if you could have a wish...
When, in the previous post, I wrote that I was hoping to do a crash course on issues relevant to understanding what life is, I definitely did not have in mind my visits to the Buddhist temples in Kyoto. This is an experience that stays with you. It's like the Pantheon, Agia Sophia, St. Peter or the Parthenon.
Surprisingly, the crowd of tourists was mainly "local", if huge. And, even more surprisingly, I found myself able to get "far from the madden crowd", the shops and the souvenirs. It required only a few steps at every temple and shrine I visited. People are unable to resist, here as everywhere, the powerful attractors of popular spots and large gatherings.
I visited, among many other places, Kiyomizu-dera.
Sometimes being alone, detached and with the game of life on halt, helps to think. You walk and kneel down in gigantic temples, which wood should not make possible. Strange, suggestive sounds; intentional noises that remain unexplained; prayers in languages you cannot help appreciating as if they were some watery music; smells that are instead familiar, incense being an all-gods favourite in every place. Slowly, calmly, lightly, step after step, hour after hour, you start entering into a different mental configuration, you may begin thinking about what life is. Really is.
The internal dialogue is a murmur that has been gently asking, its voice now uncovered by any external distraction, what you would like to achieve, and what were "the past seasons and the present, still alive". Leopardi gets mixed with Buddha, Passage to India to the War Memorial in Australia (why? Odd things free associations). Tokyo’s all-so-close to a blade-runnery future is pushed aside by atemporal monks in gray cloths, sweeping the wooden floors on which you walk barefoot.
A strange, oblong hammer in your hand bongs what looks like an oversized metal pot. You shook ropes to make noises that should please some transcendent force. Leg muscles are in pain, unused to the bent position.
And while doing all this, I was reminded of the old story of the three wishes, of the trivial trick of asking the metawish that all your wishes might be fulfilled, of the platitude that some wishes are dangerous to entertain and on and on, fast rolling down the road of shallow trivialities. I tried to hold on to a fixed point that would not embarrass me intellectually, in this slippery slope. The context asked for some reflection, not for idiocy and worn-out ideas. Yet willing to be smart is a self-defeating attitude, not a strategy. I tried to give up. And maybe half way down the road, or more likely at the bottom of it, I wondered, more seriously, what sort of wish I would like to see fulfilled, if someone were to ask me, in some omnipotent earnestness, what in me I would like to change.
I'm told that perhaps people often forget the essentials not because they do not take the game seriously, but more likely because they tend to be happy with their predicaments. One asks for beauty and money, health and success. I tried to ask the question as if it were a matter of biological re-engineering of my own personhood.
"When I was a child I spoke as a child I understood as a child I thought as a child...” ... and the wish was omniscience. I would ask for omniscience and put an end to all doubts and questions. That was the wish then, if one could be granted. I thought it was a good answer. That it was also a smart, sophisticated answer. I must have been ten or so.
When I became more arrogant, I looked down on that wish as quantitative and simplistic. I was a teenager and I asked for intelligence, the highest grade, so that nothing would be mysterious, all puzzles unraveled, all problems understood, all debates and arguments won. Not knowing all, but seeing it all through, that was the wish. I wanted to be immensely more intelligent. A lot more. Endlessly more. I thought it was a far smarter, more sophisticated answer.
I stopped asking the question for some time. Not happy with the answer, just forgetful. But in those temples I must have reached a better angle of visual. That intelligence business felt so immature. Like a taste you've lost for some food you used to crave. "... but when I became a man I put away childish things." ... or something along those lines. Because I thought that I cared much more about being a better person, about understanding in full, perhaps not much, but more profoundly. If I could cook myself like a new cake and only one extra ingredient could be provided on top of those already available, I would reach for the W jar and pour all of it in the mix. Wisdom, really, and above all.
If this is progress I don't know. But while seeing and listening to the sound of the leaves in the park of the temple, it appeared to be a much better answer to "what is life?" than my previous attempts. I must be getting old. Or perhaps better at playing this game?
Surprisingly, the crowd of tourists was mainly "local", if huge. And, even more surprisingly, I found myself able to get "far from the madden crowd", the shops and the souvenirs. It required only a few steps at every temple and shrine I visited. People are unable to resist, here as everywhere, the powerful attractors of popular spots and large gatherings.
I visited, among many other places, Kiyomizu-dera.
Sometimes being alone, detached and with the game of life on halt, helps to think. You walk and kneel down in gigantic temples, which wood should not make possible. Strange, suggestive sounds; intentional noises that remain unexplained; prayers in languages you cannot help appreciating as if they were some watery music; smells that are instead familiar, incense being an all-gods favourite in every place. Slowly, calmly, lightly, step after step, hour after hour, you start entering into a different mental configuration, you may begin thinking about what life is. Really is.
The internal dialogue is a murmur that has been gently asking, its voice now uncovered by any external distraction, what you would like to achieve, and what were "the past seasons and the present, still alive". Leopardi gets mixed with Buddha, Passage to India to the War Memorial in Australia (why? Odd things free associations). Tokyo’s all-so-close to a blade-runnery future is pushed aside by atemporal monks in gray cloths, sweeping the wooden floors on which you walk barefoot.
A strange, oblong hammer in your hand bongs what looks like an oversized metal pot. You shook ropes to make noises that should please some transcendent force. Leg muscles are in pain, unused to the bent position.
And while doing all this, I was reminded of the old story of the three wishes, of the trivial trick of asking the metawish that all your wishes might be fulfilled, of the platitude that some wishes are dangerous to entertain and on and on, fast rolling down the road of shallow trivialities. I tried to hold on to a fixed point that would not embarrass me intellectually, in this slippery slope. The context asked for some reflection, not for idiocy and worn-out ideas. Yet willing to be smart is a self-defeating attitude, not a strategy. I tried to give up. And maybe half way down the road, or more likely at the bottom of it, I wondered, more seriously, what sort of wish I would like to see fulfilled, if someone were to ask me, in some omnipotent earnestness, what in me I would like to change.
I'm told that perhaps people often forget the essentials not because they do not take the game seriously, but more likely because they tend to be happy with their predicaments. One asks for beauty and money, health and success. I tried to ask the question as if it were a matter of biological re-engineering of my own personhood.
"When I was a child I spoke as a child I understood as a child I thought as a child...” ... and the wish was omniscience. I would ask for omniscience and put an end to all doubts and questions. That was the wish then, if one could be granted. I thought it was a good answer. That it was also a smart, sophisticated answer. I must have been ten or so.
When I became more arrogant, I looked down on that wish as quantitative and simplistic. I was a teenager and I asked for intelligence, the highest grade, so that nothing would be mysterious, all puzzles unraveled, all problems understood, all debates and arguments won. Not knowing all, but seeing it all through, that was the wish. I wanted to be immensely more intelligent. A lot more. Endlessly more. I thought it was a far smarter, more sophisticated answer.
I stopped asking the question for some time. Not happy with the answer, just forgetful. But in those temples I must have reached a better angle of visual. That intelligence business felt so immature. Like a taste you've lost for some food you used to crave. "... but when I became a man I put away childish things." ... or something along those lines. Because I thought that I cared much more about being a better person, about understanding in full, perhaps not much, but more profoundly. If I could cook myself like a new cake and only one extra ingredient could be provided on top of those already available, I would reach for the W jar and pour all of it in the mix. Wisdom, really, and above all.
If this is progress I don't know. But while seeing and listening to the sound of the leaves in the park of the temple, it appeared to be a much better answer to "what is life?" than my previous attempts. I must be getting old. Or perhaps better at playing this game?
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