Artists of Existence

I know a little about Carl Justav Jung but I don't like him. All my irritations in front of those who are against any biological explanation of our mental life are projected on this Jung. I was not surprised to know about his unethical relationship with one of his patients that was documented dramatically in the movie "A Dangerous Method".

I was encouraged to buy that book written by D. T. Suzuki because its introduction was written by Erich Fromm, whom I respected since the very beginning.

After finishing Suzuki's book yesterday I find myself saying that it was Carl Gustav Jung who must had written the introduction and not Fromm. Suzuki talked about things like: metascience, antescience, cosmic unconscious, telepathy, the 6^th sense and the rest of these eastern modes of thinking.

I live in the east and I know and "experience" how these melting non-structured concepts, when be taken for granted, be dangerous. Subjectivity Vs. Objectivity is not easily balanced only by a mature who had suffered enough seeking the truth. The eastern schools of philosophy or psychology can be easily taken by a lazy thinker and lit fires of evil. Goodness has masks, you know.

But I liked how Suzuki talked about the necessity of us being aware of our unconscious. But that didn't add a bit to what Freud had left us: these masterpieces, these writings that shine.

I liked Suzuki when he said in p. 54: "At the same time that we cannot wait to be all as scientists, nature had constructed us so as that we be artists… Not a spcial kind of artists like painters, or sculptors, or musicians, or poets, etc… but artists of life." I liked that. He continue saying that we can be artists by our behavior and by our production. I really like that. Our art is our production, our behavior, etc…

I liked that part of interview with Suzuki with Huston Smith when it goes like this:

Huston Smith (H. S.): you don't think that it's inevitable that man realizing that after 70, 80 years must die, is not necessary for him to think about his death and what happens thereafter?

D. T. Suzuki (S.): Exactly!

(H. S.): He doesn't have to?

(S.): No. 70, or 80, or 100 years that concerns "time". But when we are… Living itself is not in "Time."

(H. S.): It is not in "time?". The days come and go. There seem like time.

(S.): Yes, that's the way somebody thinks- somebody standing or imagining that somebody is outside time. But if we go on with time itself, there is no such question- "whether we survive?" or not. 

I now think that Erich Fromm had written the introduction to Suzuki's book because it is about existence. Existence and its arts.