Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 61

Poem 61

When a country obtains great power,

it becomes like the sea:

all streams run downward into it.

The more powerful it grows,

the greater the need for humility.

Humility means trusting the Tao,

thus never needing to be defensive.

A great nation is like a great man:

When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.

Having realized it, he admits it.

Having admitted it, he corrects it.

He considers those who point out his faults

as his most benevolent teachers.

He thinks of his enemy

as the shadow that he himself casts.

If a nation is centered in the Tao,

if it nourishes its own people

and doesn't meddle in the affairs of others,

it will be a light to all nations in the world.

Commentary

As a frequent traveller I am well used to having my identity checked at passport control or immigration counters as one enters various countries.  In these days of growing terrorist problems worldwide, our identity, and proof of it, was never more important.  Also, if we are users of the Internet, as most of us are now, we also realise that identity theft is a singularly common crime, so must must protect ourselves against that as much as we possibly can.

The beautiful Synogogue in Prague, February, 2016

It seems to me as a Special Needs Teacher and a part-time psychotherapist ans counsellor in a secondary school that one of the most sacred things that I do is to help any individual pupil come to acceptance of his identity (I hasten to add that I teach in an all-boys school, hence my use of male possessive adjective here), to come to realise that the fostering and development of one's own self is the most precious task each of us is charged with as a person. Therefore, coming to an awareness of our real identity is very important for every one of us.

In Ireland, we are celebrating the centenary of the beginnings of our young nation in the Easter Rising/Insurrection of 1916.  There have been many books, journals, magazines and commemorative pamphlets, running into hundreds at this stage, dedicated to this centenary celebrati0n - indeed, our own school has produced two such pamphlets.  To state this in other terms, one could truthfully say that our young nation is engaged in the task of coming to terms with its own identity.  Who are we as a young Irish nation? Where stands the vision of those men who first proclaimed the Irish Republic?  Has their vision of true equality for all "the children of the nation" been actually achieved?  We are, then, at present dealing with this and other questions in our commemorative ceremonies, in the many learned commentaries given, in the books written, in all the various media outlets - written, broadcast and digital - and such activity has been a rewarding exercise for us as a nation as individuals.

Artist at work, Firenze, summer 2002

Our Taoist poem speaks about power and about powerful nations.  Ireland is most certainly not a powerful nation, and yet she has power over her own people, can represent them internationally at the EU and at UN fora.  Power in the hands of evil men can lead to much destruction both of people, animals, the goods of the earth and the work of human hands as we have witnessed in the twentieth century.  Matthew White reports in his Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century, 2010 that the number of deaths by war and oppression during that period amounted to some 203 million human beings.  One wonders as to what the destruction of animals (mainly horses) and property amounted to - a figure I should prefer not to know as I'm sure it would be mind-bogglingly huge.  As the English Catholic politician and historian Lord Acton famously observed: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."  The statistics quoted confirm that statement.  Power corrupts individuals because of their selfish and worldly-driven and ambitious egos, and it is no wonder then how much more  power actually corrupts whole nations.  The second part of his famous quotation most definitely can be related to such men as Hitler and Stalin and the many hundreds of other despots the world has known since the beginnings of civilization.

Lord Acton, 1834 - 1902

Power, our Taoist poet recommends must always be accompanied by the virtue of humility if it is not to fulfill Lord Acton's famous statement about power quoted in the previous paragraph. Humilty has always been widely viewed as a central virtue in many religions and spiritualities deriving therefrom, and indeed in many philosophic traditions.  It has also often been counterpointed or contrasted with such vices as narcissism, "hubris" and other forms of pride. Humility, needless to say, is related to the adjective "humilis" that can be translated as humble and it is a virtue that became very much abused in Roman Catholic circles over the years where novices in religious orders, and women in particular were called upon to be self-abnegating to such an extent that they might have had a far too low opinion of themselves, perhaps even a low level of self-esteem and consequently very little apreciation for their real selves. However, the Latin word "humilitas" also has a link with the word "humus" which means "earth" or "clay." Hence humility, which obviously entails a certain level of ability to put the ego in its rightful place, also encompasses a sense of being "grounded" and "earthed."  It is this sense of the word that I feel the Taoist poet has in mind in the above quoted lines.

Being grounded and earthed means being able to admit that one does not have all the answers; that the ego has to take its place along with the heart, empathy and compassion as just one motivating factor in our lives; that there is no one right way to live life or any one simple answer to complex problems and that truth is rarely pure and never simple (Oscar Wilde); that everyone makes mistakes and that the admission of them is truly ennobling of the humble person who is always willing to learn.

Individuals as well as nations, then, are called upon by our Taoist poet to be humble, to be earthed, to be grounded, that is to be centered in the Tao.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 56

Poem 56

Those who know don't talk.
Those who talk don't know.

Close your mouth,

block off your senses,

blunt your sharpness,

untie your knots,

soften your glare,

settle your dust.

This is the primal identity.

Be like the Tao.

It can't be approached or withdrawn from,

benefited or harmed,

honored or brought into disgrace.

It gives itself up continually.

That is why it endures.

Commentary

Picture of myself some years back

The line that jumps out at this commentator as he reflectively reads the above poem is the one which runs: "This is the primal identity."  What a wonderfully loaded line.  Using the literal meaning of the word "primal" we could substitute into one meaning of the word the following synonyms for it in this statement, namely "original," "first," "initial" or "early."  A second meaning given for "primal" renders the following synonyms: "basic," "fundamental," "essential," "vital" and "central." Therefore, other meaningful ways of stating our Taoist assertion would be: "This is the real identity," or "This is the true identity" or "This is the essence of identity" or "This is the vital identity."  From the moment of first consciousness we are meaning seekers and meaning makers, and certainly the older we get the more strongly we pursue our rather elusive identity.  It would seem that for us moderns that the search for meaning and the search indeed for ultimate meaning is what often keeps us going in life. The question of personal identity looms large for all of us.  "Who am I?" is a question to which we all seek an answer and one to which we do give an answer insofar as we manage to live any kind of meaningful lives. 

My shadow on Donabate Beach

In the philosophy and practice of psychotherapy, and indeed in that of psychiatry, the question of personal identity is essentially very central.  Listening to the client is an empathetic and affirming way is one sure way of helping him or her to greater self-awareness and greater self-acceptance.  And yet, it is surely a huge question as to what the nature of personal identity is in the first place.  One of the founders of humanistic school of psychotherapy, namely Carl Ransom Rogers stated that the goal of all therapy was the actualization of the Real Self, and this is a very good modern equivalent of what our Taoist poet is getting at in the above poem when he mentions "primal identity."  The task of all meditation practices, and indeed what more secular psychologists and psychotherapists refer to as the practice of mindfulness is in a strong sense one and the same.  They both seek to establish a strong sense of the Real Self or of a real sense of living in the Now of existence. Therefore, the turn to the East - and by this I mean both the actual journeys made by many psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, creative writers and musicians and many religious scholars to India and Tibet, as well as the written accounts of their experiences and newly gained knowledge and so on - in the middle of the twentieth century should not surprise us at all.  So many Westerners of note began living in ashrams and studying and meditating under various gurus and masters.  From this there emerged a wonderful blossoming of esoteric scholarship that flowed into the New Age Movement that in turn spawned an almost universal interest in Self-Development, Pop Psychology and Self-Help.  Therefore, mindfulness is merely a secularized account of the meditation practices used in the various religious denominations of Hinduism and Buddhism.

The author as a young lad aged 7.  Is this actually the me I am now?

The second phrase that jumps off the page at this commentator is "settle your dust."  How many times have we heard the old wise saying that we must let the dust settle on this, that or the other problem?  We have other similar phrases like: "Let's let sleeping dogs lie for a while" or "Let's sleep on this problem for a while" or "Don't make important decisions when you are upset in any way!" or "Choose your battles carefully!"  These phrases or sayings are all getting at the same wise advice, namely not to be reactor to this or that situation.  The easiest thing for anyone to do is to "shoot from the hip" as another phrase puts it.  Still another saying offers this piece of wisdom: "Act in haste, repent at leisure!" Meditation is all about slowing down and taking our time, of getting centered in the "Now" of being, of achieving a point of equanimity we may call the Still Point of life, of stilling the body, of becoming aware of what it's really like to inhabit or to live in this body, or even more correctly still, what it's like to be this body here in the now of existence.  I have always loved the statement, also a very wise one, that our minds tend to either live in the past (regrets and remorse and sad memories and so on) or in the future (expectations, ambitions, anxieties and/or fears and so on) while our bodies most definitely live in the present.  That, indeed, is why all meditation or mindfulness practices begin with stilling the body, of becoming aware of the body at first, then becoming aware of our feelings and just letting them go, then becoming aware of our thoughts and letting them so and so on and on, and deeper and deeper into the stillness of the "Real Self" or what our Taoist poet calls the "Primal Self."

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 46

Poem 46

When a country is in harmony with the Tao,
the factories make trucks and tractors.
When a country goes counter to the Tao,
warheads are stockpiled outside the cities.

There is no greater illusion than fear,
no greater wrong than preparing to defend yourself,
no greater misfortune than having an enemy.
Whoever can see through all fear will always be safe.

Commentary

Stained glass window, St Vitus Cathedral, Prague, 2016

Our translator Stephen Mitchell is using his translator's licence in his above rendition of poem 46. To illustrate how one translator's version differs from another's, I give here immediately that of Derek Lin which is available at the link given after it.  It runs thus:

When the world has the Tao

Fast horses are retired to till the soil

When the world lacks the Tao

Warhorses give birth on the battlefield.

There is no crime greater than greed

No disaster greater than discontentment

No fault greater than avarice

Thus the satisfaction of contentment

is the lasting satisfaction

(Tao Te Ching Version 2)

Mitchell speaks of the stockpiling of nuclear weapons and Lin that of horses being prepared for battle.  He also chooses to use contemporary or modern images of prosperity and war, that is, tractors and nuclear warheads while his fellow translator chooses the more historic images of agricultural workhorses and warhorses to put across the same message, namely that harmony with the Tao leads both to individual, social, national and international peace and harmony.

Ancient means of war: Prague Castle, February 2016

Evil stalks our world when we as individuals are not "at home " or are not comfortable with ourselves as persons; when we are always envious of others, and when our hearts are shackled, if not shattered, by negative feelings.  If, as individuals, we find it hard to live with ourselves, how can we ever find it easy to live in some peaceful acceptance with others?Whatever happens in our hearts at this micro or personal and social level must surely be magnified if a whole people or nation are not "at home" or comfortable with their identity as a people.  It is no wonder, then, that when crises arise, these opposing nations can see no peaceful solution to their conflicted sense of their own identity and that of the hated other and take recourse to war.  

Therefore, if more and more people are in harmony with themselves they will live in consequent harmony with others.  This micro, personal and social situation will then be replicated further at national and international level.  Hence, the more people practise mindfulness, meditation and prayer as individuals and as small groups there will be a knock-on effect on the world.  When people are "in harmony with the Tao" prosperity comes about.  One could say that peace and prosperity "break out," instead of its direct opposite, namely the inevitability of fighting and war.  Material prosperity follows inevitably on the heels of spiritual prosperity, if one may express the idea thus.

Hitler, and indeed all other dictators whether of the right or left, knew all too well how to manipulate people by playing to their baser instincts like fears, anxieties, memories of old rivalries; by re-opening old wounds; by inspiring the negative feelings of greed and avarice, discontentment, jealousy and envy and thereby fomenting racism, hatred, murder, mayhem and war.

However, to see through all fear is a very difficult thing to do.  The Tao Te Ching is suggesting a path for us to follow, a way of practising reflection and mindfulness, a way of meditating on life, a way of positive action in the world that springs naturally from such practice.  Once, when the great Irish poet, W.B. Yeats was asked how a person becomes a good writer, he replied that he or she must practise continually their craft.  If we are to become mindful people we must also follow the advice given by Yeats, namely to practise the craft of meditating as often and as regularly as possible.  Nothing less is required.

Namaste, friends.

Journal of a Soul 72

Looking Within

Portrane, Co. Dublin, February, 2015

Do you ever just sit and think? Do you ever take time out to see where life is going for you? Or is your life so busy that you rush from one activity to the next? If you are reading this, chances are that you have a few free moments at your disposal. This is a short invitation to look inwards, to answer the call to step within yourself.

At the start of most journeys we are full of expectations and sometimes anxieties. We don't know what surprises are in store for us further down the line. The journey inwards is no different. In fact it is probably the most frightening of all journeys - we are afraid of what we may find or uncover in our real selves. We may find a lot which we don't like, and which we may not want to change. Certainly we will find the negative, but if we journey long and deep enough we will unearth the positive too.

Life today happens at such a fast pace. We constantly rush to keep appointments and run to catch the bus or train. With a little reflection it becomes apparent that not alone are we rushing to somewhere or other, but we are also running from somewhere or other. With a little more reflection we realise that we are running away from ourselves a lot of the time.

When you are alone in your home what do you do with the silence? Do you fill it with every possible distraction? Do you hurry to turn on the television, radio or stereo? Must you always find something, no matter how trivial, to keep yourself occupied? What about positively deciding not to do any of these things? For once why not do nothing? Yes, that's what I've said, simply try doing nothing. We are all afraid to look into silence, perhaps because we really hate feeling lonely, feeling alone, being just an island cut off from the mainland of life.

Reflections on a Rock: Portrane, Co. Dublin, February, 2015

Next time you are alone why not try challenging silence or even embracing it. As the legendary Snoopy of cartoon fame says, "Sometimes I sits and thinks. Sometimes I just sits." There is a lot of wisdom in that. Try just sitting in silence with your eyes closed. Get yourself into a relaxed position with your back straight - a kitchen chair is ideal. Too soft or comfortable a chair and it's bedtime! A simple exercise like tracing all the sounds both inside and outside the house, letting them come and go into your consciousness, is a simple way to begin. Just relax and let all of the strain drain from your body, down your arms and legs and out. This is not just simply an exercise in relaxation. Yes it is that, but it is much more. It is an exercise in awareness, becoming aware of yourself most essentially. The more you become aware of yourself the more you will know yourself. Of course, this is a long journey, and it will not just happen all at once. As soon as you have begun to become present to yourself you are ready to start out on the most important journey you can take - the journey into self and to self -awareness.

Journal of a Soul 56

Body and Soul

A walk in Marley Park, Dublin, April 2014

"Body" and "Soul" are categories with which we are all too familiar.  Certainly, within the Roman Catholic dispensation. Building on Greek philosophy (most especially the work of Plato and Aristotle), the early Christians and the somewhat later Church Fathers promulgated a strong philosophy and theology, or if you like a philosophical theology*, that differentiated very strongly between the two categories. The soul, which is by nature good, inhabits the body, which according to St Paul, whom some scholars see as being as much the founder of the church as Jesus himself, is "the Temple of the Holy Spirit."  Building on the theology of St Paul, St. Augustine would adjudge the body as being simply the root of all evil.  And so over centuries there emerged a philosophy and theology that demonized the body and sanctified the soul.  

This rather radical disjunction of body and soul was accepted right down through the ages and is still central to both orthodox and unorthodox Christian belief, indeed to mainline theist belief.  The body dies and the soul lives on in another spiritual world, another realm. Now, needless to say, I am not arguing strongly on one side or another here.  I am merely stating the facts as they are, facts which hopefully I will build my reflections on somewhat later in this post, and perhaps in further posts.  My preferred method of reflection in things spiritual is always phenomenological, never reductionist or positivist, as anyone who has been a reader of my posts will know.  It's just that I like to get the basic facts straight first before proceeding. 

When René Descartes came along in the early seventeenth century, his "cogito ergo sum," a philosophical position worked out painstakingly through the crucible of intellectual doubt, argued that the mind (the mental) was radically different to the material (the body) and that they somehow interacted through the strange workings of the Pineal gland.**  Now, needless to say, this is a philosophical position compatible with most theologies that claim that immortal souls occupy an independent "realm" of existence distinct from that of the physical world.

That is a very brief outline of the historical background.  Whatever we human beings are in our full humanity we are certainly both mental (spiritual) and material (body).  Modern thinking would argue for a holistic approach where both mental and bodily aspects of who we are are inextricably linked.  While they can be differentiated to enable reflection on the mystery that is the human being in his/her totality, they simply cannot be radically separated as in either mainline Christian theology or in radical Cartesian dualism.

More Questions than Answers: Mind, Soul and Self

I like to describe myself as a spiritual person with a deep interest in Christ and the Buddha, who believes that there is a spiritual aspect to the life of the planet and to all sentient life, and most especially to human life. Indeed, phenomenologically I experience life as miraculous in the sense in which the transcendentalist/realist poet Walt Whitman put it in his eponymous long poem:

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same;
Every spear of grass–the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them,
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.

Marley Park, April, 2014

In other words, what I am arguing for here is the sheer mystery or wonder or magic with which the experience of living presents the conscious mind.  To offer simplistic, and especially reductive, answers to the meaning of life is to my mind the height or depth of arrogance and hubris. While no easy answers exist to the following questions in a clear rational sense, nonetheless these questions are valid for every thinking and feeling human being.  Let me pose the questions here - questions that are existential in tenor, questions which invite the listener to listen, reflect, ponder, wonder, expand his/her thought, stretch or flex their cognitive powers or simply invite the questioner to listen in silence and meditate on the experience.

• Is the Mind the same as the Soul?
• Is the Mind the same as the Self?
• Is the Self the Soul?
• What is the Mind?
• What is the Self?
• What is the Soul?
• Where does Personality fit into all of this?
• Is the Self the same as our Identity?
• Who or what defines Who we are?
• Is Identity a psychological phenomenon solely?
• Is Identity a sociological phenomenon solely?
• Is Identity a psychosocial phenomenon more correctly, then?
• Has Identity got a Spiritual dimension?
• Has Identity got a Religious dimension?
• What is the difference between Religion and Spirituality?
• Have the Natural Sciences anything to say about our Identity or about any of the above questions?
• What is the difference between the Natural Sciences and the Human Sciences?
• Where does the Truth lie? In the Natural Sciences or in the Human Sciences?
• Or more correctly, does it not lie in dialogue between both areas of exploration?
• Is Truth singular, i.e., "The One Truth" (Ultimate and Objective)?
• Is the Truth plural, i.e., "The many truths of knowledge" (Relative and often Subjective)?
• Can/does the Soul live on after Death?
• Can/does the Mind live on after Death?
• Can/does the Self live on after Death?
• Why are these questions so important for humankind?
• There are billions of people who believe that these questions are important.  Why?
• Does an animal have a Mind?
• If the Mind = the Soul, then could not an animal be said to have a Soul?
• Why couldn't an animal live on after death so?
• Do animals have a Personality or a Self or an Identity?
• Is a self-conscious Self a Soul?
• Is a non-self-conscious Self, i.e., an animal a Soul?

Obviously, if we wish to explore the above questions systematically we will have to do some pains-taking work of research into the origins of each term, their historical usages from culture to culture and then go on to offer a descriptive definition of each.  Once that's done we should then have to discuss and debate each question in a systematic way. Obviously, one could never tackle all such questions in one post, one chapter or even one book.  However, what I am about in this post is to give the reader a flavour of the breadth, depth and height of the questions posed by any worthwhile philosophical anthropology.

Analytical or positivist philosophers like A.J. Ayer would say that these questions are practically all invalid as they ask questions about things that are mere hypotheses and absolutely strange ones at that.  They are in no way verifiable or falsifiable and hence completely meaningless and therefore redundant questions. Those questions, he argues, simply make no sense at all as they refer to the mere idle speculation of of less rigorous philosophers.  Bertrand Russell says somewhere that to ask such metaphysical questions as I have done above is as ludicrous as asking is there a tea-pot orbiting the sun or any sun out there in space?***

Flowers, Marley Park, April, 2014

Of course, we are perfectly well within our rights to counter Russell, and indeed Ayer who was one of his early students and followers, by stating that in an existential and in a phenomenological sense human beings find that they actually do ask these questions. Indeed, I would argue that there is something within us driving us to ask these questions. In a sense, I believe that our two analytical philosophers are in fact being somewhat disingenuous because they are treating human beings as mere cognitive entities, or as entities that can only ask certain linguistically logical questions, that somehow human beings are not allowed to engage in a meta-linguistics or in a meta-meta-linguistics and further even in a metaphysics. Why not?  In this regard, I have always been inspired by that great metaphysical question asked by Heidegger, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" ****

The Scottish empiricist David Hume was an early atheist who not alone denied the existence of the soul but also of the very notion of a self, an entity that he defined as a mere "bundle of perceptions."  This is alright in theory or in logically worked out clinical thought, but humanity is more than logic or rationality.  Humanity also entails feelings, affectivity, moral and ethical impulses, and indeed much that is non-rational, even irrational.  One might counter Hume and his followers phenomenologically with a statement such as the following: "No client attends a psychotherapist, analyst or counsellor and says 'I am suffering from a bundle of perceptions crisis.'  S/he implicitly, if not  at times explicitly, believes that someone called the Self actually exists."  In other words both client and counsellor know that the self as a phenomenon exists because of their experience.  In all of this, I sometimes take heart that the great Victorian theologian and philosopher John Henry Cardinal Newman***** wrote somewhere that the human being "knows more than he is aware of," and that while he never used the term "the unconscious," he certainly would have been most aware of intuition, feelings and so on, much of which was not accessible to clinical reasoning, though it could always be reflected upon and thought about "after the fact."  Newman saw spirituality and the world of religious experience as being very much part of our overall human experience, though once again only amenable to reason "a posteriori." 

Indeed, if we were to take the Analytical and Positivist philosophers literally we would simply have no literature at all, and indeed I believe there would be no place in such a literal world for Arts of any kind.

Marlay House, once owned by David La Touche, M.P. and first governor of Bank of Ireland

The human being is way more complex than some scholars might allow.  That's why we need a philosophy like that of Socrates, a philosophy that always asks the hard and searching questions, that always asks "why" of everything and keeps asking even at seemingly inappropriate times.

I have spoken before that what is important for our study of the nature of humanity is a philosophical anthropology that looks at that nature from as wide a perspective as possible, that seeks the truth from every possible area of knowledge and does not arrogantly arrogate all truth to its own narrow province like the logical positivists and analytical philosophers do.  Phenomenologically and sociologically, Religion even has something to say about human nature. Perennial philosophy as well as all the other approaches in philosophy, and all the various theologies have much to contribute, too.  The Natural Sciences must always be tempered and balanced by the Human Sciences so as to do justice to "the phenomenon of man," in all  his/her complexity, that is the complete and essential nature of the human person.

In this sense, dear reader, what our anthropology must explore is the "more" that is in humanity rather than the "less."  The easy way out of deep thinking and reflection is often the lazy way of seeking to reduce humankind to the least it can be.  

Endnotes 

*Now the very early Christians would have had very little learned theology.  After all, theology emerged as a reflection on their lived faith experience over the ensuing centuries after Jesus' death and resurrection.  The great Greek and Roman Fathers of the Church and the early Church Councils like Nicea and Chalcedon all co-operated to promulgate various learned theologies (note the plural here, in later centuries a rather solidified central core of orthodoxy emerged, and some even subscribed to one theology or way of looking at things spiritual and religious) built upon the foundations of Greek philosophy mainly.  I have mentioned "philosophical theology" in my text above as it is an area where the two overlap rather foundationally, and obviously I am using this twentieth century term rather anachronistically here.

** "Substance dualism is a type of dualism most famously defended by René Descartes, which states that there are two fundamental kinds of substance: mental and material. According to his philosophy, which is specifically called Cartesian dualism, the mental does not have extension in space, and the material cannot think.  Substance dualism is important historically for having given rise to much thought regarding the famous mind–body problem. Substance dualism is a philosophical position compatible with most theologies which claim that immortal souls occupy an independent "realm" of existence distinct from that of the physical world." See article on Dualism in the WIKI here.

 ***The WIKI describes Bertrand Russell's argumentation on this matter thus: "Russell's teapot, sometimes called the celestial teapot, is an analogy first coined by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making scientifically unfalsifiable claims rather than shifting the burden of proof to others, specifically in the case of religion. Russell wrote that if he claims that a teapot orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars, it is nonsensical for him to expect others to believe him on the grounds that they cannot prove him wrong. Russell's teapot is still referred to in discussions concerning the existence of God" See here.

**** I have discussed Heidegger's famous question in many posts in various blogs I have written over the years.  Here is a review I wrote of a book with this very title by Leslek Kołakowski: here.

*****The great Victorian scholar, theologian and philosopher John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1090) was perhaps one of the greatest prose stylist of his era.  Much of his prose writings appeared on various curricula in English literature around the world for decades because of its sheer precision and essential beauty.  He was an original thinker, steeped in ancient history, the classical languages of Greek and Latin, the writings of the Fathers of the Church, Church history and contemporary issues in science and philosophy and much else besides.  Indeed, he had one of the subtlest of minds of his time, well able to dialogue with, as well as argue with the Darwinians of his day.  He was also a founder of a University, named the Catholic University of Ireland, which preceded UCD and wrote a classic on the philosophy of education called The Idea of a University.  His most erudite book and the subtlest of his philosophical/theological works is undoubtedly his Grammar of Assent which shows a most amazing insight into not alone why it is reasonable for humans to believe in God, but also shows a profound understanding as to how a human believes at all.  In short, after Rev Professor Jan Walgrave, O.P., I have argued in a paper I wrote some twenty years ago that Newman's approach to belief was one of "phenomenological investigation."  In other words, Newman was very much ahead of his time in describing the complexity of the phenomenon of humanity.  However, Newman's majestic Oxford University Sermons, written in his late thirties to early forties before his conversion to Catholicism, remains my favourite book from the great Victorian scholar for its beauty and simplicity of language and most essentially for its sheer authenticity.

Journal of a Soul 41

Thoughts on the Eve of 2014

A very wet Lungomare, Soverato, Jan 2nd 2014

I remember once reading in the works of the great Victorian theologian, scholar and writer, John Henry Newman, that essentially how (not why) we believe was as much a mystery as how we remember.  And indeed, memory is one of those great mysteries in life.

As I write this post here in Isca Marina (Sullo Ionio) on the last day of the year of 2013, bereft of Internet connections as the rain pours down – almost as inexorably as it does in Ireland – I am indeed awash with memories, most of them random, though somewhere my inner Self (whatever or whoever that is) is giving them some structure and form. Being without any instant Internet connection for the week to come means that this post will not see “light of day” on-line until sometime later than this last day of 2013 - more than likely very early in The New Year.

Is memory (which here I am equating with what many of us have come to define as the Self) really all about nothing more than the random connections and interconnections made by all those millions upon millions of neurons through those even more numerous dendrites that randomly spark off one another through this or that neurotransmitter?  Or is the Self more than a biochemical or even a psychochemical mass?  Whatever, the Self may be it always has a sense of being so much more.  Indeed, every human being wants his or her Self to mean more, to be more, than just a “bundle of perceptions” as the great Scottish empiricist and atheist philosopher David Hume had it.  After all, what client or patient comes to a psychotherapist, counsellor, clinical psychologist or psychiatrist with the complaint that they don’t really feel that they are being true to their “real bundle of perceptions,” or that they have not yet found their “real bundle of perceptions”?  We believe deeply that we are more.  Intuitively we grasp that the whole (Self) is always greater than the sum of its parts, greater than a mere “bundle of perceptions.”

And so for this present post I am defining myself as my memories.  At the end of any year we so love to trace what has happened not alone in the world or the country at large, but what the dying year has made of us.  Even, what all our years to date have made of us as we stand on the threshold of yet another year.

An old picture from 1945 or there abouts.  My mother is at the back on left

Memories crowd my neural memory pathways somewhat randomly, but with some little dictation from some centre of control – some area of “self-awareness.”  There I am, a three year old boy sitting on the dirt lane at the back of our house in Roscrea playing with a toy lorry and filling its trailer with lollypop bags of sand.  The old half-blind cat sits on the line pole, a great comforting presence.  The backyard is full of geranium plants.  The sting of the nettles on my legs as I run through the neighbouring fields. The fading sound of the train leaving Roscrea station with my daddy aboard, click, clack, click, clack, ...  Sad feelings.  Missing him again.  The move to Dublin. No electric light. Just candles till the power is restored.

My grandmother laid out in death in a bedroom in the old Crumlin house. I was ten. So still. Beyond us. Then and now. Only old faded photos remain. Uncle Pat’s funeral in 1970 when I am twelve.  The sound of leather shoes crushing the gravel as we followed the coffin up to its final resting place. The sound of clay falling on the wooden lid. Prayers intoned.  Men in gray coats condoling with my father. My mother comforting him in Granny Saunders’ garden when he cried. I buy ice cream for the same old woman – the oldest woman I have ever known as a young boy.  How I think she might expire at any second.  That horrible big yellow blister on her leg when she spilled boiling water on it. The time she told us that once as she dozed at the fire a mouse had run up here leg.  How we laughed.

The old Christian Brother who takes us for catechism and who tells us stories both to frighten and uplift us, though more of the former.  The smell of chalk dust mixed with stale urine, the steam that rises from wet coats as they lie draped over radiators on a rainy day.  The ice that covers the school yard making it a skating rink.  How we skate free on it before the bell tolls for class and lessons.  The young boy whose name I forget who is knocked clean from his bike to dusty death at only ten years of age.  The black hands of the old wind-up clock with Roman numerals that counts out our education in loud tick tocks.  The old brother winds it up every other day.

And there are so many other memories vying for attention with that self-aware centre of control that they could overpower, swamp and almost smother it at once, if all the controls were off.  Maybe this is the place to stop this wet last day of the dying year that is 2013.  Maybe too many memories have been summoned up.  Some centre of my inner Self has summoned them up, given them life, and shape and pattern.

Indeed how true is the opening statement I quoted from the venerable Cardinal John Henry Newman.  How we believe is as much as mystery as how we remember.  Perhaps a greater mystery is what we remember and how we choose to construct those memories, what shape and pattern, what form we may wish to give them.  That is the mystery of the Self, the centre of our identity which is an on-going construction, ever a work in progress.

Journal of a Soul 20

Searchers for, or Makers of  Meaning?

It is wonderful to write one's thoughts, give them shape and pattern on a page, and even see them take a virtual form that can be summoned up at the touch of a button or as a random connection to some remotely connected search on Google, initiated by an unknown soul.  Then that those thoughts might be read, that they might even elicit a response only adds to the wonderment.  There are times when I wonder do my thoughts precede my words or do my words precede me thoughts - the hen-egg conundrum in another guise.  And yet, I believe instinctively that it is the interplay of both, that dynamism, or symbiosis even, where one supports the other that is more important.  

As I write these thoughts, I also fully realise that these thoughts write me, that they are, in fact, giving shape to "me", forming my selfhood.  We find our selves (and I deliberately disjoin this word) in doing, in action and in all things that we pursue to give our little lives meaning.  As I have said in these posts so many times before, we are meaning-making creatures, and the greatest meaning we can make is our very own SELF.  Again, we shape our selves in another important way to - by simply learning to be and become the person we were innately meant to be.  In that sense we make ourselves by metaphorically travelling in two directions as it were, by going without (going out and interacting with others and the world) and by going within (through meditation and contemplation, through entering the stillness of not alone one's own being, but discovering in that stillness the unity of all being of which the self is put a drop in the ocean.).

And yet, I don't want to make too much of "making meaning" here.  I wish, rather to comment on the human condition insofar as it relentlessly searches for meaning.  In a sense, this is almost a counter spiritual movement if it is a fraught and lonely search that reveals very little meaning, maybe even frustration and despair.  In this sense, I am writing here about the very heart of existentialism - that lonely search for meaning in a seemingly meaningless world.  Searching for meaning can be both a spiritual and a disillusioned aspiritual (I'm not sure if this word exists, but unspiritual is certainly not what I mean, what I mean is a-spiritual in the way amoral relates to moral!) quest at one and the same time.  Let us not dwell too much on the sheer meaninglessness of life as Camus would have it in his version of the great myth of Sisyphus. 

Ah, dear reader, you are probably wondering where these thoughts are going to at all, at all.  In these posts, I often believe I am feeling my way in the dark, but hopefully with a little more direction than Mulla Nasruddin searching for his lost key under the light of the street lamp simply because there was more light there than in the dark house where he had lost it.  And so let me come to some point in this meandering post.  Last Thursday evening I had the pleasure to view the wonderful film The Great Gatsby.  Indeed, it was to my mind wonderfully loyal to the book, or at least to my memory of it from years ago - having read it for my Leaving Certificate many years ago when I was a young lad of 17 years. What comes across in the film is the sheer feeling of lostness, of being cut adrift on an ocean of multiple, though colourful and alluring experiences; of searching for something of value, almost irretrievably lost in that multiplicity; of tasting excess after excess and finding it all so hollow.  What is it, at all, that can make us humans really happy?  Why do things, which we once desired so much, eventually leave such a rotten taste in the mouth?  

In a sense, this book or film is quintessentially about F. Scott Fitzgerald himself.  After all, all writing is inevitably autobiographical  when pondered and reflected upon and cut back to the bone.  One quotation I placed on the flyleaf of a recent piece of work was a quotation from this wonderful Irish American writer.  That quotation runs:  “Five years have rolled away from me and I can’t decide exactly who I am, if anyone.  (Letter, 1932).  He had written The Great Gatsby in 1925 at the young age of 29, when he was obviously a searcher for meaning in a fraught and intense way.  One can see this search for meaning (let's call it meaning as revealed in love, in human love - yet very much in this case in the form of the classical love for the unobtainable beloved) in the following quotation about Gatsby which we find in the first chapter:

―He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward – and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far way, that might have been the end of a dock.

           (Scribner's paperback edition, p. 21)

That green light in the darkness marked where his beloved Daisy Buchanan lived with her millionaire husband Tom.  And, indeed, we instinctively know that this love is pretty much unobtainable, and the fog that is not quite as thick as that in Eugene O'Neill's wonderful play Long's Day's Journey into Night, is all too indicative of lostness: "―If it wasn‘t for the mist we could see your home across the bay…You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock." (Ibid., p.92)

And then, there is that very sad expression, which is the very antithesis of all spirituality, that suggests that the only way of steering our barque of self through the choppy waters of life is by living in the past or by the vain attempt to recapture that past in the now..  The quotation I have in mind is given almost verbatim in the movie:

"Can‘t repeat the past?‘ he cried incredulously. Why of course you can!" He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand...  I‘m going to fix everything just the way it was before," he said, nodding determinedly. "She‘ll see."

―He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy.  (Ibid., p.110)

In this sense, then, as I have already stated, this could be said to be an aspiritual quest, an illusive and elusive quest.  Those of us who deeply accept the spiritual life believe fervently in living in the now.  Indeed, we could say that Gatsby was living in a spiritual or existential hell, well before Albert Camus gave it philosophical form.

One theme of this novel  or film could be stated as follows: Dwelling in the past can only result in obsession and misfortune. We cannot transplant ourselves into the past again as it is passed and gone forever. The future misfortune can only be prevented by learning from the past.  Gatsby simply had not learned this lesson.  Another theme would be: Some of us drink in and swallow whole the illusion that the rich person's life is perfect.  In other words, we confuse illusion with reality.  After all, is this not one of the main symptoms of mental illness - that the border lines between illusion and reality are very blurred indeed? Another theme, still, would be that when dreams become an obsession they fall out of our reach.  Finally, another theme would be that wealth is not all it's cracked up to be; that the American dream may be linked to wealth, but that it is much, much more, too.

In writing this novel of quest for meaning, F. Scott Fitzgerald penned a classic which has made his name immortal in human culture as he pointed out the sham which life can be.  Deep down as humans we know we want more.  The tragedy may be that this wonderfully gifted writer F. Scott Fitzgerald may not have truly realised how great a writer he was and that his finely crafted words would live on after he had passed into the mist or fog of the past as a person.

Reading the book and viewing the film can only affect us deeply if we are at all human.  Both will push us to want to live in the now with an eye to our future. We can never, for an instant really believe the words of the narrator as we finish the novel or film, because we know, that like Gatsby we, too, will be lost forever in the fog of our own illusion if we do:

―I thought of Gatsby‘s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy‘s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could barely fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night....

―Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that‘s no matter – to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther….And one fine morning...

―So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.(180, 182)