Spring Quarter is over. And not a minute to soon.
I had stopped doing homework a few weeks ago. I wasn’t motivated enough to do my final Computer Science project. While every one else crammed for finals, I immersed myself in the writings of primitivism, buddhism, and mayan myth.
I moved out of the dorms tonight and payed the holding fee for where I’ll be living starting September. It’s downtown, above the Pita Pit.
An email just arrived, confirming my reservations for my first three nights in Bangkok. Suk it, dorm style.
Last night I completed Dennis Tedlock’s translation of the Popul Vuh. Often referred to as the Mayan’s Genesis, this is the Quiché people’s creation myth. It tells of the gods’ creation of the earth-sky, their attempts to create humans, the exploits of the trickster‘s Hunahpu and Xbalanque, and the times of the first humans. Unlike most sacred texts, I found this one to be quite accessible. It’s written in a way that, even in translation, flows and is easy to understand. I did have trouble pronouncing many of the names, but for that just ask your friendly neighborhood Guatemalan.
When the first humans were created (on the gods’ third attempt), they had perfect sight. The gods were worried that, being able to see “the four sides, the four corners in the sky, on the earth,” these humans’ deeds would rival their own, so they took the sight away. The name Popul Vuh translates to Council Book. It is said that the Quiché lords would sit with the this book in council and, using the original hieroglyphic version (which is now either lost or hiding) as a celestial guide, could regain the lost sight.
They knew whether war would occur; everything they saw was clear to them. Whether there would be death, or whether there would be famine, or whether quarrels would occur, they knew it for certain, since there was a place to see it, there was a book. "Council Book" was their name for it.
Mel Gibson’s upcoming film Apocalypto is supposed to be partially based on these myths. Hopefully the book will gain more attention because of it.
Given a period of general decline, which we now seem to be in -- the Kali Yuga, a phase of plague, famine, and war that has been described a "the end of the end" -- what language would the Blessed One skillfully use to resolve the world's demise? In contrast to the physical reality of his own age, nature itself seems now threatened with extinction. If we believe that, what is the significance of meditative practices in the modern world, particularly when the "extinction" clock reads two minutes to midnight? Can we spend our time in seclusion and contemplation -- even if, of course, we are not striving only for our own enlightenment but for all sentient beings as well? Is enlightenment more important than saving the world? Or is enlightenment the only way of saving the world?
...
It is time for inner city meditators. Time for Victorious Ones to get their hands dirty in the myriad hell and hungry-ghost worlds of the Planet. Time for bhikkus and bhikkunis to understand the addictions of television and the comforts of the corporate state. Time for spiritual warriors to taste the toxic garbage of a collapsing ecology. If there is to be any more "time."
Rudy Wurlitzer‘s Hard Travel to Sacred Places takes us to the depths of depression caused by death, amplified by the depression of middle-class travel and expensive hotels in S.E. Asia. A kind of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but take out the drugs and toss in Buddhism. Although it’s billed as travel writing, I found the actual locations and travelling to take a back seat to the author’s attempt to reconcile the loss of his step-son with his spiritual beliefs. Indeed, if one were to take out all the Buddhist quotes, the book would probably be halved in length.
Legend of the Dragonfly gets two thumbs up from me. I really enjoy parties that offer more than just music. (And they had some damn good cookies last night.)
My only complaint is the lighting. There was too much of it, making both the main rooms too bright.
I was first introduced to Jeff Vail (former Intelligence Officer for the US Air Force) last Winter by Anthropik – which will probably give you an idea of what he’s all about. His book, A Theory of Power, has been called “the most innovative approach to anarchist theory in a generation”. It has received praise from both John Zerzan and Noam Chomsky, and includes people such as Hakim Bey, Aldous Huxley, and Robert Anton Wilson in the bibliography. Impressed? I was. And I was right to be. It’s excellent.
The book is based, not surprisingly, on Vail’s theory of power, that “connections, not the parties connected, may best represent our world.” By analyzing the connections between genes and organisms, furthering this to the connections between memes and society, he “unravels the functioning of our world” and shows us the inevitable downfall of Civilization – but then he goes further.
Hakim Bey gives us the T.A.Z.. Jeff Vail gives us the Rhizome, a way to operate outside – and inside – of the T.A.Z.’s space in time.
Rhizome acts as a web-like structure of connected but independent nodes, borrowing its name from the structures of plants such as bamboo and other grasses. By its very nature, rhizome exhibits incompatibility with such critical hierarchal structures as domestication, monoculture-agriculture, division of labor and centralized government. Unlike hierarchy, rhizome cannot suffer exploitation from within because its structure remains incompatible with centralization of power. It provides a structural framework for our conscious organization of memes. Each node in a rhizome stands autonomous from the larger structure, but the nodes work together in a larger network that extends benefits to the node without creating dependence. The critical element of a world that focuses power at the level of the individual, that can meet the demands of our genome while providing the flexibility and potential to achieve greater goals, remains the small, connected and relatively self-sufficient node of this rhizome structure. In human terms, such a node represents an economic and a cultural unit at the size preferred by our genome: the household and the tribe. Functionally self-sufficient but not isolated, cooperating but not controlled, the rhizome economy, combined with a self-awareness of control structures, provides the real-world foundation of stability and freedom.
At only 50 pages, and freely available online, there is little excuse not to read this book. Go now. Forward, to Rhizome.
It always confuses the hell out me when people say Washington and end up referring to that other Washington, but now people in D.C. are being called Washingtonians. This just isn’t going to work. Someone is going to have to change their name.