Walk before talking

It would make excellent tragic material: the young man who, persecuted by Marcus Aurelius, inspired by the courage of Polycarp and men like him in the hour of their death, also wanted to be a martyr, but when confronted by horrible torture became afraid and cursed Christ as the pagans demanded. — From this one sees that it is the same in Christianity as it is in earthly life: one must first grow before God and men, and even though in our time we are not exposed to such great temptations which in a horrible way destroy everything, nevertheless embryonic theologians, for example, ought to take care that, by beginning to preach too early, they do not talk themselves into rather than identify themselves with Christianity and take the consequences.

July 11, 1838

— Kierkegaard

Commenting on journalism

This comment was posted to Mike Tomalaris' interview with Cadel Evans after Stage 17 of the 2011 tour de France, on SBS Cycling Central (21/7/2011):

Interesting insight into the high-achieving athlete's psychology. The journalist keeps asking about emotional states, like "How do you FEEL?" "Do you feel x is bad or good?" "Has x made you angry / happy?" and so forth. But the athlete never answers these questions. Instead, he talks about principles, saying "I think..." "x is a situation with pros and cons" "x is an ideal, certainly, but we'll see how things go." The emotionalism wastes brain cells needed for solving problems efficiently.

The straight jacket

To be a truthful, rational person living in conformity with society is just as impossible as doing gymnastics in a straight jacket.

Anxiety - Nirvana

If a person could be entirely free of anxiety, temptation would not have access to him. - Soren Kierkegaard.

Samsara, the cycle of birth and death, is nothing more or less than desire for completion. To be free of desire is nirvana ("no-wind", the stillness of the nondual). - Kelly Jones

How to spot the difference between worldly wisdom and real wisdom (hint: the attitude to suffering)

What the clergy preach is not far removed from blasphemy. Everywhere in life's trivialities they find analogies to the highest. Someone has had a loss, and presto! — the preacher refers to it as the Isaac whom Abraham sacrifices. What nonsense! Is loss a sacrifice? To sacrifice means voluntarily to bring a loss upon oneself. A man is sick, presto! — it is the thorn in the flesh.

— Kierkegaard

Incendiarism

DECEMBER 1854

The Problem

So far removed, so distant is Christendom (Protestantism, especially in Denmark) from the Christianity of the New Testament that I continually must emphasise that I do not call myself a Christian and that my task is to articulate the issue, the first condition for any possibility of Christianity again.

It was incendiarism (this is how Christ himself describes his commission), it was incendiarism, setting fire to men by evocatively introducing a passion which made them heterogeneous with what is naturally understood to be man, heterogeneous with the whole of existence, an incendiarism which must necessarily cause discord between father and son, daughter and mother — in short, in the most intimate, the most precious relationships, an incendiarism with the intention of tearing apart "the generation" in order to reach "the individual", which is what God wants and therefore the passion introduced was: to love God, and its negative expression: to hate oneself.

It was incendiarism. But it is not always water that is used to put out a fire — however, to keep the metaphor, I could certainly say that Christendom is the water that has put out the fire. But, as mentioned, one does not always use water; sometimes one uses, for example, featherbeds, blankets, mattresses, and the like to smother a fire. And so I say that if Christendom is the bulk that has smothered that fire once lighted, it now has such an enormous layer of the numerical beneath it that Christianity may serenely and safely be made into just the opposite of what it is in the New Testament.

Whoever you are, if it is your purpose, your idea to do your bit to help smother the fire still more, then get busily involved in this massive popularisation, doing it under the name of spreading Christianity, and you will do as much harm as you can possibly do. But if you want Christianity again, fire again, then do all you can to get rid of the featherbeds, blankets, and mattresses, the grossly bulky stuff — and there will be fire.

The orders for busyness of that kind are: Away, away with abstractions: the state church, the folk church, Christian countries — for any effort of that kind is treason against the fire; they are the featherbeds and blankets that help smother the fire still more. But efforts of the kind that aims at dispersing, aims at "the individual," are the solution.

It was incendiarism. For the time being forget that, forget that this is Christ's own view of Christianity. From what you see to be Christianity here, would it ever even remotely occur to you that it was to set fire that the founder of this religion came to earth, would you not get the overall impression that it must have been to put out fire that he came to the world.

It was incendiarism — and nowadays Christianity is reassurance, reassurance about eternity in order that we may all the better be able to rejoice and enjoy this life.

As we all know, a person can get sick from a fetid stench; there are various other disgusting smells which a man cannot bear, from which he gets sick — but one can also get sick from stupid nonsense. And just as during plague or cholera the surgeon walks about and chews on something to prevent inhaling, so also one may well have a spiritual need for something in the mouth when one has to work incessantly against stupid nonsense. But there is the difference that for the surgeon inhaling may actually be dangerous, and for the other practitioner it is not harmful, may even be beneficial. For while man by nature wishes for what can give him pleasure in life, the religious person on active duty needs a proper dose of disgust with life in order to be fit for his task; disgust with life, taken properly (for the way it is used is crucial), is the best safeguard against getting involved in stupid nonsense.

— Kierkegaard, year of his death

The only error in Soren Kierkegaard's conceptualisation of God

Kierkegaard's conceptualisation of Christ as God has a touch of illogicality about it, but this is the only fundamental error I've found in his thinking. Overall, he is among the wisest and most courageous men ever to exist, so in that context, his error is minor. But I am keen to expose any fault in conceptualisations of God, and his is definitely one.

God is spirit, or rather, the nature of Reality is not something in particular. That is what spirit means. It is emptiness of form. So, Kierkegaard rightly thought of Christ as spirit, since that is Christ's true nature.

But Kierkegaard did not see Christ as a human being who became enlightened, who was educated out of ignorance. He didn't see him as intrinsically God, beginning with the dull, unenlightened human state, and progressing to become wise. Instead, he saw Christ as intrinsically God, but beginning as God. He regarded Christ as the incarnation of God and therefore automatically enlightened.

What does this mean for his conceptualisation of God? It means that, on some level, he does not see human beings, and their finitude, as intrinsically God. He doesn't see their dependence on food and drink as spirit. He sees spirit as something other than human finitude. This is clearly an error, and it is possible that it caused him to suffer unnecessarily, by not making a clear distinction between a psychological dependence on finitude, which is what the spiritual life is all about overcoming, and finitude itself.

On the other hand, Kierkegaard was well-aware that his conceptualising was virtually always poetic. His approach to Christ was a psychological one, and he knew that. He knew all sinners in need of grace conceived of Christ as an immediate Savior, an idealistic icon, to restore the picture of living rightly. So it is possible that he knew he was overlaying the actuality of the God-man with the suffering and struggling sinner's picture of a perfect Savior. This basically means that the imperfect human conceives of perfection immediately, just like the perfect Buddha is present in the imperfect one: From one enlightened thought, another enlightened thought follows. So, given Kierkegaard mentioned how the image of Christ was manipulated in the needy sinner's mind to help them climb out of the mire of their ignorance, it is understandable that, in more troubled, depressed states of mind, his religious poetry and personified ideals got a bit out of hand.

— Kelly Jones

Eli Eli lama sabachthani?

The words "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me" were understood as Nemesis, that he who had had so much in his power had not been smart enough to assure his own future, etc. If I were to talk purely humanly about it, it is as if Christ in his human nature had become so lost in the God-relationship that everything else was forgotten. It is an expression of being extremely close to consummation, this feeling for the last time of the chasmic depth of separation between being man and being with God; therefore, it is the final expression for what comes next — being blessedly with God.

— Kierkegaard, 1848

Meditation

There are basically two kinds. One is focussed on enlightenment pure and simple, the other deals with psychological blockages to, and is based on, same.

Spiritual growth techniques are, in essence, based on reason. All the unique and infinite ways used to overcome psychological hindrances to living spiritually are inevitably unique to the individual. But all of them boil down to those two kinds of meditation: reason focussed on enlightenment, and reason focussed on one's own personal indispositions.

Working out how to deal with one's own personal bad habits and resistances to enlightenment is wholly up to the individual, adopting or developing from scratch their own personal medicines. Most difficulties one will face - after having developed sufficient bodhicitta (the sheer resolve to be truthful, no matter the cost, and accepting no excuses) - are conquered with straightforward introspection and courage. Breakthroughs are usually a matter of a series of tiny shifts building up like a trickle becoming a flood.

Resolve powers through all objections and paralyses.

Choice

It is unbelievable how meager a conception of an essential view of existence men have. They live out their lives in tomfoolery. They go out into life saying: Perhaps I shall become a somebody, perhaps I'll be a nobody, perhaps I shall even be persecuted. What foolishness! Please, simply choose, and you do not need to guess; the specific conditions of existence can be calculated very well. If you will unconditionally risk everything for the good — then you will be persecuted, unconditionally persecuted, tertium non datur.

- Kierkegaard, 1847

To Have a Cause

To Have a Cause

A. Lower forms

1. Because it seems good in the eyes of men, a sign of earnestness, etc., one speaks uninterruptedly about having a cause, about wanting to work for the cause, everything for the cause — and he has no cause except that of wanting to please men by his talk about having a cause. Such people have no cause but dress something up, a display mannequin which they coddle as if it were a child.
2. One has a kind of cause — but the cause, however, is consequential only to the point of gaining one's own advantage by having the cause.
3. One has a cause but supports it in every possible way by clubbing together etc.; one is happy when someone, even through misunderstanding, joins up, for although one has a cause, he wants to spare himself as much as possible, i.e., one wants to have a cause as little as possible.

B. Higher forms

1. Ethical irony and intellectual, unselfish interest, which have a cause to the degree that it is hidden in order to prevent the misunderstanding of being of help to someone.
2. The martyrs who suffer for the cause. They need have no fear at all of getting the support of men, because where there is suffering, men flee. But in any case, they are still careful to parry assistance through misunderstanding, if it should be offered, because the cause is to them unconditionally the absolute, the I unconditionally nothing. This is what it is to have a cause in the highest sense.

— Kierkegaard, 1851 (4 years before his death)

Angry reactions to living conscientiously

When a person voluntarily exposes himself to dangers and loss for the sake of a good cause, people reproachfully say, "It is his own fault," and become angry with him. What are they angry about? It is because of the voluntariness, the fact that he is disinterested, that he scorns what they aspire to as the highest. One can hurt a self-loving person in two ways: as a thief, a robber, gossip, et al., one can take away from him his earthly goods, but one can also by disinterestedness and sacrifice take the value away from those goods, those goods which he values as the highest. Men get just as bitter about the one way as the other. It is also a kind of reduction when that which a person regards as supreme and which he possesses is not actually taken from him but is shown to be empty and worthy of disdain.

- Kierkegaard, 1848

Definition of 99.9999999999% of humans: "Someone for whom Truth means Money"

How little resuscitation there is in life, after all, for one almost never gets a clear perception of the idea in an endeavor, but always mixed together with the illusions of finitude.

Let us take Hegel. How does he happen to become the great philosopher-author of seventeen volumes. Well, he probably had a pretty good head on his shoulders, was very industrious, and then he became B.A., M.A., and later professor — and now he begins to work. Now what call to life is there in this — always this triviality in the background: this is the way he makes a living. And then he probably makes money on his books — there we have it again.

To be sure, there is lofty talk that no one thinks about such things — well, maybe so, but it is the world's hypocrisy that at bottom it privately wants to have a shabby explanation of everything — and then talks in lofty tones. Make a test: place an endeavor right in front of people's noses (here in Copenhagen or wherever you want to), but a task which does not have a single illusion in it (neither money, office, honor, nor reputation), a task which, besides this, is so laborious and strenuous that one cannot speak of it as a kind of pleasure: and you will see, if people are encouraged in some way to express themselves completely openly, they will regard this man as crazy or so peculiar that he teeters on the border of insanity.

There is constant talk in the world about wanting only the truth, etc., but something else is always implied. A journal which seeks only the truth: well, this is regarded as all right if the journal has many subscribers, to seek only the truth in this way is understandable. And why? Because the great number of subscribers shows that it is earning a lot of money and that the journal must have a great influence. Think of a journalist who wants only teh truth, and consequently, if he originally had many subscribers, they steadily become fewer and fewer; at last he has so few that it is clear that he subsidizes the publication, and still he works just as diligently and industriously as anyone — and you will see that he is ridiculed or at least is regarded as odd.

Woe, woe, woe to these preachers who either are hulks who do not know how it all hangs together or are servile enough not to reveal it, fearing for their wages.

Opportunities come my way to discover this, even where I did not expect it. I can remember saying to Peter a year and a half ago: I believe I will give up being an author for good and start riding horses or something like that — and he answered (and with real earnestness): that would be the best thing to do. So purposeless, then, do my efforts seem to him. Had I become famous as an author, had I earned much money, then he would have said: You are not crazy after all.

— Kierkegaard, 1848

The bourgeois mentality

"One should love his neighbor as himself," say the bourgeois, and by this they mean the well-brought-up children and now useful members of the state — those who have great susceptibility to every transient emotional flu — for one thing they mean that when someone is asked for a pair of scissors, even though he is some distance away, he will say "Righto!" and get up "with great pleasure" in order to fetch them, and for another that one will remember to pay the proper visits of condolence. But they have never felt what it means to have the whole world give them the cold shoulder, for the whole pack of social herring in which they live naturally does not permit such a relationship to occur; and then when serious help is needed, good common sense tells them that anyone who is in great need of them and in all probability will never be in a position to help them in return — he is not their neighbor.

— Kierkegaard, 1837

The Electric Dog Goes Buddhist

This time, the Electric Dog was really down. None of his usual tricks and defenses worked. He tried to write a sensational bestseller, but could not get past a two-page outline. He wrote a revolutionary paper on drugs and the human mind, but no one wanted to publish it.

His worldly possessions dwindled to a futon, a laptop computer and a copy of the Dhammapada. He had no job and no home, and he managed to alienate most of his friends with his incessant complaints.

On top of it, his health was deteriorating; neither exercise, nor generous doses of multivitamins seemed to help. While the present was perfectly abhorrent, the future looked even bleaker.

What was he to do? Commit suicide? Get a straight job and go back to his girlfriend?

No, there was one last gambit he was going to try before limiting himself to such hard choices.

He was going to become a Buddhist.

He went to a monastery on top of a mountain where they taught mindfulness as a way out of life's misery. All one had to do was to watch one’s stomach rise and fall as one sat on a cushion for twelve hours a day. The delusions and desires of worldly life were supposed to slough off one's mind like so much loose debris. That sounded simple enough.

The Dog was so miserable and so determined to get rid of his misery that he actually engaged in this new method of finding happiness, quite conscientiously, for almost two weeks.

His buttocks hurt like hell. Instead of resting at night he had nightmares. Even the food, so eagerly awaited during sittings, somehow failed to satisfy him.

He was trying to get his mind to follow his breath--and whatever else was happening in his body — but the mind refused to be a trained circus pony and was bucking like a wild mare. It would only fall quiet in order to lull the Dog's suspicion and then throw him off its back all the more triumphantly.

Nonetheless, the Dog saw very clearly what a fraud he had been during his previous life. He saw the effects of his self-destructive and delusional thinking. He even learned how to, if ever so briefly, stop the restless meandering of his mind by watching his stomach rise and fall.

But to get beyond suffering or even beyond conflict about suffering or not suffering – that he could not do. He guessed that Buddhists, just like everyone else, were overselling their case.

One morning, he woke up with such a sense of desperation and hopelessness that the original choice of either getting a straight job and settling down, or committing suicide, reared its ugly head again.

That morning, he broke his usual routine, climbed up to the top of the mountain and sat there under a blue gum tree.

He resolved not to move until he could come up with the answer to his life's dilemma.

He sat there for what seemed like eternity.

Finally, strange energy began to pulsate through his body. He saw a brilliant white cloud descend upon him, illuminating the farthest recesses of his mind.

Just at that moment a bull ant bit him on his already sore buttocks. As the searing pain tore through his body, he experienced a blinding flash and a surging sense of enlightenment.

As his mind became more composed he perceived the meaning of his revelation: there were not four, but five Noble Truths of Buddhism. They went like this:

1. Life is a pain in the ass.
2. No matter how much you squirm, you are still going to get screwed.
3. The only way to deal with pain is to face it in life through action.
4. You are going to do everything possible to avoid facing truth No. 3, including learning all the tricks of meditation and the Buddhist jargon about the Four Noble Truths.
5. You can no more control your mind than you can control the movement of stars in the sky. But you can control people by teaching them how they can supposedly control their minds.

Who needs sex or possessions, he reflected, when you can have so much power?

The beautiful female acolytes will even put food into your bowl, so that you can become like a child (or a drone) before you enter Nirvana. You can watch junior monks go through mind-numbing rounds of meditation and walking which would even impress a drill sergeant. What's more, your charges would be doing it completely voluntarily. They would even try to outdo each other in their feats of submission and mortification.

The Dog found that among the aspiring followers of the Gentle One competition for merit, recognition, and power was even fiercer than in the society at large. Instead of greed, anger and ambition, steel buttocks, mental endurance and rote memory were the prerequisites for success. The Buddhist scene around him seemed to have as much to do with the original experience of Buddha as the sittings of the Vatican Council had to do with the wanderings of the unruly band of rogues who gathered around the rabble-rouser from Galilee.

The Dog got up from under the gum tree, gently rubbed the spot where the bull ant had bitten him, and started his descent from the mountain.

At first he thought that he would start teaching people the Five Noble Truths that had been revealed to him. But then he realized that people would not listen. They were so eager to give away their power for even a temporary relief from suffering via some second-hand guru or technique that they would ignore him and might even stone him.

The Dog stowed his futon in the van and started on the road leading back to town. He donated his copy of Dhammapada to the monastery's library. His buttocks still hurt but a vague sense of joy at having found his own truth was rising in his soul.

A butterfly skimmed over the road and landed on a gum tree. The Dog smiled. Why burn the house down just because it is going to fall over some day?

The butterfly seemed to be telling him, "Life may be short and full of strife and disappointment, but it is still worth living—with acceptance and grace."

At that point he became a Buddhist

— Pyotr Patrushev

http://pyotrpatrushev.blogspot.com/

http://patrushev-publications.web.officelive.com/Documents/Pyotr_Patrushev_buddhist_dog.htm

The Principal Rule

Above all, read the N.T. without a commentary. Would it ever occur to a lover to read a letter from his beloved with a commentary!

In connection with everything which qualitatively makes a claim of having purely personal significance to me, a commentary is a most hazardous meddler.

If the letter from the beloved were in a language I do not understand — why, then I learn the language — but I do not read the letter with the aid of commentaries by others. I read it, and since the thought of my beloved is vividly present and my purpose in everything is to will according to her will and wishes, I understand the letter all right. It is the same way with the Scriptures. With the help of God I understand it all right. Every commentary detracts. He who can sit with ten open commentaries and read the Holy Scriptures — well, he is probably writing the eleventh, but he deals with the Scriptures contra naturam.

That is, while reading the letter you are occupied with yourself and your relation to the beloved, but you are not objectively occupied with the beloved's letter, that this passage, for example, may be interpreted in ten ways — oh, no, the important thing for you is to begin to act as soon as possible. Besides, should it not mean something to be the lover, should it not give you what the commentators do not have? Everyone is the best interpreter of his own words, it is said. And next comes the lover, and in relation to God the true believer. Pereat the commentators!

— Kierkegaard

From Diogenes of Sinope

http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/DiogenesofSinope/index.htm

This contains almost the entire selection of anecdotes about Diogenes of Sinope, attributed to him by Diogenes Laërtias.

The categories are:
- On begging
- Where are the real men?
- Diogenes' Virtue Thought Excessive by Others
- Conqueror of Men
- Thou Art Dust
- The Reversal of Values
- Life and Death the Same
- Live Simply
- Stop Being a Hypocrite
- Vanity of the Virtuous
- On the Complacency of the Old
- Sucking-up, aka Sycophancy and Flattery
- Chastising Effeminacy
- Mocking Gods, Beliefs, Rituals, and Cherished Values
- Idiot Philosophers
- Diogenes' life as a slave
- Diogenes' writings

Diogenes was successful in promoting his views, because people thought he was a comical madman, a simpleton-cum-jester. Plato called him "Socrates gone mad". He was laughed at, because people thought a philosopher must have dignity and social respect, and live with pomp, respect and class. They couldn't see that this was a dire irony on the entire notion of what a philosopher was.

Thus, the contrast between how Diogenes actually lived, and the ridiculously decadent norms of Ancient Athens society, was extreme. The contrast took on an absurd character, and was indeed comical. His contemporaries couldn't seriously believe that one who lived in a truly virtuous, honest way, would be so plain and gauche.

It is always comical when animals try to modify their animality by disguising it, namely, shitting in porcelain vases with flowery decals, gorging themselves on expensively produced food prepared in complex ways and served on exquisitely designed platters, fucking in a high-class, modish chamber on soft mattresses, pillows and cushions, and snarling at each other in complicated language; but twice as comical is the effect when they are contrasted with another animal who lives as a very simple animal without pretences or affectations, and who also speaks the truth. It's extremely comical. The former have all the semblance of nobility and of being advanced organism - but none of the substance - while the simple, garish animal is utterly transformed by his intelligence, simplicity, and truthfulness.

This, plus his resilience and moral strength, accounts for Diogenes' ability to "force" his views on everyone like an ubiquitous chatterbox, without being killed.


— Kelly Jones

Authority

"Authority" does not mean to be a king or to be an emperor or general, to have the power of arms, to be a bishop, or to be a policeman,* but it means by a firm and conscious resolution to be willing to sacrifice everything, one's very life, for his cause; it means to articulate a cause in such a way that a person is at one with himself, needing nothing and fearing nothing. This infinite recklessness** is authority. True authority is present when the truth is the cause. The reason the Pharisees spoke without authority, although they were indeed authorized teachers, was precisely that their talk, like their lives, was in the power of seventeen finite concerns.

*In margin: This is the conception of immanental authority, not the paradoxical conception of authority.

**In margin: Those with authority, therefore, always address themselves to the conscience, not to understanding, intelligence, profundity — to the human being, not to the professor.

— Kierkegaard

When Asceticism is Not

The Displacement of the Whole of Christianity

Christianity was degraded into becoming a state religion. At the same time Christianity thereby became a doctrine — and asceticism arose. Asceticism is situationless^* renunciation. When Christianity battled and suffered persecution, asceticism in this sense was not needed.

^*In margin: N.B. And again the consequence of this was meritoriousness, super-meritoriousness, also, that there were extraordinary Christians and ordinary Christians.

The Public / Private Conundrum

I have recently been accused on crossing the boundaries of the private/public, by publishing private emails without permission. In the final analysis, the accusation is based on the indignation they feel that one individual relies on their own thought and judgment, rather than another person's.

But thinking about the private/public concept is also stimulating and relevant.

The animal's interpretation of private/public has this meaning:

Private: what I really prefer.
Public: what I'd have others believe I prefer.

That is, the animal's concept is hypocrisy and falseness.

The spiritual man's interpretation of private/public has this meaning:

Private: what I suffer in my relationship to truth, willingly, that I do not tell others about, because it is mine to bear alone, and confiding in others is a refusal to bear it at all;
Public: what I let others know about for their benefit.

The animal believes there really is such a division, to protect his ego. It divides his own mind into compartments of honesty and falseness (he keeps his honesty hidden, and therefore makes everything to himself false). He has no real faith in anything, because when he speaks, he lies. That means he must also doubt his own inner thoughts, because he hears them in the same way that he hears his own speech.

The spiritual man creates a division between what he demands of himself, and what he requires of others. That division is the private/public concept. He sets a lower standard for others, but he will still not lower it as they would want him to. Thus, the standard is essentially unified, because his standard, and the lower standard he sets for others out of mercy for them, are both part of the same continuum. This means the spiritual man's concept of private/public is not divisive at all: it is all of one nature. He doesn't compartmentalise his mind.

Yes, I am disappointed in those who have attacked me for disrespecting their concept of private/public, because I thought some should have known better. But it is part of my spiritual trial, so I burden myself with it and hope to learn to have that apostolic division from the animal realm - to learn that I cannot have communion with any other being.


Kelly Jones

Kierkegaard's thoughts on the Apostle

Extract 1:

A frivolous, vain individual always has an extraordinary conception of an apostle's high honor — i.e., the good fortune, the glory of being an apostle; a humble, profound individual always has an extraordinary conception of an apostle's sufferings.

Extract 2:

An Illusion

The supposed humility and modesty

in admitting that one does not call

himself an apostle.

Here again is a confusion which appears with the help of "Christendom", which again has turned all Christian concepts topsy-turvy — that is, has prevented them from being what they were originally: turned around.

One is said to be humble and modest if he says: I do not call myself an apostle. Consequently to call oneself an apostle is pride, conceit. That this can be pride and conceit I do not deny; I desire only to illuminate the relationship a little better.

When one speaks this way, the presupposition is that to be an apostle is a distinction; the humility and modesty lie in not claiming distinction. Fine. But like everything Christian, to be an apostle is not a straightforward distinction but a distinction turned around. Here comes a little N.B. In relationship to all direct distinction or distinguishing, the matter is very simple; if it is true that I make no claims, this is being modest, for a direct distinction is without secondary qualifications a direct earthly benefit. But to be an apostle is sheer earthly suffering. Well, if an apostle could be permitted to live again after his teaching had won out, then it could perhaps be an earthly benefit to be an apostle. But while he was living, calling himself an apostle did not help him on the way to honor, respect, or earthly advantage. Precisely this, that he called himself an apostle, was the signal for his having to suffer more than the other adherents, suffer until death.

This is what it means to be an apostle — something quite different from that later conception, which with the help of an illusion takes the apostle in vain.^*

^*In margin:

And it must be remembered that in a certain sense there is nothing we are all more equally close to than to being an apostle, simply because here there is no question of the esthetic difference of being a genius, of having talent, etc. Certainly every human being has the right to order his life just as an apostle with regard to poverty, suffering for the truth, etc., except that he does not have the right to appeal to divine authority. But he must not feel embarrassed about the first [being like an apostle], least of all out of modesty; that is, if there is to be any question about true modesty, it must be to confess that one is too weak and sensuous, therefore to bring accusation against oneself; it must not be as when I am too modest to ask to become an ambassador, a demigod artist, knight of all the European orders, etc.

But if this is the case, then to ask to be regarded as modest because one does not call himself an apostle becomes questionable, for this can also be worldly ingenuity and effeminacy.

For the confusing word "apostle" (which has subsequently become secularized and identified with the other distinctions of the world) let us substitute a whole lifetime of being laughed at, mocked, persecuted, poor, jailed, and slain. If someone now says: I am not so immodest as to demand to become "His Excellency," etc. — well, this is quite direct. But let someone say: I am not so immodest as to demand to become poor, impoverished, outcast in the world, laughed at, slain — well, this is not quite as direct; for in each generation it is impossible to find ten peersons who have courage for this. Consequently it can also be worldly ingenuity and effeminacy which hold one back but also want the advantage of being regarded as humble. This is questionable.

O, if what Christianity is were only kept clearly in mind! That it is not a doctrine but an existence [Existents], that what is needed is not professors but witnesses [Vidner] — then we would be free of all this self-important scholarliness [Videnskabelighed], these show-offs who are scholars — something Christianity now needs. No, if Christ did not need scholars but was satisfied with fishermen, what is needed now is more fishermen. Precisely because Christ was present, the danger would not have been so great if Christianity had fallen into the hands of scholars.

The error is not the studying, but the error is that the accent continually falls on the wrong place — on penetrating and presenting — thus to do something about it becomes ridiculous, a triviality. A simple man, however, has no distractions. Such a man straightway fastens his gaze upon his life, whether it has any meaning or is completely meaningless. But this simplification with regard to drawing up the account is of utmost importance; for then the accent falls on the right place, on existence [Existentsen].

Extract 3:

"The Apostle"

The condition sine qua non for all enjoyment of life is a certain evenness; the person with a most wretched lot also can gain a certain enjoyment if he only has this daily evenness.

But no other situation in life, not one, makes it so impossible to enjoy life as being an apostle. This horrifying life of being tossed in a blanket. At one moment to be brought into direst need, perhaps ravenously hungry, then to be willing — if it be God's will — to die of hunger — and then get a reprimand: You of little faith! Or, in order not to suffer ravenous hunger, to be quite willing to work for his livelihood — and then, just as he is beginning at it, a miracle happens, and he gets a reproof: You of little faith! O, it is a dreadful misery, a kind of conscious madness in all his blessedness, for it is like madness.

Ah, however spoiled and frivolous I am, so much will surely be granted me that I at least have dared venture far enough to be honest toward the extraordinary and not to take him in vain, at least to have a tolerably true idea of how infinitely the extraordinary has suffered.

Extract 4:

Serpens, nisi serpentum comederit, non fit Draco.

Further: a rat is trained to bite rats by eating a rat out of hunger.

The reverse: only a person who is bitten by men becomes an apostle; this belongs in order to qualify his passion; an apostle in direct understanding with men is an impossibility.

"Anxiety"

is actually nothing but impatience.

— Kierkegaard (1850)

The psychology of sexual desire

is all about social status. The pair-bond creates a psychological realm that is a secret sanctuary known only to the self and the lover. This deep emotional bond powerfully drives away the encroaching menace of the low social status of: being a frail, single self, solitarily pitted against "all the others".

      The lover-bond is a "love-cocoon", absorbing, swallowing and embracing the two lovers against "all the others". But there is an interesting dynamic here.

Namely, those two are a symbol of "all the rest".

      Once a small, vulnerable, single self becomes the fortified solace of the couple, once one is in a definite sexual/emotional coupledom, once one becomes a group-entity, then the power of the many has suddenly been established and endorsed. No longer are "all the rest" a feared power. Instead, they are an extension of one's new doubled-self.

      That is, a coupledom is many, rather than a unit of two individuals. The couple is the basic unit of the masses.

      This is why so many people couple up: it is social power, personal safety, and an emotional buffer against the tenuous frailty of being an infinite, and therefore non-existent, self.

— Kelly Jones

Something about the Forgiveness of Sins

To believe the forgiveness of one's sins is the decisive crisis whereby a human being becomes spirit; he who does not believe this is not spirit. Maturity of the spirit means that spontaneity is completely lost, that a person is not only capable of nothing by himself but is capable only of injury to himself. But how many in truth come in a wholly personal way to understand of themselves that one is brought to this extremity. (Here lies the absurd, offense, the paradox, forgiveness of sins.)

Most men never become spirit, never experience becoming spirit. The stages — child, youth, adult, oldster — they pass through these with no credit to themselves; it is none of their doing, for it is a vegetative or vegetative-animal process. But they never experience becoming spirit.

The forgiveness of sins is not a matter of particulars — as if on the whole one were good (this is childish, for the child always begs forgiveness for some particular thing which it did yesterday and forgets today, etc.; it could never occur to a child, in fact, the child could not even get into its head, that it is actually evil); no, it is just the opposite — it pertains not so much to particulars as to the totality; it pertains to one's whole self, which is sinful and corrupts everything as soon as it comes in slightest contact with it.

Anyone who in truth has experienced and experiences what it is to believe the forgiveness of one's sins has indeed become another person. Everything is forgotten — but still it is not with him as with the child who, after having received pardon, becomes essentially the same child again. No, he has become an eternity older, for he has now become spirit. All spontaneity and its selfishness, its selfish attachment to the world and to himself, have been lost. Now he is, humanly speaking, old, very old, but eternally he is young.

The restless arrow

Just as the expert archer's arrow leaves the bowstring and has no rest before it reaches the target, so the human being is created by God with God as his aim and cannot find rest before he finds rest in God.

Kierkegaard

From Nietzsche

Imagine the most extreme example, a person who did not possess the power of forgetting at all, who would be condemned to see everywhere a coming into being. Such a person no longer believes in his own being, no longer believes in himself, sees everything in moving points flowing out of each other, and loses himself in this stream of becoming.



As the hundreds of different languages correspond to the same typically permanent needs of people, so that someone who understood these needs could learn nothing new from all the languages, so the superhistorical thinker illuminates for himself all the histories of people and of individuals from within, guessing like a clairvoyant the original sense of the different hieroglyphics and gradually even growing tired of avoiding the constantly new streams of written signals streaming forth. For, in the endless excess of what is happening, how is he not finally to reach saturation, supersaturation, and, yes, even revulsion, so that the most daring ones are perhaps finally ready, with Giacomo Leopardi, to say to their heart

Nothing lives which would be worthy
of your striving, and the earth deserves not a sigh.
Pain and boredom is our being and the world is excrement,
--nothing else.
Calm yourself.



As long as the soul of historical writing lies in the great driving impulses which a powerful man derives from it, as long as the past must be written about as worthy of imitation, as capable of being imitated, with the possibility of a second occurrence, history is definitely in danger of becoming something altered, reinterpreted into something more beautiful, and thus coming close to free poeticizing.



If we want to transfer into the area of culture the customs of popular agreement and the popular majority and, as it were, to require the artist to stand in his own defense before the forum of the artistically inert types, then we can take an oath in advance that he will be condemned, not in spite of but just because his judges have solemnly proclaimed the canon of monumental culture...



So they are knowledgeable about culture because they generally like to get rid of culture. They behave as if they were doctors, while basically they are only concerned with mixing poisons. Thus, they develop their languages and their taste, in order to explain in their discriminating way why they so persistently disapprove of all offerings of more nourishing cultural food. For they do not want greatness to arise. Their method is to say: "See greatness is already there!"



Only the man whose breast is oppressed by a present need and who wants to cast off his load at any price has a need for critical history, that is, history which sits in judgment and passes judgment. From the thoughtless transplanting of plants stem many ills: the critical man without need, the antiquarian without reverence, and the student of greatness without the ability for greatness are the sort who are receptive to weeds estranged from their natural mother earth and therefore degenerate growths.



The scholarly habit lives on without it and orbits in an egotistical and self-satisfied manner around its own centre. Then we get a glimpse of the wretched drama of a blind mania for collecting, a restless compiling together of everything that ever existed. The man envelops himself in a mouldy smell. With the antiquarian style, he manages to corrupt a significant talent, a noble need, into an insatiable new lust, a desire for everything really old. Often he sinks so deep that he is finally satisfied with that nourishment and takes pleasure in gobbling up for himself the dust of biographical quisquilien [rubbish].



For what means does nature still have at its disposal to deal with the super-abundance forcing itself outward? Only one means, to take it as lightly as possible in order to shove it aside again quickly and dispose of it. From that arises a habit of not taking real things seriously any more. From that arises the "weak personality," as a result of which reality and existence make only an insignificant impression. Finally people become constantly more venial and more comfortable and widen the disturbing gulf between content and form until they are insensitive to the barbarism, so long as the memory is always newly stimulated, so long as constantly new things worthy of knowledge flow by, which can be neatly packaged in the compartments of memory.



While never before has there been such sonorous talk of the "free personality," we never once see personalities, to say nothing of free people, but only anxiously disguised universal people.



No one is allowed to venture on fulfilling the law of philosophy on his own. No one lives philosophically, with that simple manly truth, which acted forcefully on a man in ancient times, wherever he was, and which thus drove him to behave as Stoic if he had once promised to be true to the Stoa. All modern philosophy is political and police-like, restricted to the appearance of learning through the ruling powers, churches, academies, customs, and human cowardice. It sticks around with sighs of "If only" or with the knowledge "There was once." Philosophy is wrong to be at the heart of historical education, if it wants to be more than an inner repressed knowledge without effect.



If the personalities are, first of all, as has been described, inflated to an eternal loss of subjectivity or, as people say, to objectivity, then nothing more can work on them. Let something good and right come about, in action, poetry, or music. Immediately the person emptied out by his education looks out over the world and asks about the history of the author. If this author has already created a number of things, immediately the critic must allow himself to point out the earlier and the presumed future progress of the author's development; right away he will bring in others for comparative purposes, he will dissect and rip apart the choice of the author's material and his treatment, and will, in his wisdom, fit the work together again anew, giving him advice and setting him right about everything. Let the most astonishing thing occur; the crowd of historical neutrals is always in place ready to assess the author from a great distance. Momentarily the echo resounds, but always as "Criticism." A short time before, however, the critic did not permit himself to dream that such an event was possible.

The work never achieves an influence, but only more "Criticism," and the criticism itself, in its turn, has no influence, but leads only to further criticism. In this business people have agreed to consider a lot of critics as an influence and a few critics or none as a failure. Basically, however, everything remains as in the past, even with this "influence." True, people chat for a while about something new, and then about something else new, and in between do what they always do. The historical education of our critics no longer permits an influence on our real understanding, namely, an influence on life and action. On the blackest writing they impress immediately their blotting paper, to the most delightful drawing they apply their thick brush strokes, which are to be considered corrections. And then everything is over once again. However, their critical pens never cease flying, for they have lost power over them and are led by them rather than leading them. In this excess of their critical ejaculations, in the lack of control over themselves, in what the Romans call impotentia [impotence], the weakness of the modern personality reveals itself.



Few people serve truthfulness, because only a few have the purity of will to be just. Moreover, even of these, the fewest have the strength to be able to be just.



There are many trivial truths; there are problems that never require effort, let alone any self-sacrifice, in order for one to judge them correctly. In this field of the trivial and the safe, a person indeed succeeds in becoming a cold demon of knowledge nonetheless. When, especially in favourable times, whole cohorts of learned people and researchers are turned into such demons, it always remains unfortunately possible that the time in question suffers from a lack of strong and great righteousness, in short, of the most noble kernel of the so-called drive to the truth.



As judges you must stand higher than what is being assessed, whereas, you have only come later. The guests who come last to the table should in all fairness receive the last places. And you wish to have the first places? Then at least do something of the highest and best order. Perhaps people will then really make a place for you, even if you come at the end.



An eminently learned man and a great numskull--those go together very easily under a single hat.



Anyone who has not experienced life on a greater and higher level than everyone else will not know how to interpret the greatness and loftiness of the past. The utterance of the past is always an oracular pronouncement. You will understand it only as builders of the future and as people who know about the present. People now explain the extraordinarily deep and far-reaching effect of Delphi by the particular fact that the Delphic priests had precise knowledge about the past. It is appropriate now to understand that only the man who builds the future has a right to judge the past. In order to look ahead, set yourselves an important goal, and at the same time control that voluptuous analytical drive with which you now lay waste the present and render almost impossible all tranquility, all peaceful growth and maturing. Draw around yourself the fence of a large and extensive hope, an optimistic striving. Create in yourselves a picture to which the future is to correspond, and forget the myth that you are epigones. You have enough to plan and to invent when you imagine that future life for yourselves. But in considering history do not ask that she show you the "How?" and the "With what?" If, however, you live your life in the history of great men, then you will learn from history the highest command: to become mature and to flee away from that paralyzing and prohibiting upbringing of the age, which sees advantages for itself in not allowing you to become mature, in order to rule and exploit you, the immature. And when you ask after biographies, then do not ask for those with the refrain "Mr. Soandso and His Age" but for those whose title page must read "A Fighter Against His Age." Fill your souls with Plutarch, and dare to believe in yourselves when you have faith in his heroes. With a hundred people raised in such an unmodern way, that is, people who have become mature and familiar with the heroic, one could permanently silence the entire noisy pseudo-education of this age.



They can only cackle more than before, because they lay eggs more often. Naturally, however, the eggs have become constantly smaller (although the books have become constantly thicker). As the final natural result, things resign themselves to the commonly loved "Popularizing" of science (in addition to the "Feminization" and "Infantization"), that is, the notorious tailoring of the scientific coat to the body of the "motley public"



The time will come in which people wisely refrain from all constructions of the world process or even of human history, a time in which people in general no longer consider the masses but once again think about individuals who construct a sort of bridge over the chaotic storm of becoming. These people do not set out some sort of process, but live timelessly and contemporaneously, thanks to history which permits such a combination. They live like the republic of geniuses, about which Schopenhauer once explained that one giant shouts out to another across the barren intervals of time, and undisturbed by the wanton and noisy midgets who creep around them, the giants continue their lofty spiritual conversation. The task of history is to be a mediator between them and thus to provide an opportunity and the energies for the development of greatness. No, the goal of humanity cannot finally be anywhere but in its greatest examples.



To me, the masses seem to be worth a glance in only in three respects: first as blurred copies of great men, presented on bad paper with worn out printing plates, then as the resistance against the great men, and finally as working implements of the great. For the rest, let the devil and statistics carry them off! How might statistics demonstrate that there could be laws in history? Laws? Yes, statistics prove how coarse and disgustingly uniform the masses are. Are we to call the effects of the powerful forces of stupidity, mimicry, love, and hunger laws?



Yes, people know what a certain predominance of history is capable of; people know it only too well: to uproot the strongest instincts of youth, fire, defiance, forgetting of the self, to dampen down the heat of their sense of right and wrong, to hold back or repress the desire to mature slowly with the contrary desire to be finished quickly, to be useful and productive, to infect the honesty and boldness of the feelings with doubts. Indeed, history is itself capable of deceiving the young about their most beautiful privilege, about their power to cultivate in themselves with complete conviction a great idea and to allow an even greater idea to grow forth out of it. A certain excess of history is capable of all this. We have seen it. And this is the reason: through its incessant shifting of the horizons of significance, through the elimination of a surrounding atmosphere, it no longer allows a person to perceive and to act unhistorically. He then draws himself from the infinity of his horizon back into himself, into the smallest egotistical region and there must wither away and dry up.



The German education of the young, however, begins directly from this false and barren idea of culture. Its end goal, imagined in all purity and loftiness, is not at all the freely educated man, but the scholar, the scientific person, indeed, the scientific person who is useful as early as possible, the person who sets himself apart from life in order to recognize it clearly. The product of this education, considered in a correct empirically general way, is the historically and aesthetically educated Philistine, the precocious and freshly wise chatterer about state, church, and art, the sensorium for thousands of sensations, the inexhaustible stomach which nevertheless does not know what an honest hunger and thirst are.



That monotonous orthodoxy would sound something like this: the young person has to begin with a knowledge of culture, not at first with a knowledge of life, and even less with life and experience themselves. Moreover, this knowledge about culture as historical knowledge is poured over or stirred into the youth; that is, his head is filled up with a monstrous number of ideas derived from extremely indirect knowledge of past times and peoples, not from the immediate contemplation of living. His desire to experience something for himself and to feel growing in him a coordinated and living system of his own experiences--such a desire is narcotized and, as it were, made drunk through the opulent deceptions about matters of fact, as if it were possible in a few years to sum up in oneself the highest and most remarkable experiences of all times, especially of the greatest ages. It is precisely this insane procedure which leads our young developing artists into the halls of culture and galleries instead of into the workshop of a master and, above all, into the extraordinary workshops of the extraordinary master craftswoman Nature.



This truthfulness may also occasionally seriously harm the idea of culture esteemed at the time; it even may be able to assist a totally decorative culture to collapse.


Friedrich Nietzsche (1886)
The Use and Abuse of History for Life

Communication

At the beginning of the path, a student perceives mountains and rivers. As he proceeds, he realises that mountains and rivers are not mountains and rivers. At the end of the path, mountains and rivers are mountains and rivers.

Although sinking back into the world looks like returning to the first position again, it is not so. Everything has changed irrevocably. Everything one experiences is as it is: totally transformed by understanding.

Karma is the return of the first position, and the need to go through the renunciation. In the Hindu tradition is the saying, "Neti Neti". This is the negative conceptualisation of all concrete existence, reminding oneself not to grasp to finitude. Another saying is "Tat tvam asi", which again reminds oneself not to grasp to finitude, but to see all as sharing the same nature.

Communication is rife with difficulties, because speaking of the truth is always negative. The hearer is not yet even in the first position, so hears only fixed and concrete realities. They have that deep prejudice and lack of insight. It takes skill to take away from the listener in all the negating conceptual gifts. This seems like a paradox, but it is a simple process of finding words that tear away the concreteness of a grasping mind's conceptualisations and by slipping and sliding and merging ideas so as to convey less.

Unfortunately, in negating and destroying, there are many listeners who so bring their objectifying mental habits to bear, that they see only "destruction", "death", "nay-saying", and "bleakness" in the negating dialectic. It is truly difficult to break apart the concretising habits of such an attitude; it is the social animal that wants merging, power, illusion, enchantment, magic and mystery. It is possible that such a base, emotional psychology is not close enough to the realms of reason to deal with God in the dialectical, indirect way. Probably one has to give them baby food like poetry, strongly positive (i.e. nondialectical) ideals, and take the level of personality in order to draw them to first base where mountains are simply mountains and not reminders of their childhood. Truly, one is speaking to little children with these.

It is wrong to be speaking directly and positively, quite wrong, because this is existentially revoking the meaning of one's communication. But if the listener is of low scope, then it is impossible not to work on a level they can step towards more easily.

One must always remember to be, at first call, in the relationship individually and authentically, to the truth. Only to that ground is one's message meaningful and right-oriented. One cannot speak as anyone but as that relationship of self to the Infinite. One cannot speak as a human finitude related to the crowd, or to another human finitude. That misplaces the truth of the message. One must always take one's stance in the meaning, taking away at every breath any tendencies or movements to reinforce or concretise, or even the movement of negating that would profer itself as substantial.

It truly takes mindfulness and consistency in faith to communicate. As another has said, only a wise person can speak the truth.




Kelly Jones

Spiritual friendship

What spiritual friendship is not: a feeling of comfort, safety and warmth in companionship.

Spiritual friendship does not put a communion of minds above the individual's own private relationship to truth. By truth, I don't just mean truthfulness, but truth itself. The concept of truth is "how something is in an absolute sense", and is the standard tool for understanding Reality.

Spirituality is about understanding Reality. Therefore, spiritual friendship must be wholly focussed on the individual's own relationship to truth.

Feeling welcomed, happy, safe, loved, respected, and admired indicates loss of spirit in oneself - and also in whoever instigates those feelings in you. Why is this the case? I'll explain it briefly.

Understanding Reality reveals the true nature of oneself: that all is empty of intrinsic reality. Ultimately, Reality has no form of its own. It cannot be confined in dualistic forms, or be exclusive and finite, since all finite things share the same relative, interdependent nature (dreams are only dreams relative to waking life, and are real in their existence of being dreams).

Thus, all the forms and finite entities like selves, objects, possessions, loved or hated people, emotions, dreams, wishes and ideas, are merely wisps of existence: interactive, tangling, intercoursing strands in the ever-unfolding oneness of Reality. None of them are truly separate, nor exist independently in a solid concrete way.

So, the feelings of warmth, comfort, safety, delight, or pride that arise in relationships, automatically guarantees a lack of enlightenment. These feelings indicate the basic, underlying delusion of concrete self-existence. The need for a companion to reaffirm and concretise one's existence, one's values, one's opinions and world-view, are all branches from the one root of the delusion of self-existence.

Spiritual friendship must spring from an individual relationship to truth, and only the absolutely perfectly wise person feels no pain from spiritual friendship.

So here are some warnings:

If you trust another person, it is almost certainly a guarantee that neither of you are wise.

If you have warm feelings of respect for them, again, wisdom is lost.

If you have an associate or colleague who smiles at you, laughs, enjoys your company, likes to hold passionate conversations with you, then you ought to warn them that they've lost their soul. If they disagree with you, then keep away from them.

If you cannot find a good soul who refuses to lie to you, if you cannot find someone who tells the truth without adornment, if you cannot find someone who is plain-speaking and troubles only to deepen their roots in emptiness, if you cannot find someone who is without affectation, pride, compassion, or affection, then....

Wander alone like a rhinoceros.


— Kelly Jones

Training soul into the world

A sponging cat from the neighbour's has been visiting me a lot recently, after I gave it a bowl of milk and a pat. I don't keep my door closed. But like a trained robot, it instinctively wants to rub its body over my legs and make loud purring noises. These sorts of behaviours have obviously pleased humans for thousands of years, evidently for the cat's massaging techniques and "I'm a happy contented creature" sounds. So humans have allowed cats to sponge off them, in exchange for the ego-rubbing services. The cat in response cannot help itself from behaving like that, in the hope for food.

I don't allow it to rub against me, or sit on me. I don't give it food. It doesn't pur so much now, and meows a bit less. Its behaviour is simpler. It is being trained not to be an ego-masseuse. I can see humanity in this cat, millions of cat-generations of obsequiousness to sadistic humans. The cat has no conscience or soul, but I do.


— Kelly Jones

The Woman's World: A Praise-ful Satire

One word: Vague.

Everything is kept deliberately vague and noncommital. That's how the Woman's World functions. What do I mean by the Woman's World? I mean, the current culture that promises The New American Dream: whatever is possible, women must be permitted the reputation of already having achieved it. The sleight-of-hand required to convince everyone that this dream is good and virtuous, is the Cult of Mediocrity. Don't smile at the capitalisation: Vague is also capitalised. (It's super-vagueness.)

Let me explain. The way the masses are convinced that feminism has finally achieved its stated goal of equality for the sexes, with the triumphant successes of leading businesswomen, stateswomen, female bankers, female Nobel prize winners, female literati, etc., is through consumerism. That is, if you desire it, you may have it. This is the American Dream per se: the free-market as the essence of personal freedom. Thus, it is extremely easy to move every achievement worth noting, into the realm of dreams and desires. To dream is good. To dream is virtuous. To hope is praiseworthy. To aim and aspire is awe-inspiring and motivating.

But to do anything is tedious and boring, requiring effort and time and repetition, and bringing failure and disappointment. To actually have to slog through the long, arduous, private, long, unnoticed, dirty, painful, long, repetitive, uncertain, unfinished, long process of gradual alteration, of learning and self-correction, is totally devoid of any sense of finality and achievement. More often than not, the utter relativity of one's states of progress become very obvious, so that if one ever does seem to be achieving, even relative to one's past, it all crumbles into nothingness – because where is the ultimate standard? If one looks to what has been already achieved and standardised by men, the realisation by women is that they have come nowhere near the goal. And thus, instead of this effort, we get dreams and a rejection of standards and absolutes. We get a rejection of individuals competing against other individuals. Instead, everyone is a winner.

Consumerism teaches instant gratification, sensationalism, sensory overload, superlatives, false ultimates (The Ultimate in Sportwear), false absolutes (Absolutely the fastest car ever produced), fast-talking and cunning deceit. Everything is presented in such a way as to avoid consciousness. Television presenters are smooth with their spiels, gabbing incessantly to avoid contrasts and sharp edges. It is precisely the method used by crocodile handlers, who maintain a harmonious vocal patter while tapping the crocodile repeatedly with a long stick, to mesmerise the crocodile with musical patterns into an expectant and passive trance-state. Consumerism hypnotises, creating the same glazed-eyed passivity. Everyone is a winner. Everyone deserves what they need. Everyone is equal. No one should be lacking. No one should be any different to anyone else. Everyone should be treated equally. Everyone should be treated the same. Everyone should be smiled at in exactly the same, bland, personality-free way. No one can stand out. No one should be trusted who is different. No one is any better than anyone else. But then, no one can be special. And, oh dear, we all want to be special!

The cult of mediocrity is born. And how popular it is - of course it is. Yet, within the apparent safety and happiness of immediate gratification, there is also a deep-seated, intrinsic anxiety.

Women suffer more from anxiety and nervous tension than do men. Why? Because of their 'egalitarian', personality-less ideal. Precisely because they believe they are (read: should be) just as good as anyone else, no different in the slightest, women have no personal groundedness. They judge themselves relative to others......ad infinitum. They lack individuality, meaning: soul, centredness, an inward thinking-focussed life. To hide this personal vacuum, the Woman's World dictum is: march on, shop, stimulate your desires - enter the eternal and endless chase for MORE! ---- and you hope you will never wake up to hear the mind-numbing roar of the vacuum. Oh, keep it vague, don't worry about it. It'll pass. Stifle it.

Existentially, this Woman's World has actually vagarised the individual's existence, at the same time as making it the centre of attention. Vague: the individual must be clouded over, so that it is nothing but a blurry fog of uncertainty. Welcome to Post-modernism: the blather of nothingness enshrouded in a sophisticated verbiage of fog.



— Kelly Jones

Great Purpose

He who commits himself to the Way must be equipped with three essentials. A great root of faith, a great ball of doubt, and a great tenacity of purpose. Lacking any one of them, he is like a tripod with only two legs.

By "great root of faith" is meant the firm conviction that the practice of reason alone can carry one to the perfection of Ultimate Enlightenment. With the practice of reason great doubts about life and death will crystallize. Yet even though you become a great ball of doubt, you will be unable to break it apart unless you constantly work on it with a great burning tenacity of purpose.

The practice of the Way is like making fire by friction. The essential thing as you rub wood against stone is to apply continuous all-out effort. If you stop when you see the first trace of smoke, you will never get even a flicker of fire, even though you may rub away for a thousand years.

Don't think the commitments and pressing duties of normal life leave you no time to go about forming a ball of doubt. If a man, while pushing his way through a busy marketplace, drops some bank notes onto the ground, will he just leave them there and forget about them, just because he is in a crowded place? Of course not. He would be down there frantically pushing and shoving with tears in his eyes trying to find them. Yet what is a bit of money compared with Great Enlightenment?

The worldly man needs a great purpose to motivate him - if he wants to achieve anything much. Likewise does the spiritual man require Great Purpose to provide the force necessary to relinquish his ego.

— Kevin Solway

Keys

• Thinking is invisible, but the thought-rich life makes materiality invisible by contrast. The thinker experiences thought as the most solid reality.

• Simplicity strengthens the mind through stripping away external paraphernalia.

• Turning inward strengthens the soul, but one must reinforce this by abandoning and ignoring society and its bonds. Never smile, never look into another's face with desire.

• Evening and night-time are my favourite times: there is no glare and noise fades. Use a blindfold and earplugs through the day if it helps. Camp in forests regularly, lying under the stars, wakefully and thoughtfully reviewing progress and marking out areas for improvement.

• Other people are useless in regards to your own soul. Soul is one's own concern, and soulcare is purely individualistic. So ignore others. Never seek approval in others. Also, it is worthless to worry over your reputation: e.g. being marked out by others as troubled or nasty. Clearly, they aren't interested in wisdom, and they will never be remembered by eternity. Their choice to be insane and arrogant is their own responsibility, not yours. Abandon them.

• Your character is your own responsibility. Do not be reckless, impulsive, lazy, apathetic, fatalistic, and undisciplined. You get what you want.

• Do not use samadhi for worldly goals, because birth-and-death will inevitably result. If you use mental brightness and energy to fulfil materialistic plans to solidify the ego, you will be overly active, and soon become fatigued - thus, the buoyant active life will die, and the depressed, passive, cynical life will be born. Only use samadhi for Godliness, and escape rebirth.

• Command yourself and obey your commands. Do not listen to ignoble thoughts.

Individuality

.....it is not possible to harvest immediately what one has sown. I will remember that philosopher's method of having his disciples keep silent for three years; then I dare say it will come. Just as one does not begin a feast at sunrise but at sundown, just so in the spiritual world one must work forward for some time before the sun really shines for us and rises in all its glory; for although it is true as it says that God lets his sun shine upon the good and the evil and lets the rain fall on the just and the unjust, it is not so in the spiritual world.

So let the die be cast — I am crossing the Rubicon! No doubt this road takes me into battle, but I will not renounce it. I will not lament the past — why lament? I will work energetically and not waste time in regrets, like the person stuck in a bog and first calculating how far he has sunk without recognizing that during the time he spends on that he is sinking still deeper. I will hurry along the path I have found and shout to everyone I meet: Do not look back as Lot's wife did, but remember that we are struggling up a hill.

 

— Kierkegaard, 1835

The door-to-door evangelist

Without doubt, the motivation for the door-to-door evangelist is, paradoxically, a deep fear of men. It is this that drives the lonely evangelist to face death in one-on-one verbal battling. He (or she) is driven by the egotistical fear of death and decomposition, seeing only a collision with the encroaching outer environment. God is for them an invisible abstract power against the miscellany of real things to be found in everyday life.

For this reason, the evangelist will be unable to listen: they can only hear what can be used to repeat the mantras that help support their system of social security. They will pretend to listen only so as to manipulate their audience emotionally into befriending them (the sign of which is, repeating their views, taking their brochures, etc.)

Don't be frustrated with their irrationality and refusal to listen. They only want someone to love them; that is what God means to them. Above all, what they regard as Satanic is the view of God not loving them as they are, a God that makes everything difficult, a God that inspires conflict, a God that slays men. In other words: God is to them: their own comfort and wellbeing. Everything they say will come from this perspective.

One of the best ways to counter these frightened mice is to show them that Nature has always been about conflict and war and causality, but to do so with images of the ocean, of weather-storms, of galaxies colliding.

Kelly Jones

Worldly wisdom

With worldly wisdom one says, things will get better soon. One's consolation is shrinking from going out into the current — one tries to wade as long as possible. As long as this is not definitely decided, there always remains a doubt about the importance of actuality in one's whole train of thought.

So worldly wisdom is passing by on actuality: its actuality is the actuality of worldly wisdom, where no change is willed, so no change is perceived. One refuses to see how time passes one by. Thus, there is no change to see. This is the way most people live, although they fill their lives with spectacle and entertainment to hide the reality of their actual stagnancy.

But there is danger also in positioning oneself in relation to the actuality of "most people", for that too is shrinking from going out into the current, into the wholeness of "myself".

— Kelly Jones, developed from Kierkegaard (1843).

10 Bulls, by Kakuan

1. The Search for the Bull

The bull has been lost. What need is there to search? Only because of separation from my true nature, I fail to find him. In the confusion of the sense I lose even his tracks. Far from home, I see many crossroads, but which way is the right one I know not. Greed and fear, good and bad, entangle me.

In the pasture of this world, I endlessly push aside the tall grasses in search of the bull.
Following unnamed rivers, lost upon the interpenetrating paths of distant mountains,
My strength failing and my vitality exhausted, I cannot find the bull.
I only hear the locusts chirring through the forest at night.






2. Discovering the Footprints

Understanding the teaching, I see the footprints of the bull. Then I learn that, just as many utensils are made from one metal, so too are myriad entities made of the fabric of self. Unless I discriminate, how will I perceive the true from the untrue? Not yet having entered the gate, nevertheless I have discerned the path.

Along the riverbank under the trees, I discover footprints!
Even under the fragrant grasses I see his prints.
Deep in remote mountains they are found.
These traces no more can be hidden than one's nose, looking heavenward.






3. Perceiving the Bull

When one hears the voice, one can sense its source. As soon as the six senses merge, the gate is entered. Wherever one enters one sees the head of the bull! This unity is like salt in water, like colour in dyestuff. The slightest thing is not apart from self.

I hear the song of the nightingale.
The sun is warm, the wind is mild, willows are green along the shore,
Here no bull can hide!
What artist can draw that massive head, those majestic horns?







4. Catching the Bull

He dwelt in the forest a long time, but I caught him today! Infatuation for scenery interferes with his direction. Longing for sweeter grass, he wanders away. His mind still is stubborn and unbridled. If I wish him to submit, I must raise my whip.

I seize him with a terrific struggle.
His great will and power are inexhaustible.
He charges to the high plateau far above the cloud-mists,
Or in an impenetrable ravine he stands.






5. Taming the Bull

When one thought arises, another thought follows. When the first thought springs from enlightenment, all subsequent thoughts are true. Through delusion, one makes everything untrue. Delusion is not caused by objectivity; it is the result of subjectivity. Hold the nose-ring tight and do not allow even a doubt.

The whip and rope are necessary,
Else he might stray off down some dusty road.
Being well trained, he becomes naturally gentle.
Then, unfettered, he obeys his master.






6. Riding the Bull Home

This struggle is over; gain and loss are assimilated. I sing the song of the village woodsman, and play the tunes of the children. Astride the bull, I observe the clouds above. Onward I go, no matter who may wish to call me back.

Mounting the bull, slowly I return homeward.
The voice of my flute intones through the evening.
Measuring with hand-beats the pulsating harmony, I direct the endless rhythm.
Whoever hears this melody will join me.






7. The Bull Transcended

All is one law, not two. We only make the bull a temporary subject. It is as the relation of rabbit and trap, of fish and net. It is as gold and dross, or the moon emerging from a cloud. One path of clear light travels on throughout endless time.

Astride the bull, I reach home.
I am serene. The bull too can rest.
The dawn has come. In blissful repose,
Within my thatched dwelling I have abandoned the whip and rope.






8. Both Bull and Self Transcended

Mediocrity is gone. Mind is clear of limitations. I seek no state of enlightenment. Neither do I remain where no enlightenment exists. Since I linger in neither condition, eyes cannot see me. If hundreds of birds strew my path with flowers, such praise would be meaningless.

Whip, rope, person, and bull — all merge in No-thing.
This heaven is so vast no message can stain it.
How may a snowflake exist in a raging fire?
Here are the footprints of the patriarchs.







9. Reaching the Source

From the beginning, truth is clear. Poised in silence, I observe the forms of integration and disintegration. One who is not attached to 'form' need not be 'reformed'. The water is emerald, the mountain is indigo, and I see that which is creating and that which is destroying.

Too many steps have been taken returning to the root and the source.
Better to have been blind and deaf from the beginning!
Dwelling in one's true abode, unconcerned with that without —
The river flows tranquilly on and the flowers are red.







10. In the World

Inside my gate, a thousand sages do not know me. The beauty of my garden is invisible. Why should one search for the footprints of the patriarchs? I go to the market place with my wine bottle and return home with my staf. I visit the wineshop and the market, and everyone I look upon becomes enlightened.

Barefooted and naked of breast, I mingle with the people of the world.
My clothes are ragged and dust-laden and I am ever blissful.
I use no magic to extend my life;
Now, before me, the trees become alive.


Kakuan.

Great Waves Onami

Great Waves

In the early days of the Meiji era there lived a well known wrestler called O-nami, Great Waves. O-nami was immensely strong and knew the art of wrestling. In his private bouts he defeated even his teacher, but in public he was so bashful that his own pupils threw him.

O-nami felt he should go to a Zen master for help. Hakuju, a wandering teacher, was stopping in a little temple nearby, so O-nami went to see him and told him of his trouble.

"Great Waves is your name," the teacher advised, "so stay in this temple tonight, Imagine that you are those billows. You are no longer a wrestler who is afraid. You are those huge waves sweeping everything before them, swallowing in all their path. Do this and you will be the greatest wrestler in the land."

The teacher retired. O-nami sat in meditation trying to imagine himself as waves. He thought of many different things. Then gradually he turned more and more to the feeling of the waves. As the night advanced the waves became larger and larger. They swept away the flowers in their vases. Even the Buddha in the shrine was inundated. Before dawn the temple was nothing but the ebb and flow of an immense sea.

In the morning the teacher found O-nami meditating, a faint smile on his face. He patted the wrestler's shoulder. "Now nothing can disturb you," he said. "You are those waves. You will sweep everything before you."

The same day O-nami entered the wrestling contests and won. After that, no one in Japan was able to defeat him.

To will one virtue — Results

It is said that I am a slipshod writer. Well, that is a matter of opinion. I am fully convinced that there is not a Danish writer who pays as much attention to the insignificant word as I do. I write everything in my own hand twice, some parts three and four times, and in addition, something no one knows anything about, there is my meditating as I walk; before I write I have said everything aloud to myself many times — and this they call being a slipshod writer! And why? Because they have no conception of it at all, because to them an author is someone who at most spends a certain number of hours a day sitting in a room and writing and otherwise has nothing to do with his ideas. Therefore, that kind of an author needs time when he comes home to get into the spirit again — whereas I come home with the whole thing thought through and memorized, even in its stylistic form — when people read a few pages of my writing they are almost always amazed at my style — but a big book — well, how is that possible — ergo: I must be a slipshod writer. No, when one wills only one thing, wills one thing with every sacrifice, every effort — then it is possible.

In a way I can become nauseated by life, for I, who love but one thought — which a person can really be if he wills it — I constitute an epigram upon men, because their judgment of me, the fact that they really cannot understand my consistency, is tragic proof of the categories, the mediocrity, in which they live.

— Søren Kierkegaard, 1846

Taming the Bull

When one thought arises, another follows. When the first thought springs from enlightenment, all subsequent thoughts are true. Through delusion, one makes everything untrue.

Hold the nose-ring tight and do not allow even a doubt.

— Kakuan

Masters Apprentice

There is a voice calling for me
There is a light coming down on me
There is a doubt that is clearing
There is a day that is dawning
There is a wound that is healing
There is a season waiting for me
There is a road that is turning
There is a fire still burning



A sickness in me
Constant pace towards the end
The need is stronger
This time the need is deeper



There is a peace I am searching
There is a freedom I'm depending on
There is a pain that's never ending
There is a rain falling only on me
There is a dream I am living
There is a life I'm dreaming of
There is a death I'm awaiting
There is a home I am deserting



I hold my breath in wait
Only moments remain
Movement for departed hope
Effect for absent friends



Sever the faith from my body
Leave me begging for more
Take what I have and deliver me
Into everlasting sleep



Soothing trance
Colours fade
And disappear
Ethereal light
Showing me what I can do without



In a motionless scene
There is only me
I take what I can
Controlling you to get ahead



Fading away
And leaving
Long for sleep
Closer now
Lead the way into death



Every wretched dream
I've left behind
Every waking hour
I lie in wait



Sucked inside by will
Gone into the flood
All my questions unfurled
As I was put to the test



Once I'm below there's no turning back



Plunging into the deepest void
Departed shell left drained behind



Pacing roads unknown
Searching for a new home
Desert in my eye
Barren lands inside


— Mikael Akerfeldt, "Masters Apprentice" from Deliverance. [Opeth's best track, in my opinion, along with "A Fair Judgment".]

Bad teachers

A counterpart to the parable about the sower and the seed.

It would deal with preachers.

The owner of a wheat farm gave each of his servants an equal share of equally good wheat seed.

But one stored the seed in a damp place where it sprouted too soon and was spoiled.

And one mixed it with ordinary seed.

And one thought: the seed now belongs to me, why should I sow it, and he sold it for money.

And one did sow it but scattered it so carelessly that it was worthless.

One sowed it but put too high a price on it.

— Søren Kierkegaard, 1845, The Book of the Judge

A story

What a clever story it is, the one in 1001 Nights (Geschichte der zwei neidischen Schwestern, Nacht 617-637, III) that tells of an expedition in search of the talking bird, the singing tree, and the golden water. The task was to climb a high mountain. But the resistance was invisible (as the dervish in fact says to the one prince who was not afraid of any danger: Have you considered what it means to do battle with the invisible); it was nothing more nor less than voices that shouted and made an uproar, scolded, shocked, whined, ridiculed, etc. — and if one looked around he became a stone.

— Søren Kierkegaard, 1848

Boundaries - Things

Consider "there are no inherent boundaries" and "there are no inherently existent things". The former is accepted by most people, for to them it means EXISTENCE is supreme. They hear "there is existence, therefore me, and since existence is supreme, therefore, I am free to act and move in any way".

They have understood themselves to be supreme, like long-lasting parasitic lice feeding on the blood of a large mammal. They (brainlessly) assume their own consciousness travels the environment like a submarine, a louse freely travelling the mammal's body, the Lord of the Blood.

So they accept with fervour "there are no inherent boundaries", but only in a very restricted sense (that is, they contradict it altogether). And that is why the latter phrase makes no sense to them.

— Kelly Jones, 2009

Great Death

When Zen master Sekiso passed away and the brotherhood asked the head monk to succeed him as abbot, Zen master Kyuho, who had previously served as the master's attendant, came and addressed them. He posed a question to the head monk, "The master often told us to `cease all activity,' to `do nothing whatever,' to `become so cold and lifeless the spirits of the dead will come sighing around you,' to `become a bolt of fine white silk,' to `become the dead ashes in a censer left forgotten in an ancient graveyard,' to `become so that the present instant is ten thousand years.'

"What is the meaning of these instructions? If you show that you grasp them, you are the next abbot. If you show that you do not, you aren't the man for the job."

"His words," said the head monk, "refer to the essential oneness of all things."

"You have failed to understand the master's meaning," said Kyuho.

"Get some incense ready," replied the head monk. "If I have terminated my life by the time that incense burns, it will mean I grasped the master's meaning. If I am still living, it will mean I did not."

Kyuho lit a stick of incense. Before it had burned down the head monk had ceased breathing. Kyuho patted the dead man on the back, and said, "Others have died while seated; some have died while standing. But you have just succeeded in proving that you could not have even seen the master's meaning in your dreams."

— Hakuin

The deep-loving beast-form of Sunyata barrelling towards nonduality

I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are the over-goers.

I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore.

I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth of the Superman may hereafter arrive.

I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that the Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-going.

I love him who laboureth and inventeth, that he may build the house for the Superman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant: for thus seeketh he his own down-going.

I love him who loveth his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going, and an arrow of longing.

I love him who reserveth no share of spirit for himself, but wanteth to be wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus walketh he as spirit over the bridge.


...

I love him who chasteneth his God, because he loveth his God: for he must succumb through the wrath of his God.

I love him whose soul is deep even in the wounding, and may succumb through a small matter: thus goeth he willingly over the bridge.

I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgetteth himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his down-going.

I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his head only the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causeth his down-going.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

How idiocy is perpetuated through generations

From the first catch-phrases flung at a child to the last, it is like a series of shocks to freeze his motor, to undercut the power of his consciousness. "Don't ask so many questions, children should be seen and not heard!" — "Who are you to think? It's so, because I say so!" — "Don't argue, obey!" — "Don't try to understand, believe!" — "Don't rebel, adjust!" — "Don't stand out, belong!" — "Don't struggle, compromise" — "Your heart is more important than your mind!" — "Who are you to know? Your parents know best!" — "Who are you to know? Society knows best!" — "Who are you to know? The bureaucrats know best!" — "Who are you to object? All values are relative!" — "Who are you to want to escape a thug's bullet? That's only a personal prejudice!"

— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Waking

Wake to the day with the joy and zest of having arrived in Heaven. All will be well for you. Sit back and enjoy! What can possibly touch you, who are beyond space and time? Be as a dead man, the dead man you are, untouched by the worries and concerns of this world.

— Kevin Solway, Poison for the Heart

Misuse of mass media, and immediacy

With the press as degenerate as it is, human beings eventually will surely be transformed into clods. A newspaper's first concern has to be circulation; from then on the rule for what it publishes can be: the wittiness and entertainment of printing something that has no relation to communication through the press. How significant! How easy to be witty when misuse of the press has become the newly invented kind of witticism.

For example, they write that a certain well-known person (mentioned by name) wears an embroidered shirt. This is written and then read by the whole market town where the lunatic press thrives. The man is cartooned with an embroidered shirt and this treatment goes on for half a year — and naturally is the most widely read of everything read in the market town. If this is not either lunacy or idiocy, then I know of no other alternative. People are simply too immediate and momentary, but on this scale it is a non plus ultra — to use the circulation of the press to discuss for half a year something which, after all, the most addle-brained person ought to be sufficiently human not to talk about for more than five minutes — it can only lead to idiocy.

— Søren Kierkegaard, 1847

A strong mind

A strong mind

The written word of a thinker is structured by the organisation of logic, rather than by the standards of conventional communication in language which have come to show no sign of this; even more, the thinker – the true thinker who lives in thought – has his very being in thought, and the meaning conveyed in his thought has a far different meaning to the standards conveyed in conventional language. To state this simply, reality is truly understood, and only understood, with thought, and this thought has rejected the form and convention of animal culture.

There is no salvation through reading the written word expressed by a thinker, since the desire to lay hold of the truth engineered through another is not the key to truth, but a distancing from it. Even the act of turning to one's own writings with this desire for an outward form, for an outward encapsulation, distances one from the truth that is only actualised with one's own thought.

Thought is the only arena for understanding. It is not reading, it is not writing, it is not speaking, and it is not listening. Thought is the only arena, the only workshop, the only engine, powerful enough to create understanding. All words must come from meanings manipulated by one's own mind, and even more, one must actually construct and invent the meanings wholly within one's own finely-scrutinising intellect, for there to be any real and lasting understanding.

The written word, or any meanings conveyed by another, are nothing but a tossed-away cocoon, a hardened residue of the arrival of understanding. These are relics of something already past, not the source of, nor the crystallised agent of salvation. They can do no more than stimulate one who has lost inwardness, whose mind is weak, to seek again that inwardness for himself. They cannot substitute.

The written word is no achievement.