THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

 

July 23, 2020

 

“The world is a Dancer; it is a Rosary; it is a Torrent; it is a Boat; a Mist; a Spider’s Snare: it is what you will; and the metaphor will hold, and it will give the imagination keen pleasure.  Swifter than light the world converts itself into the thing you name, and all things find their right place under this new and capricious classification.  Must I call the heaven and the earth a maypole and country fair with booths, or an anthill, or an old coat, in order to give you the shock of pleasure which the imagination loves and the sense of spiritual greatness?  Call it a blossom, a rod, a wreath of parsley, a tamarisk-crown, a cock, a sparrow, the ear instantly hears and the spirit leaps to the trope.”  

 

(The Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Linscott, pp. 197-198, (1841))

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Battle or Picnic?

 

Life has often been described as a battle. Perhaps the most famous example is the Bhagavad Gita. Just as a great battle is about to begin, the warrior-prince Arjuna asks his charioteer and guru, the god Krishna, to drive their chariot between the two armies. Time stops. Filled with pity, and unwilling to kill his kinsmen who are on the opposing side, Arjuna refuses to fight. Krishna urges Arjuna to do his duty, to stand up and fight like a man. He teaches Arjuna that the highest liberation comes from the realization that one’s self is the unborn and undying Self of all—not other than God. Arjuna decides to join the fight, the battle begins, and everyone on both sides is slaughtered.

 

The Bhagavad Gita is a complex wisdom text which is located in the middle of a story about war. It is essentially about yoga and how to live a life of inner peace and freedom, but the plot of the epic in which it is set requires Arjuna to fight in the war. So, a central metaphor suggests that life is a battle, and the honorable thing is to boldly do what is required of you.

 

We are often reminded that life is a struggle or a battle. Darwin’s idea of the survival of the fittest is used to support this idea. Our economic system is predicated on the idea of a fierce competition which many people will inevitably lose. Too bad for them.

 

I like the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. In one of his talks at a meditation retreat, he began by saying: “Some people think that a meditation retreat is a kind of picnic…” When someone is an expert in a field, he usually warns newcomers that such expertise requires years of discipline and hard work. So, I was expecting Thich Nhat Hanh to continue by saying, “…but it’s not.” He surprised me by next saying: “I love picnics!” And I thought to myself: “I love picnics, too! Everyone loves picnics! Picnics are lovely!”

 

And it occurred to me that rather than thinking of life as a struggle, as some kind of ordeal, as a battle to be fought, I would think of my life as a picnic. Why not? As we learn from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s entertaining journal entry that I am using as the epigram for this essay, we can say anything we want. I have the feeling that life is everything-at-once. But I can’t imagine everything-at-once. So, for now, I’m going with “picnic.”

 

It’s a picnic to which everyone is invited. A gathering. A feast. Little kids are running around. Maybe there’s a softball game. There’s potato salad. Sandwiches. Lemonade. There might be pie. Ants. At a picnic, everyone has the feeling that life is good.

 

Since we’re here just a little while, doesn’t that sound good? As a metaphor, isn’t it preferable to a scene of chaos, confusion and carnage?

 

In the UNESCO Constitution, signed in November of 1945, it says: “…wars begin in the minds of men…” We should choose our metaphors wisely.

 

—Johnny Stallings  (11/14/19)

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Naomi Shihab Nye really goes to town with metaphors in this poem:

 

Sifter

 

When our English teacher gave

our first writing assignment of the year,

Become a kitchen implement

in 2 descriptive paragraphs, I did not think

butcher knife or frying pan,

I thought immediately

of soft flour sifting through the little holes

of the sifter and the sifter’s pleasing circular

swishing sound, and wrote it down.

Rhoda became a teaspoon,

Roberto a funnel,

Jim a muffin tin

and Forrest a soup pot.

We read our paragraphs out loud.

Abby was a blender. Everyone laughed

and acted giddy, but the more we thought about it,

we were all everything in the whole kitchen,

drawers and drainers,

singing teapot and grapefruit spoon

with serrated edges, we were all the

empty cup, the tray.

This, said our teacher, is the beauty of metaphor.

It opens doors.

What I could not know then

was how being a sifter

would help me all year long.

When bad days came

I would close my eyes and feel them passing

through the tiny holes.

When good days came

I would try to contain them gently

the way flour remains

in the sifter until you turn the handle.

Time, time. I was a sweet sifter in time

and no one ever knew.

 

—Naomi Shihab Nye

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Howard Thoresen has often recommended to me the book Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. 

 

Jeff Kuehner sent a couple poems:

 

The Panther

 

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,

has grown so weary that it cannot hold

anything else. It seems to him there are

a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

 

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,

the movement of his powerful soft strides

is like a ritual dance around a center

in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

 

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils

lifts quietly—. An image enters in,

rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,

plunges into the heart and is gone.

 

—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell

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There Will Come Soft Rains

 

(War Time)

 

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

 

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

 

Robins will wear their feathery fire

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

 

And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.

 

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree

If mankind perished utterly;

 

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

Would scarcely know that we were gone.

 

—Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

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Here’s a link to a short (12 minutes) film on “Sacred Economics” featuring Charles Eisenstein:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEZkQv25uEs

 

That’s it for this issue of “peace, love, happiness & understanding.” Tune in next week for another exciting episode.

 

—Johnny Stallings