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moderndayruth

~ Tarot inspired essays and more

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Tag Archives: Philosophy

Tarot Mysteries, Moscow’s Pubs & The Art of Life

01 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by moderndayruth in Essay, Photography

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Arts, Booze Bub Moscow, Education, Kabbalistic Teshuva, Leo Babauta, Philosophy, Tarot The Fool, Thelema, Zen Habits

art_of_life_0

In Kabbalah we speak of ” Teshuva”, which does not mean repentance, as it usually goes translated; instead – it means going back to one’s true self; in Christian Bible it’s said “unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:2); Crowley speaks of doing ‘as thou wilt’ as the main   law of the system of believe he founded, Thelema… You’ll find it everywhere, in every single reputable religion and school of thought, but “being who you are” might seem easier than it is.

Albeit many of us, i guess, would like to escape the rat race – that’s close to impossible because even within the most liberal and unconventional of the professions – there are strict codes for just about anything. At the time i used to hang out mostly with DJs, non-commercial writers and directors of independent movies; the thing is that all of them were successful in their respective fields  – and the rules for success are oddly the same, never mind is it a career in finances or in liberal arts; there are strict dressings codes even among the most casually dressed artists; there are linguistic etiquettes and dozens of other (un)written rules one should master – in any given field.

Often it’s said that if we choose what we’d like to do – most would turn into overeating couch potatoes… Not so. Whomever i met in life who mastered the art of going with the flow (they are few i must say), long ago was done with watching reality TV and pigging out on junk food; somehow, as we search for the ways to unshool our minds, the latter becomes so picky that most of the trivial activities become out of  question by default.

That being said – Lin Ai Wei has posted recently a great essay on what going with the flow is Not; something he wrote there i find to be of fundamental value:

“When one follows the flow of things, they are just followers. They have a desire, they go with it. They have a thought, and they revel in it for hours. Someone yells at them, and they take it either to yell back, or walk away indifferent. Following the flow of things is simply just planting causes and reaping the outcomes. It is quite ordinary, and people do it without realizing it. It is nothing special.

The only difference between someone who follows the flow of things and one who is of high wisdom, a Sage, is that the Sage doesn’t look to the outcomes; the Sage is more concerned with the causes. The Sage thus creates the flow consciously, wisely.”

That being said, I’ve noticed lately that many use two antonymous words – elitism and snobbery – interchangeably, where as the latter actually excludes the former; one of the possible etymologies of the noun snob is its being rooted in the abbreviated form of the Latin  sine nobilitate – ‘without nobility‘; by the early 19th century snob was firmly established as the word for the vulgar social climbers of humble background who copied the manners of the upper classes. (See: Oxford Dictionaries.)

An elite is defined in plethora of ways as well – by its wealth, power, talent and whatnot; in Montenegro usually if one is referred to as such it means (at least) two preceding generations in their family had higher education – and that’s the definition closest to my own understanding; anyhow – being elitist by default excludes copycatting; an elite sets the standards in any given filed, while snobs merely follow  without giving it all much of a thought. But, i digress.

I know many say – it is possible if you are child-free; not so – Leo Babauta does it, albeit it’s a challenge to the norms and nevertheless he has a big family, or, better to say, his kids are one of the main reasons he is doing it.

For myself, long ago i came to the realization that – couple of enlightened gurus aside- we, as a kind, are playing roles like actors do (albeit most make the choice unconsciously), as the time goes by we identify with the characters we impersonate – and then pretty much the whole script is quite predictable, it becomes one of the so-called “master plots” which number is, according to some, narrowed down to merely twenty… And while hardly anyone wants to be a part of a B-rated movie – metaphorically speaking, to become a director of one’s own independent movie does take guts – and skill too.

Language  – that wonderful human peculiarity that distinguishes us as a kind – can be one’s captor or one’s liberator, depending on its use; we are served on a daily basis ready made verbal cliches, by the teen age one is already equipped with all the phrases they might ever need in each and every situation they would encounter in life – sad or happy – and even for the unpredictable and surprising ones.

Long story made short – we are given preexisting patterns of speech which further condition our behavior – in addition to the infamous socialization  which in all societies basically means adjusting the masses to the needs of the ruling class(es); the easiest way to go on is to adapt to the existing rules and norms, while the only way to achieve true fulfillment is always found within the realm of one’s individuality and far from anything conventional and widespread.

The thing is that once we are outside the known and commonly accepted – there are no maps and charts and we can rely only on our own intuition (presumably judgement as such was left behind together with the conventional thinking – novelty is always beyond the logic and pre-existing experiences.)

Where will this road less traveled take us – nobody knows, the thing is that we will be fulfilled spiritually and not in any kind of lack – as long as we stick to it and don’t succumb to the usual ‘shoulds and musts.’

Nothing is a must, not a thing.

I get it theoretically too, but the practice takes daily effort. As soon as i wake up, i have obsessive thoughts about what i must accomplish during the day – and at what time; for me – it’s the meditation that enables me to prioritize among the countless tasks i schedule daily.

Unlike Leo Babauta, i can’t say i am goalless; i do have pretty clear goals in life – i am fully aware where i like to spend my time, what activities have the best chance of truly fulfilling me and with what kind of people i am happy with, the thing is that mine is not fixed, i rather navigate towards those non-goals without obsessing too much about anything and by leaving a good part of it to the Universe and its mysterious ways.

Here are some shots of my not-so-goalless wanderings through the city of Moscow and an illustration i fancy; in Tarot spontaneity is synonymous with The Fool which some list as the first Major Arcanum – and some, like me, as the last major mystery in the sequence of the 22 Tarot Trumps.

With Elena at my favorite Moscow’s pub – Booze Bub:

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Many agree with me that it’s actually the bast pub in the city – and you can read some of the amazing reviews at this absolutely cool WordPress blog on Russia.

These are some more pics of “ Cheers, just without Woody Harrelson” and of the best bartender on this side of the Pacific, an American in Moscow, a polymath and a friend of mine – Pete Cato.

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Copyright notice: Art of Life Tarot was created by Charlene Livingstone who  taught Art for over 25 years and currently works as a guide at the Art Gallery of Ontario; cards feature well-known works of art paired with inspiring quotations; the deck was published by U.S. Games Systems Inc. in 2012; All Rights Reserved.

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Be ready to lose everything, Part Deux (Hexagram 49 )

04 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by moderndayruth in I Ching, Photography, Poetry

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Baruch Spinoza, Chi, Daniil Kharms, Estragon, God, Huang, Isadora Duncan, Philosophy, Podgorica, Religion and Spirituality, Sergei Yesenin, Spinoza, Taoism, Taoist I Ching

I was just re-constructing with Arié the fire from Be ready to lose everything , what had preceded it and what followed… It’s almost six months since then and only the other day i gathered the courage to climb up the Gorica Hill and see with my own eyes what is left of it. I am not sure what i expected, but what i’ve seen had taken me by surprise and left me with a profound admiration for the powers of the nature.

You’d know that i am a city girl, i am not so much into wandering clouds, drifting waves & all that jazz – and, before you ask, i am not impressed by Sergei Yesenin the least (except for his being married to grand Isadora Duncan and the fact that they met at the house in which Bulgakov lived while writing Master and Margarita, but that’s a topic unto itself.)

With Vuk – my friends’ kid whom i consider my own – we studied Beckett earlier this evening, and to get to absurdism, we needed to go through scholasticism, Tomas Aquinas and to tackle Spinoza and his glorification of the nature as well. Might sound complicated, but if the Holy Torah can be thought while standing on one leg, as the saying goes, then both Aquinas and Spinoza are piece of cake, no?

It is so actually – all mystification, mental onania and ego trips aside, Aquinas wasn’t even a philosopher per se, he was a dogmatic persuading the reader into presumably pre-existing truths, that ain’t  philosophy, but brain washing.

And Spinoza… dunno, the history of philosophy is full of my fellow Jews desperately looking for God in all the places where He can’t be found, in my opinion all of them  would have being better of studying the Torah, but anyway – you can imagine that i find little worth in Spinoza’s musings too.

Absurdists do impress me though, i love Beckett and was supposed to write the PhD thesis on Daniil Kharms – the thing is that the program was offered in Voronezh only and  in our parts you don’t want to live anywhere else but in the capital, that’s how i ended up with doctoral theses in methodics at Pushkin Uni in Moscow … but that’s another story too.

Anyhow, in “Waiting for Godot” , Estragon says:”We should turn resolutely towards nature”, but then they decide together with Vladimir that it has been done before and isn’t really worth it – there, Spinoza written off in three lines.

That’s the genius of Beckett and minimalism, G-d forbid that Aquinas is reincarnated – it would have taken him all the volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica to come to that which S.B. said in ten words or so.

Of course, i have my own absurdist discourse – and it is definitely not connected to lurking behind it existentialism; it’s that writing style of Beckett and Kharms too, to me is equal to meditating on Zen Koans… it’s absurd, it waits around the corner for your analytic thinking – jumps at it and takes it over by surprise; after the absurdists had seized your logyc and pre-thought concepts, and went on run with them – you are left… in the zone, some label it Dao, some – Nirvana, whichever suits you.

There are all the answers – in case you are looking for them, but if you have arrived here, it means you are not looking anymore… absurd, i know – but only if starting from the dualistic thinking in the first place.

Anyhow, if observing the nature in a way, unadulterated by Spinoza’s idolization and without any other  expectations from which all human disappointment stems – even a disgruntled city dweller like me has to admit it’s downright marvelous.

You see, what left me in awe during the other day’s hike was the fact that the hill above the city has totally recovered meanwhile – in the place of almost each burned down tree, there are two or three babies growing up… And all i could think of was the I Ching’s Hexagram 49, Revolution… I think pretty much everything has been said on it, here are two excellent articles – this one i discovered by chance and was impressed by author’s writing style, creativity and – at the same time – her academic approach (just check out how meticulously are listed the sources – such an academic thing to do ; )  the other is by my favorite contemporary I Ching Scholar, Hilary Barret, whose interpretations to me personally are just the perfect blend of Confucianism and Taoism.

Other sources definitely worth checking out, yet unavailable online are Cleary’s “Taoist I Ching” which explains the 49th hexagram in terms of refining Yin energy – as an essential step in the process of  producing the (inner) alchemical elixir* and, of course, “The Complete I Ching” by the Taoist Master Alfred Huang  as the latter gives the best insight into related Chinese ideograms/ characters.

(*According to Huang, the lake in the image is metal related to the West and fire is the fire associated with the South; refining metal by fire produces brightness, the metal melts and returns to the root. In preceding it hexagram 48, joy is produced from the midst of danger – this one is about taking true Yang in water, so to get out of danger. Thus, to crystallize the elixir and, by doing so, attain joy – one needs to restore yin in fire and take true yang in water – it’s that “simple.”  )

As a side note – Huang translates the 49th hexagram as “Abolishing the old” connecting it to Ge ‘s original meaning of alternation and change, which later on extended to mean Revolution as well (both being an integral part of the same process.)

A certain dear to me gentleman with whom i correspond wrote me recently: “you were very quick, hard but in next second soft and beautiful…” not downright quetching, but given that it’s brought up, obviously such attitude is neither expected, nor an everyday occurrence, albeit it is the only natural attitude.

See, weather changes, people change – you are not the same person you were only seven years ago, everything in your body has changed meanwhile, except for the genetic memory… Yours (and mine) being narrowed down to predictability  is the society’s ways to keep control, yet it’s the most unnatural thing of all.

One might ask how does that go in hand with so dear to my heart fortune-telling? You see, i don’t believe in fortune-telling, what i do, using various tools, is quite precise diagnostics and based on it prognosis… and those are always made with force majeure in mind.

Balkan etimology

“morati” is the word for must in my language

no shoulds, no woulds, no coulds

morash means you obey

no questions asked

it’s not the way you speak in English

“móra” means –  nightmare

of a kind

which leaves you in sweat

shivering between the sheets

staring at the ceiling

and thinking

of this surreal peninsula

where every fifty years

the wise shut up,

the fool commences talking

and the scum gets reach

or something like that

“mora” is also – many seas,

albeit we have one only

and ask not for more

(who needs more than one sea?)

“gora “ is mountain,

“gore” is worse

and it also means burns…

And the city in which I live is PodGORica,

The city under the hill

Baby-mountain so to say

And the main of its six rivers

Is Moracha,

Which, as it should, has to

Must

Runs through the city

Which burns upwards,

Toward the murky Balkan sky

L.R.S.

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To Hell With Common Sense

27 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by moderndayruth in Essay

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Arts, Common (entertainer), Common sense, History, Imaginary friend, Kabbalah, Literature, Obama, Philippe Halsman, Philosophy, Real life

The Dali Atomicus, photo by Philippe Halsman (...

           Funny that while we were  raised under premise that it’s ‘inside that counts’ and given that most of the wars throughout written history were fought because of “imaginary friends”; nowadays it seems everyone is going to great lengths to persuade us that “real life” rocks and that your facebook friends and online romances are non-existent… Well, not really.

         Common sense is called common not because it will make one a torchbearer of the humanity and avant-garde – it will indeed keep you ‘common’ and it’s merely a know how for the masses – prone to entropy by definition – a working knowledge and a manual to navigate the uncommon territories of this rushing century… Those who are running in front of the rest of us and moving the time itself as they go, as they run –  they are never common and it’s us, who shclep behind them who need the “common sense” to explain to ourselves what the hell has just happened?!

        Just look at the history of science – or of the very religion, or fashion, and of course – the development of the technology; it’s always the unexpected, carried out by the most unusual folks, that constitutes the progress of the humanity; the rest is wallowing in the entropy of the common sense… Sense can’t be common, you see – because to be sound one has to think for themselves; what we can pick up from our surroundings and what we do get via socialization – is the working knowledge of life, how to adapt to the existing – and not how to create the new.

        It irks me when i read some self-righteous blockhead telling everyone their feelings are not real… Oh, really? It’s as if i know in person and went hiking or something with Clintons and Obamas, who did shape my actual life; it’s as if i know in person all the chemists and engineers who invented stuff that i now use in daily life… Neither have i met philosophers from the past, nor the classical writers – yet all of these folks together have shaped my life and made it what it is.

        I don’t get it where this obsession with the physical started –  we were thought it’s the spirit, you know, that makes the world go round… Now suddenly the rabbis are railing and psychologists are outdoing themselves to persuade you that what you get online is an illusion, while it’s the “real life” that counts… Sure, the “real life” – which at it’s core is equally fictional – only custom tailored according to the needs of governments, clergy and industrial lobbies.

         That would be my main rant of the day – i won’t even link to countless mediocre articles that sing praises to the “real life” vs online experience, it’s a waste of time – more so that these people would never get published, wasn’t it for www; it’s this very media – which they fail to appreciate – that gave them the possibility to voice their worn out ideas , in “real life” it takes much more than that to get published.

        By now you know i am for ever enchanted by Kabbalah – and i admire kabbalists for their use of internet too – i’ve never heard a kabbalist ranting against it; as they try to see the light in everything – they decided internet is a great opportunity to spread wisdom and started working hard; the result of it is that nowadays you get online for free knowledge and tools that only 50 or 70 years ago were  available only to the chosen few.

           In real life, personally, i interact with very few people on a regular bases – maybe it’s just the way i am wired, but i really don’t feel the need to spend extended periods of time in someone’s physical presence, in order to relate to them; i do have wonderful  neighbors and friends whom i know all my life, not to forget my extended family – i am part of their lives and they – of mine; but as genius Churchill put it: small minds are busy with other people, mediocre – with events, great ones – with ideas.

          I don’t really care what you had for lunch and with whom do you sleep, but i do care and would love to share the magic of your life, the extraordinary that you live in the ordinary – and that’s what i am willing to share of myself too; i follow numerous blogs and have numerous online friends – you, guys, make me happy and fulfilled by sharing your thoughts and artwork and sometimes just ramblings and miniature sketches of lives i otherwise wouldn’t get to know; in this dimension it’s highly unrealistic all of us will get together  in the same time at the same place – but, you know, it’s ok with me, the feelings i experience and the inspiration i get from you is real – and that’s just about all i need.

          For art is anyway deprived of the casual – in movies you don’t normally get to see the actors emptying their bowels and in books you’d hardly focus on food that didn’t turn out right or on days in which nothing special happens… Right, real life is made of hours and hours of maintenance of the physical, but i don’t need to share that part with you – in order to relate to your magic, or to your pain per that matter… And posting text after text on the subject of presumed illusion of the internet vs the reality … Sure, it’s as if these bores are historical Buddha himself and it’s as if they get to see the reality as it is… They don’t – and with their lack of imagination they can’t even enjoy the online experience, poor dahlings ( i do feel sorry for them, i just wish they stopped bombarding my inbox and my fb wall with their views as i find them utterly uninspiring, ’tis all.)

If you happen to be one of those people – please go back to watching reality tv or whatever you find a realistic and empowering thing to do, and let the rest of us enjoy what we find pleasurable and fulfilling, kay?

Photo credit: Philippe Halsman ‘s Dali Atomicus (1948), public domain

Visual archive of this picture taken by Philippe Halsman -28 jumps were necessary and a room full of assistants, cats and buckets of water

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