Danger, men thinking - no fig leaves in Paradise

    The other day, something Eric Rittenberry published in his Poetic Outlaws Substack Newsletter caught my fancy, which happens frequently there, and I tossed in my own immediate man thoughts. 

    Then, someone replied to my comment, and I had more man thoughts. 

    I received something new from Eric today, and I had even more man thoughts.

   Which reminds me of the “Danger Men Thinking” sign on the wall behind the communal table in the Starkville Cafe, Starkville, Mississippi, where only men tend to eat.

    Anyway, th’ar she blows! 

The Empty Boat
By: Chuang Tzu

POETIC OUTLAWS
FEB 28, 2024

To a mind that is still, the entire universe surrenders. 
- Chuang Tzu 

 

If a man is crossing a river
And an empty boat collides with his own skiff,
Even though he be a bad-tempered man
He will not become very angry.
But if he sees a man in the boat,
He will shout at him to steer clear.
If the shout is not heard, he will shout again,
And yet again, and begin cursing.
And all because there is somebody in the boat.
Yet if the boat were empty.
He would not be shouting, and not angry.

If you can empty your own boat
Crossing the river of the world,
No one will oppose you,
No one will seek to harm you.

The straight tree is the first to be cut down,
The spring of clear water is the first to be drained dry.
If you wish to improve your wisdom
And shame the ignorant,
To cultivate your character
And outshine others;
A light will shine around you
As if you had swallowed the sun and the moon:
You will not avoid calamity.

A wise man has said:
“He who is content with himself
Has done a worthless work.
Achievement is the beginning of failure.
Fame is beginning of disgrace.”

Who can free himself from achievement
And from fame, descend and be lost
Amid the masses of men?
He will flow like Tao, unseen,
He will go about like Life itself
With no name and no home.
Simple is he, without distinction.
To all appearances he is a fool.
His steps leave no trace. He has no power.
He achieves nothing, has no reputation.
Since he judges no one
No one judges him.
Such is the perfect man:
His boat is empty.

Sloan Bashinsky

Sloan’s Newsletter

Feb 28

Well, I sure flat ass flunked the empty boat test :-) As, apparently did Buddha and Jesus. However, did Chuang Tzu actually become an empty boat, who achieved nothing and nobody recognized him? If so, how did we know about him today? :-)

The other day, someone who deals with a lot of people in his work asked me why I keep tangling with messed up people online, and I said it gives 81-plus-years me something to do besides watch even more TV and read even more news online and talk even more to myself. It’s a job, for which I don’t get paid, whereas he gets paid to deal with idiots where he works.

For me, Poetic Outlaws is the place I visit online, where people seem to be swimming against the herd currents, seeking to be who they really are, which actually is a whole lot easier than trying to be someone else, which requires just about all of our energy to pull off.

Carl White

February 29

I don't really like the empty boat example. We don't yell at the empty boat cause it's not listening lol... not sure how that relates to being at peace or going with any sort of flow. Does that debunk the whole point? Surely not. 

Sloan Bashinsky

March 1

I think there are several important points in Chuang Tzu’s poem, and they do not entirely gee and haw together, which perhaps is the point? 

The poem is a culture jammer? A systems bunker buster? A call for fools?

For sure, any argument I get into requires my presence.

While I think to be invisible to other people might be an interesting life, a game of sorts, I like mixing it up with people I like, don’t like, don’t know well and may never know beyond a brief encounter. 

Yet, is the point of life to become “invisible” to others? 

That’s the 9th insight in James Redfield’s "The Celestine Prophesy”, published by Time-Warner, which made Redfield Time Magazine’s “The Celestine Prophet” and a whole hot of media publicity and money, to the extent he moved from Alabama to Florida, which has no state income tax. 

So, Redfield sure didn’t reach his own 9th insight :-). 

According to a woman I later came to know pretty well, she and Redfield attended the Unity Church on Highland Avenue in Birmingham, Alabama, my hometown. I was familiar with the church, having attended some services there.

The woman said she and Redfield bounced ideas off of each other at the church, and he turned their ideas into “The Celestine Prophecy”, and he gave her no credit and none of the loot, and she wasn’t exactly happy about being invisible and poor, while Redfield was raking in many millions off that book, and many millions off later books, and off speaking and leading a new mega religion.

I seriously doubt Redfield would have cared for living as she was living, as I was living and would live, as Chuang Tzu lived. 

Am I jealous of James Redfield? 

Hmmm.

Do I want his karma for preaching something he had not lived himself?

Hmmm.

Would I like to sit down and discuss stuff with Redfield?

Hmmm.

Would he want to sit down and discuss stuff with me?

Hmmm.

Would he be interested in reading my stranger than fiction books and novels at the free internet library: archive.com?

Hmmm.

In Chuang Tzu’s time, writings and oral traditions were how stuff was passed down, so someone had to know Chaung Tzu for us to know a little about him today, so he was not invisible in his time

Today, we have the internet and the web and even the dark web, and whereas being read there and watched and heard in The Redneck Mystic Lawyer podcasts by people at You/Tube and Torrent platforms all over the world is not the eternal life of which Jesus in the Gospels spoke, and of which Buddha spoke before him, it certainly allows someone who shoots off his mouth in cyberspace to haunt humanity for a very long time.

That reminds me of a old Sufi saying, “Let God kill him who himself does not know and yet presumes to show others the way to the door of His kingdom.”

That reminds me of the massive human space satellite junkyards orbiting the Earth, navigation hazards for visiting space traveling races, but not for angels and demons, who are of a different fiber altogether.

I wonder how Redfield, or Donald Trump, or Joe Biden, or Vladimir Putin, or the men leading Israel and Hamas, and Christians, Jews and Muslims, for just a few examples, would cope with being disturbed and spanked and stood and humiliated before endless mirrors, and their ignorance elucidated by angels known in their own Scriptures?

I can imagine Chuang Tzu would have welcomed it

l can imagine he actually experienced it.

I can imagine his poem is a multilayered weapon of mass destruction of maya, hubris, self deception, self importance, ignorance.

A puzzle with many moving parts.

A cosmic joke.

By a fool. 

    And,

Tennessee Williams on Love and Ego

POETIC OUTLAWS
MAR 1, 2024 

     

Excerpts: 

 

“If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.”
― Tennessee Williams
Like Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, one of America's most renowned playwrights, was a personage of the South, having been born and raised in the Mississippi Delta.
He once remarked: “I’ve never cared whether I shock people because I think people shocked by the truth are not deserving of the truth. The truth is something one has to deserve.”
Williams frequently incorporates elements of Southern Gothic literature into his plays, featuring themes of decay, grotesque characters, and the haunting influence of the past on the present. Many of his characters seek refuge in fantasy worlds or use escapism as a means of coping with their struggles. However, these illusions often prove to be fragile and unsustainable in the face of reality.
The following is a profound passage Tennessee Williams wrote in a 1947 letter- 

  

In creative fiction and drama, if the aim is fidelity, people are shown as we never see them in life but as they are. Quite impartially, without any ego-flaws, in the eye of the beholder. We see from the outside what could not be seen within, and the truth of the tragic dilemma becomes apparent. Not that one person is bad or good, one right or wrong, but that all judge falsely concerning each other, what seemed black to one and white to the other is actually grey—a perception that could occur only through the detached eye of art. 

Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see each other in life. 

Vanity, fear, desire, competition-- all such distortions within our own egos-- condition our vision of those in relation to us. 

Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. 

That's how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other's naked hearts.

Sloan Bashinsky

Sloan’s Newsletter

There are no fig leaves in Paradise, nor any secrets?

Ethan Summers

Interesting enough, Williams talks about seeing “each other's naked hearts”, not naked minds… 😉 But probably the heart seen as the last judge is enough to vouch for an honest mind 

Sloan Bashinsky

I have heard an idle mind is the devil’s workshop, and I have heard the heart has its own reason that reason cannot know :-)

Ethan Summers

Interesting point, maybe you are right. Maybe one should look into other’s heart before questioning other's mind. Yet I’m thinking that not having both the mind and the heart in sync, which is to say when mind dictates in matters of the soul and vice versa, is the guarantee for endless sufferings 

Sloan Bashinsky 

Perhaps first look into our own heart, mind and suffering, and then to no man can we be false?  

 

My eight grade class all had to recite Polonius to Laertes in class, and my 7th grade English class all had to recite:

 

The Fool’s Prayer

By: Edward Rowland Sill 

 

The royal feast was done; the King

Sought some new sport to banish care,

And to his jester cried: “Sir Fool,

Kneel now, and make for us a prayer!”

The jester doffed his cap and bells,

And stood the mocking court before;

They could not see the bitter smile

Behind the painted grin he wore.

He bowed his head, and bent his knee

Upon the monarch’s silken stool;

His pleading voice arose: “O Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!

“No pity, Lord, could change the heart

From red with wrong to white as wool:

The rod must heal the sin; but, Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!

“’T is not by guilt the onward sweep

Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay;

’T is by our follies that so long

We hold the earth from heaven away.

“These clumsy feet, still in the mire,

Go crushing blossoms without end;

These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust

Among the heart-strings of a friend.

“The ill-timed truth we might have kept—

Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung!

The word we had not sense to say—

Who knows how grandly it had rung!

“Our faults no tenderness should ask,

The chastening stripes must cleanse them all;

But for our blunders—oh, in shame

Before the eyes of heaven we fall.

“Earth bears no balsam for mistakes;

Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool

That did his will; but Thou, O Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool.”

The room was hushed; in silence rose

The King, and sought his gardens cool,

And walked apart, and murmured low,

“Be merciful to me, a fool!”

 

Luna Love

Hmm, I guess there are no suggestions as promised? Oh well. I didn't expect resources. 

Sloan Bashinsky

I’m just a tried old man who has run a lot of different rivers, some gentle, some not, perhaps my brain was damaged, my heart was many times, so I apologize for not understanding your comment, if it was meant for me. 

 

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com