Today: Schopenhauer

Everywhere and in all ages, there has been great dissatisfaction with governments, laws, and public instituions; mainly, however, because people are always ready to blame these for the misery that inheres in human existence and is the curse, so to say, that descended on Adam and his whole race. NEver has there been a more lying and impudent exploitation of this false projection, however, than that of the demagogues of this "modern" day. These enemies of Christianity are optimists: the world, for them, is an end in itself and in terms of its own crude conditions available for conversion into a dwelling of perfect bliss. The howling, colossal evils of our century they ascribe entirely to the regimes, blame altogether and only on these; and without these, there would be heaven on earth, ie all of us, set free of toil and pain, would be able, to 'our hearts'content, to feed and swill, propagate and burst: for that is the paraphrase of this "end in itself" and the goal of the "endless progress of mankind," that they tirelessly preach with their overblwon cliches.

Wasteland: Campbell

What, then, is the Waste Land? It is the land where myth is patterned by authority, not emergent from life; where there is no poet's eye to see, no adventure to be lived, where all is set for all and forever: Utopia! Again, it is the land where poets languish and priestly spirits thrive, whose task, it is only to repeat, enforce, and elucidate cliches. Creative Mythology, 373

Wood and Stone: Carl Jung

That the gods die from time to time is due to man's sudden discovery that they do not mean anything, that they are made by human hands, useless idols of wood and stone. In reality, however, he has merely discovered that up till then he has never thought about his images at all. And when he starts thinking about them, he does so with the help of what he calls "reason" -- which in point of fact is nothing more than the sum-total of all his prejudices and myopic views.

The Medium is the Massage

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Until writing was invented, man lived in acoustic space. Boundless, directionless, horizon-less, in the dark of the mind. In the world of emotion. By primordial intuition. By terror. Speech is a social chart of this bond.

The goose quill put an end to talk. It abolished mystery, it gave architecture and towns. It brought roads and armies, bureaucracy. It was the basic metaphor with which the cycle of civilization began. The step from the dark into the light of the mind. The hem that filled the parchment page and built a city.

Writing did not merely record language. It was a totally new medium of expression and communication which the spoken word came, in turn, to imitate. Writing encouraged the analytical mode of thinking, the emphasis upon lineality, continuity, and connectedness. In other words, visuality.
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Gutei's Finger

There was once a monk whose name was Gutei. And whenever people came to him with a question about buddhism, he would hold up a finger. That is the only answer he would give. Well, he had an attendant, and one day somebody came to the temple to inquire into the teachings being given there. The master was apparently out, but his attendent was there. So, the investigator asked, "What is your teaching here?" And the attendant held up a finger.
But in fact, the master had been there, he was peaking from behind a screen. And he came out to this boy after, and asked, "What is the fundamental teaching of Buddhism?" and the boy held up a finger.
Instantly, the master drew a knife and cut it off. The boy was naturally very upset, and ran away screaming. And so the master, yelled, "Hey come back". And as the boy came back, the master asked "What is the fundamental teaching of Buddha?" And he went to hold up his finger, but it wasn't there. And thus the attendant was enlightened.

The Virgin Spring (Bergman)

Do you see the smoke shivering in the roof-hole? She is whimpering, scared. Still, she’s simply going into the air, and out there she has the whole sky to tumble about in, but she doesn’t want that, so she cowers and trembles in the ashes under the roof.

It’s the same for a human. She shakes and worries like a leaf in a storm, for what she knows, and for what she doesn’t know.

You, you shall cross a narrow plank, so narrow you don’t know how to find a foothold. Under you rumbles a great river. It’s black and wants to swallow you. But you pass over it unhurt. There’s a valley in front of you, so deep you can’t see the bottom. Hands grope for you, but they cannot reach you. At last, you shall stand before a mountain of horror. It spews fire like a furnace, a vast abyss opens its jaws at its feet. A thousand colors flame out of it: copper and iron, blue vitriol and yellow sulfur. A blinding lightning explores from the molten rock, burns your skin. And all about are men, small as ants, for this is the furnace that swallows murderers and violent men.

But in the same instant you think you are lost, a hand shall grab you, a long arm shall encircle you. And you’ll be taken far away, where evil has no power anymore.

So let me offer now a modern Western parable of the Buddhist "wisdom of the yonder shore" -- that shore beyond reason, from which "words turn back, not having attained" -- of which I first learned some thirty-odd years ago, from the lips of my very great and good friend Heinrich Zimmer. As we have said, Buddhism is a vehicle or ferry to the yonder shore. So let us imagine ourselves standing onthis shore; let us say, on Manhattan Island. We are sick of it, fed up. We are gazing westward, over the Hudson River, and there, behold! we see Jersey. We have heard a good deal about Jersey, the Garden State; and what a change that would surely be from the filthy pavements of New York! There are no bridges yet: one has to cross by ferry. And so we have begun to sit on the docks, gazing longingly over at Jersey, meditating upon it; ignorant of its true nature, yet thinking of it ever with increasing zeal. And then one day we notice a boat putting out from the Jersey shore. It comes across the waters, our way, and it docks right here at our feet. There is a ferryman aboard, and he calls, "Anyone for Jersey?" "Here!" we shout. And the boatman offers a hand.

"Are you completely sure?" he says, however, as we step down into his craft. And he warns "There is no return ticket to Manhattan. When you put out from this shore you will be leaving New York forever: all your friends, your career, your family, your name, prestige, everything and all. Are you still quite sure?" We are perhaps a bit intimidated, but we nod and declare that we are sure, quite sure: we have had Fun City to the teeth.

My friends, that is the way of becoming a monk or nun; the way of monastic Buddhism; the way of the earliest followers of the Buddha, and, today, of the Buddhists of Ceylon, Burma, and Thailand. We are here entering what is known as the "little ferryboat," or "lesser vehicle,"Hinayana , so called because only those ready to renounce the world as monks or nuns can ride in this craft to the yonder shore. The members of the lay community, unwilling as yet to take the fateful step, will have to wait (that's all!) for a later incarnation, when they will have learned a little more about the vain conceits of their luxuries. This ferry is small, its benches are hard, and the name inscribed on its side isTheravada, "the doctrine of the ancient saints."

We embark, the ferryman hands us an oar, and the craft moves out from the dock. Ship ahoy! We are on the way, but on a rather longer voyage than we knew. In fact, it may endure for a number of lives. Nevertheless, already we are enjoying it, and already we feel superior. We are the holy ones, the voyagers, the people of the crossing, neither here nor there. We actually know, of course, no more about the Garden State than the fools (as we now call them) back on shore in the rat-maze of New York; but we are heading in the right direction, and the rules of our life are entirely different from those of the folks back home. In terms of the ladder of the Kundalini ascent, we are atchakra five, Vishuddha, "purgation," the center of ascetic disciplines. And we are finding it, at first, very interesting and absorbing. But then gradually, in a surprising way, it begins to become frustrating -- even hopeless. For the aim of it all is to get rid entirely of ego- consciousness, whereas the more we strive, the more we are building up ego, thinking of nothing, really, but ourselves: "How amI doing?" "HaveI made any progress today? this hour? this week? this month? this year? this decade?" There are some who become so attached to all this self- examination that the last thing they really want to achieve is disembarkment. And yet, in some chance moment of self-forgetfulness, the miracle might indeed take place and our boat, in the spirit of the ancient saints, put to beach -- in Jersey, the Garden State, Nirvana. And we step ashore. We have left the boat and all its dos and don'ts behind.

But now let us realize where we are. We have arrived at theri hokkai, the shore of the knowledge of unity, nonduality, no separateness; and, turning to see what the Manhattan shore might look like from this absolute point of view. . . Astonishment! Thereis no "other" shore. There is no separating stream; no ferryboat, no ferryman; no Buddhism, no Buddha. The former, unilluminated notion that between bondage and freedom, life in sorrow and the rapture of

Nirvana, a distinction is to be recognized and a voyage undertaken from one to the other, was illusory, mistaken. This world that you and I are here experiencing in pain through time, on the plane of consciousness of theji hokkai, is, on the plane ofri hokkai, nirvanic bliss; and all that is required is that we should alter the focus of our seeing and experiencing.

But is that not exactly what the Buddha taught and promised, some twenty-five centuries ago? Extinguish egoism, with its desires and fears, and Nirvana is immediately ours! We are already there, if we but knew. This whole broad earth is the ferryboat, already floating at dock in infinite space; and everybody is on it, just as he is, already at home. That is the fact that may suddenly hit one, as "sudden illumination." Hence the name,Mahayana -- "big ferryboat," "greater vehicle" -- of the Buddhism of this nondual thinking, which is the Buddhism best known as of Tibet, medieval China, Korea, and Japan.