hello everyone,
The end of the month (and the year) is in sight. It took me lots of time to
think out which part of Lila I like. To be honest I only like Lila for it's
philosophy, for the story I like for instance ZMM far better. Could we take
a similar "topic" an other month but then with free book choiche? There are
so much books in wich you can find quality.
-----
Its nearly the end of Lila and Lila and Richel have left Pheadrus. Lila's
doll, the idol, tells some interesting things and Phaedrus wants to give it
a good place.
* There was enough light to see the dark mark of the flood against the wall.
He placed the idol against the wall in sitting posture with its face towards
the see and he aranged the shirt carefully around it.
In his mind he said to the idol: " So, little friend, you have had a busy
existence."
He steped backward, made a little bow with both hands clasped together
the way he once learned in India, then he walked to the left with the
feeling everything was in the end allright now.*
(This passage isn't literally for I re-translated it from my dutch version.)
The scene above has somehow something dramatic but what really happens?
Just before Phaerdus is analysing Lila's "insanity" (and indirectly his own)
and says that people who are insane are only insane in regard to the rest of
society since they have created their own world with a other social "idea" ,
they live in a one-man society. And with that one-man society go other
rituals, like Lila's doll, or ,in sanskrit, rta.
Is the above a ritual from Lila's "society" performed by Phaedrus? Well it
looks like some kind of ritual but is it? By definition a ritual is
something what is being repeated time after time, but this ritual originates
at the very moment.
Wait, a new ritual? Then there is a Dynamic input and to make it ritual
there should be a static latch. But there is no latch, its a new ritaul
without repeating, its some dramatic happening without any (social) meaning.
I know this kind of rituals, some call them wild rituals, or, more objective
(uhum), dynamic rituals. I know them because I performed some myself. It are
irrational rituals and mostly even the people who know you best won't
understand them but they just have to happen. Sometimes they are so strong I
felt I would grew insane myself surpressing them.
What like most in the moq-philosophy is the possebillety that dynamic events
can get meaningfull. Further it learns that surpressing all DQ will make you
terrible static. The moq is the only rational system I found so far which
has a opening towards religion etc., in Lila is said that even mysticism can
be described and *understood* by the moq. Well, mysticism is what it's all
about. Wild-rituals have everything to do with mysticism.
But reading this passage over and over again I felt there is something
wrong. There is an error in the ritual which makes the whole unbelievable
for me (after all it is ofcourse fiction) and that is the lack of silence.
To carry out good a ritual you need absolute concentration. You can think of
the mythical concentration of budhist monks but it that's far to difficult.
When you pay atention you find concentration in everyday life, it is the
awareness of silence. When, for instance you are reading a book or watching
a movie and you are focussed on the book or the TV no thought will apear
wordly in your mind. You can't read and think at the same time; to overthink
your book you have to stop reading it. Especially zen-budhists spend all
their life trying to extend this silence of the mind.
This silence makes one very atentive for DQ. Isn't it said before that
ingenius ideas come when the mind is tired and unable to think, when the
mind wants nothing but sleep? Isn't it said that dharma comes mostly in the
grey area between being awake and sleeping?
Since a wild ritual is dynamic it should be performed in this state of
silence. But then there is one sentence:" So, little friend, you have had a
busy existence." Pheadrus was thinking all the time and that makes the whole
thing a fake, an imitation of what should be a wild ritual.
I don't know what else he learned in India and I'm sure Pheadrus/RMP
understands the silence-feeling for I find it in both books several times
but here for one moment he forgot his zen.
Greetings,
Jaap
------- End of forwarded message -------
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