from perpetual-lab.blogspot.com on 26th October, 2008, never till now published here. Lively comments
Life—I mean yours and mine, not some abstract conception—is a tapestry of narratives. Work (or school) life is interwoven with home life. Each is subdivided into projects. This blog used to be called As in Life …: it aimed at reflecting, and perhaps illuminating, the complexity and infinite mystery of the outer world. Still does.
The game changes as we get older. They say that youth is wasted on the young, meaning that in age we look back and wish we had today’s wisdom with yesterday’s youthful looks and vigour. When you get to a certain age—it’s one I’ve reached lately—the game is to make something of what you already have. In youth, early adulthood in particular, it’s to go out and get what you want: to stop being defined by childhood circumstances which are largely out of your own control. In my own case, I failed the transition. I was like a pirate forced to walk the plank. Using that simile, I didn’t start to swim till I was sixty-one.
So when I write my memoirs—this blog has evolved into a series of sketches towards that end—I can go from birth to age eighteen quite easily. Each post is like a handmade square, knitted or something, destined one day to be sewn into one big patchwork quilt. Now that my writer’s blog (damn! you know what I meant to say – block!) is over—I’ll have to explain about that—I’m ready to continue where I left off: at age fifteen. Three more years to go—watch this space. But there’s today as well: the story picks up after a gap of forty-five years, as if the hero had been in jail all that time and had little to relate.
My current theory about life is that everything is connected: body, soul, health, even what happens to you in the street. When any one component is disordered, the others are too. I don’t see it terms of cause and effect but synchronicity: not in Jung’s terms, though he invented the word, but my own. So I was mugged by two small boys when I had certain resentments about my environment. There have been other incidents. There was the man in the shopping centre who was approached by Security for using bad language loudly near other shoppers. I was so pleased to see this happening that I stopped to watch. Even though I stood at a safe distance, the man glared at me as if to say, “I’m remembering your face …” As if he blamed me for reporting his misdemeanour, and would get me one day for it. And he too was an angelic messenger, reminding me that
Not liking brings weariness of spirit,
And aversion serves to no purpose.
Then more recently there was the man in the alley, staggering in such a random zigzag that I didn’t know how to get past him without colliding. As we converged, thrown together on this narrow footpath between two factories, he was so disordered and angry that I deliberately didn’t look him in the eye. In hindsight this might have been a mistake because he swung a fist and cursed me, landing a feeble blow on my shoulder before staggering off erratically, bumping against the walls. Something within me laughed and was liberated, as if a Zen Master had disguised himself as a drunk for the sake of this satori moment.
In youth, I neither knew how to change my situation, nor how to adapt to it. I drifted, failed to recognize the many messengers, saw nothing but the many faces of angst.
Things change. The tectonic plates shift. Earthquakes happen, then all is still again. Ah, peace! But you never know.
So in the last few years, recorded here, I’ve been joyful in myself, joyful on country walks alone with nature, but not quite reconciled to the prison walls of indoors, not quite able to cope with town. These angelic messengers are harbingers of transformation, showing me that acceptance is not enough. I must embrace, but not selectively. I am part of the All: if I pick fights with it, no wonder I am divided.
The Perfect Way is only difficult for those who pick and choose;
Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear.
Make a hairbreadth difference, and Heaven and Earth are set apart;
If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against.
The struggle between “for” and “against” is the mind’s worst disease;
While the deep meaning is misunderstood, it is useless to meditate on Rest.
. . . . .
That’s another extract, another translation, but still from Seng Ts’an. He was my messenger in 1962, gave me a seed, which is starting to grow.
———–
*Image: a painting by the Zen monk Sengai, with grateful thanks to this site: http://terebess.hu/zen/sengai.html
There were 21 comments
Kathleen
Oh, I love it! Vincent, don’t you dare take your editorial delete key over “Now that my writer’s blog is over…” !!!
Vincent
Kathleen, I dare! But OK I have taken your point & I hope you approve the editing.
Tim
Vincent, this is fantastic. Thank you for sharing it.If you ask me, which of course you didn’t so I’m imposing my thoughts on you anyway, you’re finding what I believe is the “light of life” that Christ died trying to persuade an empire to believe in — this “here and now,” the great “I am,” versus a world bent on having “in mind the things of men, not the things of God.”Well said. Thanks again.
ghetufool
What a rewarding piece you gave us vincent! It’s amazing! I read your blog on my new mobile and commenting through it. Was checking its web capabilities. Yours was the first website checked. It was worth it. Keep writing these breezy pieces. I an glad you have overcome your writers block. I am kind of suffering though. Your thoughts inspired me a bit. I will try now.
Hayden
lovely….I have come to firmly believe you are right – body, soul, health, mood, strength – they are all faces of one thing. I even use the word soul now, without hesitation. How things change.
ruthie
vincent, such a thought-provoking & speaking to my heart post, thank you, i will return to read more of your words *ruthie*
Pauline
Life is a tapestry of narratives – I agree with you that we are writing our own stories every day and they are filled with characters of our own making. I am intrigued by the idea that your resentment was somehow connected to your mugging, that angelic messengers appear in all sorts of guises.
Vincent
“We are writing our own stories every day and they are filled with characters of our own making.”
You may be right Pauline, but it doesn’t seem that way to me. I see it more as a game of tennis, back and forth. My “opponent” is the world and I don’t determine what it does. I can get stuck in my game; and I appreciate it when I’m forced to learn something new.Some tennis players study the game under a coach, but I rely on trial and error – that seems to be my destiny.Thanks so much, Pauline, for serving the ball in this way!
Vincent
Ruthie, I am so pleased you can say that! I have some visiting to do over at your place too! Some wonderful photos there and more besides.
Vincent
Hayden, yes, and it’s wonderful to see an expansion of your insight in your own latest post Head and heart joined.
Vincent
Thanks Ghetu. Your latest piece just published “Hello!” is certainly an amazing piece of inspiration and worth waiting for. It has that quality of reminding me of something but I cannot say what; as if it is a true event that I know about but in some other dimension but this present earth-life. So if my thoughts inspired you a bit, I can’t see any direct connection—but then there is always the interconnectedness of all things!
Vincent
Tim I wish I had asked you. Please take it that I ask you at every opportunity for you to impose your thoughts. I’m glad you say what you say because it implies that Christ didn’t come so that Christianity could be established, but to show something a bit more subtle which perhaps can actually be found in Christianity too if we only know how to look.
Tim
Vincent, isn’t that what I’ve been saying all along? I thought it was, but perhaps I am more focused as I have been studying his words in more depth recently.You are absolutely correct. This carpenter named Jesus never meant to inflict “Christianity” on the world… it was his “disciples” who started that ball rolling anyway. Looking at the text, I have to believe Jesus would have turned this “church” built on his effigy over a thousand times by now.Something I have heard from Muslims is that they hate “Christians,” not necessarily Christ himself — in such circles, he is regarded as a wise and noble teacher.Gandhi said much the same thing: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians.”I hope you catch a glimpse of this light Christ brought to us… very “in tune” with Buddhist and Taoist philosophies, if you ask me.This “one higher power” I keep talking about is something I feel deep down inside myself, and I reject “religion” as it were… as the Buddha said, “Believe nothing, no matter where you hear it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own common sense.”Obviously, I am excited that my words may have made a connection to you that, up to now, may not have been made… I want to say so much about it, but perhaps it’s best left for me to be excited instead of filling up your whole comment space with more words. :)Thanks, Vincent. You made my day!
Vincent
Well, Tim, Christianity trod lightly on me and I never believed in it. It was a cultural context in which I saw a lot of hypocrisy; though at a certain age I got inspiration from certain Christians—John Bunyan for example with the Pilgrim’s Progress.So in your blog you have often made points rejecting Christianity, whilst upholding the “one higher power” as it touches you. That always fascinates me and I understand your struggles with the Church aspect. But for me the church aspect had long ago become separated from the essence which here you call the “light of life”. So much so that it surprises me – as your first comment did – when someone associates the essence of life (which to me has no name, it’s so hard to grasp conceptually, like the sound of silence) with the historical figure of Jesus.I have no hope of discovering anything new about Jesus from study of the New Testament, because I don’t know the extent to which it was edited by its original authors or later scribes and scholars to validate their Christian beliefs.But I think what everyone in the world does is validate their experience, including what they read in books, from the resonance it has in their soul.
Vincent
Anyhow, don’t worry about using up the comment space. As far as I am aware, it isn’t limited!
Tim
Well, as far as associating the “light of life” with the historical figure of Jesus… according to the text, he himself referred to this “God” we seek – this “kingdom of heaven” – as the “light of life.”John 8:12 – “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”You said, “But I think what everyone in the world does is validate their experience, including what they read in books, from the resonance it has in their soul,” and, “I have no hope of discovering anything new about Jesus from study of the New Testament, because I don’t know the extent to which it was edited … to validate … Christian beliefs.”Quite so. My approach in reading the red letters in the Gospels is certainly through the prism of my own experience — however, in this study I do take pains to remember just that, and work also to look through the prism of just how a carpenter came to the realizations he did about how life really *is*, in relation to religion and spirituality, and that at thirty years of age he came to the conclusion that he would step in to fill the shoes of a figure prophecied about for centuries — as the one who would make the “scales fall” from the eyes of Israel, and unify them with the Gentiles.It’s really fascinating stuff, and I try not to let all the religious doctrine skew my understanding — religion, after all, ultimately serves only to perpetuate religion under the guise of “doing good.”
Pauline
Oct 30, 2008
Vincent – being an opponent of the earth is an alien concept to me. I like being in collusion. I think I’m more oriented toward seeing how long we can keep the ball in the air rather than wondering if one of us winning. It’s always interesting to read another’s take on life. Yours is both thoughtful and thought-provoking.
Vincent
I don’t mean opponent as in hostile and I don’t mean the world as in planet Earth. I mean playing tennis with the Other, the not-me. A friendly match.
Pauline
ohhhhhhh… well then. Friendly is good. The idea of opponent, even an Other, does not fit in my world view but it doesn’t need to. Thanks for clarifying.
Annie Wicking
life is a journey, we all must make once we are here.How we choose to live our lives is up to us and whichever God we have chosen to follow.I live life and learn all I can from it. I count my blessing and let go of all the hurt cause by any foolish choices I may have made. At times there may be no going back only moving forward and one should do this with a happy heart because life is here to enjoy only the once.Be at peace, my dear friend and may your journey be long. Best wishes, Annie
Vincent
Pauline, I agree with you actually, but for some reason it’s my habit to disagree and argue as the only way I learn anything. Annie, thanks for your wishes, I (reluctantly of course – see comments above to Pauline) agree with you too!