NOTES TO =SC_E_AA5 , WHICH IS THE 'FLYING EDIT' OF =SC_AA5, WHICH IS THE VERBATIM INPUT OF TANSCRIPTION RSC MS. AA5 (Notes to =sc_ee5 are Deep6'd to =scsaaa5 References in =sc_aa5 to those notes are deleted from this Flying Edit. ) (eaa5-1) Me, never having raised children, I go a little crazy when I hear a child crying. Wittgenstein once wrote, in notes published posthumously in 'Culture and Value', that there is such rage and terror in an infant's cries. I think that is why people hit their little children -- they can't bear that despair. On a much lighter note: One day when I stopped by the Witts for a few warm words and maybe something to eat or drink -- Emunah Witt's first words, whenever I stopped by, would be, 'How can I help you ' -- she said, I have to out for 15 minutes, please watch the baby, it's no problem, she's sleeping. So of course the baby wakes up and starts crying. I try to reason with her, though I'm not really sure about touching her. It doesn't help. I open the door to the street. An Israeli girl is passing by. I show her the baby and say, in my few words of Hebrew, what do I do. She says, I don't know. I sort of say, You must know, you're a woman. So soon Emunah comes back, and indicates, a bit amused, that this was not so great an existential crisis. The baby is easily reassured, though I am somewhat less so. (eaa5-2) Now there is a sort of depression where one -- "over and over and over and over and OVER" as Frank Sinatra expresses it in song -- tries mentally to undo something that happened, especially if one blames one's own decision for making it happen. I went through that for at least a half year at the age of 13, when I changed from an exhilerating progressive private school, to a deadening public (ie, state_run) school. It seemed to be that my depression corresponded to what Stephen Vincent Benet noted as Abraham Lincoln's 'black moods'. ( We had read Benet's 'John Brown's Body' in school the year before.) But that was paychologically so unpleasant a state that I have never let myself feel it again. I went through subsequent depressions with 'blunted affect', feeling just about nothing. So this does not fit RSC's category of 'living sadness'. But I think RSC may have some gaps and inconsistencies in this lecture. (eaa5-3) If that was Reb Nachman's reasoning -- and that's a question one cannot resolve without having at hand the Text from which RSC is here teaching -- then Reb Nachman does not seem to have been a Master. He seems to have had some very high insights mixed with unresolved neuroses. And a mind capable of great acuity and precision, and an imagination capable of beautiful fantasies. (Eaa5-4) When he was a college student, my father used to answer the telephone, "It's your nickel, you speak first." So one day the voice at the other end of the line said, "Do you know who this is? This is the Dean of the College." My father replied, "Do you know who THIS is?" The Dean replied, "No --- " "Thank heaven!" said my father, and slammed down the phone. (eaa5-5) PVK says, a hobo is not the free_est man walking the earth, the freeest man is maybe a householder who sits inside all day tied to his "ball and chain". (eaa5-6) This is a very important teaching to try to remember during a certain sort of manic nervous breakdown, when one's ordinary dithering increases in frequency to a point at which one can do nothing, for whatever one decides to do, the mind comes up with ways in which it might fail -- this is the psycho_pathologic analogue of the epistemologic position of fallibilsm, brought to a head by Hume -- and also, one's attunement keeps switching from one option to another, so first Mary seems like my Destined Soulmate, and then Jane does, so I cannot decide which to marry, and meanwhile Mary and Jean are out trying to have a quiet cup of tea and hoping I will maybe get my act together before they both go back to the USA and marry Republicans, (Cows Defend Us!). (eaa5-7) [ Must have been one of those fast-growing potseeds I put in the flower pot when the cop come by to ask if had I license to sell that cow. ] I'll tell you later, OK? REJOINDER: "It's very pertinent; we're talking about distraction." (eaa5-8) [ A rather elegant point, a bit of a meta. This chick is maybe a mathematician from away across the Bay. ] (eaa5-9r) REFERENCE: PiRQeI AvOT 3:7 (Metsudah Siddur, Ashkenaui) Rabbi Yaakov says: One who walks on the road while he is stuying and interrupts his study to exclaim, How beautiful is this tree. How fine is this field' the Scrpture regards him as if he sins against himself." PiRQeI AvOT G:Z ... RaBI Y'aQov AOMeR : Ha_M__Ha_LeKh B_DeRReKh V_ShONeH V_M_PsIQ M_MShNaT_O V_AOMeR "MaH NAeH AILoN ZeH, NAeH NIR ZeH" -- M_'aLeH 'aLIV Ha_KaTUv K_ALU M_TChIV B_NeFeSH_O So the word in question is V_M_PsIQ M_MShNaT_O translated here "and interrupts his study" RSC recalls it imprecisely as; HaLIMeD M_PSQ RSC then seems to focus on 'cut off' , not merely as cutting off one's study, which is what the text seems to me to say, but rather, as being in some sense cut off from the world, or his soul. And that seems to me an interesting but forced reading. So I'm not sure that RSC's apologetics to nature lovers for this passage will work. And I must say, I'm rather bored with orthodox apologetics, I find more spiritual depth in starting from the assumption that the sacred scriptures are revealed through human agency, and hence apt to include errors. Incidentally, a field ain't inherently beautiful, so someone who remarks on the beauty of a field would seem to be thinking of its financial or anyhow agricultural value, and that would be a bit of bringdown form studying Mishnaos or whatever. On the other hand, if (as is my impression) the tree in question is specified as an Israel oak (Alon), and if accordingly a fruit tree could not have been the designata, then 'how beautiful is this tree' refers only to its aesthetic and spiritual aspects. ------------------------------------------------------------- (eaa5-10) One should note that here RSC is not dicussing the topic of tfilin, he is using tfilin as a sort of 'ritual metaphor' to support his point about the need of 'tie_ing' onself to whatever one undertakes, in order to ensure that one completes it. So one could say: from a theologic perspective he is discussing the significance of tfilin; from the perspective of philosophic conceptual analysis he is discussing the concept of 'tie_ing' and from a psychologic perspective he is discussing the need to, in general, tie oneself to the completion of one's undertakings. Now I think this is typical of his teaching. That means that he may use the same 'ritual metaphor' -- tfilin, or any of the Festivals (Hagim) , or whatnot -- to support a variety of points. And that may seem confusing to someone who expecs an exegesis of Jewish religious ritual. For from that perspective it may ganerate apparent inconsistencies. Again, it may be much harder to makes sense of RSC's collective if not not collected teachings, that I first assumed. (eaa5-11) [ I think RSC's 'punctuation remark' 'very strong' is sometimes used as a warning that what he has presented is a relatively strict teaching, to be undertaken only by those with the strenght and energy for such strictness. ] (eaa5-12) [ That is: Bearing in mind that that Hebrew is essentially written entirely in consonants, with the vowels regarded merely as optional aids to pronounciation -- then the same three letters, in different order, are used both for the word Kosher -- healthy, or diestarily acceptable -- and for Shekar -- Liar . ( Aleph and Vav (though not Ayin, which, except in Yidish, is not a vowel but a glottal_stop) would seem to be exceptions. But I think one can show from the "Read not" passage in Siddur, that those are considered optional letters, which can be removed or inserted as needed. ) That is -- I cannot find the passage in Siddur at the moment so I do this from whatever I have at hand of my memory -- It is a fundamental principle of orthodox religious Judaism that the Torah is Divinely Revealed, and hence that every word of it is true and unchangeable. Hence not even a single letter can be changed. Very elaborate and ingenious devices were used to ensure that no changes had been introduced when copying a Sefer Torah. Yet in this passge an accepted Rabbi is quoted as giving two examples where pasages from the Torah may be changed -- not to correct an identified error -- and even that is greatly hedged with safeguards -- but to support an alternative interpretation. In one example, as I recall, an Aleph is removed, in the other example, a Vav is inserted. The implication seems to be -- although properly this point should be made, not with two examples, but with an Aristotelian quadrad of the 4 possible combinations (Aleph yes, Aleph no, Vav yes, Vav no) -- that both Aleph and Vav can be both added and removed from the Scripture without essentially changing that Scripture as reealed truth. Now that would be blasphemy, unless Aleph and Vav were regarded as vowels, and vowels regarded as inessential to the sacred text, as merely devices to facilitate pronunciation. Rearranging letters and then drawing implications from the pairs of words that can be made from the same letters in different order, is or was a much_used -- intellectual recreation, one might say -- within orthodox Jewish religious thought. Personally, from my college background in problem_oriented (not historically_oriented) western philosophy, I prefer to draw analogies directly, rather than through what to me are circuitious routes of proof_text and of -- I think the word is gematria. But then, I do not believe that conceptual points can nor need be justified by reference to sacred texts. RABBI LEIBOWITZ: "Judy wants to know what happens to women?" [ I think that this -- the question of how women establish the spiritual link which for men is established by tfilin -- was only the secondary force of an essentially metaphysical problem -- resolving the paradox of establishing a spiritual link through a physical medium. ] (eaa5-13) [ As_it_is_said, "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." (1970s Graffiti in and around Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts ) ] (eaa5-14) [ Which, incidentally, is not a forgeone conclusion. PVK notes that samadhi, ego-loss, really does mean that you relinquish control over yourself. So you really are up there floating around, just hoping that you'll lose enough gas to come back down to earth. And that I guess is the Tibetan warning, "lest the silver chord be broken, and the golden bowl be shattered". So don't play around with this one. I think this is what we called 'ego-loss' in the LSD days -- if you popped a pill and didn't get there, you could ask for your money back, or a free coupon for an orange popsile -- which is why I never took more than a half-cap -- got me up to the Archetypal level, but then all the Freudian monsters came out from under the rug -- which is why I quit psychedelics. ù eaa5-q) It sounds look a good idea. I'll have to give it a real try. I tried it once a little bit, usual nightmares clicked in. Can't have been the schnapps I took to wash down the brown rice with mustard. I mean, its 4_Ming time, end of the month and no potatoes. Thing is, I'm starting to trust Reb Nachman less and less. Not that I ever took him for anything like a guide. But I'm not entirely confident that he ain't faking it a bit. This is Tolstoy's story, in 23 Tales, of the missionary who visits these guys on a desert isle, and tries to teach him the ABC's of religion, but figues its pretty much hopeless, and sails away, but then they come running after him, over the water, saying excuse me, but could you please go over that again. Agnieska has a Polish saying, "It doesn't have legs." I took a look at that Tolstoy story once when I was, let us say high, and there was nothing to stand on, nothing to hold onto. As R. Shlomo used to say, "It's cute and sweet , but --- " By the way, that's why I turned to religion. I'd dropped half a cap of LSD, got up there with no-one to hold my hand, and realized that only religion handed out high-altitude stepping stones. For medium altitude classical music might do. ================================================================