While looking for another file, I ran into these definitions I wrote for myself several years ago. At least I think I wrote them. There was no indication that they were taken from any other source. Basically these definitions describe how I understand and use these terms. They may not be how other people understand or use these terms or methods. So be it. I am certainly interested in knowing more about the sources and uses of these things, but they are not really immediately relevant to me. I am simply trying to find ways to articulate how it is that I understand and work with things. By whatever name, these three things describe my approach to Buddhism:
Deconstruction: The methods of a recent movement of literary criticism. It means that one can not take the apparent meaning of a text at face value because the assumptions and use of language by the author(s) of any given text may be very different from our own assumptions and ways of using language. Therefore, in order to properly understand a text, one must deconstruct it. In other words, analyze it in order to discover how the text may have been constructed in ways that may be very different from the ways in which we would construct a text in order to generate meaning. By doing this, we can get closer to the intended meaning of the text.
Note as of 9/7/07: I would add that deconstruction, as I understand it, is also a way of realizing and taking into account the contexts, assumptions, biases, insights, and oversights that we ourselves bring to a text when we read it. Even though what we may get out of a text may not be what the original author(s) intended, that does not make it any less valuable. In fact, a text that is multivalent and provocative enough to inspire many different understandings over time and in different cultures and contexts is all the more impressive - though also all the more ambiguous and less able to provide a basis for any single authoritative reading.
Demythologize: A method of modern Christian (primarily Protestant) theology. This method is used when confronting supernatural elements in a religious narrative or teaching (such as the existence of angels or devils or the workings of miracles) which seem unbelievable or logically incoherent. Instead of simply dismissing these supernatural elements, demythologization is a process of trying to uncover the metaphorical meanings behind the myths and perhaps even the actual experiences which might have generated the myths.
Note as of 9/7/07: I would add that the existential impact on our lives of the images, symbols, states of being characterized by mythic archetypes and stories and so on is much greater at times than the impact of mere prosaic facts. Reality is what shapes our lives and our understanding and relationship to life, and the power of symbol, dream, archetype, myth, fancy, fears, dreams, and nightmares cannot compare to concrete facts that we never notice or pay attention to. This does not mean that we should not try to ground ourselves in fact and rational thinking. In fact, I think it is our responsibility to do so. It simply means that more often than not we are at the mercy of the chaotic and nebulous world of that which goes far beyond fact - this is sometimes horrific and sometimes exalting.
Post Modern: A contemporary movement within philosophy and the arts. Post Modernism is a confrontation with the limitations of the assumptions of modernism, especially the modernistic ideas of progress and the triumph of reason. Post Modernism attempts to recover the values and teachings of premodern and even primitive cultures in terms of present needs and circumstances. Post Modernism is also a recognition that in the present global community many different cultures and even different periods of these cultures can meet and either confront or complement one another in various unprecedented ways.
Note as of 9/7/07: In my mind at least, post-modernism is often accompanied by huge giant whopping servings of irony - sometimes on many levels at once. Just watch the Venture Brothers or anything by Joss Whedon.
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei
I love it when you use big words, Michael. Your fried-egghead friend, Byrd in LA
Posted by: Byrd in LA at September 10, 2007 03:42 PMUseful observations. I would note that these methods are not as new as we think them to be. In my essay on the PaRDeS (A Hebrew Acronym PRDS coupled with a Persian word for paradise) I studied the time frame of the methods involved and the belief of teachers that they date back to Classical Greece (and possibly older). To teach the literal meaning of a thing at an advanced level (legitimate esotericism) requires deconstructing and demythologizing it.
Those who actually intelligently taught using myth and legends did so while having a "gut" understanding of what those myths meant metaphorically and in their own context.
Indeed to this day Shaman and religious teachers from "primitive" cultures will talk about the metaphorical meaning of their stories even as they might claim they have a "literal existence."
Consider further that a "literal existence" includes the world of our dreams and our imagination, and this link between metaphoric meaning, gut meaning, metaphysical and religious meaning becomes obvious. It is both a sign of awakening, and a sign that people lost insights at some point that these methods have to be rediscovered.
Chris
Posted by: chris at September 12, 2007 11:30 AMAnother thing, larger truths are difficult to describe. How does one describe a thing that is too big to see? Let us say that religious teachers know all too well that they need a science of "how to describe an elephant" to an assembly of blind men. They've already done the examination routine and have to cull through testimonials about how it is shaped like a rope, a parasol, a pillar, etceteras... So how do they explain it?
The "myths" we so patiently deconstruct were all constructed for a purpose in the first place. Perhaps what we need in post-modernity isn't simply deconstruction, but reconstruction. The physical structures of religion were built with the best science and engineering of religion that could be found; stupas, cathedrals, and mosques, all therefore represent wonderful science and have sturdy bones.
The religious structures; logic, narrative, etceteras... and however, are more like trenches, bullworks, walls, and fortresses than castles, stupas and Cathedrals; because the context of religious development has been war and not strait-forward competition for who has the best ideas and the best synthesis of ideas. The sages had to teach in this context, and constructed systems of belief designed to protect people from opponents, but not always designed to strait-forwardly teach enlightenment.
Therefore they have strong roots, but sometimes those roots include ideas that are anachronistic in peaceful times, and downright evil when the context is religious war. Buddhism's hermaneutics
combined with more secret transmissions from those same sages need to deconstruct those contexts so that we may rebuild more intelligently.
Deconstruction is necessary in this phase of the game, originally, because religion has anti-rational, illogical, triumphal, and fantastical interpretations of real life that can be interpreted violently if not deconstructed. The "end of the world" stuff; Mappo, escatology -- allows a kind of pure BS that is extremely dangerous if left unchecked. The real problem with modernity is that it threw out the baby with the bath water -- and people need heroes and heroic models to guide their lives. Thus moderns introduced poor substitutes for existing faulty myths.
Chris
Posted by: Chris at September 14, 2007 03:51 AM