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October 2018

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A Mysterious Autumnal HaikuNew 

by Dr. Mark Dillof October 23, 2018November 27, 2018
written by Dr. Mark Dillof
A Mysterious Autumnal HaikuNew 
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“This path no one walks along, evening of autumnal day.” — Basho

 A path that no one walks along, on an autumn evening — what sense can we make of Basho’s mysterious image? It conveys a certain metaphysical pathos, one redolent with melancholy, yearning, and a haunting sense of the uncanny. A feeling can, though, be poignant, and yet dark, obscure, and unintelligible, especially one as profound as this. What, more precisely, is Basho seeking to communicate? 

On the face of it, Basho’s poetic image of an untrodden road on an autumn evening evokes a sense of aloneness — although not necessarily loneliness — and, as we suggested, melancholy. After all, autumn is the time when the creations of the natural world are dying. It’s a prelude to the dark days of winter. The fact that it’s evening reinforces the moody feeling, although some translations of the haiku indicate, more accurately, that Basho’s poem is really referring to dusk, the time when the last remnants of sunlight are fading and evening begins.

The Power of Dusk

Dusk is an in-between time, a brief twilight period between two realms, day and night. It’s the mystical time when, according to some spiritual traditions, it’s possible to journey to the realm that lies between and beyond day and night, indeed beyond all of the polar opposites that constitute the warp and woof of the waking dream that we call “objective reality.” The traveler, who arrives at that placeless place, realizes the wholeness and completeness that lie beyond the opposites. 

To arrive at that mystical realm is to grasp the true ontological standing of the polarities, to see that they mutually arise and are a product of our own mind. Immanuel Kant had used the term “the transcendental illusion” to refer to the world we experience, owing to our unawareness that it’s our mind itself that creates the categories — such as space and time and causality  — that we mistakenly believe to be “out there,” in the sense of objective. I think, though, that the same could be said of unawareness that it’s our mind that creates the polar opposites that we imagine to exist independent of our cognition. To be awake to the transcendental illusion, in regard to the polar opposites, is to realize that the world that we experience is a function of dualistic thinking.  

The Road that’s Been Patiently Waiting for Your Footsteps

            A “path that no one walks along” is an image of “a road not taken,” but Basho’s road isn’t simply a life choice that the poet chose not to pursue, by virtue of having decided upon a different one, as in Robert Frost’s famous poem. It’s not about, for example, not having chosen to pursue a career as an English teacher. Rather, the path in Basho’s poem doesn’t run along a horizontal axis, i.e., it’s not about the individual and his decisions. Rather, Basho’s path essentially runs along the vertical axis, as do all spiritual paths, for it involves a journey down into the depths, and then upward to the heights, which lies beyond the dream. In other words, it’s the journey to the awakened state of consciousness. 

Fear of the Undiscovered Country

It seems to be intrinsic to the human condition to have a sense that something’s missing from our lives, some vital aspect of reality. We sense that if we don’t find it, that we shall be forever incomplete. Usually, though, we imagine that what’s missing is something of a material nature, such as a new car, rather than a different state of being. The path, in Basho’s poem, represents the journey to true reality, where we can regain our wholeness and completeness. That is what we really yearn for, even if we don’t realize it.  

Why, then, would anyone forsake the quest? It’s because there exists something about the road that’s far more unsettling, indeed far more dreadful, than aloneness, namely the uncanny. Freud rightly contends that the uncanny consists of a profound sense of not being at home. When we’re lost, in the ordinary sense, we at least know that we still inhabit Planet Earth, and that a map or a GPS can guide us home. But not being home, in the uncanny sense, is that we’ve left reality, as we know it. We’ve fallen down the rabbit’s hole, but not in any humorous and playful way, as in a Lewis Carol novel. That is the real “undiscovered country.” And as Shakespeare goes in to say, “…from whose bourn no traveler returns.” Just as there is no return from death, which is what Shakespeare is referring to, similarly there’s no return for the person who has travelled the mystical path at dusk, and walked until he’s reached the point of no return. He simply can’t forget what he’s seen. He’s no longer the same person. (It’s not that he has a different personality, but rather that that which is at the core of his being, his suffering, has been transformed into light.)

Freud considered the uncanny the most terrifying of experiences. To return to our discussion of dusk, for a moment, it’s telling that Rod Serling named his frightening TV show “The Twilight Zone.” He must have intuitively known that the twilight is a time when the strange path appears, the path between two worlds, and therefore the time of the uncanny. And so, is it any surprise, to use Basho’s metaphor, that few or none of us walk that autumnal path at dusk? Well, some do walk that path, those whose yearning for the light of truth is intense enough to endure the terrors. 

What, then, is Missing? 

What could it be that we’re missing? What is the obscure object of desire, which, were we able to obtain it, would make us feel complete? Plato claims that it’s the Form of the Good, which is his notion of that which is infinite, absolute, unconditioned, self-sufficient, and eternal, and philosophers and theologians have since had their own notions of the absolute. The existentialist philosopher, Karl Jaspers, contends that we must, out of necessity, experience a sense of incompleteness, owing to the perspectival and horizontal nature of consciousness. In other words, we can only perceive reality from a certain finite perspective. We cannot see, know, and experience it all at once. Jaspers is correct, in so far as everyday dualistic consciousness is concerned. But it’s possible to ascend to a level of knowing beyond dualistic consciousness, beyond the opposites, to what is known as the mystical level of knowing. 

Who Is the No One, Who Walks Along the Path?

Basho was a Zen monk. Perhaps, Zen offers us another clue as to the haiku’s meaning, particularly as indicated by the words “no one.” Indeed, it suggests that someone might be walking the path, but that someone — having realized the Buddhist state of “emptiness” — has, in truth, become no one. Of course, the Zen sense of emptiness, hollowness, or nothingness, is not a state of lack, or deficiency, but rather one of fullness, or plenitude, that only the true infinite can provide. If so, this doesn’t relieve the sense of aloneness. And there is still a residue of melancholy, although now melancholy is mixed with wonderment. In regard to aloneness, the person who has awakened is all the more isolated from his fellows, as Plato indicates, in his cave allegory. Indeed, he is like one who is awake amongst sleepwalkers.

Some Additional Reflections in the Gloaming

The Delusion of Travel

It’s the hunger, the yearning, for “I know not what” that prompts a certain type of person to travel. Of course, world travel can be enjoyable as well as a broadening experience. It’s just that travel is often a surrogate for the vertical journey, the spiritual journey that the fates require of a person. A romantic soul is more likely to be deluded into wanderlust, seeking outward what should be sought inward. Imaginary places, like Shangri-La, or actual exotic locations, are simply symbolic images of an awakened state of being.

What about Dawn?

Like dusk, dawn is an in-between time, a twilight time, and a holy time. It’s the time when the day emerges out of the darkness, a time of spiritual power, renewal, and hope for a truly new day, and not just a rerun of the previous day. It is a time when the world seems clean, pure, fresh, and alive. (And which is why it’s an excellent name for a dish detergent.) Dawn also offers a narrow pathway to the realm that lies beyond life’s dualities, to the One. But dusk has a much different spiritual power than dawn, for the fading of the light gives dusk’s twilight moments a gravitas and an urgency that aren’t there at dawn. After all, we can always travel the path, but once we’re dead it will be too late.

Walking at Dusk as Spiritual Practice

In the above pages, I’ve been treating Basho’s untrodden path, at autumn, as a metaphor. But actually walking at dusk has been used, throughout the ages, as a spiritual practice. It’s been years since I read Carlos Castaneda’s books, but I seem to recall Carlos’ teacher, Don Juan Matus, utilizing certain types of walking to help Carlos gain knowledge and power. Buddhist spiritual practices tend to be meditative, which makes sense, since it’s more difficult to think when one is walking. But for those Westerners, like myself, who are inclined not to meditation, but to analysis, walking a path — especially in autumn, in the gloaming — can invite deep reflections, if you let it, for penetrating insight requires a certain openness and receptivity. I am no Thoreau, but I do know that, when the time is ripe, a tree, a cloud, or a horse can offer valuable clues to life’s deepest secrets. It might also happen that a deep question starts to pursue us or is lying in wait, ready to ambush us. It’s a good idea to carry a small notebook, in one’s pocket to write down any insights that come upon us, on such walks, or if one is so inclined, to channel one’s inner-Basho and to write down one’s own haikus. Depending on where the path is located, it might be prudent to bring along a dog, and to carry along a walking stick, pepper spray, a siren, and perhaps a firearm, for a spiritual being — assuming that he or she isn’t an angel — has a body that needs to be protected. Oh, and don’t even think of bringing a companion, for as Robert Hunter, songwriter of the Grateful Dead states, “There is a road, no simple highway, Between the dawn and the dark of night, And if you go no one may follow, That path is for your steps alone.” Yes, it’s for your steps alone.

          Thus ends my peripatetic reflections.

 

October 23, 2018November 27, 2018 1 comment
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The Mystery of VapingNew 

by Dr. Mark Dillof October 13, 2018October 23, 2018
written by Dr. Mark Dillof
The Mystery of VapingNew 
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Have you ever seen someone deliver a burst of nicotine-laden vapor into his lungs via a handheld electronic device? And have you then seen him — about 90% of the time it’s a male — then expel what is now a billowy white cloud of vapor from his mouth? Well, that is vaping. It’s intended to be a surrogate for cigarettes, as it enables a person to breathe in a shot of nicotine, but without the tar that comes from tobacco, which causes cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and other serious medical ailments. 

There was a time when cigarette smoking was portrayed as either being graceful and elegant, manly and cool, sophisticated, or in some other attractive light. In old films, on TV, and in magazines it appeared glamorous. Of course, it couldn’t be portrayed that way unless there was an aspect of cigarette smoking that was able to evoke those qualities. Long before the cellphone was invented, cigarette smoking was what one did when one wished to withdraw from the world. Rather than reading a text message, checking the news, Facebook, the Dow, the weather, or whatever, people would simply watch the smoke rise aloft from their cigarette. If the cellphone encourages a distracted, self-absorbed state, cigarettes lend themselves to a contemplative state. 

By contrast, vaping isn’t even vaguely elegant or glamorous. On the contrary, if we didn’t know better, we would think that someone vaping is attempting to ward off an asthmatic attack. Then, perhaps ten minutes later the addict repeats the action. Instead of looking glamorous, it looks pathetic. What, then, is going on here? Is it really, as vapor addicts claim, simply a safe way to ingest nicotine? Or is there something more than meets the eye? 

Just as cigarettes have their own secret psychological appeal — which we have discussed in another essay blog post — so does vaping. We had stated that almost 90% of those who vape are male. That offers us a clue to the phenomenon. Also, most of them are fairly young, in their twenties or thirties. It would appear that men, more so than women, are in search of a meaning to guide their life. They are more likely to be searching for an identity, an ultimate center and foundation, a moral and metaphysical compass, a meaning and a purpose that can provide them with an orientation.

Without that meaning or logos, a man wanders about lost. He might, of course, appear to be purposely acting in the world. He might, indeed, work, be married and provide for a family, but his restlessness and uneasiness indicates an inward instability. Despite the appearance of solidity, he experiences his life as without a foundation, and as such unstable and chaotic. Religion used to provide that moral and spiritual compass and foundation for most people. They could then connect their finite, transient existence to that which is ultimate, absolute, non-contingent and eternal, but far fewer people turn to religion in any real way, for whatever the reason. (I am neither recommending nor not recommending a return to religion, but merely observing the origins of our contemporary malaise.) 

Vaping as Surrogate for Meaning and Purpose

Here, then, is where vaping becomes an attempted solution to the problem of needing an ultimate ground and orientation, but to make sense of it one has to understand its symbolic appeal. To those not familiar with the power of symbolism in our lives, what I’m about to say might seem like a bit of a stretch, indeed pretty far out, but here goes: The high-tech nature of the instrument used in vaping offers an important clue. What a man who vapes is sucking into himself is, symbolically speaking, science and technology. And what he is blowing out is not simply clouds of smoke, but billowing clouds of confusion. Of course, science and technology don‘t provide meaning, purpose, and an orientation, although some people regard the progress of science as a utopian dream, one that acts as an attempted surrogate for the promised land of religion. 

But apart from these science-inspired visions of the millennium, many men associate science with rationality, reason, understanding, and order. Indeed, they see science as a beacon of light, which they contrast with the dark, feminine dimension of life, which — although possessing he holistic qualities of fullness, wholeness and plenitude —embodies darkness and disorder, indeed the chaos, of the emotions. (I’m not talking gender here, but rather the feminine and masculine polarities of consciousness that C.G. Jung and other thinkers write about. Thus a man can have a feminine component to his psyche — the “anima,” to use Jungian lingo — and woman can have a masculine component — the “animus.”) 

Of course, symbolic solutions of this sort don’t succeed in accomplishing what they set out do. In this case, inhaling vaporous nicotine from a scientific-looking device isn’t going to provide a person with the order, meaning and orientation that he seeks. If it did offer a person the orientation and foundation that he is truly seeking, it would do so on the first inhalation, in which case he wouldn’t have to repeat it over and over and over again.[1]

Yes, the nicotine is physically addicting. I don’t mean to give it short shrift, so let’s consider it for a moment. What is the kick that one receives from nicotine? It’s a stimulant, as is, for example, the caffeine that we find in coffee or in energy drinks. A lack of energy can have purely physical causes — from a lack of sleep to getting older — but very often the primary reason for a lack of energy is a lack of enthusiasm for what one is doing, which then leads to boredom, followed by a decrease of energy. If there’s one thing that causes boredom, it’s emptiness and meaninglessness. Thus, even on a physical level, nicotine can act as a surrogate for the enthusiasm that derives from having a purpose, meaning, and direction. 

The Secret Cause of Addiction

Here, again, even apart from the shot of nicotine, the action of vaping — sucking in and expelling the vapor, by means of an electronic devise — is psychologically addicting.  But what really is an addiction? It has been said that at every moment life asks us a question. An addiction is an inadequate answer to an ultimate question. We might say, for example, that life says, “Who are you? Who are these other people you see everyday? What is your purpose on this planet? And what is this enigma called “life” really all about?” Your answer might be inadequate, but it’s difficult for you to relinquish it, if you haven’t found a superior answer to life’s ultimate questions. 

Like most of us, the addict would rather have an inadequate than no answer at all. The ability to endure the anxious uncertainty that comes from not having an adequate answer to the big questions is akin to what the poet John Keats referred to as a “negative capability.” I think that to be able to endure that anxious uncertainty one must, to paraphrase the Bible, have faith that if one knocks persistently enough — and for long enough — eventually the door to the kingdom of heaven will be opened. For the Buddhists, one must have the patience to know that long sustained arduous efforts will lead to enlightenment. In this age of philosophical skepticism, not everyone believes that there exists a secret knowledge, which if known, can change everything for a person. Furthermore, one must not only believe it, one must actually pound away at the door. 


[1]A similar symbolism explains the power of placebos. Here, again, a person — in this case a patent, whose suffering is at least partly psychosomatic — is ingesting is the mystique of science and technology, embodying the values of order, rationality, orientation, and light. I seem to recall Professor Emeritus William Pizante, of Binghamton University, lecturing about the symbolic appeal of placebos, approximately thirty-five years ago. 

October 13, 2018October 23, 2018 0 comment
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The Mystery of a French Horn, in a Beatles’ SongNew 

by Dr. Mark Dillof October 13, 2018October 26, 2018
written by Dr. Mark Dillof
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silver french horn isolated on white

I was sitting in a coffee house, the other day, listening to the radio playing, “For No One,” from the Beatles’ 1966 album “Revolver.” Paul McCartney had composed one of the saddest of songs, about unrequited love. What really struck me though, this time, was the bridge, played by a French Horn. Through a stroke of musical genius, Sir Paul had transformed what would have been a very good song into a truly great one. What I couldn’t quite discern, though, was how the addition of the French Horn effectuated that transformation. There lies a mystery.

So I listened to the solo version of “For No One,” in which Paul accompanies himself on sacoustic guitar. It’s certainly very good, but not on the level of the studio version, with the three violins and the French Horn. Of course, the mournful strains of the three violins do make “For No One” a good deal sadder, for violins can resonate to the dolor of the human heart. 

In Emmylou Harris’ version of the song, a dobro takes the place of the French Horn. The dobro is congruent, rather than contrasting with the mood evoked by Ms. Harris’ singing, as well as by the other accompanying instruments. The overall effect is melancholy, but not in the way that Paul’s version is, for reasons’ that we shall see. 

We might also add that the musical break in John Lennon’s song, “There Are Places I Remember,” is played on a piano that is made to sound like a harpsichord. Here, again, the harpsichord break is congruent, rather than contrasting to the main body of that song. “There Are Places I Remember” is heartfelt but cheerful, and the harpsichord bridge echoes its cheerfulness, in another key, suggesting that the lover, his beloved and the world itself share in his joy.  

But what is perplexing is the effect of the French Horn, in Paul’s studio version of “For No One.” That is because the French Horn is not an instrument generally associated with sadness. On the contrary, the French Horn is lofty and transcendent, suggesting the cool mountain air of the spirit. Popular examples include Beethoven’s trio of French Horns, from the Third Movement of his Third Symphony, the First and Fourth Movements of Seventh Sympathy and the Third Movement of his Ninth Symphony. The French Horn, from Paul’s song — played in a high key, with one note reaching a register beyond what most professional French Horn players are able to play — is similarly lofty sounding. And yet the overall effect of McCartney’s adding the French Horn to the song, “For No One,” paradoxically makes the song infinitely sadder! What is going on here? 

Paradise Lost

One interpretation, with which I don’t agree, is that the French Horn expresses the cool distance of the woman, la belle dame sans merci,who has left her grieving lover. I don’t agree because, for one thing, the French Horn, although lofty and transcendent, is not cool, but actually expresses a certain emotional warmth.  

There is a musical contrast here, between the lofty transcendence of the French Horn with the other elements of the song — Paul’s plaintive voice, the songs melody played in a minor key, by his guitar, the three violins and the songs very dolorous lyrics. Thus the French Horns make everything else, by contrast, seem all the sadder. But it’s not just the effect of contrast that makes the sad parts sadder, but something else. 

A very different musical genre, the blues, might afford us a clue. They call it the blues, for the color blue is the color of the sky and transcendence. And so, to be blue, or to have the blues, means that one has a sense of lost transcendence, of paradise lost. The sense here is that we could have known a great joy, but it somehow eluded us, and so like Edgar Allen Poe’s raven, we sit in our chamber repeating, “Nevermore.” 

“For No One” is not, of course, a blues song, but a rock song. But the addition of the French Horn — ascending to the empyrean, an ascent that the melancholy Paul is unable to make, due to his missing his sweetheart — intensifies the melancholy mood of lost transcendence. 

So it is that for there to be melancholy there has to be a sense that a happiness that once was is now lost, but could have been, expressed in the line, “A love that should have lasted years.” We may recall the lyrics of Whittier’s poem, “Of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, it might have been.” That is why, then, the addition of the French Horn elicits — by it’s contrast to the elegiacal mood of the other elements of Paul’s song — a mood of failed transcendence, of paradise lost. That is, therefore, why the studio version of the song is much sadder then the solo acoustic version, heartfelt though it may be. 

Let’s Get Real

Why is it that the “love that should have lasted years” turned out not to have had much longevity? It’s sad to say that the poet had deluded himself, for what Paul had believed was there really wasn’t there at all. Because it wasn’t there, it suffered the fate of so many failed relationships, even those that become marriages. And that fate is that eventually the other shoe dropped, meaning that we come to see that the other person is not the god or goddess that we had initially believed him or her to be. And so, unhappily, we awake from our infatuation, and now stone cold sober, we believe that we had been deluded, and so we wish to be free of the other person. 

Thus while the heartbroken man, who Paul is singing to, is foolish to romanticize a union that really was of little merit, the woman in the song is shallow to believe that once disillusionment emerges there is no more reason to stay with her partner. If that shallowness was endemic in 1966, it is all the more so in 2018. Indeed, I recall reading an interview with the popular singer Christina Aguilera, when she was getting divorced. As she expressed it, “I just wasn’t happy,” a sentiment expressed by millions of other men and women today, who believe that marriage is all about being happy and that they somehow deserve to be made happy, by the other person, and on a continual basis. 

After the Other Shoe Drops

For a marriage to last it must be founded on something more substantial than erotic or romantic attraction. Certainly, it helps if two people share common interests. Perhaps, they both enjoy playing bridge or tennis or traveling. Or perhaps it is simply that they have decided to work together to provide for their children’s wellbeing. But while Eros, romance, and common interests may be, to varying degrees, important components of a marriage, they are not sufficient. What is critically important is common values. In other words, the two people must, more or less, subscribe to a similar belief system, or worldview. 

If I may return to Sir Paul, his marriage to his first wife, Linda Eastman, appeared to have been “a marriage of true minds.” Unfortunately, Ms. Eastman died and Paul married Heather Miles. It must have initially seemed to Paul that he and Heather shared common values. But it only seemed that way, for values are deeper than one’s stated beliefs. They’re often even deeper than one’s activities. As B.C. Forbes expressed it, “It is much easier to do good than to be good.” Thus one may devote one’s life to doing charitable work, but still be a self-absorbed narcissist, and a censorious critic of one’s spouse, not that Paul was any angel.

Let us, then, return to our analysis of Paul’s song, “For No One.” It was aptly named, although for reasons perhaps lying beyond horizon of his thinking, at the time. More particularly, one may be amongst many people and yet find that there is no one there, just hollow men and women. Indeed, the beings one meets — lacking the inward substance and reality that derives from a life that is an expression of genuine values — are simply not there. T.S. Eliot observed it in the 1930s, in his poem “The Hollow Men,” and it is far truer today. 

Simply stated, the man’s heartbreak was for no one because there was no one there in the first place. Here, then, is the key to that delusion known as romantic heartbreak: The sorrowful lover is not truly crying over the loss of his beloved, but is really crying over the fantastical belief that — if one could have had an abiding union with a certain person — one could have known paradise. 

October 13, 2018October 26, 2018 0 comment
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Mark Dillof has been a philosophical counselor for over twenty years. You can learn more about his work, by going to his other website, www.deeperquestions.com.

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