It was pointed out to me recently by my good friend (for what are good friends for if not to challenge?) Jayarava, that I had not fulfilled the early promise of these pages by updating them regularly, and by implication, presumably, thus adding to the store of humanity's wisdom and contributing to the entertainment of my faithful few readers.
What then, can I say in my defence? Well, I am 71 years old and, I fear, getting old and sleepy, though not, I assure you, lazy. I am glad to say that some gleams of spacious blue sky are beginning to open once again on my mental horizon, and I feel able to attend to the important matter of updating this blog.
It is perhaps not insignificant, it just occurs to me, that I chose, some weeks ago, the image of blue sky (with a few clouds with silver linings) to head my web page.
My first instinctive defence against Jayarava's friendly importunity was to suggest that I have had nothing to say and that there IS nothing to say, but a moment's consideration revealed that such a position would be indefensible, and in any case, invite ridicule. My mind is as active as ever, though my body somewhat slower to respond than it was in earlier years, and the world surely deserves a more thorough critique than ever before.
What then have I been thinking these last several weeks, you may well ask? In brief, and not to set myself too arduous a task, I have been weighing up a recent aphorism of Sangharakshita's:
Samsara is disgusting.
The world, it seems to me, is getting worse, and so-called humanity, Quite apart from the horrors perpetrated by certain world so-called leaders and financiers, or thugs and muggers, and endured by a hapless populace,
I have begun to think that the world may well bring upon itself the kind of fate depicted so dramatically in the film The Day After Tomorrow, in which there is a cataclysmic change of climate, plunging the Earth into another Ice Age.
In an attempt to divert my attention away from such things, concerning which it seems the individual is powerless to do anything, I have plunged into a kind of escape, or, if you prefer a more positive description of my response, I have found myself reaching out, resorting or reached up, more and more, to the beauty of the literary world,
I recently read Sangharakshita's Dear Dinoo and was delighted not only with the Letters themselves but also with what I regarded as a quite masterly set of notes and appendix by Kalyanaprabha. Since I was spreading the Dhamma in India at the time of the book's launch, I was not able to hear the talk that Bhante gave on that occasion. I have since rectified that omission, thanks to the excellent recording available on Vimeo, and was deeply impressed by his ability to hold forth uninterruptedly and cogently for more than an hour, without the aid of notes. Than in itself was challenge enough, especially from a man some 16 years older than myself, and is one of the factors that has urged me back to this blog.
If you have listened to that talk, you may remember that Bhante cited a number of different instances of letters, stating with the Promissory Letter or Promissory Note, of Babylonian provenance, written in Cunieform, which is the precursor of the Cheque. You may also remember the way in which Bhante concluded that section of his talk, with his little dramatisation of the Cashier of the Bank of England exercising his prerogative of 'quantitative easing' by announcing in portentous voice 'Let there be a Billion Pounds'. I did not know whether to laugh or whether to throw up my hands in despair, for this, it seems, is just the flimsy sort of stuff on which the world's finances are based.
In addition to this earliest (and contemporary) form of Letter, Bhante went on to describe others, and to mention, in particular, the series of letters which constitute Richardson's Clarissa, a fine 18th century example of the Epistolary novel, Schiller's Letters on Aesthetics to the King of Denmark, Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, and Samuel Johnson's famous letter to Lord Chesterfield, roundly, disdainfully and magnificently rejecting the suggestion that the already famous Dictionary be dedicated to Lord Chesterfield himself.
Finally Bhante recommended for our consideration the Letters of Coleridge, of D H Lawrence, and of Philip Larkin. All these I have been eagerly following up (they are readily available on the Net), and I am now working my way through Larkin's letters to Monica with the aid of my Kindle.
In such a way have I been directing my attention away from the world and from mundane life, which seems increasingly disgusting and meaningless, and towards the beauty of the Literary World, which provides inspiration and gives meaning to what is otherwise a desert of meaninglessness or worse - a pit of iniquity.
What then, can I say in my defence? Well, I am 71 years old and, I fear, getting old and sleepy, though not, I assure you, lazy. I am glad to say that some gleams of spacious blue sky are beginning to open once again on my mental horizon, and I feel able to attend to the important matter of updating this blog.
It is perhaps not insignificant, it just occurs to me, that I chose, some weeks ago, the image of blue sky (with a few clouds with silver linings) to head my web page.
My first instinctive defence against Jayarava's friendly importunity was to suggest that I have had nothing to say and that there IS nothing to say, but a moment's consideration revealed that such a position would be indefensible, and in any case, invite ridicule. My mind is as active as ever, though my body somewhat slower to respond than it was in earlier years, and the world surely deserves a more thorough critique than ever before.
What then have I been thinking these last several weeks, you may well ask? In brief, and not to set myself too arduous a task, I have been weighing up a recent aphorism of Sangharakshita's:
Samsara is disgusting.
The world, it seems to me, is getting worse, and so-called humanity, Quite apart from the horrors perpetrated by certain world so-called leaders and financiers, or thugs and muggers, and endured by a hapless populace,
I have begun to think that the world may well bring upon itself the kind of fate depicted so dramatically in the film The Day After Tomorrow, in which there is a cataclysmic change of climate, plunging the Earth into another Ice Age.
In an attempt to divert my attention away from such things, concerning which it seems the individual is powerless to do anything, I have plunged into a kind of escape, or, if you prefer a more positive description of my response, I have found myself reaching out, resorting or reached up, more and more, to the beauty of the literary world,
I recently read Sangharakshita's Dear Dinoo and was delighted not only with the Letters themselves but also with what I regarded as a quite masterly set of notes and appendix by Kalyanaprabha. Since I was spreading the Dhamma in India at the time of the book's launch, I was not able to hear the talk that Bhante gave on that occasion. I have since rectified that omission, thanks to the excellent recording available on Vimeo, and was deeply impressed by his ability to hold forth uninterruptedly and cogently for more than an hour, without the aid of notes. Than in itself was challenge enough, especially from a man some 16 years older than myself, and is one of the factors that has urged me back to this blog.
If you have listened to that talk, you may remember that Bhante cited a number of different instances of letters, stating with the Promissory Letter or Promissory Note, of Babylonian provenance, written in Cunieform, which is the precursor of the Cheque. You may also remember the way in which Bhante concluded that section of his talk, with his little dramatisation of the Cashier of the Bank of England exercising his prerogative of 'quantitative easing' by announcing in portentous voice 'Let there be a Billion Pounds'. I did not know whether to laugh or whether to throw up my hands in despair, for this, it seems, is just the flimsy sort of stuff on which the world's finances are based.
In addition to this earliest (and contemporary) form of Letter, Bhante went on to describe others, and to mention, in particular, the series of letters which constitute Richardson's Clarissa, a fine 18th century example of the Epistolary novel, Schiller's Letters on Aesthetics to the King of Denmark, Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, and Samuel Johnson's famous letter to Lord Chesterfield, roundly, disdainfully and magnificently rejecting the suggestion that the already famous Dictionary be dedicated to Lord Chesterfield himself.
Finally Bhante recommended for our consideration the Letters of Coleridge, of D H Lawrence, and of Philip Larkin. All these I have been eagerly following up (they are readily available on the Net), and I am now working my way through Larkin's letters to Monica with the aid of my Kindle.
In such a way have I been directing my attention away from the world and from mundane life, which seems increasingly disgusting and meaningless, and towards the beauty of the Literary World, which provides inspiration and gives meaning to what is otherwise a desert of meaninglessness or worse - a pit of iniquity.