Sunday, September 9, 2018

A Couple of Q. and A.'s About Beginning Renunciation

Q. I am a 18-year-old (nearly 19) soon-to-be renunciant and ascetic,
hopefully, as it cannot be ignored that you cannot have the world
and the great rewards of salvation and freedom. I found your blog in
my investigation of Platonism, as it is a pure system where the
majority of (if not all of it completely!) it's teachings are true. Of
course, as I am new to studying it, I have to keep researching, and
read all of Plato. Your blog has been extremely helpful in this
effort, and the starting point of renunciation for any genuine
spiritual practice is self-evidently true. How doing this reflects God
("the One" or "the Absolute" as you call Him) is amazing. Though, to
begin, although some things can be renounced immediately with ease
("don't read fiction books, apply yourself to spiritual text" and
"don't lust after sweets, and don't eat meats", etc), I had a few
questions about the whole process, and your experience with it.

The first is about how to begin the initial efforts and survive the
fatigue when the excitement of a new, more proper, life begins. I
expect there to be failings and relapses (though it should be avoided
at all cost). I see one method to possibly use is continued meditation
on why you began this, escape from the world, and how perfect God is.
How did you overcome this period? How would you recommend someone who
has lived a very sedentary, and "pleasurable" life to do this? After a
while, does it just become more natural? If so, how long is this?

The second is about the temptation to return to the world and it's
ways if it arises. What methods do you have for overcoming this? Or is
it that after a while, and true cognitive change has happened,
temptation doesn't really happen (or is very weak)?

I hope that you can answer these, and again I thank you for your blog
and your efforts to spread this information.



A. Thank you very much for reading and appreciating my writings. Of course, I greatly encourage and exhort you to retain your new-found understanding of the necessity of renunciation and asceticism and to practice this for the remainder of this birth and, indeed, for all future births until you attain liberation. Please stick to it no matter how difficult it may be in this present world where there is so little, to say the least, appreciation, respect and support for renunciation and true spiritual practice. I hope, as you kindly say, my writings may be of modest help in this regard.

I began, or renewed, my spiritual practice in earnest in this birth when I was just your age forty years ago. Not encountering any renunciants or real spiritual practitioners, not even the degree of guidance or encouragement that my writings might provide, I had to learn on my own by 'the school of hard knocks' and gradually come to understand the necessity of renunciation and move in that direction despite all the silly people around me discouraging it. It was by reading the records of the ancients, the primary source texts of, at that time, Buddhism, that I understood that the moderns are for the birds and that it was clearly necessary to follow the real Path of the ancients and of all ascetic practitioners of all time, regardless of whether anyone else was or not. Thus, for example, it wasn't until four years later at the age of 22, while I was living at a so-called Zen Community in NY (which I long since repudiate as being completely fraudulent, corrupt and silly), that I took my vow of celibacy on my own (though I had never actually not been celibate and was still virginal anyway). I had already gradually become a most committed and ardent vegetarian by the time I turned 20. I had never been a drinker or party person and had always been of sort of naturally monastic and solitary temperament. I was, however, in my youth and when I was your age, what you have described in your email as 'one who has lived a very sedentary and "pleasurable" life'. I was, and have always been, not very tough physically and have always had much anxiety and was quite a 'wimp' as it were. I just kept gradually working and gently pushing myself and becoming more and more dedicated and ascetic and devoted as my understanding and devotion increased--though, as I say, in various respects other than physical and emotional toughness, I was already naturally of monastic, ascetic, renunciant temperament. The most important thing is to have great sincerity and devotion and dedication and determination to attain release and be devoted to true spiritual practice and renunciation no matter what, and then just gradually and steadily work towards renouncing more and emulating the ideal. Be patient and steady and don't be dismayed by any lapses of the sort that you refer to that may occur. If you fall down, always just pick yourself right up and keep on going. You seem to show remarkable insight into how things could work, recognizing that after the initial excitement fades the spiritual path is really a lot of hard continuous work. The kind of meditation that you suggest is a good way to keep yourself going on the right track and also to overcome any temptation to return to the world as you ask about in your second question.

In regard to both your questions, yes, it does get easier and more natural as you go on, and you backslide, even in thought, less. The more disciplined you are the easier and more natural discipline becomes. Once the cognitive shift has really been made and the aspiration for the Way has really been awakened in the soul, there is less and less serious temptation to return to the world--in fact, the thought of doing so is horrifying and revolting. How long this will take in a particular individual case such as your own, I can't say. Everyone is different and has their own individual karma to deal with. But I can say that it will definitely become easier and more natural and inevitable over time, the more diligent and devoted you are within your capacities (though again go gradually without overreaching yourself too much if it becomes discouraging). Also, some things are more difficult than others. For example, sexual desire is one of the very most difficult things to eradicate and deal with and you can expect to struggle with it and have it around for very many years to come. Of course, we don't act on it at all and don't really dream of doing so, even when thoughts and fantasies run off at length in that direction, but we still have to deal with it and be very careful about it. Perhaps, more renunciants, especially now, have fallen because of women than anything else. Other things, though, also can be hard to leave--even such as if you are still living at home and your family has a television and you get drawn into watching it!

A couple of concrete suggestions: It is very important, however much long struggle it may take, to establish a regular routine of going to bed early and getting up very early before dawn to spend time in meditation/contemplation practice. Being disciplined in different areas reinforce each other and make it all easier. A regular daily meditation/contemplation practice is essential to, is the essence of, the Path and of great assistance in developing renunciation and asceticism, indeed, is part and parcel with it. Read regularly and widely in the records and writings of the authentic great ascetics and renunciants of the past of the various systems (much is available in English). This will be of great help and importance in gaining understanding, getting encouragement, and sticking to your devotion. I'm afraid that, except perhaps for myself, you are not very likely in this present age of darkness and this modern brave new techno-world to encounter any living examples to help you and provide support, so you need to take the renunciants of the past (and future and present, though just not visible) as your support, 'the communion of saints' as the Catholics say. Vegetarianism, or, ideally, veganism, is of the greatest and most essential importance and not really very difficult at all and can be implemented rapidly and will be of great help in supporting all your other efforts. Similarly, it should go without saying that any alcohol or intoxicants or illicit drugs (not to say that I think you are doing any of that anyway) are to be immediately and permanently stopped. Even decent ordinary worldlings don't drink and spiritual practice can't even be begun without teetotaling, and, besides, you are legally underage for that anyway. If you can keep 'the big three'--celibacy, vegetarianism, and teetotalling--and keep a regular schedule of meditation/contemplation practice and be devoted to meditation/contemplation practice and spiritual and ascetic reading and study to the best of your ability, the rest will gradually fall into place.

I hope this answers your inquiries somewhat. Again, be patient and diligent and work steadily, gradually, and devotedly, and keep clearly in mind that there is no question that renunciation and asceticism and devotion to contemplative practice is the only way to go and any alternative can't even be entertained.




Sunday, September 2, 2018

Flesh-eating as the Fall of the Soul in Plato's 'Republic'

Flesh-eating as the Fall of the Soul in Plato’s ‘Republic’

by Eric S. Fallick


The Politea or ‘Republic’ of Plato is an allegorical, symbolic manual and description of individual contemplative ascetic spiritual practice. As the text itself repeatedly states and makes clear, the ‘city’ is just an analogy, a blown-up symbolic picture, for the individual soul. It has nothing at all to do with politics, political ‘philosophy’, or governance of states. ‘Socrates’ represents nous, intellect, and the higher, divine part of the soul and its divine understanding. Nous descends from the noetic realm to this lower realm of the senses and lower soul, ‘goes down (from the town) to the Piraeus’, and in doing so becomes associated with a lower soul and faculties, ‘with Glaucon (son) of Ariston’. Nous initially descends only so far as to participate in divine spiritual activities and contemplation in the lower realm of soul, ‘will be offering prayers to the goddess and wanting at the same time to view the festival’. It then is immediately returning to the noetic realm, but is restrained by more lower souls and faculties, ‘Polemarchus’ and the others, and compelled to remain for a time and instruct them in righteousness and divine matters.

Book 1 then proceeds to establish the correct divine understanding based on the noetic realm and the Forms of righteousness and holiness and their necessity and superiority for living a well-off life against the naturalistic, materialist (in both senses of the word!), physicalist, immoral, worldly understanding, ‘Thrasymachus’. Books 2 through the first part of Book 5 then, using the analogy and symbolism of the ‘city’, though constantly reminding that it is only just that and showing how it is a projection for understanding the individual soul, and the ‘guardians’, the thoughts, understandings, and discursive reasoning and cognitive state of the soul, describes the cognitive and emotional condition and training and disposition and ordering of the soul in this world as a whole with both its true higher part and the lower soul and faculties endemic to being at the lowest level that is the sense world of the beginning and, for a long time, conditioned ascetic practitioner. That is, initially and for long time on the Path, the contemplative ascetic practitioner has proper orientation, thoughts, and ordering of soul only as a conditioned state attained through practice without actual direct realization and understanding and ordering directly from the higher hypostases and spiritual realities. This is a necessary preliminary and stage of the practice, and, indeed, one at which the practitioner will likely remain for many births as he progresses, but is still a conditioned relative state, one of right opinion rather than true knowledge, and, as such, is unstable and has the possibility of being disrupted or lost until it is made into true knowledge and permanence through direct experience of the higher hypostases. The latter part of Book 5 through Book 7 then describe the further practice of actual direct contemplative experience of the higher hypostases, the attaining of actual true knowledge of the way things are and correct renunciant, ascetic practice, the mode of practice with this knowledge and experience, and the transformation of the conditioned contemplative ascetic practitioner liable to the possibility of falling from his conditioned state of practice, however wonderful it is, into a truly divine renunciant with actual stable knowledge and a permanent understanding and ordering of the soul that is not liable to regress until the final end is attained. Book 8 and the first part of Book 9 then describe how the conditioned practicing soul might fall and the various types of lower souls in this world down to the very worst. The rest of Book 9 and Book 10 show the superiority of righteousness and contemplative asceticism over the worldly way and cover various important topics of spiritual practice and metaphysics and transmigration.

In Book 2, ‘Socrates’ initially proposes and begins to develop the model of the ‘city’ as a blown-up analogy for understanding righteousness in the individual soul. The ‘city’, the complex soul in individuated sensate existence in space-time with higher and lower souls and faculties together in relation to each other, develops upon the initial fall of the true soul into the lower realm of soul and body and the senses from the noetic realm due to the need for now dealing with the senses, maintaining the psychophysical organism and body, and dealing with individual apparent objects appearing one after another in space-time. At this point, at its initial minimal descent, the soul and its thoughts and faculties naturally live a simple, reclusive, contemplative ascetic life with only the minimum lower faculties and minimum possessions and involvements in worldly affairs to maintain bodily existence. It, or now the person, just has enough clothing, shoes, and shelter for protection from the elements as necessary according to the season. He reclines on the ground on simple mats and eats from simple utensils made from leaves, etc. He, most significantly for this discussion, eats a simple grain based vegetarian diet with the addition of some modest vegetarian ‘relishes’ for complete nutrition. Note that when the text refers to the modest and moderate drinking of ‘wine’ that ‘wine’ is a symbol for the senses, which are intoxicants to the soul. So the text is saying that the contemplative ascetic recluse living in peace makes use of the senses only to a moderate degree as necessary to the minimum extent possible. A contemplative ascetic and philosophos, of course, never drinks even a drop of wine in the literal sense or any sort of alcohol, and the divine Plato never would suggest that he may. (Incidentally, this symbolism of ‘wine’ as representing the senses and sense experience occurs elsewhere in the dialogs, most notably, of course, in the Symposium.) He passes his leisure in divine contemplation, ‘hymning the gods’, and content in himself with the higher and lower faculties in order, ‘pleasantly being together with each other’. He produces no thoughts of wanting any more, ‘not making children beyond the (present) substance, taking care to avoid want or war’. He passes his life in peace and health maturing these renunciant and contented thoughts and mental states and continuing such as further circumstances continue or develop, ‘reaching old age and handing down another life of such a sort to the offspring’. This, the text makes clear, is the true, healthy, and proper way of life, the minimum declension of the fallen soul if it has to be here in this realm, the reclusive contemplative ascetic renunciant life.

How, then, does this true ascetic pure life degenerate into the mess of ordinary human life and the world as we see it and the people around us, this mess having been such since time immemorial? How does the soul after its initial fall then fall even deeper into becoming, samsara, genesis, the cycle of birth and death? The lowest faculty of the soul embedded in the body, ‘Glaucon’, seeing the bad way of sensual pleasures and desires lived by most all in samsara, is not satisfied with the simple ascetic life and wants all the sensual pleasures and sense experiences and desires that it sees around it. It turns and corrupts the whole person and soul to consider these necessary and desirable and to pursue them and dive headlong into the karmic mess of samsara and create the kind of lives we see around us. Not only does it now require comfortable furnishings and utensils to use while indulging its now excessive and luxurious desire for food and feasting, but, most crucially, now wants, and even thinks it necessary, to eat meat, to eat animal flesh and to kill for this purpose, as it sees those doing around it. This creates the inflamed, unhealthy, licentious ‘city’/soul. In true Orphic fashion, flesh-eating and killing is shown to be a critical turning point in the fall of the soul, leading to the wandering as an alien in the cycle of repeated birth and death. (And, of course, reversing this and becoming vegetarian again is a crucial and essential step in escaping from becoming and returning to the soul’s pristine state.) Once the soul has imbibed the greed for flesh and meat and has abandoned the true ascetic life that no longer suffices for it and has come to require its life of continual killing and production of meat for its consumption, this leads in snowball fashion to desires for all manners of luxuries, possessions, entertainments, etc., as listed in the text, and even for sex, ‘female companions’ and ‘the things concerning feminine adornment’. Following from the perverse desire for flesh-eating, the soul and its thoughts are darkened, and it becomes firmly ensconced in pursuing the desires of this world and ever binding itself to and suffering on the wheel of birth and death (a true Orphic as well a Platonic image).

The explication of the complete meaning of the Politea would be a great task. Perhaps, this short essay has given a tiny pointer in that direction. At any rate, the Politea reminds us that flesh-eating is a great crime and primal transgression, and that vegetarianism is an indispensable prerequisite of genuine spiritual life and practice.


Ⓒ 2018 Eric S. Fallick