A Round Trip

The Danish philosopher Soren Kirkegaard summed up the individuation process (though he never used that term), when he wrote that there are three kinds of people in the world. Simple man comes home after work and thinks about what is for dinner. Complex man comes home after work and ponders the imponderables of the world. Enlightened man comes home after work and thinks: What is for dinner? It looks like a round trip. Similarly, a Zen proverb says: The simple man sees the mountains as mountains, the rivers and rivers and sky as sky. Then one loses one’s way and the mountains are no longer mountains, the river is no longer just a river, and the sky is no longer sky. This is that awful, in-between stage in which we worry everything to death and read into all about us. Then the man who has had satori, the mountains are again mountains, the river is a river, and sky is sky. A Jungian analyst in Los Angeles, Fritz Kunkle, used to say there are three kinds of people in the world: red blooded people, pale blooded people, and gold blooded people. This is other language for the individuation process. It seems to be a round trip.