people insist that there be an inherent benevolence to nature and everything.
Yeah, what's up with that?
Sure, there are attributes to nature that are awe inspiring, like standing at the base of a giant sequoia and looking to the sky. But then reality sets in when the no-see-ums start biting. Nothing like picking a deer tick off of yourself to bring you back from reverie. Oooh, look at the little bunny, just before the hawk swoops down and makes a clean kill.
I think some people hold an idealistic picture in their minds of what they want nature to be...all bunnies and doves and green grass and high tides. The *reality* of nature though is that unless one finds blood letting and poison ivy beautiful, it is kinda difficult to lay a blanket idealism of benevolence at momma nature's feet.
If you don't need that, and you don't need life to read like a myth- with a hero, villain, and moral, then you don't need koans.
WARNING, limitations on understanding ahead...I still know less than nothing about koans. Having said that, I think it was J. Campbell that did all that work on heroes, villains and morality. I still don't fully grasp what he was getting at, but it seems there is more to the hero/superman story than what passes at first blush. On one hand we gravitate to our superman, he often in a tribal sense becomes the bull-male alpha leader, which means you also don't want to be on his bad side and face his wrath...unless you are fully prepared to make a legitimate challenge to his authority at the risk of your own life to become the alpha yourself (and collect his harem?).
Somewhere along the line our superman became some semi-benevolent spirit to be appeased, or actually a collection of them (looking at the Greco-Roman pantheon for example). Instead of holding a legitimate fear of a real physical brute that can pummel one, we started projecting that fear onto imagined (or at the least non-physical) entities, no doubt spawning superstitious behavior.
Tribe grows bigger, power is more disbursed, superstition becomes institutional, viola! institutional religion!
On the other hand, life is astonishingly complex and paradoxical. But again, if you don't need the Disney narrative the uncertainty is manageable. And, in fact, a large proportion of the spiritual-ish aphorisms that everyone digs so much are making that exact point. Everyone is masturbating to the idea of this essential uncertainty, but they won't actually let go. Everything is set up to discourage you from actually letting go.
I'm trying to stay with you here...I'm not sure quite how this follows. I think I get what you're saying if you are speaking of those who hold to an oversimplified view of the world and life around them, those to whom blinkers are a matter of necessity, not choice. I mean no disrespect, but an awful lot of people are so consumed with other matters, they don't have time or interest to ponder the infinite mysteries. They don't know, and they don't care to know. For them the oversimplified "Disney version" is all they can handle. I say this as a gentle observation, not a mean-hearted accusation. There are some brilliant people in the world whose minds are otherwise occupied, just as there are some people in the world whose minds are simply not up to the task.
And there are charletans who pretend to all manner of pseudo-knowledge, I can only guess to prey upon those with simpler outlooks.
Which certainly serves as a warning to those who seek with a sincere and contrite spirit. There *is* something, to me it is *out there,* perhaps others find it *in here,* but there are those sincere among us who do seek to reunite with whatever it is we intuit. There are those of us to whom reunion with the Divine is a worthwhile and meaningful pursuit in its own right, divorced from fear and pain and superstition.
Maybe you are pointed in the right general direction...but then who knows? We're all just speculating in the end, and won't find out for certain until the time comes.
(edited a dozen times to compensate for beer.)
LOL
I can relate. Does mentally torched after 8 hours of overtime (in addition to the regular shift) compare?
