Only a Blockhead

On Enlightenment

A few years back fellow Blockhead Julian and I had a discussion (off-blog) about enlightenment: whether such a state exists, and if it does whether it is worth pursuing.  Basically Julian answered yes, and I answered no.  This, by Mr. Furious, reminded me of that discussion:

The adventure lies in getting up every morning and not only figuring out a way to get out of bed and dealing with all the oppressive daily minutia, but in succeeding and in being triumphant and still finding room to love, care, and suffer for other people. To enjoy such true-blue miracles as the cherry and plum blossoms sprouting every spring, the mosquitoes flying into your ear, the peanut butter sandwiches with a little honey and sliced bananas is true enlightenment. Why do you think all of the really smart, spiritual poets write about everyday things? Basho wrote about frogs, snowy mornings, and a monk drinking tea. Issa wrote about spiders, idiot poets who write about snow, and flies making love. Po Chi I wrote about laziness. Li Po wrote about getting drunk and looking at the moon. Ikkyu wrote about jacking off and performing cunnilingus. Bukowski wrote about fighting bullies on the playground. The GZA wrote about Larry’s Bird flying out of Nicholas Cage. Lao Tzu wrote,

“Without going out of doors one may know the whole world; without looking out of the window, one may see the Way of Heaven. The further one travels, the less one may know.”

These are the adventures.

But not to an enlightened person.

Read the whole thing here.

--David

Throw out the baby (Jesus) but keep the bathwater

In a recent Guardian book review, Richard Holloway considers Francis Spufford’s Unapologetic: Why Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense. Holloway notes that the picture of the universe that science presents “leaves some of us with a kind of resonant absence” (what Buddhist philosopher David Loy terms “lack”).

 Spufford, feeling an existential need for forgiveness, decides that (Holloway’s summary), “Christianity, with its doctrine of unconditional acceptance, makes emotional sense.” He doesn’t know if there is a god, but sometimes “can feel that there is one. And so it makes emotional sense to proceed as if he’s there.”

 One reason for Spufford’s gut-feeling flight to religion seems to be modern atheism’s tendency, in Holloway’s words, “to bundle up all expressions of religion in the same ugly blanket before throwing it off a cliff.” Spufford’s wish for forgiveness can’t be denied, but does it have to lead to “he,” she, or a chorus line of elephants with pink toenails?

 No, says Alain de Botton in Religion for Atheists. de Botton poses the question--blindingly obvious once asked--of why humans invented religions in the first place. He answers,

we invented religions to serve two central needs which continue to this day and which secular society has not been able to solve with any particular skill: first the need to live together in communities in harmony, despite our deeply rooted selfish and violent impulses. And second, the need to cope with terrifying degrees of pain which arise from our vulnerability to professional failure, to troubled relationships, to the death of loved ones and to our decay and demise.

 Taking many of his examples from Judaism and Christianity, de Botton shows how religion has skillfully scratched humanity’s itch for tenderness, kindness and forgiveness, while encouraging our better natures, through myth, ritual, prayer, architecture, art and education. He then—and this is the brilliance of the book--goes on suggest ways that we might satisfy these needs through often similar secular initiatives.

 de Botton thinks that current education is failing us by not teaching us how to live. He is one of the founders of The School of Life, a UK institution designed to fill that gap. Another founding faculty member, Roman Krznaric recently gave an interview in which he discusses the school.  

--Julian

We've Needed this Book for a Long Time

My annoyance really peaked when I read through these catalogues, and saw that the endless sessions advertised in them all seemed to sit happily side-by-side. Yet if you literally believed the metaphysical and empirical claims they made and implied, they were more often than not logically incompatible. There seemed to be an illogical almost anti-rational and extreme open-mindedness. No claim, no matter how preposterous or unfeasible, seemed to be unacceptable—and to question the claims was seen as either spiritually naïve or as being locked into some kind of pro-conflict, old-religion mindset of harsh exclusivism. For me, when looking at particular new-age material this ‘everyone is right, all paths are valid’ approach was not only untenable and intellectually insulting, it all too often edged into smugness.

From How Contemporary Spirituality Makes Us Stupid, Selfish, and Unhappy by David Webster.

—David

It'll be a Heavenly Christmas

 

--David

It's Almost Christmas

 

--David

Still With Us

New Agers, it seems have always been with us, and, mysteriously, people often take them seriously.  I write about some proto-New Agers, and the people who took them seriously, in my review of Andrei Znamenski's Red Shambhala: Magic, Prophecy, and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia.  You can read it here.

—David

Hamaorisai

As everywhere in Japan, Shinto shrines dot the countryside. From the currently most prosperous in the area, 37 heavy mikoshi portable shrines were borne through the night towards the beach where they arrived at first light one after the other in elated festival spirits. Hundreds of local people gathered on the sand to witness this climax. Dozens of stalls sold food and drink. The shrines were paraded through the crowds, weaving and dipping to the rhythm of beating metal and the shouted chanting of the bearers, before lining up to be blessed by the senior Shinto priest. 

After the mikoshi converge, they’re usually taken into the sea in a purification ritual, with the teams of men and women porters daring each other deeper, but a typhoon was approaching and the sea was deemed too dangerous. But one of the first mikoshi to arrive wasn’t to be cheated of the experience, and took an unofficial detour into the waves. 

This year’s festival was dedicated to the victims of the March 11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. 

--Julian

Pleasures of summer: matsuri (festival)

The anticipation (in the white paper tied to the rope lining the roadsides; in the muffled drumming echoing in the hot evenings prior to the event) of the sweat and effort of the men and women carrying our local portable shrine to the beach and back

The annual Chigasaki Hamaorisai Summer Festival takes place this coming Sunday night and Monday morning. Teams carry heavy portable shrines through the night along roads marked with rope and sacred paper to the beach. They arrive one after the other in raucous fashion, and are paraded and taken into the sea after sun up.

 And then borne back to their home shrines in the heat of the day. With frequent stops for sake and refreshment. I’ll join my neighbors at the stop here at the end of our road to encourage the bearers by sharing a drink with them.

 --Julian

Oh Wow, Man

—David

Lunch

- NC Tate