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Sunday Morning (56) Taking the bus to Paris
Have you ever been to Paris? I have, several times. It is about 300 miles from here. So, you can even do a one-day trip. I did it once, and several other times I stayed in Paris for a week.
Paris didn’t make a great impression on me. Local people in those days only spoke French, religiously. They refused to understand any other language. French is not my strongest language. I can ask for directions, order food, but a real talk is out of my reach, helped by the French talking at a break-tongue speed, not pronouncing many of the syllables that show up in text. A few years ago Debbie and I were in France together, visiting the castles in the Loire region, and found that things have improved. The language is still incomprehensible for us, but they are willing to talk English now, which helps a lot.
Back to Paris. Like most large cities, Paris is crowded and messy. Too many people, cars, buildings pushed together on a too small surface. Too little nature left.
The best place to be in Paris, is in Montmartre. This large hill, already inhabited by men in Roman days, is historically the location where many artists thrived, like Monet, Matisse, Picasso, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh. Currently still, many artists do here what they love most, and also on the streets they perform their Arts. I had my face drawn in a caricature once there. Sadly, it has been lost (the drawing that is) in one of my many moves.
Debbie was in Paris also when still young (18), ever so beautiful as she is today. I wish I had been around in her life then, but in a way I was, for we were in each other all along.
I wrote a story about Paris, or to be more exact, about going to Paris in a bus. It deals with the metaphor of trying to get where you think happiness is to be found, while all the time, you were already in the best place to discover it.
Soon, I will post a link to it. The Tale is ready, but our webmaster has not yet published it on our website. So, be patient for a little while, you are almost there, soon you will discover all about going to Paris that you always wanted to know. I promise. It’s coming. Really.
Have a great Sunday, au revoir!
Paul&Debbie
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5 Replies
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Problems with Paris (for me)
- too far away
- they speak French, I can’t!
- too many Frenchmen ( that’s my bias)
- I can’t think of more
So be it. Enjoy your travels
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Thanks Tim. More thinking is not needed indeed.
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To quote Christopher Robin (I think);
- Sometimes I sit and think
- Sometimes I just sit
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Wonderful Tim, thanks!
The question then would be: who is it, that thinks he is sitting or thinking? Decartes thought the answer was “who we are” (Cogito, ergo sum – I think, so I am). But obviously this can’t be true, for even if we don’t think (like in deep sleep, coma or general aneashesia, we clearly are – who would there be to wake up otherwise? It is only the mind that thinks “that it is (separate)”, but clearly the brain is doing much more than being concerned with a persona. It needs not do that to perform all of its complicated tasks of running the body. The persona would only disturb that with sticky emotions and thoughts So more correctly would be the statement “I am there, where I don’t think” (ubi non cogito, ibi sum), about which there is a Tale on our website.
Alan Watts wrote a funny limerick on the subject :
There was a young man who said “Though
It seems that I know that I know,
What I would like to see
Is the” I” that knows me
When I know that I know that I know”.
Alan was a great guy, an elegant bum, sophisticated, highly smart, professor, philosopher and priest and one of my heroes. He wrote many books but most of all we adore his talks, for he was a great narrator who could present the entire field of perennial philosophy of East and West in a way that was funny and accessible for every ordinary Jill and Jo.
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Oh! How philosophers get tied up in knots and so often end up as the G542X Cf mutation. So much nonsense. As a Christian I acknowledge that I am: as God made me and loves me. I need no other and my response is to love him and all he has created – even enemies though that can be difficult. I love because He first loved us (me!) and what good I do is not an effort to gain more but to show my gratitude for all he has already done. During this Easter time I am reminded just how much was His love.
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Yes I know exactly what you mean, Tim. And every religion started as a philosophy (an experience of being) – but not all philosophy is making things clear. But they are not all nonsensical. I too had your experience about what most philosophies/religions had to offer and didn’t think it was bringing me any closer to a truth. And then I was pulled into a new direction that provided exactly what I intuited.
Since Rene Décartes thought that the source of being was in thinking, most philosophers after him changed the question of research. In stead of asking Who am I, they only looked at What do I Think? The thinking about thinking is what Western philosophy has turned to since. And it produces exactly that feeling which you described so eloquently in your answer. Points of view with some proof, and opposing points of view with another proof, thinking themselves into knots. This is what the mind does, for every thought is an abstraction from reality and carries his own deluded reasoning.
Then, disappointed in these exercises of mind and cleverness like you, I turned to Eastern philosophy, in particular to Advaita Vedanta, the philosophy of not-two ness (Hinduism) or nothingness (Buddhism) – they are the same. And Daoism, This is not about thinking, but about Being. And here it is not a matter of who has the best proof, but what is your Realization. And following this method, which is more like psychoanalysis avant la lettre, all come to the same Realization, that needs no proof for it is self-evident. It is who we really are. No thinking required, just the pure being, the unborn mind. It is the dissolving of philosophy in a way. Eastern philosophy is millennia earlier and fundamentally more true that what we in the West have been trying to think out in endless talks we call philosophy, which are only little games of cleverness and mindstuff that in the end did not bring us any further. I have read most of them and they are all going from the wrong premisses and are utterly useless and deluded. Clever, but deluded nevertheless.
In the Advaita philosophy, and equally so in Daoism, there is no need for a proof of god’s existence. For we are it. Like Jiddhu Krishnamurti already said: “I used to be an atheist – until I discovered that I am god.” And he meant to say: we are all “God”. We are all the revelation of god. This is also what Jesus’ teaching is about. He was not proposing a religion to believe in. He was telling about his own Realization of Oneness, the Kingdom of Heaven and he pointed us back to ourselves: it is In you! Advaita vedanta in the purest form. Jesus was a nondualist without knowing it. A messenger of Dao. This reality of Dao is for everything and everyone, it is not only for us humans, but for all life, and all matter as well. Every manifestation is included and is a revelation of this Dao. It is the reality of Neverything. If you are coming from a Christian background, you might enjoy the video’s of Marshall Davis, who translated the Christian vocabulary and values into Daoist and Advaita terms and shows very clear, that they are all the same after all. It’s called Christian Nonduality.
I recently wrote a little tale about this, about the fundamental difference between what we call an Experience (which needs proof and differs from person to person), and a Realization (or Revelation) which is self-evident and is equal beyond personal interpretations. No religion can be formed upon this, for there is nothing to believe in. But it is much more, it is what and who we really already timelessly are. It is on our website (Tale 27). You might enjoy reading it. In the end, I (hope I) managed to even point to a way to dissolve the difference between the two. Oneness in the most pure sense.
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