Wherever I go, there I am

■ 걷기예찬 Eloge de la marcbe | 다비드 르 브르통 David Le Breton | 현대문학

걷기에 대한 바이블이라고 할 수 있다. 한 줄 한 줄 밑줄을 그으며 읽을 만큼 심오하다. 걷기의 즐거움, 걷는 방법, 걷기의 정신성을 꼼꼼히 정리했다.

■ 걷기의 철학 (Pause Philo 1) | 크리스토프 라무르 Christophe Lamoure | 개마고원

‘걷기예찬’보다는 조금 쉽다. 고교 철학교사인 저자가 고교생에게 설명하듯 쉽게 풀어놓은 것이 장점이다. 142쪽으로 양도 많지 않다. ‘걷기 철학’ 입문서로 적당하다.

■ 월든 Walden; or, Life in the Woods | 헨리 데이비드 소로 Henry David Thoreau | 이레

세 계적인 명저다. 걷기에 대한 책이라기보다는 자연에 살며 느낀 것들을 정리했다. 후대에 수많은 철학자에게 영감을 줬다. 마하트마 간디도 감명을 받았다고 한다. 1854년에 썼으니 150년이 지났지만 여전히 울림은 크다. 재미는 없어서 인내력이 필요하다. 더불어 소로의 ‘산책’(양문)도 권할 만하다. 소로의 일기와 자연에 대한 메모를 정리한 책이다.

■ 느리게 산다는 것의 의미 Du bon usage de la lenteur | 피에르 쌍소 Pierre Sansot | 동문선

느림의 미학을 에세이식으로 풀었다. 느림은 삶을 풍요롭게 해준다는 것을 작은 일상의 모습을 통해 알려준다. 첫번째 장이 느리게 걷기다.

http://news.khan.co.kr/kh_news/art_print.html?artid=200805081743305

http://news.khan.co.kr/section/khan_art_view.html?mode=view&artid=200805081735505&code=900306

• ...but there seemed no point in fighting any of this. These things were permanent...so now I resolved to ride with them...At least I knew now that at some point, the ride always came to an end, and that even at their very worst, they could not kill me.

• This new sensitivity was not always comfortable, because I found that I could hear a kind of crusading aggression all around me in contemporary society. I heard it in Israel, when I listened to the Israelis and Palestinians condemning each other, wholly unable to appreciate each other's position. It was there again when British politicians attacked their opponents with bitter relish, and even in apparently civilized debates between intellectuals and literary critics on the radio. There was an edge of unpleasant self righteousness as people gleefully demolished their opponents. I heard it all the time in London, when even my most liberal friends inveighed wittily -- and often unkindly -- against this or that. I certainly heard it in Mrs. Thatcher. So my study of the Crusades changed me, making me determined always to try to listen to the other side, and at least try to understand where the enemy was coming from. Had the Crusaders done that, a moral catastrophe could have been averted. Studying the Crusades had confirmed me in my conviction that stridently parochial certainty could be lethal, especially in religious matters. We lived in a global age now, and it was dangerous to assume, without question, that "we" had the monopoly of truth and justice. (260-1)

• Yet another door had slammed in my face...Previously, when disaster had struck, I had not allowed myself to respond fully. Indeed, I had been unable to do so...This time I let myself feel my outrage, frustration, and dismay to the full...But how could I move forward? I seemed doomed to fail, fated to spend my entire life on the periphery...I was toiling up this hill one day, weighed down with plastic bags of uninspiring groceries, that an idea came to me, and (again without realizing it) I tuned another corner.(263)
• ...when I had come to an apparent dead end in the past, my life had sometimes taken a turn for the better. "Because I do not hope to turn again," Eliot had reflected in Ash-Wednesday, "consequently I rejoice." (268)

이 표현이 참 마음에 들었다.
Turning another corner.
막다른 골목에 이르러 벽에 부딪혔을 때 멍하니 서 있지말고 코너를 돌자;)

• The great myths show that when you follow somebody else's path, you go astray. The hero has to set off by himself, leaving the old world and the old ways behind. He must venture into the darkness of the unknown, where there is no map and no clear route. He must fight his own monsters, not somebody else's. explore his own labyrinth, and endure his own ordeal before he can find what is missing in his life. Thus transfigured, he (or she) can bring something of value to the world that has been left behind. But if the knight finds himself riding along an already established track, he is simply following in somebody else's footsteps and will not have an adventure. In the words of the Old French text of The Quest of the Holy Grail, if h wants to succeed, he must enter the forest "at a point that he, himself, had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no path." The wasteland in the Grail legend is a place where people live inauthentic lives, blindly following the norms of their society and doing only what other people expect. (268)

남들 간다는 길, 남들이 좋다는거 따라가다 자신의 길을 잃지 않기를.
줏대없이 쫓아만가다가는 이것도 저것도 아닌게 될테니까.  

• ...but instead of striking out on my own, I had to follow somebody else's. Instead of striking out on my own, I had conformed to a way of life and modes of thought that had often seemed alien. As a result, I found myself in a wasteland, and inauthentic existence, in which I struggled mightily but fruitlessly to do what I was told..."desiring this man's gift and that man's scope." I had too clear a preconceived idea of what I was supposed to be, and was not open to new possibilities. So again I got lost in the wasteland. (269)

• These were professions that brought fulfillment to other people, but they were not for me. Now circumstances had forced me to find my own track and enter the forest at a point that I myself had chosen, where there was no established path. I cannot pretend, however, that at the time I felt like an intrepid knight, striding heroically into the darkness...I had no idea that I was about to "turn again"...It is only now, after more than a decade of study, that I can understand what happened. (270)

• Hyam Maccoby...had told me that in most traditions, faith was not about belief but about practice. Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, and ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they conform to some metaphysical, scientific, or historical reality but because they are life enhancing...Their purpose is to compel us to act in such a way that we bring out our own heroic potential. (270)

• In the course of my studies, I have discovered that the religious quest is not about discovering "the truth" or "the meaning of life" but about living as intensely as possible here and now. The idea is not to latch on to some superhuman personality or to "get to heaven" but to discover how to be fully human - hence the images of the perfect or enlightened man, or the deified human being. Archetypal figures such as Muhammad, the Buddha, and Jesus become icons of fulfilled humanity. God or Nirvana is not an optional extra, tacked on to our human nature. Men and women have a potential for the divine, and are not complete unless they realize it within themselves. A passing Brahmin priest once asked the Buddha whether he was a god, a spirit or an angel None of these, the Buddha replied; "I am awake!"(270-1)

• Thus, the myth of the hero shows that it is psychologically damaging to live in the wasteland. If you slavishly follow somebody else's ideas, you will be impoverished and impaired...Blind obedience and unthinking acceptance of authority figures may make an institution work more smoothly, but the people who live under such a regime will remain in an infantile, dependent state. (271)

• All the traditions tell us, one way or another, that we have to leave behind our inbuilt selfishness, with its greedy fears and cravings. We are, the great spiritual writers insist, most fully ourselves when we give ourselves away, and it is egotism that holds us back from that transcendent experience that has been called God, Nirvana, Brahman, or the Tao. (279)

• Silence itself had become my teacher...Theology is -- or should be -- a species of poetry, which read quickly or encountered in a hubbub of noise makes no sense. You have to open yourself to a poem with a quiet, receptive mind, in the same way as you might listen to a difficult piece of music. It is no good trying to listen to a late Beethoven quartet or read a sonnet by Rilke at a party. You have to give it your full attention, wait patiently upon it, and make an empty space for it in your mind. (284)

• The religious traditions have all stressed the importance of silence. They have reminded the faithful that these truths are not capable of a simply rational interpretation. Scared texts cannot be perused like a holy encyclopedia, for clear information about the divine. This is not the language of everyday speech or of logical, discursive prose. (285)

• ...I think that I was lucky not to have studied theology or comparative religion at university, where I would have had to write clever papers and sit examinations, get high marks, and aim for a good degree. The rhythm of study would have been wrong -- at least for me. In theology, I am entirely self-taught, and if this makes me an amateur, that need not necessarily be all bad. After all, an amateur is, literally, "one who loves," and I was, day by solitary day, hour by silent hour, falling in love with my subject. (287)

• In every tradition, I was discovering, people turned to art when they tried to express or evoke a religious experience: to painting, music, architecture, dance or poetry. They rarely attempted to define their apprehension of the divine in logical discourse or in the scientific language of hard fact. Like all art, theology is an attempt to express the inexpressible...If you are bent on proving that your own tradition alone is correct, and pour scorn on all other points of view, you are interjecting self and egotism into your study, and the texts will remain closed.(288)

• Do not attach yourself to any particular creed exclusively, so that you may disbelieve all the rest; otherwise you will lose much good, nay, you will fail to recognize the real truth of the matter. God, the omnipresent and omnipotent, is not confined to any one creed, for, he says, "Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah." Everyone praises what he believes; his god is his own creature, and in praising it he praises himself. Consequently he blames the beliefs of others, which he would not do if he were just, but his dislike is based on ignorance.
  - Ibn al-Arabi

• Compassion does not, of course, mean to feel pity or to condescend, but to feel with. (290)

• ...the late Canadian scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith...had make his students live according to Muslim law when he was teaching Islamic studies...Because, Cantwell Smith believed, you could not understand the truth of a religion by simply reading about its beliefs. (291)

• To believe or not to believe: that is surely the religious question, is it not? Well...no. To my very great surprise, I was discovering that some of the most eminent Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians and mystics insisted that God was not an objective fact, was not another being, and was not an unseen reality like the atom, whose existence could be empirically demonstrated. Some went so far as to say that it was better to say that God did not exist, because our notion of existence was too limited to apply to God...Our notion of a personal God is one symbolic way of speaking about the divine, but it cannot contain the far more elusive reality. (291-292)

• But did that mean that we could think what we liked about God? No. Here again, the religious traditions were in unanimous agreement. The one and only test of a valid religious idea, doctrinal statement, spiritual experience, or devotional practice was that it must lead directly to practical compassion. If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express this sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel or self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology...

• In killing Muslims and Jews in the name of God, the Crusaders had simply projected their own fear and loathing onto a deity which they had created in their own image and likeness, thereby giving this hatred a seal of absolute approval. A personalized God can easily lead to this type of idolatry, which is why the more thoughtful Jews, Christians, and Muslims insisted that while you could begin by thinking of God as a person, God transcended personality as "he" went beyond all other human categories. (293)

• ...the whole of Western theology had been characterized by an inappropriate reliance upon reason alone, ever since the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Rationalism had achieved such spectacular results that empirical reason came to be regarded as the sole path to truth, and Western people started to talk about God as an objective, demonstrable fact like any other. The more intuitive disciplines of mythology and mysticism were discredited. (294)

• As a very early Buddhist poem puts it: "May our loving thoughts fill the whole world; above, below, across -- without limit a boundless goodwill toward the whole world, unrestricted, free of hatred and enmity." We are liberated from personal likes and dislikes that limit our vision, and are able to go beyond ourselves. (296)

• This insight was not confined to Buddhism, however. The late Jewish scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel once said that when we put ourselves at the opposite pole of ego, we are in the place where God is. The Golden Rule requires that every time we are tempted to say or do something unpleasant about a rival, an annoying colleague, or a country with which we are at war, we should ask ourselves how we should like this said of or done to ourselves, and refrain. In that moment we would transcend the frightened egotism that often needs to wound or destroy others in order to shore up the sense of ourselves. If we lived in such a way on a daily, hourly basis, we would not only have no time to worry overmuch about whether there was a personal God "out there"; we would achieve constant ecstasy, because we would be ceaselessly going beyond ourselves, our selfishness and greed. If our political leaders took the Golden Rule seriously into account, the world would be a safer place. (296-7)

• The silence in which I live has also opened my ears and eyes to the suffering of the world. In silence, you begin to hear the note of pain that informs so much of the anger and posturing that pervade social and political like. Solitude is also a teacher. (297)

• I tremble for our world, where, in the smallest ways, we find it impossible, as Marshall Hodgson enjoined, to find room for the other in our minds. If we cannot accommodate a viewpoint in a friend without resorting to unkindness, how can we hope to heal the terrible problems of our planet? (298)

• I learn that ego is at the heart of all pain. When I get beyond this for a few moments, I fell enlarged and enhanced --  just as the Buddha promised. (298)

• In a relationship, you constantly have to go beyond yourself. Each day you have to forgive something, each day you have to put yourself to one side to accommodate your partner. looking after somebody else means that you have to give yourself away. (298)

• ...you must not practice the spirituality of empathy simply in order to get something for yourself. I am sure that this is what Jesus meant when he told people to love their enemies. You have to be prepared to extend your compassionate interest where there is no hope of a return. This is probably what T. S. Eliot meant when he prayed, "Teach us to care and not to care" -- without interjecting yourself into your concern. And abuse feeds back into the Golden Rule. It reminds me what it is like for people in our world who are constantly reviled and misrepresented...It seems that the inner dynamic of all these great religious traditions can work effectively only if you do not close your mind and heart to other human beings. (299-300)

• And yet the very absence I felt so acutely was paradoxically a presence in my life, When you miss somebody very intensely, they are in a sense, with you all the time. They often fill your mind and heart more than they do when they are physically present. (300)

• If we try to hold on to our partial glimpses of the divine, we cut it down to our own size and close our minds. Like it or not, our human experience of anything or anybody is always incomplete: there is usually something that eludes us, some portion of experience that evades our grasp. We used to think that science would answer all our questions and solve all the mysteries, but the more we learn, the more mysterious our world becomes. (302)

• What is vital to all of the traditions, however, is that we have a duty to make the best of the only thing that remains to us -- ourselves. Our task now is to mend our broken world; if religion cannot do that, it is worthless. And what our world needs now is not belief, not certainty, but compassionate action and practically expressed respect for the sacred value of all human beings, even our enemies. (304)

• The September apocalypse was a revelation -- an "unveiling" of a reality that had been there all the time but which we had not seen clearly enough before: we live in one world. (304)

Out of clutter, find simplicity.
From discord, find harmony.
In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.

- Albert Einstein

Everyone wants economic growth, but nobody wants change.

+ wish list:

• economic growth that doesn't result in environmental (and cultural) destruction;
• people being mindful of the earth;
• people NOT blindly chasing a goal;
• people taking a breather once in a while;
• "무지개를 쫓다 세상 아름다운 풍경들을 놓치지 않는 것."