Kōan Fragments of a Distorted World #16

Intro Notes
This series started in July of 2018. When ideas for a piece of writing wouldn't gel into a poem or an essay is some of what prompted the format — throw a bunch of loosely connected bits together. And instead of having definitive information or answers to give the reader, as is done with most essays/articles, there's the Zen kōan aspect... which encourages the reader to think for his/her/whatever self.

Personally i get weary of articles telling me this is exactly what the world needs and what “we” need to do is…; sometimes that’s helpful, depending on who’s dispensing the advice, yet too-often the generic “we” is used as a slick form of conformity. As example, a recent CNN headline: “Opinion: Billie Eilish’s “Lunch” is the Pride anthem we so desperately need" … supposedly the “definitive queer anthem of 2024.” Who says definitive? … and it’s only June! Aside from whatever anyone’s sexual preferences (which are none of my business, so have fun and play nice), the opening stanza reads to me mostly like hungry ghost sexual consumerism; my bold:

“I could eat that girl for lunch
Yeah, she dances on my tongue
Tastes like she might be the one
And I could never get enough
I could buy her so much stuff
It's a craving, not a crush, huh”

Huh?! If you’re a male homosexual, CNN thinks that would be your anthem?

Anyway, as to this series’ title, it’s a riff from Lawrence Ferlinghetti's 1955 book Pictures of the Gone World. The following quote is in that book; from the poem “The world is a beautiful place”:

“Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places”

Another impetus for the series comes from William Blum who passed away in December of 2018. His “The Anti-Empire Report” (160 of them) typically consisted of a bunch of segments that were highly informative of recent news, insightful, and with pinches of humor so as to better cope with the “few dead minds in higher places.”

Blum is perhaps best known for his listing/categorizing in orderly, factual fashion the atrocities perpetrated by the USEmpire especially since WW II, as his following book titles suggest: Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II and Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower and America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy: The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else.

“William Blum left the State Department in 1967, abandoning his aspiration of becoming a Foreign Service Officer, because of his opposition to what the United States was doing in Vietnam. He then became one of the founders and editors of the Washington Free Press, the first “alternative” newspaper in the capital.”

Realizing i would miss his summaries, i wanted to keep the flame alive in some form, albeit not as directly political as his.

Square one was a circle
The ancient Chinese picture for the Sun was a circle with a wavy line inside (Large Seal, circa 1122–256 B.C.), then a dot in the center (Small Seal, circa 221–207 B.C.). But with the Clerical Style (circa 207 B.C.–588 A.D. and then Standard to present day) it became squarish with a horizontal line; my guess was that it was to accommodate speed and social efficiency, as it’s easier to quickly draw lines accurately rather than make sure you are calm and centered lest the circle become an oval shape and the dot un-centered. Such un-centered-ness en masse could cause global warming (so that’s how it started, in a Chinese calligraphy lab!). But all seriousness aside (as Steve Allen used to quip):

“…the oldest Seal Scripts are very labourious for the calligrapher. … Likely beginning in the Warring States period… this script developed into what we now call the Clerical Script (隸書/Li Shu). It takes its name from the fact that it was first used by Clerks as a type of shorthand before being finalized for legal documents and pronouncements in the Small Seal Script. In the Han Dynasty, however, Clerical Script became the official script for the production of most Imperial documents.”
&
“The Warring States period was an era in ancient Chinese history characterized by warfare, bureaucratic and military reform, and political consolidation.”

I’m no Chinese historian, but while there is a history of earlier wars, the brush calligraphy pictograph transformation apparently reflects the “consolidation” of bureaucracy, imperialism and war. It also reflects humans’ loss of relationships with the actual energy forces that grow our foods, warm our skins, and such like.

To say “back to square one” is to go back to a false beginning because the square wasn’t the beginning, rather the circle, or the circle representing a fiery sphere, among other shapes . . . wavy, spiral, elliptical . . .

Then again, what if there was no beginning. For large swaths of god-fearing and highly intellectual peoples, "In the beginning was the Word..."

Yet for another perspective, according to Chief Arvol Looking Horse of the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota: "In a Sacred Hoop of Life, there is no beginning and no ending.” 

Well there’s a Native kōan for ya or else the zenniest of Zen kōans ever, akin to an actual Zen kōan: “The myriad things return to the One: what does the One return to?”

(Pause for a good ol’ American fast-food drive-thru there are twelve cars ahead of you so fast-food isn’t that fast mind-boggling pause . . . . .
Or ponder that for 10 to 20 years—which can be the length of time Zen students ponder a kōan before attaining enlightenment.)

square one ideology: bureaucracy, imperialism and war

Reference points are powerful narrative-shapers because they are what people “return to”, masses of people, especially when considering religions, educational systems and governmental/legal policies — there it is, it’s in the book, what more proof do you need? . . . but unless one questions what the ‘it’ is in the first place, then the narrative stays stuck.

Regarding current (yet historically based) news: Did the horrors in the Middle East start on October 7, 2023 or in 1948? Did the horrors start with Russia invading Ukraine in 2022 or Ukraine attacking the Donetsk/Donbass region from 2014 onward? Square one ideologies can lead to heated arguments.

Another example: I read the following line in a recent post by satirist and playwright CJ Hopkins whose writings i appreciate even if i don’t always agree with, so this isn’t about him or his writings rather an example that reflects what i consider a square one starting point that masses of people “return to”; my bold:

"I’m not a fan of murdering civilians. Not even for the Revolution. I do not think it is a very good strategy. … Soldiers killing each other is one thing. They have been doing that since the dawn of history."

I consider that one of the most common opinions, and ignorant of asking: whose history?… because various Original Peoples were decidedly not always fighting. The ‘always warring’ history square one narrative is one reason why wars continue—because masses of people were persuaded to think it's normal. ‘Well it’s rough out there but hey we’ve always been at war anyway, so chin up and can i buy you another round?’

But what if “we” have not always been warring and killing?

of “one Mind” or a “few dead minds”
A “few dead minds” is the gist of what’s wreaking havoc on the planet.

What also comes to mind is the Haundenosaunee “Ohenten Kariwatekwen, also known as the Thanksgiving Address. Translated from Mohawk, Ohenten Kariwatekwen means “the words that are spoken before all others.”

One bit of translation:

“We bring our minds together as one and give thanks for (this is repeated throughout the prayer) Mother Earth. She has given us everything we need to live in peace…now our minds are one.”

Nowadays, it seems impossible for approximately 8-billion people around the world to be ‘of one mind’, yet perhaps the more and more smaller groups that do so will create a ripple effect ‘of one minds’ with differences that are not causes for battle. Or to quote novelist Tom Robbins: “Our similarities bring us to a common ground; Our differences allow us to be fascinated by each other.”

On the other hand (or maybe lobe), “a few dead minds” somehow developed the ability to sway masses of people so that conformity became hugely popular. Taken a step further, conformity’s extreme results in perfectly manicured lawns with every blade of grass (and only grass, no dandelion and other medicines permitted) the exact same height and color; conformity’s extreme results in agri-business mechanized farmerless farm monoculture GMO crops; conformity’s extreme results in voting for the lesser of two evils, the normalization of violence, and Nazism — everything and everyone the one-track uniform same, but it’s for a good cause if you conform for God (or Godless if you’re a Soviet Union communist) and country, conform for Blood and Soil, Blut und Boden, an actual Nazi modus operandi blatant mind control.

Is everything really that two-choice simple? Our species becoming mindlessly of one extremist, conformist mind OR working together as various groups/nations of cohesive one minds living in balance with the Earth?

”Not-Knowing”… “Bearing Witness”… “Taking Action” ~Zen Peacemakers
John McLaughlin, a fabulous guitarist, tells an anecdote about working with Miles Davis. Miles didn’t like the first sessions of a recording so he said to McLaughlin, “Why don’t you play it like you don’t know how to play the guitar.” About that McLaughlin said, “This is really a good one. So, what does he mean? I don’t know how to play the guitar, I have to play it…like this is totally Zen kōan!”

To riff the wannabe Zen master Donald Rumsfeld: The square is a known known . . . but the answers therein are always the same, written in proverbial stone, in a book, a TV screen, a war, a big-box store, an uncool musician or person, or as the song goes:
”Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes all the same
There's a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same…”

Finding a way of being calm and content with “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns” is a discipline that helps with overcoming anxieties and existential crises.

My sense, and from experience, is that embracing a place of unknowing helps with living in-tune with the timelessly circular/globular, passionate rhythms of the Sun, and helps with receiving guidance from the One from whence all our beautiful differences originate.

(“Dawn” - Sun (Light-Beings) just above the horizon
~brush calligraphy by the author)