I have been intruiged by the imagery of the ocean in relation to swimmers, boats .. are you familiar with The Islanders? This was my first introduction to such information,
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Posted by Chad B. on 08/11 at 04:36 AM
Yes, I was thinking of that too - particularly the emphasis on having to leave your home because it was to become uninhabitable for a while and the travel to another island as a necessity.
In this regard I always thought Robert Wyatt might have also been familiar with the Islanders when he wrote ‘Shipbuilding’. Maybe not....
Posted by on 08/11 at 10:04 AM
Beautiful website-blog. Stunning. The fact that there is a lifeboat means there MUST be land, no?
Posted by Mark Wright on 08/11 at 11:57 AM
Thanks Mark! Yes, that’s the point it means there is land!
I think it is such a great analogy because it puts everything in perspective - I used to view such things as me being in place A and somehow having to get to place B but the idea is that there are many ‘levels’ A, B. C, D and on and on (maybe even to infinity) and that they are ALL valid - raft, lifeboat, carniverous island, land - is actually liberating isn’t it?
Posted by on 08/11 at 12:03 PM
I just read the book, and I was most impressed by it. Still, to me, it sees that the question is not about the boat vs. solid ground, but rather the knowledge that regardless of the true situation, tigers or people, the constant is that the person is the same. It’s not the external that makes the world, it’s the internal. The rest is just window dressing.
Posted by Ouroboros on 08/14 at 09:41 AM
Yes, you have a very good point. Even the ‘cannibal’ in the alternative story Pi tells is always the same.
The book has many levels and there is a lot to ponder in it. I think I may re-read it again.
Posted by on 08/14 at 01:08 PM
Last bit on Pi
The more I think about Life of Pi the more profound and speaking to my own personal situation I find it - maybe that’s what profundity is (or what we think it is) but whatever. It seems to me that the situation of being adrift in a life-boat is the archetypal metaphor for the mystic quest - as opposed to the religious mindset. The religionist never questions that he or she is is on ‘solid ground’ and life proceeds from there in quite an orderly fashion. Much like people who have no religion and who are satisfied with their state.
But the religionist can just as soon one day turn into the castaway - all it takes is the metaphorical iceberg, the small insignificant leak that grows ever wider, the drunken crew.......and then all is in the air - no more certainty. No more comfort. Just survival.
Of course in such a situation, one knows there is land out there somewhere - but one just as surely knows that the chances of ever reaching it are thousands to one against. The only chance is to forget about land and focus on the sea - the only source of nutrition. In fact that very action - the focussing on water rather than land - is the only hope of ever reaching land. Of course, deep down you realise you most likely will never make it but that’s not the point - you have to try.
But this is way the religious mind is not adrift - or perhaps, why the mystic is a not a religionist: because out there, bobbing in your solitary lifeboat - or, if you prefer, sweating and bewildered after your fortieth year in a desert wilderness - you cannot say that there is no such thing as land just because you’ll never see it. Just because everyday you stand up in your confined floating coffin and scan 360 degrees of blue-green nothingness as far as your eyes can focus.
These things make you realise there must be more. The boat swaying and sickening (tiger or not) screams deafening that there are states that are....different. By nature it is merely a means of conveyance. Something to launch from point A, protect during a journey and be abandoned at point Z. It is a means not an end.
Just because you’ll never make it to point Z means nothing at all. It doesn’t make the lifeboat less of a lifeboat. It doesn’t make it ‘home’.