Revolting Gothic

I remember being taken through Skopje, in Macedonia, by my realtor in the 90s and asking her what she thought of the (relatively) modern Orthodox cathedral in its centre. 'It is too Catholic,' she replied. I puzzled over what she meant until I found a clue in an interview that the philosopher, Jacob Needleman, conducted with Metropolitan Anthony, in his remarkable book, 'Lost Christianity'. Metropolitan Anthony was the long running representative of the Russian Orthodox Church in London. A remarkable man: insightful, holy, penetrating with extraordinary eyes that looking at you felt seen, through and through.

In the interview, the Metropolitan is describing why he had always been revolted by the 'Gothic' in architecture. In it all is ascent, a striving after, something vertical that is absenting itself - it is not a place that you receive as 'home' as you would a Romanesque church (or a traditional Orthodox one), where you are encompassed in a story that flows horizontally around you, and where God is not 'up there' but present, presence. The vast, concrete interior space of the Skopje cathedral captured that Gothic displacement, not a Orthodox homeliness.

I was thinking of this in relation to my prior entry on 'Zen' and in continuing to read R.H. Blyth's classic, 'Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics', and why it matters that we 'see' 'symbolism' as a compensatory 'mistake' rather than an exalted form of meaning making. It is what emerges when a gap opens up between 'the real' and our current state as a kind of bridging mechanism. Ideally, we cross over the bridge, to the 'other shore' and leave it behind but, more often than not, we tarry on the 'bridge' finding every excuse for not crossing over. After all 'symbols' can be very alluring, we can spend any amount of time pondering their meanings (and arguing over them) and our attachment to them gives us an exalted sense of identity (rather than losing our identity in the presence-ing of things).

It is why 'religion' is so inordinately attractive and so dangerous and why, to quote a Buddhist parable, 'if you meet the Buddha on the road, you should kill him' rather than turn him into a bridging symbol of what you would 'like' to but cannot attain.

I remember another question and answer session with a remarkable Russian. This time the film director, Andrei Tarkovsky, where he was asked, 'What is the symbolism of rain in your films?' (as it often is). To which Tarkovsky replied, 'No symbolism, just rain'! What does it require of us to penetrate through to seeing 'just rain' in all its suchness?

Comments

Red Shambala

Nicholas Roerich is oft depicted as a spiritual seeker, peace visionary, author of numberless paintings, and a brave explorer of Central Asia. However, Andrei Znamenski in his 'Red Shambala: Magic, Prophecy, and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia' has him perform another role - that of geopolitical schemer. The scheming did have at its heart a religious vision - of a coalition of Buddhist races in Central Asia that would establish a budding utopia - the Shambala of the title - from which the truths of Buddhism (and co-operative labour) would flow around the globe. This would require the usurpation of the 13th Dalai Lama to be replaced by the Panchen Lama guided by the heroic saviour (Roerich) who appears above dressed for the part. In the achievement of these aims, the Roerichs (including his wife, Helena, who had a visionary connection with 'Mahatmas' whose cryptic messaging guided their steps) were willing to entertain strange bedfellows that at one time include...

The Buddha meets Christ in embrace

Reading Lama Anagarika Govinda is proving nostalgic on a number of fronts. I recall my first reading of it in my first year at university, bought at Watkins, the famous 'esoteric' bookshop in Cecil Court in London. I sat in my hall of residence room transfixed by a world made familiar; and, it was deepening of a commitment to contemplation (which has been observed fitfully)! I remember returning, at the time, to my school to give a talk to the combined fifth form on Buddhism and using Govinda as the backbone of my delivery (both this book, and his equally wonderful, the Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism). I was voted (I immodestly remember) their best invited speaker of the year. I had even bought a recording of Tibetan music as opener and closer! He reminded me of how important Buddhism was (and is) to my own thinking and comprehension of my experience. The Buddha's First Sermon in the Deer Park was the first religious text I read (of my own volition) at the tender age...

The Jewel in the Crown

I spent six months in Nizhny Novgorod ostensibly as both the chair and the director of a micro-finance fund. I must confess much of that work -apart from the spectacular resignation of my predecessor as director - has faded from view but what I vividly recall is at weekends progressing through Paul Scott's 'The Raj Quartet' and subsequently re-watching its painstaking and triumphant dramatization (by Granada) that I had watched, long before, on the television. It was without doubt my most deeply cherished reading experience to date. This extraordinary narrative of the British in the last, declining days of colonial rule that begins with the doomed relationship of Hari Kumar and Daphne Manners, her rape, and the injustice of Kumar as accused by Ronald Merrick, the Police Superintendent, and one of the most malevolent characters ever created in fiction. He is a magnified alter ego of Scott himself especially the sharply, destructively repressed homosexuality. The narrati...

Golgonooza

Search This Blog