Emerson - Seventy Salads Long

(Nature through nature.)
Emerson’s “Nature” touches on many of our class’s themes. We have discussed Nature (capital ‘N’), nature, evolution (yet to be covered), religiosity vs. spirituality, unity, the recapturing of youth, pride, and the sympathetic imagination. Nature (capital N) is “the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance” (Emerson, 351). It is the means by which we can “escape the barriers which render [us] comparatively impotent” (Emerson, 351) and find unity (break out the hammer). Evolution is Nature’s device, creating endless variety and beauty, unpredictable and titillating even to the drinker of the glass-half-empty. nature (little n), as in the natural or physical world, is a manifestation of Nature. It demonstrates the beauty of which Nature is capable. Though it is only a part of Nature, it can inspire humans to discover their own internal peace and beauty, that is, to discover Nature within. Here, Emerson finds Nature by immersing himself in nature: “Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball-I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me-I am part or particle of God” (Emerson, from “Nature”, http://library.thinkquest.org/3721/poems/famous/emerson.html)
While searching for Nature (natura naturans – active and co-creative) we must not mistake it for nature (natura naturata – passive and fixed).


In discussions and DBs, we reminisce often about childhood and innocent qualities we may have lost. I am resistant to do so because it seems to me like a regression. I know it need not be so and that not everyone intends this when they speak of recapturing youth. Qualities associated with youth can be usefully reintroduced into our lives if we have lost them, but we should not demur from life’s natural progression. As Emerson says, “The direction is forever onward, but the artist still goes back for materials” (Emerson, 357).

During our first year of college, most of us have gained a shade of modesty. We have learned, as Logan might now say, How hard it can be. We have made “the discovery that wisdom has other tongues and ministers than we, that though we should hold our peace the truth would not the less be spoken” (Emerson, 361).


As Charlotte has said, we have, this semester, begun to implement the sympathetic imagination by attempting to join with another thing or being, especially through compassion – suffering with – the ultimate experience of the sympathetic imagination. Emerson writes about the poet’s desire for profound sympathy with his subject: “It is an odd jealousy, but the poet finds himself not near enough to his object” (Emerson, 363).


Emerson masterfully paints these themes, and the eloquence with which he does so puts them to rest, as many of our class discussions cannot. The beauty of his poetry is often greater than the reality he uses it to describe. Yet he is adamant that “[t]he reality is more excellent than the report” (Emerson, 365). But perhaps we can use poetry such as his to cultivate the sensitivity required to realize such pervasive beauty.

(Hopkins expresses divinity through natural beauty and metaphors such as the kingfisher.)
Emerson and Hopkins both find the Mystery all about us. For Emerson it is Nature, the “wisdom… infused into every form. It has been poured into us as blood; it convulsed us as pain; it slid into as pleasure; it enveloped us in dull, melancholy days, or in days of cheerful labor” (Emerson, 365). Hopkins’ Mystery is cloaked in Christian terminology – Mary or Christ – but described with new shoots and birdcalls. It is as pervasive as air, essential, “more than meat and drink, / My meal at every wink” (Hopkins, 372). Human beings are conduits through which Nature or God flow. “Let all God’s glory through” (Hopkins, 372), writes Hopkins. While Emerson paints the Mystery with strokes of words, Hopkins plays the mystery on strings of alliteration and rhyme and drums of rhythm and cadence. They both use nature to write about Nature.
(Hopkins' flaming dragonfly.)


My new favorite line: “[M]an’s life is but seventy salads long, grow they swift or grow they slow” (Emerson, 365).

Oleanna and Johnny Lee

(Thy type of feminism that promotes the bipartisan battle between the sexes.)
The themes of power (student vs. teacher), sexual tension between males and females, the danger and power of subjective determinations, and abuse of the right to claim sexual abuse are prominent throughout Oleanna. Carol enters John’s office feeling powerless; when she leaves, she may feel empowered, but in actuality she has claimed victim-hood and prolonged her helplessness. From Mamet’s writing, it is very difficult to make a solid case for John sexually assaulting his student. Not only do his actions not support the claim (he merely puts his arm around her because she is distressed, about to break down), but his response afterwards, at least until he beats Carol, evinces innocence and disbelief that Carol has charged him with assault. It is in fact not Carol he charges him. It is her group, enforced by the power of a lawyer, that contrives her complaint. “On behalf of my group,” she says, I will charge you with being “part of that group” (Mamet, 32). Carol is struggling with her own weakness when she comes to see John, and she is passive throughout the play; when she grabs power she becomes weaker and pathetic, despicable. She further displays her own weakness by allowing a group message to overwhelm her. She doesn’t know what she wants, and, as she says, “what I ‘feel’ is irrelevant” (Mamet, 31). (I suspect that what she wants is to belong. She sits in the back of class by herself – alone – wishing that she could understand the lecture, or even “what it means to be here” (Mamet, 24).

(The idea is that anyone can be a feminist. I may be prejudiced, but Carol's motives aren't so inclusive.)
So Mamet deals with several obvious issues, but he also presents a discussion of what it means to learn and how we go about learning in our institutions of higher learning. Carol is a multiple-choice student. She doesn’t listen; she lists. She takes her notes with her everywhere, hoping that they will serve as a brain while hers is busy feeling sorry for her. Though some of John’s teaching methods seem to contradict is educational ideals, he at least sits down with Carol and wants to help her understand. He tries to soothe her fear by sharing characteristics they have in common and, in a breach of dignity, by diving her an automatic A in his class. John complains about the spout-out regurgitate-back education paradigm, which, ironically, is the very route Carol takes to indict him. It’s bizarre because during Act 1 she is too dumb to be as insidious as she later proves, but in Act 2 she’s too intelligent (although cults are influential) to be so stupid. Carol not only switches power roles with John, she takes the teacher pose as well. “We don’t ‘express’ ourselves very well,” (Mamet, 31) she says, mocking John. “We don’t say what we mean.” So how do we clarify, how do we learn what is really meant? We “consult the Report,” (ibid. 31) or we consult our lawyer, or our group; essentially, we consult the textbook. No matte how we feel, don’t bother trying to clarify communications by communicating. Find someone or something that can get you power, that immediate A, memorize it, use it, and usurp the throne. This is not learning. This is not healthy empowerment or communication. It’s pathetic.

(See how much emotion this brings up in me. Why? Is it “prejudice? An unreasoned belief” (Mamet, 21). Indeed, “when it is threatened, or opposed, [I] feel anger” (Mamet, 21). I wonder, what are these ingrained prejudices that stir up such reactivity. Are they collective, societal, imprinted in my sex? How much does my sex define the way I read this play and how much of my sex is determined by culturally defined interactions such as the ones in Oleanna?)

Johnny Lee is immeasurably more honorable than either of the figures in Oleanna. Many of his difficulties are based in his belief that he will never have to face his reality. He hopes to escape by passing the homo-multiple-choice exams his mother often forces upon him. If only he can give the appropriate response – the one that matches the cultural answer key – he will never have to actually begin working with the raw experiential material that is his difficult life. Certainly, more external and incredibly painful issues arise once he confronts his mother with his homosexuality, but opening the closet is the first step out into the light.

(Words can certainly hurt, but one must draw the line. What is to be permitted? We cannot be overly sensitive or we promote cases like Carol's.)

Johnny, like Carol, like all of us, wants to belong. The desire is so strong that it nearly gets him killed by a deranged internet pedophile who traps him beneath his “hard on” in his apartment. The desire to belong nearly persuades Johnny to continue living a lie so that his family will not boot him out. He ends his story by claiming that the discrimination he experiences is not unique to the Korean community; it is ubiquitous. What he is looking for is not just a place within the gay community, not only within his family, not in New York and not amongst Koreans. He is looking for a place that he belongs within the human community. What can we all share that brings us together rather than tears us apart? As communal animals, we are driven to find solidarity. Even in America, the one does not exist without the many. Somehow, I think most people find a way to relate to Johnny’s suffering, even though most have not experienced the type or degree of discrimination he did. Commonality in suffering inspires compassion, which must be a building block for strengthening our human community.

(So true.)

P5: Learning to Teach

See online version at:
https://webspace.utexas.edu/wcj262/Bump/P5/P5.htm?uniq=-h1x27

(Sorry, Webspace was not working on Sunday night when I submitted the link.)

Eye of Compassion (Medicine and Compassion)

(A chalazion, the culprit of my travail. It's a bacterial infection that clogs the little tubes in your eyelid, forming a bag of pus below the eye.)
On Thursday before Spring Break I went to the ophthalmologist to have a staph infection seared from the inside of my eyelid. I had tried antibiotic goo prescribed by a campus doctor and then two other antibiotics prescribed by the ophthalmologist, none of which were reducing the swelling. Actually, the herbal eyewash (a simple tea made from witch hazel bark) was much more effective until it ran out. But it had been two months since I had contracted the infection and my vision was worsening. I have only taken antibiotics once or twice in my life and am resistant to many conventional medical practices, especially surgery. At last I caved. I was ready to be done with the mess and I wanted both eyes for the beauty of Italy at Spring Break.

I was reticent to have the surgery, first of all, because the ophthalmologist who previously saw me radiated sickly energy. He was not at in his body and seemed hollow when he spoke to me. He had done this examination countless times so his body was able to run through the motions without requiring much mental or emotional input. He also looked unhealthy and not very happy – two qualities in doctors that make me justifiably wary.
(I really don't feel comfortable being operated on by a man who looks like this. Maybe I'm crazy, but I think he is.)

Luckily, when I went back in to have the surgery, they assigned me the head doctor (apparently he was the only one allowed to do this surgery now – fewf!). He was much healthier, and I was able to joke around with him, lighten the mood and let him know that I was an intelligent person and not just a patient. (I had been reading Dass at the time so I tried some of his breaking through the roles techniques.) Feeling his positivity, I “[became] much more receptive to treatment because [I] trust[ed] the caregiver” (Rinpoche, 32). Hey, this won’t be that bad!
(Not a particularly inviting environment for a warm and compassionate doctor-patient exchange.)

When I am experiencing pain, I usually try meditative techniques of entering the pain and staying calm to cope. Seeing as this surgery was a more significant source of pain – and pain to which I was knowingly subjecting myself – it seemed like an especially good chance to experiment with this approach. As I leaned back in the patient’s chair, I began to slow my breathing, focusing on my biorythms, trying to stay calm. Before I was quite ready, in went the needle, right into my eyelid, injecting Novocain. Don’t flinch, I thought. Take it! Don’t let it hurt. I tried so hard not to respond, to continue focusing on my breathing (I suppose this is the macho attitude many women accuse Eastern spiritual traditions of promoting?). And it worked! The doctor was amazed. He had never seen anyone respond as little as I did. Almost everyone flinches or cries out, and now it was over, he said.

And then started the repercussions. I began to feel nauseous, only slightly at first but it steadily built until I lost consciousness. I was swimming in a swirl or black nausea, stuck energy. I had tried so hard not to feel any pain, which is not what meditation teaches, that I had repressed all the pain that I had felt and the energy built inside me until it overwhelmed me and I passed out. Meditation teaches (at least until it alters your perception so significantly that pain is not perceived as being quite as painful) that we watch our pain, that we not attach to it so that it tortures us. Much more difficult to do once we actually encounter a substantial amount of pain. This “calm acceptance” (Shlim, Medicine and Compassion Introduction, 9) does in fact mean acceptance, and it means letting it pass by like the leaves that Dass watches from the river bank. The monks Shlim treated dedicated their entire lives to cultivating this equanimity suffused with compassion, and were able to remain “kind, calm, and completely unafraid even at the end of life” (Shlim, Medicine and Compassion Introduction, 9). But “[t]here is a real difference between just acting as if we are kind and open [and able to face pain in such a way] to everyone and actually feeling kindness and compassion for all people” (Rinpoche, 51). That is the difference between Shlim’s monks and me. But the only way, I suppose, to turn acting into feeling is to continue to act, to build habits from virtuous acts until they become ingrained. It is a life along practice, and with each failed attempt I learn a little bit more about the direction I ought to take if I am to embrace and truly feel virtuous and compassionate. I certainly learned from this painful, miserable, bloody experience. But I’m still hoping I won’t have to do it (at least this particular surgery) again.

Burnout, self-righteousness, visions. Persistence.

(How can I live with so much suffering in this world?)
Watching the Ken Wilber video that Charlotte posted reminded me of the pain I have been feeling lately. I’m only nineteen, and already there are times when all I perceive is suffering. In Tibet, the monks are marching peacefully to regain basic liberty; the Chinese respond violently and riots erupt. The number of children in Africa that die every hour because of malaria, poor sanitation, dirty water, AIDS, sickle-cell anemia, and starvation is staggering. How can I pay attention to this? How can I live the affluent life I am blessed with knowing that the cost of my airplane ticket to Venice is enough to support many starving families for weeks in third world countries? I am only nineteen. I have so long to go, and I am only at the beginning. What do I do, where do I go? I don’t want all the suffering that I will face, that I will feel around me? How can anyone live knowing about the world’s suffering? (A response to living Samsara - the world of human suffering. Here Wilber speaks about gaining the perspective, "Hurts more, bothers you less.")

Other times, I feel that I really have a plan figured out. I’ve got this great meditation practice – benefits certain to be reaped(?) – supportive family, intelligence, potential and drive, a great relationship, and an admirable role model to guide me through it all. I am planning to attend an education workshop in Washington this summer, which will be my first personal contact with the Integral community. Sometimes I feel so good. I’m really making progress. I see others’ suffering and their lifestyles that feed it, so I try to help. “If you’d just step back and realize that you are doing this to yourself…. Just practice!... There is a bigger You behind all this….” “Fucking semantics” as the tearful woman in Wilber’s video cries. Sometimes I am able to deliver my help modestly, unobtrusively. “But much of the time we come into social action … and we’re just a little self-righteous” (Dass, 158). I struggle against pomposity but am addicted to having the answer, something really wise to say, even if it doesn’t accord with my own experience, or even make any real sense.

How can we impel our vision without becoming self-righteous? We have to learn (self-righteousness again) to be “an environment, not an argument for social chance” (Dass, 163). So we lead by example. We’re transmitting our energetic states all the time. If your best friend is depressed, and you are spending much time with her or him, you are likely to share his or her depression. Excitement is contagious as well. I had not even paid much attention to the Obama Clinton race until they came to campus and the buzz reached swarmed me. I couldn’t wait (and neither could many others who may not have cared). With these examples, we realize that our state of consciousness moment to moment is touching those around us. We have a vision? Play it all day and you’ll begin to sell popcorn. (Everyone knows how contagious yawning is. "Studies have found that contagious yawning is directly linked to our ability to connect with others emotionally." http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/contagious-yawn-1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://health.howstuffworks.com/contagious-yawn.htm)

Sometimes I’m optimistic and grounded in my vision. Then, “Conflict isn’t an obstacle. It’s an opportunity to move forward” (Dass, 167). Right now, my stomach is killing me – I’ve got minor food poisoning. But I don’t want to take Advil because I want to feel the sensation, want to learn to dissolve my resistance to pain. Whether this is productive or stupid I do not know. Other conflicts, however, are just plain painful. I suffer; they are obstacles! I try to remind myself that, as Dass says, it’s where I stand in relation to the pain, not the pain itself. So I continue to try. “You do what you do when you can. And when there’s nothing to do, and burnout tries to rear its ugly head … you M*A*S*H it” (Dass, 201). When I can’t try any longer, I usually become frustrated. I can learn to carry a little levity into more of my endeavors. That’ll keep me going. I’m only nineteen, but I have to keep going.

Dass 1

(Babysitting requires that you find the balance between playing the Cat in the Hat and playing authority figure. Sometimes, in times of crisis, we must learn to drop both roles and access the compassionate self.)
Kids say the darndest things. Last summer, I babysat twin five-year-old boys. (Actually they turned six on July 20 – they’d be furious if I suggested that they were five for the entire summer.) By August, I had developed a good healthy and mostly enjoyable relationship with them. Some of my fondest moments were when one of the two would unexpectedly pop out some profound comment or aphorism. Driving them back from summer school one afternoon, I was doing my best to simultaneously keep my eyes on the road and stop the cardboard box war in the back seat. Ben, as usual, ended up crying because his brother had once again out-muscled him. Avery, the macho man, would of course get frustrated at his brother’s childish tears and usually lash out angrily. So I asked him, “Why can’t you let Ben cry? What’s wrong with crying?” After giving me the usual reasons – “he always cries; he wants his mommy; I’m tired of it” – Ave said, “His crying makes my brain hurt.” Now, this might seem beside the point, but I thought it was quite an astute observation. Not, “His crying hurts me,” but “His crying hurts some part of me, some object within me.” We say similar things like, “My stomach hurts,” or “This great idea just passed through my mind,” or “My desires lead me astray.” But who is this “me” behind the “my,” the owner of the stomach, the mind, and the desires? Is the stomach part of a physical me? – but we still say, “my physical body.” Are my desires an aspect of my mind or a bridge between physiology and mind? Is the mind an aspect of the mental rational me? “Our own mental reactions are equally objects to be observed as anything else in our field of awareness” (Dass, How Can I Help?, 104). Who or what is this me encompassing my physical, mental, and emotional bodies?
(Yes, Thing 1 and Thing 2 are the perfect metaphor for twin five-year-olds.)

Ram Dass writes about this problem of identity. He says the identifying with roles is one of the greatest hindrances to helping others and being compassionate. “[A]ny model of the self, positive or negative, will limit our capacity to help” (Dass, How Can I Help?, 26) because “[t]he more you see yourself as a “helper,” the more need for people to play the passive “helped.” You’re buying into, even juicing up, precisely what people who are suffering want to be rid of: limitation, dependency, helplessness, separateness” (Dass, How Can I Help?, 28). So if I truly want to help or share an experience, I ought to try to shed my identity as nurse, father, boyfriend, and, during the summer, as babysitter. By simply being present I can better understand what you actually need or want. Stripping myself of the guardian role led to some of my most intimate experiences with Ben and Ave. Just sitting and allowing them to cry or shout or express their pain was usually the most effective path. I generally kept certain boundaries in place, however, because five-year-olds do need guidance and structure. The balance is interesting.

("Know thyself.")
If you “Know thyself” (inscribed on the tower at Delphi), finding the balance between self and higher Self or babysitter and compassionate listener becomes easier. This brings us back to that slippery question, which the Caterpillar sums up so nicely, “Who are you?” (Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 48), or simply, “Who you?” (Dass, How Can I Help?, 30). We can answer this question with varying degrees of specificity and profundity: I’m a doctor, a teacher, a brother, a child, an intellectual, a human being/becoming. We need theses identities for stability, but not completely identifying with any of them has benefits as well. Shedding identities can help us to remember “the Self, seated in the hearts of all beings” (Swami, Gita, 81). What is this Self? Does this Self feel like a religious concept? In what ways is it beyond religion? (I’m curious.) Some people say their greatest fear is that they might be nothing. As Zen lineage holder Genpo Roshii responds, “You might just be” (Integral Life Practice, Big Mind DVD). The Gita says, “At the dawning of that day all objects in manifestation stream forth from the Unmanifest, and when evening falls they are dissolved in It again” (Swami, Gita, 67). It, Self? Here we see examples of the problematic dualistic nature of words, which we have stumbled upon so often in recent classes. It and Self are symbols, but that’s all. As concepts they have their limits. Without the appropriate experience, this signifier may be nonsensical because it will have no referent and the mental signified will be distorted.

I’m sure Avery had all this in mind when he informed me of his brain pain.

Ghandi, King, Ahimsa: To Experience WITH

(A dream of Ahimsa and compassion brought about my King's ability to understand, by entering others' experiences, the suffering of his people.)
As we mature, our circle of care (hopefully) expands beyond our egocentric demands to incorporate family, then community, nation, eventually all people, and possibly all sentient beings and all of manifestation. Krishna describes the culmination of expanding compassion as “the perfect saint who, taught by the likeness within himself, sees the same Self everywhere” (Swami, Bhagavad Gita, 55). This is the saint who has cultivated the consummate sympathetic imagination by accessing that spirit, or consciousness, that pervades us all. Doing so inspires not only internal piece but global piece as well. “I propose that sympathetic imagination is the root of all peace—peace with society, other people, your roommates and yourself” (Julie C.). I believe this statement conveys a profound truth. In order to be compassionate, one must “suffer together with” (OED, Course Anthology, 126) another person. (I will qualify this definition below.) Sharing a common experience intimately and meaningfully requires that we heighten our “natural and instinctive sympathy” (Anthology, 132, “The Sympathetic Imagination”) by “pentrat[ing] the barrier which space puts between [us] and [our] object” (Anthology, 131, “The Sympathetic Imagination”). Our ability to feel others’ suffering relies on our ability to conjure or remember a similar experience within ourselves.

This is also why compassion can be difficult: We interpret others’ experiences through our own. We assume that we know how they feel, that they are feeling just as we have before. And this is partly true because all humans have experienced suffering. But the individual experiences of suffering are unique. If we can simply be with another, allow her or him to have her or his experience without having to label it, we can enter that common experience of just suffering without getting as tangled in the relative details of an individual experience.

According to the OED and our discussion in class, compassion means to suffer with or “suffer together with” (OED, Course Anthology, 126). But as I have been reading Ram Dass’ How Can I Help, I have realized that “suffering” can mean many things and that it is not necessarily the proper way to think about compassion. I think compassion is more to experience with or experience pain with someone. And pain need not be suffering; suffering is the fear of and resistance to pain. Ahimsa teaches a way to experience pain while decreasing suffering. As Ahimsa and many other devotional, spiritual practices advance, a cultivated mind experiences a world that “hurts more, bothers you less” (Ken Wilber, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TUr949kmZk). (Ken Wilber addresses the increase in pain that comes with heightened awareness. Though you are more sensitive, you are not attached to pain in so painful a way.) In his “I Have A Dream” speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. uses the term “creative suffering” (King, Anthology, 122) to describe faith-based suffering aimed at creating a vision of peace and equality. (King's passionate cry to unite behind peaceful suffering.) Behind this lies the idea of creative emergence or evolution. Through “creative suffering” rather than physical violence we align with the natural progressive flow, or Eros, or synthetic drive of the universe. Existence is naturally creative – look where we are today, walking and talking and sending people to get married on the moon; we used to be dirt. Something happened. By acting through peace (though with the fiery persistence of King and Gandhi) and expanding our circles of compassion, we become conduits for the natural creative flow to which we owe our lives. This is “creative suffering.”

(Ghandi protests by disobeying the salt laws - peacefully.)
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ghandi were fearless in the face of suffering. Indeed, “Ahimsa is not possible without fearlessness” (Sivananda, Anthology, 115). To continue with a dream in the face of immense adversity, without succumbing to the instinctual fear and anger that leads to violence, is truly admirable. The Qur’an says, “oppression is even worse than killing” (Ali, 167). Even though Ghandi and King experienced the worse of these two, neither resorted to killing. Fighting with compassion, with vision, with Ahimsa, they managed to overcome oppression I can’t even fathom.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (that's "Kanikt")

(http://www.najafcoins.com/Images/o2894.jpg An emerald green sash such as the ones worn by Arthor's Order of the Garter.)
When I was young, my dad would read to my sister and me while we lay in bed before sleep. The three of us liked tales of adventures and fantasy, usually with talking, sword-wielding animals and the glory of great battles and kingdoms. We read Red Wall, Watership Down, the Tolkien books, C.S. Lewis, and Merlin books. Most nights, the stories captivated me and I begged for just one more chapter, or to the next break point, or at least one more page, please! Sometimes, however, I would drift in and out of sleep, armed stoats battling armored badgers dancing in and out of my dreams, giving rise to magic and sometimes nightmare during deeper sleep. Fantasy tails from many cultures are like children’s dreams. Campbell writes about myths’ resonance with the individual and collective unconscious, which sends dreams into our sleep as its messengers. In retrospect, my childhood fantasies seem like emanations from this deep well of collective human un-thought. Reading Gawain, Campbell, the Ramayana, and the Bhagavad Gita recalls many themes from myths I’ve heard before and from myths that have welled up from my subconscious.

Both the Ramayana and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight depict a hero who must battle temptation to maintain purity. Ravana relentlessly tempts Sita to forget her husband and join him in his pleasure banquet. Ravana “glittered in a long robe of silver tissue and was strongly perfumed with red powder of sandalwood” (Anthology A, Ramayana, 1040) so as to test Sita’s fidelity. Lady Bertilak, though not portrayed menacingly as is Ravana, acts as the temptress during Sir Gawain’s stay at her husband’s castle. “Hir thryven face and hir throte throwen al naked, / Hir brest bare bifore, and bihinde eke” (“Her lovely face and throat displayed uncovered, / Her breast was exposed, and her shoulders bare”) (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, James Winny, 97). Lady Bertilak enters Gawain’s chambers three times, taking one, two, and then three kisses from Gawain, who manages to abstain from further activity despite immense desire. Despite temptations, Sita and Gawain both reject – for the most part – advances made on them. (http://www.spellboundsupplies.co.uk/users/www.spellboundsupplies.co.uk/upload/pentacle%20leaves.jpg The pentacle that would have been worn by Gawain as a sign of his order. And it's green too!)

Neither, however, is left completely untainted (Sita may actually be, but Rama believes she is not). Both Gawain and Sita must be absolved from their misdeeds. Sita undergoes ritual purification. “’I shall walk through the fire. And when you see me unscathed you will know that I am innocent’” (Anthology A, Ramayana, 1068). Gawain is absolved by the Green Knight/Bertilak himself. “’I halde hit hardily hole, the harme that I hade. / Thou art confessed so clene, beknowen of thy mysses, / And hatz the penaunce apert of the poynt of myn egge” (“’The wrong you did me I consider wiped out. / You have so cleanly confessed yourself, admitted your fault, / and done honest penance on the edge of my blade’”) (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, James Winny, 135). Campbell writes that this stage of the heroe’s journey signifies his preparation for the return to the world. The hero has dived deeply and must be cleansed before he can bear his boon into the world.

In the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana, and Sir Gawain, a hero’s honor and faith in God are closely linked. Gawain has committed himself to meeting the Green Knight and plans to do so even though it may mean his own death. “If I avoided this place, / Took to my heals in fright, in the way you propose, / I should be a cowardly knight, and could not be excused” (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, James Winny, 121). A knights worth is pinned to his valor and the weight of his word. But he is given courage to push on through faith in the Lord, in this case in Christ, who suffered profound travail. “Though an opponent grim / To deal with club in hand, / His faithful servants God / Knows well how to defend” (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, James Winny, 121). Gawain’s honorable character is summed up by his unwillingness to struggle against a knight who will likely take Gawain’s life; Gawain gave his word that he would not. “’No, by God,’ said Gawain, ‘who gave me a soul, / I shall bear you no grudge at all, whatever hurt comes about’” (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, James Winny, 127). The Bhagavad and the Ramayana depict spiritual battles in which the hero must overcome human doubt and weakness. Rama is distraught with the thought that his wife has loved Ravana, yet he battles on for the sake of honor. “’I have avenged my honour. Your abductor is dead” (Anthology A, Ramayana, 1064), he says despondently to Sita after killing Ravana. Though he feels hopeless, his honor is worthy of defense. Arjuna struggles with what it means to be honorable directly in the face of the divine. Krishna lectures him: “Why give way to unmanliness? O you who are the terror of your enemies! Shake off such shameful effeminacy, make ready to act!” (Bhagavad Gita, Swami, 11). Arjuna fears the consequences of his actions, but finds courage in his spiritual conviction. Honor is at stake, but the divine is there to support if we can access it. (http://www.iloveulove.com/images/krishna1baby.jpg Blue or green? Colors are a theme in Gawain as the knights green is often contrasted with the red of blood and the white of snow. Krishna is our blue god of Hinduism.)

Honor extends beyond actions. True honor is expressed in small tasks, in words, in cordiality and chivalry towards the chambermaid, in posture and comportment throughout one’s days. Honor must be defended at all cost when faith is at stake. Shame belongs not only to those who act waywardly but also to those who hold negative thoughts of what may be honorable. “Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense”: shamed be he who thinks evil of it, of duty, and especially of God. According to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, this is the motto of the Order of the Garter, or the order of knights wearing Gawain's green sash. Arthur mandated that soldiers wear a green garter or sash to commemorate Gawain’s adventures with the Green Giant, and this maxim, which ends Gawain’s tale, pertains to Arthur’s knights and the many heroes of other myths.


P.S.
Does this smell like browning?: “With enough malice from the north to torment the ill-clad. / Snow pelted down spitefully… / Choking the valleys” (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, James Winny, 115).

Censorship is Not the Answer

Many aspects of America’s popular culture are repulsive. Any tacit code of morality is stretched by our willingness to explicitly defy it. If all you see is pornography and Jerry Springer, if all you hear is angry metal music and brutalizing rap, and if your only impression of the justice system in America is its attempts to deal with repugnant moral and sexual corruption and violent breeches of individual liberties, then America will appear despicable. But the way in which many of the horrifying aspects of American culture are circulated distorts and abstracts them. Jerry Springer exploits the sexual perversions of participants on his show by painting fantastical portraits of lives in which every feature is founded on debauchery and shame. Jerry Springer does not present people; he directs a theatre of grotesques. This is not America! The fact that participants are not accurately portrayed on these daytime television shows does not change the fact that someone has to be twisted enough to create and perpetuate them, nor does it change the fact that an audience fills its theatre and millions watch from their TV sets at home.


I have never been able to stomach the pain I see in the participants’ lives (I still cannot watch films with gratuitous violence and crudeness – not just because I think it’s destructive, but because I do not enjoy it) but I do not believe this demands full-scale censorship. My distaste is my preference. But a higher preference of mine is not to indiscriminately impress upon others my preferences. This is the argument D’Souza uses to defend the right of Muslims to choose for themselves the type of society they want to create. We can promote democracy in Iraq, but we should not impose American democracy. D’Souza says, “most European countries have democratically chosen to relinquish some of their economic liberties in the interest of economic security. So why can’t Muslim countries choose to give up some of their civil liberties in order to promote civil morality?”6 This is actually a convoluted argument for freedom rather than security. Freedom, not myopia, allows a country to order itself as it would choose. Ben Franklin said, “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” But is choosing security an expression of a sort of meta-liberty? The freedom to choose requires freedom. Franklin’s words are important because if security or moral standards are chosen, they must be implemented in ways that do not utterly restrict individual expression. Therefore I do not advocate for censorship. A Muslim country may democratically decide to implement a code of propriety; I believe there should be space to challenge standards. Without opposition, belief becomes meaningless.

Some opinions and beliefs are better than others – they are more right – and I want to incorporate these beliefs into my belief system. But I believe learning what is better and what is worse is an individual responsibility. A government or community can set the conditions that encourage people to make better choices. That’s what public education is. But no one can ever make another person grow. By watering a plant, we make conditions favorable for that plant to grow; we are not making the plant grow. D’Souza says, “Imposing values through popular assent is what democratic politics is all about.”5 Pragmatically, this may be what democracy has come to. But I do not believe democracy is really about imposition. Ideally, democracy is a process. It is an active arena in which ideas and values can compete. Some values are inevitably going to “win,” but it is anathema do assume that this means opposing ideas should thus be censored.

I agree with D’Souza when he says, “Pornography promotes a trivialization and dishonesty about sex that is unhealthy for human development.”1 But I also believe firmly that limiting freedoms inhibits both the growth of individuals and society and their potentials for manifesting greater happiness. Censorship is not the answer. Censhorship “does not protect victims from predators so much as it regulates an illicit market that cannot be suppressed but can be kept underground.”2 A central question of censorship is, Who is doing the censoring? Why do some people have the right to squash the opinions of others, and what motive other than power and greed does anyone have to enlist himself as censorer? “If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”4 How can censorship be justified?

Some argue that a society has the right to censor values that would undermine that society. All societies have values. Inevitably some people will have opposing values. But silencing the dissenters halts growth and deflates meaning because “[a]ll silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.”3 Most great ideas throughout history have emerged in opposition to common beliefs. Imagine if Copernicus’ ideas had not survived. He was harshly ridiculed, yet today it is impossible to imagine living in an earth-centric universe. Abolition was staunchly resisted in part because there was no model upon which to base a society without slavery. Imagine the many beliefs common in the world today – in Iraq and in the United States – that will be utterly obsolete a century from now. I suppose that’s one reason to favor censorship: my beliefs, the ones that are so great just because they are mine, will continue to dominate. A genuine vision for the future of the human race incorporates the right to dissent.

In conclusion, censorship is dangerous. Although I do not condone the behavior and morals prevalent in much of American popular culture – what is apparently our international image, I find censorship to be even more distasteful. As the lesser of four evils, vote Candidate D. His proposition of “limited censorship of sex and violence in popular culture multimedia” does not entail the imposition of his beliefs. Rather, D is actually advocating for regulation, not downright censorship. In order for a plant to grow, some conditions must be favorable.




1. Dinesh D’Souza, The Enemy at Home (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 127.
2. Ethan A. Nadelman, “The Case for Legalization,” in Today’s Moral Issues, ed. Daniel Bonevac (New York: McGraw Hill, 2006), 174.
3. John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty,” in Today’s Moral Issues, ed. Daniel Bonevac (New York: McGraw Hill, 2006), 148.
4. Ibid., 148.
5. D’Souza, 189.
6. Ibid., 262.

Clearly, We Are Responsible for 9/11

I think it should be mandatory that all college students read a book antithetical to his or her professed beliefs about the world and the way it should be. Lately, with the help of D’Souza and his The Enemy at Home, many of my beliefs have disintegrated. My response to many problems is unreasoned, arbitrary, and fickle. My reactions are instinctual. In fact, one of my strongest intellectual beliefs at the moment is that I don’t believe I really have any, none that might not blow away in tomorrow’s wind.


(When I heard D'Souza speak last semester I felt a bit like I'd been flattened by a steam roller. He is so persuasive and confident that I, with mostly inchoate beliefs, had difficulty holding onto my beliefs and measuring them against the ones he presented.) D’Souza is immensely and frighteningly convincing. The meat of his arguments appear valid. I do believe that in many ways what he calls the “decadent American culture,” which – as he tirelessly emphasizes – “the cultural left has fostered”1 is responsible for American resentment in the Middle East. Our societal standards are very different from those of Muslim societies, and “we should always be aware of the blinders that ethnocentrism places on our minds.”2 We broadcast vulgar television shows, such as Jerry Springer, which exploit the plight of many sad and unfortunate people. We place utmost emphasis on freedom of expression and the right of the individual to be autonomous. (Yes, just as was pointed out today in class, my words are filled with gross generalizations. I will refrain from making them only long to acknowledge that I will continue to make them.) According to D’Souza, America is still largely Christian. “The real story of America should be entitled ‘How This Christian Country Has Become an Even More Christian Country.”3 But he also declares that most Americans are only nominally Christian. Islam is the only of the three great monotheistic religions that still believes. And does it ever. The Qur’an prescribes all facets of life to be dictated by God and religion. In America, liberals and most conservatives cherish our separation of church and state. It is a victory for liberal democracy, a victory that should be shared with the rest of the world. But Muslims do not desire this. This goes against all that governs their lives. (“Unlike many Christians, who have multiple idenities only one of which is that they happen to be Christian, Muslims typically regard their religion as central to both private and public identity, and consider all other affiliations as secondary or derivative.” 4) Many Muslims would prefer it if America was more Christian than it is. As D’Souza fiercely explains, Muslims are disgusted with our moral values (or, in their view, lack there of). Radical Muslims do not hate our freedom or our new technology or even our democracy. Many advocate for democracy because with democracy they see an opportunity to gain political power. Radicals have depended on technology to orchestrate their growing regimes, for international communication, to build weapons, and carry out terrorist attacks. They do not even hate freedom. They hate OUR freedom, which they do not perceive as freedom at all but depravity.

And even if many Muslims despise American culture, they are not enraged to violence simply because our values are different from theirs. What enrages them is the fact that we are pressing our values onto their world. This raises a very interesting question. What is our right to meddle in the business of others? (The declaration of cultural relativism. Inevitably, inaction and existentialist malaise take over if this doctrine is driven to its extremes. So how do we reconcile the truth that everyone has certain natural rights with the truth that what we perceive to be human rights may be cultural constructions? How can we learn to step beyond our ethnocentrism and see what are culturally relative factors and what truly are universals? We must learn to be aware of cultural propensities, especially when manipulating international ordeals.) Do we move into a country that promotes perspectives of human life radically different from our own, yet lives peaceably and without interfering with other countries? It seems we ought not to. But what if there is internal turmoil, such as a civil war. Or what if a majority of traditionalists stringently maintains power over a newly developing body of progressives, which more closely agree with our ideals. How far do we go in this case? What if there is harsh repression by a dictatorial regime, who couldn’t be happier with the position they’re in. Should we intervene? Is it our responsibility? Their right? Does a people have rights to rights that their culture has never before espoused. Does a culture that believes its value structures to be better, more fare, than another’s have the right to push this structure on others?

What if, as D’Souza claims, one country is trying to push its progressive values on a traditional culture that does not want its society restructured? It seems as though the cruelty of some of the despotic regimes in our world day is innately evil. There is no question, torture, undue violence and suppression seem to be universal evils. But many such oppressed people are utterly certain that they do not want the liberal values that come with an American liberation.

D’Souza stresses that “America’s ideals and its interests are not identical.”5 By this he means that American do not really want all the freedoms for radical Muslims that they are proposing. Releasing dangerous, detained potential terrorists threatens American security. We do not want the extremists to gain more power; that would be devastating to the world as we know it. But this line insinuates something deeper. D’Souza writes extensively about religious discrimination in America under the name of religious equality. If Americans allow the public display of many diverse belief systems, why is religion so taboo? “One’s right to espouse a belief system does not require every institution of government… to abstain form supporting a different set of views.”6 For example, “if the government puts up a monument to Abraham Lincoln, is it violating the freedom of those who detest Lincoln? It would seem not.”7 D’Souza cleverly points out that hypocrisy espoused by freedom-seeking progressive institutions. Everyone is equal and has equal rights until they disagree with me. D’Souza argues that religious people are being discriminated against here in America because so many have gained the right to express their beliefs, while religious people – he means Christians – have lost theirs.

The meat of D’Souza’s arguments are well supported and very well argued. It is his bias and his conclusions I disagree with. So say it is indeed true that liberals, liberal pop culture in particular, are responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 11. (A map of the countries from which al-Queda received financial support between 2004 and 2006. Terrorism takes very little money, and it seems as though once the terrorist impulse is engendered it is impossible to halt it. Terrorism must be stopped at its roots. What does this entail for our interactions with Muslim countries?) In what way does this convince liberals that they are wrong? I do not believe this will convince liberals to become more conservative. Being at the front edge of evolution requires being ostracized by the vast majority (not that our disgusting cultural displays are at the cutting edge of morality). Just because Muslims define progress as going back to the eleventh century when their empire was at its height does not mean that we will ever be able to agree. Conversely, does progress entail the recent developments in American society? And how far does cultural relativism go to explain the inability of our differences to be reconciled?


1. Dinesh D’Souza, The Enemy at Home (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 2.
2. Ibid,. 68.
3. Ibid., 186.
4. Ibid., 82.
5. Ibid., 43.
6. Ibid., 187.
7. Ibid., 187.

David Mamet

(David Mamet)
Mamet’s interviewer did not wait to jump into the meat of Mamet’s inspiration. Immediately upon being seated in his large armchair he asked Mamet, “So what made you become a story teller? Was there some book or relative in your life that really inspired you?” Without hesitation, Mamet proclaimed, “I’m a Jew. Jews have been telling stories for thousands of years. That’s what we do. The first really good story we told we called the Torah.” Though he never really smiled or chuckled, Mamet seemed to enjoy consternating his interviewer with such flippant responses.

Mamet’s words that have most stuck with me:
Mamet quoted this line from some religious teacher, possibly a prophet, possibly the Prophet. “I am going to give you two teachers: one of them will be a speaking teacher; the other will be a silent teacher. The speaking teacher is the Qur’an. The silent teacher will be death.” He drew an analogy between these religious “teachers” and teachers of the stage. He said, In play writing, the audience is the speaking teacher. The blank piece of paper is the silent teacher.

(Flippant Mamet still flippant as cartoon)
Here, Mamet actually quotes an article written by his interviewer:
“There’s no such thing as a good poet. The poets who have not yet completed their poem are failed poets. The poets who have are ex-poets.”

Mamet was also adamant about conciseness. If there is any doubt, any doubt at all, throw the word, the line, the act out. Just throw it out! It’s like flying. If there’s any doubt about the plane’s ability to fly, don’t fly. The interviewer told the audience that while looking through Mamet’s memoirs he found a script that Mamet had rewritten twenty-six times. What’s more, the play never even made it to the stage. You just have to suffer heart break sometimes, said Mamet.

Contemplative Islam

Reading the Qur’an has been edifying. I now actually know a bit of what it says, rather than what Christians say it says or what the radio correspondents and TV anchors say it says. Cultural awareness aside, the most fascinating aspect of the Qur’an is its mystical claims, the room it leaves for mystical interpretation. There are many instances in which passages from the Qur’an might easily be transcribed from Buddhist or Hindu texts. First of all, the Qur’an advocates that a Muslim community be “a community of the middle path” (The Qur’an and Sayings of Prophet Muhammad, Qur’an 2:143, p 129). (The Buddha, sitting in lotus position, advocated an eight-fold path, the key to which was finding the middle way. Meditation was the essential practice through which he arrived at his realization or Nirvana. Is it possible that Muhammad sat in this same posture?) Allah does not approve of extreme behavior in either direction. Even in the prescribed law codes there is room for leniency on many issues because human beings inevitably encounter harsh and unforeseen circumstances in which they are forced, out of necessity, to behave in opposition to code. Modesty is a core attribute of Islam; some commentators even suggest that it is the meaning of Islam. Guatama Buddha taught very similar ideals only in a different context. He exemplified the middle way and life lived modestly. These are ideals upon which most traditions the world over agree.

But the deep mystical ties between sayings from the Qur’an and Buddhism, mystical Hinduism, contemplative Christianity, or any other mystical tradition go deeper. (I don’t know much about Sufism, but I imagine it was not difficult for Sufis to derive their mystical tenets from the Qur’an.) Sohaib N. Sultan, who annotated The Qur’an and Sayings of Prophet Muhammad, writes that spiritual vitality relies on inward contemplation. He says, “Your spiritual devotion must begin with reflection, for it is in the reflection of divine signs that you will discover an intimate relationship with God’s beautiful attributes. It is interesting to consider that Prophet Muhammad’s own journey toward God began not with revelation, but with nights of deep reflection, meditation, and contemplation…. ‘Reflection is the lamp of the heart; if it is abandoned the heart will have no light’” (Sohaib N. Sultan, The Qur’an and Sayings of Prophet Muhammad, p 88). Here, Muhammad’s pre-revelation practice sounds very similar to that of Jesus, who spent forty days and forty nights fasting and meditating alone in the dessert, struggling to find pure awareness of the divine. (A depiction of Jesus during his forty day revelatory stint in the dessert.) “Muhammad’s peak defining experience, called the Meraj, saw him elevated through the seven heavens to the realm of God Almighty” (http://www.sol.com/au/kor/22_02.htm, Anthology B, p 321). This sounds remarkably similar to Gautama Buddha’s realization under the Boddhi tree. He described his elevation through the seven chakras until his ultimate realization of divine union. Mother Theresa used Biblical terminology to convey her own progression, speaking of the seven temples of the body. Muhammad’s experience seems like many of the realizations had by the world’s great mystics and sages.

It is very interesting to note the developments of certain traditions once its founder has had such a realization. Christianity forever banned any other human being from ever having an experience of divine union. Buddhists and Hindus (not all?) advocate practices – yogas – by which realization of Godhead in self can be achieved. Islam seems to slide back and forth between the two extremes. On the one hand, the Qur’an (Ali’s translation) uses terms such as “God conscious” (Trans: Ali, The Qur’an and Sayings of Prophet Muhammad, Qur’an 29:83, p 85) to describe a way of life and internal human states. This is very similar to Hindu terminology – Brahman and Atman are one. But on the other hand, Islamic history has discredited any individuals who have made claims of divine identity. Even Muhammad did not attain this status; he is merely a prophet or messenger. Muslims accept Jesus as a prophet and a great teacher who did receive divine wisdom, but they do not believe that he was, as Christians claim, the Son of God. They tease apart these two aspects of Christian doctrine without troubling about it. “The career of Sabbatai Sevi, a Jew who considered himself the Messiah, is a perfect illustration of Ottoman pragmatism. When he toured the Jewish communities of the Ottoman world gathering adherents and outraging the Jewish establishment with his mystic utterances and scandalous decrees, the Ottomans ignored him” (Goodwin, Anthology B, p 329-330). Claims to Godhead do not seem to be taken seriously by these Muslims. If these claims are not a problem, then are they not even a remote possibility either?

(Dance and passionate movement are essential mystical practices of Suffism, a branch of Islam. Here are the Whirling Dervishes, a group of ecstatic dancers spinning toward that moment of divine union.)
Yet “[m]any Sufis (and other mystics in other religions) seek a spiritual union between themselves and the divine principle” (http://www.sol.com/au/kor/22_02.htm, Anthology B, p 322). So how do we reconcile these two principles? Need they be reconciled? Or are they simply different, mutually compatible levels of interpretation fed by Qur’anic wisdom? Many other passages from the Qur’an indicate much less lenient and much more mythic, Salvationist messages. “[P]erhaps the [Final] [sic] Hour is near!” (The Qur’an and Sayings of Prophet Muhammad, Qur’an 33:63, p 75). This is a cry for action. Mystically, the final hour is always near. Unfortunately this alternative reading is swept away: “Rather, truly righteous are those who believe in God and the last day, and the angels and the scriptures, and the prophets…” (The Qur’an and Sayings of Prophet Muhammad, Qur’an 2:177, 59). This seems to be about as clear cut, literal, and mythic as religious scriptures come. The implications of such belief cannot easily be predicted, but they are being played out in our world for all of us to see first hand. Is there such a thing as being right? We are in a battle of perspectives.

Spirituality and Atheism: Not Two, Not One

(Here we go again, climbing the steeple of faith. It's always such a shock when your handholds begin to crumble.)
The Gospels may have been canonized, but they are not static; they allow multiple interpretations. Today, we are still discovering “new” gospels, which are variously legitimate and which may or may not add anything to our interpretation of the canonical texts. People are always looking for new ways to interpret Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John so that their words – the words of Jesus – will fit their lives, the society in which they live, and become compatible with new advances in knowledge such as science. When I heard Witherington speak last Friday, I was impressed with the enormous amount of research, science, and contemporary scholastic theory he was able to incorporate into his reading of the Bible. His arguments for God’s existence were at least pseudo-scientific and he used scientific validity tests to give credence to his beliefs. His Christianity is different (if only slightly) from the Christianity of any other Christian and certainly the Christianity of centuries and millennia past. Indeed, he challenged fundamentalist Christians to “wake up and smell the coffee” because we are no longer living in a pre-scientific world. If Christianity is to remain viable in America, it will have to keep up with the times. (Reading D’Souza has made me wonder whether this is really true, especially for Islam. Based on American values and seeing as most Americans are not first and foremost religious as many Muslims are, it seems as though American religion must stay up to date less it risk falling by the wayside.)

Last semester I read Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. Hobbes was one of the forerunners of the Enlightenment and he tried to reconcile Christianity with developing Enlightenment worldviews. He analytically dissected Biblical texts, attempting to treat them rationally as one might treat any other item of literature – or in his case politics – under examination. Contemporary authors are still rewriting the Gospels. I read to such examples last semester: Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief and Norman Mailer’s The Gospel According to the Son. From these books I adopted the argument, Why must Jesus be divine, why can’t he have been an incredibly compassionate human being, virtuous and wise, even a visionary? Aren’t his revolutionary beliefs and human actions enough? Since then, I have learned that, of course, this is not enough for most Christians. A core teaching of Christianity is that Jesus is the Savior, that he will return for a final day of judgment and that it is through faith in him that we “shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John 6:35, p 87). My attempts at interpreting the Gospels intuitively in a way that aligned with my own spiritual beliefs were foiled by most others. And that’s totally fine. It’s difficult to concede that faith is a matter of faith, but at its core it truly is.

(Why must Christ's resurrection be interpreted literally? Are his teachings, his proclamations of divine awareness not enough? I cannot believe the mythic interpretation of his literal ascendence or Moses' literal parting of the Red Sea.)
I guess the point I’m getting at is that interpretation and belief are in some ways inextricable. Which gives rise to other I cannot say. Interpret the Bible with my own belief system, but certainly my beliefs come from they manner in which I interpret the world around me. The following are some of the lines from John that really grabbed my attention, ones that might easily appear in a Hindu or Buddhist text. “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30, p 95). Jesus is proclaiming his union with the divine. Many Kosmic realizers have made similar claims. They perceive a sense of unity with, they in fact become, what cannot be described as other than God, the Ultimate. They practice compassion and contemplation just as Jesus does, and their teachings in many ways resemble his. “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8: 58, p 92). Jesus’ statement expresses the eternal nature of the Divine. The divine, ultimate consciousness is outside of time. As Bump put it, we are “conduits” for this magnificent power. It is not us personally that is eternal, but something that shines through us, is us and much more. “I am” is a name for God, Atman commonly invoked by sages to try to express that divine identity, the Always Already, that we may each find within ourselves. “He spake of the temple of his body” (John 2:21, p 79). Mother Theresa used the same analogy to express levels of consciousness or energy centers in her body. It is analogous to the seven chakras. Higher levels in the temple correspond to higher more subtle energy centers. Mother Theresa even divided the temple up into seven very similar stages. “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that come down from heaven” (John 3:13, p 80). This conveys the Eastern idea of involution and evolution, agape and eros. The cycle of death and rebirth; the way that we are brought down into the gross dimension upon conception and steadily evolve throughout life back towards more subtle, causal, or even nondual awareness. Each day and night we go through this cycle. During the day we are awake; we are in the waking state and supported by the gross body. When we “go to sleep,” we pass into the dream state, supported by the subtle body. From there we pass into deep dreamless sleep, a state supported by the causal body. We go through the same process in reverse as we awake. Involution and evolution, many say, is happening in every moment, with every inhalation and exhalation. I do admit, it is easy to read nearly anything into a text if you set your mind to it. I was disappointed by my lack of interest in reading John yesterday because I know how rich it is. I suppose it will just take another cycle of disillusionment and enchantment for me to see the light in it once again.
(These might be the hands of anyone. Devotion, prayer, realization is not limited to Christ or his disciples.)

I am a very spiritual person. This phrase alone means nothing. But I am what I would call spiritually oriented. I do believe that something more than colliding atoms animates our consciousness. I do believe that there are mystical levels of consciousness achieved by sages and devotees and on occasion, by chance encounter, the unsuspecting person without a spiritual practice. And I think it likely that Jesus was one such mystical realizer; but not the only one. This is belief. But it is not merely belief. I feel it – conviction, like a rock or a concrete rod running through my abdomen. This does not make my belief any different from many others who hold a similar conviction. After all, even rocks evolve, erode, and grow with time.

GrecoRoman and Jewish Heroes

(A pictorial depiction of the path of perceiving external objects. Words are such objects which we perceive, process, and interpret.)
What struck me after reading page 310 regarding Biblical translation and context, is that none of the assigned reading was originally written in English. Plato wrote the Apologia in Greek; Virgil wrote his Eclogue in Latin; and the selections from the Old Testament of the Bible were originally in Hebrew and Aramaic, and those from the New Testament in Greek. This is interesting because it hints at both the power and limitations of language. Plato and Virgil thought the thoughts that became their masterworks in languages other than English. They interpreted the world around them with symbols other than the ones I use to decode and record my surroundings. It is a profound thought that there is some mutually comprehendible meaning lying behind the symbols used to convey. Though words create meaning and an entirely new world of phenomena in which to explore, some facet of our minds, some aspect of knowledge allows us to translate between symbolic systems and convey meaning that is in some ways common to all human beings. Though I do not use the same words to express “pain” and “love” as Virgil, Plato, Isaiah, or John did centuries ago, intuitively I feel that we can experience pain and love very similarly.

(Charles Sanders Peirce, who philosophized about the nature of language and distinguished between the object a word refers to - referent - the symbolic word itself - signifier - and the import and connotations of that symbol in our minds - signified.)
As I read through these texts, a theme, expressed severally with various English phrases, emerges. Though the word “virtue” may not be explicitly stated, its virtue runs through the Plato’s Apologia and Psalm 41 in particular, but through Isaiah and Virgil’s Eclogue as well. In Plato’s Socrates we see a man who’s life is nothing if not an instrument with which to push toward virtue and knowledge, which for him are one and the same. With death imminent, Socrates does not falter in the least. “Those of us who think that death is an evil are in error,” (Plato, Apologia, 56) says Socrates. “The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness” (Plato, Apologia, 55). Socrates’ righteousness is not founded on reward and punishment, but on pure righteousness, righteousness for righteousness’ sake. His virtue is in his passion, his inquisitiveness, and his serenity in tempering both qualities with NON-ATTACHMENT. (Socrates. "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question."
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (1863)) Socrates virtuously exemplifies the middle way: “Socrates’ moral seriousness is counterbalanced by a worldly personality who enjoys good food and company – goods which he is also willing to forgo without complaint if they are not available or if the conflict with the much more important pursuit of [virtue]” (Nehamas, “Socrates,” 58). Socrates is distracted from his knowledge quest neither by impending death nor the wrongs that may have been done him by his accusers (he is not even angry with them). His humility brings him strength.

In Isaiah chapter 11, we must again aspire to righteousness. “Righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins,” and with righteousness shall he judge the poor,” though he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes” (Isaiah, 11:5, 4, 3, p 60). Through humility and attention to that which is beyond the individual can man pay service to his faith. Psalm 41 expresses a similar sentiment to that of Socrates as well. Socrates says that his prosecutors have not triumphed and he has not failed. Psalm 41 states, “I know that thou favourest me, because mine enemy doth not triumph over me…. Thou upholdest me in mine integrity” (Psalm 41:10, 11, p 70). Socrates distinguishes human from divine knowledge by saying that human’s are wise if they can realize their own ignorance. He does not so explicitly pay tribute to a divine body, but humility is an admirable human quality in the Psalms, Isaiah, and Plato. Though cloaked in different terms and contexts, common meanings underlie all these words. Now in English, I can grasp some thread of the meaning intended by these authors centuries ago.