Experience of Life

Posted on March 3, 2005 in Myths & Mysticism Reading

I’m reading The Power of Myth for a book group later this month. So far, the first chapter dovetails very nicely with other teaching I am receiving. In particular, this passage speaks not only to those of us who struggle to free ourselves from life’s cravings, but also those of us who write and create. Joan Didion said “We tell ourselves stories in order to live”. Yes, that’s what it is all about. And it’s also about what Anais Nin called “the second tasting”. We have the experience once and then we digest it:

The mind has to do with meaning. What’s the meaning of a flower? There’s a Zen story about a sermon of the Buddha in which he simply lifted a flower. There was only one man who gave him a sign in his eyes that he” understood what was said. Now, the Buddha himself is called “the one thus come”. There’s no meaning. What’s the meaning of the universe? What’s the meaning of a flea? It’s just there. That’s it. And your own meaning is that you’re there. We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.