Read Online A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living (Collected Works of Joseph Campbell) by Joseph Campbell - Free Book Online
Authors: Joseph Campbell
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Americas, were addressed to the animal. On the Northwest Coast, the principle rites were when the first wave of salmon came in, and they were intended to thank the salmon.
The life of the animal that you’ve taken
is given back when you recognize
what you’ve done.
And so, sitting down to eat, realize what you are doing: you are eating a life that has been given so that you might live.
…man, like no other animal, not only knows that he is killing when he kills but also knows that he too will die; and the length of his old age, furthermore, is—like his infancy—a lifetime in itself, as long as the entire span of many a beast. 45
When I was working on the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, I had a lot of meals with the monks. Their grace before meals is the most beautiful invocation. It goes like this: “ brahman is the cosmic, universal, life consciousness energy of which we are all manifestations. brahman is the sacrifice. brahman is the food that we are eating. brahman is the consumer of the sacrifice. brahman is the ladle that carries the sacrifice to the fire. brahman is the process of the sacrifice. He who recognizes that all things are brahman is on the way to realizing brahman in himself.”
The meaning of this grace is that taking food into your system is like putting a libation into a sacrificial fire: the fire of your digestive apparatus consumes what you eat, so eating is the counterpart of a sacrifice.
The communion ritual is an extension of this idea, a motif that came into the world with the dawn of agriculture: “If the seed does not die, there is no plant.” It dies as seed and yields to the sprout. Now, since we are composed of spirit and matter—the two substances are what live in us—we need two types of food. The food that nourishes our material part—vegetables, animals, whatever it is we eat—is earthly food, but we must also have spiritual food, nourishment for our spiritual part. And communion, the eating of Christ, is a symbolization of the imbibing of that spiritual nourishment, a concretization of the idea of meditation, But in order to eat anything, it has to be killed, so again we have this notion of the sacrifice.
You should be willing
to be eaten also.
You are food body.
Every ritual is of that order, properly putting your mind in touch with what you really are doing. And so, we should realize that this event here and now: our coming together to help each other in the realization is a beautiful, beautiful ritual.
You can ritualize your entire life that way, and it’s extremely helpful to do so. The whole thing of compassion comes in there. What helped me was waking up and thinking of my penny catechism: “to know, to love, to serve God.” I don’t think of God as up there. I think of God as right here in whatever I’m knowing and loving and serving. “To be happy with Him forever in heaven” means to recognize your own compassion, your own participation in that creature or person you’re with. That seems to be the goal of the journey.
T he principle ritual in most puberty and initiation rites is a death and resurrection ritual in which your name is changed. You die to the name you had and are resurrected with a new identity.
I once saw a film of the consecration of a group of young men who were becoming monks. They were standing in the aisle of a church, and then they all prostrated themselves, and a great canvas emblazoned with the cross was laid over them. When the canvas was removed, they were monks.
The experience of boys being initiated in Australia and New Guinea is of death. Their eyes are covered, and they hear the bullroarer coming, and they are told that the dragon is coming to consume them. When itis right over their heads and they’re about to be eaten, their eyes are uncovered, and now initiated, they see that it’s Uncle Charlie with the bullroarer.
In another such rite, described in a book about the Ona of Tierra del Fuego,
The life of the animal that you’ve taken
is given back when you recognize
what you’ve done.
And so, sitting down to eat, realize what you are doing: you are eating a life that has been given so that you might live.
…man, like no other animal, not only knows that he is killing when he kills but also knows that he too will die; and the length of his old age, furthermore, is—like his infancy—a lifetime in itself, as long as the entire span of many a beast. 45
When I was working on the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, I had a lot of meals with the monks. Their grace before meals is the most beautiful invocation. It goes like this: “ brahman is the cosmic, universal, life consciousness energy of which we are all manifestations. brahman is the sacrifice. brahman is the food that we are eating. brahman is the consumer of the sacrifice. brahman is the ladle that carries the sacrifice to the fire. brahman is the process of the sacrifice. He who recognizes that all things are brahman is on the way to realizing brahman in himself.”
The meaning of this grace is that taking food into your system is like putting a libation into a sacrificial fire: the fire of your digestive apparatus consumes what you eat, so eating is the counterpart of a sacrifice.
The communion ritual is an extension of this idea, a motif that came into the world with the dawn of agriculture: “If the seed does not die, there is no plant.” It dies as seed and yields to the sprout. Now, since we are composed of spirit and matter—the two substances are what live in us—we need two types of food. The food that nourishes our material part—vegetables, animals, whatever it is we eat—is earthly food, but we must also have spiritual food, nourishment for our spiritual part. And communion, the eating of Christ, is a symbolization of the imbibing of that spiritual nourishment, a concretization of the idea of meditation, But in order to eat anything, it has to be killed, so again we have this notion of the sacrifice.
You should be willing
to be eaten also.
You are food body.
Every ritual is of that order, properly putting your mind in touch with what you really are doing. And so, we should realize that this event here and now: our coming together to help each other in the realization is a beautiful, beautiful ritual.
You can ritualize your entire life that way, and it’s extremely helpful to do so. The whole thing of compassion comes in there. What helped me was waking up and thinking of my penny catechism: “to know, to love, to serve God.” I don’t think of God as up there. I think of God as right here in whatever I’m knowing and loving and serving. “To be happy with Him forever in heaven” means to recognize your own compassion, your own participation in that creature or person you’re with. That seems to be the goal of the journey.
T he principle ritual in most puberty and initiation rites is a death and resurrection ritual in which your name is changed. You die to the name you had and are resurrected with a new identity.
I once saw a film of the consecration of a group of young men who were becoming monks. They were standing in the aisle of a church, and then they all prostrated themselves, and a great canvas emblazoned with the cross was laid over them. When the canvas was removed, they were monks.
The experience of boys being initiated in Australia and New Guinea is of death. Their eyes are covered, and they hear the bullroarer coming, and they are told that the dragon is coming to consume them. When itis right over their heads and they’re about to be eaten, their eyes are uncovered, and now initiated, they see that it’s Uncle Charlie with the bullroarer.
In another such rite, described in a book about the Ona of Tierra del Fuego,
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