Borrowing some categories of the great philosopher and theologian Raimon Panikkar, we could say that travel is an invariant human, but not a universal culture. In fact, as Panikkar explains itself, there are invariant
human - everyone eats, everyone laughs, everyone has a body, dance, have some socializing, talking, but there are cultural universals, that there is no cultural value that can withstand universally, much less a priori. At any time there is a dominant myth that allows some cultural universals, but these vary with time. ... The fact that all people eat does not mean that the food has the same meaning for men and then produce the same results.
short, cross-cultural perspective that animates this short essay is important not to sin by easy reductionism. Meet the travel means meeting (also) a plurality of ' human experiences, the policromaticità of reality itself. We will come back.
The journey: a garden of symbols, a network of metaphors
The journey then, especially in the Western tradition, weaving a network is a truly impressive and metaphorical and garden of symbols: death is a journey that is "passing" or "return to God," the mystery or anything, but life itself is, it is called "the journey of our life," Dante or a pilgrimage, or the street. "I am the way, the truth and the life" (Jn 14:6), the Gospel says, and the mystery of ' existence, which in truth is beyond names, Lao-tze is Tao "Way." For Catherine of Siena "we are all travelers and pilgrims," \u200b\u200bel ' man on earth, reminds us of Thomas ' Aquino, is "so to speak on the way". According to the Upanishads we are like one who travels and wanders all over the world to find a treasure that is really hidden ... under his feet.
In short, the ' man viator , constitutively. If then the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) must lead the way in "homeland", and this life is only a step to the final one, for others, especially d ' East, every step is all way, this is in the ' ever: "When you walk, walk" Zen saying goes. And on that many mystics (also Jewish, Christian and Muslim) would d ' Agreement.
Even the rites of passage, initiations are traveling, but on this we will focus particularly on the following pages. Even not too large displacements become programmatically, in our common speech, "travel". And move in a text is it not travel, auscultation, underline, Amarna a "step"? Another metaphor odeporica. And the very word "metaphor" from the greek metaphoréin , "carry" takes us back where we started.
The theme of the trip: between writing and story, myth, religion and literature
If ' -travel experience is so central, it is not surprising certo che essa da sempre sia al centro di racconti orali e scritti. Non solo racconti di viaggio, naturalmente. Questo è un genere o forse un sottogenere. Miti, fiabe, testi sacri, poemi, romanzi parlano di viaggi e sono viaggi essi stessi. E in generale mitologie, religioni, letterature, topiche di ogni parte del mondo hanno i loro viaggi, raccontano ascese e discese, fanno del viaggio il centro o almeno uno dei "fuochi" di riferimento.
Si prendano ad esempio la Bibbia e l ’ Odissea, i due testi fondanti dell ’ Occidente (Auerbach). Ebbene il viaggio, l ’ esodo, la fuga, l ’ go, reach and / or the return are the focus of two great books, so different and yet so full of common suggestions. If Odysseus-Ulysses is the prototype of the traveler in the West and Abraham "the migrant" is the father of the three Abrahamic faiths that call from him, also traveling Jason and the Argonauts, Aeneas, Dante, in his mysterious Muhammad ascended to heaven, and traveling as a supernatural being disappears Lao-tze: riding a bull headed West, stopping only at the crossing of ' West, where he dictated to Yin Xi, the guardian of the pass, his famous book, Tao Te Ching . So also Lie-zi, the second great Taoist saint, who lived perhaps between the fifth and fourth centuries BC, "riding the wind shifted. He traveled so pleasant, and within a fifteen days came home" (Zhuang-zi). It traveled and wandered Gautama Buddha, before coming to ' roam and travel light and that was a downhill and a ' rise in the depths of reality.
Thousands and thousands of travel, an inexhaustible theme (and yet to be explored)
short, one could cite countless trips and countless travelers.
The issue is so important, vast, varied, similar and different, that ancient and modern take to write a book about small size is almost a gamble, a dangerous route, a "dubious step." Opera much larger and more voices deserve such an argument. Also
prospects through which many traveled are truly history, sociology, anthropology, history of religion, mythology, literature (comparative or not), economics, etc..
Just then a well-stocked library to access to numerous publications in various ways, dealing with travel: just think of the whole shelves devoted to tourist guides and the like.
However, if you search for large and complex investigations on the journey from the perspective of anthropology, sociology, religion and so on. there are many fewer titles than you might think.
Subsequently, in fact still seems to lack a real face on the theme of intercultural studies, addressing the trip in the various religions, mythologies, cultures, literatures, with a view of dialogue.
short, much remains to do, to explore, it is appropriate to say, traveling.
The mystical journey and initiation in the different traditions
The delimitation of the research field is therefore more necessary than ever.
Hence our choice to take care of a particular form of travel, these myths, religious traditions, but also in literature of all time: the mystical journey and initiation. We could also call it, without adequate explanations, inner journey, symbolic.
If "the ' initiation is ' human experience par excellence" and is "a universal practice" (Mircea Eliade) is well way to deal with today, when global tourism brings in some few hours from one end to ' else in the world, but could always ' uniformity, the ' homogenization, superficiality.
The initiatory journey instead constantly calls us to go deeper, of ourselves, of ' other and reality.
Cos ' is a journey of initiation?
What's ' meant by initiatory journey? And so ' is a ' initiation?
The term "initiation" comes from the Latin initiatio derived from initium , and in turn from the verb in -eo ("come in, start"). And ' initiation is a "new life", a rebirth, a step-or a series of steps, in stages, just like a trip - which involves the crossing of one or more thresholds el ' entry into another level of consciousness, a new state of life. Moreover
is constitutive of ' man
the desire to open up to a more authentic life, a life that escapes the banality, a life in which we overcome the limits of time and space that seem to hold so the prisoner ' human existence. This desire is usually related to the belief that we need a sacred act, a sacrifice to be able to achieve. We think here in what historians religions are wont to call initiation, the rite by which a person passes by ' appearance to reality, from ' illusion to the truth, adolescent life to life in its fullness ; initiation that can be compared to the true or the second birth.
L ' initiation is not something exotic, enigmatic, a phenomenon that magic shop : to be started is to give quality to life, live it fully, through an inexhaustible inner work, but also with receptive openness to the mystery, to grace, the spirit which blows where it wants. In this sense ' initiation is not just for the few, but is available to all, which does not mean it's cheap.
the mystical journey of initiation and the second Eliade, and Campbell Mazzarella
According to Mircea Eliade, the initiation is a process designed to achieve the transition from one psychological state of being considered less than a higher one. It is equivalent to a mutation of the ontological scheme of existence. At the end of the process, the neophyte receives a life completely different than before: it has become another. To achieve this metamorphosis novices are subjected to a series of tests, which involve in fact, more or less transparent, a death ritual, initiation, followed by a resurrection and a new birth.
Other important and often applicants are:
a) preparation (physical, psychological, spiritual) to the trip;
b) a sacred place (mountain, cave, maze etc.).
c) ' importance the guide, one or more instructors or mystagogues;
d) the issue of ' error (often caused by immaturity, inexperience);
and) the sacrifice and / or ritual;
f) the mystic nuptials, the hierogamy (with the divine principle etc...)
Similarly, different, the Dante scholar Adriana Mazzarella identifies the following characteristics of the initiatory journey:
a) evidence of great physical effort and / or to overcome psychological and spiritual;
b) indispensability of one or more guides (external and / or interior);
c) pass the death and resurrection, that the death of an old level of consciousness to rise to a new one;
d) travel through the three worlds present in all the esoteric traditions;
e) importance of a "ray Heaven, "a female principle mediator who can be physical, but also refers to other things: Wisdom, Sophia, inner female, feminine aspect of God, Shekinah , Buddhi etc.
f) union with the supreme principle as the end of the journey.
Finally, Joseph Campbell, describing the adventure of the hero as dynamic initiation, highlights three key stages, all ' inside of which is a whole range of possible developments. Thus we have:
1) the departure
2) the ' initiation;
3) return.
turn in the first stage we can find first) appeal from the ordinary world output; 1b) the refusal of the appeal; 1c) the supernatural help; 1d) crossing the first threshold; 1e) the "belly of the whale. " In the second: Second) tests; 2b) an encounter with the goddess, 2c) as the woman temptress; 2d) reconciliation with his father, 2e) the apotheosis; 2f) the ultimate gift. In the third, third) refusing to return; 3b) the escape magic, 3c) the help from the outside, 3d) crossing the threshold of return; 3e) Lord of two worlds; 3f) are free to live.
Initiation and mystical
As in the early Christian tradition in which the terms "initiation" and "mystical" were intimately connected, so we talked and mystical journey of initiation. With mystical here we emphasize some aspects of the experience told: a) it remains at least partly ineffable, despite all efforts to put it: the word refers to the silence, the mystery, b) is also an experience full of life, the mystic brings to live the fullness of life here and now (not only to defer an afterlife or eschatology), a life which is both body and soul and spirit, or matter, consciousness and the mystery of infinity (which some traditions - not all! - call it God). The mystique is in fact a holistic experience of life and not just an "expert of the divine", c) the man she lives in its fulfillment, which some traditions call God-like, other lighting, construction, etc.. (See theosis, nirvana, satori, moksha ).
the mystical journey of initiation and is also an inner journey, because it leads people who live in the depths of himself and all of reality. Interior does not mean nor imply that intimate outdoor living, travel outside so to speak, should be neglected. Internal and external, physical and spiritual journey are in union-dual. In this sense, the trip is symbolic, because it "throws together" etymologically the dimensions of reality, which is at once cosmic, human and divine (or cosmoteandrica).
size initiatory broad sense
We have briefly outlined the characteristics of the mystical journey and initiation. Of course, this involves research instances described in the examples, which are the Comedy of Dante, the story of Gautama Buddha, the Vedic myth of Shunahshepa etc.. Not necessarily they are all present in the same story and are naturally declined, and lived according to the culture, tradition examined.
However, the category of initiatory journey is here used in a broad sense (sensu side), not bound by classifications ethnographic, anthropological, religious, etc.. Which are certainly legitimate and important, but not within the scope of this booklet, whose cut as it is "speech", but also existential wisdom. We are interested
in short, how well a broad sense initiatory dimension is present, explicit or latent, in many of the major texts studied, as, on the other, in any real journey, in every life lived in depth. In fact, each "myth" - understood here in its etymological meaning and enlarged the "sacred story" - tells the transforming experience, not only intellectual but of our whole life, and it's called. The size initiatory thus understood is therefore profound search for meaning (of self and reality), truth, transformation, meeting.
why we say that every major text (even literary) has in itself an initiatory dimension to see, read and live. In some cases it may also be told the truth with a figurative journey is, for example The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Stevenson is a kind of anti-manual initiation. That sense a lot of literature in XX century (to which we will do only a brief mention) is inhabited by that nostalgia Initiation. It, in our technological world, globalized and paneconomicista, has become very difficult, problematic, if not actually impossible. Yet the great novels and poems the great chase, the singing, try, even in vain, to find her.
In short, the initiatory experience, especially designed broad sense, is the heritage and not all of the elite more or less esoteric (although it has existed and may yet give a 'secret initiation ").
Map intercultural test and the mystery of
The intercultural dimension of our journey along this "little way". On the one hand, literally, because we are facing worlds near and far, and our "other": the Bible, the archetype odissiaco (from Homer to Dante to postmodern odyssey of Thomas Pynchon), with nods to the trip in kabbalah and Islamic mysticism, but also it would address other horizons and other world view, different from our Western and Judeo-Christian-Islamic here, then the great myth of Vedic Shunahshepa, the path of Buddha, the journey to the reawakening of Mani and the descent into the underworld of Bantu mythology.
Obviously it is not easy to multiculturalism, much less to folklore, but the awareness that only through meaningful dialogue between the traditions you can find a creative meeting and perhaps also of innovative solutions for our troubled period. The dialogue of which we speak has initiatory nature itself: it implies a profound transformation of those who experience it, even a kind of death to their own beliefs to enter into a relationship of mutual fertilization with each other. The other is not so much the stranger, but how he wants the Latin etymology ( alter ), "the other two," the other side of me. " In short, the mystery of the other reveals to me. The other is my experience of revelation, as I can be for him.
Un'interculturalità across the
Still, though: the intercultural dimension is understood here in a broader sense than ever (as the initiatory journey). That is not only
intercultural encounter with the "other culture" (eg Asia, Africa, etc...) Every true way (ergo not merely tourists) goes to him, in a nutshell or explicit dynamics di trascendimento di sé, del proprio mondo, una sorta di straniamento, di disorientamento, che può preludere a una rinascita. Il distacco dal noto mi porta in un "altrove", in un incognito, in un inaspettato che è un altro lato di me da scoprire, senza pure mai essere completamente riducibile a me. Ogni vero viaggio mi porta a confronto con il mio prossimo, con lo straniero, diverso e simile a me. Ogni vero viaggio mi porta a un incontro interiore (oltre che esteriore), dove le classificazioni del mio ego vacillano. L’incontro del Sé, per l’Io, per usare un linguaggio di sapore psicoanalitico, è un profondo dinamismo interculturale (e non può avvenire senza l’altro). L’interculturalità combining internal and external environment and is therefore also intra-cultural.
In this sense, re-read their founding texts (eg the Bible, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, Comedy etc..) In light of initiatory mystical dimension and fruitful dialogue with other world view is a strong cultural moment.
Back to my "culture" fertilized by a long stay in contact with "others" and reread "the tree of my origins," deeper, with more width, not uproot it, but remembering also that the roots have trunk, stem and fruits, and branches that reach out of "my" tree goes in directions that perhaps I had expected or had not seen before. If the sun rises East, my plant will naturally turn.
Everything is interconnected.
Summary:
Introduction
The trip, original size, 5
The Bible and the initiatory journey of Joseph and his brothers, 18
The archetype odissiaco, Dante ... and other trips, 29
A great Vedic myth about the human condition, 38
Buddha's life as a journey, 45
the handle between universalism and initiation, 53
A strange African descent into hell, 58
Finally and above all ... to continue the journey, 61
Author:
Vacchelli John
is professor of Italian literature at a grammar school of Milan and works with the Catholic University of Sacro Cuore di Milano. It is a founding member of the Research Community "Raimon Panikkar" at the University of Bergamo.
and ditrice m issionaria the taliana: http://www.emi.it/schede/1882-1 . html
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