To best understand John Muir, it’s best perhaps to reflect on those people who most influenced him.
http://www.nps.gov/yose/historyculture/muir-influences.htm
unquote
Yesterday, my tenant/roommate was out front watering the plants--I could hear this and her talking with friends through the window near my right ear. On my left, my small portable television was playing CNN's retrospective of the Sixties, and this particular show was showing old footage of the war in the Vietnam. My tenant is Vietnamese. In front and above me, is my large lcd television attached to some plastic shelving with bungee chords, this at the foot of my bunk, and, with my earphones on, I was playing World of Warcraft, and listening to the sound effects. And inside my head, I was trying to think up a post about the Sufis, as in the news of the war in Iraq, Sufis were being mentioned as being involved, and as allied with the violent sorts marching on Baghdad in very horde like fashion.
Here's link to page that goes over this:
http://mideasti.blogspot.com/2014/06/stange-bedfellows-izzat-ibrahim.html
At the very outset of the Iraq war, I wondered how the Sufis would fare. My google searches back then found that over history, Sufis had engaged in warfare, and it's savagery, with the same enthusiasm as everyone, which was a disappointment, as I had a kinda fondness for what I thought was a peaceable bunch. And even a kinda hope that there was a tradition being carried forth by the Sufis that was to the good. Here's link to page that expresses this sentiment, and with the same lament!
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Mystical power
Why Sufi Muslims, for centuries the most ferocious soldiers of Islam, could be our most valuable allies in the fight against extremism
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/01/25/mystical_power/?page=fullunquote
Sufism is taught, as it is explained, by a master to a disciple. Wax on Wax off!http://www.etonline.com/movies/147639_the_karate_kid_30th_anniversary/ The easiest way to understand this, in the West, is consider the relation between coaches and players in sports. In the East, for centuries, what passed for sports, was religion. And, sad to say, religion is military discipline. Martial arts. War.
I'm not one for religious arguments, but the general view of Sufism is that is an effort to set aside the affairs of this world through various exercises. And that these exercises are laid out in the Koran, but right here, an argument ensues, as some claim that Sufism predates the Koran, which is where I happened on Sufism in the writing of Robert Graves. He re-translated with the help of Omar Ali Shah the Rubaiyat of Omar Kayahm, and then wrote the introduction to Idries Shah's The Sufis. Graves's take on Sufism is that it is self similar to the English language tradition of poetry. Insomuch as I was studying English lit and poetry at the time, I just thought, oh, this is the tradition of poets in Arabia. Graves goes on in his writing to connect poetry with the stone age, which in America isn't that far back. Kerouac writes somewhere that Americans wont really get a grip until they fathom Native Americans.
Well, I am of the mind that Sufism, religion, poetry, all have origins in the long ago, and the exercises happen quite naturally enough. While seated at a booth at Denny's, I took note of a large family in the corner booth, and thought of the father, "What a task you have, and no braver or nobler undertaking!" I looked away, back to my own musings, and as the family got up to leave, I was taken aback to see that one child was in a wheel chair sorta thing, and was crippled. My eyes met for a moment with the father's, and seeing my wan smile of hello and acknowledgement, he smiled too.
Myself, I can't follow the sense of Sufis, or the sense of much that goes on in the news, especially cnn and fox and such! But I'm not tasked with that. Of late, I don't seem to be tasked with much of anything!
Commentators on Emerson point out his being influenced by Eastern thinkers, but tracking out just what influences him, and just how he influenced others, is daunting, as he spoke of many things and to many people! But he has about him that master to disciple tradition, coach to player, wax on wax off, and when he visited Muir in the Valley, the two of them hit it off...
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In 1871, Transcendentalist-thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson saw Yosemite, which reminded the New Englander of White Mountain Notch. Upon meeting, Muir showed Emerson his hundreds of pencil sketches of peaks and valleys. They visited the Mariposa Grove, guided by Galen Clark, who publicized the sequoia stand in 1857. Muir said to Emerson in the grove: “You are yourself a sequoia. Stop and get acquainted with your big brethren.” Emerson called Muir a “new kind of Thoreau” who gazed at sequoias of the Sierra instead of scrub oaks of Concord.
and this:
Le Conte said of Muir: “Mr. Muir gazes and gazes and cannot get his fill. … Plants and flowers and forests, and sky and clouds and mountains seem actually to haunt his imagination.”
http://www.nps.gov/yose/historyculture/muir-influences.htm
unquote
To all who sleep on the ground:
I've always had a soft bed and roof,
And you envy me...
I envy you.
DolphinWords
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