The 1961 edition
Zorba steps into these blogging topics with grace, dancing, as is his wont, when his words are untranslatable. I never thought (though certainly dreamed) that blogging could become a global conversation and a new communal form of literature. I got here following an inner impulse as faithfully as my unfolding consciousness has permitted.
My first blog was called Discoveries and resembled this one in appearance; but it was based on a false premise-—showcase of ego and attempt to please a crowd. So it was put on the bonfire of vanities. The present incarnation started as An Ongoing Experiment, for I did not know where it was going technically, thematically, visually and various other “-allies”. Allies were in fact what it needed, i.e. readers, commenters, an invisible community. One true reader alone would be enough to make a difference to the world. Let that reader find the blog and let the blog find that reader.
I remain reluctant to tell anyone about this place, for anonymity helps it flourish. As the narrator tells Zorba, mining for lignite is not his true purpose for being on Crete, but it deflects the locals' curiosity. And as the late Douglas Adams mused, it might be the laboratory mice who have been experimenting on us, rather than we on them. So let us allow the benign impulses in us direct our actions. Adams the atheist may have been an instrument of a global spiritual plan. And something whispers insistently in my ear that none of us are exempt from being such instruments. Certainly, I have come a long way, even from the inception of this blog in late April. Then, I was doubting everything, especially spirit. Always doubting, but it turned out to be the main attraction.
Zorba, that most natural of men, believes in nothing, and offers profane sermons such as this:
“Don’t laugh, boss! If a woman sleeps all alone, it’s the fault of us men. We’ll all have to render our accounts on the day of the last judgement. God will forgive all sins, as we’ve said before-—he’ll have his sponge ready. But that sin he will not forgive. Woe betide the man who could sleep with a woman and who did not do so! Woe betide the woman who could sleep with a man and who did not do so!”
The narrator, Zorba's boss, is writing a book called Buddha and tries to eliminate the persistent image of a certain widow's swaying hips from his mind, with little success.
7 comments:
YES. This is a favorite book, and also a favorite movie. Quinn never again did another character. I recall a scathing later review of him as a Native American that dismissed him as "Zorba the Creek!" When you are infested/penetrated/permeated with the zest for life, can there be room for more? He didn't move past this inspiration - not sure that this isn't to his credit as a human, though it limited him as an actor.
I dispute your word "profane" if offered in the spirit of "desecration." Life, life essence, and yes - sex - was holy until the desert god Yahweh won preeminance.
some of us still think that life is the sacred impulse, not the distillate, dis-embodied derivation we take as sacred today.....
Not profane as in desecration but as in the opposite of a supposed Buddhist or Christian idea of "sacred".
Men's - and women's - ways to a higher consciousness have often involved celibacy, not because of some male desert god Yahweh making sex dirty but because in earlier ages family ties would have forced the person, man or woman, into a life of toil, property and responsibility. It's not that I agree or even empathize. More an historical fact.
I'll stick with Innana! Most of the "rules" were written to discredit her and her holy snake -
Leading blind men in pitch dark nights to the needle in a hay stack is a specialty evidently requiring no effort of the Light. Hiding hay stacks for men who search for needles is a cynical treat of the dark to confirm its power over this illusion called life.
When you speak of the dark and the Light, and "this illusion called life" your language sounds strange to me, and I cannot see your standpoint. Life is my only reality so the only way I can call it illusion is if I have fallen under the spell of some teacher or belief who tells me it is not real. I refuse to give away my individual power in that way.
Light in my perception are the creative powers (having true creative power), the dark is the opposite, the destructive forces in the universes (having the skill to re-arrange matter and energy).
The reference to illusion is based on thoughts similar to described by Carlos Castaneda when he writes about the visions of Juan Matus, the Yaqui shaman who was his guide. Castaneda argued Matus' vision for decaded, often vehemently, before he began to gradually understand it.
Similar assertions have been made by the Huna shamen from Hawaii who claim that what is generally called reality, is in fact a mass-hallucination and the Aboriginees who believe the human world was spawned by the dreams of the ancient.
An appealing description of dreamtime that covers some of the aspects that I suspect reflect it well is:
Our immediately experienced reality is only an illusion or a shadow of real eternity. In eternity all time happens simultaneously and all space is contained in every bit of space.
In such an environment entities of creation would have a difficult time accumulating awareness. Linear time and space separate events, order it chronologically and allow to assess cause and consequence, thus allowing us to build awareness. It must contain everything in order to become complete - from stupefying insanity and violence to overwhelming, immaculate Love.
At this point we live inside a huge, global illusion (and the illusion lives inside us) created by occult forces that is as old as humanity itself. Occultism is what the word implies: A belief in occult powers and the possibility of bringing them under human control, in which occult means hidden.
A good example is the 9/11 array of events; what mainstream media reported on it and what is believed by the majority of people is a created illusion (a re-arranged truth). Knowing of what truly occured and what the intention was of the actual perpetrators will allow the ones who are able to see through the inflicted illusion, to envision a number of possible futures and apply in every day life what is generated by their compassionate core (to counter the ways of the occult forces in this world).
Thanks Rage, I can see more clearly now where you are coming from. I've a lot of respect for Don Juan Matus (via Castaneda) and also for Don Miguel Ruiz. I think the Yaqui and the Toltec ways are not different?
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