Judaism, I Asked For Wonder*

"The gods attend to great matters; they neglect small ones..." --Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 B.C.E.-43 B.C.E.), ancient Roman Statesman

Responding to one of the great figures in the Hellenistic world Jewish theologian, Abraham Joshua Heschel writes "in the theology of the common good, according to Aristotle, the gods are not at all concerned with the dispensation of good and bad fortune, or external things. To the Hebrew prophet, however, no subject is as worthy of consideration as the plight of man. Indeed G-d Himself is described as reflecting over the plight of man rather than as contemplating eternal ideas. His mind is preoccupied with man, with the concrete actualities of history, rather than with the timeless issues of thought."

In the Nevi'im, or Prophet's message, nothing that has bearing upon "good and evil is small or trite in the eyes of G-d. The teaching of Judaism is the theology of the common deed. The Torah, or Bible, insists that G-d is concerned with the everydayness, the trivialities of life.
Thus the great challenge does not lie in organizing solemn demonstrations, but in how we manage the commonplace. The prophet's field of concern is not the mysteries of heaven, the glories of eternity, but the blights of society, the affairs of the marketplace.
He addresses himself to those who trample upon the needy, who increase the price of grain, use dishonest scales and sell the refuse of corn or wheat (see Nevi'im, Amos 8:4-6). The predominant feature of the biblical pattern of life is unassuming, unheroic, inconspicuous piety, the sanctification of trifles, attentiveness to details."

The wages of a laborer shall not remain with you until morning (Torah, Leviticus 19:13,18).
Love your fellow as yourself; I am the Lord. When you encounter your enemy's ox or ass wandering, you must take it back to him.
When you see the ass of your enemy lying under its burden and would refrain from raising it, you must nevertheless raise it with him (Torah, Exodus 23:4-5).

-- taken from I Asked for Wonder, A Spiritual Anthology by Abraham Joshua Heshel

* A SimpleMind Zen reader favorite which first appeared here in 2009.

Imagining and the Soul

"What converts this "it" into me"?  --The Force of Character by James Hillman*

Writing about character isn't so fashionable these days; in our psychologically steeped society, we are conditioned to think more about personality, ego, identity, integrative structures, and other such rational terminology for what has been thought of in previous generations simply as "character". And despite the apparent Oneness which most religions teach, you each have your style, your set of traits both physical and emotional, and a destiny. "You are essentially different from me,' says Hillman, 'by virtue of the lasting sameness of each of our individualized characters." Hillman argues that despite all the changes in a single lifetime, all the progressions made into the future, you are the unique sum of character; character provides 'a lasting core.'

"It's refreshing to discover that some of the oldest and most basic ideas of philosophy-- Same and Different, Form and Matter-- are actually at work in our daily lives... [What] keeps us who we are and holds our body to its form? Imagine the body as an ancient philosopher, the body as a place of wisdom... character, this governing wisdom... an active force...  the hustlers of materialism [form counters materialism, advances function] who ask us to buy the idea that we are complex pieces of biotechnology, compared to computer chips... results from underlying bio-genetic impulses.'
'Form can be reduced to matter." Equally fashionable and in doubt, in Hillman's eyes, is the discipline of Cognitive Sciences. Here the temptation is overwhelming to reduce a human being to an "organ of computation," a reptilian brain and so forth. Equally fantastic is the absence of myth or reductionism in its presentation. Rather there is an air of statement or axiom, self-evident 'truth.'

In contrast Hillman, the philosopher, the scholar, turns to thinkers such as Aristotle, especially Aristotle whose idea of Form in relation to the body and soul has guided much Western thought for more than two millenia. Aristotle believed that the soul is the form of the body, the original of its movement... the interests of body and soul are the same. The soul forms the body, in this view; while without a body, a soul cannot be located. Because of this Aristotle believed that the soul's beauty was harder to detect than beauty of a bodily form. The soul is, in tradition, the element concerned with goodness and beauty, justice and courage, friendship and loyalty. The soul is also variously described by its actions, such as courageous, timid, vacillating, or kindly, loving. "Through these characteristics we come to know the nature of our soul and to assess the souls of others."

Insisting that the soul has a definite, intentional, intelligent idea, Hillman strikes against the cliche idea of soul today that concludes it "all gossamer, no fiber; a refuge, a fairytale land, a mood, a symbol... He counters these cliches, insisting "the idea of  Form gives shape and character to soul, and demands more rigor in thinking about it. Further the character in this reckoning fulfills itself "by doing what it is naturally suited to do, which is also its pleasure. Aristotle called this natural activity, energy." Thus, the character imagined is as much a product of our imagination as our experiences; this "does not mean that our images are purely personal fantasies and that imagination is a function inside each privately enclosed skull."

Imagination is more than a mental function. The creative forces in the world, as the world soul, produce the images that we perceive; some come to us in idleness, in daydreams, in sleep, in sudden, clear insights, or after long struggles in meditation. The philosopher Emmanuel Kant remarked that without imagination, we should have no knowledge whatsoever.  We do not have to visually perceive these imaginings to feel feelings, think thoughts; we do not have to optically view poems, or characters in stories or movies to 'see' them or their character in our imagination. More than anything, imagination is one of the great "archetypal principles like love, order, beauty, justice, time. We sense these principles coursing through us." Beauty and order, for example, are not placed in the world; we find them there. Thus if  "character is a complex of images, then to know you, I must imagine you."

* author James Hillman is a well known thinker, Jungian psychologist and scholar.

Consciousness, Everything That Rises True

~ For traveling friends, because education truly is a two-way street ~

"feel your lightness and let it merge with others..."--Tao Te Ching

"Many poets are not poets... they never succeed in being themselves."

"It is therefore literally true that anyone who rests content with philosophical or theological speculation about God is supremely ignorant."

--Thomas Merton

"Pushed to the extreme, Mind can only harden man, not divinize him or even simply give him joy..."

--Sri Aurobindo, Satprem

"I am the will, the heart, the soul, the spirit, the self, the I..."

--Peter Kreeft

Ways of seeing, vispayana, are many and yet they are few: some spiritual traditions are unique, and yet they are universal:

"If you know what it is, don't talk it away:
If you don't then you don't understand.

Hush, keep it in, and your doorway shut--
Steer clear of sharpness and untangle the knots.

Feel your lightness and let it merge with others,
This we say is our basis of oneness.

The sage who does this doesn't have to worry
about people called 'friends' or 'enemies,'
with profit or loss, honor or disgrace--

He is a Master of Life, instead."
--Tao Te Ching, chapter 56, translated by Man-Ho Kwok

"I have three priceless treasures:
The first is compassion
the second, thrift
And the third is that I never want to be ahead of you.

If I have compassion, you will die for me. I know that.
If I waste nothing, I can give myself to you all--
And if I don't seem perfect, then you'll trust me to lead you.

These days people scorn compassion. They try to be tough.
They spend all they have, and yet want to be generous
They despise humility, and want to be the best.

I tell you that way is Death's.

If you have loved your people, you will know it
they will fight tooth and nail for you in attack or defense.

This is the protection of Heaven, and your harvest.
--Tao Te Ching, chapter 67, translated by Man-Ho Kwok

Thomas Merton, Integrity:
"Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or particular saint they are intended to be by [gifts of] God... They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have somebody else's experiences, or write somebody else's poems, or possess somebody else's spirituality...

There can be an intense egoism in following everybody else. People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular-- and too lazy to think of anything better... Hurry ruins saints as well as artists... In great saints you find that perfect humility and perfect integrity coincide. The two turn out to be practically the same thing. The saint is unlike everybody else precisely because he is humble... since no two people are alike, if you have the humility to be yourself, you will not be like anyone else in the whole universe... Individuality is something deep in the soul... humility brings with it a deep refinement of spirit, a peacefulness, a tact and common sense, without which there is no sane morality...How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man's city?

--Thomas Merton, Trappist monk from his book, The New Seeds of Contemplation

Says Thomas Merton, writing about the saint of India, St Thomas the Apostle in his book also The Ascent to Truth, "Speculative sciences can only find God as he is reflected in visible creation..." There is an embodied truth that is whole and complete, as you are a whole and complete body and soul. Thus the teaching about 'belief in both the seen and the unseen.'

Peter Kreeft, The Most Important Thing:
"Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man." Matthew 15:11

"This is true not only of the mouth or the body, but also the soul. What comes into my soul is not necessarily what I will, but what comes out of my soul is precisely what I will. The Greek philosophers did not clearly recognize this personal center. They were intellectualists; they thought the deepest thing in us was the mind. Thus Plato taught that whenever we really know the good, we do it... Aristotle defined man as a rational animal." When asked about his teachings, Jesus replied, "My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. If any man's will is to do this [the Father's] will, he shall know whether the teaching is from God." John 7: verses 16-17

"The will leads us to wisdom... Know thyself, was the first and greatest command for the Greeks. It was inscribed upon every Temple of Apollo... To answer that fundamental question: What is the self? What am I? What is the human person? The key of love unlocks the deepest answer...

--Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You

And finally, the last word here: "In truth, it is not our human forces which will work out this passage... but a more and more conscious surrender to the Force from above."
--Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, by Satprem

Culture Needs Eastern Wisdom

"The horizons of the world are no longer confined to Europe [or the West]."
  -- A Thomas Merton Reader, essays by Thomas Merton

While some visitors here may be confounded by the name of this blog and its stated aims, be no mistake, the "raft is not the shore, nor is the wave without the water."  The winds are in the waves. This is everyday mind. Writing in his collected essays, Theologian, and great friend of Eastern philosophy and wisdom, Cistercian monk, Thomas Merton speaks to a subject increasingly important in modern life. He writes in an essay that "we have to gain new perspectives, and on this our spiritual and even our physical survival may depend... Does Christian culture need Oriental wisdom?" It is, he says, absolutely essential to introduce into our studies, the Humanities and a dimension of wisdom oriented to contemplation as well as to wise action.... It is no longer sufficient to go back over our European and Christian traditions."

Merton asks if Christian, western culture needs Asian wisdom. He asks if the current lack of Humanities education by the vast majority of educators and students leads to a great, gaping void. While many think of the Humanities to be synonymous with the Arts such as painting, drawing, music or theater, it is, in fact, so much more. This is moreover what Merton ponders. He says, "while it would certainly be rash to state this without further qualification. We may ask ourselves a few pertinent questions on the subject...
Firstly, it is quite clear that non-Christian religion has anything that Christianity needs, so far as it is a supernaturally revealed religion. Yet from the point of incarnation, of revealed Christian truth, we know how much of Greek and Roman patrimony there is in the faith. We know also of the breadth of Aristotle's use of Arabian commentators and mystics; we know of similar use of Asian philosophy and wisdom."

"Have we not been too ready to dismiss Oriental philosophy without really attempting to understand it? Do we not shrug it off? Can we be content to leave it at the level of comparative religion, like we might saunter through the Louvre in Paris comparing paintings? Do we simply study these systems from an a-priori logic, judging them false, but interesting anyway?"
To these musings Merton writes decidedly, "we cannot arrive at an understanding of any wisdom, natural or super-natural by arguing for or against it. Wisdom is not penetrated by logical analysis." The values in [Oriental] religion reveal themselves only on the plane of spiritual experience, or in the least, on a plane of aesthetic experience. They belong [also], to the natural order with deep affinities to super-naturalism, of course. A firm grasp of them leads us to both a deeper understanding of Eastern and Western values." This Merton says is vital to us in our modern, everyday lives.

Aristotle and the Akratic

"Weakness of the will is something we all think we know; many feel that we experience it ourselves."  --Weakness of Will by William Charlton

The good that I would feel to do; the good that I would not feel and do... is the subject of a talk by Saint Paul in one of his biblical letters to the Romans (Romans 7:15), is often attributed by modern commentators to a 'weak will.' Modern philosophers such as William Charlton take up this notion in his book, The Weak Will. So called 'weakness' he explains, is often an attempt to explain either behavior or the effects of behaviors. The behavior he describes and explores is that of 'going against one's better judgment,' and the result of that action.

In an effort to be concise, Charlton takes up the discussion of the greatly influential Aristotle's ideas on the the Will, and uses the Greek term, the Akratic. Translators of Aristotle have sometimes used the English term "incontinent" to indicate slips or mistakes in the will of persons. Delving into his topic, Charlton writes that there are several views on Akrasia. Some, like John Calvin, argue that there is no Akrasia, no free will; others argue that it wholly exists, such as the philosopher Emmanuel Kant.

The questions which Charlton seeks to expound are those of strength. Are there various strengths of will? Does that person in Akrasia consciously choose, and how so? What about the modern ideas of psychologists, like Sigmund Freud? Charlton notes, in counter-face to the established Roman hierarchy of the ancient times, that the first person thought to bring "the idea of the Will into philosophy (of the West) does indeed appear to have been the Christian Bishop, Saint Augustine of Hippo.
Augustine writes of the Will sometimes as 'a faculty of the mind,' sometimes as the mind itself in its role as a thing which issues commands... Augustine asks, how can the mind give orders which are not obeyed?"
Later thinkers of the Medieval age were confronted with the texts of both Aristotle and Plato; comparison of these with these texts by writers such as Saint Paul of the Bible caused them to ponder, "when I act against my own will, it means that I have self knowledge..."

Today the inquiry into the Will, volition and motivation is taken over largely by science and the theories of psychology. The spiritual component has been thus voided.  Moving far away from the ancient Greek conception of the will as having two parts,  modern philosophers like Descartes often see it as strength or force. Such strengths, weak or strong, are therefore practical problems to be solved.
Leaping forward, and the 'human potential' movement emerges. Desires, as weakness, now are at the forefront for thinkers such as Russell; men are then just at the whim and mercy of their desires.

Finally, Charlton weighs in after examining the thoughts of others. He says, "weakness of the Will is puzzling, insofar as we think our behavior is determined by our view of what is best; it's not so puzzling if we think our behavior is determined mechanistically by our physical environment."