ON LIVING ALONE, FLOTSAM, AND JETSAM

Kurt Andersen, True Believers: A Novel(New York: Random House, 2012) ("Living alone has also made me much, much more conscious of the inconsequential things, the sweet banalities of a day in a life. I feel now as if I spent most of my previous time on earth in a state of perpetually frenzied obliviousness, intent on executing all the Important Tasks at Hand. The test to take. The application to finish. The man to marry. The job to get, the brief to write, the motion to file, the verdict to appeal, the meeting to schedule, the PowerPoint to prepare. The apartment to buy, the meals to organize, the two mile runs, the sex to have, the kids to get to school and playdates and doctors and volleyball games and SAT tutors and colleges. The marriage to end. The books to write. I was always good at screening out the noise and focusing exclusively on the signal, which made me successful in school and at work and (more or less) as a parent. Until I lived alone, I was not so good at understanding--really understanding beyond the obligatory modern lip service to smelling the roses and living in the moment--that the extraneous noise can be lovely. The Buddhist call it mindfulness, a word I sort of hate but an MO I've come to believe in.... We deprive ourselves if we ignore all the tiny, inconsequential bits and pieces, the flotsam and jetsam of life. Quarks and neutrinos and atoms and molecules, the earth, asteroids, stars, the shaft of light angling through the kitchen window right this second, illuminating the slow-motion Dance of Ten Thousand Dust Motes: isn't it all flotsam and jetsam?" Id. at 93-94.).

KALI'S BOON: CONFRONTATION AND ACCEPTANCE OF DEATH

David R. Kinsley, The Sword and the Flute: Kali and Krsna, Dark Visions of the Terrible and the Sublime in Hindu Mythology, with a new preface (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: U. of California Press, 1975, 2000) ("The sound of Krsna's flute, though, is more than a melody. It is a summons, a call to come to him. It calls the souls of men back to their Lord." Id. at 33. "A central theme in Hindu spirituality is the idea of maya. Essentially maya is what prevents man form seeing the world as it really is. It is grounded in 'not-knowing' (avidya) and is said to be the result of superimposition. Man, in his ignorance, superimposes various structures and images upon things as they really are, thus preventing true 'seeing.' In this state of not-knowing, man comes to see the world as permanent, pleasant, and worthy of his ultimate attachments. He also see it as dual, fractured into bits and pieces, something 'out there' to which he must respond and react continually. Maya, therefore, both lures man into a false sense of security and reality and clutters and fragments his picture of reality." Id. at 133. "Kali quite clearly conveys maya as seen from the 'other shore.' She illustrates strikingly what the world of appearance looks like to the one who has seen beyond. She may be voluptuous and smiling in her later representations, suggesting the dark allure of the world based on not-knowing, but her overall presence, which is frightening, and her dwelling place in the cremation ground clearly mock the ultimate significance of a world grounded in the ego. For the pilgrim who has crossed to the other shore, who has torn the veil of maya, the world left behind or transcended is revealed in all its pretense. With awareness grounded in knowledge, the enlightened one is able to focus on the cremation ground as the end of worlds grounded in a grasping ego. The one who see truly no longer superimposes false and superficial images on the world as it is but rather focuses on the unmistakable reality of the world as painful and fleeting." "Kali, of course, not only represents the world of maya seen from the other shore of enlightenment. She also acts as a catalyst to one who strives to reach the other shore, who strives to see truly." Id. at 134-135. "The First Noble Truth of the Buddha is, 'All is suffering [duhkha],' a truth that the Hindu tradition, too, has assumed for most of its history. What the Buddha articulated in his formula and what duhkha means to the Indian tradition is not simply that life has its misfortunes, bad luck, or tragedies. Duhkha suggests something much more fundamental in Indian spirituality: it underlines the inevitable realities of sickness, old age, and death, the inevitable change and passing away of things. For  Buddhism, and to a great extent for Hinduism as well, the first step in man's spiritual quest is meditation on this point: sickness, old age, and death are the very texture of life, and to think otherwise is to remain hopeless deluded. To live is by definition to participate in these realities. This is the way things are, and nothing can be done to change it." "In a less linear, less formalized way, Kali conveys the same truth. The image of Kali in the cremation ground or as a shrunken, wrinkled, skeletal hag fastens one's attention on those aspects of life that cannot be avoided and must eventually result in pain, sorrow, and lamentation. As illustrative of maya and as the embodiment of uncaring, pulsing prakrti, Kali forces man's attention upon those aspects of life that cannot be kept at bay or successfully repressed. She is the mythological embodiment of those three 'passing sights' that provoked the Buddha himself to abandon the world in search of enlightenment, those same sights that are presupposed in his First Noble Truth: sickness, old age, and death." Id. at 138-139. "It seems that Kali's boon is some way has to do not so much with directing man's vision to liberation after death as to granting liberation before death. It seems that she is religiously efficacious not simply insofar as she scares man into rejecting the physical world by conveying its darker aspects. To her devotees she has also given a playful freedom in this life, painful through she reveals it to be. And this boon of freedom is not ... the boon of ignorance--an ignorance of the way things really are and a childishness based on futile hope. It is a freedom based on release from ignorance, a freedom that comes to see one who knows himself to be mortal, a freedom that enables him to revel in the moment, to accept the fullness of life as a gift to be reveled in rather than a curse to be gotten rid of." "Kali's boon is won when man confronts or accepts her and the realities she dramatically conveys to him. The image of Kali, in a variety of ways, teaches man that pain, sorrow, decay, death, and destruction are not to be overcome or conquered by denying them or explaining them away. Pain and sorrow are woven into the texture of man's life so thoroughly that to deny them is ultimately futile and foolish. For man to realize the fullness of his being, for man to exploit his potential as a human being, he must finally accept this dimension of existence. Kali's boon is freedom, the freedom of the child to revel in the moment, and it is won only after confrontation or acceptance of death.... To ignore death, to pretend that one is physically immortal, to pretend that one's ego is the center of things, is to provoke Kali's mocking laughter. To confront or accept death, on the contrary, is to realize a mode of being that can delight and revel in the play of the gods. To accept one's mortality is to be able to act superfluously, to let go, to be able to sing, dance, and shout. To win Kali's boon is to be childlike, to be flexible, open and naive like a child.... Kali is Mother to her devotees not because she protects them from the way things really are but because she reveals to them their mortality and thus releases them to act fully and freely, releases them from the incredible, binding web of 'adult' pretense, practicality, and rationality." Id. at 144-145. I will not ignore death. I will confront and accept death, my eventual death. I will strive to revel in the moment. I will learn to play, though not in any contrived, affected, or manufactured way. "Kali's overall presence may be understood as benign. Her raised and bloodied sword suggests the death of ignorance, her disheveled hair suggests the freedom of release, and her girdle of severed arms may suggest the end of grasping. As death or the mistress of death she grants to him who sees truly the ultimate boon of unconditional freedom, release from the cycle of samsara, release from pain, sorrow, and not-knowing. Her two right hands, the upper making the mudra of 'fear not' and the lower making the mudra of granting boons, convey to him who would seek his true spiritual destiny the knowledge that death is only the passing away of the nonessential and the gateway to ultimate freedom. Death is not to be feared but is seen as a boon. Kali's dark, menacing appearance does not frighten but attract one who has seen the world for what it really is: the ephemeral, phantasmagoric display of superimposition or the magic of the gods, a world fraught with pain and suffering, a world in which all things perish and pass away." Id. at 143-144. Previously, on this blog I have asserted a serious yoga practice involves confronting one's demons. In a recent class I was amused by an instructor's assertion that 'yoga practice is not about confronting one's demons.' Since I had never heard her (or, for that matter, anyone else at yoga) mention demons and whether yoga had anything to do with confronting one's demons, I could not help but wonder whether the instructor had read my blog and was asserting her disagreement. Of course, thinking so was pure conceit/ego on my part. That said, I think death itself and the fear of death and the denial of one's mortality are among demons which plague human existence. And, who can honestly deny that many, very many individual come to modern postural yoga because they fear physical aging (which is essentially a fear of death, is it not?). I understand where yoga studios do not highlight the possible confrontation with demons, especially the demon of death, in yoga class. Yoga studios are, after all, businesses, and they do not wish to market themselves as being in the demon hunting business. Yet, the standard format for studio-based yoga practice is to have the last asana, the last posture, be Savasana, the Corpse Pose. Savansana is a time to meditate on one's death. To confront and accept the demons of aging and death.).

FINDING JOY UNDER DIRE CIRCUMSTANCES

Julia Alvarez, A Wedding in Haiti (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2012).

WHAT BECAME OF THE 'NEW' NEW DEAL?

Theda Skocpol, Obama and America's Political Future, with commentaries by Larry M. Bartels, Mickey Edwards, & Suzanne Mettler (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England, 2012) ("Americans are, in short, philosophical conservatives and operational liberals. This means that even if Americans approve many specific measures furthered by President Obama and the Democrats, popular worries could be stroked by political opponents, As a young, change-oriented president, Obama would have faced such worries under any circumstances. But the spreading economic distress of 2009 and 2010 generated genuine fear that was readily exploited by political foes who equated even mild government activism with 'radicalism'." Id at 11-12. "Obama's failure to engage more consistently in high-profile public leadership on the economy constitutes, in an important sense, democratic political-malpractice. For much of his first tern, Obama botched a central function of the presidency in a period of economic crisis--and if he is not reelected to a second term, his early shortfall  in this vital area of democratic communication will be a significant part of the explanation." Id. at 37-38.).

SHORT READS RELATING TO BUDDHISM

Harvey B. Aronson, Buddhist Practice on Western Ground: Reconciling Eastern Ideals and Western Psychology (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2004).

Damien Keown, Buddhist Ethics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2005).

Thomas J. McFarlane, ed., Einstein and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings, with an Introduction by Wes Nisker (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2002) (From the backcover: "This unique collection of parallel quotes reveals how modern science and ancient Eastern thought lead us to the same deep truths. Einstein and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings shows how seemingly opposite endeavors--scientific observation and spiritual contemplation--have produced amazingly similar ideas about the nature of the universe and our place in it....").

HOME

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, translated from the French by Maria Jolas, with a Foreword by John R. Stilgoe (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969) (From the backcover: "Thirty years since its first publication in English, French philosopher Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space remains one of the most appealing and lyrical exploration of home. Bachelard takes us on a journey, from cellar to attic, to show how our perceptions of houses and other shelters shape our thoughts, memories, and dreams.").

JUST THE FACTS

Dwight Macdonald, Masscult and Midcult: Essays Against the American Grain, edited by John Summers, and with an Introduction by Louis Menand (New York: New York Review Books, 2011) (From "The Triumph of The Fact": "It is their respect for The Facts that makes most Americans so touchingly willing to give information to anyone who asks them for it.  We take easily to being profiled, galluped, kinseyed, luced, and otherwise made the object of journalistic or scientific curiosity.  With amazing docility, we tell the voice on the phone what TV program we are looking at (so that advertisers can plan their strategy for exacting $$$ from us) [blogger note: now we are facebooked, googleed, amazoned, etc., for it is through  and over the internet that we so readily disclosed the our personal facts], answer impertinent questions from reporters (whose papers then sell the answers back to us), co-operate on elaborate and boring questionnaires administered by sociologists (so they can get their, not our, associate professorships), and voluntarily appear as stooges on broadcast shows which bare the most intimate details of our lives or--if we miss out on a Fact question--put us through stunts as if we were laboratory animals in the  grip of a made scientist.  In the last instance there is, of course, 'something in it' for us, but the prizes seem not worth the humiliation, and I suspect are often more of an excuse than a motive, i.e., that the participant thinks of himself objectively--as an object, a Fact--and not subjectively--in value-terms like pride, honor, or even vanity--and so either welcomes or doesn't mind the public exposure of his Factuality; but that senses there is something monstrous in this detachment and is glad to conceal it by affecting greed, a base motive but at least a subjective one."  "In the thirty years I have been asking people questions as a journalist, I have often wondered why almost no one refuses to give an interview, even though, in many cases, there is more to be lost than gained by so doing.  There are some obvious reasons for this--vanity, the American illusion that publicity is always in some vague way to one's advantage, and the pleasure most people take in hearing themselves talk, especially when the listener is professionally sympathetic and informed.  A less obvious reason perhaps is that the gathering of facts by journalists has come to be accepted as a normal and indeed praiseworthy practice, and people seem to feel it their duty to 'co-operate.'  If the story is about themselves, they take the line they 'have nothing to hide,' they 'stand on the record,' and insist they 'just want to give you the facts and let you decide.'  In reality, they often have plenty to hide, but it would be a cynical and untypical American who would admit this even to himself."  Id. at 203-235, 215-216.  This blogger is a very cynical American (I would say "untypical American" as well, but that would be an effort to make myself into something exceptional and special).  Oops! Perhaps I should have hid those facts.).