banality of transcendence
September 3, 2007 9:32 AM Subscribe
The banality of transcendence, chapter and verse.
I am very curious about humans achieving enlightenment or transcendence or similar spiritual type peak experiences in the context of the mundane. For example: the episode in Goethe's Faust where Faust sees the miraculous as two peasants plowing a field, or the episode in the sutras where the Buddha's pal sees it in a lotus flower. I have a copy of Faust and I cannot find the passage. If there are other good examples that I can find with a library card or a web browser I would be very interested in them.
I have my own experience which I shall spare you, and I also am not really interested in a random blogger's personal example, but if there is a quoteable internet example (say e.g. Bill Gates blogged about seeing the Virgin Mary in a hex dump) that would be OK.
Thank you!
I am very curious about humans achieving enlightenment or transcendence or similar spiritual type peak experiences in the context of the mundane. For example: the episode in Goethe's Faust where Faust sees the miraculous as two peasants plowing a field, or the episode in the sutras where the Buddha's pal sees it in a lotus flower. I have a copy of Faust and I cannot find the passage. If there are other good examples that I can find with a library card or a web browser I would be very interested in them.
I have my own experience which I shall spare you, and I also am not really interested in a random blogger's personal example, but if there is a quoteable internet example (say e.g. Bill Gates blogged about seeing the Virgin Mary in a hex dump) that would be OK.
Thank you!
Your examples remind me of Blake's:
To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wildflower
To hold eternity in the palm of your hand
And infinity in an hour.
(From Auguries of Innocence)
posted by frobozz at 9:39 AM on September 3, 2007 [2 favorites]
To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wildflower
To hold eternity in the palm of your hand
And infinity in an hour.
(From Auguries of Innocence)
posted by frobozz at 9:39 AM on September 3, 2007 [2 favorites]
In DeDaumier-Smith's Blue Period, by JD Salinger, the main character achieves this sort of epiphany while looking in the window of a medical supply store. The story is in 9 Stories.
posted by miniape at 9:47 AM on September 3, 2007
posted by miniape at 9:47 AM on September 3, 2007
Well Water by Randall Jarrell
What a girl called "the dailiness of life"
(Adding an errand to your errand. Saying,
"Since you're up . . ." Making you a means to
A means to a means to) is well water
Pumped from an old well at the bottom of the world.
The pump you pump the water from is rusty
And hard to move and absurd, a squirrel-wheel
A sick squirrel turns slowly, through the sunny
Inexorable hours. And yet sometimes
The wheel turns of its own weight, the rusty
Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear
Water, cold, so cold! you cup your hands
And gulp from them the dailiness of life.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:19 AM on September 3, 2007 [2 favorites]
What a girl called "the dailiness of life"
(Adding an errand to your errand. Saying,
"Since you're up . . ." Making you a means to
A means to a means to) is well water
Pumped from an old well at the bottom of the world.
The pump you pump the water from is rusty
And hard to move and absurd, a squirrel-wheel
A sick squirrel turns slowly, through the sunny
Inexorable hours. And yet sometimes
The wheel turns of its own weight, the rusty
Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear
Water, cold, so cold! you cup your hands
And gulp from them the dailiness of life.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:19 AM on September 3, 2007 [2 favorites]
Virginia Woolf writes about sudden "shocks of trancedence" in an essay called "A Sketch of the Past" You can read excerpts here.
Scroll down to the heading "Artist-Critic—Shock-Receiving Capacity"
This essay is inside the collection of essays entitled Moments of Being in which you may find other interesting pieces.
posted by amethysts at 10:24 AM on September 3, 2007
Scroll down to the heading "Artist-Critic—Shock-Receiving Capacity"
This essay is inside the collection of essays entitled Moments of Being in which you may find other interesting pieces.
posted by amethysts at 10:24 AM on September 3, 2007
Have you read Watchmen? The climax of one of the character arcs (the 'thermodynamic miracle' conversation for those who've read it) might count as an example.
It's been entirely too long since I've read it, but doesn't the preface to Lyrical Ballads state that Wordsworth's intent in much of the volume's poetry is to concentrate on the miraculous in the quotidian?
posted by kimota at 10:26 AM on September 3, 2007
It's been entirely too long since I've read it, but doesn't the preface to Lyrical Ballads state that Wordsworth's intent in much of the volume's poetry is to concentrate on the miraculous in the quotidian?
posted by kimota at 10:26 AM on September 3, 2007
Walter Benjamin wrote about the possibility of transcendence (he wrote something like "the straight-gate through which could be glimpsed the Messiah") in works of art. I thought of this given amethysts' comment about Woolf. Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time remembering which text has his messianic musings - it's not 'Arcades' 'Work of Art in the Age...' or any of the standard texts, though. I know art doesn't qualify as the mundane, but Benjamin apparently thought that art contained crystallized historical moments that could transcend the continuous spiral of Hegelian/materialist thinking... It's been awhile, so I'm a bit rusty. Hope that helps!
posted by Slothrop at 10:34 AM on September 3, 2007
posted by Slothrop at 10:34 AM on September 3, 2007
I will spare you my experience but not my philosophizing. My opinion is that recognition of spiritual identity is not a peak experience but, to use the phrase of Douglas Harding, a valley experience instead. He presents 'seeing who you are' (or enlightenment - if you happen to like that word) as recognition that the self is nothing more than a field of awareness (among other possible phrases). Because that is all there is to it, it is always mundane. It isn't visions but a change in looking. Namely, looking instead of looking at, but enough of my philosophizing.
Now none of that answers your question, but if you find that position agreeable check out his website. It has a pretty good compilation of passages at the tab, "the voice of tradition". Much of it is verse or 'instruction' from Zen priests. There is also a narrative of Douglas Harding's own experience and I think a few others but the group largely plays down experiences and sees this experience as obtainable at any time in any mood. Ecstasy is not a necessary accompaniment.
Full disclosure: I am in no way affiliated with the above website or the group running it and have had no personal contact with anyone who is. I do think they are one of the few no bullshit groups talking about the subject with no agenda beyond promoting this view of the self.
It's been a while since I read James' Varieties of Religious Experience but that book is chock full of examples. Quaker journals tend to have a lot of these as well. Many of their spiritual autobiographies are on the web. A few searches of some of the earlier, more prominent members should point you towards the relevant sections of their journals. Martin Buber had a profound experience petting a horse, which I believe he mentions in the introduction to I and Thou, but again you won't have to struggle to find it. Many zen and chan stories along these lines as well.
posted by BigSky at 10:54 AM on September 3, 2007 [1 favorite]
Now none of that answers your question, but if you find that position agreeable check out his website. It has a pretty good compilation of passages at the tab, "the voice of tradition". Much of it is verse or 'instruction' from Zen priests. There is also a narrative of Douglas Harding's own experience and I think a few others but the group largely plays down experiences and sees this experience as obtainable at any time in any mood. Ecstasy is not a necessary accompaniment.
Full disclosure: I am in no way affiliated with the above website or the group running it and have had no personal contact with anyone who is. I do think they are one of the few no bullshit groups talking about the subject with no agenda beyond promoting this view of the self.
It's been a while since I read James' Varieties of Religious Experience but that book is chock full of examples. Quaker journals tend to have a lot of these as well. Many of their spiritual autobiographies are on the web. A few searches of some of the earlier, more prominent members should point you towards the relevant sections of their journals. Martin Buber had a profound experience petting a horse, which I believe he mentions in the introduction to I and Thou, but again you won't have to struggle to find it. Many zen and chan stories along these lines as well.
posted by BigSky at 10:54 AM on September 3, 2007 [1 favorite]
It's not quite the same but: the opening chapter of Joyce's Portrait of the Artist shows this kind of transfixion in the ordinary as a constant in the life of a child before he gets used to things...later on, the young man has to seek this kind of transcendence consciously, and has a very heavy-handed theory of the epiphany to go along with it, but as a child he constantly has these experiences that you would call "epiphanies" if it were an adult returning to this state and not a child swimming naturally in it.
Also Kracauer's theory of realist film and how it is supposed to replace art and return to us a sense of wonder at quotidian objects might be relevant. The book is called "Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality".
posted by creasy boy at 10:54 AM on September 3, 2007
Also Kracauer's theory of realist film and how it is supposed to replace art and return to us a sense of wonder at quotidian objects might be relevant. The book is called "Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality".
posted by creasy boy at 10:54 AM on September 3, 2007
Best answer: Much of William James's THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE fits your need. It's a brilliant piece of writing, should be required for every high school student. A particularly memorable quote from it:
"After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and became more and more lively, and had more of that inward sweetness. The appearance of everything was altered; there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost everything. God's excellency, is wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in everything; in the sun, moon, and stars; in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, and trees; in the water and all nature; which used greatly to fix my mind. And scarce anything, among all the works of nature, was so sweet to me as thunder and lightning; formerly nothing had been so terrible to me. Before, I used to be uncommonly terrified with thunder, and to be struck with terror when I saw a thunderstorm rising; but now, on the contrary, it rejoices me."[136]
[136] Dwight: Life of Edwards, New York, 1830, p. 61, abridged.
See also Henry Beston's nature writings, i.e. 'The Outermost House' for page-by-page revelatory experiences.
posted by mr. remy at 10:57 AM on September 3, 2007
"After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and became more and more lively, and had more of that inward sweetness. The appearance of everything was altered; there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost everything. God's excellency, is wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in everything; in the sun, moon, and stars; in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, and trees; in the water and all nature; which used greatly to fix my mind. And scarce anything, among all the works of nature, was so sweet to me as thunder and lightning; formerly nothing had been so terrible to me. Before, I used to be uncommonly terrified with thunder, and to be struck with terror when I saw a thunderstorm rising; but now, on the contrary, it rejoices me."[136]
[136] Dwight: Life of Edwards, New York, 1830, p. 61, abridged.
See also Henry Beston's nature writings, i.e. 'The Outermost House' for page-by-page revelatory experiences.
posted by mr. remy at 10:57 AM on September 3, 2007
It's not quite the same but: the opening chapter of Joyce's Portrait of the Artist
I'd agree with you on Joyce, but I'd pick a different excerpt: the bird girl episode 2/3 of the way through the novel seems to me to be the apex of Stephen's waking into the world:
A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to
sea. She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a
strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender bare legs were delicate
as a crane's and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had
fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and
soft-hued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips, where the white
fringes of her drawers were like feathering of soft white down. Her
slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed
behind her. Her bosom was as a bird's, soft and slight, slight and soft
as the breast of some dark-plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was
girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her
face.
She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his
presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet
sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long she
suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bent
them towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot hither
and thither. The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the
silence, low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep;
hither and thither, hither and thither; and a faint flame trembled on
her cheek.
--Heavenly God! cried Stephen's soul, in an outburst of profane joy.
He turned away from her suddenly and set off across the strand. His
cheeks were aflame; his body was aglow; his limbs were trembling. On
and on and on and on he strode, far out over the sands, singing wildly
to the sea, crying to greet the advent of the life that had cried to him.
Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the
holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had
leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate
life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal
youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open
before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error
and glory. On and on and on and on!
posted by mr. remy at 11:05 AM on September 3, 2007
I'd agree with you on Joyce, but I'd pick a different excerpt: the bird girl episode 2/3 of the way through the novel seems to me to be the apex of Stephen's waking into the world:
A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to
sea. She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a
strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender bare legs were delicate
as a crane's and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had
fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and
soft-hued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips, where the white
fringes of her drawers were like feathering of soft white down. Her
slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed
behind her. Her bosom was as a bird's, soft and slight, slight and soft
as the breast of some dark-plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was
girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her
face.
She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his
presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet
sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long she
suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bent
them towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot hither
and thither. The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the
silence, low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep;
hither and thither, hither and thither; and a faint flame trembled on
her cheek.
--Heavenly God! cried Stephen's soul, in an outburst of profane joy.
He turned away from her suddenly and set off across the strand. His
cheeks were aflame; his body was aglow; his limbs were trembling. On
and on and on and on he strode, far out over the sands, singing wildly
to the sea, crying to greet the advent of the life that had cried to him.
Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the
holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had
leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate
life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal
youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open
before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error
and glory. On and on and on and on!
posted by mr. remy at 11:05 AM on September 3, 2007
Mr. Remy -- yes, a fine piece of writing -- really captures his overblown mindset at that point. I thought the bird-girl was too overly symbolic though, not mundane enough. I figured "horse-piss and rotted straw" would fit the bill more; or something like: "What did that mean, to kiss? You put your face up like that to say goodnight and then his mother put her face down. That was to kiss. His mother put her lips on his cheek; her lips were soft and they wetted his cheek; and they made a tiny little noise: kiss. Why did people do that with their two faces?" I was thinking of this kind of epiphany, and not the grand symbolic kind: just a quiet absorption and wonder in the quotidian...which is also what Kracauer's film theory emphasizes: a return to a consciousness of simple objects through an artistic estrangement of them.
This may or may not be "transcendence", it's hard to say.
posted by creasy boy at 11:36 AM on September 3, 2007
This may or may not be "transcendence", it's hard to say.
posted by creasy boy at 11:36 AM on September 3, 2007
Werner Erhart achieved his "enlightenment" while driving in San Francisco traffic one day. [source]
posted by nitsuj at 11:45 AM on September 3, 2007
posted by nitsuj at 11:45 AM on September 3, 2007
Street Window
The pawn-shop man knows hunger,
And how far hunger has eaten the heart
Of one who comes with an old keepsake.
Here are wedding rings and baby bracelets,
Scarf pins and shoe buckles, jeweled garters,
Old-fashioned knives with inlaid handles,
Watches of old gold and silver,
Old coins worn with finger-marks.
They tell stories.
--Carl Sandburg (1878–1967)
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 11:47 AM on September 3, 2007
The pawn-shop man knows hunger,
And how far hunger has eaten the heart
Of one who comes with an old keepsake.
Here are wedding rings and baby bracelets,
Scarf pins and shoe buckles, jeweled garters,
Old-fashioned knives with inlaid handles,
Watches of old gold and silver,
Old coins worn with finger-marks.
They tell stories.
--Carl Sandburg (1878–1967)
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 11:47 AM on September 3, 2007
Love those lines of Blake's, frobozz.
I would add one of his "Proverbs of Hell" from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell which is one step more abstract, I think:
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
posted by jamjam at 12:27 PM on September 3, 2007
I would add one of his "Proverbs of Hell" from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell which is one step more abstract, I think:
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
posted by jamjam at 12:27 PM on September 3, 2007
There are so many interesting examples of this. Joyce's "The Dead" is also a classic discussion of banality and transcendence. Another frequently cited example would be Thomas Merton's Louisville revelation in The Seven Story Mountain. See also Hopkin's "The Windhover," with all that "sheer plod" and revelation mixed together.
posted by washburn at 12:39 PM on September 3, 2007
posted by washburn at 12:39 PM on September 3, 2007
There's a great book that deals - in some strange ways - with the question of banal enlightenment. Particularly with the 'after enlightenment, then what?' question. The author, the wonderful John Horgan, seems to find it in the last chapter in a weird, thrilling, and utterly heart(breaking/warming) experience with his two little daughters.
Additionally, the Bill Moyers series 'Writers on Faith and Reason' has some spectacular stories and interviews about this subject. With hyperarticulate guests like Rushdie, Richard Rodriguez, Pëma Chodron, there's a lot to learn, I think.
posted by mr. remy at 12:44 PM on September 3, 2007
Additionally, the Bill Moyers series 'Writers on Faith and Reason' has some spectacular stories and interviews about this subject. With hyperarticulate guests like Rushdie, Richard Rodriguez, Pëma Chodron, there's a lot to learn, I think.
posted by mr. remy at 12:44 PM on September 3, 2007
seconding "the varieties of religious experience"
for more poetic zen-type stuff, try "zen flesh, zen bones" by Paul Reps
posted by DarkForest at 12:46 PM on September 3, 2007
for more poetic zen-type stuff, try "zen flesh, zen bones" by Paul Reps
posted by DarkForest at 12:46 PM on September 3, 2007
She spun her car into a field
And through the hole in the windshield
She saw the marvellous revealed
In the everyday.
She saw far out into space
Through the sockets in her face.
She saw everything in place,
Nothing in her way.
She saw the thinness of a dime,
She saw a slug secreting slime,
As if for the first time.
Purified by flame
Nothing had a name.
Nothing looked the same.
She'd come so far so fast
But she could not outpace her past
It had caught up with her at last
She saw the thinness of a dime
Saw a slug secreting slime
As if for the first time
Others looked but never saw
The glory apprehended raw
Down to the smallest flaw in the grand design.
The Marvellous in the Everyday by Peter Blegvad, from his album Hangman's Hill.
posted by Grangousier at 1:48 PM on September 3, 2007
And through the hole in the windshield
She saw the marvellous revealed
In the everyday.
She saw far out into space
Through the sockets in her face.
She saw everything in place,
Nothing in her way.
She saw the thinness of a dime,
She saw a slug secreting slime,
As if for the first time.
Purified by flame
Nothing had a name.
Nothing looked the same.
She'd come so far so fast
But she could not outpace her past
It had caught up with her at last
She saw the thinness of a dime
Saw a slug secreting slime
As if for the first time
Others looked but never saw
The glory apprehended raw
Down to the smallest flaw in the grand design.
The Marvellous in the Everyday by Peter Blegvad, from his album Hangman's Hill.
posted by Grangousier at 1:48 PM on September 3, 2007
I'd agree with you on Joyce, but I'd pick a different excerpt: the bird girl episode 2/3 of the way through the novel seems to me to be the apex of Stephen's waking into the world
Agreed.
posted by ludwig_van at 2:36 PM on September 3, 2007
Agreed.
posted by ludwig_van at 2:36 PM on September 3, 2007
Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:
— That is God.
Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!
— What? Mr Deasy asked.
— A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.
posted by mr. remy at 9:53 PM on September 3, 2007
— That is God.
Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!
— What? Mr Deasy asked.
— A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.
posted by mr. remy at 9:53 PM on September 3, 2007
The world in a grain of sand, or the universe in your charioteer:
the gita, chapter 11, verse 9 ff.
posted by jak68 at 10:19 PM on September 3, 2007
the gita, chapter 11, verse 9 ff.
posted by jak68 at 10:19 PM on September 3, 2007
'High Windows' by Philip Larkin has the transcendent in the mundane quality (esp. the last verse)
When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's fucking her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise
Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives--
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide
To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That'll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark
About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
posted by Rufus T. Firefly at 4:10 AM on September 4, 2007
When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's fucking her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise
Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives--
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide
To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That'll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark
About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
posted by Rufus T. Firefly at 4:10 AM on September 4, 2007
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posted by Bookhouse at 9:39 AM on September 3, 2007