Thich Nhat Hagn's "Fear"

Wed Jul 31 06:35:48 CDT 2013

"/Emerson/. --- Much more enlightened, adventurous, multifarious,
refined than Carlyle; above all, happier.... Such a man instinctively
feeds on pure ambrosia and leaves alone the indigestible in things.
Compared with Carlyle a man of taste. --- Carlyle, who had great
affection for him, nevertheless said of him: 'He does not give /us/
enough to bite on': which maybe truly said but not to the detriment of
Emerson. --- Emerson possesses that good-natured and quick-witted
cheerfulness that discourages all earnestness; he has absolutely no idea
how old he is or how young he will be --- he could say of himself, in
the words of Lope de Vega: '/yo me sucedo a mi mismo/'. [*]. His spirit
is always finding reasons for being contented and even grateful; and now
and then he verges on the cheerful transcendence of that worthy
gentleman who, returning from an amorous rendezvous /tamquam re bene
gesta/, said gratefully: '/Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda
voluptas/'. [**]"

([*]: I am my own successor; [**] ... that worthy gentleman who,
returning from an amorous rendezvous as if things had gone well, said
gratefully: 'Though the power be lacking, the lust is praiseworthy'.
'Voluptas' replaces the usual 'voluntas' = will.)

TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
(chapter: Expeditions of an Untimely Man, # 13, translation: R.J.
Hollingdale)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=1112&msg=160855&sort=date

On 31.07.2013 12:30, alice wellintown wrote:
> “American Nietzsche” is a sober work of intellectual history, but as
> Nietzsche insisted, all scholarship reflects the temperament of its
> creator, and it’s clear that Ratner-Rosenhagen finds neither the
> poststructuralist nor the conservative Nietzsche at all satisfying. At
> the end of her consistently insightful book, she turns to Harold Bloom
> and the philosopher Stanley Cavell, who emphasized Nietzsche’s
> affinities with the man he himself regarded as “the most fertile
> author” of his century — Ralph Waldo Emerson. Indeed, one can show
> that Emerson anticipated many of Nietzsche’s most famous utterances.
> There is a direct line from Emerson’s “oversoul” to the “overman.”
> Several decades before Nietzsche wrote, “What does not kill me makes
> me stronger,” Emerson wrote, “In general, every evil to which we do
> not succumb, is a benefactor.” More profoundly, Emerson foreshadowed
> Nietzsche’s concern with the ubiquity of flux and power, and the value
> of overcoming the past. “Life only avails,” Emerson once wrote, “not
> the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in
> the moment of transitions from a past to a new state.”
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/books/review/american-nietzsche-by-jennifer-ratner-rosenhagen-book-review.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
>
>
>
> On 7/31/13, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The Tragic Sense of Life? Like, when did life get a tragic sense? Did
>> the Greeks have this sense? Did Shakespeare? Is it a product of
>> reason, the enlightenment? Or Romance? Or is it Modern? When did we
>> get this Heart of Darkness? Did we construct it with Modern Life? Do
>> all peoples suffer from it now? Do the Indians know Tragesy as we in
>> the West know Tragedy? And what is a tragic sense?
>>
>> So, a good book that I know was on P's reading list is _The Tragic
>> Sense of Life_, and a couple-few others are discussed in this easy to
>> read paper
>>
>> PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE,
>> Richard L. Rubens, Ph.D.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> http://www.columbia.edu/~rr322/Tragedy.html
>>
>>
>> On 7/30/13, Rev'd Seventy-Six <revd.76 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> That's Kool and the gang. All I am saying is:  there is a nigh unto
>>> bottomless resevoir of negative experience in the arts & sciences. I
>>> would appreciate that balanced a tad, esp. in this tilted age. The
>>> Inferno wasn't a challenge to Dante: Paradise, however, exceeded his
>>> reach. I would prefer not to equate birth with a plummet into a sphere
>>> of profane dread & agony. In the arts we have come to confuse realism
>>> with suffering when it ain't the lion's share, experience-wise. Maybe
>>> I'm naive...
>>>
>>> On 7/30/13, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> I don't.
>>>>
>>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>>
>>>> On Jul 30, 2013, at 6:24 PM, malignd at aol.com wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I'm not sure how to read this group anymore.  Does anyone think Becket
>>>>> was
>>>>> serious?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>
>>>>> To: 'David Morris' <fqmorris at gmail.com>; 'Ian Livingston'
>>>>> <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
>>>>> Cc: 'Keith Davis' <kbob42 at gmail.com>; 'P-list' <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>>>> Sent: Tue, Jul 30, 2013 6:05 am
>>>>> Subject: RE: Thich Nhat Hagn's "Fear"
>>>>>
>>>>> Oh, it’s downhill well before that. Samuel Beckett in a 1970 interview:
>>>>> “Even before the foetus can draw breath it is in a state of barrenness
>>>>> and
>>>>> of pain. I have a clear memory of my own foetal existence. It was an
>>>>> existence where no voice, no possible movement could free me from the
>>>>> agony and darkness I was subjected to.”
>>>>>
>>>>> And in _Murphy_, Neary curses the day he was born “and then, in a bold
>>>>> flashback, the night he was conceived.”
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
>>>>> Behalf Of David Morris
>>>>> Sent: Monday, July 29, 2013 11:51 AM
>>>>> To: Ian Livingston
>>>>> Cc: Keith Davis; P-list
>>>>> Subject: Re: Thich Nhat Hagn's "Fear"
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes. That is a clear way of explaining the root experience and its
>>>>> later
>>>>> recognition/identification.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Monday, July 29, 2013, Ian Livingston wrote:
>>>>> Maybe the way to reconcile your perspectives, which both seem valid, is
>>>>> to
>>>>> remove the labels. Birth is the first appearance the emotional
>>>>> sensation
>>>>> that is later associated with fear, coupled with the sensation of
>>>>> emotional resistance to that proto-fear that is later identified as
>>>>> desire.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 7:39 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>> Sure.  But birth is a stark initial lesson in separateness, even if the
>>>>> "self" hasn't yet formed. And I think initial experiencing the
>>>>> sensation
>>>>> of fear and desire is TNH's focus, something that precedes a self.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Monday, July 29, 2013, Keith Davis wrote:
>>>>> The only clarification might be that there is no consciousness of the
>>>>> fear
>>>>> and desire until we reach the point where we become aware of a"self" as
>>>>> separate from other "selves", where we develop an "individual
>>>>> consciousness".
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 1:13 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> It starts with a description of each of us pre-birth in the "The Palace
>>>>> of
>>>>> the Child." Everything we needed was done for us there.  Food, air,
>>>>> warmth, in a big water cushioned bed, with great sound insulation.
>>>>>
>>>>> Then we get pushed out into the loud cold world, having to cough out
>>>>> liquid in order to take our own first breath.  Every aspect of this
>>>>> birth
>>>>> is traumatic, and TNH says it is called the "Original Fear."  At about
>>>>> this same moment we realize we want to keep living.  TNH calls this
>>>>> "Original Desire."
>>>>>
>>>>> I think this was all pre Freud.
>>>>>
>>>>> David Morris
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> www.innergroovemusic.com
>>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> http://posthistoricpress.blogspot.com/
>>>
>

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