Evan Brown

I got a great deal on a used copy of Durckheim’s The Way of Transformation from Amazon.com, and it arrived in the mail today. Having only paged through it very briefly, I am eager to delve. (You may recall how I was wowing about Durckheim last last month.)

This passage caught my eye on the quick, backwards, thumb-guided trip through the work:

The practice of pure gesture requires first that we have a continuous awareness of our usual behavior, our prejudices, habits, and processes of self-protection; and secondly that we should awake in ourselves a determination to retract and dissolve all these attitudes with which we deceive ourselves as to what the truth of life is.

Control of one’s thoughts and actions seems to be a universal virtue. What’s in it for the individual, and what’s the right way to undertake this enterprise of self-control?

Lao Tzu tells us that “he who conquers men has force, he who conquers himself is truly strong.” Tao Te Ching, Ch. 33.

From the Katha Upanishad:

When one lacks discrimination and his mind is undisciplined, the senses run hither and thither like wild horses. But they obey the rein like trained horses when one has discrimination and has made the mind one-pointed.

It’s not just an Eastern thing. The Stoics, of course, had a lot to say about the topic. Here’s a line from Marcus Aurelius:

Take me and cast me where thou wilt; for there I shall keep my divine part tranquil, that is, content, if it can feel and act conformably to its proper constitution. Meditations, Part VIII, para. 45.

So this idea of controlling the self (I like the term self-sovereignty) has as a fundamental aspect a controlling or management of the effects that the outside world has on one’s consciousness. To do it completely is a sort of transcendence or escape, or a complete equanimity. The attainment of nirvana, or the delivery into Heaven, is to be taken away from this “life in the flesh” (See Romans 8:5), or to escape the world of maya. Or closer to the ground, we may just go looking to transcendence for a “fix” or a “salve” to get through a rough time.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it?

I suppose it’s too good to be true. Thinking about it only on the surface one can be swept away or even seduced by transcendence or escape. But a more principled evaluation reveals the issue’s complex nature: a self-sovereignty that leads one only to transcendence and equanimity, at least for as long as we’re alive, is incomplete.

Here’s how Jon Kabat-Zinn presents this idea:

The quest for spiritual unity, especially in youth, is often driven by naivete and a romantic yearning to transcend the pain, the suffering, and the responsibilities of this world of eachness and suchness, which includes the moist and the dark. Wherever You Go, There You Are, p. 267.

He goes on to say that the idea of transcendence can be “a great escape, a high-octane fuel for delusion.” So that’s why in Buddhism, for example, it’s important to bring it back down, so to speak, to give practice to the Zen concept of being “free and easy in the marketplace.”

It’s a big part of the idea of the bodhisattva — a being who, though fully enlightened, still keeps one foot in the temporal world because of his compassion for all sentient beings. One could also see the same idea manifested in Jesus. We are asked to believe that he was fully divine while walking the earth and associating with prostitutes and lepers and tax collectors. At an even deeper level, it’s the idea underlying the horror of the crucifixion — the perfectly transcendent being dying a painful and ugly death. (See Philippians 2:8: “Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”)

These ideas seem helpful tools in navigating a path that leads one to joyfully participate in life’s suffering. It’s harder to do than one may think, but not necessarily for the reasons one may come up with at first.

Sailboats on their way to Lake Michigan pass under the LaSalle Street bridge. [Where is this?]

There is an interesting paradox concerning matters of the spirit having to do with the status of the individual — the interrelation between privilege and equality.

One of the salient norms of modern life is a sense of egalitarianism — in civic life we learn that we’re all created equal, that the Constitution (at least in the U.S.) gives us equal protection under the law, that we can and should work for equal opportunity employers.

This egalitarianism has an analogue in the religious context as well. Christians learn that the first shall be last and the last shall be first, and are called by the Golden Rule and other instructions of Jesus to engage in radical selflessness. The Buddha stressed virtues like lovingkindness and right livelihood. An even more radical idea from the East (such as from the tenets of Jainism) is the objective of extending compassion to all sentient beings (presumably including ants and mosquitoes!).

But inextricably embedded in the context of the spiritual life is an idea of privilege, linked mostly to the state of consciousness of the one participating in the relation with the ineffable. It comes in many forms, and we are provided with examples spoken with varying accents.

Jesus urged a setting apart of those who were to follow his way, using a passageway metaphor: “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.”

A more mystical, non-canonical account of Jesus’ teaching tells of him drawing a distinction between those who have the insight to know the Kingdom of God and those who are lost in a sort of dull automaticity. As stated in the Gospel of Thomas, “Jesus said: [the Kingdom of the Father] will not come by expectation; they will not say: ‘See here’, or: ‘See there’. But the Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth and men do not see it.”

Gurdjieff picked up on a similar theme by noting that most of us are not fully aware of reality because we are not conscious at all, but are walking around in a “waking sleep.” But one can “wake up” from this lower state, to arise to a higher level of awareness.

And isn’t that what the notion of enlightenment is all about, after all? In attaining a state of nirvana or, to a lesser extent, of samadhi one presumably changes the status of his or her consciousness. This is most preeminently achieved through escape from the cycle of rebirth or samsara. Talk about an ultimate setting apart of oneself from the others!

Extraordinary insight serves to differentiate the individual from the ordinary consciousness, as revealed in Durckheim’s description of our rare moments of higher consciousness, as “privileged moments” and “life’s starry hours.” And from the perspective of Islam, Rumi used the same kind of language to describe the mystical rapture of love when he talked about the Privileged Lovers.

So you see, there’s an interesting dynamic going on here. On one hand is the elevated nature of the individual occasioned by the work he or she has done with the inner life, or in proportion to which his or her inner life has been operated upon by enlightening forces (think Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus or Gautama Buddha under the bodhi tree). This elevated nature is a privileged nature. But on the other hand is the essentially universal call to equality in the form of compassion. The paradoxical coexistence of these notions which appear so closely to one another is worth meditating on.

It’s easy to feel uncomfortable these days when talking about privilege. But I suggest that in these terms it’s okay to assert such a privilege. And such a privileged feeling can rightfully support one’s notion of gratitude.

I suspect that most of us do not realize that we see and think in abstractions all the time, even when we are paying close attention to the details.

We even generate these abstractions in our imaginations and in our dreaming consciousness. The other night I dreamt I looked to the sky and saw thousands of stars. Did I look at and examine each sparkle, or count them all? Of course not. I could surmise that there were thousands of them by “deciding” to perceive a generality instead of each little point.

The tendency to see generalizations is with us in every moment of our perceptions and thoughts. Look outward at even the simplest material object. That chair is a swirling configuration of atoms, each comprising particles having statuses that are imperfectly determinable. Think of the vastly more complex systems, like that bird outside the window. It is alive — a fact that depends on the properties that emerge as the levels of complexity are ascended, from the particle to the atom to the molecule to the cell to the tissue to the organ to the system to the organism. When you look at that bird, you don’t see all that complexity. You see the abstraction, i.e., the emergent property of birdness. You might even think of these collections of properties as epiphenomena.

Thank goodness we see these collections of properties. Can you imagine how hopelessly complex and, indeed, meaningless all that we see would be if we perceived only the innumerable seething and teeming complexities and were not able to discern patterns or properties?

But the pattern recognition can be taken too far. It is not difficult at all — in fact it’s the ordinary, unexamined mindset — to see only the generalizations and to lose sight of the smaller, sometimes invisible, yet always interdependent parts that are doing the comprising.

So here’s a need for balance or moderation. In seeing things and understanding what they are, we owe ourselves a healthy dose of mindfulness, so that we can grok them as best we can. There is too much extraordinary detail to gloss over. But we cannot afford to get so lost in the minutiae that we go crazy.

Photo credit: Kris Smith.

Our five year old is almost always the first one in the house to arise every morning, so he comes into our bedroom to say good morning. This morning when he came in, we told him right away that we learned some big news during the night while he slept.

I asked him whether he had ever heard of Osama Bin Laden, and he kind of chuckled and said, “no.” The conversation went on something like this:

Me: Well, he was a bad guy. The worst guy. And the United States got him.

Son: (With a bit of a nervous smile.) Was he like a scary clown, with a red nose and rainbow hair?

Me: No, but he did wear kind of a strange hat. Do you remember the story about the Twin Towers?

Son: Did he drive an airplane into those buildings?

Me: No, but he told others to do that.

Son: Did they make him die?

Me: (Taking a deep breath.) Yes.

I was pleased to see that our son was not frightened by this news, but appeared to take the news somewhat matter-of-factly. (We have not told our three year old about the story. That seems the best for him for now.)

Discussing this with our five year old caused us to reflect on what is appropriate in terms of disclosures like this. We could have, of course, easily made it frightening for him, with a bunch of drama, turning OBL into some kind of bogie-man (“Good thing they got him or he would have blown up Daddy’s train.”) Or we could have not told him at all.

It was important to me that we do neither of these things.

I remember back when Reagan was shot (March 1981). I was, more or less, the same age then as our son is now. I remember discussing the facts of the news story with my parents then, in real time, and that really helped me contextualize what was going on, at least as best as I could as a little kid.

I’m glad I was not shielded from the news. Kids in my kindergarten class were discussing it the next day, and I had no doubt I knew the right version of the story. 

So I see two very important benefits to conscientious disclosure of difficult facts like this.

The first is short term: helping ensure the shocking nature of the news doesn’t needlessly rock the little growing consciousness inside there.

The second benefit is more long term: we want our children to rely on us as a source of information that has integrity. This is critical for the overall development of judgment. If our son cannot rely on us as a timely source for good and accurate information, or believes that we are withholding too much, how can we expect him to trust our insight to help him develop adult discretion?

I don’t think any writer has influenced my thought more than Joseph Campbell. One of the most intriguing ideas that Campbell talks about is the notion of being “transparent to the transcendent.” (See p. 40 of The Hero’s Journey.)

Campbell got this terminology from the German psychotherapist and Zen master Karlfried Graf Durckheim. And he thought very highly of Durckheim’s work — so much as to say that when “transparent to transcendence” came into his vocabulary, he thought “it just seemed to be the only thing necessary.” He went on to say, “to me, [Durckheim] is the polestar.”

If Joseph Campbell endorsed something, I’ll buy it wholesale. So I’ve begun my Durckheim exploration. That has started off tonight with this (kind of haunting) little 10 minute documentary I found on YouTube (embedded below). It seems to be a nice intro to his work and thought.

Drop me a line if you have read Durckheim and let me know what you think.

From Design You Trust:

Artist Scott Weaver used over 100,000 toothpicks to create this mechanical sculpture of San Francisco over the course of 35 years. Talk about a labor of love.

More pics here.

From Venture Bros. Blog:

Here are some Sears Catalog ‘Speed Suit’ pages we found online. Also called Leisure Jumpsuits and Putter Suits, these short sleeve, one-piece suits are ideal for household and yard chores or leisure wear in warm weather. The suits boast such details as two pleated chest pockets and Perma-Prest sewn in leg crease and wide spread collar. The special polyester and cotton weave actually ‘breathes’ for comfort. Speed suits ranged from $10 to $30 in Sears The Men’s Store.

Read the whole post.