2018.05.24 - Day 71

Another synchronicity – Storm talking about Humanism and I started reading a section in Homo Deus about Humanism. ‘Whereas traditionally the great cosmic plan gave meaning to the life of humans, humanism reverses the roles and expects the experiences of humans to give meaning to the cosmos.’

Harari, Yuval Noah. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (p. 259). Random House. Kindle Edition.

Just thinking that many modern spiritual teachers are also quite humanistic. When I practiced Zen a lot of stress was given to the authority of a lineage of teachers right back to the Buddha, But now I notice the authority being given more to our own experiences and feelings. Tart and Salzman both do this, I feel. We are told to throw off the shackles of teachings of gurus and the conditioning of our cultures and instead, wake up to our own inner light. Humanism is a very big topic that I had never thought much about before. I must delve into it a bit more.

I loved this passage:
‘Today we might think of medieval knights as insensitive brutes. If they lived among us, we would send them to a therapist, who might help them get in touch with their feelings. This is what happens to the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. He walks along the yellow brick road with Dorothy and her friends, hoping that when they reach Oz, the great wizard will give him a heart. Likewise, the Scarecrow wants a brain and the Lion wants courage. At the end of their journey they discover that the great wizard is a charlatan, and he can’t give them any of these things. But they discover something far more important: everything they wished for was already within themselves. There was never any need of some godlike wizard in order to become sensitive, wise or brave. You just need to follow the yellow brick road and open yourself up to whatever experiences come your way.’

Harari, Yuval Noah. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (p. 282). Random House. Kindle Edition.

Your passages fit well with our Conference of the Birds session today, Zen! Harari's is a book I'll listen to again at some point - only wish that he had done the audio himself. :)

It is that he has such a broad and unique, forward-thinking vision and seems to have delved so deeply into in the past, that his scope for the future, or maybe better said 'the whole', has broken some usual boundaries. Another interesting concept he goes into is 'tech religions'.

Pondering these kinds of modern ideas maybe why it is a little hard to immerse as much as I'd like to in the CotB readings, because while I relate to the birds and hoopoe in a personal way as someone who practices what I'd call a devotional path, it is more open ended than the text (so far) allows for. I'm so curious to see mankind reach not just farther but deeper and in more cooperative ways to solve the big problems, yet to do so there does seem to need some checking of powers that be, and is there the will? The vision of the birds' shared quest may be missing sight of shared obstacle for concentrating on the more traditional obstacles like seeking personal comforts, which seem to be stand ins. Have to consider more.

No isolation again otherwise, nor intentional reaching out - went to see a film with my son tonight, and had another good talk with my daughter. An issue that had been weighing on me for the last few weeks also cleared itself up suddenly and surprisingly.


<3 Thinking of Riddle attending services. Wishing peace and comfort. edited 03:11, 25 May 2018

Ditto Eliza re: Riddle.

Bleu was also motivated to post a link to Youval Harari in Secular Humanism, saying "a thought provoking conversation . . . related to our book session conversation today . . ."
https://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/articles/9724

When I first read Birds, I think it was 1974. I related to it then because I was then on a devotional path of Bhakti Yoga. That and Sufism had an exotic mystical air. But there is a tendency to 'beat oneself up' on any devotional path and of course the hoopoe fulfills that role well as flagellator-in-chief! I certainly don't do that anymore.

Besides, there is a difference between Bhakti Yoga and Mysticism. As I understand it, the mystic wants to merge with the object of devotion (as portrayed in Birds and in what I can gather of Bruce's mysticism). By contrast, Bhakti Yoga uses the word Yoga in its root meaning of "yoke", and not as its derived meaning of "union". In other words, the devotee in Bhakti Yoga wants to get as close as possible to the object of their devotion, and stay close *without* merging. The idea was once explained to me by a mahatma who said, "I want to keep on tasting sweetness, but I do not want to become the sugar. I want to stay at the feet of the master, but I do not want to become the master."

Meanwhile I have been reading the first half of the chapter in Homo Ludens entitled Play-Forms in Philosophy. There's quite a bit of fun here, first dealing with the Sophists, who would go round giving their fifty-drachma lectures and trying to trip each other up with their "pompous perorations".

At one point Huizinga writes, "We should not forget that all the frivolous and insincere traits exemplified in the sophist are essential elements in his make-up, recalling his remote origins. He belongs by nature to the tribe of nomads ; vagrancy and parasitism are his birthright." I can't imagine why I thought of American politicians at that point. >;-)