Friday, December 24, 2004

Shakespeare's sense of purpose

"As many arrows, loosed several ways,
Fly to one mark; as many ways meet in one town;
As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea;
As many lines close in the dial’s center;
So may a thousand actions, once afoot,
End in one purpose, and be all well borne
Without defeat."

Shakespeare’s Henry V, the Archbishop of Canterbury describes the way the English army can effectively win its war with France

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

A middle way... [Theragatha]

"Take heed that when effort is too strenuous it leads to strain and when too slack to laziness. So make a firm determination that you will adopt the middle way, not allowing yourself to struggle or to slacken, but recognizing that faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom are the fruits of a calm and equable way."

Sunday, December 12, 2004

East & West [Rafael Lopez-Pedraza]

After the latest Islamic challenge of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush said that the War Against Terrorism would be a long war. Of course, he reduced Islam to terrorism when, in reality, suicidal terrorism is only a new weapon of the fanatical Islamic fundamentalist, the Islamic version of the hero who himself becomes the weapon; a hero whose imagination of the after life is a total denial of the life he has lived and of his creed.(i) What he has most rejected in his life on earth because of religious repression he will live in the beyond with his God, a projection of eternal blessedness, a psychology stemming from a primitive tribal warrior mentality. President Bush is probably right about the length of this war that has created fear in the American people. The popular backing of George Bush during these days has to do with his speeches being addressed solely to the dangers of terrorism, probably creating for the first time in American history a fear that disregards any other values in life. History will show whether this fear will mobilize the energy for giving a response to today's Islamic threat the long war Bush announced. We could say that the fate of the West depends on giving the right response to the present challenge from the East. (ii)

We can see clearly enough that for the time being Bush's rhetoric seems to be the same as his foes: the rhetoric of the American Protestant Bible opposing the totalitarian rhetoric of the Koran. The rhetoric of "evil" is common to both. It cannot be otherwise. Concerning evil, the philosopher Bernard Williams in Shame and Necessity says: ". . .there is a 'problem of evil' only for those who expect the world to be good . . ." [Berkeley: Univ. of California Press,1994), p. 68] So we have two monotheistic systems each reducing the situation to a projection of the repressed shadow upon the other. Modern psychology has used the term "Manichaeism", taken from the religious principles of Manes (216-274 AD), the division of the world between the children of light and the children of darkness, as an expression of a split off idea or a split personality. According to the historian Bernard Lewis the Islamic jihad:
. . . was interpreted to mean armed struggle for the defense or advancement of muslim power. in principle the world was divided into two houses: the house of islam, in which a muslim government ruled and muslim law prevailed, and the house of war, the rest of the world, still inhabited and, more important, ruled by infidels. between the two, there was to be a perpetual state of war until the entire world either embraced islam or submitted to the rule of the muslim state [new yorker november 19, 2001, p. 52]

The stupidity of Christianity's proselytizing power-bid to colonize the whole world pales in comparison to the Islamic world vision."

excerpt from EAST AND WEST by Rafael Lopez-Pedraza

prestented at the
III Latin American Congress of Jungian Psychology
Salvador, Brazil
April 30th to May 4th, 2003

"challenges of practice: the patient and the continent"

Thursday, December 09, 2004

The solitary ember [paolo coelho]

Juan always attended Sunday services at his parish. But then he began to find that the pastor always said the same things, so he stopped going to church.

On a cold winter’s night two months later, the pastor paid him a visit.

“He must have come to try to convince me to go back,” Juan thought to himself. He imagined he could not tell the real reason: those boring sermons. He had to find an excuse, and as he was thinking he pulled two chairs up close to the hearth and began talking about the weather.

The pastor said nothing. Juan, after some vain attempts to start up a conversation, sat in silence too. They both sat there without speaking, just looking at the fire for close to half an hour.

Then the pastor rose, and with the help of a branch that had not yet burned, pulled an ember aside and placed it far from the fire.

The ember, without enough heat to go on burning, began to go out. Juan quickly tossed it back into the middle of the fire.

“Good night," said the pastor, rising to leave.

“Good night and many thanks,” answered Juan. “No matter how bright it is, an ember removed from the fire will end up going out quickly. No matter how clever a man may be, far from his neighbors he will never manage to conserve his heat and his flame. I will be back at church next Sunday.”


Wednesday, December 01, 2004

What ARE we waiting for anyway?

Stop waiting ...
Until your car or home is paid off.
Until you get a new car or home.
Until your kids leave the house.
Until you go back to school.
Until you finish school.
Until you lose 10 lbs.
Until you gain 10 lbs.
Until you get married.
Until you get a divorce.
Until you have kids.
Until you retire.
Until summer.
Until spring.
Until winter.
Until fall.
Until you die.