Thank you Joseph Campbell

I must've picked up Transformations of Myth Through Time in the basement of The Franciscan chapel in Roppongi. They used to have quite a selection of used books that expats leaving Japan would drop off there. They'd sell for 200 yen hardcover and 100 yen paperback; it was a great place to find used books in Japan and I often meet with friends and friends of friends and friends of a mutual friend Bill W there, so I'd always check out the used books in the stairwell.  A few years ago Tokyo FD made them move them all out of the stairwell so they just stopped taking books. I was bummed about that but grateful for all the good books I found there, a good 35% of my little library here came from there.

Anyhow so I must've had that book here for years then one day guess it was just time I leafed through it for the umpteenth time and something just spoke to me. On the next trip to Tokyo I got another Joseph Campbell book, THOU ART THAT Transforming Religious Metaphor and Damn! Yeah, it was time.  A genuine when the student is ready the teacher appears kind of thing. 

That's all a few years ago now. Since then the Joseph Campbell section in my home library has grown to eleven or 12 books. I'm on the first book of working my way through THE MASKS OF GOD.  I started on Occidental Mythology and give it a double thumbs up at 3/4 of the way through.  Actually as I sit and type this I'm on my way to Tokyo to meet with aforementioned friends and friends of friends and friends of Bill W, so I'm planning on stopping by Kinokuniya in Shinjuku to pick up another of the MASKS OF GOD books. But before I do I wanted to start a Joseph Campbell favorite quotes page. So here it is a quick copy and paste of some favorites in my journal for starters and I'll add more later...

"Suddenly you’re ripped into being alive. And life is pain, and life is suffering, and life is horror, but my god you’re alive and it’s spectacular."

"My favorite definition of mythology: other people's religion. My favorite definition of religion: misunderstanding of mythology."

"Mythology, properly understood as metaphor, will guide you to the recognition of your tiger face. But then how are you going to live with these goats?

Well, Jesus had something to say about this problem. In Matthew 7 he said, “Do not cast your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet and turn and tear you.” 

..

“You wear the outer garment of the law, behave as everyone else and wear the inner garment of the mystic way. Jesus also said that when you pray, you should go into your own room and close the door. When you go out, brush your hair. Don’t let them know. Otherwise, you’ll be a kook, something phony.

So that has to do with not letting people know where you are. But then comes the second problem: how do you live with these people? Do you know the answer? You know that they are all tigers. And you live with that aspect of their nature, and perhaps in your art you can let them knkow that they are tigers. 

And that’s the revelation then. And so this brings us to the final formula of the Bodhisattava way, the way of one who is grounded in eternity and moving in the field of time. The field of time is the field of sorrow. “All live is sorrowful.” And it is. If you try to correct the sorrows, all you do is shift them somewhere else. Life is sorrowful. How do you live with that? You realize the eternal within yourself. You disengage, and yet, reengage. You—and here’s the beautiful formula—“participate with joy in the sorrows of the world.” you play the game. It hurts, but you know that you have found the place that is transcendent of injury and fulfillments. You are there, and that’s it.” 

pp 119-120 of Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion

"As Schopenhauer says, when you look back on your life, it looks as though it were a plot, but when you are into it, it's a mess: just one surprise after another. Then, later, you see it was perfect. So, I have a theory that if you are on your own path things are going to come to you. Since it's your own path, and no one has ever been on it before, there's no precedent, so everything that happens is a surprise and is timely."
pg. 63 of Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion

"One way to deprive yourself of an experience is indeed to expect it. Another is to have a name for it before you have the experience. Carl Jung said that one of the functions of religion is to protect us against the religious experience. That is because in formal religion, it is all concretized and formulated. But, by its nature, such an experience is one that only you can have."

THOU ART THAT  pg 13



The best thing one can do with the Bible is to read it spiritually rather than historically. Read the Bible in your own way, and take the message because it says something special to each reader, based on his or her own experience. The gift of God comes in your own terms. God, pure and in Himself, is too much. Carl Jung said 'Religion is a system to defend us against the experience of God.' It may be a species of impudence to think that the way you understand God is the way God is."


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 I just sat down to leaf through some books and add a few more quotes to this and good gosh I'd better figure out a system first--too many dog-eared pages and highlighted sections I don't know where to start!   The above two are ones with double dog eared pages and notes in the margin though so there's two more for now.  The latter one there just has a single note in the margin.  It is: "YES!" If there's one thing I've learned in this life it's this. Nobody knows what God is. And if nobody knows what it, or capital "I" if you prefer "It" is, then they certainly don't know which sports team is Her favorite or which politician She wants to win an election.  (if you didn't like my use of the feminine pronouns for God there then I'm guessing you strongly disagree. ha ha ha ) but I digress... 
 Or as Campbell tells of how his friend explains it:

"My friend Heinrich Zimmer of years ago used to say, "The best things can't be told," because they transcend thought. "The second best are misunderstood," because those are the thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which can't be thought about, and one gets stuck in the thoughts."The third best are what we talk about.”