Recently I was asked to read an advance copy of David Loy’s forthcoming book Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution and see if I wanted to write a blurb for it. (Funny how one writes a book and in the process become an official expert, considered competent to comment on other books. Makes me wonder what the mystical relationship must be between tautology and feedback loop…) As Loy is one of my heroes, I said, sure. Then I set the book on my bedside stand. Today I’m working on Sunday’s sermon and as one chapter in particular appeared to be relevant to the sermon topic I’ve considered a read “research,” not procrastination, thank you. Just a fan of multitasking, as another of my heroes Alton Brown advocates…
Anyway, in the really intriguing chapter “How to Drive Your Karma,” Loy quotes Eric Fromm commenting on Sigmund Freud (I know, I know…). However convoluted that might be I found it a great quote. And here it is bare, without my usual attempt to correct for gender inclusive language.
The attempt to understand Freud’s theoretical system, or that of any creative systematic thinker, cannot be successful unless we recognize that, and why, every system as it is developed and presented by its author is necessarily erroneous… The creative thinker must think in the terms of the logic, the thought patterns, the expressible concepts of his culture. That means he has not yet the proper words to express the creative, the new; liberating idea. He is forced to solve an insoluble problem: to express the new thought in concepts and words that do not yet exist in his language…. The consequence is that the new thought as he formulates it is a blend of what is truly new and the conventional thought which it transcends. The thinker, however, is not conscious of this contradiction.
Food for thought, don’t you think?
By the bye, while it’s still officially “forthcoming,” you can make an advance purchase (just go to the link I provided above) of Money, Sex, War, Karma. And I recommend you do. It’s really, really good. Loy is one of that rarest of rare breeds, an academic who is also a genuine Zen master; someone who gives his fine mind and searching heart to the things that matter most in making a life worth living…
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