Showing posts with label JS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label JS. Show all posts
Friday, March 19, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
By what light then do they see?
A beautiful world come tumbling down in song,
released from obligation though not free to act
How to know:
Take one step back
look left to find
a coin on a pilaster
reflecting history
but not much light
Now isn't that better than singing?
Isn't that better than a trip to the bank?
Who's to say the birds don't know
that old word haruspicate,
to offer up one's guts for news
filtered down through stars
Golden girl, he says
meaning the slant of the sun,
where are you running?
Eh?
Quo vadis?
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Intellect/Mysticism
An excerpt from an essay by Donald Childs entitled 'Risking Enchantment: The Middle Way between Mysticism and Pragmatism in Four Quartets':
During an interview with Francoise de Castro in 1948, several years after the publication of Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot was prompted by the interviewer's observations about the inhibition of mysticism by intellect in Valery's creative process to talk about mysticism in general:
Eliot then said what seemed to me the centre and luminous point of the entire interview: 'But intelligence pushed to its depths leads to mysticism.'
'Do you not believe,' I asked him..., that intellect and mysticism are two faculties which are opposed in human nature?' A sign of denial was his only response, and this affirmation: 'All human faculties pushed to their depths end in mysticism.'
(From Words in Time: New Essays on Eliot's Four Quartets, edited by Edward Lobb)
This view of intellect and mysticism can also be seen in the writings of long gone alchemists as laid out for us by Carl Jung in his book 'Psychology and Alchemy', in which he explains the nature of the alchemical work as both physical and metaphysical, requiring the chemist to be in the correct state of health and in the right state of mind in order to pursue the philosopher's stone, focusing the intellect with a religious concentration. The examples he gives are not unlike the guidance offered by Shunryu Suzuki on the practice of zazen through Right Mind, Right Effort, etc. Descriptions of Atget's decisive moment and a sniper's steady hand also have a hint of the mystic in them, and many other human efforts bad and good.
During an interview with Francoise de Castro in 1948, several years after the publication of Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot was prompted by the interviewer's observations about the inhibition of mysticism by intellect in Valery's creative process to talk about mysticism in general:
Eliot then said what seemed to me the centre and luminous point of the entire interview: 'But intelligence pushed to its depths leads to mysticism.'
'Do you not believe,' I asked him..., that intellect and mysticism are two faculties which are opposed in human nature?' A sign of denial was his only response, and this affirmation: 'All human faculties pushed to their depths end in mysticism.'
(From Words in Time: New Essays on Eliot's Four Quartets, edited by Edward Lobb)
This view of intellect and mysticism can also be seen in the writings of long gone alchemists as laid out for us by Carl Jung in his book 'Psychology and Alchemy', in which he explains the nature of the alchemical work as both physical and metaphysical, requiring the chemist to be in the correct state of health and in the right state of mind in order to pursue the philosopher's stone, focusing the intellect with a religious concentration. The examples he gives are not unlike the guidance offered by Shunryu Suzuki on the practice of zazen through Right Mind, Right Effort, etc. Descriptions of Atget's decisive moment and a sniper's steady hand also have a hint of the mystic in them, and many other human efforts bad and good.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
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