Jack Haas' poetic wonder-filled aphorisms

I like Jack Haas a lot. Never met him. Just know him through his books.

I've blogged about them here, here, here, and here. And now, here I go again. 

I'd stuck Haas' "The Dream of Being" under some other books. A few days ago it came to light, no worse for wear. I finished reading the book this morning.

As the front cover says, it's filled with aphorisms, ideograms, and aislings (vision poems). One of my here's has some passages from the book. 

I'm sharing more.

Haas has a great way of speaking about what can't be spoken about. He's a seeker who has a unique perspective on what can be found, and what can't.

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You wanted to be shown a picture of it before attempting to construct the puzzle, but then it would not be much of a puzzle, would it? You wanted to have no interpretation, and you ended up having an interpretation of having no interpretation.

You wanted to be without becoming, and to become without being. You desired only to do the doable, and only to know the knowable. You are afraid of not having what you do not have. You are afraid of having what you have.

You are afraid to brood upon the mystery, to cast away the meaning.

You have believed in your own untruths so thoroughly that to suddenly not believe in them would be tantamount to your own negation.

That you dwell in the hypothetical, that you conjecture, ponder, and consider, does this not prove how little you actually know? Speculation is the physiognomy of ignorance. After all, would a being who "knew,'" ever choose to surmise?

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What is it you seek anyway? To hold a truth within you?

But perhaps the only truth is the uncomfortable emptiness which lies so irrefutably inside of you.

And if poor you should choose to fill that honest vacancy, then your only truth will not be true, and, instead of being empty, you will be full of lies.

...You want to lose what you have, you want to gain what you do not have. You imagine yourself as if trading what you have for what you want. But really you have nothing except want.

And you are no match for the universe's skilled indifference. You try your best to haggle, but in the end you beg.

If you were a squirrel begging for stale peanuts in a city park, God would be a retired old curmudgeon with droopy jeans, who frequently smelled of whiskey, and was, on occasion, oblivious.

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We venerate the way the blind man hears and the way the deaf man sees -- because their senses become extraordinary through the compensation of a lacking.

But we do not revere what the fool tells us of wisdom, nor what the idiot tells us of knowledge. No, we listen only to the seers -- only to those whose vision is so clear that they have forgotten how hard it is to hear.

Isn't it possible that no truth explains the world as well as our honest questioning of it?

When, etymologically, did awe-full become awful? And how much can we trust a culture that decides the astonishing... horrid?

Is there not more wisdom in the helpless drool issuing from the silent, gaping mouths of wonderstruck fools, than in all the words, of all the wisemen, in all this wonder-parched world?

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The preacher stands up, walks to the pulpit, looks softly into the congregation, rolls his eyes to the ceiling, gapes unabashedly into the distance, shrugs his shoulders, and overturns his palms, as if humbly saying "Who knows?" And the sermon is over.

The worm devoureth the core, and yet the seed flourisheth.

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You have sought for a person of knowledge your whole life, forsaking everything without exclusion: family, friends, health, and comfort. 

Your search has been exhaustive and all-consuming, but without fruition, until finally you learn the whereabouts of a true sage, and set off on your last, desperate journey.

Having extended yourself beyond your limit, you finally arrive at your destination, and with your weak heart throbbing, you enter the hidden hermitage.

Misery! There is no one to be found. You are distraught.

And in the time it takes you to collapse under the stress of failure, another seeker, following the same arduous route as yourself, arrives to find you dying.

As he looks sorrowfully into your eyes you utter defeatedly "It doesn't make any sense."

Now, given all of this: given than this other person has also lost all that you have lost in the seeking, has also come the same distance and followed the same path as you, perhaps also knows only what you yourself know, and has also desired to find the same sage as you had sought, so as to right it all --

Does it matter that, as you resignedly exhale your final capitulative breath, you can hear the other person ecstatically declaring to you, "Master, I have found you, and your wisdom!"?

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There is a Way, but it only leads to the Way. 

There are no rewards, only delays; no oases, only mirage. There are only precarious stepping stones, there is no distant shore.

...Yea, there is a path but no destination; what we regard as a destination is simply ...fatigue along the path.

Comments

[cc]

Apart from being preachy and humorless, Haas' "The Dream of Being" is vaguely reminiscent of R.D. Laing's "Knots", which is brilliant and wickedly funny.

[Willie R.]

I dunno - if that is a picture of Jack Haas, then it is a cipher that belies the credulity of his utterances. Huge beards are impractical at best. Who could believe a word of what someone who deliberately looks like that says?

Tsk, Tsk.

[Skeptic]

Willie R., Millions of people in India follow men with huge beards.

[cc]

The character Big Bird from Sesame Street, a sweet, dimwitted, effeminate doofus with good intentions and not much knowledge, was the antithesis of the typical big-beard who has all the answers, is often a recluse, scolding, harsh, and inscrutable.