Weltanschaung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Within

  • Peace

    Peace

    Internal or external, the path to peace is the same.

    It is difficult to imagine a world at peace without its inhabitants first having found tranquility within themselves.

    And it is difficult to imagine a person achieving equanimity within, without conducting himself in the right way in the physical world .

    It is hard to believe that anybody would have difficulty in establishing the “right way” to conduct himself, if he really thought about it. But in that unlikely event one need only consult some of the more benign schools of thought which have been around for many thousands of years. Do unto others as the Christians might say, or follow the Buddhist Eightfold Path. Cultivate the beautiful tenets of the Tao. Practice the spiritual and ethical traditions of Sufism, follow the Dharma of the Hindus.

    Or frankly, follow your own good sense. Do no harm to any sentient being, be kind and generous in spirit.

    And above all do not insist that yours is the only way, that your belief system is unique. And that everyone else has it wrong. To do so is assuredly not “right thinking”, not “right action”.

    The exclusive claims of different religions are merely variations of universal truths that have been taught since the origins of man.

    Can inner or external peace arise if I insist I am right and those who do not agree with me are wrong? Can peace in the world be achieved when one set of people believe their god or philosophy is the only truth and seek (often by violence, of thought if not of deed) to convert the heathen?

    History would suggest not.

    But who am I to say? If I were to insist upon the rightness of my own thinking, I would be falling into the same trap as those who have led crusades and jihads. Of those who considered Jews vermin and dealt with them accordingly.

    I can only repeat that these are my views, that this is the way I choose (or, more realistically, try) to lead my life and this seems to be drawing me to a place of peace where I can live and let live. My external actions affect my inner world and vice versa. An increasing level of inner peace is giving me an increasing awareness of the importance of following my own path both within and in the external physical world. And letting others follow theirs.

    The two must go hand in hand – as man thinketh in his heart, so is he. I can not expect tranquility within if I am a beast without. If my inner thoughts and my worldly actions are those of peace, then I can hope to become what I want to be.

    Those without introspection will find it difficult to develop peace within or without. Those who continue to follow the often unconscious desires humanity has traditionally pursued are also unlikely to find lasting contentment.

    I have no need surely, to point out that greed, envy, anger or pride are unlikely to lead to a life well led or to a sense of serenity.

    Read the Noble Eightfold Path and the Four Noble Truths if you are in any doubt. If you can not fathom good or bad. If you are unable or unwilling to separate the ethical wheat from the moral chaff. If you can not find the way to happiness.

    Wrong thoughts and wrong actions lead to suffering.

    I have felt much change within my self in the months and years since I began this blog. In the beginning there was much anger. A conviction that the world was wrong. That it must change.

    Today I feel that I have been wrong and I hope that I am now “right”. Or at least that I will continue to feel less and less need to be critical or vociferous. And that I will continue to develop a detached understanding and acceptance of all around me.

    Today I feel it of utmost importance that I mind my own business, that I retire from a world I have always found wholly unsatisfactory. And from behaviour that leads and always has led to conflict and misery in a world dominated by self.

    Mea culpa, I have been at fault as much as the next man. Through fear perhaps, or through the inner blackness which has so often plagued my life.

    And yes, through greed, through envy and perhaps one or two other unwise emotions.

    Life is so easy in hindsight but if I had my time again, I must not fool myself that I would live in a better way.

    For most of us, wisdom can only come through experience and that perhaps is the one and only benefit of age. The ability after many years of effort to admit that I was wrong. And to have the energy and courage to start again.

    It will be obvious to any who have been kind enough to follow this, my diary, that I have long known what my path ought to be. That in reality my weltanschauung has been the same throughout my life. That, intellectually, I have always felt the same, known in which direction my true path lies. But it is only very late in the day that I have come to admit this to myself. That I have begun to make an honest and very internal effort to realize within what I have long understood in the abstract.

    For me, the path lies within. Contemplation, reflection, silence and above all coming to know myself is leading me to a place of equanimity. To a place where I can be free not to judge, to a state of mind where I can feel pity and compassion for a beautiful world torn and tortured by ignorance. And self.

    There will be those who insist that I must look to their god. That without worshipping Ganesh or Gilgamesh, without bowing down before some other deity, I will never reach the afterlife but will instead find myself cast into the darkness, or worse into some fiery pit, the likes of which even Hieronymus Bosch failed to to depict with sufficient severity.

    I would say to such people that I do my best in life and if their god can not accept my efforts and will not allow me access to his version of a heavenly afterlife, then I reject him and will happily take the consequences.

    If there are gods, I reject those that are jealous.

    And so back to peace, or rather my version of it. I have meditated in Gothic Cathedrals, in Zen Buddhist monasteries in Japan, in Hindu temples in Singapore. And in our garden shed. In Battersea Park by the pagoda. On mountain tops, in gardens, in fields.

    Does it matter so very much whether I choose to repeat a mantra of my own choosing or to dwell upon the goodness of this god or that. Whether I believe in an emptiness of infinite fecundity or a creator god who stuck it all together in six days around six thousand years ago. Whether I concentrate my mind on loving kindness or upon some representation of The Good of Plato. I think not. But you are welcome to think otherwise.

    What matters is that I seek to be a “better” person in the external world and a happier and more tranquil being within.

    I plod my way towards my goal by the simple means of putting my mind at deep rest and softly repeating mantras of my own making. Soon enough, images appear unbidden and a deep peace settles upon my quietened mind. Such tranquility increases in depth and duration day by day. It often appears unbidden in my waking world and a sense of infinity can stretch before me and around me.

    Seek your own path. Choose or reject a god or a philosophy. But in the end, your way may end up being not so very different to my own.

  • Which Way

    Which Way

    Who will you follow and where will you go. Up or down, which way. Forwards or backwards in an infinite universe, where the very concept of direction has no meaning.

    Will you listen, perchance, to a holy man or prophet. Does philosopher or mage have the answers you seek, a fool even.

    Or an inner voice perhaps, as you wander the water marshes. The cry of gulls, the shriek of the buzzards, the paddling ducks. Overhead the dull grey of winter skies soothes and complements, a light, pattering rain adding its quiet voice to those of all else around you.

    Are you tired of life maybe, or just its struggles and inanities. Do you weary of the earth and skies or is it the tedium of your species which wears you down.

    Everywhere there is noise and yet a signal seems nowhere to be found. Unless from within. Yes, there perhaps lie the answers you seek, in the emptiness and clarity of your own mind. It is all so simple and yet what artifice we have created.

    Leave the guile of man, renounce his web of clever tricks, his mechanized toys and manifold distractions. No man has the answer to all and yet we must seek. Does any man have the key, the code the wand which will unlock even a small part of the mystery. Perhaps such a man exists but he will be deeply hidden.

    Conceivably he may be found somewhere, this mage who has unearthed the story of life. But if you seek him you must know where to look. He is in the world but not of it. If he gives expression to his secrets, his voice will be small and he will not ask for payment.

    Perhaps his voice is to be found in music or art. He may be singing a line of mournful plainsong or plucking a stringed instrument while others sing the lyrics and notes of John Dowland. Come again, he says, sweet love doth now invite.

    He may be found perhaps in ancient stained glass or the more modern beauty of the pre-Raphaelites.

    Or are you he, and hiding in plain sight. Yes, yes I think that must be right. The small glimmer within which knows right from wrong, good from bad. Go inwards, be silent in the tumult. Shut off the turbulence and ferment and seek meaning within.

    Somehow on better days the answers emerge. A great clarity and calm settles upon the mind and gnosis seems so very close.

    Break with silence, re-unite yourself with tempestuous humanity and such lucidity will shimmer and fade. The gossamer thread of true meaning is not to be found amongst the big people.

    And did the countenance divine shine forth in those quiet and watery pastures by the sea. If so, the trick is to remain there, in metaphor at least.

    Which way. Within.

  • My kind of God

    My kind of God

    I have been profoundly moved by religion my entire life. I have always believed in the “Good” even though I may not always have done it.

    Sitting in quiet meditation I hear the sound of plainsong whether or not it is there. I long for peace, for a better place and better times. A time and place where there is no want but only happiness. Where there is infinite wisdom and none suffer.

    If that sounds like the heaven of the Christians or the Nirvana of the Buddhists, then that should not seem so surprising. In a hostile universe, how many of us over how many thousands of years must have yearned for such wonders, as war and plague raged around them. As they struggle to force food from the barren earth during the seven years of biblical famine.

    And so we conjure gods to assuage our fears. To send us manna from heaven. To vanquish our foes and knock down the walls of Jericho.

    To give us peace. To put our minds in a place of pure ecstasy where we feel nothing but joy and security, wrapped like a baby curled up in swaddling clothes. Or in the comfort of the womb.

    And such states can sometimes be reached although they are difficult to maintain. How very often have I felt that sense of warm certainty, where my mind and body seem to have ascended to a better plane. Where I appear to have broken through to a deeper realm somewhere outside the physical universe in which I normally dwell.

    That is what I have sought all my life. Ascension, transcendence. Sublimation – a transition from the physical ream to some place of safety and unimaginable beauty.

    I am a seeker and yet I get so often distracted from my path. Only a couple of days ago I bemoaned the parlous state of our world and expressed a wish for post scarcity to cure all our ills. But I veered dangerously into the world of politics and dissension and that is something a seeker must avoid. No good is to be found there, no field of joy.

    As my fried Keith has so often said, humanity is an irrelevance and will pass like so many grains of sand scattered in the wind. We will be unlamented, our passing unnoticed in this reality of infinite space and time and possibility.

    But sentience, mind. There may true reality perhaps be found. Or so I hope. So, in my better moods, I believe.

    Will I sound childish and absurd if I own up to watching Star Trek since childhood? Will I be laughed at when I express a profound joy I experienced when watching this latest generation of bold travelers on Netflix last night? Perhaps, but I care little.

    Sugary as it may be, the series portrays the Good and that is how and where I want to live. A bunch of men and women roam the universe and put it right. Gods by another name, although less powerful by far than the Minds of Ian Bank’s Culture. Let alone his Elders – those who have sublimed to some non physical and better realm.

    How did I feel when I wrote Post Scarcity? Sad, depressed, negative and hopeless. Is peace ever obtained by conventional means? Will I feel more peaceful or make the world a better place by campaigning with the Greens to save the whales? Or by joining Amnesty International to campaign for political prisoners?

    I think not alas.

    To engage in the bitter struggles of the human world serves little purpose.

    Where on this mortal plane should a seeker position himself? Where in this veil of tears should he dwell?

    Within, deep within. Even as I write those words I feel a warmth spreading through my veins. My kind of god – simply the sort of feeling you meet when you go inwards. When you dwell on what is good and refuse to engage with what is bad.

  • Another Day, Another Guru

    Another Day, Another Guru

    I was listening to some cross legged Russian windbag this morning pontificating on why micro-dosing psychedelics was bad news. It was not, he said, a short cut to god or anything else.

    I should have realized the fellow was going to irritate me when he waited a full minute before answering the question posed by the serious young woman interviewing him. For dramatic effect and presumably to emphasize his great holiness, wisdom and gravitas he remained silent in the lotus position while we mere mortals waited for his pearls of wisdom.

    What  a tosser. He proceeded to um and ah about various eastern concepts using the usual mumbo jumbo phrases about “mantric, tantric, chakra” filled bollux before ticking us off roundly about short cuts to heaven.

    I remember some years ago my wife and a sister having the hots for some old dear called Shine who wrote books on auric eggs or something. Anyway our Betty had supernatural powers or better and could see people’s auras. Or was it chakras? Or bottoms? I can’t recall.

    And so it goes, as Billy Joel so charmingly put to music. Another day another guru.

    Let me first tell you in no uncertain terms I am no Guru. I can not direct you to a stairway to heaven, nor have I traveled such route myself.

    But what I might just be able to do is to save you a bit of time and money by warning you against windbag, guru nutters. And also save you a bit of heartache and disappointment.

    I have been what I would call a “searcher” all my life.  I have looked in every nook and cranny and under every blade of grass for the Stone. The Philosopher’s Stone. The answer to Life the Universe and Everything.

    And I have read some shatteringly bad books and listened to some truly stupid people. It is not that I consider myself all wise: merely that I know humbug when I come across it.

    Why are we mere mortals fooled by Gurus?  Why do we listen to gurus? Seek them out, sit at their feet, worship them and suck up their bullshit?

    It is because we live in a fearful and in some respects terrifying and “bad” world full of danger and that most awful of animals – our fellow man.

    We crave gurus as we crave god: to answer our problems, to provide meaning to our life, to help us in our struggles. To answer our prayers, to save us from the hand of our enemies. To grant us eternal life and in the interim happiness and plenty on earth.

    Please don’t get me wrong: I would like all those things. But I do not need the advice of windbag self appointed gurus to achieve them.

    I have sought and in a sense I have found.

    There have been tracts, texts and indeed people I have found helpful along the way but mostly I have had to beat my own path to the doors of perception. I have followed Dorothy and found the Wizard of Oz; the winds of Kansas did me a favor and showed me there is no external savior and that all our emperors have no clothes.

    Lest that sounds bleak, it is not. I have found some help along the path. Cardinal Hume’s wonderful books for instance. The Abbot of Worth and his TV appearances. The simpler explanations of Eastern philosophy.  The Rules of St Benedict. The Tao.

    But in essence you will have to do all the work yourself.  No one is going to save you, transform your life, rapture you. No seller of books or vitamins, no merchant of dreams will save your soul or give you the “12 Steps to Happiness and Fulfillment”.

    If anyone promises so to do, run. And lock your wallet. Tighten your purse strings.

    The answer lies within. You and you alone hold the key to your own happiness and peace. And if you are temperamentally a miserable sod as I am you may need a little chemical help along the way.

    Which brings me right back to where I started and the Russian windbag grumbling about entheogens.

    What I can tell you is that entheogens have helped me. Have I seen the face of god? Probably not but he feels somewhere quite close by, even if he is not quite what I thought he was.

    What I can also tell you is I am moderately hopeful that judicial and cautious use of psilocybin may be on its way to curing a life long tendency to consider the glass half empty.

    Perhaps the Russian windbag is right in his own case. An entheogen may not be for him. But make your own mind up. Tune out, turn off the windbags.