Hey all,

I was wondering if any of you had any thoughts on some of these quotes I pulled out of this article about Ed Abbey. I noticed he was writing most of this stuff towards the end of his life. 

Take care,

Curt

Quotes:

"2. One of these days the Orientalizers will have to face the question of why the homelands of Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism and Zen—namely, India, China, Japan—are also the most abused, ravaged, insulted, overpopulated and desperate lands on planet earth.

"Why? I have my theories about it, of course, implied by things I’ve written elsewhere; but how do you and Devall and Gary Snyder explain it? If you’re going to make your theories cohere with fact, you’ve got to do some thinking about the real role of any large-scale, institutional religion in human life and the life of the planet.

"In my view, the Oriental religions are no better than Christianity (itself of Oriental origin, of course) or Islam; all of them tend to divorce men and women from the earth, from other forms of life, by their mystical emphasis upon the general, the abstract, the invisible, and by their psychological tendency, in prayer and meditation, to turn the mind inward, toward self-love, self-importance, self-obsession. Salvation. Satori. Union with God, union with the All-Source, union with The One. (Which one? my daughter Suzi, age eleven, says—bless her native common sense.) Of course, the devotees of these mystical rites claim the opposite—that they are engaged in self-transcendence. I think they delude themselves; rather than escaping the self, they are wallowing, luxuriating, in a most enormous vanity. The same is true of all the many lesser cults now flourishing, like fungi in a bog, among us bored and idle Americans—EST, for example, and Esalen, and TM, and psychoanalysis, and anal-analysis, and good God! all the many other sickly little superstitions that pollute the psychic atmosphere.

"(However, I tell myself . . . it’s all part of the carnival. All part of the human comedy. These things have always been with us and always will. Each to his fate, predetermined (perhaps) by his character. I must confess that I often tire of my own role as the sneering buzzard on the dead tree. There are times when I envy those with the freedom to hurl themselves into the mob, to lose themselves in the flood of life. Ideally, I suppose, we should be able to enjoy every form of experience. Including suffering? even torture? even slavery?)

"Paralyzing philosophy. But always entertaining.

"Action, there’s the thing. Action! When I grow sick with the buzzing of the brain, I like to go climb a rock. Cut down a billboard. Disable a bulldozer. (Eine kleine Nachtwerke) Climb a mountain. Run a rapid. Pursue a woman. Etc."

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"And yes, I do distrust mysticism. I regard it as too easy a way out. Whenever I find myself sliding into mysticism in my writing—I never do it in my feeling and seeing—I know that my mind is relaxing, taking the easy way around a hard pitch of thought. Just as those who casually throw in the word “God” think that they are answering questions which may very well have no answer. Not all questions can be answered. I think that Carl Sagan is a bit naive in his scientific optimism, just as those who call themselves mystics are naive in identifying their personal inner visions with universal reality."

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"8) I no longer have much interest in the supernatural, or what is mistakenly referred to as “mystical” events and experience. That kind of search belongs to the youthful stage of life, both in the individual and in the race. I now find the most marvelous things in the everyday, the ordinary, the common, the simple and tangible.

"For example: one cloud floating over one mountain. Or a trickle of water seeping from stone after a twenty-mile walk through the desert. Or the smile of recognition on the face of your own child when she hasn’t seen you around for several hours. These are the deepest joys, as we learn to understand when we go into the middle age of life.

"The love of a man for his wife, his child, of the land where he lives and works, is for me the real meaning of mystical experience. Those who waste their whole lives hungering for fantastic and occult sensations are suffering from retarded emotional development and stunted imaginations. One world and one life at a time, please. I have no desire to be reborn until I have exhausted every possibility of this life in this time on these few hundred square miles of earth I call my home."