the power of everyday living...
[Lila; Chapter 32]
"And he remembered that Franz Boas had said that in a
primitive culture people speak only about actual
experiences. They don't discuss what is virtue, good,
evil, beauty; the demands of their daily life, like
those of our uneducated classes, don't extend beyond
the virtues shown on definite occasions by definite
people, good or evil deeds of their fellow tribesman,
and the beauty of a particular man, woman or object.
They don't talk about abstract ideas."
['The American Indian and the Problem of History'
excerpt taken from a chapter called 'The Metaphysics
of Writing Indian-White History' edited by Calvin
Martin]
"One begins by cultivating an appreciation for
the metaphysics of the Native American lifeway. The
first principle is that these people traditionally
lived in a world dramatically different from the one
we perceive, products as we are of the
Judeo-Christian, rationalistic, empirical, scientific
tradition. The Indian was a participant-observer of
Nature, whereas we in the Western cultural tradition
tend to be voyeurs. We keep our distance from Nature;
we plunge into it enveloped by an arsenal of
protective paraphernalia or admire it through a
picture frame or scrutinize it through a microscope
lens - antiseptically, removed from the Power of it
all. In the fourth quarter of the twentieth century
we seem still afraid of encountering Pan. Unlike
young Ike McCaslin in Faulkner's 'The Bear' (1961), we
are unwilling or unable, it is debatable which, to
rise at dawn and walk into the forest stripped of our
civilized accouterments to confront the great primeval
Bear. The result is that the Bear has nothing to
teach us-about who we are and what is meaningful in
life- because the wilderness has been either
suffocated ('conquered', 'subdued', 'tamed', etc...)
by Christianity and its technological offspring, or if
it has a residue of Power remaining in it we find its
speech incomprehensible - unintelligible. We may
listen to Nature but we cannot make out what it says.
Our wilderness has become a proverbial Tower of
Babel...
...The chief aim in life in virtually all North
American Indian societies was to be saturated with the
primordial Power of Nature which seemed to pulsate
throughout all creation. Hence the vision quest, the
dreaming, the magical songs, the drumming, the use of
hallucinogens, the use of ancient tobacco. All of
Nature was alive, populated by all sorts of beings -
animal persons, plant person, etc... beings upon whom
the Indian relied for physical and spiritual
sustenance. Perhaps most important, he learned who he
was by listening to the wisdom of the bear, the
beaver, the eagle, the elements, and so forth. Nature
talked to him in a way we may never fully comprehend -
in a way that Eiseley only glimpsed. He truly lived
in another realm. It is essential for the historian
to grasp this, to understand that the Indian of the
fur trade, the Indian of the Spanish mission system,
the Indian of the Tecumseh revolt or Wounded Knee
Creek - that all were individuals who lived more or
less in what we would call a mythic world."
http://books.google.com/books?id=RxwcbiPehWkC&pg=PA115&ots=600bPzhzr7&dq=Calvin+Martin+books&sig=If8OMeRTuc0hjDtP_Aq8GrBvBtY
This book edited by Martin above also has a
chapter titled, 'The Metaphysics of Dancing Tribes'
with a short poem at the beginning by Susanne K.
Langer as follows:
"Their worship is dance,
They are tribes of dancers."
['Chan Buddhism' by Peter Hershock]
"At bottom, realizing this harmony means
conducting ourselves as buddhas and bodhisattvas right
here and right now, in the midst of our present
relationships, just as they have come to be. Although
this is perhaps easiest for those who have left the
home life and taken ordination, as proven by Mazu's
famous student, Layman Pang - a free-thinking poet
known throughout China - it is possible even for those
remaining with spouse and children. Indeed, as Layman
Pang demonstrated, it is even possible for Chan to be
practiced with one's family. Chan is not a matter of
sitting in meditation in order to become awakened but
of carrying out every action from walking to sitting
to standing or lying down in unflinching readiness to
awaken. In doing so, we cannot lapse either into
denials of what is occurring here and now or into
longing for what has not yet come to be. Instead, we
must with uncompromising attentiveness make use of
precisely the resources present to revise the meaning
of our situation - whatever it may be - from one of
blockage and bondage to limitlessly fluent
liberation."
...the power of everyday living... dynamic quality...
direct experience... this does not short-straw any
static quality level... the impact of any
metaphysics/philosophy upon everyday living...
goin' for a walk in the woods with my son as my wife
is working and I will be working later on and now I
leave a computer that has become a friend thanksgiving
is in the air - good!
SA
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