Time & The Tradition

Thinking about the Ashes cricket tournament this afternoon on the train I wondered what it must be like to first get handed that tiny urn with the burnt cinders of those bails. No doubt an enormous rush of Tradition. The very memory of that match so long ago now only goes to reinforce the binding of the Tradition. So very oddly as things pass into the Past and become less significant what they leave behind in the Present gains a stronger aura in the light of that Loss. The Passing of Time is the very source of Tradition.

What Buddhist recognise as the most profound and liberating force in all existence - the fact that nothing last forever - is at the same time the force which binds us to the Past! That which has gone, or departed, because it can never be seen again, because of the sense that it is untouchable and unreasonable with, casts a powerful force upon the land of the living where all things are uncertain and the future is infintely negotiable. When they decide whether to play The Ashes this year do they really have a choice in it? After all who cares if there is one less cricket match in the calendar? It makes no difference to anyone... except it violates the Ancestors and The Tradition!

Anyone in the "progressive" West who thinks tribes and cultures who worship ancestors and the Past are primative are - as seems to be the case in every respect as I slowly examine it - can only believe this because of the veil of rejection they cast over their own motives and culture. I imagine that quite contrary to the view of "progress" there is actually enormous conservatism in Man's approach to Life - we are afterall the same and have the same root needs and concerns.

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Realised that "The Tradition" exists in a dialectic with "The New". In consumerist societies we are obsessed with things being "New". This fetish gains its value because of its opposition to things which are fetished as being "Old" or "Traditional". They are mutual bedfellows. So when we see the "Latest" edition or version of something we can understand that this only makes sense because it is posturing itself against the alternative which is the "Traditional". People who follow fashions and the latest things are thus really conservative in their thinking - only ironically! Quite a suprising find I thought.