Weltanschaung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Pilgrim

  • Vanity Fair

    Vanity Fair

    Who treads the path and why. And those who do not, those who prefer Vanity Fair, what is their fate.

    Is there meaning at all in the universe, right or wrong, up or down. None, says the physicist. All is an illusion, even consciousness itself. No free will, all choice mere fanciful thinking along a harsh and desolate path of deterministic rigour, our route set as firmly as a locomotive on rails of steel.

    No choice is truly made, no change possible say those brilliant minds which describe and measure the physical universe. And yet such minds can tell us nothing of intrinsic meaning. Assuming that any such concept can be said to exist.

    Is he wrongheaded then, our pilgrim. No heaven no hell. The path mere conceit, leading nowhere. Was John Bunyan’s hero on a road to nowhere, or can the seeker find peace and meaning.

    The world over, seekers follow the same path. Whatever their race or culture, the means are similar and the end identical. Called by different names, the discerning traveler shuns the narrow dogma of priest and the guardian of orthodoxy, and seeks out nirvana, peace, god through a life which becomes ever more silent. Contemplation tells them that the physicist is wrong.

    It is clear to such people that consciousness does exist. If that phenomena is merely subjective, in objective terms most would agree that this ghost, this ephemeral and fleeting flicker, is at least a shared illusion and therefore undeniable whatever its “reality” or otherwise.

    There comes a time when our traveler has read enough, having listened diligently to the conflicting noise of the opinionated and self anointed. He has studied at worthy and ancient universities. He is no stranger to Wittgenstein and Erasmus, Confucius and Lao Tzu once influenced his thinking.

    Or there again, the traveler may be a man of no education, unlearn-ed even. No one is disqualified from the search for meaning.

    But all eventually find that the path leads inward and that Vanity Fair offers no lasting reward. And certainly no peace.

    Such men will not care whether good and evil can be said to exist objectively. It exists for them and that is enough. The great men of learning who deny meaning can be safely be ignored. For those who seek, a god will be found to exist – even the atheist will find something wondrous and immaterial to believe in.

    As to himself, he neither worshipped a god nor washed the feet of the poor. He sought sanctity in no one’s eyes, least of all his own.

    He supposed, if and when he thought of the matter, that the external world was beyond the pale, let alone a god who encouraged Jew and Arab to slaughter each other’s babies and invented evolution. Or didn’t.

    The world never changed, nothing new under the sun and probably never would be. So forget worship – if a creator did exist he was either a very poor programmer or a vicious sadist. Perhaps both.

    But callous our pilgrim was not, nonetheless. If there was sanctity it was to be sought in right thinking and the eradication of suffering. It’s just that he was not up to the job of bringing about the latter.

    And so his own path was to mind his own business and try at least to do no harm. For he knew he could do no good.

    And so his path led inwards into silence and meditation.

    It seemed to him highly probable that merchant moguls, kings, emperors and politicians were, for the most part, unlikely to be skilled in such arts. Those who “do” in the world, especially those who “do down” don’t spend much time in self reflection or questioning.

    If they did, he suspected the world might be an altogether better place but on the whole he remained convinced the world would go to hell in a handcart and he determined no to go with it.

    There is a reality to meditation and meditation leads to reality. Or to put it another way, we humans do not as a species see the error of our ways and fail to see the futility of our customary pursuits. Nor do we understand that less is often more.

    Meditation has a curious effect, practiced daily and diligently. It sorts the world out, it sifts the chaff from the wheat. It cures the soul and in and of itself seems to lead to right thinking and an appreciation that reality is not as simple as it seems.

    And so for some, it becomes pointless to think more, to read more, to listen more. Shut out the Tower of Babel, switch off the talking heads. Think right thoughts, even if you do not have the inclination or aptitude to pursue right deeds.

    And it reaches the point where you look at the collective madness of our species and simply resign.

    If that sounds selfish it is certainly better than succumbing to the insanity of killing babies, screwing the poor, or entering politics.

  • Pilgrim

    Pilgrim

    Why do they do it, what are they seeking? And what is a shrine, a holy place? Many are put off by such language, reeking as it does of mediaeval incense and crusader’s crosses. Costly and false relics. Rigid and inevitably meaningless dogma.

    To him however, language was a poor medium in which to express the holy. The ineffable, as some would have it.

    In any event, he found himself in Vézelay and perhaps, despite his misgivings over etymology, he found himself after all to be a pilgrim. He sought no cure, although such would have been welcome. He simply sought. As he had done his entire life.

    For miles around, endless forest stretched. A family of wild boar grunted and trundled off, mercifully in the opposite direction. Overhead red kites wheeled in search of their prey. Wild deer roamed the meadows, a pine marten sat, bold as brass on the path in front of him, and stared.

    Each perfect village seemed to have its turreted castle, or at least a fortified manor house. And bridges and streams and soft green fields. And above, the ubiquitous forest. It was not too great a stretch of the imagination to place oneself there as Romanesque and later, Gothic churches were being built. Not a better time to live, but a world unspoiled by pollution, a world where the human virus had not yet so befouled a wondrous planet. Violence, plague, hunger was the lot of man, and that at least has lessened a little in the modern age.

    Vézelay itself was a place of wonder. A walled town on a hilltop, perfectly preserved and seemingly little touched by modernity. Its history was as bloody as that of any town in Europe, but in days of peace there is no finer place to sit and brood upon the infinite, far from brutish commerce and pointless politics.

    A recluse, he was delighted to find the Abbey was still tended by monks, some Franciscan and others from a more recently founded order, whose curious liturgy involved bending to touch the ground and then standing up, opening their hands in supplication and praise to their god above.

    In over four decades he had never before known his wife content to sit still and look in awe. Still, and spellbound. But sitting in the nave of the Abbey, the two of them looked, transfixed, at the Gothic choir and ambulatory, while the sound of soft chanting from Vespers in the nearby cloisters washed over them.

    Increasingly, he came to believe that the object of his search was at hand. That he had found and need seek no longer. Acceptance was the key and renunciation also. What of? Acceptance of the way things are. Renunciation of the effort to change the world. A simple decision to go with what is, with nature, with the wider universe. And to view animal struggling as a meaningless by product of evolution.

    Around him lives were crumbling, as they inevitably do. Friends and relatives were dying, succumbing to the sad state of dementia. Losing all their money, forced into stacking supermarket shelves.

    And the world continued as ever, corrupt capitalists and politicians, murderers, criminals and torturers. The sick, the hungry, the homeless. Vicious competition for scarce resources, the victory of the strong and determined over the meek and the weak.

    He practised gratitude daily but realised his own place in the world was secured by luck not by effort or the kindly care of some deity. And yet none of it seemed to matter much anymore, especially as the days and years rolled by with an ever quickening pace.

    The pilgrimage then was a form of acceptance. A disappearance into a place and state of beauty and peace. A renouncing for good and all of the absurd and destructive Mammon and a realisation that someplace, somewhere a different world existed.

    Or perhaps a different state of mind. The same world maybe but a different attitude to it. An entirely altered state of consciousness. An awakened sense of being, where peace and cooperation gave solace and refuge. Where humanity’s vices were jettisoned and the lion sat down with the lamb.

    Fanciful perhaps, ridiculous even, to those who still clung to the mores so long afflicting the human animal. And yet to him, a truth had been discovered, a long life of mistakes had been revealed. An end had been found to his seeking and the basic truth of the scriptures had been revealed.

    Reality was something else. Something different entirely. And the only way to grasp it was to let go, to dissolve into it.

    Life after death, the matrix, gods and demons, who knows? The seeker simply had to let go. Perhaps one day all would be revealed, perhaps not. Maybe a greater reality existed or perhaps the physicalists were right after all.

    But peace was acceptance of what is. Of that he was sure. And an abandonment of almost all of what man thought he wanted or needed.