Religion: Don't Contradict Me

On page 252 of Rebecca Goldstein’s excellent novel, Mazel, we meet a young Jew, Maurice, living in pre-War Warsaw, who has found no vocation in life. His older brother, Jascha, is a composer of music, considered to be a genius by many. In Jascha’s life, music provides a definite focus and meaning, accompanied by self-conscious movement in the direction of existential authenticity.

As opposed to Jascha’s focus, we see in Maurice a constant and unresolved vacillation between various imagined lives, each of which he projects as potentially desirous. This we can understand as the interplay of, and tension between, the influences of three gunas in the psyche of Maurice. In fact, these contradictory urges are pulling him apart:

“When Jascha was sixteen, it had already been obvious that there would be no life for him outside of music. But Maurice could imagine himself easily into a great number of mutually exclusive lives.
“He would have liked, at one and the same time, to be both a talmid chachem, a disciple of the wise, and also to be one of those bright lights who danced away every night at the Astoria Hotel, buying drinks for the prettiest and fastest girls in all of Warsaw.
“He would have liked to be a thorough-going rationalist, a professor of physics or philosophy at some famous German University, and a the same time to be a Cabalistic mystic, seeing divine emanations in every puddle.
“He would have liked to be an American millionaire, but also a kibbutznik living in collective penury in Palestine.
“Every single one, and more, of these imagined lives called out to him, and he would, if he could, gladly take hold of them all. But the thing was simply impossible. The talmid chachem’s existence would run counter to the bright light’s. The rationalist and the mystic would trip each other up. The millionaire and the kibbutznik could not possibly keep house in the same puny precincts of his person.
“One life is definitely not enough, which is why the Cabalistic idea of reincarnation had always appealed so much to him.”

Regarding the nature of, and opposition to, such contradictions, Simone Weil writes in the Notebooks (p. 387):

“Contradiction is not conceived by the mind without an effort on the part of attention. For without this effort we conceive one of the contraries, or else the other, but not the two together, and above all not the two together in the character of contradictories. Moreover, contradiction is that which our mind tries to get rid of and is unable to. It comes to us from outside. It is real.”

… “Either the mind maintains real within itself the simultaneous notion of the contradictories, or else it is tossed about by the mechanism of natural compensations from one of the contraries to the other. That is what the Gîtâ meant by ‘having passed beyond the aberration produced by the contraries.’ It forms the very basis of the notion of dharma.”

In other words, in order to fulfill one’s existential destiny, one must focus the attention on one’s every act, in the moment that it is undertaken. One must complete the act without reference to the imaginary ends of the action taken. As we have seen below: “Action for action’s sake, not for its fruits” which is achieved by “Ordering of finite means with a view to an infinite and transcendent end”. In this way, one forges for oneself an authentic existence, in complete accordance with one’s dharma. And one acts without the accretion of ever more karmic debt. One dispenses with the need to live another life on the material plane in order to achieve that perfection required of every human being by God: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." (Matt 5:48 KJV) It is not enough to be a Good Joe; one must be a Saint Joseph.

We shall see how Weil relates these ideas to those of Christian salvation.

Religion: Not guna do it?

In the 600-plus pages of my two-volume edition of the Notebooks of Simone Weil [Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1956; translated by Arthur Wills], she cites the Bhagavad Gîtâ a total of 41 times. For this reason, I was reading one translation of the Gîtâ, which I took out of the library, while working my way through the Notebooks. When I had finished that, I bought a copy of a more recent translation, by Graham M. Schweig, which I have on my nightstand. I am currently working my way through that, a couple of pages per night. Last night I began the fourteenth of the eighteen chapters, in which the Lord Krishna explains to Arjuna the three gunas, or “qualities of nature”: sattva, rajas, and tamas. Simone Weil uses these concepts in constructing and elucidating her system of theology, relating them to both Platonism and Christianity.

The gunas are each briefly defined in the Index to Sanskrit Terms provided at the end of the Notebooks:

Sattva: higher element of the gunas; principle of purity and light.
Rajas: middle element of the gunas; disturbing principle which gives rise to the passions.
Tamas: lower element of the gunas; principle of darkness and evil.

Collectively, these three “qualities” or substances go to form the prakrti, which is defined in the index as “original matter (or nature).” Another key term, which is strangely omitted from the index in the Notebooks, is dharma. In a footnote on page 21 of his translation of the Gîtâ, Schweig defines dharma as: “A state of consciousness, a personal calling to goodness, cosmic harmony, sound ethical law, or justice. Dharma is the very first word in the Sanskrit Gîtâ, and this symbolic primacy is not lost on Simone Weil. Each person’s dharma, she knows is “all mixed up with evil,” the amount of which is dependant upon the relative strength of influence exerted upon the individual’s actions by each of the three qualities of nature. Actions, and the results of actions, are karma, which can be likened to a debt that the individual owes to existence as defined by how far he falls short of fulfilling his individual dharma. The thematic aim of the Gîtâ, Weil says, is the “ordering of finite means with a view to an infinite and transcendent end: how is this possible.” Her answer to this question is: “One should become detached from the three gunas (even sattva). Action for action’s sake, not for its fruits (even the fruit of inner perfection)” – (page 89).

We will look at this paradox further as time goes on, since it seems to be a crucial element of Simone Weil’s thought in contemplating the nature and goals of human existence.

NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATION: It may seem inappropriate to use "The Three Graces" to decorate a post on "The Three Gunas." But my reasons are two-fold: a) I'm a fan of the artist, and this is a prime excuse; and b) it is precisely because all three gunas (even tamas) look good to us when we are failing in our attention to duty and allowing them to influence our acts, that all of our acts are entangled, or mixed up with evil. Caveat emptor.

Reflections: Road Trip

The past week has been a hectic one, centered on getting my oldest daughter properly supplied, packed, and transported, to begin her freshman year of college. This involved a 1500 mile round-trip, by car, over the course of three days, with the setting up of a dorm room sandwiched between the two all-day driving sessions. Then, at the end of it all, you find yourself at home, minus the presence of a loved one who has been one of the central focuses of your life for the past 18 years. It isn’t quite the “empty nest” syndrome yet, since she has a sister a year behind her. But there remains a gaping hole, nonetheless.

My good friend, Jim, who has only one daughter, and went through this a couple of years ago, tells me that he’s still adjusting to it. And then he tells me that you hear from them most often when they’re unhappy. Talk about the proverbial rock and the ubiquitous hard place.

All complaining and lamenting aside, the drive through the hills and mountains of West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts is a particularly beautiful one. Even driving through Connecticut and New Jersey at night, on the way back, provided some sinister beauty. You are speeding along dimly-lit elevated highways, through cityscapes resembling scenes once envisioned in futuristic film noir. Towering edifices, like alien monuments edged in twinkling lights, loom up out of an absolute darkness, as though projected by the eerie, greenish-blue light reflected from their massive planes, deeply etched by the angular dance of jet black shadows. Where the highway passes over human dwellings, made visible by ordinary street lights, it is impossible to imagine the lives of the people who live within such ancient wooden frame structures. None of it seems real.

Back now, in humdrum Ohio, in a house with an empty bedroom, surrounded by a large lawn which needs tending regardless of the end-of-summer heat wave, perhaps there will be some consolation in resuming the daily reading which the distractions of the past week have made nearly impossible?

Reflections: Whattsa matter you?

Ava Gardner. No comment. Just...Ava Gardner.

Readings: What Is Life?

Across the evening valley the old mule went with his heartbroken "Hee haw" broken like a yodel in the wind: like a horn blown by some terribly sad angel: like a reminder to people digesting dinners at home that all was not as well as they thought. Yet it was just a love cry for another mule.

--Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums


After all, our wisdom, however irrefutable it may be, has provided us with no understanding of the meaning of life. Yet all those millions who make up humanity manage to live without ever doubting its meaning.

--Leo Tolstoy, A Confession


...I'm also interested...in observing if any demonstrable good's to be had from getting as old as Methuselah, other than that the organism keeps functioning like a refrigerator. We assume persistence to be a net gain, but it still needs to be proved.

--Richard Ford, The Lay of the Land


To say like Ivan Karamazov: nothing can possibly make up for a single tear from a single child. And yet to accept all tears, and the countless horrors which lie beyond tears. To accept these things not simply in so far as they may admit of compensations, but in themselves. To accept that they should exist, simply because they do exist. ...and by this acceptance to love God through and beyond it.

--Simone Weil, Notebooks, Volume One


There are two ways to look at life. One is that you never have enough closet space. The other is that you have too much stuff.

--Rodak

Reflections: Life in the Material World

[N.B.: if you would like to read this essay on dualism from the beginning, scroll down to the August 13th post, "Reflections: Heresy?"]

Why was the Serpent’s proposal to Eve so effective? Why was the satisfaction of every physical need, combined with complete ease and security, not enough for our human parents? In Chapter XXXIII of his Republic, Plato provides a possible answer:

"…As hunger and thirst are states of bodily inanition, which can be replenished by food, so ignorance and unwisdom in the soul are an emptiness to be filled by gaining understanding. Of the two sorts of nourishment, will not the more real yield the truer satisfaction?
Clearly.
Which kind of nourishment, then, has the higher claim to pure reality – food-stuffs like bread and meat and drink, or such things as true belief, knowledge, reason, and in a word all the excellences of the mind? You may decide by asking yourself whether something which is closely connected with the unchanging and immortal world of truth and itself shares that nature together with the thing in which it exists, has more or less reality than something which, like the thing which contains it, belongs to a world of mortality and perpetual change.
No doubt it is much more real."

Prior to eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve were essentially nothing more than a pair of beautiful pets; they were not fully human, as we understand human. It would seem that, according to orthodoxy, the price of full self-consciousness and of our moral free agency, and therefore of our full humanity, is living with the perpetual burden of Original Sin.

Orthodoxy states that the sin of Adam and Eve is responsible for bringing death into the world, but the text of Genesis does not fully support that doctrine. It is made clear, for one thing, that Adam and Eve will be eating, and to eat is necessarily to kill that which is eaten. To the contention that Adam and Eve were immortal prior to the attainment of self-consciousness are opposed verses 22 and 23 of the third chapter of Genesis:

[22] And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
[23] Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

Clearly, it was for the very purpose of keeping Adam and Eve from acquiring immortality, along with wisdom, that they were expelled from Eden. So, the Serpent did not exactly lie when he told Eve that she would not die as a direct consequence of eating that apple. And the Serpent also spoke the truth when he said that Adam and Eve would become godlike by eating it, as God himself affirms. Plausibly, then, everything that orthodoxy attests to be the fallen state of nature is, in reality, a necessary condition of material existence. The material world is not the highest Good under heaven; but neither is it Fallen because of a human act. It is as it must be, in order to have material existence. It becomes, therefore, the human project to transcend our material nature and strive to become holy, like God. This is what Jesus commands us to do: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” [Matt. 5: 48]

So, what is the nature of the Serpent? Is this the first appearance of Satan, the principle of pure evil, in the Bible? Interestingly, the book of Genesis does not characterize the Serpent as “evil,” but merely as “subtle.” It is clear that the agenda of the Serpent is to coax the humans into an act of defiance against the rule put in place by the Creator. But we have seen that the consequences of this act of disobedience are not shown to be unequivocally bad as they might be interpreted, for instance, by the philosophy of Plato.

The Serpent is sometimes portrayed in a positive light in world mythology, and sometimes as an embodiment of evil. Some snakes are, after all, poisonous. But others are a boon to man in controlling the numbers of vermin. The Serpent is sometimes, as in Genesis, seen as wise, and is sometimes equated with Satan:


"Although in the minority, there are at least a couple of passages in the New Testament that do not present the snake with negative connotation. When sending out the twelve apostles, Jesus exhorted them 'Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.'Matthew 10:16)."


…and,


"In the Gospel of Matthew 3:7, John the Baptist calls the Pharisees and Saducees visiting him a "brood of vipers". Later in Matthew 23:33, Jesus himself uses this imagery, observing: 'Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Gehenna?' ("Hell" is the usual translation of Jesus' word Gehenna.)"


And these are some of the reasons why the various degrees of dualism found in Platonism, Neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, and the teachings and philosophies of some of the many mystics and sages are of interest to me.

Reflections: The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

We have seen how, in a material world, light beamed at existing objects necessarily creates the shadows in which evil can lurk; the brighter the light, the deeper the darkness. All of Creation, man included, is founded upon this intrinsic paradox. As they put it on the street corners of the Bronx, “You have to take the good with the bad.” The Creator equipped man with free will because man could not, in any meaningful sense, choose the good, unless he were capable of choosing evil instead. And this inevitable truth sets up the tragedy of man’s Fall and his expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

In the creation of Eden, God had provided Adam and Eve with everything that materia has to offer – beauty, nourishment, sexuality, and power – dominion over the entire spectrum of life. But there remained this one, odd, exception:

Genesis.2
16] And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
[17] But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

In the first version of the Creation, as presented in Genesis 1, this divine caveat does not occur. It is only in the second, notably less perfect, version of Creation that the Creator plants in the groves, along with “every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food,” the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

In terms of our considerations of dualism, we might well ask here, how – since the whole of creation had been deemed “good” by the Creator – there could logically exist a tree of the knowledge of good and evil? For how does one have knowledge of a thing (evil) that does not exist? The very presence of this tree in the midst of the Garden seems to imply that all is not good.

We might next ask how, if prior to the Fall, Adam and Eve have no knowledge of good and evil, they can be said to be moral agents and to possess free will? If one cannot consciously choose evil, then one is morally absolved of any intent to do so, and the concept of guilt, or sin, is meaningless.

Which brings us to the serpent. Although, as we noted earlier, all of Adam and Eve’s animal needs had been provided for by God’s creation, Eve’s encounter with the serpent quickly shows us that the satisfaction of every material need and desire was not sufficient. The serpent is easily able to persuade Eve that the acquisition of wisdom – the ability to transcend the material, passing into intellectual realms – was worth risking even death, the permanent loss of the material world. We will enlarge upon this consideration next time.