Reality Beyond Realism

[Smoke Teff]

Thanks David,

Certainly ambitious, and much more an inquiry than a top-down lesson on my part. Growing up, I had much more schooling in (mostly Western) lit than in non-Western spirituality. So literature was the first thing that allowed me to feel like I was seeing through the first couple layers of illusion. 

Campbell, Brown, and others have pointed to artists as modern-day shamans, bringing people in contact with the real. I want to see how stories can (or can’t) do that when I have also come to understand reality as starting where storytelling stops. 

> On Jun 28, 2020, at 4:52 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> My God, this seems an ambitious task!  In Buddhist or Hindu or other ancient eastern schools, ubiquitous reality is seen as an illusion, a veil one hopes to see past.  Individuality (personal identity) is also seen as a false reality, at least partly so.  Many lifetimes of observance by a select few are sometimes required to see beyond the illusion of common reality.  I wish you all the best.
> 
> David Morris 
> 
>> On Sun, Jun 28, 2020 at 3:06 PM Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Fellow Plisters,
>> 
>> Starting July 1 I'll be leading a class you and/or people you know may
>> find interesting. The class is called Reality Beyond Realism:
>> Storytelling for/versus Enlightenment.
>> 
>> It comes out of a tension I’ve been feeling in my own work in recent
>> years. The tension is basically this. On the one hand, the telling of
>> stories is maybe the original human activity. On the other hand,
>> stories also seem to represent our most formidable limitation as
>> individuals and as a species. Buddhism (and related traditions) seems
>> to agree with contemporary science (neuroscience, quantum physics,
>> etc) in the claim that our notion of individual “self” is ultimately a
>> kind of delusion. A fiction we compulsively tell ourselves, which may
>> have once been adaptive, but may no longer be so. There are stories at
>> the bottom of all our sufferings and all our social strife. This is
>> easy to see in personal psychological dysfunctions (depression,
>> anxiety, etc.), political cynicism (which relies on limited and
>> outmoded stories), as well as deliberate misinformation (i.e. "false"
>> stories).
>> 
>> So the tension leads to the question: can stories actually take us
>> closer to individual and collective enlightenment? And the related
>> question: Is what separates us from a more enlightened world the
>> telling of bad stories, or the telling of stories altogether? As
>> people who are uniquely attuned to the telling of stories—who may even
>> look at (literary) storytelling as a kind of calling or chosen life’s
>> work—is it possible for us to really use them for “good”? Can stories
>> get us free, or do they only imprison us? Can they bring us closer to
>> “absolute reality” or can they only distort our apprehension of
>> things?
>> 
>> So this “class” is a four-part inquiry where we will look at some of
>> the conventions of Western realism as well as some texts that
>> deliberately subvert those conventions (this will include some Pynchon
>> excerpts, of course). We’ll try to see what other kinds of stories are
>> possible or desirable, whether stories can be used to dismantle
>> stories, or whether they inevitably entrap us in the constant karmic
>> ping-pong of the world of forms.
>> 
>> Some of those conventions of storytelling will include: the
>> individuality of subjectivity, the linear and strictly forward
>> movement of time, the mechanics of cause and effect, certain
>> epistemological regimes and attendant values (including capitalism,
>> scientism, post-Judeo-Christianity, etc.), as well as the more
>> literary-specific conventions of stories built out of language (i.e.
>> subject-verb containing sentences) and the form of the prose story
>> (with its beginnings/middles/ends, conflicts and rising action and
>> climaxes, etc.).
>> 
>> The course will be four sessions, on consecutive Wednesdays, starting
>> July 1, 6-8pm Eastern Standard Time. It’s run through this very cool
>> organization called Incite Seminars, which is trying to bring
>> ambitious learning out of neoliberal higher education institutions and
>> rebuild it together with the people. They’re Philly-based, but now
>> operating on Zoom. The classes run on an “enable-as-you-can” (i.e.
>> donate-what-you-choose) structure. A few people have signed up already
>> but I’d really love for there to be a diversity of
>> perspectives/experiences involved. If you think you might know someone
>> who would be interested, I’m including a link to the class page, where
>> you can read the full description and fill out a registration form:
>> https://inciteseminars.com/reality-not-realism/
>> 
>> Also, if you have some favorite relevant excerpts, other reading
>> suggestions, or ideas for the direction of the class, I'd be happy to
>> hear and incorporate them.
>> 
>> Love,
>> 
>> Smoke
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l