2018.05.10 - Day 57

Funny but I read a lot about not depending on gurus in the last spiritual book I read. "..I advise you to stop trying to find refuge in gurus and their teachings. Stop trying to find safety and support in the opinions of others, no matter how enlightened you imagine they are. Just be yourself as best you can moment-by-moment, and then see where you are. That’s as real as it gets. "

Saltzman, Robert. The Ten Thousand Things (p. 238). Kindle Edition.

Synchronicity? Or is it just that I was so interesting in searching that I ignored this truth before, but am now ready to receive it? The same teachings have been around for millennia - we just have different teachers expressing them in different ways. Modern gurus have latched onto a way of presenting them in an attractive way as an answer to life's problems. How easily, we, (or I anyway), put so much trust in self-appointed gurus. They only have to say they have meditated in a monastery for X years or had some magical awakening experience. I watched a fascinating documentary on Netflix recently about Rajneesh Bhagwan (Osho) and was amazed at the way he was able to create such an incredible charismatic aura around himself that millions worshiped him. I think he just repeated teachings from Advaita and other places, though, to be fair, I have never read any of his books.

Zen - It's true. We do get attached to the search and the journey. And to our gurus. Many of us, including me, could have played the part of guru to similar throngs of people. And successfully too. But few of us have - thankfully! - maybe because it removes one problem but substitutes another. But imagine: if instead we all went quietly and humbly about our lives, perhaps those that needed to see would see, and we would have greater and longer lasting effect than any guru.

"Play and Law" - I wrote yesterday that the two things seem very far apart. But of course they're not, even if we think of law as serious and stuffy. But as Huizinga has pointed out all along, "the sacredness and seriousness of an action by no means preclude its play-quality."

And I thought this was going to be a boring chapter of Homo Ludens. It's not. Quite the reverse. It's thought-provoking and inspiring.

The link between play and law is fairly easy to see when you consider our adversarial court system. The court itself is a contest area, a play area, a sacred space, with very distinct rules and costume. There are two sides who are mostly intent on winning, and not losing, and never mind the supposed right or wrong of the situation.

"We moderns," writes Huizinga, "cannot conceive justice apart from abstract righteousness, however feeble our conception of it may be. For us, the lawsuit is primarily a dispute about right and wrong; winning and losing take only a second place. Now it is precisely this preoccupation with ethical values that we must abandon if we are to understand archaic justice."

Now here's a thought... I take the view, unpopular with many religious people, that there are no absolutes of right and wrong. Instead I see good and bad as changeable over time, between peoples and between species. This relativist thinking is anathema to all upstanding monotheistic folk. But I see good and evil, right and wrong, simply as those things that help, or do not help, a group survive. And a group will sensibly tend to enshrine those relative values into law for its own self-preservation.

What if - in the past before religious diktat imposed a value set of right and wrong - the ancient adversarial legal process actually *informed* a society's ideas of right and wrong, rather than, as we think nowadays, the other way round? What if the values, upon which laws were later built, were first actually thrashed out over time in legal battles? Or perhaps it was all part of a large feedback loop where a society iterated towards stability and, hopefully, longevity?

It's an interesting hypothesis, at least to me. I wonder if there's any historical evidence that could test it, either to support or reject it.

I never expected that kind of exploration when I started Homo Ludens!

Have to come back tomorrow to read entries. My eyes are too tired to focus long, after a red-eye flight became complicated, and then more complicated. Feel grumpy to have missed book session, after arriving home later than expected and feeling like a puddle, but also relieved to be home.

Quite an un-isolated adventure yesterday/today. Didn't resort to devices and found myself chatting all night with a gentleman who began meditating a few years ago and is enthusiastic about the changes in himself/his life since that time. He was pleasant and inspiring, and looked out for me when catching ongoing transitions. It sorted of reminded me of the film Jet Lag, minus some dynamics. ;-) edited 23:19, 10 May 2018

:) Catching up.

Storm! What an amazing thesis question. I would love to know more, if you do indeed follow down that rabbit hole a while. I'm actually enrolling in a paralegal course, hopefully in June if I have the ducks and dollars lined up. My thinking is that it could be a good tool to work 'forever', sometimes from home, and to impact causes I care about. We'll see. Regardless, I'm fascinated by imagining early courts as plays. Shakespeare may inform, but perhaps there is research 'out there' too.

@Zen, "When I discovered the guru in my own heart..." is the phrase that comes to mind. There is something about the natural process of integration from guru-devotion, where guru begins as hm, almost meditation 'object' and ideal or impression/imprint, which, in greater or lesser periods of time may become less dualistic, opening to blurring of thresholds and boundaries. Back in my early days of active Christian devotion, I had a vision: I had been, as I did a lot back then, praying for hours and hours, when I lay back on my bed, closing my eyes. Sky and clouds arose in my field of vision and parted. It would be hard to describe 'how' that looked but it felt more than looked, if that makes sense. There was Jesus. As I tried to look closer, there was me (again, not like seeing 'me' but feeling seeing me), then Jesus emerged... on and on. When I consider such a vision now, I realize it was 'guru devotion' I was engaged with as a Christian, without having the vocabulary. In fact, I would have been fearful to have entertained these questions then. But it was one of several visions that eventually broke down rigidness, as over and over again my visions kept linking and itntertwining 'me' with guru in a way that outside of visions and dreams I would not have done.

In my early years with my Meme (great-grandmother), I was not allowed to use the word 'adore' outside of talking about G-d. Anyway all that to say that I feel there is still, in free-thinking societies, place for devotion. And as these threads too intertwine I consider those blurred thresholds between ritual and play and worship. edited 16:10, 11 May 2018