...What did you think, that joy / was some slight thing?-Mark Doty’s Visitation
When I work with people who both navigate and dominate systems, as most of us have opportunities to do, when I work with those who are marginalized and are oppressed by systems, as most of us have the opportunities to experience, there comes upon me, often, a sense of disembodiment. It arises from my experience of having, throughout my life, been the Stranger, and having never been brought to heel as the Neighbor. This Stranger lives within me, too, an embodied Spirit, who is attached to the embodied Spirit of the Neighbor, in many ways, like some tumor that has grown veins to attach to the body proper. But these highways of intersection are no measure of their similarity as they are forgotten and never minded, it is the the bulk that is experienced, the heap of oddities and unmatched corners.
In this way, that I wish to speak to you, is the idea of Joy, in this world, in this experience, this subversive nature of being, this tumor in this existence. Like much, in this particular world, we have made the mistake of words and inherency, we have mistaken words for Reality rather than an expression of a reality. I have written of this before, I do not want to hash it out again, but in short it is the belief that, in this case, there must be a choice between Joy and Suffering. I capitalize Suffering here, because I am writing this for those who have reached a place where the satellite view of the individual reveals an ‘absurdity’ that is the chaotic, meaningless, interactions of ‘life’ which themselves is evidence of an uncaring world. These are the ones who gasp at the leviathan that breaches the dark and bemoans the depth, breadth, of the ocean and offers its Will to the beast that inhabits such a place. They are left with, only, the arrogance of ‘sight’-They Suffer. This arrogance, is matched by those that also believe in the Ocean and Leviathan, but they swim with the beast, they mimic the beast, and revel in their ability to shame and ridicule those on the shore, they swing their terrible tails and giggle as the waters pull Them into the deeps whether they are the ones that Suffer or suffer.
Joy, to these men, is a trifling, a trinket, that in the commerce of the Arrogant is a glass bead to the golden coins of invasion and annihilation. Joy is the effect of a sucker’s bet and can be had only by the fools and the ignorant, and, unlike what you may have thought I’d point to, they are right, as Joy is often thought of.
Joy is the forgetfulness, the willful ignorance of Being, as we know it, it is the usurpation of, let us say, pleasure for Happiness. That they Can, pleasure and happiness, arise together does not mean they are inextricably linked. Any glance into those who have born horrific physical pain and, who have, within this suffering expressed an almost unimaginable happiness, can prove the ability to cleave these two.
The error lay in fundamental ideas of Reality, that we think because we Suffer, that there is an Ocean, that Leviathans and their Near Twins stalk those waters, makes it that we must, in the end, be bereft of Joy, if we Know. We believe that knowing is mutually exclusive to Joy. This is not so.
In this way, that I wish to speak to you, is the idea of Joy, in this world, in this experience, this subversive nature of being, this tumor in this existence. Like much, in this particular world, we have made the mistake of words and inherency, we have mistaken words for Reality rather than an expression of a reality. I have written of this before, I do not want to hash it out again, but in short it is the belief that, in this case, there must be a choice between Joy and Suffering. I capitalize Suffering here, because I am writing this for those who have reached a place where the satellite view of the individual reveals an ‘absurdity’ that is the chaotic, meaningless, interactions of ‘life’ which themselves is evidence of an uncaring world. These are the ones who gasp at the leviathan that breaches the dark and bemoans the depth, breadth, of the ocean and offers its Will to the beast that inhabits such a place. They are left with, only, the arrogance of ‘sight’-They Suffer. This arrogance, is matched by those that also believe in the Ocean and Leviathan, but they swim with the beast, they mimic the beast, and revel in their ability to shame and ridicule those on the shore, they swing their terrible tails and giggle as the waters pull Them into the deeps whether they are the ones that Suffer or suffer.
Joy, to these men, is a trifling, a trinket, that in the commerce of the Arrogant is a glass bead to the golden coins of invasion and annihilation. Joy is the effect of a sucker’s bet and can be had only by the fools and the ignorant, and, unlike what you may have thought I’d point to, they are right, as Joy is often thought of.
Joy is the forgetfulness, the willful ignorance of Being, as we know it, it is the usurpation of, let us say, pleasure for Happiness. That they Can, pleasure and happiness, arise together does not mean they are inextricably linked. Any glance into those who have born horrific physical pain and, who have, within this suffering expressed an almost unimaginable happiness, can prove the ability to cleave these two.
The error lay in fundamental ideas of Reality, that we think because we Suffer, that there is an Ocean, that Leviathans and their Near Twins stalk those waters, makes it that we must, in the end, be bereft of Joy, if we Know. We believe that knowing is mutually exclusive to Joy. This is not so.
Perhaps it is because I am not of the West but live within the West, and there are deep philosophical differences at the core, though most of it overlaps. We can see this in the common understanding of Camus’ “Absurd” though he did not like that title nor Existentialist, and rather frowned on the idea of a meaningless world, that said, he is thought of as a person that showed the absurdity of life, that we care so much for our lives in an uncaring world. And I can understand this through the lens of this society that is so powerfully Self focused. And, even as I say this, the typical societal mind goes to the idea of a non-self focused society but in the lens of an nihilistic annihilation of the self which is also a symptom of the wrong view.
I have found useful is to draw a diagram. Usually I use a triangle with where the top point is usually being open, then I show that the base is also permeable. This self is rested upon what Camus calls the ‘absurd’ but it is not ‘absurd’ in the sense that it does not have an expression; much like how Chaos Theory does not fit the common definition of Chaos. I like to use the Ineffable for the Absurd when I look at it, it takes into account the perpetual dynamism of nature, but this dynamism, in itself, is not permanent or cannot be because of its very nature, though, it can be expressed to be ‘permanent’ because of its perpetual changing-this is hard to express because perpetual dynamism thwarts the ability to define which needs to have permanent variables. This dynamism is the basis for the malleability of the world in which we inhabit. How this world is formed is through the base of the triangle, which are our values/principles/whatever you call your initial premise of Right and Wrong. The Nature of nature moves from the ineffable to the effable through this pathway which from these initial premises arrives at materialized, systemic structures. I am not saying that there are not Physical Law of the universe but I am saying that Humans (and perhaps Animals, my biology is not deep enough to have studied this) do not experience the world through these Laws, we experience them through our principles. This does not mean that our Experience is less than, just as the physical laws produce a myriad, perhaps uncountable (and now the research on multiverses and the possible infinite amount of Physical Laws and universes) expressions of them, so to our Experiences do too. That the Human Being (and perhaps others) live in an expressed Universe does not diminish its ineffable worth and value, just as this expression does not diminish that of Physical Laws, in fact, they are of the same cloth. If we are scientists and believe in the atomistic, material causal chain, that leads up to Human thought we see that the Physical Laws were precursors to this Human expression. They are not separate, they are together, inexpressibly linked, just as that which is Ineffable must produce (because of its dynamism), and must be the root of Systems because of its malleability.
This brings us back to Joy. Joy is an expression of an Authentic life, a full and aware life, of which we see a difference between the Western and Eastern traditions; whereas Kant, says that the Noumena cannot be experienced and is the realm of the Divine, the East says that it can be experience though not expressed in exactitude (because of its Nature of dynamism), and in this an awareness can be achieved for transcendence. But this is beside the point, really, even in the Western sense it can be pressed deeply against, this boundary. That this boundary can be known as a person without sight would know the contours of a face, and if this face were a map the reason speaks of a leap of faith for Reason will have met its conclusion and fulfillment.
Joy is to be had not despite the Suffering that is the Nature of living, but because of it, within it. The Ineffable is the Nature of things, the Human expression is that which comes about from our principles that arise from this confrontation with this Ineffable, if what we see is chaos and coldness, then our expressions will be of this; if, instead, we see the malleability and Freedom of Nature, then our expressions arise from the Imagination of the perfect (perfect Love, etc). That Joy in its real forms arises in all of our lives, in part, the beautiful form, the touching service, is, to me, evidence, circumstantial to be sure, that the Freedom of Nature is authentically expressed as Loving, and that despite our idolatrous fancy of the Coldness of Nature it still arises, is again evidence of its validity.
I have found useful is to draw a diagram. Usually I use a triangle with where the top point is usually being open, then I show that the base is also permeable. This self is rested upon what Camus calls the ‘absurd’ but it is not ‘absurd’ in the sense that it does not have an expression; much like how Chaos Theory does not fit the common definition of Chaos. I like to use the Ineffable for the Absurd when I look at it, it takes into account the perpetual dynamism of nature, but this dynamism, in itself, is not permanent or cannot be because of its very nature, though, it can be expressed to be ‘permanent’ because of its perpetual changing-this is hard to express because perpetual dynamism thwarts the ability to define which needs to have permanent variables. This dynamism is the basis for the malleability of the world in which we inhabit. How this world is formed is through the base of the triangle, which are our values/principles/whatever you call your initial premise of Right and Wrong. The Nature of nature moves from the ineffable to the effable through this pathway which from these initial premises arrives at materialized, systemic structures. I am not saying that there are not Physical Law of the universe but I am saying that Humans (and perhaps Animals, my biology is not deep enough to have studied this) do not experience the world through these Laws, we experience them through our principles. This does not mean that our Experience is less than, just as the physical laws produce a myriad, perhaps uncountable (and now the research on multiverses and the possible infinite amount of Physical Laws and universes) expressions of them, so to our Experiences do too. That the Human Being (and perhaps others) live in an expressed Universe does not diminish its ineffable worth and value, just as this expression does not diminish that of Physical Laws, in fact, they are of the same cloth. If we are scientists and believe in the atomistic, material causal chain, that leads up to Human thought we see that the Physical Laws were precursors to this Human expression. They are not separate, they are together, inexpressibly linked, just as that which is Ineffable must produce (because of its dynamism), and must be the root of Systems because of its malleability.
This brings us back to Joy. Joy is an expression of an Authentic life, a full and aware life, of which we see a difference between the Western and Eastern traditions; whereas Kant, says that the Noumena cannot be experienced and is the realm of the Divine, the East says that it can be experience though not expressed in exactitude (because of its Nature of dynamism), and in this an awareness can be achieved for transcendence. But this is beside the point, really, even in the Western sense it can be pressed deeply against, this boundary. That this boundary can be known as a person without sight would know the contours of a face, and if this face were a map the reason speaks of a leap of faith for Reason will have met its conclusion and fulfillment.
Joy is to be had not despite the Suffering that is the Nature of living, but because of it, within it. The Ineffable is the Nature of things, the Human expression is that which comes about from our principles that arise from this confrontation with this Ineffable, if what we see is chaos and coldness, then our expressions will be of this; if, instead, we see the malleability and Freedom of Nature, then our expressions arise from the Imagination of the perfect (perfect Love, etc). That Joy in its real forms arises in all of our lives, in part, the beautiful form, the touching service, is, to me, evidence, circumstantial to be sure, that the Freedom of Nature is authentically expressed as Loving, and that despite our idolatrous fancy of the Coldness of Nature it still arises, is again evidence of its validity.
Joy is not the slip of a thing, weak or a symptom of ignorance, it is the subversive expression of Truth, and absolutely is a tool of resistance to dominant norms. It is not separate from our understanding or Truth, in fact it is an effect of understanding and Truth. It should not be run from, nor sought after like some bauble, but it should be lived in our own journeys toward our most authentic expressions of our duties. And, I have found, as we do this it arises more frequent in our duties, sometimes in those small ways that one would not think of, the moss in the crook of a winter bare bush, the person who bends down to pick up litter not their own, or in things we deem big, like resistance in the face of tyranny. It is the Time we are in that tells us which we should do. And only in picking up this mantle are we able to express this type of full Joy rather than the pale similitude that we take for it, if we take it at all.
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