Powerlessness

     In his study of the form that masochism takes in modern man, Theodor Reik puts forth an interesting view. Masochism is more widespread than we realize because it takes an attenuated form. The basic dynamic is as follows: a human being sees something bad which is coming as inevitable. There is no way he can halt the process; he is helpless. This sense of helplessness generates a need to gain some control over the impending pain — any kind of control will do. This makes sense; the subjective feeling of helplessness is more painful than the impending misery. So the person seizes control over the situation in the only way  open to him: he connives to bring on the impending misery; he hastens it. This activity on his part promotes the false impression that he enjoys pain. Not so. It is simply that he cannot any longer endure the helplessness or the supposed helplessness. But in the process of gaining control over the inevitable misery he becomes, automatically, anhedonic (which means being unable or unwilling to enjoy pleasure). Anhedonia sets in stealthily. Over the years it takes control of him. For example, he learns to defer gratification; this is a step in the dismal process of anhedonia. In learning to defer gratification he experiences a sense of self-mastery; he has become stoic, disciplined; he does not give way to impulse. He has control. Control over himself in terms of his impulses and control over the external situation. He is a controlled and controlling person. Pretty soon he has branched out and is controlling other people, as part of the situation. He becomes a manipulator. Of course, he is not consciously aware of this; all he intends to do is lessen his own sense of impotence. But in his task of lessening this sense, he insidiously overpowers the freedom of others. Yet, he derives no pleasure from this, no positive psychological gain; all his gains are essentially negative.
— Philip K. Dick, Valis, p. 78.

Anonymity

C S. Lewis, concluding one of my least favorite books, Mere Christianity (revised edition, 1952), shrewdly associates the Christian surrender of the self with not seeking literary originality:

"Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self.... Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay...."

     Setting aside all questions of merely personal distaste, I am fascinated by this passage, because it is the point-by-point reversal of the program of knowing the deep self that is the Gnostic (and literary) quest for immortality. Gnosis depends upon distinguishing the psyche, or soul, from the deep self, which pragmatically means that any strengthening of the psyche depends upon acquaintance with the original self, already one with God. Originality is as much the mark of historical Gnosticism as it is of canonical Western literature; that Lewis simultaneously deprecates both the self and originality confirms the Gnostic negative analysis of those who assert that they live by faith rather than by knowledge. Christian "faith" is pistis, a believing that something was, is, and will be so. Judaic "faith" is emunah, a trusting in the Covenant. Islam means "submission" to the will of Allah, as expressed through his messenger Muhammad, "the seal of the prophets." But Gnosis is not a believing that, a trusting in, or a submission. Rather, it is a mutual knowing, and a simultaneous being known, of and by God.
     I cannot pretend that this is a simple process; it is far more elitist than C. S. Lewis's "mere Christianity," and I suspect that this elitism is why Gnosticism always has been defeated by orthodox Christian faith, in history. But I am writing spiritual autobiography, and not Gnostic theology, and so I return to personal history to explain how I understand Gnosis and Gnosticism....
— Harold Bloom, Omens of Millennium, pp. 22-23.

Still Still

     Dōgen Zenji says, “To read words, unaware of the way of practice, is just like reading a medical prescription and overlooking to mix the compounds for it; it will be altogether worthless.” We just look at the prescription and forget to drink the medicine. We enjoy reading the prescription, saying, “Oh, this is wonderful medicine!” It is ridiculous, but we do this always. We think zazen is wonderful because Buddha says if we do zazen we become strong. From where does the strength come? Does it come from outside of you? We look at the scriptures and depend on them, and then we are really happy. But who must be strong, the scriptures? No, you must be strong.
— Dainin Katagiri, Return to Silence: Zen Practice in Daily Life, p. 107.

The six pāramitās or perfections that the bodhisattva practices are:
Generosity,
Moral conduct,
Patience,
Courage,
Meditation,
Wisdom.

The Eightfold Path consists of:
Right views,
Right intention,
Right speech,
Right action,
Right livelihood,
Right effort,
Right mindfulness,
Right concentration.

Buddha’s teaching of the four holy truths, or the Four Noble Truths, is as follows:
Life is suffering;
Suffering is caused by craving;
Suffering can cease;
The cessation of suffering comes about by following the Eightfold Path.

The Triple Treasure is:
I take refuge in the Buddha.
I take refuge in the Dharma [Truth].
I take refuge in the Sangha [Community].

The Three Collective Pure Percepts are:
Refrain from evil.
Practice all that is good.
Purify the mind.

The Ten Prohibitory Percepts are:
Refrain from taking life.
Refrain from stealing.
Refrain from committing adultery.
Refrain from telling lies.
Refrain from intoxicants.
Refrain from misguided speech.
Refrain from extolling oneself while slandering others.
Refrain from being avaricious in the bestowal of the Dharma.
Refrain from being angry.
Refrain from abusing the Triple Treasure.

The six senses are — (a), six sense organs (b), six sense objects (c), and the five skandhas (d); as below:
(a) color, sound, smell, taste, touch, thoughts;
(b) eyes, ears, nose, mouth, body, mind;
(c) visual object, auditory object, taste object, object of smell, tactile object, object of thought;
(d) form, feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness.

— Dainin Katagiri, Return to Silence: Zen Practice in Daily Life, “Notes,” pp. 175-176 passim.

INTERVIEWER

Still, some artists put such an emphasis on their work, on creating something that will last, that they put it before everything else. That line by Faulkner — “The ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of old ladies.”

ALLEN

I hate when art becomes religion. I feel the opposite. When you start putting a higher value on works of art than people, you’re forfeiting your humanity. There’s a tendency to feel the artist has special privileges, and that anything’s okay if it’s in the service of art. I tried to get into that in Interiors. I always feel the artist is much too revered: it’s not fair and it’s cruel. It’s a nice but fortuitous gift — like a nice voice or being left-handed. That you can create is a kind of nice accident. It happens to have high value in society, but it’s not as noble an attribution as courage. I find funny and silly the pompous kind of self-important talk about the artist who takes risks. Artistic risks are like show-business risks — laughable. Like casting against type, wow, what danger! Risks are where your life is on the line. The people who took risks against the Nazis or some of the Russian poets who stood up against the state — those people are courageous and brave, and that’s really an achievement. To be an artist is also an achievement, but you have to keep it in perspective. I’m not trying to undersell art. I think it’s valuable, but I think it’s overly revered. It is a valuable thing, but no more valuable than being a good schoolteacher, or being a good doctor. The problem is that being creative has glamour. People in the business end of film always say, “I want to be a producer, but a creative producer.” Or a woman I went to school with, who said, “Oh, yes, I married this guy. He’s a plumber but he’s very creative.” It’s very important for people to have that credential. Like if he wasn’t creative, he was less.
— Woody Allen, in The Paris Review, #136: “Whither Mirth?,” pp. 216-217.

Symbolic Action

     The third condition is ritual. Ritual in Buddhism is attaining kannō dōkō, which means “the interacting communion of appeals and response.” Ritual is constantly painting a portrait of our life, setting in motion the interactive communion between us and the universe, not between us and something small, between us and the universe. Without ritual we cannot do anything. The poem “To Paint the Portrait of the Bird,”1 by Jacques Prévert [1. Jacques Prévert, To Paint the Portrait of the Bird, trans. Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971). Copyright 1949 Editions Gallimard.], is a good example of the interacting communion of appeal and response that is ritual or the essential nature of repentance:

First paint a cage
with an open door.
Then paint
something pretty
something simple
something beautiful
something useful
for the bird.
Then place the canvas against a tree
in a garden
in a wood
or in a forest.
Hide behind the tree
without speaking
without moving . . .
Sometimes the bird comes quickly
but he may take long years
before deciding.
Don’t get discouraged.
Wait.
Wait years if necessary.
How fast or how slowly the bird comes
has nothing to do with the success
of the picture.
When the bird comes
if he comes
observe the most profound silence
till the bird enters the cage
and when he has entered
gently close the door with a brush.
Then
erase all the bars one by one
taking care not to touch any of the bird’s feathers.
Then paint the portrait of the tree
choosing the most beautiful of the branches
for the bird.
Paint also the green foliage and the wind’s freshness
the dust of the sun
and the noise of the creatures in the grass in the summer heat.
And then wait for the bird to decide to sing.
If the bird doesn’t sing
it’s a bad sign,
a sign that the painting is bad.
But if he sings it’s a good sign,
a sign that you can sign.
So, then, so very gently, you pull out
one of the bird’s feathers
and you write your name in a corner of the picture.

     The cage, in the first line, means our whole body — the six senses, six sense organs, six sense objects and the five skandhas. This is what the whole world consists of; this is our cage. Everyone has an individual cage. We are nothing but the cage. The poet says, “First paint a cage with an open door.” “Open door” means we should accept the vastness of existence. Usually we don’t open the door. We make the cage and then shut ourselves off. But, if we do this, how can we attract the bird? “Bird” means the Truth, the same and one ground. How can we attract the truth if we close the door? So the poet tells us to paint a cage with the door open.
     Next he says, “Then paint/something pretty/something simple/something beautiful/something useful/for the bird.” We have to paint something pretty, simple and beautiful, not for ourselves, not for the cage, but for the bird. “Something beautiful, something simple” means something beyond our intellectual sense. It means we have to see ourselves and also the vastness of space in which all sentient beings exist. This is our practice, constantly. Even if we don’t understand it, paint it, paint something pretty. Even if we don’t believe it is something beautiful, that’s all right, we are following the Buddha’s teaching and we should see the total picture. We should put ourselves in this position. This is to paint something beautiful.
     “Then place the canvas against a tree/in a garden/in a wood/or in a forest./Hide behind the tree/without speaking/without moving . . ./Sometimes the bird comes quickly.” When we paint something beautiful, we shouldn’t attach to it. Leave the painting in the wood, in the forest and then hide ourselves. This is to practice the truth. When we do gassho, we have to practice samādhi. Samādhi is really silence. We must be behind the gassho, but we cannot move. If we move, even a little, immediately our intellect comes up and argues. That’s why the poet says. “Hide behind the tree/without speaking/without moving . . .”
     Then the poet says, “Sometimes the bird comes quickly,” but strictly speaking, the bird is always there. The bird is there, but because we don’t always experience enlightenment through zazen we say “sometimes” it comes. However, Buddha’s compassion is open to everyone; there is always a bird whether we realize it or not. We don’t know when it will come. But according to this poet it doesn’t matter when it comes or how long it takes. How fast or how slowly the bird comes doesn’t matter, because that has nothing to do with the success of our life. Real success is just to put ourselves in zazen when we do zazen, to put ourselves in gassho when we do gassho, because compassion is open to everyone. “When the bird comes . . ./observe the most profound silence/till the bird enters the cage/and when he has entered/gently close the door with a brush.” Not with our hand, please, close the door with a brush. “Then”—and this practice is very important—“erase all the bars one by one/taking care not to touch any of the bird’s feathers.” This is egolessness, the practice of egolessness. How beautiful it is. If we want to paint the portrait of a bird we have to practice egolessness.
     “Then paint the portrait of the tree/choosing the most beautiful of its branches/for the bird./Paint also the green foliage and the wind’s freshness/the dust of the sun.” When we do this, all things become alive. We can make our lives come alive. But without this practice, we cannot paint the autumn, the air, “the dust of the sun” or “the noise of the creatures in the grass in the summer heat.” We cannot.
     “And then wait for the bird to decide to sing./If the bird doesn’t sing/it’s a bad sign,/a sign that the painting is bad.” This means that perhaps enlightenment is attained, or a Ph.D. degree or the degree of medical doctor, but our life doesn’t work. When it doesn’t work, we need to pay more attention to what that degree means or we have to pay attention to our own experience, until the bird starts to sing. When the bird starts to sing that is our experience, our life, so we can sign the painting. But don’t sign with arrogance. The poet says to sign your name in the corner of the picture. We shouldn’t show off, because the whole of life, the whole world is alive. We are just a corner, that’s enough. We are the whole world; the whole world is working. “One of the bird’s feathers” means take Buddha. Take one of the ideas of the universe that we believe, for instance, “the universe is the same and one ground,” and use that feather. With that feather we can write our name, not in the middle of the canvas, but in the corner of the picture. This is the poem, a very beautiful one. Throughout this poem we can see ritual in action.
— Dainin Katagiri, Return to Silence: Zen Practice in Daily Life, pp. 75-78.

Those Real Myths

     Apparently human beings whose souls have answered to God’s call cannot just be “on earth”; they must have a “heavenly” counterpart. Hence certain lightnings and stars represent their celestial “dimension,” as it were. The author reads the lightnings and stars as cosmically projected symbols of the spiritual aspect of saints on earth. The imagery of spatial transcendence is transparently symbolic of inner spirituality as the presence of “heaven” within human personality.
     Our second witness is Jewish merkabah (“throne-chariot”) mysticism, which flourished within Judaism as a significant but underground movement from some time after Ezekiel right down through medieval cabalism to modern Hasidism. The great historian of this phenomenon in Judaism G. G. Scholem comments almost offhandedly on a shift in the mystics’ perception of the nature of the spiritual quest, a shift that took place so inconspicuously that it can only be dated as happening somewhere around 500 c.e. It was the moment when the Jewish mystics no longer spoke of the mystical ascent through the seven heavens, and described it rather as a descent.41 This revolution in imagery (and nothing is more revolutionary than the transformation of the fundamental metaphors by which we apprehend the world) marked the perception that the mystic did not in fact journey into heaven but penetrated the soul’s own depth. This shift was the seed that would, after many centuries of drifting, darkness, nurture, and growth, come to full flower in an inheritor of that mystical tradition—Sigmund Freud. It is this shift that led finally to the psychological mind-set of modern times, stripped, however, of a sense of the divine reality within. It was that shift which enabled Jung, standing on Freud’s shoulders (or toes), to recover a sense of the numinous reality behind the myth and symbol and to redirect us back to these ancient treasuries of truth, with this difference: we can now withdraw the unconscious projections which “change the world into the replica of one’s unknown face,” and locate the cosmic aspect of myth within ourselves—and, I would wish to add, in the inwardness of the events of our time and the forces of nature and history and institutional structures that impinge on us. We are, in short, capable of a “second reading” of the ancient texts, a reading in which the myth is understood to speak symbolically of the real but invisible spiritual dimension of personal and corporate earthly existence.
     Why not, then, simply discard the myth in favor of our demythologized interpretation? The more obvious and general answer is that we cannot dispense with the myth because it says more than we can tell. It is not only lucid but opaque. It participates not only in the light of consciousness and reason but also in the darkness of mystery. It treasures things that we have not yet learned to comprehend and preserves them for a generation that might. Through a set of powerfully evocative symbols acknowledged as meaningful by a people, it presents an incredibly condensed story that depicts, through the indirect language of narrative, the nature of ultimate reality, the way things got how they are, the path to salvation, and the final meanings of life. All our “explanations” of myths are dispensable and time-bound and will soon be forgotten, but the myth lives on, fed by its continual interplay with the very reality it “presents.”

41. G. G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1941, 1965), 46-47. Perhaps a similar phenomenon happened independently in gnosticism as well. Speaking of the same kind of mystical journey to heaven, the NHL Steles Seth says, “The way of ascent is the way of descent” (127: 21-22). This echoes an ancient saying of Heraclitus: “The way up and the way down are one and the same” (H. Diels, Die Fragments der Vorsokratiker (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1912), 1:89, frag. 60). Perhaps that ancient insight was only now being vindicated. See also NHL Zost. 82:23-24 and the Teach. Silv. 116:27-117.:5; and 117:6-9—“Open the door for yourself that you may know what is. Knock on yourself that the Word may open for you.” The Greater Hekhalot repeatedly refers to the “descent” into the Merkabah, as do the “Hekhalot Fragments” (cited by Ithamar Greunwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980], p. 188). Another way of symbolizing the “descent” to God appears in Re’uyot Yehezkel, where Ezekiel is depicted as “standing on the River Chebar looking down at the water and the seven heavens were opened to him and he saw the Glory of the Holy One” (cited by Gruenwald, p. 135). The water serves as a mirror of the things in heaven. But that is tantamount to saying that the heavenly is revealed through the depths of the unconscious (“water”). See also T.B. Sanh. 91b—“So will the Holy One, blessed be He, bring the soul, [re]place it in the body, and judge them together, as it is written. He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that he may judge his people: He shall call to the heavens from above—this refers to the soul; and to the earth, that he may judge his people—to the body.” One could scarcely hope to find a more explicit equation of heaven with the “within” of a person.

— Walter Wink, Naming the Powers, pp. 141-143.

Delightfully Defined

Patience, n.
A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.

Patriot, n.
One to whom interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.

Patriotism, n.
Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.

Peace, n.
In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.

Plagiarism, n.
A literary coincidence compounded of a discreditable priority and an honorable subsequence.
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.

Plan, v.t.
To bother about the best method od accomplishing an accidental result.
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.

Platitude, n.
The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. The wisdom of a million fools in the diction of a dullard. A moral without the fable. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A demitasse of milk-and-morality. The Pope’s-nose of a featherless peacock. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. The cackle surviving the egg. A desiccated epigram.
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.

Definite Apposites

Faith, n.
Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.

Language, n.
The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another’s treasure.
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.

Learning, n.
The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.

Lecturer, n.
One with his hand in your pocket, his tongue in your ear and his faith in your patience.
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.

Lexicographer, n.
A pestilent fellow, who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods. For your lexicographer, having written his dictionary, comes to consider “as one having authority,” whereas his function is only to make a record, not to give a law. The natural servility of the human understanding having invested him with judicial power, surrenders its right of reason and submits itself to a chronicle as if it were a statute. Let the dictionary (for example) mark a good word as “obsolete” or “obsolescent” and few men thereafter venture to use it, whatever their need of it and however desirable its restoration to favor — whereby the process of impoverishment is accelerated and speech decays. On the contrary, the bold and discerning writer who, recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense, has no following and is tartly reminded that “it isn’t in the dictionary” — although down to the time of the first lexicographer (Heaven forgive him!) no author ever had used a word that was in the dictionary. In the golden prime and high noon of English speech; when from the lips of the great Elizabethans fell words that made their own meaning and carried it in their very sound; when a Shakespeare and a Bacon were possible, and the language now rapidly perishing at one end and slowly renewed at the other was in vigorous growth and hardy preservation — sweeter than honey and stronger than a lion — the lexicographer was a person unknown, the dictionary a creation which the Creator had not created him to create.
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.

Past, n.
That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy. The Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song. In the one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing, beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one — the knowledge and the dream.
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.

Making of Minds

     Long before we understand the function of each hemisphere, it was recognized that people have at least two modes of understanding. Philosopher Thomas Hobbes called one mode “directed” and the other “free.” Indian spiritual teacher Rhadhakrishnan called one “rational” and the other “integral.” French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss referred to one as “positive” and the other as “mythic.” A graphic and poetic description of the “two minds” appears in the second-century Indian Buddhist text, the Lankavatara Sutra:
     The discriminating mind is a dancer and a magician
     with the objective world as his stage. Intuitive
     mind is the wise jester who travels with the magi-
     cian and reflects upon his emptiness and transiency.
— Wes “Scoop” Nisker, Crazy Wisdom, pp. 107-108.

RATE THE INTENSIVE above the extensive. The perfect does not lie in quantity, but in quality. All that is best is always scant, and rare, for mass in anything cheapens it. Even among men the giants have often been true pygmies. Some judge books by their thickness, as though they had been written to exercise the arms, instead of the mind. Bigness, alone, never gets beyond the mediocre, and it is the curse of the universal man, that in trying to be everything, he is nothing. It is quality that bestows distinction, and in heroic proportions if the substance is sublime.
— Baltasar Gracian, The Art of Wordly Wisdom, #27, Martin Fischer (tr.), p. 15.

DILIGENT, AND INTELLIGENT. Diligence quickly accomplishes what the intelligence has well thought out. Haste is the passion of fools, and as they know not the difficulties, they work without heed: wiser men, on the other hand, are likely to fail from overcaution; for of reflection is bred delay: and so their hesitation in acting loses them the fruits of their good judgment. Promptitude is the mother of fortune. He does much who leaves nothing for tomorrow. A magnificent motto: to make haste slowly.
— Baltasar Gracian, in Ibid., #53, p. 30.

THE SENSE TO let things settle. Especially when the public, or the private, sea is most turbulent. There come whirlwinds into human traffic, storms of passion, when it is wise to seek a safe harbor with smoother waters: many times is an evil made worse by the remedies used; here leave things to nature, or there to God: the learned physician needs just as much wisdom in order not to prescribe, as to prescribe, and often the greater art lies in doing nothing; the way to quiet the turbulence of a mob is to withdraw your hand, and let it quiet itself, to concede today, may be the best way to succeed tomorrow; it takes little to muddy a spring, nor does it clear by being stirred, but by being left alone: there is no better remedy for turmoil, than to let it take its course, for so it comes to rest of itself.
— Baltasar Gracian, in Ibid., #138, pp. 79-80.

A PROPER CONCEIT of yourself, and of your aims, especially at the start of life. All have a high opinion of themselves, particularly those with least reason; each dreams himself a fortune, and imagines himself a prodigy: hope wildly promises everything, and time then fulfills nothing: these things torment the spirit, as the imagined gives way before the truth, wherefore let the man of judgment correct his blunders, and even though hoping for the best, always expect the worst, in order to be able to accept with equanimity whatever comes. It is well, of course, to aim somewhat high, in order to near the mark; but not so high that you miss altogether a starting upon your life’s job; to make this proper estimate of yourself is absolutely necessary, for without experience it is very easy to confuse the conjectured with the fact; there is no greater panacea against all that is foolish, than understanding; wherefore let every man know what is the sphere of his abilities, and his place, and thus be able to make the picture of himself coincide with the actual.
— Baltasar Gracian, in Ibid., #194, p. 114.

IN HEAVEN ALL is gladness. In hell all is sorrow. Upon this earth, since it lies between, sometimes the one, and sometimes the other. We have our being between two extremes, and so it partakes of both. Fortune should vary, not all being felicity, nor all adversity. This world is a zero, and by itself worth nothing, but joined to heaven worth everything: indifference to your lot is common sense, and not to be surprised by it, wisdom. Our life becomes more complicated as we go along, like a comedy, but toward its end it becomes simpler; keep in mind, therefore, the happy ending.
— Baltasar Gracian, in Ibid., #211, p. 124.

ENJOY A LITTLE more, and strive a little less: others argue to the contrary; but happy leisure is worth more than drive, for nothing belongs to us, except time, wherein even he dwells who has no habitation: equally infelicitous to squander precious existence in stupid drudgery, as in an excess of noble business. Be not crushed under success, in order not to be crushed under envy: it is to trample upon life, and to suffocate the spirit; some would include hereunder knowledge, but he who is without knowledge, is without life.
— Baltasar Gracian, in Ibid., #247, p. 145.

Seeing HOW

     One of the finest parallels to what has been said here is the description of his central experience given by Edward Maitland, the collaborator of Anna Kingsford. He has discovered that during reflection on an idea, related ideas become visible, so to speak, in a long series apparently reaching back to their source, which to him was the divine spirit. By means of concentration on this series, he tried to penetrate to their origin. He says: ‘I was absolutely without knowledge or expectation when I yielded to the impulse to make the attempt. I simply experimented on a faculty . . . being seated at my writing-table the while in order to record the results as they came, and resolved to retain my hold on my outer and circumferential consciousness, no matter how far towards my inner and central consciousness I might go. For I know not whether I should be able to regain the former if I once quited my hold of it, or to recollect the facts of the experience. At length I achieved my object, though only by a strong effort, the tension occasioned by the endeavor to keep both extremes of the consciousness in view at once being very great.
     ‘Once well started on my quest, I found myself traversing a succession of spheres or belts . . . the impression produced being that of mounting a vast ladder stretching from the circumference towards the centre of a system, which was at once my own system, the solar system, and the universal system, the three systems being at once diverse and identical…. Presently, by a supreme, and what I felt must be a final effort . . . I succeeded in polarizing the whole of the convergent rays of my consciousness into the desired focus. And at the same instant, as if through the sudden ignition of the rays thus fused into a unity, I found myself confronted with a glory of unspeakable whiteness and brightness, and of a luster so intense as well-nigh to beat me back…. But though feeling that I had to explore further, I resolved to make assurance doubly sure by piercing if I could the almost blinding luster, and seeing what it enshrined. With great effort I succeeded, and the glance revealed to me that which I had felt must be there…. It was the dual form of the Son . . . the unmanifest made manifest, the unformulated formulate, the unindividuate individuate, God as the Lord, proving through His duality that God is Substance as well as Force, Love as well as Will, Feminine as well as Masculine, Mother as well as Father.’ He found that God is two in one like man. Besides this he noticed something that our text also emphasizes, namely, ‘suspension of breathing’. He says ordinary breathing stopped and was replaced by an internal respiration, ‘as if by breathing of a distinct personality within and other than the physical organism’. He took this being to be the entelechy of Aristotle, and the inner Christ of the Apostle Paul, the ‘spiritual and substantial individuality engendered within the physical and phenomenal personality, and representing, therefore, the rebirth of man on a plane transcending the material’. This genuine experience contains all the essential symbols of our text. The phenomenon itself, that is, the vision of light, is an experience common to many mystics, and one that is undoubtedly of the greatest significance, because in all times and places it appears as the unconditional thing, which unites in itself the greatest energy and the profoundest meaning. Hildegarde of Bingen, an outstanding personality quite apart from her mysticism, expresses herself about her central vision in a similar way. ‘Since my childhood,’ she says, ‘I have always seen a light in my soul, but not with the outer eyes, nor through the thoughts of my heart; neither do the five outer senses take part in this vision…. The light I perceive is not of a local kind, but is much brighter than the cloud which bears the sun. I cannot distinguish height, breadth, or length of it…. What I see or learn in such a vision stays long in my memory. I see, hear, and know in the same moment…. I cannot recognize any sort of form in this light, although I sometimes see in it another light that is known to me as the living light…. While I am enjoying the spectacle of this light, all sadness and sorrow vanish from my memory….’
— C. G. Jung, Golden Flower, “Commentary by C. G. Jung,” R. Wilhelm & C. G. Jung, pp. 104-107.

     At our point of time the I Ching responds to the need of further development in us. Occultism has enjoyed a renaissance in our times which is virtually without a parallel. The light of the western mind is nearly darkened by it. I am thinking now of our seats of learning and their representatives. I am a physician and deal with ordinary people, and therefore I know that the universities have ceased to act as disseminators of light. People have become weary of scientific specialization and rationalistic intellectualism. They want to hear truths which broaden rather than restrict them, which do not obscure but enlighten, which do not run off them like water, but penetrate them to the marrow. This search threatens to lead a large, if anonymous, public into wrong paths.
— C. G. Jung, “Appendix,” “In Memory of Richard Wilhelm,” in Ibid., p. 143.

Be Now Here

     In the Thomas Gospel, on the other hand, when the apostles ask, “When will the Kingdom come?” — Jesus says, “The Kingdom will not come by expectation. They will say ‘see here, see there.’ The Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it.” That’s Gnosticism.

     Gnosticism is the Western
     Counterpart of Buddhism.

     Thomas says, in other words, that there is a revelation possible to you right now. It is here. So, “to be happy with Him forever in heaven” means to reach that depth now. It’s a totally different slant.

     If you read Christian mythology
     in the Gnostic way,
     it makes universal sense.

— Joseph Campbell, Joseph Campbell Companion, Diane K. Osbon (sel. & ed.), pp. 174-175.

     This bringing together of Joyce’ esthetic theory with the maya idea was a wonderful illumination for me. I just woke up one morning and said, “My god, I have finally got it after eighty years.” I have known the implications of esthetic arrest, but I’d never linked it up to the maya idea. It is your mental attitude that determines whether you experience the projecting or the revealing power. The world is there in both modes. It is not that the world changes, it’s your consciousness.
     Esthetic arrest is the result of this change of focus. “The Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth and men do not see it.” You see it in esthetic arrest. But to develop the inward depth experienced through this change of focus, those who seek to achieve fully the goal of life should set aside a sacred space. The sacred space, when you think of where it appears in traditional cultures, is for initiations and meditations. If you are so fulfilled already that no further initiations are necessary, then you can do without such a space. But, insofar as you’ve not struck the ultimate depth and are interested in enriching and building the interior, in addition to the external aspects of your life, then you have to have some place, some way, to practice this.
     All the world will open up when you’ve achieved this inner depth, and your play in life will be informed by this radiance….
— Joseph Campbell, Ibid., pp. 252-253.

     Participate joyfully
     In the sorrows of the world.

     The obvious lesson . . . is that the first step to the knowledge of the highest divine symbol of the wonder and mystery of life is in the recognition of the monstrous nature of life and its glory in that character: the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed. Those who think — and their name is legion — that they know how the universe could have been better than it is, how it would have had they created it, without pain, without sorrow, without time, without life, are unfit for illumination. Or those who think — as do many — “Let me first correct society, then get around to myself” are barred from even the outer gate of the mansion of God’s peace. All societies are evil, sorrowful, inequitable; and so they will always be. So if you really want to help this world, what you will have to teach is how to live in it. And that no one can do who has not himself learned how to live in it in the joyful sorrow and sorrowful joy of the knowledge of life as it is.

     We cannot cure the world of sorrows,
     but we can choose to live in joy.

— Joseph Campbell, Ibid., p. 289.