Gone nowhere.
Some days solitude takes you.
A saturation takes place. All the personalities and opinions! The jostling in politics. The positions held and trumpeted. The wearying of words intended to carpet a flawed floor.
9
Throw away holiness and wisdom,
and people will be a hundred times happier.
Throw away morality and justice,
and people will do the right thing.
Throw away industry and profit,
and there won't be any thieves.
If these three aren't enough,
just stay at the center of the circle
and let all things take their course.
(--ch 19, Tao Te Ching, by Lao-tzu, from a translation by Stephen Mitchell)
There are days when you don't care. When the ordinary expectations fizzle into ash.
Kathleen Norris in her 2008 book
Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life, writes:
At its Greek root, the word acedia means the absence of care. The person afflicted by acedia refuses to care or is incapable of doing so. When life becomes too challenging and engagement with others too demanding, acedia offers a kind of spiritual morphine: you know the pain is there, yet can't rouse yourself to give a damn. That it hurts to care is borne out in etymology, for care derives from an Indo-European word meaning "to cry out," as in a lament. Caring is not passive, but an assertion that no matter how strained and messy our relationships can be, it is worth something to be present, with others, doing our small part. Care is also required for the daily routines that acedia would have us suppress or deny as meaningless repetition or too much bother.
(pp.3-4)
If care means 'to cry out,' and God is invocation, what is to be seen in an acedic lament? And what did the monk mean when he said to me: "Cheer up...things are only going to get worse!"?
A Buddhist Retreat Behind Broken-Mountain Temple
In the pure morning, near the old temple,
Where early sunlight points the tree-tops,
My path has wound, through a sheltered hollow
Of boughs and flowers, to a Buddhist retreat.
Here birds are alive with mountain-light,
And the mind touches peace in a pool,
And a thousand sounds are quieted
By the breathing of a temple-bell. - Ch'ang Chien
It seems everyone has a complaint. The left and the right, the orthodox and the heretics (
hairesis, Greek for 'choice,' as in those with a different opinion), those in power and those without power.
Nowhere is there enough solitude.
Itself a poem. Itself as poem.
Amy Lowell wrote:
No one expects a man to make a chair without first learning how, but there is a popular impression that the poet is born, not made, and that his verses burst from his overflowing heart of themselves. As a matter of fact, the poet must learn his trade in the same manner, and with the same painstaking care, as the cabinet-maker. His heart may overflow with high thoughts and sparkling fancies, but if he cannot convey them to his reader by means of written word he has no claim to be considered a poet. A workman may be pardoned, therefore, for spending a few moments to explain and describe the technique of his trade. A work of beauty which cannot stand an intimate examination is a poor and jerry-built thing.
In the first place, I wish to state my firm belief that poetry should not try to teach, that it should exist simply because it is a created beauty, even if sometimes the beauty of a gothic grotesque. We do not ask the trees to teach us moral lessons, and only the Salvation Army feels it necessary to pin texts upon them. We know that these texts are ridiculous, but many of us do not yet see that to write an obvious moral all over a work of art, picture, statue, or poem, is not only ridiculous, but timid and vulgar. We distrust a beauty we only half understand, and rush in with our impertinent suggestions. How far are we from "admitting the Universe"! The Universe, which flings down its continents and seas, and leaves them without comment. Art is as much a function of the Universe as an Equinoctial gale, or the Law of Gravitation; and we insist upon considering it merely a little scroll-work, or no great importance unless it be studded with nails from which pretty and uplifting sentiments may be hung! (--from The Poet's Trade, by Amy Lowell, at Poets.org, http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16037)
So it is today and yesterday both emit half understood beauty.
This jerry-built acausality.
Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, was fascinated by what he termed the process of synchronicity - seemingly random events which have a personally significant meaning. For example, you may start to think of a friend whom you haven't seen for a long time, only to receive an unexpected phone call from that friend the same day. Or, you are looking unsuccessfully for the source of a quotation when, almost unthinkingly, you pick up a book from your library, open it randomly, and there it is ! These type of things happen quite often.
Jung termed this process 'synchronicity' and he said that it is an acausal principle in that there seems to be no cause-effect process at work. However, I believe that this process is still based on the law of cause and effect, but on a level which we are not perceptive enough to realise. Synchronicity takes place in the hidden depths of the psychic - that is, at the transpersonal and quantum levels of existence.
This said, there is indeed a level of Being which is truly acausal, untouched by the law of cause and effect. It does not, however, occur or arise in the world of matter-energy, nor on the level of mind and psyche, but in the realm of Pure Consciousness. In the extraordinary Yogic text called the 'Yoga Vashishta', written several thousand years ago, the story is told of the crow and the coconut.......
A crow alights on a coconut tree and at the very same moment, by chance, a ripe coconut falls. These two unrelated events seem to be related in time and space, though in fact there is no causal relation. A man sitting under the tree would think 'it is because of the crow that I am now eating this wonderfully ripe coconut.'
The meaning of this parable is profound. It does not apply to the daily life of 'sticks and stones', where cause and effect is quite evident. Nor does it refer to the mental and psychic levels where, though less evident, cause and effect still function. It alludes to the relationship between Purusha (Pure Consciousness) and Prakriti (Matter-Energy-Mind) and the 'Transcendental Point' (Skt. 'bindu') where these two principles 'touch' each other. This is acausal.
In the story, there seems to be a cause-effect relationship between the crow and the falling of the coconut, but this is only how it appears and is due to our lack of understanding. If we could see the wider picture, we would see that there is no relationship between the crow and the falling coconut. In the same way, there is no cause-effect relationship between Pure Consciousness and the world of form, matter, energy and mind. This is a paradox which defies our normal logic.
The Bhagawat Gita declares: "All this world is pervaded by Me (the acausal Consciousness) in My unmanifest aspect; all beings exist in Me, but I do not dwell in them." (verse 9:4)
By jumping beyond the world of cause and effect, we may be blessed with the Vision and Realisation of the Acausal. Yoga and deep Meditation allow us to plunge into this ineffable experience
(--from, From the Causal to Acausal, by Swami Nishchalananda Saraswati, http://www.mandalayoga.net/index-newsletter-en-causal.html)
Nothing to flout. Nothing to flaunt.
A mere nothingness.
Ramana Maharshi looks at silence with different eyes:
A visitor asked: `What is mouna (silence)?'
M.: Mouna is not closing the mouth. It is eternal speech.
D.: I do not understand.
M.: That state which transcends speech and thought is mouna.
D.: How to achieve it?
M.: Hold some concept firmly and trace it back. By such concentration silence results. When practice becomes natural it will end in silence.
Meditation without mental activity is silence. Subjugation of the mind is meditation. Deep meditation is eternal speech.
D.: How will worldly transaction go on if one observes silence?
M.: When women walk with water pots on their heads and chat with their companions they remain very careful, their thoughts concentrated on the loads on their heads. Similarly when a sage engages in activities, these do not disturb him because his mind abides in Brahman.
(20th July, 1936, Talk 231, from Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi,
http://bhagavan-ramana.org/ramana_maharshi/books/tw/tw231.html
Some days you take solitude.
Going nowhere.
