July 27, 2006
Once again, in words of mostly one syllable:
The message of true religion
never was designed \
to make our pleasures less.
Courtesy of Second Terrace, here, from Dostoevski's The Brothers Karamazov, on happiness.
I love that passage—it’s Cana of Galilee, the first miracle … Ah, that miracle, what a lovely miracle! It wasn’t sorrow, it was human happiness that Christ extolled, and the first miracle He worked was to bring men happiness … 'He who loves men loves their happiness,' Father Zosima used to repeat so often—that was one of his guiding ideas … What is true and beautiful is always full of forgiveness…”
Part of the intuition of Carl Jung and his idea of Archetypes is that qualities cluster, keep company in a force field. Thus
- happiness
- truth
- beauty
- forgiveness
-- according to Dostoevski's saintly character Zosima, these are
signals that Someone is Nearby, turning the water of "not-good-enough" into plenty of excellent wine.
The sorrows of the mind be banished from this place.
So writes Dilys from retirement, and so say all of us!
Update:
Second Terrace takes unhappiness -- madness -- straight up, too.
The problem of man today is not just that he chooses wrong, but that he cannot think straight. The reason why most conversation is bankrupt today is not because not much is said, but it is because not much can be said. There are not enough completed thought processes, not enough logical arguments comprehended, that can be rhetorically presented in valuable talk. What remains is the stuff that reigns in those ubiquitous cell phone dialogues, overheard in the darndest of places with the darndest of messages....
And I know that they are not one whit prepared for challenges or temptations. They will be set on fire by the merest of slights. They will jump to defcon red at the tiniest sight of rolling teenage eyes. They will be crushed by the first tragedy. They will run into the arms of the first seducer....
It is because, among other things, they have little moral imagination. They have no good stories or fables from a decent canon of literature. They have been shielded, by a cabal, from any poetic strain that could have made them root themselves into history, breathe in prayer, and reach like saplings into the sky of glory....
They have not grown into adults who can command themselves, their thoughts and their feelings. They can do this only by orienting their “psychic vision” (i.e., the nous) to Someone Higher: this orientation is the sine qua non of the Church’s ministry in general.
It is hardly necessary to add that such has not been done. The sane vision of Christ is not, in practice, the ministry of the Church....
Real Christian ministry, in contrast, usually does not excite, and will never titillate. Occasionally, it may not even succeed at bringing in the sheaves. But it will produce reason and peace...
I think you'd be interested in True Ancestor's post today about the US being the 23rd happiest nation on earth. The top five are Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Iceland, and the Bahamas. He's also got a nice link to a Buddhist discussion of happiness.
http://trueancestor.typepad.com/true_ancestor/2006/07/boo_hoo_we_dont.html
Posted by: Richard Lawrence Cohen | July 28, 2006 at 09:34 AM
"When a person is told that Buddhism is a way of self-examination, he focuses his attention on examining the real nature of the self. Then he discovers that the self is nothing worth loving or cherishing. Thinking this way, he becomes less self-attached, less self-centered."
Sounds a bit like the point in the update. "Grow up." However the alchemy of that is understood.
Posted by: dilys | July 30, 2006 at 09:33 PM