Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 74

Poem 74

If you realize that all things change,

there is nothing you will try to hold on to.

If you aren't afraid of dying,

there is nothing you can't achieve.

Trying to control the future

is like trying to take the master carpenter's place.

When you handle the master carpenter's tools,

chances are that you'll cut your hand.

Commentary

ST Augustine defined time as the measure of change.  John Henry Cardinal Newman stated that to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.  Change is of the very essence of things.  This is a very old philosophy dating back to the sixth century B.C., the time of Heraclitus at least.  So it isn't hard to believe that the Tao Te Ching from the fourth century B.C. should preach something similar. 

Indeed, there is nothing we can really hold onto in the world, even though the lessons of our ego is such: that we can hold on to things.  Not alone does our ego insist on holding onto things, it also insists on getting more and more things, on expanding the human grasp on things.  Nations do the same as the historical rise of nationalism and two world wars have taught us.  Yet, we still haven't learnt the lessons of history.  Every generation has to learn its lessons the hard way, it would appear.  When I was growing up my father used to quote an old proverb: "There are no pockets in a shroud" or sometimes he used to put it even simpler still, "You cannot take it with you."  We spend a lifetime building up ourselves (i) getting a good education, (ii) being successful at our jobs or professions, (iii) reading a family, (iv) stocking our brains/minds with the highest of cultural acquisitions and yet all these things in the end will fade from our grasp.  All religions and all spiritualities worth their salt teach this wisdom.  Yet, it should not be used to frighten us from living.  It should be used like the Buddhists do, learn to live life all the fully, with deeper values.  They do this through meditating on how transient are the things of this world and by realising deep within that everything changes and we change too within those changes.  When I was a student of the Latin language our teacher used to quote Ovid who declared:  "Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis."  It translates: "The times change and we change with them."  We cannot even bring all our learning, all our well-stocked minds with us either.  We simply disappear when we die.  Perhaps we may linger in the memories of those who love us, those who are still left alive after us.

The lesson to us from these few stanzas are to learn to be humble, to declare our ignorance, to say "no" to the blandishments of the ego and to value the dignity of life by living in the present.  That is why the writer advises us not to attempt to control the future.  Such is as foolish as trying to catch the wind or like trying to be a master carpenter with none of the skills.  It would seem that our egos lead us often into false expectations and we simply "cut our hands" with the carpenter's tools.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 65

Poem 65

The ancient Masters

didn't try to educate the people,

but kindly taught them to not-know.

When they think that they know the answers,

people are difficult to guide.

When they know that they don't know,

people can find their own way.

If you want to learn how to govern,

avoid being clever or rich.

The simplest pattern is the clearest.

Content with an ordinary life,

you can show all people the way

back to their own true nature.

Commentary: 

This poem contains sentiments that are found in other religious and spiritual traditions. When one writes about spirituality, no matter from one tradition or another or even from a neutral stance, one will find that certain themes repeat themselves.  Our Taoist poet refers to what is called in the early Christian tradition the "docta ignorantia" or a "learned ignorance." St Augustine of Hippo was the first among the early Fathers of the Church to use this phrase which occurred in one of his sermons.  The full sentence in Augustine's wonderful Latin runs: "Est ergo in nobis quaedam, ut dicam, docta ignorantia, sed docta spiritu dei, qui adiuvat infirmitatem nostram."  A translation would run: "There is in us, therefore, a certain learned ignorance, so to speak, but one taught by the Spirit of God, who helps us in our infirmity."  In other words when we talk about the divine we are never in a territory which is systematically mapped out.  The only guidelines in this spiritual province would be divine inspiration or divine revelation for St Augustine.  A similar line of thought in traditional Christian theology is that of the "via negativa" where we mortals can only deduce attributes of the Deity by declaring all that an infinite, all-powerful and all-loving Being cannot be. Another term for this approach in the mystical tradition is Negative Theology or more elaborately Apophatic theology that proceeds by describing God by negation, speaking of the Divine only in terms of what He/She is not (apophasis = repudiation or denial) rather than presuming to describe what God is.  It is in such a way that our Taoist poet writes in the first stanza of the above poem:

The ancient Masters

didn't try to educate the people,

but kindly taught them to not-know.

The way of "not-knowing" also fits in nicely with the Socratic tradition of declaring one's ignorance constantly in  any matter before proceeding to learn about it incrementally by research and learning.  To present oneself as the repository of all knowledge is obviously a very egotistical thing to do and a very weak approach to epistemology or any valid theory of knowledge.  Again this Socratic approach is to the fore in the second stanza:

When they think that they know the answers,

people are difficult to guide.

When they know that they don't know,

people can find their own way.

In a sense as we grow as human beings we have to unlearn many of the prejudicial opinions and beliefs we have acquired during our early life.  This is the experience of most adults as they grow older and wiser.

All religions and spiritual approaches to life advocate the sufficiency of an ordinary plain life, unencumbered by great riches and power.  In  the end we all end up dead, and dying and death as as natural as living and life.  In pondering the former we learn to appreciate the latter better.  In short, we learn to value our very breath as human beings.  This is the sense I get when reading the final stanza:

If you want to learn how to govern,

avoid being clever or rich.

The simplest pattern is the clearest.

Content with an ordinary life,

you can show all people the way

back to their own true nature.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 50

Poem 50

The Master gives himself up

to whatever the moment brings.

He knows that he is going to die,

and he has nothing left to hold on to:

no illusions in his mind,

no resistances in his body.

He doesn't think about his actions;

they flow from the core of his being.

He holds nothing back from life;

therefore he is ready for death,

as a man is ready for sleep

after a good day's work.

Commentary

One of the disputed quotes attributed to one of the mid-twentieth century Prime Ministers of Great Britain, Mr Harold Macmillan, who when asked what was most likely to throw any administration into crisis, is the famous one which goes, "events, dear boy, events!" Whatever about the accuracy or inaccuracy of its attribution, its wisdom is simple and so true.  Things happen either purposely or by chance, crises occur, accidents  take place and so on and so forth, and the wisdom we must learn to our definite cost is that we must weather these incidents with equanimity if we are to survive in this world in any sane sense.  This is the type of wisdom that our Taoist poet is alluding to in this poem above.  Once again, I hasten to point out that what he is recommending is no mere passivity in the face of random or caused occurrences, but rather an attitude of mind, a seemingly imperturbable spirit that will allow us peace of mind and sanity to deal with the human fall-out of those events no matter what the level or depth of their tragedy.

A weak flame tries to pierce the falling dusk: January 2016

Once again, at the heart of all spirituality is the contemplation of death and dying.  It has most rightly been pointed out by our inherited wisdom as a human race - in almost all spiritualities to a greater or lesser extent - that death is not the end of life - in fact, they maintain that it is part of the experience of living and central to life itself.  After all, individuality is but a little part of what life is.  We individuals are but mere specks of life who mostly subscribe to our own mythology of being so much more than we actually are: life is always greater than we small specks of it. However, when those close to us die, we are reminded in no small way what fragile vessels of life we are in actual fact.

In this regard, the Master lives by holding nothing back from life, by retaining nothing within his being that should not be spent on living and thereby adding to the sum total of life in the outer world.  He most naturally goes with the flow of life or the river of being.  As I type these fragile words on this virtual page in computer space, I realise how much more powerfully moving and existentially-loaded is the phrase "river of being" than the reductive, though solidly biological, "river of genes" of Richard Dawkins.  As humans, we are spiritual realities inhering so mysteriously and intricately in our temporary biological bodies. And so, as death and dying are inextricably part of all growth and of all life, the Master lives also by holding nothing back from the inevitability of life, not even his own death.  And so, dear friends, chance readers of these cyphers in virtual space, we could do worse than re-reading and pondering the above poem, which I repeat here for emphasis.  Namaste!

The Master gives himself up

to whatever the moment brings.

He knows that he is going to die,

and he has nothing left to hold on to:

no illusions in his mind,

no resistances in his body.

He doesn't think about his actions;

they flow from the core of his being.

He holds nothing back from life;

therefore he is ready for death,

as a man is ready for sleep

after a good day's work.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 16

16

Empty your mind of all thoughts.

Let your heart be at peace.

Watch the turmoil of beings,

but contemplate their return.

Each separate being in the universe

returns to the common source.

Returning to the source is serenity.

If you don't realise the source,

you stumble in confusion and sorrow.

When you realise where you com from,

you naturally become tolerant,

disinterested, amused,

kindhearted as a grandmother,

dignified as a king.

Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,

you can deal with whatever life brings you,

and when death comes, you are ready.

Reflection

Once again, the writers of the Tao Te Ching return to an old and constant theme, namely the achieving of a state of emptiness.  The writer of the above poet recommends that his hearers and readers empty their mind of thoughts.  The intention is to slow down the racing thoughts, to still the mind and eventually with practice to empty it of the distractions of continuous and interrupting thoughts.  The whole effort of meditation then is to allow the meditator to become an observer of life and of the thoughts that come and go, and in so observing to get beyond them to a state of stillness or emptiness or serenity.  Some modern traditions call the meditator the Witness.  This stillness or emptiness or serenity allows the meditator to be objective and to watch unmoved and not to become taken in by the turmoil of the lives and minds  of those who chase the impulses and ambitions of the ego.

Another word for meditation is contemplation.  In some traditions, like that of the spirituality associated with the Roman Catholic Church, these two words represent different approaches to prayer.  Here, I am using them synonymously and interchangeably.   There are many metaphors used for the path to the state of Enlightenment: striving to reach the Still Point; attempting to experience true emptiness; the return journey to the source or walking the path to serenity.  In our dying and death we will certainly be entering the portals leading to Serenity if we have the courage to embrace it.  We have all originally come from the one and the same source, whatever that may be, whether we call it by the name of God or any other appellation, and indeed we will all return to it at the last breath of our mortal lives. Realising that both our source and destination are the same for every sentient and conscious being, we readily leave aside all confusion and sorrow, become way more tolerant and compassionate to both self and others, objective, amused even, and kindhearted as "a grandmother." 

I have already mentioned many times in these pages the old quotation that Plato attributed to Socrates, namely that all true philosophy begins in wonder.  It is not very unusual then  - given the links between what we may term the perennial or practical wisdom side of philosophy on the one hand and spirituality and religion on the other -  that the Tao Te Ching should declare that once the disciples of meditation have immersed themselves in this basic attitude of wonder that they will be able to much more easily deal with whatever "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" life throws at them.  Moreover, our Taoist poet maintains that "when death comes" these disciples of the Way/Tao will be ready.

By way of conclusion, I once again invite the reader to peruse the above poem and allow a word, phrase or line to present itself as a mantra for a five or ten minute meditation period. 

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 11

Poem 11

We join spokes together in a wheel, 

but it is the centre hole

that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,

but it is the emptiness inside

that holds whatever we want,

We hammer wood for a house,

but it is the inner space

that makes it livable.

We work with being,

but non-being is what we use.

Reflections:

Once again when it comes to the big questions of life, like the" why" of it, we are singularly at a loss, and are indeed left existentially in a chasm of doubt or in an abyss of mystery that can invite different responses according to our culture and our physical/mental make-up.  Some will respond by faith in a religious deity, others by an atheism that denies all possible design by a higher power and still others will declare their inability to be sure about what life is about at all - that position is known as agnosticism.  In between these three major options a myriad of other nuanced positions can be held.  None of us, as we grow older, will be satisfied with asking merely the "how" questions of science and digesting their rather dry bland answers alone.  We somehow desire and demand  a more appetizing and tastier meal of knowledge.  In this regard, we are in the company of the great Nobel Prize winner for Theoretical Physics, Richard Feynman who declared: "I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned!"  This statement appeals to me because it shows the thrust towards knowledge and truth which, I would argue, is at the centre of all good religious inquiry as well as that of the sciences.  I would also believe firmly in the contention of the great nineteenth century theologian and scholar, John Henry Newman, that no truth in any area of human exploration into knowledge can contradict another truth found in another area of such exploration: he declared that no truth can contradict another truth as such was axiomatic by very definition of truth in the first place.

And so we return to the paradoxes and the unity of opposites or of binaries or of polarities. I have spoken of this concept many times in the preceding posts. A partial list of such polarities would be:

• Light vs Dark
• Night vs day
• Clear vs Opaque
• Heavy vs Light
• Good vs Bad/Evil
• Rigid vs Flexible
• Emptiness vs Fullness

The poem above returns us once again to the image of the wheel which is a wonderful symbol for life which continues to persist and perdure in a cyclical sense.  The paradox at the heart of the first stanza of the above poem is worth repeating: "it is the centre hole that makes the wagon move."  This is obviously paradoxical.  I remember once, when attempting to write on the mystery of suffering as an undergraduate in philosophy and theology, coming across the image of a word carved in stone which sought to contend that the word itself exists for us in the emptiness carved from the stone.  I also remember finding an image of the word "evil" carved in stone in some book or other.  What these artists and authors were getting at is the Augustinian theory/theodicy that evil is simply a lack of the good that should be there in the first place: "MALUM EST PRIVATIO BONI."

In the second stanza above, we are presented with the image of the emptiness in the pot having the potential to hold the substance of its contents.  The potential of emptiness for fullness is also paradoxical and essentially mysterious, belonging to the sense of wonder which is the beginning of all philosophy and indeed of all knowledge.

And then we are faced with the final paradox that Being and non-Being are the major balance of opposites that we encounter in human existence.  That tension of polarities suffuses everything we do in life.  Life occurs somewhere somehow as the very energy that shoots between both those poles of Being (Life) and Death (Non-Being).  In a sense, to live is to die and mortality is central to what life essentially means.  I wrote more fully on this particular tension by way of reference to the Second Law of Thermodynamics HERE in this blog so I shan't run the risk of repeating myself ad nauseam. 

Meditating on non-being as well as being is important, and that's the reason why Buddhists place a lot of significance upon the student in search of enlightenment learning to meditate upon his/her dying and death.  Such a meditation is never in any way morose or depressing as it essentially liberates the meditator to more fully live in the "now" and to embrace the presence of his/her existence.

Conclusion: One again I invite the reader of these few words to re-read the above Taoist poem and to let a remembered word or phrase or line act as a mantra for a meditation session of say five or ten minutes.

Journal of a Soul 75

Of Living and Dying

"Live in the Now" - that's the lesson of Meditating on Death

“None of us gets out of life alive” is a quotation that remains in my mind.  I even remember the occasion of my first hearing it way back in the early 1990s.  I was listening to a radio programme by the Irish journalist Colm Keane on the subject of “Death Row” in some penitentiary in one of the southern states of the USA.  Our intrepid journalist interviewed a convicted murderer, who was placed behind a protective glass screen.  I remember that this man showed absolutely no remorse for the murders he had committed and saw life as being just a sort of game which one played; a game where it did not matter if one broke the rules as long as one got away with it.  In fact, the prison guards called him, “the animal.”  I remember the hair standing upright on my neck as I listened to this cold, unfeeling, rational, and obviously very intelligent man, express his thoughts and feelings on the crimes he had committed and on life in general. However, he expressed in eight short words the very heart of the human predicament – our temporality or our transitoriness on this minuscule planet that is a mere dot in the infinity of space. This state of affairs, when it hits home in the thinking and feeling and self-conscious human being, is exactly what we mean by the adjectives “existential” or “existentialist.” In short, our mortality lies at the heart of what essentially existentialism boils down to.

Freud used to say that the real repression in humankind was that of the base sexual desires that were deeply rooted in the dark pit of the unconscious.  However, Jung and others since have pointed out most wisely that the ultimate or real repression is that of death.  In one sense, this repression is a survival mechanism.  After all, the denial of death allows for egocentric humankind to push forward against all opposition – coming from either others or nature – to amass property, wealth and acquisitions of all kinds.  One might say, in quite a convincing sense, that all culture is created in the face of death – a sort of myth of significance and permanency in the teeth of the very impermanence and transitoriness of life itself.

Daffodil, Easter 2014

Here is where a philosophy of life comes in on the one hand and where the spiritual and religious traditions on the other have had some insightful things to say.  Admittedly religions in their more structural, authoritarian, hierarchical and indeed forbidding senses have been all too doctrinaire in their tenets and often murdered many who opposed them throughout the course of history.  However, here I am referring to a more devotional and spiritual model or aspect of such religions.  It is arguable that when religions lose vital contact with what the philosopher Eric Voegelin, called their “engendering experience” (or spiritual source or originating vision) they become monolithic, heartless and forbidding structures capable of dehumanising others.

The novelist, literary critic and professor of philosophy Umberto Eco opined that we read literature to learn how to die.  That notion is perhaps a bit one-sided.  I prefer to say that we read literature in order to learn how to live and die.  Living and dying are, in fact, the two sides of the one coin and are somehow paradoxically inextricably linked.  To be a living being is to be a dying being.  Essentially, death and dying are consequences of The Second Law of Thermodynamics or of the results of what’s called entropy.  A thorough understanding of this concept is beyond me as I have little background in Physics, but I can grasp some of its intentions and implications.  To my mind, Walter E. Requadt explains entropy very well for the ordinary person in the street in his wonderfully thought-provoking and stimulating blog called “The Happy Iconoclast” by invoking “Murphy’s Law”:

Unless we constantly insert new energy into a house by maintaining it, painting it, repairing it, the structure will eventually but inevitably be levelled to the ground. Its molecules will move from a lower level of randomization, from structure, to a higher level of randomization, towards unstructured debris.

Entropy is the reason why paint peels, why hot coffee turns cold. Furthermore, entropy is the reason why investments have a pre-ordained inclination to go sour -- unless we enhance success by inserting into the investment system additional energy in the form of strategy, work, calculated risk or other forms of energy. Entropy ensures that sugar, which becomes more randomized when it is dissolved in water, will not reconstitute itself in the crystalline form -- unless we apply heat energy from outside the system and evaporate the water.

Wherever we look, whatever we do, we must be acutely aware of the immutable laws of thermodynamics, especially the easily overlooked Second Law: Entropy. This fundamental law of physics ranks with other fundamental manifestations of the universe such as gravity, time and electromagnetism.

Anything that can go wrong not only will go wrong, it must go wrong, as decreed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. (See here: The Happy Iconoclast)

To say that we humans die is to say that we like the entire flora and fauna of the earth are subject to the inevitability of the various laws of the universe, and most essentially to the law of entropy.

Along similar lines, Stephen Hawking told his biographers (Stephen Hawking: A Life in Science by John Gribbin and Michael White, 1992), who had once been Ph.D. students under his direction, that he had never succumbed to anger at life when he was stricken down with motor-neurone disease because essentially life was just chance anyway, and that it all boiled down to the randomness of nature – that is, to the chances involved or the probability of one’s parents meeting and then in the combinations of genes allocated by nature to your particular embryo.  These were, to say the least, random.

Professor Stephen Hawking

While Hawking likes to style himself an atheist, this stance is quite akin to that of a Buddhist spirituality (which some say is not religious anyway) that states that all suffering is caused by our attachment to things animate and inanimate.  All meditation practices and wisdom learnt therefrom and from study, and indeed from life in general, all help us to break free from such suffering by learning detachment. In other words, this is the implication of what is known as the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism that can be stated in simple terms as:

1.  Suffering exists: dukkha. (Life is unfair essentially, with much chance involved – Hawking’s position)

2.  Suffering arises from attachment to desires. (Wishing that things were different – that I shouldn’t get Motor Neurone disease and so on). It is called either samudaya or tanha in the various traditions and is the vain desire to have and control things. 

3.  Suffering ceases when attachment to desire ceases. (When I cease to be attached to unfulfillable desires or even fulfilled ones). The end to suffering is called nirodha. It is achieving Nirvana, which is the final liberation from suffering. The mind experiences complete freedom, liberation and non-attachment. It lets go of any desire or craving. It is an attaining of dispassion.

4.  Freedom from suffering is possible by practicing the Eightfold Path

It is important to note that in the Eastern religions, to meditate on dying and death is no mere negative action.  Nor is it a particularly morose one.  Only at first sight does it appear to be such.  Once one has meditated on either dying or death one comes from one’s sitting with a renewed commitment to living life more fully, and more especially living it more fully in the now.  To realise that truly life is fleeting and that we all end up either “six feet under” or being cremated is to deeply realise that the only answer is to live life more fully, more intensely by being aware of the sheer importance of living fully in the now.  After all, now is all we have.  In a sense, neither the past nor the future exists because the first has ceased to be and the second has not yet come.  In a deeper sense, all that exists is the present moment or the now.  In fact, conscious life is just that – an awareness of the abiding present or the passing now. (Or, as I look at these previous words anew, why not write "the abiding presence of the passing now"?

Picture of a Poppy I took April 2014

 Meditating on dying and death should never bring us down into the pits of despair because its real message is to deeply value and live in the enduring present.  Obviously, I don’t mean by this combination of words that everything stays the same or that nothing changes.  What I mean is that we only can really live in the now of time as it moves – that’s what I mean by the enduring present.

We read in the Tao Te Ching:

If you realise that all things change,

There is nothing you will try to hold on to.

If you aren’t afraid of dying,

There is nothing you can’t achieve.

Trying to control the future

Is like trying to take the master carpenter’s place.

When you handle the master carpenter’s tools,

Chances are that you’ll cut your hand.

(Tao Te Ching, verse 74, Lao Tzu, translated by Stephen Mitchell)

In summary, then, we have two choices and the choice recommended by all spiritualities worth their salt is to choose life not death everyday of our lives by practicing living in the now.

Journal of a Soul 67

The Passage of Time

Interesting evergreen tree at Newbridge House, Donabate, Co. Dublin

The passage of time seems to be quicker the more one ages.  Indeed, as a friend of mine who is a mathematician stated: "This is quite logical because  to a 56 year old person like myself on the cusp of his 57th birthday another year is in comparative terms a mere one 56th or a one 57th of your life depending on how you calculate it.  One way or another ageing is inevitable.  Recently, I was quite intrigued when a past pupil who was about 19 declared that he would like to live forever.  Another young man in our company replied that such "would never happen and that his wishful thinking was in every sense delusional." St Augustine once defined time as "the measure of change." The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus averred that "one can never step into the same river twice," and further that everything was in "a state of flux." I was amused, as I say, by the wishful, if delusional, thinking of my young friend.  I thought to myself how great it was to be so innocent and full of enthusiasm for life. This was also quite ironic as we were in a local hostelry imbibing some alcoholic beverages in the wake of a commemorative service for one of his friends who had ended his life by suicide. Obviously this latter person had found living life totally unbearable.

The Importance of Philosophy

Philosophy is more an activity and a process than a learned body of reflections on life. While it may be the latter as is witnessed by all the countless books written on the subject, it is so much more.  It is the activity of questioning to the nth degree everything around us, the nature of the universe; what knowledge may be, if there is any such thing as Truth in an objective sense or is it always relative; what love, faith, hope and charity may be, indeed what emotions may mean; what the purpose and meaning of the life we humans experience is and so on and so forth.  There is also a philosophy of every subject under the sun.  We can surely ask what the nature of numbers is and what we are at when we do mathematics.  Are the tenets of mathematics universal and true everywhere in the universe.  We believe so and can adduce reasons to substantiate our contentions.  We can study the history of science and also its philosophy. What is the difference between practical knowledge and scientific knowledge? Is all scientific knowledge empirical?  In many cases, yes, but both at the subatomic and astronomical level, no - we need to use very abstract and much speculative thought there, but such thought is no less rigorous than the process of arriving at conclusions from empirical evidence. There are so many questions we humans can ask and none may be as important as the moral one as to what are right and wrong actions.  What is morality and why need we act in such and such way and so on. My young friend obviously had never encountered philosophy, that is, the radical questioning of one's own thoughts and opinions.  What would it mean to live forever?  Follow the thought experiment through, young man. Would you keep ageing and ageing and yet never die? Even simple tools eventually wear out? Humans are made of material stuff which breaks down.  Does not the simple physical law of entropy imply that everything eventually burns itself out? If we never died what would birth mean at all? There obviously would be no point in birth if there were no death! How would we deal with the population explosion? These are all philosophical questions, which at first glance may seem somewhat silly, but on reflection clarify superficial thought and silly shoddy thinking.  Essentially to live implies within its ambit the process of dying itself.  In fact, to live is to die.  Think of any simple plant or flower you might have at home or in the garden.  It grows, blooms and eventually dies.  I remember meeting a most interesting man who owned a pet shop.  One could see his total commitment to and love of animals of all varieties.  He opined that it was important for youngsters to keep pets, to nourish and see them grow and eventually die.  Keeping pets, he felt, taught children to accept that death and dying are parts of life.  As an animal, albeit human, I consume food, burn it and transform it into energy to keep my body going.  It is obvious that my body will wear out, break down and die - such is only natural.

Reflections on Death and Dying 

Having been brought up in a rural setting one could say that I am somewhat at home with the cycle of the seasons, with the sowing of seeds, the growth of plants, their cultivation and harvesting and so on in a never-ending cycle.  Within that scenario, death and dying are seen as a natural process. The peasant folk had and obviously still have their traditions like the waking of the dead - the celebration of the life of the departed one about the open coffin that is positioned centrally in the house of the departed.  Within this context not alone is grief made bearable but the sting is taken out of death at least for a short while.  These ancient rituals grew up within various communities as they attempted to help the grieving party cope with their sorrow and to make some social or communal sense of the experience of death.

And yet, existentially we all face our own extinction in a very private way - we each of us have to make some personal sense of our mortality, that is, if we are at least half thinking or even semi-reflective persons, as quite simply, no matter how many or how few are our family or friends, we die alone.  It is, alas, a journey only we ourselves can embark upon as we pass through the portals of death alone. Perhaps the greatest myth in our modern culture is the growth of sheer individualism with all that it entails. Modern individuals have built up around themselves their own private worlds of prestige, social achievement and material possessions - private worlds that give them a sense of identity - and all of that far too superficial or lacking in any depth.  Very soon we tire of superficiality, of building up  these rather tawdry worlds of vast egotistical proportions - rather like that portrayed in the novel, The Great Gatsby and most effectively indeed in the film of the same name.  All of these fantasies of individual power and prestige cannot keep the gnawing tooth of mortality at bay. Nor can any of these superficial attempts to build identity on the shifting sands of materialism keep the lonely soul protected from anxiety, angst and a host of concomitant emotional and psychosomatic complaints.

Some Personal Memories

The first death I can remember was that of my Grandmother Mary Phoebe Brophy in 1968 when I was ten years of age.  My young mind soaked in the experience as my mam and dad, as well all my uncles and aunts (all 11 of them) were very upset.  Perhaps the most consoling moment of the whole experience was being requested to kneel down and say a prayer at my grandmother's bedside and to touch her beaded hands.  I can still conjure up the vision of my grandmother's body in that bed all those years ago.  However, all in all, it was a positive experience, one that we were unconsciously taught to accept as a part of life, the final  mile stone along the journey of life if you like.  Then the second death I remember was that of my Uncle Paddy Quinlan at 58 of a rare cancer in 1970 - I remember so well the packed church and all the people who came to say goodbye on the day of his funeral.  I can still hear and feel the crunch of gravel under my shoes as I walked up to the graveside.  As I stood beside my father as they lowered the coffin, I saw a little white one and my father said gently, "that's your little angel brother Thomas who died many years ago." Since then, of course, there have been many other deaths, not the least of which were the deaths of my father and mother - experiences which I have recounted here and elsewhere in the blogosphere. Those particular deaths were wrenches to my being that I find quite difficult to describe.  One knows that when one has experienced their leaving of this world that your generation is next.

Existentialism

Sundown, Phoenix Park, October 2014

The theme of anxiety was at the very heart of existentialism from its very origins. This is a sense of anguish which can be defined as a sense of dread at the nothingness of human existence. This theme goes back as far as Kierkegaard in modern existentialism though it stretched way back further into ancient philosophy, too. In fact, anxiety as a theme pervades this philosopher’s work. Kierkegaard lived his relatively short life (1813-1855) in Denmark. The meaninglessness of his existence filled him with anxiety and despair and a sense of hopelessness and deep depression. At base his anxiety was a deep despair at the very nothingness of human existence. In the great universal scheme of things we are mere minuscule ants on a minuscule anthill called earth, lost in the infinity of space. How do we cope with the fact that we as thinking and feeling subjects will come to nothing in the end? Let’s hear Kierkegaard’s words: “I stick my finger into existence – it smells of nothing. Where am I? What is this thing called the world? Who is it that has lured me into the thing, and now leaves me here? Who am I? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted?”(Lavine, T.Z. (1984) From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest New York: Bantam Books)

Making Meaning

We are meaning-making creatures.  We are forever forming and moulding meaning from the very stuff of life.  If we do not do so we are an empty, hollow people whom T.S. Eliot describes so vividly in his poem The Hollow Men:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken grass
In our dry cellar.

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion ...

These people who are hollow are the superficial people we described in one of our opening paragraphs.  They are the ones who have built their identities on the shifting sands of their own private worlds of prestige, social achievement and material possessions - private worlds that give them a false sense of identity - and all of that, as I have said, far too superficial or lacking in any depth. Something in us is repulsed by lack of meaning and superficiality.  It's almost as if there is something in us - some divine spark - that wishes to ignite and set the fire of enthusiasm and joy alive in our our hearts.  We feel, indeed intuit or know at a deep level, that there is something somewhere drawing us on towards meaning, some amazing, if imaginary lodestone, drawing us ever onwards.  This spiritual spark in me demands that I call it God.  Perhaps, that is overstating my case.  And yet, those are the words that came out as I wrote these lines.  There is a fullness of life to be experienced if only we have the courage to reach out and embrace it.

And as a meaning-making species we have conjured religions up from our collective unconscious to guide us and lead us ever onward on our human journey to meaning and personal truth.  We have embraced spiritualities of various types to give us the courage and the sustenance to support us on our journey.  Whether such religions and spiritualities are actually the result of our own imagination matters not a whit.  Perhaps it comes from an outside power, namely God, and of this I am quite convinced some of the time, especially at moments when I experience all too transiently beauty, truth, love, wonder and mystery.  But yet, in another sense that matters not a whit either.  What matters is that we have a meaning, a reason to live and a reason to die.  In our faith, in our imagination or in our soul, our very meaning lives on, and that is what makes all the difference, a difference that no proselytizing atheist can ever take from us.  And death and dying in this scenario are surely as natural as birth and growth.  Yes, indeed. Amen to that!!

Journal of a Soul 54

Keeping it Real

Ardgillan Park, April, 2014

"Keep it real," is a colloquial phrase that has become very popular in more recent times. The online Urban Dictionary explains it as "being true to oneself and representing oneself in an authentic manner," see here.  Strangely, this explanation all sounds very philosophical, if not existential in its import.  I like to define it as not allowing ourselves the comfort or luxury of escaping into either a dream world or a world of make-believe or quite simply into a world of pure denial.  After all, we all like to take the easy way out, but if we do so continually we become very unreal people, or in the words (actually one word) of the hero or antihero even of Catcher in the Rye, we become "phony."*  That's why I like teaching adolescents, especially Special Needs kids, as they surely do keep me in the real world.

Getting Lost in Abstractions 

Ardgillan Park, April, 2014

I have always found taking flight into abstractions to be one of my weaknesses, in the same league indeed as my love for chocolate.  In my last post I indulged in this a little.  Being of a philosophical and literary frame of mind my imagination can often take flight... and indeed, it is so easy to do so.  After all, which of us does not like indulging himself or herself in either chocolate or philosophy.  However, that's where the import of my opening paragraph comes in. Philosophy, Theology, Mathematics, or whatever subject you wish to mention here becomes quite irrelevant to the man and woman in the street unless it is seasoned well with the spices of reality.  All subjects have to be applied to the very living of life.  Now I am not decrying or vilifying Pure Philosophy, Pure Theology or Pure Maths or any of the pure sciences, I am merely saying that while they all impact upon their applied variety, for the man and woman in the street they are almost wholly irrelevant. (No wonder, all subjects have their applied branch!)

And yet, dear reader, there is a sort of symbiotic relationship between the pure and the applied in all the sciences, both human and natural/physical.  However, life has a way of keeping us all real, and there are no better ways at its disposal than illness, dying and death.  When any or all of these three events hit us we are taught in no uncertain terms "to keep it real!" Let me indulge in a little poetic allusion here by quoting one of my all time favourite poets, T.S. Eliot:

Unreal City,	60
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.	65
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. (See here)

That's one thing you will find in all T.S. Eliot's poems, namely the reality of death.  For the modernists contemporary culture was moribund, lacking in depth and in meaning.  People were almost the "living dead," existing on a superficial level, especially in the cities where it is so hard to put down roots in the unfeeling and lifeless concrete.  Reading such poems always kept life real for me. 

Again reading autobiographies and biographies has always been another passionate hobby of mine, especially those that sought as far as possible to tell the truth in all its naked honesty.  Two recent memoirs come to mind here, that of Nuala O'Faolain and that of Michael Harding, the latter of which I reviewed here.  

In a now famous and moving interview that the writer Nuala O'Faolain did with one of our leading radio presenters Marion Finucane (12 April, 2008) on her then recent diagnosis of cancer in late 2012 she said:

Even if I gained time through the chemotherapy it isn't time I want.  Because as soon as I knew I was going to die soon, the goodness went out of life.... 

For example, I lived somewhere beautiful, but it means nothing to me anymore -- the beauty. For example, twice in my life I have read the whole of Proust. I know it sounds pretentious, but it's not a bit. It's like a huge soap opera. But I tried again the week before last and it was gone, all the magic was gone from it.... 

You see, the cancer is a very ingenious enemy and when you ask somebody how will I actually die? How do you actually die of cancer ?... I don't get an answer because it could be anything. It can move from one organ to the other, it can do this, that or the other. It's already in my liver, for example. So I don't know how it's going to be. And that overshadows everything. And I don't want six months or a year. It's not worth it....  

I actually don't know how we all get away with our unthinkingness. Often, last thing at night I walk the dog down the lane and you look up at the sky illuminated by the moon and behind the moon the Milky Way and, you know, you are nothing on the edge of one planet compared to this universe unimaginably vast up there and unimaginably mysterious.  And I have done that for years, looked up at it and given it a wink and thought 'I don't know what's going on' and I still don't know what's going on, but I can't be consoled by mention of God. I can't.... 

I think look how comfortably I am dying, I have friends and family, I am in this wonderful country, I have money, there is nothing much wrong with me except dying... (See here.  In fact, this whole transcript is worth reading, as is listening to the podcast itself which is even more moving, see here. )

Now, if after reading the above, or perhaps having either read or listened to the interview with Nuala O'Faolain either in part or in full, you are not brought into the real world, then you are totally unfeeling and lacking in even a little empathy.  

The Spire, Dublin's O'Connell St., April, 2014

"Keeping it real" means always living with an awareness of our mortality in the background, even if it is only somewhere in the background.  In other words, I am in no way advocating an obsession with death or dying or even that we become somewhat morbid or pessimistic in our outlook on life.  Most religions see death as not the end of life, but rather as a gateway to another more spiritual realm.  Our above quoted author and journalist, Nuala O'Faolain was an unbeliever, and indeed all humans, believers and unbelievers alike, have a spirituality, a system of beliefs that give their lives meaning.  So, I am in no way decrying any one spirituality or any one belief system at the expense of another.  My thoughts here are about "keeping it real," maintaining a perspective on our mortality that sees illness, dying and death as an inextricable part of the very fabric of life and not an end of that life.  After all, we are creatures of nature ourselves and nature proceeds in a cyclical sense, to such an extent that life goes on despite us.  In a sense our individuality is just one little inconseqential and insignificant dot in an ever expanding universe.  Again such considerations lead me to marvel at the very wonder of existence, at its sheer plenitude and beauty, and at the very wonder of my own mind's drive and passion for knowledge and wisdom, that is a veritable infinite desire to know.  This sheer wonder at the mystery of living endows me with a deep spirituality which makes me fall down in humility before the wonders of the universe.  One of my favourite poets and philosophers, more properly I suppose a philosopher poet, one Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the quintessential philosopher of The English Romantic Movement, once paid a wonderful homage to his father by saying that ever since as a young boy his father had brought him walking out in the countryside to view the night sky his mind had "become habituated to the vast." In Coleridge's sense, he had become a believer in God the Creator of such a vast universe.   And yet Nuala O'Faolain could look at the same vista and remain an unbeliever.  It all depends on one's perspective and one's own feelings in a way. I am inclined to belong to the Coleridgean crew myself! One way or another, whether you are a believer or unbeliever, you have a native or innate spirituality which seeks to make meaning and sense of your own lived experience, of making your own life worthwhile.  

Conclusion

These soul outpourings were inspired by the death of the mother of a friend of mine.  I drove up to the funeral home in Drogheda, some 35 km. away, through the hubbub of speeding traffic and weaving motorways, travelling towards the stillness of death.  There is a lovely tradition in Ireland, which I very much like, and that is reflectively touching the joined hands of the departed.  I noticed several people doing it before me.  That sense of touch brought me back to all the other many times that I touched the hands of the dearly departed: my late grandmother Mary Phoebe Brophy (when I was only 10), those of my father (1993), my mother (2013) and some relatives, friends and even departed pupils over the years.  That feeling is like touching the stone or marble on the altars of my youth.

I would like now to conclude with some quotations on death and dying that are hopeful and inspiring rather than morose or dispiriting:

• The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. ~ Mark Twain

• Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live. ~ Henry Van Dyke

• While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

• Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever.  ~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Footnotes:

* The hero or antihero's name is Holden Caulfield and the novel is, of course, written by  J.D. Salinger as long ago as 1951.  However, that book remains all too contemporary in the very universality of its sentiments and indeed in its attempt to make meaning of our little lives.  Here is just one quotation from Holden on the phoniness of life. “I was surrounded by phonies...They were coming in the goddam window.”