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.