Introduced to the book by Clayton, from work. Really enjoyed this as someone who spent a bunch of time in church and religious schools growing up. Quotes:

• "He taught, as great teachers teach, by example. It was not his manner to try to talk anyone into anything. Preachers err, he told me, by trying to "talk people into belief; better they reveal the radiance of their own discovery."
• On visionaries and leaders: "They’ve moved out of the society that would have protected them, and into the dark forest, into the world of fire, of original experience. Original experience has not been interpreted for you, and so you’ve got to work out your life for yourself. Either can you can take it or you can’t. You don’t have to go far off the interpreted path to find yourself in very difficult situations. The courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities into the field of interpreted experiences for other people to experience – that is the hero’s deed."
• "All life is sorrowful" is the first Buddhist saying, and so it is. It wouldn’t be life if there were not temporality involved, which is sorrow – loss, loss, loss. You’ve got to say yes to life and see it as magnificent this way; for this is surely the way God intended it…. I don’t believe there was anybody who intended it, but this is the way it is. James Joyce has a memorable line: "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." And the way to awake from it is not to be afraid, and to recognize that all of this, as it is, is a manifestation of the horrendous power that is all of creation. The ends of things are always painful. But pain is part of there being a world at all… Moyers: But if you accepted that as an ultimate conclusion you wouldn’t try to form any laws or fight any battles or… Campbell: I didn’t say that… that is not the necessary conclusion to draw. You could say "I will participate in this life. I will join the army. I will go to war." and so forth. I will participate in the game. It is a wonderful wonderful opera – except that it hurts."
• "Moyers: In classic Christian doctrine the material world is to be despised, and life is to be redeemed in the hereafter, in heaven, where our rewards come. But you say that if you affirm that which you deplore, you are affirming the very world that is our eternity at the moment. Campbell: Yes, that is what I am saying. Eternity isn’t some later time. Eternity isn’t even a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now that all thinking in termporal terms cuts off. And if you don’t get it here, you won’t get it anywhere…. The experience of eternity right here and now, in all things, whether thought of as good or as evil, is the function of life. Moyers: This is it. Campbell: This is it." Reminds me of DFW, "this is water".
• "What does it mean to have a sacred place? … This is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know ath you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen."
• "The New Testament teaches dying to one’s self, literally suffering the pain of death to the world and its values. This is the vocabulary of the mystics. Now, suicide is also a symbolic act. It casts off the psychological posture that you happen to be in at the time, so that you may come into a better one. You die to your current life in order to come to another some kind. But, as Jung says, you’d better not get caught in a symbolic situation…. Moyers: But it seems so foreign to our experience today. Religion is easy. You put it on as if you are putting on a coat and going out to the movies. Campbell: Yes, most churches are nice for social gatherings. You like the people there, they are respectable people, they are old friends, and the family has known them for a long time. Moyers: What has happened to this mythic idea of the self-sacrificing savior in our culture today? Campbell: During the Vietnam War, I remember seeing on the television young men in helicopters going out to resuce one or another of their companions, at great risk to themselves. They didn’t have to resuce that greatly endagnered young man. And so there I saw this same thing working, the same willingness of which Schopenhauer wrote, of scarificing one’s own life for another. Men sometimes confess they love war because it puts them in touch with the experience of being alive. In going to the office every day, you don’t get that experience, but suddenly, in war, you are ripped back into being alive. Life is pain, life is suffering; and life is horror, but by God, you are alive."
• "… if he doesn’t recognize it, it may turn him into Darth Vader. If the person insists on a certain program, and doesn’t listen to the demands of his own heart, he’s going to risk a schizophrenic crackup. Such a person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a program for life, and it’s not the one the body’s interested in at all. The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves or have listened only to their neighbors to learn what they ought to do, how they ought to behave, and what the values are they should be living for."
• "I can’t think of any that say that if you’re going to live, you won’t suffer. Myths tell us how to confront and bear and interpret suffering, but they do not say that in life there can or should be no suffering. When the Buddha declares there is escape from sorrow, the escape is Nirvana, which is not a place, like heaven, but a psychological state of mind in which you are released from desire and fear. And your life becomes harmonious, centered, and affirmative. Even with suffering? Exactly. The Buddhists speak of the bodhisattva – the one who knows immorality, yet voluntarily enters into the field of the fragmentation of time and participates willingly and joyfully in the sorrows of the world. And this means not only experiencing sorrows oneself but participating with compassion in the sorrows of others. Compassion is the awakening of the heart from bestial self interest to humanity. "

(tags: philosophy culture folklore religion mythology legends symbolism storytelling humanity )