The Tears Dried, and the Heart Died

Work is long,
Stress is hard,
Too much on your mind.

Your heart hardens and you go your own way.
Consume yourself with yourself.
A petty life among millions of strangers,
meanders further from the meaning.

Remember the family?
Your Father, your Mother, and your Kin
have not forgotten you.
Hold on to the fact you’re suffering is only for you,
When the world suffers along with you.
Keep your head down your eyes closed.

Why me? You cry at night.
Come back to us cry’s the world.
Where have you gone my sweet Soul, God whimpers.

So many things that distract.
Collecting gold in your fist,
More toys, less of this,
feeling when you experience something real.
A fleeting sunset, cold grass on your feet, or the touch of your mother’s hand,
can’t compare to this solitude, these toys, this drug, or all the wealth of the land.

When did you die to us? Sweet child when will you be born again?
The gravestone simply says “The Tears Dried, and the Heart Died.”

Dustin Huffer is back in Santa Saves Christmas

A Shawn Huffer Film

Taming God

God, who called out Abraham
or God the Christ bringer?
Maybe Allah whose secret word pierced Mohammed’s heart?
Or it could even be the Amida Buddha who turned enlightenment into salvation.
Which God is the God for you?
Krishna, Zeus, Apollo, Ganesha, Osiris?
After you organize you can fill in the details and look for proof.
The very proof that is contrary to God.
Reducing God to a context cannot be done.
He is not a theorem of creation or “proof.”
Divine Will cannot be condensed to a set of laws penned in a tome.
This sect, that sect. Which do you collapse into?
Koran, Bible, Bhagavad Gita, Lotus Sutra, I Ching, you better pick one.
Turn wisdom and beauty into laws and history.
Laws against the sheep of different flocks.
Beliefs bring violence.

Why chose one?
God is not tamable by a religion or any organization.
He is not packaged and sold by any one set of metaphysics.
God is an untamable fire that burns his will into every man’s heart.
It’s your job to chisel away the stone and receive the fires.
Let the sparks melt away the ego.
Ego that makes your sect better than others.
You can’t have God unless you let go of all beliefs.
And answer as Abraham did when God called.
Boldly proclaim “Here I am.”
Don’t hide like Adam behind a tree.

With no beliefs and emptiness all you will have left is faith.
Faith is to patiently wait and consent to what is revealed.

So take a walk away from the church’s walls.
This path will be lonely, because the walls are thick and the preacher is loud
but don’t fear faith is all you need.

Now You're Living

The superior man says, “Every man dies, but not every man lives.”

The baby thinks “when I can walk, that’s when I’ll start really living.”
The child says “when I get in high school and have a car, then I’ll be living.”
The teen says “when I get to college, that’s when I’ll start living.”
The college student says “when I get a job and make some money, then I can start living.”
The worker says “when I get enough vacation time to go to Costa Rica, then I will really be living.”
The vacationer says “when I retire and can always be on vacation, now that will be the life.
The retiree says “if only I were younger I could really be living.”
The dead man’s skull says “I was once like you and you will soon be like me.”

When will you start living?

 

Rain Check

Ah, I once wrote of how you make me feel,
and how I love to make you feel.
Words danced as lovers do,
atop a bed of roses.
Rhymes hit their sensual noses,
like the aroma of strawberries lightly dipped in whipped cream.
The symphony of moans creates a
crescendo in a heart bending climax.

 

Ah I exhale and think of these musings,
as they spark a flame in my heart that burns my entire body.
After spontaneously combusting I contemplate
and I realize that I haven’t wrote
simple words for you,
pressed together in a sardine-can-like-fashion.

I write to you this rain check.
As my awareness of true love deepens
and we watch the years pass,
I run short of words.
The reason isn’t my limited vocabulary,
or a lack of eternal devotion to you.

Let me pose this to you:
The botanist can easily explain to you
the seed of a beautiful flower.
It is oval in shape and greenish brown in color.
Now require the botanist to explain the blooming flower.
How does one explain this?
It sprouts open with a violent desire to color the world
and bathe in the sun’s warm rays.
The colors slowly bleed into the pedals
as it is pollinated by fat buzzing honey bees.
Does this do the flower justice?
No, I say.

Now that our seed is blooming
I am charged with that question:
Can you explain the blossom of True Love?
The abstraction hits me.
My mind turns into a tornado of devotion
out of this tornado my words are muddled and short of brutish grunts.

So I will patiently wait,
until the tornado is a soft spring wind,
kissing the lips of a peaceful brook,
elegantly framed by two knotty oak trees,
one tree with an old rope swing,
where you glide through the air of my heart .

Childish

The Father above,
looks below.
The Mother below,
looks above.
Man is what they imagine together.

The Father being a prime creative force,
Lends us his infinite breath.
By which we get the soul.
The Mother being the nurturer,
Holds us in her womb and feeds us from her breast.
By which we get the body.

Man at one time loved the Father and respected the Mother.
Now man only loves himself.
His eyes were pointed up in awe of the Father
And his heart was filled with the Mother.
Now his eyes are straight ahead,
and his heart is nowhere to be found.

Man creates and takes as if he were the Father
and pillages and burns the Mother.
Technology outgrew man’s wisdom,
now the Mother is saying,
“I brought you in, I can take you out.”

The Father by nature is patient,
the Mother can’t afford to be.
For when we have eaten the womb and dried the breast,
enough will be enough.

The Mother will scratch the itch that man has become.
When the winds come, the oceans rise, and the sky falls,
Man will look back to the Father and beg him to stop the Mother.
The Father in his infinite wisdom will shrug,
and say “maybe the next time around.”

Thus our epoch ends,
So that a new one may begin.

Meaning in the Meaningless: Zen

 

A. Siddhartha Gautama transformed into Buddha—the enlightened one—after 49 days of intense meditations and the battle against Mara the Evil One. Once he achieved enlightenment, his first sermon explained the Four Noble Truths: life is dukkha (suffering), the root of all suffering is tanha (desire), to defeat dukkha one must destroy tanha, and to destroy tanha one must follow the Eightfold Path. Buddha did not speak of suffering in the physical sense, such as pain, hunger, and sickness. There is no way of escaping these human conditions. If there is no escape from these sufferings, then the last two Noble Truths are fallacies, because following the Eightfold Path does not prevent hunger. The dukkha Buddha refers to is suffering upon suffering, or suffering of the spirit. This pain roots from tanha, or desire. Here, desire means to fulfill the ego’s needs. The quest for personal fulfillment causes dukkha, because one sees the world in his or her own projections and not what is the case. If we only seek the satisfaction of our egos, we will suffer. This behavior will create a rift between the interconnectedness of the world and our own egos. To be content, one must seek and act as if one is connected to all others and one must work with compassion. Acting in compassion and not personal desire will limit material feelings and suffering will subside. In order to defeat the ego’s embellishment of desire or anger, one can look at his or her psyche objectively. This will put the mind and heart ahead of the ego so that it can be analyzed. Thus, one will learn to free themselves from the confinements of desire.

“Trading Dialogue for Lodging” in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones illustrates a case of someone living with tanha and experiencing dukkha.[i] A dumb, one-eyed monk has a wordless argument with a wandering monk over lodging. The wanderer held up one finger signifying the Buddha, and the one-eyed idiot—not able to think beyond his own perceptions—thought that the one finger signified his one eye. The one-eyed man holds up two fingers to signify the wanderer has two eyes; the wandering man thinks he is signifying Buddha and his teachings. So the wanderer holds up three to show Buddha, his teachings, and his followers. Of course, the not- too-bright monk believes the fingers represent that they have only three eyes between them. Offended, he gets ready to punch the wanderer. The clenched fist shows the wanderer that the Buddha, the teachings, and the followers are all one. He feels that he lost the argument and departs. This story juxtaposes an individual who is able to look past his ego and who is not seething in suffering with someone who does live in suffering as a result of allowing a handicap to dictate how he perceives the world. The one-eyed monk is so caught up in his handicap, he become spiritually handicapped and limits his mind to the material. He cannot step back and think of himself objectively; he only lives within his perceptions.

B. A common method of Zen Buddhism is the use of koans. A koan is an absurdity with no apparent trick. This definition only scratches the surface. In practice, it is a way to exhaust rational thought or shock the mind out of the rational level. A Zen master will ask a student to explain the sound of one hand clapping. The mind has no rational answer for this and there never will be. However, through the deep act of trying to rationalize it, one will exhaust the rational. This opens the mind to a revelation. This revelation is satori, a flicker of enlightenment. This differs from the traditional emphasis Buddhism had on sutras. Sutras were studied scriptures that held guidelines on how to live life, commentary on reaching enlightenment, and other factors that provided organization for Buddhism. Sutras are on the side of learning about enlightenment and past Buddhas, which Zen dissented from. Zen held that there was no specific path to enlightenment and each person had to reach it by themselves via knowing through being. Zen’s goal was to bring Buddhism back to its original purpose, a therapeutic way to shed desire and suffering.

Satori is an ongoing quest—one that will not end until death. It can be described as a light bulb flickering: when it is off the rational mind blinds you, when it is on the light hits you and you attain satori for that instance, until the light is turned off again. In Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, the story “Three Days More” describes a student who returns to his master upset that he cannot answer what the sound of a hand is.[ii] The master sends him back to keep meditating on the matter, but the student still cannot attain enlightenment. Finally, the master tells him that if he doesn’t have an answer after three more days, he should commit suicide. The student becomes enlightened on the second day. The impending doom of suicide shocked the student’s mind into letting go of the rational and finding the truth, leading to satori.

C Satori is a flicker of enlightenment, where one sees beyond the rational and material. After the mind loses its rational thought process, a door is opened to a room where a Zen student can find the true answer which he seeks. Satori sheds the illusion of the moment so one can see what is the case. One opens to satori only for an instant and the more instances of occurrence, the more a person is free from illusions. Just because a person reaches satori once, this does not mean that he or she is enlightened. This would be in the realm of moksha, which is a termination of the world upon awakening. Satori for the Zen Buddhist does not terminate a person’s current understanding of things, but allows him or her to see clear for an instance by quieting one’s mental chatter. In no way does a moment of satori create a comprehension of the infinite; it simply clears up the finite for an objective view.

An example of satori is the Zen Flesh, Zen Bones story, “A Parable”.[iii] In this story, a man is travelling across a field and is chased by a tiger until he reaches a cliff where he grabs some roots and jumps off the edge. As he is hanging, the man notices another tiger is at the bottom of the ledge waiting for him to fall. Soon some mice come and start gnawing at the root. Amidst his apparent doom, he sees a strawberry and plucks it with his free hand. Without waving away the mice or trying to save his skin, he eats the strawberry and it is delicious. This illustrates satori, because every moment has a strawberry, and satori is this strawberry. A flash of truth is just as delicious as the last strawberry one will ever taste. The man with the strawberry was a man of quality over quantity. The situation destroyed his rational and emotional mind so that he may see what was in front of him. Two tigers, one above and one below, spells certain death, so why wrap yourself up in living minutes long by struggling when there is a strawberry in reach?

Critique

First of all, my critique of Zen is no way derived from knowing through being. When most people think of Zen, they think of a temple in the middle of the forest with a rock garden sitting in recently raked sand. This is because Zen has a tendency to leave the world behind. They remove themselves from—or perhaps transcend—the social world. By removing themselves from the world, they fall into their own world of absurdities. They call satori a flicker of enlightenment or truth, which may be correct, but when they induce it by stick beating or by cutting pinkies off it seems to fall into subjectivity. The world of truth doesn’t exist to them, because they trap themselves in the absurd, so that satori can be anything. There is a story in where a Zen master cuts a cat in half because two students can’t answer a question. Later, another student goes to his master and puts a sandal on his head. The master explains that his action would have saved that cat. Either the master is beyond any understanding I’ve attained or he is putting his own projections of absurd truth out on the world, so that a sandal on a head suffices as an answer.

---

[i] Reps, Paul and Nyogen Senzaki. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 1985. Pg. 46

[ii] Reps, Paul and Nyogen Senzaki. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 1985. Pg. 45

[iii] Reps, Paul and Nyogen Senzaki. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 1985. Pg. 38-39

No-Thing-Ness

 

A    Chuang-tzu’s critique of Confucian ju philosophy was that it dealt only with the world of the lesser Tao. Ju is the ability to be compassionate to others by practicing empathy. To live by this Tao, one must be able to do “good” without any selfish inclinations. The philosophy of Confucius is based in the world of objects. To follow the ju philosophy, “goodness” is turned into an object of desire. A man of the lesser Tao completely ignores the goodness in himself, which can operate through the greater Tao, and only looks to the external norms and laws to find the good. Chuang-tzu contends the man of greater Tao will see that goodness is endowed with existence and cannot be cultivated or taught by external norms. The pursuit of the lesser Tao leads to reducing goodness into something that is attainable. The more it is treated as an end, the less real it becomes through defining and training. This is because the greater Tao cannot be defined or trained. The greater Tao Chuang-tzu uses to critique Confucian ju philosophy is the infinite void around and in everything that exists. It cannot be taught, defined, or seen. If one has guidelines or ideals of doing the “good.” he or she will be acting according to their own consciousness, which is grounded in the lesser Tao. To let go of the want to do “good,” one must give no definition of “good” and simply wait for the time to act with spontaneity. The way to finding the good is to stop looking for it.

In the allegory of the bell a monk rings a bell for some bystanders and asks if the music of the bell came from the metal casting or the non-being inside the bell. Chuang-tzu would expect the Confucian to say that the sound came from the monk hitting it or the acoustics of the casting. Any answer they would come up with would be due to a science based in the world of objects or lesser Tao. Their methods of finding the “sound” would even be a fallacy because they would be using the rules of what constitutes a sound. They would desire to find “sound;” thus turning it into an object for attainment, which then renders any search for the real sound of the bell dead. Chuang-tzu, on the other hand, would not deny the phenomenal truths of the bell, but he would not hold that to be the standard of the bell’s music. He would contend that both the casting and the non-being (greater Tao) within the bell created the sound together. The bell would not be the bell if it did not have both non-being and casting together in the embodiment of a bell.

B Loa-tzu believed that to become a sage one must return to non-being, from whence all things came from. To do this, one must first take a step outside of one’s own subjectivity to realize there are other principles at work in the world. This would put a person among the world of being and recapture the self from the me. From here, the person must return themselves to non-being, or the greater Tao. Lao-tzu believes that with each person’s presence in being there is an essence that is a union of the finite and infinite. This essence can be called the I and is on the side of form, while our material or biological selves is the me. The me is on the side of matter and only exists in this world. A byproduct of its creaturely existence is that it cannot look back or comprehend the infinite. The I, on the other hand, can look into the infinite. Imagine the I tip-toeing on the small wall between non-being and being. It can turn its head towards the me or look back into the infinite. This is where the problem occurs. Given the me is the I’s way of being for a lifetime, the I will begin to identify with and collapse into the me. This stems from the I having preferences for the me’s career in the world. The I also understands that the me is a reflection of it as it undergoes change, so it has the tendency to say the me is the true self. This is a total collapse into the me. This fall of the I causes immense spiritual suffering, because the I gives the me imagined importance in the world, which puts the me at odds with anything that gets in the way of its wants. Lao-tzu saw this as the fall and contended that man’s I must return to its essential relationship with the me. This relationship is an objective observer with non-attached spiritual attention. The sages would be able to check their I’s so they don’t collapse in the existential. This way of living frees the I from the finite, which is the main goal of Lao-tzu’s teachings.

A cross has a vertical and a horizontal line intersecting. On this vertical axis is the I watching the me, which is walking along the horizontal part the of cross. This puts the I and me embodiment on the intersection of the cross. Soon the I wants the me to walk on the horizontal faster than the other me’s and it collapses into the me. Now, the only dimension to the embodiment is on the horizontal. Our original condition is to be on the intersection of the cross so the I and the me can be raised to heaven. Loa-tzu believes we must return to the cross by keeping the I out of the horizontal and by the I objectively willing the good of the me. This in turn will raise you to heaven or the greater Tao, which is non-being.

C Wei wu wei literally means action with no action. It is the way of life for people whom embody the greater Tao, without needing to embody anything. By letting Tao work in a person, wei wu wei happens without effort or any set goals. It is the essence of wei wu wei to be on the side of the offered destiny of a situation. Every moment requires an action, which can either be seethed in personal desire or be of spontaneity and singleness of attention. It may seem to the lay person that the Taoist is a pacifist even in the face of evil. The champion of wei wu wei sees the truth of the situation, while objectively discerning what moral action should be done. Therefore wei wu wei is to negate the refusal to attend to the need of the other or the situation. To do this, the Taoist first needs to accept the truth of the situation by looking at it with spiritual attention, which is in no way attached to the social or the self. After this, he or she will become alert to the situation and the consequences of acting. Without being alert to the situation, one may act rashly or with some sort of desire, which undermines the singleness. After the need is discerned, one will act according to the situation. The Taoist must act, because he or she knows that moments never come twice. With no goals in mind and the self pulsating with the greater Tao, the good of the situation will be met through wei wu wei.

An example of a man operating with wei wu wei is the parable of the Good Samaritan. A man on his way to Jericho was beaten near death and robbed. He lay in the street and a priest walked by him and instead of helping, he crossed to the other side. Then a Levite comes across the same beaten man and does the same as the priest. Finally, the Good Samaritan sees the man and bandages him up, then takes him to an inn, where he pays the innkeeper to bring him to good health. The Good Samaritan saw the man that people had avoided and accepted the truth of the situation, which was that without help, this man would die. After that, he becomes alert to the situation’s consequences, which without action would most defiantly scar his soul with bad karma. Lastly, he acted according to the need of the situation and the latent good was brought out of the situation. Jesus tells this parable to illustrate when to act as a neighbor should. Jesus was illustrating that one has to work on kairos time, which is how one must embody wei wu wei, to see past the chronologically mundane and see what needs to be done at that moment.

Critique on A

Chuang-tzu’s critique on Confucian ideals of virtue leaves out the fact that the heart of Confucianism is sincerity. In the Five Relations, one must sincerely be a father to a son, and husband to a wife, or a ruler to a subject. Before any liturgy or laws are followed, a person must already have the good working through them with sincerity. Confucians thought the laws would help people become sincere. Chuang-tzu’s critique of the Confucians isn’t fair because it ignores that Confucius saw good coming from sincerity, which was helped along by different Tao’s depending on one’s lot in life. Just because Confucius didn’t give sincerity some abstract and metaphysical source like non-being, doesn’t mean it does not come from the same place. The so-called hero of virtue could very well be operating on the greater Tao, because they are sincere in their dealings, which would transcend any ideals of the good, because sincerity creates these ideals.

Risk of Destiny

And God said,” Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” – Genesis 1:26

With God’s breath, life was given to man. The Divine dreamed that man would find the Kingdom within his own heart. All of us were given unique fates at birth. Our fates are unchangeable factors of life, such as socioeconomic status, family, and nationality. With each fate, there is a destiny. Destiny is a call to reach beyond fate for a greater quality of living. This will raise a person above the mundane, fated life and into the spiritual, destined life. Each individual must accept or reject the destiny God offers. When seeking destiny, humans will know when it is discovered because their hearts will be opened to the essence of their life’s purpose. By recognizing our nature and essence, we become in the likeness of God. These are “God’s dreams for us,” as Robert Lawton states.

As a consequence of God’s dreams, we find man’s insecurity in the form of questions. Am I doing the right thing? Am I taking the right path? Do I even have a path? I have felt these insecurities before. To understand and overcome them, I began seeking my original purpose, which I believe is to tell stories. In my life, the greatest risk is not understanding God’s dreams for me. By cultivating myself with formal education, I will be better equipped to confront life’s spiritual and moral challenges. With this ability, I will not only be born in the image of God, but I will be more in his likeness.

This is our original nature, but we frequently find ourselves astray and must realign with our true purpose. This journey to be ourselves is the riskiest, as Lawton purposes. Lawton points to how easily people lose their nature in the face of worldly stresses. Adam’s fall in Genesis is an ideal example of the risk involved. After he ate the Forbidden Fruit, God’s first question was “Where are you?” God placed Adam in Eden with an original nature and a destiny to stay in the likeness of God. When he ate the fruit, he fell from his nature, thus falling away from God. God poses this question as an exclamation of betrayal, rather than a query of his physical location or an inquisition of his psyche. This is the root of our insecurity: falling away from our nature and God’s dreams for us.

On our journey, there are many attractions that lead us in circles. Social exploits and economic comfort can make us turn from the spiritual path we are set on. In today’s climate, we seek a socially acceptable path to “getting a good job,” and if we are lucky, early retirement. Trading one’s nature to please the masses is the bane of morality and God’s dreams for us. A poet, for instance, is born to a business-owning father. The child loves words and wants to weave them into beautiful songs. One day, the child tells his father that he wants to be a writer. His father, being a man of business, will steer the child away from this foolish, unprofitable profession. The father chisels away at the child’s nature until he has become the same statue of a man. By defying his nature, the child becomes an adult who wanders in spiritual darkness. He transmutes the Kingdom is in heart to stone.

In my journey, there are innumerable risks that lie ahead. For many college students, they expect the greatest dangers to be found in the questionable behavior of their peers, as well as themselves. The use of destructive intoxicants and predominance of sexually-driven relationships mark the stereotypes of the college youth. These things hold little sway over me. The risk I am concerned the most about is the one people don’t usually see. I fear the choice to settle for economic gain rather than treading the path of being one’s self. Today success is marked by a person’s ability to gather money and resources. Albeit most become financially successful through hard work and personal sacrifices, their hard work becomes negligible in comparison to their wealth. I can already feel the pressures from friends and family, encouraging me to obtain a degree that quickly unfolds into a profitable career. My risk comes from the temptation to be “successful” in the eyes of the masses.

I want to tell stories. More specifically, I want to tell stories through film. Trite phrases and clichés aside, this gives me a true sense of happiness. Not the emotional happiness derived from the taste of something sweet or the soft feeling a woman’s touch. It is something deeper in my soul that beckons to me, “Nick, tell them a story.” I am at risk of losing this voice, not because it will leave me, but because I won’t listen. I could settle for becoming a career, or I could stride through the path that was set in front of me and become myself.

Such is Water

Three great waterfalls
Always in turmoil and rapids
Yet, always water
Science surges in one stream
Spirit drifts in another
Humanity flows between them
Humanity feels the urge to flow to one or the other

Patience reveals
Three waterfalls pour into one tranquil lake
Such is water, such is life

Riches of Rags

Draped in riches
Covered in gold
The Holy Men, they will pretend to be
Of spirit and love
Spectacle is all you will see

The true love comes from men in rags
Happiness is being free of greed
See the riches of rags
Look to the past, look to the meaning
Of what the poor men spoke
For it changed kingdoms once before
May it do so again.

Death

Something as beautiful as birth
Is mirrored by death
The death of a flesh vessel
Fashions a stench and turns the eyes away
Man can’t see past the vase and the flower
To see the void which holds the water, the true beauty
The life giver

One must love the death
As they love the birth
Do not mourn the flesh
Rejoice for the soul
For the creation was a gift to the world
And the ascension is a gift to the universe.

 

 

*wrote this one for my family-in-law's dog after it died. Bye Rush.

Sunshine

One act of love
Planted the seed of the galaxies
Let there be
And there was
Soon humanity was born
All with a piece of infinite love
Imbued in their essence

Open your gift and love
Let the sun of your soul shine on the hearts of others
When the sun sets
Darkness will come
Keep the fire burning
Because the world is still turning
Only by the grace of His devotion
Keep the world spiraling and the sun shining
By Loving

The Philosopher’s Insomnia

In the bedroom there is an awkwardness
it resembles a joke at a funeral.
Funny it may be,
but oh-so inappropriate.

The celluloid love stories only show a place of sanguinity
Lovers bask in blue moon light giggling as if the walls themselves were comedians
Or they have the sweetest, most choreographed, faux sex the world has seen.
Never silence, never that awkward feeling

Never that tidal wave of nausea which locks you down
Never does the bed seem to sprout hands that pinch your legs.
Rarely does the ceiling turn into a maniacal serial killer waiting to cut your heart out.

Soon the existential tragedy sets in and you lack a view of reality.
I wish for metaphysics.
Because I want to believe in Love.
All I get is blank sheets of ice
as Sartre crucifies Plato
and Nietzsche’s mustache replaces God.

In the void of human silence I bask
It makes a hot summer’s night
fill with a chill that aches the bones.
Breath starts to fog
As my heart freezes over

Is this the ice age of Love?
It’s time to build a fire.

Freedom Dies

Freedom to eat
Freedom to shop at will
Freedom to yell what you want
Freedom to walk down the street
Freedom to collect what you want
Freedom to mock freedom
Freedom of will.

How we hold these dear
How they blind us with fear
Of losing such freedom of will
We have forgotten our original freedom.
Freedom to become ourselves.

We will trade self discovery for cash
The cold hard kind
That hollows our soul

Modern self discovery
Is finding what clothes look good
Strapped to our fake bodies
Or what color pallet our face paint should be.
Finding oneself is as easy and looking in a mirror
Not too much thought just a sensory recollection

The easy way out
Be what you own
Success is how little you can know yourself
And how much you can buy.

Freedom to choose
Not to be yourself.

Manly Men, Not Men

In construction business men champion the manly.
The gruffness of slamming a cup of mead
on table filled with cards comes to mind.
More specifically the howling one hears
as a female, attractive or not, walks by.
Standards, my friends, are very low.

Today, working with lumber
I got pitch stuck to my hand.
In fact my fingers are stuck to this pen
in some poetic way.
So I feel I must write of a friend’s sadness.

My friend who could be called a man’s man,
expressed a simple sadness.
The sadness you see in the eyes of a foster child
before his parents are taken away.
You see my friend’s father,
another man of the manly,
once turned his back on a child.
A schism in the family left my friend with no father
to show him how it is to be a man.
So he became a man’s man, not a real man.

The sadness slipped into my friend’s face
as his father by chance passed by.
My friend flush red sadly said “hi.”
His father looked back and nodded,
with childish eyes.

The father was a child just like his son.
He gave up being a man when he gave up on his child,
now they are both only men of manliness.
It is nothing more than a child
pretending to be a man by howling at women
and drinking too much beer.

I only hope my friend won’t do the same
and will love his child in the way his child should be loved.
Then maybe someday he will be a real man.

Fathers love your sons
Sons love your fathers
Because I never want to see this sadness again.

It Gets Lonely...

It gets lonely over here
where the objectivists once played.
A few here and there pass by.
But only to give waves of goodbye
as they jump into the ever growing subjective.

It’s the Promised Land I hear.
Man becomes God,
they scandalously whisper in my ear.
Your tastes rule everything,
it’s all in the eyes of the beholder.
There is no Beauty with a capital B
only the perceptions of the lower b.
Truth is as easy what your feelings tell you.
Why, they even tell me
you can find justice in the masses!
Man has it good over there,
not too much to think about or worry about.
Just stay true to your feelings, they all say.

But here I stay,
even with the promise of living the easy life.
I prefer it over here.

I can nibble on baklava with Socrates,
while we discuss where to find Justice.
“Not the masses” he will surely say.
I will question my feelings,
over coffee with Boethius.
Soon I will even better my taste of the Beautiful,
as a student of Plato.
Over here I sip tea with Chuang Tzu and Meister Eckhart,
while facing the dark waters of Genesis and the Non-being of Tao.
Maybe later in the day I’ll take a hike with Confucius,
while discussing sincerity.

Yes, wave all you want,
my place is here.

The Good, the Bad, and the Universal

Hsun-tzu believed that human nature was inherently bad. Hsun-tzu derived this belief by focusing on the biological aspects of humans. He believed that the biological make-up and tendencies of humans were the truest aspect of humanity. Our nature is to procreate, kill, and eat. Man is born an animal, which needs training to curb biological urges. He starts by looking at the masses for his norm of human nature. He saw very appetitive creatures and believed that humans needed to be trained by an externalized manifestation of li. This external li would control the bad nature of the body. His conception of li originates from past sages who created the concept to make people follow the rules of propriety. Propriety restrains the biological self by externally requiring people to behave properly. Hsun-tzu’s belief of curbing our bad human nature leads to authoritarianism, which gave birth to the legalist, who tried to administer li through the power of government. Through the state and socialization, li is used to render people more sage-like. Li was engrained into the people through education, rites, and discipline. This was the only way to curb the biological self, because the biology can never be at harmony with the spirit. Thus authoritarian rule must change the person in order to have any hope of harmony.

An example of Hsun-tzu’s human nature is Freud’s superego. Hsun-tzu’s external manifestation of li to control the biological appetite of the masses is like the superego regulating the id. The id is an impulse driven appetite that only sets out to please the phenomenal self. The superego represents societal norms and morals. The superego must be forced into a child’s head through education, discipline, and rituals. Once the superego starts working, the child will feel guilt for id-driven urges. Thus the child will become a socially stable creature.

Critique:
Mencius, when faced with Hsun-tzu’s theory on human nature, found it unnatural. A Hsun-tzu follower, Kao Tzu told Mencius that making morality out of nature was like making cups and bowls out of willow. Mencius refuted by pointing out that one must mutilate the willow to make cups and bowls; one can’t do it by following its nature. To Mencius, Hsun-tzu’s theory would be mutilating men and their natures to make them moral. In Hsun-tzu’s view, the body can never be at harmony with the spiritual self, so it has to be controlled externally. Mencius felt that li came from inside a person, which means the body and spirit need to reach a balance to be at harmony.

B. Mencius believed that human nature was intrinsically good. He held that if Heaven makes all men, then there is a standard that Heaven has engrained into them. With Heaven’s standard comes a natural self that is good. Humans possess an innate capacity for good and knowledge of what is good. Li is latent within man and therefore does not need an external force to bring it into man’s nature. It is merely a part of it. Mencius illustrates that water’s nature is to flow downward, just as man’s nature is pointed towards the good. He admits that an external force can keep water from flowing down, but it is hardly natural. He believed that to be truly human, a person must follow their nature, which is germinated in the Four Hearts. According to Mencius, every human needs the Four Hearts to truly be human. The first heart is the heart of compassion, which awakens empathy. The next one is the heart of shame, which makes an individual ashamed of failing to be dutiful. This forces humans to create aspirations. Third is the heart of courtesy and modesty, which is imperative in affirming the other. The final heart is the heart of right and wrong, which teaches the difference between quantity and quality. If a person can manifest these Four Hearts, they will be acting to their full nature. However, if they do not have these hearts, then the person is not a human. By aligning oneself with his or her original nature, the latent li starts to work through the person. If the person fully manifested the Four Hearts and strived for wisdom, they may be looked at as a sage. Mencius regarded the sage as the norm of humanity. Mencius thought one could find the full embodiment of human nature in the sages, because they are the pinnacle of what man is capable of.

A child is born with the Four Hearts built in. The child first takes on the heart of compassion when playing with his or her various dolls and stuffed animals. The child’s imagination makes the toys real and feelings will be created for them. If the toy is sad, then the child will be sad. A child’s first step to being human is empathy. Being empathic, the child must be courteous to others. With the heart of courtesy, the child will be successfully affirming the other with good manners and small human interactions such as greetings. As the child gets older, the heart of shame reveals itself. The child will feel bad for not doing as much as he or she can. A less-than-desirable grade in school will give the child drive to do better. Soon, when the child matures, the heart of right and wrong will surface. He or she may be confronted with the temptation to steal or to lie. A person, in the face of these choices, must make the right decisions and will become wise for doing so. This will also give the person the ability to differentiate between what makes quality and what is a product of social consensus (quantity). The person’s human nature will be pulsating with li and the person will be on the path of the sage.

Critique:

When Mencius looks at the sage as the normal example of human nature, he is not being realistic. When I look around, I don’t see many sages. They are referred to as ancestors throughout Confucian works. Creating an ideal based on people who lived long ago doesn’t take into account how people live today. The Four Hearts are the product of idealistic thinking and not reality. Humans are animals and need to be socialized.

C. Mo-Tzu’s doctrine of universal love is a way of eliminating family loyalty. His doctrine calls for everyone to love each other without distinction. The love Mo-Tzu refers to is not the Christian type of emotional love, it is a love created from intelligence. Mo-Tzu championed mental love, but rejected emotional love. Eros love, which is based on emotions, was ignored for agape love, which is his love of the mind. This love is defined as loving the other in the way and the sake of the other. To do this Mo-Tzu must take out the individual other and turn the other into humanity. One no longer loves for the way of the other, but loves everyone the same way. Love of the mind becomes a duty to humanity, which defines what humanity needs through law. His doctrine took on a utilitarian form because it required people to love everyone with the same intentions and work based on duties. You cannot love your child, for being your child; you have to love it for being a human along with a complete stranger. The needs of humanity are summed up in Mo-Tzu’s five goods, which are enriching the country, increasing the populous, bringing about good order, obtaining favor from the spirits, and preventing aggressive war. These things are supposed to be sought universally. The five goods must be enforced by a ruler. The people are made to understand why they need to believe in universal love.

The military unit is an example of Mo-Tzu’s doctrine of universal love. They must love the unit mentally, because an emotional love could get in the way of the unit’s duties. They all have a duty to each other to keep the unit alive and running smoothly, which is regulated by military law. For instance, risking the entire unit to save the life of a single comrade is prohibited. This demonstrates the mental love for the whole of the unit as opposed to emotional love for a close friend. The military unit is utilitarian because it uses law to instill duty equally, rather than placing emphasis on the individual.

Critique:
The Confucian objection to Mo-Tzu is in his destruction of the individual. Confucius believed in affirming the other through agape. His objectivism involving individuals would put him at odds with Mo-Tzu’s generalization of all human needs as defined by their duty. Mo-Tzu throws a blanket over the individual. Therefore, there can be no objectivism when looking for the good of the people. Mo-Tzu’s system would need to look to the ideals, which become laws that regulate the needs of humanity. By looking at laws instead of the individual’s needs, they lose any chance of doing what is truly good on an individual basis.

Confucian Harmony

A The superior man or the Chun-tzu is a man that stands in awe of three things. First he stands in awe of the ordinances of heaven. By doing this he knows where his power and influence stops and heaven’s surpasses his. Second, he stands in awe of great men, so the superior man can recognize when his contributions end and the great men supersede him. Third, the superior man will listen to the words of the sages. By recognizing the greater knowledge of the sages, the Chun-tzu will be in a constant state of reception of their wisdom. The mass man, on the other hand, seethes in mediocrity and is content with it. The mass man can’t live by the laws of heaven because he doesn’t know them. Mass man will disrespect great men and shrug off the words of the sages. The mass man won’t strive to attain anything greater than the average. He believes anyone above average is only there by social constructs and other external factors such as wealth. The mass man sees the norm of a person in the middle of the bell curve, while the superior man sees the norm of a person in the great men, or full manifestations of humanity. The mass man only tries to be average; therefore he will have no shame for his lack of education or wisdom.

A superior man is Thomas Jefferson. He stood in awe of the ordinances of heaven, so much that he felt compelled to draft his own version of the Gospels. Jefferson also stood in awe of great men and heeded the words of the sages. This can be seen in his writing which is heavily influenced by John Locke and Montesquieu. One day, a student in history class will be in awe of Jefferson and exclaim, “Jefferson was a genius.” Another so-called student, a mass man, may sneer and say “Jefferson was an elitist.” The mass man will throw the word elitist at anyone extraordinary. They seem to dislike it when greatness is juxtaposed against their averageness. Being content in the mundane bell curve, they will reduce the outliers to their socioeconomic status, the century they were born in, and terms like “elitist.”

B Confucius believed we were all born with a fate. Fate is what is given to a person, like ones sex, class, parents, and other unchangeable factors received at birth. With each fate there is a destiny. Destiny is a call to go beyond fate to a higher quality of living. This will raise a person above the mundane fated life into the spiritual life. The original state of a human was spiritual, which then became complicated in the mundane world and created an imbalance between the tranquil spirit and the phenomenal self. To balance the complications, one must use sincerity to reach harmony between the two. This is essential to one’s destiny, which becomes realized when harmony rises to the surface in all of your actions. Sincerity is a pure act of attention that will give you a singleness of mind when responding to the other. This attention is not spent on the personal or social level. These levels focus on the self. For instance, the personal level would only focus on the individuals own feelings, not the other’s. The social would only reveal something about a person against the backdrop of society. The attention Confucius writes of is spiritual attention. This is a non-attached attention, which lets a person objectively attend to the other. By having a singleness of mind when listening to the other, a person sheds their own biases. This will bring out the good in people and the self, creating harmony.

Fate and destiny can be exemplified in Siddhartha Gautama. He was born a prince with wealth, women, and a father willed him to become a world conqueror. His father blocked him from the outside world so he could never see death or suffering. This did not work and Siddhartha Gautama took the journey to realize his destiny. He had to walk away from all the riches to rise above his fate to his destiny. After finding the right path, he took what was offered by the cosmic forces and reached a new level of enlightenment. His fate as a prince was rooted in the mundane world, but his destiny allowed him to live the ordinary life in an extraordinary way. When it comes to the three attentions, we start with the personal level. Someone operating on the personal level of attention is only focusing on their self. This leads to them judging the situation with their feelings, not objectively. The social level of attention can be seen in someone who constantly worries about his lot in society. The person will only judge their position in society against others. The spiritual or non-attached attention is attained when the self lets go of his or her biases and objectively listens to the other.

C The doctrine of the rectification of names originated from Confucius’ belief that words had lost their essecial meaning. He thought the word must symbolize the essence of the thing it names to embody it and truly be a name. Words are not used as a simple communication tool; they must be used analogous to the thing. This doctrine lends its hand to the 5 relations, which are friend to friend, sibling to sibling, husband to wife, parent to child, and ruler to subject. By rectifying names, it gives these five relations meaning. By knowing the right word for father it leads to the essence of it. By knowing the essence of something, a child can be a better father or relate to your father. It allows a person to pay attention to the essence of fatherhood. By knowing the essences of the five relations one can better embody those roles in life. By embodying these roles li can fully operate in the relationships, which leads to harmony. Harmony comes from li bringing out the latent spirit within a relationship.

When I think of the doctrine of the rectification of names, the word mother comes to mind. It is usually one of the first words expressed as a child in short form as mom. The word gets to the essence of what a mother is. When said, it inspires a feeling of security and warmth. This word reveals the essence of a mother, which gives a child’s first words merit. If anyone understands what a mother is, it is her child. The mother also knows what her title entails and acts out on the parent to child relationship sincerely. If all people could get to the essence of what it is to be a friend, a parent, a child, a sibling, or a ruler there would be harmony in all relationships.

Critique of A:

The mass man could be right about everyone being equal. No one’s exploits of opinions should be held higher than their own, because everyone is entitled to their own feelings. Hard work has very little to do with success. It is mostly determined by socioeconomic status and other social factors. By saying that, anyone who is not equal in tastes or ability is elitist. The mass man would say that his tastes are just as good as someone who has sought after good taste in a subject.

Critique of C:

Sociologists argue that language is a tool for man to operate as a social creature. Words are just labels we assign to objects and are only valid through social consensus. In this view, there is no way to go beyond language, because it constructs our reality through labels. They would say any spirit we feel from a word’s relationship with the object is from the constant use of the word in our society. We just start to recognize an object by the word so much it seems to touch it essentially, but it is actually just from habitual use.

The Stand

The dusty road seems forever.

Men, women, children take their leave.

Shops lock, stocks lock, guns shake.

One man’s nervous hand

Steps out to make his stand.

The barkeep shakes his head.

The barber thinks him dead.

The whore pleads for his life.

Everyone turns away, even his wife.

The escaped killers ride.

The sun falls on their back.

A red sun.

The fires of hell are overdue.
The man hears time as it passes.

He listens to everything he loved.

With the snap of a Schofield

Bullets fall into six steel coffins.

The gun cocks and he feels his wife’s lips.

He can smell the whore’s perfume.

He can taste the barkeep’s whiskey.

He feels the barber’s razor

.The fires of hell roll in.

He stands alone

Face to face with hell.

He cracks an uncanny smile.

Four horsemen drunk with power break leather.

The man skins his smoke wagon.

Smoke and fire explode in the streets.

The killers sober at the rip of the bullets.

“Damn he’s fast” screams a wounded man.

Six dead ears hear nothing.
The lone man.

The deputy.

Stands above the wounded man.

Mercy, begs the coward.

Schofields snap back into leather.

He was fast

Bullets were faster.

The man falls.
Five dead men lay in the street.

A widow curses.

A whore cries.

He stood where no one else would.

A man has to do what a man has to do.

In the face of hell’s fire.

He didn’t flee.

What’s that say about me?

Wicked Review

Wicked is a musical based on the novel by Gregory Maguire. The musical portrays the characters from The Wizard of Oz in a perspective quite different from how they were originally presented. It re-imagines the classic story from the point of view of Elphaba, who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West. The post-modern approach to Oz is disappointing. Instead of augmenting the original film, the writer merely alludes to it and turns away from it. The musical numbers were mediocre for this caliber of musical. The songs/dances sounded/looked the same—all in dire need of raw emotion. What Wicked lacked in music, it made up for in full force with set design, effects, and lighting. These elements were flawless and crafty, enveloping us in this newly-imagined, though feigned, universe of Oz.
The greatest disappointment concerning Wicked is the scale and setting of the story. With the original Oz, we had the tale of an epic journey in the same tradition as the Lord of the Rings. Wicked, on the other hand, was the equivalent of a 1980’s John Hughes’ high school drama. Wicked claims to be the untold story of the Wicked Witch. Reflecting on The Wizard of Oz, I see the Wicked Witch to be true evil, not a misunderstood green girl. I may be an Oz purest, but it was upsetting to see the Scarecrow embrace Elphaba in the end of Wicked. The story of young Elphaba suffering racism and stirring activism to end animal cruelty could survive without being stapled to the world of Oz. Instead of thoughtfully utilizing the story’s existing themes and character development, Wicked only uses them as a spring board. It then springs far away from Oz, by making the Wicked Witch misunderstood. The original film viciously depicts her evil nature, while Wicked flips it around. Glinda is rendered a popular moron who is evil in her selfishness, leaving Elphaba as the victimized outcast. The use of the Lion and Tin Man were also annoying, considering the musical never comes to terms with the Witch being the center of their despair in the original Oz. The one element I thought was well-played is the idea of the Wizard being the architect Oz’ downfall. What kind of guy stands behind a robot head and yells at you? The kind of guy doing bad things from behind the curtain.
Since the release of Wicked, its popularity has seized the attention of countless families full of children. Outside of the theatre, one hears talk of its amazing music and how every member of the family has a copy of the soundtrack. I wasn’t impressed. The musical numbers felt redundant with no real emotion behind them. Instead of propelling the story, I felt like they took me out of it and put me in a trendy pop music video. Every time I heard Elphaba and Glinda sing with each other, it reminded me of a 13-year-old girl listening to her pink IPod. The next tracks had to be from Hannah Montana or the Cheetah Girls. Not to say that any of this is poor quality; it just doesn’t resonate with me. The end of the first act was by far the best musical piece in the show. When Elphaba rushes off stage and comes back flying in with lights beaming through fog, the music takes a downturn into a darker melody. If Wicked offered more moments where the music represents the psychology of its characters rather than the characters just singing along the music, it would have been a much stronger show.
The magic of Wicked wasn’t in the music or story, it was in the set design, effects, and lighting. The set transitions flow perfectly and the audience hardly notices, as gear panels slide out and beds appear from thin air just in time for witches to jump onto them. The special effects were an achievement for the stage. The first thing we see is a smoke-breathing dragon flapping its wings and whipping its head around. Then, monkeys fly from vines in front of a giant fantasy clock that a Dungeon and Dragons fan would want as a center piece. Next, we see a witch in a radiant gown float down on a bubble-blowing contraption. And Elphaba, in her witch hat, flies her broomstick through gleaming smoke. On all occasions, my mouth dropped. The stage design was perfect; they must have had the actual Wizard of Oz on a laptop controlling it all back stage, laughing to himself as people’s eyes lit up in amazement. To augment these moves, they had extremely well-planned lighting schemes. These allowed them to easily transition us into another scene or to make a special effect appear magnificent. Again in “Defying Gravity,” the light beaming through the smoke as Elphaba flew above the stage was masterfully orchestrated.
On stage, Wicked fails to grasp my heart as it did for most people, but the magic off stage with the effects and set design held me enough to appreciate the musical. The music was just too poppy for my tastes and seemed to lack passion. Finally, the story deceived The Wizard of Oz instead of playing off of its themes and enhancing Wicked’s relationship with the film.