thanks for the company

phi 2070 was nice. lots of things said, broody exchanges, passionate discussions, foolish moments, possible future friendships,

thanks.

Topics for the final exam

The topics for the final (tuesday, december 18 @ 12:40pm) are:

Zen techniques
Wu wei
Confucianism
Taoism

the exam will have the same format than last test. i.e., fill in the blanks for main terms or concepts. the essay question for the final will be to write a page about your favorite theme from within taoism and zen. 

ryokan and the art of poetry

Chinese poems

Walking beside a clear running river, I come to a farmhouse.
The evening chill has given way to the warmth of the
morning sun.
Sparrows gather in a bamboo grove, voices fluttering
here and there.
I meet the old farmer returning to his home;
He greets me like a long-lost friend.
At his cottage, the farmer's wife heats sakè
While we eat freshly picked vegetables and chat.
Together, gloriously drunk, we no longer know
The meaning of unhappiness.

Yesterday I went to town begging food from east to west.
My shoulders are getting thinner and I cannot recall the
last time I had a heavy rice sack.
The thick frost is a continual reminder of my thin robe.
My old friends, where have they gone?
Even new faces are few.
As I walk toward the deserted summer pavilion,
Nothing but the wind of late autumn blowing through
the pines and oaks.

Autum night -- unable to sleep, I leave my tiny cottage.
Fall insects cry under the rocks, and
The cold branches are sparsely covered.
Far away, from deep in the valley, the sound of water.
The moon rises slowly over the highest peak;
I stand there quietly for a long time and
My robe becomes moist with dew.

Returning to my hermitage after filling my rice bowl,
Now only the gentle glow of twilight.
Surrounded by mountain peaks and thinly scattered leaves;
In the forest a winter crow flies.

My life may appear melancholy,
But traveling through this world
I have entrusted myself to Heaven.
In my sack, three sho of rice;
By the hearth, a bundle of firewood.
If someone asks what is the mark of enlightenment
or illusion,

I cannot say -- wealth and honor are nothing but dust.
As the evening rain falls I sit in my hermitage
And stretch out both feet in answer.

The Long Winter Night: 3 poems 

The long winter night! The long winter night seems endless;
When will it be day?
No flame in the lamp nor charcoal in the fireplace;
Lying in bed, listening to the sound of freezing rain.

To an old man, dreams come easy;
I let my thoughts drift.
The room is empty and both the sakè and the oil are used up --
The long winter night.

When I was a boy studying in an empty hall,
Over and over I had to fill the lamp with oil.
Even now, that task is disagreeable --
The long winter night.

Green mountains front and back,
White clouds east and west.
Even if I met a fellow traveler,
No news could I give him.

Deep in the mountains at night, alone in my hermitage,
I listen to the plaintive sound of rain and snow.
A monkey cries on top of a mountain;
The sound of the valley river has faded away.
A light flickers in front of the window;
On the desk, the water in the inkstone has dried.
Unable to sleep all night,
I prepare ink and brush, and write this poem.

Winter -- in the eleventh month
Snow falls thick and fast.
A thousand mountains, one color.
Men of the world passing this way are few.
Dense grass conceals the door.
All night in silence, a few woodchips burn slowly
As I read the poems of the ancients.

Loneliness: spring has already passed.
Silence: I close the gate.
From heaven, darkness; the wisteria arbor is no longer
visible.  The stairway is overgrown with herbs
And the rice bag hangs from the fence.
Deep stillness, long isolated from the world.
All night the hototogisu cries.

Immediateness

According to Zen intellectualizations, concepts, even language itself are inadequate for expressing our experience as it is experienced.

We go through life thinking that our words and ideas mirror what we experience, but repeatedly we discover that the distinctions taken to be true are mental constructs. In verbalizing something, we may have a lingering sense of having compromised part of our experience, but we continue to devise new categories, new names for new things, more distinctions when a moment before there were no distinctions.

The goal of Zen training is to break down our dependence on categories that interfere with the directness and immediacy of experience, but this does not mean that thought stops altogether.

The Zen student is interested in preserving immediacy, but the myriad forms of life situations present a baffling assortment of possibilities to which one must respond.

Thought is effective only when it arises spontaneously out of a problematic situation.

which war? mine!

atRifF

what is war? "a condition of active antagonism."

antagonism? the "condition of being an opposing principle, force, or factor."

as opposed to what? which force? to be is to continually wage a battle with opposing instincts within oneself. a dynamic conflict of domination and subordination. to be means taking sides against oneself.

with this premise of "internal opposition" i'd like to probe an ancient taoist text, the art of war.
let's backtrack to philosopher f. nietzsche, who speaks a constant "wrestling of opposite forces." reality for nietzsche, is a flux of contradictions. an authentic individual must not only acknowledge this fact, but seek to promote similar oppositions within himself:

(...) a given quality contends against itself and separates into opposites; everlastingly these opposites seek to reunite. odinary people fancy they see something rigid, complete and permanent. in truth, however, light and dark, bitter and sweet are attached to each other and interlocked at any given moment like wrestlers of whom sometimes the one, sometimes the other is on top. (PTAG, 5)

a wrestling act. here's another one: "one is fruitful only at the cost of being rich in contradictions; one remains young only on condition the soul does not relax, does not long for peace." (TI, morality as antinature, 3)

this nietszchean auto-poesis (the making of oneself) is fundamental to overcome the stagnation posed by self-satisfaction, which paradoxically is something we all seek.  change means (inner) conflict engendered by opposites (friend, enemy, self). authentic self is he/she who is determined by this intensity of self-oppositions.

let's not beat around the bush. we can now entertain the opening words in the art of war:

1. military action is important. it's the ground of death and life... so it is imperative to examine it.

how can there be a "military" of oneself?

military relates to armed forces. soldiers! what's a soldier? one who actively serves a cause. which?

one, any, whether event or condition in which one is responsible for an action or result. 

i can see myself as a soldier on my way to battle with myself in an unforeseen event. any situation is in principle a pure beginning. here we must accept the uncertainty principle: everything begins in confusion and obscurity. the emergence of clarity is the result of this internal wrestling which leads to never-ending clarification. am i not responsible for this most significant cause? is is not mine? is it not my duty to fight? (think of the literal? non- literal? meaning of the b. gita).  

is this the end?

(...) he who has overcome his passions has entered into possession of the most fertile ground … to sow the seeds of good spiritual works in the soil of the subdued passions is then the immediate urgent task. the overcoming itself is only a means, not a goal; if it is not so viewed, all kinds of weeds and devilish nonsense will quickly spring up in this rich soil now unoccupied, and soon there will be more rank confusion than there ever was before. (WS, 53)

a new battle will have to be fought. and why not? 

enough said.

i'm closing this post next wednesday at 11pm.   

The Chuang Tzu

Excerpts from The Chuang Tzu.

do your work and step back (post for comment)

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

atRifF

i take thomas bayrle Maxwell Kaffee (above) as a metaphor for the paradox of the one and the multiple. we find it 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, to render reality "coherent," could paradoxically take us into unexpected detours.

when should we let things just 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)

the answer is near. one just have to take the chance:

 Since before time and space were,
the Tao is.
It is beyond is and is not.
How do I know this is true?
I look inside myself and see. (vers. 21)

we don't see our will as being impeded by anything other than our desire to act. in the big realm of overall causation, our will is not the only mover, but one amongst hundreds of millions of other intersecting wills. seldom we stop to ponder our volition 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 of the ONEw32w2?

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."⁴ 

as in jazz, taoism offers 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.

tao is plural, it offers diverse 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 into 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. now 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. 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. 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 advises: a man who knows he is a fool is not a great fool (how close to this). as you'll see, the fool becomes an distinguished character in zen.

there is a caveat though, if we unproblematically go 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 then meaning displaces the being.⁷

said differently, desire may end up killing the true 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. ⁸

risus purus that may work as an antidote to the negative attitudes of our political comedy: anal-retentiveness, social hostility, impetuous rage and self-importance.

the tao of self-knowledge is personal, contrarian & paradoxical!

Not-knowing is true knowledge.
Presuming to know is a disease.
First realize that you are sick;
then you can move toward health. (vers. 71)

i am closing this post wednesday november 21 

________________
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).  ⁷Sarah Kay, Zizek: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge, 2003), p. 162.  ⁸ Simon Critchley, Infinitely Demanding, (Verso, 2007), p. 82

Tao Te Ching

for the sake of simplicity, i found this translation by s mitchell.

phallocentric power twice

this late 19th century poster illustrates phallocentric power @ the height of the struggle for women's suffrage in the U.S. take a look at the role of "men." a policeman hold the woman down, he reddish nose a sign of having been "attacked" by a "masculine woman" (epithet used against the suffragettes at the time).

 
a dapper mustached man vexingly steps on the woman's chest while force-feeding her through a funnel. "men" resent women's claim for political equality (in so doing, they are betrayed by their own representation). the "victims" are now the torturers who deprive  women of their freedom to go on a huger strike for being arbitrarily detained (for protesting men's political inequality?) this is how men protect their right not to be infringed upon by women.

and why not -all the while- have a little fun?

but meanings multiply with contexts: a little more than a century later water-boarding becomes a policy of state. the phallocentric method remains, now with different subjects. instead of women, now we got terrorists. both suffrage and terror are subversive acts.

who is the well-dressed man?

Confucius' Analects

The Analects.

don't forget to vote!

i don't think there's a more important ritual right now.

when the absolutist, the subjectivist, the relativist and the skeptic discuss truth

we cannot stop making inferences. but inferences are tricky. here's an example from our last class. if i recall correctly (and a lot was said back-and-forth and my memory may betray me), jonathan made the point that my saying: religious pluralism is better than religious fundamentalism is an absolutist statement.

please, read my chicken soup dilemma. 

why make a purported-to-be-true statement the sole property of the absolutist?

as my chicken-soup-dilemma suggests, diverse and opposite positions can converge on particular statements. the problem is not a statement, but what backs it up.

truth (well, except truths of math) has to be dependent of time, space & milieu. here i part with the idealist. why bragging an "evermore" when life is just a breathing cosmic/second? truth is no less decisive when it aims for the now --but i'll let the future settle the matter.  

take this statement:

i believe truth is a marriage between 1. thought & 2. a time-bounded state-of-affairs. 

let's examine possible justifications:

absolutists would accept 1. & 2. as long as both are infallible and transcendent.
subjectivists do exactly the opposite of the absolutist.
relativists take 1. while doubting the necessity of 2. 
skeptics suspend the value of 1. & 2.
nihilists care for neither.

i heard that i could also be a "subjectivist." when you add the two: subjectivist + absolutist, you get a bizarre stew of infallibility (the absolutist part) & solipsism (the subjectivist part).

i wish them both away from me & my shadow.*  

so, where are we? i don't know exactly -but hope- in a better place than before. :)
______________
* a line from cristopher marlowe's dr. faustus.

on the advantage of religious pluralism

after a couple of points were made, i tried to argue in class my preference for religious pluralism over religious fundamentalism*, but there's so much one can do within an hour of class. what is religious pluralism?

religious pluralism is the view that there is more than one path of salvation.**

we have a pretty good idea that ashoka the great, the buddhist king of the 2nd century b.c. preached a very early form of religious pluralism:

all religions should reside everywhere, for all of them desire self-control and purity of heart. (in the s. dhammika) and this one: contact (between religions) is good. one should listen to and respect the doctrines professed by others. rock edict Nb12 (s. dhammika)

why do i find religious pluralism a preferable option? religious tolerance would be first on my list. then one could argue that pluralism is epistemologically sound. earlier, i said that infallibility is not a trait of the wise (who by principle keeps his/her fallibility in check).

pluralism presupposes fallibilism. the quest for knowledge, truth, (whatever you want to call it) is an open-ended, historic, time-bounded, proposition. coming back to religion, this is the an attitude of the mystic sufi poet rumi:

i looked for god. i went to a temple, and i didn't find him there. then i went to a church, and i didn't find him there. and then i went to a mosque, and i didn't find him there. and then finally i looked in my heart, and there he was.

better yet: "how many paths are there to god? there are as many paths to god as there are souls on the earth."***

here is a consequence of pluralism:

even if i believed that my religion is a "better" choice of worship, i understand that "better" are --not objective standards, but-- open-ended biographical, sociopolitical preconditions. there is nothing else that makes my religion "better" except my belief that it does (of course i share this belief with a community of believers that think like me). as a pluralist i have to be aware that i cannot prove that my religion is "better" without begging the question on my own assumption. why?

the reason is that the "ultimate" test rests on my religion's claim to legitimacy: it boils down to saying, my religion is best/better because my religion (church, doctrine, whatever) claims to be best/better. in theology this might be good enough for a test.

not in philosophy.

_________
* islam, christianity and judaism have fundamentalist versions. for example, here are some of the fundamental views of the presbyterian church: 1- the bible is inspired and infallible. 2- christ was born of a virgin. 3- christ's death is the atonement for human sin. 4- christ resurrected in a body from the dead. 4- christ's miracles are real. **keep in mind that pluralism is not relativism. the relativist claims not that there is more than one valid path of salvation, but that all paths are the same. but you see, as a pluralist i'm saying exactly the opposite of this. i believe that religious pluralism is better than religious fundamentalism. ***another mystic virtuoso of this same period, abu hafs al-suhrawardi says: "whoever claims possession of something, his altruistic outlook is not sound, since he considers his self more entitled to the thing by possessing it … altruism is the mark of those who see that all things belong to god." see Paul L. Heck's Common Ground: Islam, Christianity, and Religious Pluralism, p. 205. 

Confucius and "Li"

I'd like to start with Li and why Confucius makes rituals so important. 

American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce considered the formation of habits to be an essentially inductive process. In one of his earliest published articles, he concludes that the formation of a habit is an induction, and is therefore necessarily connected with attention. 

Habituation is a matter of induction, but also the process is characterized as being linked to specific acts of attention. Sociologist Clifford Geerts agrees:

It is in some sort of ceremonial form-even if that form be hardly more than the recitation of a myth, the consultation of an oracle, or the decoration of a grave that the moods and motivations which sacred symbols induce in [people] and the general conceptions of the order of existence which they formulate for [people] meet and reinforce one another. In a ritual, the world as lived and the world as imagined fused under the agency of a single set of symbolic forms, turn out to be the same world.

"Li" has this quality of being a praxis. It's performative, and repetitive. 

Their repetition brings forth a transformative function. For example, religious rituals can produce a spiritual transformation (purifying, healing, reconciling, protecting, informing, and so on). Through ritual practice, the individual comes to understand and participate in the Tao, the harmonious patterns of individual, social, and cosmic interaction created by the Confucian sages. Simultaneously, the transformative process of moral cultivation occurs.

"Li" is automatic behavior, a kind of psycho-somatic response that helps one deal with the world. 

Rituals are a form of cultural transmission that involves the generation, retention, and communication of those representations. 

"Li" incorporates somatic and affective aspects. "Li" shapes, transforms, and orders certain cognitive and affective responses to our environment. Why? Because, through "Li" one comes to embody the culture. 

Not only one internalize the conceptual categories and ideals expressed symbolically in "Li," but our gestures and movements become ritualized as well. Part of this process of transformation, takes place because of the somatic experience of praxis. This is the key to Confucian ritual ideals.

concerning the fool

humata, hukhta, huvarshta. we had a nice exchange in our last reading. here are my ten cents.

first, what's a fool?

64. If a fool be associated with a wise man, even all his life, he will perceive the truth as little as a spoon perceives the taste of soup.

the spoon perceives nothing. so, the fool is basically ignorant: he/she just cannot tell the difference. thus,

67: That deed is not well done of which a man must repent, and the reward of which he receives crying and with a tearful face.

the fool doesn't understand the cause-effect correspondence between deed and reward. this is pratitya sumutpada: you reap what you sow.

don't take this to be an ethical pronouncement. rather, it's the way things are! in this case, dharma & karma follow a universal law. the fool's ignorance is that he/she's out of synch with reality. the fool wishes the reward to be different than it is when time is ripe. but the deed/reward correspondence cannot be bent. thus:

69. As long as the evil deed done does not bear fruit, the fool thinks it is like honey; but when it ripens, then the fool suffers grief.

the problem with the fool is that he/she doesn't understand that reality is surreptitiously piecemeal. the effect of our deeds is pending in the future. we really don't know when the time comes. this heavy -likely unnoticed weight- pursues the fool -and the wise- wherever he/she goes: 

71. An evil deed, like newly-drawn milk, does not turn (suddenly); smouldering, like fire covered by ashes, it follows the fool.

now comes 63, which suggests a possible fool/non-fool limit:

63. The fool who knows his/her foolishness, is wise at least so far. But a fool who thinks himself wise, he-she is called a fool indeed.

acknowledging one's own foolishness is wise "at least so far." this is not really wisdom, but a hopeful sign. obviously, there are degrees. one can be a total fool, or the least-so-far  that understand his/her condition, which automatically makes him/her a bit different.

could the wise ever become a fool?

once the wise thinks he's wise there lies an opening for foolishness (as long as the wise's confidence doesn't make him/her less wise by ignoring his/her own potential fallibility,  thus opening up the dreaded possibility of self-delusion).

let's problematize 63. we take it that the wise knows, but how much?  the wise needs to know (that he knows), but for knowledge's sake, he must leave room for doubt. why? because we're fallible.

infallibility is not a trait of the wise, (who by principle keeps his/her fallibility in check). rather it's the fool who believes himself to be infallible. finally, it seems that being wise is not so much thinking it but doing it. when it comes to talking, the wise should not boast being wise -nor fool.

dhammapada (with stories)

another wonderful site for dhammapada wich verses and stories, here.

Dhammapada

Dhammapada here.

forking paths (post for comment)

Lucio Fontana, Spatial Concept, (1960).

In emptiness there is no form, nor feeling, nor perception, nor impulse, nor consciousness; No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; No forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables or objects of mind; No sight-organ element, and so forth, until we come to: No mind-consciousness element; There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, and so forth, until we come to: there is no decay and death, no extinction of decay and death. There is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path. There is no cognition, no attainment and non-attainment.-- Paramita Hridaya Sutra

Alfredo Triff

 In Buddhist philosophy there are no wholes: only parts. Similarly, there is no progression to an actuality. The Buddhist moment does not progress toward realization.

Tom Friedman, Big Bang, (Glitter and mixed media on paper, 2008).

It harks back to Nagarjuna's doctrine of Sunyata, a crucial concept in Buddhist philosophy. Imagine a universe of correlations, whereby everything is connected. Whatever is at any moment of space-time, consists of conditions or relationships, and these, too, are dependently co-originated:  

"The 'originating dependently' we call 'emptiness.' " "Emptiness is dependent co-origination."

Sunyata does not mean absolute lack, but rather a positive meaning of being, the ultimate source of all reality. Lama Govinda interprets the principle:

"śūnyatā is not a negative property, but a state of freedom from impediments and limitations, a state of spontaneous receptivity, in which we open ourselves to the all-inclusive reality of a higher dimension. Far from being the expression of a nihilistic philosophy which denies all reality, it is the logical consequence of the anātman doctrine of non-substantiality. Śūnyatā is the emptiness of all conceptual designations and at the same time the recognition of a higher, incommensurable and indefinable reality, which can be experienced only in the state of perfect enlightenment."*

What does it mean to say that reality is ultimately and intimately relational? Sunyata is the reverse of Pratitya Samutpada, the Buddhist law of dependent co-origination. There is no self-subsisting, isolated phenomena. Reality is relation(ship), always in flux, always becoming.

Ghada Amer, Anne, (Acrylic, embroidery and gel medium on canvas, 2004).

Reality is always digested, interpreted, quantified, apprehended. The common sense, everyday perception of things is one amongst many other constructions or versions of the world. What happens is that we "normally" understand the world as made up of distinct, self-subsisting substances, and hence we are able to put things in rational order according to various rules or laws. So, while Sunyata -negatively- means that nothing has a sufficient basis of its being in itself, Pratitya Samutpada means -positively- that one event is dependent on others.

One concept is implied in the statement of the other. Substance, for example would be dependent only on itself, thus excluding both Sunyata as well as Pratitya Samutpada. Therefore, Buddhism doesn't recognize recognizes substance.

The distinction comes from a passage in the catuṣkoṭi of the Mādhyamikas:
a- It is not the case that x is ϕ.
b- It is not the case that x is not-ϕ.
c- It is not the case that x is both ϕ and not-ϕ.
d- It is not the case that x is neither ϕ nor not-ϕ

It seems very complicated, but one can see it as twotruths: Are you warp-yarn or weft- yarn?

 Kaisa Puhakka charts the stylized reification process as such:

"We are typically not aware of ourselves as taking something (P) as real. Rather, its reality 'takes us,' or already has us in its spell as soon as we become aware of its identity (P). Furthermore, it's impossible to take something (P) to be real without, at least momentarily, ignoring or denying that which it is not (not-P). Thus the act of taking something as 'real' necessarily involves some degree of unconsciousness or lack of awareness. This is true even in the simple act of perception when we see a figure that we become aware of as 'something.' In Gestalt psychology, for each figure perceived, there is a background of which we remain relatively unaware. Now, extend this dynamic to text-analysis or speech acts. In hermeneutics, for every text we understand there is a context we miss. With every figure noticed or reality affirmed, there is, inevitably, unawareness. Is this how a spell works?"**

French philosopher Alain Badiou presents his ontology surprisingly close to Buddhism. For Badiou, 1- Being has no latent structure of its own. 2- Being's multiplicity is irreducible to any totality. 3- Ontology is a theory of the void, which is why "the infinite" is a void. It cannot be reduced to a unity. To think of Being means to posit oneself as as "warp" or "waft" (or both?).

Between uncontrolled chaos and absolute disorder:  

Julie Mehretu, Dispersion (Ink and acrylic on canvas, 2002).

What drives this "thirst" for being? Let's see it this way: An entity is reproduced through a replication of its states. Each moment comprising a state of the entity. A complete entity can only be the result of an imaginative reconstruction over a series of states. Sculptor Schramm presents it as in-between of place and no/place: 

Felix Schramm, Misfit (2005-06) @ SFMoMA

The sequence of the replications is linked together in the mind through the rapid succession of similar moments. This gives the continuity of experience and the appearance of persistence. In Martin Oppel's Untitled, the gravity-defying totem-like sculpture becomes a cipher for legion (one in the many).  

Martin Oppel, Untitled (Strata Fiction C, 2008).

Satkari Mookerjee writes that the arrow in its flight "is not one but many arrows successively appearing in the horizon, which give rise to the illusion of a persistent entity owing to continuity of similar entities." 

At this point, Jorge Luis Borges can lend us a hand:

"The Garden of Forking Paths is an enormous riddle, or parable, whose theme is time; this recondite cause prohibits its mention. To omit a word always, to resort to inept metaphors and obvious periphrases, is perhaps the most emphatic way of stressing it. That is the tortuous method preferred, in each of the meanderings of his indefatigable novel, by the oblique Ts'ui Pên. I have compared hundreds of manuscripts, I have corrected the errors that the negligence of the copyists has introduced, I have guessed the plan of this chaos, I have re-established -I believe I have re-established- the primordial organization, I have translated the entire work: it is clear to me that not once does he employ the word 'time.' The explanation is obvious: The Garden of Forking Paths is an incomplete, but not false, image of the universe as Ts'ui Pên conceived it. In contrast to Newton and Schopenhauer, your ancestor did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time. We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us. In the present one, which a favorable fate has granted me, you have arrived at my house; in another, while crossing the garden, you found me dead; in still another, I utter these same words, but I am a mistake, a ghost."

_______
*Lama Anagarika Govinda, Creative Meditation and Multi-Dimensional Consciousness, pp. 10-11.** Kaisa Puhakka, Puhakka, Kaisa (2003). "Awakening from the Spell of Reality: Lessons from Nāgārjuna' within," in Encountering Buddhism: Western Psychology and Buddhist Teachings (State University of New York Press, 2003), p. 134, 145.

I will close this post  this sunday at 11pm.

the path of purity

this is a great site for the visuddhimagga.

why a buddhist cannot be a cynic

everything is connected!

suffering exists, but there is no one who suffers,
deeds are, but there is no doer of deeds,
nirvana is, but no one is blissful,
the path is but there is no traveller on it.
(visuddhimagga, XVI, 90)

Buddhism link

Buddhism link.

Notes on Buddhism

Julie Mehretu, Black City, 2006.

... l'homme n'est pas ce qu'il est, il est ce qu'il n'est pas.-- Jean Paul Sartre

Read more here.

why voting now

after a discussion with my phi 2010 classes: 

the charge that "both parties are the same" is true only in general. let's understand where we live: america is a center leaning nation, it moves left and/or right depending the time and issues. political parties have to respond and accommodate to this fact. even as the process has been partly co-opted by special interests, change is always possible. it happens daily, and our history proves it. the idea you have of the place you want to be in is the ideal to fight for. it may get close as some issues win. you cannot achieve all you want at once. then what? without the struggle for justice you would have no reasons to fight in the first place. if the world is determined in advance there is no transformation and no place for political struggle.

if you want to comment you can do it here (though this is not a mandatory post).

can philosophy debate theology? you bet

our discussion on theology was intense but, a couple of points:

in case i was too overpowering (my apologies). i failed to defend a larger point about what this class is about.  

1- philosophy is a discipline about critique & analysis of ideas
2- religion is a practice & a collection of beliefs (ideas)
3- theology is a branch of religion
so, given 1 & 2 & 3, theology is up for philosophical discussion

the discussion of theology is a legitimate philosophical concern. no need for apologies now. by discussing ideas, philosophy is not stepping into anybody's turf or property.
___________

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.--Isaiah xiv, 7.

the quote above is from isaiah. the question is how is god so lenient with satan? he can destroy him, instead, keeps him at arms length. why? hint: what is the book of job without satan?

the devil represents evil, but why evil?there are several ways to look at this:

*ontological: good & evil are ontologically together. one cannot be thought without the other.  
*cosmological: history begins with goodness. evil is a "perversion" of things in time. some, not all good, becomes evil. after the end of history, evil disappears and we return to the original state of bliss.
*instrumental: (defended by spinoza): goodness is what is useful to us, evil the opposite.
*there is a beyond good and evil of nietzsche's transvaluation of all values which aims at erasing traditional christian theological borders.  
*mythological: good & evil are needed opposites: in egypt there's ra, osiris & isis against apep the serpent and set, the ravager, father of deceit and of lies. the phoenicians opposed baal to moloch and astarte, in india indra is opposed to vritra and the asuras. in persia ormuzd has to contend with ahriman for the lordship of the world, etc. so, there is a deeper mythological prototype that brands this good/evil association.
___________

now my thought experiment. can satan be forgiven? well, it's conceivable (here we count with god's omnibenevolence).

1. to be forgiven, satan would have to repent. repentance implies change, which is implicit in the notion of being. being is not what one is and it is what one is not (more of this sartrean lemma later). satan hasn't changed, presumably because he's chosen not to. his "fall" rests on this premise. one cannot invoke satan's "nature" causing satan's becoming, since the being of satan has a prehistory, i.e., lucifer. this prehistory of satan would have to be rejected to rule out this possibility for this prehistory is what causes satan.

2. satan's being cannot be self-ruled since "being" is what one finds as one exists. being is not self-presence to itself. being is time and time is not ecstatic. in fact, satan's being is related to the very exclusion of goodness from satan's nature in order to avoid thinking, reasoning the good (i.e., even in the heart of evil there must be a space for guilt). satan's evil (what we call "satanic") responds to perpetuating his own "nature" by restricting himself to thinking the good (or guilt, which is thinking one's erring). in order to be satan, he has to constantly defer goodness. so, in a sense, satan is not what he is. that is to say, there is always more or less to being than itself. this more or less is time, the unpredictable future. satan's "being," as stereotyped and beleaguered as it is, is no exception.

3. satan's repentance takes a reversal of that primeval rebellious act in his prehistory.  though he cannot become lucifer (since time & history cannot be undone), one can only speculate that he takes a more subdued role.

this reformed angel-who-was-satan wishes no more of his past. now he's content with god's forgiveness in oblivion. will it be time for another proud & inexperienced angel to take his place?  but then, could there be a universe of goodness without evil?

below, the list for the midterm and this week's post.