Crop Rotation - 007 - Miscellany - Hagakure, Meditation 17, Ecclesiastes, Psalm 73

Yamamoto Tsunetomo: Hagakure

John Donne: Meditation 17

The Bible: Ecclesiastes, Psalm 73

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears while we all stop sorrow with us. There's a song that will linger forever in our ears. Hard times come again. Hard times, hard times come again. Many days you have lingered around my cabin door. Oh hard times come again no more.

SPEAKER_03 0:47

Welcome to Crop Rotation, a literature, theology, and philosophy discussion podcast. A good farmer doesn't grow the same thing every year. For the soil to thrive, there needs to be variety. We're a group of friends who found that we missed the life of the mind that we were able to live together when we were at St. John's College in Annapolis two decades ago. This podcast is an opportunity to explore and discuss works of art and of intellect that we've each discovered in the intervening years. Before each meeting, one of us gives the group an assignment. This leader is also responsible for asking an opening question to begin the discussion.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Hey, I'm Sir Robert Burbridge. Well, we're doing some crop rotation of our minds and souls. And tonight was my selection of readings. We've got a guest here, Jared is also here, and I'll just uh Hey, there he is. And he's our first guest that we've had, and hopefully he'll come again, and we'll also have some other guests sometime. So the four readings that we have tonight, without further ado, we have Psalm 73, we've got Ecclesiastes, chapters 2 and 3, the first several pages, which in the translation I have is about a chapter and a half or so of the Hagakure, the way of the samurai, and Meditation 17 by John Dunn. I'd like to start by saying first, the reading was very short this time compared to other times. It is a small bit of text. I like them because they all involve a certain amount of reflection from the authors who wrote them. And my opening question will involve that. But because they're short, we're going to go ahead and depart from our previous mode of operation. And we're going to read the full text of the reading here at the beginning of the recording so that you, the audience, if you haven't read them, can engage with us in the same way. If you have them available, just to say them again, you might want to pause after I say, and then you can open them. But the first couple of chapters of the Hagakure, Meditation 17 by John Dunn, Psalm 73, and Ecclesiastes 2 and 3. Alright. Why don't we read these? We'll do Psalm 73, then we'll do Ecclesiastes, then the Hagakure, then John Dunn. Alright.

SPEAKER_05 3:18

Psalm 73. Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart. But as for me, my feet were almost gone, my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They are not in trouble as other men, neither are they plagued like other men. Therefore, pride compasseth them about as a chain. Silence covereth them as a garment. Their eyes stand out with fatness. They have more than heart could wish. They are corrupt and speak wickedly concerning oppression. They speak loftily. They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth. Therefore, his people return hither, and waters of a full cup are wrung out to them. And they say, How doth God know? And is there knowledge in the Most High? Behold, these are ungodly who prosper in the world, they increase in riches. Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain and washed my hands in innocency. For all the day long I have been plagued and chastened every morning. If I say, I will speak thus Behold, I should offend against the generation of thy children. When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me until I went into the sanctuary of God. Then I under then understood I their end. Surely thou didst set them in slippery places, thou castest them down into destruction. How are they brought into this desolation as in a moment? They are utterly consumed with terrors, as a dream when one awaketh. So, O Lord, when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image. Thus my heart was grieved, and I was pricked in my reins. So foolish was I and ignorant. I was as a beast before thee. Nevertheless, I am continually with thee. Thou hast hold me by my right hand, thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever. For lo, they that are far from thee shall perish. Thou hast destroyed them all that go ahooring from thee. But it is good for me to draw near to God. I have put my trust in the Lord God, that I may declare all thy works.

SPEAKER_03 6:28

Ecclesiastes chapters two and three. I said to myself, Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good. But that also proved to be meaningless. Laughter, I said, is madness, and what does pleasure accomplish? I tried cheering myself with wine and embracing folly, my mind still guiding me with wisdom. I wanted to see what was good for people to do under the heavens during the few days of their lives. I undertook great projects. I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I made reservoirs to water groves of flourishing trees. I bought male and female slaves and had other slaves who were born in my house. I also owned more herds and flocks than anyone in Jerusalem before me. I amassed silver and gold for myself and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired male and female singers and a harem as well, the delights of a man's heart. I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom stayed with me. I denied myself nothing my eyes desired, I refused my heart no pleasure, my heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Nothing was gained under the sun. Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom and also madness and folly. What more can the king's successor do than what has already been done? I saw that wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness. The wise have eyes in their heads, while the fool walks in darkness. But I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both. Then I said to myself, The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise? I said to myself, This too is meaningless, for the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered. The days have already come when both have been forgotten. Like the fool, the wise too must die. So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me, and who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish. Yet they will have control over all the fruit of my toil into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge, and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun? All their days their work is grief and pain. Even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless. A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him who can eat or find enjoyment? To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge, and happiness. But to the sinner, he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens. A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart. Yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink and find satisfaction in all their toil. This is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever, nothing can be added to it, and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him. Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before, and God will call the past to account. And I saw something else under the sun. In the place of judgment, wickedness was there. In the place of justice, wickedness was there. I said to myself, God will bring into judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time to judge every deed. I also said to myself, As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals. The same fate awaits them both. As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath, humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place, all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the human spirit rises upward, and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth? So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?

SPEAKER_00 12:52

So, real quickly on those two, those are from the Bible, and they for our group, those have a special place. I'm going to say super briefly about each of these four people. That first one, the psalm we read, 73, is attributed to Asaph. Asaph was a musician in the temple for under David, and he's mentioned in particular in 2 Chronicles as being a seer, which is an older word for prophet. So he's a both a prophet and a seer. When Hezekiah has his, this is the verse, King Hezekiah and his official ordered the Levites to praise the Lord with the words of David and Asaph the seer. So they sang praises with gladness and bowed down in worship. So I just want to mention who Asaph is. Solomon was the one that Matt just read. This is late in his life. He was King David's son and was faithful to God in the beginning of his life, and his heart wandered towards the end. This is the end of his life, and he's musing and reflecting. The Hagakure is also called the Book of the Samurai, written by Yamamoto Tsunetomo. He was a samurai at the end of the what we would call the golden age of the samurai. And he retreated to a hermitage late in his life. And a student of his came and just talked to him and got his wisdom and ended up recording chronicles of his thoughts about life and reflections on society and so forth. And this the this is uh his reflections on what it meant to him to be a samurai in the golden age of it, what he would thought of that way, and the sort of decay of that culturally for them.

SPEAKER_04 14:40

So although it stands to reason that a samurai should be mindful of the way of the samurai, it would seem that we are all negligent. Consequently, if someone were to ask, what is the true meaning of the way of the samurai? The person who would be able to answer promptly is rare. This is because it has not been established in one's mind beforehand. From this, one's unmindfulness of the way can be known. Negligence is an extreme thing. The way of the samurai is found in death. When it comes to either or, there is only the quick choice of death. It is not particularly difficult. Be determined and advance. To say that dying without reaching one's aim is to die a dog's death is the frivolous way of sophisticates. When pressed with the choice of life or death, it is not necessary to gain one's aim. We all want to live, and in large part we make our logic according to what we like. But not having attained our aim and continuing to live is cowardice. This is a thin, dangerous line. To die without gaining one's aim is a dog's death and fanaticism. But there is no shame in this. This is the substance of the way of the samurai. If by setting one's heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he pains freedom in the way. His whole life will oh yeah, I was gonna say, he gains freedom in the way. His whole life will be without blame, and he will succeed in his calling. A man is a good retainer to the extent that he earnestly places importance in his master. This is the highest sort of retainer. If one is born into a prominent family that goes back for generations, it is sufficient to deeply consider the matter of obligation to one's ancestors to lay down one's body and mind, and to earnestly esteem one's master. If it is further good fortune, and it is further good fortune if, more than this, one has wisdom and talent and can use them appropriately. But even a person who is good for nothing and exceedingly clumsy will be a reliable retainer if only he has the determination to think earnestly of his master. Having only wisdom and talent is the lowest tier of usefulness. According to their nature, there are both people who have quick intelligence and those who must withdraw and take time to think things over. Looking into this thoroughly, if one thinks selflessly and adheres to the four vows of the Nabashima samurai, surprising wisdom will occur regardless of the high or low points of one's nature. People think that they can clear up profound matters if they consider them deeply, but they exercise perverse thoughts and come to no good because they do their reflecting with only self-interest at the center. It is difficult for a fool's habits to change to selflessness. In confronting a matter, however, if at first you leave it alone, fix the four vows in your heart, exclude self-interest, and make an effort, you will not go far from your mark. Because we do most things relying on our own sagicity, we become self-interested, turn our backs on reason, and things do not turn out well. As seen by other people, this is sordid, weak, narrow, and inefficient. When one is not capable of true intelligence, it is good to consult with someone of good sense. An advisor will fulfill the way when he makes decisions by selfless and frank intelligence because he is not personally involved. This way of doing things will certainly be seen by others as being strongly rooted. It is, for example, like a large tree with many roots. One man's intelligence is like a tree that has been simply stuck in the ground. We learn about the sayings and deeds of the men of old in order to entrust ourselves to their wisdom and prevent selfishness. When we throw off our own bias, follow the sayings of the ancients, and confer with other people, matters should go well and without mitzap. Lord Katsushige borrowed from the wisdom of Lord Naoshige. This is mentioned in the Ohana Shikigaki. We should be grateful for his concern. Moreover, there was a certain man who engaged a number of his younger brothers as retainers, and whenever he visited Ido or the Kamagata era, he would have them accompany him. As he consulted with them every day on both private and public matters, it is said he was without mishap. Sagara Kyuma was completely at one with his master and served him as though his own body were already dead. He was one man in a thousand.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

Okay. Um Tsunatomo was 17th century, so 1600s, late 1600s, and approximately contemporary was him, John Dunn. With him was John Dunn. John Dunn was actually a little bit before him, died 20 years or so before Tsunatomo, but they're in the same world approximately, though Tsunatomo is in Japan and Dunn is in England. So this is Meditation 17 by John Dunn. He was a monk, priest, I guess, and had a bunch of meditations just about life and society and different things. He's talking a lot about a bell in this. The bell is the church bell in a town that will ring for various things to call attention for people. Maybe they're out, you know, doing whatever, and it's indicating there could be somebody who's gravely sick, you should come, or other kinds of events. And the other thing is there's going to be a it's going to mention a suit later, and it means lawsuit. And there was just a lawsuit where there some different orders were trying to figure out whose job it was to do the ringing of the bell for morning prayers. Context, he doesn't introduce them, so I just wanted you to know what was happening there. Perchance, he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him. And perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me and see my state may have caused it to toll for me. And I know not that. The church is Catholic, universal. So are all her actions. All that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me. For that child is thereby connected to that body whose head is my head too, and engrafted into that body whereof I am a member. When she buries a man, that action concerns me. All mankind is of one author and is one volume. When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language. And every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators. Some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice. But God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all, but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness? There was a contention as far as a suit, in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation were mingled. Which of the religious orders should ring to prayer first in the morning? And it was determined that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand a right the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell tolls for him that thinks it doth. And though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not his eye to the sun when it rises? But who takes off his eye from a comet that when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to hear any bell which upon any occasion rings? But who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manner of thy friends or of thine own were. It tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch more from the next house in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion or a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but not current money in the use of it, except that we get nearer and nearer our home heaven by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him. But this bell that tells me of his affliction digs out and applies that gold to me. If by this consideration of another's danger, I take mine own into contemplation and so secure myself by making my recourse to God who is our only security. Okay, so I had a whole bunch of ways I thought about going for this question. One of the things that I'm was that I was going to touch on, and I'm not gonna ask about this explicitly here, but I'm gonna mention it because it's a big deal, is there's a death thread in all of these, right? And there's a life thread, living and dying and so forth. I'd like us to imagine, for the sake of what we're doing here, that these four men, at least as represented by the things we're reading, right? We're they had a lot more to them, but that these four men could sit together for a dinner or something and talk. What would they agree on? And what would they disagree on?

SPEAKER_04 27:50

It's interesting you asked that question. One, because my grandmother just passed away yesterday. She had been uh walking with the Lord for about 80 years and was about 101, and I would say represented Bushido and Christianity fairly well. Sorry, John. And yeah, that's okay. Uh every tear I have shed has been in the attempt to comprehend the overwhelming reality of what it will it is like for her right now to be seeing the face of Jesus, hearing the voice of Jesus, experiencing the warmth and the pressure and the texture and the substance of the embrace of Jesus Christ Himself, and hearing, you know, Well done, my good and faithful servant. That's the primary thing that I've been praying over and over and over for her is Lord, let her hear, Well done, good and faithful servant, which again I think speaks to that upholding of what's inimitable about Bushido. Her email address was Maryandjesus at Juno.com, Maryandjesus at netscape.com, Maryandjesus at yahoo.com. She lived her life very formatively around that relationship. And two, because I did a comparison between the virtues of the author and this code, and the virtues of Christianity. And I I tried to map out out of like the fruits of the spirit, the list that Peter gives, where's the overlap? And there's some very interesting, large overlaps, and there's a couple of notable misses. So I'd be curious to hear what other people see in terms of the deepest connections between something like Peter's list of virtues or the fruits of the spirit, which a lot of people consider to be very formative, deep, you know, classical lists of what Christianity is about. That to me seemed like a good, meaningful way to begin to talk about what they would agree about, where would they see their codes and their life, their values overlapping and these pieces of art, you know?

SPEAKER_03 30:00

Can I bring in because it mentions the four vows of the Nabishima samurai? I believe that what those four vows were specifically was to never be second place in pursuit of the way of the samurai. Number two is always be loyal and devoted in service to your master. Number three is filial piety, do your duty to your parents. Number four is having compassion for all sentient beings.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

I just don't really see uh ASOF, ASAF and uh old Solomon harmonizing each other. Yeah. I feel like ASAP, he he might not bring it up, but he might feel kind of sorry for Solomon.

SPEAKER_03 30:54

I mean he almost interesting. Go ahead. He almost, Matt. He almost, you know, you can see him saying, Ah, Solomon, I had your problem. Like this psalm is almost him narrating that he had Solomon's problem, and while he had Solomon's problem, he was a beast. He was a brute, and then he went to church, and his problem was solved. So I imagine he might say to Solomon, hey, just go to the temple.

SPEAKER_04 31:24

Uh Matthew, that is a wildly concrete and practical parenting pro tip for anyone with a teenager. Just read the contents of Psalm 73 to your child that's still in bed and say, See, go to church. It'll be fine. That's funny. Yeah, Jared, I agree with you. That's uh I think that's a great insight, and I agree. I it feels like of all these four works, those two are the two that are in the Bible, and they feel most disconnected from each other. Yeah, as authors of perspective. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:57

To me, they're almost, I think I might be putting my own interpretation too much on this, and so I would love to see where how Jared reads it differs from how I read it. So I see like Psalm 73 has two parts. It's describing the provability of moral nihilism, and then it's displaying the solution to that. And then it seems like the whole book of Ecclesiastes is just a series of that same thing over and over again, like showing a proof for nihilism, and then saying, But I saw that nothing was better than to do your work with joy, and then another proof of nihilism, and then back to another.

SPEAKER_04 32:44

Then can I disagree with you before you move on past this? Because I feel like the Psalm 73 is not a proof, and I agree with you completely that Solomon is doing proof work. So my my beef would be that in 73 he's talking about, he's making the argument. I guess this is semantics, right? But he's making the argument this is an inescapable experience here, and he's clearly defining the points of his proof that it is. But he's not trying to reason and reckon with in that proof, he's just setting up this whole thing. Well, I guess it has to do with the way that you're he's shaping it. He's got a big preamble of bad, bad, bad. Whereas with Solomon, I see there's this through line that's very different where he's saying, Well, even while I was doing this, I still had my wisdom with me. So that that to me, I think, is what feels so totally different, is that ASAF is an A-B structure, whereas Solomon, there's these through lines and it's all sequential proof steps and stuff. You see what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 33:53

I definitely see there's a difference in ASAF saying, when I thought this way, I was a beast, and Solomon saying when I thought this way, wisdom was guiding me, and I was right. Yeah, there you go. That's a big difference. But I'm interested in I'm interested in Jared's Jared's interpretation. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:12

Oh like the modes of talking?

SPEAKER_03 34:15

No, like I was saying they seem really similar to me because both of them are contrasting, on the one hand, an argument for nihilism, and on the other hand, that the solution to that is found in God. And so that's like in my reading of it, you could almost fit Psalm 73 into Ecclesiastes as just another section of Ecclesiastes. But you're obviously reading it very differently for them to seem so different. So I'm interested in what you think about my interpretation or I don't know what you Yeah. Explain more why they seem so different to you.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

Solomon seems to be like staying in this philosophizing way most of the time. And just my read on his tone throughout is not far from despair. What did what did he say? Didn't he call it despair? Yeah, I mean he said I hated life.

SPEAKER_03 35:15

I hated life.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

Yeah. And I just imagine him. Well, he's definitely a man of the world, right? He's like the guy who won the hardest and got everything.

SPEAKER_04 35:28

Yeah. Because he did it on biblical principle, right? Because you asked for wisdom, I'll give you wisdom and yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

And that's that seems like the scope of his thinking in two and three. But ASAF is a seer and he talks about maybe a similar struggle, but then going to the temple and seeing. And he seems to like come back from encountering what's beyond the sun and have lifted spirits, and he expresses a hope that Solomon doesn't. He seems to have more in his hand to hold on to than Solomon.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

So tell me what you think of this, Jared, or anybody. But I see these four texts, I mean, these four men in these conver in this part, and I it's almost a conversation, but ASAF is saying something like, I envy the pleasure that the wicked are able to indulge in, right? They're able to something like be single-minded about it, and it's paying off, right? Like they get to indulge their desires and it pays off for them. But then I go to the temple and I'm reminded of a bigger picture, a longer thing. And it says, You, Lord, will despise their image. When I became embittered in my innermost being and was wounded, I was stupid. I didn't understand. And then he says, basically, they're all gonna die. But as for me, God's presence is my good. I've made the Lord God my refuge, so I can tell you about all you do. One interesting thing there is that Asaph is still talking about death as this sort of like boundary, right? This gate past which he's not looking. His hope is kind of that God's gonna end the life of the indulgent wicked, but not me. I'm gonna live a little longer, can tell about stuff God did. Solomon basically says, Yeah, man, death is awful because all the stuff of my life is meaningless. Tsunitomo, much later in this conversation, they're sitting around at dinner, might say something like, Yeah, but everyone dies, right? It's not that big a deal, just do it right, like do a good job dying. And that's the important thing. And then Dunn pipes in, because they've all been have having this conversation with a totally different perspective, and he's basically like, it's not not a big deal, it's the biggest deal. I'm really looking forward to it. I don't have anything further to say about that right at this moment, but but that but the perspectives here are really interesting, and it seems to me that actually ASAF and Solomon have very parallel. This is my take on it, they have very parallel pictures in their mind about what's happening. They're just playing different roles in that same little skip about life and death.

SPEAKER_03 38:33

I want to amplify something I heard Jared saying, which maybe he wasn't saying, but it's something like Solomon gets as far as you can get with philosophy. And then Asaf goes right over his head and sees it for real. With you know, with philosophy, you have to start from the earthly things that you can see, and maybe, you know, you can prove some things about nature or math or something from just from your own mind or something like that. You can prove in your own head all the propositions of Euclid just by yourself, like that guy from Jupiter or whatever, but you can't actually see with philosophy the true end of the wicked. When ASAF goes to the temple, he sees the actual true ultimate end of the wicked. And he doesn't need to do any philosophizing because he just sees it. He can just report what he sees.

SPEAKER_04 39:36

Yeah, I to me, the way that I saw that dichotomy, I was seeing it in terms of like ASAF by the end of it, the last line to me is the most Bushido kind of line of Psalm 73, where he talks about all this stuff about suffering and finding hope. And to me, it almost reads a little bit like that Hindu proverb about the guy who's walking through the forest path, steps on a thorn, hits the ground, reaches over, finds another thorn, digs the first one out of his foot, and then throws them both away. Because by the end of the psalm, he's no longer talking about, oh, uh, this is awful, and I think it's just I see these other people who are getting away with it. But I have okay, all right. In the end, final judgment's coming. It's okay, things are going to be square. At the end of it, I feel like he does something totally different and almost pivots. And it's can somebody read the last like two verses of Psalm 73? I can read it. For behold, those who are far from you shall perish. You put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Lord my refuge, that I may tell of all your works. And so it's everything that happened in this whole chapter to me is culminating in this. I now have something to do for my master. I am now useful to my master because whatever I have been through will be what comes out of my mouth, and it will not be anything but that, and I will not not speak it. So I've made God my refuge that I may tell of your works. So he's operationalized, he's made serviceable his person and plight to his master, you know. Whereas Solomon is doing all this for himself, he's a philosopher using tools, and then ASAP is like a samurai saying, Yes, I get to pull out my sword now.

SPEAKER_03 41:48

I was almost thinking you could get from Solomon to Samurai as a kind of reductio ad absurdum.

SPEAKER_06 41:58

Hmm.

SPEAKER_03 41:59

Sure. If the samurai guy is like, You're dumb if you say that dying without achieving your aim is a dog's death. You should just go ahead and do the right thing, and if you die, you know, that's whatever. Solomon is like, every death is a dog's death. Every aim you could possibly accomplish is already worthless.

SPEAKER_04 42:22

So Solomon's entire premise of heavel in Ecclesiastes is incompatible with Eastern honor-based living. You can't have absurdities at that level. You have to hold the line, you have to continue to believe in and hold as sacred things that Solomon would just jab holes in, right? Is that fair, Matt?

SPEAKER_05 42:42

What is he?

SPEAKER_04 42:48

Heil is the Hebrew word for nothingness or meaninglessness.

SPEAKER_03 42:51

Well, what I'm trying to say is that Solomon's almost presenting an argument for that one section in the Hagakure where he says, don't worry about achieving your aim. It's better to make the decision to die right away. And Solomon might be like, Yeah, because your aim is already meaningless. Whatever you might be trying to achieve that you think is worth breaking your vows or not being first in the way of the samurai is not actually worth anything at all. It's actually meaningless.

SPEAKER_00 43:35

Which I first I don't know that Solomon has that experience in his life. Um, at least prior to the fact that by the time he's old, he's you know getting frustrated that he's not gonna live forever and keep attaining his aim.

SPEAKER_04 43:53

Isn't that exactly what Ecclesiastes is? Him admitting I'm doing a science experiment trying to find something else. I keep getting back a null. I keep failing. I keep doing this. Right? Do you see what I mean? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:06

I don't know. Is he saying that? I feel like he's doing his experiment and it's all working fine, but death death is like a an inescapable frustration to meaning.

SPEAKER_04 44:21

Yeah, I think you need to reintroduce into your framing of Solomon's engagements as science experiments the drive that he's got a lot of he's talking about it in this very heady intellectual language, but let's face it, he wanted to do those things not just for the science, but because like he says, I got singers and a harem. So he's talking about I have managed to obtain the equivalent back in the day there wasn't Spotify, and you couldn't just uh you know, access to women was very different. Let's just leave it that and move on. And he had the means to get music and sensual romantic pleasure in his life. Those are two extremely deep places of like human satisfaction and soothing to the soul. So I don't think that his science is very impartial.

SPEAKER_00 45:19

Anyway, I think I'm saying the same thing. He was successful in his experiments, right? He went, at least on the at the surface level of the experiments, he went to go get all satisfied with the pleasures of his heart, and he could, so he was able to collect the data of you know what happens when you do that. And his conclusion is death makes it awful, dying is the worst, and it makes all the stuff that you get. However, I have seen that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy his activities because that's the reward. That's all there is, right? And then he says, Who can enable him to see what will happen after he dies? Which I think is a that line is like super interesting because candidly, I don't see ASAF saying anything different. There's a little bit because he's he talks about God is my strength in my heart, my portion forever, but it's not clear to me that ASAF has a meaningful picture of what that's like or you know what that means, the forever side of it. Maybe he does, but Solomon seems to go, yeah, it's just this impenetrable veil. So just the best I have found is enjoy stuff.

SPEAKER_03 46:38

I think there's a I think there's more to it than that. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 46:43

If I may God is his portion forever.

SPEAKER_00 46:46

Yeah, that's I agree, but the rest depend I don't know what forever means here. Maybe it means what we think of as forever, maybe it means for my whole life or something like that. I'm happy for it to mean something past death, but the rest of the psalm appears to be, at least to me, about everything happening that's happening in this life. I interrupted you, Matt. Sorry.

SPEAKER_03 47:10

Yeah, I think there's more to what Solomon is saying than just I've I found no satisfaction in these things, and there's nothing better than that, therefore doing your work with happiness because it comes from God is the best you're going to get. I think he actually has like a theology of time that is saying something. I'm not sure I could completely understand it, but if you look at chapter three, verse uh let's say start at 12, I know that there's nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink and find satisfaction in all their toil. This is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever, nothing can be added to it, and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him. Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before, and God will call the past to account. So it's something like the things that happen to you, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try for anything, the things that happen to your body and your life are from the hand of God, and your choice is not what's going to happen, but in how you deal with it, how you feel about it, how your spirit receives it to it. How you receive it. Exactly. So, like, for instance, everything that God does will endure forever. Well, eh, this cannot have a mundane meaning. This must have a philosophical meaning because God does some things which don't endure forever. Like he created Adam and then Adam died. Adam did not endure forever. So there you go. Or he made the Garden of Eden and then it got wiped away by the flood, or destroyed in an earthquake or something, and it did not endure forever. I don't know. You can list some things that God did that didn't endure forever. So this has a philosophical meaning.

SPEAKER_04 49:14

Doesn't verse 15 answer that? Like whatever has already been, whatever is has already been, and whatever will be has been before. So even the things that you're describing that are emergent and then transient, well, that's just this piece of a thing that God has been doing from all of eternity that is the 7-Eleven in Arizona on Route 66 that exists for 19 months. That's a thing. That's a thing in God's eternity. It's a real narrow, right, weird, tiny blip.

SPEAKER_03 49:50

It will be in the future, and it was always in the past. And also, like this thing that's happening to you, this work that you're doing during your life is not something that you know starts at 8 a.m. and goes until 5 p.m. It always has been and it always will be. And the work that you're going to do in the future already existed in the past. And so if you can find satisfaction in it, that's the gift of God. He's saying time was not a thing. Whatever is current, the whatever what is in the present is the was in the past. Hang on. I don't think he's saying that future is in the past.

SPEAKER_04 50:34

I don't think he's saying that time isn't a thing as much as I see what you're saying. That's useful for framing there. Let me clarify it by saying to the degree that time does come back in from the framing that you've said, which I agree with, it is coming in so that you in time can experience this and fear him, which is crazy. He says at verse 14, I know that everything God does will endure forever. Nothing can be added to it, and nothing taken from it. Eat your heart out, Aristotle. God does it so that people will fear him. Like Solomon claims to lay down the knowledge that the shape of metaphysics is evangelical on God's part towards us. That's pretty crazy.

SPEAKER_03 51:24

Anyway, this is not this point I'm making is not super germane to like the question at hand, but I do think that there's something deeper to Solomon's assertion that you should enjoy your life than just because everything else is meaningless and there's nothing better than this. I think he has a theology behind it. And I found I I don't know, I just thought of this and maybe I'll throw it out there because it might help. There's something in the John Dunn meditation and in Ecclesiastes that seems very similar to me. So, like this section that we just read is like a radical skepticism of time or a radical skepticism of value or radical skepticism of meaning, which is something that Solomon seems to arrive at with great struggle. He like does everything in the world and having experienced it all, arrives at a point of radical skepticism. John Dunn starts with this meditation with radical skepticism about his own knowledge of his body and whether he understands what the people around him are trying to communicate to him. I might be so sick right now that I don't even know that I'm sick. And they're trying to tell me and everybody else how sick I am by ringing the bell that I hear.

SPEAKER_00 52:54

He's picturing somebody in a fever, unable to be lucid, and you know, some kind of fever dream. Maybe, and maybe he's that person. Like maybe he's in that state in the fever dream right now. Right. Which is radical skepticism. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 53:11

Is radical skepticism the core mechanic of escape from darkness and foolishness advocated by Jesus in Christianity? Like Jesus is saying, like, if you have eyes to see, see, if you have ears to hear, hear. Um the attitudes are all about this is upside down and yet it will be good. That's that's skepticism.

SPEAKER_05 53:38

I think that Dunn in the first paragraph is talking about the inability of us to make a decision for Jesus, if you will. We are, I think everyone is so ill that we know not that the bell is tolling. The bell is sort of the the gospel, and he's saying, like, in this state, how am I supposed to even know that the bell is tolling? I am like a man on his deathbed. They're ringing the bell already for my death.

SPEAKER_00 54:14

He has two statements about that, Dwight, that I think reinforce what you're saying. I haven't thought of this before, so I'm just getting it now. But one of them is he says at one point, I'm backing up the idea that he's talking about, you know, for whom the bell tolls. And one of them is he says, the bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth. Right? If you think it tolls for you, it does. You're right. And then he makes a more dramatic statement a couple paragraphs later, when he says, Don't ask who the bell's tolling for. It tolls for you. And that's more dramatic because he's not saying, if you think it tolls for you, it does. Here he's saying whether or not you think it tolls for you, it does. And so he's there's a kind of progression. And I think you're right, Dwight, that you could see that as him answering the question that he's asking at the beginning. Tell me if I'm not paraphrasing your you right correctly, Dwight, but at the beginning, you're I think you're saying reasonably that he's asking a question like, you know, what is this bell? Who's it tolling for? And he's coming to the conclusion maybe by halfway through, it's inescapable. It's you. And the message is about death and life, and you know, this translation. I don't have a concrete place to go with that, but yeah.

SPEAKER_04 55:41

No, I think so. So my uh I had an observation about this that what Dunn is accomplishing here by using a bell and by having the image of this bell tolling being both an image of classically, when people snip this as a reference, it's the death that death is calling, death is coming for you, you will die. The bell tolls, and then the next deeper level understanding is no, no, it's this, you know, the bell is calling. Is it your death or somebody else's death? But then you realize it's much deeper. It's the call into kingdom thinking, framing things in terms of to the degree that I see this with respect to God, I'm getting it. So what's beautiful is it's both this, oh, it's a death bell. No, really, it's the bell is ringing because the community is being called together to rally, to pray together, to be safe together, right? Bells were in churches because this was a time when infrastructure of safety, when a marauding band comes by, really only exists in the church. That's the only fortifiable place. So there's this dual meaning of, oh, death is calling for you with this clacking bell. Really, it's we're all in to in this together, and it's called there's a similar parallel with something else that I took way too long to explain that part. But do you guys agree, disagree? Like, do you see what I mean about these this dual meaning of the bell? Is that valid?

unknown 57:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 57:24

You say the two meanings that it's both death is calling for you. But it's the opposite. It's no, no, no, no. Uh death has happened in the community. We're rallying together and coming together in prayer to support one another, and we're we're one in conflict, you know.

SPEAKER_05 57:42

I think he's using all the bell, you know. And in some places he's talking about the funeral bell, and but then there's a paragraph that starts about as therefore the bell that rings to a sermon. So that's the call to worship, not necessarily a person dying. But he says at the end of that, how much more for me who am brought so near the door by this sickness, this you know, this this sin that is going to drive me to death if not I am able to join the community.

SPEAKER_00 58:19

And even further, Dwight, that I would be foolish not to fully engage in that bell as for me, regardless of who you know is the person ill. That's that's the end, right?

SPEAKER_03 58:36

Yeah, I'm going to venture and answer. Here is a similarity that the four men would agree on. They would agree that you should be very skeptical of the world that you see around you. Yeah. So Solomon would say the things that you think are valuable around you are actually meaningless. Um, ASAF would say the ends, like the purposes or the ends of the stories of the people around you, it looks like they are ending well, but you can't you should be skeptical of that. You actually, in God's view, they are ending very badly. And Dunn would say, it looks like we're all separate, and the funeral bell is tolling for one person who's dying, but actually you should be skeptical of that, and we are all one thing. There's a reality underneath of visible reality, which is the unity of Christians. And then the weakest form of this is from the samurai guy, because what he says is you might be an idiot, so you shouldn't trust your own judgment. What you should do is grapple the four bonds, the four vows to yourself, and ask somebody who's not personally involved in the situation, because you're probably too dumb and self-interested to come up with a good answer on your own. But they would all agree in that. I mean, actually, there's probably a more radical skepticism in there in that you should be skeptical of thinking that you can reach your aims, or that you can ever that you should ever do something wrong or break your vows in order to reach your aims, or something like that. There's a sort of skepticism there. Anyway, I think they would all agree that there's a world or an ethic or a truth that is not immediately apparent in the world that you have to be skeptical of how things appear in order to get to.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:59

Is yeah, his skepticism might be skepticism of operating without a lord.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:07

I think I'm just trying to think about what Tsunatomo's skepticism might be. I have not thought about this that this way, Matt, but he says there's a sentence right in the middle where he says about the dog's death. He says, This is the substance of the way of the samurai. And what he's talking about when he says, so obviously that's really central, right? What he's talking about when he says that is previously he says to say that dying without reaching one's aim is a dog's death is the frivolous way of sophisticates. When pressed with the choice of life or death, it's not necessary to gain one's aim. Here, their skepticism right there about the world and its value and what it's saying and what you're being told about things. And then he says, Yes, of course we all want to live, and we make our reasoning according to the things we like. But not having attained our aim and continuing to live, and then he brings in a transcendence, right? A transcendence that denies the thing he's being skeptical of is cowardice. This is a thin and dangerous line. I don't understand what that line means, what that sentence means. And then he says, To die without gaining one one's aim is a dog's death and fanaticism. So but there's no shame in this. Here he's transcending again the thing he's that the thing that's in the world. There's no shame in this. That point right there is the substance of the whole way of life I'm putting together in service to my m to my master.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:44

And this and on this point, I believe that it coheres with Christianity most deeply in the statement no servant is greater than his master. So take up your cross and die and be a thing of shame. Be a fool, for God has chosen the foolish things of this world to shame the wise. He's glorifying himself through you in your foolishness. So be ready to die to yourself, be ready to be the quickest to serve, be quick to sit in a seat that is far away, take a foolish choice of a seat, be quick to go speak to someone who can give you nothing back. Make wildly foolish investments of your time and effort and sincere presence.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:36

Can I this may be a violation, Sir Robert, but there's a passage from Chesterton that I would really like to read. Yeah, go for it. Okay. If you look in Orthodoxy chapter six, this really reminds me of the Hagakure section we were just reading. Chesterton says, paganism declared that virtue was in a balance. Christianity declared it was in a conflict, the collision of two passions apparently opposite. Of course, they were not really inconsistent, but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously. Let us follow for a moment the clue of the martyr and the suicide and take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live, taking the form of a readiness to die. He that will lose his life the same shall save it, which is, of course, from the Bible, is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage, even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it. He must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. That's really that's something that if Chesterton was at this dinner, he would really understand what the samurai guy is saying.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:49

Yeah. I I I don't have a thing to tie to this, but I'm gonna say something that came to my mind while you're reading that from actually later in the Hagakure. One of the little small All musings that Tsunitomo does is he says, A good samurai always keeps a makeup kit with him. And right before he goes into battle, regardless of anything else, he should do his hair, wipe off any sweat, make sure he's well made up, so that he leaves a great corpse if that's how it goes. And if it doesn't, he's ready to represent his master.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:23

So good.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:23

That's the kind of weird indifference to death, right? Like he plans on coming through it, he wants to come through it, he wants to live, but he has this idea that what was it? Um I'm gonna tie in Solomon here, but Sagar Sagarakuma was completely at one with his master and served him as though his own body were already dead. He was one man in a thousand, which Solomon also notes later. A true man is one in a thousand.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:55

Sorry, the reason the reason that I bring up the Chesterton is to buttress a claim that I wanted to make about the Hagakure, which is to say that this thing about living as though your body was already dead, etc., in to Chesterton, that could be merely earthly courage. Like from Chesterton's point of view, what he is talking about when he's talking about there is only the quick choice of death, it is not particularly difficult, be determined and advanced to say that dying without reaching one's aim is to die. Dog's death is the frivolous way of sophisticated. When pressed with the choice of life or death, it is not necessary to gain one's aim. That's just regular courage. Why is that just regular courage? But what I'm saying is right, because that is exactly Chesterton's a man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward and not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide and will not escape. You know, he must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it. Um Chesterton says what I'm saying is that I think that there is a transcendent, there's a transcendent thing in the Hagakure that he's going for, but I suspect that it may not be as much to be found in the parts about courageous living.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:27

Let me ask you, Matt, because I wanted to hear your take on this. The part right after you stopped reading in Chesterton, he comments on his own courage talks. He says, No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity. I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more. It has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry, the Christian courage, which is a disdain of death, not the Chinese courage, which is a disdain of life. Here's my fair enough so far. And and by the way, the Japanese courage at this time is you know somewhere akin to the Chinese one, at least geographically they're both Confucian. Yeah. So my question is on that point, is Tsunatomo's a disdain? I can see how one could make an argument that it's a disdain of life. He's saying it's not worth much. But I might argue it's actually a desperate love of life of one's master. And not saying that my life is nothing, saying my life is super important to me. But if my master tells me die, I die. If he tells me live, I live, you know, I do the best I can for whatever. It's that it's to love my life is not my place. To love his life is. And for if he loves my life, then I keep it. And if he loves my death, then I do that. I would say that that's a reasonable articulation of Tsunatomo's position on his life.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:18

Let me just mention the Chinese courage, which is a disdain of life. He might as well have said the Ecclesiastes Solomon position, which is a disdain of life. If we're going to talk about disdain of life, Mr. Chesterton, we have an example in the Bible which you can go to.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:35

Anyway, which is important because that ratio of meaningless is achieved by in the Eastern consciousness, in the entire Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and larger social systems is achieved by the size of the value of the collective and the whole. It's that the honor system, the group that you belong to, if you're Japanese, it's Japan. If you're Chinese, it's China. The nation, the collective that you belong to is so much greater than you that it pulls up your ego and the details of the decision-making about your fate, they get sucked up into the slipstream of good that is that which is greater than you. Whereas in the West, we're individualists, not collectivists. And so that absurd ratio, you know, we have to find it for ourselves individually. Anyway, so fast forward to Sumitomo to World War II, and there's, I forgot the guy's name, so I'm sorry I can't give you the name. He ends up becoming a Christian later and coming back to Japan and sharing the gospel, but he's sharing his pre-Christological experience identity as a Japanese person. And he gives this incredible insight where he says the torment nexus that we keep trying not to invent for AI, where an artificial being is trapped inside of some AI cage of hell, right? The moral spiritual nexus of suffering that every young Japanese man experiences to a man is in his mind the future processing to avoid or trying to get a handle of and deal with in advance the fear of the obligation between his father, his teacher, and his ultimate master or lord should come in conflict. To me, that was like the most interesting thing about the whole biography, but it's proof that hundreds of years later, it's still exactly the same personal cultural experience that Japanese people are having. So I just wanted to advocate for the people of Japan as being awesome and give evidence as such. But do you see what I mean? Like for this Bushido guy, it's just the Lord because he's a samurai. But the transposition is that even if you're not in such a direct, clear relationship to a martial lord and you're a common civilian, you still have the exact same problem, and it's just a little bit more complicated. The one becomes a trinity.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:21

But I'm just loving the whole imagining these four guys actually talking. The scene that that would be. Just because they would be like so I feel like they would be pretty comfortable with silence among them, but they would have a lot to say. Solomon would speak first because he's the king. It would be at his palace. He would the most the bulk of the conversation would would be between him and the temrai guy.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:54

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:55

ASAP would time in sometimes, and that would give Doloman pause. But neither the Tamurai guy nor Dolman could really say much back to him. And then I feel like I'm not sure how John, I haven't imagined John Dunn in the conversation, but I feel like ASAF and John Dunn would go out for drinks afterwards.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:16

Let me tell you something about John Dunn. I happen to have a pretty large book of the collected poetry of John Dunn, and the preface is like, this is not all of it. Nobody will ever be able to gather all of the poetry of John Dunn. Because he and you flip through it, and it was like it'll be like eight lines composed to some woman, and and then six lines composed to some dude, you know, in in perfect rhyming, iambic hexameter, heroic meter, you know, just about some little thing. Anyway, he he was continually dashing off perfect poetry and sending it to people. That's cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:08

He was also the head priest of his church, I can't remember, Anglican something of London, which is a very central thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:21

So one observation that I have is that all of these guys would agree that the way to survive the horror of reality is to have a phenomenally internalized locus of control that's pointed at a divine principle of self-regulation to protect you from the horror of emptiness and from the brutalities of disappointment and to give dignity to your effort. And so for me, it would be interesting to see how quickly Dunn could convince Sunatomo that Yahweh is a sufficiently direct master to make Bushido still hold up. You know, I think Dunn would maybe even make an exercise of seeing how much of Sunatomo's system he could just rubber stamp with just Jesus and say, yeah, this is Jesus, this is Jesus, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:16

I think Chesterton could get him.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:19

Oh, Chesterton could thread him like a frickin', yeah. Oh my, he could crochet him. Yeah. Yeah. He would, he could, yeah, yeah. I would love Matt, that's a good point. I would love to see Chesterton in the afterlife just sitting there on a chair, just taking all contenders, all comers, and just folding them like pretzels to show them that Christ was in them, you know, and C. S. Lewis, C. S.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:48

Lewis and George McDonald would just be standing behind him going, he gets special dispensation to set up a Charlie Kirk turning point USA table in limbo.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:58

Yeah, I agree with you. It's either Augustine or probably it is, it's Chesterton. It's Chesterton.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:06

He's hilarious. Oh yeah. I want to hear from Dwight.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:11

I was thinking about the uh bit and done about the book. How when one man dies, the chapter is not torn out, but translated into a better language. That was an interesting connection to me. It's interesting to me how many of our readings sort of there's little parallels and stuff, and that really brought back to mind the personal vindications in the Library of Babel.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:44

And leaf by niggle, the transposition into the forest. Yeah. Yeah. Being gardeners together.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:52

But God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:05

Lie open to one another was the part that caught me when I was reading it this time. And I I don't that's a that's an interesting picture to me that I don't fully understand what it means to done.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:18

That we shall all lie open to one another.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:21

Yeah, I mean I think that's sort of radical community. You know, he's talking about how the other the person who dies lessens him, and you can't have that when you're as we are now, you know, having our furative thoughts about one another, you know, that we hide.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:43

I took that to mean a very specific thing. I thought he was specifically talking about the moment in time when we all experience judgment and we and that our lives are laid bare and judged. And Paul talks about how like we'll be judging angels and we'll all see this like all this judgment is universal and exposed. I thought that was what he was talking about was the moment of judgment and absolute flatness of perspective of what everyone has done with respect to everyone, and then we all get transposed finally into the resurrected new world and life and stuff. Agree, disagree. Irrelevant.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:30

I'd like to get back to just imagining out what do you guys think would be these four guys talking? What would they in for their experiences, what would be the main the like standout agreements and disagreements of that dinner together?

SPEAKER_05 1:19:47

I'll posit a disagreement. I think I can't remember his name, but the Haggakuray guy. He and yeah, he seems like the most our life is what we live from birth to death exclusively. And you know, he says if you wake up every morning, set your mind right, and live as if you were already dead, your whole life will be without blame, and you will succeed in your calling. And I think that is terrestrially focused. I think Solomon is quite terrestrially focused, but not entirely, and then probably John Dunn and ASAF would be, you know, explicitly talking about God.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:39

So let me ask you, do I I see uh his name is Tsune Tomo or whatever time?

SPEAKER_05 1:20:46

Sune Tomo.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:46

Tsune Tomo. I see him as something like proto-Christian, at least ethically. Um and I, you know, what do I know? But you know that uh part in Aristotle where he's reasoning about the unmoved prime mover, and he basically in his pagan culture reasons to, as far as I can tell, a Christ figure from God minus humility, maybe minus some other virtues too, but he kind of gets there and he's like, oh, this magnanimous man who's able to do all, whatever. And I and my reading of that is a kind of Romans 1, like his unchanging characteristics and eternal qualities have been clearly seen from what's been made. That Aristotle earnestly sought and you know was seeing things. And, you know, what does that mean for his eternity? I don't care right now for the sake of this. And I think that Sunitomo is in a similar spot. It looks it the way I read this is that he's devoted himself to understand, understand might be the wrong word, but to grasp deeply something about life roles. He's looking for the truth, he's looking for something real. And at least to my reading of it, he's nailed something that is real about life. When Paul went and evangelized on the Areopagus, he goes and he looks at it and he says, Men of Athens, I see you're very religious in every way, and you even there's even this altar to the unknown God. What you say is unknown, I'm now going to proclaim to you. I think he would come, and Paul's evangelism to Tsunitomo might only amount to you're exactly right, and let me tell you who the true Lord is. Yeah, what would Paul change about Tsunitomo?

SPEAKER_05 1:22:49

Yeah, I think the Lord being translatable to God is the key. I yeah, yeah, I I think you're right. I think I just imagine Sunatomo when he says Lord is speaking of a man.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:09

I think so too. And my reading of it, it sounds like who the Lord is doesn't matter because they're all the same. Like you have to have a Lord if you're gonna be this life, right? You're a retainer. Yeah. And I think that's really neat because that gets somebody past a kind of partisanship that makes them think that their lord is the special one. And he this is just me defending him, I don't know, whatever. But he could be open to oh, there's like a transcendent lord. I I get what you're saying, and I think you're actually 100% right about it having this worldliness, but I think he's found a sort of reflection of the transcendent in the worldliness he was able to discover.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:56

You know, do you think Sunatomo could, though, change? He has he has a lord, right? I mean, he has a master.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:07

Can a samurai be like, oh, well, actually, I need to go with this guy over here.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:13

I think he would say no, that of earthly masters you can't, but I also think he would understand what it means to be a man under authority, and he would take orders from somebody his master told him to take orders from. And so if somebody were to introduce him to his master's master, whether his master knows it or not, right? Like some transcendent thing, I think he could receive that. I you know, I don't know, I don't actually know that. I don't see that explicitly here.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:46

I'm definitely imagining now, like, okay, throughout the night, they would be talking about the big things of life and death and how fleeting life is, and how death is this big thing to deal with. And they would all have some they would find common ground on a lot of common ground on that. And probably find a good deal of the conversation refreshing. And then John Dunn would totally evangelize Tunatomo. I think as Solomon and Tunatomo had a lot of back and forth about ideas, John Dunn would see like, wait, okay, this guy is a heathen, but he's like pretty solid on a lot of stuff. He would be the one to be like, Let me tell you about this awesome Lord.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:34

Jared, do you think that Dunn would use Leviticus and Bushido to try to help him understand the role of the law in God's efforts to show us what it means to submit and follow and understand his will and his way so that there can be shalom in the land, right? Because the emergence of Bushido is because you've got a bunch of dudes who are warriors and they're like chopping people up and you know, not behaving and being wild. And so you want this warrior class to live a principled life, right? And it's this weird, interesting niche application of like, how do you get a bunch of people to not murder? But God's doing the same thing at Sinai, right? He's trying to get a bunch of people to go from a bunch of Exodus refugees with a bunch of pagan ideas into filling the land and living in it well and not killing each other and being a good culture and civilization. So, from that perspective, Leviticus and Bushido are the same tool, same kind of tool. So I'm curious, do you think Dunn would uh see that? Do you think he would use that approach, or do you think he would frame it a different way? How do you think he would see Bushido and try to get Sunatomo to see Bushido through a biblical lens?

SPEAKER_01 1:26:58

Dunn's the least imagined as I'm thinking this out. Do you you think you win?

SPEAKER_04 1:27:04

Just turn his IQ to 150 something and think English silly thoughts. You're in, I'm just kidding, I'm teasing. He's the an artist and a genius and a godlier man than me, probably. I should not speak of some such.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:17

Maybe you could make an argument like this that Tsunatomo has seen that the most effective if you imagine a human being like a machine, right? Imagine the most effective human being that you can possibly have. Somebody who's one in a thousand, somebody who is like if your government has just three of them, you will be secure. Your whole the government of the whole region will be secure if there are just three of them. That's how effective they are. What this person needs in order to be in order to have this virtue. Of extreme effectiveness is fanatical devotion to a code, a strict moral code, fanatical devotion to obeying one specific person, and the willingness to die instantly, complete disregard for death. And if you say, well, okay, if that's what human beings need in order to be their true selves, do you really think that the Kami of Shinto or the Buddha or Confucius have the correct account of the creation of human beings who are like this? What would the creator of the world have to look like? What would the story of the cosmos be in order for humans to show up such that they become their most effective when following these principles?

SPEAKER_04 1:29:02

So when they gave humans the opportunity to use a button to activate different regions of the brain, the one that everybody generally leaned towards was the part of the brain that made them slightly just a little aggressive and focused. And that was the most desirable state that everybody wanted to be in, more than the bliss thing. Just uh so it neurologically operationalizes the brain effectively to think in a fundamental framework that involves some amount of violence, death, opposition with force. Because it gives you an enemy, it gives you something to aggressionalize the mind against. So from that perspective, it may be that something like Bushido is fundamentally more operationalizable on a human mind than democracy, because democracy is requiring the predisposition of non-aggressionalized interaction, but rather rule-based balance equilibriating, like you're finding equilibrium through shifting actions and shifting incomes. Still thinking about this from a mind perspective first. Is that a fair assessment of it's a fundamentally aggressionalized methodology? Is that a fair observation?

SPEAKER_03 1:30:43

So, you know, we had something very similar in Europe, which was the chivalry code of the of knights. And it just turns out it I think it shows up in various places in world history under a certain like uh level of technology and level of civilization where you don't have telephones, you don't have you might not even have like uh fiat currency, you know, law is very patchy, law exists where somebody with weapons makes it exist. The thing that can bootstrap civilization the most is a warrior cast of people who can kill anybody and are 100% devoted to doing what their master says, and also are impeccably honest, impossible to bribe, impossible to corrupt, because they would rather die than disobey their master. So with that, a monarch, you can actually have a civilization, you know, in a mountainous area where the roads are not good.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:02

You can actually like collect taxes from villagers effectively and defend those villages from your neighbors and like actually bootstrap a real society with sufficiently consistent feedback loops of retribution for injustice that cause regionalized behavior adherence to rule and norm, and like civilization exists in an area. Yeah, keep going. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:28

Yeah. Anyway, it's just like a thing that when when it says in the Psalms or something that God loves honest weights and measures, somebody has to go implement that on the unruly masses who are constantly trying to cheat each other. So the social role of the knight tends to arise. And in modern democracies, we've divided that role into like the policeman and the judge and the jury. We don't trust one person to do all that, but we don't have to because you know we have these methods of written communication and digital communication that are like extremely effective, and we have a you know, pretty strong surveillance state that pretty much knows what you're doing anytime it wants to, so you don't really need knights anymore, anyway.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:24

But in Isaiah, just to point out, from a prophetic perspective, this is somewhat universal because even Isaiah has so much language about princes and advisors, like the head and the tail is this image that shows up a lot, and it means that cast of people who are like the really excellent ones that are most directly trusted by the leadership, who are really implementing the will of the leaders, those are the people upon whose backs the land is rising or falling. That's who determines how well it's going in the land. So it's just interesting that Isaiah upholds that concept. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:07

Well, it's David and his mighty men. He had a group of his guys who like took care of problems.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:15

Yeah, but one of the most was Joab, who was not going to get along with the Haggakuray guy.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:25

Tsunatomo.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:26

Tsunatomo. Joab is the opposite of a samurai. But he is an extremely effective general for David. Uh we don't have to go on the same thing. He's a political figure.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:40

Yeah. It's interesting. Samson is the most militarily aggression in terms of aggression, violence. He's hyperbolic, he's superlative. And the his story coheres so much around him being a man who does not live by his code. He has a Nazarite code, you know, he has a Bushido similar code, and it is his lack of adherence to his lack of living a life of sincerity where he is purposeful that leads to his demise. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:15

And yet and God is faithful to his way of life, even when Samson isn't.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:21

And in his death, Samson becomes absolute 100,000 percent Turbo Max Bushido implementer, and in his death conquers more of his enemies than he did in his life combined, and serves his master more completely in his death than he had in all of his life combined, and begins the deliverance of his people. So it's interesting that one of the judges deeply implements Bushido.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:57

I can't decide if I think he's ri I can't decide if I think like the way of the Demurai is a very hard and polished way. It seems like it takes something like spirituality and brings it all into the physical world and like really hardens a man. And I feel like that would in in the course of the night really contrast with like a staff in a way, which is I think more like that Hebrew thing where it's like you really experience your experiences and he has all these ups and downs and is open to input.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:40

Do you think that, Jared? Do you think that Tunitomo would experience Jesus, you know, if he was like seeing him clearly and kind of was buying the story, see Jesus as samurai to the to his father, you know, to the to the God, or Lord to him, or both somehow.

unknown 1:37:06

Hmm, I like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:08

There's this thing of Jesus and the whole gun.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:11

I was just gonna say the crucifixion from that view for Tsunatomo is really interesting because Jesus doing that crazy thing he does where he always defeats everybody's expectations about everything. The crucifixion is this interesting thing where he says, No, I gain my and my desire by dying, and in achieving my aim, I also keep my, you know, I I get to both die, have my life, and eat it too.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:46

He would find that beautiful, I think.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:48

Yeah. You remind me of the Heliand, which is, if unless I'm mistaken, I'm not an expert in this, but it's it's a translation of the Gospel of John into Old Saxon from I guess AD 800 or so, and they it does portray Jesus and as like a Lord and his disciples as knights.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:20

And they're like knights errant going around the Holy Land, like encountering bad guys and teaching people, and that's largely my actual view, you know, not specifically knight, but like as a sort of errant band of brothers on mission with domains that they've been given oversight.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:44

Because that's literally kickoff, right? The 70, he literally sends them out in pairs on errant mission. Literally. So Jesus says, I only do what I see my father doing, and even the Holy Spirit only speaks what he hears. So, from that perspective, I would say that something like the roots of Bushido are internal to the nature of God. The order of the absolutizing of some aspect of an otherwise organic system that you would expect to have some amount of flex in it. That's within God's nature. That's within God. The Spirit only speaks what he hears. Jesus only does what he sees his father doing. So I would imagine at some point Sunatoma would hear enough from Dunn and or Solomon andor ASAP and say, hang on, I'm you guys are trying to convert me. I might need to convert you guys. You know, I've got some stuff that has I can lay claim to some things about the nature of God himself from what you're telling me.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:54

Yeah. Dunn's interesting here. We don't well, okay. Dunn's the one who claims to have a view of the post-death state. ASAF seems to have a claim that there is one. Solomon throws up his hands and says, Who knows? You know, who knows what's going on there?

SPEAKER_04 1:40:15

I disagree with you, Sir Robert. Can I disagree with you real quick? He's like ASAF says, You will receive me to glory. So ASAF doesn't just say that there is one, he says, I will be there. So ace even ASAF has an eternal glory, personal knowledge that he's got.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:35

Okay. It seems less focused and clear to me. But let's say that. That's fine. That sounds good. Solomon says, Who knows what's going on? He's, I think, explicitly says, Who can enable him to see what will happen after he dies? Tsunatomo says, Who knows? Solomon, who cares? Right? What are you doing? And then Dunn says something like, I have a picture of it, the library where we're open to each other and there's something else happening, right? I have a picture of it, and here, you know, it's metaphorical or something. I have to look at the ASAP one. I do think ASAP has one. The mine is that my flesh and heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart, my portion forever. That's the part where I see it. But the rest of what I see from him, at least, maybe I'm just not seeing it well yet. It seems to be on this side of death.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:30

So verse 24.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:32

The vision.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:33

Verse 24, you guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Like that afterwards, after death.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:42

I'm saying he does believe there's something there, but it's completely nonspecific. Like you will take me up to glory, whatever that means, and you'll be my portion forever, whatever the experience of that is like. Dunn says, Well, I'll tell you what the experience of it like is in part, we're open to each other, we're in a community, we're doing this thing. Solomon says, Yeah, I mean, who knows? And Sunatomo again says, Yeah, I mean, who cares? Right? That's that's not my concern yet. I've got a different thing. That's at least how I'm reading them. I don't know what to do with that exactly.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:17

Because he doesn't know that there's an option, right? It's absurd. Like he would be like, What do you mean I don't care? Like, well, if there's something that I could care about, that's great. But I what is there after death? I don't know. I don't have any hope or I don't know about eternal life or God raising me from the dead, you know. So I have to live my life here.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:35

I think it's real easy to imagine him finding afterlife sort of risable, you know, and what are you concerned with that about? Because I I am alre I'm already dead. I'm not already dead and in heaven. I am already dead. Dead, dead.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:53

Yeah, if you're you know if you're hoping to be rewarded in the afterlife, that that's like a way of getting your aim without dying, or something like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:04

Interesting. We're all approaching this from the perspective of eternal life as a thing that I want. So here, can I dangle this in front of you as a sales pitch point for Tsunatomo? You'd have to say, listen, God is master, and it is his will that we should be eternal beings, and that is why he sent his son to die, that we might participate in his life and live forever, because that is his will. And if you want to obey him, you must walk with him, not in this life only, but eternally. You think you're getting off the hook dying? Think again, you're on this for eternity, baby. There is no off ramp. So buckle like this is Bushido 2.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:49

It would be like it would be like dangling another harem in front of Solomon, like dangling an another palace. Like Solomon doesn't care about another harem or another choir or another grove of fruit trees. And why would Sunatomo care about another year of life?

SPEAKER_00 1:44:11

I think this actually makes Dwight's point that I had I kind of missed before, or at least I didn't see it strongly. The thing I would say to Tsunatomo in this case, if I were evangelizing or something, I don't know, whatever, if I were sitting at that table, or if I at least got to whisper in Dunn's ear, I would say, hey, Hebrews 11, and then to say to him something like, Without faith, it's impossible to please God. The one who draws near to him must believe that he exists, and that he rewards those who seek him. And then I'm gonna skip a chunk right here. Those people were looking for a better country, a heavenly country. They're trying to get somewhere. And then at the very end, these people, you know, were put to death, they were tortured, sawn into, died by the sword, so forth. For their master's sake, who wanted them to seek a heavenly kingdom, they were those of whom the world was not worthy. Like I think that's a that's an evangelism vector for Tsunatomo. And I that that helps me to see what Dwight meant about Tsunatomo being so in the world. I I was like seeing the possibility of it out of the world, but he really actually is concretely there.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:28

I I'm trying to decide, like the I don't know how much of this is me reading into the tone of Tsunatomo, but I feel like he's pretty old and he's really familiar with the shortcomings of man and the limitations of I feel like he might have something like the humility that comes from wisdom.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:52

Yeah, he says we are all negligent. He's he doesn't stick his finger out and condemn the crowd. He includes himself in it at the beginning.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:02

I just disregard that use of the aggressive, inclusive Wii.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:06

Or do you think he would be hard like I I could I don't fully understand the samurai way, and it does seem like maybe really hard. Like you hunker down into it and then this is your way.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:19

And it's like maybe he would be approaching this conversation kind of like someone who's already dead and not really So I'll tell you just as a side note that Sunatomo does see this as the way of the samurai and not a universal way that everyone should take. He plays a role and he knows that and he's choosing that. And I think there is a hardness of concretizing get getting rid of what's irrelevant to that role and keeping what's useful for it. So that's probably possibly part of the hardness you're seeing. And I think you're right that there's a kind of real grit and hardness here, though he's not saying every single person should do it.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:03

Well, he's also saying grit is value to some degree, or grit is the only way to change your place in the value ladder. Like it's enough to be of absolute determination and think earnestly of your master. Having only wisdom and talent is the lowest tier of usefulness. You can have wisdom and talent and no grit, and you'll be useful because you have wisdom and talent. But if you have grit, you're immediately climbing up from the bottom of the rack ladder. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:37

If you have a master.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:39

Yeah, if you have a master. Yeah, yeah. Oh well. I don't know. That's interesting. Uh do you think that this guy would find it absolutely risable, the idea of taking the code of Bushido and dedicating yourself to something rather than someone?

SPEAKER_00 1:47:56

I mean, the merchant class. I don't know. I haven't thought about this before. The merchant class is not answerable to a thing with will. I mean, the emperor, whatever. They're answerable to the market, right? No, I mean they don't have to do what the market says about anything, right? They can decide to retire and, you know, whatever. They can not go for this deal, but go for that deal because the market says this isn't valuable. Fine, then I'll do a different thing and aim somewhere else. They're determining their direction in a way that a samurai who's a retainer is not.

SPEAKER_05 1:48:30

For what it's worth, because it specifically relates to this, I just search for Ronan, and he does say it is unthinkable to be disturbed at something like being ordered to become a Ronan. A Ronin is you're no longer under me. You know, you're a masterless samurai. And he says, Why even be disturbed at that? So he doesn't actually need a master.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:57

At one point he says that sometimes lords will test their samurai by kicking them out for a short time to be Ronin. And then we'll bring them back. So even if you're even if you're kicked out by your master, you should still follow the way of the samurai perfectly. Yeah, because it's a way.

SPEAKER_05 1:49:20

Yeah. You just wait until the master a master returns. So I guess that also might be a way for him to Yeah. I think probably the master of the master is the better way to get to Jesus, but it also might be uh come out from under him and come under me.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:38

Well, thank you. I have gained a lot from this conversation, all of y'all. Um That's fun. Thanks. I have put a lot of energy into these bits over some years, some more than others. The the psalm is actually the least the one I've been least exposed to, but it's been really helpful to me recently. But in the talking of it, I've thought a lot of thoughts that I have never thought before about these things. So I'm really grateful. That's some good cross-pollination.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:08

As long as they're good thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:11

We'll find out, maybe.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:14

Cool. So Josh has to start thinking about what he's gonna assign for our next meeting. And Dwight, it's your turn to assign us something.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:26

I will send you the texts, but it's just two short stories and a film.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:35

Earnestly. Jared, thank you for being here and contributing. I'm sure all of us yeah, absolutely. I'm sure all of us, I also would love to invite you back sometime.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:46

Thanks.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:47

Thank you for being the only one of us to earnestly and with any amount of competence or results actually fulfill Sir Robert's desire to have this simulation rendered.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:59

So I both me and opening question.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:06

Listen, Matt, I'm trying to stand on top of you and hold Jared up. Be quiet. Okay, I'll submit.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:12

Whoa.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:13

I was just gonna say, Jared, we're doing one guest right now, and the person who's reading it is gets discretion about it. Just telling you. So I was grateful to invite you and that you said yes.

SPEAKER_05 1:51:26

The short stories are In a Grove and Rashomon.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:32

Oh, I've never read Rashomon, and I've always meant to. So this is gonna be exciting. Thank you. Thank you for the impetus.

SPEAKER_05 1:51:40

The movie is Rashomon. I will say that the short story Rashomon might get sort of clobbered because the movie is actually based on In a Grove mostly. But I would say, you know, let's not drop that story.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:03

Thank you for joining us for this discussion. You are dismissed with the following valediction from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Now the hungry lion roars, and the wolf behowls the moon, whilst the heavy ploughman snores, all with weary task foredone. Now the wasted brands do glow, whilst the screech owl screeching loud, puts the wretch that lies in woe in remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night that the graves all gaping wide, everyone lets forth his sprite in the churchway paths to glide, and we fairies that do run by the triple heckett's team, From the presence of the sun, following darkness like a dream. Now our frolic, not a mouse shall disturb this hallowed house. I am sent with broom before, to sweep the dust behind the door.