Immersed and Empowered?

There are few things more tiresome than a group of ageing and effete academics sitting in a panel discussion boasting about their embrace of new technology. The present author has been unfortunate enough to endure many such sessions over the last decade or so – Deans of Faculty puffing up about “crowd sourcing”, Vice-Chancellors relating their first experience of “twitting”, Sociology professors droning on about “drilling data” from a new spreadsheet program. The uncritical and self-congratulatory tone of such sessions – “Gee, look at how techno-savvy I am. My, aren’t I up to date?” – is a form of narcissistic delusion that is at plague proportions in institutions of higher learning everywhere. It is even worse among educators in lower year levels. Everyone thinks that the more technology the better. Technology = education. It is, of course, nonsense. But we live in times when it is almost impossible to challenge the equation and those who do are quickly given redundancies to make way for ‘Next Gen’ academics who have no critical insights into the machines they use at all since they do not remember anything before the digital age.

It was unfortunately the lot of this present author to attend yet another ‘app launch’ by a bunch of esteemed professors last night, and it was exactly like all the others. Speaker after speaker stood up to relate how “excited” there were about the “endless possibilities” of the latest “collaborative project” between the egg-heads and the tekkies. In this case it was an “app” (how casually people use that ugliest of abbreviations) that uses “geo-spatial settings” to illuminate your mobile phone with “data” when you point it at certain landmarks. You hone your phone at a certain location and the “app” gives you “data” about the location’s history. The historians present at the launch were visibly aroused by this idea. Not only could it help tourists become “better informed”, we were told, but it was fantastically “educational” – a new device to “empower” the history student and to “smash” the old paradigms of classroom learning.

Moreover, this was just the beginning. At present the “app” merely displays photographs and a bit of text. But soon, soon!, we were assured, there would be video and sound bytes and 3D virtuality and a whole array of other bells and whistles. All on your smartphone. The word that was thrown around with abandon, used by numerous speakers, was “immersion”. Soon the technology would be “immersive”, we were told. Tourists and students alike would be “immersed” in data of every possible type. Everyone present nodded with approval.

During question time it fell upon this present writer to ask the difficult question: how is being “immersed” in data “empowering”? “It seems to me,” he said, “and it is my whole experience as an educator, and as a computer user, that being ‘immersed’ is an unpleasant and unedifying experience. In order to learn one must keep an objective and aloof position outside of the data, a position from which to view, or else you end up swamped, drowning, floundering with no direction, no perspective. Being ‘immersed’ is not good. You need to keep your head above water in order to breathe. There is nothing empowering about drowning in random data.” This was treated as an unwanted and incomprehensible objection, and after an uncomfortable silence the academic techno-orgy continued as if the question had never been raised. Technology is an unmitigated good, it seems. Anyone who raises any questions as to the wisdom of its applications is a dinosaur.

The present writer is entirely familiar with this. He’s been called a dinosaur and a Luddite often enough. In this particular case – this particular “app” – there is the uncomfortable fact that he doesn’t even own a mobile phone and thinks that mobile phones are an abomination however you use them. This is in India, where even the beggars own mobile phones! A modern Indian without a mobile phone is inconceivable. When you tell a modern Indian that you don’t own a mobile phone they look aghast as if to say ‘But how do you access your porn!?’ (Pornography, and not historical buildings, is by far the main matter of interest for mobile phone users on the sub-continent.) So there is the question of what this writer was doing at this app launch in the first place? And does he have the right to an opinion since he is not even a user of this technology?

In answer, he takes the view that – inevitable though the flood of ‘immersive’ technology may be – it is the right, and the duty, of thinking people to ask hard questions about the wise applications of machines that, quite obviously, are as socially corrosive as they are socially constructive. We live in a digital revolution, though. It is difficult to think outside of the pervasive paradigm that it brings with it. Yet that is precisely the work of academics and other thinking people. Our duty is not to cheer and chant – it is to question and caution. Alas, this almost never happens. Most academics are, instead, boring middle-aged wanna-bes over-eager to show how contemporary and ‘nerd savvy’ they are. On the whole, they are quite incapable of independent, critical thinking. On the whole, there is hardly a group of people in society today more sheep-like in their group-think and conformism. That, at least, is how this writer has experienced the academic world, and this particular “app” launch - with everyone happily wallowing in the confused relationship between 'immersion' and 'empowerment' - was another reminder of it.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Himalayan Swiss Chalet Gothic

In order to administer their great Empire of enlightened paternalism the British had to meet the formidable challenges of the Indian environment. It is said that the average lifespan of an English gentleman living in Calcutta and working for the East India Company, or later the Raj, was merely two or three monsoons. Evidence of this is plain enough in the Park Street South Cemetery. Grave after grave speaks of men – and many women too – who came to work in India and who died at an early age, usually from malaria or dysentery. The English found the heat and grime and dirt and disease of India almost unbearable.

Accordingly, they had to adopt strategies to ameliorate their situation and to overcome the challenges they faced. One such strategy was the institution of the hill station. In order to escape the conditions of the Indian plains they found cool places in the hills to which they could retreat. These were places, moreover, where they could re-create vestiges of English life as a means of preserving their own institutions, codes of civility and sense of identity amidst the exotic chaos that was India. The British hill stations were tiny enclaves of England transplanted to the cool hills of the Indian sub-continent.

On the plains, the British developed a distinctive architecture. They fused classical (Graeco-Roman) styles with many features adopted from Mahometan buildings. The Moghuls before them had developed imperial public buildings that would remain relatively cool in the scorching summers. The English took some of these features and blended them with their own architecture creating a unique Anglo-Saracen style that can be seen in such buildings as the India Museum – formerly the Royal Asiatic Society building – in Calcutta, and many other examples. Although undoubtedly British and European these buildings have broad porticos and walkways that create shade and cool spaces after the manner of Islamic buildings.

In the hill stations, however, there was no need to appropriate Saracenic styles. The cool environment meant that the British could confine themselves to European architectural modes without exotic oriental elements. In keeping with the function of the hill stations, moreover, these were private rather than public buildings and so there was more scope for individuality and personal expressions of taste and wealth. The challenges were different. There were two main ones. Firstly, the hills tended to be very steep, quite unlike the English landscape. And second, the whole environment was prone to earthquakes from time to time, a danger with which the English were not accustomed. Hill station architecture had to be adapted to these factors.

In the first place, the Victorian gothic cottage or manor house was blended with styles and modes more adapted to steep hills, specifically to Scottish baronial architecture. But this proved to be prone to earthquake. The Scottish baronial building is made of heavy stone and is several floors high. Through tribulation the British learnt that this was not well suited to an earthquake zone. Instead, they also turned to the Swiss chalet and blended elements of Swiss wooden architecture with English gothic styles. Thus they created a distinctive hill station architecture, the so-called Himalayan Swiss Chalet Gothic.

This is the type of architecture that one finds still in the Indian hill stations - Himalayan Swiss Chalet Gothic - although much of it is in advanced disrepair today. There are some well-preserved examples, but the modern Indians often show a blithe disregard for the heritage of the Raj era (and indeed for heritage in general). Worse, as well as suffering appalling neglect, Raj architecture has been crowded out by the tasteless inhuman concrete monstrosities (and earthquake death-traps) that are typical of post-colonial Indian building.

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Below readers can find a pictorial essay of such Himalayan Swiss Chalet Gothic buildings as the present writer was able to observe in Darjeeling, the great hill station once attached to Calcutta. The town was first settled as a sanitarium for British soldiers recovering from malaria, but later became the celebrated site of the British tea industry. It is now populated by Nepalis and Tibetans and Gorkas and, while still charming and a place of great beauty, much of its architecture, alas, has suffered the fate mentioned above.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

De Koros - a Buddhist Saint

Just outside of Darjeeling, on a downhill road towards the tea gardens and army base at Lebong, is the old cemetery once used by the English and other Europeans in the time that the town was the primary summer hill station of the British Raj, then centred in Calcutta. The cemetery is small and these days untended, except for the quite prominent grave marker of the Hungarian linguist Alexander Csoma de Koros which, when the present author visited the site, had been recently cleaned, cared for and decorated. There is an informative plaque there commemorating de Koros' life and work and explaining that the grave had been established by the Royal Asiatic Society and had been tended by money from authorities in Hungary. 

As well as this, closer into town, just around the bend from the Raj Bhavan (the Maharaja's winter residence), there is another marker also tended by Hungarian authorities, this time an abstract wooden statue (pillar) in the Boodhist manner dedicated to de Koros and standing among a row of statues to other notable citizens of the town. De Koros, therefore, has two markers dedicated to him and both are looked after by authorities in far away Eastern Europe. It comes to pass, in fact, that Hungarians not only tend these markers but are known to travel here in order to visit them, such is the repute of de Koros in his native land. He is regarded as one of the great sons of the Magyar people and his grave in Darjeeling is a place of solemn pilgrimage for Hungarians. 

The esteem in which he is held is not limited to his fellow nationals, however. De Koros is a hero in Hungary, but in Boodhist Japan he is nothing less than a Bodhisattva, which is to say a saint of the first order, a semi-divine being who has attained liberation but vowed to remain in the wheel of existence in order to assist other sentient beings to the same end. He was given this status by the Boodhist authorities in Japan in 1933. On the occasion, a large statue of him sitting in the lotus position was installed at the Tokyo Boodhist University. See thus:

So who, exactly, was Alexander Csoma De Koros and what did he do to deserve such high praise and sanctification? He is not a well-known figure in the Anglosphere outside of the narrow field of Tibetan linguistics and other obscure byways of academia. His hagiography is as follows:

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Born in Koros, Transylvania, in the 1780s - the exact date is disputed - he was a painfully shy and inward character who devoted his life to the study of languages, for which he had an unusual gift. By the time he was in his mid twenties he had acquired mastery of over a dozen languages including English, Latin, Greek, and others more exotic. In 1820, just in his forties, he set out to travel eastwards, his reason being to trace the origins of the Hungarian language in the Orient. We have a full account of his travels in the form of a letter he composed at one point, since he travelled without official sanction and was sometimes questioned about who he was and what was his purpose. He travelled largely on foot, walking from Constantinople overland to British India. There he met the explorer William Moorcroft with whom he travelled to Ladakh in order to investigate the languages of Tibet. Moorcroft assisted him and wrote him a recommendation which he needed at a later point because he was detained by the British on suspicion of being a spy. This matter was resolved, however, and the British then offered him every assistance. A Captain Kennedy, who first took him into custody, wrote of him that he "... declines any attention that I would be most happy to show him, and he lives in the most retired manner.” 

This retired manner was his most notable trait. He devoted himself entirely to study and otherwise lived as a hermit. In Ladakh, however, he was tutored by a Lama named Sangs-Rgyas-Phun-Tshogs and quickly mastered the Tibetan tongue, one of the first Europeans to do so. He furthermore immersed himself in the esoteric teachings of Tibetan Boodhism by reading the two great encyclopaedias of Lamaism,  the one hundred volumes of the Kangyur, and the two hundred and twenty-four volumes of the BsTangyur. The Tibetans gave him the name Phyi-glin-gi-grwa-pa, meaning "the foreign student". Tibetan Boodhism became his great love. He had set out in search of the roots of his own language and instead found a spiritual tradition high in the Himalayas. Mr. Edward Fox wrote an account of this journey in the 2006 book The Hungarian Who Walked to Heaven. 

De Koros spent many years compiling a dictionary of Tibetan and an account of Tibetan grammar and when this work was completed he headed for Calcutta to see it published. There he was welcomed by the Royal Asiatic Society who unanimously inducted him as an honorary member and organised a stipend upon which he could live. From 1839 to 1842 he worked as a librarian for the Society while his dictionary, grammar and other works were readied for publication. (Having established that this vagabond with a strange European accent was not a spy, the British were remarkably supportive and encouraging to De Koros, let it be said.)

Then, in 1842, he determined to set out for Lhasa. This journey was interrupted, however, when he contracted malaria. He was on his way to Lhasa when he died of fever in Darjeeling on April 11 1842. Thus was Darjeeling his last resting place, and thus he is today a celebrated figure in the town. 

De Koros, then, is, in the Buddhist firmament, a scholar saint. His claim to sainthood is founded in his extraordinary dedication to learning. (There was once a time when extraordinary intellectuals qualified as saints. Alas, in our own time, it is only do-gooders and social workers who qualify.) His story is one of a remarkable journey, as if he was drawn across the world, to the very roof of the world, to his destiny. A map of his travels - one of the most extraordinary intellectual and spiritual adventures ever undertaken by a European Orientalist - is illustrated below:

Yours,

Harper Mc Alpine Black

Lear in Darjeeling

Kanchenjunga from Darjeeling, painting by Edward Lear

The Five Treasures of Snow (Mount Kangchenjunga), the third tallest peak in the world, is, as the author has related in previous posts, a mere fifty or so miles from Darjeeling and stands with awesome and imposing majesty upon the northern horizon. As it happens, the days have been exceptionally clear over the last week and so the mountain and its many companions in this eastern end of the Himalayas has been highly visible every morning and throughout the day. Not surprisingly, both locals and of course tourists have been taking the opportunity to photograph the mountain, while others just stand pondering from the various vantage points in the town that afford excellent views. There is, as far as this author is aware, no other major town - Darjeeling, the Queen of the British hill stations, boasts a population of about 100,000 - in such an immediate proximity to such a substantial mountain. It is what makes Darjeeling so remarkable. The British came here to escape the heat and more especially the mosquitoes (and so malaria) of the Indian plains, but they soon came to value the location just for its extraordinary natural beauty. 

Among the notable Englishmen who have resided here (leaving aside the notorious Aleister Crowley, who has been mentioned in a previous post) is none other than Mr. Edward Lear, the reputed father of the limerick and master of English nonsense. Readers may or may not be aware that the present author is a great enthusiast for the work of Mr. Lear and indeed has modelled some aspects of his own poetry and fiction upon his. Indeed, the author - writing under yet another assumed identity - has a website where he keeps his works of fiction, principally short stories, by the Leariferous name of Runcible Highway. See here. The word "runcible", need it be said, is possibly Mr. Lear's most enduring contribution to the English language, an all-purpose neologism adaptable to all adjectival occasions. He excelled at neologisms and other nonsense and brought a much-needed sense of the silly to otherwise sombre Victorian literature. The present author's own "stranded adjective technique", so-called, owes a direct debt to Mr. Lear. This was a man who was known to introduce himself as Mr Abebika Kratoponoko Prizzikalo Kattefello Ablegorabalus Ableborinto Phashyph. 

What is less well known is that Edward Lear was also a (serious) painter of some note, and in particular he painted scenes from his various travels. At the top of this page readers will find a reproduction of  a painting he made of Mount Kanchenjunga as seen from Darjeeling during his time in the town. It is difficult to ascertain exactly from where the view was taken. The vantage point of Observation Hill has long been occupied by the Mahakal Mandir (Temple) and no temple is to be seen in Lear's painting, unless that is the standing object around which people are gathered in the left foreground. The path that leads into the distance would then be what is now called Mall Road, leading to the so-called 'Hermitage' near the Raj Bhavan. Certainly, the vegetation has changed, but the broad outlines of the topography are unfamiliar. All the same, the imposing presence of the mountain has not changed at all. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Mr. Pallis of Kalimpong

Among the silliest things His Holiness the Dalai Lama is inclined to say to fawning cameramen these days is that Boodhism is not, whatever else it might be, a religion. No? Well, what utter nonsense! It is an assertion that is plainly and demonstrably untrue. What is one to make of a religious leader who wants to say that his religion is not a religion?

The present author was reminded of this bizarre distortion while sitting in a shared jeep on the road to Kalimpong recently, squeezed in against an overweight Tibetan monk in maroon robes on his way to the same destination. At every point that the jeep (an eight seater carrying fourteen people and two chickens travelling on precipitous roads with four bald tyres) went past any even slightly Boodhist landmark – a grave, a stupa, a flag, a monastery, a road to a monastery – the overweight monk raised his hands in a gesture of fervent prayer, closed his eyes and muttered solemn incantations in Tibetan. One wonders exactly what game the Dalai Lama is playing, but on such evidence Boodhism sure looks like a religion to this author!

Accordingly, this author was expecting Kalimpong to be a hotbed of the aforementioned religion, and the presence of the monk on the journey promised it to be so, but in fact, on arrival, the town hardly presented a Boodhist face. It so happens that the monasteries there are on hilltops well out of town, and in town itself there is little obvious evidence of the Boodhist presence. The author only had five or six hours to look around, but during that time he encountered two splendid Hindoo mandirs, an elegantly bulbous green Mahometan mosque and a stately but stern Scottish Church. There were no maroon monks about nor anything else that was overtly Boodhist save a few prayer flags here and there and an old sign to the Tibetan Medicine And Astrology Centre.

This was somewhat disappointing because the author had journeyed there under the impression that Kalimpong – about two hours drive through the hills and forests from Darjeeling – was, or is, a major Boodhist centre. It certainly has that reputation. Clearly, though, this applies to the caliber and renown of the near-by monasteries and not to the town itself. A former British hill station with its share of remaining British architecture, it is unfortunately somewhat over-run with Indian commerce. The streets are busy and congested, noisy and cluttered, much like any Indian town. Moreover, the author was there just in time to witness a large street demonstration of local rabble agitating for Kalimpong’s administrative independence from Darjeeling and West Bengal. Standard Indian stuff.

The other reason the author had reason to suppose that the town would offer a distinctly Boodhist ambience, was that it was formerly the home of the traditionalist writer on Boodhist matters, Mr. Marco Pallis. Mr. Pallis is the author of several excellent books, two of which the present author has read and very much valued, namely, Peaks & Lamas, and A Buddhist Spectrum. The former is a celebrated account of the Tibetan world that Mr. Pallis encountered in the mid-twentieth century. Rousing. Inspiring. It was one of the first authentic accounts of the Tibetan tradition written for European readers and remains one of the best. 

The latter – which this author found more useful to his particular needs – is a perspicuous and highly lucid account of the great variety and types and sects and schools of Boodhism, from the Tibetan to the Pureland. As the title suggests, Mr. Pallis proposes that Boodhist religion – yes, it’s a religion! - constitutes an entire spectrum of positions, and he sets out to inform his readers of the great wealth and variety of the same. It is a book that the present writer recommends without hesitation. Indeed, it stands as one of the very best books on Boodhism in general, in his opinion. Readers will certainly learn more from reading Mr. Pallis than from any of the volumes of sentimental tripe to which His Holiness the Dalai Lama has seen fit to attach his name in recent years. Pallis is an excellent writer. His work does due honour to the beauty and wealth of the entire Boodhist tradition and to Lamaism in particular. 

He lived in Kalimpong in the 1950s. At the time it was an enclave to which Tibetans were escaping from the overbearing moves of the communist Chinese in Lhasa and thereabouts. He there became familiar with members of the Dalai Lama’s family and other Tibetan dignitaries – he was a very well-connected man and possibly the foremost Tibetologist of his time. He was a mountain climber, too, and an accomplished musician, and a linguist, amongst other things. The Traditionalists (so-called) were not generally well-disposed to Boodhism at first, since the pneumatic leader of the Traditionalist ‘school’ Mr. Rene Guenon – a vedantist – once dismissed it as a “Hindoo heresy”. More than anyone else, Marco Pallis worked to challenge this one-sided miscalculation. One wonders what he would make of the decidedly non-traditional New Age direction in which the Fourteenth (and last?) Dalai Lama has taken Tibetan Boodhism of recent times? The present writer spent a pleasant and useful day enjoying the environs in which Mr. Pallis had lived and worked, even if the atmosphere was not nearly as Boodhist or as traditional as he had understood.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Darshan

The prominence of the eyes of Hindu divine images… reminds us that it is not only the worshipper who sees the deity, but the deity sees the worshipper as well.

- Dianne Eck

In studies for his doctoral thesis the current writer observed (in the context, the correct word) that the Platonic cosmology as found in the dialogue called Timaeus is strikingly and surprisingly visual. It is surprisingly so because in every respect it is a thoroughly Pythagorean work, the Timaeus, and its central protagonist, Timaeus of Locri, is clearly being presented as a Pythagorean divine who is visiting Athens. One might expect a Pythagorean cosmology to be auditory in nature. The Pythagoreans are best known for their doctrine of the so-called ‘music of the spheres’ and the general proposition that music is at the heart of the cosmic order. And yet Plato’s cosmology – his distinctly Pythagorean cosmology – is entirely visual. The central elements, we are told, are fire and earth. Fire – which is to say light – shines upon earth – which is to say solid objects, and in this manner the visible cosmos comes into being. Timaeus explains it otherwise by the parallel terms ‘radiance’ and ‘solidity’. He makes it plain that it is a visible cosmos that the Demiurge constructs through these principles.

In accord with this, Timaeus’ account of eyesight takes a special place in the dialogue. He gives an account of how an internal light extends outwards from the eye and meets the external light reflected from solid objects by the ‘radiance’ of the cosmic ‘fire’. Moreover, as Timaeus – an astronomikos says - it is by the visual observation of the stars that all human knowledge is ultimately derived. Eyesight here, not hearing, is the primary faculty.

These matters have come to mind for this author at this time because he finds a compatible cosmological perspective implicit in the visual character of the Hindoo. Hindooism, as it is practiced, is an extraordinarily visual affair – bright, garish, variegated, multi-coloured, abundant – but more than that the very act of seeing is spiritual in itself to a degree that is quite striking to those not accustomed to it. This act of seeing is called darshan. One “takes” darshan. The word is used when, for example, one goes to see a king or a prince or a maharaja. One “takes darshan” with important authorities. By extension, one “takes darshan” with the gods. It is central to Hindoo piety. In English, we might say that one has an “audience” with a king or a prince or a maharaja, but “audience” is exactly the wrong word here. (Audience = audio, to hear.) Rather, for the Hindoo, seeing and being seen are the important things. The Hindoo world is extraordinarily visual. We might expect a tradition encapsulated by the sacred syllable AUM to be about sound and resonance. In fact, the religious cosmology of the Hindoo is intensely visual and based in the act of seeing. It has been so since the beginning. Its most primordial roots are in primal (Vedic) fire.

Darshan is what happens when the devotee goes to a Hindoo temple. There is a seeing. The devotee is there to look upon an image of the deity, and, moreover, to be seen by the deity in turn. Evidence that the latter has occurred is found when the priest in attendance places the tika – the vermillion mark – upon the third eye (forehead) of the devotee. Seeing, that is to say, is the devotional act. Just looking is the devotional act. For the Hindoo, this is a deeply tangible thing. In many ways, to look is to touch. And so, in turn, to be seen is to have been touched.

Indeed, this attitude is not exclusive to the Hindoo but can be regarded as more widely traditional. It prevails in the strongly auditory tradition of Islam, for instance. Seeing is touching – and thus we find the careful regulation of what is seen in, for example, the veiling of wives. Islam, like Judaism, and like Protestant Christianity, places emphasis upon the Word which is spoken and has, accordingly, a deep mistrust of the image. This was not so for Plato’s ancient Greeks, nor for other so-called “pagan” systems, and it is not so for the Hindoo. There is an often overwhelming profusion of images in Hindooism, to a degree that even exceeds the most image-laden manifestations of Catholic and Eastern Orthodox piety in the Christian faith. The Catholic and the Orthodox, though, are in some position to understand the Hindoo’s love of images. Their use of statues and icons is not dissimilar, but even so, not nearly so profuse and unrestrained. 

A good account of this is given in Dianne Eck’s small booklet from 1998, Darshan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. “When the Hindoo goes to the Temple, they do not commonly say, ‘I am going to worship’,” she explains, “but rather, ‘I am going for darshan.’” It means, as she says, that the devotee is going to “see the image of the deity – be it Krishna, or Durga or Shiva or Vishnu – present in the sanctum of the Temple.” And they go, as she says, “especially at those times of the day when the image is most beautifully adorned with fresh flowers and when the curtain is drawn back so that the image is fully visible.” This is the central act in common Hindoo piety. The deity is present in the image. “Beholding the image is an act of worship,” Eck relates, “and through the eyes one gains the blessings of the divine.”

Appreciating the importance of this assists the stranger in understanding the activities that are to be seen daily in a Hindoo mandir (Temple). Similarly, it is by this that we must understand the Hindoo practice of pilgrimage as it is undertaken by millions of souls every year. A Hindoo will traverse the sub-continent or travel high into the Himalayas in order to take darshan of his or her god – to see and be seen. It is an aspect of Hindoo worship that common Western portrayals of the Hindoo – chanting a mantra with eyes closed – overlooks. Mantras and interiority are part of the Hindoo order too, certainly, but in everyday experience they are not as important as darshan (“auspicious seeing”). In every Temple is the ancient Vedic fire pit. Images – iconic and aniconic – abound. There is an implicit cosmology of fire/light in which the faculty of eyesight is central. It is fully in accord with Plato’s account. When one goes to a Hindoo temple, this is mainly what is happening – the seeing of the sacred, and the being seen by the sacred in a world of fire and earth, radiance and solidity.

The present author recalls the mysterious “seeing” that he experienced at the Kalighat Temple in Calcutta only last month. At the very core of the Temple – the ultimate experience for devotees, many of whom have crossed the country in pilgrimage – is the terrible eternal gaze of the dark goddess of primordial night. Devotees, pushed and shoved in the tussle of the crowd, catch a fleeting glimpse of the goddess’ image. But, at the same time, she gazes back through the eyes painted upon her stone. There is a visual encounter. One sees. One is seen. That is darshan.

In this, let us note, there is an important contrast to be made with the tourist who is there with his own profane and uncomprehending forms of seeing as well as with the single mechanical and one-way eye of his camera.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Mealy-Mouthed Mufti

If anyone doubts the extent of delusion and denial among those who purport to be leaders of contemporary Islam, let them consider the following disgraceful statement issued by the Grand Mufti of Australia in the wake of the barbaric murders of innocent civilians in Paris on November 13th 2015. The Mufti has rightly come under fire for the wording of this statement, and some have called for his immediate resignation. A retraction or resignation is unlikely; instead there is an attitude of defiant and self-indulgent ignorance that pervades the office of the Mufti and that further characterizes Mahometan officialdom throughout Australia. It is not confined to Australia, though. It permeates Islam as a whole, beginning with its leaders and representatives and seeping down to the average Saracen in the street. The rot starts at the top. It radiates out from Mecca and typifies everything that is wrong with contemporary Islam. 

The events in Paris are infamous enough: there is no need to rehearse what happened, who was killed, by whom, or the nature of the barbarism. But readers should consider the following statement by His Eminence, Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, and in particular note the statement highlighted in red. 

Let us consider it. What are the “causative factors” that are creating terrorism and that are preventing strategies to stop terrorism? They are, according to the Mufti:

1. Racism
2. Islamophobia
3. The curtailing of freedoms through securitisation
4. Duplicitous foreign policies
5. Military intervention

So, apparently, the causes of terrorism are all matters which are being inflicted upon Muslims. Muslims are the victims. Muslims themselves are not to blame. Islam itself is not to blame. There are no problems or faults within the Islamic Ummah itself that have not been imposed by non-Muslims. There is no reason for Muslims to reflect upon their own interpretations of their faith, on where modern Islam has gone wrong, or on the structures and ideologies that prevail in their communities. No. Muslims, according to the Mufti, are the victims. Muslims are being pushed into terrorism by others. Nothing can be done about terrorism until critics of Islam are silenced.

Note that there is no direct condemnation of those who perpertrated the massacre in Paris. There is no statement condemning the ISIS organization as unIslamic. And there is no statement demanding that Muslims everywhere conduct some appropriate soul-searching to root out the evil of fundamentalism from contemporary Islamic religiosity. Instead, the Mufti’s statement lays the blame on others. Terrorism is a reaction to racism. Terrorism is a reaction to “Islamophobia” – whatever that may be. Terrorism is a reaction to security and policing. Terrorism is a reaction to the Australian government’s foreign policies and, by some strange paradoxic, Australia's military engagement against terrorists in the Middle East. (Is the Mufti really saying 'We can't do anything about terrorism until you stop bombing ISIS in Syria?!!!') 

Unless this mealy-mouthed Mufti condemns the attacks in Paris - without reservation - he should resign. His response to the Paris atrocities is completely unacceptable. He promotes an ideology of victimhood rather than confronting the poison that is infecting contemporary Islam. He is part of the problem. He deserves to be condemned and he has shown himself not to be fit for the high office he holds.

(We might also note at this time that the Mufti - supreme representative of Muslims in Australia - cannot or will not speak English. It speaks volumes in itself that Mahometan officialdom in Australia has appointed a non-English speaker as their figurehead. There is no serious effort to engage with mainstream Australia.)

* * * 

What might His Eminence have said instead? Several correspondents have asked the present author what response Muslim authorities should have given? It is, of course, not the business of this author to do the job of the Office of the Mufti or the National Council of Imams, but he offers the following as one possible appropriate wording. It is not, as they say, rocket science. The Mufti's Media Statement might well have been worded as follows:

His Eminence, the Grand Mufti of Australia, Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, and the Australian National Imams Council, mourn the loss of innocent lives due to the recent terrorist attacks in France. Almost 130 people were tragically killed and more than 350 injured.

We would like to convey our deepest condolences to the families and friends of the deceased.

We reiterate that the sanctity of human life is guaranteed in Islam. We condemn, without reservation, all those involved in these evil and barbaric deeds and denounce any Muslims, in Australia or abroad, who offer support to those responsible. Acts of terror have no justification and are profoundly un-Islamic in every respect. Those who perpetrate such acts face the displeasure of Allah Almighty and the punishment of the hellfire. They can in no way be regarded as martyrs.

We regret, once again, that radical and extremist ideologies have taken root in some sections of the Islamic Ummah and we vow to work tirelessly to completely eliminate such perverse ideologies from our own community. We assure the Australian people that we will cooperate with the Australian government and law enforcement to take all necessary steps to remove the doctrine of hatred and terror from within Australian Islam, to prevent any material support for terrorism here or abroad, and to protect innocent Australians from all acts of terror and religious violence.

We ask the Australian people to distinguish between the great majority of Muslims who are peaceloving and a small minority of deluded heretics who are misled by narratives of victimhood and blind hatred that have no basis in fact. We call upon all people of good will to stand with the peaceloving majority and to help us cleanse contemporary Islam of this terrible cancer.

* * * 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

A Henocultural Position

The intelligent appreciation of Oriental religiosity was once hobbled by a false dichotomy. It still prevails in some quarters. Namely, the simplistic notion that there are (a) monotheist religions and (b) polytheist ones. Moreover, it was also supposed, simplistically, that polytheism was the state of primitive religion and that this at length evolved into monotheism which is the superior and advanced form of religion.

This model proved particularly inappropriate for encounters with the religions of India and especially that grouping of religions, sects and cults known as Hindooism. On the face of it, it is, plainly, polytheistic since it includes the worship of not only multiple but a myriad of deities. On the other hand, though, it clearly has strong monotheist themes and these extend back to the ancient Vedic order from which the profusion of Hindoo piety has developed. This fact was made plain to Europeans by the representatives of Hindoostan in response to the misapprehensions and misunderstandings of missionaries then labouring under the aforementioned false dichotomy.

The failings of the model were corrected by the great German student of Oriental spirituality Max Muller who, very sensibly, argued that the either/or polarity of mono- and poly- was inadequate to describe the realities of the case. Accordingly, he introduced a third and middle category, namely heno-theism, being the proposition that while there is a multiplicity of gods there is nevertheless a single dominant deity of which that multiplicity is either an subservient expression or a complement. Henotheism, that is, is a compromise between stark monotheism and plain polytheism. Muller believed, with some justification, that this is the better model for understanding the religion of the Hindoo, and indeed other supposedly “primitive” and “pagan” religions besides. Adopting this term – henotheism – other students of the diverse religions of man have argued, with some justification, that pure systems of monotheism and polytheism do not or rarely exist and that most, if not all, religions tend to the henotheistic. Thus, for example, the Christian faith – quite apart from Trinitarianism – has a multiplicity of angels and archangels and the like. Even the fiercely monotheistic faith of the Mahometans knows God by ninety-nine different Names. One god has multiple powers and multiple forms, and this is exactly the point made by apologists of Hindooism.

The same subtlety can rightly be applied to the false dichotomies that prevail in contemporary considerations of culture. On the one hand we have the so-called multiculturalists, whom we might just as well label polyculturalists, and on the other hand we have the monoculturalists, namely those who advocate a national or ethnic purity free of foreigners. The contemporary world offers examples of both. Europe – overreacting to the monocultural excesses of the Nazis – has embraced the polycultural model, relaxing borders and deliberately encouraging a smorgasbord of cultures, nationalities, languages and ethnicities. Japan is an example of the monocultural model. The Nipponese, while now open to modernity and trade, have no taste for allowing foreigners to reside in their sacred islands. Nippon is for the Nipponese. They value their tradition and their integrity. You can visit, but you cannot stay. 

In Western polities, this dichotomy has also taken shape along the classical binary fault-lines of Left and Right. The political Left is polycultural, and the Right monocultural, by and large. These both tend to further extremes. On the Left we find a corrosive, sentimental dissolution into cultural relativism. On the Right we find – as a reaction – a tendency towards racism and supremacism which can often take quite ugly forms. Indeed, these tensions – Left/Right, poly/mono – have become sharply accentuated in recent decades, largely as the result of the Left implementing further and further aspects of their relentlessly polycultural agenda. In many places Leftist no-border relativism has reached ridiculous proportions. Some Leftists will tell you - as they have told the present author - that celebrating Christmas is “racist” and an affront to “multiculturalism” and “tolerance”. The intolerance of Leftist tolerance has provoked a predictable and largely warranted backlash but has also stirred the sleeping dragon of racialism and nastier forms of cultural chauvanism. We see foreigners and immigrants attacked and insulted on trains.

For clarity on these matters the author looks to the model offered by Max Muller. Between the extremes of open-slather multiculturalism and the closed insularism of monoculturalism there is the sensible middle ground of henoculturalism, namely the proposition that while a culture is open to diversity and difference it nevertheless maintains its integrity and sense of self.

This might seem like a common sense position and yet it is rarely articulated in today’s polarized political landscape. In any living culture, surely, there is a negotiated tension between self and other, old and new, tradition and change. Both are of value. This is the underlying assumption of the middle position we are here calling henoculturalism. Closed polities such as that of Japan are difficult to justify and maintain in an increasingly globalized world; but there must be safeguards against excessive plurality. The answer is to have a secure, robust traditional culture that is, at the same time, open to other influences and the benefits of cultural interchange. An openness to multiple cultures need not mean the suicide of one’s own. This entails vigilance, though, and a resistance to Marxist and other subversive internationalist ideologies (including international capital) that would undermine the institutions and identity of nation states in pursuit of a sentimental and spurious universalism. It is plain that multicultural models are failing Europe and to a lesser extent the USA. A henocultural position requires a rethinking of the multicultural project with greater attention to social cohesion and a better balance between national values and the tolerance of the exotic.

Let us take the example of Australia. Its history, language, customs, institutions and values are primarily Anglo-Celtic, European and Judeo-Christian. This fact is to be celebrated. At the same time, however, it has opened its doors to immigrants from many different nations and cultures. The richness of Australia lies in both of these facts. It is rich for its British, European and Judeo-Christian heritage, and is further enriched by its immigrant populations. Problems have arisen though since the cultural Left has developed a hostile attitude to the nation’s British, European and Judeo-Christian heritage which is deems “racist”. (Single word labels like this pass for intellectuality on the Left.) Those who value that heritage are demonized and have been marginalized by the imposition of codes of “political correctness” under the banners of “diversity” and “tolerance”. This has made the Left entirely blind to the dangers and difficulties of indiscriminate immigration and the corrosive, destructive effects of relativism.  In response, we see the growth of the so-called “Far Right” or more exactly reactionary forms of nationalism and patriotic politics. In context, these are - up to a point - a healthy readjustment to the cultural suicide of the multicultural Left. 

Since the author is currently sitting in a tea house in Darjeeling looking out upon Chowrasta Square and a group of soldiers armed with AK47s, we might also mention here the case of Pakistan, a religious monoculture, in contrast to the Republic of India. The author has journeyed through both and must report, in all honesty, that India is richer and more prosperous precisely because it is more diverse; religious diversity is one of the treasures of India. Religious monoculturalism is a fatal flaw in the entire conception of the modern state of Pakistan. 

Yet there are - as there should be - natural limits to diversity if henoculturalism is not to give way to the chaos of polyculturalism. These are burning issues in today's India. To what extent is it "secular" (often a by-word for cultural relativism) and to what extent is it an essentially "Hindoo" nation? The Prime Ministership of Mr. Modi is bringing these questions into sharp focus. The answer, though - leaving aside the vociferous ideological chattering of the Leftist commentariat - is the same answer, mutates mutandis, as offered by Max Muller in the 19th C., namely that India, like Hindooism itself, is, always, a beautiful balance of one and many. India is - and has always been - an essentially Hindoo world. Yet it accommodates other religions: the Mahometans, the Jains, the Boodhists, the Christians, and a hundred others. 

This tolerance of others can only be viable where the primacy of Hindooism is acknowledged and respected. Thus too in Australia: tolerance of others can only be viable where the essentially British, European and Judeo-Christian character of the nation is safeguarded, cherished and respected. In India, and in Australia - as in the United Kingdom and Europe, and the United States - there is now an especially stupid Leftist intellectual culture that fails to grasp this and so poses a threat to the very ideal of tolerance and diversity it espouses. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Untrod Snow

The general foundation for the symbolism of the mountain is simple: since the earth has been associated with everything human (the etymology of the word "human" is from humus, soil), the earth's peaks, which reach to the sky and which are transfigured by perennial snow, were spontaneously regarded as the most apt material to express, through allegories, transcendental states of consciousness, inner spiritual realisations, and apparitions of extra normal modes of being, often portrayed figuratively as gods and supernatural beings. 

- Baron Evola, 

Some Remarks Concerning the Divinity of the Mountains

For a long while it was believed that Kangchenjunga was the tallest mountain in the world. It was only at the dawn of the 20th C. that finer estimations established that Everest – or Peak XV as it was known – was slightly higher, with so-called K2 in Kashmir in between them. So officially, today, Kangchenjunga is the third highest peak on Earth. It remains, though, one of the least climbed. This present author gave an account several posts ago of the ill-fated 1905 expedition led by the English psychopath, the self-styled Prophet of the Aeon of Horus, Aleister Crowley. Although Crowley established a viable path, he failed to reach the summit. This feat was not accomplished until decades later, and since then only rarely. The north-east face – which the present author can view with spectacular clarity from the Darjeeling hills as he writes (see accompanying pictures) – has only been conquered thrice and is regarded as one of mountaineering’s most perilous challenges. 

Moreover, it is not likely to be conquered again any time soon since the good government of Sikkim, the northern mountainous province of India on the border of which the mountain is located, has issued a decree that no further climbing expeditions will be permitted. The reason for this is that the mountain is regarded as sacred, and the spectacle of disrespectful mountaineers climbing and very often dying all over it outraged religious authorities. The former King of Sikkim, who was deposed when the republic of India annexed the territory, held a firm policy on this, and it has now been renewed by the provincial authorities. The mountain has always been sacred to the Sikkimese people – the mountain’s immense presence dominates the entire territory – and they will not permit foreigners to trample its sacred snows. Even when in the past climbing parties were permitted on the mountain they were required to agree to stop short of the summit itself out of respect for the gods of the mountain. This was a sensitivity observed by most mountaineers. One party, for example, climbed the mountain but planted their flag of triumph six feet from the actual summit as a gesture of respect. (No doubt the megalomaniacal Crowley would have shunned this convention if he had had the chance.) 

This, at least, is the case for those who approach from Sikkim. Unfortunately, the mountain can be accessed from Nepal to the west and the Nepalese – more interested in revenue from climbing permits - impose no such requirements. Mountaineers can violate the summit through Nepal, that is to say, and indeed they do. There are those mountaineers who scoff at the Sikkimese and, contrary to the wishes and pleas of the Lamas and Brahmin, summit the sacred mountain through Nepal instead. This is the same fraternity, let us recall, who have in recent times trashed Mount Everest to the extent that it is now a rubbish dump of litter and dead bodies. Comments by representatives of this fraternity suggest that they do not really appreciate what is at stake. A certain Mr. Bauer, an Austrian and spokesman for a group clambering to climb the north-east face (his grandfather tried twice and failed) denounced the ban and said, "We revere mountains in Austria too. Climbing does not mean the mountains and landscape cannot be preserved, but it does give the locals an opportunity of making some money.”

Readers will note what these comments reveal about Mr Bauer’s values. For him it is a matter of “revering” mountains – we revere them, that’s why we climb them -, of environmental conservation and, yes, money. But none of these concerns are within the orbit of the concerns of the Sikkimese. Mr. Bauer’s concerns are entirely secular. They do not actually address the idea that the mountain is sacred. The entire category of “sacred” completely escapes Mr. Bauer, it would seem. Even the contemporary Western phenomenon of “eco-spirituality” which, if we are kind, we might ascribe to Mr. Bauer’s comments, really belongs to an entirely different order of ideas. What we have here is a clash of modernity and tradition. The good people of Sikkim – for the most part simple Boodhist peasants – have a traditional regard for the mountain. They do not “revere” it, and they do not value it because it is ecologically intact, nor indeed because it might be a source of income. No, they regard it as sacred. What exactly does this mean? In general, modern people have no idea.

This is not the place to elaborate upon this question, but let us merely say that to the traditional mind the sacred represents some aspect of a transcendent order of Reality (Yes, Reality, with an upper-case R.) It is the transcendent – that which transcends the earthly – that is the important factor. To find a mountain “inspiring” or similar, as modern people do, does not involve anything transcendent whatsoever. It is a profane and shallow emotion. Similarly, “eco-spirituality” is an entirely profane affair as well. For a mountain to be sacred in the traditional sense it must be a symbol, an object that points to, or embodies, a higher (and deeper) reality. When modern people look upon a mountain – even one so immense as Kangchenjunga – they never leave the confines of their limited worldview. When they cry “Oh! It’s magnificent!” or “Oh! How beautiful!” or “Just look at that, Bill! Isn’t it amazing?” they never extend themselves beyond merely sentimental responses. Such responses are of a totally different order to the way in which traditional people regard a mountain.

One important difference is this: the traditional idea of sacred involves fear. The sacred is to be feared. If there is one thing that modern man – even where he might count himself “religious” – is lacking, it is the fear of God. The traditional response to a mountain as immense and imposing as Kangchenjunga is awe. Awe – true awe – is a religious emotion. Mr. Bauer and his mountaineers are not in awe of Kangchenjunga. If they were they would never entertain the idea of subduing such a mountain. They might be impressed or daunted by the scale of the mountain, but they conspicuously lack any deep and appropriate sense of awe. The religious people of Sikkim fear and dread both the mountain and, even more, its gods. That is the difference. 

The present writer touched upon this idea in another earlier post when he made the point that traditional people fear wilderness. They fear what modern people call “nature”. Again, the category of ‘eco-spirituality’ which elevates ‘eco-systems’ and ‘biodiversity’ and the like to pseudo-deities, fails to encompass this entirely. It is not the same thing at all. Whether it is a jungle or a mangrove swamp or a desert or a mountain, the modern mentality does not view wilderness (that which is by definition beyond the human realm) with the same sense of awe (i.e. a sacred fear) that even the most ecologically spiritual modern person does. There is no “sacred fear” in “eco-spirituality” and there is no hint of it in the way Mr. Bauer claims Austrians “revere” mountains either. 

This is not to say, nevertheless, that there is not or cannot be an integral spiritual dimension to mountaineering. For this, see the work of Baron Julius Evola. There is a very fine collection of Baron Evola's writings entitled Meditations on the Peaks & Mountain Climbing as a Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest which collection is probably the preeminent text on the issue. Baron Evola is not blind to the promethean and thuggish self-engrandizement that can characterise the conquerors of mountains, but he insists - rightly - that mountain climbing need not be insensitive to or incompatible with the sacred aspect of mountains. 

Although the ancients did not practice mountain climbing... they nonetheless had a very vivid sense of the sacredness and symbolism of mountains. They also thought - and this is rather telling - that climbing mountains and living therein was the prerogative of heroes and initiates, in other words beings who were believed to have gone beyond the limits of the common and mediocre life of the plains.

- Baron Evola

* * * 

What, specifically, makes Kanchenjunga sacred? How, in what way, is its sacredness understood among the people of the holy land of Sikkim? The name Kangchenjunga means, it is said, “the five treasures of snow”. One common explanation of this - preferred in tourist pamphlets - is that it refers to the five valleys that shape the sides of the peak. This is almost certainly the profane explanation of geographers. Such an explanation really only takes account of the idea of "five snows" but makes nothing of the designation "treasures". A more likely and more traditional explanation - as offered by local people - is that it refers to the idea that five treasures are concealed there, concealed, that is, by the snow, in which case the important part of the name is precisely "treasures" and the number five has nothing to do with any supposed five-sided topography. 

These treasures are said to be gold, salt, scriptures and an invincible armour (or alternatively grain, turquoise, medicine etc.since there are differing accounts of these five things). It is said that these will be revealed to the pious at the close of days or as required as the cycles of time decline. This idea is related, that is to say, to the important concept in Boodhism (of the Mayahana type and the Nyingma sect in particular) of terma, namely the notion that certain scriptures, relics and precious objects were hidden by enlightened beings of former times for the benefit of those of us unfortunate enough to live in more opaque and less propitious times. At selected times, as required, these secrets will be revealed. Nyingma Boodhism, readers must appreciate, is a tradition of on-going and continuous, which is to say unfolding, revelation. Certain terma have been hidden in secret places. They are and will be "found" when needed. Kanchenjunga is one such stash of secret treasures. But they are, for now, beyond the reach of mortal men. 

Thus, other than being an abode of the gods in the general sense that mountains always are – especially since they seem to float in the air as celestial (transcendent) realms detached from the earth – this, we can assume, is what makes Kangchenjunga especially sacred to the Sikkimese. It is a place of hidden, sacred treasures. It is a trove of the most sacred terma. This is the pertinent aspect of its transcendent quality. This is to what its name refers. These are treasures hidden beyond the profane realm. And this is why its snows must remain untrod.


Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black