"I of my own knowledge…"

Chapter Five. Preparation

Sure death outside, for them. But not for me. And I had the strongest reason of all to risk it, a reason they could no longer understand except abstractly, intellectually. None of them had a ceaseless longing gnawing at them, for the simple reason that anyone they’d left behind was long dead, or much aged. Their very longevity separated them from the rest of the world, even more effectively than the surrounding mountains. I didn’t want to be separated that way from Marianne. It wasn’t heroism that made me determined to return: Death or capture seemed easier than living on without her.

As I read these words I have just written, they seem to me impossibly romantic and naive. They seem to idealize her (and me, of course) just like the “little reading” romances Thoreau mocks so devastatingly: “the nine thousandth tale about Zebulon and Sophronia, and how they loved as none had ever loved before, and neither did the course of their true love run smooth. . . .” But I’m not setting myself up as Romeo, nor her as Juliet, and I don’t have much experience in love. I can’t compare intensities. All I know is that I was one person before meeting her, and another afterward. She said it was the same for her. By our third date, which was two days after the first, it was as if a dentist had suddenly stopped drilling. Or perhaps I should say it was as if I’d been born with a radio blaring ceaseless static into my ear, and suddenly it had been turned off. In her presence I found peace, and completion. Someone had removed the filters from my eyes, and I was seeing the world in vivid color for the first time (more…)

When a man of wisdom speaks, and his words continue to ring true after more than half a century, maybe it would be a good idea to listen. This is from “A Study in the Process of Individuation,” in Carl Jung’s The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.

Conclusion

Our series of pictures illustrates the initial stages of the way of individuation. It would be desirable to know what happens afterwards. But, just as neither the philosophical gold nor the philosophers’ stone was ever made in reality, so nobody has ever been able to tell the story of the whole way, at least not to mortal ears, for it is not the storyteller but death who speaks the final “consummatum est.” Certainly there are many things worth knowing in the later stages of the process, but, from the point of view of teaching as well as of therapy, it is important not to skip to quickly over the initial stages. As these pictures are intuitive anticipations of future developments, it is worth while lingering over them for a long time, in order, with their help, to integrate so many contents of the unconscious into consciousness that the latter really does reach this stage it sees ahead. These psychic evolutions do not as a rule keep pace with the tempo of intellectual developments. Indeed, their very first goal is to bring a consciousness that has hurried too far ahead into contact again with the unconscious background with which it should be connected…. (more…)

Chapter Four. Realities

“It’s me, all right. The name Bryant that he says is my right name ain’t the right one, but if you knew where to look, you’d find the old news stories about me quick enough. Not that it matters: The statutes of limitations don’t run any 30 years, and anyway it wouldn’t be so easy, extraditing me out of here.”

“But except for the names, the rest of the story is true?”

“Oh, more or less. Like Huck Finn says, he stretched it here and there, but mostly he told the truth.”

Mr. Barnard and I were standing, in parkas, by the frost‑covered windows of his greenhouse room, which the morning sun had turned into a splendid wilderness of illuminated traceries. Mr. Barnard had said he thought I’d like seeing the designs. I was a little surprised that he’d notice such things. I think, now, that he wanted to get my first impression of the book in surroundings as unfamiliar to me as possible in our limited world. (more…)

Chapter Three. Introductions

I had a long winter and spring ahead of me before I could try to get over the mountains to India, and the monastery was not so large a place to roam. I soon used up its spaces.

I’d get up in the morning—after sleeping as late as possible and then lying in bed staring up and out at the blue‑black sky beyond my window—and wander down to the kitchen to fix myself some tea. (In those early days I sorely missed my coffee.) Then I’d make my way down to Mr. Barnard’s greenhouse, or his workshop, or I’d pace one of the little patios that open off the main buildings. Sooner or later Mr. Barnard and I would come together and we’d have a lunch, usually some thick slices of bread and butter, or perhaps a few pieces of fruit. And while we ate, and later while we sat in the library rooms or went outside for a smoke, he and I would talk. (more…)

Chapter Two. The Monastery

Late the following morning, Mr. Barnard found me lying in bed staring up at the ceiling, wondering how long the trek back would take. Provided the place wasn’t an elaborate Chinese trap, I figured I’d stumbled into probably the only place in Tibet that would help me get back over the border into India or Pakistan. I figured they’d give me provisions, and maybe even a guide. Working our way by night, moving with someone who knew the terrain, I figured five nights, maybe. I couldn’t get over the good luck that had brought me safely here. Assuming that the place was what it seemed.

And suddenly there was Mr. Barnard at the door. “Well,” he said, beaming benevolently down at me like a Buddha with a mustache, “when I looked in on you a while back, you looked like you were working hard on catching up on your sleep. How are you feeling now?” (more…)

Messenger: A Sequel to Lost Horizon

By Frank DeMarco

Dedicated to:

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, admirable representative of his people, a man upon whom hatred has no hold.

Having,

of all mankind,

reason to be bitter,

the Dalai Lama lives serene.

He smiles.

And to Danny Lliteras, author of the Llewellen trilogy:

In The Heart of Things

Into the Ashes, and

Half Hidden by Twilight,

who encouraged and prodded me by word, example, and friendship.

And to the memory of my brother Joe, 1949‑1979.

(more…)

Long ago (1979) and far away (New Jersey, where I was then living) I began writing a novel, a sequel to James Hilton’s Lost Horizon. I was wild about Hilton’s book, re-reading it often, feeling in my bones that this is a book about something real. But Lost Horizon was written in 1932, before the atomic bomb and before the invasion by Communist China in 1950 and again, more devastatingly, in 1959. I couldn’t stand the thought of the lamasery at Shangri-la in Red hands. I tried to think, how could it survive behind the lines, so to speak. (more…)

Nan Rothwell’s studio is in Nelson County, Virginia, quite near where I live. For the past several months I have been enjoying being in one of her pottery classes. This weekend and next she is holding her annual exhibition/sale, and I thought I’d show a couple of photos.

The first two photos are of the table in which she displays some of her students’ work. Four of these pieces are mine, which is why we’re seeing these photos first!

Fun to be associating with others playing with mud, and neat to be learning from someone who has been doing it for 30 years and more.

(more…)

Amazing hypocrisy on China’s part. They no more believe in reincarnation than they do in political or economic liberty, so they attack the Dalal Lama for violating “the religious rituals and historical conventions.” This, after they have spent half a century actively trying to elminate both! This, after they arrested (and for all we know killed) the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama who was recognized by the religious authorities, and put in their own. This, too, after they passed a law saying that the Dalai Lama would have to have official government approval to reincarnate! Idiots.

This from the Independent: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3187092.ece

China furious at Dalai Lama plan to name successor
By Clifford Coonan, China Correspondent
Published: 23 November 2007

China has accused Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, of violating the religious rituals and historical conventions of Tibetan Buddhism by suggesting he might appoint a successor before his death instead of relying on reincarnation.

Beijing’s latest broadside against the Dalai Lama is a sign of heightening tensions between the central government and the man Tibetans see as a god-king. While reincarnation sounds like an esoteric concept to those of other belief systems, it is a deeply political issue in the isolated Himalayan enclave.

The Dalai Lama said Tibetans would not accept a successor who was selected by China after his death, prompting an angry response from Beijing. “The reincarnation of the living Buddha is a unique way of succession of Tibetan Buddhism and follows relatively complete religious rituals and historical conventions,” said Liu Jianchao, a Foreign Ministry spokesman . “Dalai’s remarks obviously violated the religious rituals and historical conventions.”

(more…)

Orphans’ Dinner at the New Land — set up for 18 people whose families are elsewhere. This year, as last year, I cooked the turkey and dressing and provided the space.