Layers & Levels Introduction Part Two

As the Inner Ring of the Vortex is drawn, this Layers and Levels Series is gradually acquiring some sort of shape, like a looming Torii Gate on a mist-covered lake at dawn.

The book – for that is clearly what this series of Articles is now becoming – will probably comprise three main sections, or Levels, modelled on the Vortex Logo, namely:

1. DRAWING THE INNER RINGS – collecting skeins, or skandhas, of various foundational layers and levels, building vocabulary and perspective from non-materialist, generally premodern, sources. (The current phase.)

2. THE OUTER RING: these principles and notions in a variety of philosophical, social, artistic, historical, spiritual and narrative contexts, perhaps principally showcasing the Buddhist Mahayana (‘Great Vehicle’), whose main thrust is the expansive generosity unleashed once individuals and/or society break free from the shackles of materialist self-imprisonment.

3. RETURN TO ORIGIN, SACRED RITUAL: examples and suggestions about how individuals and collectives can manifest sacred principles, with an emphasis on formal, or contained, simplicity, thus returning to the Inner Ring starting point of the Vortex Logo.

Moreover, it seems this book, should it indeed become one, is in part a response to the work of two contemporary philosophers, Alexander Dugin from Russia and Iain McGilchrist from the Isle of Skye, both of whom have gone to great lengths to deconstruct many of the underlying flaws of the modernist mindset, and who advocate valuing sacredness as key to remedying most modernist social ills. Seeing as the entire world is mired in the ‘thick, black fog of materialism’ ¹ it is hardly surprising that much of their work remains similarly ensconced in explaining the nature and characteristics of that pervasive miasma. So what I am hoping to offer is some explanatory and performative examples from classic, non-materialist traditions, of what might help constitute Dugin’s Fourth Political Way ².

As is well said: ‘Manners maketh Man’ in that they are a proactive, creative expression, not merely some sort of stuffy, pseudo-Victorian straight jacket. (Ask any happily married couple whether or not manners matter.) It is also an offering and response to my beloved teacher, Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, who tirelessly transmitted virtually all the esoteric content, and his close student and companion John A Perks, aka ‘Johnny’, his personal attendant and Chief Trickster for many years who founded, in accordance with his teacher’s suggestion, the lineage of Celtic Buddhism. Indeed, albeit decades after our teacher’s early death in 1987, they both still live and play together in Johnny’s mindstream, by the merrily flowing waters of Saxton’s River in Vermont, albeit now decades after my teacher’s death in 1987.

Editorial Note: at some point this Intro Part Two, and any other subsequent additions, will merge into a final Introduction but for now it features as a sequential entry in the emerging Series. Indeed, all the Blog and Substack entries will constitute some sort of first draft after which a book will be fashioned with no doubt many not making the final cut, or getting merged with various others. Editors love such shenanigans!

1 Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche The Sadhana of Mahamudra, 1968

2 The word ‘Way’ is substituted for ‘Theory’ for a Way is something actually lived and practiced, not merely hypothesized.