Dharma Queries
—A Quick Review of the Present Yuga
1. Nature and Man—the great Paleolithic Goddess and the
antler’d dancer—magic paintings in caves; red hands; red
dots.
2. Social energy and Man—the gathering of bronze and
iron-age power; tribes become “nations” and expand—the pole
Star, the War Chief, the penis-as-weapon resolve as
God in Heaven.
3. A reaction to pure social and warrior-power mystiques:
teachers of social management—Confucius, Zoroaster, Judaic
reforms; spiritual-social disciplines like the Gita.
4. Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism, temper the power
hunger of states and castles; with emphasis on individual
responsibility and liberation.
5. These systems become power-manipulators in turn, while
within them survival of archaic Nature-and-Man traditions
regain influence. Yogacara Buddhism leading toward Vajrayana;
Mediterranean mystery cults leading towards dozens of
occidental occult and alchemical streams of thought.
6. Contemporary Science: the knowledge that society and any
given cultural outlook is arbitrary; and that the more we
conquer Nature the weaker we get. The objective eye of science,
stiving to see Nature plain, must finally look at “subject”
and “object” and the very eye that looks. We discover that all
of us carry within us caves; with animals and gods on the
walls; a place of ritual and Magic.
Gary Snyder
from Earth House Hold
new Directions Books, 1969
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