The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

 

With its seven interrelated parts--rich in story, character, and imaginative range--"The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1978) is the novel that brought Czech-born Milan Kundera his first big international success. Aaron Asher's new translation, commissioned and monitored by Kundera himself, conveys beautifully into English the nuances and the tone of the author's original text. " Part fairy tale, part literary criticism, part political tract, part musicology, and part autobiography" (as the New York Times described it), "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is, above all, the wonderfully integrated stories of men and women living in a world of public oppression and private longings, a world in which history may be rewritten overnight and in which love may fall victim to either political intrusion or personal betrayal. 

The seven parts of Kundera's novel explore different aspects of human existence in the twentieth century, particularly as they are affected by life in the police state of the narrator's fictionalized Bohemia. In 1971, three years after the Russian occupation of his homeland, Mirek--under surveillance by the not-so-secret police--seeks to retrieve his love letters from his former lover, Zdena. Marketa and her husband, Karel, must cope with Karel's increasingly childlike mother while at the same time dealing with the amoral Eva and memories of past desires. At a small French summer school, two American girls learn the lessons of laughter. Displaced to a provincial town in Western Europe, Tamina (" all the other stories are variations on her own story" ) urgently tries to retrieve memories of her husband and their past together in Bohemia, memories recorded in notebooks that she left behind at her mother-in-law's house in Prague. And forty-five-year-old Jan prepares to cross several borders--geographical, existential, erotic--for a new life in the United States.

Set in postwar Czechoslovakia in the aftermath of the Stalinist purges of World War II, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is “a novel in the form of variations” that explores how totalitarianism affects individual and collective, national and personal, memories. Milan Kundera (1929– ) traces the interrelated lives of a handful of characters who are each trying to recover or banish poignant memories. Much of the novel is based on Kundera’s own knowledge of totalitarianism; following the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Kundera lost his teaching post at the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, saw his books removed from the shelves of public libraries, and was banned from publishing in his homeland.

Divided into seven parts, the first section of the novel follows Mirek, a once-celebrated researcher who has been forced to leave his job and is surrounded by undercover agents. The character observes that “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Yet throughout the novel, Kundera demonstrates that historical revision occurs not only at a national level but in private, everyday life as well. Kundera alternates between presenting characters’ interior monologues and the narrator’s reflections on philosophical and theoretical questions that arise, including: What constitutes history? Where do memories adhere and how are they recovered? What are the origins and characteristics of laughter? As usual, he presents these brief narratives using flashbacks, authorial asides, and other frameworks. The novel is comprised of revealing episodes, often of a sexual nature, that function as studies of larger, pervasive themes.

Yoga by Emmanuel Carrère

 

Emmanuel Carrère is a renowned writer. After decades of emotional upheaval, he has begun to live successfully―he is healthy; he works; he loves. He practices meditation, striving to observe the world without evaluating it. In this state of heightened awareness, he sets out for a ten-day silent retreat in the French heartland, leaving his phone, his books, and his daily life behind. But he’s also gathering material for his next book, which he thinks will be a pleasant, useful introduction to yoga.

Four days later, there’s a tap on the window: something has happened. Forced to leave the retreat early, he returns to a Paris in crisis. Life is derailed. His city is in turmoil. His work-in-progress falters. His marriage begins to unravel, as does his entanglement with another woman. He wavers between opposites―between self-destruction and self-control; sanity and madness; elation and despair. The story he has told about himself falls away. And still, he continues to live.

This is a book about one man’s desire to get better, and to be better. It is laced with doubt, animated by the dangerous interplay between what is fiction and what is real. Loving, humorous, harrowing and profound, Yoga hurls us towards the outer edges of consciousness, where, finally, we can see things as they really are.

How We Live Is How We Die By Pema Chodron

 As much as we might try to resist, endings happen in every moment—the end of a breath, the end of a day, the end of a relationship, and ultimately the end of life. And accompanying each ending is a beginning, though it may be unclear what the beginning holds. In How We Live Is How We Die, Pema Chödrön shares her wisdom for working with this flow of life—learning to live with ease, joy, and compassion through uncertainty, embracing new beginnings, and ultimately preparing for death with curiosity and openness rather than fear.

Poignant for readers of all ages, her teachings on the bardos—a Tibetan term referring to a state of transition, including what happens between this life and the next—reveal their power and relevance at each moment of our lives. She also offers practical methods for transforming life’s most challenging emotions about change and uncertainty into a path of awakening and love. As she teaches, the more freedom we can find in our hearts and minds as we live this life, the more fearlessly we’ll be able to confront death and what lies beyond. In all, Pema provides readers with a master course in living life fully and compassionately in the shadow of death and change.

My Notes (EWR)

Her writing seems to reflect a lifetime of dedication to her practice. What comes through is that she took and takes her practice very seriously and wants to share what she has learned with others. There's a certain kind of earnest compassion that comes through. Wholesome is another word that comes to mind.

As I read the descriptions of the various Bárdos I found myself thinking once again of the similarities between Buddhism and Catholicism. In Catholicism it was heaven, hell, purgatory and limbo. In both cases the lessons are how you live your life now will determine what happens in the afterlife.

I was appreciative of the fact that she tackles head on the issue of reincarnation, which is mostly ignored in the Buddhist literature that I am familiar with. It's a challenging concept, full of contradictions, suppositions, what looks like some very active imaginations. She suggests a way to deal with it is to suspend judgment and open yourself up to whatever lessons you might derive. That was a good advice because it allowed me to suspend my skepticism long enough to read through the descriptions, despite the fact that they seem bizarre and otherworldly.

I have a hard time with lists: 4 of this, 5 of that, and I tend to skim over those descriptions without much consideration. Some of that may be that I already have a map in my head of how to categorize my life experiences, and it resists revision and learning a new system.

I was trouble by the amount of attention she spends on Chogyam Trumpga. Perhaps elsewhere in other books she deals with his less wholesome habits, alcohol and womanizing. But it raises for me a core issue: what do you do when you find out the people that you seek to admire and learn from have significant flaws. Call it the Woody Allen syndrome, there's a part of me that never feels quite the same about people after I'm exposed to their shadow side.

A couple of passages I’d like to discuss further:

“Ignorance” as a destructive emotion is a little harder to understand. It’s a dull, indifferent state of mind that actually contains a deep level of pain. It can express itself as being out of touch, being mentally lethargic, not caring what we’re feeling or what others are going through. When this state of mind dominates us, it can turn into depression.”

“The five buddhas and all the other brilliant appearances are not the product of our usual confused, dualistic mind. They come from our true nature, which is ineffable, unprejudiced, and nondual.”

 Anam Cara  (Soul Friend)

I am only a chapter into this extraordinary book and already feel like it's going to take an honored and treasured place in my psychic library. I am listening to it and I'm grateful that I had the intuition that this would be a book better heard than read - all the better to let the spoken words sink in and work their magic unawares. 

To stay that the language is poetic is to understate the experience. Read in a sonorous, Gaelic-tinged accent, it makes the most of the vast vocabulary of the English language, a language that  mostly does not lend itself easily to beautiful prose, save in the hands of exceptional writers. The recital is both firm and lilting. It silences the analytic, dualistic mind and seduces you into listening with your heart where, I’m led to believe, wisdom accumulates.

It begins with a paean to friendship, holding out the promise of restoring that word to to it’s hallowed place in this era of crude Facebook de-friendings and social media trivialization. And then it blossoms into a sublime elucidation of the word “love” so immediate and intimate that I felt my heart stir. 

All this in the first chapter!

Rediscover the Promise of Enlightenment
 
As Western culture has embraced practices like meditation and yoga, has something been lost in translation? “What we see in America today in both the yoga boom and mindfulness fad,” writes Dr. Miles Neale, “is a presentation of technique alone, sanitized and purged of the dynamic teachings in wisdom and ethics that are essential for true liberation.” For anyone seeking a path dedicated to both authentic personal growth and the overthrow of the nihilism, hedonism, and materialism that are threatening our planet, this compelling teacher presents a well-conceived, sustainable solution with Gradual Awakening.
 
The core of this book is Tibetan Buddhism’s “gradual path”—or Lam Rim—interpreted with fresh insights from modern scientific research. Offering an illuminating new presentation of Tibet’s deep psychology, meditative techniques, and virtuous rituals, Dr. Neale presents a time-honored path of enormous transformational potential. Each chapter serves as a practical manual that will allow you to experiment with and actualize the benefits of role-modeling visualization, affirmations, contemplative themes, textual recitation, prayers, altars, offerings, and meditation. Here you’ll explore:
 
• Uprooting the “sickness of paradigm”—why a complete spiritual practice must directly confront the fundamental human suffering caused by the modern ethos of scientific reductionism
• The Lam Rim path—the history, heritage, and power of this 30-step “hero’s journey” of awakening
• Evolutionary self-care—understanding the Buddhist concept of renunciation as a form of self-love and healing
• Radical altruism—awakening Bodhicitta, our innate aspiration to evolve fully in service to others
• Quantum vision—how the teaching of “emptiness” allows us to pierce the illusion of materialism and accurately perceive the subtlest nature of reality
• Dr. Neale’s MAPS process (Maturity, Acceptance, Possibility, and Seeds) to integrate and manifest key insights and skills in your everyday life
 
The mass-market dilutions of Eastern wisdom that focus on symptom relief and easy answers have left behind the ultimate promise of spiritual practice: enlightenment. “Enlightenment is an unfolding process—open to everyone.” writes Dr. Neale. For most of us, this path to awakening must be realized through a gradual process: building on incremental insights into who we truly are, learning to care for ourselves and others, and discovering creative ways to engage the problems we all face. Gradual Awakening will serve as a lifelong companion for anyone willing to embrace a new paradigm that integrates science with spirit, theory with practice, and personal meditation with the desire to transform the world.
 
A portion of the proceeds from this book will benefit the Buddhist nuns of Kopan Nunnery in Nepal.

 

Human consciousness: a tragic misstep?

“Man is a tragic animal. Not because of his smallness, but because he is too well endowed. Man has longings and spiritual demands that reality cannot fulfil. We have expectations of a just and moral world. Man requires meaning in a meaningless world.”   I bet very few people would guess the author of this quote in an existentialism pub quiz.   Its belongs to the 20th century Norwegian philosopher and mountaineer Peter Wessel Zapffe, and unlike most existentialists, Zapffe was a true pessimist.   You see, most existentialists, starting with Nietzsche, and moving on to the likes of Sartre and Camus, saw the meaninglessness of the universe as liberating, as an opportunity to be the authors of our own meaning, rather than be burdened with some “objective”, God-given purpose. Not Zapffe.   Taking a leaf out of an (admittedly controversial) anecdote about evolution, Zapffe argued that just as the Irish elk that roamed through Eurasia 2.6 million years ago grew antlers too heavy, and too burdensome to sustain, so too, us humans, are victims of evolution. Evolution is blind, mutations happen randomly, and while the results in our case might not be threatening the species with extinction, according to Zapffe, they are responsible for the crappiness of the human condition: a state of constant dissatisfaction with the world.   Nature endowed us not with antlers disproportional to our size and strength, but with minds out of sync with reality. Humans, according to Zapffe, have more consciousness than we can handle. We are too aware of the state of the world and the suffering, injustice, and cruelty within it, and what is more, we long for a world that is free of all those ills. We crave a just, harmonious, peaceful world, and at the same time, we are conscious that this can never be a reality. We literally have a name for those imaginary places where all is just and good: utopias, the non-places, translated from Greek.   Self-consciousness is also a bummer, according to Zapffe. We are too aware not just of the world, but of ourselves. We are conscious of our own mortality, the finitude of our abilities, of our potential legacy when we eventually, certainly, die. And for what? What’s the point of it all? There is none, Zapffe argues. This is the human tragedy: by our very nature, we desire what doesn’t exist, meaning.   If this all rings kind of true to you, don’t worry. Zapffe offers a list of copings mechanisms we can use in response to this less-than-ideal situation: isolate ourselves from the world, focus on some ideal or value to distract ourselves, or try that very Freudian/Nietzschean of tasks: to sublimate suffering into something of aesthetic value.   Cold comfort, you might think. But there is always the possibility that Zapffe was just wrong. Evolutionary existentialism might make some valid points, but does it really capture the full scope of human experience? Excessive consciousness can be a curse, but it can also be a blessing. If overthinking things is so bad, why do philosophers spend so much time perfecting it?   Alexis Papazoglou

 

The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work (Works)

by 

Joseph Campbell,

 

Phil Cousineau (Editor)

The author of Hero With a Thousand Faces, The Masks of God series, and The Power of Myth here turns his powers of observation and analysis on his own life's journey and conveys the excitement of his life-long exploration of mythic traditions, which he called "the one great story of mankind."

In conversations with poets, anthropologists, and philosophers, Campbell reflects on subjects ranging from the origins and functions of myth, the role of the artist and the need for ritual, to the ordeals of love and romance. Illustrated throughout with photographs from Joseph Campbell's family archive and with a new, revised introduction, The Hero's Journey introduces the reader first-hand to Joseph Campbell the man, his discoveries, his terminology, and his thinking.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/242530.The_Hero_s_Journey?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=qprnc6lTmA&rank=1

EWR My personal notes February 1

The heroes journey is about leaving the dependency of childhood. It's about the transformation of death and resurrection. It's losing yourself giving yourself over to transformation by trial. It's going beyond yourself.

The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves

Put yourself in situations that evoke your higher spirit.

It's important to live life as a mystery.

It's about saying yes to the adventure of living.

Dragons represent the binding of oneself to one's ego, to be trapped in a cage. The ego is too small it pins us down and makes us do what others want us to do. The antidote is to "follow your bliss".

"In primitive societies the violence delivered to young men in their teens is prodigious and is taming them. The young man is a compulsively violent piece of biology and you've got to integrate that. People talk about looking for the meaning of life; what you're really looking for is an experience of life. In one of the experiences is a good fight."

"in so far as you take the religion seriously, you're living in an immediate relationship to myth; and the problem then is to relate your experiences when you move into the world to this mythological ground, to see the world in terms of those structures which have been put into you in the beginning."

Chakras: the lower chakras are the physical source of power and strength – the upper one of intellect in mind – the heart is the center.

Samsara: there's a place of rest in yourself, a quiet place where the action comes from. A center that must be held. When you are not compelled by desire or fear or social commitments, that is Nirvana.

Campbell's definition of myth: "Transparent to the transcendent". "Mythology opens the world so that it becomes transparent to something that is beyond speech, beyond words, in short, to do what we call transcendence."..." The energies of the universe, the energies of life, that come in the subatomic particle displays that science shows us, are operative. The ultimate ground of being transcends definition, transcends our knowledge. When you ask about ultimates you're asking about something that transcends all the categories of thought, the categories of being and non-being. And the experience is the experience of a truth. An intuitive experience that disregards time in space."