You might say that life is not predominantly—or even superficially—a logical endeavor. Life transcends logic, and therefore religion does too. At the practical level logic does its manual labor, but the higher reaches are intuitive. Christianity illustrates this. It is the only monotheistic religion which features a triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Belief in these three persons, who are yet a single God, is the mark of all those who subscribe to the Apostles’ Creed. The scriptural roots of this appear in Matthew 28:16-20, the concluding verses of that gospel. The resurrected Jesus appears to his followers on a mountain in Galilee. There Jesus said to them: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” This verse is then formulated, in or around 390 AD into the Apostles’ Creed. In the Latin version, the Son is conceived of the Holy Spirit (conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto)—and since the conception is actually experienced by the Virgin Mary, the obvious reading is that God is most definitely masculine. How else can we read this?
But religions are intuitive structures. Not surprisingly, therefore—and almost by way of a kind of Law of Compensation—the Our Lady becomes a very major symbolical figure, at least in Catholicism. Her statues and images are everywhere—and rare the office of Jesuit professors I used to visit in college where a prominent painting or statue of Mary was not the distinctive art in those offices. Indeed I remember reading, with approval of course, Robert Graves opining that the enduring quality of Catholicism as a religion, and (he might have added) its continuing strong attraction of converts everywhere, is due to a cultural correction introduced into the extraordinarily masculine theology by popular intuition. Once you open up that indivisible number, One, and thus (however explained, however theologized away) multiple persons appear—which, of course, happens in every religion sooner or later, if the real essence of it is strong—the numbers will multiply and the Feminine will make its appearance.
Catholicism makes a kind of conceptual but in practice meaningless distinction between veneration and worship. It is permissible to venerate the Virgin Mary but not to worship her. Doing that would be Mariolatry (rhymes with idolatry), a word of Protestant coinage dating to the eighteenth century.
Religions have a life of their own—and the cultural realities of it have more weight than the theological skeletons that are largely always out of sight. Thus also Buddhism evolved from a kind of very focused, ascetic elite pursuit into the Mahayana, with far more members than any other of its endlessly growing strands. But women in Buddhism are still written in very small letters. How many people know, for example, that the Buddha had been married? Or what Mrs. Gautama’s name had been? Well, for the record, she was the Princess Yahodharā. And she and the Buddha had had a boy called Rāhula. Learn something new every day.
Showing posts with label Buddha. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Buddha. Show all posts
Monday, October 31, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
“Illusion” as Interpretation
A recent earlier post here (“Whose Illusion?”) touches on this subject, and more is provided here. To put it as succinctly as possible, it is unreasonable to speak of the world as illusion once you understand the world in some in detail. The assertion that it is, which we encounter in Brahmanism and in Buddhism, arises not from reasoning but from an overwhelming feeling. The root of that feeling is the unitive experience—as we call it in the West. We call it that because it is taken to be unity with God (or the Cosmos) reached in ecstatic states. That sense of unity is also present in the Vedantic saying Thou Art That, meaning that Atman is Brahman (soul is God). Different Vedantic schools give this doctrine different interpretations, thus ranging from “soul is a part of” to “soul is.” The sense of unity is also present in the Buddhist Enlightenment but without being called that; but all multiplicity is conquered; absolute liberation characterizes the enlightened state.
The experience certainly produces both a radical devaluation of the world and sometimes an equally radical indifference to it. The world is suddenly seen in a very new perspective. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), who spent his life writing the most profound works of theology, had a mystical experience while saying mass late in 1273. He stopped writing. Asked to resume his work, he said: “Everything I have written seems like straw by comparison with what I have seen and what has been revealed to me” (source). He did not resume his work.
D.T. Suzuki, in Essays on Zen Buddhism, First Series, quotes the Buddha saying, p. 137: “These questions are not calculated to profit, they are not concerned with Dharma, they do not redound to the elements of right conduct, nor to detachment, nor to purification from lusts, nor to quietude, nor to tranquillization of heart, nor to real knowledge, nor to Nirvana. Therefore is it that I express no opinion on them.” The questions referred to were: Is the world eternal? Is the world not eternal? Is the world finite? The source given is the Pottapada Sutta (in which a beggar, Pottapada, asks the Buddha questions). That word Dharma is a killer, by the way. It means all sorts of things, including “doctrine.” In this context it is best understood as “the path.”
One of the striking features of the unitive experience is that those who’ve undergone it never say anything concrete, never mind new, about the world. They have a feeling of overwhelming knowledge, but it produces nothing they’re able to articulate. What we get from them is a valuation. That’s plain enough in Aquinas’ statement—as in the Buddha’s. Aquinas now dismisses his own works as more or less worthless—more or less because straw isn’t entirely worthless. The Buddha asserts that answering questions about the nature of the world is irrelevant to the achievement of the experience of nirvana. Valuations.
The most accessible written source about a full-fledged modern unitive experience is Pathways Through To Space (1973) by Franklin Merrell-Wolff (1887-1985). The book is readily available still and makes fascinating reading. Merrell-Wolff then tried to give some explanations in his The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object. That second book, in my opinion, has virtually no content—nor does a later one in which he includes commentary on his second book.
Having looked at such matters for many years now, I’ve gradually come to see the unitive experience minimally as a non-starter for cosmological thought. Those who’ve had it are overwhelmed by knowledge, but its content is inaccessible, not least to themselves. Now let’s suppose that it is—and I don’t by any means think that it is—an experience of the Ultimate. But if that is the case, it gives us two polarities and absolutely nothing in between. At one pole is Everything at the other Illusion—or something valued not at all. But how one relates to the other—and why it is that life-forms are so very, very intricately engineered, and ditto the elemental world beneath that engineering—that is never even remotely illuminated by this very energetic experience of enlightenment.
The experience certainly produces both a radical devaluation of the world and sometimes an equally radical indifference to it. The world is suddenly seen in a very new perspective. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), who spent his life writing the most profound works of theology, had a mystical experience while saying mass late in 1273. He stopped writing. Asked to resume his work, he said: “Everything I have written seems like straw by comparison with what I have seen and what has been revealed to me” (source). He did not resume his work.
D.T. Suzuki, in Essays on Zen Buddhism, First Series, quotes the Buddha saying, p. 137: “These questions are not calculated to profit, they are not concerned with Dharma, they do not redound to the elements of right conduct, nor to detachment, nor to purification from lusts, nor to quietude, nor to tranquillization of heart, nor to real knowledge, nor to Nirvana. Therefore is it that I express no opinion on them.” The questions referred to were: Is the world eternal? Is the world not eternal? Is the world finite? The source given is the Pottapada Sutta (in which a beggar, Pottapada, asks the Buddha questions). That word Dharma is a killer, by the way. It means all sorts of things, including “doctrine.” In this context it is best understood as “the path.”
One of the striking features of the unitive experience is that those who’ve undergone it never say anything concrete, never mind new, about the world. They have a feeling of overwhelming knowledge, but it produces nothing they’re able to articulate. What we get from them is a valuation. That’s plain enough in Aquinas’ statement—as in the Buddha’s. Aquinas now dismisses his own works as more or less worthless—more or less because straw isn’t entirely worthless. The Buddha asserts that answering questions about the nature of the world is irrelevant to the achievement of the experience of nirvana. Valuations.
The most accessible written source about a full-fledged modern unitive experience is Pathways Through To Space (1973) by Franklin Merrell-Wolff (1887-1985). The book is readily available still and makes fascinating reading. Merrell-Wolff then tried to give some explanations in his The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object. That second book, in my opinion, has virtually no content—nor does a later one in which he includes commentary on his second book.
Having looked at such matters for many years now, I’ve gradually come to see the unitive experience minimally as a non-starter for cosmological thought. Those who’ve had it are overwhelmed by knowledge, but its content is inaccessible, not least to themselves. Now let’s suppose that it is—and I don’t by any means think that it is—an experience of the Ultimate. But if that is the case, it gives us two polarities and absolutely nothing in between. At one pole is Everything at the other Illusion—or something valued not at all. But how one relates to the other—and why it is that life-forms are so very, very intricately engineered, and ditto the elemental world beneath that engineering—that is never even remotely illuminated by this very energetic experience of enlightenment.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Looking at Our Own Reality
How does our own personal sense of reality arise? The answer seems obvious, but a little reflection proves that to be too simple. The obvious answer is that we feel our own bodily sensations—and also that we, ourselves, know this, this “Here I am.” There is a distinct duality present in this simple state of self-awareness. One polarity is a sense of continuity, of persistence. I was awfully worn out yesterday, but now I’m pretty chipper. The knowledge that I was and now I am—and simultaneously aware of both—is that sense of continuity. I remember being tired; my body is now energetic. The knowledge belongs to me; it is still there. And the mere fact of forgetting doesn’t change that. Thus for instance I haven’t the vaguest of how I felt at 9:20 a.m. on July 11, 2009. Indeed 2009, which is just the other day, is a pretty fuzzy memory unless I start consulting calendars to bring some of it back. Nevertheless I feel innately certain that I was present back in that vague past. So here we have it: continuity, persistence, now tired, now chipper, but while these states cycle, something remains unchanged. That something is the consciousness of my persistence.
The other pole of this duality, of course, is change itself. There is me—and the other, the over against. The most obvious “over against” is my body. The other, greater over against has changed over time, in itself and also in relation to me. Once it was Minnesota, then Virginia, then Kansas, then Missouri, then Germany, then Hungary. My body has also changed. Once it was small and young, now it is big and old. It is still the over against because it has changed—but “Here I am” has not.
So much for the obvious. But is that sufficient to make us feel real? One way to test that is to imagine ourselves in a situation where nothing else is present but Here I am and Stuff out there, the body close and intimate, all else a step removed—pleasing when it’s edible or drinkable, dangerous when it is hard and cold. A world like that would very quickly make us feel deep anguish. The closest to a documented case like that is the life of Helen Keller—close but not quite perfect. Keller was 19 months of age when an illness deprived her of sight and hearing. As I’ve noted in this blog earlier, she was beginning to learn to speak, was imitating phrases that she’d heard. She had also learned the word for water and remembered it (as “wah-wah”) throughout her painful period of mental darkness. Until she reached age seven and finally got help, she lived in a state of powerful frustration, longing to communicate somehow by using signs and gestures. It’s not a perfect case because she had, at an early age, already discovered—not the other but the others. Her fabulous story is of the greatest value in vividly showing how vitally important for a personal sense of reality is the presence of, and communication with, other Here I am’s.
Long ago and far away I came across a great truth. I think it was in Franklin Merrell-Wolff’s Pathways Through to Space. It is that the two great paths exist for human development, one based on heightened consciousness (Enlightenment) and the other through relationship (Love). Merrell-Wolff’s path was the first; indeed it seems to rank very high among the mystics. But I’d assert that Love is prior and higher—indeed that in its absolute absence, in a world of mental darkness such as Keller experienced in childhood—the very tools for higher awareness are denied us. Language, the tool we need for the first-mentioned path, comes about because we use it to relate to other living beings just like us. It begins with that wah-wah in earliest childhood. Our personal reality depends intrinsically on relationship—as does genuine transcendence. All else is secondary.
The Buddha ranks highest in the category of Enlightenment—achieved by a great act of denial, as it were. What were the roots of that effort? Seeing human misery when Siddhartha Gautama was young: compassion. And when the Buddha achieved his aim, what did he do? Did he pass on into Nirvana? If he had done so, some farmers would have found a desiccated body under that now famous bodhi tree. But no. The Buddha returned to the world to—to communicate, to relate. And one of the great religions sprouted from that seed. No. There are no genuine solitaries high or low. Enlightenment needs its justifying polarity too. Ultimately transcendence falls apart unless there is another person out there to give this person his or her reality.
The other pole of this duality, of course, is change itself. There is me—and the other, the over against. The most obvious “over against” is my body. The other, greater over against has changed over time, in itself and also in relation to me. Once it was Minnesota, then Virginia, then Kansas, then Missouri, then Germany, then Hungary. My body has also changed. Once it was small and young, now it is big and old. It is still the over against because it has changed—but “Here I am” has not.
So much for the obvious. But is that sufficient to make us feel real? One way to test that is to imagine ourselves in a situation where nothing else is present but Here I am and Stuff out there, the body close and intimate, all else a step removed—pleasing when it’s edible or drinkable, dangerous when it is hard and cold. A world like that would very quickly make us feel deep anguish. The closest to a documented case like that is the life of Helen Keller—close but not quite perfect. Keller was 19 months of age when an illness deprived her of sight and hearing. As I’ve noted in this blog earlier, she was beginning to learn to speak, was imitating phrases that she’d heard. She had also learned the word for water and remembered it (as “wah-wah”) throughout her painful period of mental darkness. Until she reached age seven and finally got help, she lived in a state of powerful frustration, longing to communicate somehow by using signs and gestures. It’s not a perfect case because she had, at an early age, already discovered—not the other but the others. Her fabulous story is of the greatest value in vividly showing how vitally important for a personal sense of reality is the presence of, and communication with, other Here I am’s.
Long ago and far away I came across a great truth. I think it was in Franklin Merrell-Wolff’s Pathways Through to Space. It is that the two great paths exist for human development, one based on heightened consciousness (Enlightenment) and the other through relationship (Love). Merrell-Wolff’s path was the first; indeed it seems to rank very high among the mystics. But I’d assert that Love is prior and higher—indeed that in its absolute absence, in a world of mental darkness such as Keller experienced in childhood—the very tools for higher awareness are denied us. Language, the tool we need for the first-mentioned path, comes about because we use it to relate to other living beings just like us. It begins with that wah-wah in earliest childhood. Our personal reality depends intrinsically on relationship—as does genuine transcendence. All else is secondary.
The Buddha ranks highest in the category of Enlightenment—achieved by a great act of denial, as it were. What were the roots of that effort? Seeing human misery when Siddhartha Gautama was young: compassion. And when the Buddha achieved his aim, what did he do? Did he pass on into Nirvana? If he had done so, some farmers would have found a desiccated body under that now famous bodhi tree. But no. The Buddha returned to the world to—to communicate, to relate. And one of the great religions sprouted from that seed. No. There are no genuine solitaries high or low. Enlightenment needs its justifying polarity too. Ultimately transcendence falls apart unless there is another person out there to give this person his or her reality.
Monday, September 6, 2010
The Two Projections
Concerning the reality we shall experience after we die, humanity has two predominant projections. It seems to me that both are based on actual experiences of individuals later further elaborated by speculators who haven’t been there. I call the first ecstatic, the other communitarian. Both appear in variant cultural frames. In the Buddhist tradition nirvana is a kind of pure bliss about which I can’t find any elaboration; in the west it is union with God or the beatific vision. Both appear to me to be passive states; but those who hold this view (or have experienced it) deny that. They report a union, an identity, a fullness, a completeness, an unlimited power, an all encompassing knowledge. For a detailed rendition of such an experience I’d point to that of Franklin Merrell-Wolff’s given in Pathways Through to Space. This work has an eastern, Hindu flavor; its merit is that it comes from a modern twentieth century American who’s trying to communicate it in a framework accessible to us. Anyone genuinely interested in the matters discussed in Borderzone will get something valuable out of reading that book. The iconic and briefest summary is Meister Eckhart’s famous line: “The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.” The same sort of unitary experience is reported of Plotinus and is found in Islamic mysticism too. I cannot help but think that experiences of this type—very powerful that they are—have shaped humanity’s theologies in major ways. It seems to me that Plotinus’ own unitive experience must have been the basis of his cosmic conceptualization of the One. And ideas like omnipotence and omniscience are mirrored in the experiences of ecstatics—Merrell-Wolff’s for instance or those of Mansur Al-Hallaj, the Persian-Muslim mystic martyred for proclaiming “I am the Truth,” and “There is nothing in my cloak but God.”
I’ve had a minor but potent youthful experience of this type myself (reported here). That should have made me lean in this directions, but, instead, I’ve come to think of it as a valuable inoculation against this view of reality. In all reports of this type of experience I recognize my own—and I’m grateful for the experience because I have a personal basis for evaluating others’. Mine took place spontaneously rather than in the context of passionate struggling, questing, and willful attempts at realizing the transcending—as is usually the case. Thus I see the phenomenon of ecstasy as perhaps caused by a certain state of concentration which releases energies we only experience very, very filtered in ordinary life. And it is an experience of energy rather than of transcending will or intelligence; the cognitive or willful aspects of that experience come from our own consciousness not from that which temporarily envelops us. For these reasons, over a lifetime, I’ve been much more inclined toward the other major human projection of the Beyond.
That projection envisions communities of vast size and diversity in immaterial or “other-material” spaces somewhere invisible to us from here. The simplest expression of this projection might be the “Happy Hunting Grounds” said to have been the destination of some Indian tribes. (With hundreds of real tribes, every human ideology has been presented in Indian lore, not least straight-forward materialism.) The most elaborate such projection I know of is Swedenborg’s, divided into three realms: a lower hellish, a middling spiritual transitional world, and an upper heavenly. Swedenborg’s has a biblical flavor, but missing is the redemptive role of Jesus of Nazareth. People have read similar structures into the Koran. This view also has a strong basis in Near Death Experience reports which picture the earliest moments of entering such communities. Heaven and hell are also part of the Christian world conception—suggesting that it makes room for both, a unitive beatific vision and a “life” in heaven or hell. One is for the upper, let us say, and the other for the less educated classes. And in Buddhism, of course, we also find, perhaps also just for the lower classes, all manner of splendid heavens and dreadful hells, usually numbered seven, a number humanity genuinely likes.
To be sure, the unitive/ecstatic projection is much simpler, tempting the intellectual mind to reach for Ockham’s razor. But Ockham intended for the simplest theory accommodating all of the evidence. I’m much more drawn to the “naive” view of the masses of humanity—which, in the East, for instance, lifted Mahayana Buddhism, with its grand heavens and deep hells, into the most populous branch of that religions—even if, one imagines, it is altogether incompatible with the Buddha’s own view or experiences. If we take the unitive experience as the ballgame, one person in multiple millions born will be saved, the rest plowed under once again. And the vast cosmos of stars and galaxies has no meaning whatsoever. For once I find myself with the masses and look at the elites with a very puzzled face.
I’ve had a minor but potent youthful experience of this type myself (reported here). That should have made me lean in this directions, but, instead, I’ve come to think of it as a valuable inoculation against this view of reality. In all reports of this type of experience I recognize my own—and I’m grateful for the experience because I have a personal basis for evaluating others’. Mine took place spontaneously rather than in the context of passionate struggling, questing, and willful attempts at realizing the transcending—as is usually the case. Thus I see the phenomenon of ecstasy as perhaps caused by a certain state of concentration which releases energies we only experience very, very filtered in ordinary life. And it is an experience of energy rather than of transcending will or intelligence; the cognitive or willful aspects of that experience come from our own consciousness not from that which temporarily envelops us. For these reasons, over a lifetime, I’ve been much more inclined toward the other major human projection of the Beyond.
That projection envisions communities of vast size and diversity in immaterial or “other-material” spaces somewhere invisible to us from here. The simplest expression of this projection might be the “Happy Hunting Grounds” said to have been the destination of some Indian tribes. (With hundreds of real tribes, every human ideology has been presented in Indian lore, not least straight-forward materialism.) The most elaborate such projection I know of is Swedenborg’s, divided into three realms: a lower hellish, a middling spiritual transitional world, and an upper heavenly. Swedenborg’s has a biblical flavor, but missing is the redemptive role of Jesus of Nazareth. People have read similar structures into the Koran. This view also has a strong basis in Near Death Experience reports which picture the earliest moments of entering such communities. Heaven and hell are also part of the Christian world conception—suggesting that it makes room for both, a unitive beatific vision and a “life” in heaven or hell. One is for the upper, let us say, and the other for the less educated classes. And in Buddhism, of course, we also find, perhaps also just for the lower classes, all manner of splendid heavens and dreadful hells, usually numbered seven, a number humanity genuinely likes.
To be sure, the unitive/ecstatic projection is much simpler, tempting the intellectual mind to reach for Ockham’s razor. But Ockham intended for the simplest theory accommodating all of the evidence. I’m much more drawn to the “naive” view of the masses of humanity—which, in the East, for instance, lifted Mahayana Buddhism, with its grand heavens and deep hells, into the most populous branch of that religions—even if, one imagines, it is altogether incompatible with the Buddha’s own view or experiences. If we take the unitive experience as the ballgame, one person in multiple millions born will be saved, the rest plowed under once again. And the vast cosmos of stars and galaxies has no meaning whatsoever. For once I find myself with the masses and look at the elites with a very puzzled face.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
So What Is The Aim Again?
The aim is to awaken, not to achieve this or that mood. Back in my active days effort lay ahead on workdays; there it was when I woke up: the commute, the chores left behind the night before. Reality’s pressure forced me to clean up my act at intervals. The mental contents of awakening were quite often tinged with anxiety. I could never contemplate the future with equanimity. Functionally this situation reminds me of certain Zen masters who slapped aspirants at random times. This produced a pervasive anxiety in their charges—that feeling of always expecting something bad to happen. I’ve managed to make my living in such a way that the Zen master was always somewhere behind me or on my blind side. The presence of anxiety will produce alertness of the mind, and alertness is a precondition for hearing the higher dimension.
Hello paradox. The object of life is supposed to be happiness. Now we imagine that state to be a kind of stress-free, childlike bliss—not as a high, sovereign alertness that ignores even while it deals with all the shit that happens all the time. Initially we cultivate that sovereign alertness (I’m speaking for myself) because it is a coping mechanism, not because it makes us happy. It makes us competent. I came to the spiritual life by way of the turbulence of action. Unless you’re blessed with a high state of insensitivity—a really thick skin, a really hearty temperament--the high-energy turbulence of modern life will produce anxiety.
I will describe the conditions in which contemplative musings about happiness—in this life—might seem appropriate. Endeavor to be born into a very well-off family—at that stage of its existence when its wealth is wide and deep, when the family is well embedded in the upper class, and in a time when neither revolution from the bottom, nor a greedy ruler from the top, nor war from the side threatens to unravel this temporary social nest. Oh, yes. Make sure that you are male, first born, and in good health. Finally, take an interest in philosophical matters and think in abstract categories drawn solely from your personal experience. And even under these circumstances, it really is best if you’re not a very sensitive, intelligent, or a poetic soul.
Siddhārtha Gautama, the man later known as the Buddha, had all of the above qualifications except the last. And that last was his undoing. He discovered how other people lived, and that opened his eyes. Goodbye happiness. Despite the presence of all those things most people would consider happy-making, he was miserable and set out on his epic journey of liberation from the wheel of karma.
The case of the Buddha is the case, ultimately, of most people except the genuinely blind. It’s very striking that in every culture a shadow falls upon this dimension, no matter how beautiful it is in sunshine and shade, in mountain and valley, by brilliant starlight, on the shores of the vast ocean. At a functional level all descriptions are equivalent: the Gnostic view that a low god, who holds us captive, made this world; the Christian view of the fall and of original sin; the Eastern view of the karmic wheel. The various solutions also have a uniform shape. Knowledge, gnosis, liberates. So does enlightenment. And salvation, death in a state of grace, also represents an escape from the valley of the shadow of death.
In practice—in the everyday life—this means coming and staying awake. The framing of the story may be different one culture to the other, but the meaning is the same. Alertness, awakeness, and oil in the lamp—so that when the bridegroom comes, the lamp may be lit: wonderful stories full of incisive advice. If we manage to awaken and meet the moment of transition well prepared, then we shall have achieved the real object of this life, which is liberation. And let’s be practical. Such action improves life one moment to the next as well. It’s also competence, not some kind of “piety.” Or, to underline the point, those two states of the self are equivalent—however different the sound. In the end, after a life lived competently terminates, seeking happiness will still not be an aim. At that point it will simply be our natural state.
Hello paradox. The object of life is supposed to be happiness. Now we imagine that state to be a kind of stress-free, childlike bliss—not as a high, sovereign alertness that ignores even while it deals with all the shit that happens all the time. Initially we cultivate that sovereign alertness (I’m speaking for myself) because it is a coping mechanism, not because it makes us happy. It makes us competent. I came to the spiritual life by way of the turbulence of action. Unless you’re blessed with a high state of insensitivity—a really thick skin, a really hearty temperament--the high-energy turbulence of modern life will produce anxiety.
I will describe the conditions in which contemplative musings about happiness—in this life—might seem appropriate. Endeavor to be born into a very well-off family—at that stage of its existence when its wealth is wide and deep, when the family is well embedded in the upper class, and in a time when neither revolution from the bottom, nor a greedy ruler from the top, nor war from the side threatens to unravel this temporary social nest. Oh, yes. Make sure that you are male, first born, and in good health. Finally, take an interest in philosophical matters and think in abstract categories drawn solely from your personal experience. And even under these circumstances, it really is best if you’re not a very sensitive, intelligent, or a poetic soul.
Siddhārtha Gautama, the man later known as the Buddha, had all of the above qualifications except the last. And that last was his undoing. He discovered how other people lived, and that opened his eyes. Goodbye happiness. Despite the presence of all those things most people would consider happy-making, he was miserable and set out on his epic journey of liberation from the wheel of karma.
The case of the Buddha is the case, ultimately, of most people except the genuinely blind. It’s very striking that in every culture a shadow falls upon this dimension, no matter how beautiful it is in sunshine and shade, in mountain and valley, by brilliant starlight, on the shores of the vast ocean. At a functional level all descriptions are equivalent: the Gnostic view that a low god, who holds us captive, made this world; the Christian view of the fall and of original sin; the Eastern view of the karmic wheel. The various solutions also have a uniform shape. Knowledge, gnosis, liberates. So does enlightenment. And salvation, death in a state of grace, also represents an escape from the valley of the shadow of death.
In practice—in the everyday life—this means coming and staying awake. The framing of the story may be different one culture to the other, but the meaning is the same. Alertness, awakeness, and oil in the lamp—so that when the bridegroom comes, the lamp may be lit: wonderful stories full of incisive advice. If we manage to awaken and meet the moment of transition well prepared, then we shall have achieved the real object of this life, which is liberation. And let’s be practical. Such action improves life one moment to the next as well. It’s also competence, not some kind of “piety.” Or, to underline the point, those two states of the self are equivalent—however different the sound. In the end, after a life lived competently terminates, seeking happiness will still not be an aim. At that point it will simply be our natural state.
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