Light on the Page» truth

Justice and Reincarnation

Landar — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:11:51 +0000

The conditions in which human consciousness develops stand revealed through our relationship to concepts. The concept of justice, for example, is one which winnows its way down through philosophical and religious thinking to the present day, when its relevance for humanity becomes critical.

We can ask, together with Socrates, whether a just person’s actions will ever harm another human being. And straightaway the edifice of law rears its head. If a prisoner is placed in overcrowded, insanitary conditions with no hope of rehabilitation, is justice served? Not according to our definition of the just person never harming another human being. Because, although it is justifiable to prevent someone from being a danger to society – as well as bringing them face to face with the consequences of their actions – it cannot be right to make them into a worse human being. As a matter of fact the concept of justice surely exists as a remedy for what is wrong in human beings. And although this will often offend you as a victim who requires retribution, the sum of human happiness depends on people becoming better – i.e. freely choosing not to harm other people. Thus the concept of justice is circular – it always comes round to improving human nature.

I wondered to myself quietly if divine justice isn’t the same. I don’t need to state definitively if I believe in this or that theory. I just need to hold the best ideas in my head and think about them. We have nothing to fear from ideas. People are often scared, for example, of the idea of reincarnation and karma. The bible says nothing about it, they object. Hindu or Buddhist thinking does not always seem to keep pace with advanced Western, scientific doctrines. By default people feel that their own existence matters and that it evolves and changes. But our current default intellectual position denies continuity of consciousness beyond death. What is critical for humanity is to square these things up in both the forum of experience and that of concepts. So when we consider reincarnation and karma – just as an idea – a similar towering edifice of law immediately appears, although this time in relation to divine justice. If, for example, someone is seriously injured through accident or attack do we say that it is a consequence of something that person did in a previous life? Is karma then just a question of like for like – what you do in one life happens to you (although perhaps in a slightly different form) in the next? Would this not simply be a case of ‘an eye for an eye’? (Or, when we say ‘the sins of the fathers are visited on the children’, do we really mean that your own actions in a previous life come back to haunt you in another?) Perhaps divine justice also finds it necessary to prevent someone from being a danger to society, or also likes to bring a person face to face with the consequences of their deeds? At any event, if we believe that justice is not synonymous with retribution, vengeance, or merely punishment, then how much more must divine justice be above these things? How do we square this up with all those situations where we find ourselves saying, almost involuntarily, ‘Where was God?’. Even taking into account reincarnation and karma it’s very hard to say that a gruesome accident is somehow just.

So by analogy with the very best of human justice can we say that divine justice serves to bring people to the point of freely choosing not to harm other human beings? Or that justice in itself – human or divine – is circular and comes round to improving human nature? It’s just a fact, of course, that human nature is a rattlebag of rights and wrongs. I feel this in myself on a daily basis and feel that the human being who is only good must be a statue or something else which has never truly lived. The whole of art and drama is built up out of the dilemmas of right and wrong. The development of human consciousness means to evolve, and to take the whole realm of your experience and concepts with you as a flesh and blood human being. That includes reincarnation and karma, and justice, as ideas or as experiences.

When I think about these things – and the ground and the sky – I feel the earth whirling around me and arrive at the viewpoint that the world itself is the philosopher and we human beings are its premises and arguments until, in conclusion, it – the world – remains only as a spirit which shines above sky, below ground, and deep into eternal night.

Tomorrows

All the treasures under the sky

are married in a drop of rain,

which conceals the sun in its window,

beds itself in the droughty earth,

miracles its nature in conception

and gives its mind to thoughts of life and birth.

If I had such a considerate soul

you would find me everywhere,

making this globe a drop of pure tomorrows.

Justice

And when I look for justice in the skies

or the ever-turbulent earth

my humanity must devil itself

with rights and wrongs in ferment.

Why, the earth is its own philosopher

picking over the human argument,

finding in one the premise of hope,

in another lengthening doom,

until in conclusion the world is only

a spirit which shines above sky,

below ground, and deep into eternal night.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

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Author: Jay Landar

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The Smallest Wave of a Great Ocean

Landar — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 16:21:39 +0000

Life plays itself out on two levels. The one is breath and blood and heart, the other is thought and feeling and understanding. A fatal damage may occur to either. If to the first then life is over; if to the second then what remains of life – all your days – may seem like an open coffin. However, Love might not give up on you. It might choose to place a flower on that satin bed. Then, though hope and trust appear to be gone, the miracle of new life or of life sustained takes place. I believe this is true. Even if someone dies with all hope and trust lost, that flower may still be placed there. It may happen at the moment of death – many stories attest to that – or, I believe, it may happen after. The miracle of new life or of life sustained will take place at some point.

This fact indicates the vital relationship between the two levels. On the one hand we don’t know why death, illness, accident take place; on the other we feel it is essentially connected with the inner impulse of thought, feeling and understanding. Love gives meaning or restores the balance – by that I mean the force which creates or sustains both levels. By its intrinsic nature this force is miraculous – we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t. At its most outward level it may make the dumb man speak or the blind man see. Only – we’ve grown so far away from understanding it. Faith is what binds us to it. But faith has grown like a very long arm stretching further and further away from the miraculous.

What separates us from the animals? Truth. The ability to apprehend truth. This ability gives us the means to overcome all divisions. Unfortunately, the faculty to divine the truth has been largely replaced by the process of rationalizing phenomena. In other words a faculty has been supplanted by a process, ‘divining’ by rationalizing, and the truth by phenomena. The verb ‘to divine’ is very little used nowadays. It accurately expresses our relationship to the truth at a human, non-animal, level. It contains the notion that truth is a treasure which is not so easily discovered. Ultimately, I believe, it embodies our relationship to the divine itself. As such it is the means by which we arrive at the flower laid on the white satin bed. It is the force which rekindles faith.

Truth can be as great or small as you like. It can be the smallest wave of a great ocean. That might be the wave which makes you take off your shoes and bathe your feet. It is the wholeness which brings your feet back to life again.

Walk

The hour long walk from truth to reality

may take many lifetimes: the perception

of truth must sprout into its living tree.

Many a beanstalk has been coined for this

and felled again in the evening of its growth.

I long for the sinews of that sap-filled wood,

for its pleasure in the sun, its thinking

in the rain, its maturing into sky.

What does a short walk in autumn achieve?

Leaves falling, lives left behind, truth turned real.

Wave

And truth is like the very smallest wave

of a great ocean – enough to make you

take off your shoes and bathe your feet until

the wholeness brings them back to life again.

And it is a poem, just unnoticed

while the world is busy with monuments,

but remembered when the soul longs for meaning.

And it is the evening after a day

of half-paid bills, of lights at red, of snatched

meals and thoughts trapped between layers of road metal.

Miracle

So if life slams shut its other lid -

and in there lie its jewels of hope and trust -

what can you see but the coffin of your days

lying open through the many years ahead?

Love places a flower in that satin bed -

the miracle of new life, of life sustained.

And even if you die and are laid to rest,

the call to breath and beating heart will wake you.

Best wishes, today,
Landar

The Noise of Many Places

Landar — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 11:10:05 +0000

Truth will always find its friends. I understand that because truth knows me and calls me by name. Who is truth? Pontius Pilate asked the question, ‘What is truth?’, because he did not know the being who stood before him. Would you or I have acted differently? Pilate was in a position of authority – he was required to act. He did not have the benefit of hindsight; the book had not been written yet. Would we have acted differently? And yet truth remains. It doesn’t matter that militant atheists will not give it a shape, a name, an identity. Truth will always find its friends. Sometimes they will emerge shyly, unexpectedly, at the point of defeat. Truth is the quiet shoulder in the turbulent man. It wears its chequered coat in company. Who would not want it to be a harlequin, a thing of many varied colors? And yet it stands by the person who bears its single color alone – the person who has no friends. It will stand with him or her until the end of the earth.

The stillness of truth rebuffs all agitation; it needs no convincing or persuasion of its right. It doesn’t waste its time in condemning what is wrong. It lets its silence reach into the noise of many places.

Silence

The stillness of truth rebuffs all agitation;

it is a citadel and will not yield its walls.

It houses life and love and stands above the earth

but chooses its messengers to speak aloud its name.

It needs no convincing or persuasion of its right;

it wastes no time in condemning what is wrong.

The stillness of truth has a certain home in me

and will never be shaken from its ever-spreading roots.

I will not force you to listen to my words

but will let their silence reach into the noise of many places.

Truth

Will truth stay in itself and shield its light?

It will not shun the market-square or hide

from people who’ve never learned debate.

It wears it chequered coat in company

but knows its friends by name and calls them out.

Yet it will stand by one who is alone,

who bears its colour with no one else around.

Even until the end of earth it will stand

when every false attack has gone to ground.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

Image: The Seated Harlequin, Pablo Picasso

Life Is a Dream

Landar — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 10:39:46 +0000

Which is greater, the love of life or the fear of death? If you level them out you have the sphere of earth: a roundness purporting to be flat. Earth is the sphere of our activity – we walk in it in life and lie in it in death. Therefore in a sense the joys and fears are equal. We forget ourselves by night and remember by day. We expend our life by day, recoup by night. As an individual I am an eternal thing: a myth born in a moment. I am like an ornament hanging on a tree which is already dying. The world is the vehicle for my existence but that existence must always pass away. As regards life things might as well be equal – the love of life and the fear of death. As regards my individuality, my heart is like a square object in a round space. It must go on trying because the earth is walking in me too.

Life is a dream; the waking point is pain. I hardly have the right to speak of pain – to quote chapter and verse – unless I am prepared to bear the burden of my own and help others carry theirs. Therefore I have to make myself a beast of burden. But as a human spirit I also want to soar up to the sun. How can I reconcile these things? Become a donkey with wings? An ox who ascends? I am what I am: I’m born to do and to try and to be what I can. Nothing will stop me even though I plod the silent road. Here it is that pain reveals itself as the light-bearer. It is the gilt on my hoofs, the silver on my tongue – it lifts me, one foot at a time, where I might otherwise not go. It ascends with me, raises me to the sun by diverse ways – the weight in the legs becomes lightness to rise up. And what is more it gives me the precious coin of expression: sympathy for all life. How else could Don Quixote – a dreamer – outride the jeers and remain a Don to the very tips of his toes? Because he knew the impossible can happen – he understood the roundness of life.

All this belongs to the question of fatalism or commitment. Fatalism is where things happen to you; you have no control over them and no choice but to accept them. It’s the condition you live in before taking the decision to level out the love of life and the fear of death. After taking that decision the flat roundness of earth is yours to live on. Pain is no longer an expression of fate but a commitment. Ultimately the gilt and the silver appear through it. No one wants or invites pain – but you have to dream like Don or fly like the donkey to ascend to true life.

Don

Do I have the chapter and verse to speak of pain

if I don’t make of myself the beast of burden?

And yet I also would fly close to the sun -

a donkey with wings? an ox ascending?

I’m born to do and try and be what I can -

nothing will stop me though I plod the silent road.

Pain is the gilt on my hoofs, the silver on my tongue -

it lifts me, one foot at a time, where I might not go.

It gives me the coin of expression, sympathy for life.

How else could Don Quixote outride the jeers

and remain a Don to the very tips of his toes?

Roundness

And which is greater, love of life or fear of death?

Both must level out to the sphere of earth,

a roundness purporting to be flat.

There I will walk, where days and nights are equal,

where honeysuckle tangles round the moon

and memory sips with forgetfulness.

I am a myth born in a moment,

an ornament on the tree already dying.

By dawn I will remember my name but not my being,

by nightfall I will have lived too long by half.

I will not cease from complaining that my heart is square

in a round space. And the world goes on walking in me.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

You can also find Landar on EVOLVER:
http://www.evolver.net/user/landar

Follow Your Own Path

Landar — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 14:14:39 +0000

There will always be guides along the way but the path you follow has to be your own. Your own star shines above it with absolute radiance. A true guide will never tell you to follow a different path – they will give you the understanding you need to follow your own. So many followers and believers cram into ships and railway carriages to follow the way their master has gone – then find that he is not there when they arrive. This is their own failing. The master will always be at a different point.

The followers and believers will lose sight of you if you take your own path. There is something magical or mercurial about going where your feet have to go. As if the feet themselves sprout wings. Hermes himself was a guide. He leads you to the underworld but you pay your own coin to cross the river. Each journey across is a separate one – no one is crammed together.

Others along the way will catch sight of you: those who are also following their own paths. What gives inspiration? The sight of someone religiously following a prescribed way – however exalted – or a glimpse of a person who has gone off into the thickets and briars of the unknown because their feet told them to do so? This person wears the flash of color, the red coat of the journeyman who makes his mistakes because his passion for the path is greater.

At the end of the day those who follow their own path arrive at the same destination: the far shore of the great river to Erebus. But they carry their own lamp now – they see in the dark. For others the upside-down torch of Hermes is the last light they will see.

Star

Do I alter my path as the wind blows?

If I’m wise I change my way.

But do I alter my path? Ah! -

the goal is already in me or how

can I make a path towards it?

But if the goal is the highest – say Love

on earth and I have never comprehended

such divinity, is the divine still

in me, as a star is above the path?

As I know love in your hands, in your eyes,

I know it in the highest I can reach.

Path

Let me not describe a path as mine

which has been laid out by another,

sanctified by their feet walking it

and followed by believers ever since.

Even though I see myself as small

beside them, unqualified to question,

foolish not to speak as they have spoken,

to learn as they have taught and teach again.

But let the path be mine which my own feet

cry out to follow, though they take me past

those same believers losing sight of me.

And let me honor those who say this path

was true – we know because you follow it

as we will follow ours and won’t lose sight.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

You can also find Landar here:

http://pagelight.blogspot.com/

(Image: Hermes as psychopomp)

The Holiest Secret

Landar — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 16:15:34 +0000

As a child, my hands held each day like a ball; my holiest secret the dark halls of night. Is this so any more? The child’s eyes are still there but they see different things now. The kingdoms of fantasy have not disappeared – but they take a different form. This fact is very difficult to isolate and understand, because childhood itself disappears and becomes a foreign land. But the eyes of the child are still the truest – within the whole human being. The earnestness with which a child plays, the complete acceptance of the world he or she creates – its inner consistency – contain everything we need to make ourselves into proper citizens of the universe. And here I’m trying to reach out to something an adult can hardly understand – to confess that I’m a child of the world who needs to ‘play’ with truth and with the elements of life in order to reintegrate myself into existence.

But everything I want to say is evaporating before me, as ideas will do. It’s dying into adulthood, losing the power of true conception. I want to reach out to that child, but he says, ‘I have played truly – what will you do?’ And I search frantically for my inner relationship to truth, to trust, to real reality – the one which hides behind our make-believe false reality and which is like a ball in the hands. And all the while I know I must be an adult who is a child – who can answer the question, ‘What will you do?’ The Christmas story is like this of course – to be able to look into that child’s eyes. Do we expect that he will only look into ours?

But before I dissolve into sentimentality I must make another assertion: I believe with every fibre of my being that that child can be reborn in us. I believe he will bring with him the proper relationship to truth and reality. But he needs the older friend to say, ‘Yes, I can help you, I can teach you – I will sacrifice everything I want for myself in order to do that. That is what I will do.’ Then you will see a smile on the face of that child broad enough to light up the whole world.

Play

And in those hours when I dream while I wake,

a world I’ve imagined appears in me;

and like any child who plays for play’s sake,

the fantasy in me is all I can see.

But when I am sifting my words for the page

these images float through the air shaped like clouds

which change by the minute – an hour being an age -

and capture the meanings which spread in their crowds.

Pen

When I was a child I rode like a king,

I carried in secret the sceptre and sword;

I was crowned ex cathedra, imagining

the world would unearth my fantasy’s hoard.

Now I know that mere wordplay has little to say

of politics, statecraft, the worries of men;

but I’ve learned of the kingdoms where truth and light play

and will always invent them again with the pen.

Understand

And childhood is kingship, fantasy all,

the world just a plaything, a toy to delight;

my hands are the holders, each day a ball,

my holiest secret the halls of night.

Is everything lost of the child in his hour,

does nothing remain of the sceptred hand?

He lives in my visions, his eyes the power

too loosen my images, understand.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

You can also find Landar here:

http://pagelight.blogspot.com/

The Steep Ascent

Landar — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 16:42:17 +0000

We’ve left words in their prison to languish and die. We’ve separated them from their origins and their gods. How is this? On the one hand we treat them as objects, devoid of living content. We deny them any connection to the things they describe, instead of seeing that they are the very life and soul of those things. The objects are real, the words are merely tools or appendages. And, in truth, words are tortured by this loss of heart. Then, on the other hand, we ourselves have lost contact with the world where words have their divine archetypes. In other words, we have no idea any more of the holy fire in which words and their ‘things’ were first created.

As a poet I feel this strongly – the soulless coinage of language. As a philosopher I lament the loss of the pure, divine world of origins, which unified our concepts and the words we used to fulfil them. And as a human spirit I swear to find those gods again, even if they dwell on the highest mountain peak.

In poetry I see the gods lit through, with excellence in sound and truth and tone. Should our words be slaves of earthly thrones, or tuck their wings in tightly out of fear? At a time when human beings are rising up for freedom, should we cheat our minds of that region where truth and words have their origin, where they can never be subject to manipulation and control? Freedom is more than the shifting off of shackles. The next set of debased concepts will merely come along to put them on again. To aspire to the world where words and thoughts have their archetypes is to unfetter the human spirit. ‘Everything under the sun is for love, and words exist to wake us to this fact – life gives us the hand and words the glove, a match that only nature can enact.’

Everything

Everything under the sun is for love,

and words exist to wake us to this fact -

life gives us the hand and words the glove,

a match that only nature can enact.

But what is fairer than the earth’s own kinds?

The mind that sees them, dresses them in light,

the heart that lends us speech, and finds

the birth of life in what comes to its sight.

Excellence

What can this language do that lives in things?

Repair the loveless, worship the unseen,

bury golden thoughts in the mind of kings,

send shepherds to the bourne of nature’s queen.

So must we let our words hide from the true

and curl our lip with phrases bleak as stone?

In poetry I see the gods lit through

with excellence in sound and truth and tone.

Fly

And words shall not be slaves to earthly thrones

or tuck their wings in tightly out of fear,

nor shall they be imprisoned in their bones

to take the shape of life where none may rear.

They have their gods where minds aspire to fly,

their truths eternal in the atmosphere,

and those who’ve dreamed them long and live to try

the steep ascent forever bright and clear.

Best wishes, today,

Landar