some more thoughts about materialism vs. spirituality

one of the marks of several of the more experimental writers who can be said to have a serious spiritual component in their writing is an involvement with the material culture -- particularly the texts, anecdotes, objects, figures -- of religion, and so this is a spirituality which depends on the graphics of a Lull, or the sephirot, or the texts of the gnostics (Hillman) or the talmudic tradition of text and layers of commentary rather than palimpsest

in another way, too, the ritual, even at its simplest, the ritual of sitting zazaen, for example, it a way of objectifying a process -- what about that zafu? incense? etc. -- or an experience -- what about those visions and visualizations?