Name: The Power of Myth
Rating: 4.263157894736842 (57 reviews)
ISBN: 9780385418867

Joseph Campbell

The noted mythologist discusses the relationship of ancient myths to modern life, including discussions of recent heros, tales of love and marriage, the power of myth, and mythic themes

The Power of Myth

sharkie

Laura Mei

Nirvana is right here, in the midst of the turmoil of life. It is the state you find when you are no longer driven to live by compelling desires, fears, and social commitments, when you have found your center of freedom and can act by choice out of that. Voluntary action out of this center is the action of the bodhisattvas — joyful participation in the sorrows of the world. You are not grabbed, because you have released yourself from the grabbers of fear, lust, and duties.

There is an important idea in Nietzsche, of Amor fati, the "love of your fate," which is in fact your life. As he says, if you say no to a single factor in your life, you have unravelled the whole thing. Furthermore, the more challenging or threatening the situation or context to be assimilated and affirmed, the greater the stature of the person who can achieve it. The demon you can swallow gives you its power, and the greater life's pain, the greater life's reply.

Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. The damned thing in the cave, that was so dreaded, has become the center.

The serpent, who dies and is resurrected, shedding its skin and renewing its life, is the lord of the central tree, where time and eternity come together.

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about. When a spider makes a beautiful web, the beauty comes out of the spider’s nature. It’s instinctive beauty. How much of the beauty of our own lives is about the beauty of being alive.

You may have success in life, but then just think of it? What kind of life was it? What good was it — you've never done the thing you wanted to do in all your life. I always tell my students, go where your body and soul want to go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don't let anyone throw you off.

The way to find your happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you really are happy – not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self-analysis. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you.

Greg Talbot

In this galaxy not too long ago, Bill Moyers and inter-faith thinker Joseph Campbell had a series of lectures about faith in the modern world. The conversations about the adventure of life, the poetry of myth, and the divine presence that permeates through societies and faiths is as relevant today as it was when the book came out. In his introduction Moyers frames the question he thinks Campbell is concerned about. It's the unquestioned question that we think faith is all about "you're talking about a search for the meaning of life". Campbell replies "no no no. for the experience of being alive". This bliss Campbell follows through the book. Finding agency and experience of being as the great hero's journey that we move toward a bigger sense of self. It's so great to read this book as conversation. I think reading a guru or spiritual thinker who meets modernity and religious ideas (Ram Dass, Alan Watts), it's easy to loose yourself to the teacher or get lost in a sort of holyness of ideas. But Campbell is admantedly grounded...and humbled in describing religious myths as far more potent than their critics will admit. The great joys of the religious life are going past the imagery, the concepts, and flowing into the great wave of compassion toward that larger divine. Campbell says " We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purpose of outer value that we forget that inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it's all about." (p.5). One of the refreshing things in Campbell's writing is how sort of nonchalant he can be about the whole God idea. He isn't pushing the reader toward belief, and more encouraging to think of the way different socities have thought of the divine. as an impersonal forces that shape us, as the fibers of out bodies, as the great monotheistic God, and the embodied strange creatures in our accepted myths (greeks, roman). With my recent readings on Sartre, Camus, Nietzche and other existentialists, Campbell also shares the wisdom of individual agency. The enrichment offered by a life with passionate commitment is one where we take a step closer toward the best version of ourselves. The passages on loving, marriage, education and his endless quotes of great literary writers show his wisdom as a thinker. Whether we are on the beam, or off it, this is a valuable book about the journey and our shared humanity.

Vasuta Kalra

Brilliant read, helps put life in great perspective

Bill Moyers

The national bestseller, now available in a non-illustrated, standard format paperback edition The Power of Myth launched an extraordinary resurgence of interest in Joseph Campbell and his work. A preeminent scholar, writer, and teacher, he has had a profound influence on millions of people--including Star Wars creator George Lucas. To Campbell, mythology was the “song of the universe, the music of the spheres.” With Bill Moyers, one of America’s most prominent journalists, as his thoughtful and engaging interviewer, The Power of Myth touches on subjects from modern marriage to virgin births, from Jesus to John Lennon, offering a brilliant combination of intelligence and wit. This extraordinary book reveals how the themes and symbols of ancient narratives continue to bring meaning to birth, death, love, and war. From stories of the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome to traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity, a broad array of themes are considered that together identify the universality of human experience across time and culture. An impeccable match of interviewer and subject, a timeless distillation of Campbell’s work, The Power of Myth continues to exert a profound influence on our culture.

A very good non-fiction novel. You learn so much about the origins of myths and how we are affected by them.

The Power of Myth

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