Life Affirming Mythologies: Blackfoot myth of the Buffalo Dance

“Life isn’t meant to be happy. That’s not what it’s about. Ah, the damage that is caused by that attitude. All life is sorrowful. Sorrow is the essence of life. But can you handle it? Are you affirmative enough in your relationship to life to say ‘yea’ no matter what happens?”                                —Joseph Campbell

One of the functions of mythology is to help us establish our relationship to life, to provide the context and meaning for experiences of all sorts. According to Campbell, a life-affirming mythology is one that makes room for both the joy and sorrow in life and treats them both as inevitable.  

In this program I tell a Blackfoot myth about the buffalo that Campbell often used as one example of a life-affirming mythology. It provides a way for people to accept all of it—death and killing and the fact that life feeds on life— and find beauty, sacredness, and connection.

MITM theme music by Travis Rosenberg. Thanks to Radio Free Joshua Tree for providing MITM a home on internet radio-- and thank you for listening!

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