Singing the Way: Insights into Poetry & Spiritual Transformation (THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY SERIES) - Softcover

Laude, Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0941532747 ISBN 13: 9780941532747

Publisher: World Wisdom, 2005

Synopsis

This groundbreaking book underlines the primordial richness of language by focusing upon the spiritual qualities in poetry which serve to bridge the human and the Divine.

About this title

About the Author

Patrick Laude was born in France in 1958. He took an undergraduate degree in History and a graduate degree in Philosophy at the University of Paris-Sorbonne while a Fellow at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. He came to the US in the early eighties and obtained a Ph.D. in French literature in 1985. He is the author of numerous articles and several books dealing with the relationship between mysticism, symbolism and literature, as well as important spiritual figures such as Jeanne Guyon, Simone Weil, Louis Massignon and Frithjof Schuon. His works include Approches du Quiétisme (Tübingen, 1992), Massignon intérieur (L'Age d'Homme, Paris-Lausanne, 2001), The Way of Poetry (Oneonta Philosophy Studies, New York, 2001). He is also the co-editor of Dossier H Frithjof Schuon (L'Age d'Homme, Paris-Lausanne, 2001), and the co-author with Jean-Baptiste Aymard of Frithjof Schuon. Life and Teachings (SUNY Press, 2004). He is currently Professor of French at Georgetown University.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1: 1. HINDU POETICS The Liberating Word When discussing the philosophy and the methods of Hindu poetics, it is important at the outset to situate poetry within its anthropological and spiritual context. In this respect, one of the first principles that must be highlighted is the fact that Hindu poetics stands in sharp contrast with the ordinary contemporary European concept of poetry in that it cannot be dissociated from the goal of life, in view of which it is only a means. As Rene Daumal has rightly pointed out in his Rasa or Knowledge of the Self, "art is not an end in itself. It is a medium in service of sacred understanding." As modern men we tend to place an emphasis on the individual as the locus of creativity and potential or actual happiness; our perception of poetry is that of a free, spontaneous, and self-enhancing activity that draws its worth from allowing us to express ourselves independently of the constraints of a perceived usefulness or specific finality. In fact, poetry has tended to become a kind of antonym for the useful and the purposeful, while being on the other hand all the more closely associated with self-expression. Hindu poetics is predicated upon principles that are directly contrary to these assumptions. First, it lends reality and "seriousness" to poetry inasmuch as it may lead to what it perceives as the ultimate goal of life; and secondly, this goal is fundamentally identified with the transcending of the particular limitations of the egoic individuality, whether it be that of the poet, the auditor, or the reader. The Hindu weltanschauung and anthropology is articulated in a cohesive understanding of what makes human life worth living and gives to it its purpose. Traditionally, the Hindu world enumerates and acknowledges four of these "purposes": kama (pleasure), artha (wealth), dharma (duty or function), and moksha (spiritual liberation from existential bondage). As with most Indian quaternaries, however, these four goals should not be understood primarily as a hierarchical set of four elements (which they undoubtedly are on a certain level), but rather as a relative hierarchy of three terms that are both transcended and synthesized by a fourth. Accordingly, moksha clearly stands above any other purpose in Hindu life, and it also eminently includes in its realization the fulfillment of all other existential goals. In essence, moksha transcends and recapitulates all the other goals because the strength of the instinct of self-preservation " is there to be overcome by the higher faculties of reason and self-control" and "reason itself must be disintegrated and transcended in the pure vision of the One which is the real self and true Being." All positive aspects of reality are "legitimate" in the overarching scheme of manifestation; but man, in so far as he is a locus of consciousness of Atman, the immanent and absolute Subject, needs to outgrow his lower aspirations. According to this view of reality, the "I" that ordinary consciousness posits as the de facto alpha and omega of its identity, is nothing but a mistaken distortion of the real "I," the only Subject that is. From this principle, it results that the ego-consciousness cannot be the fundamental end of artistic and poetic creation. Rene Daumal, who is quite aware of the fundamental gap separating the two visions we have sketched above, draws a suggestive contrast that highlights their diverging orientations: Modern man believes himself adult, complete, having no more to do until death, than to gain and spend goods (money, vital forces, learning), without these transactions affecting that which calls itself "I." The Hindu regards himself as an entity to complete, a false vision to rectify, a composite of substances to transform, a multiplicity to unify. If such is the finality of human destiny, how should poetry be situated within the process of development affecting human consciousness? To begin with, let us remark that the exercise of poetry appears able to be an instrument of fulfillment with respect to the first three goals that we have mentioned. Poetry is undoubtedly a source of delight (kama) both operatively and aesthetically; it may also be (albeit in a less direct manner) the means of acquisition of wealth or goods (artha); and it undoubtedly corresponds to a vocational function (dharma) for the poet who exercises his gift. More importantly however, poetry corresponds to a way of access to moksha in its own right. In other words, the purely contemplative understanding and practice of poetry constitutes the entelechy of that art. Poetry, an activity that modern thinking associates with individual and self-justifying enjoyment, is in fact a path of liberation from the bondage of the individual ego in so far as the latter is experienced as a veil upon the nature of the true Subject.

Edition details

• Publisher: World Wisdom
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0941532747
• ISBN 13: 9780941532747
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240