Category Archives: Christianity

The MWS Podcast 99: Tobias Jones on the Windsor Hill Wood Community

Christianity, Community, ,

We are joined today by British author and journalist, Tobias Jones. Tobias was educated at Jesus College, Oxford, and then worked at the London Review of Books and the Independent on Sunday. He’s a best-selling author and his books include The dark heart of Italy, Utopian dreams and Blood on the Altar. He moved to Parma in Italy in 1999, returning to the UK in 2004. Jones and his wife now manage a ten acre woodland shelter near Shepton Mallet, Somerset called Windsor Hill Wood. The sanctuary is the subject of his 7th book, A Place of Refuge and will be the topic of our discussion today


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The act of creation

Christianity, Middle Way Philosophy, Myth, Religion, The Arts, ,

I’ve been thinking recently about creation in human experience, and also how this relates to the symbolism of creation in the Bible. I’m indebted to Iain McGilchrist here, who, in ‘The Master and his Emissary’ points out the difference between left hemisphere and right hemisphere forms of creation: I will call them reproductive and mimetic forms of creation. The more I reflect on this difference the richer it seems.

In the reproductive form of creation, some kind of idea, plan, or copy (whether mental or physical) of what is to be produced already exists. A new version of that copy is produced.

However, in the mimetic sense of creation, something already exists that may have a closer or more distant resemblance to the thing to be created: it may just be ‘raw material’ that is to be shaped, but in accordance with how it already is. The existing materials are recombined so as to produce something new that was not previously combined in that way, whether in the object itself or in the mind of the creator.God

The crucial differences between these forms of creation depend on what is going on in the mind of the creator.

In the reproductive sense of creation, there are clear goals and representations of what is to be created, and the process of creation is merely to reproduce those goals as precisely as possible. The representations may or may not include an actual copy of the thing to be produced already in existence. A construction engineer building a bridge from a set of painstaking designs in creating in this sense, as is a factory production worker who merely controls a machine that is pre-set to reproduce identical plastic parts over and over again. In this sense of creation, the left hemisphere is heavily dominant.

Reproductive creation follows a positive feedback loop in which an idea is fixed on, a copy of that idea is constructed, and then the constructed thing reinforces the idea. However, reproductive creation will only actually succeed to a certain extent. The plastic parts may appear identical, but will have microscopic variations. The bridge may follow the specification as precisely as possible, but there will be at least some small divergences from it. However, the mental state accompanying this kind of creation focuses on the goal of copying, and will either be frustrated by a lack of exactness in the copying or will deny that there is any such lack, re-interpreting the creation to fit the idea and pretending in ad hoc fashion that it was intended to be like that all along. Any divergence from the plan, if it is admitted, is a failure. The view of the world adopted is one where it is assumed that it is possible to copy exactly because there is an absolute relationship between the specification and the creation. Whilst it may be admitted, on philosophical enquiry, that the copy in the plan is not exactly the same as the created thing, the reproductive creator will insist on the absoluteness of the relationship. This relationship can be called isomorphism from the Greek for ‘same shape’.

In the mimetic sense of creation, on the other hand, there is no expectation of any isomorphism between a plan or a previous model and what is created. Rather it is accepted that both the form of what is created and its meaning to us will depend on various variable factors: the nature of the materials, the mental state and expectations of the creator, or other incidental factors that contribute to what is produced. It is not that the creator will lack plans or intentions, for these will always have to be present to some extent for the activity of creation to occur at all. However, it is accepted that the creation will in some respects have a life that is independent of the creator. Different goals may emerge in the process of creation that were not envisaged at the beginning. A wider harmony and integrity will be sought for the creation which is only partially in line with any wishes the creator may have started with, also responding to the conditions that arose in the process of creation.

In contrast to the positive feedback loop involved in reproductive creation, mimetic creation involves a negative feedback loop. An idea of what is to be made is put into operation, but differences between the idea and the creation are not seen as failures, rather as new conditions to be learnt from and responded to. In this way the idea of what is being created continually changes along with the thing being created.

The mimetic sense of creation is obviously one that applies to works of art, following the senses discussed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Erich Auerbach. It also applies to parenthood – at least if it is pursued with wisdom rather than with inflexible plans for the child. Mimesis is obviously the embodied type of creativity. It is a type of creativity pursued with an active and integrated role for the right hemisphere, taking new conditions into account as well as the left hemisphere’s goals and representations. We tend to describe people as ‘creative’ who have learnt to manage the process of mimetic creation with confidence.

I don’t want to imply here that reproduction is necessarily bad: it is just limited when compared to mimesis. The problem with reproduction seems to be when it is absolutised: when we expect copies to be exact, and plans to be precisely reproducible. There are some horrendous examples in history of big plans that were put into operation with hardly any consideration for the conditions: perhaps the Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme is the most astonishingly arrogant and incompetent example I have come across. Mimesis, on the other hand, is not only a quality of the best art, but also the best political proposals and the best engineering projects, among many other things.

If you apply these ideas about Creation to God’s creation of the world in Genesis, they can be related to the debate about what sort of creation Genesis is describing. Did God  simply have a plan that he put into operation regardless? If so, we could read the Creation story as a left hemisphere fantasy of the total and precise enactment of a plan, based on total power. This way of thinking seems to be implied in the classic Christian interpretation of the Creation as ex nihilo – that is, as creating something out of nothing. Blake’s famous ‘Ancient of Days’ picture depicts this kind of creation.

But the text begins “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was a vast waste, darkness covered the deep, and the spirit of God hovered over the surface of the water.” (Gen 1:1-2), which can on the contrary be read as indicating that earth, ‘the deep’ and water already existed, and were merely formed by God. This interpretation would fit the influence of Babylonian and other near eastern creation stories on this one, as the other stories all involve prior existent matter.

If we try to let go of all the metaphysical claims and associations with Christian (and Jewish) dogmas in the Genesis story, we can read it archetypally and in accordance with human experience, simply as an inspiring symbol of creativity, with an archetypal God as a cosmic artist. God does have plans, but he also has raw materials and unexpected conditions to respond to. He pauses each day after making each new set of things before continuing, suggesting that he wasn’t just putting his plans into operation without reflection. What’s more, if you’re creating something as complex as life, you must expect it to respond in unexpected ways: as Adam and Eve are depicted as doing. For more on the Eden story, see my previous post, ‘Reconsidering the Fall’ (and also don’t miss Emilie Aberg’s excellent comment on that).

Annunciation by Simone Martini

Christianity, Culture, Myth, Painting, The Arts,

I’ve always been struck, even haunted, by this painting, as I have by the Annunciation theme in general. It is quite an early Renaissance painting, still showing many of the signs of the transition from statuary to painting in the gilding and the arches.

If we want to find a Middle Way reading of what it might mean to us, we need to first of all put aside any doctrinal associations that may be getting in the way. Yes, the angel is announcing to Mary that, despite being a virgin, she has conceived the son of God. You don’t have to believe that any such thing happened, or that there was a man who was the son of God, or indeed to support the restrictive notions of womanhood implied by the stress on virginity in the Christian tradition. Just put all that stuff aside, look at the painting, and see what experiences it evokes.

Annunciation Simone_Martini

What I experience primarily is the sacred otherness of the angel’s message, and Mary’s uncertainty and hesitation before it. The angel seems to be bearing a message for her, as for any viewer, that the  potentialities within us are startlingly bigger that we had ever thought. That utter weirdness and difficulty is emphasised by the gold, which puts us in an other-worldly ambience; by the angel’s inhuman wings; by the lilies; and by the dove of the Holy Spirit hovering above them.

Mary is quite right to be hesitant, but at the same time she seems to recognise that this strange event is not a threat. It may be strange and apparently other, but at the same time it needs to be accepted in a wider framework. Perhaps others may read a girlish lack of confidence into Mary’s posture, but I’d rather read a certain provisionality. She’s holding all this weirdness, for the moment, albeit warily. She’s going to see how things turn out.

The whole scene can thus symbolise for us the difficulties of any big new idea or prospect that takes us ‘beyond our comfort zone’, and especially the problems of creativity. Whenever we develop something new there’s an ambiguous Middle Way to be found between a fixed idea of what we want to create and its absolute value on the one hand, and an idea of the many discouraging difficulties, distractions and potential failures on the other that might lead us to feel that the thing we want to create is valueless. Giving birth to the Son of God (before we get into the big question of the significance of ‘Son of God’) is a situation where you can easily imagine both of those extremes presenting themselves to Mary. More traditionally, on the one hand she could feel proud, on the other unworthy. In between there is provisionality, riding the creative wave. And I feel that’s what the artist is trying to depict here.

Buddhism and Christianity

Buddhism, Christianity, Middle Way Philosophy, Religion, Video

I have now produced two more short introductory videos: ‘The Middle Way and Buddhism’ and ‘The Middle Way and Christianity’. This has also led me to think about the rather different approaches I took to each religion, and to want to write up here some explanation of that difference. Before I explore the differences, though, it’s probably better if you see the videos. I will embed them here. (Also please note that if you are reading this without any prior exploration of Middle Way Philosophy, it would also be better to view the general introduction first before these).

One thing you will readily notice about the two videos is that in relation to Buddhism I emphasise the distinction between the Middle Way and Buddhism, whilst in Christianity I emphasise the relationship between the Middle Way and Christianity. This is only intended to challenge what I perceive to be the overwhelmingly common assumptions in each case: that Buddhism somehow owns the Middle Way (even that the Middle Way Philosophy is ‘really Buddhism’) on the one hand, and that Christianity has nothing to do with the Middle Way on the other. Of course, it would be equally possible to emphasise the relationship between Buddhism and the Middle Way, or the ways that the dominant interpretation of Christianity is antipathetic to the Middle Way: but treatments of both are common enough.

Of course, the cases made for both are equally dependent on a wider argument I want to make about tradition.  Traditions do not have essences (or if they do, we have no way of determining them), any more than people do. (For more about tradition please see this video.) If we expect to be able to take the positive, integrable aspects of ourselves and choose to dwell on those and develop them rather than the negative, absolutizing parts of ourselves, we should extend the same courtesy both to others and to other traditions, rather than defining them absolutely in terms of things we reject. Some individuals can be psychopathic, utterly repressing all sympathy for anything other than their dominant egoistic goals, and larger groups or traditions can also sometimes exhibit such psychopathic features (think of Daesh). But we should be extremely cautious about attaching any such labels to an extremely diverse, millennia-long tradition. These traditions are part of people’s identities and need to be acknowledged and worked with, though of course they will contain both helpful and unhelpful elements.Buddhist_statue_with_hidden_cross_on_back Chris73 CCSA3-0

I think it is equally important, whatever tradition one may be working with, to acknowledge the Middle Way as something separate, that stands apart from tradition, and indeed as something more important than tradition. That is not a rejection of tradition, but it is a way of avoiding being confined by it. Any Buddhists or Christians who can take this attitude are very welcome in the Middle Way Society, and one of the society’s founding values is that universality.

On the other hand, approaching both Buddhism and Christianity in terms of the Middle Way is not a vague universalism either. The aim is to be quite precise about what the Middle Way is (even though our understanding of it is of course always developing) and to use the Middle Way as a tool for resolving conflicts between traditions. Religions are not essentially all one: what is or can be one is the recognisable features of good judgement in relation to them. By agreeing about how we will judge our different traditions and situations, we can at the same time acknowledge a great diversity of specific religious symbol and practice, and yet co-operate in the wider process of understanding and practising the Middle Way. Then diversity becomes a strength, not a weakness, providing a variety of possible models for different situations. It also becomes a key way of resolving conflict. If we were to all admit that we do not have final access to God or any other absolute, and train ourselves in relying on experience, what grounds of conflict would remain? It is absolutes that collide in conflict, not experiences.

For anyone interested in more detail about the relationship between Buddhism and Christianity, here is a paper I wrote in 2008 called Should Western Buddhists be Christians? Western Buddhists were the target audience for this paper, though it might also possibly be of interest to Christians.

At present I am not intending to produce further videos for other religions. Buddhism and Christianity are both religions that I have direct experience of, but in other cases (such as Islam) my knowledge is largely academic, and it would be much better to leave it to others with more direct experience to explore their meaning in relation to the Middle Way. You can already find such material on this site about the Jewish Middle Way, written by Susan Averbach.

 

Picture: Buddha with hidden cross on the back: Chris 73/ Wikimedia CCSA 4.0