Reclusland

Ego, the self-image, is a scarecrow planted in your garden.  Being too busy dressing it up, we miss the birds and the weeds.  Instead, turn your attention to the cultivation of your garden, and let scarecrow take care of itself.

To insist on the primacy of movement originating from the self-image is to mistrust something that is trustable to the absolute.  To cling is to trust in something other than what is.  Everything that springs from such behavior is, ultimately, tragically flawed.  It carries within it the seeds of its own failure.

From “Pilgermann“:

“Every action is under His control,” said Firouz.  “How can that be, really? Think of the dreadful things that are done in this world every day.”

“The child is under the control of the parents, is it not,” said Bembel Rudzuk; ‘ yet must the child creep on its hands and knees before it can walk, and when it first walks it can only go a step or two before it falls.”

“True, true,” said Farouz.  “That’s all we are: little children creeping on our hands and knees.  The parent, however, doesn’t punish the child for falling, while Allah the Watchful will surely punish the sinner, will he not?”

“The child who falls when learning to walk has not the choice,” said Bembel Rudzuk, ” but the sinner has.”

“Then what was the use use of bringing the child into it at all?” said Firouz.  “It’s a useless analogy, it’s no help whatever.”

“It’s a perfectly useful analogy, ” said Bembel Rudzuk: “the consequence of not being able to walk is to fall and the consequence of not being able to maintain moral balance is also to fall.  How could it be otherwise?”

“To be in a fallen state,” said Firouz, “that isn’t so dreadful; all sorts of fallen people ride about on good horses wearing fine clothes and who can tell the difference?  I’m thinking about later, I’m thinking about the Fire where one burns and burns and is given molten brass to drink.  Do you think that’s really how it is?”

“I think the Fire is in the soul of each of us,” said Bembel Rudzuk: “those of us consigned to the Fire burn every day and every night.”

“Everything is burning,” said the Buddha, “burning with the fire of passion, with the fired of hatred, with the fire of stupidity.” (Vin. 21)

From “Pilgermann“:

My being was grating on this day as the teeth grate on a stone in the bread.

Many, many Americans come to me and ask for an African initiation, but I tell them no, that they should look into their own lives and the place to look is your suffering.  I’ve come to realize that there is some close affinity between what I may call the organized, indigenous initiation, and the almost random, unpredictable chain of suffering and pain that befalls just about everybody, whether it is here or elsewhere.  What I learned from it is that the similarity between the two is in the pain and the suffering—it does indeed serve a purpose.

I would like to believe that a major illness has to have a purpose; it has to have a function; otherwise, it wouldn’t just come like that.  My sense is that in the absence of what I may call organized initiatory pathways, somehow the individual spirit is strong enough to invoke its own initiation!