Papa Fury:
One of our tech boys flagged this,
splashed down in the Banda Sea.
Could be the Quinjet.
But with Stark's stealth tech,
we still can't track the damn thing.
The Widow :
Right.
Papa Fury:
Probably jumped out and swam to Fiji.
He'll send a postcard.
Natasha Romanoff:
"Wish you were here."
You sent me to recruit him, way back when.
Did you know then what was going to happen?
Papa Fury:
You Never KNOW —
You Hope for The Best
and
Make Do
with What You Get.
I got A Great Team.
The Widow :
Nothing lasts forever.
Papa Fury:
Trouble, Miss Romanoff.
No matter who wins or loses,
Trouble still comes around.
“The Grail Castle is always just down the road and a turn to the left. If anyone is humble enough and of good heart, he can find that interior castle. Parsifal has had the arrogance beaten out of him by twenty years of fruitless searching, and he is now ready for his castle.
THE SECOND GRAIL CASTLE
Just down the road, turn left, and cross the drawbridge, which snaps closed ticking the back hooves of your horse. It is always dangerous to make the transition of levels that entry to the Grail castle involves.
Parsifal finds the same ceremonial procession going on; a fair damsel carries the sword that pierced the side of Christ, another damsel carries the paten from which the last supper was served, yet another maiden bears the Grail itself. The wounded Fisher King lies groaning on his litter, poised between life and death in his suffering.
Now, wonder of wonders, with twenty years of maturity and experience behind him, Parsifal asks the question which is his greatest contribution to mankind: Whom does The Grail serve?
What a strange question! Hardly comprehensible to modern ears! In essence the question is the most profound question one can ask: where is the center of gravity of a human personality; or where is the center of meaning in a human life?
Most modern people, asked this question in understandable terms for our time, would reply that
I am the center of gravity;
I work to improve my life;
I am working toward my goals;
I am increasing my equity;
I am making something of myself—
or most common of all—
I am searching for happiness,
which is to say that
I want the Grail to serve me.
We ask this great cornucopia of nature, this great feminine outpouring of all the material of the world—the air, the sea, the animals, the oil, the forests, and all the productivity of The World—we ask that it should serve us. But no sooner is the question asked than the answer comes reverberating through the Grail castle halls — the Grail serves the Grail King.
Again, a puzzling answer.
Translated, this means that life serves what a Christian would call God, Jung calls the Self, or and we call by the many terms we have devised to indicate that which is greater than ourselves.
Another language, less poetic but perhaps easier, is available. Dr. Jung speaks of the life process as being the relocation of the center of gravity of the personality from the ego to the Self. He sees this as the life work of a man and the center of meaning for all human endeavor.
When Parsifal learns that he is no longer the center of the universe—not even his own little kingdom—he is free of his alienation and the Grail is no longer barred from him.
Though he may come and go from the Grail castle during the rest of his life, now he will never be alien to it again.
Even more astonishing, the wounded Fisher King rises, healed, in triumph and joy. The miracle has happened, and the legend of his healing has been accomplished.
In Wagner’s opera, Parsifal, the wounded Fisher King rises at this moment and sings a wondrous song of triumph and power and strength. It is the culmination of the whole tale!
Now who is the Grail King whom we have not heard mentioned before? He is the true king of the realm and he lives in the center of the Grail castle. He lives only on the Host and the Wine of the Grail. He is a thinly disguised figure of God, the earthly representation of the Divine, or in Jungian terms, the Self. It is humbling to learn that we hear of this inner center only when we are ready for it and when we have done our duty of formulating a coherent question.
The object of life is not happiness, but to serve God or the Grail. All of the Grail quests are to serve God. If one understands this and drops his idiotic notion that the meaning of life is personal happiness, then one will find that elusive quality immediately at hand.
This same motif appears in a contemporary myth, The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien; the power must be taken from those who would exploit it. In the Grail myth the source of power is given to the representative of God. In Tolkien’s myth the ring of power is taken from evil hands that would use its power to destroy the world and is put back into the ground from which it came. Earlier myths often spoke of the discovery of power and its emergence from the earth into human hands. Recent myths speak of returning the source of power to the earth or into the Hands of God before we destroy ourselves with it.
One detail in the story is worth special observation: Parsifal need only ask the question; he does not have to answer it. When one is discouraged and certain he will never have the intelligence to find the answer to insoluble riddles, he can remember that although it is the duty of the ego to ask a well-formulated question, he is not required to answer it. To ask well is virtually to answer.
Rejoicing bursts forth in the Grail castle; the Grail is brought forth, it gives its food to everyone, including the now-healed Fisher King, and there is perfect peace, joy, and wellbeing.
Such a dilemma! If you ask the Grail to give you happiness, that demand precludes happiness. But if you serve the Grail and the Grail King properly, you will find that what happens and happiness are the same thing. A play on words becomes the definition of enlightenment.
An identical theme is found in very different language in the “Ten Oxherding Pictures” from Zen Buddhism. This is a series of ten pictures prescribed for an artist to portray the steps toward enlightenment. In the first the young hero searches for the ox—his inner nature; in the second he sees the footprints of the ox; in the third he sees the ox. The series proceeds to the ninth picture in which the hero tames the ox, forges a peaceful relationship with it, and sits quietly surveying the scene. The question rises at this pointBehold the streams flowing, whither nobody knows; and the flowers vividly red—for whom are they? Author Mokusen Miyuki reflects that these words could be translated literally into “The stream flows on its own accord, and the flower is red on its own accord.” The Chinese term tsu, “of its own accord,” is used as a compound, tsu-jan, in Taoist thought. It can mean “naturalness,” an occurring of the creative spontaneity of nature, within and without. In other words, tsu-jan, can be taken psychologically as the living reality of selfrealization or the creative urge of the Self manifesting itself in nature.
The series of pictures culminates in the tenth when the hero, now perfectly at peace, walks unnoticed through the village streets. There is nothing extraordinary about him now except that all the trees burst into blossom as he passes by.
This questioning of the meaning of the stream or the redness of the rose from such a different source as Zen Buddhism enhances our understanding of this quest.
A Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, came to America more than a century ago and made some astute observations about the American way. He said that we have a misleading idea at the very head of our Constitution : The Pursuit of Happiness. One can not pursue Happiness; if he does he obscures it. If he will proceed with the human task of life, the relocation of the center of gravity of the personality to something greater outside itself, happiness will be the outcome.
In this year of our Lord we are just beginning to ask the Grail question : Do we have the right to cut down the trees, impoverish the soil, and kill all the pelicans? The answer is beginning to come clear; the first lisping syllables of the question are audible. If we can hear this old tale of an innocent fool blundering into the Grail castle for the first time and earning his way there a second time, we can find some sage advice for our own modern way.
Excerpt from :
"He: Understanding Masculine Psychology"
by Robert A. Johnson.
