Two kinds of joy

Last summer I went to a meditation retreat with a dear friend -- the one who introduced me to meditation in the first place.  I enjoyed it … part of me wants to say it was restful, but in fact I was exhausted when we got back.  But the quiet and clarity were delightful, and I can see why people love it so much.  Some of the people there were actually monastics – Buddhist monks – and of course that takes “loving it” to a whole new level.  Maybe not quite something I aspire to.  Still, it was a good way to spend the weekend.

Saturday evening there was a kind of “talent show” or fun get-together of all the guests at the retreat, where people could tell jokes or stories, recite poems, or whatever they felt like.  For a few minutes I debated internally about quoting the Sarah Teasdale poem "Barter", but finally decided against it.  The turbulence, or urgency, or passion of its last stanza seemed somehow out of place in a retreat devoted to calm, quiet, and mindfulness.

And yet, I wasn’t completely happy with that answer.  After all, Teasdale’s poem talks about the years of strife being in the service of that “one white, shining hour of peace”.  The hour of peace can’t be out of place as a Buddhist goal, and more than once the event organizers repeated that without suffering there can be no compassion.  So it was a puzzle, and I spent some time puzzling over it.

I’m not sure I came to any profound resolution, but in the process I did see a totally unexpected commonality between the way of passion and the way of mindfulness.  And over the next couple of days I tried to spell it out.  I came up with this:

The forest’s dry as tinder. Just a spark,

And all the hill will come alive with flame –

A shining beacon, bright against the dark,

That swallows whole your home and life and name.

Just so it is with passion. Once alight,

All obstacles restraining it are lost.

Friends, reputation, family, sense of right –

Joy torches in a smoking holocaust.

For quiet, seek the Joy of mindfulness:

A candle sheltered from the blust’ring storm –

No death nor ruin, anguish nor distress –

No bonfire, but a lamp that’s light and warm.

Yet e’en this lamp will burn up all you have.

For if you chase this Joy to where it lives,

You’ll leave your home, your work, your kin, your love,

Your very name when Dharm’ a new name gives.

What mystery for wise men to admire:

Why Joy must be an all-consuming fire!

Dharma as distraction

So why haven't I been writing lately?  Besides the usual excuses, I mean ....

Last spring a dear friend of mine introduced me to vipassana (or "mindfulness") meditation, and I began to learn something (beyond a textbook level) about the ethics and outlook of Buddhism.  And it kind of took the wind out of my sails, because I found myself no longer sure what the point of this blog is.  I started out trying to write a kind of common-sense classical philosophy -- a usable, livable classical philosophy rather than one confined to libraries.  But now I wonder if maybe there already is such a thing.

Of course there are many ways that Buddhism and Hellenism are different.  Each went down its own road of metaphysical speculation, for example.  But in ethics, which has to be the core of any "livable" philosophy, how much difference is there really?  When you sift through all the drama and stage-dressing of Plato's Republic, the fundamental explanation why we should act ethically is that acting unethically makes us unhappy.  Nobody wants to be unhappy, so act ethically and you won't be.  Shakyamuni Buddha says exactly the same thing.  It is clear from the metaphysics of the Republic that -- whether or not Plato really believed in reincarnation (and we probably don't know for sure) -- Plato certainly taught that our actions have consequences for our own souls, that we become such-and-such a kind of person because of the choices we make.  You could repeat that last sentence substituting the name "Buddha" for "Plato" and it would still be true.  And so on.

OK, so they are not identical.  Plato seems to have allowed that there is a positive role (even if a small one) for wine in a good life, while the Buddha doubted it.  Plato certainly thought there is a positive role for erotic longing in a good life (though we can discuss whether he thought consummation was nearly as good), and the Buddha classified it as a form of suffering.  But enough of it is similar that, what with this and that claims on my time anyway, I found I just didn't have enough motivation to overcome the hurdles and get back to it.

But I want to.  Hellenism and Buddhism aren't identical.  And even if they were, spelling out the identity could be kind of fun.  Besides, there are articles I have promised to write: on the Theory of Forms, for example, or on Neoplatonist theology.  Even if nobody reads this site, I ought to pay up.

I'll come back to this.  Soon.  Or at any rate it won't be another year.  Stay tuned ....