p68: For there [the East]-- in contrast to the typically West European idea of a destiny and character potential in each one of us to be realized in our one lifetime as its "meaning" and "fulfillment"--the focus of concern is not the person but the established social order: not the unique, creative individual--who is regarded there as a menace--but his subjugation through identification with some local social archetype, and his inward quelling, simultaneously, of every impulse to an individual life.
p73
And since all the laws to which he is adhering will have been handed down from an infinite past, there will be no one anywhere personally responsible for the things that he is doing. Nor, indeed, was there ever anyone personally responsible, since the laws were derived -- or at least were supposed to have been derived-- from the order of the universe itself.
p74
He is called the "tenant farmer" of the god... Men had become the mere servants; the gods, absolute masters. Man was no longer in any sense an incarnation of divine life, but of another nature entirely, an earthyly mortal nature. And the earth itself was now clay. Matter and spirit had begun to seperate. I call this condition "mythic dissociation," and find it to be characteristic mainly of the later religions of the Levant (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam).
(shift to monotheism - king of kings in accordance with a historical change in the manner of ruling other peoples)
p137
When Buddhism in the first century AD was carried from India to china, an imperial welcome was accorded the monks, taken of translating the Indian scripture. Nothwithstanding the really enormous difficulty of turning Sanskrit into Chinese, the work went forward famously and had continued for a good five hundred years, when there came to China from India, about the year 520 AD, a curiously grim old Buddhist saint and sage known as Bodhidharma, who immediately proceeded to the royal palace. According to the legend of this visit, the Emperor asked this somewhat cussed guest how much merit he had gained through his building of monasteries, support of monks and nuns, patronizing of translators, etc, and Bodhidharma answered, "none!"
"Why so?" inquired the Emperor.
"Those are inferior deeds, " came the answer. "Their objects are mere shadows. The only true work of merit is Wisdom, pure, perfect and mysterious, which is not to be won through material acts."
"What, then," the Emperor asked, "is the NObleTruth in its highest sense?"
"It is empty," Bodhidharma answered. "There is nothign noble about it."
His Majesty was becoming annoyed. "And who si this monk before me"
To which the monk's reply was, "I do not know." And he left the court.
Bodhidharma retreated to a monastery and settled downt here, facing a wall, where , as we are told, he remained in absolute silence for noine years--to make the point that Buddhism proper is not a function of pious works, translating texts, or performing rituals and the like. And there came to him, as he sat there, a Confucian scholar, Hui K'o by name, who respectfully addressed him, "master!" But the Master, gazing ever at his wall, gave no sign of even having heard. Hui K'o remained standing--for days. Snow fell; and Bodhiharma, in perfect silence, remained exactly as he was. So finally, to indicate the seriousness of his purpose, the visitor drew his sword, and, cutting off his own left arm, presented this to the teacher; at which signal the monk turned.
"I seek instruction," said Hui K'o, "in the doctrine of the Buddha."
That cannot be found through another, " came the response.
"I then beg you to pacify my soul.""
"Produce it, and I shall do so."
"I have sought it for years," said Hui K'o, "but when I look for it, cannot find it."
"so there! It is at peace. Leave it alone," said the monk, returning his face to the wall. And Hui K'o thus abruptly awakened to his own transcendence of all daylight knowledge and concerns, became the first Ch'an master of China.
p146
TThere is a popular Indian fable that Ramakrishna used to like to tell, to illustrate the difficulty of holding in mind the two conscious planes simultaneously, of the multiple and the transcendent. It is of a young aspirant whose guru had just brought home to him the realization of himself as identical in essence with the power that supports the universe and which in theological thinking we personify as “God.” The youth, profoundly moved, exalted in the notion of himself as at one with the Lord and Being of the Universe, walked away in a state of profound absorption; and when he had passed in that state through the village and out onto the road beyond it, he beheld, coming in his direction, a great elephant bearing a howdah on its back and with the mahout, the driver, riding –as they do–high on its neck, above its head. And the young candidate for sainthood, meditating on the proposition “I am God; all things are God,” on perceiving that mighty elephant coming toward him, added the obvious corollary, “The elephant also is God.” The animal, with its bells jingling to the majestic rhythm of its stately approach, was steadily coming on, and the mahout above its head began shouting, “Clear the way! Clear the way, you idiot!” The youth, in his rapture, was thinking still, “I am God; that elephant is God.” And, hearing the shouts of the mahout, he added, “Should God be afraid of God? Should God get out of the way of God?” The phenomenon came steadily on with driver at its head still shouting at him, and the youth, in undistracted meditation, held both to his place on the road and to his transcendental insight, until the moment of truth arrived and the elephant, simply wrappings its great trunk around the lunatic, tossed him aside, off the road.
Physically shocked, spiritually stunned, the youth landed all in a heap, not greatly bruised but altogether undone; and rising, not even adjusting his clothes, he returned, disordered, to his guru, to require an explanation. “You told me,” he said, when he had explained himself, “you told me that I was God.” “Yes,” said the guru, “you are God.” “You told me that all things are God.” “That elephant, then, was God?” “So it was. That elephant was God. But why didn’t you listen to the voice of God, shouting from the elephant’s head, to get out of the way?”
p257
The first condition, therefore, that any mythology must fulfill if it so to render life to modern lives is that of cleansing the doors of perception to the wonder, at once terrible and fascinating, of ourselves and of the universe of which we are the ears and eyes and the mind. Whereas theologians, reading their revelations counter-clockwise, so to say, point to references in the past (in Merton's words: "to another point on the circumference") and Utopians offer revelations only promissory of some desired future, mythologies, having sprung from the psyche, point back to the psyche ("the center"); and anyone seriously turning within will, in fact, rediscover their references in himself.
