I took shape in the universe, and alighted here, on blue planet.
Have I been diverted by some misfortune, fooled by some illusion?
For in rest or in exaltation, emerge
other images, other feelings, other spaces, other impulses,
which bring to me the fugitive and moved perfumes of a remembered elsewhere.
I am seated astride here and elsewhere.
Everything here is stranger to me than elsewhere.
Here is submerged by clamours and amazements;
elsewhere is irrigated by friendship, scintillates from enthusiasm,
is shrouded in silence, and is patient ad infinitum.
Elsewhere and here are meeting in an intimate and secret haven.
(Wherever you are, clicking twice takes to the top of this page)
Passer-by,
I know you are.
This log, you see, is a simple and intimate dialogue.
You can, if you wish, make your voice heard, here in comment, or else
at this place.
No matter!
For I am not seeking,
but scanning.
(Passing the cursor over the words which are underlined allows you to check their meaning.)
“We are all related to God, and earth needs none of us to suffer: for it is miserable people's imprecations that pile up and cause all disasters.” (In a notebook of Gerard de Nerval)
“Nous sommes tous parents de Dieu, et la terre a besoin qu'aucun de nous ne souffre: car ce sont les imprécations des malheureux qui s'amassent et causent les désastres.” (Sur un carnet de Gérard de Nerval)
If my view of the world is only a wide projection, in other words if the world, the universe, beings and things have in themselves no determined reality, it is thus in my interest and in the interest of beings and things to care over my projection, in other words over my vision, in other words over what I put into my heart.
“Yes, where your treasure is, there is your heart also.” (Matthew 6, 21)
Three days ago, as I had started again to read the Quatrains of Omar Khayyam, in the beautiful translation of Charles Grolleau (from a translation by Edward Heron-Allen), it occured to me suddenly to open the book at random, asking it seriously to offer me a message as a gift. And I came across the 77th quatrain:
Drink wine, that will banish thy abundant woes,
and will banish thought of the Seventy-two Sects;
avoid not the alchemist, for, from him,
thou takest one draught, and he banishes a thousand calamities.
That quatrain, I understand it so:
“Enjoy your living, remember that you are happy now, and henceforth everyday. Towards religion, you are now in harmony with yourself, having reached an attitude suitable to you; what you had to learn belongs to you now, and it is time for you to move to the next subject. Move towards joy!”.
Anna Moï, L'écho des rizières (The echo of the paddy fields):
“Mistakes are seldom fatal.
They're even rather happy, reflecting thus a subjective view which does not match other people's reality.
During the time necessary to correct it, they give to things an out of step identity: a freshness.”
Is the fact that an out of step identity is given to things a mistake?
And if there is an error, isn't it the fact of believing that an error is possible?
And if there is no mistake, there is thus nothing to correct.
A proverb says: “Errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum / to err is human; to persist (in error) is diabolic.”
What is diabolic belongs to the Devil, in other words to the one who divides.
Error (mistake) has the same root as errare (wander, roam). Isn't wandering the rightest way to walk on one's own path, the path which is a “subjective view which does not match other people's reality”?
Which leads me back to the first post of this blog...
Is it diabolic to want to make one's own way?
Would it be only one and the same way for all beings, and not as many ways as beings?
For my part, I don't attach such a dramatic status to mistake. Mistake, it is the unforeseen, the unexpected, it may be a present that life offers to me in order to escape the narrowness of my own view by reminding me that the possibles never stop being created.
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Lama Chagdud (or Chakdud) Tulku Rinpoche (epigraph of L'écho des rizières which translation I have found at emdots' home):
“Always recognize the dreamlike qualities of life and reduce attachment and aversion.
Practice good-heartedness toward all beings.
Be loving and compassionate, no matter what others do to you.
What they will do will not matter so much when you see it as a dream.
The trick is to have positive intention during the dream.
This is the essential point.
This is true spirituality.”
If there is no other mistake than believing that mistake is possible, in the dream that life may be, then correcting that only mistake, taking off that veil which distorts vision, isn't it that positive intention which allows to dwell in dream.
And to conclude about that positivity:
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Compensation) (thanks to emdot):
“Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the gain of rectitude must be bought by any loss. There is no penalty to virtue; no penalty to wisdom; they are proper additions of being. In a virtuous action, I properly am; in a virtuous act, I add to the world; I plant into deserts conquered from Chaos and Nothing, and see the darkness receding on the limits of the horizon. There can be no excess to love; none to knowledge; none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in the purest sense. The soul refuses limits, and always affirms an Optimism, never a Pessimism.”
The other day I watched four dancers, three women and a man, gliding in the intimacy of a small room. I felt wrapped in a gentle serenity, I liked what I was seeing, I was in full harmony with the place and the time.
But I am not able to give my full attention to something for a long time, so my mind was not slow to start floating irresistibly.
It was about informal and formal speech (in French “let up / sustain” one's speech), about the violent rigidity the defenders of the French language show against every attempt to make its rules more flexible, then about the fact that the tensions of the body, which origin is psychological, consume a lot of energy so that they remain stable. Sustain, let up, that is speaking with the voice of effort.
Suddenly appeared to me the meaning of that “delirium”: my mind were translating into a conscious language the dialogue between my body and dance. But what did dance tell to my body? A very simple thing:
“Rigidity is what consumes energy. Look at me, I move fluently, but nevertheless with tone, and never do I freeze. I am a unique movement, I am the swaying life, light and supple,”
Dance conversed intimately with me, it lavished on me the subtle nourishment I needed. It spoke about my body, so rigid because of all my tensions, because of my so hard and so shortened muscles, about the almost daily limbering-up exercices I had just starded doing. It was my own body speaking through dance:
“Don't fight tooth and nail against my rigidities, for they have protected me from many a violence. If you shake me too brutally, I will tense myself even more, for fear I might break. But be patient and gentle with me: if you are not, who else will be? The stronger my resistance will be, the greater be your gentleness, the more confident be your patience. Allow me to open myself at my own pace, allow me to be the only guide, for I am the only one who knows what is good for me. Do treat me thoughfully, do speak to me tenderly, do love me, for I am you and you are me.”
My mind knew all those things already, for it had read or heard about them many a time. But only my mind knew them. I mean I did know nothing actually.
In the first years of my childhood, I had on two occasions a narrow escape from a violent death, and each time the circumstances were similar. I don't remember which emotions I may have felt at those moments, but I certainly have felt something, since images of those events remain in my memory.
The first time, as I was coming back with my brother from the bank of the river near our home, I started suddenly to run down the levee and stopped dead on the side of the road: a car flashed straight past me.
The second time, I ran through the gate of our garden and stopped dead on the side of the street: the driver of a tipper truck which was going down the street slammed on the brakes, and I remember the rear wheels hitting the opposite kerb, then the one on my side. The opposite neighbour, a woman, and the driver shouted at me, but I don't remember their words.
On two occasions I thus have been saved from a certain death.
Someone, maybe a medium, told me a day that I were enjoying a “supernatural” protection; when I remember those events, I am inclined to believe it, and I feel myself full of gratitude, and totally secure.
If it is true that in an other-world beings are watching over me, I want to return their friendship. I am ready for everything they may expect of me.
This is what the medium said to me, and the inspiration I draw fom it:
“I stride along, straight forward, for I'll have allways my whole life to live.
I am faithful, that is, I am in perfect harmony with myself, with the other-world, with the whole life.
I don't look backwards, for the past is past.
I don't doubt, so that nothing be lost.
I follow my instinct, my intuition, my imagination, my foolishness.
Life provides me with many tools for me to forge ahead.
It plunges a sword into my brow, it pushes a sword into my breast: life opens all my canals.
A lofty myself hoists me up towards him; a lowly myself asks me to hoist him up towards me.
I offer all that life offers to me; I am its willing medium.
For life is beautiful, life is worth living.”
Charles Baudelaire, Scraps (Les Épaves) (1866), XVII - La Voix, translated by William Aggeler.
Source:
The Voice
The back of my crib was against the library,
That gloomy Babel, where novels, science, fabliaux,
Everything, Latin ashes and Greek dust,
Were mingled. I was no taller than a folio.
Two voices used to speak to me. One, sly and firm,
Would say: “The Earth's a cake full of sweetness;
I can (and then there'd be no end to your pleasure!)
Give you an appetite of equal size.”
And the other: “Come travel in dreams
Beyond the possible, beyond the known!”
And it would sing like the wind on the strand,
That wailing ghost, one knows not whence it comes,
That caresses the ear and withal frightens it.
I answered you: “Yes! gentle voice!” It's from that time
That dates what may be called alas! my wound
And my fatality. Behind the scenes
Of life's vastness, in the abyss' darkest corner
I see distinctly bizarre worlds,
And ecstatic victim of my own clairvoyance,
I drag along with me, serpents that bite my shoes.
And it's since that time that, like the prophets,
I love so tenderly the desert and the sea;
That I laugh at funerals and weep at festivals
And find a pleasant taste in the most bitter wine;
That very often I take facts for lies
And that, my eyes raised heavenward, I fall in holes.
But the Voice consoles me and it says: “Keep your dreams;
Wise men do not have such beautiful ones as fools!”
Étienne de la Boétie (1530-1563): Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, rendered into English by: Harry Kurz
Yet surely if there is anything in this world clear and obvious, to which one cannot close one's eyes, it is the fact that nature, handmaiden of God, governess of men, has cast us all in the same mold in order that we may behold in one another companions, or rather brothers.
If in distributing her gifts nature has favored some more than others with respect to body or spirit, she has nevertheless not planned to place us within this world as if it were a field of battle, and has not endowed the stronger or the cleverer in order that they may act like armed brigands in a forest and attack the weaker.
One should rather conclude that in distributing larger shares to some and smaller shares to others, nature has intended to give occasion for brotherly affection to become manifest, some of us having the strength to give help to others who are in need of it.
Hence, since this kind mother has given us the whole world as a dwelling place, has lodged us in the same house, has fashioned us according to the same model so that in beholding one another we might almost recognize ourselves; since she has bestowed upon us all the great gift of voice and speech for fraternal relationship, thus achieving by the common and mutual statement of our thoughts a communion of our wills; and since she has tried in every way to narrow and tighten the bond of our union and kinship; since she has revealed in every possible manner her intention, not so much to associate us as to make us one organic whole, there can be no further doubt that we are all naturally free, inasmuch as we are all comrades.
Accordingly it should not enter the mind of anyone that nature has placed some of us in slavery, since she has actually created us all in one likeness.
“Let the little children come to me. Do not prevent them: yes, it is for their kind, the kingdom of Elohims.
Amen, I say to you: who does not welcome the kingdom of Elohims like a little child does not enter it.
He takes them in his arms...” (Mark 10, 14-16)
This sentence haunts me:
Amen, I say to you: who does not welcome the kingdom of Elohims like a little child does not enter it.
Fascinated by the paradox of this sentence, I had forgotten to look at the whole scene. However, it is written very clearly:
“He takes them in his arms...”
I welcome life,
as spontaneously as a little child
who tends his hands towards me
so that I take him in my arms:
thus, I am at home.
I dwell in life.
Akira Kurosawa's last “Dream”. 黒沢明の最後の「夢」
正直、生きてるのは良いもんだよ。とても面白い。
In fact, it's good to be alive. It's exciting.
The village
(This is the text of the english subtitles)
The movie on YouTube: Watermill Village Part 1 Part 2
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A young man (Y) arrives in a village. He meets an old man (O) sitting and repairing a wheel of a water mill...
Y: Good day. Good day!
O: Ah... good day.
Y: What's the name of this village?
O: Doesn't have one. We just call it “The Village”. Some people call it “Watermill Village”.
(Looking at the house...)
Y: Do all the villagers live here?
O: No... they live in other places.
Y: There's no electricity here?
O: Don't need it. People get too used to convenience. They think convenience is better. They throw out what's truly good.
Y: But what about lights?
O: We've got candles and linseed oil.
Y: But night's so dark...
O: Yes. That's what night is supposed to be. Why should night be as bright as day? I wouldn't like nights so bright you couldn't see the stars.
Y: You have paddies... but no tractors to cultivate them ?
O: Don't need them. We've got cows, and horses.
Y: What do you use for fuel?
O: Firewood mostly. We don't feel right, chopping down trees, but enough fall down by themselves. We cut them up and use them as firewood. And if you make charcoal from the wood, just a few trees can give you as much heat as a whole forest. Yes, and cow dung makes good fuel too!
* * * * * * *
O: We try to live the way man used to. That's the natural way of life. People today have forgotten they're really just a part of nature. Yet, they destroy the nature on which our lives depend. They allways think they can make something better.
Especially scientists. They may be smart but most don't understand the heart of nature. They only invent things that in the end make people unhappy. Yet they're so proud of their inventions. What's worse, most people are, too. They view them as if they were miracles. They worship them. They don't know it, but they're losing nature. They don't see that they're going to perish.
The most important things for human beings are clean air and clean water and the trees and grass that produce them. Everything is being dirtied, polluted forever. Dirty air, dirty water dirtying the hearts of men.* * * * * * *
Y: On my way here, I happened to see some children putting flowers on a stone beside the bridge. Why?
O: Oh, that. My father told me once. Long ago, a sick traveller died by the bridge. The villagers took pity and buried him right there. They placed a large stone on his tomb and put flowers on it. It became a custom to put flowers there. Not only the children. All the villagers put flowers there as they pass, though most don't know why.
(One hears a music in the distance...)
Y: Is there a celebration today?
O: No, a funeral. You find this strange? A nice, happy funeral. It's good to work hard and live long and then be thanked. We have no temple or priest here. So all the villagers carry the dead to the cemetery on the hill. We don't like it when young adults or children die. It's hard to celebrate such a loss. But fortunately the people of this village lead a natural way of life. So they pass on at a ripe old age. The woman we're burying today lived to be ninety-nine. You must excuse me but I'm going to join the procession.
To tell the truth, she was my first love. But broke my heart and left me for another.* * * * * * *
Y: By the way, how old are you?
O: Me? One hundred plus three. A good age to stop living.
Some say life is hard That's just talk.
In fact, it's good to be alive. It's exciting.(the old man joins the merry procession...)
I left a tyrannical god for a loving and generous one, then rejected the narrowness and the pride of his human face to embrace the infinite of the universe and to blend in with it; today, I want to exorcize every image and to deal with life.
What do I know about life?
To the devil - that is definitely the word - all the questions: they are only pretexts to temporize indefinitely, to put off living. To ask myself whether I have lived little or badly is not to live. I do not know and do not want to know anything about it. That is: the questions are judgements which lead to other questions and chain me to a merry-go-round which never stops. It is time only to be.
“Stand up! Go ahead!”
“Stand up! Go ahead!”, this is the Hebrew word ashrei, which evokes the rectitude of the one who walks on a road which goes straight towards IHVH, who walks resolutely on a road without obstacle (Andre Chouraqui).
Stand up and go ahead.
This is not a mere blessing, mere “Beatitudes” for the one who yearns for the sacred breath, but an incentive to stand up and go ahead.
“Stand up! Go ahead!”: if I stumble? I go on!
(Matthew 5, 2-12)
Ieshoua`: “Ahead!, the humiliated of the breath!... those who mourn!... the humble ones!... those who hunger and thirst for righteousness!... the matricials!... the pure hearts!... the peacemakers!... those who are persecuted because of righteousness!... when they offend you and persecute you, lie and accuse you of any crime, because of me.
I stand up. I go ahead. I am.
Summary of Matthew 4, 1-11 and Luke 4, 1-13
Ieshoua`, full of the sacred breath, returns from Iarden.
He is led in the breath to the wilderness, forty days tested by the devil. He fasts forty days and forty nights. Afterward, he is hungry.
1 The “tester” approaches him and says:
“If you are son of Elohims, tell these stones to become loaves.”
Ieshoua` answers and says:
“It is written: ‘man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes out of the mouth of Elohims’.” (Deuteronom 8, 3: “man does not leave on bread alone: the human lives on everything that comes out of the mouth of Adonai.”)
2 Then the devil takes him with himself and leads him to Ierushalaim; he sets him on the ridge of the sanctuary and says to him:
“If you are son of Elohims, throw yourself down from here. Yes, it is written: ‘He advises his messengers to keep him.’ And: ‘With their hands, they will lift you, so that your foot does not strike a stone’.” (Psaumes 91, 11-12: “Yes, he orders his messengers to keep you on all your roads. They carry you on both palms, so that your foot does not strike any stone.”)
Ieshoua` answers and says to him:
“It is written, on the other hand: ‘Do not test Adonai, your Elohims’.” (Deuteronom 6, 16: “You will not test Adonai, your Elohims.”)
3 The devil takes him again with himself to a very high mountain. He shows him all the kingdoms of the universe and their glory. He says to him:
“I will give you any authority on them and their glory. Yes, it has been delivered to me and I give it to whom I want. For you thus, if you bow and prostrate yourself before me, it will be yours, all.”
Ieshoua` answers and says to him:
“It is written: ‘Prostrate yourself before Adonai, your Elohims. Serve him, only him!’.” (Deuteronom 6, 13: “Quiver before Adonai, your Elohims, serve him, swear by his name.”)
Having exhausted every test, the devil leaves him and withdraws until fixed time.
And then, messengers approach him; they serve him.
* * * * * * *
Material life is lack and concern: one must feed one's body, ensure one's security, have power over things. Everything must always be done again and again.
Spiritual life is fed generously by itself (“out of the mouth of Elohims”), entered through faith (“Do not test”), maintained by gratitude (“Prostrate yourself... Serve him, only him!”).
The material world may obstruct the flow of spiritual life, but it never stops it. And as soon as the obstacle is removed (“Having exhausted every test”), it starts flowing again (“And then, messengers approach him; they serve him.”)
Faith, “adherence” is a way of being, a way of living in which generosity and gratitude are one, me and life are one: it only concerns children and fools.
“Come to me, you all, the tired ones, the overworked ones; I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, learn from me that I am humiliated and small-hearted: you will find comfort for your beings.
Yes, my yoke is useful, my burden is light.”(Matthew 11, 28-30)
I take your yoke, your light burden to get out of my cage and to embrace whole life.
or rather conscientiousness.
One considers usually that an answer of the Yi Jing is valid only for the moment when the question is asked. For my part, I consider that it is up to the questioner to fix the range of the answer.
I thus affirm that Yi Jing must be able to answer questions which aim at the totality of the existence; with this intention, I consider that all that refers to the time amounts to expressing the global circumstances of the life of the questioner.
* * * * * * *
One day, I handled the rods of achillea to ask the Yi Jing to suggest me a way to obtain inner peace, quiet mind, and to preserve them.
☳
☶
It answered me with the hexagram 62 “Xiao Guo”, “preponderance of the small”, formed by the trigram ☳, “zhen”, “the arousing, thunder”, surmounting the trigram ☶, “gen”, “keeping still, mountain”.
The general meaning of this hexagram is given by the judgement, which states:
PREPONDERANCE OF THE SMALL. Success.
Perseverance furthers.
Small things may be done; great things should not be done.
The flying bird brings the message:
It is not well to strive upward,
It is well to remain below.
Great good fortune.
Here is an extract of the comment Richard Wilhelm wrote about this judgement:
Exceptional modesty and conscientiousness are sure to be rewarded with success; however, if a man is not to throw himself away, it is important that they should not become empty form and subservience but be combined always with a correct dignity in personal behavior.
We must understand the demands of the time in order to find the necessary offset for its deficiencies and damages.
In any event we must not count on great success, since the requisite strength is lacking
In this lies the importance of the message that one should not strive after lofty things but hold to lowly things.
The structure of the hexagram gives rise to the idea that this message is brought by a bird.... this gives the image of a soaring bird.
But a bird should not try to surpass itself and fly into the sun; it should descend to the earth, where its nest is.
Humility is said without servility, it consists in dealing, while keeping a worthy attitude, with things of small importance, smale scale, small greatness, i.e modest.
How does this “judgement” answer my question?
It suggests that I cannot obtain inner peace by taking height, distance compared with the contingencies of the present.
I should not avoid immediate, concrete, small, modest realities, and fly away towards higher thoughts or aspirations, but face them.
In a face-to-face discussion without condescension, without presumption, but with a respectful attention, with delicate, subtle and light conscientiousness, as when I am walking in a garden.
Thus that I abandon the idea of doing great things and having great aspirations, and that I remain on earth, or come back to live on it, with sensitivity and lightness.
Inner peace is the friend of small things and simplicity.
Nymphs, women, I like to contemplate the radiance of your nudity, as fresh as birth, so modest, so shameless!
Welcome my kisses and my caresses, by turns soft and careful, by turns passionate and tender, according to the impulses of our cheerful passions.
Whom you invite in your residence, in the depths of water, disappears forever, says one... Why would he return from there?
Nymphs and Satyr
William Bouguereau
(1873)
Nymph with morning glory flowers
Jules-Joseph Lefèbvre
(?)
Hylas and the Nymphs
John William Waterhouse
(1896)
(Click on the images to enlarge them.)
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Thanks to Wikipedia for the Nymphs.
