Tao called Tao is not Tao (Tao Te Ching - Lao-Tzu)
Life is the flowing and living energy which cannot be frozen into concepts and formulas. Life cannot be understood, only lived. (beatnik)
Being, by it's very nature, can't be known, so words can only give us the direction in which to look. (pg 3: One - Essential writings of non-duality - Jerry Katz)
The reality of a human being is a mystery. There is no answer that can answer it, because it is not a question in the first place. It is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved. (pg 96: Tantra - the way of acceptance - Osho)
We are all manifestations of a mystic power: the power of life, which has shaped all life, and which has shaped us all in our mother's womb. And this kind of wisdom lives in us, and it represents the force of this power, this energy, pouring into the field of time and space. But it's a transcendant energy. It's an energy that comes from a realm beyond our powers of knowledge. And that energy becomes bound in each one of us - in this body - to a certain commitment.
Now, the mind that thinks, the eyes that see, they can become so involved in concepts and local, temporal tasks that we become bound up and don't let this energy flow through. The energy is blocked, and we are thrown off balance ....... So the psychological problem, the way to keep from becoming blocked, is to make yourself - and here is the phrase - transparent to the transcendant. It's as easy as that. (Pathways to Bliss - Joseph Campbell)
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and other stuff that goes on inside my head..
8 comments:
It seems to me that there are two directions in which to err.
One is to become bound with and by language and unable to escape it. The other to be bound to the quest and quest and the question and in so doing to become unable to move beyond it. One can easily choose a positionless position, a conclusion-less conclusion and be a questioner deaf to the answer.
Hey Tim - nice to see you here ;)
A position, a conclusion or an answer are, by definition, finite, and assume the duality of here and there, wrong and right. The transcendant is beyond that duality.
The only real position is here - and that is everywhere. The only time is Now - and that is eternity. It's a mystery to be embraced and lived. By trying to solve it we try and step outside of it, and the only place that can happen is in our mind - in the past and the future. But even that is now, in that the only time I can think about the past is now. So past and future are an illusion - and so is the question, or any answer.
Tim has a point Gavin. The more you absolutise mystery the less we can communicate in words. Blogs are about words, and digital ones at that - they have a narrow spectrum. We need to acknowledge this limitation if any meaningful communication is possible.
Also, if truth cannot be spoken of, is there any use in song, poem, scripture, or any manifestation of spoken or written language?
Nic - what is it that is to be meaningfully communicated? We don't communicate words, we communicate an experience of life to which words point.
Words are useful tools to convey meaning, but words themselves can never actually contain that meaning, they can only act as a medium through which meaning can hopefully flow.
This might have some relevance to this discussion
I agree with these comments.
But I still feel you have too strong a duality between meaning and message. These things are not separate.
And Mr Marshall, you didn't answer this to my satisfaction:
"Also, if truth cannot be spoken of, is there any use in song, poem, scripture, or any manifestation of spoken or written language?"
Nic - I'm not sure what you mean by the duality between meaning and message - I see them as the same thing.
What I'm getting at is that is that it is easy for us to confuse concept with the raw reality of living. An example Allan Watts gives is that you can take water out of a river in a bucket - but that which is in the bucket isn't the river - you can never capture the river.
Naming something is at a lesser level of reality than the experience of that something, but in order to communicate it we need to name it.
Ultimately, what I'm trying to say in this post, but allowing others to say it for me, is that there is a difference between 'knowlege' and 'knowning'. Theology and philosophy, for instance, deals with knowlege - concepts. When it comes to the raw reality and the mystery of this life I experience - the minute I try and explain it - I've missed the point.
With regard to Poetry and song, perhaps part of this interview with Joseph Campbell will help with answering that:
Tom: Heinrich Zimmer said "The best truths cannot be spoken. . . "
Joseph: "And the second best are misunderstood."
Tom: Then you added something to that.
Joseph: The third best is the usual conversation - science, history, sociology.
Tom: Why do people confuse these?
Joseph: Because the imagery that has to be used in order to tell what can't be told, symbolic imagery, is then understood or interpreted not symbolically but factually, empirically. It's a natural thing, but that's the whole problem with Western religion. All of the symbols are interpreted as if they were historical references. They're not. And if they are, then so what?
hmm - maybe I should stick with the rhythm metaphor ;)
Being able to write music is helpful, but people never really mistake written music for the experience of music itself.
Rhythm is only rhythm when it keeps on moving. You can experience it, dance to it and even create it, but if you try and grab on to it you'll lose it.
I can write about rhythm and you know what I'm talking about, because it points to something you have experienced, but my writing will never be able to actually encapsulate the experience.
Now all of this is obvious, and yet we so easily cling to doctrine, orthodoxy, theology, philosophy as if they have existance in and of themselves, and so we defend our 'positions' - our conceptial points of view. We even try and make them more real by saying they're divinely inspired and so forth...
Does that help?
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