"The peace of utter stillness . . ."

image: Ruins of the temple of Asclepius, Elea. Wikimedia commons (link).

Special thanks to a reader who recently introduced me to the work of Peter Kingsley, with whom I had previously been unfamiliar. 

I have now read one of Dr. Kingsley's four books, In the Dark Places of Wisdom (1999), which can accurately be described as "momentous in its implications" (in the words one prominent author has used to describe Dr. Kingsley's work).

The momentousness of the implications comes from Dr. Kingsley's discovery that something has been stolen from the culture that we today know as "the West" -- something so essential, that it is in fact the very thing which we each long for in our lives, and which we can wear ourselves out in pursuing and never reaching. 

In the Dark Places of Wisdom describes the problem:

And here's a great secret: we all have that vast missingness deep inside us [. . .] the more we feel that nothingness inside us, the more we feel the need to fill the void. So we try to substitute this and that, but nothing lasts. We keep wanting something else, needing some other need to keep us going [. . .]. 34-35.

Because of what has been stolen in antiquity, he argues, western culture has become "a past master at the art of substitution," but "It offers and never delivers because it can't. It has lost the power even to know what needs to be delivered, so it offers substitutes instead" (35). 

What we are seeking is described by Dr. Kingsley at one point as "the peace of utter stillness" (36), and of course we can never find this by rushing after it, searching for it everywhere -- but ironically there is a way in which it is accessible to every one of us, at all times.

According to his thesis, the knowledge of how to access "the peace of utter stillness" still exists in places outside of western culture, and because of this many moderns have assumed that such knowledge "never took root in the West" (115). "But," he says, "that's not the case." In fact, this knowledge was once at the heart of western culture -- and may indeed lie at the heart of its greatest ancient achievements. It's just that it has been covered over by what may be described as "a conspiracy of silence" (230).

He implies that the blame lies with the invention of a new definition of philosophy, in Athens, under Plato. Plato, the book argues, could almost be seen as a "parricide," who inherited the great ancient wisdom and then betrayed it -- metaphorically speaking, killing his own father. 

And the "father" that Platonic philosophy killed, Kingsley argues, was represented by an actual historical figure, one whose name has survived to this day: Parmenides of Elea.

Based upon new archaeological discoveries of marbles and inscriptions which had lain forgotten at the site of ancient Elea (or Velia, as it was also known and as it is spelled throughout In the Dark Places of Wisdom), along with the body of what had already been known about Parmenides (including the surviving fragments of his own writings), Peter Kingsley shows the reader that Parmenides came from an ancient line of wisdom-lovers who practiced the technique of achieving that "utter stillness" through the entry of a state of consciousness "described as neither sleep nor waking," in which they made contact with "another level of awareness and another level of being" (80).

In other words, Peter Kingsley has found yet another incredibly important line of evidence which demonstrates that what we today describe as "shamanic" (a word which he uses in the book) is in fact the shared inheritance of all humanity -- not least of all that portion which would later come to be known as "the West" -- but that in western culture this inheritance has somehow been lost, or stolen. 

The details are amazing and fascinating, and deserve to be read in their entirety in the book itself. Below are just a few noteworthy quotations, many of which appear to resonate very strongly with material that has been presented in this blog and in my 2014 book The Undying Stars, where similar conclusions have been reached based upon other sources of evidence -- which is just what we might expect to find, if in fact something like the loss posited in In the Dark Places of Wisdom has indeed taken place in western culture (due to font limitations, some diacritical markings over vowels, present in the original quotations, are not included here):

• "Always we want to learn from outside, from absorbing other people's knowledge. It's safer that way. The trouble is that it's always other people's knowledge. We already have everything we need to know, in the darkness inside ourselves. The longing is what turns us inside out until we find the sun and the moon and the stars inside" (67).
• "And the fact is that Parmenides never describes himself as traveling out of darkness into the light. When you follow what he says you see he was going in exactly the opposite direction" (51).
• "The underworld isn't just a place of darkness and death. It only seems like that from a distance. In reality it's the supreme place of paradox where all the opposites meet. Right at the roots of western as well as eastern mythology there's the idea that the sun comes out of the underworld and goes back to the underworld every night. It belongs in the underworld. That's where it has its home; where its children come from. The source of light is at home in the darkness" (68).
• "There used to be experts at incubation -- masters at the art of going into another state of consciousness or allowing themselves to go if they were drawn there. Sometimes they did this for the sake of healing others, but the point of incubation wasn't really the healing at all. That's simply how it seemed. What was most important was the fact that the healing comes from another level of being, from somewhere else. For these were people who were able to enter another world, make contact with the divine receive knowledge directly from the gods" (101-102). 
• "The purpose was to free people's attention from distractions, to turn it in another direction so their awareness could start operating in an entirely different way. The stillness had a point to it, and that was to create an opening into a world unlike anything we're used to: a world that can only be entered 'in deep meditation, ecstasies and dreams'" (181).
• "Ancient Greek accounts of incubation repeatedly mention certain signs that mark the point of entry into another world: into another state of awareness that's neither waking nor sleep. One of the sings is that you become aware of a rapid spinning movement. Another is that you hear the powerful vibration produced by a piping, whistling hissing sound." In India exactly the same signs are described as the prelude to entering samadhi, the state beyond sleep and waking. And they're directly related to the process known as the awakening of kundalini -- of the 'serpent power' that's the basic energy in all creation but that's almost completely asleep in human beings. When it starts waking up it makes a hissing sound" (128).
• "The recipe is strictly esoteric, only for transmission from a spiritual 'father' to his adopted 'son'" (129).
• "For us a song and a road are very different things. But in the language of ancient Greek epic poetry the word for 'road' and the word for 'song,' oimos and oime, are almost identical. They're linked, have the same origin. Originally the poet's song was quite simply a journey into another world: a world where the past and future are as accessible and real as the present. And his journey was his song. Those were the times when the poet was a magician, a shaman. [. . .] The words shamans use as they enter the state of ecstasy evoke the things they speak about. The poems they sing don't only describe their journeys; they're what makes the journeys happen. And shamans have always used repetition as a matter of course to invoke a consciousness quite different from our ordinary awareness: a consciousness where something else starts to take over. The repetition is what draws them into another world, away from all the things we know" (122 - 123).

Each of these quotations deserves careful and deep consideration. As does the entire book, and the message it is trying to tell us.

It is fascinating to note that in this ancient tradition of which Parmenides (or Parmeneides) was part, the entry into the condition of being "beyond sleep and waking" was understood to be essential for the "fields" of both healing and of properly ordering society and human activity. This same connection is also found in shamanic cultures around the world, and we have also seen that it appears to have been a central feature of the Therapeutae of the ancient world, discussed in this previous post.

Regarding the thesis that it was Plato (and the mindset of Athens in general) who is responsible for the loss of this ancient wisdom, I would say that it is very clear that Plato himself gives hints that his writing  (and especially his "story-form" writing) is not meant to be understood literally -- that Plato's writing is itself esoteric in nature -- and Peter Kingsley acknowledges that in this book.  

Indeed, he provides many quotations from Plato which indicate that Plato as well believed that the rules for ordering society had to come from the realm of the gods (and specifically from Apollo, who is not only the god of the sun but also of music, of healing, and of laws for the proper ordering of society and one's own life), which seems to undermine the argument that Plato or the Platonic school turned philosophy into an exercise in dead and dry "ratiocination" (to use a 19th-century term) rather than one of ecstatic travel into non-ordinary reality.

And, as I have explored previously, there is an important exchange in the dialogue known as the Phaedrus in which Plato has Socrates point to the temple at Delphi -- the most important oracle in the ancient world, and the place in which the priestess (the Pythia) would "cross over" into that same realm "beyond sleep and waking" in order to receive information directly from the divine (in this case, of course, from Apollo, whose importance is powerfully and insightfully explored throughout In the Dark Places of Wisdom). 

And so I am not so sure that Plato was actually the culprit.

I personally believe that there is strong evidence to support the conclusion that the actual forces that sought to destroy the esoteric and "shamanic" elements at the heart of what would come to be called "western culture" were not the Platonists but rather the creators of literalist Christianity, who spent the years that we (and they) designate as the second and third centuries AD vehemently opposing esoteric interpretations of the scriptures that they held sacred, and especially the various different schools and groups known as the Gnostics, and who eventually maneuvered into the capitol of the Roman Empire itself -- whereupon, during the reign of the emperor Theodosius, they extinguished both the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Oracle at Delphi.

Nevertheless, I am in complete agreement with Dr. Kingsley regarding the answer to the "vast missingness deep inside us," and the fact that we are all designed for and capable of "the peace of utter stillness," and that in fact we are in contact with this infinite stillness of the divine realm at all times, and we can access it through a nearly infinite variety of different techniques of ecstasy.

I am also in agreement that this ability to journey to the hidden realm is part of the ancient heritage of all humanity -- of the "western" part as well -- but that in the West it has been stolen, and suppressed, for well over a thousand years and nearly for two thousand.

This knowledge cannot be hidden forever. It is right there, in each of us, ready to be found.

Many thanks to Peter Kingsley for his work in revealing an incredibly important part of this story, and to Mr. J____ for pointing me to it.

a few additional previous posts with some resonance to the subjects discussed above include:

• "Your song"
• "Buddha bless you"
• "The shamanic journey described in the Pyramid Texts"
• "The horizon and the scales of judgement"

Selma: Natural Universal Law vs. Artificial Legalities

Fifty years ago, on the 7th of March, 1965, the first attempted march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama along US 80 to protest unjust, illegal, unconstitutional, racially-motivated restrictions on voting -- as well as recent deadly police violence -- was broken up by "law officers" and "deputies" using clubs, whips, cattle prods, tear gas, and physical barehanded violence.

The violence of that day was captured on film and video and shown around the country and around the world, and that first march became known as "Bloody Sunday." It was a tremendous turning point in public opinion, and the disgust that it generated, among those who saw the images of violence against unarmed, non-violent men and women and even children, finally accomplished changes which decades of litigation in the court system could not achieve in the unjust courts which were dominated in many cases by those who also supported racial oppression.

It is quite possible to make the argument that the nonviolent marches beginning in Selma were deliberately designed to bring into the light of day -- to reveal and make obvious -- the officially-condoned, soul-crushing reign of violence and racial oppression that had been going on for decades in the United States but which had been largely ignored, excused, and overlooked by those not directly threatened by it. 

This is the argument proposed by David J. Garrow in Protest at Selma: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, published in 1978, a book which began from a thesis he began in 1973 while a student at Wesleyan College and which as a book won the 1979 Chastain Award of the Southern Political Science Association for "best book on politics, government, or public administration in the US South."

In that book, he presents evidence that:

The first federal attempts to protect southern blacks' right to vote [. . .], based upon the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, employed a litigative strategy of enforcement which placed much faith in the federal courts' ability to rectify racial discrimination in the electoral process. As we shall see, this faith was badly misplaced. Recalcitrant, obstructionist judges in most southern jurisdictions all but stifled the Justice Department's attacks on voting-related racial discrimination and harassment. Only minute gains in black registration and voting resulted from the Justice Department's long and costly attempts to eliminate racial discrimination in the electoral processes of several dozen southern counties. Recently one scholar has asserted that the courts eventually would have proven successful in effectively enforcing southern blacks' right to vote. Consideration and analysis of this claim shows how erroneous it is. 5.

It was not until the events of "Bloody Sunday" that people around the country finally became sickened by the spectacle of seeing on a large scale and in undeniable images and film footage the kind of violence and ugliness which had been operating in the shadows and on a more individual-scale for decades but which -- for whatever reason -- they had not previously considered and had therefore tolerated, ignored, or "excused away."

This view of the events of Selma in March of 1965 is incredibly important, I believe, for a number of reasons, because it shows that:

• "Artificial legalities" were being used to thwart natural universal law. Natural universal law says that no one has a right to use force to stop another person from doing something lawful (nonviolent) such as voting, assembling peaceably, riding in a car with another person regardless of the color of their skin, or protecting their mother from assault -- and certainly no one has the right to use deadly force and thereby kill someone for any of the above actions. Artificial "laws" (which really are illegal and hence no laws at all, which is why they will be referred to here as "legalities" instead) are often written which supposedly bestow upon some men or women a free pass to violate the rights of other men and women, or even to use physical force against them to oppress them and deny them of their human rights and dignity.
• These artificial legalities ("artificial legalities" in this case being used as a term to describe those laws on the books which are deliberately designed to subvert or "get around" the requirements of natural law, and in doing so to do violence to the natural law rights of some group of men and women) are often supported by a variety of mental "smokescreens" or "illusions" (or "paradigms," or "narratives") which prevent their careful examination by those not directly violated by them. We could use a shorter, blunter word and call them "lies." These lies or illusions, when widespread among the general populace, act to prevent outrage which could in fact bring about the rejection of those artificial legalities. Because of this fact, in these types of extreme cases, attempts to address obvious natural-law violations through the courts can be thwarted by what Garrow calls "recalcitrant, obstructionist judges" -- that is, judges who do not care about natural universal law but actually wanted to continue a system built upon the violation of natural universal law, which they assisted by their reliance upon artificial legalities.
• In reality, the judges and their artificial legalities are only a small piece of the puzzle: the bigger piece is the perception of the public at large. There were some men and women who actually used physical violence against blacks, in a way that was almost "casual" in its brutality (Garrow, 228).  These acts of outright violence were enabled by the courts and the system of artificial legality described above -- but they were also enabled by the many more people, not just in the south but around the country, who were neither judges nor active perpetrators of violence themselves, but who supported, overlooked, condoned, or otherwise excused the racism and thus the violence and the violations of the rights and dignity of other men and women.
• As long as that larger body of men and women -- the ones who generate that nebulous thing known as "public opinion" -- did not examine their support of the violations of natural law that were taking place, the courts could continue to use artificial legalities to paper over clear violations of natural law, and those who were accustomed to actually inflicting almost "casual" forms of physical violence against other men and women based on the color of their skin could get away with it, often with complete impunity. 
• In other words: there were enough judges (and juries) in the courts who were devoted to a system that clearly violated natural universal law, and which condoned systemic, brutal, often murderous violence against some men and women in the society. As long as enough people in the "society at large" either consciously supported that same unjust system, or simply failed to examine it and thus failed to become outraged by it, these courts could use their artificial legalities to thwart natural universal law, and those criminals who actually perpetrated violence against African-American men and women and children could do so with impunity.
• That is why a strategy of simply trying to go through the courts would not work and did not work from 1957 to 1965 (or in decades before 1957, as there actually were voting rights acts on the books going back to the 1800s).
• The events at Selma in 1965 represented a completely different approach, a new strategy: the attempt to appeal to the inherent sense of natural law and human dignity in the public-at-large. While there will always be some upon whom such an appeal will not work, if the majority of people become outraged at clear violations of natural universal law, the artificial legalities can be swept aside by the tide of public opinion. The key is to wake people up to the point that they examine the assumptions and illusions -- in fact, the lies -- which they had been listening to or subscribing to without questioning or examining up to that point.
• David Garrow's 1978 book presents specific evidence that the marches originating in Selma, Alabama were deliberately designed to bring about a situation in which the injustice of the system that controlled the courts and the agents of "law enforcement" in Alabama would be on full display to the world.

Note that the assertion that the Selma marches were part of a deliberate strategy of nonviolence as a means of waking people up to injustice does not in any way suggest that they were somehow less-than-authentic, or that the very real injuries and violence and abuse (and even loss of life) that participants suffered as a result of their decision to march (or their decision to shuttle marchers back in their cars afterwards) are in any way less valid.

On the contrary, as the evidence shows, other methods of ending the institutionalized discrimination and oppression and violence were not working. A strategy of peaceful protest in a city and county where the police and sheriffs and deputies would be likely to exhibit on a large scale the almost "casual" violence that individual black men and women were at risk of encountering on an individual scale at just about any moment in their daily lives if they violated the unwritten norms and mores of that society was both courageous and intelligent -- and it turned out to be extremely effective, at least in terms of securing the ability to register to vote. 

It was also an extremely moral strategy -- it appealed to natural universal law, and it appealed to the higher aspect of human nature, the spiritual aspect of human nature.

Racism, violence, and other violations of natural law are by their very nature degrading, brutalizing, de-spiritualizing. If every human being has a physical component and a spiritual component, racism and violence emphasize the physical component and attempt to deny the spiritual component. 

They emphasize the visible and deny the invisible. 

They emphasize our animal nature and deny the inner, hidden, but undeniable divine spark present in each and every human being.

Thus violence and racism and the lies that support and enable them act to pervert and reverse the teachings of the collective ancient sacred teachings of humanity, which (I believe) can be shown to be designed to help us recognize and emphasize and "coax out" the invisible, spiritual, hidden-and-almost-forgotten divine spark inside ourselves and others and the world around us. 

We can say this succinctly by saying that violence and racism, by their very nature, curse and do not bless.

The violence displayed against the marchers at Selma in March of 1965 place this brutalizing aspect of racism on full display: white "law officers" and "deputies" (many of these deputies being private citizens, "deputized" and given clubs to use against the marchers) used whips, cattle prods, and horses against the marchers in Selma, as well as clouds of tear gas which is composed of pulverized glass and attacks the mucous membranes of the eyes, nose, and mouth, causing the eyes to burn and begin to flow with tears and the nose and lungs to burn and begin to flow with mucous -- thus emphasizing the body and bodily functions and pulling the consciousness down from any sort of higher considerations to the problem of wiping off the snot that is hanging down like long icicles from one's own nostrils, and figuring out how to get fresh breaths of air into one's lungs without choking or gasping or vomiting.

In previous civil rights marches (notably in Birmingham), police also let big German shepherd police dogs brutalize marchers, leaping at them and biting them and ripping their clothes off. They also turned powerful firehoses on men and women, which is also extremely brutalizing. (Photo gallery).

Garrow recounts some of the injuries after the march at Selma:

The parsonage next door to Brown's Chapel became one treatment center, as the New York doctors and nurses treated the less seriously injured, most of whom were suffering from the effects of the tear gas. At Good Samaritan Hospital several blocks away, fifty to sixty marchers were treated, and seventeen were admitted. Injuries included fractured ribs and wrists, severe head gashes, broken teeth, and what was thought to be a fractured skull sustained by SNCC's John Lewis. More than half a dozen others  were treated at the Burwell Infirmary. Estimates of the total of injured ran as high as ninety to one hundred. 76.

Even after the marchers had retreated to the churches, "tear gas was fired into the First Baptist Church, and lawmen threw a black teenager through a window" (76).

Some human beings are so gripped by a consuming mental lie that they will not recoil at such an exhibition of violating the rights of other men and women for the non-crime of peaceably assembling to protest a culture of institutionalized racist violence and severe voter registration discrimination by walking across a bridge and down a highway,* but most know that such brutality is profoundly wrong. Garrow cites first-hand accounts by people around the country after watching the news that night of Bloody Sunday, and being shocked and outraged.

I believe this analysis of the Selma marches is extremely important in any struggle against the systematic, institutionalized violation of natural universal law and human rights. 

The peaceful marchers at Selma did not have "superior physical force" to match what the law enforcement personnel (and the private citizen "deputies") brought to bear against them. In fact, the peaceful marchers did not have weapons at all, while those who opposed them had weapons, tear gas, helmets, and in some cases even horses.

What they did have, however, was truth on their side. Systems which say that it is excusable to violate the natural human rights of another man or woman, and even to use physical violence against them for virtually any arbitrary reason whatsoever, can only be supported by lies. 

We are all, sadly, capable of accepting stunning lies and of overlooking grievous violence -- even of condoning it or promoting and praising it. The illusions or paradigms or smokescreens or narratives that we accept and buy into, and which can blind us or numb us to the criminality of what is taking place literally all around us -- and which we are in fact enabling and supporting through our failure to examine the assumptions underlying those narratives or paradigms. 

Until something blows that fog of illusion away, rolls back the smokescreen, we probably will not exhibit any outrage, because we remain willfully blind to the outrages that are taking place.

In such an environment, criminals can perpetrate acts of almost "casual" violence with impunity. In extreme situations, the courts will look the other way, fail to convict those criminals of their crimes, and actively seek to subvert natural law through twisted structures composed of artificial legalities.

The leaders of the Civil Rights movement eventually realized that their plan of going through the courts first was being thwarted, obstructed, and subverted by some of those who were running the courts themselves. They hit upon the strategy of appealing directly to the general public at large -- behind whose apathy those criminal violations were being allowed to continue with impunity.

The events of Bloody Sunday were an absolutely historic turning point which led to a widespread re-examination of previously unquestioned assumptions, paradigms, and lies -- and which led many to reject those previously unexamined paradigms. It had dramatic results. Of course, there has been more progress in some areas of ending racially-based violations of rights than in others, and so the process of calling for the examination of assumptions, paradigms and narratives must go on.

There is much, much more that could be said about the details of the events leading up to the Selma marches, and about the importance of what took place in Selma and other cities in the South fifty years ago. Far too little of the truly ugly and disturbing details of some of the violence that took place before and after the actual marches is ever studied or discussed or examined in classrooms or in "the news," with the result being that far too little of it is examined and considered for its applicability to our individual lives and to the situations we find ourselves facing today.

We owe it to ourselves to seek out and study this information and this history on our own. And, we owe it to those who at great personal risk to their own physical security participated in those marches so many years ago: we should learn as much as we can about what they were really facing in their lives, and to learn the lesson that they taught us about the importance of natural universal law, about the ability of peaceful protest to blow away the fog of lies, about the courage to stand up to violence and injustice, about human dignity, and ultimately about the elevation of the human spirit -- about blessing -- and about refusing to be dragged down by people or forces or systems that want to degrade and brutalize us.

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* and, by the way, the artificial excuse that Sheriff Clark had put US Highway 80 "off limits" due to possible public safety concerns and that the assembly was thus "unlawful" is a canard, as Clark had in previous months authorized his lawmen to use billy clubs -- and used his own billy club -- to prevent blacks from entering by the front door of the courthouse, and to force them into a side alley where they and their protest against voter registration discrimination would be more out of sight, and as no one can argue that preventing them from going in the front door was a "public safety concern," neither can we believe that Sheriff Clark was really issuing his injunction against the marchers because he had "public safety concerns" about their crossing the bridge or walking down the side of the highway in this peaceful protest.

Buddha bless you

In many ancient mystical traditions around the world, the method for passing the ancient wisdom to the next generation was through a discipleship system, in which a special relationship was established between master and disciple.

Such a system can clearly be seen in operation in the surviving records and descriptions of the earliest Greek philosophers, and it is amply attested in many of the observations of shamanic traditions in cultures in which those traditions remained largely undisturbed right up into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 

Such a system also continues in many of the martial arts of China and surrounding countries, and it is described in the traditions surrounding the life of Bodhidharma, or Da Mo, and his first disciple Shen Guang, later named Hui Ke.

As described in the previous post entitled "Bodhidharma, Shen Guang, and the Shaolin Temple," texts that are over a thousand years old contain the stories surrounding Shen Guang's attempts to convince Da Mo to accept him as his disciple include accounts of Shen Guang standing guard over the meditating Da Mo for years at a time, even in the snow, and -- when it seemed that he would never be accepted -- ultimately cutting off his own left arm and waving it around his head to demonstrate his incredible devotion and desire to be guided in the way by Da Mo.

As that previous post explained, this story contains many distinctive clues which point to a celestial foundation for all of the events in the traditional account, including the nine years' long meditation of Da Mo, the flicking of prayer beads from a necklace at Da Mo by Shen Guang, the traditions regarding Da Mo's one sandal (which can be seen in the first image of Bodhidharma included in that previous post), the tradition regarding Da Mo's crossing of a river upon a single broken reed (which can be seen in the second image of Bodhidharma included in that previous post), and of course the gory episode of Shen Guang's chopping off of his own left arm, after which he was accepted as Da Mo's disciple and changed his name to Hui Ke.

Interestingly enough, on the Shaolin Temple USA website created by Shi Yan Ming, who came to the US on one of the first Shaolin exhibition tours in 1992 and ran away in San Francisco, there is a page which explains that to this day there is a tradition that Shaolin Temple disciples and monks greet one another using only their right hand, out of remembrance and respect for the sacrifice Hui Ke made in order to be accepted as Da Mo's disciple (see for example the description and discussion on this page).

He also explains the importance of the disciple system for imparting the essence of Chan Buddhism, on this page, where we read:

Chan is said to be a direct transmission of the dharma outside of the sutras (texts recording the teachings of the Buddha), passed "Mind to mind, heart to heart from master to disciple."

That same page notes that the distinctive one-handed gesture of greeting which commemorates the single-minded devotion of Hui Ke can be seen in the first movie featuring superstar Jet Li, the 1982 film entitled Shaolin Temple (above), which depicts events during the reign of the emperor Taizong (who ruled from AD 626 until AD 649) of the Tang Dynasty (which ended in AD 907).

It is very interesting to consider the fact that this tradition is based upon a story which almost certainly comes from the constellation Hercules, who "plays" Shen Guang in the story and holds a sword in his right hand (which is why his left arm is the one he cuts off), as can be seen in the star-chart diagram included in that previous post.

It is also very interesting that this single-hand gesture is an adaptation of the traditional mudra or hand gesture of Namaste (or Namaskaram), a very ancient gesture and one that is described in the Vedas, and which has been translated to mean "I bow [in recognition of the divine in you]" or "the divine in me recognizes the divine in you" and which thus clearly fits the definition of blessing, or recognizing and bringing forth and raising the spiritual aspect which lies within and infuses all aspects of creation.

It is also noteworthy that this same mudra (with two hands) is used in the hand gesture associated with Christian prayer and the word "Amen," which insightful researchers have argued has clear connection to the ancient Egyptian god Amun or Amon, the hidden divinity. This concept of the hidden god or hidden divinity parallels the teaching found in ancient sacred traditions around the world that men and women are composed of both a physical and a spiritual component, and that the invisible spiritual component is submerged in the physical and almost forgotten or overlooked -- which is why we should work to bring it out in ourselves and others, and which is connected to the concept expressed in Namaste.

It is equally noteworthy that, in the film, whenever the senior monks and abbots of the Shaolin Temple use this hand gesture, they speak the benediction, "Buddha bless you," as they do so.

This can be seen, for example, at about eight minutes into the film, where we clearly see the senior abbot using the single right-hand gesture and intoning those words of blessing:

The use of a hand gesture to accompany a blessing is very ancient, and it can be very powerful in a positive way, as was discussed in this previous post on the association of Leonard Nimoy and the character of Mr. Spock with the hand gesture derived from the letter shin and the accompanying blessing, "Live long and prosper."

The fact that the message of Namaste / Amen has been modified in the traditions surrounding the Shaolin Temple into a one-handed gesture as a way of pointing to the story of Hui Ke and the devotion he had to exhibit in order to be accepted as a disciple by Da Mo thus incorporates two important concepts: firstly the concept of our inner spirit-nature, which must continuously be invoked and brought forth as it is always in danger of being ignored or forgotten in our incarnate material condition, and secondly the vital importance of the transmission of dharma "mind to mind, heart to heart."

Blessings.

One Foundation

video link 

From the 1973 album Burnin' by The Wailers, these are the lyrics to "One Foundation," written by the immortal Peter Tosh. The words sung by Peter Tosh (lead vocals on this song) are in non-italicized  (upright) text, and those in italics are sung by the accompanying artists: 

Got to build our love

On one foundation

Got to build our love

On one foundation

Got to build our love

On one foundation

[or] There will never be

No love at all

There will never be

No love at all

Got to put aside

Man's segregation

Got to put aside

Them organization

Got to put aside

Them denomination

There will -- there will never be

No love at all

I mean there will never be

No love at all

Got to build our love

So build our love

on one foundation

On one foundation

We got to build our love

Come let us build our love

On one foundation

On one solid foundation

Got to build our love

Got to build our love

On one foundation

On one foundation

Or there will never be

A single drop of love

You won't have no

True freedom, yeh

Got to come together

We are birds of a feather

We got to come together

'Cause we are birds of a feather

We got to come together

'Cause we are birds of a feather

Or there will never be

Lord have mercy

No love at all

There will never be

Yeah yeah

No love at all

We also got to realize

We are one people

Yeah

We got to realize

That we are one people yeh

We got to realize

We are one people

Or there will never be

No love at all

There will never never never be

No love at all

Got to build our love

On one foundation

We got to build our love

On one foundation

Got to build our love

On one foundation

Got to build our love

On one foundation

Got to build our love

On one foundation . . . 

I believe it can be demonstrated that literalist interpretation of sacred texts tends to lead towards what this song describes as "man's segregation" and "them denomination," while esoteric interpretation tends to reveal the underlying unity between the messages of the ancient scriptures and mythologies of virtually all of the world's cultures.

This divisive tendency in literalist interpretation has been explored in some previous posts, including "The sacred celestial metaphors refute racism and sexism," "Shem, Ham and Japheth," "PTAH, JAH, TAO and BUDDHA," and "'Vision A' or 'Vision B'."

The reason that the literalist approach tends towards divisions, segregations, and denominations, is that when sacred texts are interpreted literally, this often leads to the conclusion that one group is literally descended from or blessed by the divine, to the exclusion of all others. 

It also leads very commonly to the conclusion that only those who accept the specific form of literal interpretation favored by that particular group can expect to be blessed in this life and especially in the afterlife, and that all others will be punished in the afterlife -- in some cases, eternally (for some discussion of the reasons I believe the doctrine of eternal punishment in hell is a misinterpretation of texts which are meant to be interpreted esoterically and metaphorically rather than literally, see "No hell below us . . .").

This represents a very severe form of dividing humanity, of setting some people outside of the "family" of those who are supposedly accepted and deserving of love and blessing -- and thus represents the very opposite of what is being urged in "One Foundation." And it can clearly be seen to be in operation among numerous groups to this very day.

The belief that some men and women are more valuable, more blessed, more worthy, or more connected to divine favor than others is actually a reprehensible teaching, and can and very often does lead to the sanctioning of violence (the violation of rights, including the right to security in their physical person) against those deemed to be less favored.

On the other hand, I believe that it can be demonstrated that the ancient scriptures and sacred traditions can be shown to teach that each and every man and woman is equally connected to the divine, that each in fact embodies the universe (each is a "microcosm" of the infinite "macrocosm"), each is inherently possessed of infinite and unmeasurable value. Such a realization, of course, would lead directly to the conclusion that violence against another such being is inherently wrong, and cannot be excused by any appeal to membership by one in some favored group to which the other does not belong.

It might be objected that such a doctrine of non-violence is unrealistic, in a world in which some (regardless of their actual inherent and inextricable connection to the divine) choose nevertheless to exercise violence against their fellow men and women. However, this does not follow at all: such a view would argue that the use of force is in fact permissible to stop someone who is in the act of inflicting physical harm upon another, and that such force is in fact only justified by the intrinsic value of each individual man or woman no matter who they are. Using force to stop violence is not a violation of anyone's rights but rather a protection of them (see further discussion in the post entitled "Why violence is wrong, even in a holographic universe").

Dogmas or ideologies which excuse the violation of the rights of other men and women can properly be described as a form of mind control, in that they are used to override our inherent knowledge that the violation of the rights of others is wrong (just as we inherently know that the violation of our own person and our own rights is wrong and unjust, and we naturally rebel against it, even from a very young age and without having to be taught it).

Such dogmas are not always based upon literalistic interpretations of ancient scriptures, but they certainly can be. And, to be fair, those who interpret scriptures literally do not always condone violence or the violation of the rights of others, or even the devaluation of some groups versus others. The point is that I believe that literalist interpretation can tend to invite such division.

"One Foundation" recognizes that these divisions between members of the human family are in fact artificial and based upon illusion, and that thus so are the reasons which are built up to excuse the violation of the rights of some men and women, or to excuse the elevation of one group at the expense of everyone else.

It smashes through these artificial divisions and segregations, and the man-made organizations which seek to institutionalize and enforce them. 

That is what great art does: it smashes mind control. 

So come let us build our love / On one foundation . . .

The celestial fire

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

The Bibles of antiquity have but one theme: the incarnation. The vast body of ancient Scripture discoursed on but one subject -- the descent of souls, units of deific Mind, sons of God, into fleshly bodies developed by natural evolution on planets such as ours, therein to undergo an experience by which their continued growth through the ranges and planes of expanding consciousness might be carried forward to ever higher grades of divine being.    

-- Alvin Boyd Kuhn,

Esoteric Structure of the Alphabet and Its Hidden Mystical Language. 20.

The world today is pausing to honor the life and work of Leonard Nimoy.

He is of course most closely associated with the character of Spock in the series Star Trek, a series which depicted travel across the stars but which was certainly no less concerned with the exploration of the human condition.

He is also inextricably connected with the concept and act of blessing. 

Blessing can be accurately said to be an essential part of his identity, one with which he is universally identified and remembered. 

The outpouring of response today to the news that Leonard Nimoy has sprung the bonds of earth to again be among the stars from which we all came has overwhelmingly referenced his blessing "Live long and prosper," which was delivered with his intrinsic dignity and sincerity and accompanied by the famous hand gesture which he introduced during the first season of Star Trek.

It is no secret that this hand gesture represents the Hebrew letter shin and that it has profound connection to the sacred act of blessing -- which has previously been argued within these pages to be the act of evoking the divine spirit which dwells in each being in the universe and indeed which infuses every aspect of the universe itself at all times and at every point.

Mr. Nimoy on many occasions related the story of the deep impression that the act of ritual blessing made upon him as a child, during which this hand gesture was extended as part of the invocation of the divine and the ceremony of blessing (see for example this video clip showing one such explanation he gave).

In seeking to understand more fully this benevolent or beneficent side of Leonard Nimoy -- this profound association with the act of blessing, which he connected to this particular hand gesture embodying this important letter shin and the expression "Live Long and Prosper" -- let us briefly explore just a few important aspects of this symbol.

In the relatively short treatise entitled The Esoteric Structure of the Alphabet and Its Hidden Mystical Language, Alvin Boyd Kuhn (1880 - 1963) says of alphabets that:

along with every other symbolic device of ancient meaning-form, even the alphabet embodied the central structure of all ancient literature, -- the incarnation, the baptism of the fire-soul in and under body-water. [. . .] The celestial fire emanated from primal source as one ray, but soon radiated out in triadic division, and finally reached the deepest heart of matter in a sevenfold segmentation. But in its first stage of emanation it was always pictured as triform. The YOD candle-flame being its type-form, the Hebrews constructed their letter which was to represent the fire-principle with three YODS at the top level, with lines extending downward to a base, on which all three met and were conjoined in one essence. This gives us the great fire-letter SH, shin, -- ש

21-22.

Kuhn then demonstrates that this letter is used in the Hebrew word for fire itself, which is esh but which he asserts on a linguistic basis is also related to AeSH and ISH, with ish being the word for "man, who embodies this single, double and triple fire" (22). The word ash, he notes, is the byproduct of fire in English, but also the great tree of life Ygdrasil in Norse mythology, the very tree upon which Odin had to hang in order to obtain the symbolic technology of writing, as well as the tree from which mankind was originally fashioned, according to some expressions of Norse myth (the reader may remember that in the past we have addressed the fact that Kuhn, writing in the early part of the 20th century, often used the terms "man" and "mankind" but explicitly stated throughout his writings that what he said applies to both men and women, and that we should not assume that he intended to refer to "men" when he used the term "mankind").

Going further with the significance of the letter shin, Kuhn explains that the Hebrew word for the sun, shemesh, also embodies the concept of spirit-fire plunging down into incarnate water and then rising back to the realm of spirit:

As a globe of fire its nature would be expressed most fittingly by the letter shin (SH), with its threefold candle flame, the three YODS, above; the place of water into which it nightly descends would be indicated by M, and the place of its final return, the empyrean above, by SH again. So the word thus constituted would turn out to be SH-M-SH (shemesh); and this is just what it is. It is the old basic story of divine fire plunging down into water, the universal trope figure under which all operation of spirit in and upon matter was dramatized. 30.

From the foregoing discussion, we can begin to understand why extending one's arm and hand with the form of the Hebrew letter shin, representative of the divine threefold fire which is plunged down into incarnation, can be a gesture of blessing: it is a reminder not to forget the divine fire within, our origin among the empyrean of the stars -- the spirit plane -- and it is a blessing that seeks to elevate the invisible spirit in each of us and in all creation itself, along with all the positive aspects connected to our "higher nature" (the opposite of cursing, which seeks to put the spirit down, to degrade others and make them less in touch with spirit and more under the control of matter and the "lower nature").

Elaborating upon the same line of argument, Kuhn says:

As a symbol designed to depict the immersion of fiery spiritual units of consciousness in their actual baptism in the water of physical bodies, the letter form that dramatizes the actual event, and the letter sound that onomatapoetically mimics the sound of fire plunging into water, this alphabet character shin is certainly most eloquently suggestive. 34.

And here we can begin to draw our analysis back to the well-beloved character whom Leonard Nimoy brought so memorably to life and whose expressions of blessing have become so powerful to a world in such great need of blessing. For Mr. Spock, of course, was a Vulcan, from the planet Vulcan -- named expressly and explicitly for the god of fire: Vulcan, known to the Greeks as Hephaestos (and who, by the way, was not only the god of fire but was also cast down to earth at one point by Zeus).

Coincidence? 

Not likely. Perhaps a manifestation of the benevolent synchronicity operating within a conscious universe, but such a connection between the hand gesture now so inextricably associated with Mr. Spock and the planet for whom his very people are named can hardly be written off as meaningless.

And, we can go even further. For, as countless previous posts have explained, the concept of the plunge into incarnation was represented in ancient Egyptian myth by the casting down of the Djed column -- where the divine spark was submerged in matter, forgotten and hidden. A major part of our work in this incarnate life was seen to be the raising up of the Djed column, which is to say the remembrance of the divine fire, the reconnection and elevation of the spirit and the elevation of the "higher aspects and impulses" of our being -- in short, all the calling forth of benevolent spirit associated with the concept of blessing!

Now, one whole series of previous posts explored the fact that the ancient Egyptian Cross of Life, the ANKH, was absolutely symbolic of this idea of raising the Djed column, elevating the spirit, and blessing (and, in fact, ancient Ankhs were often depicted as incorporating the symbolism of the Djed column in their vertical pillar). See for example "Scarab, Ankh and Djed." 

This same vitally-important symbolism of the raising of the Djed column can be seen operating in both the Old and New Testaments, in the symbol of the cross in the New Testament, for example, and of the lifting up of the brasen serpent by Moses upon a staff in the Old Testament. 

Now, you may have caught the fact that the Ankh-Cross itself was a symbol of life, a symbol of the giving of life, and thus a powerful symbol of blessing. This connects directly to the words of blessing which Spock -- and Leonard Nimoy -- would pronounce and with which he is so closely connected: "

Live long and prosper."

Two previous posts have explored at some length the amazing number of words which Alvin Boyd Kuhn believed could be linguistically and conceptually related to this powerful concept through the root sound of the ancient word Ankh -- see "The Name of the Ankh" and "The Name of the Ankh Continued: Kundalini around the world."

Now, what would happen if we combine the fire-symbol of the letter shin with the word Ankh itself? Alvin Boyd Kuhn has anticipated just such a question, and in fact he refers back to the earlier independent scholar Gerald Massey (1828 - 1907), who apparently also explored this avenue of thought:

Massey traces even the great name of mystery, the sphinx, from this ANKH stem, preceded by the demonstrative adjective P (this, the, that) and the starting S, thus: S-P-ANKH. Massey was well versed in the abstrusities of the hieroglyphics and his surmise on this is as good as that of others. The word thus composed would mean "the beginning of the process of linking spirit and matter," which indeed is the sphinx-riddle of the creation. The sphinx image does conjoin the head of man, spirit, with the body of the animal, lion, representing matter. It is precisely such values and realities that the sages of antiquity dealt with and in precisely this manner of subtle indirection. When will modern scholarship come to terms with this recognition! 38.

Now, this line of argument is most incredible, because in the above passage we practically have the name of Spock himself. Look at the term S-P-ANKH which Kuhn, following Massey, argues to be the linguistic and symbolic and esoteric origin of the word sphinx , and you will immediately perceive that if we emphasize the "velar fricative" sound of the KH (which became the voiceless velar fricative sound indicated by the letter "x" in the word sphinx) it will automatically de-emphasize the preceding sound of the "n" and give us rather directly the name of Spock!

Now, this is a rather incredible development, and the reader can be excused for exclaiming at this point that there is just no way that they were thinking of the esoteric origins of the word sphinx and S-P-ANKH when they came up with the character-name Spock!

And yet, we do not have to argue that "they" were thinking along these lines at all -- it might have been "the universe" that created this unbelievable synchronicity, independent of conscious human awareness, acting through creative human conduits.

But, it is most remarkable to note that one of the other extremely distinctive characteristics of Mr. Spock in the Star Trek series is his constant effort to present a dignified expression of calm, composed gravitas, almost never showing emotion and especially not grinning or laughing or smiling (except on very rare occasions): what can only be described as a most sphinx-like characteristic!

And so, we see that Leonard Nimoy and his blessing-speaking character Mr. Spock connect with us on a profound level, and impart to us wisdom which stretches back to a very ancient source. 

When Mr. Nimoy held up his hand in that symbol of shin, he was blessing. He was silently saying (if I may paraphrase, or interpret the symbolic content discussed above): "You are divine fire -- you have an inner spark -- you, and everyone you meet, contain this spirit-fire submerged in water, so to speak, plunged into matter, but you must not forget where you come from -- you come in a real sense from the stars -- you come from the realm of spirit, and you can remember that and elevate that -- Blessings."

It is an expression of reminder, of recognition, of elevation of the spirit and consciousness, and of blessing which is very much analogous to the gesture and greeting contained in Namaste.

And now, Leonard Nimoy has crossed over this plunge into water, this crossing of the Red Sea which is symbolic of our incarnation in this body. He has left us with these benevolent and beneficent blessings and teachings, beautifully and elegantly expressed. And he goes to be among the stars, the realm the ancient wisdom teachings of the world depicted as the realm of the stars.

We can all agree that he will not find that journey to be one with which he is unfamiliar or for which he is unprepared.

Peace and blessings.

Bodhidharma, Shen Guang, and the Shaolin Temple

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

The historicity of many aspects of the famous Shaolin Temple* of China can be, and has been, a subject for study and debate.

As with many such debates, particularly those in which deep reverence or personal beliefs are involved, examination of this subject can sometimes become contentious.

Without entering directly into the "deep water" of such disputes or debates, we can at least agree that the tradition of the Shaolin Temple is itself indisputably connected with two very important traditions: Ch'an Buddhism (which is often spelled Chan Buddhism, and which is the direct predecessor of Zen Buddhism in Japan), and the martial arts.

Previous posts have explored the importance of the connection between these two, in that training in the use of force can cause us to fall into the error of "turning a person into a thing" (in the words of Simone Weil in her famous 1940 essay on The Iliad: or the Poem of Force), but meditation upon the spiritual content and value of every being we encounter and cultivation of the attitude of blessing others and wishing to see their spirit elevated has the exact opposite tendency and acts as a counterbalance, with the goal that what could be misused to "lower spiritual awareness in one's self and in others" (as engaging in the use of force in ways that violate the rights of others will inevitably do) is instead transformed into a practice which "elevates spiritual awareness in one's self and in others" (by reducing the practitioner's need to use force inappropriately, while enabling him or her to use force to protect one's self or others if necessary and thus prevent violence). 

Through this focus on spirit and blessing, the martial arts are (ideally) transformed into a spiritually uplifting discipline analogous to yoga and other practices designed to elevate spiritual awareness and bless and regenerate the world.

I would argue that the emphasis on the invisible world of spirit is coded into the traditions of Shaolin Temple through references to the celestial realm, used throughout the world to convey deep teachings regarding the spiritual component of human existence and of the universe in which we live, and their dual material and spiritual composition. 

For example, precessional numbers such as 72 and 108 are deeply embedded in numerous Chinese martial arts, and in the traditions of the Shaolin Temple. For example, Shi Yan Ming -- who grew up in the Shaolin lineage --  has written about the fact that the Shaolin Temple traditionally contained 72 rooms or chambers. Other traditions assert that in order to graduate as a Shaolin monk, a candidate had to pass through an elaborate hall containing 108 mechanical dummies which would each launch a different unexpected attack upon the candidate at a different point on the journey down the hall.

Some might argue that the incorporation of these numbers, 72 and 108, do not necessarily indicate an esoteric celestial aspect to these traditions. They might argue that, although these same numbers are found in the sacred texts and rituals of India, or in the dimensions of the pyramids at Giza in Egypt and in Egyptian myth, or in the Norse sagas, their presence in China could be attributed to mere coincidence, and that since those ancient cultures are separated by such vast distances, the use of 72 and 108 in China might be referring to something else entirely.

However, I believe there are additional very powerful reasons to believe that the very same celestial codes operating in the myths and traditions of cultures such as ancient Egypt or ancient India (or across the oceans in the dimensions of the monuments in Central and South America) can be shown to be operating in the esoteric traditions of Chan Buddhism as well, and that the conclusion that these numbers are a celestial and hence a spiritual code is well-founded.

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

The ancient connection between Chan Buddhism and the practice of martial arts as a form of spiritual elevation and blessing can be traced directly back to the texts and traditions surrounding the figure of Bodhidharma, also called Da Mo in China, who according to tradition brought both to China.

Stories of the life of Da Mo can be found in early texts, most notably in the text known as the Ching-te Chuan Teng-lu (ways of spelling this text in English vary), or the "Transmission of the Lamp," which is itself a collection of various earlier traditions regarding Da Mo. The expression "Transmission of the Lamp" refers to the passing down of dharma or the ineffable teachings of Chan, which supposedly originated with Da Mo. 

Da Mo is often said to have lived between AD 470 and AD 532 (or 528). The Chuan Teng-lu was collected later, around the year AD 1000. See for some discussion of the compilation of the Chuan Teng-lu page 155 in this text entitled Zen Canon: Understanding the Classic Texts.

In the account of Da Mo given in the text itself (for instance, beginning on page 150 of this translation), we read the famous story of the transmission of the dharma from Da Mo to his first disciple, Shen Guang, in which Da Mo knelt motionless in meditation (in some accounts for nine full years), while Shen Guang stood guard over him in hopes of being noticed:

Staying at the Shaolin Temple on Mount Song, there he sat in meditation facing a wall, a whole day in silence. People couldn't understand it so they called him 'the wall-gazing Brahmin'. At that time there was a monk named Shenguang who was deeply learned and had lived for a long time near Luoyang by the Rivers Yi and Luo. A scholar well read in many books, he could discourse eloquently on the Dark Learning. Sighing frequently, he would say, 'The teachings of Confucius and Laozi take rituals as the Practice and customs as the Rule, while in the books of Zhangzi and The Changes the wonderful principle is still inexhaustible. Now I have heard that a great master, Damo (Bodhidharma), is residing at Shaolin. I must pay a visit to this peerless sage living not so far distant.' Then he went, visiting morning and evening for instruction. Master Damo was always sitting in a dignified posture facing a wall and so Guang heard no teachings nor did he receive any encouragement. Then Guang thought to himself, 'Men of old, on searching the Way, broke their bones to extract the marrow, let their blood flow to help the starving, spread hairs on muddy roads [to allow people to pass], or jumped off cliffs to feed a tiger. In days of old it was still like this, now what kind of man am I?' 150.

Finally, after a great snow fell and Shen Guang still stood motionless guarding Da Mo, the master spoke to Shen Guang and asked what he wanted. In some versions of the story, Shen Guang hurls a large block of snow and ice into the cave or chamber in which Da Mo was meditating, in order to get his attention. In any case, Shen Guang finally pulls out his sword and cuts off his own left arm in order to demonstrate his tremendous devotion and desire to learn what Da Mo has to show him (in some versions, Da Mo says he will only teach Shen Guang when red snow begins to fall from the sky, and so Shen Guang waves his own severed arm around his head and Da Mo finally relents and decides to take on this devoted disciple, who afterwards took on the name Hui-k'o). 

You can read some of the other aspects of this story, and the other adventures attributed to Da Mo and Shen Guang, in the account here on Shi Yan Ming's website, as well as in other texts in books or on the web, such as the version given in Thomas Hoover's 1980 book The Zen Experience, available on the web here through Project Gutenberg. See pages 28 and following of that online file.

Concerned readers can be comforted by the fact that I personally believe no arms were literally severed and waved around anyone's head in order to pass on the teachings of Chan Buddhism in the time of Da Mo and Shen Guang, but believe that this story -- like so many other sacred spiritual traditions around the globe -- can be convincingly demonstrated to be based squarely upon celestial metaphor, as are many of the other incidents and episodes in the traditional account of Da Mo.

The fact that this story is probably not literal is indicated by some of the other traditions surrounding the kneeling meditation of Da Mo, such as the detail that he remained in the kneeling meditation for nine full years without moving, facing the wall of the cave, until his image was actually transferred to the wall itself. Another aspect of the tradition (cited in Thomas Hoover's book above) states that when his eyelids became heavy and he felt he might be drifting off to sleep, Da Mo ripped off his own eyelids to continue his meditation. And another aspect of the story has him kneeling there so long that his legs actually fall off. 

Clearly, these aspects of the story can probably not be taken literally, and I don't believe the severing of Shen Guang's arm should be, either.  

In fact, I believe that familiarity with the constellations who take on similar roles in other myths and stories around the world will immediately suggest the probable celestial identities of both Da Mo (who kneels, meditating, endlessly until his very image or shadow is transferred to the cave wall) and Shen Guang (who stands silently guarding Da Mo, until at last in desperation he cuts off his own arm and waves it around to make the snow red and prove his devotion).

The diagram below shows the important constellation of Bootes, whom we have met in numerous other myths (see this index of stars and constellations and blog posts which discuss them). As you can see, the outline of Bootes resembles a kneeling figure -- and in fact the tiny "leg" which is drawn in this outline based on the system suggested by H.A. Rey is very faint, and the stars themselves could alternately be envisioned as a robed, kneeling figure with a bald head, as Da Mo is often drawn in art stretching back centuries.

Above the kneeling figure stands the vigilant figure of Shen Guang, played in this case by the celestial actor of the constellation Hercules, who appears to be brandishing an enormous sword, in his right hand (which is probably why it is his left arm that he cuts off in the story):

As for the bloody arm itself, I believe a good case can be made for the constellation Coma Berenices, or Berenice's Hair, in the role of the bloody arm. It consists of a vertical line between its two brightest stars, and then a myriad of "droplets" fanning out from one end of the vertical line (this constellation is described on pages 36 and 37 of H. A. Rey's essential book on the stars and constellations, The Stars: A New Way to See Them). In this case, it appears that the bloody arm is being waved right in front of Da Mo, in order to really get his attention.

There are, in fact, many other clues in the traditions of Da Mo which indicate to me that the above interpretation is very likely the correct celestial origin of the Da Mo story. One of the most well-known and oft-depicted episodes in his life is Da Mo's famous crossing of a wide river upon a broken reed, which is given to him in most accounts by an old woman at the near side of the river before he ventures across on the unlikely reed. 

As can be seen from the diagram above, the "bloody arm" in this case probably represents the broken reed in that aspect of Da Mo's mission, and the woman who provides the reed to him for this occasion is none other than Virgo, who can be seen with her arm outstretched, giving the reed to Bodhidharma for his crossing. 

Another episode from the story of Da Mo and Shen Guang has the impertinent Shen Guang taking his  won string of Buddhist beads from around his neck and flicking them at Da Mo, knocking out some of Da Mo's teeth in the process (the imperturbable Da Mo acts as though nothing untoward has happened, and walks away). In between Hercules and Bootes is the necklace-shaped constellation known as the Corona Borealis, or the Northern Crown. We saw that it almost certainly represents the gorgeous necklace of Freya in Norse myth, as well as a necklace in a famous Japanese myth about Amaterasu the sun goddess. 

In the star chart above, the Northern Crown is outlined in purple, and marked as a "Sandal (?)." This is because there is yet another tradition about Da Mo, depicting him as carrying a staff over his shoulder with a single sandal hanging from one end of the staff. In The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, we read on page xiv:

In his Transmission of the Lamp, Tao-yuan says that soon after he had transmitted the patriarchship of his lineage to Hui-k'o [that is, Shen Guang], Bodhidharma died in 528 on the fifth day of the tenth month, poisoned by a jealous monk. Tao-hsuan's much earlier biography of Bodhidharma says only that he died on the banks of the Lo River and doesn't mention the date or cause of death. According to Tao-yuah, Bodhidharma's remains were interred near Loyang at Tinglin Temple on Bear Ear Mountain. Tao-yuan adds that three years later an official met Bodhidharma walking in the mountains of Central Asia. He was carrying a staff from which hung a single sandal, and he told the official he was going back to India. Reports of this meeting aroused the curiousity of other monks, who finally agreed to open Bodhidharma's tomb. But inside all they found was a single sandal, and ever since then Bodhidharma has been pictured carrying a staff from which hangs the missing sandal.

If you note from the above diagram that Bootes has a long "pipe" that he seems to be smoking, you can instead imaging this pipe as a staff, and if it continues over his shoulder, then it would be perfectly positioned to imaging that the semi-circular arc of the Northern Crown is the other shoe or sandal hanging from the staff. In fact, the depictions of Bodhidharma's staff often seem to have a "crook" or bent part at the end -- in other words, depicting the staff as shaped somewhat like the pipe of Bootes with its wide end (see here or here or here, for example, and older art depicting him often uses similar symbology). 

So, I believe that the purple arc which functions as the Buddhist beads in the episode in which Shen Guang flicks beads at Da Mo may also function as the single shoe or slipper or sandal in the episode of Da Mo walking the hills with one shoe hanging from his staff after he was supposedly dead and buried.

All of this celestial metaphor within the story of Da Mo and the founding of Chan tradition and of the Shaolin Temple, I believe, serves as an esoteric pointer to the realm of the spiritual. The realm of the stars, for reasons discussed in other posts and in the book The Undying Stars, functions in myth around the world (including the stories in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible) as a pointer to the invisible world of spirit (just as this lower world of earth and water, into which the stars plunge as they sink down in the west, represents the realm of matter and incarnation).

I believe that this clear evidence of celestial metaphor also serves to validate the assertion that the celestial numbers 72 and 108 in many Chinese martial arts originally associated with the Shaolin Temple are serving a similar function (just as they do in so many other myths and sacred traditions around the globe).

And, finally, it points to a very important truth, which the ancient keepers of the traditions of both Chan Buddhism and the martial arts wished to impart to us: that while activities such as physical training and discipline and even the effective use of force may be a very important aspect of our time here in this physical realm of incarnation, we must not forget that we and everyone else we meet are also spiritual beings, and that ultimately our actions should serve to elevate the spiritual aspect of ourselves and others, rather than to put it down. 

Ultimately, these arts are about recognizing who we are, in a world which often seems to do everything possible to keep us from remembering or recognizing the truth.

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

* The characters usually translated "Shaolin" are

少  林

and mean "small forest."

In Mandarin this is xiăo lín and in Cantonese it is  síu làhm both of which mean "small forest" (in that order). 

You can see the characters in the image above (top), on the sign posted over the door, although they are written right to left, such that the symbol for "small" is on the right and "forest" is in the middle.

The symbol for "temple" (on the left as you look at the photo on the page) is:

寺

Shang oracle bones: more evidence of humanity's shared shamanic heritage

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

Numerous previous posts, including

• "Humanity's shared shamanic heritage"

• "The shamanic foundation of the world's ancient wisdom"

and

• "The centrality of ecstasy, according to ancient wisdom"

have advanced the position that what may be broadly termed the shamanic worldview belongs as a precious inheritance to all the world's people, and can be conclusively demonstrated to be the foundation of the nearly every ancient sacred tradition on our planet.

This thesis would include those cultures whose scriptures and sacred traditions are built upon the common system of celestial allegory seen operating in the myths and sacred stories used from very ancient times right up to the present day -- including those which form the basis for the sacred texts of the Old and New Testament of what today is called the Bible. For an index of previous posts discussing several dozen of these myths and sacred stories from around the world, see the list in this "Star Myth Index."

Although the definition of the term "shamanic" can be profitably discussed, and some may argue that its broad use is inappropriate for a term which has very specific and even "technical" applications, and which employs an actual Tungusic word originally used only in one particular part of what is today Siberia and Manchuria, I believe the word in its broad application does have value, in that there are in fact clearly-identifiable characteristics of what can be called the shamanic worldview which can be found in shamanic cultures around the world, and which can also be identified operating in the myths of (for instance) ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, the Norse myths, and many others.

In some of the posts linked above, the defining characteristics of this worldview have been summarized as:

the awareness of "the other realm" or "world of the gods" in addition to the world of ordinary reality, and the practice of techniques for actually traveling between the realm of ordinary reality and the realm of the gods in order to obtain knowledge or effect change not possible to obtain or effect through any other method.

Why would it be possible (and even necessary) to make contact with or journey to that invisible realm in order to gain information or effect change for this material realm? I believe the answer almost certainly relates to the view, expressed in many shamanic cultures which survived into recent centuries, as well as in shamanic scriptures and texts from ancient times, that this material world at all points is connected to and interpenetrated by the spirit world, and that in fact in some very real sense the material world is generated or projected from the invisible world.

In The Undying Stars, I also explore at some length the likelihood (suggested by other researchers as well) that the invisible or spirit world is closely related to the state of "potentiality" described by many modern theoretical physicists in response to the extraordinary results of certain experiments which led to the revolution in thought that is quantum physics. If so, then this would also help to explain why contact with that invisible realm could enable us to obtain information or effect change which impacts this ordinary or material realm, information and change not possible to obtain or effect through actions in this material realm alone. 

I believe that the evidence that the sacred traditions of the world's cultures were founded upon just such a shamanic worldview is overwhelming. So much of this evidence was already available by the end of the eighteen-hundreds for Gerald Massey (1828 - 1907) to declare (in a text linked and quoted in this one of the above-linked previous posts) that all of the ancient wisdom of humanity included a deep knowledge of entering "trance-conditions" in order to make contact with or even travel to the spirit realm, but that somehow this knowledge was interrupted and lost prior to the modern period in many parts of the world. 

In 1899, evidence not previously recognized (and which Massey probably never heard of) was added to the existing pile of evidence supporting such a claim: the recognition of the oracle bones of the Shang period of ancient China, which was the second-oldest ancient dynasty of China, following the Xia Dynasty of the near-mythical past (the benevolent "Yellow Emperor," Huangdi, whose story has many elements in common with "Saturnian" myths around the world was part of the Xia Dynasty). 

The Shang (traditionally dated 1766 BC to 1122 BC) were once thought by some scholars to have been mythical themselves, but in 1899 a scholar and chancellor of the Imperial Academy and collector of antiquities named Wang Yirong of Beijing recognized the script on bones which were being ground up and ingested as medicines as ancient script similar to that seen on Bronze Age antiquities, a discovery which led over time to the recognition of the oracle bones of the Shang, which now number in the many tens or even hundreds of thousands, but which had remained unrecognized and largely unknown for over three thousand years.   

The  techniques for crossing to the "other realm" or the "invisible world" and bringing back information are widely varied across different cultures, climates, and time periods -- almost as widely varied as human culture itself. A previous discussion of some of the many different "techniques of ecstasy" -- many of which are found in Mircea Eliade's landmark 1951 discussion of the subject of shamanism and ecstasy --  entitled "How many ways are there to contact the hidden realm?" suggests that the fact that humans seem to be able to find ways of contact with and even travel to the spirit world using whatever their local environment provides to them may indicate:

a) that we are designed or "hard-wired" to be able to access non-ordinary reality,

b) that this ability resides with us as human beings and is not dependent on access to specific external elements or implements, and

c) that this ability to access the hidden realm is absolutely essential to human existence itself. 

In his encyclopedic examination of the myriad techniques of communicating with the spirit world, Eliade does not appear to directly discuss the oracle bones of the ancient Shang, although he does discuss the use of oracular bones among shamanic cultures which survived to the present day, such as the Koryak of the Bering Sea / Kamchatka region, the Oirat / Kalmyk of western Mongolia and the lands to the east of the Caspian Sea, and others.

He also notes that some scholars in the past have suggested intriguing parallels between ancient Shang art and designs and those used by Native American tribes of Alaska and the northwest coast of North America, those found on monuments in Borneo, Sumatra, and New Guinea, and that some have also pointed out the fact that "the drawings on the Lapp drum are astonishingly reminiscent of the pictographic style of the Eskimo and the eastern Algonkin," suggesting the possibility of some very interesting correspondences between shamanic cultures from very different parts of the globe and across many millennia of human history (page 334 and also footnote on page 334).

In addition to their importance as evidence of very early contact between the material realm and the invisible world in ancient China, the oracle bones are also tremendously important as extremely early examples of Chinese script, and scholars have determined that many characters still used today are directly descended from those used by the Shang. The Wikipedia entry on the subject states that scholars today believe the Shang writing to be directly ancestral to the Chinese system still in use, and that the oracle bones constitute the earliest significant corpus of ancient texts through which to study the origins and evolution of the Chinese characters.

It is fascinating to consider the origin of the Chinese characters for "eye" and "king" from characters which can be seen on surviving oracle bones, or to note how the traditional character for "tiger" still has a tail which corresponds to the image used for "tiger" on the Shang bones, in which the figures were generally drawn as though "standing" on a surface which runs "up and down," or upon which (in other words) animals which would be facing to the left if the ground were imagined running horizontal or "left to right" are in the ancient inscriptions rotated so that their noses are upwards, their feet are to the left, and their tails are towards the bottom as we look at the bones.

It is also extremely significant to pause and consider that this fact of the oracle bones constituting the earliest examples of Chinese writing appears to indicate a very close relationship between writing and contact with the invisible realm -- just as the story of the origins of the Norse runes through Odin's self-sacrifice by hanging on the World Tree demonstrates in northern European myth and sacred tradition.

The method by which the oracle bones were used is described in many places on the web and in books about ancient Chinese history. Here is the description from A Concise History of China, by J.A.G. Roberts (1999):

Much of the information available on Shang society comes from inscriptions made on the shoulder-blades of oxen (scapulimancy), or less commonly on the shells of turtles (plastromancy). At one time such items were described as 'dragon bones' and ground up for medicine. In the late nineteenth century the bones and their fragments were recognized for what they were. Over 150,000 fragments of Shang oracle bones have now been identified and these provide a major source of evidence about the Shang state. Many of the inscriptions refer to future events and they have been translated as questions addressed to an oracle. Recently it has been argued that the inscriptions are not questions but statements or predictions and that the divination process formed part of a sacrificial rite. Once the bones had been inscribed, a heated bronze tool was applied to them and the cracks which appeared were interpreted as a response to the question or prediction. Some of the inscriptions relate to the actions of the king and his allies and from these information may be gleaned about the organization of the Shang state. Others refer to the weather, to the planting and harvesting of crops and to the siting of buildings. The inscriptions use a vocabulary of more than 3000 different glyphs and they include a dating system based on a 10-day week and a 60-day cycle. 5.

The video below does a fairly good job of presenting the outlines of the importance of the oracle bones and their initial discovery (or recognition) in 1899:

Other videos, some of which focus more on the question of how exactly Wang Yirong first recognized the importance of the inscriptions on the bones in 1899, and how scholarship regarding the bones has proceeded since then, can be found in this video (which appears to be part of a larger series), and in this video which is basically a podcast and contains some interesting discussion of the oracle bones.

The text from J.A.G. Roberts above continues in its discussion of the Shang, noting the presence of "very sophisticated" bronze vessels and implements from the Shang period which are remarkable because there is no evidence "of an earlier and more primitive stage of bronze work" (5), and then goes on to say:

From the evidence of the oracle bones and bronze vessels, and from the burial practices followed, some understanding may be obtained of Shang religion. The Shang people worshipped many deities, most of whom were royal ancestors, some were nature spirits, and others perhaps derived from popular myths or local cults. The veneration of ancestors was practised by much of the population, and it has remained an essential part of Chinese religious practice until modern times. It has long been assumed that Shang religion also had a single supreme deity, referred to as Di, who was part ancestral figure, part natural force, who presided at the apex of a complex Shang pantheon. A recent study has rejected the idea of Di as a high god, and has claimed that in Shang religion di was the term used to refer collectively to 'the gods,' and that it was only under the Zhou that the idea of a supreme god emerged. From the evidence of the tombs it is clear that the Shang believed in an afterlife, and divination may have been addressed to departed ancestors. The Shang court may have been attended by shamans, and the king himself was perhaps a shaman. 6-7.

Further evidence which appears to argue quite strongly that ancient Chinese culture exhibits elements of the shamanic worldview is explored by Stanford Professor of Chinese Culture Mark Edward Lewis in The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han (2007), part of a series of books called the History of Imperial China edited by Timothy Brook as general editor. Discussing the overarching understanding that our world consists of a visible and an invisible realm, and the points of contact and communication between them, Professor Lewis writes:

Religion in imperial China dealt with the realm of "spirits" (shen) and shadow (yin). From earliest times, the Chinese offered sacrifices to a spirit world that paralleled the human. The two realms -- the visible and invisible -- were roughly parallel, and the dying moved from one to the other. 178.

He then explores some of the many categories of contact between the visible and invisible realms, which he explains were "sometimes personalized (as in divination, dreams, or trances), sometimes localized (as in sacred places or shrines), and sometimes generally visible as omens but subject to disputed interpretation (as in prodigies such as comets, eclipses, droughts, or the raining of blood)" (178).  He quotes an evocative poem written by one of the consorts of the Emperor Gaozu, the founder of the western Han dynasty, who reined as emperor from 202 BC to 195 BC:

Floating on high in every direction,

Music fills the hall and court.

The incense sticks are a forest of feathers,

The cloudy scene an obscure darkness.

Metal stalks with elegant blossoms,

A host of flags and kingfisher banners.

The "Seven Origins" and "Blossoming Origins" music

Are solemnly intoned as harmonious sounds.

So one can almost hear

The spirits coming to feast and frolic.

The spirits are seen off to the zhu zhu of the music,

Which refines and purifies human feelings.

Suddenly the spirits ride off on the darkness,

And the brilliant event concludes.

Purified thoughts grow hidden and still,

And the warp and weft of the world fall dark. 179.

Professor Lewis says of this scene:

The sacred space blurred ordinary sense perceptions with smoke, incense, music, and the forest of banners. The chief sacrificer prepared for his contact with the spirits by fasting and meditation. This extended deprivation not only cleansed the body but also induced a mental state more susceptible to perceiving uncanny phenomena. In the atmosphere of the ritual scene, the carefully prepared participants could hear the spirits come to feast with their living kin and then see them depart before the world settled into blackness. Such scenes are described in some of the songs of the Zhou Canon of Odes (Shi jing), where spirits grow drunk on sacrificial wine. 179.

Finally, Professor Lewis provides the important insight that "Chinese divination was usually regarded more as a guide to action than as the report of a fixed fate. Divination provided not knowledge of a preordained future but understanding of trends so as to act upon events with the greatest efficacy" (183).

As something of an aside, we should note that this understanding of the spirit world, which Professor Lewis asserts characterized the ancient Chinese understanding of the spirit world, appears to harmonize quite well with the assertion made earlier that the realm of spirit may correspond in some way to what quantum theory describes as "superposition," in which very small particles cannot be described as having an "actual position" independent of its observation: in which they exist in a sort of world of "potentiality" until they are observed, at which time they "manifest" in a particular place (see the discussion, for example, in Quantum Enigma by UC Santa Cruz physics professors Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, beginning on page 84 in the 2nd edition).

All of this evidence from China's ancient period speaks to a worldview which can be broadly included in the definition of the shamanic worldview as articulated above: a worldview which perceives the existence of an invisible world of spirit, and which understands the importance of communication between the two realms and which possesses techniques to effect such communication.

This evidence also argues that the concept of the shamanic is not restricted to pastoral or nomadic or hunter-gatherer societies, even though it is in such societies where shamanic practices appear to have survived most clearly into recent centuries.

Previous posts have noted the convincing arguments put forward by Dr. Jeremy Naydler and others, based upon extensive evidence, that the pharaonic civilization of ancient Egypt was built upon central principles and a worldview which also conforms to the broad definition of the shamanic.

The implications of the oracle bones of ancient China are actually quite profound for modern civilization here in the twenty-first century AD, over thirty-eight centuries after the start of the Shang civilization.

First, as has been hammered-upon throughout this post, the oracle bones provide still more evidence to the growing mound of evidence from around the world that the ancient wisdom of the human race was shamanic in nature, aware of the vital importance of the spirit world and of the need to contact and communicate with what has been called the realm of "non-ordinary reality" -- just as real as our ordinary mode of consciousness, but differing radically from our ordinary experience -- and which may be related to the state of "potentiality" described in the basic principles of modern quantum physics.

Second, the oracle bones yield important avenues for further examination when they are compared to other ancient cultures which themselves could be described as exhibiting a shamanic worldview. It has already been noted that the story of the "Sacrifice of Odin," in which Odin gains the spiritual vision needed to see the runes and thus obtain the gift of writing through the process of hanging upon the great tree Yggdrasil, suggests to us that writing itself -- an inherently symbolic activity -- has strong connections to and even origins within the invisible world.

We can now bring up another parallel from another well-known ancient point of contact with the invisible realm: the famous Oracle at Delphi. There, supplicants (including, according to the ancient texts, many kings and heroes) would present their questions to the priestess of Delphi, who was known as the Pythia, and she would enter into a state of ecstatic trance in order to convey a message from the other world. The parallels to the use of the Shang oracle bones should be quite evident.

What is extremely noteworthy in this regard, I would submit, is the fact that the Oracle at Delphi was associated not only with crossing over the barrier to the invisible realm, there to obtain messages and information not available through ordinary means alone, but also with the admonition "Know Thyself," traditionally held to have been inscribed prominently at the Delphic temple and referenced in that connection by many important ancient texts and authors, including notably by Socrates himself (at least as depicted in the dialogues of Plato) when discussing the origin and role of mythology!

What could it mean that in this most sacred point of this extremely important ancient culture we find juxtaposed a tradition of crossing over to the invisible world and an admonition to "Know Thyself"?

Could it not be that the command to "Know Thyself" entails the command to "understand our dual material/spiritual nature" and the simultaneous "dual material/spiritual nature" of this universe in which we dwell (and which we in fact reflect and embody, in the "macrocosm/microcosm" philosophy which can be seen to have been operating in the sacred teachings of ancient Greece, and in the scriptures of the Bible, and indeed in Chinese culture as well, where traditional Chinese medicine has from ancient times recognized a correspondence between the motions of the sun, moon, stars and planets and the internal organs and flow of energy within the human body -- and see here for more on that subject going back to ancient Egypt).

If so, then the growing evidence of the universality of the worldview and the practice of techniques which we might label "shamanic" has profound implications for our own self-knowledge and even for our own fulfillment and sense of completeness as human beings. There is a powerful quotation from Mircea Eliade, made during a discussion of the ecstatic journeying undertaken by the shamans of the Inuit, Inupiak, and Yupik peoples of far northern regions of North American continent (whose name for a shaman was angakok or angakut) in which he relates the assertion based the accounts of the angakok themselves that:

It is above all during trance that he truly becomes himself; the mystical experience is necessary to him as a constituent of his true personality. Shamanism, 293.

Such an assertion is very much in keeping with the foregoing observations of the near-universality of shamanic practice at the foundation of the world's various cultures and sacred traditions, with the great diversity of methods by which people around the world have found ways to make contact with the other world, and with the fact that it was at the Oracle of Delphi where the ancient Greeks chose to inscribe the grave command, "Know Thyself."

In light of such findings, we must ask ourselves whether there might not be negative consequences of a serious nature for a society which marginalizes and even criminalizes the universal human impulse to contact the realm of non-ordinary reality? For some discussions on that front, see previous posts such as "Outlaw drums," "Graham Hancock identifies war on consciousness," and "Literalists against the shamanic."

And, as we contemplate these subjects, we can be thankful for the recognition attributed to Wang Yirong of the significance of the inscriptions found upon the ancient bones which were being dug up from fields in which they had lain for so many centuries, silently proclaiming the shamanic worldview practiced during one of the earliest periods of Chinese history.

We can only wonder what other evidence of ancient shamanic practice around the world has disappeared into the dust of history without leaving a record which we can today read or examine.

And we can gaze at the ancient writings on the shoulder bones and tortoise plastrons, placed there by those wishing for a message from the other world, and ponder our own need for the same -- which connects us to them across the great gulf of centuries, and speaks to a universal human need which is every bit as real today as it was in the days of the Shang.

below are some other images of oracle bones

. . .

above image: Wikimedia commons (link).

above image: Wikimedia commons (link).

above image: Wikimedia commons (link).

above image: Wikimedia commons (link).