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The Voice of the Valley: Zen Teachings
226 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 26, 2024
I read Deshimaru in the early nineties. I was still struggling mightily at work, and his books mightily recharged my batteries - giving me new courage and conviction.
I would strenuously cling to Deshimaru’s virtues at the end of that decade, when all my hard-won values were abruptly Transvalued.
That was no joke, or so it seemed in 1999. But, you know, it was in reality no different than in 1970, when my long quest started.
“In my beginning is my end:” so true, Thomas Stearns Eliot! The seed of our existential freedom is given to us RIGHT AT THE START.
It’s the seeds of anxiety, for freedom has no moral limits.
Freedom is a gift. Sin is a gimme.
You use gifts for a fuller harvest by reinvesting them. But don’t bury all your gifts in a barren field of gimme’s and vainly try to forget your anguish.
But freedom rightly conceived, as the existential freedom of choice in the utter emptiness of our being-in-the-world, has an entirely open-ended flavour to it, as in the hope of the wonderful choral music of that modern master of ecclesiastical psalmody, Gelineau. It’s redolent of the better old days.
Say, by the way, speaking of earlier times - does anyone else remember the pre-Amazon days in Canada or elsewhere? What you did back then, you see, was rely on close downtown bookstores within an easy radius from your office or home.
Back then, book store owners speckled the street in clusters, and relied on their individual tastes and predilections for more esoteric and less in demand kinds of books. Intelligent readers, therefore, had to know bookshop managers’ tastes!
Now we have Amazon, with everything available that’s under the sun...
But they were more individualistic and much smaller stores in those days, and you got so if you started following a new lead in a good author, you knew where you would find it.
So we older guys WERE more active and much less prone to be sedentary couch potatoes back then.
Deshimaru was one of my leads in the early nineties. A man’s man. A no-nonsense character. A “what you see is what you get” type guy. A guy who would make a good, solid friend!
His anxiety had bred true character.
So yes, I LIKED Deshimaru’s strength of character. And he led me out of my Dark Wood. For a while - until my values were challenged irrevocably.
The voice of the valley sounds animistic, doesn’t it? Pathetic fallacy?
Never! Deshimaru lived in a concrete world, of solid and concrete sorrows and joys.
Zen didn’t alter the spirit of his original Christianity, either, from back in the pre-war years.
No. It only turned him more like himself.
Certain. Strong. Enduring - but always under the Shadow of Transience.
And AWAKE enough to bear it! As we should all be.
I’m sure my European buddies remember his remarkable work in Paris in the seventies.
Influential work for peaceful change and increased personal alertness.
Challenge is key.
And unless we glimpse, with Deshimaru, our moral emptiness in a world that lacks value if it lacks goodness, we won’t stand up for what is right.
So, Taisen, we miss your strength, and humanity, and open-handed words of peace and charity.
You were a true fighter for Truth, and we need more folks like you now.
I would strenuously cling to Deshimaru’s virtues at the end of that decade, when all my hard-won values were abruptly Transvalued.
That was no joke, or so it seemed in 1999. But, you know, it was in reality no different than in 1970, when my long quest started.
“In my beginning is my end:” so true, Thomas Stearns Eliot! The seed of our existential freedom is given to us RIGHT AT THE START.
It’s the seeds of anxiety, for freedom has no moral limits.
Freedom is a gift. Sin is a gimme.
You use gifts for a fuller harvest by reinvesting them. But don’t bury all your gifts in a barren field of gimme’s and vainly try to forget your anguish.
But freedom rightly conceived, as the existential freedom of choice in the utter emptiness of our being-in-the-world, has an entirely open-ended flavour to it, as in the hope of the wonderful choral music of that modern master of ecclesiastical psalmody, Gelineau. It’s redolent of the better old days.
Say, by the way, speaking of earlier times - does anyone else remember the pre-Amazon days in Canada or elsewhere? What you did back then, you see, was rely on close downtown bookstores within an easy radius from your office or home.
Back then, book store owners speckled the street in clusters, and relied on their individual tastes and predilections for more esoteric and less in demand kinds of books. Intelligent readers, therefore, had to know bookshop managers’ tastes!
Now we have Amazon, with everything available that’s under the sun...
But they were more individualistic and much smaller stores in those days, and you got so if you started following a new lead in a good author, you knew where you would find it.
So we older guys WERE more active and much less prone to be sedentary couch potatoes back then.
Deshimaru was one of my leads in the early nineties. A man’s man. A no-nonsense character. A “what you see is what you get” type guy. A guy who would make a good, solid friend!
His anxiety had bred true character.
So yes, I LIKED Deshimaru’s strength of character. And he led me out of my Dark Wood. For a while - until my values were challenged irrevocably.
The voice of the valley sounds animistic, doesn’t it? Pathetic fallacy?
Never! Deshimaru lived in a concrete world, of solid and concrete sorrows and joys.
Zen didn’t alter the spirit of his original Christianity, either, from back in the pre-war years.
No. It only turned him more like himself.
Certain. Strong. Enduring - but always under the Shadow of Transience.
And AWAKE enough to bear it! As we should all be.
I’m sure my European buddies remember his remarkable work in Paris in the seventies.
Influential work for peaceful change and increased personal alertness.
Challenge is key.
And unless we glimpse, with Deshimaru, our moral emptiness in a world that lacks value if it lacks goodness, we won’t stand up for what is right.
So, Taisen, we miss your strength, and humanity, and open-handed words of peace and charity.
You were a true fighter for Truth, and we need more folks like you now.
January 21, 2019
I liked this book. Wisdom intertwined with humour.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews