frumiousb

Therefore we should not bewail our loss. Rather we should lament the fact that our consolation is still unknown to us, that comfort cannot comfort us.
pg. 68

Books like these selected me much more time to process and capture in these kind of notes than they do to actually read. At times, when I pick up a book that I have read and see how many notes I took in the margins and the volume of work that it implies to work those into this kind of format I wonder why I bother-- why I make the effort. But then as I progress, I find that it fixes my memory of what I have read. Retyping ideas and passages that move me, although costly in terms of time, help me hold sharp things that if sharp may well stay dear. A good lesson, even if I am currently two months behind in book reviews.

*****

I find it a little bit difficult to talk about religious or spiritual classics in this kind of public forum. I ascribe this to weak-mindedness on my part, rather than malice or misbehaviour on the part of others. I have found here in the past that when discussing thinkers like C.S. Lewis or Madeleine L'Engle that people are quite put off by what they have to say because God is so much the subject of their writing. This surprises me a little, and makes me reluctant to say very much about spirituality or the spiritual writers who I enjoy. Like I said, I see this as my issue, not a fault in others.

What occurs to me sometimes is that in many cases if a writer like L'Engle or Teresa of Avila substituted the words "universal consciousness"-- or some other relevant neutral term-- for "God" in their writing then it would not change what was being said, but would still make the writing more palatable to people approaching the work. I'm not sure what that means, except that I would suggest that it is worth considering that the ideas could be useful, beautiful, and relevant even if you don't happen to share the specifics of the writer's faith. Even if you do not believe in that kind of spirituality at all. As destructive as religion has been to critical and philosophical thought, it has also engendered a great deal of the thinking and writing that created much of the base for our modern ideas. While a great deal of religious writing is simply propaganda for the official Church, there is also a large body of work which is as delicate and lovely as its secular counterparts.

Anyhow, Meister Eckhart hardly needs an apologia from me, although I guess this is what this initial thinking amounts to here. Considered one of the great medieval humanists by many, he was still very much a man of faith. Still, this was one of the best reading experiences that I have had so far this year, and it both moved and informed me.

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with a commentary by Jung
trans. Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup
Oxford University Press
1927/1960


Translator & Editor

(As a digression from the review, would somebody like to tell me why it is suddenly fashionable in political blogs to discuss the occupation in Tibet as Not Such A Bad Thing?

I'd agree that it is not the biggest political issue facing the world today. Probably not even in the Top 10 of issues that we have with China. Still, I find the spate of the arguments kind of noxious, and wonder what is prompting the discussion. As far as I've read the arguments, they kind of run like this:

• They treat the occupied area better than their own provinces, so people should stop whining.
  
• The Tibetans didn't deserve to have their own culture anyhow because they had serfs! (As opposed to China's liberated agricultural population base?)
  
• Since they've been occupied since the 1950s, shouldn't we just accept that it is part of China? Get over it.
  
• Their religion is stupid. China is right to try to stamp it out.

Where the heck is this stuff coming from?)

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