Posted on by qscrisp

André Comte-Sponville and the Atheist Spirituality

Yesterday I went into town and became strangely extravagant in relation to books.

I was going to pick up a book I had ordered on punctuation, since I have recently lost confidence in that area, but while I was in the book shop, I decided that it would be a good thing if I ordered a copy of Time and Free Will by Henri Bergson. Having gone this far in my extravagance, why not, I wondered, have another look at that new translation of the Qur'an I was perusing the other day. I walked over to the shelf and couldn't help noticing a book with the title of The Book of Atheist Spirituality, by André Comte-Sponville. Curious, I extracted the volume and began to read. In fact, I read a great deal of that book there in the shop. I even ended up buying it, along with the new translation of the Qur'an.

For me to buy such a book after I had already been so extravagant must be testimony to its interest. Beginning at chapter one, I was first impressed by its clarity (in matters of philosophy, I believe that difficulty of language is often a way of making an argument sound more substantial than it is), then its even and expansive tone. It seemed to me that this was not a work written by someone with a grudge.

Skipping on to further sections, I found things here and there with which I did not or could not agree, but was uniformly impressed by the intelligence and frankness with which it was written. Still, I might not have bought it, since I had, after all, already been extravagant, I am already over atheism, and I do already have more than enough good books to read.

I suppose I bought it partly in gratitude at the fact that there appears to be a professional atheist in the world who is not an irritating bigot, and partly because… well, I think it was because of this, on page 142:

The real mystery is not in words but in the world. It is in the spirit, whenever it starts asking questions or looking at reality from a different angle. What is mysterious? Being is mysterious – everything is mysterious! Again, Wittgenstein expresses it perfectly: 'Mysticism wonders not how the world is but that the world is.' This brings us back to the question of being ('Why is there something rather than nothing?'), except that is no longer a question. Nor is it, quite, an answer. Rather it is an experience, a sensation, a silence. It can be described as the experience which, in mysticism, corresponds to that question in metaphysics. It is the experience of being, above and beyond the banality of what is (as a Heideggerian might put it) – the experience of mystery above and beyond the apparent self-evidence of explanations.

I have not yet read the whole book, so I do not know how persuasive it will ultimately be, if persuasion of some kind is its goal, as perhaps it must be. I have read, however, enough for me to have a reasonably deep and complex response. The author writes:

My intention is not to convert people to atheism. It is merely to explain my position and the arguments in its favour, motivated more by love of philosophy than by the hatred of religion. There are free spirits on both sides, and it is to them that my words are addressed. The others, whether believers or atheists, can be left to their certainties.

Very well, I will consider myself one of those to whom this work is addressed, and I will respond in the same spirit.

The book is divided, after the introduction, into three sections and a conclusion. The three sections are in the form of questions, which are I. Can we do without religion?, II. Does God Exist?, and III. Can there be an atheist spirituality?

From what I have read (as if the title of the book were not enough) I surmise that the author's answer to the third question is affirmative. If so, then so much the better, since I certainly would not deny spirituality to anyone. Quite the opposite. Nonetheless, I still cannot escape the suspicion of oxymoron in a phrase such as 'spiritual atheist'. What is this spirit, exactly? Naturally, the author deals with this question, but I'm not sure he does so in a satisfactory way. Rather than try and explain what I mean directly, I shall attempt a circuitous route by referring to the second of the three questions. Does god exist?

It was in reading parts of this section that I found myself most impatient, not because the author's conclusions seemed unreasonable, but because the question itself seems quaintly archaic, and also rather boring. First of all, if one is not sure what god is, how can one even begin to approach the question of whether or not it exists? The answer must depend on what is meant by 'god' and it seems to me that consensus is far from being established. This, of course, can be seen as another objection to religion: If no one knows what god is, then religion is effectively gibberish and guesswork. Or at least, it is if one has to see it as a unified force. Individuals may well know what they individually mean by 'god' and find their explanation of the matter to be of utmost importance.

Secondly, what if Wittgenstein's 'that the world is' is precisely what we choose to call 'god'? In this case, to ask whether god exists is clearly a meaningless, silly, time-wasting question. 'Belief' in god, under this definition, is not actually 'belief' at all, it is merely (merely?) the experience of wonder. And there really are dimensions to such an experience that are beyond words. There have been those who thought the name of God was too sacred to be spoken, that it was a blasphemy to do so. Is this not simply a way of saying that there is a dimension to this wonder that must not be reduced by language? And yet, I'm afraid that it is precisely this dimension that Comte-Sponville is in danger of reducing. Then again, since we're dealing with language, perhaps what I perceive as reductionism is merely semantic.

To explain this sense of reductionism further, let me talk about the author's section on 'the oceanic feeling':

The dissolving of the ego is akin to what Freud, borrowing the expression from novelist Romain Rolland, called 'the oceanic feeling'. He described it as 'a sense of indissoluble union with the great All, and of belonging to the universal', very much as a wave of a drop of water belongs to the ocean. Most of the time, this is indeed no more than a feeling. But occasionally it is an experience, and a powerful one – what contemporary American psychologists call an altered state of consciousness.

The author claims to have had the experience. He describes it with beautiful precision, but does not believe it to have been a religious experience:

Was it a vision? No, at least not in the usual sense of the term. Never have I felt anything more natural. Was it a mystery? Yes, perhaps, but a self-evident one. Was it a revelation? If you like, but one that contained neither a message nor a secret.

I have also had something that appears to be the oceanic feeling that people speak of (as a pronounced experience). I have had it more than once, and more than once without chemical aid. I would attest to the truth of the author's words at least insofar as they tally with my own experience (in other words, there are, I believe, other experiences). There was for me nothing necessarily religious in the oceanic experience in a 'Road to Damascus' kind of way. The idea of 'conversion' was irrelevant. There was no voice of a singular god issuing instruction mightily from a throne of clouds, and I was not even remotely chastened by the idea that I must get me to church.

Nonetheless, to have such an experience and still to have such grave reservations about use of the word 'god', the existence of god and so forth, seems a little odd to me. That is, with an experience of numinous expansion, I would have thought the reductionism that leads to a taboo surrounding 'god', and to the notion that the word is a gateway to nothing of any significance, and is therefore a gateway that must be barricaded, would be discarded as an unnecessary hindrance. What's more, in the face of such an experience, such reductionism seems to be precisely the kind of spiritual amputation/castration that the author claims he is anxious to avoid.

Maybe it really is a semantic problem. But maybe the problem is something else.

There is, after all, a sense in which the question of whether or not god exists is deeply, urgently meaningful.

The author does, at some point, give his definition of god. He defines it as god is defined in the orthodox Western tradition, as a personal divinity who is also the creator of the universe. This definition is, of course, responsible for the silliness of the question as to whether god exists, and the silliness of some of the arguments used to refute such an existence. One such argument, for instance, is that although god's existence cannot be disproved, neither can the existence of fairies and werewolves. This argument is silly on many levels, but the level I choose to emphasise here is that it treats god as if it were something contingent within the world. To wonder whether god exists or not is an entirely different proposition to wondering whether a specific race such as fairies or werewolves exists, since it is to wonder about the nature of being itself.

Comte-Sponville mentions the difference between Western and Eastern traditions, that, in broad terms, a personal god is absent from the latter. The question of the existence of god refers to this predominantly Western, personal conception. It may be disturbing to some that such a conception is not universal, though there are subtleties enough in the apparent divisions between cultures that the lack of universality is at least debatable. In any case, it's an interesting and significant distinction, which may be represented by Christianity on one side and Buddhism on the other.

What does it really mean, then, to ask if god exists?

It seems to me that the question, by implication, is whether there is any desirable afterlife. That is, is there an afterlife in which one's personal individuality is (still) valuable?

In this case, I must admit that the question does not seem archaic or silly to me.

(There is a sense, of course, when one has the oceanic feeling, that 'personal afterlife' is also a distracting concept – that the answer to this question is neither yes or no, because the question, once again, is wrong. But this is an extremely difficult sense to grasp, and I shall not explore it further here.)

As I said, I have not read all of the book yet, but in what I have read so far, the question of procreation (to me the absolutely fundamental question of religion) is nowhere addressed. If this question is not addressed, then Comte-Sponville's attempt to avoid spiritual castration has – in my view – failed. Buddhism does not present us with a personal god, but nor does it present us with a reason to procreate. On the contrary, the ultimate aim is not to be reborn. In other words, to be born upon Earth at all is a sign that one has, in some way, failed to acheive desirable nothingness. This might be called spiritual sterility.

Comte-Sponville quotes Swami Prajnanpad to the effect that the greatest curse of humanity is hope (in other words, a sense of future). But what is procreation, and what are children, if they are not hope and future?

These are the penultimate lines of the book:

Love, not hope, is what helps us live. Truth, not faith, is what sets us free.

But what is love and where does it come from? If it exists at all, and is not merely a castrated psychological abstraction.

I would also like to say something about faith. It has been my feeling for some time that faith is not the same as belief. It is more a kind of trust. One doesn't have to believe in a specific nugget of information as fact in order to trust.

Further to this feeling, it came to me yesterday, quite out of the blue, that faith is simply the conviction that there is something worth being curious about. This might sound inadequate as a definition, but if so, it's possible that is because you have not looked at the implications of the statement, or do not feel the feelings that are its subtext. Once you have the conviction that there is something worth being curious about firmly in place, all that is left then is to be open-minded. In fact, it is arguably harder to be open-minded if you do not have such a conviction, since you are more likely to think that nothing will change how you feel, to presume you already know that everything is worthless.

This, it seems to me, is the faith of Socrates. Socrates said he knew nothing, and yet in his search for truth, and for 'the Good', he seemed to know something – that there is something that is worth being curious about. Even if everything he expressed and taught in words turns out to be very silly, and his definitions of 'the Good' are silly, it is not his words that are important. It is what underlies those words. 'The Good' was what inspired him to seek the truth in the first place. To quote R.D. Laing, "The Life I am trying to grasp is the me that is trying to grasp it."

Comte-Sponville also dismisses – as many others have done – St. Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of god. Briefly stated – as briefly as possible – the argument goes that god is the perfect being and the perfect being must exist. I seem to remember a triangle being brought into the argument. (I'm not going to look it up now.) Was it something to do with existence being part of the definition of perfection just as three sides are part of the definition of a triangle? I think I'm getting it mixed up now. Anyway, triangle notwithstanding, the argument has been dismissed as circular, and I imagine that Comte-Sponville dismisses it on the same grounds. (I didn't read that section thoroughly.) Nonetheless, I feel there remains something fascinating about this argument, and at times it has seemed to me quite inspired. I suspect that St.Anselm was talking about the thing that it is worth being curious about. One is able to conceive of perfection because it is the "me that is trying to grasp it", or part of that me, or involved with it. It's a way of saying, how could we conceive of something if it did not exist? If we were merely animated rocks, where would we get this strange imagination from?

The strange thing is that, having said all this, I have no faith. What I mean by this is simple. Whatever else I may think or feel, I cannot look upon procreation as anything other than a horror. That is, without some form of religion (perhaps even a form that does not yet exist), without some absolute guarantee that the individual is valued by the universe and is vouchsafed the equivalent of a desirable afterlife, to be born can only mean being sentenced to an existential cruelty that is infinitely terrible.

I have never yet encountered anything that persuades me it is a good thing to be born or to give birth. It's quite possible that Comte-Sponville would recognise me as an atheist. I am a more honest atheist than those who profess no faith but still have children. I have a desire for faith, but I would never have children without it.

34 Replies to “André Comte-Sponville and the Atheist Spirituality”

  1. Speaking of Bergson, have you heard of Stefan Grabiński? He was a writer of strange stories in Poland about 100 years ago and apparently some of Bergson’s ideas were highly influential to him.I have noticed before that you seem to believe that not being born is better than being, and this makes me wonder: Do you believe that not existing means that you don’t feel? Also, why do you assume that your (hypothetical) child would feel the same way that you do? Honestly, I would think that you would have noticed that barely a fraction of the population even thinks about ontological or cosmological issues.No disrespect intended, just interested in your thoughts. Possibly intelligent debate.

  2. Hello.Thanks for commenting.I do know the name Grabinski, but have not read any of his work. I must look him up.I have noticed before that you seem to believe that not being born is better than being, and this makes me wonder: Do you believe that not existing means that you don’t feel?Well, this is an interesting question. If one was not, I suppose it does seem to me that, to quote Larkin, one would have, or rather, there would be “nothing to feel with, nothing to think with, nothing to love or link with”.Consciousness would still exist, but the specific consciousness identified as ‘me’, or whoever the non-existent person in question wouldn’t be, would not have been formulated. Put another way, if the population was lower there would be fewer chances for consciousness to form in ways that were nightmarish.This is actually a deeply involved question. How many people can say that they know what will happen after death? Many people (most?) live in such fear of death that they cannot even bear to talk about it. The fear is so great that they are compelled to ignore it, to wipe it from their minds. Nonetheless, they have children, and so more people are compelled to perform the same act of desperate ignoring. I know that people have this fear of death. I have observed it from a distance, I have encountered it close up, and I have lived with it deeply for many years. It no longer has the paralysing hold over me that it once had. It is possible to come to terms with one’s own death even without faith. What is problematic – as many, including Comte-Sponville, agree – is coming to terms with the death of a loved one without faith. (Or there is the alternative of believing that the loved one was just an illusion anyway, but I, with many others, reject this.)It is quite possible that, in the rather repulsive hypothetical situation that I had children, they would not be assailed by existential doubts. However, I think this is rather unlikely. The fact that no one seems really to know where we came from or where we are going is a frightful position, and means that there will always be a risk that anyone born into the world will also be born into terror. That risk is magnified if a child inherits unconscious and conscious memes of anxiety etc. from a parent.In the end, life simply happens, whatever our protestations might be, and saying it should be this way or it should be that way is more or less irrelevant. Even if it were not irrelevant, I don’t quite have the monstrous self-importance necessary to believe that my existential doubts should dictate social policy. Nonetheless, I do not understand how anyone can procreate without certain knowledge of the ultimate cosmic destination of those they bring into the world. It is beyond my comprehension that people do this. It seems to me that the sensible thing to do would be to await certain knowledge. If certain knowledge does not come (which would probably mean a knowledge shared by the entire human race), I would have thought that one would have to ask the question, “Why on Earth do I want to have children? What am I thinking of?”Possibly intelligent debate.You’ve come to the wrong place, I’m afraid.

  3. Originally posted by quentinscrisp:Nonetheless, I do not understand how anyone can procreate without certain knowledge of the ultimate cosmic destination of those they bring into the world.Then, for you, the entire justification for existing in the first place is certainty in what will happen to you? No wonder that you seem to be so generally despondent sometimes.As an aside, you seem to have studied the Theraveda traditions of Buddhism, correct? I say this because I think that I remember you mentioning Vipassana before. There is a book that I would send you if I could called “Heartwood of the Bodhi Tree” by a Thai monk from one of the Theravadin traditions. Before I read through certain chapters of that book I had the opinion that Buddhism was essentially nihilistic as well, and even though I study from a different school I learned a lot from the author. I think… :whistle: Originally posted by quentinscrisp:You’ve come to the wrong place, I’m afraid.Don’t worry, I will put my dunce cap on and try to fit in.

  4. Then, for you, the entire justification for existing in the first place is certainty in what will happen to you? I suppose it is. I’m here now, of course, and if I can live without despondency I will, and occasionally do. I think it should be fairly clear that I am not committed to being miserable. But let’s face it, life does not seem custom-made for human happiness. I feel that we have to ask, why do we bother? In my case, I bother because I was brought into the world and am obliged to bother. To perpetuate the situation of other beings being brought into the world and so obliged to bother when their happiness is no concern of the universe seems… like a kind of project of absurdist vandalism in some way. In all honesty, if life can’t be perfect, it’s just not worth living. Again, once you’re already here, the choice has been made for you. You can’t make the choice for yourself; you can only choose not to inflict the same thing on others.As an aside, you seem to have studied the Theraveda traditions of Buddhism, correct? Different traditions here and there. Of all those I have encountered, I find Zen probably the most congenial. I started writing a long essay on Buddhism a while back. I haven’t finished it. As I understand it, the only reason the Buddha didn’t kill himself was because he thought the karma from the action would oblige him to continue existence in some form. The whole impulse behind Buddhism was a suicidal impulse – finding a way to eliminate the karma that prevents the non-existence that is the aim of suicide.It’s obviously a powerful tradition with many tributaries and branches, et cetera. For me to dismiss it as being without value would be ridiculous. However, I would question the spiritual pre-eminence it is given by many of the kind of people who I tend to hang out with in one way or another. In other words, I don’t think it is everything, and I think that it is dangerous – or at the very least I find it very oppressive – to suppose that it is everything.I say this precisely because I have been very drawn to Buddhism. I have looked into what it would truly mean for me to be Buddhist. I decided that either I was wrong or Buddhism was wrong for me. Or both.

  5. Well, what do you mean by perfect? Honestly the idea of a perfect Heaven or reunion with the Godhead or the Tao is fairly disgusting to me. I hope that the afterlife is actually being incarnated again and again, although preferably with my memory (or most of it) intact. I hate that idea that people always seem to have of Karma being some kind of cosmic checks & balances system like sin & virtue. I can’t imagine the Buddha believing that merely killing yourself would make you incarnate again. It would seem very Calvinist of him, and rather stupid in my opinion. One would have to be perfect to attain the effects of Nirvana. Actually, I don’t believe that he really mentioned that the idea of reincarnation was canonical, just that it was very common to the Hindu background which he operated in. However, I would not want you to think that I am a Soka Gakkai or similar. I am really an animist, but find a lot in common with Buddhism, and have gone through years of seeing it as you do. It is just a convenient language to speak in. Besides, forms don’t usually include a checkbox for animist or other traditional religion on them. Hmm I have more to say but don’t know how to formulate. Too bad we couldn’t talk about this over tea. Oh well.

  6. A perfect world is just one where everyone is completely fulfilled.I’m not sure whether reunion with the Godhead would be disgusting or not. As an abstract idea it doesn’t repel me. I suppose it depends on the context, the claims being made about it, etc.Hang on… I’m wanted (or something like that).More later…

  7. I hate that idea that people always seem to have of Karma being some kind of cosmic checks & balances system like sin & virtue.Yes, it’s all very rigid and joyless and moralistic.On the subject of Buddhism being nihilistic, it’s not just Westerners who perceive it in this way. The Buddhist priest in popular Japanese animation Urusei Yatsura is one example of a native stereotype of Buddhism. He is constantly telling the hero that this or that sign, course of action, etc., is unlucky, that he is cursed and so on, whilst nonchalantly stuffing his face.In Runaway Horses, by Mishima, the head of some kind of martial arts training school is constantly complaining about how Buddhism has emasculated the Japanese race and so on. (Obviously he’s more into Shinto, which started off animistic and became somewhat nationalistic.)In Buddhism’s native land of India, from what I can gather, the Buddhist tradition has now largely disappeared, with Hinduism surviving. Many Hindus – again, from what I can gather – consider Buddhism too bleak to be a real religion. I have said that Zen is the form of Buddhism I prefer, but maybe it would be more accurate to say Chan, since my impression is that it was in China that Buddhism was moulded by the influences that made it a really valuable cultural artifact. My guess is that these influences were Daoist. I have a book called The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects and it begins rather gloomily: It is a long time since the idea of writing this book occurred to me. One fine summer afternoon I had explained my plan to a learned Tibetan who led a life of contemplation in a little house on the rocky side of a mountain. He was not encouraging.

    “Waste of time,” he said. “The great majority of the readers and hearers are the same all over the world. I have no doubt that the people of your country are like those I have met in China and India, and these latter were just like Tibetans. If you speak to them of profound Truths they yawn, and, if they dare, they leave you, but if you tell them absurd fables they are all eyes and ears. They wish the doctrines preached to them, whether religious, philosophic, or social, to be agreeable, to be consistent with their conceptions, to satisfy their inclinations, in fact that they find themselves in them, and that they feel themselves approved by them.”Yes? And why wouldn’t they? If you’re going to preach, after all, that suggests you think there’s a point. What’s the point of discouragement? Needless to say, the guy did write a book. But the hold that Buddhism long had over me was the hold of my thinking I must, at all costs, do what is not agreeable and congenial to me, which the above-quoted master seemed to think was such a worthy way to live. But why? In the end it makes no sense to me.I do think Buddhism has a lot to offer, but the main problem, as I see it, is a fixation on the void. I mean, I am no one to make pronouncements on such things, as if I know better than everyone else, but, in order to live my own life, I must know my own mind. And as far as I’m concerned, the problem can be highlighted by the two different versions of the ox-herding pictures. One version ends on the void, which is where many Eastern Buddhists and perhaps most Western adherents of buddhism seem to be stuck. A later, in my opinion more agreeable version, of the ox-herding pictures does not end there, but comes back to the world. I’ve seen one guy commenting on the ox-herding pictures on the Internet, and he was more or less frothing at the mouth at the thought that many people ‘misinterpret’ the pictures, thinking that the ‘fat, drunken oaf’ in the last picture is the same person as the pilgrim in the first picture. This, he said, was obviously untrue and shows a complete misreading of the whole meaning of the pictures. How on earth could this drunken oaf ever be a master?But it seems to me that if you were a master you could be whatever the hell you wanted to be, and wouldn’t need the approval of some uptight arsehole writing on the Internet. “If you’re a master you sit up straight and don’t drink,” seemed to be the implication. It reminds me of the bit in this where the amputees are dancing and pretending to have a wonderful time:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMecO38MZCcThat's the image I have of a lot of Buddhism.”I am trying to eliminate all my karma in order that I can cease existing. Even without a spiritual penis I am still able to join in various social activities. Isn’t life as an amputee wonderful!”Etc.If only they would admit to their true despair, I’d have a lot more respect.

  8. This is G.K. Chesterton:After belabouring a great many people for a great many years for being unprogressive, Mr. Shaw has discovered, with characteristic sense, that it is very doubtful whether any existing human being with two legs can be progressive at all. Having come to doubt whether humanity can be combined with progress, most people, easily pleased, would have elected to abandon progress and remain with humanity. Mr. Shaw, not being easily pleased, decides to throw over humanity with all its limitations and go in for progress for its own sake. If man, as we know him, is incapable of the philosophy of progress, Mr. Shaw asks, not for a new kind of philosophy, but for a new kind of man. It is rather as if a nurse had tried a rather bitter food for some years on a baby, and on discovering that it was not suitable, should not throw away the food and ask for a new food, but throw the baby out of window, and ask for a new baby.That’s pretty much how I feel in relation to the old Tibetan sobersides quoted above.

  9. Have you heard of the monk Ryokan? To me he is the perfect counter-example to that. I find his poetry in translation to be beautiful.Also, if you ever write your memoirs you must title it “My Spiritual Penis”.

  10. I’m not sure that I had heard of him, but I’ve just looked up a little about him, and he sounds interesting. I should probably add that I’m generally an ‘ambivalent’ sort of person… Should I add that? Maybe I shouldn’t. Anyway, the point is… no, perhaps it doesn’t matter.My memoirs? Hmmmm. I’m afraid there’s very little mem in my life for me to woir, but if I do ever woir my mems, I shall consider that title.

  11. There is also Han Shan, Layman Pang, Joshu, and of course the wonderful Zhuangzhi whom you have already discovered.Look for that which makes you feel light and unencumbered, not that which pulls you down.Plus, you can always hire a ghostwriter!

  12. Just want to add some general stuff as a PS to the blog entry itself:If we’re allowed to talk about ‘spirituality’ without feeling poncey, then I think it’s something that people basically have whether they acknowledge it or not, although some may possibly be more in tune with it than others. Therefore there is nothing at all strange or unexpected about an atheist being spiritual. What is strange is that atheism is, in so many ways, an avowal of antagonism towards spirituality. If one is to embrace one’s existent spirituality, I would imagine this would involve a reassessment of the atheist tag.To put it another way, if atheism just means, when one comes to tick the box for religion on a form, that one ticks the box saying “none of the above”, then there is no contradiction or problematical aspect at all with the notion of spiritual atheism. In fact, freedom from a dogmatic form of religion is arguably a sign of greater spirituality. What I don’t understand, however, is when people don’t mean “none of the above” but have a kind of a thing about being atheist, in which case it becomes another box to tick like all the previous boxes, and another similar trap to fall into. It’s quite possible that I’ll read the whole book and find Comte-Sponville is a ‘none of the above’ kind of guy, and I’ll think, “Well, all the controversies I imagined really were purely semantic.” Having said that, there does remain, for me personally, this peculiar, anxious quibbling between the Buddhist and the monotheist version of spirituality. Comte-Sponville is clearly closer to the former, but recently, for all the former’s advantages, I find myself thinking, “Hang on, there is something in the Western tradition. It’s not all backwardness and barbarism. There’s a reason it was this way, and if we lose what’s good in it, we lose a great deal.”

  13. Look for that which makes you feel light and unencumbered, not that which pulls you down. Yeah, this is pretty much what I do. If I’ve been struggling to fit a sentence I’ve just read into my brain for about 30 minutes and it’s starting to hurt, I sometimes find myself stepping back, figuratively, and thinking, “This is just words.” There’s a mental sensation here something like when you stand in a doorway and try to force your arm upwards against one of the jambs for half an hour and the step away. Your arm seems to float up of its own accord. And so with the brain. On these occasions I remember that it’s not fitting words into my brain that’s important. It’s whether those words are in any way liberating, etc.I mean, there is something endearing about our Puddleglum contemplative, but I have to wonder what his ultimate aims are. If it’s to do with liberation, then why try and lay heavy chains on people?

  14. I think that it is a matter of interpretation, and then translation, of the original thoughts. But, I think that, unfortunately, overall the Buddhist message that I see (unless I’m taking it the wrong way), isn’t clearly stated enough to get to the maximum number of people. Maybe it is also a matter of the message being the same for so long; if it worked for him then, great; but maybe he didn’t intend for it to be something durable and flexible to pass along the generations. I always find it amusing that it was Tom Baker who played Puddleglum in the Wonderworks version of the Narnia books. He makes me laugh.Perhaps we should talk about something less weighty and obtuse?

  16. I think that it is a matter of interpretation, and then translation, of the original thoughts. It’s always a game of Chinese whispers, which is why it is always better to trust your own experience. But, I think that, unfortunately, overall the Buddhist message that I see (unless I’m taking it the wrong way), isn’t clearly stated enough to get to the maximum number of people.I’m not really sure there is a message, which might prove your point. Some Buddhism is taught as if there is a message, and this is what I like least. Zen seems to me a practice more than a message, and, as far as I can tell, the practice is designed to free your awareness. In that sense it seems ridiculous for it to be a teaching in the sense of, “This is the way things are.” Despite recently accepting the spirit of U.G. Krishnamurti into my mortal frame, I would kind of argue with the things he said while he was alive in his own body. By which I mean, he declaimed that he had no message. You know, maybe the guy I buy bread and cheese from in the Spar shop down the road also has no message (maybe he does), but he, like many other people, is not going around shouting about it. In other words, the ‘you don’t get it till you realise that there is no message’ message is radically elitist in that it does not accept that there can be any kind of relative progress or improvement of situation. You either ‘get it’ or you don’t. Getting it is apparently about being accepting, but those who loudly declaim this no-message message often seem far from accepting. They are the only ones who understand. Everyone else is ignorant, etc. Well, if they were so accepting, why should they care? Most ordinary people are, in fact – as Chesterton suggests – far more accepting than this.Anyway, people do and say what they need to at the time, and to place it into a different time and context is perhaps unkind, so I suppose I shouldn’t rake up U.G.’s past pronouncements.I always find it amusing that it was Tom Baker who played Puddleglum in the Wonderworks version of the Narnia books. He makes me laugh.The mere existence of Tom Baker – and not his non-existence – is more fabulous than the entire history of ‘Buddhism’, ‘Christianity’, or any other such monstrous abstraction.Perhaps we should talk about something less weighty and obtuse?I doubt I could be anything other than obtuse.

  17. Justin Isis writes:”Besides, forms don’t usually include a checkbox for animist or other traditional religion on them.”Probably because no one takes animism seriously. I also am attracted to it, though. No one takes Immaterialism seriously either. I feel like as I get older, I only really like philosophies or religions that have already been “disproven” or aren’t taken seriously. I don’t care about something that’s trying to be a coherent “realistic” philosophy or tell me how to live. Arguments which are supposed to “make sense” (like anything to do with karma, or the pillars of Islam) usually don’t make any sense to me, but things like Immaterialism or animism which are supposed to be “absurd” usually make sense to me.

  24. Hsng on. I’ll get back to you on that one.In the meantime we should all discuss whether The Sugarcubes was/were better than Bjork’s solo stuff.

  26. Yeah, I was just throwing out the shorter word to type. I always felt that if I were going to listen to one or the other it would be the Sugarcubes. But now you’ve got me into a debate about someone I don’t even listen to!OK then: Hunky Dory versus Man Who Sold the World Bowies!Hunky Dory Bowie, I choose you!!!

  27. Ah… that’s a difficult one. Hunky Dory is, in many ways, a perfect album. There are probably few if any other albums in the history of pop music that have conveyed to me the idea of MUSIC as something thrilling, personal, transformative and, dare I say, spiritual. And the songs are not three-chord tricks. David Bowie could really write songs. When, on occasion, I listen to it today, the closest thing I hear to a flaw is Song for Bob Dylan. The rest pretty much seems to validate the existence of pop music by itself. On the other hand, we have The Man Who Sold the World, a slightly more hazy, druggy, Twilight Zone kind of album, whose treasures are to be found perhaps not immediately, but after you’ve sneaked past the sleeping monster of the heavy metal arrangements and down the secret passage of the madness and mysticism subtext (Kahlil Gibran, Nietzsche, H.P. Lovecraft etc.). The songs and lyrics on the album are at once more straightforward than Hunky Dory and weirder. A machine built to save the world goes insane and turns on its creators, a sinister nursery rhyme hints at reincarnation twisted into madness, or vice versa, the occult circle is expanded to include the prehuman Supermen who process in “solemn perverse serenity”, and yet, Bowie assures us, uncannily, “I never lost control”. For which of these two albums should I cast my vote?I think it’ll have to be Hunky Dory, for Quicksand, for Fill Your Heart and especially for The Bewlay Brothers, which is the weirdest, most unsettling and convincingly enigmatic song ever committed to vinyl.

  28. There are probably few if any other albums in the history of pop music that have conveyed to me the idea of MUSIC as something thrilling, personal, transformative and, dare I say, spiritual.This should have been something like: “There are probably few if any other albums in the history of pop music that have conveyed to me the idea of MUSIC as something thrilling, personal, transformative and, dare I say, spiritual, to the degree that this album has.”I think Bowie’s 90s were probably better than his 80s. I like Let’s Dance, and Tonight has at least two great songs on it, but this is pretty much where things started to go wrong. 1. Outside is an album I can enjoy listening to, though it sounds too much like Bowie being influenced by inferior artists influenced by him. Earthling, I can also enjoy. It has some great tracks. Heathen was billed (reviewed) as his great comeback, but it’s quite dull, really. I like the opening and closing tracks. Reality was better than Heathen, but I’m still puzzled by filler like the George Harrison cover and some of the good tracks were still kind of unconvincing. Oh, and I haven’t mentioned Hours…, which sounds like an album of out-takes, and has Bowie doing a bad rock’n’roll karaoke of himself with The Pretty Things are Going to Hell, just as the track Reality on the album of that name is also a bad rock’n’roll karaoke of himself. Basically, Bowie should have been the next messiah, but copped-out and just became a ‘succesful musical artist’ or whatever. It’s an understandable choice, I suppose. He didn’t want to get torn limb from limb like Ziggy, I expect. But he really should have been a Pied Piper of Aladdinsanity leading us all into Bowie Universe through the lightning crack in the sky. I wish some rock star would actually do that. Not that there are any rock stars anymore. I suppose rock has failed in that sense.Time to move on.

  30. I do want to come back and jump in on this comment conversation, and now curious about the book. Meaning the one you read and ended up buying. I am too sleepy at this point to add to something I can’t finish at this time.Will be back to follow along…

  33. Originally posted by anonymous:The difficulty I have with Comte-Sponville is that he denies the supernatural Spirituality of ‘Western’ tradition, but redefines Spirit as a kind of emergent property of the mind – an epiphenomenon. Hence it is totally natural, though mysterious.To wrap oneself up in this natural dreaming seems senseless to me. Surely the only true basis for true spirituality should be its genuine supernaturalness. Otherwise I’m hiding in my private fantasies.My views differ from those of Comte-Sponville, too, as I’m sure you noticed. I do sometimes wonder, though, whether it’s all arguing over words, for instance, whether to say ‘natural’ or ‘supernatural’. Do the words we arrive at change the reality? If they do, or they change our behaviour towards that reality, then we should, indeed, be careful about them. Or perhaps the words are a perilous distraction from the reality.Again, there’s a for and against here. Anyone who wished to denigrate words entirely, I would refer to Helen Keller’s account of her awakening to self-awareness through language.

  34. MyGoatyBeard writes:Quentin said: I find myself thinking, “Hang on, there is something in the Western tradition. It’s not all backwardness and barbarism. There’s a reason it was this way, and if we lose what’s good in it, we lose a great deal.”The difficulty I have with Comte-Sponville is that he denies the supernatural Spirituality of ‘Western’ tradition, but redefines Spirit as a kind of emergent property of the mind – an epiphenomenon. Hence it is totally natural, though mysterious.To wrap oneself up in this natural dreaming seems senseless to me. Surely the only true basis for true spirituality should be its genuine supernaturalness. Otherwise I’m hiding in my private fantasies.

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