Blaise Pascal
In the 17th century Blaise Pascal, a brilliant French philosopher and mathematician and an intense spiritual seeker, kept a kind of “thought diary” In which he wrote down his various reflections in fragmentary form. After his death it was published under the French title, Pensees, and ever since it has become a classic of the Western Tradition. Here’s a few of his “thoughts”:
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
“If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.”
“Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light is throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.”
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
This last statement sounds a bit flip but actually it carries a very deep insight which is also quite universal….I mean you will catch the same sentiment among the Sufis, Zen folk, Desert Fathers, etc. We will return to this later in a different and more obvious context.
Poor Pascal, as brilliant as he was, and so sincere and intense in his religious journey, he nevertheless became tainted with Jansenism, a real spiritual malady that spread through 17th century French religious culture (especially Catholicism, but it did also resemble some tenets of the Protestant Reformation). Jansenism’s vision of mankind was one of total corruption, and all human beings were predestined either for salvation or damnation. What Pascal illustrates is that no matter how keen one’s intellectual acuity is (and he was a true genius), that is no guarantee of spiritual/religious clarity. That’s a whole other ballgame as they say! Perhaps something to think about.
Cormac McCarthy
Novelist, consummate storyteller, master of English prose…. At one point in my life I was deeply enticed by his novels. The writing was so engrossing, even hypnotic….but finally I could not follow his extremely bleak vision of life and his portrayal of life as completely opaque to any meaning. However, there are those moments of remarkable luminosity. A small example of that is this excerpt from one of his novels, The Crossing: the setting is in Mexico about 70 years ago, and a grizzly old man is talking to a young American who has lost his family ranch and who has rode his horse into old Mexico to perhaps find a sense of his old way of life:
“Things separate from their stories have no meaning. They are only shapes. Of a certain size and color. A certain weight. When their meaning has become lost to us they no longer have even a name. The story on the other hand can never be lost from its place in the world for it is that place. And that is what was to be found here. The corrido. The tale. And like all corridos it ultimately told one story only, for there is only one to tell.”
There is a deep truth hidden here. Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn , The Great American Novel begins like this:
“You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly – Tom’s Aunt Polly , she is – and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.”
Robert Bellah, the sociologist, and Alasdair MacIntyre, the moral philosopher, have both pointed out that our individual lives are a narrative set within a larger story. WHO Huck is, who this person is, is set within this story and you really don’t know him without knowing the whole story. In other words, we are not these separate “marbles” just rubbing against each other randomly in this bucket we call “our world.” Our life is a story set unfolding within a great story….and this implies a lot. No wonder modern human beings are strangely drawn into a vacuity of meaning, and either embrace the resultant nihilism or anesthetize themselves into spiritual numbness through the varied “drugs” that modern life provides. MacIntyre said that before you can decide, “What is the right thing to do? What is the good thing to do in any situation?” “What should I do?” you have to ask, “What story is my life a part of?” Who you are and a sense of who you are and what that means and what are your values emerge as you answer this question, either implicitly or explicitly. (Huck Finn, in his own way, does that.) In this context one could say that Jesus radically changes the narrative in which our life is embedded. Something to think about here.
Gandhi
In reading “Not Even Wrong,” a science blog by mathematician Peter Woit who teaches at Columbia….a blog that I particularly like, I found this troubling quote:
“Update: The latest opinion polling of the Israeli public shows very strong support for ethnic cleansing and genocide. Support for expelling all Palestinians from Gaza at is at 82% (above 90% among the religious), for expelling all Arab citizens of Israel is at 56%. Support for killing all the inhabitants of a conquered city (e.g. Gaza or the West Bank) is at 47% (60% or so among the religious). No polling numbers on what fraction of Israeli citizens want their Arab citizen neighbors killed.”
These numbers are from the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. This gives us one glimpse, but just one, into the nightmare of that situation. And then there is the newer entry by Peter:
“At the moment though it seems to me important to just focus on a basic point of morality: an appalling genocide is going on in Gaza, and Columbia University’s response to this genocide is an all-out campaign to stop people from protesting it. This is completely disgraceful.
It’s difficult to get reliable information about what is happening in Gaza, partly because the Israelis have killed most journalists there (and are starving to death the few remaining ). All indications are that the Israeli government is pursuing a policy of destroying all homes and infrastructure there, to make sure the inhabitants driven out have nothing to return to. Civilians are being killed and starved with the goal of forcing them somehow to leave. Among the most reliable sources of information are the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, which have detailed stories,,,, explaining how starving people seeking food are being killed.
The New York Times has recently published a long article by an Israeli scholar considered a leading authority on genocide entitled I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It. that strongly makes the case that what is going on is genocide.”
And of course what Hamas has done is also outrageous and evil. Both sides seem to think that vengeance for what the other has done, or just plain fear for what the other might do, justifies almost any kind of response. Retaliation disguised as self-defense becomes an absolute law.
(There is a partial and eerie similarity to what happened here in the U.S. between Native Americans and white Europeans in the first four centuries after the whites arrival. Michael Rogin, a political philosopher, once called the Palestinians the “Indians of the Middle East.” That was back in the 1970s…..)
The degree of fear and hatred that each side has in that conflict for the other side is mind boggling in its ferocity. This is the result of decades of one injustice piled on top of another, of so much fear and hatred that one cannot see any good whatsoever in the “other,” of neither side rising heroically above their compulsion for vengeance, of allowing only “an eye for an eye” as your guide. It is an expression and a manifestation of what we mean when we say “hell.” And this made me think of Gandhi and the equally hellish situation between Muslims and Hindus in India.
In 1946, as India was about to get its freedom from British rule, the tensions between Hindus and Muslims exploded in uncontrollable riots. Mobs and official forces engaged in rampant murder, beating people to death, rape, looting, brutalizing women and children, etc. Something like at least two million people were killed. There is a scene toward the end of the movie about Gandhi, where Gandhi, nearing death , is engaged in an absolute fast to stop the rioting. A bedraggled and desperate Hindu man comes in to see Gandhi:
Hindu man: ”Eat…EAT! I am going to hell, but I will not have your death on my soul! I’m going to Hell! I killed a Muslim child! I smashed his head against a wall.”
Gandhi: “Why?”
Hindu: “Because they killed my son! The Muslims killed my only son!”
Gandhi: “I know a way out of Hell. Find a child, a child whose mother and father were killed and raise him as your own. Only be sure that he is a Muslim and that you raise him as one.”
“I know a way out of hell.” Indeed! Neither side in this insane conflict has any leader capable of saying that and of showing THE WAY. Instead the people are being led deeper into hell, and the suffering has been unspeakable and will continue to be so. And the spiritual darkness reflected in that poll will only increase. Something to think about. And something to think about our own implication in all this….our own place in this hellacious history…..
Martin Buber
Buber has a very interesting take on the whole Genesis account of the creation of human beings and the so-called “original sin.” Like most Christian theologians and biblical scholars, he does not see it as a story of something that happened in the past but rather as a profound mythological explication of the human condition. Merton, in one of his talks to his novices and fellow monks at Gethsemani, picks up on this, and it is obvious that it has tremendous significance for him and its applicability to monastic life and the deep Christian life. Here is the Youtube link to this talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA7GZaAaCpA
It’s not a good copy so you have to be patient. At first he jabbers about some stuff, but then he gets going:
What was Adam’s original sin? He wanted to do good!! In a sense Adam broke the original wholeness of creation. He wanted to see himself doing good, being good…and a reward is just around the corner! What a remarkable insight! As Merton points out there is a lot to unpack here. Listen to Merton as he goes a long way into it….very important for the monastic life and the true spiritual life:
““If we make this life a consistent project in seeing ourselves doing good, we are in trouble.”
But there is even more. And so true how universal this insight is….Zen, for example is ruthless in deconstructing this self that wants to see itself enlightened. In light of this I thought of that Gospel episode where someone addresses Jesus as “Good Teacher…..” And Jesus’ response is, “Why do you call me good? Only God is good.” (Mark 10:18) Interesting echoes of Genesis.
Vocation
No Exit
I borrow this expression from the title of an intriguing French play by Jean Paul Sartre. But Mark Twain will be our guide for now….more precisely again that great American novel, Huckleberry Finn. There are several “escape themes” in the novel. First of all, Huck is an independent youngster who is very marginal to civilization and its values. Aunt Polly tries to “sivilize” him, but that turns out to be like the proverbial square peg and round hole….ain’t gonna work! Huck runs away and in doing so he encounters another “escapee,” a runaway slave by the name of Jim. They join together on a raft floating down the Mississippi, a kind of community of escapees! Huck may be marginal to civilized society, but his moral views have been shaped by that society; and so he is tempted to turn Jim in because he doesn’t want to do something illegal, “wrong,” helping a slave run away is condemned by his society. But his young, naïve heart has a different sense about all this. He helps Jim even If it means “going to hell” for doing this. Here is the critical excerpt:
“It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from ME, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting ON to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth SAY I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger’s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie–I found that out.
So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn’t know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I’ll go and write the letter–and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:
Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.
HUCK FINN.
I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking–thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ‘stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
‘All right, then, I’ll GO to hell’–and tore it up.”
Think about this!! Where is the “hell” in this picture and is there a “way” out of it…..and has Huck found the way….or is there “no exit” for him (and us)?
The ”second escape” is their journey on the raft. They see it as a journey to each his own freedom. But here is the tragic, cruel irony: they are not heading north toward “freedom,” but farther south….they are drifting down the Mississippi from a border state, Missouri, to the fully slave states of the South. No exit for both of them. Huck witnesses the chaos, the corruption, the degradation of human sociability as he moves down the heart of American society on the Mississippi, the Great Highway of 19th century America.
(Interesting to compare/contrast this with Conrad’s very serious, very heavy novel, Heart of Darkness, another journey down another river and with one eye on the British Empire. In any case, Jim does get his freedom because his owner freed him in her will……but is this really any kind of “escape” into anything like real free humanity in a free society? About Huck….well, look below……)
Finally, the “third escape” appears in the last lines of the novel, Huck speaking:
“But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.”
Note: “the Territory” is the West, Indian country, the wilderness, etc. This represented a kind of symbol and reality of a kind of freedom for white Americans….a superficial freedom to be sure but one which could open up into something deeper. But Huck had witnessed not only the boyish frustrations of civil limitations but the very rot at the core of civilization….and really there is “no exit” from that in “the Territory.”
Every major spiritual tradition will tell you that you will ALWAYS run into No Exit until you go through the heart of your heart which also always has external repercussions as Gandhi well illustrates in “I know a way out of hell.”
One day the Buddha was asked: “How do we escape the heat of the summer’s day?”
And the Buddha answered, “Why not leap into a blazing furnace!”
Think about it.
Merton’s Hagia Sophia
I am sitting by a campfire at a remote campsite in the Sierras, Tibetan prayer flags flapping in the breeze, sending prayers for all creatures….
I am thinking about Thomas Merton at the Redwoods Monastery for a small group conference in 1968. He is standing under a redwood tree in the forest, listening to the soft rain. Another monk approaches him….Merton tells him, “Here is where everything connects,” Indeed.
I am thinking of Merton’s “Hagia Sophia,” a prose poem written about 1960 that may very well be his finest and deepest poetic reflection. It reveals a profound discovery and awareness of the real “feminine” as a manifestation of Divine Wisdom at the depths of all reality. And it is this Sophia which is the root connectedness of all being that flows from the Mystery of the Ultimate Reality.
There is too much in this poem to go into at this time, but here are some excerpts:
“There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden whole-ness.
This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom,
the Mother of all,
Natura naturans.
There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fount of action and joy. It rises up in word-
less gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being, welcoming me tenderly, saluting me with indescribable humility.
This is at once my own being, my own nature, and the Gift of my Creator’s Thought and Art within me, speaking as Hagia Sophia, speaking as my sister, Wisdom.”
And:
“O blessed, silent one, who speaks everywhere!
We do not hear the soft voice, the gentle voice, the
merciful and feminine.
We do not hear mercy, or yielding love, or non-resistance,
or non-reprisal. In her there are no reasons and no answers.
Yet she is the candor of God’s light, the expression of His
simplicity.
We do not hear the uncomplaining pardon that bows
down the innocent visages of flowers to the dewy
earth. We do not see the Child who is prisoner in all
the people, and who says nothing. She smiles, for
though they have bound her, she cannot be a prisoner.
Not that she is strong, or clever, but simply that
she does not understand imprisonment.
The helpless one, abandoned to sweet sleep, him the
gentle one will awake: Sophia.
All that is sweet in her tenderness will speak to him
on all sides in everything, without ceasing, and he
will never be the same again. He will have awakened
not to conquest and dark pleasure but to the impeccable
pure simplicity of One consciousness in all and through all:
one Wisdom, one Child, one Meaning, one Sister.
Amen!