(no subject)

[sophiaserpentia]

It is interesting that I get Avalokiteshvara when I took the Bodhisattva quiz. (Thank you, scarletserpent.)

Not only is this deity dual-gendered, but Dee had a vision of hir (a thousand-armed androgynous, compassionate, firm presence) before she knew anything about the Bodhisattvas.

And this reminds of something that has been, for several reasons, on my mind during the last few days.

When she had this vision she experienced for a few brief moments the kind of peace, calm, and happiness she wished for her whole life. When she tried to go back during meditation she was turned away; the bliss was not meant as a place of residence. During the depths of her depression one night I listened to her beg to go back. "Let me back in, let me back in," she sighed, and I knew what she was talking about.

One of the ironic cruelties of life is that happiness is held out for us in small doses and then pulled away. Lovers break up and are left with the memories of happiness together. Friends, parents, lovers, children die. Physical bliss itself might be the worst of these; the most fleeting of all, and the ones which our brains are wired to continually seek.

Alan Watts wrote in The Wisdom of Insecurity, "If you try to capture running water in a bucket, it is clear that you do not understand it and that you will always be disappointed, for in the bucket the water does not run. To 'have' running water you must let go of it and let it run." This it seems to me is the essence of apprehending beauty; part of what makes it special (in addition to what I have said about it in the past) is that it is fleeting and momentary.

Some people say that heaven would be a place where everything goes right, where there is no death, no pain, no misery. Some have even described heaven as a paradisical forest or oasis where endless sexual delights are offered. But in such a realm there would be no incentive to grow, to overcome anything, to evolve, to move beyond, to explore newness. Add just a little bit of adversity and you would have something little more interesting than a video game. Add just a little bit more adversity to that... and you have something that starts to resemble the world we live in.

Edit: Recommended viewing on this issue includes the movie "Pleasantville."

Comments

[yaksha2.livejournal.com]

I believe I've had this same inkling since I was eleven years old. Strange that it is such a thought that eliminates the desire for anything but change and so therefore people see that as very mundane and limiting.

Probably rather boring as well.
I'm going to take that quiz now.

kyle.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Yes, what makes us think that we would like the idea of being in a garden filled with endless bliss is the fact that bliss is so hard to find in this life.

[lucretius.livejournal.com]

If there is an eternal reward in the medieval sense--contemplating forever or submerged in the perfect & unchanging deity--I'm not certain that I'd want it. Not if the deity is the God of the medievals: geometric in its perfection and in its conception. I'm not Platonic enough to always favor the static over the dynamic.

Dynamism is such a part of our mindset, most of us, that we can't really imagine sufficiency & stillness & wholeness.

William James talks about ideas & states of equilibrium and satisfaction as "perchings." They come between periods of flying. Points of rest. Building a nest that will be sufficient forever seems to us maybe somehow a little dishonest--maybe even a little blasphemous.

Whitman, who I always figure has caught what was Ideal in the germinal America of his time, writes about an afterlife or destiny that doesn't stop at heavens or stars:

This day before dawn I ascended a hill, and
looked at the crowded heaven;
And I said to my Spirit: "When we become the enfolders of
those orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of everything
in them, shall we be filled and satisfied then?"
And my Spirit said: "No, we but level that lift, to
pass and continue beyond!"

Lu.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your thoughts, and the beautiful quotes.

Salvador Dali is said to have taken the motto of his homeland Spain, non plus ultra, and scratched out the "non" to make it "plus ultra" -- ever upward, never content.

A modern Platonic conception of deity might include a geometric perfection akin to the "strange attractors" of chaos theory; but even that might be too static in the long run.