The Butcher's Spoon

The Medium is the Massage

2011-06-02T11:46:00.000-07:00

--
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.
--

Gutei's Finger

2011-02-17T17:49:00.000-08:00

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)

2010-12-27T18:07:00.001-08:00

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.

2010-10-18T08:31:00.000-07:00

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.

Four Functions of a Properly Operating Mythology

2010-10-18T08:19:00.000-07:00

1. To awake and maintain in the individual a sense of awe and gratitude in relation to the mystery dimension of the universe, not so that he lives in fear of it, but so that he recognizes that he participates in it, since the mystery of being is the mstery of his own deep being as well.

2. To Offer an image of the universe that will be in accord with the knowledge of the time, the sciences and the fields of action of the folk to whom the mythology is addressed.

3. To Validate, support and imprint the norms of a given specific moral order, that, namely, of the society in which the individual is to live.

4. To guide the individual stage by stage, in health, strength, and harmony of spirit, through the whole foreseeable course of a useful life.

Passages From "Myths to Live By" (Campbell)

2010-10-18T07:31:00.000-07:00

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.

Natural Music (Jeffers)

2010-10-18T07:23:00.000-07:00

Natural Music
by Robinson Jeffers

The old voice of the ocean, the bird-chatter of little rivers,
(Winter has given them gold for silver
To stain their water and bladed green for brown to line their
banks)
From different throats intone one language.
So I believe if we were strong enough to listen without
Divisions of desire and terror
To the storm of the sick nations, the rage of the hunger-smitten
cities,
Those voices also would be found
Clean as a child's; or like some girl's breathing who dances
alone
By the ocean-shore, dreaming of lovers.

Here (Wislawa Szymborska)

2010-10-18T07:22:00.000-07:00

Here
by Wislawa Szymborska

I don’t know about other places,
but here on Earth there’s quite a lot of everything.
Here chairs are made and sadness,
scissors, violins, tenderness, transistors,
water dams, jokes, teacups.

Maybe somewhere else there is more of everything,
only for some reason there are no paintings there,
cathode-ray tubes, dumplings, tissues for tears.

There are plenty of places here with surroundings.
Some you can particularly get to like,
name them your own way
and protect them from evil.

Maybe somewhere else there are similar places,
But no one considers them beautiful.

Maybe like nowhere else, or in few other places,
here you have your own body trunk,
and with it the tools needed,
to add your children to those of others.
Besides that your hands, legs, and the amazed head.

Ignorance here is hard at work,
constantly measuring, comparing, counting,
drawing conclusions and finding square roots.

I know, I know what you’re thinking.
Nothing is permanent here,
for since ever forever in the power of the elements.
But notice—the elements get easily tired
and sometimes they have to take a long rest
before the next time.

And I know what else you’re thinking.
Wars, wars, wars.
But even between them there happen to be breaks.
Attention—people are evil.
At ease—people are good.
At attention we produce wastelands.
At ease by the sweat of our brows we build houses
and quickly live in them.

Life on earth turns out quite cheap.
For dreams for instance you don’t pay a penny.
For illusions—only when they’re lost.
For owning a body—only with the body.

And as if this was not enough,
you spin without a ticket in the carousel of the planets,
and along with it, dodging the fare, in the blizzard of galaxies,
through eras so astounding,
that nothing here on Earth can even twitch on time.

For take a good look:
the table stands where it stood,
on the table the paper, exactly as placed,
through the window ajar just a waft of the air,
and in the walls no terrifying cracks,
through which you could be blown out to nowhere.

We don't go wrong

2010-10-15T11:52:00.000-07:00

But we're afraid, you see, to know that we don't go wrong, because we think that if we do that, we will lose our morals. But the only reason why people lose their morals is that they're scared. They can't trust life, or they can't trust others. They think that if you die or something like that, it will be terrible, it will be awful, it will be the end. So the fights. So the desperate efforts to make it all in one life, and that's greed. That's excessive protections of one's security. But if you are really open, and you start looking around, you suddenly see that you're in a world where everything is absolutely incredible. Not simply lovely things like these blossoms here, but alsso the dust on the floor, little wiggles, cracks, and the quality of light in things. That's what's so fascinating, the reflection of light on everything, because everything that exists is really a reflection of everything else.

- Alan Watts

Sila

2010-10-01T14:45:00.000-07:00

Dr. Rasmussen, recognizing that most of Najagneq's spirits were outright frauds of this kind, one day asked him if there were any in whom he himself believed; to which he replied, "yes, a power that we call Sila, one that cannot be explained in so many words: a very strong spirit, the upholder of the universe, of the weather, in fact of all life on earth--so mighty that his speech to man comes not through ordinary words, but through storms, snowfall, rain showers, the tempests of the sea, all the forces that man fears, or through sunshine, calm seas, or small, innocent, playing children who understand nothing. When times are good, Sila has nothing to say to mankind. He has disappeared into his infinite nothingness and remains away as long as people do not abuse life but have respect for their daily food. No one has ever seen Sila. His place of sojourn is so mysterious that he is with us and infinitely far away at the same time."
And what does Sila say?

"The inhabitant or soul of the universe," Najagneq said, "is never seen; its voice alone is heard. All we know is that it has a gentle voice, like a woman, a voice so fine and gentle that even children cannot become afraid. And what it says is: Sila ersinarsinivdluge, 'Be not afraid of the univers.'"

Drag in the Mud

2010-02-23T08:02:00.000-08:00

Once, when Chuang Tzu was fishing in the P'u River, the king of Ch'u sent two officials to go and announce to him: "I would like to trouble you with the administration of my realm."

Chuang Tzu held on to the fishing pole and, without turning his head, said, "I have heard that there is a sacred tortoise in Ch'u that has been dead for three thousand years. The king keeps it wrapped in cloth and boxed, and stores it in the ancestral temple. Now would this tortoise rather be dead and have its bones left behind and honored? Or would it rather be alive and dragging its tail in the mud?"

"It would rather be alive and dragging its tail in the mud," said the two officials.

Chuang Tzu said, "Go away! I'll drag my tail in the mud!"

Not Even Anything Land

2010-02-23T07:57:00.001-08:00

In Cheng there was a shaman of the gods named Chi Hsien. He could tell whether men would live or die, survive or perish, be fortunate or unfortunate, live a long time or die young, and he would predict the year, month, week, and day as though he were a god himself. When the people of Cheng saw him, they dropped everything and ran out of his way. Lieh Tzu went to see him and was completely intoxicated. Returning, he said to Hu Tzu, "I used to think, Master, that your Way was perfect. But now I see there is something even higher!"

Hu Tzu said, "I have already showed you all the outward forms, but I haven't yet showed you the substance-and do you really think you have mastered this Way of mine? There may be a flock of hens but, if there is no rooster, how can they lay fertile eggs? You take what you know of the Way and wave it in the face of the world, expecting to be believed! This is the reason men can see right through you. Try bringing your shaman along next time and letting him get a look at me."

The next day Lieh Tzu brought the shaman to see Hu Tzu. When they had left the room, the shaman said, "I'm so sorry - your master is dying! There's no life left in him - he won't last the week. I saw something very strange-something like wet ashes!"

Lieh Tzu went back into the room, weeping and drenching the collar of his robe with tears, and reported this to Hu. Tzu.

Hu Tzu said, "Just now I appeared to him with the Pattern of Earth - still and silent, nothing moving, nothing standing up. He probably saw in me the Workings of Virtue Closed Off. Try bringing him around again."

The next day the two came to see Hu Tzu again, and when they had left the room, the shaman said to Lieh Tzu, "It certainly was lucky that your master met me! He's going to get better - he has all the signs of life! I could see the stirring of what had been closed off!"

Lieh Tzu went in and reported this to Hu Tzu.

Hu Tzu said, "Just now I appeared to him as Heaven and Earth - no name or substance to it, but still the workings, coming up from the heels. He probably saw in me the Workings of the Good One. Try bringing him again."

The next day the two came to see Hu Tzu again, and when they had left the room, the shaman said to Lieh Tzu, "Your master is never the same! I have no way to physiognomize him! If he will try to steady himself, then I will come and examine him again."

Lieh Tzu went in and reported this to Hu Tzu.

Hu Tzu said, "Just now I appeared to him as the Great Vastness Where Nothing Wins Out. He probably saw in me the Workings of the Balanced Breaths. Where the swirling waves12 gather there is an abyss; where the still waters gather there is an abyss; where the running waters gather there is an abyss. The abyss has nine names and I have shown him three. Try bringing him again."

The next day the two came to see Hu Tzu again, but before the shaman had even come to a halt before Hu Tzu, his wits left him and he fled.

"Run after him!" said Hu Tzu, but though Lieh Tzu ran after him, he could not catch up. Returning, he reported to Hu Tzu, "He's vanished! He's disappeared! I couldn't catch up with him."

Hu Tzu said, "Just now I appeared to him as Not Yet Emerged from My Source. I came at him empty, wriggling and turning, not knowing anything about `who' or `what,' now dipping and bending, now flowing in waves - that's why he ran away."

After this, Lieh Tzu concluded that he had never really begun to learn anything. He went home and for three years did not go out. He replaced his wife at the stove, fed the pigs as though he were feeding people, and showed no preferences in the things he did. He got rid of the carving and polishing and returned to plainness, letting his body stand alone like a clod. In the midst of entanglement he remained sealed, and in this oneness he ended his life.

Mediocrity

2010-01-13T12:14:00.001-08:00

"A young man with an active mind," Ulrich reflected, "is constantly sending out ideas in every direction. But only those that find resonance in his environment will be reflected back to him and consolidate, while all the other dispatches are scattered in space and lost!"...And so Ulrich felt that what he had just thought was not entirely without significance. For if, in the course of time, commonplace and impersonal ideas are automatically reinforced while unusual ideas fade away, so that almost everyone, with a mechanical certainty, is bound to become increasingly mediocre, this explains why, despite the thousandfold possiblities available to everyone, the average human being is in fact average."

Robert Musil, "The Man Without Qualities"

My Soul

2010-01-13T12:13:00.001-08:00

The most peculiar of all the peculiarities of the word "soul", however, is that young people cannot pronounce it without laughing. Even Diotima and Arnheim were shy of using it without a modifier, for it is still possible to speak of having a great, noble, craven, daring, or debased soul, but to come right out with "my soul" is something one simply cannot bring oneself to do. It is distinctinly an older person's word, and this can only be understood by assuming that in the course of life people become more and more aware of something for which they urgently need a name they cannot find until they finally resort, reluctantly, to the name they had originally despised.

-Robert Musil "The Man Without Qualities"

Where is God Just Now?

2009-08-10T17:41:00.000-07:00

For instance, one evening when I was in the workshop, my future tutor entered unexpectedly and, as he walked in, asked my father: Where is God just now? My father answered most seriously, God is just now in Sari Kamish. Sari Kamish is a forest region on the former frontier between Russia and Turkey, where unusually tall pine-trees grow, renowned everywhere in Transcaucasia and Asia Minor. Receiving this reply from my father, the dean asked, What is God doing there?' My father answered that God was making double ladders there and on the tops of them he was fastening happiness, so that individual people and whole nations might ascend and descend.

Spilt Milk

2009-06-17T15:17:00.000-07:00

We that have done and thought,
That have thought and done,
Must ramble, and thin out
Like milk spilt on a stone.

--WB Yeats

Life Life - Arseniy Tarkovsky

2009-04-24T08:38:00.000-07:00

Life, Life
by Arseniy Tarkovsky

1.

I don't believe forebodings, nor do omens
Frighten me. I do not run from slander
Nor from poison. On earth there is no death.
All are immortal. All is immortal. No need
To be afraid of death at seventeen
Nor yet at seventy. Reality and light
Exist, but neither death nor darkness.
All of us are on the sea-shore now,
And I am one of those who haul the nets
When a shoal of immortality comes in.

2.
Live in the house-- and the house will stand.
I will call up any century,
Go into it and build myself a house.
That is why you children are beside me
And your wives, all seated at one table,
One table for great-grandfather and grandson.
The future is accomplished here and now,
And if I slightly raise my hand before you
You will be left with all five beams of light.
With shoulder blades like timber posts
I held up every day that made the past,
With a surveyor's chain I measured time
And travelled through as if across the Urals.

3.
I picked an age whose stature measured mine.
We headed south, made dust swirl on the steppe.
Tall weeds were rank; a grasshopper was playing,
Brushed horseshoes with his whiskers, prophesied
And told me like a monk that I would perish.
I took my fate and strapped it to my saddle;
And now I've reached the future I still stand
Upright in my stirrups like a boy.

I only need my immortality
For my blood to go on flowing from age to age.
I would readily pay with my life
For a safe place with constant warmth
Were it not that life's flying needle
Leads me on through the world like a thread.

(Translator - Kitty Hunter-Blair)

Mishima - Words and Reality

2008-12-22T08:47:00.001-08:00

Words are a medium that reduces reality to abstraction for transmission to our reason, and in their power to corrode reality inevitably lurks the danger that the words will be corroded too. It might be more appropriate, in fact, to liken their action to excessive stomach fluids that digest and gradually eat away the stomach itself.

Many people will express disbelief that such a process could already be at work in a person's earliest years. But that, beyond doubt, is what happened to me personally, thereby laying the ground for two contradictory tendencies within myself. One was the determination to press ahead loyally with the corrosive function of words, and to make that my life's work. The other was the desire to encounter reality in some field where words should play no part at all.

Existentialism is Humanism

2008-11-28T08:54:00.000-08:00

Existentialism Is a Humanism

Jean Paul Satre

My purpose here is to offer a defense of existentialism against several reproaches that have been laid against it.

First, it has been reproached as an invitation to people to dwell in quietism of despair. For if every way to a solution is barred, one would have to regard any action in this world as entirely ineffective, and one would arrive finally at a contemplative philosophy. Moreover, since contemplation is a luxury, this would be only another bourgeois philosophy. This is, especially, the reproach made by the Communists.

From another quarter we are reproached for having underlined all that is ignominious in the human situation, for depicting what is mean, sordid or base to the neglect of certain things that possess charm and beauty and belong to the brighter side of human nature: for example, according to the Catholic critic, Mlle. Mercier, we forget how an infant smiles. Both from this side and from the other we are also reproached for leaving out of account the solidarity of mankind and considering man in isolation. And this, say the Communists, is because we base our doctrine upon pure subjectivity – upon the Cartesian “I think”: which is the moment in which solitary man attains to himself; a position from which it is impossible to regain solidarity with other men who exist outside of the self. The ego cannot reach them through the cogito.

From the Christian side, we are reproached as people who deny the reality and seriousness of human affairs. For since we ignore the commandments of God and all values prescribed as eternal, nothing remains but what is strictly voluntary. Everyone can do what he likes, and will be incapable, from such a point of view, of condemning either the point of view or the action of anyone else.

It is to these various reproaches that I shall endeavour to reply today; that is why I have entitled this brief exposition “Existentialism is a Humanism.” Many may be surprised at the mention of humanism in this connection, but we shall try to see in what sense we understand it. In any case, we can begin by saying that existentialism, in our sense of the word, is a doctrine that does render human life possible; a doctrine, also, which affirms that every truth and every action imply both an environment and a human subjectivity. The essential charge laid against us is, of course, that of over-emphasis upon the evil side of human life. I have lately been told of a lady who, whenever she lets slip a vulgar expression in a moment of nervousness, excuses herself by exclaiming, “I believe I am becoming an existentialist.” So it appears that ugliness is being identified with existentialism. That is why some people say we are “naturalistic,” and if we are, it is strange to see how much we scandalise and horrify them, for no one seems to be much frightened or humiliated nowadays by what is properly called naturalism. Those who can quite well keep down a novel by Zola such as La Terre are sickened as soon as they read an existentialist novel. Those who appeal to the wisdom of the people – which is a sad wisdom – find ours sadder still. And yet, what could be more disillusioned than such sayings as “Charity begins at home” or “Promote a rogue and he’ll sue you for damage, knock him down and he’ll do you homage”? We all know how many common sayings can be quoted to this effect, and they all mean much the same – that you must not oppose the powers that be; that you must not fight against superior force; must not meddle in matters that are above your station. Or that any action not in accordance with some tradition is mere romanticism; or that any undertaking which has not the support of proven experience is foredoomed to frustration; and that since experience has shown men to be invariably inclined to evil, there must be firm rules to restrain them, otherwise we shall have anarchy. It is, however, the people who are forever mouthing these dismal proverbs and, whenever they are told of some more or less repulsive action, say “How like human nature!” – it is these very people, always harping upon realism, who complain that existentialism is too gloomy a view of things. Indeed their excessive protests make me suspect that what is annoying them is not so much our pessimism, but, much more likely, our optimism. For at bottom, what is alarming in the doctrine that I am about to try to explain to you is – is it not? – that it confronts man with a possibility of choice. To verify this, let us review the whole question upon the strictly philosophic level. What, then, is this that we call existentialism?

Most of those who are making use of this word would be highly confused if required to explain its meaning. For since it has become fashionable, people cheerfully declare that this musician or that painter is “existentialist.” A columnist in Clartes signs himself “The Existentialist,” and, indeed, the word is now so loosely applied to so many things that it no longer means anything at all. It would appear that, for the lack of any novel doctrine such as that of surrealism, all those who are eager to join in the latest scandal or movement now seize upon this philosophy in which, however, they can find nothing to their purpose. For in truth this is of all teachings the least scandalous and the most austere: it is intended strictly for technicians and philosophers. All the same, it can easily be defined.

The question is only complicated because there are two kinds of existentialists. There are, on the one hand, the Christians, amongst whom I shall name Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel, both professed Catholics; and on the other the existential atheists, amongst whom we must place Heidegger as well as the French existentialists and myself. What they have in common is simply the fact that they believe that existence comes before essence – or, if you will, that we must begin from the subjective. What exactly do we mean by that?

If one considers an article of manufacture as, for example, a book or a paper-knife – one sees that it has been made by an artisan who had a conception of it; and he has paid attention, equally, to the conception of a paper-knife and to the pre-existent technique of production which is a part of that conception and is, at bottom, a formula. Thus the paper-knife is at the same time an article producible in a certain manner and one which, on the other hand, serves a definite purpose, for one cannot suppose that a man would produce a paper-knife without knowing what it was for. Let us say, then, of the paperknife that its essence – that is to say the sum of the formulae and the qualities which made its production and its definition possible – precedes its existence. The presence of such-and-such a paper-knife or book is thus determined before my eyes. Here, then, we are viewing the world from a technical standpoint, and we can say that production precedes existence.

When we think of God as the creator, we are thinking of him, most of the time, as a supernal artisan. Whatever doctrine we may be considering, whether it be a doctrine like that of Descartes, or of Leibnitz himself, we always imply that the will follows, more or less, from the understanding or at least accompanies it, so that when God creates he knows precisely what he is creating. Thus, the conception of man in the mind of God is comparable to that of the paper-knife in the mind of the artisan: God makes man according to a procedure and a conception, exactly as the artisan manufactures a paper-knife, following a definition and a formula. Thus each individual man is the realisation of a certain conception which dwells in the divine understanding. In the philosophic atheism of the eighteenth century, the notion of God is suppressed, but not, for all that, the idea that essence is prior to existence; something of that idea we still find everywhere, in Diderot, in Voltaire and even in Kant. Man possesses a human nature; that “human nature,” which is the conception of human being, is found in every man; which means that each man is a particular example of a universal conception, the conception of Man. In Kant, this universality goes so far that the wild man of the woods, man in the state of nature and the bourgeois are all contained in the same definition and have the same fundamental qualities. Here again, the essence of man precedes that historic existence which we confront in experience.

Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man or, as Heidegger has it, the human reality. What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing – as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.

And this is what people call its “subjectivity,” using the word as a reproach against us. But what do we mean to say by this, but that man is of a greater dignity than a stone or a table? For we mean to say that man primarily exists – that man is, before all else, something which propels itself towards a future and is aware that it is doing so. Man is, indeed, a project which possesses a subjective life, instead of being a kind of moss, or a fungus or a cauliflower. Before that projection of the self nothing exists; not even in the heaven of intelligence: man will only attain existence when he is what he purposes to be. Not, however, what he may wish to be. For what we usually understand by wishing or willing is a conscious decision taken – much more often than not – after we have made ourselves what we are. I may wish to join a party, to write a book or to marry – but in such a case what is usually called my will is probably a manifestation of a prior and more spontaneous decision. If, however, it is true that existence is prior to essence, man is responsible for what he is. Thus, the first effect of existentialism is that it puts every man in possession of himself as he is, and places the entire responsibility for his existence squarely upon his own shoulders. And, when we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men. The word “subjectivism” is to be understood in two senses, and our adversaries play upon only one of them. Subjectivism means, on the one hand, the freedom of the individual subject and, on the other, that man cannot pass beyond human subjectivity. It is the latter which is the deeper meaning of existentialism. When we say that man chooses himself, we do mean that every one of us must choose himself; but by that we also mean that in choosing for himself he chooses for all men. For in effect, of all the actions a man may take in order to create himself as he wills to be, there is not one which is not creative, at the same time, of an image of man such as he believes he ought to be. To choose between this or that is at the same time to affirm the value of that which is chosen; for we are unable ever to choose the worse. What we choose is always the better; and nothing can be better for us unless it is better for all. If, moreover, existence precedes essence and we will to exist at the same time as we fashion our image, that image is valid for all and for the entire epoch in which we find ourselves. Our responsibility is thus much greater than we had supposed, for it concerns mankind as a whole. If I am a worker, for instance, I may choose to join a Christian rather than a Communist trade union. And if, by that membership, I choose to signify that resignation is, after all, the attitude that best becomes a man, that man’s kingdom is not upon this earth, I do not commit myself alone to that view.
Resignation is my will for everyone, and my action is, in consequence, a commitment on behalf of all mankind. Or if, to take a more personal case, I decide to marry and to have children, even though this decision proceeds simply from my situation, from my passion or my desire, I am thereby committing not only myself, but humanity as a whole, to the practice of monogamy. I am thus responsible for myself and for all men, and I am creating a certain image of man as I would have him to be. In fashioning myself I fashion man.

This may enable us to understand what is meant by such terms – perhaps a little grandiloquent – as anguish, abandonment and despair. As you will soon see, it is very simple. First, what do we mean by anguish? – The existentialist frankly states that man is in anguish. His meaning is as follows: When a man commits himself to anything, fully realising that he is not only choosing what he will be, but is thereby at the same time a legislator deciding for the whole of mankind – in such a moment a man cannot escape from the sense of complete and profound responsibility. There are many, indeed, who show no such anxiety. But we affirm that they are merely disguising their anguish or are in flight from it. Certainly, many people think that in what they are doing they commit no one but themselves to anything: and if you ask them, “What would happen if everyone did so?” they shrug their shoulders and reply, “Everyone does not do so.” But in truth, one ought always to ask oneself what would happen if everyone did as one is doing; nor can one escape from that disturbing thought except by a kind of self-deception. The man who lies in self-excuse, by saying “Everyone will not do it” must be ill at ease in his conscience, for the act of lying implies the universal value which it denies. By its very disguise his anguish reveals itself. This is the anguish that Kierkegaard called “the anguish of Abraham.” You know the story: An angel commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son; and obedience was obligatory, if it really was an angel who had appeared and said, “Thou, Abraham, shalt sacrifice thy son.” But anyone in such a case would wonder, first, whether it was indeed an angel and secondly, whether I am really Abraham. Where are the proofs? A certain mad woman who suffered from hallucinations said that people were telephoning to her, and giving her orders. The doctor asked, “But who is it that speaks to you?” She replied: “He says it is God.” And what, indeed, could prove to her that it was God? If an angel appears to me, what is the proof that it is an angel; or, if I hear voices, who can prove that they proceed from heaven and not from hell, or from my own subconsciousness or some pathological condition? Who can prove that they are really addressed to me?

Who, then, can prove that I am the proper person to impose, by my own choice, my conception of man upon mankind? I shall never find any proof whatever; there will be no sign to convince me of it. If a voice speaks to me, it is still I myself who must decide whether the voice is or is not that of an angel. If I regard a certain course of action as good, it is only I who choose to say that it is good and not bad. There is nothing to show that I am Abraham: nevertheless I also am obliged at every instant to perform actions which are examples. Everything happens to every man as though the whole human race had its eyes fixed upon what he is doing and regulated its conduct accordingly. So every man ought to say, “Am I really a man who has the right to act in such a manner that humanity regulates itself by what I do.” If a man does not say that, he is dissembling his anguish. Clearly, the anguish with which we are concerned here is not one that could lead to quietism or inaction. It is anguish pure and simple, of the kind well known to all those who have borne responsibilities. When, for instance, a military leader takes upon himself the responsibility for an attack and sends a number of men to their death, he chooses to do it and at bottom he alone chooses. No doubt under a higher command, but its orders, which are more general, require interpretation by him and upon that interpretation depends the life of ten, fourteen or twenty men. In making the decision, he cannot but feel a certain anguish. All leaders know that anguish. It does not prevent their acting, on the contrary it is the very condition of their action, for the action presupposes that there is a plurality of possibilities, and in choosing one of these, they realize that it has value only because it is chosen. Now it is anguish of that kind which existentialism describes, and moreover, as we shall see, makes explicit through direct responsibility towards other men who are concerned. Far from being a screen which could separate us from action, it is a condition of action itself.

And when we speak of “abandonment” – a favorite word of Heidegger – we only mean to say that God does not exist, and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence right to the end. The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain type of secular moralism which seeks to suppress God at the least possible expense. Towards 1880, when the French professors endeavoured to formulate a secular morality, they said something like this: God is a useless and costly hypothesis, so we will do without it. However, if we are to have morality, a society and a law-abiding world, it is essential that certain values should be taken seriously; they must have an a priori existence ascribed to them. It must be considered obligatory a priori to be honest, not to lie, not to beat one’s wife, to bring up children and so forth; so we are going to do a little work on this subject, which will enable us to show that these values exist all the same, inscribed in an intelligible heaven although, of course, there is no God. In other words – and this is, I believe, the purport of all that we in France call radicalism – nothing will be changed if God does not exist; we shall rediscover the same norms of honesty, progress and humanity, and we shall have disposed of God as an out-of-date hypothesis which will die away quietly of itself. The existentialist, on the contrary, finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that “the good” exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote: “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse. For if indeed existence precedes essence, one will never be able to explain one’s action by reference to a given and specific human nature; in other words, there is no determinism – man is free, man is freedom. Nor, on the other hand, if God does not exist, are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimise our behaviour. Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse. – We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does. The existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never regard a grand passion as a destructive torrent upon which a man is swept into certain actions as by fate, and which, therefore, is an excuse for them. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion. Neither will an existentialist think that a man can find help through some sign being vouchsafed upon earth for his orientation: for he thinks that the man himself interprets the sign as he chooses. He thinks that every man, without any support or help whatever, is condemned at every instant to invent man. As Ponge has written in a very fine article, “Man is the future of man.” That is exactly true. Only, if one took this to mean that the future is laid up in Heaven, that God knows what it is, it would be false, for then it would no longer even be a future. If, however, it means that, whatever man may now appear to be, there is a future to be fashioned, a virgin future that awaits him – then it is a true saying. But in the present one is forsaken.

As an example by which you may the better understand this state of abandonment, I will refer to the case of a pupil of mine, who sought me out in the following circumstances. His father was quarrelling with his mother and was also inclined to be a “collaborator”; his elder brother had been killed in the German offensive of 1940 and this young man, with a sentiment somewhat primitive but generous, burned to avenge him. His mother was living alone with him, deeply afflicted by the semi-treason of his father and by the death of her eldest son, and her one consolation was in this young man. But he, at this moment, had the choice between going to England to join the Free French Forces or of staying near his mother and helping her to live. He fully realised that this woman lived only for him and that his disappearance – or perhaps his death – would plunge her into despair. He also realised that, concretely and in fact, every action he performed on his mother’s behalf would be sure of effect in the sense of aiding her to live, whereas anything he did in order to go and fight would be an ambiguous action which might vanish like water into sand and serve no purpose. For instance, to set out for England he would have to wait indefinitely in a Spanish camp on the way through Spain; or, on arriving in England or in Algiers he might be put into an office to fill up forms. Consequently, he found himself confronted by two very different modes of action; the one concrete, immediate, but directed towards only one individual; and the other an action addressed to an end infinitely greater, a national collectivity, but for that very reason ambiguous – and it might be frustrated on the way. At the same time, he was hesitating between two kinds of morality; on the one side the morality of sympathy, of personal devotion and, on the other side, a morality of wider scope but of more debatable validity. He had to choose between those two. What could help him to choose? Could the Christian doctrine? No. Christian doctrine says: Act with charity, love your neighbour, deny yourself for others, choose the way which is hardest, and so forth. But which is the harder road? To whom does one owe the more brotherly love, the patriot or the mother? Which is the more useful aim, the general one of fighting in and for the whole community, or the precise aim of helping one particular person to live? Who can give an answer to that a priori? No one. Nor is it given in any ethical scripture. The Kantian ethic says, Never regard another as a means, but always as an end. Very well; if I remain with my mother, I shall be regarding her as the end and not as a means: but by the same token I am in danger of treating as means those who are fighting on my behalf; and the converse is also true, that if I go to the aid of the combatants I shall be treating them as the end at the risk of treating my mother as a means. If values are uncertain, if they are still too abstract to determine the particular, concrete case under consideration, nothing remains but to trust in our instincts. That is what this young man tried to do; and when I saw him he said, “In the end, it is feeling that counts; the direction in which it is really pushing me is the one I ought to choose. If I feel that I love my mother enough to sacrifice everything else for her – my will to be avenged, all my longings for action and adventure then I stay with her. If, on the contrary, I feel that my love for her is not enough, I go.” But how does one estimate the strength of a feeling? The value of his feeling for his mother was determined precisely by the fact that he was standing by her. I may say that I love a certain friend enough to sacrifice such or such a sum of money for him, but I cannot prove that unless I have done it. I may say, “I love my mother enough to remain with her,” if actually I have remained with her. I can only estimate the strength of this affection if I have performed an action by which it is defined and ratified. But if I then appeal to this affection to justify my action, I find myself drawn into a vicious circle.

Moreover, as Gide has very well said, a sentiment which is play-acting and one which is vital are two things that are hardly distinguishable one from another. To decide that I love my mother by staying beside her, and to play a comedy the upshot of which is that I do so – these are nearly the same thing. In other words, feeling is formed by the deeds that one does; therefore I cannot consult it as a guide to action. And that is to say that I can neither seek within myself for an authentic impulse to action, nor can I expect, from some ethic, formulae that will enable me to act. You may say that the youth did, at least, go to a professor to ask for advice. But if you seek counsel – from a priest, for example you have selected that priest; and at bottom you already knew, more or less, what he would advise. In other words, to choose an adviser is nevertheless to commit oneself by that choice. If you are a Christian, you will say, consult a priest; but there are collaborationists, priests who are resisters and priests who wait for the tide to turn: which will you choose? Had this young man chosen a priest of the resistance, or one of the collaboration, he would have decided beforehand the kind of advice he was to receive. Similarly, in coming to me, he knew what advice I should give him, and I had but one reply to make. You are free, therefore choose, that is to say, invent. No rule of general morality can show you what you ought to do: no signs are vouchsafed in this world. The Catholics will reply, “Oh, but they are!” Very well; still, it is I myself, in every case, who have to interpret the signs. While I was imprisoned, I made the acquaintance of a somewhat remarkable man, a Jesuit, who had become a member of that order in the following manner. In his life he had suffered a succession of rather severe setbacks. His father had died when he was a child, leaving him in poverty, and he had been awarded a free scholarship in a religious institution, where he had been made continually to feel that he was accepted for charity’s sake, and, in consequence, he had been denied several of those distinctions and honours which gratify children. Later, about the age of eighteen, he came to grief in a sentimental affair; and finally, at twenty-two – this was a trifle in itself, but it was the last drop that overflowed his cup – he failed in his military examination. This young man, then, could regard himself as a total failure: it was a sign – but a sign of what? He might have taken refuge in bitterness or despair. But he took it – very cleverly for him – as a sign that he was not intended for secular success, and that only the attainments of religion, those of sanctity and of faith, were accessible to him. He interpreted his record as a message from God, and became a member of the Order. Who can doubt but that this decision as to the meaning of the sign was his, and his alone? One could have drawn quite different conclusions from such a series of reverses – as, for example, that he had better become a carpenter or a revolutionary. For the decipherment of the sign, however, he bears the entire responsibility. That is what “abandonment” implies, that we ourselves decide our being. And with this abandonment goes anguish.

As for “despair,” the meaning of this expression is extremely simple. It merely means that we limit ourselves to a reliance upon that which is within our wills, or within the sum of the probabilities which render our action feasible. Whenever one wills anything, there are always these elements of probability. If I am counting upon a visit from a friend, who may be coming by train or by tram, I presuppose that the train will arrive at the appointed time, or that the tram will not be derailed. I remain in the realm of possibilities; but one does not rely upon any possibilities beyond those that are strictly concerned in one’s action. Beyond the point at which the possibilities under consideration cease to affect my action, I ought to disinterest myself. For there is no God and no prevenient design, which can adapt the world and all its possibilities to my will. When Descartes said, “Conquer yourself rather than the world,” what he meant was, at bottom, the same – that we should act without hope.

Marxists, to whom I have said this, have answered: “Your action is limited, obviously, by your death; but you can rely upon the help of others. That is, you can count both upon what the others are doing to help you elsewhere, as in China and in Russia, and upon what they will do later, after your death, to take up your action and carry it forward to its final accomplishment which will be the revolution. Moreover you must rely upon this; not to do so is immoral.” To this I rejoin, first, that I shall always count upon my comrades-in-arms in the struggle, in so far as they are committed, as I am, to a definite, common cause; and in the unity of a party or a group which I can more or less control – that is, in which I am enrolled as a militant and whose movements at every moment are known to me. In that respect, to rely upon the unity and the will of the party is exactly like my reckoning that the train will run to time or that the tram will not be derailed. But I cannot count upon men whom I do not know, I cannot base my confidence upon human goodness or upon man’s interest in the good of society, seeing that man is free and that there is no human nature which I can take as foundational. I do not know where the Russian revolution will lead. I can admire it and take it as an example in so far as it is evident, today, that the proletariat plays a part in Russia which it has attained in no other nation. But I cannot affirm that this will necessarily lead to the triumph of the proletariat: I must confine myself to what I can see. Nor can I be sure that comrades-in-arms will take up my work after my death and carry it to the maximum perfection, seeing that those men are free agents and will freely decide, tomorrow, what man is then to be. Tomorrow, after my death, some men may decide to establish Fascism, and the others may be so cowardly or so slack as to let them do so. If so, Fascism will then be the truth of man, and so much the worse for us. In reality, things will be such as men have decided they shall be. Does that mean that I should abandon myself to quietism? No. First I ought to commit myself and then act my commitment, according to the time-honoured formula that “one need not hope in order to undertake one’s work.” Nor does this mean that I should not belong to a party, but only that I should be without illusion and that I should do what I can. For instance, if I ask myself “Will the social ideal as such, ever become a reality?” I cannot tell, I only know that whatever may be in my power to make it so, I shall do; beyond that, I can count upon nothing.

Quietism is the attitude of people who say, “let others do what I cannot do.” The doctrine I am presenting before you is precisely the opposite of this, since it declares that there is no reality except in action. It goes further, indeed, and adds, “Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realises himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.” Hence we can well understand why some people are horrified by our teaching. For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, “Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions.” But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art. The genius of Proust is the totality of the works of Proust; the genius of Racine is the series of his tragedies, outside of which there is nothing. Why should we attribute to Racine the capacity to write yet another tragedy when that is precisely what he did not write? In life, a man commits himself, draws his own portrait and there is nothing but that portrait. No doubt this thought may seem comfortless to one who has not made a success of his life. On the other hand, it puts everyone in a position to understand that reality alone is reliable; that dreams, expectations and hopes serve to define a man only as deceptive dreams, abortive hopes, expectations unfulfilled; that is to say, they define him negatively, not positively. Nevertheless, when one says, “You are nothing else but what you live,” it does not imply that an artist is to be judged solely by his works of art, for a thousand other things contribute no less to his definition as a man. What we mean to say is that a man is no other than a series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organisation, the set of relations that constitute these undertakings.

In the light of all this, what people reproach us with is not, after all, our pessimism, but the sternness of our optimism. If people condemn our works of fiction, in which we describe characters that are base, weak, cowardly and sometimes even frankly evil, it is not only because those characters are base, weak, cowardly or evil. For suppose that, like Zola, we showed that the behaviour of these characters was caused by their heredity, or by the action of their environment upon them, or by determining factors, psychic or organic. People would be reassured, they would say, “You see, that is what we are like, no one can do anything about it.” But the existentialist, when he portrays a coward, shows him as responsible for his cowardice.

He is not like that on account of a cowardly heart or lungs or cerebrum, he has not become like that through his physiological organism; he is like that because he has made himself into a coward by actions. There is no such thing as a cowardly temperament. There are nervous temperaments; there is what is called impoverished blood, and there are also rich temperaments. But the man whose blood is poor is not a coward for all that, for what produces cowardice is the act of giving up or giving way; and a temperament is not an action. A coward is defined by the deed that he has done. What people feel obscurely, and with horror, is that the coward as we present him is guilty of being a coward. What people would prefer would be to be born either a coward or a hero. One of the charges most often laid against the Chemins de la Liberté is something like this: “But, after all, these people being so base, how can you make them into heroes?” That objection is really rather comic, for it implies that people are born heroes: and that is, at bottom, what such people would like to think. If you are born cowards, you can be quite content, you can do nothing about it and you will be cowards all your lives whatever you do; and if you are born heroes you can again be quite content; you will be heroes all your lives eating and drinking heroically. Whereas the existentialist says that the coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic; and that there is always a possibility for the coward to give up cowardice and for the hero to stop being a hero. What counts is the total commitment, and it is not by a particular case or particular action that you are committed altogether.

We have now, I think, dealt with a certain number of the reproaches against existentialism. You have seen that it cannot be regarded as a philosophy of quietism since it defines man by his action; nor as a pessimistic description of man, for no doctrine is more optimistic, the destiny of man is placed within himself. Nor is it an attempt to discourage man from action since it tells him that there is no hope except in his action, and that the one thing which permits him to have life is the deed. Upon this level therefore, what we are considering is an ethic of action and self-commitment. However, we are still reproached, upon these few data, for confining man within his individual subjectivity. There again people badly misunderstand us.

Our point of departure is, indeed, the subjectivity of the individual, and that for strictly philosophic reasons. It is not because we are bourgeois, but because we seek to base our teaching upon the truth, and not upon a collection of fine theories, full of hope but lacking real foundations. And at the point of departure there cannot be any other truth than this, I think, therefore I am, which is the absolute truth of consciousness as it attains to itself. Every theory which begins with man, outside of this moment of self-attainment, is a theory which thereby suppresses the truth, for outside of the Cartesian cogito, all objects are no more than probable, and any doctrine of probabilities which is not attached to a truth will crumble into nothing. In order to define the probable one must possess the true. Before there can be any truth whatever, then, there must be an absolute truth, and there is such a truth which is simple, easily attained and within the reach of everybody; it consists in one’s immediate sense of one’s self.

In the second place, this theory alone is compatible with the dignity of man, it is the only one which does not make man into an object. All kinds of materialism lead one to treat every man including oneself as an object – that is, as a set of pre-determined reactions, in no way different from the patterns of qualities and phenomena which constitute a table, or a chair or a stone. Our aim is precisely to establish the human kingdom as a pattern of values in distinction from the material world. But the subjectivity which we thus postulate as the standard of truth is no narrowly individual subjectivism, for as we have demonstrated, it is not only one’s own self that one discovers in the cogito, but those of others too. Contrary to the philosophy of Descartes, contrary to that of Kant, when we say “I think” we are attaining to ourselves in the presence of the other, and we are just as certain of the other as we are of ourselves. Thus the man who discovers himself directly in the cogito also discovers all the others, and discovers them as the condition of his own existence. He recognises that he cannot be anything (in the sense in which one says one is spiritual, or that one is wicked or jealous) unless others recognise him as such. I cannot obtain any truth whatsoever about myself, except through the mediation of another. The other is indispensable to my existence, and equally so to any knowledge I can have of myself.

Under these conditions, the intimate discovery of myself is at the same time the revelation of the other as a freedom which confronts mine, and which cannot think or will without doing so either for or against me. Thus, at once, we find ourselves in a world which is, let us say, that of “inter-subjectivity”. It is in this world that man has to decide what he is and what others are.
Furthermore, although it is impossible to find in each and every man a universal essence that can be called human nature, there is nevertheless a human universality of condition. It is not by chance that the thinkers of today are so much more ready to speak of the condition than of the nature of man. By his condition they understand, with more or less clarity, all the limitations which a priori define man’s fundamental situation in the universe. His historical situations are variable: man may be born a slave in a pagan society or may be a feudal baron, or a proletarian. But what never vary are the necessities of being in the world, of having to labor and to die there. These limitations are neither subjective nor objective, or rather there is both a subjective and an objective aspect of them. Objective, because we meet with them everywhere and they are everywhere recognisable: and subjective because they are lived and are nothing if man does not live them – if, that is to say, he does not freely determine himself and his existence in relation to them. And, diverse though man’s purpose may be, at least none of them is wholly foreign to me, since every human purpose presents itself as an attempt either to surpass these limitations, or to widen them, or else to deny or to accommodate oneself to them. Consequently every purpose, however individual it may be, is of universal value. Every purpose, even that of a Chinese, an Indian or a Negro, can be understood by a European. To say it can be understood, means that the European of 1945 may be striving out of a certain situation towards the same limitations in the same way, and that he may reconceive in himself the purpose of the Chinese, of the Indian or the African. In every purpose there is universality, in this sense that every purpose is comprehensible to every man. Not that this or that purpose defines man for ever, but that it may be entertained again and again. There is always some way of understanding an idiot, a child, a primitive man or a foreigner if one has sufficient information. In this sense we may say that there is a human universality, but it is not something given; it is being perpetually made. I make this universality in choosing myself; I also make it by understanding the purpose of any other man, of whatever epoch. This absoluteness of the act of choice does not alter the relativity of each epoch.

What is at the very heart and center of existentialism, is the absolute character of the free commitment, by which every man realises himself in realising a type of humanity – a commitment always understandable, to no matter whom in no matter what epoch – and its bearing upon the relativity of the cultural pattern which may result from such absolute commitment. One must observe equally the relativity of Cartesianism and the absolute character of the Cartesian commitment. In this sense you may say, if you like, that every one of us makes the absolute by breathing, by eating, by sleeping or by behaving in any fashion whatsoever. There is no difference between free being – being as self-committal, as existence choosing its essence – and absolute being. And there is no difference whatever between being as an absolute, temporarily localised that is, localised in history – and universally intelligible being.
This does not completely refute the charge of subjectivism. Indeed that objection appears in several other forms, of which the first is as follows. People say to us, “Then it does not matter what you do,” and they say this in various ways.

First they tax us with anarchy; then they say, “You cannot judge others, for there is no reason for preferring one purpose to another”; finally, they may say, “Everything being merely voluntary in this choice of yours, you give away with one hand what you pretend to gain with the other.” These three are not very serious objections. As to the first, to say that it does not matter what you choose is not correct. In one sense choice is possible, but what is not possible is not to choose. I can always choose, but I must know that if I do not choose, that is still a choice. This, although it may appear merely formal, is of great importance as a limit to fantasy and caprice.

For, when I confront a real situation – for example, that I am a sexual being, able to have relations with a being of the other sex and able to have children – I am obliged to choose my attitude to it, and in every respect I bear the responsibility of the choice which, in committing myself, also commits the whole of humanity. Even if my choice is determined by no a priori value whatever, it can have nothing to do with caprice: and if anyone thinks that this is only Gide’s theory of the acte gratuit over again, he has failed to see the enormous difference between this theory and that of Gide. Gide does not know what a situation is, his “act” is one of pure caprice. In our view, on the contrary, man finds himself in an organised situation in which he is himself involved: his choice involves mankind in its entirety, and he cannot avoid choosing. Either he must remain single, or he must marry without having children, or he must marry and have children. In any case, and whichever he may choose, it is impossible for him, in respect of this situation, not to take complete responsibility. Doubtless he chooses without reference to any pre-established value, but it is unjust to tax him with caprice. Rather let us say that the moral choice is comparable to the construction of a work of art.

But here I must at once digress to make it quite clear that we are not propounding an aesthetic morality, for our adversaries are disingenuous enough to reproach us even with that. I mention the work of art only by way of comparison. That being understood, does anyone reproach an artist, when he paints a picture, for not following rules established a priori. Does one ever ask what is the picture that he ought to paint? As everyone knows, there is no pre-defined picture for him to make; the artist applies himself to the composition of a picture, and the picture that ought to be made is precisely that which he will have made. As everyone knows, there are no aesthetic values a priori, but there are values which will appear in due course in the coherence of the picture, in the relation between the will to create and the finished work. No one can tell what the painting of tomorrow will be like; one cannot judge a painting until it is done. What has that to do with morality? We are in the same creative situation. We never speak of a work of art as irresponsible; when we are discussing a canvas by Picasso, we understand very well that the composition became what it is at the time when he was painting it, and that his works are part and parcel of his entire life.

It is the same upon the plane of morality. There is this in common between art and morality, that in both we have to do with creation and invention. We cannot decide a priori what it is that should be done. I think it was made sufficiently clear to you in the case of that student who came to see me, that to whatever ethical system he might appeal, the Kantian or any other, he could find no sort of guidance whatever; he was obliged to invent the law for himself. Certainly we cannot say that this man, in choosing to remain with his mother – that is, in taking sentiment, personal devotion and concrete charity as his moral foundations – would be making an irresponsible choice, nor could we do so if he preferred the sacrifice of going away to England. Man makes himself; he is not found ready-made; he makes himself by the choice of his morality, and he cannot but choose a morality, such is the pressure of circumstances upon him. We define man only in relation to his commitments; it is therefore absurd to reproach us for irresponsibility in our choice.

In the second place, people say to us, “You are unable to judge others.” This is true in one sense and false in another. It is true in this sense, that whenever a man chooses his purpose and his commitment in all clearness and in all sincerity, whatever that purpose may be, it is impossible for him to prefer another. It is true in the sense that we do not believe in progress. Progress implies amelioration; but man is always the same, facing a situation which is always changing, and choice remains always a choice in the situation. The moral problem has not changed since the time when it was a choice between slavery and anti-slavery – from the time of the war of Secession, for example, until the present moment when one chooses between the M.R.P. [Mouvement Republicain Poputaire] and the Communists.

We can judge, nevertheless, for, as I have said, one chooses in view of others, and in view of others one chooses himself. One can judge, first – and perhaps this is not a judgment of value, but it is a logical judgment – that in certain cases choice is founded upon an error, and in others upon the truth. One can judge a man by saying that he deceives himself. Since we have defined the situation of man as one of free choice, without excuse and without help, any man who takes refuge behind the excuse of his passions, or by inventing some deterministic doctrine, is a self-deceiver. One may object: “But why should he not choose to deceive himself?” I reply that it is not for me to judge him morally, but I define his self-deception as an error. Here one cannot avoid pronouncing a judgment of truth. The self-deception is evidently a falsehood, because it is a dissimulation of man’s complete liberty of commitment. Upon this same level, I say that it is also a self-deception if I choose to declare that certain values are incumbent upon me; I am in contradiction with myself if I will these values and at the same time say that they impose themselves upon me. If anyone says to me, “And what if I wish to deceive myself?” I answer, “There is no reason why you should not, but I declare that you are doing so, and that the attitude of strict consistency alone is that of good faith.” Furthermore, I can pronounce a moral judgment. For I declare that freedom, in respect of concrete circumstances, can have no other end and aim but itself; and when once a man has seen that values depend upon himself, in that state of forsakenness he can will only one thing, and that is freedom as the foundation of all values. That does not mean that he wills it in the abstract: it simply means that the actions of men of good faith have, as their ultimate significance, the quest of freedom itself as such. A man who belongs to some communist or revolutionary society wills certain concrete ends, which imply the will to freedom, but that freedom is willed in community. We will freedom for freedom’s sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own. Obviously, freedom as the definition of a man does not depend upon others, but as soon as there is a commitment, I am obliged to will the liberty of others at the same time as my own. I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim. Consequently, when I recognise, as entirely authentic, that man is a being whose existence precedes his essence, and that he is a free being who cannot, in any circumstances, but will his freedom, at the same time I realize that I cannot not will the freedom of others. Thus, in the name of that will to freedom which is implied in freedom itself, I can form judgments upon those who seek to hide from themselves the wholly voluntary nature of their existence and its complete freedom. Those who hide from this total freedom, in a guise of solemnity or with deterministic excuses, I shall call cowards. Others, who try to show that their existence is necessary, when it is merely an accident of the appearance of the human race on earth – I shall call scum. But neither cowards nor scum can be identified except upon the plane of strict authenticity. Thus, although the content of morality is variable, a certain form of this morality is universal. Kant declared that freedom is a will both to itself and to the freedom of others. Agreed: but he thinks that the formal and the universal suffice for the constitution of a morality. We think, on the contrary, that principles that are too abstract break down when we come to defining action. To take once again the case of that student; by what authority, in the name of what golden rule of morality, do you think he could have decided, in perfect peace of mind, either to abandon his mother or to remain with her? There are no means of judging. The content is always concrete, and therefore unpredictable; it has always to be invented. The one thing that counts, is to know whether the invention is made in the name of freedom.

Let us, for example, examine the two following cases, and you will see how far they are similar in spite of their difference. Let us take The Mill on the Floss. We find here a certain young woman, Maggie Tulliver, who is an incarnation of the value of passion and is aware of it. She is in love with a young man, Stephen, who is engaged to another, an insignificant young woman. This Maggie Tulliver, instead of heedlessly seeking her own happiness, chooses in the name of human solidarity to sacrifice herself and to give up the man she loves. On the other hand, La Sanseverina in Stendhal’s Chartreuse de Parme, believing that it is passion which endows man with his real value, would have declared that a grand passion justifies its sacrifices, and must be preferred to the banality of such conjugal love as would unite Stephen to the little goose he was engaged to marry. It is the latter that she would have chosen to sacrifice in realising her own happiness, and, as Stendhal shows, she would also sacrifice herself upon the plane of passion if life made that demand upon her. Here we are facing two clearly opposed moralities; but I claim that they are equivalent, seeing that in both cases the overruling aim is freedom. You can imagine two attitudes exactly similar in effect, in that one girl might prefer, in resignation, to give up her lover while the other preferred, in fulfilment of sexual desire, to ignore the prior engagement of the man she loved; and, externally, these two cases might appear the same as the two we have just cited, while being in fact entirely different. The attitude of La Sanseverina is much nearer to that of Maggie Tulliver than to one of careless greed. Thus, you see, the second objection is at once true and false. One can choose anything, but only if it is upon the plane of free commitment.

The third objection, stated by saying, “You take with one hand what you give with the other,” means, at bottom, “your values are not serious, since you choose them yourselves.” To that I can only say that I am very sorry that it should be so; but if I have excluded God the Father, there must be somebody to invent values. We have to take things as they are. And moreover, to say that we invent values means neither more nor less than this; that there is no sense in life a priori. Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the value of it is nothing else but the sense that you choose. Therefore, you can see that there is a possibility of creating a human community. I have been reproached for suggesting that existentialism is a form of humanism: people have said to me, “But you have written in your Nausée that the humanists are wrong, you have even ridiculed a certain type of humanism, why do you now go back upon that?” In reality, the word humanism has two very different meanings. One may understand by humanism a theory which upholds man as the end-in-itself and as the supreme value. Humanism in this sense appears, for instance, in Cocteau’s story Round the World in 80 Hours, in which one of the characters declares, because he is flying over mountains in an airplane, “Man is magnificent!” This signifies that although I personally have not built aeroplanes, I have the benefit of those particular inventions and that I personally, being a man, can consider myself responsible for, and honoured by, achievements that are peculiar to some men. It is to assume that we can ascribe value to man according to the most distinguished deeds of certain men. That kind of humanism is absurd, for only the dog or the horse would be in a position to pronounce a general judgment upon man and declare that he is magnificent, which they have never been such fools as to do – at least, not as far as I know. But neither is it admissible that a man should pronounce judgment upon Man. Existentialism dispenses with any judgment of this sort: an existentialist will never take man as the end, since man is still to be determined. And we have no right to believe that humanity is something to which we could set up a cult, after the manner of Auguste Comte. The cult of humanity ends in Comtian humanism, shut-in upon itself, and – this must be said – in Fascism. We do not want a humanism like that.
But there is another sense of the word, of which the fundamental meaning is this: Man is all the time outside of himself: it is in projecting and losing himself beyond himself that he makes man to exist; and, on the other hand, it is by pursuing transcendent aims that he himself is able to exist. Since man is thus self-surpassing, and can grasp objects only in relation to his self-surpassing, he is himself the heart and center of his transcendence. There is no other universe except the human universe, the universe of human subjectivity. This relation of transcendence as constitutive of man (not in the sense that God is transcendent, but in the sense of self-surpassing) with subjectivity (in such a sense that man is not shut up in himself but forever present in a human universe) – it is this that we call existential humanism. This is humanism, because we remind man that there is no legislator but himself; that he himself, thus abandoned, must decide for himself; also because we show that it is not by turning back upon himself, but always by seeking, beyond himself, an aim which is one of liberation or of some particular realisation, that man can realize himself as truly human.

You can see from these few reflections that nothing could be more unjust than the objections people raise against us. Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position. Its intention is not in the least that of plunging men into despair. And if by despair one means as the Christians do – any attitude of unbelief, the despair of the existentialists is something different. Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God. In this sense existentialism is optimistic. It is a doctrine of action, and it is only by self-deception, by confining their own despair with ours that Christians can describe us as without hope.

Attention Wish Will Free Will

2008-10-22T16:06:00.001-07:00

Attention—Wish—Will—Free Will

A Talk by Mr. de Hartmann

From the Diary Notes of Thomas C. Daly

In June, 1954, the de Hartmanns made a special visit to their newly constituted Toronto Group, to give a clear direction to our Work. On the evening of June 11, all the members met again in my parents' apartment, where we had originally begun as a "provisional" group two years before.

Expectancy was in the air. During the first hour, while Mr. de Hartmann gave a music lesson to someone else at a nearby hotel, Madame de Hartmann questioned each and all of us together, especially deeply: "Why are you here?—What is your aim?—And what do you wish?"

Typical answers: "To be free from ups and downs" … "To get rid of negative emotions" … "To become something real" …

To each answer she countered with: "Yes, but why? Why do you want that?—One can want all such things just to be approved of by others, just to get on better in life—but why do you want that? …"

By the end of the hour, our minds were empty of answers. We had been brought to a level of pondering we had never before experienced. Finally she planted a seed that grew inside this silence: "There is only one important thing—to actually develop our possibilities. We should not be content with anything else, or anything less."

Into this atmosphere at last came Mr. de Hartmann, and it became apparent that, instead of a reading as we usually had, de Hartmann himself was going to speak to us directly from his own experience. And he began to speak without notes and straight from the heart.

First he underlined four themes: "Attention—Wish—Will—Free Will." And then he proceeded to relate them to each other. In that atmosphere of openness, his clarity, breadth of thought and obvious wish for our own understanding penetrated so deeply that afterward I felt I remembered it almost word for word, and wrote it down as follows:

How do we perceive an object? Why that one object, out of so many? Something connects us with that one object, and not with others. It attracts our attention. We pay attention to it. It attracts our attention through one of our senses: our eye, ear, nose, and so on. Our eye, ear or nose pays out attention to the object.

Our wishes, our desires, are connected with it in some way. We want to have it; or we want to avoid it; or we want to look at it more than we want to look at any other object.

This morning I saw a dog with two small boys. Its whole attention was glued to its two masters, watching to see what they would do, which way they would go, so he could quickly follow and be with them. He had attention for nothing else. And his attention continued to be concentrated on the two boys as long as I watched. This is already a high degree of attention, even if it is only animal attention—much stronger than many humans have.

Now we come to wish. Wish is only, as it were, a mere point in space. If we only wish for an object, we will never have it. In order to possess it, we must begin to move toward it. This movement is the beginning of will. If wish is a "point," this kind of will generates a "line," moving toward the object, with a view to possessing it, or identifying with it.

At every level of the universe there are degrees of will. The iron and lodestone: purely mechanical will—yet it moves towards its goal. The caterpillar moves along towards the leaf it wants to eat. The dog: sometimes a dog so strongly wishes to be with his master that when the master dies the dog will sit by his grave and never eat or leave there till he dies himself. This is already a very high degree of will—even if only an animal's will. Few humans attain it.

Thus there is an attention, and a will, for outside objects. An object attracts us; we do not attract the object. Objects govern us from outside. They make us do all sorts of things. It is not the woman who buys the hat, but the hat buys the woman. The man does not smoke the cigarette; the cigarette smokes the man, as Mr. Gurdjieff said. The attention and the will generated by outside objects, through the senses, are not our own. They are part of the mechanism of Nature: Nature works us. We do not conquer Nature; Nature conquers us. The attention and the will connected with the physical senses and outside objects are not our own. This will is not free, but answers the call of every outside object.

But there is another Attention, and another Will. Man has two natures: a lower, and a higher. The lower nature is like an animal's—more subtle and complex, perhaps, but nevertheless it works in the same way. The higher nature is the real one. It is incomplete, but capable of growing into a full and complete Man.

For the higher nature, there is another Attention, and another Will, not born outside of us, but born in us. This Attention is the beginning of real Consciousness; and this Will is the beginning of Free Will. With this Attention, we can observe ourselves; with this Attention we can remember ourselves. With this Will, we can make efforts to attain our greatest aim: to complete ourselves.

But we must actually will it. Knowledge is not enough. It is good, and necessary, of course, but of itself it will change nothing in us. Understanding is necessary. We must have new knowledge: for instance, in order to know what can be wished. But unless we actually wish it, we will have no chance of obtaining anything. And wishing alone, is also not enough. We can wish forever, but unless we move toward what we wish we will never obtain it. We must will it.

But we do not have enough Will. And we do not have enough Attention. So we must increase them as best we may. And the only way to increase them is to make the right kind of efforts. Without efforts, nothing can increase. But if we turn all our Attention, all our Will, and all our Efforts, towards our big Aim, little by little, like the caterpillar, we will approach it: the big Aim.

Two Masters

2008-10-21T13:52:00.001-07:00

In the early days of my interest in Buddhism and psychology,I [Atanu] was given a particularly vivid demonstation of how difficult it was going to be to forge an integration between the two. Some friends of mine had arranged for an encounter between two prominent visiting Buddhist teachers at the house of a Harvard University psychology professor. These were teachers from two distinctly different Buddhist traditions who had never met and whose traditions had in fact had very little contact over the past thousand years. Before the worlds of Buddhism and Western psychology could come together, the various strands of Buddhism would have to encounter one another. We were to witness the first such dialogue.

The teachers, seventy-year-old Kalu Rinpoche of Tibet, a veteran of years of solitary retreat, and the Zen master Seung Sahn, the first Korean Zen master to teach in the United States, were to test each other's understanding of the Buddha's teachings for the benefit of the onlooking Western students. This was to be a high form of what was being called _dharma_ combat (the clashing of great minds sharpened by years of study and meditation), and we were waiting with all the anticipation that such a historic encounter deserved. The two monks entered with swirling robes -- maroon and yellow for the Tibetan, austere grey and black for the Korean -- and were followed by retinues of younger monks and translators with shaven heads. They settled onto cushions in the familiar cross-legged positions, and the host made it clear that the younger Zen master was to begin. The Tibetan lama sat very still, fingering a wooden rosary (_mala_) with one hand while murmuring, _"Om mani padme hum"_ continuously under his breath.

The Zen master, who was already gaining renown for his method of hurling questions at his students until they were forced to admit their ignorance and then bellowing, "Keep that don't know mind!" at them, reached deep inside his robes and drew out an orange. "What is this?" he demanded of the lama. "What is this?" This was a typical opening question, and we could feel him ready to pounce on whatever response he was given.

The Tibetan sat quietly fingering his mala and made no move to respond.

"What is this?" the Zen master insisted, holding the orange up to the Tibetan's nose.

Kalu Rinpoche bent very slowly to the Tibetan monk near to him who was serving as the translator, and they whispered back and forth for several minutes. Finally the translator addressed the room: "Rinpoche says, 'What is the matter with him? Don't they have oranges where he comes from?"

The Ebbing Glory of King Poseidon

2008-10-20T13:12:00.001-07:00

The Skin of Light

2008-10-15T15:33:00.000-07:00

The Skin of Light
Rene Daumal

The skin of light enveloping this world lacks depth and I can actually see the black night of all these similar bodies beneath the trembling veil and light of myself it is this night that even the mask of the sun cannot hide from me I am the seer of night the auditor of silence for silence too is dressed in sonorous skin and each sense has its own night even as I do I am my own night I am the conceiver of non-being and of all its splendor I am the father of death she is its mother she whom I evoke from the perfect mirror of night i am the great inside-out man my words are a tunnel punched through silence I understand all disillusionment I destroy what I become I kill what I love.

Artificial Sun

2008-10-15T15:28:00.001-07:00

[Describing one of Antonioni's first documentaries, which was never completed: a shoot with schizophrenics in a mental hospital]. I wanted to do it with real schizophrenics, and the director of the hostpital agreed. he was a bit mad himselff--a very tall man who demonstrated reactions of mad people in pain by rolling about on the floor with the rest of them. But he provided me with some schizophrenics and I chatted with them, explaining how they were supposed to move in the first scene. They were amazingly docile and they did everything in the rehearsal as I asked them. Everything was fine--until we lit the klieg lights and they came under a glare that they'd never seen before. All hell broke loose. They threw themselves on the ground; they began to howl--it was ghastly. We were in a sea of them and I was absolutely petrified. I hadn't even the strenght to shout "Stop!" So we didn't shoot the documentary; but I've never forgotten that scene."

Chemical Brain

2008-10-15T15:26:00.001-07:00

" Six months ago another scholar came to visit me [Michaelangelo Antonioni] in Rome, Robert M. Stewart. He had invented a chemical brain and he was going to Naples to a congress on cybernetics to tell them about his invetion, one of the most extraordinary discoveries in the world. It was in a tiny box, mounted on a load of tubes: there were cells, made up of gold and other substances, in a chemical solution. These cells have a life of their own and have certain reactions: if you walk into a room, they take on one shape, whereas if I walk in, they take on another, and so on. In that little box there were a few million cells, but from such basis you can actually reconstruct a human brain. That man feeds them, puts them to sleep--he talked to me about it very clearly. . ."

"Another man Silvio Ceccato, of the Univerrsity of Milan apparently created an electric brain, that could see and describe what it sees, and write an article from any given aesthetic, ethical or political point of view."

Steppenwolf

2008-10-15T15:08:00.000-07:00

Excerpt: Steppenwolf: Herman Hesse

"This Steppenwolf of ours has always been aware of at least the Faustian two-fold nature within him. He has discovered that the one-fold of the body is not inhabited by a on-fold of the soul, and that at best he is only at the beginning of a long plilgrimage towards his ideal harmony. He would like either to overcome the wolf and become wholly man or to renounce mankind and at last to live wholly a wolf's life. It may be presumed that he has never carefully watched a real wolf. Had he done so he would have seen, perhaps, that even animals are not undivided in spirit. With them, too, the well-knit beauty of the body hides a being of manifold states and strivings. The wolf, too, has his abysses. The wolf, too, suffers. No, back to nature is a false track that leads nowhere but to suffering and despair. Harry can never turn back again and become wholly wolf, and could he do so he would find that even the wolf is not of primeval simplicity, but already a creature of manifold complexity. Even the wolf has two, and more than two, souls in his wolf's breast, and he who desires to be a wolf falls into the same forgetfulness as the man who sings: "If I could be a child once more!" He who sentimentally sings of blessed childhood is thinking of the return to nature and innocence and the origin of things, and has quite forgotten that these blessed children are beset by conflict and complexities and capable of all suffering.

There is, in fact, no way back either to the wolf or to the child. From the very start there is no innocence and no singleness. Every created thing, even the simplest, is already guilty, already multiple. It has been thrown into the muddy stream of being and may never more swim back again to its source.The way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God leads on, not back, not back to the wolf or to the child, but ever further into sin, ever deeper into human life. Nor will suicide really solve your problem, unhappy Steppenwolf. You will, instead, embark on the longer and wearier and harder road of life. You will have to multiply manytimes your two-fold being and complicate your complexities still further. Instead of narrowing your sworld and simplifying your soul, you will have to absorb more and more of the world and at last take of it up in your painfully expanded soul, if you are ever to find peace. This is the road that Buddha, and every great man has gone, wheter consciously or not, insofar as fortune favored his quest."

Night and The City

2008-10-15T15:05:00.000-07:00

The General In The Library

2008-10-15T15:00:00.000-07:00

The General in the Library

by Italo Calvino

One day, in the illustrious nation of Panduria, a suspicion crept into the minds of top officials: that books contained opinions, hostile to military prestige. In fact trials and enquiries had re-vealed that the tendency, now so widespread, of thinking of generals as people actually capable of making mistakes and caus-ing catastrophes, and of wars as things that did not always amount to splendid cavalry charges towards a glorious destiny, was shared by a large number of books, ancient and modern, foreign and Pandurese.

Panduria's General Staff met together to assess the situation. But they didn't know where to begin, because none of them were particularly well-versed in matters bibliographical. A commission of enquiry was set up under General Fedina, a severe and scrupulous official. The commission was to examine all the books in the biggest library in Panduria.

The library was in an old building full of columns and stair-cases, the walls peeling and even crumbling here and there. Its cold rooms were crammed to bursting with books, and in parts inaccessible, with some corners only mice could explore. Weighed down by huge military expenditures, Panduria's state budget was unable to offer any assistance.

The military took over the library one rainy morning in No-vember. The general climbed off his horse, squat, stiff, his thick neck shaven, his eyebrows frowning, four lieutenants, chins held high and eyelids lowered, got out of a car, with a briefcase in his hand. Then came a squadron of soldiers who set up camp in the old courtyard, with mules, bales of hay, tents, cooking equipment, camp radio, and signalling flags. Sentries were placed at the doors, together with a notice of forbidding entry, 'for the duration of large-scale manoeuvres now under way. This was an expedient which would allow the enquiry be carried out in great secret. The scholars who used to go to the library every morning wearing heavy coats and scarves and balaclavas so as not to freeze, had to go back home again. Puzzled, they asked each other: "What's this about large-scale manoeuvres in the library? Won't they make a mess of the place? And the cavalry?

And are they going to be shooting too? Of the library staff, only one little old man, Signor Crispino, was kept so that he could explain to the officers how the books were arranged. He was a shortish fellow, with a bald, eggish pate and eyes like pinheads behind his spectacles.
First and foremost General Fedina was concerned with the logistics of the operation, since his orders were that the com-mission was not to leave the library before having completed their enquiry; it was a job that required concentration, and they must not allow themselves to be distracted. Thus a supply of provisions was procured, likewise some barrack stoves and a store of firewood together with some collections of old and it was generally thought uninteresting magazines. Never had the library been so warm in the winter season. Pallet beds for the general and his officers were set up in safe areas surrounded by mousetraps.

Then duties were assigned. Each lieutenant was allotted a particular branch of knowledge, a particular century of history. The general was to oversee the sorting of the volumes and the application of an appropriate rubber stamp depending on whether a book had been judged suitable for officers, NCOs, soldiers, or should be reported to the Military Court.
And the commission began its appointed task. Every evening the camp radio transmitted General Fedina's report to HQ. So many books examined. So many seized as suspect. So many declared suitable for officers and soldiers.' Only rarely were these cold figures accompanied by something out of the ordinary, a request for a pair of glasses to correct short-sightedness for an officer who had broken his, the news that a mule had eaten a rare manuscript edition of Cicero left unattended.

But developments of far greater importance were under way, about which the camp radio transmitted no news at all. Rather than thinning out, the forest of books they seemed to grow ever more tangled and insidious. The officers would have lost their way had it not been for the help of Signor Crispino. Lieutenant Abrogad, for example, would jump to his feet and throw the book he was reading down on the table. 'But this is outrageous! A book about the Punic Wars that speaks well of the Carthaginians and criticizes the Romans! This must be reported at once!' It should be said here that, rightly or wrongly, the Pandurians considered themselves descendants of the Romans.

Moving silently in soft slippers, the old librarian came up to him. That's nothing,' he would say, 'read what it says here, about the Romans again, you can put this in your report too, and this and this,' and he presented him with a pile of books. The lieutenant leafed nerv-ously through them, then, getting interested, he began to read, to take notes. And he would scratch his head and mutter: 'For heaven's sake! The things you learn! Who would ever have thought!' Signor Crispino went over to Lieutenant Lucchetti who was closing a book in rage, declaring: 'Nice stuff this is! These people have the audacity to entertain doubts as to the purity of the ideals that inspired the Crusades! Yes sir, the Crusades!' And Signor Crispino said with a smile: 'Oh, but look, if you have to make a report on that subject, may I suggest a few other books that will offer more details,' and he pulled down half a shelf-full. Lieutenant Lucchetti leaned forward and got stuck in, and for a week you could hear him flicking through the pages and mutter-ing; “These Crusades, these Crusades.”

In the commission's evening report, the number of books examined and lined up got bigger and bigger, but they no longer provided figures relative to positive and negative verdicts. General Fedina's rubber stamps lay idle. If, trying to check up on the work of one of the lieutenants, he asked, 'But why did you pass this novel? The soldiers come off better than the officers! This author has respect for hierarchy!', the lieutenant would answer by quoting other authors and getting all muddled up in matters historical, philosophical, and economic. This led to open discussions that went on for hours and hours. Moving silently in his slippers, almost invisible in his grey shirt, Signor Crispino would always join in at the right moment, offering some book which he felt contained interesting information on the subject under consider-ation, and which always had the effect of radically undermining General Fedina's convictions.

Meanwhile the soldiers didn't have much to do and were getting bored. One of them, Barabasso, the best educated, asked the officers for a book to read. At first they wanted to give him one of the few that had already been declared fit for the troops; but remembering the thousands of volumes still to be examined, the general was loth to think of Private Barabasso's reading hours being lost to the cause of duty; and he gave him a book yet to be examined, a novel that looked easy enough, suggested by Sig-ner Crispino. Having read the book, Barabasso was to report to the general. Other soldiers likewise requested and were granted the same duty. Private Tommasone read aloud to a fellow soldier who couldn't read, and the man would give him his opinions. During open discussions, the soldiers began to take part along with the officers.
Not much is known about the progress of the commission's work: what happened in the library through the long winter was not reported. All we know is that General Fedina's radio reports to General Staff headquarters became ever more infrequent, until finally they stopped altogether. The Chief of Staff was alarmed; he transmitted the order to wind up the enquiry as quickly as possible and present a full and detailed report.

In the library, the order found the minds of Fedina and his men prey to conflicting sentiments: on the one hand they were constantly discovering new interests to satisfy and were enjoying their reading and studies more than they would ever have im-agined; on the other hand they couldn't wait to he back in the world again, to take up life again, a world and a life that seemed so much more complex now, as though renewed before their very eyes; and on yet another hand, the fact that the day was fast approaching when they would have to leave the library filled them with apprehension, for they would have to give an account of their mission, and with all the ideas that were bubbling up in their heads they had no idea how to get out of what had become a very tight corner indeed.

In the evening they would look out of the windows at the first buds on the branches glowing in the sunset, at the lights going on in the town, while one of them read some poetry out loud. Fedina wasn't with them: he had given the order that he was to be left alone at his desk to draft the final report. But every now and then the bell would ring and the others would hear him calling: 'Crispino! Crispino!' He couldn't get anywhere without the help of the old librarian now it seemed, and they ended up sitting at the same desk writing the report together.

One bright morning the commission finally left the library and went to report to the Chief of Staff; and Fedina illustrated the results of the enquiry before an assembly of the General Staff. His speech was a kind of compendium of human history from its origins down to the present day, a compendium in which all those ideas considered beyond discussion by the right-minded folk of Panduria were attacked, in which the ruling classes were declared responsible for the Nation's misfortunes, and the people exalted as the heroic victims of mistaken policies and unnecessary wars of their government. It was a somewhat confused presentation including, as can happen with those who have only recently embraced new ideas, declarations that were often simplistic and contradictory. But as to the overall meaning there could be no doubt. The assembly of generals were stunned, their eyes opened wide, then they found voices and began to shout. General Fedina was not even allowed to finish. There was talk of a court-martial, of his being reduced to the ranks. Then, afraid there might be a more serious scandal, the general and the four lieutenants were each pensioned off for health reasons, as a result of 'a serious nervous break-down suffered in the course of duty'. Often after that, dressed in civilian clothes with heavy coats and thick sweaters so as not to freeze, they were often to be seen going into the old library where Signer Crispino would be waiting for them with his books.

The Man Who Shouted Teresa

2008-10-15T14:59:00.002-07:00

The Man Who Shouted Teresa

by Italo Calvino

I stepped off the pavement, walked backwards a few paces looking up, and, from the middle of the street, brought my hands to my mouth to make a megaphone, and shouted toward the top stories of the block: "Teresa!"

My shadow took fright at the moon and huddled at my feet.

Someone walked by. Again I shouted: "Teresa!" The man came up to me and said: "If you do not shout louder she will not hear you. Let's both try. So: count to three, on three we shout together." And he said: "One, two, three." And we both yelled, "Tereeeesaaa!"

A small group of friends passing by on their way back from the theater or the café saw us calling out. They said: "Come on, we will give you a shout too." And they joined us in the middle of the street and the first man said one to three and then everybody together shouted, "Te-reee-saaa!"

Somebody else came by and joined us; a quarter of an hour later there were a whole bunch of us, twenty almost. And every now and then somebody new came along.

Organizing ourselves to give a good shout, all at the same time, was not easy. There was always someone who began before three or who went on too long, but in the end we were managing something fairly efficient. We agreed that the "Te" should be shouted low and long, the "re" high and long, the "sa" low and short. It sounded fine. Just a squabble every now and then when someone was off.

We were beginning to get it right when somebody, who, if his voice was anything to go by, must have had a very freckled face, asked: "But are you sure she is home?"

"No," I said.
"That is bad," another said. "Forgotten your key, have you?"
"Actually," I said, "I have my key."
"So," they asked, "why dont you go on up?"
"I don't live here," I answered. "I live on the other side of town."
"Well, then, excuse my curiosity," the one with the freckled voice asked, "but who lives here?"
"I really wouldn't know," I said.

People were a bit upset about this.

"So, could you please explain," somebody with a very toothy voice asked, "why you are down here calling out Teresa."

"As far as I am concerned," I said, "we can call out another name, or try somewhere else if you like."

The others were a bit annoyed.

"I hope you were not playing a trick on us," the frecled one asked suspiciously.

"What," I said, resentfully, and I turned to ther others for confirmation of my good faith. The others said nothing.

There was a moment of embarrassment.

"Look," someone said good-naturedly, "why don't we call Teresa one more time, then we go home."

So we did it one more time. "One two three Teresa!" but it did not come out very well. Then people headed off for home, some one way, some another.

I had already turned into the square when I thought I heard a voice still calling: "Tee-reee-sa!"
Someone must have stayed on to shout. Someone stubborn.

The Black Sheep

2008-10-15T14:59:00.001-07:00

Black Sheep, by Italo Calvino

There was a country where they were all thieves.

At night everybody would leave home with skeleton keys and shaded lanterns and go and burgle a neighbour's house. They'd get back at dawn, loaded, to find their own house had been robbed.

So everybody lived happily together, nobody lost out, since each stole from the other, and that other from another again, and so on and on until you got to a last person who stole from the first. Trade in the country inevitably involved cheating on the parts both of the buyer and the seller. The government was a criminal organization that stole from its subjects, and the subjects for their part were only interested in defrauding the government. Thus life went on smoothly, nobody was rich and nobody was poor.

One day, how we don't know, it so happened that an honest man came to live in the place. At night, instead of going out with his sack and his lantern, he stayed home to smoke and read novels.

The thieves came, saw the light on and didn't go in.

This went on for a while: then they were obliged to explain to him that even if he wanted to live without doing anything, it was no reason to stop others from doing things. Every night he spent at home meant a family would have nothing to eat the following day.

The honest man could hardly object to such reasoning. He took to going out in the evening and coming back the following morning like they did, but he didn't steal. He was honest, there was nothing you could do about it. He went as far as the bridge and watched the water flow by beneath. When he got home he found he had been robbed.

In less than a week the honest man found himself penniless, he had nothing to eat and his house was empty. But this was hardly a problem, since it was his own fault; no, the problem was that his behaviour upset everything else. Because he let the others steal everything he had without stealing anything from anybody; so there was always someone who came home at dawn to find their house untouched: the house he should have robbed. In any event after a while the ones who weren't being robbed found themselves richer than the others and didn't want to steal any more. To make matters worse, the ones who came to steal from the honest man's house found it was always empty; so they became poor.

Meanwhile, the ones who had become rich got into the honest man's habit of going to the bridge at night to watch the water flow by beneath. This increased the confusion because it meant lots of others became rich and lots of others became poor.

Now, the rich people saw that if they went to the bridge every night they'd soon be poor. And they thought: 'Let's pay some of the poor to go and rob for us.' They made contracts, fixed salaries, percentages: they were still thieves of course, and they still tried to swindle each other. But, as tends to happen, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer and poorer.

Some of the rich people got so rich that they didn't need to steal or have others steal for them so as to stay rich. But if they stopped stealing they would get poor because the poor stole from them. So they paid the very poorest of the poor to defend their property from the other poor, and that meant setting up a police force and building prisons.

So it was that only a few years after the appearance of the honest man, people no longer spoke of robbing and being robbed, but only of the rich and the poor; but they were still all thieves.

The only honest man had been the one at the beginning, and he died in very short order, of hunger.

Introduction to Analogous Alpinism

2008-10-15T14:58:00.001-07:00

Introduction to Analogous Alpinism
René Daumal

My observations are those of a beginner. As they are completely fresh in my mind and concern the first difficulties a beginner encounters, they may be more useful to beginners making their first ascents than treatises written by professionals. These are no doubt more methodical and complete, but are intelligible only after a little preliminary experience. The entire aim of these notes is to help the beginner acquire this preliminary experience a little faster.

Alpinism is the art of climbing mountains by confronting the greatest dangers with the greatest prudence. Art is used here to mean the accomplishment of knowledge in action.

You cannot always stay on the summits. You have to come down again . . .

So what's the point? Only this: what is above knows what is below, what is below does not know what is above. While climbing, take note of all the difficulties along your path. During the descent, you will no longer see them, but you will know that they are there if you have observed carefully.

There is an art to finding your way in the lower regions by the memory of what you have seen when you were higher up. When you can no longer see, you can at least still know. . .

Keep your eyes fixed on the way to the top, but don't forget to look at your feet. The last step depends on the first. Don't think you have arrived just because you see the peak. Watch your feet, be certain of your next step, but don't let this distract you from the highest goal. The first step depends on the last.

When you take off on your own, leave some trace of your passage that will guide your return: one rock set on top of another, some grass pierced by a stick. But if you come to a place you cannot cross or that is dangerous, remember that the trace you have left might lead the people following you into trouble. So go back the way you came and destroy any traces you have left. This is addressed to anyone who wants to leave traces of his passage in this world. And even without wanting to, we always leave traces. Answer to your fellow men for the traces you leave behind.

Never stop on a crumbling slope. Even if you believe your feet are firmly planted, while you take a breath and looking at the sky the earth is gradually piling up under your feet, the gravel is slipping imperceptibly, and suddenly you are launched like a ship. The mountain always lies in wait for the chance to trip you up.

If, after climbing up and down three times through gullies that end in sheer drops (visible only at the last moment), your legs begin to tremble from knee to heel and your teeth start to chatter, first reach a little platform where you can stop safely; then, remember all the curse words you know and hurl them at the mountain, and spit on the mountain; finally, insult it in every way possible, swallow some water, have a bite to eat, and start climbing again, calmly, slowly, as if you had your whole lifetime to undo this bad move. In the evening, before going to sleep, when it all comes back to you, you will see then that it was just a performance. It wasn't the mountain you were talking to, it wasn't the mountain you conquered. The mountain is only rock or ice, with no ears or heart. But this performance may have saved your life.

Besides, in difficult moments, you'll often surprise yourself talking to the mountain, sometimes flattering it, sometimes insulting it, sometimes promising, sometimes threatening. And you'll imagine that the mountain answers, as if you had said the right words by speaking gently, by humbling yourself. Don't despise yourself for this, don't feel ashamed of behaving like those men our social scientists call primitives and animals. Just keep in mind when you recall these moments later that your dialogue with nature was only the outward image of a dialogue with yourself.

Shoes are not like feet—we are not born with them. Therefore we can choose them. Let yourself be guided in this choice first by experienced people, then by your own experience. Very quickly you will be so used to your shoes that every nail will seem like a finger, capable of testing the rock and gripping it firmly; they will become a sensitive and reliable tool, like a part of yourself. And yet you were not born with them; and yet, when they wear out, you will throw them away and remain what you are.

Your life somewhat depends on your footwear. Care for them properly, but a quarter of an hour per day will be plenty, for your life depends on several other things as well.

A climber far more experienced than I told me, "when your feet will no longer carry you, you have to walk with your head." And that's true. It is not, perhaps, in the natural order of things, but isn't it better to walk with your head than to think with your feet, as often happens?

If you slip or have a minor spill, don't interrupt your momentum but even as you right yourself recover the rhythm of your walk. Take note of the circumstances of your fall, but don't allow your body to brood on the memory. The body always tries to make itself interesting by its shivers, its breathlessness, its palpitations, its shudders, sweats, and cramps. But it is very sensitive to its master's scorn and indifference. If it feels he is not fooled by its jeremiads, if it understands that enlisting his pity is a useless effort, then it falls back into line and compliantly accomplishes its task.

The Fabricators of Useless Objects

2008-10-15T14:57:00.001-07:00

The fabricators are unbelievably ingenious. Everything is grist to their skills. I even caught sight of one or two who could make the most useful things quite unusable and this, in their language, they call the greatest achievement of art. One of the cleverest of them had just completed the construction of a perfectly uninhabitable house and, seeing my astonishment, condescended to explain:

"When a tree grows, it's not to provide homes for birds. The bird is a parasite on the tree just as human beings are parasites on houses. The building which I have created is itself its own meaning. See how simple, how bold the lines! a cement pole sixty meters high supporting those double-walled rubber globes! (And indeed the effect was of a bunch of gigantic red currants painted in many colors.) No walls or roof or windows; it's a long time since we jettisoned such superstitions. Each globe is decorated inside in accordance with my specifications, and a central lift enables the visitor to inspect them without fatigue. The temperature is kept exactly at the ideal level for the ideal human organism as defined by our experts. It is the only temperature at which nobody feels comfortable: some shiver and others sweat. That's how science in this day and age serves art to make houses uninhabitable. This one should last at least six months."

Raymond Abellio

2008-10-15T14:56:00.001-07:00

"Ce n'est pas parce que deux nuages se rencontrent que l'éclair jaillit, c'est afin que l'éclair jaillisse que les nuages se rencontrent"

Daumal

2008-10-15T14:55:00.000-07:00

"chaque fois que l'aube paraît, le mystère est là tout entier"

Eckhart

2008-10-15T14:54:00.000-07:00

The Eye with which I see God is the same Eye with which God sees me.

-Meister Eckhart

Memory and Justice

2008-05-09T07:25:00.006-07:00

The task obtaining redress will be replaced by forgetting. No one will redress the wrongs that have
been done, but all wrongs will be forgotten.

Kundera

Let Them Keep Company With Beasts

2008-05-09T07:25:00.005-07:00

Good only for those who are so impatient that they think they waste their time when they spend it in studying the works of nature and acts of humans. Let them keep their company with beasts, let them have an entourage of dogs and other beasts of prey and live with them.

DaVinci

Tarkovsky on Hamlet

2008-05-09T07:25:00.003-07:00

The most horrible thing for a person who senses that they are at a certain spiritual level is to lose it. Hamlet is about this very issue. in order not to break away from life, in order to live so as to be connected materially with this world, the Danish Prince had to lower himself to the level of the villains who lived around him in Elsinore. The tragedy is not in the fact that he dies, since death for him is an escape from his situation, but in the fact that although a spiritual man he becomes a murderer.

Kilgore Troute - Ideas

2008-05-09T07:25:00.001-07:00

And here according to Trout, was the reason human beings could not reject ideas because they were bad: Ideas on Earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter. Friends agreed with friends, in order to express friendliness. Enemies disagreed with enemies, in order to express enmity.

Akhmatova "Requiem" Intro

2008-05-09T07:24:00.003-07:00

During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I
spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in
Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,
her lips blue with cold, who, of course, had never in
her life heard my name. Jolted out of the torpor
characteristic of all of us, she said into my ear
(everyone whispered there) - 'Could one ever describe
this?' And I answered - 'I can.' It was then that
something like a smile slid across what had previously
been just a face.

Progress

2008-05-09T07:24:00.001-07:00

Progress is out of the question a narrow minded concept. you've got to think in terms of life's changes. When autumn becomes winter, when flowers die . . . is that progress?" But, he adds, "Inactivity is not what happens."

Ozymandias

2008-05-09T07:23:00.000-07:00

OZYMANDIAS
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Kagemusha

2008-05-07T09:35:00.003-07:00

Swift as the wind,
Silent as the forest
Fierce as the fire
Immovable as the mountain.

The Two Great Masters of Egypt

2008-05-07T09:35:00.001-07:00

Ibn Khafif Shirzi tells this story: "I heard that there were two great masters in Egypt, so I hurried to reach their presence. When I arrived, I saw two magnificent teachers meditating. I greeted them three times, but they did not answer. I meditated with them for four days. Each day I begged them to talk with me, since I had come such a long way. Finally the younger one opened his eyes. 'Ibn Khafif, life is short. use the portion that's left to deepen yourself. Don't waste time greeting people!" I asked him to give me some advice. 'Stay in the presence of those who remind you of your lord, who not only speak wisdom, but are that.' Then he went back into meditation." Ibn Khafif was being taught the importance of having his own experience of the unseen, and not to fret so much about the forms of greeting people, hearing wisdom, and about what we should be doing.

Nasruddin and the Beggar

2008-05-07T09:34:00.002-07:00

As Nasruddin emerged form the mosque after prayers, a beggar sitting on the street solicited alms. The following conversation followed:
- Are you extravagant? asked Nasruddin.
- Yes Nasruddin. replied the beggar.
- Do you like sitting around drinking coffee and smoking? asked Nasruddin.
- Yes. replied the beggar.
- I suppose you like to go to the baths everyday? asked Nasruddin.
- Yes. replied the beggar.
- ...And maybe amuse yourself, even, by drinking with friends? asked Nasruddin.
- Yes I like all those things. replied the beggar.
- Tut, Tut, said Nasruddin, and gave him a gold piece.
A few yards farther on. another beggar who had overheard the conversation begged for alms also.
- Are you extravagant? asked Nasruddin.
- No, Nasruddin replied second beggar.
- Do you like sitting around drinking coffee and smoking? asked Nasruddin.
- No. replied second beggar.
- I suppose you like to go to the baths everyday? asked Nasruddin.
- No. replied second beggar.
- ...And maybe amuse yourself, even, by drinking with friends? asked Nasruddin.
- No, I want to only live meagerly and to pray. replied second beggar.
Whereupon the Nasruddin gave him a small copper coin.
- But why, wailed second beggar, do you give me, an economical and pious man, a penny, when you give that extravagant fellow a sovereign?
-Ah my friend, replied Nasruddin, his needs are greater than yours.

John Cage - on Why?

2008-05-07T09:34:00.001-07:00

I feel very When one becomes concerned with causation, the ego is overreaching its remit; like taste and classification, causal thinking is an indirection of our experience. "This question of asking 'why'," proposes Cage, "is the same as asking which is the most or which is the best. They are very closely related questions that enable you to disconnect yourself from your experience, rather than to identify with it."

1001 Nights

2008-05-07T09:32:00.004-07:00

The Truth is not revealed in one dream, but in many.

The Spirit in Vibration

2008-05-07T09:32:00.003-07:00

Everything in the world has its own spirit, and this spirit becomes audible by setting it into vibration.

Heaven of The Bhagavad Gita

2008-05-07T09:32:00.001-07:00

It was a multiform, wondrous vision,
with countless mouths and eyes
and celestial ornaments,
brandishing many divine weapons.

Everywhere was boundless divinity
containing all astonishing things,
wearing divine garlands and garments,
anointed with divine perfume.

If the light of a thousand suns
were to rise in the sky at once,
it would be like the light
of that great spirit.

Madness

2008-05-01T13:26:00.001-07:00

On that young nondescript face the smile seemed to come out of some old knowledge and it said, "I'll tell you why I'm smiling, but it will make you crazy."

Michel Foucault, "Madness and Civilization"

Susan Sontag "War"

2008-05-01T13:25:00.002-07:00

It is because the war in Bosnia didn't stop, because leaders claimed it was an intractable situation, that people abroad may have switched off the terrible images. It is because a war, any war, doesn't seem as if it can be stopped that people become less responsive to the horrors. Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing "we" can do--but who is that "we"?--and nothing "they" can do either--and who are "they"?--then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.
And it is not necessarily better to be moved. Sentimentality, notoriously, is entirely compatible with a taste for brutality and worse. (Recall the canonical example of the Auschwitz commandant returning home in the evening, embracing his wife and children, and sitting at the piano to play some Schubert before dinner.) People don't become inured to what they are shown--if that's the right way to describe what happens--because of the quantity of the images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling. The state described as apathy, moral or emotional anesthesia, are full of feelings; the feelings are rage and frustration. But if we consider what emotions would be desirable, it seems to simple to elect sympathy. The imaginary proximity to the suffering inflicted on others that is granted by images suggests a link between the faraway suffers--seen close-up on the television screen--and the privileged viewer that is simply untrue, that is yet one more mystification of our real relations to power. So far as we feel sympathy, we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence. To that extent, it can be (for all good intentions) an impertinent--if not an inappropriate--response. To set aside the sympathy we extend to others beset by war and murderous politics for a reflection on how our privileges are located on the same map as their suffering, and may--in ways we might prefer not to imagine--be linked to their suffering, as the wealth of some may imply the destitution of others, is a task for which the painful, stirring images supply only an initial spark.

The Theater's Function

2008-05-01T13:25:00.001-07:00

It is not the place of the theater to show the correct path, but only to offer the means by which all possible paths may be examined.

Washbin

2008-05-01T13:23:00.000-07:00

I am the washbin of a leaking sky.

Before The Law

2008-05-01T13:21:00.000-07:00

Before The Law, by Franz Kafka

BEFORE THE LAW stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment. The man thinks it over and then asks if he will be allowed in later. "It is possible," says the doorkeeper, "but not at the moment." Since the gate stands open, as usual, and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man stoops to peer through the gateway into the interior. Observing that, the doorkeeper laughs and says: "If you are so drawn to it, just try to go in despite my veto. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the doorkeepers. From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last. The third doorkeeper is already so terrible that even I cannot bear to look at him."
These are difficulties the man from the country has not expected; the Law, he thinks, should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone, but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, with his big sharp nose and long, thin, black Tartar beard, he decides that it is better to wait until he gets permission to enter.
The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at one side of the door. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be admitted, and wearies the doorkeeper by his importunity. The doorkeeper frequently has little interviews with him, asking him questions about his home and many other things, but the questions are put indifferently, as great lords put them, and always finish with the statement that he cannot be let in yet.
The man, who has furnished himself with many things for his journey, sacrifices all he has, however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts everything, but always with the remark: "I am only taking it to keep you from thinking you have omitted anything." During these many years the man fixes his attention almost continuously on the doorkeeper. He forgets the other doorkeepers, and this first one seems to him the sole obstacle preventing access to the Law. He curses his bad luck, in his early years boldly and loudly; later, as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself. He becomes childish, and since in his yearlong contemplation of the doorkeeper he has come to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the fleas as well to help him and to change the doorkeeper's mind. At length his eyesight begins to fail, and he does not know whether the world is really darker or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. Yet in his darkness he is now aware of a radiance that streams inextinguishably from the gateway of the Law.
Now he has not very long to live. Before he dies, all his experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head to one point, a question he has not yet asked the doorkeeper. He waves him nearer, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low toward him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to the man's disadvantage. "What do you want to know now?" asks the doorkeeper; "you are insatiable." "Everyone strives to reach the Law," says the man, "so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?" The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and, to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear: "No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it."

Thirteen Books For The Cross of The Sun

2008-05-01T13:20:00.000-07:00

Thirteen Books to be Read Upon The Crossing of the Sun

1. The Brother's Karamazov - Dostoevsky (Translator: Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Peavers)

2. Collected Fictions - Borges

3. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea - Mishima

4. The Little Prince - Exupery?

5. The Histories - Herodotus

6. Popul Vuh (Translator - Dennis Tedlock)

7. Four Quartets - TS Eliot

8. Gurdjieff: An Approach to His Ideas - Michel Waldberg (Translator: Steve Cox)

9. The Book of Five Rings - Miyamo Musashi ( Translator: Ashikaga Yoshibaru)

10. His Master's Voice - Stanislaw Lem

11. Sculpting in Time - Tarkovsky

12. The Prophet - Khalil Gibran

13. Rising Up Rising Down - William T Vollmann

2008-05-01T13:15:00.000-07:00

Nasruddin and the Banquet

2008-04-30T16:39:00.000-07:00

One day Nasruddin went to a banquet. As he was dressed rather shabbily, no one let him in. So he ran home, put on his best robe and fur coat and returned. Immediately, the host came over, greeted him and ushered him to the head of an elaborate banquet table. When the food was served, Nasruddin took some soup with spoon and pushed it to the his fur coat and said,

"Eat my fur coat, eat! It's obvious that you're the real guest of honor today, not me!"

Film Recommendations

2008-04-30T16:38:00.000-07:00

Movies to see (in arbitary order):

1. The Double Life of Veronica
2. The Wreckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr)
3. The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky)
4. Sans Soleil (Chris Marker) / La Jettee
5. Mouchette (Bresson)
6. Un Chien Andalou (Bunuel)
7. Fall of the House of Usher (Jean Epstein)
8. Notre Musique (Godard)
9. Blue Velvet (Lynch)
10. Visitor Q (Takashii Miike)
11. Shock Corridor (Samuel Fuller)
12. The Idiots (Lars Von Trier)
13. Branded to Kill (Seijun Suzuki)
14. Intentions of Murder (Shohei Immamura)

Fanny Och Alexander

2008-04-30T16:37:00.001-07:00

A young man journeys down an endless road in the company of many others. The road leads across rocky plains where nothing grows and the sun's fire burns from morning to evening. Nowhere is there shade or coolness to be found. And huge dust clouds are stirred all around by a harrowing wind. The youth is driven forward by an incomprehensible frenzy and tormented by a scorthing thirst. Sometimes he asks himself or one of his campnions about the goal of their journey. But the answer is uncertain and tentative. He himself has forgotten whey he ever set out on his journey. He's also forgotten his native land and the journey's final destination.

Suddenly one evening he finds himself standing in a forest. Dusk sets in and all is quiet. Only the evening wind sighs through the tall trees. He stands amazed but also anxious and suspicous. He's all alone and he discovers his hearing is weak, since his ears are inflamed from the merciless light of day. His mouth and throat are parched from the long pilgrimmage. His lips are cracked, pressed together around curses and harsh words. So he doesn't hear the ripple of flowing water and doesn't notice its reflection in the dusk. He stands deaf and blind at the edge of the spring unaware of its existence. Like a sleepwalker he wanders unaware between the sparkling pools. His blind skill is remarkable and soon he's back onto the road in the burning shadowless light.

One night, by the camp fire, he's seated by an old man who is telling some children about the forest and the springs. The youth recalls what he's been through but faintly and indistinctly as in a dream.

He turns to the old man skeptical yet courteous and asks, "Where does all this water come from?"

"It comes from a mountain whose peak is covered by a mighty cloud."

"What kind of cloud?", the youth asks.

The old man answers, "Every man carries within him hopes fears and longings. Every man shouts out his despair or bears it in his mind. Some pray to a particular god. Others address their cries to the void. This despair, this hope, this dream of deliverance, all these cries, all these tears are gathered over thousands and thousands of years and condense into an unmeasurable cloud around a high mountain. Out of the cloud rain flows down the mountain forming the streams and rivers that flow through the great forests. That's how the springs are formed where you can quench your thirst, wash your badly burnt face, cool your blistered feet. Every body has at sometime heard of the mountain, the cloud, and the springs, but most people anxiously remain on the dusty road in the blazing light."

"Why do they stay there? ", asks the youth in great astonishment.

"I certainly don't know.", replies the old man. "Perhaps they've convinced themselves and each other that they'll reach their unknown destination by evening."

"What unknown destination?", begs the young man.

The old man shrugs his shoulders. "In all probability the destination does not exist. It's deception or imagination. I myself am on my way to the forests and the springs. I was there once when I was young, and now I'm trying to find my way back. It's not easy, let me tell you."

The next morning the youth set out with the old man to seek the mountain, the cloud, the forests, and the rippling springs.

A Square Asylum

2008-04-30T16:36:00.000-07:00

Two nights ago I had a nightmare. The little square hole in the wall adjacent to my bed began to emit an orangish light. I had known that there were no lights on in the hallway, and the intensity of the color convinced me it could not be reflective light from outside.
I sat and I watched this light pulse, and a fear began to grow inside me. I looked at the clock and it was 2:00. I knew I was in a dream, but I couldn't bring myself to wake up. The intensity of the light became stronger, and I knew that something was in the hall.
The rest I do not remember, but I realized that my nightmares are very different from what most peoples. They are never images of physical violence, being done to my person or an other. It is always a quality of light, a movement of time, or a sound that arouses an anxiety and fear inside me.

Tales of Genji

2008-04-30T16:34:00.000-07:00

The sailing moon that disappears into the heavens knows naught of the mountains heart. Lured from my above by this moon, it seems that I too am disappearing into the heavens.

Four Quarters Excerpt

2008-04-30T16:31:00.000-07:00

And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to
conquer
By strenght and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several tiems, by men whom one cannot
hope
To emlate--but there is no competition--
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under
conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Khalil Gibran Giver

2008-04-30T16:28:00.000-07:00

For in truth it is life that gives unto life--while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and silences of the night.

Nasruddin's Donkey

2008-04-29T11:09:00.002-07:00

One day a couple of local mapmakers came to Mullah Nasruddin to ask if he could tell them the exact location of the center of the world?

"Yes," he replied. "It is just under the left hind of my donkey"

"Well, maybe! But do you have any proof", they responded.

"If you doubt my word, just measure and see."

Twelve Thesis on the Economy of the Dead

2008-04-29T11:09:00.001-07:00

Twelve Thesis on the Economy of the Dead
by John Berger

1. The dead surround the living. The living are the core of the dead.
In this core are the dimensions of time and space.
What surrounds the core is timelessness.

2. Between the core and its surrundings there are exchanges, which are not
usually clear. All religions have been concerned with making them clearer.
The credibility of religion depends upon the clarity of certain unusual exchanges.
The mystifications of religion are the result of trying to systematically produce such exchanges.

3. The rarity of clear exchange is due to the rarity of what can cross intact the frontier between timelessness and time.

4. To see the dead as the individuals they once were tends to obscure their nature.
Try to consider the living as we might assume the dead to do:
collectively.
The collective would accrue not only across space but also throughout time.
It would include all those who had ever lived. And so we would also be thnking of the dead.
The living reduce the dead to those who have lived, yet the dead already include the living in their own great collective.

5. The dead inhabit a timeless moment of construction continually rebegun.
The construction is the state of the universe at any instant.

6. According to their memory of life, the dead know the moment of construction as, also, a moment of collapse.
Having lived, the dead can never be inert.

7. If the dead live in a timeless moment, how can they have a memory?
They remember no more than being thrown into time, as does everything which existed or exists.

8. The difference between the dead and the unborn is that the dead have this memory.
As the number of dead increases, the memory enlarges.

9. The memory of the dead existing in timelessness may be thought of as a form of imagination concerning the possible.
This imagination is close to (resides in) God, but I do not know how.

10. In the world of the living there is an equivalent but contrary phenomenon.
The living sometimes experience timelessness, as revealed in sleep, ecstasy,
instants of extreme danger, orgasm, and perhaps in the experience of dying itself.
During these instants the living imagination covers the entire field of experience
and overruns the contours of the individual life or death. It touches the waiting imagination of the dead.

11. What is the relation of the dead to what has not yet happened, to the future?
All the future is the construction in which their “imagination” is engaged.

12. How do the living lie with the dead? Until the dehumanisation of society by capitalism,
all the living awaited the experience of the dead. It was their ultimate future. By themselves the living were incomplete.
Thus living and dead were inter-dependent. Always. Only a uniquely modern form of egotism has broken this inter-dependence.
With disastrous results for the living, who now think of the dead as eliminated.

Gurdjieff on War

2008-04-29T11:07:00.000-07:00

"Those who dislike war have been trying to do so [prevent war] since the creation of the world," said G. "And yet there has never been such a war as the present [WWI]. Wars are not decreasing, they are increasing and war cannot be stopped by ordinary means. All these theories about universal peace, about peace conferences, and so on, are again simply laziness and hypocrisy. Men do not want to think about themselves, do not want to work on themselves, but think of how to make other people do what they want. If a sufficient number of people who wanted to stop war really did gather together they would first of all begin by making war upon those who disagreed with them. And it is still more certain that they would make war on people who also want to stop wars but in another way. And so they would fight. Men are what they are and they cannot be different. War has many causes that are unknown to us. Some causes are in men themselves, others are outside them. One must begin with the causes that are in man himself. How can he be independent of the external influences of great cosmic forces when he is the slave of everything that surrounds him? He is controlled by everything around him. If he becomes free from things, he may then become free from planetary influences."

"The reason first reason for man's inner slavery is his ignorance, and above all, his ignorance of himself. Without self-knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave, and the plaything of the forces acting upon him."

"This is why in all ancient teachings the first demand at the beginning of the way of liberation was: 'Know thyself.'"

Automatic Dances

2008-04-29T11:05:00.000-07:00

There is nothing to illustrate
Simply Life's Movement's
Eternal Currents leaping
Across tangents of Desire and Regret
And Dismissive Rejoinders at Change
Incomprehensible. Overwhelming.
Automatic.

Bhagavad Gita

2008-04-29T11:03:00.000-07:00

When Passion Increases, Arjuna
Greed and Activity
Involvement in Actions
Disquiet, and Longing Arise.

When Dark Intertia Increases
Obscurity and Inactivity
Negligence
And Delusion Arise.

When Lucidity Prevails
The Self Whose Body Dies
Enters the Untainted Worlds
Of Those Who Know Reality.

Fate and Chance

2008-04-29T11:02:00.001-07:00

It's most likely not so much fate, as much as chance, she said.

Control

2008-04-29T11:00:00.000-07:00

Q. If Control's Control is Absolute, why does Control need to Control?

A. Control needs Time.

-William Burroughs

Errors

2008-04-28T13:23:00.000-07:00

Any error can be an unrecognizable bearer of truth.

White Dwarf

2008-04-28T13:22:00.000-07:00

The white dwarf lies dormant until it comes in contact with a neighboring star's hydrogen, which ignites a thermonuclear explosion.

The Three Paths of Vindiction

2008-04-28T13:21:00.001-07:00

Three ways are open to her," he thought, "to throw herself into the canal, to go to the madhouse, or . . . or, finally, to throw herself into a depravity that stupefies reason and petrifies the heart.

Dostoevsky, "Crime and Punishment"

Silence and The Mental Emptiness

2008-04-28T13:19:00.000-07:00

And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence,
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen.

TS Eliot Four Quarters

Buckminster Fuller

2008-04-28T13:18:00.000-07:00

There is nothing in the chemistry of a toenail that predicts the existence of a human being.

-Buckminster Fuller "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth"

Guilt

2008-04-28T13:15:00.000-07:00

In those days the Gods took what was nobler, not the punishment, but the guilt.

Pushkin

2008-04-28T13:13:00.000-07:00

Even if you lead me
This land is unknown
The devil is probably leading
Going round and round in circles

Rabbi Cansino

2008-04-27T13:05:00.002-07:00

It was only the first night, but already a number of centuries had already preceded it.

Dead Man

2008-04-27T13:05:00.001-07:00

Abimelech, King of Gerra, took Sarah, but God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, "Behold you are a dead man, because of the woman you have taken, for she is a man's wife.

Doi ya Doi

2008-04-27T13:04:00.001-07:00

Doi ya doi, I am the doi of the doi ya doi!

The Sumerian After Life

2008-04-27T13:03:00.000-07:00

The House where they sit in darkness, where dust is their food and clay their meat, they are clothed like birds with wings for garments, over bolt and door lie dust and silence.

Herodotus

2008-04-27T13:01:00.000-07:00

He besought them to return and used every argument to dissuade them from abandoning their wives and children and gods of their country. One of their number in reply, pointed to his private parts and said that wherever those were, there would be no lack of wives and children.

Les Trois Faces Dans Le Glace

2008-04-27T13:00:00.000-07:00

Ainsi j'appris d'un coup que ces avex reçus de trois femmes ne cachaient qu'un homme et que cet homme c'etait lui.

Popul Vuh

2008-04-27T12:58:00.000-07:00

This is the account, here it is:

Now it still ripples, now it still murmurs, ripples, still sighs, still hums, and it is empty under the sky.
There is not yet one person, one animal, bird, fish crab, tree, rock, hollow, canyon, meadow, forest. Only the sky alone is there; the face of the earth is not clear. only the sea alone is pooled under all the sky; there is nothing whatever gathered together. It is at rest, not a single thing stirs. it is held back, kept at rest under the stars.