How about looking at what constitutes traditional philosophy? When we talk about the tradition or the teaching - what do we really mean? What's in and what's out? What's its purpose? And why should we bother getting up in the morning?
Again, what is the School's role in teaching or in passing on traditional philosophy? Is it fulfilling this role? If it's hampering rather than helping -in what way does this show itself? And how may it be rejuvenated?
Lastly - and I personally find this of interest - is there nothing since the Renaissance (or Shakespeare/Mozart) that can't be pressed into service?
There have been a number of observations and quotes on this blog - from Emerson to William Isaacs - which have illuminated dark corners and given pause for thought. Or are we talking about method here rather than content? And is there any difference in truth?
If Socrates had been born today would he have been a blogger? Or would he have been drummed out of his group for asking awkward questions?
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Is Socrates a blogger?
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33 comments:
Lots of good questions Laura ... just as a starter, I would hope that the old "Shakespeare / Leonardo / Mozart" triumvirate is thoroughly out of date. New material features Viktor Frankl, Jacques Lusseyrand, Pablo Casals and Nelson Mandela, for example, as well as "new" old sources like Julian of Norwich or Kabir.
When you say "the old "Shakespeare / Leonardo / Mozart" triumvirate is thoroughly out of date" I presume you mean that the emphasis given to these three is what may have become a little 'closed'? I couldn't agree that what was expressed by these three has somehow become irrelevant. I watched the Scofield/Brook version of King Lear recently and it raises profound questions. Shakespeare never seemed to have had 'fixed' answers. He presents life with depth, colour and complexity. You go away with questions, not answers. Questions are alive. Answers are dead.
With regard to the question 'what is the teaching/tradition?', that question arises here also. I used to hear a phrase in the school which I don't hear any more, 'the thorn to remove a thorn'. i.e, the teaching is an instrument to remove impediments. Is there a danger of us worshipping the instrument (through passive acceptance) and forgetting how to use it?
There is an analogy given by Anthony de Mello. A man comes to a primitive village and shows them how to make fire. Many years later they have forgotten how to make fire but have put a flint, kindling etc on a altar and worship it.
I find it difficult to think in terms of 'the' tradition. It seems to me that we have a number of tools in terms of knowledge, practises etc and these are only as useful as how consciously they are used. I sometimes need to read something from a different teacher just because the difference in style helps to prevent the mind running along habitual grooves. Or I need to go back to a very simple practise like simply being aware of the feet on the floor as I am walking to combat thoughts.
"Believe nothing, O monks, merely because you have been told it . . . or because it is traditional, or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings--that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide."
~ Buddha
In response to the first point, all I meant was that the idea of there being only one painter/writer/composer in the world is fortunately gone.
Thankfully! It isn't helpful to told that no-one will ever be capable of aspiring to the pinnacle reached by 'x'. What a way to demotivate. And arrogant too as it assumes that the values you look for are the pinnacle...? Yes, I think the truth varies, depending on perspective.
Often great artists seem to have some minor figure they follow that isn't too off-putting. Shakespeare loved Gower (in which he may be alone) and TS Eliot admired some minor French poet.
Would Socrates have been a blogger? I doubt whether he would have bothered with the technology. Would he have been drummed out of his group? I very much doubt he would have joined a group (this is a problem - what would the School do if some great figure arrived in its midst?), but if he had he would almost certainly have been kicked out.
I don't think this is a criticism of the School, but a recognition that its present structures are only designed for ONE kind of relationship - guru-student. As I've noted before, there are many stories in the Indian tradition in which a student turns out to know more than the teacher (Brihad. Up., 1965 Conversations, etc) ... it's a creditable aspect of the Indian tradition that the teacher then gives up his position and asks a question.
Last summer I remember attending one of the Thursday evening lectures at Mandeville Place. Mr.Lambie was in the audience and I was surprised to hear the speaker finish his talk by quoting Buddha on his death bed:
"Be ye lights unto yourselves"
Then I thought, "Why should I feel this was a somewhat provocative comment in the present company?" I imagined that the quote would be disapproved of in the guru-student structure of the school, but is that true? I'm sure some would find this not a helpful thing to say to someone lacking discipline, some might find it way too liberal, others may find it frightening, others liberating. Which is the true view or is it different for each individual. To quote a different tradition:
"We see things not as they are but as we are."
Perhaps it all comes down to this one question: do I personally want the safety and comfort of the guidance of others or am I willing to really meet reality head on without the middle-man? Am I ready for this? Does there come a point when the universe conspires to make the advice so bad that you have no choice but to find the answers within yourself and hence step beyond previous constraints?
We are told we are all essentially free so I if I am bound by some dogmatic individual (or bound by my erroneus perception that someone is a dogmatic individual) it is only because I have given my consent. Perhaps each has to face, and ultimately overcome this issue for himself?
Great comment.
I think this expresses a common, even near-universal dilemma. I bet DL would not object to the quotation from the Buddha, or to the principle that people should be lights unto themselves. When he came back from visiting India (having just missed Shantananda's final hours) he said, "Mr MacLaren is no longer with us. Shantananda is no longer with us. We now have to be Brahman for ourselves".
In practice, it's a little more complicated than that. As you've illustrated, we all have our own inner system, even now, that keeps us dependent, even if the teacher is telling us not to be.
I'd like to pick up on what you said, Kapila, about tradition.
Some of the questions raised in recent days have made me think again about the word "tradition". I'm using it in the way Jaiswal does ... which is almost the opposite sense to the Buddha's use of it. The "tradition", as I see it, consists of the search for wisdom, rather than accumulated texts.
According to Jaiswal, heresy (asking questions) is traditional, while dogma (stating answers) is not traditional.
Are we talking about method here? And the School as a vehicle?
If the School is a vehicle then it can only go where the driver directs it - the driver in this case being the 'guru', however defined, who has access to the highest wisdom and can interpret it. The School has not, to my knowledge, ever directly encouraged the cult of personality. 'We are all students here,' say tutors.
Having said that, some tutors assume a superior wisdom. It's this which effectively blocks further enquiry. If one's question is met with an offhand dismissal (it's been known)then why run the risk of asking again? We're all imperfect vehicles but, assuming the enquiry is sincere, it can only help to free the teaching by treating it with respect.
If the question irritates, or seems irrelevant, then what in you is it running up against? It's not a problem for the questioner to deal with.
It is putting oneself in an invidious position to suppose that someone else can tell you what the truth is. Invidious and idle. One can listen, reflect, enquire and verify, and if there's an answering response then well and good.
But if, as Kapila says, the advice seems bad, then one only makes it worse by complying.
Now I've just remembered occasions when I didn't want to do something but it turned out alright in the end and I was shown how this was.
So the above implies a degree of freedom from ahankara.
Laura said:
"But if, as Kapila says, the advice seems bad, then one only makes it worse by complying.
Now I've just remembered occasions when I didn't want to do something but it turned out alright in the end and I was shown how this was.
So the above implies a degree of freedom from ahankara."
To be fair, I've experienced the latter as well. There are clearly people in the school with very fine perception and their words penetrate often bringing considerable discomfort to the ahankara. I understand and accept this even when it's uncomfortable.
But there seems to be a lower grade of advice which is often:
- contradictory
- generalised
- doesn't really feel like it fits the situation or experience
One of the problems with advice seems to be that we in the school often try to 'sound confident' even when we are on dodgy ground? This creates confusion in that the 'confident sound' makes the speaker sound authoritative but the information (or understanding behind it) isn't.
This comes back to an earlier post about 'assume a virtue'. What's the good of trying to 'sound confident'? True confidence is a by-product of true knowledge/experience. 'Sounding confident' is a propaganda technique. So perhaps we can talk people round to the 'right' answer but it isn't knowledge? Am I alone in seeing it like this?
You've hit it on the nail.
Goading the ahankara is a trick for gaining power over people. It seems to have been propagated by Gurdjieff/Ouspensky and to have lingered in the School.
If anyone can show me an example of His Holiness ever doing such a thing, I would be astonished.
The wise person has the effect of making one feel so secure that the heart relaxes and opens, often revealing painful truths. The atmosphere of wisdom is such that we recognise it to be better than the wreckage we are presently clinging to.
Yes, that's really what we all long for, when all's said and done.
I am indebted to Kapila for the introduction to Anthony de Mello, the Goan Jesuit priest who wrote non-doctrinal books.
I found this on Google:
At the end of Wellsprings is a collection of single sentences - de Mello calls them "seedlings" - which are not to be forced open with our minds, but sown in our hearts where they may germinate and grow.
The seedlings may not bring instant enlightenment, but they are unlikely to encourage backsliding. Here are a few:
-- The Messiah is still around. When did you see him last?
-- Listen to the Good News: God is unjust - he makes his sun to shine on the good and bad alike.
-- Certainty is the sin of bigots, terrorists and Pharisees.
-- Compassion makes us think we may be wrong.
-- The God who deals in terror is a bully, and to bend the knee before him is to be a coward, not a devotee.
-- Repentance reaches fullness when you are brought to gratitude for your sins.
-- I am no great improvement on those who killed the Saviour.
-- If your God comes to your rescue and gets you out of trouble, it is time you started looking for the true God.
-- Doubt is Faith's friend. The enemy of Faith is fear.
-- The market is as good a place for silence as the monastery, for silence is the absence of the ego.
Hi Ubuntu - the Anthony de Mello books have been for sale in the school as long as I've been a member, so at least 10 years. So I can't claim to have discovered him.
There are more excerpts from his writings at:
http://www.geocities.com/~spiritwalk/demello1min.htm
There are many gems:
WISDOM
It always pleased the Master to hear people recognize their ignorance.
"Wisdom tends to grow in proportion
to one's awareness of one's ignorance,"
he claimed.
When asked for an explanation, he said,
"When you come to see you are not as wise today
as you thought you were yesterday,
you are wiser today."
Thank you for this, Kapila. What you say reminds me that wisdom is always available if we know where to look and how to receive.
I haven't seen de Mello in the bookshop, not because it wasn't there (as you say)but because I'd ceased looking.
So there you are - another new expperience via this blog.
Ubuntu
I was momentarily horrified to think that the de Mello quote about ignorance might have been taken as directed to you. I hope it wasn't taken this way and it certainly wasn't intended to be so.
Not at all, truely it wasn't. Even if it had been, I would only have grown in wisdom according to de Mello!
Picking up on the discussion about 'sounding confident' there is a value in 'assume a virtue if you have it not'.
I take this step to be a)if one hadn't the virtue in embryo then one couldn't assume it; b)if one does assume it then, like a new set of clothes, it may give new possibilities and dimensions; and c)if there's a true aspiration to the virtue then one may grow into it and become virtuous oneself.
If all this tends towards greater freedom - as I think it must, even if haltingly - then it is to be encouraged.
Along the way one has to look out for the thorns and thistles of complacency, ambition and pretentiousness, and so avoid polishing one's halo and annoying friends and family.
I'm still not completely convinced about "assume a virtue". I have just read something by a devotee of Sri Ramana Maharshi about how the ego is extremely devious and subtle, even, "I am still", "I am detached" etc. I still think "assume a virtue" runs the real danger of creating yet another identity. "I am (whatever virtue I am trying to assume)". And, sure, there can be success in many endeavours because of this. People who are successful in the world believe in themselves (or believe in an idea about themselves). But is this reality, is it the Self? Or is it just the salesman's pitch, the politician's spin?
Another excerpt, this time from Sri Ramana himself:
Even to repeat Aham Brahmasmi or think of it, a doer is necessary. Who is it? It is 'I'. Be that 'I'. It is the direct method. The other methods also will ultimately lead everyone to this method of investigation of the Self.
[Talks: 266]
Sure, it's not the 'final answer' as V commented elsewhere. Perhaps wise to think of 'virtue' as a staging and sustaining post?
But many wise men, such as Plato, Aristotle and Confucius have given space and time to the various qualities of virtue which inclines me to cherish them rather than otherwise. P and A said that, in order to be just, for example, one must be wise. And we would surely prefer to be wise rather than ignorant? And if we were wise than we would be just to the virtues?
We have to have something to work on.
Perhaps incidentally, you might be interested in this little story of Sri Ramana Maharshi. As you may know, Tiruvanamalai(east of Banaglore)is where his ashram is and has a tall, conical hill nearby, said by some to be the centre of the world.
When I was there, my group climbed the hill as is traditional but, being feverish, I stayed in the ashram. Wandering around I came across a gravestone, marked with the name and details of one of his devotees, a former English army officer. This would have been at the time of the Raj.
I'm still not quite sure why that moved me so much.
Rather like children singing, or old Gurkha soldiers walking for days for a reunion with their former unit, it had great virtue.
I feel that you are using the word virtue in a whole range of ways here, perhaps not really adding to what you said earlier.
Maybe we would need to go back to how Shakespeare was using it - Hamlet imploring his mother to assume the virtue of chastity.
I think a psychologist would call this a "cognitive behavioural" approach, such as getting up in the morning and repeating to yourself how you're going to be confident today. Apparently it really works, and indeed it's the only psychological method that shows consistent results. I also think it's part of the NLP technique that many swear by.
Even so, I'm with Kapila in being unconvinced that this is really it.
Just a further thought that arose on the 'assume a virtue' question. I don't see it as vital that we agree on this. I would say that if there is a practise that an individual finds helpful then I wouldn't wish to dissuade them. Part of the issue with the 'institutionalisation' seems to be that we feel compelled to accept a practise and 'should' expect a particular kind of result from it. I prefer to think that we have a number of tools, then we must know ourselves and apply the right tool to get us past the apparent obstacle? This may be different tools for different people or at different times. Like a literal toolbox, the intelligence indicates that the tool you're trying to use for the job isn't working, so you need to try a different one!
(Heaves large dictionaries off shelf).... may need help here.
Robert Graves, the poet, said that the only books worth keeping are dictionaries and reference works. (The rest can presumably go to Oxfam, just remind me some time.)
The Latin 'virtus' = moral excellence from 'vir', a man.
The cardinal virtues (cf. Plato and Aristotle) are temperance, prudence, courage and justice. In order to be just one must be wise. The Christian theological virtues (as in I Corinthians 13.13)are faith, hope and charity, the latter said to be perfect love of God and Man. Confucius said that perfect virtue consists of gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness. Not forgetting the seven virtues oposed by the seven deadly sins.
Having laid the table, as it were, what do we put on it?
The Complete Oxford (squints with magnifying glass)says virtue is a quality of persons, including angels, or an embodiment, or act, of such power.
Secondly, virtue is conformity of life and conduct with the principles of morality from which Vanbrugh (following Dryden)says that 'Virtue is its own reward.'
Virtue may be an entity. Coleridge said in 'all Year Round' that 'Man may bow before virtue, but virtue never bows before man.' V has remarked on chastity and she enters at this point (it's always a 'she'), her lax sister being a 'woman of easy virtue'.
Next is a particular moral excellence. Almost in modern times Godwin in Enquirer said that 'Human virtues without discrimination are no virtue.'
The scope of virtue broadens to encompass a moral quality embodied in a painting or sculpture, to 'make a virtue of necessity' (Chaucer and others), to indicate superior merit, ability or distinction. Various uses are now obsolete - these include an accomplishment, physical force or energy, and a flourishing state.
But as a quality of things, as in 'By virtue of...' it is still currency today. Along the same lines virtue may be inherent in plants, medicines and precious stones, connecting to their qualities and powers.
This is quite enough (ed.). Has anyone seen my Onions Etymological Dictionary? It's gone walkies
Thanks for the research Laura. I don't think we disagree that virtue is a good and noble thing. But if we take the Oxford definition you gave:
"virtue is a quality of persons, including angels, or an embodiment, or act, of such power."
...could it be said: if the sun is the Self, then its rays, its light, its heat are the virtues? The quality is inherent in the thing, is inseparable from it. Need it be assumed or brought about in some way?
Bringing this back to the practical, I find when I am simply present then the other virtues flow from this. I am without effort, more patient, self-controlled etc. If I am not present, any amount of practice is futile and results in hypocrisy. So both the reason and the experience satisfy that the virtues are inherent and what is necessary is simply to practice being conscious. This, by a different route, comes back to the Tao Te Ching Quote posted elsewhere:
"The Tao never strives, yet nothing is left undone.
If leaders were able to adhere to it
the ten thousand things
would develop of their own accord."
Thankyou BTW for sharing the experience of the soldier's grave at the Sri Ramana Ashram.
I - er - find I have to try a bit harder. I don't think it's quite as simple as that.
This morning my regular lodger, Andrew, remarked as I wandered to the breakfast table, 'I see you're carrying your Mug of Virtue?'
He had no idea what he meant, it just popped into his head. It is a very nice mug, made by a craftsman potter, and this morning it held a fruit cordial.
However, if virtue has a shape it could well be a mug or a bowl. First thoughts are that virtue is a capacity.
Others may like to develop it further.
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