Annotation by Mary Brown: An energetic, conservative housewife and business woman, deeply interested in self-awareness.
You don't need any instruction on the poem. William Blake expressed this idea very frequently. I remember that once he said
Socrates taught what MeletusAnd one of his Proverbs of Hell reads, A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
Loath'd as a Nation's bitterest Curse,
And Caiaphas was in his own Mind
A Benefactor to Mankind:
Both read the Bible day & night,
But thou read'st black where I read white.1
I am sending back your Russian poems, which I thought very beautiful. I like translations and find them particularly interesting when they are printed opposite to the original. I have a Greek set, KTEMA ES AEI, and I think you saw my Rainer Maria Rilke. Recently I read a new and very intellectual life of Ronsard but it had a copious selection of his poems — with prose translations!
I guess P's origin is as good as anybody's and better than some. I don't think much of origins anyway. The lily springs from the mire, and Jesus was born in a stable. We'd have a fit if any of our relatives were born in a stable.
I think the reason so many people are mixed up is that they think more of self-improvement than of doing the will of the Father. The aim is self-knowledge rather than self-improvement. We don't expect a cockroach to be other than he is, and when we can look upon our planetary constitution with the same dispassionateness, then self-improvement comes as a by-product. This is the only way it can come. The merit is in the work, not in the fruits. I am writing a book for you.
Thank you for the book.2 It contained some of my favorites and shall be my constant companion. To use a vulgar phrase, you knocked me for a loop. I first opened the book where it says, "And central peace subsisting at the heart of endless agitation." I have often thought it curious that people speak of the peace of the stars not realizing that they represent ceaseless activity. To my mind peace is not inanity but INTEGRATED activity. I already have great respect for Mrs. Judson. She quotes Plato to the effect that art presents an image of reality. That is right. But the true artist not only portrays a picture of reality as he sees it but endeavors to evoke in the hearer or spectator his own vision of reality. There is something more than just enjoying a beautiful picture.
I still wear those socks you knitted for me.
The way in which modern art reflects the present lack of integrated individuality is portentious.
There is only one attitude; the wish to work.
Thank you so much for the Zen scroll. You always seem to strike me just right. For instance, those socks you knitted for me so long ago are still my favorite socks. And that Quaker book of pictures is one of my eternal possessions.
I don't know if you are particularly interested in Zen, or just Japan. I have a little Zen book, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones,3 beautifully printed in Japan. I wonder whether you have seen it.
I have always been interested in scroll painting, which is really of Chinese origin. I have from the Metropolitan a beautiful reproduction of a Chinese scroll showing the progress from the country to some religious festival in the city, also a picture of some Chinese gentlemen studying a scroll. All real art and in fact creative activity is based on a perception of reality behind appearances. The value of the scroll lies in the fact that it recognizes the fact that as finite creatures we conceive this in succession although cosmic phenomena are not limited by time and space. Thus each scroll has an integrating core besides the running depiction. In the case of your scroll, the central theme might be the endless exploration of man in search of the permanent, the illimitable, the "something." What do you think?
I have never been a confirmed Oxfordian. You see, when I was young, Bacon was all the rage and it was absolutely proved that he wrote the plays. But I was inclined to agree with Mr. Dooley, who after profound study came to the conclusion that the plays of Shakespeare were not written by him but [by] another man of the same name. That is, the evidence in the affirmative is insufficient. As a matter of fact, I am not so much interested in authorship, sources, use of words, figures of speech, as in the profound understanding of reality, evidenced not merely by the delineation of character but essentially by their relation to each other.
Some time ago you gave me a book, Making the Ministry Relevant.4 I have been studying it again recently and find it stimulating. The Saturday Review said that Hoffmann's contribution was bonbastic and arrogant, but I did not find it so at all. These critics know nothing, they just use words.
From one point of view the ministry is relevant and so are mosquitoes for that matter. Everything perceived by the senses is a portion of reality if we only know it. Every bit can be used but we must first try to find our real selves. There is no "new reality." It is always the same ever-changing changelessness. Before Abraham was I AM. But of course with changing sensuous conditions the effective approach must change. For instance, the modern man is more apt tobe influenced by Einstein than by St. Teresa. We are no longer aided by dogmatic creeds. But the abolishment of creeds does not mean the abolishment of reality. The problem of the ministry is to find an effective means of making us realize in ourselves the underlying essence of which the things apparent to the eye are only an outward show. Of course ultimately the duty of understanding is ours. Transformation rather than sublimation. By this I mean that the individual by constant inner struggle must attempt to be reborn, that is, attain a higher level, rather than to produce outward betterment without inward change of heart.
You are right not to worry about C. He is himself always, past, present and future. The temporary weakening of the formulating mechanism of course seems unfortunate but does not go to the root of things and may even be an advantage. He needs loving sympathy, but nothing more will be required of him than he can give. YOU have a wonderful opportunity.
You are a microbe and you can't do better than to be a microbe.
From one point of view you can take our struggle as walking on a tightrope; on one side are the things we like and on the other are the things we dislike. But we try to keep out of that and fix our mind on the ultimate aim: i.e. fixing our mind on the end of the tightrope. At first we may need a balancing pole, which may be considered teaching or suggestions from others, reading, etc., but eventrually we find that we do not need the balancing pole but can go our course straightforward to the ultimate end.
Star Island is the main island of the Isles of Shoals.5 They usually have a Congregational assembly and very good speakers. This man you speak of [Thomas Hora] is quite right about LOVE because LOVE is not the human emotion which we ordinarily feel. Real love for another is in some measure attained when we reach a stage of consciousness which permits us to put ourselves in the place of another.
Read the epitaph at the end of "My Father" in Meetings with Remarkable Men.6
Don't worry about showing the ego when you write. Orage used to say the style is the man, that is the style of writing always discloses the position of the writer on the ladder of reality. So just be your own sweet self. Samuel Butler in The Way of All Flesh said: "Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself, the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him." For myself, I doubt whether any of us in this life will be able entirely to dispense with personality, for our task is one of control, direction, attention and attitude rather than destruction. "I" is :it" transformed, with a new birth.
Mary or Phillie makes no difference.7 A filly is not so bad, as the enclosed poem shows. Mary Phillips must get away from both names, to her real self, her original face.
There is no devil. He is simply a creation of our imagination to help us escape from what is really our own responsibility.
As to love, I merely quote Kagawa:8 "Search not for springs of love in the deep valleys, nor yet in the bosom of another person. The spring of love,–it must well up in thine own heart. [I must go] down deeper, still deeper, into my own soul, and there, in my heart of hearts, shall I find the spring of love."8
Benoit is right.9 This is not only regular Zen doctrine, but it is universal truth. Our only struggle is to control our personalities and empty ourselves. Then something comes in. He who loses his life shall find it.
Man's chief aim is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
To glorify God is to live according to His purpose rather than to acclaim Him.
His purpose and the purpose of the whole evolutionary process is to develop the sense of awareness. We must make our purpose in life to become conscious beings according to the Will of the Creator and not merely to attain our own perfection and the comforts of material life. If we do not do it, somebody else will. At the basis of it all is the feeling of love not in the sense of possessiveness but with the feeling that all is ONE. That is the only way to love your neighbor as yourself.
| << Letters to Marion Baldwin | Letters to Vanessa Coward >> |