Bookend · 17 April 2008

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
 

Henry Miller

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1. A brother from another mother!

   Posted by: Gregor · Apr 18, 04:49 AM · #

2. Sooooooo very true!

   Posted by: LI Ashtangini · Apr 18, 05:22 AM · #

3. You see, that last sentence is so very important.
   “forget yourself”. That is it. The key to a happy life.

   Posted by: Susan · Apr 18, 05:58 AM · #

4. Dogen and Henry M in alignment:

   “To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.”

   Posted by: karen · Apr 18, 06:56 AM · #

5. Extremely resonant advice.

   Posted by: katie · Apr 18, 11:25 AM · #

6. Karen, thanks!

   I was trying to figure out how I would say than forgetting yourself doesn’t mean ceasing self-awareness. Dogen takes it to another level and it is nice to know such a place exists. Vipassana’s spacious awareness and then some.

   To forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad things.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 18, 04:55 PM · #

7. I particularly like the translation that goes: “to forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things” because I love the ten thousand things.

   Posted by: karen · Apr 18, 09:09 PM · #

8. Interesting that that quote would come from someone as thoroughly, narcissistically self-obsessed as Henry Miller.

   It recalled me, though, to a beautiful line by Goethe I copped from “The Editor”, as he’s gamely called here:

   “From early on, I have suspected that the so important-sounding task ‘Know thyself’ is a ruse of a cabal of priests. They are trying to seduce man from activity in the outside world, to distract him with impossible demands; they seek to draw him into a false inner contemplation. Man only knows himself insofar as he knows the world—the world which he only comes to know in himself and himself only in it.”
   –Goethe

   Although I’ll note that “cabal”, which as metaphor interferes badly with “priests”, was the translator’s innovation and not Goethe’s sloppiness—which, as we all know, doesn’t exist.

   Posted by: dailymiltonian · Apr 22, 05:23 PM · #

9. Not to mention that that second-to-last “only” is badly placed, if your interest is precision. Do I have to go and be translating Goethe now? Please say no.

   Posted by: dailymiltonian · Apr 22, 05:27 PM · #

10. Hello Daily Miltonian!!!

    I tend to be happiest with Mr. Miller when I read him shallowly. There is much in his morality-as-stated that I like, though at a deeper level the narcissism keeps you from communing with him. Same with Anais Nin, come to think of it.

    Nice catch on the cabal.

    I gave that Goethe quotation to the Editor when I read it in some book by, I think, Aldous Huxley. I thought he would enjoy using it against me from time to time. Especially when I dream of the cave.

    BTW:
    1. the Cave as delusion rather than enlightenment-
    2. “know thyself”-
    3. the Meno-

    I haven’t thought of Plato in ages, and here is is thrice inside of an hour.

    Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 22, 05:40 PM · #

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