Bruce Charlton's Notions

From Owen Barfield on CS Lewis (1989) ed. GB Tennyson, page 13:

Lewis had spent his early manhood striving in all sincerity to experience living what Alan Watts has called 'The Supreme Identity'. 

Lewis's very success in that endeavour - compared with the average run of idealists, who do not even make the attempt - proved to him that insofar as the experience is genuine and not merely a complacently fancied experience, it reveals itself as a theoretical truth but a pragmatical error. 

It is and can be an intellectual experience only. 

When it comes to the will, there is no identity, and the prayer must always be 'They will be done', just because my own will, if I look it squarely in the face, is a rag-bag of lusts and feeblenesses and terrors.  

Not for Lewis, therefore, are the lofty strivings of the twentieth-century Buddhist and his condescending smile as he contemplates Christianity and all other formulated religions.


This is also my conclusion. That 'twentieth-century Buddhists' - i.e. more generally Western advocates of Eastern deistic religions - are (to use another and blunter terminology) complacent hypocrites (i.e. do not rigorously practice what they preach) and self-aggrandising advocate of the dark side (because they refuse to acknowledge and repent their lusts, feeblenesses and terrors).

Harsh, I know; but that is my evaluation - on similar grounds as Barfield describes for Lewis. Here and now and for us; Buddhism and the like are not just an ineffectual spiritual dead-end; but an inducement to self-justified embrace of the dark powers - and thus associated with joining and fighting-with the wrong side in the unavoidable spiritual war. (As did Alan Watts.) 

For us; God must be personal, and our religion must be Christian. No alternative. Doing this - each of us, for his own life - is not straightforward; but the conclusion to be drawn from such difficulties to get to work on making it possible. 

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I am re-reading that most valuable of biographies - Father Seraphim Rose: his life and works, by Hieromonk Damascene - and was reminded of the vast damage done in the late twentieth century by spoiled priests.

Thomas Merton - 3.5 million hits on Google search
Alan Watts - 700K hits
Bede Griffiths - 200K hits

The likes of these were instrumental in setting up and encouraging the sixties counterculture, the sexual revolution, syncretic and New Age spirituality, and the fusion of radical Leftism with the project for world government, the 'peace movement' and suchlike utopian plans for 'heaven on earth'.

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The man who became Fr Seraphim was taught by Alan Watts in San Fransico during his pre-Orthodox Nietzschian beatnik era; the young Eugene Rose wrote to Merton, and followed his evolving apostasy with dismay.

Dom Bede Griffiths OSB had no connection with Fr Seraphim, so far as I know - but was a pupil and frequent correspondent of CS Lewis.

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My impression is that few people have done so much damage as these spoiled priests - who brought 'inside knowledge' of what they attacked.

All were talented, learned, charming, eloquent, energetic, excellent writers - which of course only made them vastly more dangerous when they crossed over to serve the dark side.

If we add to them the numerous less famous priests, pastors, monks, friars (especially them!), bishops, archbishops and a Pope who were to a significant and crucial degree covert apostates (mostly in the sense of re-writing traditional Christianity to suit modern sensibilities) - then it can be seen that these foes masquerading as allies, these wolves in lambs' clothing, constitute just about the most important servants of evil outside of Communism (from which they were, of course, not distinct).

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The lamest translation of the lamest poem ever written in the history of the world:

The old pond,
A frog jumps in:
Plop!

Matsuo Basho translated (ahem) by Alan Watts

from

http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/basho-frog.htm

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Are there any good Haiku in translation? I've read an inordinate number of the blimmin things, since I came across them heavily recommended by JD Salinger - and never found one that rose even to the level of mediocrity as a poem.

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