Originally posted by epiphinehas
I know from my own experience with the OT that it's extremely difficult to hammer out exactly what a certain passage intends. When someone says, "this prophecy is outright false," I wonder whether they're reading the same Bible. Furthermore, God has a history of making pronouncements against people and nations, prophecies, which have been dropped becau ...[text shortened]... after thousands of years of exile (another of Ezekiel's prophecies).
But I digress...
But does this really say anything more than that the territory can be adjusted sufficiently to make the map come out right because we want to believe the map? Now you are certainly correct: the territory is fluid; an already written map is no longer fluid. Nevertheless, it is the map that needs to be tested against the territory, not the other way around. And if the territory changes, one needs a new map, not a bulldozer.
In this case, the territory is the actual unfolding of history. But I am also talking of the spiritual and existential territory in which and of which we are.
Now, to use the phrases I have been using for a long time: the map is an
ikon of the territory. It is really ludicrous to insist on even possible changes in the territory in order to defend the (once, if at all) accuracy of the map.
The Biblical texts are not the territory; neither are the Upanishads, for that matter. The territory in this case (you understand my metaphors here, I am sure) is prior to every map—every name, idea, concept, word that has ever been spoken or written about the territory. Whenever such things are taken as anything more than
ikons of the territory, they become idolatrous.
Jesus for example, I believe, was in contact with the territory. He expressed that in such iconographic phrases as, “The father and I are one.” He used the language of his culture as best he could to point
to the territory, and our place in and of it. Now, because the territory is also existential, and includes us, his map (like that of the Buddha, or Lin Chi, for example) included himself in his own existence. And so the mapmaker also can become idolized as part of the map.
Now, this “mapmaking’ is part of the natural operation of our consciousness, and can begin immediately and spontaneously when we are in contact with the territory (in which and of which we also are). And when that happens, we may also draw spontaneously on the work of previous mapmakers, even those of whom we are fairly dimly aware (which is why someone steeped in a culture of Christian maps may not necessarily have aspects of just those maps leap into his/her mind at the moment of spontaneous translation).
What happens when those maps are religiously dogmatized is that they become both substitutes for the territory, and the gridworks by which the territory (and one’s unique experience of it) are judged. “Salvation”, however one understands that term, no longer is taken to depend on contact with the territory as it is, but on whether or not one adheres to the “proper” map.
In the end, one’s faith is vested either in the territory which precedes all our attempts to map it (all our thoughts, concepts, ideas and words about it; and all those who have drawn maps before us)—or one’s faith is vested in a map, one’s own or one borrowed.
This is not to say that such maps are useless. But any map likely has errors, and no map captures all the details of the territory (the only complete “map” of the territory is the territory itself, which is wonderfully dynamic and varied). If one has been able to use a given map to become immersed in the territory, the thing to do is to put the map down and wander the territory for oneself. Until one can claim that one has covered the whole territory however, one cannot reasonably claim that one’s particular map is the only right one, or even the most right one—and certainly not that it is an errorless one. And since the territory is nigh on infinite, one can never really make such a claim.
And why would anyone want to anyway? Why should anyone spend their time doing “apologetics” for their map? Well, I suspect there are different reasons, and so I do not accuse anyone of any particular reason. But, in the end, I suspect it has something to do with the fact that a map has definite markings, boundaries, and gridlines—and the territory has none of these. Every concept, idea, word, name that we use to try to “eff” the ineffable are ours—or those of folks who have tried before us. That does not make the ineffable really more effable—it does not mean that the territory must conform to any of our mapmaking efforts. That does not mean that the ineffable carries in itself any of the names we may give it—God, Brahman, Christos, Shiva, Tao—or that it is limited by the ideas and concepts and images that underlie such names.
I do not judge the Christian map harshly—as a map. Mostly, the arguments that I enter into about it have to with what I might consider as mis-readings of that map (and I might be correct or incorrect in my readings); but I also do not assume that it is necessarily the “best” map, let alone the only “right” map. My only concern with any map is whether or not it is helpful—for this person or that person—as a guide
into the territory. The same maps are not always helpful for all persons in that regard.
The territory has no gridlines—except those that we assign; and, again, that is to be expected and recognized because the territory includes us and our mapmaking consciousness. I am a unique expression of the territory, as are you.
When it comes right down to it, I don’t really give more of a fig for Buddhist maps than I do for Christian maps. I have a whole collection of maps. I can either use (any of) them to guide me back to the territory, or not. What I don’t want to do is waste my time defending (or insisting upon) this map over that one.
The precedent territory is ultimately ineffable; the subsequent maps are not. Maybe it seems safer not to wander off the edge of the map. But the map is not the territory. I only use maps as
ikons: I do not try to limit the territory to what is described on any (set of) map(s)—whoever does so, and for whatever reasons they might do so, has made the map more than
ikon... Nor do I pretend to limit the territory to the bounds of my experience of it...
def: Christian
09 Aug '08 08:282 edits
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