Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 27

Poem 27

A good traveler has no fixed plans

and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition

lead him wherever it wants.

A good scientist has freed himself of concepts

and keeps his mind open to what is.

Thus the Master is available to all people
and doesn't reject anyone.

He is ready to use all situations

and doesn't waste anything.

This is called embodying the light.

What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?

What is a bad man but a good man's job?

If you don't understand this, you will get lost,

however intelligent you are.

It is the great secret.

Commentary

Skeleton of a coracle, Dingle Interpretative Centre - 

Another staple recommendation, indeed tenet, of anyone involved in the spiritual quest from whatever religious background is surely that the journey itself is more important than the destination. Today pilgrimage is becoming important once more as many people discover anew the spiritual quest through making a journey.  Accordingly, even here in Ireland, the Camino pilgrimage to Santiago or the town or Cathedral Church of St James in Catalonia, Spain. The physical journey is a solid outward sign or symbol of the inward journey of the self, or soul indeed.The greatest story of pilgrimage was perhaps written in verse by the famous Geoffrey Chaucer (1343 - 1400), the text of which most of us studied at some stage in our academic career, or at least read excerpts from.

We know these stories as The Canterbury Tales which Chaucer began working 0n from 1386 onwards. They recount, in verse mostly, the stories told by way of a friendly contest between a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from London to Canterbury in order to visit the shrine of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.  The prize for the winner is simple indeed: a free meal at the Tabard Inn in Southwark.  Chaucer's take on the idea of pilgrimage is humorous, a tad raunchy in parts, but for all that very appreciative of the importance of pilgrimage in the social life of the people among whom he lived at the time. Many other books have recounted the importance of pilgrimage and have pointed  out that life is a journey in many senses: in the physical sense as we grow up and move from one phase to another in our lives and often travel about the world in so doing; in the psychological sense as we journey to get to know ourselves; in the spiritual sense as we seek to make sense and meaning of our lives in an often inimical world. John Bunyan's (1628–1688) Pilgrim's Progress (1678) is a good example of a more serious presentation of pilgrimage in the spiritual life from an evangelical Protestant point of view.  It is a wonderfully profound read written in the simplest and most direct of language.

Oceanic Tapesty Ionad an Bhlascaoid - Kerry

Again, the verses of the above poem are full of paradoxical writing.  Setting up oppositional points of view is a preferred method of our author, and indeed one of the methods mostly used by writers of spirituality or mystical theology in any tradition.  It is important, indeed, to plan out any journey we wish to undertake as well as we can, though it is often wonderful to take a few diversions on our way here and there along our path - diversions that make our travelling far more interesting.  However, our Taoist writer does not mean just doing that as he suggests that we have no fixed plans at all.  That advice is ridiculous in worldly terms, though not in a deeper spiritual sense.  Indeed, we can make the greatest of plans in our lives and then have them ruined totally by accident or by chance. These unexpected happenings, even tragedies, do befall us as we make our journey.  Perhaps, the author is getting at the truth of that as it unfolds in our lives, that is, by making his exaggerated demands on us so that we don't become too ambitious and ego-driven to the extent that we lose a healthy intuition about what really matters in life - loving and being loved by others and so on.

John Bunyan (1628 - 1688)

Inspiration and intuition are undoubtedly very important in art.  Of course, so is talent and hard work to achieve a certain mastery in it.  The hard work does pay off as the more the artist practises the more s/he is open to being inspired and being intuitive.  Our Taoist author sees the scientist as being open to inspiration and not being too tied down by traditional concepts.  Openness to the new is the order of imagination.

Likewise, the Master of meditation is open to everyone and in totally non-judgemental and accepts everyone as they are in an unprejudiced and unbiased fashion.  All situations he finds himself in is looked upon as "grist for the spiritual mill."  

In the final stanza of the above poem our Taoist writer shows that there is really very little difference between the good and the bad man in a sense as we all are made up of good points and bad points. The so-called good people just manage to control their baser instincts and more evil desires better than the so-called bad people do.  That reminds me of the old moral poem we learnt as children: "There is so much good in the worst of us// And so much bad in the best of us// that it hardly behooves any of us//To talk about the rest of us." (Edward Wallace Hoch)  And indeed, here we must agree vehemently with our Taoist poet that this piece of wisdom can guide us well through life: in our parenting of children, in our teaching of children, in our leadership of others: in short, in how we greet others as being as important as we ourselves are in the overall scheme of things.

Finally, as is my usual habit in ending these short posts on the Tao Te Ching, I invite the reader to go read slowly over the above poem and let whatever line, phrase or word offer itself to you as a possible mantra for a short five minute meditation.

Journal of a Soul 76

Summer Retreat

La Basilica di San Pietro, Roma, giugno, 2015

It is hard to say something new. That is surely the greatest problem facing anyone who wishes to write something. With regard to spiritual/meaning matters I feel this is especially true. Travelling on one's own I feel is a form of pilgrimage as one is journeying inwards as well as outwards as it were; the spiritual journey mirrors the outer physical one.  One thing I like about such travelling is that one ends up talking to people out of necessity simply because of the desire to hear one's own voice again as well as the natural desire to reach out and communicate with others.  Sitting on some steps in Piazza San Pietro, Rome, just three days ago, a young Australian lad struck up conversation with me, opining that it was "very peaceful here." Our conversation spanned from Irish to Australian cultural similarities and differences, and why so many young Irish people wished to take a year out and backpack "down-under."  He shook my hand as I departed: the desire to acknowledge another human being who had the courtesy to listen. 

And yet the existential trials of life walk with us as we make our pilgrimage.  Indeed, we mostly repress those existential trials in order to survive.  But there is a further "and yet" that needs to be acknowledged.  That "and yet" is that the existential trials of life, and most especially death and dying are the greatest repression of modernity, as the great contemporary existential psychotherapist and psychiatrist Irvin Yalom has so perspicaciously and wisely pointed out.  Let me illustrate for the briefest moment.  If you are Irish or Irish-American you will be well aware of the tragic deaths of those young 21 year old J1 students from Ireland who died when a balcony collapsed recently in Berkeley California and the number of others seriously injured, especially those who suffered life-changing injuries.  The trials of these last mentioned are only beginning.  Or to put it in more poetic words: their pilgrimage truly begins now.

As I write, I have just read that another mad gunman - appropriately dressed in black - has gunned down countless tourists on a beach in Tunisia, among whom one Irish mother was murdered.  The mind boggles. Moral evil raises its ugly head all too often.  Indeed, let us add another "and yet" here: if none of us risked anything in life humanity would amount to very little.  Life is about risk.  Without risk it is hard to envisage any life worth living at all.  How true that old proverb is: "Nothing ventured, nothing gained!"  If you don't go a J1 visa to USA you miss out on a lot.  I had not got that opportunity due to family circumstances and financial constraints at the time.  It is a super opportunity for personal growth.

Life is fickle and chance-bound.  I remember when I first started in my present school some 27 years ago that as I descended the bus at a stop near the school that a motor cyclist nearly mowed me down; that as a young four year old boy I was nearly killed by a lorry from the local bacon factory - I can still hear the screech of brakes and so on.  Recall here your own near misses.  We have all had near misses - some nearer than others.  And yet, if we had not had the courage to venture forth, we simply would not be the people we are today, in this moment of time.  That is what life is about - the courage to take risk or as the existentialists put it the COURAGE TO DARE.

There are other thoughts and feelings that throng my conscious mind, and yet like a meditator of some thirty years or more, I know that I must learn to still those thoughts and feelings, to just let them come and go as the waves of the sea, and then attempt to let them slide from consciousness and dwell in pure awareness.  No easy task, that, I assure you.  And yet, I believe that is the goal of life.  Recently I was at a conference and a Ph.D, candidate, dedicated teacher, committed family man with wife and family and a former student of mine (who had lost both his parents when he was all too young) asked that old chestnut of a question: "What's it all about, anyway, Tim?  I was brought back thirty years to Ger Smith, a teacher colleague who had asked me the same question.  It was only a couple of years later that I had learnt that Ger had died of a congenital heart disease to which there was no cure. I was not then to know that man's inner tormenting question in its fullness.  Today I understand it better having been through my own personal wringer of which I have written about widely in these pages, so there is no need to repeat the obvious.

And so as we journey we carry all the above questions in our backpack, and that is no harm at all.  Indeed, it is a gift.  Meditating on death and dying, chance and mischance, accidents and life-altering occurrences are all part of the deal.  Risk is simply part of the deal with life and let us not forget that.  In short, what are these pages, these writings, these reflections teaching me?  Well, they are teaching me to DARE TO BE, to keep right on, or as one of my favourite singer-songwriters puts it, "to keep on keeping on."  Those words as no doubt you will know are sung by the infamous Bob Dylan. That's what it's all about: to keep right on till the end of the road.  Once, when my mother had fallen in her early eighties and had crawled to the wall for support. she marvelled out loud to me when I had picked her up: "I wonder is it coming near the end, Tim?"  I asked her how she was and she said: "I'm fine. I slipped after dressing myself and couldn't get up, but as I knew you'd drop by at lunch time I'd only have to wait four or five hours here!" She died at 96 in a nursing home.  Her whole motto was simple: "Keep going!" Or as the great poet Robert Frost once remarked rather succinctly, when asked what life was all about: "It goes on!" The same wisdom as that of most of humanity. All spiritualities teach us to live in the "now," to have no regrets about the past or fears for the future, but simply to appreciate the now.  Dear reader, let us learn to Dare To Be, To Dare to Risk or to Dare to Live!!  Aude Vivere!!

Journal of a Soul 9 - The Dark (K)night of the Soul

The journey of the Self to Self-knowledge is a long and arduous one as any pilgrim will tell you.  To put this in a spiritual (or "religious" in the best sense of that word) way is to say that the journey of the Soul to God is indeed a difficult one.  As an agnostic Buddhist I see this second sentence in a metaphorical way - another way of expressing our journey to authenticity, self-knowledge or greater self-awareness.  I am happy with all expressions of this journey which is very important to the life of every individual no matter what his or her spiritual allegiance from theistic to atheistic and all the shades in-between the two polarities. 

In my life I have read as much spiritual literature as well as general literature as a way of making sense of the life I am confronted with (as Heidegger puts it, I did not ask to be born - I was thrown out there into existence - dasein which literally means being-there) or indeed gifted with (many philosophers, outside Christian believers have used the idea of life's giftedness quality, e.g., Michael J. Sandel (b. 1953), professor of political philosophy at Harvard.  Here's what my own favourite male actor says: “I figure life's a gift and I don't intend on wasting it. You don't know what hand you're gonna get dealt next. You learn to take life as it comes at you... to make each day count.” ― Leonardo Di Caprio).  I tend to look on life in this second sense.  The former is an existential way of looking at life while the latter is a spiritual one.  Needless to say, these two are "twins" as it were, and need not necessarily be mutually exclusive.

I spent some three years in my mid-twenties, from 25-28, in religious life in the Order of St Augustine (OSA).  While there I was introduced to all the major classics of Christian theology and spirituality over the years, e.g., the mysticism of St John of the Cross as well as that of St Augustine of course.  But it is that of the former with which I am interested here.  John of the Cross (San Juan de la Cruz) (1542 – 1591), born Juan de Yepes Álvarez, was a major figure of the Counter-Reformation, a Spanish mystic, Catholic saint, Carmelite friar and priest, born at Fontiveros, Old Castile.

Anyway, this Saint John of the Cross wrote a great and famous  poem called Dark Night of the Soul. This poem narrates the journey of the soul from its bodily home in this human body to its union with God. This journey is called "The Dark Night", because darkness represents the hardships and difficulties the soul meets as it attempts to detach itself from all the worldly concerns and materials.  At the end of the journey, hopefully, the soul will reach the light and live in union with the Creator.  The main idea of the poem can be seen as the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual maturity and union with God.

Now my title obviously is deliberately a pun, given the horrific happenings a screening of The Dark Knight Rises yesterday on July 20, 2012, during a midnight showing of the film at the Century 16 cinema in Aurora, Colorado.  A gunman, James Holmes,  wearing a gas mask opened fire inside the cinema, killing twelve people and injuring some 58 others. At the time of his arrest, Holmes identified himself as the Joker— one of the main antagonists within the Batman series — to police.  Warner Bros. stated that it was deeply saddened by the shooting, and announced the cancellation of the Paris premiere of The Dark Knight Rises.

One may say that those poor relatives who are left bereaved in the wake of this massacre, and indeed all those poor innocent wounded victims are now experiencing their dark night of the soul.  Evil is an extremely difficult problem which faces every human being in this world.  Indeed, I have written much on this theme in my former blog Still Point and I shall not rehearse here any of the arguments I adumbrated and explicated there.  Indeed, The Mystery of Evil was the title of my thesis for my first undergraduate degree.  However here, I want to say some words on how the mystery of evil weaves its way into the very fabric of our lives.  Consequently, no human life can be lived without tasting its bitter and sorry mystery.

The face of a mass murderer - James Holmes: See Here

The journey of the Self to Self-awareness or Self-knowledge or, if you are a firm believer in God, the journey of the Soul to God, is one littered with a lot of human and animal and indeed material wreckage along the way.  (Now, I respect totally both these versions of the human journey.  Neither is more correct nor more authentic than the other.  To my mind both are equally valid ways of steering the human person along the road of life.)

Those poor people who were out for a night's entertainment were suddenly thrown deep into the darkest night of soul that they ever could have experienced.  I have the same feeling as I type these lines as I had in the wake of the Norwegian massacre by the lone gunman and murderer Anders Behring Breivik.  Can we do anything about these madmen (all mass murders are men as far as |I am aware)?  What is happening us at all?  I believe the answer lies is the fact that today people lack a spiritual sense, a sense of connection with the world.  Another way of saying this is to state that the borderlines between reality and unreality has broken down.  Society is at fault here as it bombards everyone with countless pieces of information and all of it unsorted and uncensored.  Anyone anywhere can have access to anything.  The current mass murderer James Holmes purchased some 6,000 rounds of ammunition over the Internet before carrying out his massacre at the midnight screening of Batman.

Whether this man was mad or deluded is not the point.  The point is that today human beings are lacking a moral compass.  Traditional moral compasses have all now virtually broken down in the Western World for most of the younger generations all around the world.  Every little boy can access anything he wants on the Internet from serious porn to seriously sick and depraved actions of all descriptions.  When I was growing up the local library was my spiritual home where I was entertained and edified.  Now I love the Internet and spend many hours on it and am well aware of what can be found there across the spectrum.  Now, strangely, I'm not arguing for tighter censorship.  What I am arguing for is tighter self-censorship and self-control.  The questions we need to ask is what are we doing in society that allow people like Holmes and Breivik to perpetrate their evil deeds.  It is far too easy to write them off as psychopaths or sociopaths.

As we all struggle with our own spiritual advancement we encounter evil and suffering.  We must constantly question our own motivations as we proceed on our way.  We must take responsibility for the life we have been gifted with, whether by a spiritual source in God or from a scientific source in the Big Bang.  Whichever one of these is the commitment which you, dear reader, hold does not really matter.  However, what does matter is how I behave and live out my spiritual quest.  Also we are all responsible for keeping our fellow citizens in the real world where ethics are grounded in our very being.  Let us ask ourselves what have we as a society done that has allowed mass murderers like Breitvik and Holmes to commit such life-denying and life-destroying crimes.

The answer, dear friends, is certainly a spiritual on - one deeply rooted in values, and values that have some realistic horizon.

Journal of a Soul 6

Cross on old ruined Church, Badolato Marina

The early Christians spoke of their being “in via,” or on the way to Heaven or the Kingdom of God.  In this last sentence, it is the beautiful and succinct Latin phrase “in via” that I want to highlight.  All cultures and all religions, which by definition are cultural phenomena, speak of the metaphor of travelling, or journeying or making a pilgrimage.  I have always liked those rather reflective and quirky Westerns starring Clint Eastwood, because they captured the lonely soul on his/her way or journey.  However, the Pilgrim in question is more often than not a very misguided soul, and yet the example stands in the sense of our travelling through the wilderness of life. In fact, in some of those Westerns the term “Pilgrim” is used quite frequently. 

In American literature and films, one gets the sense of the early Pioneers striking out into the unknown deserts, mountains and prairies in search of a “Promised Land” so to speak.  I have always felt that the case of the Native American Indian was never given fair treatment in 99% of those Westerns.  Indeed, in actuality, it appears to this rather ignorant writer on the far side of the great Atlantic Ocean that the poor Native American Indians got treated harshly, all too harshly by the so called enlightened early Pilgrims.  However, as I say, that is an uneducated view from afar.

Anyway, my point here is that the Spirituality of these Native Indians is very attractive and grounded in the cycles of the Seasons.  Theirs is a rich and pure spirituality with a wisdom all its own.  Again, over the years I have only got the vaguest glimpses of it in this or that rare film or in this or that rare novel.  Then, those of us in any way au fait with the Ecological or Green Movements in any of their incarnations will be very aware of the great speech of Chief Seattle which is quoted very frequently in such literature.



Lizard at the top of ruined church, Badolato

We are very much creatures of the earth, bound to the cycles of its movements about the great and sustaining Star called simply Sun.  As I type these few reflective words in the South of Italy the Sun is high, very warm and burning of the skin at some 32 degrees Centigrade.  There are no signs of the little lizards which come out along my back patio in some numbers in the calm of the less hot evenings.  As I sit and rejoice in this retreat time in the South far away from the colder Northern climes of Ireland, I am reminded here also of the closeness of humankind to the Seasons.  These are very much a peasant people here in the Mezzogiorno, a people who work slowly and surely to the patterns set down as paradigms by Nature.  These are a people in harmony with the world, just like the American Indian or like the Irish peasant, of whose origins I am proud to be.

It is so hard to have a spiritual sense in a large city.  Or as I remember reading somewhere once: it is hard to put down roots in a concrete jungle.  A lot of our cities, especially in the poorer quarters where human beings are forced to live shoulder to shoulder, eyeball to eyeball, one on top of another with very little “elbow room” as the great John Henry Cardinal Newman put it.  He was describing his freedom to research and his freedom to think for himself actually, but his words are lovely and indeed apt for our purposes here, are they not?  What little elbow room all those children have to be themselves in the modern concrete jungles of our cities.  This writer, as you have long since discovered, is a romantic and indeed a peasant – or countryman – at heart.  The words of a local woman, who is the landlady of small agriturismo lodgings, come to mind here.  Proudly she told me in her native language – “Sono Contadina” – “”I am a peasant.”  To her, I replied simply, “Anch’io, sono contadino nella sangue” – “I, too, am a peasant in the blood.”

To bring these few words to a conclusion, I will mention here a wonderful Irish novel that I am reading.  It is called That They May Face The Rising Sun, and it is written by one of the greatest twentieth century Irish novelists, the late great John McGahern.  This is a novel written in the simplest and easiest of styles with a flow that only closeness to nature could have begotten.  McGahern is of all too obvious obvious peasant roots.  He writes like an angel, inspired by the movements of the earth around our great Sun Star.  He writes with a consummate ease that can plumb the depths and scale the heights of the human heart and soul.  As any observer and lover of nature will know: everything in its province has its time and its season.  Just as surely as the sun goes down it will rise again tomorrow.  Just as surely as an old cow dies another calf will delight the on-looking eyes of a farmer’s child.  Just as surely as the storms and rains come the calm of the cloudless skies will return.  Those of us close to nature will realise that we, too, are part of that very same cycle.  We humans come and go.  No sooner has one poor soul ceased breathing on this earth of ours than another soul will be born into the bounty of the earth.

The sad thing is that it takes us a lifetime to learn the simplicities of life, the simplicities which our forefathers acquired ever so easily because they were so close to nature.  We have lost a lot in gaining such advancement in technology.  Not that I am decrying technology here as I use the Internet a lot and find it comforting and useful, and even sometimes distracting and even rewarding.  I am no Luddite.  My point is simple – we moderns have become so alienated from our true nature as part of the cycles of the Seasons.  We moderns have become alienated from our real Selves, what it means to be truly human in this wonderful, if at times painful, world.

Journal of a Soul 3

Introduction

We humans know more than we are conscious of, according to the late great Victorian Catholic theologian John Henry Cardinal Newman.  In other words, the rational is only one small part of the human mind.   There are also our emotions to consider.  Newman did not talk about the unconscious as such, because for him those unknown spaces in the human heart were in fact the seat of the Holy Ghost as they would have called the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity in those halcyon days.  This was the profound mystery of humanity and that of the human soul, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit at the very centre of human life.  All Christians believe in this doctrine: viz., the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit.If you are not a Christian in the strict Church-going sense, but belong to those who are pilgrims on a more humanist journey through life, you can still be open to the fact that the above doctrine is a wonderful metaphor for the mystery that is at the heart of the human person.

These posts in this new blog will not be discursive or academic in any sense. Rather, they are going to be journal entries recounting my journey in search of Self.  In this case they will be spiritual in the broadest sense of the meaning of that word.  My understanding of "spiritual" is the innate ability within us to connect both with the mystery within us and with the mystery outside of us, both in others and in all the world in general.  In that sense, I mean also our innate ability to tap into the source of life - whatever that may be - some call it God, others a Benign Energy at the heart of the universe, others Order, and others still the impersonal inner drive of the universe towards a more perfectly evolved manifestation of itself.  Now, these posts, being essentially existentialist (if the reader will excuse the juxtaposition of two seemingly contrary words) my aim is to be personalist in tendency and to desist from any polemics here at all.  In these pages, no pure philosophy or theology or science of any description will be found.  In short these posts will be, in the words of the wonderful Pope John XXIII, "The Journal of a Soul."

The Music of the Soul

Ever since I was a young boy I can remember my teachers always telling us that "Music has Charms to sooth a savage Breast," and lines of poems that I like have a tendency to stay with me always.  On checking, I find that these lines come from the pen of William Congreve (1670 – 1729) who was an English playwright and poet.  On perusing the provenance of the lines, I further find that they are the opening words of a play called The Mourning Bride (1697) and are well worth quoting here:

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.
I've read, that things inanimate have mov'd,
And, as with living Souls, have been inform'd,
By Magick Numbers and persuasive Sound.
What then am I? Am I more senseless grown
Than Trees, or Flint? O force of constant Woe!
'Tis not in Harmony to calm my Griefs.
Anselmo sleeps, and is at Peace; last Night
The silent Tomb receiv'd the good Old King;
He and his Sorrows now are safely lodg'd
Within its cold, but hospitable Bosom.
Why am not I at Peace?

As you will have realised after reading the above there is much profundity in these lines.  The question: "What then am I? Am I more senseless grown//Than Trees, or Flint?" even when taken totally out of context as I am doing here, is so relevant to every human being.  We, too, even though unbenighted by grief as the bride is here, can ask what it is actually to be, to exist at all?  We can also ask the last question here, too - "Why am not I at Peace?"  A teacher-friend of mine, long since retired, always said wisely that in the end we have to live with ourselves.  There is much wisdom in this saying.

As I journey on the road - in via - to self-knowledge, nay, further, to self-acceptance, there is much truth in his observation.  As I exist in my world, I find that I am a being with a moral centre, too.  How am I to act in this, that or the other situation in which I find myself from one hour to the next as I journey through life.  What is the moral self?  This is also a question worth asking, if I am to live with myself with any degree of equanimity and peace of mind.  As I pursue these reflections hopefully I'll come up with some existential answers to these questions.  Quite clearly at this juncture I have nothing further to say about this moral self.  These are not academic or polemic posts and so they will be solely the result of my reflections and meditations a personal discernment.

And, in that journey to self-acceptance music has helped me greatly.  Returning to my opening lines in today's post, I believe the power of music is such that, although at times it may be combined with verbalization as we find in song lyrics, there is much in music that hits us at an unconscious level, at levels of being far deeper that we are cognitively aware of.  As we listen on and as we note our reactions with ever more trained an ear we will become more aware of these hidden depths.  There will be deeper stirrings of our being which may even bring a tear to our eyes as well as balm to a tired spirit.  I am not at all a music cogniscento and know little except that which stirs my soul.  I will finish this post with two versions of one of my favourite songs - Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen (the composer) and the late great Jeff Buckley.  Both these renditions rock me to the foundations of my being.