PHI 2070 Eastern Philosophy: November 2011

Thomas Bayrle, Maxwell Kaffee, Oil on canvas (1967).

The Tao doesn't take sides;
it gives birth to both good and evil.
The Master doesn't take sides;
she welcomes both saints and sinners.- Tao Te Ching

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i'd like to talk about this void of tao calling what fullness?

imagine an event before us, which appears incomplete. it's out of joint. and what isn't?

i take thomas bayrle Maxwell Kaffee (above) as a metaphor for the nausea that implacably pursues roquentin in La Nausée, the paradox of one-and-the-many that we find again in kenyan artist ingrid mwuangi's If:

The Tao gives birth to One.
One gives birth to Two.
Two gives birth to Three.
Three gives birth to all things. (vers. 42)¹

Ingrid Mwuangi, If, digital c-prints mounted on aluminum (2001).

The Tao is like a well:

used but never used up.

It is like the eternal void:

filled with infinite possibilities. (vers. 4)

according to the tao te ching, our will to fix things can paradoxically take us into unexpected detours. when to let just things be?

If you don't realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused, (vers. 16)

we generally don't see our will as being impeded by anything other than our desire to act (a point we should heed from hard determinists). yet, in the big realm of overall causation, we're not alone. our will is "differential," one amongst hundreds of millions of other intersecting wills. seldom we stop to ponder our volitions as an infinitesimal fraction of an overall sum of (unknown) wills in the here and now, plus the already existing chain/reactions which our time/space.

how to see one's will vis-a-vis this higher order of will/differentials? what's the relative limit between one's doing and one doing too much? and viceversa, how much of our lives simply end up -unknowingly- "happening" to us?

ray bradbury, A Sound of Thunder, edition of collier's magazine (june 1952).

just as in bradbury's A Sound of Thunder,² imagine how much of our planet's future is -and is not- in our hands right now.

The Tao is like a bellows:

it is empty yet infinitely capable.

The more you use it, the more it produces;

the more you talk of it, the less you understand. ( vers. 5)

on the positive side, think of serendipity in science, randomness in quantum mechanics and aleatoricism in music. ³

Marco Fusinato, Mass Black Implosion, ink on archival facsimile of score (2007).

on the negative side, think of Black Swans, popper's historicist fallacy and uneventful events. which brings us back to the mismatch of essence/appearance. of course, the question that we need to answer is how can we tell the difference?

Look, and it can't be seen.

Listen, and it can't be heard.

Reach, and it can't be grasped. (vers. 14)

the answer to the problem is not that simple, because there is no single unequivocal course of action. it's at this point that jazz can help. when musicians improvise, they are also part of a center of energy given by the whole ensemble. if one sees it synchronically (as if you could make a slice in the music sequence) the musicians seem to solo, if one sees it diachronically, it plays as a perfectly fit sequence. the success of the solo depends precisely of this give-and-take between part and whole and vice-versa. this is known as "groove," the sort of tao of jazz.⁴

as in jazz, taoism is perspectival, i.e., there can be different solutions to a given problem. this doesn't mean that all solutions are the same. just as there are good and bad improvisations, there are good and bad solutions to a given problem (in its uniqueness, tao is plural).

tao has multiple interpretations. why? think of this question: is the Big Dipper made by nature? Philosopher nelson goodman thinks not: a constellation is a "version," i.e., a construction that picks some stars from others. the same with "star," which is a version that "picks" (configures) stars from other celestial bodies.⁵

Lecia Dole-Recio, Untitled, paper, vellum, tape and gouache (2003).

goodman explains:

Truth of statements,rightness of descriptions, representations, exemplifications, expressions,... is primarily a matter of fit, fit to what is referred to in one way, or other renderings, or modes and manners of organization.⁶

in our quest/struggle with reality, we keep building construction upon construction (human endeavor in science, politics and the arts, reflects this dynamic). what comes first in Ochoa's Collapsed? hint: the concrete wall is the future event of the aggregate of rock, sand and water. you see the cause, then you see the effect, but never at once. art does the trick!

Ruben Ochoa, Collapsed, Concrete, steel, burlap, wood, dirt (2009).

at some point we discussed the apparent riddle of the Tao Te Ching, which brings forth the idea "speaking/not speaking" in zen, which we'll go into detail pretty soon. the Chuang Tzu helps: "if tao is made clear (by words), it is not tao. if words are argumentative, they do not reach the point."

yeah, every now and then we just have to let go and shut up. at that point one really but briefly understands the value of letting words flush down the word/sewer.

Close your mouth,
block off your senses,
blunt your sharpness,
untie your knots,
soften your glare,
settle your dust.
This is the primal identity. (vers 56)

tao listens to silence. composer & buddhist john cage puts is beautifully: "every something is an echo of nothing."

let's pay attention to tao's subtle groove:

If you want to become whole,
let yourself be partial.
If you want to become straight,
let yourself be crooked.
If you want to become full,
let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn,
let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything,
give everything up. (vers 22)

in our reading tuesday, we commented an important and often glossed over element in taoism: humor. Let's come back to it. chuang tzu counsels: "the general idea is to show the happy excursion, the enjoyment in the way of inaction and self-enjoyment." (Chuang Tzu, A Happy Excursion)

no one fits this metaphor better than a child. we must try to bring back our lost innocence and sense of wonderment. there is something to be said for a child's natural ability to take in the world without any prejudice.

Brian Chippendale, Ninja and Maggot Series, (2006).

unfortunately, growing up means repressing this ability so that the adult becomes an entrenchment of hardened stereotypes. meanwhile, our ability for enjoyment gets regimented and instrumentalized.

"having fun" -as we usually use the word nowadays- carries this sense of being entertained, which in our post-capitalist society is exactly the opposite of true fun, the equivalent of forfeiting our curiosity by domesticating ourselves into vacuous, purposeless compliance.

against this disposition we must present tao's flexible, contrarian, comical, side:

Teruhiko Yumura This is Ja, for Flamingo Studio

tao's flexibility avoids the pitfalls of intellectual constipation:

Proud beyond measure,

you come to your knees:

Do enough without vieing,

Be living, not dying.

now the fool comes back. he's been with us this semester. chuang tzu says: a man who knows he is a fool is not a great fool. how close this is to this. as you'll see, the fool becomes an distinguished character in zen.

i'd like to warn you however, of unproblematically going for enjoyment, not only because, to begin with, the capitalist imperative "enjoy yourself" can castrate the true feeling we seek, but because, as sarah kay points out, enjoyment can be a double-edge sword: "enjoy-meant," and the meaning displaces being.⁸ said differently, the desire ends up killing the feeling. i think this is what philosopher simon critchley has in mind when he cites a telling passage from beckett's Watt:

The bitter the hollow and -haw, haw!- the mirthless. The bitter laugh laughs at that which is not good, it is the ethics laugh. The hollow laugh laughs at that which is not true, it is the intellectual laugh. Not good! Not true! Well, well. But the mirthless laugh is the dianoetic laugh, down the snout - haw!- so. It is the laugh of laughs, the risus purus, the laugh laughing at the laugh, the beholding, the saluting of the highest joke, in a word the laugh that laughs -silence please- at that which is unhappy. ⁹

it is risus purus that may work as a therapy to demystify the negative attitudes of our political comedy: anal-retentiveness, social hostility, impetuous rage and self-importance.
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¹ taken from Tao Te Ching, translated by s. mitchell. ² in his short story A Sound of Thunder, ray bradbury imagines the impact of the so-called butterfly effect:

Maybe Time can't be changed by us. Or maybe it can be changed only in little subtle ways. A dead mouse here makes an insect imbalance there, a population disproportion later, a bad harvest further on, a depression, mass starvation, and finally, a change in social temperament in far-flung countries. Something much more subtle, like that. Perhaps only a soft breath, a whisper, a hair, pollen on the air, such a slight, slight change that unless you looked close you wouldn't see it. Who knows? Who really can say he knows? We don’t know. We’re guessing. But until we do know for certain whether our messing around in Time can make a big roar or a little rustle in history, we’re being careful.

³ serendipity is the finding of something valuable without its being specifically sought. in general, activities and skills that can function in parallel may interact in unplanned and unforeseen ways. professor Jeffrey McKee argues that some of the most important forces of human evolution (the roles of which have been largely neglected) are chance, coincidence, and chaos. according to McKee one cannot understand how humans evolved without taking these three factors into account. see, The riddled chain: Chance, coincidence, and chaos in human evolution (Rutgers University Press, 2000).⁴"when jazz is really grooving -whether it's a solo pianist, a quartet, or a big band -there is indeed an unmistakable feeling of buoyancy and lift (...) relaxed intensity is the key." Johnny King, What Jazz Is: An Insider's Guide to Understanding and Listening to Jazz (Walker: 1997) p. 24. ⁵ Hilary Putnam, Renewing Philosophy, (Cambridge, 1992), p. 115.⁶Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking, (Hackett Publishing, 1978). ⁷ See, Youru Wang, Linguistic Strategies in Daoist Chuang-Tzu and Zen Buddhism: The Other Way of Speaking (Routledge, 2003), p. 98. ⁸Sarah Kay, Zizek: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge, 2003), p. 162. Simon Critchley, Infinitely Demanding, (Verso, 2007), p. 82

Illustration by Pomme Chan

The Mystery is the first ancestor of the Spontaneous, the root of the many diversities.
Unfathomable and murky in its depths, it is also called imperceivable;
stretching far into the distance, it is also called wonderful;
so high that it covers the nine empyreans,
so wide that it encompasses the eight cardinal points;
shining beyond the sun and the moon,
speedy beyond the rapid light;
it both suddenly shines forth and disappears like a shadow.
it both surges up in a whirlwind and streaks away like a comet;
it is both stirred up by deep eddies and like a clear deep pool,
it is both flaky and at the same time misty, rising up in clouds;
it takes on form and gender, and it exists [you];
it returns to darkness and solitude, and it is no more [wu];
it plunges beyond, into the great darkness, and buries itself deep;
it rises above the stars and floats on high;
neither metal nor stone can equal its hardness,
and the moist dew cannot attain its softness.
Square without set-square, round without compasses,
it comes and no one sees it,
it leaves and no one follows it;
through it, the sky is high and the earth low,
through it, the clouds rush by and the rain falls.
It carries within it the embryo of the Original One,
it forms and shapes the two Principles (Yin and Yang);
it exhales and absorbs the great Genesis,
it inspires and transforms the multitude of species,
it makes the constellations go round,
it shaped the primordial Darkness,
it guides the wonderful mainspring of the universe,
it exhales the four seasons,
it encloses the void and silence in darkness,
it frees and parcels out natural abundance,
it makes the heavy fall and the light rise up,
it makes the rivers Ho and Wei flow.
If one adds to it, it does not increase.
if one takes away from it, it does not grow less.
If something is given to it, it is not increased in glory.
If something is taken from it, it does not suffer.
Where the Mystery is present, joy is infinite;
where the Mystery has departed, efficacy is exhausted and the spirit disappears.