Just to finish for now, here is Thomas Merton again, offering another idea of "Being" apart from the modern Cartesian "self" which many have inherited and assumed to be sacrosanct.

[i]Meanwhile, let us remind ourselves that another, metaphysical, consciousness is still available to modern man. It starts not from the thinking and self-aware subject but from Being, ontologically seen to be beyond and prior to the subject-object division. Underlying the subjective experience of the individual self there is an immediate experience of Being....... It has in it none of the split and alienation that occurs when the subject becomes aware of itself as a quasi-object. The consciousness of Being (whether considered positively or negatively and apophatically as in Buddhism) is an immediate experience that goes beyond reflexive awareness.........Posterior to this immediate experience of a ground which transcends experience, emerges the subject with its self-awareness.

(The post- enlightenment) self-aware subject is not final or absolute; it is a provisional self-construction which exists, for practical purposes, only in a sphere of relativity. Its existence has meaning in so far as it does not become fixated or centered upon itself as ultimate, learns to function not as its own center but “from God” and “for others.".

In brief (ah! sighs of relief......😀) this form of consciousness assumes a totally different kind of self-awareness from that of the Cartesian thinking-self which is its own justification and its own center. Here the individual is aware of himself as a self-to-be-dissolved in self-giving, in love, in “letting-go,” in ecstasy, in God—there are many ways of phrasing it. The self is not its own center and does not orbit around itself; it is centered on God, the one center of all, which is “everywhere and nowhere,” in whom all are encountered, from whom all proceed. Thus from the very start this consciousness is disposed to encounter “the other” with whom it is already united anyway “in God.” The metaphysical intuition of Being is an intuition of a ground of openness, indeed of a kind of ontological openness and an infinite generosity which communicates itself to everything that is. “The good is diffusive of itself,” or “God is love.” [/i]

(From an essay in "Zen and the Birds of Appetite", available from all good bookstores........)

The destiny of man is to [u]reveal[/u] the meaning of the universe, [u]not[/u] to construct meaning.

Ah, Sam: You are trying to save souls that don't understand their uniqueness nor their purpose! I applaud your effort, but[u] trust[/u] - trust that in time these souls will, in their time of need for reassurance that their lives were meant for more than just for their own enjoyment, cry out to be saved from the abyss of the nothingness they created for themselves. This cry has been witnessed at many death-bed vigils in the past and one has to wonder if they will suddenly be absolved from their disbelief or just pass on into that nothingness. Too late?

Here is a poem by Wallace Stevens, "The Snow Man"

[i]One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
[/i]


I can't quite get my head around this. In some ways it seems to support both the ideas that are the subject of this thread i.e. that we must be snow men (or women....😀) ourselves, objective, and yet this will reveal an inherent meaning in the world around us.

What do others think?

All views welcome.

May true Dharma continue.
No blame. Be kind. Love everything.

I like Jung and I think his ideas are cool, but I just don't agree with him on that point. I think he is a bit of a mystic. Similarly, I like the idea of synchronicity and the collective unconscious, but I'm not sure I believe in them.