Since you also lived in Japan you must have wondered about the way Japanese manage to run a society without any particular commitment to organized religion. People outside Japan often seem to think of Japanese as “Buddhist” or “Shinto”, but in truth they are both and neither and seem to slip from one philosophy to another without any of the western sense of inconsistency. I know of almost no one who “goes to church” and no one who argues about evolution or thinks it strange to go to a Shinto priest for a birth naming, a Christian church for a wedding, and a Buddhist temple for a funeral. In fact, the Japanese are the most intrinsically “unattached” people I know. And yet they lead lives filled with ethos. Living here has helped me more to find no need to look for or single out any of the organized religions than any of the long discussions I’ve had about all of them. It’s one of the things I love about Japan, that ability to look at the roots of living as a very down-to-earth relationship with the “real world”.

maria – Which album do you have, I wonder? He recorded so freakin’ many – there’s very little chance I know it!

beth – Thanks. O.K., I’ll make it a “best of,” if you insist, but I have a lot more to say in this line.

rr – Well, the cracks got varnished too, of course, though I don’t think it affected their basic grooviness all that much.

Rachel – You’re right about originality; what I really meant was novelty. If one hatches a thought on one’s own, it’s still original, even if it isn’t novel.

Also, not to get all semantically correct (SC?) on you, but what I was talking about wasn’t so much the apophatic way — that’s, like, the Ayn Sof of Kabbalah — as just plain skepticism, I think. I extend my skepticism further than most agnostics or atheists, however: I not only question the existence of heaven and hell (and any transcendent or descendent inhabitants they might have), I question my own existence, too.

Brett – Nope, not too attached to non-attachment, really. As i said in the comments to Dale’s post yesterday, there’s another side to this that I didn’t have time to go into: the whole beauty/magic thing, David Abram’s “spell of the sensuous.” I do feel the commandment against idolatry is key to the Abrahamic traditions, but I like to have it both ways, as you’ll see in today’s post. In other words, I think idolatry gets a bad rap sometimes. Totally inconsistent, I know.

“Feel good”: feel secure, or vindicated, or reassured, or otherwise confirmed in one’s own preconceptions. Feeling good in the sense of an aesthetic, wondering or awestruck response, on the other hand, is often the beginning of true discovery. (See Dale’s bit about beauty.)

Dick – I’m sorry about that. I figured a link that only North Americans could use was better than no link at all. If I find a better service, you can bet I’ll link to that, instead. I tried making a recording straight from my boombox for y’all, but even with all the effects in the Audacity software, my cheap-ass mike still made it sound like shit.

Hal – Yeah, fear of death has spoiled religion, along with so many other things. But it has given us a lot of good ghost stories and zombie films! And communion, yeah – that’s another big part of being in the groove that I didn’t have time to go into here.

Glad to “meet” another Hooker-n-Heat fan! Canned Heat was one of the few 60s blues-rock bands I really respect, and they knew how to get out of the way and let Hooker be himself.

First of all I have loved the song Burning Hell ever since I first heard it, I really identify with the at-home defiance of the song. The entire Hooker-n-Heat album is absolutely fantastic.

Why are so many of us afraid of death? It really is the cause of a lot of our misery.

However, below all of that, the beauty of communion is still there to be… shared.

Friends don’t let friends groove alone.

OMen

Sadly, the Hooker link won’t work outside the States. Could have done with some profane early morning boogie. ‘Let that boy boogie-woogie ’cause you know it’s in him and it’s just got to come out’.

As I’ve said before, one of my base assumptions is that if some doctrine or dogma makes me feel good, it can’t possibly be true.

What do you mean “feel good”?

I tend to figure originality is over-rated. Shakespeare wasn’t doing anything particularly original, but what he did, he did well.

I imagine you won’t be surprised to hear me assert that there’s no necessary disjunction (for me) between following a theistic spiritual path and acknowledging the wisdom of apophatic discourse. But I’m like that; I want to have my cake and eat it too.

Wonderful. And the Seussian window(s).