426-07:00To an Empowered Love<i>If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. </i><p>
<i>Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.</i><p>
<i>And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.</i><br />
<p>
- 1 Corinthians 13 <p>
I never tire of reading St Paul’s great reflection on the gift of love in his first letter to the Corinthians. It is, in my opinion, the most profound and prophetic reflection in the letters attributed to him in the New Testament. It is also perhaps, in our contemporary post-Christian era, one of the few things he wrote that can still speak to us with any meaning or depth.<p>
Paul himself underlined the difficulty of putting love into practice: elsewhere in his letters he is arrogant and boastful, is concerned to keep women in an inferior place in the nascent Christian community and hectors new converts to keep to his version of Christ’s Way, which he is certain is the <i>only way</i> despite people with other views. <p>
Where Paul, with the benefit of 2000 years of hindsight, could be said to have erred is his movement away from the core of his revelation of Christ, centred on love, towards certitude of belief. In his letters love is sometimes lost amid the need to organise and enforce a system of beliefs, to ensure that converts to the gospel align themselves to some ideas and not to others, and the need for unity of the right-thinking faithful. Love at times becomes secondary in his great missionary project.<p>
What is love and how can it help us in the 21st century? <p>
We tend to corral love in personal relationships and the family, but it reaches a lot further and is loaded with spiritual meaning, as Paul indicates in <i>Corinthians.</i> I would define love as the intention and act that benefits life. A loving person is one who consistently acts to support and nurture the creative force that is in all things. Though love can be communicated through words, it cannot be tied down to any set of ideas or beliefs; it exists as a higher-order value demonstrated only in its beneficial effects upon life. <p>
When I think of the immense global environmental and social problems we face in the 21st century, only one solution comes to mind: love. When despair at human ignorance and greed overwhelms me, I look to only one way out: love. <p>
Love is not passive, it does not imply a retreat from worldly concerns but is an engagement in the world on the terms of what brings most benefit in the widest possible embrace. Love has no boundary, no place where you can say it does not reach, no dark corner into which it cannot shine. We can lose sight of love, but it remains with us, ready, still. <p>
Love provides energy and direction in dark times because it is solely about affirmation of life. As we go about our daily lives, the task is to stay anchored to love, to draw from it at every moment, and to return to it if we have lost our way. <p>
Many of the issues facing humanity in the modern era revolve around a crisis of empowerment. Industrial, scientific and medical advances have given the human species immense power, even to the capability of destroying all life on Earth. But in our collective focus on power and on empowerment, we have often left little room for love. Perhaps that’s the immediate challenge facing our species – redressing the imbalance between power and love and becoming as proficient in love and its applications as we have in the sphere of power. That would necessarily mean many difficult decisions where we dampen our desire to control and master in favour of letting go, of accepting things just as they are, and of faith and humility before the greater power of the universe. Our narrow concern just for ourselves must give way to a larger, more expansive realisation of Self that embraces all life on Earth and encompasses the very mystery of being. <p>
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the great synthesist of science and religion, said: “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall master for God the energies of love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” If humanity has any future, and some say our time on this planet is now fairly limited because of the enormously destructive changes we have wrought, to love is where we need to go. The direction of our next stage of evolution must be to an empowered love.<p/>
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-55633471381045129612018-03-03T22:43:00.000-08:002018-03-04T15:03:15.893-08:00This is not America"This is not America" – I’ve heard this said many times in the media by activists in response to Donald Trump, condemning his right-wing policies and all for which he stands. <p>
"This is not America", and I always think "Oh yes, it most certainly is." I reason that if the country in which I live, Australia, has its warts and barnacles, then America must have plenty too. Take the dominance of corporate power that makes democracy at the highest levels in the US an illusion, take economic inequality in the richest country in the world, take its urban ghettoisation and squalor, its addiction to gun-toting violence at home and military empire abroad, its race problems, history of slavery and genocide of Indigenous people. <p>
All of these are surely America, as much so as all that is good about the place. In fact, how is it possible to say that the good outweighs the bad? If you are middle or upper-class you may not be directly exposed much to the ugliness, but it exists nonetheless. Trump, it seems to me, represents raw, naked power and the arrogance and stupidity that goes with it. That's as American, as the old saying goes, as apple pie.<p>
The question for me is: How do we oppose the bad while not casting it as somehow alien to ourselves and the body of humanity as a whole? How do we fight Trump in a reasoned and mature way without denial and demonisation?<p>
This points to one of the burdens that has come down to us from Christian civilisation – the absolute dichotomy between good and bad and identification with good at the expense of evil. Modern psychology takes a sharp knife to this simplistic approach: We are all capable of good and evil acts, it says, and the way through the opposites is a psychic acceptance and integration of all elements. When we accept our own capacity for evil, we may come to a point of integration that allows us genuine freedom to choose how we act, no longer trapped in binary opposition within ourselves and against others. <p>
From this point of acceptance and love we can still fight the good fight, but there’s a qualitative change. We don’t exclude or dehumanise the evildoer because we see them as our self. Even as we act to stop what they are doing, we are conscious not to create an "us and them" picture that severs the fabric of humanity. The result is always an affirmation of wholeness rather than a negation; we ask, “What is it that I am affirming in this situation?” to guide us. <p>
In its own uniquely contradictory way, the Christian tradition offers helpful insights. St Paul says in <i>Ephesians 6:12,</i> "Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh … but against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." What Paul means is that we focus on combating the wrongness of actions and not the individuals involved, or in another formulation we look to the principles at stake and not to personalities. So much energy in the current opposition to Trump is sucked down into useless name-calling and shrillness.<p>
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s-60s, in my view, showed a remarkable degree of maturity. Martin Luther King steadfastly refused to lower the tone of the movement in reaction to the hideous racism of the time, continually affirming the dignity and humanity of everybody – black and white, oppressed and oppressor – while acting decisively for a better society. That’s America, the kind we desperately need to see more. </p>
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-36686483235804798232018-01-01T23:17:00.000-08:002018-01-01T23:18:46.451-08:00What is Man?<i>Most dialogues involving the ancient Greek philosopher Aristageles were written by his students (notably Caro of Athens) after his death in the late-4th century BC. Some dialogues, including the following, are of unknown authorship and likely written much later. How closely these later works relate to the thought of Aristageles has been much debated.</i><p>
<i>Gordias:</i> Aristageles, I am so glad to see you. Where have you been? Your friends haven’t sighted you for days. Have you been ill? <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Dear friend, this cold, damp weather is no good for my bones. What’s more, the flabby old rascal dropsy has been harrassing me for days with pain in the legs and swelling. By Zeus, I challenged him this morning, saying I would go to the Agora whether he liked it or not. And as you can see I am here, grimacing somewhat but still determined, with the aid of a stick. <p>
<i>Gordias:</i> I am sorry for your condition. <p>
<i>Aristageles</i>: Over the years I have prayed to every god on Olympus, tried every ointment known in Greece, but this miserable beast still importunes me. It will pass, I know, like everything, and likely take me with it. But you seem lively, despite the leaden skies. There is a brightness in your eyes and a spring in your gait. <p>
<i>Gordias:</i> Yes, indeed. I am preparing to host a symposium. Phokion, Thoxias and Thribias have all said they will come, and Polydoros will no doubt when he returns from Argos. And I have asked Ascaldea of Miletus, the citharede, to perform for us. It would be an honour if you too could join us, if you are able. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> How kind. And what will be the subject of our discussion on this propitious occasion?<p>
<i>Gordias:</i> Uh, well, I haven’t quite fixed on that.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> You haven’t something in mind? Something enticing enough for Phokion, Thoxias, Thribias and Polydoros to slake their thirst for philosophy at your well?<p>
<i>Gordias:</i> Well yes, I do.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Out with it, then. No false modesty here. <p>
<i>Gordias:</i> What is Man?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> What is Man? Is that it?<p>
<i>Gordias:</i> Are you not pleased?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Well, it is to the point. Philosophy is nothing if it doesn’t take us to the essence of things. <p>
<i>Gordias:</i> I have no doubt, if this be the topic of the night, that the discussion will be lively, deep and reasoned. But I would like to know, Aristageles, your view on the subject; for if you come I would like to place you in the best order of speakers. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Then you are asking me, What is Man?<p>
<i>Gordias:</i> Most humbly, yes, I am.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Man is an animal. <p>
<i>Gordias:</i> Then it is my turn to put on a perplexed face. An animal?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Indeed. Man is a donkey, carrying the burden of his desires.<p>
<i>Gordias:</i> Just that? An animal?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Man is a pig, wallowing in the disasters of his own making. Man is a horse that dances when set free. Man is a nightingale that sings to the glory of God. Man is a curlew that cries out in fear in the night. <p>
<i>Gordias:</i> Nothing more than an animal?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> He is a cat, preening himself with simple pride; he is an ox, determined, steady and wilful; he is a fox who cunningly preys on all he can; an oak that with great strength lifts its arms to heaven.<p>
<i>Gordias:</i> Wait, an oak is not even an animal.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> I am stretching the cord, it is true. But I mean life, my friend, life. <p>
<i>Gordias: </i>And is that all Man is, life? He is surely nobler, more refined, more advanced than a mere animal.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Have you no great regard for creation, and for the mighty creator and originator of all? <p>
<i>Gordias:</i> Of course I do. I am questioning your placement of Man in the order of things.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> His place is that which Zeus assigns him.<p>
Gordias: But greater than an ox, a donkey, a nightingale and all the others you mentioned. A man has reason. It sounds ridiculous, but no ox ever came up with philosophy. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Ah, let me prove to you the connection between the two. Would you allow me to lead such an animal to the symposium?<p>
<i>Gordias:</i> With respect, that is madness.<p>
<i>Aristageles: </i>Socrates said that the greatest of goods comes to us through madness, provided it is bestowed by divine gift. <p>
<i>Gordias: </i>I don’t understand. Man has created civilisation – no animal could do that.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Have you not seen the nests of some ants, where thousands working harmoniously together build the most contrived and delicate structures? Or the hives of bees, that through labour and ingenuity create the nectar we call honey?<p>
<i>Gordias:</i> Great temples, art, poetry – you say all this is comparable to the work of ants, bees and oxen?<p>
<i>Aristageles</i>: It is a matter of how one looks and sees the world. I do not privilege men because I have seen the worst and best of what we are capable. We have our own role, it is true, in this great dance of the cosmos, our unique capabilities and purpose, but as to some special altar at which we should erect and bow down to the statue of Man, of that I beg to express my disapproval. <p>
<i>Gordias:</i> Why you are a contrarian, Aristageles. I have seen you worshiping at the Acropolis, taking part in the rites and processions of the Dionysia, speaking eloquently at debates of philosophy with your peers. You partake in all this, the gift of the genius of our ancestors carried forward by the good men of our time, yet you trifle with it as if it was nothing at all. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> I don’t trifle, and I don’t wish my words to fall too hard on your years. But I do say that I would happily spend some days in the fields in the company of butterflies and grasshoppers in preference to my fellow men and women; some time watching the flight of partridges or the play of dolphins. <p>
<i>Gordias:</i> And you would bring an ox to my symposium, let it stand there and defecate on the marble and break wind from its rear end?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> It would be no better or worse than what I have seen and heard at many symposia.<p>
<i>Gordias:</i> Then I have nothing more to say to you, Aristageles. Good Day, and until we meet next time.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Until next time, Gordias.</p>
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-87811779422210509412017-10-01T22:30:00.000-07:002017-10-01T22:30:39.485-07:00On perfection<font size=-2><i>Zorba once said: “I always act as though I were immortal.” This is God’s method, but we mortals should follow it too, not from megalomania and impudence, but from the soul’s invincible yearning for what is above.<br>
- Nikos Kazantzakis</i><p></font>
When I was an adolescent and continuing into my 20s, I used to daydream. A lot. <p>
At home, at school, in almost any circumstance when my mind didn’t have to focus too much, I would drift into a hazy zone of pleasure. Maybe most young people are prone to daydreams, unburdened as yet by the mundane realities of life that keep more mature folk stolidly earth-bound. <p>
In my dreams I was invariably a hero of some kind: a rock star, a famous footballer or cricketer for Australia, a saviour who rescued beautiful women and people who were in trouble. There were times when I was possessed by the sweet oblivion of these fantasies; they would sometimes entrance me the entire distance of my walk home during my university days, the duration of almost an hour.<p>
Looking back, I see the worth of this escapism that was so intoxicating. It held the promise, the ideal, the sense of perfection that I was to move towards once I threw off the layers of my childhood self and entered the tumult of the world as an adult. It signified the bridge between adolescence and maturity, and that I was ready to make the journey across. I was never actually to become a famous musician or sportsman, for the value of the fantasies was in their meaningful symbolism. <p>
Just as birds, people and much of life on Earth awakes and rises with the appearance of the sun each morning, so as a youth I was "rising" in the direction of what I could be, towards alluring archetypes of realisation. And as the sun dispenses life-generating energy, so the archetypes heralded a new psychic energy that was available to me in my struggle to adulthood. <p>
There’s a tendency in contemporary times to reject perfection and do away with ideals. We counsel ourselves to be realistic and practical and to drop absurd notions of the perfect. At times of failure we may draw out the truism that “nobody is perfect” and fight against the harsh demands of "perfectionism". It’s perhaps no coincidence that God, the ultimate perfection, has lost so much value in the West, as we increasingly look to the earth and less to heaven. <p>
But what is problematic is surely not perfection itself but our relationship to it; namely to judge ourselves and others in relation to the perfect and to form unhealthy attachments to it. Perfectionism is a kind of enslavement in which a person has become driven by the perfect, the energy of the archetype corrupted and misused. For the ideal to have worth it acts as a guide, a motivator, an inspiration and pointer to inner realities of what we may be; not a dictator, demon or possessor.<p>
The question of personal judgement in relation to the perfect has been one of the most troubling in the history of Western spiritual development. The wrathful God demanding obedience in the face of flawed, sinful nature has left a legacy of anxiety in the relationship between human and divine. But it need not be so: If perfection is seen and experienced without the baggage we tend to place on it, without projections, judgements, desires or demands, with only its numinous essence, its wholesome capacity to uplift, we align ourselves with it appropriately.<p>
Likewise the so-called "realised" historical personages of Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad and others. Not only do these figures of perfection act as models, through what they did and said, for people in daily living, but their presence generated symbols of wholeness that continue to reverberate in the collective psyche to this day. As living, breathing humans they were subject to the successes and failures all of us experience, but their attainment to a certain degree of spiritual mastery marked them out; they rose higher than others and so were able to act as teachers and catalysts of profound change. Our attitude to their realisation ought to be one of gratitude not servitude, appreciating all the gifts that have come, and continue to come, for our improvement and that of the world. <p>
Perfection is actually closer to us than we think. In the <i>Gospel of Thomas,</i> Jesus says: "The Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth and men do not see it." With similar meaning Buddhism asserts that “every moment is perfect” – that reality as a whole, understood through the most refined capability of the mind, is just what it is and what it needs to be. The vital, intuitive capacity to see this is the very same that allows us to appreciate beauty. In beauty we are taken to a higher experience of being, we glimpse the divine. Yet this divinity is thoroughly present in myriad ways in the everyday world, for who could not say that the beaming smile of a child, the rosy blush of dawn on the horizon, the blossoming of flowers and the human form are not perfect? <p>
Perfection does not cancel out the reality of the imperfect – the two co-exist in the paradox that is the universe. Pain, suffering, destruction, the various mistakes and limitations of human action and societies all must be reckoned and placed alongside the presence of the perfect. Reconciliation of the two is perhaps the cutting edge of the spiritual development of our species: God meets humanity, humanity meets God.<p>
Whether we are comfortable with it or not, perfection is integral to life and our experience of it. It is the balance, the hope and the passing beyond hope that affords life’s essential happiness and unity. It is the call from the summit to ascend towards our seemingly unlimited potential, reflecting "the soul’s invincible yearning for what is above."
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-55844742929532344302017-09-10T21:13:00.000-07:002017-09-10T21:13:00.178-07:00Plato's goat<i>The following is another dialogue involving Aristageles, a 4th century BCE Greek philosopher. This time he is in conversation with Typhrion, about whom nothing is known.</i><p>
<i>Typhrion:</i> Have you seen him?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Yes, I was at his bedside last night. There is a tremendous crowd of people around him now, but the mood was hushed and solemn, as you’d expect.<p>
<i>Typhrion:</i> How was he?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Ashen-faced, falling in and out of consciousness, mumbling at times. His fire burns quite dimly now.<p>
<i>Typhrion:</i> Did he recognise you?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> When I entered the room and touched his hand, he opened his eyes and thought I was his brother, Glaucon. I said my name and his face changed to the most profound look of disbelief, then it relaxed slowly to a knowing smile and he closed his eyes. <p>
<i>Typhrion:</i> Ah, Plato. Plato the great. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> May his soul take flight with ease to its resting place. <p>
<i>Typhrion:</i> May it be so. With Hermes’ guidance to Elysium, there to sup with the gods and all the heroes who have ever lived. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> To Elysium, of course. <p>
<i>Typhrion:</i> But I am curious, Aristageles. Do you not go back a long way with Plato?<p>
<i>Aristageles: </i>Many years ago he was my mentor and teacher, and indeed I was a student in the early years of the Academy.<p>
<i>Typhrion:</i> Tell me, what did you make of the man then? What was he like and how did he influence you?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> He was passionate, firm, driven by a daemon that told him he was always right. The might of his intelligence was such that he didn’t seem to need other people but simply fed off his own thoughts, building a ladder higher and higher towards Olympus. I was afraid of him for a while – every time he looked at me I felt his dark eyes boring into my soul, uncovering everything that wasn’t quite pure.<p>
<i>Typhrion: </i>Do you remember your first days in the Academy?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Not well. My father, as it happens, thought philosophy a waste of time – “mental pig’s muck” was what he called it – so it was my mother who introduced me to Plato. She saw that I had an inquiring mind and would be of little use in the family business, and she was distantly related to Plato’s family. He always thought highly of women and welcomed my mother and me graciously. <p>
<i>Typhrion:</i> What did you think of his teachings?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> At first I swallowed everything he said, because I was young and his presence was powerful. He taught me a great deal. His commitment to what was right and good was unerring; he could not be bought by anyone. And the elegance of his thought, particularly to impressionable youths like me, was at times breathtaking. We will fashion the world, he thundered, in the name of Truth, Justice and Beauty! The rarefied air of <i>ideas,</i> the notion that you could see through the world around you to what lay at its heart, its soul and essence laid bare, made many of us, his students, giddy. We felt we could almost speak with the gods. We were ready to follow Plato to the farthest shore, for what mixed thoughts we had of him soon gave way to much admiration and love. Then, gradually, my own thinking diverged from his as I found my maturity and embraced the lessons of life.<p>
<i>Typhrion:</i> Do continue, Aristageles.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> My father had property near Mount Pastra, around the valley of the Asopos – vineyards and olive groves. From the time that my legs were strong enough, I would climb Pastra every summer, walk for hours frolicking around its flanks, exploring its crags and crevices, talking to the goatherds who pastured their flocks there. It became my second home.<p>
It’s impossible to describe the joy I felt drinking the clear water of the mountain streams, bathing under a waterfall, climbing to a great rock and staring down from vertiginous heights with no company but an occasional curious eagle gliding on the gusts above. And coming down at sunset the song of goatherds and tinkling of bells, as if Pan and his satyrs were stirring the whole mountain to chorus as it welcomed the oncoming night. <p>
I grew so fond of the place that in the fourth year of my studies at the Academy I asked to take a break so that I could live up there. <p>
<i>Typhrion:</i> And what did Plato say to that?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> He was in absolute disbelief. My father, and to my despair my mother as well, considered it a disgrace. “Imagine my own son living like an animal, reeking of goats and dung!” she said. But I was old enough to make my own decisions, I wasn’t to be swayed. I bought a small flock and lived for the next three years on Pastra – each summer the goats grazing on the mountain and winter in the valley below. Home was a series of shacks; I ate what cheese I could make, bread I could buy and herbs I could pick; my only meat was an occasional snared rabbit; I drank only milk and water. It was, of course, a much harder life than I thought it would be, but I was content nonetheless.<p>
Plato actually visited me there one time. And that’s when our differences first became evident. <p>
<i>Typhrion:</i> How so?<p>
<i>Aristageles: </i>As you know, he had an ambivalent relationship to all material things. Soul, to him, was what really mattered, and mind took precedence over body. He followed his own teacher Socrates in this. The ideas, the forms, were true reality, the world a mere passing parade of shadows. Only the eternal was substantial.<p>
We had been walking all day and both of us were hungry when we returned to a hut I had been living in by one of the streams that feeds the Asopos. I spread out a cloth with cheese, thin bread and some olives. The way we both shovelled food into our mouths made me quip, “We may have underestimated the importance of the body after all, Plato.” He smirked, rather unimpressed, but it started an argument between us that lasted the remaining time of his stay. <p>
Living on the mountain I had found it impossible to say body was inferior to mind. How could I? All around me was body – the fresh spring earth smelling of oleander and narcissus, the rocks, the sky, the clouds, the goats that fed me and demanded my attention. I had sensed my own body, my own life, becoming one with the body of the mountain. It nurtured me and I, in some small way, gave back to it. Mind and body seemed inseparable, served one another, ate at table with the gods through the daily rhythms of living. <p>
<i>Typhrion:</i> But Plato thought the body’s needs were a distraction from the work of the mind, didn’t he?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> He did. He held that the body, being the well of the instincts, of insatiable and uncontrollable urges, had to be subjugated or it would drag the mind down into mud. I challenged him, saying my mind was as enlivened and developed on Pastra as it had been in Athens, only it was functioning differently, working with the body instead of pretending to be independent from it. The virtuous soul was not partial but accepted all reality. <p>
Emboldened, I urged him to reconsider the form of the good as a unity of mind and body, but he didn’t understand. His greatest achievements, he said, had been the result of the mind liberated in flight towards the light of God. He became furious with me and warned that I was in danger of regressing to the state of an animal, which made me angry in turn. You can imagine that we parted in less than convivial fashion. <p>
<i>Typhrion:</i> What happened afterwards?<p>
<i>Aristageles: </i>After my years living on the mountain, I returned to Athens to be with my family. Friends counselled me to go back to philosophy, for still being young I was unsure of my future and felt as a leaf in the wind – blown one way and then another. I sought out Plato and he generously welcomed me back into his circles. But things didn’t end well.<p>
<i>Typhrion:</i> Oh?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> It all went awry midway through the very first lecture of Plato’s I attended. As we were listening to him, there was a sharp crashing sound, then loud chaotic voices and a sandy-coloured billy goat, bleating, tore into the middle of the room. On one side of it, in bright red letters, was painted “My form is good”. After we had captured the animal I tried to tell Plato that I had nothing to do with the prank, but he would not have me study with him again. “You humiliate me,” was all he said.<p>
Many years afterwards, by way of mutual friends, I learnt that he had been quietly pleased with my subsequent achievements.<p>
<i>Typhrion:</i> Well, well, Aristageles. Perhaps now his soul, before it departs, will look upon the broken vessel of his body with empathy and honour for all it has given him over so many years.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> We scorn it at our peril, Typhrion. </p>
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-11737005705013479572017-07-09T18:37:00.000-07:002017-07-10T20:16:11.099-07:00The return<p style="font-size:12px"><i>Under no circumstances ever say "I have lost something", only "I returned it." Did a child of yours die? No, it was returned. Your wife died? No, she was returned. "My land was confiscated." No, it too was returned.<p>
<p style="font-size:12px">"But the person who took it was a thief."<p>
<p style="font-size:12px">Why concern yourself with the means by which the original giver effects its return? As long as he entrusts it to you, look after it as something yours to enjoy only for a time – the way a traveler regards a hotel.</i><p>
<p style="font-size:12px">Epictetus, <i>Enchiridion</i> chapter 11.<p><br></p style>
One of the joys of philosophy is its ability to act as a guide through the perils and pleasures of life, its determination to go to some of the deepest and hardest places in order to shine a light, grasp a meaning and ameliorate the condition of the soul.<p>
I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the above passage by 1st century Stoic philosopher Epictetus ever since I read it about a year ago.<p>
On the one hand it sounds cold and insensitive, dealing as it does with one of the hardest aspects of being human – coping with loss, particularly that of people you love. The philosopher appears to simply say “Get over it” as a means to deal with hardship, where the mental, philosophical observation of "return" is somehow meant to ease emotional pain.<p>
We ought to reflect that Epictetus lived in the Mediterranean world at the height of the Roman Empire, a time when patriarchal culture ruled, war and masculinity were accepted and celebrated, and emotions considered a weak part of being human, unworthy of the loftiness of reason. It's a good thing by all measures that 2000 years later Western culture is no longer as dominated by the masculine. <p>
Yet I still find what Epictetus says remarkably wise and current. <p>
"Return" is about recognising that all beings, all things, come and go. Everything eventually goes back to its source, the great Mystery and seedbed of the universe from which it originally arose. The Stoics called it Nature, the physical-spiritual reality that governs our lives. Through their eyes we see there is no gap between that which is and that which is not; everything belongs to the great turning wheel of the universe and each will have its day in the sun and its darkness.<p>
To contemplate "return" is to understand that there are no separate objects, nothing that is entirely without relationship to something else; and the most important relationship we all have is to the source of our being, which has total claim over us and which will "return" us at the appropriate time. Nothing can be lost because loss implies possession, when all that we have and all the people we love are not really ours to keep, but subject to what Nature gives and takes away from one moment to the next. The philosopher is urging us to acknowledge what we are given, and not to react with recrimination and disappointment when it is taken away: "Look after it as yours to enjoy only for a time."<p>
Being human we immerse ourselves in people, in our work, in ideas and in various material objects that fill our lives. In doing so our identity, some part of ourselves, inevitably comes to reside in many different people and things. When something of value goes, we experience it as a kind of death in us. The greatest challenge that Epictetus poses, I think, is to reshape or reframe the identity-making process; so that not only is some realisation of impermanence anchored in it, but that endings are respected as necessary to the fulfillment of life as a whole. We may grieve, but we must also hold to a vision of continuum in which life is affirmed at each stage of ever-going, ever-coming. And what has passed always leaves some mark, some legacy big or small, whether we are able to see it or not.<p>
I learnt my most profound lesson of return a few years ago when I lived for a time in a mud-brick cottage at the edge of a forest in central Victoria. Animals of all kinds were present both inside and outside the house – at one moment a centipede crawling out of the sink or a rat scurrying in the wall, at another a mob of kangaroos munching on the front lawn or honeyeaters sipping out of the bird bath. Everywhere something living was on the march, doing its thing – running or flying past, eating, defecating, procreating, dying. Loss or death in this environment seemed to not have a hard edge of meaning but was simply a part of the process of life, countless waves of beings coming and going. <p>
In the rounds of life, then, what is lost? Or for that matter, what is gained? With our human way of seeing we necessarily experience reality at one level most of the time; Epictetus is calling us towards a bigger, grander and at the same time more balanced vision.
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-4378605202162084142017-05-27T17:37:00.001-07:002017-05-27T17:37:57.860-07:00The outer and inner lifeWherever you are in Japan, it seems you are never far from a Shinto shrine or a Buddhist temple. By the side of the road, behind houses, on a grand approach by a wide path or in a quiet lane the religious life of the Japanese springs into view. <p>
From simple stone monuments of local protector deities to grand vermillion gateways, bold pagodas and halls with gilded Buddha altars, Japanese religion appears rich, textured and varied. And anyone who partakes is graced by the waft of incense, surrounded by the sound of chanting monks, led through the pleasing forms of a rock garden to purify the mind for the blessed experience of divinity. Leave the mundane you at the gate, enter with your true self. <p>
So varied and fascinating were my visits to shrines and temples in a recent trip to Japan, I began to wonder what exactly it was that people were worshipping in all these places – what was the common object of it all? <p>
My musing led to the observation that all the different sects of Buddhism and Shinto in all their rites, rituals and beliefs were human constructions of one form or another. What did this then say about the experience of the divine, of the feeling of depth and transcendence beyond the ordinary physical world? Was that also a human construct, an illusion (some would say) of the imagination induced and fortified by the edifices of religions?<p>
I’m not a doubter when it comes to spirituality. It’s clear to me – intellectually and emotionally – that life is more than just matter, more than the sum of the material activity of various cells and particles. For most of the history of humankind, religious beliefs and practices have been a central part of living, and indeed remain so for the vast majority of the planet’s people. Even in Western countries, where a reductionist, materialist scientific worldview is dominant, the arts and culture express depths of meaning and experience well beyond materiality. It seems to me that it is healthy for a rounded and full life to acknowledge and embrace the spiritual – in whatever form that suits. <p>
But a Western, critical view remains highly valuable when engaging with the realm of spirit. In service, it asks the faithful to stand back and see the human element in religious forms and understandings, to see the way those forms have been constructed by human minds and hands, to note that they are finite and transient. Spirit may be the inspiration, it may be present and deeply felt, but its potential expression in myriad ways is a necessary insight. Armed with this thought, we might avoid the common partiality of many religions and their followers seeing their own beliefs and rituals as divine to the exclusion of others. Spirit needs human craft and ideas to take shape in the world, and just as the world and its people change over time and according to place, so spiritual forms inevitably vary, religions rise and pass away.<p>
This view of relativity need not weaken religion or spiritual practice. A person can still fully engage with their particular spirituality while accepting its finite and transient parameters in time and space. The key focus here is on spirit, the essence of the experience, which is boundless and can take a vast array of forms. The Japanese Zen Buddhist scholar DT Suzuki said: “The foundation of all concepts is simple, unsophisticated experience.” To the heart of the experience is where the faithful must continually return.<p>
Critical, logical thinking can actually aid spiritual practice by restoring a vision of wholeness in which both matter and spirit are part of the one play of life. Maligned by Eastern religions as “ignorance”, logical dualism – the everyday phenomenal mind – is really no better or worse than the oneness of spirit. Both are the offspring of the one reality of the universe, and the task for wholeness is to bring about their alignment, their unity.<p>
Perhaps the single greatest lesson of Buddhism relates to attachment, one it has been consistently hammering for centuries. Its message: “Don’t get hung up on the world of the senses, of words and ideas. Seek the truth within.” But just as we can be lost in the ordinary world of phenomena (taken perhaps to an extreme by modern Western rationalism), forgetting spirit, so we can lose ourselves in spirit (the tendency of Eastern religions) and forget the outside world and our necessary responsibility to it. Practising non-attachment means moving between matter and spirit, understanding their respective claims, until there is a purposeful resonance such that the two gradually become one in our life. The Buddha is then seen and experienced amid the noise and chaos of the city as much as within the emptiness of the individual soul in a meditation room. <p>
Practical examples of spirit-matter synthesis abound in the various Zen-inspired arts of Japan: martial arts, flower arrangement, tea ceremony, haiku poetry and others. It is said that the great poet Basho achieved enlightenment when he once heard a sound in a monastery garden and produced the following: <i>still pond/a frog jumps in/kerplunk!</i> Simply, life unfolds in dazzling multiplicity, with its inner and outer faces, within and around us.</p>
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-59121886437654039522017-04-30T22:09:00.000-07:002017-04-30T22:09:26.693-07:00The tyrant<i>Sometime in the 4th century BCE democratic government in Athens has been overthrown and a tyrant called Stesichorus has taken power. While walking along a prominent street in Athens, the philosopher Aristageles is accosted by Lambros, a friend, who quickly ushers him into a nearby laneway. The following dialogue is one of the few extant on politics involving Aristageles.</i><p>
<br>
<i>Lambros:</i> By Zeus, what are you doing walking so blithely out of doors?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> I go this way all the time. Why, what’s the matter?<p>
<i>Lambros:</i> Have you gone mad? Do you not know that Stesichorus’ men are rounding up all the philosophers they can find and throwing them in jail?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Yes, I have heard. Such things ought not stop a person from enjoying such a fine and warm afternoon. <p>
<i>Lambros:</i> But do you want to be in jail? Murdered? You must keep a low profile and stay at home, at least for the next few days. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> I have nothing to fear from this man or his followers. Athens has had tyrants in the past, if not for many years, and they have rarely enjoyed more than a brief time in the sun. <p>
<i>Lambros:</i> But how can you be so relaxed? Everything has changed.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Oh? Does day no longer follow night? Are the birds not singing in their trees as ever before? Have all our temples been turned to dust? <p>
<i>Lambros:</i> You know what I mean. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> I’m afraid I don’t and ask your guidance. What is the change that so alarms you?<p>
<i>Lambros:</i> Democracy, Athens’ jewel, has been overturned. And not just by anyone, but by a brute, an oaf with so little refinement or education and so openly contemptuous of the proper ways. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> My dear Lambros, there is not so much difference between Stesichorus and the democratic politicians who were our lords only a few days ago. <p>
<i>Lambros:</i> And what do you mean by that?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> A lie can issue from the gilded tongue of a professed democrat as much as from the rough one of an oafish despot. <p>
<i>Lambros:</i> So? Make your point. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Well, the current political crisis was caused by our war with Macedon. Before the Macedonians we were fighting the Thebans, and before that we had skirmishes with Mytilene and Corinth; we fought in Samos, Thessaly and Euboea, and there was the disaster in Sicily and the decades of war with Sparta. I have lived many years but I can remember only a few without wailing processions for the war dead. Nearly all that time Athens was under the democratic, popular will. <p>
<i>Lambros:</i> You would prefer tyranny to democracy?<p>
<i>Aristageles: </i>I would prefer people to live by virtue and wisdom, resolving their differences without bloodshed.<p>
<i>Lambros:</i> Then you are dreaming, Aristageles.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Yes, and fully aware of what is possible. <p>
<i>Lambros: </i>Men will always seek power if they can get it; power to take whatever they can for themselves from whomever they can. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> And our democracy was no better than this? <p>
<i>Lambros: </i>It was no better, but we were better for having a democracy than being left to the whim of one man.<p>
<i>Aristageles: </i>Then the choice is between the greed and power hunger of the many in a democracy and the one in a tyranny? That seems hardly a choice for the good. <p>
<i>Lambros:</i> Without our system of government, Athens could never have flowered and become a great city. We would never be properly civilised – never have the system of law, the glorious buildings and statues, the culture and refinement we enjoy today.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> But are there not tyrannies where culture flourishes? Cities like Syracuse and Elea have produced some of the finest poets and philosophers but are not democratic. And the Persian kings sponsored magnificent art, built temples and developed sophisticated laws. Should we be the only ones to rightfully call ourselves civilised? <p>
<i>Lambros:</i> Many a cultured Greek from abroad has settled in Athens for our freedom of expression, liberty they could not have back home. You know that, yet you stubbornly continue on a line of argument that leads nowhere. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> And did this liberty of Athens help Socrates? For simply speaking the truth, he was put to death. <p>
<i>Lambros:</i> Socrates was no naive babe and knew what he was doing. He went beyond the limits of what the citizens of the city could tolerate.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> But here is exactly my point – what is it that we tolerate and find acceptable? What do we value? You have said that power is central to what we uphold, so does everything else proceed from it? Is everything else an adornment to power? Are wars and domination fundamental to the civilisation we so proudly cherish? <p>
<i>Lambros:</i> I don’t know. Answer your own questions. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> It seems to me that we will never be truly civilised unless we abandon war, let go of the need to take from others what is not ours. What is the worth of our society, of all our refined culture, if it feeds on blood and the spoils of other lands? <p>
Socrates saw wisdom as of the highest value and it is to wisdom that we must turn as the cornerstone of all our public and private works. Imagine if the institutions of Athens were ruled with wisdom – what could be achieved not just for our own city, but for all Greeks and humanity in general. <p>
<i>Lambros:</i> But if others – Macedon, for instance, as the immediate pressing example – come to conquer us, you say we do nothing?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> We would do what is wisest at the time. It may be nothing – for sometimes it is better to surrender than to risk life in futile struggle – or it may be some kind of defensive action to stop the attacker. We would simply be guided by what is best to maintain the integrity of our city and its people. <p>
<i>Lambros:</i> May I say it would be best for you now, Aristageles, to hurry home at once before the agents of Stesichorus find you. I see a phalanx of his men in the distance. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> I thank you for your concern, but the sweet breath of the afternoon calls me forward on the walk I was undertaking before it was interrupted. <p>
<i>Lambros:</i> You are, as always, your own man.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Always. </p>
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-34103629102533192982017-03-23T16:59:00.001-07:002017-03-23T16:59:44.850-07:00The death of Diogenes<i>Diogenes of Sinope (c.410BCE – c.324BCE), a Greek philosopher of some fame and notoriety, lived in Athens most of his life and taught his students in the open. Often referred by his nickname, the Dog, Diogenes lived an austere life with few possessions, begging for food and sleeping in a ceramic barrel in the marketplace. <p>
The Cynic school of philosophy he founded was based on the renunciation of worldly attachments and commitment to a style of living in keeping with nature; that is, what mattered most to a person’s physical and spiritual wellbeing. Using himself as an example, Diogenes taught happiness through simplicity and railed against social conventions, pretence and luxury. <p>
Accounts of the time say there was a large gathering in Athens’ Agora a few days after he died to honour the man and his principles. Of the many speeches given only that of Stanios of Pharsalus, a one-time student of Diogenes, has passed down to us in full:</i> <p></p>
<p><br>
So, what of the Dog? Why do we remember him?<p>
It would be wrong to speak only about the way he lived as if that was all that explained the man, but neither would it be right to touch lightly on his lifestyle, for it resonated so much with him, made the philosophy he practised, and served as his trusted weapon against all the folly of humankind. <p>
We would all agree that in no other philosopher has there been a closer link between thought and way of life, none as consistent as the Dog. Many people think and talk about what is right, but he actually <i>lived,</i> he lived the righteous path, and what’s more he made his life a touchstone by which others could compare their commitment to what is right and good. <p>
I was with him many times when, in the middle of a fine conversation with a man or woman about some aspect of life or philosophy, he abruptly reached out a great, dirty hand in a gesture of begging. The surprise, the shock, the fluster on the other person’s face told much about their soul. Whenever on these occasions he received an open-hearted and unencumbered response he’d leap into that peculiar Diogenes dance of swinging arms and legs many of us still remember with fondness. <p>
Was he a perfect man? We all know he was not; perfection belongs to the gods. He was stubborn, at times pig-headed, at times lacking display of the human kindness he had in plenty in his heart. More than once he said to me, “Ah, Staniou, the good has left me today. I am too bitter to speak.” He simply could not surrender the belief that other people should aim as high as he did, or could share the same kind of faith and commitment. <p>
He saved his most caustic attacks for the ignorant, the ambitious, the braggarts and windbags, the politicians and the rich; but somehow those whom he stripped to reality with his words, flayed with the fire of his tongue, still came back to speak with him, as if his wisdom was a kind of necessary tonic. <p>
Who can remember the wrestler, Teles? He was the epitome of an Olympic champion with conceit to match. And Diogenes challenged him to a contest, spat in front of him saying he was nothing because his <i>soul</i> was nothing. All of us who crowded round to watch were praying Teles wouldn’t kill him, but the Dog was summoning him to a fight that was not about brawn. Time after time he broke out of Teles’ holds, squirmed and scrounged until the enraged wrestler finally gripped him, holding him well after his body went limp. When he let go Diogenes looked dead, and everybody suddenly turned to Teles, the mood went dark and even the women seemed ready to spring on him. The wrestler had the look of a hunted deer about to be torn apart by hounds. We know that after that day he never wrestled again. <p>
Many years ago, when I first arrived in Athens and began to fall under the spell of philosophy, I would walk past that curious dishevelled man here at the Agora, lounging as he did in the sun by the fountain, talking to the shopkeepers, begging from passers-by. I thought he was a vagrant, perhaps mad. It was a shock when I learnt that this man was one of Athens’ finest philosophers. <p>
Like everyone else, I was interested in the “Why” question – why he lived that way, and how it related to his thinking.<p>
One morning in spring I found the courage to approach him. He was reading, in the sun as always, on the steps of the Temple of Zeus. <p>
“Diogenes, I ... I have a question for you,” I stammered nervously. <p>
He didn’t look up, but kept softly mouthing the words to himself as he read. So I sat down near him and waited. <p>
It was some time, past noon, before he rolled up the parchment and finally acknowledged my presence. He of course knew what I was going to ask him, and I sensed a rehearsed, but not thoughtless, answer would come my way. <p>
He pulled a bunch of grapes from his satchel, tore it in half and shared it with me. Then he shifted and set those calloused feet of his and said: <p>
“A philosopher cannot be anything but what he is, just like a grape cannot be anything but a grape. Can a grape be a pear, or a fig or olive?”<p>
“But philosophers don’t live like you do.”<p>
“Show me another philosopher,” he said. <p>
Sometimes those words of the Dog come back to me. Sometimes I wonder if he was right. </p>
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-40959017889280200482017-03-05T14:47:00.002-08:002017-03-09T14:58:52.857-08:00Learning and unlearning<i>The extant Annals of Philosophy by Stesimachos contains several dialogues involving the Athenian philosopher Aristageles (second half of the 4th century BCE), believed to have been written by his student, Caro. In the following, taken from the Annals, Aristageles is in conversation with a merchant called Phidoxes on aspects of the nature of wisdom.</i> <p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> What can you teach me about wisdom, Aristageles?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Nothing. I know nothing on the subject.<p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> Come now, don’t play Socrates with me! By your venerable grey beard, I’d say you would have learnt a thing or two over the years. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> A thing or two? Yes, I learnt, but now to me it is as naught.<p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> How so?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Well, look at me. Do you see wisdom?<p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> I see only an old man.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Exactly. Wisdom is not something that you see.<p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> Is it something that you hear?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> No.<p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> Feel?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Absolutely not.<p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> Well then, what?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Fill a cup with wine, it is full. Empty the cup, it is empty. <p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> By Zeus, Aristageles, enough with opaque words and let’s have something that makes sense! <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Learning and unlearning, accumulating and letting go – that’s the nature of wisdom. If you don’t learn, life is limited and basic. But if you learn and don’t unlearn, you lack the completeness for wisdom. <p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> Can you say more?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> When I was a child, I loved the hearth-side stories of the Trojan War. I wanted to be one of the great warriors who fought at Troy – an Achilles, a Diomedes, an Ajax – and my brother and I used to cover ourselves in bruises running around hacking at each other with wooden swords pretending to be one hero or another. <p>
Then I grew up and gradually realised the adult meaning of those Trojan War stories. All of them are cautionary tales about what goes wrong when you become a slave to your emotions: lust, anger, pride, envy, greed. Achilles was almost permanently in a rage, and it ultimately cost him his life. Ajax’s hurt at being cheated by Odysseus drove him to madness and ultimately suicide. Indeed the whole ghastly slaughter of the war would not have happened if not for Paris’ infatuation with Helen.<p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> And how does this relate to wisdom?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> There are men well into their old age still believing themselves to be Achilles, still pretending to be Ajax or Odysseus, and still enslaved in all the ways of those heroes. Learning requires participating in life, gaining experience, but unlearning is seeing through the boundaries and limits of ordinary life to what lies at its heart. <p>
What do I care if my honour is offended? If someone curses me in the street, I thank them for the opportunity to practise humility, going on my way without responding in kind to create more trouble. If another philosopher has views opposed to my own, what is the use of storming about and writing endless treatises to destroy his position, as so many of our people do? I should rather thank him for what his views can teach me about my work and improve accordingly.<p>
<i>Phidoxes: </i>So wisdom is about being humble?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> It is like a sculptor chipping away at stone, taking away the quantities of the bare material of living to find the core and create something beautiful. Wisdom removes the apparent, the obvious and the hard-edged, to get at what is truly life-giving. It is the cool spring high in the mountains that feeds a myriad of streams tumbling to spread a bounty of life below. <p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> You speak of unlearning, but to me that sounds like removing knowledge. Why would a man spend his whole life learning, only to lose the very thing he sought?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Unlearning is not subtracting knowledge but transforming it. Tell me, as a merchant who no doubt travels much by sea, have you encountered ship’s captains who have been particularly good at what they do?<p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> Yes, I have.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> And can you describe one of these men?<p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> Well, the best I use is one called Stopheon. He has an uncanny knack of bringing ships through the worst storms and highest seas without damage. His ability to read the winds and the seas, to navigate and steer, to know the sails and how to employ his crew, is peerless. And he has more than a touch of the requisite captain’s sense of humour.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Is it likely this Stopheon would have had to learn much when he started out as a seaman?<p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> Of course, like everyone working on ships. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> And you would say that his knowledge now as a seaman and ship’s captain is great?<p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> Vast. I have never seen him unsure of himself. He seems to act seamlessly, like the ship is an extension of himself, his own body – he knows how it must move in all conditions, what to do when.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Ah, seamlessly – that is the clue to the unlearning. Stopheon has all the knowledge but it is not mere knowledge any more, the bare facts or ideas of what to do in various circumstances, he has transformed it into something else. Can he sometimes act in ways contrary to received knowledge, unorthodox as it were?<p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> Yes, I have been on a ship of his when he has steered towards an oncoming storm – not a major one, mind you, but a storm nonetheless – to use the winds. I wonder if sometimes he makes up his own rules as he goes along, but I still have full confidence in him. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> So there is wisdom: you learn the rules, you know the rules, the rules are transformed. It is not that a wise man does not observe customs and laws – he lives in the world like everyone else – but that he sees beyond them and operates in a refined way. <p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> May I remind you, Aristageles, that only a few minutes ago you said you knew nothing about wisdom. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> And I don’t.<p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> Then what you have just said is worthless?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> You must let go of it at the appropriate time, Phidoxes. As for me, it is gone – just a pleasant breeze from the west that has graced us for a few moments and disappeared.<p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> Gone? No more?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> It is a feature of being elderly that all that is solid, all that is substantial to younger people, becomes much less so. The older I get the quicker I see through what is present in the world and the quicker I let go. It is as if I am only partially here, reaching into the next world. Sometimes I feel I can almost touch the gods. <p>
<i>Phidoxes:</i> I pray the gods grant us a few more years of enlivening discussions with you, Aristageles.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> That, along with everything else, is entirely in their hands. </p>
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-40713321107423192422017-01-08T16:02:00.000-08:002017-01-08T16:02:50.980-08:00Fate, chance and neither<i>The following dialogue between Aristageles, a philosopher, and his younger protege, Caro, took place on a street in Athens sometime in the 4th century BCE. </i><p><br>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Caro, I heard about your cousin’s death. My sympathies are with you and your family.<p>
<i>Caro:</i> Thank you, Aristageles. Xanthus and I were quite close, even though he was younger than me. I’m sorry for my glum looks but I’m still very much grieving and in shock.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Of course. <p>
<i>Caro:</i> I have spent the past few days shut up indoors, not wanting to brave this beastly world or speak to anybody. But Torcus, my father’s slave, pleaded with me to go for a walk for my health and sanity. He said it was possible to die from sadness and it made no sense to join Xanthus in Hades’ company. So here I am, as needs must. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Grieving is very hard on the soul, dear friend.<p>
<i>Caro:</i> Yes, it is. My mind is tormented with questions I can’t answer, Aristageles.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> I understand. We are but mortals, after all, up against the great Mysteries. <p>
<i>Caro:</i> He was only 17. Did you know that? Just 17 and he had everything before him. Intelligent, brave, athletic; he would have had a fine career in any number of fields had he ripened to a proper age. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> And he died after being thrown from his horse? Forgive me for asking.<p>
<i>Caro:</i> Yes, the grey mare. He was riding alone to Marathon, which he’d done many times before. Some passing merchants found his body, with the horse grazing nearby, and said it may have been scared by a rabbit or some other animal and bolted. Judging by where his body lay, he probably hit his head on a rock when he fell.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Sad indeed.<p>
<i>Caro:</i> Yes. But you must answer one thing for me, Aristageles.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> If I can. I am better at asking questions than giving answers.<p>
<i>Caro:</i> Was Xanthus fated to die? Perhaps Zeus or another god was angry with him for some reason and sought vengeance. Or do you think his death was pure misfortune? He knew that road well and it is not dangerous; a few more strides by the mare and he would have likely been thrown well clear of the rock and lived. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> I can’t provide an adequate response.<p>
<i>Caro:</i> But surely philosophy would guide us in answering this.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Philosophy is a guide, but it affords no certainty. <p>
<i>Caro: </i>Then what can you say, Aristageles? Nothing?<p>
<i>Aristageles: </i>I could say that the death of Xanthus was occasioned by the Fates and by chance, and neither. <p>
Caro: I don’t understand. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Well, let’s firstly look at fate. Is it not about the exercise of will – human or the higher will, the will of the gods? When a man consistently drives his chariot fast and recklessly, we say he is fated to have an accident and hurt himself. And behold, it happens! The higher will of the gods is harder to figure because we do not have their knowledge or power. Someone dies and we say Zeus willed it – but why? Why should it be so? Why was your cousin taken so early? The ways of the higher powers are a mystery. However, the wise tell us that we and the gods are kin and that we can open ourselves to them, through reverence, prayer and patient listening, and become true servants of their will. We can live so that everything makes sense, so that fate speaks to us – not by the typical everyday mode, but in a deeper way. <p>
<i>Caro:</i> I can see where your words lead. After Xanthus was brought home and laid on his bed, I sat with all the relatives around him, and amid the wailing and moaning I had the feeling that his soul was hovering above his body, and that he was being called to service in other worlds. Just in that brief time I understood. Then it passed and everything was black and incomprehensible and infuriating again. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> It would not be the world if it were not blissful and hellish at the same time. <p>
<i>Caro:</i> But you say chance played a role in Xanthus’ death as well. How is it possible for both fate and chance to be present at once?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Well, they are not mutually exclusive. Did you not say yourself that had the horse taken a few more strides Xanthus would likely still be with us? <p>
<i>Caro:</i> Yes. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> I’ll give another example. In walking here from your house today you must have passed many people. What was the significance for you in each individual who came from the opposite direction? <p>
Caro: I don’t know. I passed no-one who was familiar to me.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Exactly. Then would you say that every incidental fact of life has meaning?<p>
<i>Caro:</i> I suppose not. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Life proceeds in a glorious array of multiplicity. Perhaps the gods are responsible for every minute detail, or maybe they oversee the general sense of it all and allow the spirit of life to proceed as it will under their watchful gaze.<p>
<i>Caro:</i> But last month as I walked the same way I met Ariston, a friend from Megara whom I hadn’t seen in years, and he invited me to visit and be in the company of Demetrius the sophist, as it turns a close friend of his. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Ah! So here meaning arrives and fate and chance are clearly working in hand in hand. Whatever the circumstance – good, bad or indifferent – we are presented with the opportunity of learning, improving ourselves and the lot of others. <p>
<i>Caro:</i> But you said earlier that neither fate nor chance was also at work – how does that hold? <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Well, do you see that dog over there scratching in the dirt?<p>
<i>Caro:</i> Yes.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Do you think it cares anything about the discussion we’ve just had? Whether one thing is just so, or another thing something else? <p>
<i>Caro:</i> I don’t expect it to – it’s an animal. It doesn’t reason like we do.<p>
Aristageles: Yet we can still learn much from it. When reason ceases its labours and sits down in the dust to scratch fleas off itself, what are we left with?<p>
<i>Caro:</i> I don’t know. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Nothing, and everything. That is, all as it really is; the hum and the clamour of the universe.<p>
<i>Caro:</i> I don’t understand. <p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Simple living, simple gratitude for all that is just as it is without concern or striving. <p>
<i>Caro:</i> I am very puzzled.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> The wise say that true knowledge begins with utter confusion.<p>
<i>Caro:</i> And will you leave me in such a state?<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> I leave you so blessed.<p>
<i>Caro:</i> Goodbye, Aristageles.<p>
<i>Aristageles:</i> Goodbye, Caro, and may your grieving from now on be light. </p>
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-56720181419290363422016-12-31T17:28:00.000-08:002017-01-01T17:05:02.952-08:00A Dialogue on Place<i>The following imaginary dialogue happened in a street in Athens sometime in the 4th century BCE. The two people involved are philosophers, Aristageles an older man and Xanthon a younger protégé. </i><p>
ARISTAGELES: Ho, Xanthon! Where are you off to so hastily on such a fine morning?<p>
XANTHON: I have much to do today, Aristageles.<p>
ARISTAGELES: People have been talking and wondering what has become of the learned Xanthon. You haven’t been seen in weeks, not since the symposium at Alkaios’ house at any rate. Your friends miss you. <p>
XANTHON: I’ve had very much on my mind, Aristageles. The weight of it has been such that I’ve had no time for friends or frivolity, not even for philosophy. <p>
ARISTAGELES: May I enquire what has detained you in such fashion?<p>
XANTHON: Oh, Aristageles, it is something about which I dare not speak for shame. My heart is a hollow vessel of sadness. <p>
ARISTAGELES: Is it something that cannot be shared with one who cares? ‘A heavy sack between two is no burden’, the saying goes.<p>
XANTHON: If only. I’m afraid the grief is solely mine to bear.<p>
ARISTAGELES: But is there no way a friend could help? Remember, philosophy beats paths through all things.<p>
XANTHON: Yes, I know it does, but for me? You see I have no way out.<p>
ARISTAGELES: Out of...<p>
XANTHON: I am going into exile, Aristageles.<p>
ARISTAGELES: Ah, so this is the rock that sits on your soul?<p>
XANTHON: Yes, it is. I was chosen for the expedition against the Macedonians, which as you know is only days away. I’m not a fighter, cannot fight, will not fight again. The very thought of the battlefield sickens me and I have a feeling in my gut that if I go to war again I will die.<p>
ARISTAGELES: It is very normal to hate war, my friend. War is a plague, a curse, and it is a great stain on Athens, on our civilisation, that we have danced to the blood frenzy more than many other cities; even as much as some barbarians. Nor is it unmanly to refuse to fight. Reason is a divine gift, and it makes no sense to walk into butchery, even if sanctioned by the laws of the land. <p>
XANTHON: You are right, Aristageles. But do you know what weighs on me heaviest, even more than being known as a coward and losing my honour? It is the thought of leaving Athens. It fills me with the blackest dread. <p>
ARISTAGELES: Do you fear never returning?<p>
XANTHON: Yes. Athens is home. I have only ever left Attica twice in my life, and then only to Corinth. Athens is everything to me; it is my life, my soul. What will I do without the sight of her hills every day, her temples and squares? The Acropolis, the life of the agora, the processions and singing of the Panathenaea, Boreas sweeping through the leaves of the plane trees by the Ilisos, even the chaos of the Piraeus – all these have made me, have built what I am block by block. And soon I will have only impressions of her for comfort, mere memories, and I will be entirely undone. So here I am, Aristageles, running around furtively making preparations for my voyage.<p>
ARISTAGELES: Did you know that the Ilisos was one of Socrates’ favourite places to walk? It is said he often went there with his companions. They would pay their respects to Pan and the wood nymphs and talk philosophy for hours.<p>
XANTHON: Ah, philosophy. What of it, now? What can it ever say to us when we are in such dolor?<p>
ARISTAGELES: Well, it speaks to us most in the darkest times. It teaches us always to follow the gods, and as you have strived to do so here in Athens, so shall you, I am sure in ... Where is it you are going?<p>
XANTHON: Olbia. <p>
ARISTAGELES: By Zeus, that far! You will be missed.<p>
XANTHON: But how is the pain healed by the gods? How is this city, this soft earth of Athens, to be replaced with anything I find anywhere else?<p>
ARISTAGELES: The wise tell us that gods and men are kin. And as you stand on your ship watching the shore of the Piraeus recede in the distance and weep for your loss, so the great ones will be weeping with you. Every place has its own gods – its temples to a particular guardian, its goddesses in the sacred groves, its satyrs and nymphs in the hills and rivers. Where one city builds shrines to Artemis, another will honour Apollo or Demeter or Hephaestus. But what does the multitude of gods from all the corners of the world have in common? What is the shared thread, whether the sacred garment is woven for one or another?<p>
XANTHON: I confess I don’t know.<p>
ARISTAGELES: Do they not all represent the good, some variation of it?<p>
XANTHON: They represent power, it is true. Of the good, I am not sure. Ares is rarely anybody’s favourite, and Dionysus has a wild edge of intoxication and violence. <p>
ARISTAGELES: Power implies choice. The gods offer us a choice – do we respond to conflict with a neighbour in the way of Athene, with justice and dignity, or descend into bloodshed? Do we accept Demeter’s laws about the tending of the wheat fields or do whatever we like when it comes to nourishing our city and the land? Do we honour Dionysus with wine and song, or become prudish and miserable? If we truly follow the gods, we follow what’s best.<p>
XANTHON: I have had no cause to think deep thoughts in the past few weeks. <p>
ARISTAGELES: All that you have learnt in Athens, all that is noble in this city, all that has nurtured your soul, your family and friends and lovers, the wisdom of philosophy – take these in your heart to your new home. Will you not find the good in Olbia? Not in the same forms as here in Athens, not with the same people or the same soil, but in some local shape nonetheless. And if Olbia prove barren and inhospitable, go to another place and find what you seek there. The world opens to those with the mettle to grasp it. <p>
XANTHON: They are kind, wise words, Aristageles. <p>
ARISTAGELES: And as you go about your new life, friend, be sure to ‘keep your hands soft’. Have you heard that old phrase? It means to change as conditions arise; not in the way of a fool who has no idea what they are doing, but as someone whose hands shape fortune in their life and the lives of others. As Euripides says, ‘that I may lightly change my ways, my ways of today when tomorrow comes, and be happy all my life long’. <p>
XANTHON: Thank you, Aristageles.<p>
ARISTAGELES: And one last thing. Before you set forth on your journey, do pay a visit to Agathe. She hasn’t seen you for a long time and misses you terribly.<p>
XANTHON: I will.
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-36680662278618707632016-10-20T15:47:00.001-07:002016-10-20T15:47:59.915-07:00Ask and it will be given<i>So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.<p>
Luke 11.9-10</i><p>
I take the Bible as fascinating, not from the point of view of dogma to be literally believed and obeyed, but from the diamonds of wisdom that are studded through its pages. The above passage quoting Jesus from the <i>Gospel of Luke,</i> rich in poetry and meaning, is one of them. <p>
One of the advantages of our times in the West is the abandonment of religious certainty. Heartbreaking though it is for many of us, it allows us to look back on the spiritual traditions with a different view – one tuned to the basics of the message, the core of the revelation and the wisdom it brings forth. We align ourselves not with the practical details of the tradition, the doctrine, rituals and sacraments (though these have their place and are important in their own right), but with the spiritual quality that is at its heart. <p>
<i>Ask, and it will be given you</i> ... To ask, spiritually speaking, is to pray, and to pray is to establish and nurture a relationship with the divine. To ask is not simply to utter words to God, pleading for one thing or another; it is to place yourself in direct contact, in communion you could say, with the source of life. That’s no small thing, and all religions recognise the grave import of doing so, with paths of ritual leading believers to the right of frame of mind for divine communion. <p>
Asking requires discipline in which a person is in touch with the centre of their own being. From this centre, which is the spark of the divine within, the <i>atman</i> as Hinduism calls it, the individual opens to the world and to spirit. Opening to spirit necessitates abandonment of ego, surrender to the will of the divine (“Islam” means surrender), which for all spiritual traditions is the aim and cornerstone of living. <p>
Spiritual communion requires no goal, no reward – it is an end in itself which replenishes the vital purpose of life. Hence when you Ask, the answer is given you; to search is to find at the same time and to knock on the door is to see it swing open. This does not mean that pain and suffering is abolished for the person who asks, that the cares of the material world are somehow erased, but that there is grace for the true seeker, a spiritual core from which they act and which affords lasting peace. <p>
The passage from <i>Luke</i> is also, I think, about the importance of <i>intention.</i> We have to truly Ask, build a genuine path to God, in order to find spiritual gold. A counterfeit relationship – one based solely around a person’s ego needs, petitioning the divine mystery to satisfy desires, simply does not work. The door will stay shut. When our intention is appropriate we set a course in the right direction and, perhaps immediately, perhaps after years of hard work and patience, by the will of the divine, the seeker finds. <p>
There is another sense in which Jesus’ words are somewhat subversive to the practices of the Church as they manifested over the centuries of Christianity. He does not say “Ask, and a priest will give you God’s blessing” or “Knock, and the door will be opened for you in the afterlife”. There is an immediacy in the words which points to the imminence of God and the availability of unmediated redemption here and now. From the gnostic <i>Gospel of Thomas:</i> “The Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth and men do not see it.” To Ask is to see heaven in the splendour and beneficence of creation here on earth, and the only consequent action is to affirm and preserve that splendour.
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-17078145041506002432016-10-09T17:00:00.000-07:002016-10-09T17:51:42.855-07:00On humourOne of the funniest moments that I can recall happened many years ago when I was a university student and doing everything I could, in idealistic twenty-something fashion, to change the world.<p>
I had traveled with a few friends to take part in a mass protest encampment in Canberra against an international weapons exhibition that was being set up on the edge of town. We arrived one morning and pitched our tents, like a few hundred other young folk, in a grassy reserve across the road from the arms fair. Nothing much was planned until later in the day, so we sat around and talked, ate some food and prepared for what protests would be happening.<p>
Among our number was a tall, lean gent we affectionately called Stevie P. He was a few years older than the rest of us, was doing an Honours in politics studying the radical student movements of the 1960s, and loved to talk. Though affable, Steve was a bit edgy and shabby – he wore dirty, knee-holed jeans, had shoulder-length wavy hair and was rarely seen without a can of VB (a cheap beer) in one hand. He’d had a fairly rough working-class upbringing in one of Melbourne’s outer suburbs which took the shine off his idealism and he would bait the more romantic types like me with arguments about the imperfection of what we stood for and the impossibility of meaningful social change. <p>
Stevie also had a nervous condition that made his hands shake. I’d taken little notice of this until that day in Canberra. At some point in the late morning clouds started to gather above us, the sky turned a shade of dark purple and an enormous storm broke, scattering everyone to their tents to avoid the downpour. All except for Stevie – he just happened to be hungry for a peanut butter sandwich. As I ran to gather my belongings I caught sight of him sitting on the ground, trying to spread peanut butter on a slice of bread with hands impossibly flustered. Everyone else’s agitation had accentuated his shakes and the bread was flipping around while he did his damnedest to shove some spread on it. I stopped what I was doing and roared with laughter, so determined was Stevie to have his way in the midst of chaos. <p>
Now and again something will trigger the memory of that moment and it brings a smile. Sure the laughter was at the expense of someone else and their difficulty, but I couldn’t help it. It was a ridiculously funny situation.<p>
Humour has that ability to bring something special to a moment, to lighten and ameliorate whatever is going on. In his 1956 essay <i>Aboriginal Humour,</i> the great Australian anthropologist Bill Stanner related a story of how on a field trip in the Northern Territory an Aboriginal friend of his kept stealing tinned milk from his stores. Eventually it came to a head: “I looked at him and he looked at me. We both knew it was a crisis ... Then he went to the case of empty tins, and held up one or two so that I could see the tiny holes through which he had sucked them dry. He held one tin speculatively, poked at the hole, looked across at me, and said: ‘Rust’.” <p>
Humour doesn’t just make life more bearable, it makes it more whole, more balanced and in tune with the overall conditions of living. It’s telling that the hardest things humans can bear – war, grief, depression – close the door most to humour. Yet even in the middle of darkness unexpected rays poke through, such as when funny stories are told at funerals about the deceased. They demonstrate a kind of completeness of spirit in which joy is not absent even in the most dire of circumstances.<p>
Humour of course can have a sting in it. It can be barbed like a javelin aimed at the powerful, the egocentric and corrupt. In those instances it brings a force of truth that is more irresistible and more palatable to more people because it is delivered in a funny way. Humour invites us to let our guard down and accept whatever is wrapped inside it. And unfortunately it is often used the other way – to belittle the already powerless, to wound and denigrate, and maintain an oppressive status quo.<p>
Like any spark of creative act, humour can be inspired or miss the mark completely. It needs a person to be in the moment, spontaneous, fully alive. I’m a fan of the American stand-up comedian Rich Hall, a master of his craft, who in his routines of funny guitar songs and audience banter laughs as much at himself as at the people he sends up. Humour exposes humanity’s foibles, and in doing so is able to acknowledge without rancour the quirks and imperfections we all share. We can all do with just a little bit more humour in our lives.
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-66262162287956692462016-09-15T19:51:00.000-07:002016-09-15T19:51:32.540-07:00The personality“Do you know the road rules?! Do you know the rules?!” A bearded cyclist was shouting at a taxi driver sitting passively in his car at a rank in central Melbourne. <p>
Clearly there had just been an incident the aftermath of which I was passing on my lunchtime walk from work – possibly one that had caused or nearly caused the cyclist to come off his bike. <p>
There was a smattering of more loud words before the cyclist finished with a curt “I’ve got your number, mate” and took off. Before he disappeared, I was tempted to approach him and tell him his aggression was not on. Then I thought – how would I react if I was on a bike and this was the umpteenth time my life had been endangered by a driver? Would I be able to summon much grace or finesse? I hoped, come such a moment, I wouldn’t display the ugliness of that cyclist.<p>
It made me think of the vagaries of personality, how it was possible for two people to react differently under the same circumstances, and how we can understand and work with our inner forces to make us better people. <p>
Personality is the face an individual presents to the world, coming out of a complex internal matrix shaped by a range of factors including a person’s genes, their parents, life experience, cultural influences, gender, age and physical condition. The matrix also holds a large dose of mystery, the element of unknown as to why exactly someone is the way they are and which rounds off the full, unique package that is their personality.<p>
The personality is, like everything else in the field of time and space, subject to continuous change and to the flux – the ups and downs, conflicts and tensions – that entails. Managing one’s personality is one of the most important things we can do because the good that we create in ourselves inevitably affects others and creates the conditions of loving kindness under which everything prospers. To master the personality is not to somehow get rid of or iron out life’s fluctuations, which is impossible, but to ride the daily waves up and down attuned to wholeness and the better parts of our nature. <p>
The personality could be said to operate according to three principles: <i>the self</i>, <i>the other</i> and <i>the image</i>.<p>
<i>The self</i> is the internally contained driver of the personality in the day-to-day world as well as the set of understandings a person has about who they are. The self responds to the raw facts of daily living and is ultimately responsible for the thoughts, emotions and desires that arise in the personality. Most of what we do most of the time seems automatic because the personality is able to learn from life and act in ways that keep it, generally speaking, functional. However, its own complexity and that of human society inevitably present a host of challenges to the health of the personality which require both a vital sense of self and self-knowledge. <p>
A person with a weak or undeveloped sense of self is at the whim of social forces and their own emotions, thoughts and desires. The task towards a healthy personality is about understanding one’s inner dynamics – what arises when and why – as well as acquiring the skills to make conscious, discerning decisions for the good. These days there is a large variety of self-development modalities with the potential to increase a person’s self-knowledge and improve the functioning of the self. Whatever it is that helps an individual – a particular practice of yoga, meditation or therapy or a combination of things – the requirement is mostly hard work and patience over many years. <p>
<i>The other</i> is a principle of difference that exists because the personality is aware of an external world and has to negotiate relationships. It is the personality’s means to understand and relate to external people and objects, with the personality creating groups, types and labels (often with the assistance of society) to separate the beneficial from the harmful. <p>
For most individuals the other is identified with actual people and objects, but like the self it is actually a dynamic within the personality and not external to it. It generates a framework or structure on reality. And because the other is all about difference, everything within the personality itself that is not in accord or easily assimilated or normalised tends to be drawn into the other and can end up as a view on an external person or object. This is the sense of the term “projection” in psychology, when aspects of what is broken or irrational within are cast outwards. Whole societies as well as individuals can manufacture projections of the other, as happened with the witch craze in Europe and North America in the 17th century, the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany and McCarthyism against Communists in 1950s America. The personality’s response to the other is influenced by its own self-awareness, for when the self is in healthy balance within the personality the other is also experienced with proportion and goodwill.<p>
<i>The image</i> is the transpersonal factor in the personality that opens it to dimensions deeper than the everyday material world. Numinous, transcendent, archetypal, spiritual – all are words for that which is perceived, often dimly if at all, as reflecting mysteries about the nature of the personality and the world as whole. Out of this perception of the unknown comes an image, or multiple images, for the human mind to digest. Dreams are carriers of the image; religions build on and develop the image to create practices and beliefs that nurture relationship to the source of being. God or gods, demons, angels, saints and prophets are various manifestations of the image, pointing to the many layers and levels of the mystery of creation. <p>
It’s healthy for the personality to recognise and find a meaningful relationship with the transpersonal because life is multi-dimensional, evolving, and can’t be reduced to any structure, system or way of thought. The open, inquiring, receptive personality allows the image to speak to it and makes use of the image to enrich its experience of life. Just as with the self and the other, the dangers that exist in relation to the image are about its strength or weakness in the personality. Too strong, concrete or fixed and the personality can become enslaved to the image; too weak or non-existent and the meaning and vitality of living is drained. The key is a creative response within an overall template of balance.
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-41812825571831571512016-08-14T23:26:00.000-07:002016-08-15T15:07:34.370-07:00Gaia callingBack when I was a grassroots political activist in my 20s, the discussions that I had with friends and fellow travellers would sometimes turn to the need for vision.<p>
We were always protesting against – against the Gulf War, against uranium mining, against cuts to university funding, against violence towards women – but almost never on the front foot for something. We struggled to bring our ideas of what we valued to light and to create a program or vision for the kind of world we wanted. <p>
This problem has dogged the anti-globalisation, Occupy and other mass movements for progressive change in recent times and made them easier targets for criticism from conservative elites and media. It becomes more convenient to dismiss a movement, to label it as "fringe", when it presents a potpourri of complaints attacking one institution after another and offering no overarching, constructive narrative.<p>
The core of the matter is not about the laziness of activists, nor is it solely to do with human nature, which makes it more appealing to be critical than to aim for the positive. The issue lies considerably deeper, in what could be called the mythical dimension of existence, and specifically in the lack of correspondence to an available myth. <p>
Myths are action-inspiring ideas that take root in the collective psyche, shaping culture and society and the way people understand their world. In the modern West the myths of Progress, Growth, Science and Equality have been perhaps the most important, motivating the creation of the kind of civilisation in which we live. Myths are the engine room of action while also providing the glue, the common causes that bind a society. When a myth breaks down, when it no longer serves the collective, a new one has to be found to replace it.<p>
Myths are supra-rational – they relate to and influence the ordinary level of being, of thoughts and emotions, but are on a wholly different plane. And while people can strive to create myths, the dynamics of their existence are essentially a mystery. They arise organically in response to particular human needs at particular historical times and they die organically when those needs are no longer relevant. <p>
Because they exist at a less tangible, and in some sense elevated dimension of being, myths can take on religious quality. They become magnets for devotion, attachment and zeal. One only has to think of the all-embracing regard that Science has in the West to appreciate this religious dimension, with scientists serving as pseudo-priests dispensing all knowledge about life. Myths have a non-rational flavour and they must be reckoned for what they inspire in the human heart and soul. <p>
In our time there is one myth on the rise that has the potential to affect all others and radically reshape human attitudes and actions. That is the myth of Gaia, the blue planet that we and so many other life forms call home. This myth, given impetus by chemist James Lovelock in his Gaia hypothesis, holds that the Earth is a living being and an integrated whole. Like all myths it relates to material realities – the existence of the planet and its ecosystems – as well as a series of attitudes current to the time, most notably that human activity is dramatically threatening the Earth’s capacity to support life. The myth has an evocative impact on human feeling, calling forth the ancient respect and connection to earth, reverence for and communion with life, love of place, and a sense of the unity and solidarity of all that exists on the planet. The myth emerges out of thinking and understanding that is increasingly global in nature. <p>
In her book on contemporary spiritual trends, <i>The New Believers: Re-Imagining God,</i> Australian broadcaster Rachel Kohn approached the Earth myth in this way:<p>
"Believing in the earth has all the elements of a full-blown religion, with its idyllic Eden, its fatal hell and its ethical program of life that calls for some of the highest human virtues, such as diligent study, sacrifice, patience, love, humility and simplicity in service to ends that are not overwhelmingly focused on the self."<p>
Though myths move according to the mysterious ways of the psyche, they are fed by the actions of multitudes of people over many years who in turn are energised and transformed under their influence. The work of creating vision for positive change then becomes, if not easier, more available to those who take on the challenge. For an example of such a time we can look to the 1960s-70s, when the world was charged with a liberatory energy that empowered millions of people towards new horizons of being. Some four decades later the stakes are considerably higher, namely the future of the very planet on which we live. Gaia calls us forward.
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-28778362743206768942016-07-18T18:16:00.000-07:002016-07-21T14:06:19.471-07:00The value of wisdomMany years ago I knew a man called Kyran, a rough old bloke who lived in a terrace house in inner Melbourne. Once a week after work I’d drop in to his place and walk his two bullish Siberian huskies. An acquaintance through a friend of mine, he was in his late-60s, had developed a heart condition and needed people to help him out.<p>
Kyran grew up during the Great Depression and Second World War and, in a full and colourful life, had been a truck driver, cane cutter, tent boxer, builders labourer and union stalwart. Like many people of his generation, he had an exterior of concrete and stone while underneath there beat a soft and caring heart. <p>
One evening after returning his dogs from their walk I sat with him watching the TV news. A story came on about some outlaw motorcycle gang members, all leather and tattoos, brawn and scowls, appearing in court. “Pretty tough guys, eh Kyran?” I said.<p>
“Tough! They’re not tough,” Kyran snorted in disgust, and recalled a fight he’d had with some bikies on a building site. <p>
“I’ll tell you what’s really tough,” he suddenly said after a pause. “Seeing your kids go hungry day after day and not being able to do anything about it. <i>That’s</i> tough.”<p>
I came to Kyran for homespun wisdom such as this, and it seemed to pour from him regularly. As an old man speaking to a young one he took on the persona of the elder, passing on what helpful stories and insights about life he could. I was glad to hear them, delivered in fruity and unrefined language as they often were, and felt privileged to be in his company. <p>
In our public culture, saturated with spin, ego and the creation of false value for private gain, wisdom seems to have been largely relegated to the margins. We no longer value elders nor cultivate the kind of patience needed to hear their words. The fast, the flashy and the superficial are given highest regard. <p>
Wisdom and instant gratification are polar opposites. It took a whole, full life to brew the kind of insight on the world that Kyran had accumulated, and there was nothing easy about it – his words had to be pondered, strained through one’s own experience and imagination.<p>
Wisdom has that uncanny ring of truth that seems to echo through the ages; sitting with Kyran in his terrace house and listening to his stories with his dogs slumped about him I may have been round a campfire in aeons past. There was a weight of knowledge, of gravity and importance. <p>
The truth that wisdom presents has an enduring quality, garnered from thousands of years of human experience, which pierces through all pretence. It is essentially about the good, that which lasts and nourishes life. And it has the flavour of the archetypal, of that barely perceptible realm of existence that touches the eternal. <p>
Wisdom does not intrinsically belong to any group or section of the community, not to a particular institution or external authority, gender or age. It is available to anyone who is able to reflect on their life with depth and draw lessons aimed at the good. It is radical in that it aims for general wellbeing across all divisions created by humans – not pandering to the varieties of desire, power, greed or fear – yet it also works to establish boundaries that protect and nurture life.<p>
In doing so it acts as a guide to living but not a prescriber of particular laws, for laws change over time but wisdom has the quality of timelessness. It may be an impetus for codes of behaviour, for cultures, institutions, social mores and movements but it cannot be reduced to them. Wisdom belongs properly to poetry than prose, and in that sense is of a more elevated if more elusive power. <p>
In contemporary times it is fashionable to praise “disruptive” technology and practices that change established patterns in some beneficial way, but we rarely laud those that are “restorative”. Wisdom both disrupts and restores – it clears out the rubbish of false thinking while returning the mind and body to an understanding of what really matters.
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-22858277798538124752016-06-05T19:33:00.000-07:002016-06-16T17:13:11.966-07:00For Yourself Alone<i>O Lord, if I worship You<br>
Because of fear of hell<br>
Then burn me in hell.<br>
If I worship You <br>
Because I desire paradise<br>
Then exclude me from paradise.<br>
But if I worship You <br>
For Yourself alone<br>
Then deny me not<br>
Your eternal beauty.</i><p>
There is much wisdom in this small gem of a poem written by Rabia Basri, an 8th-century Iraqi Muslim mystic and saint. I came across it in a collection of Sufi verse, and even among the more elaborately imagined poems of masters like Rumi and Hafiz, it stood out for its truth and clarity. Great work requires no more than what needs to be said. <p>
In just a few words Rabia answers one of humankind’s most basic and ancient questions – how can suffering exist in the world? The crucial line is: <i>For Yourself alone.</i> <p>
The poem is a devotional appeal to God, but non-religious contemporary Westerners need not turn away as a result. If “Lord” is substituted with “Life” the sense of the poem remains. We worship life in the way we regard it, in our outlook, expressed in our day-to-day living. Rabia is saying that if our attitude to existence is egocentric – wanting only what is good and rejecting the bad and difficult, then we deserve to (and will) suffer. But if we ask of life purely what it gives us and love it for all that it is, <i>For Yourself alone,</i> then the desire (and presumably the outcome) is one of resting in eternal beauty, in the deep beneficence of creation. <p>
The poem is also relevant to a great religious dilemma that has exercised the human mind through history, expressed in the question: How can a loving God exist in the midst of suffering? Again, the ego-bound attitude asks for goodness and avoidance of harm from the powers that rule the universe, when those powers cannot properly be known or encompassed by the human mind, the mystery of life being ultimately unfathomable. The disillusionment with God that arose in many people after the horrific events of the 20th century – two World Wars, the Holocaust, the dropping of the atom bomb – is in reality the disillusionment of humanity with itself, or its projection of ego onto the divine, seeking to avoid hell and to enter paradise.<p>
Religions for centuries nurtured this projection, constructing a divine Father who rewarded the good and punished evildoers. This lasted as long as religion was at the centre of society and the majority of people were unable to penetrate the veil of its doctrine; once the rational mind became dominant and questioning and doubt were unleashed, the Father toppled from his pedestal.<p>
Rabia upsets the role of conventional religion in providing a moral framework for human behaviour, where fear of divine retribution prevents wrongdoing and desire for divine grace encourages good acts. She wants none of that, only to experience a direct relationship with God, which she sees as all-encompassing. There is a ring of correspondence to our time in Rabia’s vision beyond God the lawmaker; many of the spiritual explorers of the present day in the West are looking for a pure experience of the sacred free of the rigid moral compass of the past. <p>
In its rejection of self-interest, the poem expresses an elevated consciousness that, for most of us most of the time, is hard to reach. The difficulty arises, unavoidably, because all of us are creatures in time and space. In a very creaturely way we seek our own benefit from the environment around us; we seek to live, to grow and reproduce ourselves, while keeping away from harm. There are certain laws and dynamics that pertain to life in the created world. But the material aspect is not all there is to living, and this is what the poet is pointing to; the demands of spirit – of the depth dimensions of existence – run in some sense contrary to those of matter.<p>
Spirit asks for a unifying consciousness, an acceptance of oneness beyond appearances, as the appropriate means to fulfil the core of the human journey. Matter, on the other hand, seeks a discriminating view of tangible subjects and objects. Resolving this tension is a difficult challenge. As beings in time and space we can’t deny what that entails, but neither should we surrender to the ego and cancel out the spiritual path. Each person ultimately has to look beyond him or herself and align with spirit. <p>
<i>For Yourself alone</i> then becomes a call to embrace the fullness of life without reservation, its highs and lows, while orienting past the hurly-burly of phenomena to what really counts at the heart.
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-49832876714425990332016-05-19T19:33:00.000-07:002016-05-19T19:33:16.412-07:00God or Man?God or Man? Which is it to be? That’s the rather-too-neat equation posed by Western culture which, since the 20th century, has been answered decisively for the latter.<p>
Friedrich Nietzsche grandly announced "God is dead", but God inevitably had the last say, pronouncing Nietzsche dead at the premature age of 55. Touché!<p>
The overthrow of God – that is, divine agency in human affairs and in the universe at large – has been perhaps the most important feature of what we call modernity. Gradually, from the Renaissance through the Enlightenment, the Scientific and Industrial revolutions with concurrent economic and technological changes, Europeans concluded that humanity created its own destiny (indeed had always done so) and that God was just another production of the human mind.<p>
When religion had always said that everything came from God, now everything was the result of the objective forces and dynamics of the universe that Western science revealed. Humanity was responsible for its own self, freed from servitude to a fictional Creator. <p>
There are, it must be said, a host of problems with the modernist worldview, which have increasingly been voiced in recent decades in what many thinkers call the "post-modern" era. And there are those, some calling themselves "traditionalists", who have maintained the pre-modern religious outlook, pointing to the majority of the world’s people who are still directed by a religious calling. <p>
While deeply flawed, I think modernism presents important opportunities for humanity’s overall development. Seen from a big-picture view of our cultural evolution it is in the end a phase, a particular period in history that needs to be treated with open inquiry.<p>
In raising human agency to the fore, modernity pierced the fiction that social circumstances were divinely ordained and somehow fixed for all time. As the core of pre-modern society, religion had sanctioned much that began to be open for questioning: slavery, wars, hierarchical power structures, class injustice, the inferior role of women etc. Religious reformers tried to breathe new life into their institutions, but as change and human agency became more important to society, there seemed less place for the eternal dimension of reality – for God. In the end He retreated to the seemingly changeless environment of the religious sanctuary, the church, there to rule over a vastly diminished domain. <p>
Modernity raised a crucial question that religion has struggled with ever since: If the divine is the true source of all reality, what is its relationship to a changing world? For thousands of years there had been no separation between the social and spiritual dimensions of human life, but the two were now noticeably apart. Adding to that, it was clear that throughout history religious institutions had muddied the nature of the sacred by attaching it to that which was clearly human in origin and fallible. Sacred texts like the Bible were written so long ago that much of what they contained seemed of little or no relevance.<p>
What is the relationship of the changeless to a changing world? I think the sacred needs to be restored to its proper place at the higher or meta-dimensions of being – at the levels of inspiration, revelation and wisdom. At these more refined spaces it is still there to guide us, still there for us to apprehend it as the source of all life, without being reduced by human desires to fit human ends. When prescriptive morality appears, when God is said to will this or that, we know we are in the hands of the mortal and not the divine. <p>
To be sure, morality and good behaviour are important and indeed indispensable for a properly spiritual life, but we also need to recognise that much about society and its mores changes over time and spirit can never be reduced to human particulars. The divine always exists at higher levels of our apprehension, and with anything concrete in the world we ought to ask "What is the higher Truth here?”, "What is the inspired or soulful response?" in order to approach the sacred.<p>
The divine is not remote to human concerns at the higher dimensions of being when it’s appreciated that these dimensions are very much woven into the fabric of everyday life and accessible at any moment. The more that we are able to open to inspiration, revelation, wonder and creativity in daily living, the more the sacred is available to us. As we bring it into our lives, the separation between the human and the divine starts to lessen until, at some progressed point of development, the "divine human" is actuated. This is where God, once again, is fully in charge of existence but where the human – the changing, mortal aspect of reality – is in no way diminished; the ego is translucent to God while participating in the unfolding drama of life. <p>
The God versus Man dilemma is then seen to be irrelevant because Man participates willingly in the divine calling and recognises the essence of his own self in the mirror of the sacred. The path to God is no longer blocked by uncertainty and antagonism as the human vessel is properly tuned to receive spirit. </p>
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-72171223246156914692016-04-22T00:13:00.000-07:002016-04-22T00:13:05.137-07:00Islam and the WestI’ve always enjoyed reading the books of Karen Armstrong. A former Catholic nun, she has been prolific for more than two decades on the history of religion, most impressively with <i>A History of God</i> in 1993. <p>
Armstrong is measured, balanced and open-minded, and one of the few contemporary Western authors of standing who writes sympathetically but expertly about Islam (<i>Islam: A Short History</i> and <i>Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet</i>).
Reading her I reflect on the anti-Islamic bigotry that runs deep in the West. In <i>Muhammad: Prophet for Our Time,</i> she says:<p>
<i>“We have a long history of Islamophobia in Western culture that dates back to the time of the Crusades. In the 12th century, Christian monks in Europe insisted that Islam was a violent religion of the sword, and that Muhammad was a charlatan who imposed his religion on a reluctant world by force of arms; they called him a lecher and a sexual pervert.”</i><p>
Islam, in this early part of the 21st century, is the Western world’s psychological “other”; one of its chief bugbears. An “other” is simply a projection of the dark side of ourselves onto someone else so that we maintain a self-image that is whole, papering over cracks we’d prefer not to face. In the collective Western mind Muslims are associated with intolerance, fanaticism, violence and terrorism, but this hides the West’s very chequered record towards Islam – namely the several centuries of colonialism, imperialism, invasions, racism, and forced economic and cultural modernisation continuing to this day. <p>
Power is the central issue here, as those who are on top seek to maintain and extend their power while keeping the marginalised at bay. It’s an ancient human story but one that throughout history has been moderated by the better side of our nature. In our time, we can ask some pertinent questions: Can the dominant forces of the world, led by the West, allow a broader and fuller expression of what it means to be human to exist? Can cultures that are very different co-exist in mutual respect without any one group asserting overall control? Can power be ceded in some fashion and become much more diffuse, encouraging diversity to flourish? It is the consistent abuse of power that leads to the appearance of extremist groups like ISIS and the Taliban, as those who are the abused aspire to become abusers in an atmosphere of despair. <p>
The moderating force to power is, of course, love. In the hard world of politics and international relations one senses that word is never used, but it is evident in every instance of practical solidarity and humanity. Every conflict and crisis is an invitation to love – to see the face of the “other” as our own face, provoking dialogue and reconciliation. When the boundaries between “us” and “them” break down we see the oneness of life and the value, the necessity of each part in the whole. A realisation of oneness gives us the impetus to cherish all life. <p>
Love is a challenge to the narrowly conceived ego that seeks power for its own sake regardless of the consequences. It is hard to say whether humanity will ever evolve a mature enough collective ego that will enable us to live in harmony with ourselves and the natural world. At times we seem a great distance from that ideal. Yet if we can imagine it perhaps it’s not as far away as we think; what, after all, in the long span of the development of the human species, is 200, 500 or even 1000 years? <p>
I think of the wonderful mystical tradition of Islam called Sufism, timeless in its appeal, that revolves around the idea and experience of love, in its highest expression the love for the Divine that extinguishes the separate ego. In one of his poems, the Sufi master Mohyuddin Ibn ‘Arabi writes:<p>
<i>
My heart has become capable of every form: it is a<br>
pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks,<p>
And a temple for idols and the pilgrim’s Kaaba and the<br>
tables of the Torah and the book of the Qur’an.<p>
I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love’s<br>
camels take, that is my religion and my faith.</i> </p>
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-8637634731036761042016-04-03T20:26:00.001-07:002016-04-04T16:09:39.530-07:00Thoughts on revelationOne of the advantages of rising early, as all early risers know, is the feeling of being present in the waking of the world. All is hushed, quiet, dormant, dark, and slowly stirs into the passion of life in a remarkable transformation of movement, sound, light, being and soul. <p>
I have the privilege a couple of times a week to be on an early-morning bus to work from my home in central Victoria to Melbourne, starting the journey in inky darkness and moving through the grand spectacle of dawn and sunrise along the way. <p>
As light appears on the horizon it is a faint orange, a first smudge that gradually changes to pink, sometimes with delicate red and purple hues above. In the east, where the main show happens, clouds take on pinkyness, break up and swirl in a sea of blue. Pinks change to fiery reds then yellow as the sky comes ablaze.<p>
By the time dawn is in full array the bus passes the Macedon Range on our left, a dark hulking facade that blots out the action. We climb into the Great Divide, with its refined air and subtle colour; shreds of mist fly past, a flock of ibis in v-formation flaps overhead. Then, down into the plain again, the sun finally rises, breaking open the horizon with a flood of light. <p>
The grace, the intensity, is deeply moving. The book I had taken to read lies idly on my lap. <p>
To an open and receptive sensibility, the process of world-waking is a miracle, a revelation. Thinking of the great historical revelations of humanity – that of Moses, Zoroaster, the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed – none of them compares with this ordinary, everyday event. Or rather, for all of them it was the ground, the Mother, the vehicle that brought their Word to birth.<p>
I would define revelation as “coming into being”. That is, a spiritual manifestation of some kind experienced at a point in its process that engenders inner transformation. The revelation appears autonomous, a discreet event, if we speak of a particular sunrise or of a particular mystical vision that occurs to an individual, but in reality the person is catching a moment in an unfolding process and experiencing it as a soulful awakening. <p>
The sunrise is part of the turning, changing life of the Earth as a mystical vision is an emanation of Spirit to a developing individual in a certain time and culture. It’s important to be aware of this dynamic nature because of the human tendency of attachment to revelation which at times has caught them as if in a static bind. Powerful religions with global reach have been formed around them when their inner nature, their core, defies any hard concretisation. Jesus’ revelation was of the nature of Love, Zoroaster’s the relationship of Light and Dark, Buddha’s the Path beyond suffering. When a “holy book” is created around a particular revelation, the danger arises that it becomes lifeless over time and open to the uses and abuses of power. Treated as poetry, as story, as a gateway to the mystery of being, a revelation lives; as theology or doctrine it dies. <p>
At the same time, it is inevitable and, indeed, desirable that a revelation effect change in the world and its redemptive goodness and transformative power be shared with others. “Proclaim!” is the first, urgent word spoken to Mohammed in his rapture at the Cave of Hira. Yet there is no guide of certainty as to what is to be proclaimed, what is to be done – only that action is consistent with the nature of the revelation. <p>
It is also inevitable that people respond differently in the presence of Spirit according to their personality and inner development. The same numinous moment, the same sunrise may yield a variety of results. In that sense, a revelation is like a comet – some will apprehend only parts of its long tail while others are able to approach somewhere near the head. The tail represents the revelation taken at its most concrete and literal, while the further one moves towards the head the more metaphoric and refined it becomes. It is the one spiritual manifestation for everyone who partakes in it, but translated differently by each person. The task, then, is for those nearer the crown of the comet to lead a movement of the rest towards the apex of refinement. <p>
Just as the sunrise is available to everyone, so revelation in general is the common endowment of all who are receptive to it, and any claim of ownership by a religion or institution is absurd. In creating sacred rites and rituals around a revelation the challenge for a community is to remain open to the changing call of Spirit over time and avoid idolatry of its own symbols. The task of a priest is not to be “a keeper” of the sacred but a guide towards the transformative power liberated by the revelation.<p>
In our contemporary globalised world there is a process of convergence of cultures and a tendency of democratisation that undermines established hierarchies. What was previously buried or undervalued begins to have its day in the sun; women start to be properly recognised, non-human nature is seen for its own intrinsic worth. Through this prism, revelation too is made “democratic”. No longer is it reserved for men or a priestly class or spiritual elite, but belongs to all who can experience it and who are able to turn it creatively for the benefit of the world.
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-15328712775967434012016-02-21T18:28:00.000-08:002016-02-22T20:08:10.352-08:00Simplicity, complexitySimple things are often not quite as they look. Take the work of Australian artist Ben Quilty as an example.<p>
From a superficial view a Quilty painting seems remarkably straightforward – a smattering of thick brush strokes on a large canvas producing a fairly uncomplicated depiction of a person or scene.<p>
Yet the emotional power typical of the artist’s work – whether in a portrait of an Australian soldier mentally scarred by service in Afghanistan or in a glimpse of the inner reaches of his own psyche in self-portrait – can only be carried off by an underlying complex mastery of technique. <p>
Such is the way with masters in all fields: they make things look astonishingly simple and elegant, masking the years of training and development of skills and inner resources required to attain such a level of grace. <p>
Simplicity and complexity, like the Taoist yin and yang, are best seen as bedfellows, inseparable in any way you care to see them. Look anywhere and their dual relationship appears: a single lightning bolt can trigger an enormous bushfire; a single car accident can throw a city’s complicated road network into chaos; a small fault can shut down a corporation’s entire computer system; a giant whale is dependent for its survival on tiny plankton; the magnificence of life on Earth arose from the activity of single-cell organisms.<p>
All life is a mixture of the simple and the sophisticated, and even the most basic forms of life – as scientists have discovered – when examined reveal more basic components and antecedents. <p>
American theorist Ken Wilber, in his book <i>The Eye of Spirit,</i> says: “In any developmental sequence, what is whole at one stage becomes merely part of a larger whole at the next stage. A letter is part of a whole word, which is part of a whole sentence, which is part of a whole paragraph, and so on.” The result is a nested hierarchy of being moving towards ever greater sophistication, at the same time reflecting the earlier stages of its own self. <p>
In one sense, simplicity can be seen as a state of rest and complexity one of movement, action. When we experience something pleasing, as say a fine work of art, it is the perfection of simplicity that appeals. Though the work may be of high complexity, of great degree of difficulty, it is the beauty of the final, apparent manifestation that strikes the senses. In a way this is an illusion because nothing is ever static – and this is where complexity comes in to upset our balance. Complexity is always chipping away at what is apparently “final”, always moving on to something new. We may still be emotionally affected by a painting many years after having first seen it, but we and the painting (its colour, consistency of paint etc) would have changed over time and the experience is inevitably different in some way.<p>
The entire dynamic is one of evolution at work – life moving from the simple to the more complex, which at the next stage of development is the simple on the way to greater complexity ... rest, movement, rest, movement, rest, movement. <p>
Of course the process is not a smooth one. Evolution involves tension, the conflict of opposites, and there are snags and inconsistencies along the way. The old does not disappear with the arrival of new forms but may set up points of friction with them, the resolution of which is typically key to further evolutionary stages. In the grand unfolding drama of humanity there are older and newer dynamics in co-existence with each other, older and newer cultures, older and newer modes of living and understanding the world. One or the other ought not to be rejected or treated with disdain: each can learn from the other if the project is the overall wellbeing of humanity and the planet. Ben Quilty could have refused the opportunity that he took to be Australia’s official war artist in Afghanistan in the name of the primitivism and brutality of war, yet what he brought was compassion for the soldiers that in his paintings seeks a liberating path beyond conflict and suffering.<p>
It’s important to be aware of the complex and the simple and the many ways they relate in life not only for what such awareness brings in enriching and deepening experience, but as a kind of mirror to the soul. Behind the manifestation of their duality is a single current of light, a single inscrutable source that shines through the infinite variations of form in the world. We can admire the interplay of the apparent forces or see them as a door to the ultimate font of being.
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4642082033441251341.post-98912725605805932016-01-25T15:57:00.000-08:002016-01-25T15:57:11.911-08:00Immanence and transcendenceSometimes something small that you see or hear, despite all the distractions that fill up the day, sticks in your mind and gives you cause for reflection. <p>
Not so long ago I went walking in the bush with a friend I hadn’t seen in many years. It was a mild summer’s day, our boots kicking up the quartz stones as we tramped over part of the hill country in central Victoria.<p>
Several times we stopped to look at particular plants or inspect the sweeping lay of the land and met passers-by coming the other way. On a couple of occasions we spoke to the strangers and each time my friend in parting wished them a good day in a pure, heartfelt way.<p>
I was moved by the way she spoke those words. It seemed their quality was spiritual, in the way that a pure heart expresses the life of Spirit, which was fascinating given my friend is a scientist and an avowed atheist. I was reminded of religious goodbyes along the lines of "May God be with you". <p>
It’s a very contemporary development to be able to speak about spirituality and religion as separate things. Once it was thought that organised religion, with its beliefs, rituals and sacraments, provided the only frame through which the inner life could be expressed. Now there is an emerging realisation that spirituality can be autonomous and that for each person it may or may not be expressed through established religious means. Some atheists, like the philosopher AC Grayling, are happy to call themselves spiritual but strongly reject religion. <p>
In this change there is a powerful move towards immanence, where the depth and meaning of life is located through the experience of the individual in the elements of life itself, without reference to a powerful Other – be it God or anything else considered “supernatural”. This shift has occurred alongside the decline of Christianity in the West, which has insisted on belief in a transcendent God no longer relevant to modern culture and upheld only one Truth in an age of multiplicity of beliefs.<p>
The spiritual immanence that is putting down roots in our time appears in a rationalist culture that so often seems inimical to the sacred. And yet people like my friend are able to see and appreciate spiritual quality in nature, in beauty, in relationships and in many other ordinary instances that elevate life beyond basic materiality and make it worth living.<p>
What has happened, then, to the transcendent principle, if we can call it so, that was so important to humanity for so many thousands of years? Where has God gone? Has he disappeared entirely or just in temporary recess, waiting to surface eventually in another guise?<p>
It all depends on the future of the scientific rationalism/empiricism that is so central to the modern West. If over time its exclusivist orientation (mirroring that of the Judeo-Christian tradition) breaks down, as it might with the help of a maturing process of immanence, a new spiritually charged worldview could develop. Immanence and transcendence are really just two sides of the one reality, and ultimately neither is sufficient without the other if the aim is spiritual wholeness. <p>
Transcendence is fundamentally about mystery. It is the great Unknown attached to life, death and ultimate purpose that is also experienced as the generative force of the universe. It is other to created forms but linked intimately to them. It is invoked in the dark, expansive reverence of places of worship. It is Spirit ultimately unnameable and unspeakable that has been given many names throughout history – God being one of them. <p>
The divine is both contained in material form and other to it, imminent and transcendent. God’s downfall has left a tragic void in the Western psyche, felt most acutely by the artists and mystics of our time, those "angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night" as poet Allen Ginsberg beautifully described them in <i>Howl.</i> Many such souls (Ginsberg included) fled the Judeo-Christian tradition to Eastern spirituality – Buddhism and Hinduism – to find transcendence there.<p>
The spiritual challenge of our time is two-sided: recognising and acknowledging the process of immanence, the desire for the in-dwelling sacred; and finding suitable new forms for the urge to transcendence. <p>
Some people are already doing this work, away from mass culture on the fringes of society. They may be coming together for new moon rituals or other neo-Pagan ceremonies that relate humans to the cycles of nature, or meeting in small affinity groups to explore shared spiritual directions, or weaving new ways of understanding the dynamics of plants, animals and the cosmos as a whole. What they share is a calling for the sacred, an orientation towards wholeness, and the capacity to be explorers in the creation of new syntheses of immanence/transcendence.
Sasha Shtargothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209370726577960276noreply@blogger.com0