=SCSAB89N1 First doc for deep6 of b9 notes: *** NOTES TO my input of B9: {b9-1} {Comment (sa): Christianity has a through-the-looking-glass view of Judaism. As Henry Kissinger is said to have said of Anthony Lewis: He gets it wrong all the time. The more I look at Christianity, the weirder it gets. Which is regretable, because, speaking as a New Englander ( I was born in Cambridge. (That's not quite true, but my mother told me always to lie, and I try to honor her word.) Like, the triumphalism of Christianity is based on false suppositions. For starters, we were never a 'chosen people', just a 'choosin' people'. We chose to follow the Torah; the goyim could have too. And still can. And if Prophets could predict the future, they wouldn't get thrown down wells. So even if they predicted Jesus would be the Meshiach, the best that would get him would be a free Shabat dinner; he'd still have to meet the criteria for Meshiach, starting with throwing out the Romans. {B9-2} {Comment (sa): Not 'from all all the people' but 'amongst all peoples'. For each people may have its path; and there are good people amidst all peoples; and turkeys too. #l2 And Connie Osgood said: With all the turkeys in the world, no-one need ever go hungry.} {B9-3} {Note (sa): This is presumably Marvin Koussoy, who sometimes wears red suspenders ('braces' in England_English), as_it_is_said: "Why does a fireman wear red suspenders?" "To keep his pants up." #l2 {B9-4} {Comment (sa): This is difficult to swallow; but there is something in it. I transcribed a few seminars by PVK, and that's ok maybe, and I did it ok -- #l4 I'll bet you can't find 2 substantive errors in a Session -- and a side bet that you can't find more than 4 in my transcriptions of a week's lectures -- #l2 but something is lost in doing so. The teachings, which need to be almost transparent--translucent, become less translucent, more nearly opaque. One still learns what PVK said, but no longer what one was supposed to be inspired to do thereby. For this is something that, they say, one has to discover for oneself, maybe not even PVK knew it as he gave the lecture; maybe he was less the thinker and more the channel that I supposed. #l2 {B9-5} {Comment (sa): I think not. If it had been compiled on time, not before it was almost too late, it might have been an encyclopedia of folk-wisdom. Now it's still got some of that; but it's like one's old attack where one puts everything that was left, some of it valuable, some of it sentimental, some of it junk. I mean, those turkeys seem to have been up to their knees in black -- of, anyhow grey -- magic, and none of them any good at it anyhow. Throwing curses back and forth like Mongoloids with a beach-ball at a picnic. And they wonder why the Temple fell. I mean, this is "they didn't say a bracha before learning the Torah." EG stops in for a cup of cold Lavazzo & says: I read it in the Gemorra. I says back: Don't believe everything you read. He says: What you read and what I read is maybe different. EG says in short: The Gemorra is just a basis for the oral torah. The Siddur is often very deep; occasionally so shallow you can't even get your feet clean: I mean, that curse by Shmuel haKatan, and that dash of chavinist triumphalism in the Alenu. I get past the 19/18 (Shmuel haKatan's addition to the Shemoneh Esre) but not saying nor even thinking it, and by answering 'bruch shm_o' by not a final Amen. Which means of course that I can be counted as orthodox. Too bad. Next they'll kick me out of the Rotary Club. ). But so what of the ficker of it; what does on think. R. Zalman said: Keter. (And that is traditional.) I think: let the wind blow the chaff away; their schemes shoiuld come to naught. But everyhone knows: hate the sin, not the sinner. But I mean this shtuyot has bad realworld effects: many would deny Yigal Amir the prisoner's right to propogate; arguing that his seed though not be continued. We all got problems with our fundamentalists, Sam Huntington. But I digress.} #l2 {B9-6} {Comment (sa): With RSC , we often get the same old orthodox apologetics and question-begging self-justification, but somehow he makes it work.} {B9-7} {Comment (sa): Oh really. Adultery is what adults do. It's as American as Swap Clubs. It may often be a bad idea, but it's not a great sin; and there's no call here to trouble heaven with a plea to be saved from one's own free will whenever you go next door to borrow a bucket of Gilbey's. I mean adultery is not a problem since we stopped herding goats. Back in the good old days, the greatest danger to the societal fabric was that some bastard kid might come up one day and say, hey, I'm the first-born, all those goats belong to me. And then you got clan warfare, and then the AAmalekites hear the noise when they're sleeping off a drunk, and come down off the hills and wipe out the lot of us and take the chicks too. So that's why adultery is a Class 1 No- No. Or was. Only problem is, the Bible is so holy nobody every can change a word of it; but at least we'll be in good shape if there's a nuke war and we all have to back to herding goats. I mean: the first think you learn if you ever pretend to work for a living is: when you're paid by the hour, don't work more than 10 minutes of each one.} #l2 {B9-8} {Comment (sa): This is getting a bit too much, Butch. I mean really, not eeveryone who is non-Jewish is an idoloter (and, as noted elsewhere, not everyone who is isn't). I mean, ain't payot and wearing dry-cleaned black ffrock-coat and two hats in a chamsin more idolatrous than stopping by St. APatrick's Cathedral to sit in the cool shade and enjoy the bright colours of the stained-glass windows.} ============================================================ ==== ==== #l2 17 Jun '04 -- 29 sIvaN HH: There was a great window of opportunity from 1967 to 1973 HH said in the name of R. Shlomo: The first Shabat at the Kotel -- everything was possible. But one week later, people had frozen up again. And the haredim would only give you their fingertips. {Irrevelant Comment (sa): Alifa says: Tallit is associated with Shaharit, and so is associated with a time-bound commandment, from which women are excused. But this is no reason for women not to wear a tallit. The commandment of tzizit is not time-bjound; it applies to all one's garment; one puts on a tallit gadol before Shaharit simply because that is the start of the day; Shaharit is the first thing one does when gets up, washes, attends to one's needs, and dresses. Merely being 'associated' does not give the former the status of the latter; it depends on the nature of the relationship. #L2 {Important note: (sa): I think this then comes down to: the call by French rabbi's for French Jews to wear baseball caps rather than kipot, contradicts this teaching by RSC. That is an important point. It would certainly apply to the law by the French government prohibitting the wearing of kippot in public schools. {B9-9} There are ways one could weasal around this: that it's only during a limited context of the day; or that it's a courtesy to one's fellow students (but as Ezer Weizman would say: Enough already; Let them be courteous to me.} {Comment (sa): That is: If to break a certain mitzva or even minhag is presented as a symbolic disavowal of one's allegiance to religous Judaism, then one may not do it; for to do so is to foreswear one's acceptance of the covenant between the Jewish people and Heaven. This becomes quite an interesting topic. I want to say: you can see it as a solemn disavowal; I see it as coerced shtuyot, why should I bind myselfyour pig- headed interpretation, when my interprettion is illuminated by the light of Heaven. #l3 As_it_is_said (by me (and Jonathon Daniels said: Ah, another impeccable source)): What do you call a Jew who has just immersed himself in the baptismal font: a Jew with wet hair. That applies to the question: if A constrains B to disvow X [or more generally: to do Q as a symbolic gesture of disavowing X], while B does not freely intend to disavow X, or be does not consider his doing Q as a disvowal of X -- is the disavowal valid? I want to say: Obviously not. For one thing, a vow, and hence a disovowal, cannot be made under constraint; it is not valid if made under constraint. No more than money taken at gunpoint may be claimed as a gift. Too, I want to say: a symbol, like any gesture of communication, "goes through", is valid, only -- the computer analog of this is the 'handshake' -- if both sender and receiver perceive it alike (if not quite identifically; there is room in communication for imperfect communication, as judicially, justice must be tempered by mercy; din with chesed. #l2 OK: HOw does this apply to the French headscarf flap. The French have forbidden students at state schools from conspicuously displaying their religious affiliation by their dress, or even by their grooming. This applies explicitly to the headscrarves worn by strictly observant Muslim women over puberty (for Jews, it is only applicable to married women, and ends with divorce; I think Greek widow women wear black always, but maybe I'm wrong.), and to Jewish kippot. To wear a kippa is "a minhag that has the force of law". It is not a halacha (unlike tzitzit, which is explict in the Bible, with no indication taht it is not incumbent upon both women and men; although by minhag it is restricted to men). Wearing payos is explicitly done to distinguish us from the goyim. (Legalistically, it fulfills the mitzva of 'do not trim the corners of your head'; but surely to wear payot with a close-cut head violates the spirit of that mitzvot, and even mocks the mitzva with a minimalist observance. It's the sort of thing a child would do to aggravate his parents: You said I couldn't eat the Christmas pudding, but you didn't say I couldn't eat up everything else in the Fridgidaire and give the rest to the parokeet. Obvously ultra-orhtodox dress would not be permitted under French regulations. Since the purpose -- darned near the sole purpose, for it's about as unostentatious as an 'I am Humble' George Bush billboard -- is to state publically, I am Jewish -- then prohibiting such dress would seem to demand a disovowal of that publically made symbolic avowal - hence one would be prohibited from adhering to it. I think this then comes down to: the call by French rabbi's for French Jews to wear baseball caps rather than kipot, contradicts this teaching by RSC. That is an important point. #l2 Everyone knows: I turn on the bathroom light in the middle of Shabat night: so does this then mean, "you've I've blown it, Shabat for you was only 4 hours this week, too bad Chad, you might as well go out bowling Saturday morning." [And you see now the viciousness of the Accuser: it -- and it is an it, no more, some dippy little demon in a Basic loop) -- it tries to afflict us with our own virtues; to say, this is your ideal, and you've failed, so "despair and die" ("Shakespeaare", MacBeth). It is pure Din. It is untempered, unhumanized, by Chesed, by Love (Ishk-ALLAH; the Sufis say that one better than we do, even if they ain't go halacha and tend to go all_or_nothing on Din). So (and everyone knows that; it is dead; down with the shade-ees of Hades. #l3 What a price we pay for building civilization, if you can call it that with a straight face, on sexual repression. #l3 And Cindy said, #l4 (from an end-user's perspective, but I think much more too)) Sorry about that TABBYCAT, but it was too cute to let go of. #l3 what a pity mothers don't sex-train their little boys, the way they toilet-train them: 'Nice erection' like 'nice poo_poo__do' #l2 No; everyone knows that you just keep on doing Shabat, the best you can. (In contrast: once one breaks a fast, one cannot resume it and count that as keeping the fast. Though I don't see why one can't resume it anyhow, "without expecation of a reward". *** {Comment (sa): In defense of avoda zora, and idolatry. It seems to be that the present-day baal tchuva opposition to avoda zora is a bit unfounded. First of all, the Source ain't at all clear. Sure, Nadav & Abihu got hit by lightning, but it's not clear what their sin was; nor do they seem to be regarded as sinners. The worst anyone says of them is that it was excess zeal. Their burial was not entirely honorable, but it was not without honor; their bodies were carried outsdie the camp by their kinsmen, as I recall. Aharon haCohen produced the biggest Avoda Zora Show until Cecil B. DeMille, and he didn't even get a parking ticket. I mean, Miriam got hit with a lot more just for a passing remark about that nigger chick; and she'd saved Moses' life. They say, the golden calf was no problem because you could see right through it, back up to Mt. Sinai. And everyone knows that; idolatry is merely a matter of opacity; if you can see through the -- what do we call them, propadeutics? -- the gizmo to what it indicates, idolatry ain't so bad. I mean, those Greek orthodox icons, the Roman Catholic crucifix, a statue of Buddha, Heck, I've seen worse in the way Baal Tchuva brats use the ArtScroll term for Deity. And what's this with kissing everything in sight, from Torah Scrolls to tzitzit (the worn kind; the other kind is not avoda zora). And they way they do kabalat Shabat here like they were cheering at a football game, or zobieing out at a disco. There's more spirituality in the bump and grind of a garbage truck, Oh Noble Scarab. And as for Korach and is crew, the firepans became the altar covering. As for Tractate Avoda Zora, I gather that's mostly about what you can't sell to a Roman on the Day of the Bachanalia of Buggeroo. } {b9-11} {Comment (sa): I dunno; as_it_is_said: "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me." (Cambridge Massachusetts (Sacramento Street), 1940's.} {b9-12} #l2 {Comment (sa). Right. Monthoeism stands in contrast to polytheism, which is here crudely perceived as idolatry. So non-idolatry is not (or one might say: not merely) a law within monotheism; it is the very structural principle of monotheism.} {b9-13}} #l2 {Comment (sa): Oh shucks: Nobody worships idols, except for the owners of a Rolex watch. Everyone else addresses their prayers to a symbol of the Divine: be it a golden calf, an icon, a depiction of Christ on the Cross, or an imagined 2nd or 3rd Temple above the Western Wall. #l3 I sat in the tipi -- actually it was the New Buffalo rebuilt circle, dug down about a meter -- basement apartments never seem to work -- so anyhow, I was trying to look at the middle of the road all night -- and towards morning Sunhawk walks over from is place at the top, and stands in front of me, so I have to look at him. So anyhow (to tell it again here) there I was at the Abode Camp, and PVK invites us to ask him questions, and I really want to ask, should I go back to grad school to pick up a PhD like everyone else is doing that year, but maybe I fear too personal a response, so I frame some high-falutin' question about the role of philosophy in spiritual whosamagis maybe, and PVK says, in effect, best's I recollect: Well, it's said that [doing, but I don't think he used that word] philosphy is like a blind man looking for a black cat in a coal mine -- and then he says something about, it is good to focus on people. I don't know recollect what else he said; maybe it's still on tape. An inner voice then speaks unto me, saying: Bullsh_t the Oracle, and the Oracle shall bullsh_t you back. Gedalya Persky later says to me, he was Camp Director that year: Hey, that's great, you've already got back your price of admission. George Robinson once said to me, in effect, learn to concentrate on and appreciate material things. That was at New Buffalo, when I was flipping out. Mike Duncan once said, Poor Steve, he thinks everything is so important. I was as usual up to my neck in psychic flotsam and jetsam -- my mother once remarked to me, in passing, though we never discussed or even acknowleged the topic: Oh, I know all about that stuff -- and methinks I heard a voice that I identified as Little Joe's saying: Don't listen to them, listen to real people.} #l2 {b9-14} {Comment (sa): It is a welcome sign of progressive whatchamacallit for the Rabbi to say that we can eat ham sometimes; but he fails to make clear precisely when we can. #l3 Based on my own experience, I would say: When the Dorfmans serve Westphalian Ham (or whatever it was: some Rambam of Hams) with very froth eggnog at their New Year's Day At-Home. #l4 And Sammy Cauman once said to me, at their New Year's Day party in the Apartment on Riverside Drive: Steve, you must try the lox; it will break your heart. I mean, I'm walking in the Ozarks, and this hillbilly comes up with a shotgun and says, stranger, I don't know who you are or why got all them knots hanging out from your underwear, but you better cut yourself a chunk of poor old honey-fried Pigasus here, and wash her down with a slug of West Virginee's best, 'cause today's my Pappy's birthday and he gets real sad if he thinks folks is too stuck up to eat with him, and I was really hopin' to save these two shotgun 45's for grouse-rousting season. Then I can eat ham; that hillbilly wouldn't know halacha from Secaucus, and means no offense to Judaism; he'd as soon blast an Anglican. Maybe sooner. But in most cases, if someone demands of a Jew that he eat ham, it is intended as an insult to his Judaism. RSC seems here to be attempting a sort of Wittgensteinian move, where one one would have a few very basic, very fundamental principles of Judaism -- don't kill, don't bow down to idols, don't adulterate holy deadlock -- which one must under no conditions violate -- and then the halachot, which one can violate to save one's life, provided that such violation is not perceived by one's persecutter as a repudation of one's participation in the covenant. This is analogous to Wittgenstein's remarks at the end of On Certainy, where, if I recall, he is trying to set out some very basic principles, analogous to his super-position in PI of "very general facts of our natural history" above the much more recognizeable and prevalanet "forms of life'. } {b9-15} #l2 {Note (sa): To put these mythic metaphors in a metaphysic mode: The 'covenant' ("we are chosen") is logically prior to, on a higher level than, the halachot ("Mt. Sinai").} {b9-16} #l2 {Note (sa): This gives a context for RSC's teaching -- really, one of the "cash tora's" -- teachings that you should carry around with you, because you can spend them like cash when you need them (there is an Israeli term for cash, which essentially means, cash you can spend, checks you should save to cover up mouse-holes) -- -- that of course the Gates of Repentance close with Ne'eila of Yom Kippur; but if you don't make it through in time, you get through from the Succah on Sukkot, and if you still don't make it through, you can float on through on the light of Chanukah.} {b9-17} {Note (sa): The fleishig son-in-law is the Mitnogdim, and the milklich is the Chasidim. And nowadays all either of them have left is potatoes. } {b19-18} {Comemnt (sa): This is maybe PVK: getting into the consciousness of a great being.} {b19-19} {Comment (sa): And anyhow, idolatroy is nothing to get hoarse or herse over; everyone who's short of Englightenment is idolatrous to some extent. Idolatry is just the Hindu notion of maya, trapped in the world of appearances. Plato said that -- idols of the agora and all that -- and Plato is like, Great White Dead Books. Recommended by Howard Bloom of Yale, and if that ain't WASP Heaven I'll take pastrami on rye. } {b19-20} {Comment (sa): Paul Wienpahal (UCSB, 1967-1968 I was there) in one class said, you think you know what a Zen Master is, but did you ever see one -- all you have is your picture.} {b19-21} TEXT: Why does it come out that we are alone ...[3-dots typescript] X the world level? Because the holiness of a Jew is that he is alone with {Comment (sa): Cf. HIK: "aristocracy of the soul and democracy of the ego" But Cf. too the story of the Sufi Master who longed to perceive the Oneness of the Infinite. So the response came, "Oh, I" and the lonliness was unbearable [Adon Olam says the same]. So the Master said, I can't bear it, and the respone came back, "Oh, Thou" , which was bearable [I suppose that's Ishk-ALLAH]} #l1 #l2 {Comment (sa): PVK once said (Zenith '97 (I think '97:): 'When I take a retreat (ie, in his later years) it is only for you, not for me.' Indicating that PVK had already reached wherever it is one has to go on one's own behalf -- he used to say: 'Don't you dare die until you have reached' - - I think his word was 'Englightenment', bbut maybe 'Illumination'. Surely not 'Awakening'; that's no place not to go on from. "Nymph in thy orisons be all my sins remembered" (Hamlet). Oy. So to my point: I don't know if one would say RSC had reached Enlightenment; he was more dedicated to public service than a monk, and more humble too maybe, for he veiled both his achievement and his humility in a personna that he most have deemed the most useful guise, like a monk's robes, for what he had to do. A loveable, somewhat bumbling friend to everyone. Well, maybe I can guess why R. Joshua Witt, who was R. SC's main man in Israel, dropped out; it's a darned heavy cloak, for all that it looked lighter than light, for a successor to put on. "Say what we mean, not what we ought to say." (King Lear). But what I started to say is: RSC's earlier teachings, here, seem no less deep, to me, than his later ones. This is a surprisingly deep teaching. Only I find it quite hard to get to the depth in Judaism; there is such a trapping of metaphor to get through, with all that semi-anthropomorphic mythic_historicism. I mean, that's why I'd go to HIK (and maybe PVK, tho he's much more complex) for mysticism, not to kabala or any of whatever else there is for Jewish mysticism. The SOW carries much less overhead; it uses the simplest possible terminology, where in Judaism the primary requirement is to contrive consistency with the canonic text. And to do that is often quite a twist and dance. (We had one of those 'grapevine' dances at Shady Hill, when I was a child, a circle dance where every other person raises their arms, and the others, still holding hands, duck under and then come back -- the Book of Cells could barely be more intricate. You will find much mysticism encrypted in the folk-art of England -- the nursury rhymes (Ba-ba black sheep is an apalling example, it does deal with black magic, I think), or such a dance. Ok, you want a safe easy example, knock the neighbors: the Christians long for the Second Coming, overlooking the unwanted side-effect that the prerequisite is the annihilation of the world -- one's personal world, or everyone's personal world. No doubt the dead have a great time, but they can't smell the roses in my back yard, or grab a piece of brie from the 'fridge' (this is the sort of whimsical nostalgia for life that Woody Allen expresses so well) -- except in recollection, and maybe that''s just as vivid. But PVK once said, when Three Island hit -- this is that near-- nuclear power plant disaster in the mid '70's -- , the -- whatevers -- wanted to help, but they had to ask, 'Where is it'. } {b19-22} {Comment (sa): Well, that's true enough. My electic friends in the SOW seem barely to have glimpsed what Judaism is about. Of course, neither have I. I mean, oy, is there a learning curve to Yiddishkeit. Again: the intricacy and hence opacity of its 'meta-language' (to use Baker-Roshi's term, Zenith, '89, as I recall, #l3 CAVEAT TABBYCAT; SKIP THIS ONE: the year I climbed to the edge of the snowfield, and wound up snuffling after Claudia back to Hamburg, where I darned near wound up as Hamburger-helper when I vacillated too long about going back to Israel for Gulf War I. #l4 OK, someone said, don't knock yourself, that's loshon hora too. I was cool, Claudia "who floated up trails like a red-maned horse" (the image is from Franz Marc; being ingeniously bright but under-educated, and so turning her mind, I think now, to interpersonal games (she once said she found young men 'uninteresting'; no great compliment to one who'd just turned 50 in time for a last fling -- she tried to Henna my hair but it didn't take -- and get me to wear tighter pants -- my first impression of Hamburg is an underground supermarket so full of so many kinds of yellow cheeses that I could just stand there, Country George, and laugh. #L5 And now Q, turning 60, is spinning around over a chick who's in her prime and driving it, and won't let him use Viagra because it's not natural -- I mean, talk of sexual domination, that gambit should be ruled out of bounds by the Geneva Convention. #L6 (The New Yorker, especially Thurber, used to be genteelly eloquent, with whimsical nostalgia for all our set-aside dreams, about 'the war between the sexes.) #L7 But I digress. So anyhow, I think it's fair to say that the SO has not given Judaism it's proper place. HIK seems to say very little of it; though of course he would not have had much chance to find the real practioners; they were mostly in the Pale then. PVK seemed to find the eloquent lamentation in it -- the sort of hazzanut -- Wallachian? whatever that is -- that I heard in Temple Bet El in the 50's -- I hardly hear it in Israel -- very lyrical, a few of RSC's runs touch on it; but his whole work was to move the professional musicality of hazzanut into a very simplifed musical nusach -- or so it seems to me, knowing almost nothing of all that; BZ could say -- AoK seems to take his Judaism from "The Jewish Treasury of Folklore", which was my state-of-the-art hanbook of Yiddishkeit in the USA 50's, but is so watered down it can barely sit on a coffee table without blushing -- "everything he knew about Judaism could have been poured into a thimble, with room left over for a short dry Martini" -- unfair bit of wit that, chap. Coffee break is over; back to work, jerk. I mean, what I always wanted to say was, don't take that almost elegaic hazzanut as paradigmatic of Judaism; take the joyousness of Chagall. Apologia pro chutzpah sua 040630: You see, I'm not really trying to freak out the frummies -- epater le bourgeoisis always was my favorite game, from beatnik to hippy to -- oh well, other masques to hide from myself what I should be -- freaking out the frummies is merely a fringe benefit. What I'm really trying to do is show the SO crowd that we're relevant too. So all my cross- comparisons with teachigns of PVK et al. are not essentially a matter of waving feints of avoda zora at the bull of orthodoxy -- and in many ways Judaism is a path for the petit- bourgeoisis. Jewish practice is the opposite of estotericism; it's set up to be useable by everyone -- that's the point of ruling the mitzvot obligatory. The Abode wanted me to come to a membership meeting on Saturday. I tried to say, I can't, that's Shabat, and this sure sounds like work to me -- I mean, I'd have to go in there and find the right mix of obsequiousness, charisma, and whatever; and contrive the right style of words -- that sure sounds like work to me; I mean surely you don't expect me to approach something so valuable to me with honesty -- what a risk that would be -- So anyhow, someone said then, she was new on the job, 'Surely you can give up a bit of your Shabat' -- "and I am dumb to tell" (Dylan Thomas) that the mitzvot are obligatory -- they ain't like eclectic secular practices, S.S. Pierce snack packs on the path to self- fulfillment -- for one surely could give up one or two of those once in a while for the common good -- You know, I don't re-read much less edit this stuff after I've typed it; I'm not sure I could bear to. Why are the mitzvot obligatary. Because if they weren't who would dare do them. We'd all deem and condemn ourselves as unworthy. Again: And PVK used to say: If you're asked to do something, it doesn't necessarily mean you're qualified, it just means They [ is this 'Elo(k)im'? -- I can barely guess ] couldn't find anyome better. Yoiu see, that remark coems as a great relief; it excuses us from having to judge ourselves worthy.} {b9-23} {Comment (sa): [again, usual term for designating the Ineffable or Infinite or whatever you say in better circles -- the Parterre, I assume; I mean, why should religion, that most precious of Accessories, be democratized -- seems to be omitted, which is most appropriate; the only other convention that comes close is the use of two apostrophe's. I once though, if one were setting a Psalm and came to the name for the Infinite, one might use a single stroke on one of those tiny Zen gongs that signal the start and stop of mediation.} {b19-24} {Comment (sa): Again, R. Zalman once said: Nowadays kabala is not estoeric; you can buy it at any paperback store; was esoteric now is halacha. And so maybe it ain't the deepest teaching we have to share, but maybe it's the most needed, and most useful.} {b19-25} {Comment (sa): A similar point is made in Wittgenstein/Austin ordinary language analysis, but only implicitly. Ordinary language use make sense because it always deal with exceptional instance; or one could say, it always occurs in contrast. That's what's wrong with Moore's "I know this is my hand." (I forgot to tag it with I put in the the cyrogenic freezer before taking the space shuttle, but I'd recognize those dirty fingernails anywhere.) You see: Moore's statement seems to be a bit of very general wisdom; but really it's nonsense, in any ordinary context, unless it occurs against the context of an even more nonsensical situation. } {b19-26} {Comment (sa): No, I should think that if one moves slowly enough, and in a civilized manner, one can increment in a continuous way. I should certainly hope so. Though few succeed. Until late Zenith, PVK seemed to take it as just one of the costs of climbing up the spiritual mountain, that one would be hit with "a breakdown that avers itself to be a breakthrough" -- everything falls apart -- you come back from the retreat in a state of bliss, lose your job, your chick walks off with the postman, maybe some physical ailment you were holding off sees that the sentry has gone into sartori, and takes the chance for a quick zap -- and then -- "a palace built in a ruin", as they say of the dervish -- you rebuild a new self, a new personality, far better than the old one. Well, that's 'dissolve et coagule', with a vengeance. But in late Zenith PVK once spoke of the "art" -- that was his word -- of being able to break down and rebuild better, without things falling apart. I mean, I think -- hope anyhow -- that it is not essential to the SO path that one must be tested -- HIK says, you are tested only when you want to "get ahead" of yourself (that's not HIK's words, but I think it is his sense) (I once heard a few Indians in the tipi, as we talked in the early morning, say "I don't get ahead" -- maybe that's what they meant -- you see, each day in Shaharit we pray, 'may we not be tested and not do that which causes dismay ' -- which suggests that it ain't like high school, when I cruised through with all A's, so they made me co-valedictorian -- Fran Goldberg also got all A's, so we split the gig -- I took advantage of my position to laud "The Beat Generation and the Angry Young Men" (and what prunes the latter were; but one needed any icon one could get in 1958. ) I praised dropping out and going on the bum. In '61, after I quit Oberlin and transferred to UC Berkeley "to meet girls" (that's a Jules Feiffer tag-line), I crossed paths with John McCormick, a football player from Belmont High, who had apparently taken my advice; as soon as he said hello I recognized him and walked away as fast and evasively as I good. I suppose after that I went to the snackbar or the paperback racks in the bookstore. "One copes." (that's a line from my Jonah poem.) But anyhow, this is Reb Nachman's forward surge and backward fall (that's HOmer's ocean on the beach metaphor, tide coming in); and it is PVK's 'dissolve et coagule).} {b19-27} {Comment (sa): Ok, for starters, it ain't a matter of 'believes_in'. It's a matter of perception, or attunement, or sensitivity -- like the fact that some women can feel emotions, and quite a wide and subtle pallette of them; it must be lovely experience sometimes, though I wonder how they can then get anything done. And it must be a great nuisance most of the time; I mean, if the world as worthy of our psychedelic consciousness, we would have been born with an LSD gland -- an operating one, I mean. I mean -- it goes without saying -- and had better -- that I believe in the existence of whatever I perceive. I mean, I don't usually fear I've flipped out. I mean: I believe in John Kerry; not unconditionally, as if he were the re-incarnation of Jesus or Elvis (ah, America), but I believe that he'll do much better than Bush, even though, being a Presidential candidate, he does not dare say what he'll really do -- and I may believe that there will still be water in the creek near the top of the next ridge, so I'll drink up the last in my canteen before we climb it -- but what does it mean to say, 'I believe G_d exists'. And a pseudo-question invites pseudo-answers.}