Mnemosune

[sdi]

A man decays
His corpse is dust
His family dies
But his books live on

(Chester Beatty Papyrus IV, as translated by Susan Brind Morrow.)

---

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

(Laozi, Tao Te Ching I, as translated by Stephen Mitchell.)

---

Its definition, in fact, could be only "the indefinable": what is not a thing is not some definite thing. We are in agony for a true expression; we are talking of the untellable; we name, only to indicate for our own use as best we may. And this name, The One, contains really no more than the negation of plurality: under the same pressure the Pythagoreans found their indication in the symbol "Apollo" [a=not, pollon=of many] with its repudiation of the multiple. If we are led to think positively of The One, name and thing, there would be more truth in silence: the designation, a mere aid to enquiry, was never intended for more than a preliminary affirmation of absolute simplicity to be followed by the rejection of even that statement: it was the best that offered, but remains inadequate to express the Nature indicated. For this is a principle not to be conveyed by any sound; it cannot be known on any hearing but, if at all, by vision; and to hope in that vision to see a form is to fail of even that.

(Plotinos, Enneads V v "On the Nature of the Good" §6.)

---

Gutei raised his finger whenever he was asked a question about Zen. A boy attendant began to imitate him in this way. When anyone asked the boy what his master had preached about, the boy would raise his finger. Gutei heard about the boy's mischief. He seized him and cut off his finger. The boy cried and ran away. Gutei called and stopped him. When the boy turned his head to Gutei, Gutei raised up his own finger. In that instant the boy was enlightened.

(Wumen Huikai, The Gateless Gate, as translated by Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps.)

---

To write something and leave it behind us,
It is but a dream.
When we awake we know
There is not even anyone to read it.

(Ikkyu.)

---

I have never understood Memory. Why should one wish to remember or be remembered? The earth is not a place of Memory, it is a place of Forgetting, and it is by Forgetting we become unearthly. Isn't it?

And yet the "Orphic" tradition highly prizes Memory: Hesiod was initiated by her daughters; Homer urges the initiate to remember everything; Pythagoras's prior incarnation, Aithalides, so prized Memory that it was the one gift he asked of Hermes (Apollonios Rhodios, Argonautica 640 ff.; Diogenes Laertios, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers VIII iv); the Delphic god says "Know Thyself;" the Orphics and Platonists emphasize drinking from her pool rather than the stream of Forgetting; the Orphic Hymn to Memory goes so far as to say that it is wicked to forget. But Memory is a thing of the world below: God has no Memory, it simply Is; even Souls have no Memory, they merely survey the entire sweep of their great Life as attention requires.

Memory is, perhaps, simply a paradox. There is nothing that can be said, and yet where would I be if they didn't try?

Comments

[jprussell]

I've given some preliminary, entirely unsatisfactory thought to this, as Memory also plays a significant role in Germanic myth. Odin's teacher is Mimir, whose name means "Memory," and He gave up an eye to drink from Mimir's Well. The world-tree is sometimes called "Mimir's Tree," and in the Prose Edda, it is said that of His two ravens, Odin fears the loss of Munin ("Memory," very roughly - more likely, a far more complex part of someone's soul-complex that happens to handle "memory" as one of its jobs) more than Hugin ("Thought" - similarly complex idea here).

The best (but still wholly unsatisfactory) answer I've been able to come up with is that if we are in the material world to learn lessons that ready us for spiritual life, we need to be able to remember them. And/or the idea that memory allows a greater incorporation of Being into the self (or vice versa?), and so it is a way toward recognizing our unity with it.

Perhaps there is some kind of distinction between "higher" and "lower" memory - recalling the events of our petty lives here on Earth may be a dim reflection of something bigger and weightier, just as our personality is an inadequate representation of our true Self, and one that might obscure it, but might also be a tool for coming to know it.

But what do I know, and how can I put it into words?

[sdi]

I wonder about what of the material life we need to retain in the spiritual life. The Buddha says that rafts are for crossing the river but not for carrying around once we're on the far side; similarly, Plotinos says that "virtue" is the process of coming near a higher power, but the higher power has no need of the virtue. (Indeed, he calls the spiritual virtues "purificatory," and isn't purity a stripping away of the unnecessary?)

Your notion of "higher" and "lower" memory sounds like a fruitful avenue to explore; thanks for suggesting it...

[sdi]

As a counterpoint, I was reminded of a waka by Lafcadio Hearn:

Wasuraruru
Mi naran to omō
Kokoro koso
Wasuré nu yori mo
Omoi nari-keré.

"To be forgotten of a beloved is a soul-task harder far than to be remembered."