spring is full

love/death

from a brief history of thought by luc ferry

"stoicism here anticipated one of the most profound insights of psychoanalysis: that he who remains the prisoner of his past will always be incapable of 'acting and enjoying', as freud said. . . stoicism would teach its disciples to part ways with those ideologies that promote the virtue of hope."

"contrary to the commonplace idea that one 'cannot live without hope', hope is the greatest of misfortunes.  for it is by nature an absence, a lack, a source of tension in our lives."

"there are moments when we seem to be here not to transform the world, but simply to be part of it, to experience the beauty and joy that it offers to us.  for example, you are in the sea, scuba diving, and you put on your mask to look at the fish.  you are not there to change things, to improve them, or to correct them; you are there to admire and accept things."

"we must learn to content ourselves with the present, to love the present to the point of desiring nothing else and of regretting nothing whatsoever."

"there are moments, instants when we have the rare experience of being completely reconciled to the world. . . to see to it that life as a whole resembles such moments: that is the fundamental project of stoic wisdom. it is at this point that we touch on something resembling salvation, in the sense that nothing further can trouble a serenity which comes from the extinguishing of fears concerning other dimensions of time."

"both religion and philosophy are closely linked, through their attempt to conquer anxiety over human mortality."

"the implacable and blind fate of the ancients gives way to the benevolent wisdom of an individual who loves us as individuals, and in a way that no one else loves us.  it is love that becomes the key to salvation.  but, this is not love in the usual sense; it is what christian thinkers will call 'love in god'."

"this leads us to the second characteristic: love is stronger than death.  what link can there be between the sentiment of love and the question of what can save us from mortality and death?  it is simplest to start from the christian proposition that there are, fundamentally, three faces of love, which between them form a coherent 'system'.  first, there is the love that we might call 'love-as-attachment': in the sense that we are bound to another, to the point of not being able to imagine life without this other.  we can experience this love as much within the family as with a lover.  on this point, christians were united with stoics and buddhists in viewing this love as the most dangerous and least enlightened of all.  not only because it risks diverting us from our true duties towards god, but also because it cannot survive death and it cannot tolerate rupture and change.  aside from the fact that it is usually possessive and jealous, love-as-attachment stores up for us the worst of all sufferings - the loss of loved ones."

"at the opposite extreme is what we might call 'compassion': a love that drives us to care for strangers when they are in need. . . and, finally, there is 'love-in-god'.  here and only here is the ultimate source of salvation, which, for christians, will prove stronger than death."

"you will remember that stoicism regards the fear of death as the greatest obstacle to the happy life (likewise in buddhism).  and this anxiety is not without its connection to love.  in simple terms there is an apparently insurmountable contradiction between love, which leads to attachment, and death, which leads to separation.  if the law of this world is one of finiteness and mutability, and if, as the buddhists maintain, everything is 'impermanent' - changing and perishable - then we sin by lack of wisdom if we attach ourselves to things or persons that are mortal."

"the ideal condition in which to die is one where you have abandoned everything, inwardly and outwardly, so that there should be, at this crucial moment, the least possible longing, desire or attachment to which the soul can cling.  this is why, before dying, we should free ourselves from all our goods, friends and family." -sogyal rinpoche, the tibetan book of living and dying

"it is unjust that men should attach themselves to me, even though they do it with pleasure and voluntarily.  i should deceive those in whom i evince this desire; for i am an end for no person, and have not the wherewithal to satisfy them.  am i not about to die?  and thus the object of their attachment will die.  therefore, as i would be culpable in causing a falsehood to be believed, though i should employ gentle persuasion, though it should be believed with pleasure, and though it should give me pleasure; even so i am culpable in making myself loved.  and if i attract persons to attach themselves to me, i should warn those who are ready to consent to such a lie that they should not believe it, whatever advantage i might derive from it; and likewise that they ought not to attach themselves to me; for they should be spending their life and their efforts in pleasing god, or in seeking him." - pascal, pensees

"the reason why this grief had penetrated me so easily and so deeply, was that i had poured my soul out onto quicksand by loving a person sure to die, as if he would never die." - augustine, confessions

we must ensure that "our soul does not become stuck and glued to these transient things by loving them through the physical senses.  for as these perishable creatures pass along the path of things that race towards non-existence, they rend the soul with pestilential desires, and torment it without cease; for the soul loves to be in them and take its repose among the objects of its love.  but in these things there is no point of rest, for they are impermanent, they flee away and cannot be followed with the bodily senses.  no one can fully grasp them even while they are present." -augustine, confessions

irreversible

from a brief history of thought by luc ferry

"...we must not think about death, because there are only two alternatives: either i am alive, in which case death is by definition elsewhere; or death is here and, likewise by definition, i am not here to worry about it!  why, under these conditions, would you bother yourself with such a pointless problem?"

"poe is suggesting that death means everything that is unrepeatable.  death is, in the midst of life, that which will not return; that which belongs irreversibly to time past, which we have no hope of ever recovering."

"to live freely, capable of joy, generosity and love, we must first and foremost conquer our fear - or, more accurately, our fears of the irreversible."

"we can neither think nor act freely when we are paralyzed by the anxiety provoked - even unconsciously - by fear of the irreversible."

"for the ancients, not only was nature before all else good, but in no sense was a majority of humans called upon to decide between good and evil, between just and unjust, because the criteria which enabled those distinctions all stemmed from the natural order, which was both external to and superior to men.  broadly speaking, the good was what was in accord with the cosmic order, whether one willed it or not, and what was bad was what ran contrary to this order, whether one liked it or not.  the essential thing was to act, situation-by-situation, moment-by-moment, in accordance with the harmonious order of things, so as to find our proper place, which each of us was assigned within the universal."

curious.

“Compassion is threatening to the ego. We might think of it as something warm and soothing, but actually it’s very raw. When we set out to support other beings, when we go so far as to stand in their shoes, when we aspire to never close down to anyone, we quickly find ourselves in the uncomfortable territory of 'life not on my terms.' The commitment traditionally known as the bodhisattva vow, or warrior vow, challenges us to dive into these noncozy waters and swim out beyond our comfort zone. We vow to move consciously into the pain of the world in order to help alleviate it. It is, in essence, a vow to take care of one another, even if it sometimes means not liking how that feels.

This commitment is connected deeply and unshakably with bodhichitta, traditionally defined as a longing to awaken so that we can help others do the same, a longing to go beyond the limits of conventional happiness, beyond enslavement to success and failure, praise and blame. Bodhichitta is also a trust in our innate ability to go beyond bias, beyond prejudice and fixed opinions, and open our hearts to everyone: those we like, those we don’t like, those we don’t even notice, those we may never meet. Bodhichitta counteracts our tendency to stay stuck in very narrow thinking. It counteracts our resistance to change.

This degree of openness arises from the trust that we all have basic goodness and that we can interact with one another in ways that bring that out. instead of reacting aggressively when we’re provoked, endlessly perpetuating the cycle of pain, we trust that we can engage with others from a place of curiosity and caring and in that way contact their innate decency and wisdom."

-pema chodron

the home-coming

from thus spoke zarathustra by friedrich nietzsche

"o solitude!  solitude, my home!  i have lived too long wildly in wild strange lands to come home to you without tears!
now shake your finger at me as mothers do, now smile at me as mothers smile, now say merely: 'and who was it that once stormed away from me like a storm-wind? -
'who departing cried: i have sat too long with solitude, i have unlearned how to be silent!  you have surely learned that -  now?
'o zarathustra, i know all: and that you were lonelier among the crowd, you solitary, than you ever were with me!
'loneliness is one thing, solitude another: you have learned that - now! and that among men you will always be wild and strange:
'wild and strange even when they love you: for above all they want to be indulged!
'but here you are at your own hearth and home; here you can utter everything and pour out every reason, nothing is here ashamed of hidden, hardened feelings.
'here all things come caressingly to your discourse and flatter you: for they want to ride upon your back.  upon every image you here ride to every truth.
'here you may speak to all things straight and true: and truly, it sounds as praise to their ears, that someone should speak with all things - honestly!
'but it is another thing to be lonely.  for, do you remember, o zarathustra?  when once your bird cried above you as you stood in the forest undecided, ignorant where to go, beside a corpse.
'when you said: may my animals lead me!  i found it more dangerous among men than among animals.  that was loneliness!
'and do you remember, o zarathustra?  when you sat upon your island, a well of wine among empty buckets, giving and distributing, bestowing and out-pouring among the thirsty:
'until at last you sat alone thirsty among the intoxicated and lamented each night: "is it not more blessed to receive than to give?  and more blessed to steal than to receive?" - that was loneliness!
'and do you remember, o zarathustra?  when your stillest hour came and tore you forth from yourself, when it said in an evil whisper: "speak and break!" -
'when it made you repent of all your waiting and silence and discouraged your humble courage: that was loneliness!'
o solitude! solitude, my home!  how blissfully and tenderly does your voice speak to me!
we do not question one another, we do not complain to one another, we go openly together through open doors.
for with you all is open and clear; and here even the hours run on lighter feet.  for time weighs down more heavily in the dark than in the light.
here, the words and word-chests of all existence spring open to me: all existence here wants to become words, all becoming here wants to learn speech from me.
down there, however - all speech is in vain!  there, the best wisdom is to forget and pass by: i have learned that - now!
he who wants to understand all things among men has to touch all things.  but my hands are too clean for that.
i even dislike to breathe in their breath; alas, that i lived so long among their noise and bad breath!
o blissful stillness around me!  o pure odours around me!  oh, how this stillness draws pure breath from a deep breast!  oh, how it listens, this blissful stillness!
but down there - everything speaks, everything is unheard.  one may ring in one's wisdom with bells - the shopkeeper in the market-place will out-ring it with pennies!
everything among them speaks, no one knows any longer how to understand.  everything falls away into failure, nothing falls any longer into deep wells.
everything among them speaks, nothings prospers and comes to an end any longer.  everything cackles, but who still wants to sit quietly upon the nest and hatch eggs?
everything among them speaks, everything is talked down.  and what yesterday was still too hard for time itself and its teeth, today hangs chewed and picked from the mouth of the men of today.
everything among them speaks, everything is betrayed.  and what was once called a secret and a secrecy of profound souls, today belongs to the street-trumpeters and other butterflies.
o humankind, you strange thing!  you noise in dark streets!  now again you lie behind me - my greatest danger lies behind me!
my greatest danger always lay in indulgence and sufferance; and all humankind wants to be indulged and suffered.
with truths held back, with foolish hand and foolish-fond heart and rich in pity's little lies- that is how i used to live among men.
i sat among them disguised, ready to misunderstand myself so that i might endure them, and glad to tell myself: 'you fool, you do not know men!'
one forgets what one has learned about men when one lives among men: there is too much foreground in all men - what can far-seeing, far-seeking eyes do there!
and when they misunderstood me, i, like a fool, indulged them more than i did myself: for i was accustomed to being hard with myself and often even taking revenge on myself for this indulgence.
stung by poisonous flies and hollowed out like a stone by many drops of wickedness: that is how i sat among them and still told myself: 'everything small is innocent of its smallness!'
especially those who call themselves 'the good' did i discover to be the most poisonous flies: they sting in all innocence; how could they be - just towards me!
pity teaches him to lie who lives among the good.  pity makes the air stifling for all free souls.  for the stupidity of the good is unfathomable.
to conceal myself and my riches - that did i learn down there: for i found everybody still poor in spirit.  it was my pity's lie that i knew with everybody,
that i saw and scented in everybody what was sufficient spirit for him and what was too much spirit for him!
their pedantic wise men: i called them wise, not pedantic - thus i learned to slur words.  their gravediggers: i called them investigators and scholars - thus i learned to confound words.
gravediggers dig diseases for themselves.  evil vapours repose beneath old rubble.  one should not stir up the bog.  one should live upon mountains.
with happy nostrils i breathe again mountain-freedom!  at last my nose is delivered from the odour of all humankind!
my soul, tickled by sharp breezes as with sparkling wine, sneezes - sneezes and cries to itself: bless you!

thus spoke zarathustra.

reconciliation, right & wrong

by thanissaro bhikkhu

"These two are fools. Which two? The one who doesn't see his/her transgression as a transgression, and the one who doesn't rightfully pardon another who has confessed his/her transgression. These two are fools.

"These two are wise. Which two? The one who sees his/her transgression as a transgression, and the one who rightfully pardons another who has confessed his/her transgression. These two are wise."

— AN 2.21

"It's a cause of growth in the Dhamma and Vinaya of the noble ones when, seeing a transgression as such, one makes amends in accordance with the Dhamma and exercises restraint in the future."

— DN 2

The Buddha succeeded in establishing a religion that has been a genuine force for peace and harmony, not only because of the high value he placed on these qualities but also because of the precise instructions he gave on how to achieve them through forgiveness and reconciliation. Central to these instructions is his insight that forgiveness is one thing, reconciliation is something else.
The Pali word for forgiveness-khama-also means "the earth." A mind like the earth is non-reactive and unperturbed. When you forgive me for harming you, you decide not to retaliate, to seek no revenge. You don't have to like me. You simply unburden yourself of the weight of resentment and cut the cycle of retribution that would otherwise keep us ensnarled in an ugly samsaric wrestling match. This is a gift you can give us both, totally on your own, without my having to know or understand what you've done.
Reconciliation — patisaraniya-kamma — means a return to amicability, and that requires more than forgiveness. It requires the reestablishing of trust. If I deny responsibility for my actions, or maintain that I did no wrong, there's no way we can be reconciled. Similarly, if I insist that your feelings don't matter, or that you have no right to hold me to your standards of right and wrong, you won't trust me not to hurt you again. To regain your trust, I have to show my respect for you and for our mutual standards of what is and is not acceptable behavior; to admit that I hurt you and that I was wrong to do so; and to promise to exercise restraint in the future. At the same time, you have to inspire my trust, too, in the respectful way you conduct the process of reconciliation. Only then can our friendship regain a solid footing.
Thus there are right and wrong ways of attempting reconciliation: those that skillfully meet these requirements for reestablishing trust, and those that don't. To encourage right reconciliation among his followers, the Buddha formulated detailed methods for achieving it, along with a culture of values that encourages putting those methods to use.
The methods are contained in the Pali Vinaya's instructions for how monks should confess their offenses to one another, how they should seek reconciliation with lay people they have wronged, how they should settle protracted disputes, and how a full split in the Sangha should be healed. Although directed to monks, these instructions embody principles that apply to anyone seeking reconciliation of differences, whether personal or political.
The first step in every case is an acknowledgement of wrongdoing. When a monk confesses an offense, such as having insulted another monk, he first admits to having said the insult. Then he agrees that the insult really was an offense. Finally, he promises to restrain himself from repeating the offense in the future. A monk seeking reconciliation with a lay person follows a similar pattern, with another monk, on friendly terms with the lay person, acting as mediator. If a dispute has broken the Sangha into factions that have both behaved in unseemly ways, then when the factions seek reconciliation they are advised first to clear the air in a procedure called "covering over with grass." Both sides make a blanket confession of wrongdoing and a promise not to dig up each other's minor offenses. This frees them to focus on the major wrongdoings, if any, that caused or exacerbated the dispute.
To heal a full split in the Sangha, the two sides are instructed first to inquire into the root intentions on both sides that led to the split, for if those intentions were irredeemably malicious or dishonest, reconciliation is impossible. If the group tries to patch things up without getting to the root of the split, nothing has really been healed. Only when the root intentions have been shown to be reconcilable and the differences resolved can the Sangha perform the brief ceremony that reestablishes harmony.
Pervading these instructions is the realization that genuine reconciliation cannot be based simply on the desire for harmony. It requires a mutual understanding of what actions served to create disharmony, and a promise to try to avoid those actions in the future. This in turn requires a clearly articulated agreement about — and commitment to — mutual standards of right and wrong. Even if the parties to a reconciliation agree to disagree, their agreement needs to distinguish between right and wrong ways of handling their differences.
Yet right and wrong have gotten a bad rap in Western Buddhist circles, largely because of the ways in which we have seen right and wrong abused in our own culture — as when one person tries to impose arbitrary standards or mean-spirited punishments on others, or hypocritically demands that others obey standards that he himself does not.
To avoid these abuses, some people have recommended living by a non-dual vision that transcends attachment to right and wrong. This vision, however, is open to abuse as well. In communities where it is espoused, irresponsible members can use the rhetoric of non-duality and non-attachment to excuse genuinely harmful behavior; their victims are left adrift, with no commonly accepted standards on which to base their appeals for redress. Even the act of forgiveness is suspect in such a context, for what right do the victims have to judge actions as requiring forgiveness or not? All too often, the victims are the ones held at fault for imposing their standards on others and not being able to rise above dualistic views.
This means that right and wrong have not really been transcended in such a community. They've simply been realigned: If you can claim a non-dual perspective, you're in the right no matter what you've done. If you complain about another person's behavior, you're in the wrong. And because this realignment is not openly acknowledged as such, it creates an atmosphere of hypocrisy in which genuine reconciliation is impossible.
So the solution lies not in abandoning right and wrong, but in learning how to use them wisely. Thus the Buddha backed up his methods for reconciliation with a culture of values whereby right and wrong become aids rather than hindrances to reconciliation. To prevent those in the right from abusing their position, he counseled that they reflect on themselves before they accuse another of wrongdoing. The checklist of questions he recommended boils down to this: "Am I free from unreconciled offenses of my own? Am I motivated by kindness, rather than vengeance? Am I really clear on our mutual standards?" Only if they can answer "yes" to these questions should they bring up the issue. Furthermore, the Buddha recommended that they determine to speak only words that are true, timely, gentle, to the point, and prompted by kindness. Their motivation should be compassion, solicitude for the welfare of all parties involved, and the desire to see the wrong-doer rehabilitated, together with an overriding desire to hold to fair principles of right and wrong.
To encourage a wrongdoer to see reconciliation as a winning rather than a losing proposition, the Buddha praised the honest acceptance of blame as an honorable rather than a shameful act: not just a means, but the means for progress in spiritual practice. As he told his son, Rahula, the ability to recognize one's mistakes and admit them to others is the essential factor in achieving purity in thought, word, and deed [MN 61]. Or as he said in the Dhammapada, people who recognize their own mistakes and change their ways "illumine the world like the moon when freed from a cloud" [Dhp 173].
In addition to providing these incentives for honestly admitting misbehavior, the Buddha blocked the paths to denial. Modern sociologists have identified five basic strategies that people use to avoid accepting blame when they've caused harm, and it's noteworthy that the Pali teaching on moral responsibility serves to undercut all five. The strategies are: to deny responsibility, to deny that harm was actually done, to deny the worth of the victim, to attack the accuser, and to claim that they were acting in the service of a higher cause. The Pali responses to these strategies are: (1) We are always responsible for our conscious choices. (2) We should always put ourselves in the other person's place. (3) All beings are worthy of respect. (4) We should regard those who point out our faults as if they were pointing out treasure. (Monks, in fact, are required not to show disrespect to people who criticize them, even if they don't plan to abide by the criticism.) (5) There are no — repeat, no — higher purposes that excuse breaking the basic precepts of ethical behavior.
In setting out these standards, the Buddha created a context of values that encourages both parties entering into a reconciliation to employ right speech and to engage in the honest, responsible self-reflection basic to all Dhamma practice. In this way, standards of right and wrong behavior, instead of being oppressive or petty, engender deep and long-lasting trust. In addition to creating the external harmony conducive to Dhamma practice, the process of reconciliation thus also becomes an opportunity for inner growth.
The Buddha admitted that not all disputes can be reconciled. There are times when one or both parties are unwilling to exercise the honesty and restraint that true reconciliation requires. Even then, though, forgiveness is still an option. This is why the distinction between reconciliation and forgiveness is so important. It encourages us not to settle for mere forgiveness when the genuine healing of right reconciliation is possible; and it allows us to be generous with our forgiveness even when it is not.

sanctuary

Sanctuary

by Jean Valentine

People pray to each other. The way I say "you" to someone else,
respectfully, intimately, desperately. The way someone says
"you" to me, hopefully, expectantly, intensely ...
—Huub Oosterhuis

You       who I don’t know       I don’t know how to talk to you   

—What is it like for you there?

Here ... well, wanting solitude; and talk; friendship—

The uses of solitude. To imagine; to hear.

Learning braille. To imagine other solitudes.

But they will not be mine;

to wait, in the quiet; not to scatter the voices—

What are you afraid of?

What will happen. All this leaving. And meetings, yes. But death.   

What happens when you die?

“... not scatter the voices,”

Drown out. Not make a house, out of my own words. To be quiet in   

another throat; other eyes; listen for what it is like there. What   

word. What silence. Allowing. Uncertain: to drift, in the

restlessness ... Repose. To run like water—

What is it like there, right now?

Listen: the crowding of the street; the room. Everyone hunches in   

against the crowding; holding their breath: against dread.

What do you dread?

What happens when you die?

What do you dread, in this room, now?

Not listening. Now. Not watching. Safe inside my own skin.

To die, not having listened. Not having asked ... To have scattered   

life.

Yes I know: the thread you have to keep finding, over again, to   

follow it back to life; I know. Impossible, sometimes.

sorrows

by lucille clifton

who would believe them winged
who would believe they could be

beautiful    who would believe
they could fall so in love with mortals

that they would attach themselves
as scars attach and ride the skin

sometimes we hear them in our dreams
rattling their skulls    clicking

their bony fingers
they have heard me beseeching

as i whispered into my own
cupped hands    enough    not me again

but who can distinguish
one human voice

amid such choruses
of desire

between monuments/guardian at the door

the use of pleasure

quotes from the use of pleasure: the history of sexuality volume two by michel foucault

"what were the games of truth by which human beings came to see themselves as desiring individuals?"

"as for what motivated me. . . it was curiosity - the only kind of curiosity, in any case, that is worth acting upon with a degree of obstinacy: not the curiosity that seeks to assimilate what it is proper for one to know, but that which enables one to get free of oneself.  after all, what would be the value of the passion for knowledge if it resulted only in a certain amount of knowledgeableness and not, in one way or another and to the extent possible, in the knower's straying afield of herself?"

"it is easy to see that each of these great figures of sexual austerity is tied to an axis of experience and to a cluster of concrete relationships: relations to the body, with the question of health, and behind it the whole game of life and death; the relation to the other sex, with the question of the spouse as privileged partner, in the the game of the family institution and the ties it creates; the relation to one's own sex, with the question of partners that one can choose within it, and the problem of the adjustment between social roles and sexual roles; and finally, the relation to truth, where the question is raised of the spiritual conditions that enable one to gain access to wisdom."

"given a code of actions, and with regard to a specific type of actions (which can be defined by their degree of conformity with or divergence from the code), there are different ways to 'conduct oneself' morally, different ways for the acting individual to operate, not just as an agent, but as an ethical subject of this action.  take, for example, a code of sexual prescriptions enjoining the two marital partners to practice a strict and symmetrical conjugal fidelity, always with a view to procreation; there will be many ways, even within such a rigid frame, to practice that austerity, many ways to 'be faithful'.  these differences can bear on several points worth considering."

"they concern what might be called the determination of the ethical substance; that is, the way in which the individual has to constitute this or that part of himself as the prime material of his moral conduct.  thus, one can relate the crucial aspects of the practice of fidelity to the strict observance of interdictions and obligations in the very acts one accomplishes.  but one can also make the essence of fidelity consist in the mastery of desires, in the fervent combat one directs against them, in the strength with which one is able to resist temptations: what makes up the content of fidelity in this case is that vigilance and that struggle.  in these conditions, the contradictory movements of the soul - much more than the carrying out of the acts themselves - will be the prime material of moral practice.  alternatively, one can have it consist in the intensity, continuity, and reciprocity of feelings that are experienced vis-a-vis the partner, and in the quality of the relationship that permanently binds the two spouses."

"the differences can also have to do with the mode of subjection: that is, with the way in which the individual establishes his relation to the rule and recognizes himself as obliged to put it into practice. . . one can also practice fidelity in response to an appeal, by offering oneself as an example, or by seeking to give one's personal life a form that answers to criteria of brilliance, beauty, nobility, or perfection."

"there are also possible differences in the forms of elaboration, of ethical work that one performs on oneself, not only in order to bring one's conduct into compliance with a given rule, but to attempt to transform oneself into the ethical subject of one's behavior.  thus, sexual austerity can be practiced through a long effort of learning, memorization, and assimilation of a systematic ensemble of precepts, and through a regular checking of conduct aimed at measuring the exactness with which one is applying these rules.  it can be practiced in the form of a sudden, all-embracing, and definitive renunciation of pleasures; it can also be practiced in the form of a relentless combat whose vicissitudes - including momentary setbacks - can have meaning and value in themselves; and it can be practiced through a decipherment as painstaking, continuous, and detailed as possible, of the movements of desire in all its hidden forms, including the most obscure."

"other differences, finally, concern what might be called the telos of the ethical subject: an action is not only moral in itself, in its singularity; it is also moral in its circumstantial integration and by virtue of the place it occupies in a pattern of conduct.  it is an element and an aspect of this conduct, and it marks a stage in its life, a possible advance in its continuity.  a moral action tends toward its own accomplishment; but it also aims beyond the latter, to the establishing of a moral conduct that commits an individual, not only to other actions always in conformity with values and rules, but to a certain mode of being, a mode of being characteristic of the ethical subject."

"all moral action involves a relationship with the reality in which it is carried out, and a relationship with the self.  the latter is not simply 'self-awareness' but self-formation as an 'ethical subject', a process in which the individual delimits that part of himself that will form the object of his moral practice, defines his position relative to the precept he will follow, and decides on a certain mode of being that will serve as his moral goal.  and this requires him to act upon himself, to monitor, test, improve, and transform herself.  there is no specific moral action that does not refer to a unified moral conduct; no moral conduct that does not call for the forming of oneself as an ethical subject; and no forming of the ethical subject without 'modes of subjectivation' and an 'ascetics' or 'practices of the self' that support them."

"moral conceptions in greek and greco-roman antiquity were much more oriented toward practices of the self and the question of askesis than toward codifications of conducts and the strict definition of what is permitted and what is forbidden. . . the accent was placed on the relationship with the self that enabled a person to keep from being carried away by the appetites and pleasures, to maintain a mastery and superiority over them, to keep his senses in a state of tranquility, to remain free from interior bondage to the passions, and to achieve a mode of being that could be defined by the full enjoyment of oneself, or the perfect supremacy of oneself over oneself."

two yearnings

"zeffrino didn't know quite what to think.  seeing a lady cry was a thing that made your heart ache.  but how could anyone be sad in this enclosure of sea crammed with every variety of fish to fill the heart with desire and joy?  and how could you dive into that greenness and pursue fish when there was a grown-up person nearby dissolved in tears?  at the same moment, in the same place, two yearnings existed, opposed and unreconcilable, but zeffrino could neither conceive of them both together, nor surrender to the one or to the other."

from the short story "big fish, little fish" by italo calvino

shells

one with the birds

rituals

from "womyn, rituals, and family therapy" by joan laird & ann hartman


"ritual can be mobilized as a powerful instrument in therapy."

"while words may accompany ritual, ritual takes us beyond language and beyond our conscious, cognitive categories, because of its powerful use of myth, metaphor, and symbol... ritual implies action.  it is performed, enacted, reflecting the past and shaping the future at one and the same time."

"rituals... include repetition, performance, special behavior of stylization, order, evocative presentational style, and a collective dimension (that is, a dimension charged with a social message, even if it the self sending a message to self).  elements of chaos and spontaneity may appear at particular times and places."

"most of the transitions in the womyn's life cycle are organized around changes in the lives of her husband, children, or parents.  accompanying ritual communication reinforces her role as caretaker and nurturer, but may say little about the meaning of her life... no widely sanctioned rituals exist to mark the passage from home to public life for womyn for whom marriage is not the major leaving home marker."

"... womyn tend to structure their lives (and, we would add, their rituals) around a range of contingencies that depend on others.  these contigencies include: 'the need to fit the expectancies of an unknown spouse, the uncertainty about whether she will marry, and the necessity to provide a backup education & training 'just in case' she does not, the possibility of childlessness, with the concomitant need to develop alternative activities, the disruption of routine when the children leave home, with the concomitant need to develop other options, and the possibility of divorce or widowhood...'"

"social rituals don't just express our realities, they help create them."

"from marriage on, many of the central rites of passage in which womyn participate, if she is a mother, are related to the movement through the life cycle of her children: their birthdays, graduations, and marriages.  later she may become the central caretaker for her parents, as they age and die.  it is not clear, if transition rituals are so focused on the needs of others, how the changes, separations, and redefinitions a womyn faces are mastered or incorporated.  finally, if a womyn does not follow the traditional life course and is unconnected to husband or children, her life may lack recognizable markers, leaving her forever on the margins or in what turner might define as a 'liminal' phase."

"it is, perhaps, therapy's ritual character that provides it with so much power."

"therapists can help families devise rituals that express the family's beliefs and values and help their female members move through the life cycle according to those meanings... other womyn may need help in freeing themselves from rigid and demeaning daily ritual patterns, in resolving old, unfinished issues, or in completing the mourning of earlier losses."

looking inward

from an unentangled knowing by upasika kee nanayon (translated by thanissaro bhikkhu)

"anyone who has to fight to have his/her ideas accepted inevitably loses touch with the qualities of dispassion, self-effacement, unentanglement with others, contentment with little, and seclusion - qualities the buddha set forth as the litmus test for gauging whether or not a proposed course of action, and the person proposing it, were in accordance with the dhamma." -thanissaro bhikkhu

to begin with, know that the body is composed of various physical properties, the major ones being the properties of earth, water, fire, and wind; the minor ones being the aspects that adhere to the major ones: things like color, smell, shape, etc.  these properties are unstable (inconstant), stressful, and unclean.  if you look into them deeply, you will see that there's no substance to them at all.  they are simply impersonal conditions, with nothing worth calling 'me' or 'mine'.  when you can clearly perceive the body in these terms, you will be able to let go of any clinging or attachment to it as an entity, your self, someone else, this or that.

the second step is to deal with mental phenomena (feelings, perceptions, thought-fabrications, and consciousness).  focus on keeping track of the truth that these are characterized by arising, persisting, and then disbanding.  in other words, their nature is to arise and disband, arise and disband, repeatedly.

start out by brushing aside all external concerns and turn to look inside at your own mind until you can know in what ways it's clear or murky, calm or unsettled... until you've trained the mind to stay firmly in a state of normalcy (neutrality).

when you focus on the breath, using the breath as a leash to tie the mind in place so that it doesn't go wandering off, you have to use your endurance.  you have to endure pain...  if there's pleasure, don't get enthralled with it... if there's a lot of pain, you first have to endure it and then relax your attachments.  don't think of the pain as being your pain.  let it be the pain of the body, the pain of nature.

if you can maintain equanimity in the face of pleasure or pain, it can make the mind peaceful - peaceful even though the pain is still pain.  the mind keeps knowing, enduring the pain so as to let it go... this is a really important skill to develop, because it will make craving, defilement, and attachment grow weaker and weaker... as for the pleasure that comes from the practice, it's a cool pleasure that lets go of everything, really free from any sense of me or mine.

why is it that the mind can stay engaged with the defilements all day long and yet go for entire days without knowing how heavy or subtle the breath is at all?

you look, you know, right there at the mind and can tell whether or not it's empty and still.  once you see that it is, then you investigate to see how it's empty, how it's still.  it's not the case that once it's empty, that's the end of the matter; once it's still, that's the end of the matter.  that's not the case at all.  you have to keep watch of things, you have to investigate at all times.  only then will you see the changing- the arising and disbanding- occurring in that emptiness, that stillness, that state of normalcy.

you were born to study pain and the causes of pain, and to follow the practice that frees you from pain. . . if we contemplate it till we know all its details, we can then make it our sport: seeing that the pain is the pain of natural conditions and not our pain.  this is something we have to research so as to get to the details: that it's not our pain, it's the pain of the aggregates [form, feeling, perception, thought-fabrications, and consciousness].  knowing in this way means that we can separate out the properties - the properties of matter and those of the mind- to see how they interact with one another, how they change.  it's something really fascinating... watching pain is a way of building up lots of mindfulness and discernment.

a longtime favorite

birdwings 
by rumi

your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror
up to where you’re bravely working.

expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.

your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
if it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.

your deepest presence is in every small contracting
and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.


*translated by coleman barks

performances

from the presentation of self in everyday life by erving goffman

"when an individual plays a part he implicitly requests his observers to take seriously the impression that is fostered before them.  they are asked to believe that the characters they see actually possesses the attributes he appears to possess, that the task he performs will have the consequences that are implicitly claimed for it, and that, in general, matters are what they appear to be.  in line with this, there is the popular view that the individual offers his performance and puts on his show 'for the benefit of other people.'"

"when the individual has no belief in his own act and no ultimate concern with the beliefs of his audience, we may call him cynical, reserving the term 'sincere' for individuals who believe in the impression fostered by their own performance.  it should be understood that the cynic, with all his professional disinvolvement, may obtain unprofessional pleasure from his masquerade, experiencing a kind of gleeful spiritual aggression from the fact that he can toy at will with something his audience must take seriously."

"in so far as this mask represents the conception we have formed of ourselves - the role we are striving to live up to - this mask is our truer self, the self we would like to be."

"we find that the individual may attempt to induce the audience to judge him and the situation in a particular way, and he may seek this judgment as an ultimate end in itself, and yet he may not completely believe that he deserves the valuation of self which he asks for or that the impression of reality which he fosters is valid."

"the expressiveness of the individual (and therefore his capacity to give impressions) appears to involve two radically different kinds of sign activity: the expression that he gives, and the expression that he gives off.  the first involves verbal symbols or their substitutes which he uses admittedly and solely to convey the information that he and the others are known to attach to these symbols.  this is communication in the traditional and narrow sense.  the second involves a wide range of action that others can treat as symptomatic of the actor, the expectation being that the action was performed for reasons other than the information conveyed in this way. . . the individual does of course intentionally convey misinformation by means of both of these types of communication, the first involving deceit, the second feigning."

"it is also highly important for us to realize that we do not as a matter of fact lead our lives, make our decisions, and reach our goals in everyday life either statistically or scientifically.  we live by inference.  i am, let us say, your guest.  you do not know, you cannot determine scientifically, that i will not steal your money or your spoons.  but inferentially i will not, and inferentially you have me as a guest." -william i. thomas

"regardless of the particular objective which the individual has in mind and of his motive for having this objective, it will be in his interests to control the conduct of others, especially their responsive treatment of him."

"tom burns. . .presents the argument that in all interaction a basic underlying theme is the desire of each participant to guide and control the responses made by the others present.  a similar argument has been advanced by jay haley. . . but in regard to a special kind of control, that having to do with defining the nature of the relationship of those involved in the interaction."

"now given the fact that others are likely to check up on the more controllable aspects of behavior by means of the less controllable, one can expect that sometimes the individual will try to exploit this very possibility, guiding the impression he makes through behavior felt to be reliably informing. . . this kind of control upon the part of the individual reinstates the symmetry of the communication process, and sets the stage for a kind of information game - a potentially infinite cycle of concealment, discovery, false revelation, and rediscovery.  it should be added that since the others are likely to be relatively unsuspicious of the presumably unguided aspect of the individual's conduct, he can gain much by controlling it."

"the others, however passive their role may seem to be, will themselves effectively project a definition of the situation by virtue of their response to the individual"

"ordinarily the definitions of the situation projected by the several different participants are sufficiently attuned to one another so that open contradiction will not occur. . . each participant is expected to suppress his immediate heartfelt feelings, conveying a view of the situation which he feels the others will be able to find at least temporarily acceptable.  the maintenance of this surface of agreement, this veneer of consensus, is facilitated by each participant concealing his own wants behind statements which assert values to which everyone present feels obliged to give lip service."

"together the participants contribute to a single over-all definition of the situation which involves not so much a real agreement as to what exists but rather a real agreement as to whose claims concerning what issues will be temporarily honored.  real agreement will also exist concerning the desirability of avoiding an open conflict of definitions of the situation."

"we can appreciate the crucial importance of the information that the individual initially posseses or acquires concerning his fellow participants, for it is on the basis of this initial information that the individual starts to define the situation and starts to build up lines of responsive action.  the individual's initial projection commits him to what he is proposing to be and requires him to drop all pretenses of being other things."

"the work adjustment of those in service occupations will often hinge upon a capacity to seize and hold the initiative in the service relation, a capacity that will require subtle aggressiveness on the part of the server when he is of lower socio-economic status than his client."

"given the fact that the individual effectively projects a definition of the situation when he enters the presence of others, we can assume that events may occur within the interaction which contradict, discredit, or otherwise throw doubt upon this projection.  when these disruptive events occur, the interaction itself may come to a confused and embarrassed halt.  some of the assumptions upon which the responses of the participants had been predicated become untenable, and the participants find themselves lodged in an interaction for which the situation has been wrongly defined and is now no longer defined.  at such moments the individual whose presentation has been discredited may feel ashamed while the others present may feel hostile, and all the participants may come to feel ill at ease, nonplussed, out of countenance, embarrassed, experiencing the kind of anomy that is generated when the minute social system of face-to-face interaction breaks down."

"any projected definition of the situation also has a distinctive moral character. . . society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will value and treat him in an appropriate way.  connected with this principle is a second, namely that an individual who implicitly or explicitly signifies that he has certain social characteristics ought in fact to be what he claims he is.  in consequence, when an individual projects a definition of the situation and thereby makes an implicit or explicit claim to be a person of a particular kind, he automatically exerts a moral demand upon the others, obliging them to value and treat him in the manner that persons of his kind have a right to expect.  he also implicitly forgoes all claims to be things he does not appear to be and hence forgoes the treatment that would be appropriate for such individuals.  the others find, then, that the individual has informed them as to what is and as to what they ought to see as the 'is'."

"one cannot judge the importance of definitional disruptions by the frequency with which they occur, for apparently they would occur more frequently were not constant precautions taken.  we find that preventive practices are constantly employed to avoid these embarrassments and that corrective practices are constantly employed to compensate for discrediting occurrences that have not been successfully avoided.  when the individual employs these strategies and tactics to protect his own projections, we may refer to them as 'defensive practices'; when a participant employs them to save the definition of the situation projected by another, we speak of 'protective practices' or 'tact'.  together, defensive and protective practices comprise the techniques employed to safeguard the impression fostered by an individual during his presence before others."

"in addition to the fact that precautions are taken to prevent disruption of projected definitions, we may also note that an intense interest in these disruptions comes to play a significant role in the social life of the group... there seems to be no grouping which does not have a ready supply of these games, reveries, and cautionary tales, to be used as a source of humor, a catharsis for anxieties, and a sanction for inducing individuals to be modest in their claims and reasonable in their projected expectations."
   

the rooms. (part one)

the rooms. (part one)

took it apart, it had nothing to

lose. the pile filled with punctuation,

hinges, hunger.

screwdriver in hand

gray mass growing

brains flex & pipe up

give me the tools?

who is a house!

where is the room:

(what hallway follows)

i was hung up, a coat

hooked to a swinging door

past the burning

singing

some songs are made of small fires

tumbling down tubes and tunnels

swallowed with a caress on a throat

some songs are deluges

some extinguish

some are off key

all songs are safety measures

1.31.13

oh, judith butler

from gender trouble

"the political assumption that there must be a universal basis for feminism, one which must be found in an identity assumed to exist cross-culturally, often accompanies the notion that the oppression of womyn has some singular form discernible in the universal or hegemonic structure of patriarchy or masculine domination.  that form of feminist theorizing has come under criticism for its efforts to colonize and appropriate non-western cultures to support highly western notions of oppression, but because they tend as well to construct a 'third world' or even an 'orient' in which gender oppression in subtly explained as symptomatic of an essential, non-western barbarism.  the urgency of feminism to establish a universal status for patriarchy in order to strengthen the appearance of feminism's own claims to be representative has occasionally motivated the shortcut to a categorial or fictive universality of the structure of domination, held to produce womyn's common subjugated experience."

"are the specificity and integrity of womyn's cultural or linguistic practices always specified against and, hence, within the terms of some more dominant cultural formation? ... the masculine/feminine binary constitutes not only the exclusive framework in which that specificity can be recognized, but in every other way the 'specificity' of the feminine is once again fully decontextualized and separated off analytically and politically from the constitution of class, race, ethnicity, and other axes of power relations that both constitute 'identity' and make the singular notion of identity a misnomer."

"contemporary feminist debates over the meanings of gender lead time and again to a certain sense of trouble, as if the indeterminacy of gender might eventually culminate in the failure of feminism.  perhaps trouble need not carry such a negative valence.  to make trouble was, within the reigning discourse of my childhood, something one should never do precisely because that would get one in trouble.  the rebellion and its reprimand seemed to be caught up in the same terms, a phenomenon that gave rise to my first critical insight into the subtle ruse of power: the prevailing law threatened one with trouble, even put one in trouble, all to keep one out of trouble.  hence, i concluded that trouble is inevitable and the task, how best to make it, what best way to be in it.  as time went by, further ambiguities arrived on the critical scene.  i noted that trouble sometimes euphemized some fundamentally mysterious problem usually related to the alleged mystery of all things feminine.  i read beauvoir who explained that to be a womyn within the terms of a masculinist culture is to be a source of mystery and unknowability for men, and this seemed confirmed somehow when i read sartre for whom all desire, problematically presumed as heterosexual and masculine, was defined as trouble.  for that masculine subject of desire, trouble became a scandal with the sudden intrusion, the unanticipated agency, of a female 'object' who inexplicably returns the glance, reverses the gaze, and contests the place and authority of the masculine position.  the radical dependency of the masculine subject on the female 'other' suddenly exposes his autonomy as illusory.  that particular dialectical reversal of power, however, couldn't quite hold my attention- although others surely did.  power seemed to be more than an exchange between subjects or a relation of constant inversion between subject and an other; indeed, power appeared to operate in the production of that very binary frame for thinking about gender."

"laughter in the face of serious categories is indispensable for feminism."

"her/his performance [divine in the john waters' film female trouble] destabilizes the very distinctions between the natural and artificial, depth and surface, inner and outer through which discourse about gender almost always operates."

"the mobilization of identity categories for the purposes of politicization always remain threatened by the prospect of identity becoming an instrument of the power one opposes.  that is no reason not to use, and be used by, identity.  there is no political position purified of power, and perhaps that impurity is what produces agency as the potential interruption and reversal of regulatory regimes."

trying to name what doesn't change

by naomi shihab nye
 

Roselva says the only thing that doesn’t change   

is train tracks. She’s sure of it.

The train changes, or the weeds that grow up spidery   

by the side, but not the tracks.

I’ve watched one for three years, she says,

and it doesn’t curve, doesn’t break, doesn’t grow.

Peter isn’t sure. He saw an abandoned track

near Sabinas, Mexico, and says a track without a train   

is a changed track. The metal wasn’t shiny anymore.   

The wood was split and some of the ties were gone.

Every Tuesday on Morales Street

butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.   

The widow in the tilted house

spices her soup with cinnamon.

Ask her what doesn’t change.

Stars explode.

The rose curls up as if there is fire in the petals.   

The cat who knew me is buried under the bush.

The train whistle still wails its ancient sound   

but when it goes away, shrinking back

from the walls of the brain,

it takes something different with it every time.