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Psalm I.11

He came back from his prayer to the cat on his lap. He fed the cat, he let her go out to the moonlight, and he hid in the pages of Abraham. Like one newly circumcized, he hid himself away, he waited in the trust of healing. Faces of women appeared, and they explained themselves to him, connecting feature to character, beauty to kindness. Various families came to him and showed him all the chairs he might sit in. ‘How can I say this gently?’ he said. ‘Though I love your company, your instructions are wasted here. I will always chose the woman who carries me off. I will always sit with the family of loneliness.’ Saying many words of encouragement his visitors departed, and he entered more deeply into his hiding. He asked for his heart to be focused toward the source of mercy, and he lifted up a corner, and he moved a millimetre forward under the shadow of the tabernacle of peace. His cat came back from the moonlight, flew softly to her place on his lap, and waited for him to come back from his prayer.

We are still wandering around a domestic realm here as with the previous psalm; feeding the cat, the social pressure of the visiting families… Though literaly jewish in its expression this psalm has buddhist sensitivity. It seems to want to express the process where prayer or meditation is distracted by the communalities of life. The families offering their dauthers remind us of Buddha's temptation by the daughters of Mara. Surely there must be equivalent stories in the Bible.

The cat and moonlight, seem to represent poetry in that they are allowed in the closed intimate circle. But women receive a different treament, certain conditions have to be met for them to enter the circle. They may be a representation of the material world? So poetry is accepted in the realm of the spiritual? As a source, or as an expression, or both… Just some thought…

So this psalm seems to express the desire to find balance between the spiritual and the material. But in fact not only the desire but the fact that balance is at hand.

I would like to hear from an english speaker what the expression «I will always chose the woman who carries me off» means in this context.

Hi Simon,

I would like to hear from an english speaker what the expression «I will always chose the woman who carries me off» means in this context.

I imagine it means he follows only the woman who sexually transfixes and delights him, and leaves/hides from everyone else who might enable him to make a different sort of connection or be less lonely.

Perhaps the cat on his 'lap' hints at the cat being something to do with his sexuality? He hides in the pages of Abraham, the Bible, but the instructions are wasted cos the 'cat' returns after his prayer?

Diane

Couldn't it mean also to carry him off to the spiritual realm? as opposed to an arranged mariage of convenience that would keep him entangled in the material realm.

I will always sit with the family of loneliness

So his exile is consciously chosen as was mentioned previously.

I will always chose the woman who carries me off.

His soul.

I had a dream last night that I had a dog biting on my hand following me around. I liked the dog and I knew that he would never bite hard enough to hurt me but enjoyed that he was there.

I wouldn't have remembered the dream if I didn't see shortly after awakening that a study was just completed that showed that it is much better for your health to have a dog rather than a cat.

Then I saw 1.11 and saw that it was talking about a cat. I don't know what to make of that but I liked the relaxed atmosphere of the prayer and of it being a time to just sit and relax. I was a little worried that a prayer would appear that I felt made me restless to say a lot and this one doesn't and that is good because I am leaving wed morn to go and sit for ten days in silence at a meditation retreat and I will go feeling that things are kind of peaceful in this place where I have found myself wandering about.

The part about the one who takes him away reminds me of the poem called Dear Roshi about the woman he met that takes him away. Who looks like a middle eastern woman.

I wouldn't have remembered the dream if I didn't see shortly after awakening that a study was just completed that showed that it is much better for your health to have a dog rather than a cat.

Was the study sponsored by a dog food company?

Okay, back to this. I like the Dear Roshi connection you've made here.

Looking forward to your returning from your meditation retreat, refreshed and even more peaceful. I hope your time goes well for you there, Jack.


~ Lizzy

The daugthers offered for mariage by the families would mean settling down.

The woman who carries him off would mean settling up.

(sorry Jack, couldn't resist)

Simon wrote:The daugthers offered for mariage by the families would mean settling down.
The woman who carries him off would mean settling up.
(sorry Jack, couldn't resist)

Good one Simon

I love dreams.

Carl Jung suggests that all "characters" in a dream are aspects of ones personal psychological makeup. Not make-up!

He would probably suggest nothing to you about what that dog in your dream represents. He would ask you to figure it out yourself!!!
But I am not that wise!

So this is how I would interpret your dream, if it were mine.
In my case, when I dream about a dog it seems to represent "domesticated wolf"; ie; that natural part of my nature that is still wildly innocent, but tamed and innocent rather than wild and harmful.
If that dream was mine I too would be happy. I would feel that the games I get up to are a little adventurous, but, not designed to hurt anyone...just fun.
The dream suggests to me that your unconscious is saying
"your on the right track, Jack. Enjoy life as your innocence comes through...not nastiness or severity.

Cats, on the other hand,(symbolic) think they own the house and in Leonard's verse 1.11, seem to symbolise the "world of the opposites", the rational world, the world that people call "real" and your Buddhist friends call illusion.
Cats, according to Tibetan Buddhists are "psychic" so in this sense they have the ability (symbolic) of living in either world, but there on the edge of existence /non-existence, they "chose" everyday reality. They are not so "innocent" as they exercise reason (symbolic).

The dog is good. It is fun.
The cat..... Differentiates and chooses this or that World. Not so innocent.

"a study was just completed that showed that it is much better for your health to have a dog rather than a cat."

Perhaps the innocence of a happy dog is healthier, psychologically, than the 1/2 wisdom of "reality"?

Your little asides/stories are great, Jack.

Matj

Just as I felt about I.10, I also find I.11 quite baffling, and I’m afraid what I have to say will come out rather confused. As several people above suggested, a symbolic interpretation is probably called for, but a concrete one is also possible to some extant.

The narrator made progress in his quest to regain his tradition. He still doesn’t feel secure in it, and there are often setbacks. But he is making some progress nevertheless, even if only a minute one. The “tabernacle of peace” is a post-biblical expression, which appears in the Jewish Prayer Book, especially in the prayer recited on Sabbath Eve (and on holidays’ eve), in which this expression appears several times, including when the community entreats: “Spread over us Your tabernacle of mercy and peace”. The narrator in I.11 enters the mode of prayer for long periods, detaching himself from his surroundings. Surprisingly perhaps, the actual word “prayer” did not appear much in the book so far (although some synonyms were used); I remember it from I.4 and not much else. But I.11 begins and ends with it.

The second sentence of I.11 mentions Abraham, and the next sentence speaks of circumcision. According to Genesis, Abraham was the first man to be circumcised, and at a very advanced age, which must have been extremely painful. It is a trauma that requires healing, but the narrator trusts this process. In the Bible, circumcision also has a beautiful metaphorical usage, of cleansing the heart, for example, Deuteronomy 4:16: “Circumcise then the foreskin of your heart, and stiffen your neck no more”.

But circumcision obviously has a sexual connotation, and indeed he moves here directly to speak about women. These women offer not only beauty but also kindness, but he rejects them in favor of “the woman who carries me off”, who, as Diane said, seems the be the sexually alluring woman, with whom he can have a risky, highly-charged short-term affair, rather than a stable relationship. However, as Mat says, there is also the possible equation of the woman with the soul. Jack drew our attention to “Dear Roshi” (from Book of Longing, p. 23); this “poem” is hand-written next to a drawing of a voluptuous woman, in the familiar style of the temple sculptures of India. When LC apologizes to Roshi that he cannot help him “because I met this woman”, does he hint to his flirt with Indian philosophy, which drew him away from Zen practice? It would be typical to him to associate spiritual quest with eroticism, and it would also give the joke a double meaning. But maybe that’s too easy. I’m still not sure that I figured out what he actually says here about women.

And we also find here again the theme of loneliness and seclusion. I don’t know if his exile is consciously chosen, as Simon puts it, or a state that he finds himself in and cannot find the way out. To me it feels like the basic human condition, according to a certain view; even among people one can feel alone, as we know. No, I don’t think he chooses to be alone, rather that he is compelled to be so.

Hi all-
I'm finally back from my (minor) eye surgery and "seeing" very well-though, I'm not sure that it helps me "see" what LC is meaning. The one benefit of not being able to stare into computer screens and required to rest my eyes was that I was able to look at poetry and then close my eyes and think for awhile.

For some reason, I think that 1-10 and 1-11 are connected closely.

In 1-11, we have the narrator espousing a sort of generational heritage, but unlike most Biblical geneaologies, it moves forward rather than backward like the ordinary Biblical model that moves backward to suggest authenticity or relation to a prophet or vision figure. It moves forward to Augustine, a clearly non-Jewish figure and to his son and daughter. I also note that the emphasis is placed on the song that is *not* known to him or his son and the nations that have *not* known you.

The language drew me back to "Lines From My Grandfather's Journal" where the narrator speaks of covenant:

There was a promise to me from a rainbow, there was a covenant with me after a flood drowned all my friends, inundated every field: the ones we had planted with food and the ones we had left untilled.

And later, of images of God:

You raged before them
like the dreams of their old time God

.

and

The rich old treasures still glow in the sand under the tumbled battlements; wrapped in a starry flag a master-God floats through the firmament like a childless kite.

Then, the narrator speaks of the beauty of his heritage:

There were beautiful rules: a way to hear thunder, praise a wise man, watch a rainbow, learn of tragedy.

Now, moving back to BoM, we have the narrator saying:

You placed me in this mystery

I think that the many notions of the absolute, in particular, the anthropomorphic God, the father figure is not working for the narrator. How can he, father himself-as Simon has so movingly portrayed-"expound the interior life of god?"

Doron, perhaps, here is where the existence of the higher levels of the Kabbalah and our inability to grasp this lofty notion starts to come into focus for the narrator.

And now you feed my household, you gather them to sleep, to dream, to dream freely, you surround them with the fence of all that I have seen. Sleep my son, my small daughter, sleep-this night, this mercy has no boundaries.

Doesn't this resonate with the same sentiments that gave Hamlet pause in his famous speech? Here is the existentially pure moment. Plus we have the opposing notions of the fence with no boundaries and mercy's place somewhere herein.

I'm hoping that my writing has some clarity to it, but as Doron has said, this is such a deep passage, mystic as Matj says, that it is difficult to portray in words.

If you contrast this with 1-11, where he comes back from this revery to the cat on his lap. I wonder if the cat symbolizes independance and also, perhaps, the cruder association with the sexual pussy. He feeds the cat, lets it go out to the moonlight. I'm sorry but I've read too much Romantic poetry and every time I read "moonlight" I think of some transfiguring force like in Keats' "Eve of St. Agnes." The narrator retreats also to his transfiguring force, the pages of Abraham.

When I read, "Various families came to him and showed him all the chairs he might sit in" I'm wondering if this is some reversal of the hospitality principle of setting a place for Elijah at the passover meal? Or perhaps more concretely as someone else suggested, that this forced hospitality continued to drive the narrator away from his musings on the absolute and he moves "a millimetre forward under the shadow of the tabernacle of peace." Perhaps back toward ordinary life. And like the cat, he comes back from the moonlight, and comes back from his prayer.

I have a number of other thoughts, but this is probably confusing enough.



Joe

mat james wrote:Perhaps the innocence of a happy dog is healthier, psychologically, than the 1/2 wisdom of "reality"?

Your little asides/stories are great, Jack.

Thanks. I liked the words you said concerning my dreams as the dog did appear to be like a wolf.

I will be coming back in about 12 days . The best to you and all who are travelling through this thread with you. Maybe when I return I will be enlightened as I think that was in the brocedure for this meditation retreat I am going to.

jack

I will always sit with the family of loneliness

"The flight of the alone, to the Alone." Plotinus (around 250 A.D.)

It could be interpreted that Leonard's "family of lonliness" is the individual soul in prayer/unity with his God.
It could also be extended to include all those who seek isolation ("40 days in the desert" types, ) in order to contact the Lone-ranger, God.

These last 2 verses, 1,10 and 1,11, as DB, Simon and others suggest, need to be read on several levels if the verses are to be understood.
That multi-dimensional aspect of Leonard's work is what makes it outstanding and alluring...it is what makes it poetry of the highest order.

There are many references to the works of the early Christian mystics in these verses, as well as the Jewish ones that you are alluding to.
My guess is that at the time of writing this book he was fascinated and influenced by many early Christian writers (mystics).

Plotinus, above, was not a Christian and by all accounts not very religious but more philosophical, a neo-Platonist. This non-theistic perspective may have had some appeal to the young psuedo-apostate, Leonard, and I sense the influence here in these verses (1,10+1,11) and, to push a point, earlier verses also.
If you are interested, do a google on "Plotinus" and his chapter/essay "The Ascent to Union with the One", and you may understand why I rave on so!.

Carry on Comrads!

Matj

Joe Way wrote:I'm sorry but I've read too much Romantic poetry and every time I read "moonlight" I think of some transfiguring force like in Keats' "Eve of St. Agnes."

Joe

In Hallelujah LC wrote:Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you

…

There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

There is this clear feeling of crossing a border between worlds. Beauty and moonlight (indeed romantic themes) have the power to everthrow him. What does that mean? To overthrow his first level perception of reality and precipitate or elevate him to another realm? But the other realm may not be a goal in itself. He switches back and forth between the two realities which are both expressed as reverie.

Maybe it doen't matter which he hears
The holy or the broken Hallelujah.

That may be the secret of balance...


Nice to see you back Joe!