Class 4 Reflections

September 29, 2010

LS800 Class 4

Sappho Poetry - c. 600 BCE
Marcus Aurelius, Mediations - c. 170 CE

Based on our readings, some from Ancient Greece, many class discussions have centered on the nature of the world: What are its building blocks? How does it work and where do humans fit into it? Given the Ancient Greeks’ interest in the world around them, it came as no surprise that much of their poetry focuses on the senses of hearing and sight. It’s as if the reasoned and logical investigation of matter merged with the sensual arena of thought in poetry. It will remain unknown whether the world’s make-up ever played the role of Muse for Sappho, but just as the philosophers of the day took to explaining the natural world, Sappho applied her bodily senses to poetry.

Sappho’s poetry is saturated with physical reactions to love. The passion expressed is not lessened by the fact that only fragments of her poems remain. Her gorgeous coalescing of the celestial and telluric (LP34)

As the stars surrounding the lovely moon will
hide away the splendour of their appearance
when in all her fullness she shines the brightest over the whole earth

has a corporal effect on the reader as do her juxtapositions of sensual sentiments with the inanimate earth (LP46,47): “I will let my body flow like water over the gentle cushions” and “Then love shook my heart like the wind that falls on oaks in the mountains”. The former fragment, to me, is post-coital in character and insinuates the end of some frenzied activity while the latter stems from something more purely emotional. In these snippets, Sappho’s poetry takes root in the human heart and mind and contrasts their subjective reality to our senses’ subjective reality. For example, in the same way one admires the beauty of the moon surrounded by stars, (the true scope of which the intellect can scarcely grasp), so too is the profound impression that love gives, taking one beyond this earth and into the breathless ether, where the stars spin only because we, on earth, turn. (Excuse me, I’ve never waxed poetic before … humour me). Essentially, the incommunicable feeling of love is well-expressed when set side-by-side our awe of nature. It's as if that feeling of wonderment and disbelief has permeated our being and we're in touch with the cosmos at some deeper level.

But how fortunate we are to read this Ancient Greek woman’s gems! Just as in ancient China, there was little passion in love between men and women in Athens. It is thought that Sappho was an instructor at a thiasoi, an all-girls’ school, where she introduced sensual awareness and self-esteem to girls, girls who were about to enter a sexually divided society. Knowing of the oppression Athenian women lived under, perhaps Sappho longed for her ideas to be immortalized and remembered; she longed for her knowledge of the beauty of sisterly-love to survive her days and extend beyond her sorority on Lesbos; (LP147): “I think that someone will remember us in another time”.

On Lesbos, women lived in a world wholly different from Athens. At times I felt bits of her poetry express the freedom of life on Lesbos, describing it as a sanctuary from domineering men (LP154) while others bits express utter loneliness and a longing for something else (Voigt, 168B). How sad to think of these women’s lives post-Lesbos, after being married off, and of all the unread female writing made invisible within purdah. Indeed, most of the Ancient Greek writings that remains today are male in origin. What makes the writings more exclusive is that they were produced by a select few men.

(LP31):
Sweetness of your laughter…
sets the shaking inside my breast, since
once I look at you for a moment, I can’t speak any longer
but my tongue breaks down, and then all at once a
subtle fire races inside my skin, my
eyes can’t see a thing and a whirring whistle thrums at my hearing
cold sweat covers me and a trembling takes
ahold of me all over: I’m greener than the
grass is and appear to myself to be little short of dying.

This is Sappho’s reaction to a man interacting with one of her loves. Is she about to have a seizure or go into a jealous rage? Some take this lengthy fragment to be an anxiety attack of the type that a homosexual in our day might experience. I wonder how lesbians were viewed in Greece at that time, at a time when pederasty was common. As if it matters, the debate continues as to whether Sappho was a lesbian or not. Stories about her have undoubtedly been twisted through the ages and who’d be surprised if she’d been slandered to keep people from admiring her brilliance? She was, after all, a woman!

Interestingly, the true sense of her poetry must be, to some extent, misconstrued by English readers today. As Robert Frost said, “Poetry is what is lost in translation”, and this rings very true with Sappho. Surely some nuance and meaning are lost, but my guess is that in decent translations the general feeling remains the same. To me, poetry is a form bridging music and prose. It can convey a sentiment using imagery that cannot otherwise be expressed in prose. To use a quote to describe poetry’s ability to communicate the ineffable: “The great function of poetry is to give the situation of our dreams” (Gaston Bachelard). I would venture to say that an interpretive dance would better express the situation of our dreams than would prose!

Have you ever listened to soft jazz or Classical music while slipping into sleep? There are moments in that state between wakefulness and slumber when you feel you can perceive exaclty what the artist is saying within his tonal conversation. It might be so beautiful and revealing that it pulls you back into consciousness but for the life of you, you cannot express it in words. The feeling remains, though; intangible. Emotions are not hard and fast; they are fickle things, sensitive by nature. From the Sapphic translations I’ve read, they all amount to expressing the same general feeling but that is not to say that nothing was lost in the translation. To me, one can liken such translations to different musicians’ interpretations of a musical piece.

The most celebrated violinists and pianists, for example, are not distinguished by their technical abilities but by their interpretations. When Glenn Gould took the piano world by storm, critics believed that he played Baroque music as it was intended (as if they could really know. I often ponder how Mozart’s music was played in the 18th Century). Much like the translators of Sappho’s poems, musicians express something beyond words, something profound and universal. Different musicians change the feeling of the message by using different phrasing, different dynamics, tempo, rhtyhm and so on. These are the musician’s tools (what words are to the poet), and they translate what was written on paper by the composer. Just as today’s poetry has come a long way since the time of Shakespeare, for example, so has music. These two forms do travel the same path, albeit in different realms.

I wonder at how big a figure Sappho would be today had her complete output survived. I also marvel at how luck played a role in preserving what few fragments we do have. Some of humanity’s most precious achievements were rescued from the bin, so to speak. It’s almost certain that Bach (J. Sebastian; this one, not this one) produced more music than what’s been preserved, prolific as he was. Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, 6 complete multi-movement works that fill two audio CDs, are praised by violinists and music fans for their depth, complexity and utter genius. Legend has it that these works’ original manuscripts were rescued from a pile of meat-warpping paper at a butcher shop! More shocking is what the full title of these works implicates: “Sei Solo Violino Senza accompagnato. Libro Primo”, as if to say that what was recovered was only the first book!

When did we (humanity) start to value our history? I was surprised to learn that in the 1800s many of Rome’s structures were still being quarried for building materials and that the Colloseum was overgrown with trees. How many treasures were destroyed for scrap materials and how many works of genius were discarded in a Spring cleaning and used for kindling?

In stark contrast to Sappho’s sensual poetry, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations speak very little of love and suggest that anything overly emotional or sensual should be avoided. He’d agree with Sappho’s maxim, (LP158) “When anger spreads inside your breast keep watch against an idly barking tongue”, that one should be aware of passions and emotions. Sappho’s poetry deals with hurt and wounded feelings and leave the impression that nothing is constant but change. Aurelius would drink to this too, but might otherwise avoid her poetry; it would have been too passionate and emotional for his liking.

Aurelius, like Sappho, applies images of nature in his writings. His intention in doing so was, in some instances, to meditate on how minuscule and insignificant he is so as not to let his human desires make his whole world a whole world. (II.10) - “throw all else aside, and hold fast only these few things; further calling to mind at the same time that each of us lives only in the present, this brief moment”, (XII.19) “Perceive at last that you have within yourself something stronger and more divine that the things which create your passions and make a downright puppet out of you. What is my consciousness at this instant?” (VII.48) “When discoursing about mankind, look upon earthly things below as if from some place above them”. By looking at life from a far, focus on the smallness and triviality of your life. Gain this perspective.

Like past posts, I could comment on the many similarities and connections between Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and the recurrent themes that infuse this course (for example his appeal for mankind to live in more in accordance with Nature's rules) but I’ll try not to too too much. It is evident that questions surrounding how one should live have endured throughout human history and this idea has already been commented on. (I have to keep this blog's vast and growing readership in mind, after all). Today, I’d like to take a slightly different approach and try to explore how Roman culture around 150 CE influenced this particular text and why Stoicism remained popular for over 500 years since its beginnings around 300 BCE.

The Roman Empire was not a Garden of Eden. Far from it. Its boundaries were under constant threat of invasion by barbarians and therefore Rome had to maintain legions of men ready to wage war. Aurelius lived his final years amidst the nightmare of battle which makes his writings all the more meaningful and a true testament to his humanity. To me, among much else, his writings amount to a campaign against laziness and anything that can keep a man from behaving well and in-line with nature.

The remarkable thing about Stoicism is that it uses the idea of death without afterlife to motivate one to live well… (II.12) “death is not only nature’s handiwork but also her well-being”. I thought this line very interesting. Would we be motivated without death? If we did live forever, would we be motivated to search as we do? I wonder. My contention is that we deny our mortality and make believe that there’s an afterlife which causes us anxiety because deep within us we’re aware of the delirium of such a claim. Aurelius lived well for the moment, not for the afterlife, in contrast to many religions that promise compensation for acting well and thinking properly. The art of living for Aurelius centered on not acting well for the sake of recompense and not to rely on gods for comfort.

Man denies his own mortality in living in the past and building castles in his future. What is is in the present. (X.16, V. 17) “Don’t any more discuss at large what the good man is like, but be good.” “To pursue the impossible is madness: but it is impossible for evil men not to do things of these sorts”. What are past and future are, in a real sense, impossible and one would live well focusing on good actions in the present rather than philosophizing over how a good person should (theoretically) behave.

In comparing Meditations with Timaeus, I felt that Aurelius sets Plato’s ideas in motion. In some of his descriptions, I could see the flux, the Becoming, the slow dissolution of what exists, the streaming and morphing through the passage of time as well as the revolutions of the universe in the distant, infinite background. There are plenty of parallels that can be drawn from Mencius, Plato, the Bhagavad Gita and the Stoics. In reading Meditations I was often reminded of what I happen to know about Buddhist philosophy. It struck me as meaningful that such similar ideas were thought of independently by different cultures at about the same time; this is sometimes referred to as the Axial Age. Sure, Plato influenced Aurelius and the Stoics, but the idea of the “sage” or of a wise man - whether from Asia or Europe - appears to have had the same qualities that spoke to the people of the day and continues to speak to us. The idea struck a chord, one that was articulated then and resonates to this day. Karl Jaspers claimed that the “Axial Age,” was a shift from the Mythic Age, into an age when “man becomes conscious of Being as a whole, of himself and his limitations… Consciousness became conscious of itself.” Some contend that Jesus represents the greatest example of this consciousness and that the New Testament was the first expression of it after the Axial Age. Could it be that man, globally, struggled with his consciousness long enough that he reached a plateau of understanding? Somehow the world was ready for this revelation much like it was ready for Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Surely if Darwin (and Wallace) had not postulated "Natural Selection" someone else would have. The ideas were out there, at the forefront, and only had to be integrated.

Man reached a stage of maturity at this time and realized that the gods were not helping their cause; their fate was controlled by them more than by spirits. Stoicism, as described by Aurelius, is all about self-control, self-criticism and reliance on the self to attain something good. It requires constant vigilance and is hard work. Aurelius rehashes the same ideas over and over but in different shades, as if a particular day’s experiences allowed him to see these Stoic Truths in a different light. While Ancient Greek, Roman, Hindu and Buddhist philosophies have many gods in their beliefs, the Stoics cared to purify the air, simplify the aether, as it were, in order to breathe easy. In simplifying, one can breathe the true, clean air of nature, free from superstition. The first Stoics in 300 BCE were not the first to rid humanity of superstition - that was partially Plato’s goal with the Timaeus (c. 400 BCE) where he describes the world as an ideal and unchanging blueprint. As such, the world could not be altered by the gods unless by the “rules” of this model.

The differences between many of these ancient texts are fundamentally slight and derived from the respective culture. This is partly why we continue to read these important works. In a sense, these ancient writers are freed (and in reading them we are freed) of the thoughts that muddle and preoccupy our minds today. They did not have the technologies that steal so much of our time. Although probably inaccurate, we think of these authors as having simple lives and we read their works as blank slates, unclouded by issues of our time.

However, reading Aurelius and imagining his plight as Roman Emperor on a war front, nothing could have been “simple” for him. (IV.51) “Run always the short road” he warns himself, enforcing the idea that a muddled mind creates more running around. I suspect that practicing empathy helped him not only to keep his ego in check and to be “good” towards others, but also helped him in surviving plots against him and understanding where his enemies might be, what they are thinking and what their motivations are (VI.53) “…be in the mind of the speaker”. I came across a bust of Philippus the Arab, an emperor who reigned less than 100 years after Aurelius, and felt that the complexity in his face would have suited Aurelius’.

The intensity of his gaze and the conflict therein is notable. Here we have a powerful figure facing death each day and struggling with life; struggling with the people who surround him and with his own self. In here, we also see humanity, reason and understanding. (VI.47) "Keep in mind the good qualities of those who surround you today…" How can one do that amidst a population of hungry hurting soldiers? It must have been hard.
On the topic of composure, I visualize Aurelius (VII.60) as composed at all times, under attack or under cover. Remembering Mencius’ comments on posture and composure, one can see that the sage’s physiognomy runs across cultures.

His meditations allowed him to deeply contemplate his actions and motivations. (VI50,51) state clearly that one’s intentions in acting is of the utmost importance; more important than whether you fail or succeed.
One final note on Aurelius, for whom I’ve gained a lot of respect, is that he recognized what humanity needs and was a leader who applied what he recognized as true. He was not one easily deluded or corrupted. It was not a new idea to him that man makes the same mistakes and has been for millennia. (VII.1) “This is Evil; it is that which you have often seen. Have this ready to hand at every emergency, that this is what you have often seen. You will in general find the same things repeated up and down the world. The ancient chronicles are full of them…” How we could use leaders like him today!

Class 3 Reflections

September 22, 2010

Antigone c. 440 BCE

Medea c. 430 BCE

Son of Pritha, fraud, insolence and hostile conceit; anger, rough speech too, and ignorance; these are the traits of those born to the demonic condition.

- Bhagavad Gita (16.4)

Although Antigone and Medea could not be more different from last week’s readings, these tragic plays do dovetail the Bhagavad Gita and Mencius in that they supply good examples of individuals blinded by desire and emotion to the point of absolute ruin. They give worst-case scenarios of exactly the kinds of demonic conditions that human shortcomings can bring.

Before seminar, I didn’t know that these plays speak of a time prior to when they were actually written. The first audiences of Antigone and Medea knew these stories' characters as existing 400 years before them. Just as Genesis does, the plays show the vestiges tribal mentality when humans were still owned by their more basic instincts. They confirm the conscious and unconscious struggle that all civilized people grapple with in their task to remain part of the social order in which they live. Truly, the balance that must be struck between this social order and that of Nature is one that we seek today. The few thousand years of since the Neolithic Revolution have not fully suppressed the millions worth of evolution that took us from savages to sapiens.

Continuing on with one of last week’s focuses, no belief system that amounts to restraint and moderation is owned by any character in Medea. Mencius would say that, consequently, Medea, Creon, Jason & Co. go through considerable hardship - hardship that they do not benefit from in the long run. (Au contraire). The players never question their actions in terms of their potential fruits nor do they really delve into their selves, exploring their motives. They are often seen to obey their emotional impulses, act as if they are beyond reproach and accept no responsibility for their actions.

With these ideas already hinted at in Medea, I found apt the chorus’s eerie description of rivers flowing backward, foreshadowing the horrific events to come. Man, in doing such evil, disturbs the natural flow, as intimated by the chorus, “Flow backward to your sources, sacred rivers, and let the world’s great order be reversed.” A very similar idea is expressed in Antigone where, in the first choral ode (306-335), man is juxtaposed to nature; man, guilty of perverting all that is natural.

The natural flow interrupted by humans is evident in Creon’s rule. As he is a ruler in a time of war, he speaks tough at the beginning of the play and swears to show no mercy to anyone who threatens the state. The fawning chorus, here, reflects exactly how the citizens feel, “Such is your pleasure… you have the power to enact any law, both for the dead and for those of us surviving” (196-198). Creon is granted god-like powers! Speaking for the people, here, the chorus shows how tired of conflict and desiring of peace the citizens are. It changes its tune quickly enough, advising Creon to reconsider his plans, when it becomes clear that his tyranny is causing a clash that will bring instability to the state.

Antigone’s determination to bury her brother stems from love and honour in the face of an unnecessary and unjust edict from an autocratic ruler. Really, both Antigone’s and Creon’s positions are unnecessary: Burying Polyneices’ body will not bring him back (although in Ancient Greece such a burial was of importance) and if Creon were to show Polyneices and his kin some decency, his power would not be diminished in any significant way. As Teiresias says, lines 997-1001: “Yield to the dead man; do not stab him when he has fallen. What valour is there in killing the dead again? With good will towards you I give you good advice”.

Generally, Antigone appeals to the laws of the Gods; Creon to his rule (420); and Haemon to common sense. I wonder whether the Greeks would have agreed with Creon that the polis is of utmost importance? Undoubtedly it was, but so were family ties, family loyalties. Insofar as the burial is inconsequential to the state’s safety, my guess is that most Greeks would have sympathized with Antigone (fundamentally, with her point of view, but perhaps not with her as she is a stubborn woman).

There are parallels with Medea: Medea is a prideful woman and a barbarian to boot. For both reasons she is portrayed as a witch or a sorceress: “You are a clever woman, versed in evil arts…”, enforcing the belief that anything non-Athenian is barbaric, uncivilized and dangerous. These attitudes towards outsiders means that Medea becomes powerless in the face of losing her husband - she will be a single woman, without status and a barbarian in a foreign land. She has few options in expressing herself and goes to extremes to land the final punch, so to speak.

Creon’s misogynistic character remains the same in both plays; how ironic that his downfall is due to a woman. However, not to defend Creon too much, but it’s not hard to sympathize with him given his new powerful position, one that he has little experience with. Moreover, albeit too late, he does take ownership for his mistakes and his arguments are well-reasoned when looked at through his eyes.

Despite her pride and stubbornness, most of us sympathize with Antigone because of her undying love for her brother and harsh treatment by Creon (never mind that she says she’d sooner see her children or husband die, because her brother is irreplaceable - (875)). Antigone is driven to the point where the only thing she has control over is her own death. Displaying that she chooses death, she follows this path proudly, she owns it. Her pride will not have it any other way.
I wonder if the sympathies were as clear-cut then (one way or another) as they are today, and if so, in whose favour - Creon’s or Antigone’s? Creon says that he cannot submit to a woman - would most Greeks have agreed with him? Is Euripides exaggerating the point that females lack the reason possessed by males and therefore are capable of anything?

Now that Mencius is fresh in my mind, I picture him in the Ancient Greek audience, thoughtfully stroking a fu manchu, appreciating Sophocles for entirely supporting his point that a ruler's kindness can go a long way for the people, not to mention for the ruler himself. The tragedy Antigone would not have been had benevolence been Creon’s standard. The following lines also ring true to Mencius’ philosophy: “The mighty words of overproud men / With mighty blows are punished, / And, with old age, teach wisdom”, as well as, “You foul creature, lower than a woman!” (693)

“As for a man who considers someone he loves to be more important than his country, I say that he is nothing.” As mentioned, although this kind of macho-talk might be what the people want to hear, what does it say about Creon’s attitude? A state where Might is Right is a failed state; at least a ruler who acts in this way will fall hard. The clannish mindset is apparent in the “civilized” Creon, who partially justifies his decision based on Antigone’s lineage. Her fate is tied up with her father’s (Oedipus’) actions. “It is clear the girl is the violent child of a violent father” (Chorus, 433).

“When he combines the laws of his country / with the justice of the gods he is sworn to / his city stands tall.” The laws of country and the laws of the gods do not always mesh with human desires. Again, our desires are not necessarily consistent with living in a society. In a showdown between Creon’s ego and the gods, Creon seems to have a chance to concede his position and obey the will of the gods when Teiresias warns him (992-1001), “So think about this, my son. Mistakes are common to all men; but when a man makes a mistake, he is not foolish or doomed to failure if, after falling into trouble he finds the remedy, instead of remaining obdurate. Stubbornness brings the charge of stupidity. Yield to the dead man; do not stab him when he has fallen. What valour is there in killing the dead again? With good will towards you I give you good advice. Nothing is sweeter than learning from one who speaks well, if he speaks to your advantage”. Immediately after this Creon insults Teiresias and at that point is condemned; there is not turning back for Creon.

Antigone is silent, defiant, when first brought in and accused in front of Creon. Her returning to the corpse a second time is in protest against Creon’s inflexible rule. Recall her line (line 426-429), “But if I die before my time, then I call that a gain; for someone who lives in the midst of evils as I do, how could it not be advantageous to die? So for me to meet this fate is no pain at all. But if I had allowed the dead son of my mother to remain unburied, then I would have suffered.”

637 - Haemon pleading with his father to tap into the “wisdom planted [within him] by the gods” and hints at the blindness and stupidity of obstinacy. He even mentions that the citizens agree with Antigone’s actions! In many ways, Creon is given many hints to address his pigheadedness and change for the greater good. 659-669 provides nice metaphors of the natural “bending” in nature and how one can remain in tact while still going with the flow. This is reminiscent of Mencius.

Medea is between a rock and a hard place, in a no-win situation. Living in xenophobic Athens, her role in society is unstable with or without Jason. One’s source of morality comes in large part from the society in which one lives in and identifies with. Medea has no long-standing ties with Athens and she cannot return to her native land (moreover, her native land is populated with rough savages, remember!) Did Sophocles write this story because he could sense Athens’ xenophobia growing (literally, as Xenophon was 12 years old at the time of Antigone’s writing)?

I also took the sentry’s role in Antigone as social commentary by Sophocles. “It is most sweet to get yourself out of trouble, but painful to cause trouble for people you care for. But all that matters less to me than my own safety.” The sentry, a common man, speaks the voice of the average citizen. The above lines (405-7) outline the individualistic and selfish philosophy of mind that results under authoritarian rule. Now, if everyone were to think this way (recall Mencius - if everyone were to think in terms of “profit”) what would become of society as a whole? Answer: A society controlled by fear. Lines 462-5 intimate at the citizens’ hesitation of speaking up for what is right.

The tutor at the beginning of Medea states similar beliefs: “What’s strange in that? Have you only just discovered that everyone loves himself more than his neighbour? Some have good reason, others get something out of it. So Jason neglects his children for the new bride.”

The more I reflect on the themes of this course, one that recurs is that of humans being beyond nature, the victims of the gift of reason, given them by the “gods”. Reason somehow grants us the freedom of will and as a result we can act in ways that are discordant with the rest of nature. Antigone, an appropriate title to describe our present grappling with these primal, ancient issues: indeed, these problems are anything but gone, (or, “anti-gone”). We are shackled by this, in constant struggle. To this day, we seek guidance to find how we can sing in our chains.

Class 2 Reflections

September 15, 2010.

GLS 800, Class 2

Bhagavad Gita
Mencius

How does one live a virtuous life? Last week this question was central to our discussion which focused on Plato (Timaeus) and the Bible (Genesis). We want a system in place that answers the unanswerable so that we can get on with our daily lives feeling assured that the mysteries that life and its aftermath bring are not mysteries at all. Ironically, Life itself is the mystery, and what better way to unravel the unknown than methodically and diligently. The Mencius, the Timaeus and the Bhagavad Gita, through vastly different outlooks, delve into the mystery of existence and offer instruction on how to live.

Each of these works can be said to propose a way of life that will train one to be in synchronization with the underlying blueprint of existence. In the Timaeus, the blueprints are the revolutions of the universe and Forms; in the Bhagavad Gita, Brahman; and in Mencius, Ch’i. To use the hackneyed metaphor of “many paths leading to the summit of a mountain”, these books take different routes in making very similar points and prescriptions, some of which are moderation, control of desires/emotions, duty and the need of an inner foundation.

This is a spiritual question and one that focuses on spiritual and abstract ideas. At times, during my first reading of the Gita, I was jeering at the text, believing that it was encouraging the full denial of one’s senses and desires. I happen to enjoy my vices. If the creator gave me desires and senses that he now wants me to deny and forgo, frankly he should have created a different type of homo sapiens! Why should I have to deny my humanity in this way? How am I a better, virtuous person for not desiring? And why, on this planet, is Krishna so “down” on life? 8.15 “...birth - that impermanent place of sorrow”. What a stark outlook!

The more of the Gita I read, the more obvious it became that, in fact, one of its messages is that the body and its senses are tools for spiritual growth. To use our senses and desires with awareness is the key. If we are aware of the trappings of the material world, aware of our weaknesses and the many (many!) aspects of our human nature that can lead to downfall, we can then be our true authentic Selves, not controlled by anything that is not us. 13.1 (Gita) “The body is the site of all knowing”; to attain higher knowledge, know (understand) the senses. Similarly, Mencius said that one must work through hardship - lures of the senses, in this example - to gain enlightenment. The learning is a process that takes a lifetime (or lifetimes). “The sole concern for learning is to go after and find the strayed heart” as Mencius said, referring to our “birth hearts”. Likewise, to fall out of rhythm with the cosmos brings disease upon the body until one’s being gets back in synch, as it was at birth. “There is nothing better for the nurturing of the heart than to reduce the number of one’s desires” because the desires can easily be given priority over your heart. 3.7 - “Rein in the senses through the mind”. Perhaps this is good advice.

3.37-3.41:
“Learn the enemy, here on earth:
it is desire and anger…
each is all-consuming and evil
…The wisdom of the wise is covered by this eternal enemy;
covered by a fire in the shape of desire, a fire which is always hungry.
…Desire covers wisdom and confuses the embodied self.”

It is desire, passion, emotions (gunas) that are sources of doing harm. Understanding these base emotions and seeing them for what they are - detaching yourself from them - allows one to penetrate their fire and attain the inner Wisdom.

Really, though, who can fault Arjuna’s desire not to kill his family? The Gita unfolds with Sanjaya recounting Arjuna’s inner turmoil and his heart-to-heart with Krishna. Arjuna’s initial reaction to having to go to war with relatives is emotional. Krishna represents a detached, reasoned approach of the situation from a deeper perspective. One lesson is that in order to stay authentic and be genuine, sometimes decisions that bring grief have to be made.

Arjuna’s struggle is presented as a thought experiment to explore the intricacies involved in making a decision. Rigorous contemplation can be applied to any decision, large or small and if Arjuna can act in a spiritual manner in the face of having to go to war, well there are no excuses for followers of Krishna, then! By using such an emotionally-charged example, one that involves family, history, killing, duty, honour, sacrifice etc… the Gita busts the concept wide open to explore the minutiae of decision-making and, therefore, how one must conduct oneself every day. “Even after we’ve killed them we would not want to live!”, Arjuna exclaims at the beginning of his conversation with Krishna. Life sometimes forces hard decisions on us that might have unpopular consequences even if correctly acted upon. Performing duties for the greater good, but without attachment to results (rajas), is the appropriate course of action, according to Krishna. There is no Yoga or Dharma where the baggage of emotional passion exists. They cannot coexist because emotion muddles the mind. Plato would agree. Arjuna’s duty as a warrior must not allow it.
So, without spoiling the ending, Arjuna gets schooled by Krishna on how to make decisions with composure, balance, equanimity and honour to his social group (he is a warrior).

Now, moving from warrior to sage: Mencius was a wandering sage in China (around 350 BCE) willing to counsel political leaders and land owners who would listen. His encounters with these leaders are summed up in the form of parables, most no more than half a page in length. In these homilies, he tries to convince them to be benevolent rulers instead of greedy, vain, warmongering tyrants. In doing so, he appealed to their vanity, a deadly sin which they are gripped by. Be benevolent as I say and people will flock to your borders, begging entry into your kingdom of ten thousand li! He talks a lot about the importance of maintaining good agricultural practices, which speak to his humble beginnings and the warring times that he lived in. Unlike Plato, he was not a privileged aristocrat.

Mencius experienced first-hand the harsh consequences of war on the people around him and yet he still had faith in the human heart. He believed that the seeds required to become a great sage are in all of us; they only need to be cultivated. It is only natural for the being to drift towards benevolence just as it is natural for “river water to flow downward” (to use Mencius’ metaphor). Similarly, Mencius would have said that any society that needed laws to make people behave morally is a failed society. Such laws are like dams in a river, blocking the flow of something intrinsic to human nature (I’ll take credit for that metaphor).
But in nurturing these seeds, what makes the right decision clear? “Try your best to treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself, and you will find that this is the shortest way to benevolence”. (Book VII.A.4). Follow the golden rule - practice empathy. Mencius speaks a lot about the heart and the good heart. When I do something good, my heart is warmed. When there is goodness about, one feels a warmth deep within. One should get in the habit of acting like a sage, sacrificing to do good, and the benefit will be returned in spades. The term sacrifice means that you forgo immediate satisfaction to do something for someone else. It is not a “sacrifice” in the Western sense of the word (often a wholly negative concept, leaving one “in debt”) but one with the promise of that which is sacrificed to be reimbursed one hundred-fold.

With the frequent appearance of the word “benevolence” in the text, I thought that that word must hit very close to what Mencius meant. Interestingly, Mencius’ definition is more complex and beautiful. Perhaps it was my Western thinking that wanted his idea nicely packaged in a single word. His definition of “benevolence” would have been more accurately described with: "Characteristics of someone who is looked up to and revered". There are far too many things that make a sage a sage and benevolence does not capture them all; benevolence is but one admirable attribute.

I couldn’t help but question the truth of the historic figures - Mencius often refers to the past as through rose-coloured spectacles. Examples are throughout the text - VI.B.9. “The good subject of today would have been looked upon in antiquity as a pest on the people”. This is something I might hear from my grandparents, and it would make me skeptical. Apparently, Mencius is referring to Odes written about these sages/rulers/kings of times long past (500 years before his day). Since we know that those in power and the winners of wars write the books, there’s no question that these Odes are not completely truthful but that they are complimentary. Regardless, they are a useful device to Mencius and he gives his brethren ideals, examples to live up to.

Most of the course’s texts, so far, have ignored women’s viewpoints. The contempt for women in ancient China was so profound that not even Mencius and Confucius could break with the norm of their day. Chinese ideograms that include the character for 'woman' mean: “evil, slave, anger, jealousy, avarice, hatred, suspicion, obstruction, demon, witch, bewitching, fornication, and seduction”. Confucius even classified women in a group with “the lower orders.” Here is a fragment from the poet Fu Xuan, who lived 500 years after Mencius:

How sad it is to be a woman!
Nothing on earth is held so cheap.

That our conception of marriage should include at least some affection makes the ancient Chinese institution seem worse than slavery: A new bride would see little of her husband, would rarely leave the home and would be psychologically (if not physically) abused by her mother-in-law. The mother-in-law, finally free to exercise some power, could now abuse, blame and ridicule her son’s wife with the aim of getting closer to her son. The cycle would then repeat itself in the next generation. Mencius - “Golden rule”?
When Mencius makes any mention members of the other sex, they are mere objects, concubines. What is more, it is written (about Mencius’ mother, Appendix 2) that a woman’s guiding principle is the “three submissions”: In youth she submits to her parents; after marriage, to her husband; after the death of her husband, to her son. This is in accordance to the rites.”

I wonder if Mencius would have agreed with Timaeus and say that women have their destiny and men, theirs. This idea of Destiny, although not wholly clear to me, is different in each of this week’s readings. From Mencius, I don’t get the feeling that he believes that ‘all is written’. Rather, if something cannot be controlled, let it happen because it will happen anyway and nothing can be done to stop it. In the meantime, we will do our best and act correctly, righteously. Do not waste time trying to explain something that happened inexplicably. It is fate, Heaven’s decree.

With the Gita - “I’ve already destroyed them. You who sling arrows … be an instrument and nothing more” - Everything has been written. Since Destiny is the result of past action - karma - there is no need to fear consequences, just act in good faith, towards Me (Krishna). This kind of thinking can lead to atrocity. There is no doubt that people have read the Gita with agendas for fighting war and have justified their actions through this holy text. Gandhi had a very different interpretation.
However, some maxims did seem to point towards “free will” - “Those who choose gods go to the gods. Those who choose ancestors go to the ancestors. Those who honour the ghosts go to the ghosts. Those who sacrifice to me go to me.” No better examples can be given to show the malleability of this text and how it can be interpreted to support one’s agenda.

Some might say that today’s world is based on reason, which is a good thing only when the reason has values (humanism, morality, common sense) attached to it. Today, Power is the value, the purpose, the goal, at all costs and this is acceptable. The Mencius opens with a dialogue on “profit”. Whereas today, profit and power are near-equivalents to advancement and success, Mencius can see their destructive paths and their origins in want and greed. Both want and greed are fuelled by misguided senses. Mencius’ philosophy is a middle ground - a Middle Way - that is founded on reason for the benefit of all (men) and this is in large part due to the importance he places on morality.

It is hard to reconcile and balance the idea of restraining or denouncing our senses and desires while maintaining our fundamental humanity. We are, after all, material beings. Balance is to know yourself well enough to know when your desires are taking you for a ride, when they have the reins. The senses can be misleading because, like sugary sweet foods, one craves them, while blind to the possibility of diabetes. (18.38 “that joy which is like nectar in the beginning, and poison when transformed through contact between the senses and their objects, is known as rajasic”.)

Think of the consumers of our society engaging in “retail therapy”. They have created meaning in accumulating things for themselves. 16.16 “Wandering away with many thoughts, they are covered by a net of confusion. Clinging to the enjoyment of desire, they fall into impure hell”. This becomes the raison d’être itself: To fill the gaps of life with want and expectation; to have a desire to fulfill and to then fulfill it. This cat and mouse chase of creating and fulfilling masks our discontent and in turn we are masked from ourselves. (Wow, I never before sounded like such a theologian!)

The proverbial rat race, where principles are forsaken for the sake of one’s job; “work” the most acceptable and commonplace excuse to deny our humanity, deny our health and families. “The way of Loss is the way of manic activity, of ambition and of accumulation. It is the way of aggression” (Thomas Merton). This, a complete opposite of wu-wei, which is enlightened non-action rather than needless bustle and "busy-work" for its own sake (Taoism).

16.11 (Gita) "With no end of anxious thoughts, clinging to an end which is dissolution, their highest goal is the enjoyment of desire. 'This has been gained by me today! And I will get this desire - a desire which carries the mind like a chariot...I will be joyful!' Thus say those confused by ignorance."

This describes well what I have said.

The Gita teaches that when we are not living in the present, one has expectations of the future and that person will be disappointed when these expectations are not met. Only by living in the present can one be satisfied and at peace, keeping desires such as greed (that pull one’s thoughts into the future) at bay.

My initial impression of Mencius, after reading the Gita, was that his goal is an uphill battle, to put it mildly. The Gita implied that finding peace within oneself may take many lifetimes, so the prospect of creating a peaceful state by starting with the individual will take much more time! Mencius has a point, though, that being that conflict between states is a reflection of human nature. It’s a macrocosm of the conflicts experienced on an individual level. Especially today, the avarice of human nature on a global scale isn’t hard to see.

Class 1 Reflections.

September 8, 2010.
GLS 800, Class 1

Timaeus
Genesis
Enuma Elish
Anishinabe Creation Story

None of my previous blogs were what I'd call essays although each tended to have a general theme. The following entry is both a reflection and summary of some points from our first class. In content and organization, it is more scattered than past posts. The reason for this is that we covered a lot in this seminar and so many viewpoints were expressed. I learned a lot and was quite surprised to notice that after so many years of teaching in front of a roomful of students I get very nervous when speaking in front of a classroom of peers! The ideas were so many and new to me that I felt mentally bombarded with unfolding thoughts of my own; some that went somewhere (to an actual point) and others that simply came and went, ethereal, ungraspable. In such a mental state, my fear was that I might speak up and start on a point, only to lose it and stop short midstream. I'm sure comfort will come with time and practice, as always.

The general sequence of a "Creation Story" is as follows: Primordial chaos, god brings order, and his efforts and creations culminate with man. Man, the creator of creation myths, clearly does not like disorder. He seems to have an innate need to explain and understand the world in the same way that symmetry - visual order - for some reason has a pleasing effect on us. Just an interesting thought that came to mind regarding our desire to control: why is it that various guises of order, whether visual or intellectual, have a comforting effect on us, as if clutter and disorganization is not 'right'.

We tend to believe that there's an explicable cause for everything. Given enough time and effort, surely we can figure it out. The next best thing is to name something. One classmate mentioned the opening lines of the Enuma Elish, which read, “When in the height heaven was not named, / And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name…” This describes the chaos before the gods assumed control of it. By naming something, humans, intellectually speaking, own it. Imagine a house pet with no name or a nameless child. Naming something is a necessary first step in explaining the cause of something, the reason for something.

The similarities in basic storyline shouldn't suggest similar forms. Genesis is a narrative, Timaeus a dialogue and the Enuma Elish, is very much like a poem. Pastoral societies probably craved to hear stories about the powers of gods, the supernatural, and wanted to have their surroundings explained to them since they couldn't explain natural phenomena any other way. It was likely more entertaining and meaningful for them to learn about the gods, who humans hoped to join in the afterlife, than hearing about a relatively inconsequential village romance, for example.

I always felt that such stories involving gods are a form of wishful thinking. If we have faith in a higher power, maybe, just maybe, we will go to a higher place after death. If this self-delusion works properly, not only does death become insignificant, it becomes something welcomed and eagerly awaited. Likewise, knowing that god was on one’s side must have made suffering not only bearable but perhaps even pleasurable. It was the word of god “…that his [Ishmael’s] descendants would live in hostility with all his brothers”. One can more easily accept war if it is known that war and suffering are part of god’s plan.

Consider the surroundings of the authors of these works. Compare Plato’s Athens to the environments of the writers of the Enuma Elish or the Anishinabe myth where they are faced with a hostile world and are in endless conflict with Nature. Whereas it was in the interest of relatively helpless hunters and gatherers to create a god, it was not so in Plato’s day. In Plato’s day, man sought immortality through “love of learning and Wisdom” (90c-d). This type of salvation is vastly different from that promised by older myths. Perhaps Plato saw the hardships faced by Athens as caused by manand therefore he looks within man to solve those hardships. The Anishinabe, on the other hand, saw many of its problems the result of Nature not being kind and so gives power to an exterior source.

In our first seminar, I was struck by the complexity and the depth of interpreting Genesis’. The repetitive, unfolding of god’s covenant with his people is full of purpose. It acts as a set-up of basic relationships between god and humans (and vice versa) and equates a good citizen as one in close relationship to god (Yahweh). Genesis shows the evolution of the people’s moral identity. Herein lies the emergence of structure, morality and genealogies. What I will take away from this point of the seminar is that Genesis is a coming of age story of the Jewish people and that this is only the first layer of a very large onion!

Indeed, I was very surprised to learn that the story of Genesis - to a certain extent - set up the geopolitical backdrop of today’s Middle East, one example being that there is a distinction between the descendents of Ishmael and Isaac to this very day! I never would have guessed the long-lasting political consequences of Genesis but I suppose all written works are historical documents in one way or another.

One thing that left me rather confused after reading Genesis was that there is so much emphasis on genealogies. Genesis 11, for instance, could have been truncated to the first 10 lines. What’s the point of the next 22 which only document “who begat who”? In class someone mentioned that this feature gives credibility to the story because these people actually existed and their descendents are with us today. Another fellow student - one with a far better ear for poetry and rhythm than me - remarked on the beautiful cadences within Genesis and the Enuma Elish. I then had a very romantic visualization of a creation myth's campfire reading where an idyllic, bucolic people, under an awning of infinite stars and constellations, sit spellbound. The image alone had an hypnotic effect on me! As a listener, I can only imagine how such a reading and resulting mental state might reinforce belief in a story and the indoctrination of its tenets.

Feeling is often pitted against reason and depending on the circumstances and the era, one will win out. I don't know how relevant this is, but my feeling was that reason is given too much sway in our time and there is not enough consideration given to feeling and morality. Perhaps what I was feeling (and am having difficulty articulating) is that we might be very smart, technically, but we sometimes lack basic common sense, something that often partly relies on feeling or intuition. One example: What is your reaction to the geoengineering idea of dumping sulfuric acid into the atmosphere to help block out the sun’s rays and hence cool down the warming world? The letters CFC come to my mind. Who would have thought that CFCs would have been so destructive to the ozone layer? At first, these compounds dramatically raised our quality of life but what a mistake they turned out to be! Mitigating climate change by dumping compounds into the air might sound reasonable, given the science we now know, but who knows what the consequences are? The complexity of humanity is matched by that of the physical world. How arrogant of some scientists to think that they can engineer the world in such a way as if this planet is their little test tube? Although science does have answers to some things - some answers being correct, some wrong, none proven - science is never infallible and when it comes to answering questions on such a scale, one can only propose a likely story and concede that it might be wide of the mark. Humanity has never known so much about the world and its history than it does today but, still, it might be advised to consider both feeling and intuition. This is but an extreme example of how “feeling” - listening to one’s heart or gut feeling - has a place in the world and, to quote M.J., can make the world a better place. After all, we are not only reasoning beings but feeling beings, and emotions are not always unreliable and to one’s detriment, as Plato might have believed.

Plato the Humanist

Timaeus. Plato - among the first humanists

“Know Thyself”
- An ancient Greek.

(In this blog I will make some statements of which I’m not 100% sure. They are my impressions of what Plato thought based only on what he wrote in the Timaeus. For those Plato scholars out there, bear with me.)

600 BCE marks the approximate date when the first secular humanists lived. These humanists took the novel approach of attempting to explain the world through reason rather than myth and superstition. Among these was the great “maestro” Pythagoras of Samos, often referred to as the founder of Science as we understand Science today. Pythagoras’ philosophy, much like Plato’s, was that the grand design of the universe is composed of related components - all is unified. The sublime order of numbers was sacred to Pythagoras and, ironically, he is best known for the Pythagorean Theorem which he was likely not the first to discover. However, he did note (pun intended) that changing a guitar string’s length by, say, 50%, creates a proportional interval change. It should be no surprise that the Pythagorean followers held Orpheus as their patron god. In any case, Socrates and his student Plato entered the scene some 200 years later and followed the Pythagoreans’ line of reasoning as seen in the Timaeus, a book that relies more on reason than divine beings to explain the world. Considering his teacher’s philosophy that people are capable of thinking for themselves and should not unquestioningly trust authority, it would be amazing if Plato had proposed a creation story similar to Genesis, the Anishinabe story or the Enuma Elish.

Divine beings were used as tools to explain what was virtually inexplicable at a time when humans had no luxury of thinking beyond survival. Plato took the route of intellectually examining what was known of the physical world to explain physical reality. This is remarkable considering many of his statements about the world could not have been easily supported. Plato, however, did not seek support in any physical form; his forms were mental, rational.

Compared to Genesis, where God was the force behind events like Creation and Adam and Eve’s - humanity’s - ability to reason, the idealism of Plato takes us somewhere else. It takes us inward, into the mind, rather than outward, to the supernatural. To use his teacher’s analogy of the cave, Plato believed that humans - some select humans - had access, albeit minimal, to the Truth. This idea, explained in the Republic, is fleshed out in his analogy of the cave. Socrates - a character in Plato's Republic - contends that humans live within a cave where they can only see the shadows of the real world cast on the cave walls. Having faith in this approach, Plato hones his mind on the perfect Forms that exist beyond the cave and keeps the premise that this perfection - which does not exist in this world - is a template used to make the material of the world. Any copy of a Form is imperfect and therefore all earthly materials are imperfect.

We cannot use our senses to understand Forms, only our understanding, to understand Forms. Forms are unchanging; they always are; they are eternal and have no becoming. Whatever the senses perceive is changing, or becoming and are objects we form opinions on. He implicates himself, his mind, in explaining the world and does not implicate gods. He reasons his own way - even though sometimes laughable ways by today’s standards - through the world and explains it as a “likely story” based on his insights on Forms and his premise that he can see only part of what is really happening outside of the cave. From what little he is sure of, he deduces what the physical world is like and how it was created.

A key difference between the Timaeus and Genesis is the message that the strength to ameliorate oneself can come from within. This theme is repeated throughout the Timaeus more than other creation stories that have supernatural gods, although both proscribe ways to live. To sum up a few examples: 47b-c states that when the soul is within our bodies, it loses its perfect shape to the movement and disorderliness of the body... but properly educated and controlled, it brings the being into harmony with the perfection of the universe. 90 c-d: “…to the extent that human nature can partake of immortality, he can in no way fail to achieve this: constantly caring for his divine part as he does, keeping well-ordered the guiding spirit that lives within him, he must indeed be supremely happy.”

The cosmos is a likeness of something from a completely different medium - a Form. All Plato says that remotely implies a god and his motivation is that his end was to make the cosmos as good as possible. The "good cosmos", by extension, includes humans and it is our duty as beings within the cosmos to be in line with it, in tune with it and to do our best to be as good as possible. Knowledge of Forms and truth is to know god and the road to achieve immortality, so the focus should be on nature, not a folk tale god that no one has seen directly or in shadow.

40c-41. These two paragraphs sum up Plato’s reliance of reason and dismissal of superstition. Here is the first of the two paragraphs: [Of heavenly bodies] “To describe the dancing movements of these gods … to tell how many of them are in opposition and in what order and at what times they pass in front of or behind one another so that some are occluded from our view to reappear once again thereby bringing terror and portents of things to come to those who cannot reason - to tell all this without the use of visible models would be labour spent in vain. We will make do with this account and so let this be the conclusion of our discussion of the nature of the visible and generated gods."
Here, Timaeus admits that gods exist but concludes that they are not useful in his discussion because one can’t reason their existence nor can one use a visible model to understand them. Even though Plato didn’t trust scientific observation per se he did seem to require some sort of visible reproduction of what he believed to be a Form, and there are no replicas of gods in the material world.

The hypothesis that order is an innate state of the natural world is one that cannot be experimented on. Instead, Plato approaches this very topic from a variety of angles intellectually. Despite this, he seems to concede that certain things cannot be humanly explained and at a certain point his faith in a higher and good being does take over.

Timaeus explicitly limits his discussion to the earth and heaven (of which there is only one of each) as if to say that there are no other worlds/dimensions to consider, where gods might reside. To resort to that explanation would be a cop-out as one cannot apply ideas based on anything visible in the natural physical world to support it. However, it makes relative sense, based on our knowledge of forms like triangles, spheres and the harmony of mathematics and music, to make certain assumptions of what is visible and to explain the world, a priori, based on this knowledge.

By that date, 600 BCE, humanity had come a long way from walking the line of death and survival, a path walked by our species for the vast majority of its existence and one that necessitated the invention of gods. Today, we are more inclined to believe in what science supports than what myths tell. For this reason, it’s hard for us to even imagine how we would have reacted to rain or lightning prior to and during Plato’s time. To explain such natural events would have been impossible without an understanding of some complicated science. To Plato’s credit he does not explain natural phenomena as the doings of gods (something external to himself and the world itself) nor does he experiment on the world around him. Rather, he looks within. This is consistent with his belief that Forms reproduced in the physical world are defective and that only the mind can imagine these Forms as perfect. For this reason, Plato would understandably be skeptical of instruments that measure the physical world since the external world beyond the mind is unreliable. Here is a quote from his Republic that sums up this attitude: “The stars, however beautiful, are merely part of the visible world which is but a dim and distorted shadow or copy of the real world of ideas; the endeavour to determine exactly the motions of these imperfect bodies is therefore absurd. Instead: let us concentrate on abstract problems in astronomy and geometry, and dismiss the heavenly bodies, if we intend truly to apprehend astronomy”. This attitude prevailed through the Dark Ages when science, technology, the human body and its senses were rejected in favour of mind and spirit.

There is a disconnect between what the mind is able to imagine and what the world exhibits. The mind can conceptualize perfect Forms while the outside world does not exhibit this perfection. As stated above, the implications of this thinking had a huge impact on humanity. Not only did it separate man’s destiny from what the gods desired, it also split the physical world from the mental. But was Genesis not first in making this distinction? Can the fall of Adam and Eve be construed as a rise to humanity’s ability to reason? In a sense, Adam and Eve stepped outside of nature - the nature that wild animals inhabit - and a gift such as Reason could only have been given them by something divine. Since then, humans have been able to develop civilizations, language and electric guitars.