shaking off the soggy conflations

...

Just because a thing is secret does not mean it is important...

       Any more than...

       Just because something is not secret means it is unimportant.

This is not just some gimcrack philosophical talking point. Failure to take on these conflations means people will get hurt and, as President Obama was quoted as saying when assessing the American involvement in the Syrian civil war, "Don't do stupid shit." Secrecy as the truth or lack of secrecy as the truth -- "Don't do stupid shit."

... 

Somewhere in Hinduism there is the tale of a student who huddles with his teacher in an intimate setting. As by tradition, the teacher gives the student a mantram, a selected bit of Hindu text which acts as a guiding principle for the student in future. Mantra vary according to the teacher's assessment of the student. And in this story, as ever, the teacher warns the student never to reveal his mantram. "If you were to tell others, it would save the whole world," the teacher says approximately.

Upon leaving the teacher, the student rushes out to the public square, assembles a crowd and promptly tells them his mantram. You gotta love the Hindus! They dare to smile, they dare to laugh, they dare to take on the ordinary man's ordinary way of thinking. If spiritual life reaches everywhere and always and if it is as wonderful as any student might dearly wish it were, then secrecy is A. a bald-faced fantasy and B. just one more cruelty in what can be a cruel world. 

... 

In Zen Buddhism, a discipline I have slogged around in for a number of years, there are periodic bouts of mental and verbal dyspepsia over the financial costs associated with extended retreats or sesshin. An elderly teacher in my bomb zone -- was it Yasutani Roshi? I'm not sure -- was once asked about whether and how much to charge aspiring students, who were sometimes financially strapped. He laughed and replied, "Oh yes! Charge them a lot! That way they will think the Dharma is worth something!"

The Dharma -- the enlightened state, the big-bingo truth of things, the everywhere-and-always of things, the primal wonder and goodness of things, the inescapable nature of things, the very-god of very-gods ... how could anyone charge money for such a bright light? Wasn't that false and mean-spirited? Wasn't the demand for $50,000 for a guaranteed enlightenment experience both crass and cruel and exceptionalist? Wasn't the same true for lesser charges? Didn't it sully the purity of goodness and omnipresence and, well, the dream? How could anyone charge a lot for what ought to be -- because it was -- free? Surely the Dharma was worth a great deal ... right up until the moment anyone put a price tag on it.

...

Oscar Wilde once wrote that a cynic is a man "who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." By this pungent yardstick, I wonder that anyone might consider himself less than a full-blown cynic. And yet out of that cynicism -- that knowing and assigning of price -- the bright light of idealism, the rock-solid certainty that there is some ineffable value that cannot be taxed -- gains considerable stature. The contrast is inherent in Wilde's bons mots. How could anyone deny or demean this state, this value ... listen to a piece of beautiful music and be swept up and melted; read a poem that purely shoots you dead; love and be speechless. The is a land where secrecy finds no purchase ... until someone puts a price tag on it... at which point those deeply touched exclaim and complain and give umbrage. No! No! No! God is not for sale ... except, perhaps, on Sunday.

...

After World War II, the British assembled a documentary called "The German Concentration Camps Factual Survey." Until this year, the movie was suppressed because it was feared that the horror and guilt it could instill in German viewers might demoralize a Germany that needed reconstruction more than it needed a guilt trip. Out-takes of the movie were aired and focused on "ain't it awful," which it sure as hell was. But the wider implications -- a more grown-up view -- were kept under wraps, much as the wider implications of a "war on terrorism" today are kept under wraps amid the "ain't it awful" of nightly news reports ... or the price tags of spiritual life are used as a stopping point for dismay and complaint. The American out-takes on the concentration camps were and still largely remain in the "ain't it awful," shock-jock realm ... which is one reason the shock of the Holocaust dwindles even as the ostensibly well-intentioned strive and claw to keep it alive.

... 

Last night, I dreamed of a copper fire extinguisher which was adorned in ways that suggested "Alice in Wonderland." I was looking it over and felt myself drawn to it, though I don't much like "Alice in Wonderland." I wanted to have it, to take it home, to love it. But as I was looking it over, a friend pointed out to me that there was a price tag affixed -- a price tag I had utterly failed to notice. The price tag said, "$430." And with genuine surprise, I thought, "How could anyone put a price tag on this love child of mine?!" I meant it seriously. It just didn't compute ... didn't fit together ... was apples and oranges or as ridiculous as the old joke question, "What is the difference between a duck?" ... price tag and love: Imagine that! I felt the sort of surprise I feel when looking over an assemblage of bidders at Sotheby's or Christie's ... paying big money not because something reaches down inside them and sings, but because it's a "good investment" or its color scheme complements the living room couch.

...

What'll it be? The ascendency of bourgeois mediocrity or the aristocratic snicker of excellence? Or perhaps a little from Column A and a little from Column B ... all of it descending into a stomach that is not entirely content? Where the secrets and the obvious mix and mingle, is there any chance for relaxation and a noonday doze?