something about these lyrics

   By Paul Simon: 

                                "American Tune"

Many's the time I've been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and I've often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
But I'm all right, I'm all right
I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don't expect to be
Bright and bon vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
or driven to its knees
But it's all right, it's all right
For we've lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong

And I dreamed I was dying
I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying

We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hour
and sing an American tune
But it's all right, it's all right
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all, I'm trying to get some rest

https://youtu.be/ZCmgKSUXH18

velocemente e accuratamente

quickly and thoroughly

we will forget the sins

soon to be ex-occupant

as White House shivers

his walking away

into Florida sunshine

basking in his take

clean getaway

a family hauling

plunder -- their smiles

as when someone nods 

to ambulance pulling

away 

from accident

out where

“The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does.”
—Allen Ginsberg

closed gate

doesn’t keep

sunrise out



morning sitting

inside awareness

nothing outside

a beautiful reciprocal arrangement

In this troubled time when, scampering, the search for facts and response send many thither and yon trying to procure both materials and (like Diogenes) someone reliably honest to, four square, tell verifiable truth to those longing for truth, we, instead, are saddled with opportunistic blather from ill-defined executive whose motivation and intentional stability are, at best, suspect, and, at worst, calculatedly bonkers.

We are orphans abandoned by kidnapped decency and given substitute custody in the hands of a shriveled duplicity and disturbed unfocused paranoia. 

“All’s misalliance. / Yet why not say what happened?” wrote Robert Lowell in his poem Epilogue.

Truth needs a voice.

And that voice is the sound we long for at this time.

"Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."   (—Mr. Antolini, in Catcher in the Rye, by J.D.Salinger)

Pray for the grace of accuracy and clarity as the poet advocates.

Like rhythmic breath, like pulsing blood, the body longs to dance in morning sunlight, turn in sunrising fresh air, look into one another’s mere gaze with fond presence.

May flimflam derision be gone.

May decent compassion arise.

As you are, as I trust, as we can be!

irreducible loopiness of human existence

That we all do not agree on an assessment of the situation before us, or on a course of action to set in motion to navigate and set as corrective, is the norm. Disagreement and dialogue are part of civic discourse. Hence, we argue our position, suggest solutions, and engage those with differing opinions.  

That's how participatory democracy works. 

What is, however, optional is rancorous rhetoric, name-calling, and belittling sarcasm that attempts to diminish or devastate the person and the position presenting and presented in the negotiations. This is unpleasant and pervasive in American politics. And is cultivated as art-form and strategy of war in our contemporary atmosphere of disagreeableness. If you do not espouse unanimity with a dominant leader, you are treated like an insane, despicable outsider enemy.

We are, all of us, mad or not, fated to struggle with the irreducible loopiness of human existence. Often, without even realizing it, we find ourselves caught in double binds or self-fulfilling prophecies of the kind discussed in this book. They are an ever-present trap; they are never a prison. Understanding the tangled loops of violence, myth, and madness is the first step to breaking free of them. The belief that things cannot change is always a myth, no matter how widely shared it may be. Myth, Girard teaches us, is born of unanimity. Unanimity is the enemy of truth and progress. It is a formidable enemy but a fragile one, for the tiniest minority is capable of breaching it. When an individual stands up against the crowd, when a therapist shows a patient that at least one person treats their experience with respect, unanimity begins to fissure. A crack is opened for the light to get in. (--Chapter Title: No Exit? Madness and the Divided Self, Book Title: Vengeance in ReverseBook Subtitle: The Tangled Loops of Violence, Myth, and Madness Book Author(s): Mark R. AnspachPublished by: Michigan State University Press. 2017)

Politics becomes unbearable. Reasoned assessment of given facts is sacrificed for demagogic proclamation of personal opinion. Toadyism and sycophantic adulation are the squeamish offerings of loyal cohorts. Intelligent debate is obsolete. Everyone is impoverished by simpleminded either/or, take it or leave it, brief apodeictic panegyrics. 

We need poetry.

Forget philosophers or prevaricating fools drenched in wealth and power pontificating with snide and surly superiority presenting themselves as flawless captains of the shipshape state -- we need poets.

We need insightful and intuitive vision that excludes none and can articulate what is true in such a way that its harsh beauty is seen and recognized by loving hearts inspired to move and act with courageous service.

We need mystics who see what most of us cannot. The strength that understands weakness. The quiet appreciation of foundational things holding us up, holding us together. 

We need the seers and the sayers.

  In the 1951 preface, he [Heidegger] explains his hope that 

     For the sake of preserving what has been put into the poem, the elucidation of the poem must    strive to make itself superfluous. The last, but also the most difficult step of every interpretation [Auslegung], consists in its disappearing, along with its elucidations, before the pure presence of the poem. The poem, which then stands in its own right, itself throws light directly on the other poems.  

Because Heidegger believes that language is so fundamental to human being, true poetry, a "poetry which  thinks" [denkende Dichten]. through its intense and thoughtful use of language, reveals and even shapes the essence of human being, if it is not reduced to an aesthetic experience. To Heidegger, our current technological world-view presents a world of subjects and objects, of material and human resources, giving us an understanding of existence increasingly framed by technology. Poetry offers us a possible path out of this dangerous world-view, which led us to Hiroshima and Auschwitz. This poetic path is one Heidegger spent many decades following, and which led his philosophical work to become increasingly poetic in form.  

Heidegger's approach to poetry, which he takes pains to disclaim as literary criticism, does perhaps anticipate more recent 'literary' approaches to poetry. This might partly be due to the great indirect influence Heidegger has exerted on literary studies, perhaps also due a broadening of the methodologies used in studying literary texts during the earlier part of the twentieth century, which had more to do with philology than philosophy. Heidegger's work on poetry attempts mitdenken to 'think with' the poems he elucidates. In exploring the relation between poetry and philosophy, Heidegger illuminates both modes of discourse. In his use of the term thought, rather than 'philosophy' in much of his later work, he bridges the gap between those two modes. Thought is what poetry and philosophy have in common. To Heidegger they are simply differing modes of expressing it, different languages in which thought occurs. (--from, Introduction: A Thinking Poetry,  Heidegger and Poetry)

We need to return to thought.

To become thoughtful.

To think -- to see things through.

To see through things.

To say to the earth: "Write me, a poem."

...   ...   ...

Coda: Early Spring

once dangerous ice 

and freezing snow 

have gone, 

beyond brown ground, 

did go 

to flowing brook 

and bouncing pond 

where duck and loon return 

like cloister sound 

to mountain liturgy 

vested 

for upcoming 

solemnity 

om mani padme hum

Behold

What Is

Within

Without

...   ...   ...

 Here’s one commentary:

The 6 Syllables and Their Relationship to Suffering 

Interestingly, each of the 6 syllables has certain Sanskrit meanings that are important. These oppose certain internal forces that cause suffering. 

• Om (ohm)- Om is the sound or “vibration” of the universe. This sound is the most important of all; but in the context of chanting and mantras, it is meant to destroy attachments to ego and establish generosity.

• Ma (mah)- Removes the attachment to jealousy and establishes ethics.

• Ni (nee)- Removes the attachment to desire and establishes patience.

• Pad (pahd)- Removes the attachment to prejudice and establishes perseverance.

• Me (meh)- Removes the attachment to possessiveness and establishes concentration.

• Hum (hum)- Removes the attachment to hatred and establishes wisdom.

“So in this way recitation of the mantra helps achieve perfection in the six practices from generosity to wisdom. The path of these six perfections is the path walked by all the Buddhas of the three times. What could then be more meaningful than to say the mantra and accomplish the six perfections?” —Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones

(—from, The Meaning of Om Mani Palme Hum, by Matt Caron, Silvana East)

a bagatelle

Are you worried?

Me?

Yes, you.

A bit.

And you?

Yes, a bit.

I suppose that’s normal.

Yes.

Nice chatting with you.

Yes, ta.

Ta, indeed.

in our own personal loneliness and silence

 He said that silence is the mother of truth.

In silence we face and admit the gap between the depths of our being, which we consistently ignore, and the surface which is untrue to our own reality.  We recognize the need to be at home with ourselves in order that we may go out to meet others, not just with a mask of affability, but with real commitment and authentic love.  /  If we are afraid of being alone, afraid of silence, it is perhaps because of our secret despair of inner reconciliation.  If we have no hope of being at peace with ourselves in our own personal loneliness and silence, we will never be able to face ourselves at all: we will keep running and never stop.  41

(--from, Love and Living, by Thomas Merton, 1979)

It is the feast of the Annunciation.

Aime ta mère! 

who knows who I am

Text:

Trump: We’ll be open again at Easter.

Jesus: No, stay safe, take the time.

Dialogue:

Trump: [aside] Who does he think he is? Does he know who I am?

Jesus : Yes, I do.

Commentary: 

Easter for Jesus means death and resurrection. Easter for Trump means stock market growth and we don’t care about you.

Midrash:

Yeshua is sitting at table with some friends. He is telling them that death is resurrection. 
He is saying that integrality-of-communion/suffering/death/resurrection/ascension is a one-of-a-piece event not separated from the other, an instantaneous irruption into the human field of experience and existence. He says that it is a radical change of heart and mind that opens human consciousness to the profound mystery of spiritual/material transformation.

When asked “Do you know ‘who I am’?" Jesus hears this question as referencing the name of Reality/God ("I am who I am!")

Jesus knows 'who I am', and knows it cosmotheandrically, knows it unicity of being, without beginning or end, birth or death, and with integrality, awareness, and unadulterated compassion, love, and truth.

He-who-saves -- he who preserves and embodies wholeness, refusing the partitioning and fragmenting of severing rationality and dim narrowed consciousness -- is saying to friends "Who I am is who you are -- in love."

Epilogue:
 Χριστός ελεήμονος, merciful Christ, longs to be merciful with the president of the United States.

Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God manifests Himself everywhere, in everything — in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that He is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. You cannot be without God. It’s impossible. It’s simply impossible. The only thing is that we don’t see it. What is it that makes the world opaque? It is care. 

(— Thomas Merton, transcribed from a recording of a talk he gave at the Abbey of Gethsemani in August 1965) (louie, louie). 

Addendum:
Now we have to confront the ambiguous use of the word "care." 

for border collie and the rest of us

Look at me!

Look at me!

Are you looking?

Now listen —

You’re going

to be

Ok.

Whatever happens,

You’re going to be

Ok.

Ok?

Alright.

Now remember —

Whatever happens,

You’re going

to be

Ok.

we sat together

Sometimes you know someone well

In silence — the way he walked the hill

Refilled coffee cup

Sat in choir stall —

Bro. Tim from 30 years of 5 days a

Year at monastery

Died in December, Joe said

And I’m touched —

Our curious community

spring morning in maine

Odd

Waking to several inches of snow

But lovely!

drip, drip drip

melt melt melt

day goes on

what happens next

These days the universe is sniggering. It is frequently being asked when it began as though a birthday card is on someone's desk and the writer has never been sure how old the recipient is, much less what specific address to send it to.

The universe was already in existence. The Big Bang explosions what happens next.         (--Brian Greene interview, Commonwealth Club, Mind, Matter and the Search for Meaning, March 2020)

 I fall in the compromised elderly category in this time of COVID-19. I get a call from our state representative's office checking up on needs and stuff. Someone asks if they could get us something from the grocery store. My son and niece unobtrusively check in around St Patricks Day and the vernal equinox to see if there is a pulse able to respond. My president doesn't want me to feel he is not in charge and control of everything -- so he abjures facts and earnest words of caution in favor of telling me how hard it is to be a billionaire and not certain he'll be re-elected if people choose to live rather than his having a strong economy and bailout residuals for his resorts and business deals.

And I know I am loved.

I think about increasing my life-span by changing my diet, maybe become vegan or vegetarian -- but realize I'm already (in some eyes) old, and should have died at least twenty years ago when I became a senior citizen.

Then Greene says the universe has no beginning. Consciousness is just particles and life forces.

Religion will never explain the external world.

William James says feel the world, don't just lay out the nuts and bolts of it.

Walt Whitman leaves the lecture hall, goes outside, and looks up at the night sky.

And it occurs to me that there is no beginning of anything. Nor, I suspect, is there any ending to anything. Except that I've already had peanut butter and jam on toast and I have to convince myself that I've had it and should not make another one.

If such a preposterous notion is valid, no beginning and no end, are we starting to move to an understanding of the notions that there is no birth and no death? Change, yes, in the composition and deterioration of matter. And form.

But, nothing is born and nothing dies? I wonder. Appearances occur. And, form dissolves. Awareness surrounds the conscious universe, then, apophatic aphasia mutes articulation and description.

Greene says there is no such thing as an external version of right or wrong. He might also be saying that everything that is is an expression of our inside-out investigation and manifestation of meaning and purpose. That there is no outside. Only the realization of the within of everything.

Our being-here is, if you will, gift. But it is a gift of itself to itself from itself. Once we have let go of an external God or fate commanding our actions and demanding our compliance -- and turn, rather, to alertness of the passage through the permeating-within of who we are where we are when we are (and possibly why we are) -- we are tying our boots, snugging our caps, zipping our coats, and opening the door to wander into and through the body within the body within the body within the body we call the universe changing itself again and again.

And here we are!

Sláinte 

referenceless and idiotically, step by step, walking mountain

If we think the world is dizzy with extraordinary circumstances, spinning a set of contradictory opinions about how to navigate the facts and fears presented by COVID-19 in America and the world, we might want to consider an additional conversation about whether there is a separate world doing something to a self/body, or, if we are the world, with all the perplexing implications embedded in that consideration.

In my conversations with Riccardo Manzotti, professor of theoretical philosophy at the IULM University in Milan, we have explored his mind-object identity theory, a hypothesis that shifts the physical location of consciousness away from the brain and its neurons. In Manzotti’s version of events, the brain does not ‘process information’ coming from the senses to create illusory representations of an external reality that it can never really know (the hypothesis supported by most neuroscientists and many philosophers); rather, the encounter of the body (brain and senses included, of course) with the world allows the world to occur in a certain way, to become an object relative to the body; and that occurrence, that relative object, is what we call perception, consciousness, and it remains exactly where it is, outside our body. Our experience, our mind, is the world as it is in relation to our body. And the ‘I’ is identified neither with the brain, nor more extensively with the body, but with our experience which is the world in relation to the body.
However, if this is the case, if subject and object, or rather mind and relative object, are one in experience, does this not make it all the more difficult to explain our impression of free will? Isn’t it precisely our moment-by-moment awareness of making decisions that proves that we are separate and sovereign subjects moving in a world of objects that remain quite distinct from us and over which we seek to have mastery?

 https://aeon.co/essays/the-question-is-what-are-we-a-conversation-on-consciousness

I remember hearing the words of Jose Ortega y Gasset who defined the individual by saying,"Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia" (I am I and what's around me). (Or, I am I and my circumstances.) 

In a frame of mind that leans away from dualistic split between mind and matter, or as Descartes put it, the res cogitans and the res extensa (the thinking thing and the extended thing) -- my preference (but not yet my understanding) leans toward an integral holistic oneness wherein mind/body, perception/reality, inner/outer, human/divine, material/spiritual all reside as a cosmotheandric circumincessional interpenetrative wholeness. 

The Vedic Tat Tvam Asi (That Thou Art) one of the Mahāvākyas (Grand Pronouncements) in Vedantic Sanatana Dharma.(Wikipedia) is a teaching that points to the attempt to dissuade the commonsense belief that we are other than what we are. If we see it, hear it, taste it, touch it, or smell it -- "it" is not something other that us. 

J. Krishnamurti would repeat over and over that "the observer is the observed." 

Advaita observes this -- 

a Vedantic doctrine that identifies the individual self (atman) with the ground of reality (brahman). It is associated especially with the Indian philosopher Shankara ( c 788–820). (Lexico)

The koanic inquiry, "Who are you?" becomes an important and profound investigation when we finally begin to suspect that everything, everything is waiting for you (cf. David Whyte) to realize the true awakening to the improbable answer to the primordial question.

Manzotti and Parks dialogue on this in Dialogues on Consciousness:

Parks: I see what you’re saying: my experience, which is none other than the accumulation of all the objects my body has encountered, eventually determines my actions. But I’m not altogether convinced. And my problem is this: not only do I have the impression of making decisions, cogitating, not just acting, but I also believe that I ‘organise’ experience. That I see the world in a certain way. I hold a system of political opinions, of aesthetic preferences, and so on. So I feel that, rather than being a world of objects coming together over time to determine an action, I have an inner world that determines how I organise the outer world. I don’t just act as consequence; I decide how to act, coherently. 

Manzotti: Let me offer an analogy to suggest the fallacy behind your conception. We’ll stay with cars. When you drive, you turn the steering wheel and, thanks to a complex yet easily understandable coupling of cogs and drive shafts, the vehicle’s front wheels turn accordingly. Is there anything mysterious between the steering wheel and the two wheels that turn? No. Just a chain of cause and effect such that, given the turn of the driving wheel, the front wheels have to turn.
Okay, now imagine an infinitely more complex object, a human body. The world acts on the body, but before the body is going to translate that cause into an effect, an action, a simply enormous, though of course necessarily finite, number of causal events may take place, inside the body and outside. What’s more, unlike the car, which is a fixed object when it comes out of the factory, your wonderful body can change in response to the world, it is teleologically open – so that, to give the simplest example, when you see a face a second time, the experience is different from the first time, because the first experience is still causally active in your brain, hence we have the sensation of recognition. So with this fantastically complex object, the body, we cannot conceive the whole causal chain that precedes an action (this was a favourite observation of Baruch Spinoza’s) and hence we cannot predict what action will be taken. As a result of this conceptual impossibility, we slip into the habit of inventing an intermediate entity, the self, to which we attribute a causal power. We say that I, or my self, caused this to happen. But as David Hume said, we never meet or see a self; we meet ideas, or, as I would say, objects. The self, this elusive intermediate entity that initiates action, is a shortcut, an invention, a convenient narrative to explain our complex experience. 

Parks: To wind up then; as you see it: experience, mind, is the world relative to the body, but a world, or an I, that accumulates over the years, that continues to act long after the moment of immediate proximity, creating an ever-changing agglomeration so complex that it becomes impossible to predict how, in the face of a new situation, a new experience, we will behave. And all the tensions we experience, that we call decision-making, or the exercise of freewill, are the ongoing evolution of this agglomeration of world, which is ourselves. 

Manzotti: Right. And you don’t need to feel alienated by being at the mercy of a blind material world; you are the world. 

Parks: I’m not altogether sure that that’s much more preferable, but it’s certainly something worth dwelling on. 

(—in Aeon.com,, You are the world, excerpted from the book ‘Dialogues on Consciousness’ (2020) by Riccardo Manzotti and Tim Parks (OR Books).  

From climate change to coronavirus, from inequity of wealth to disparity of legal decisions, from what we need to what we want, our cancelation culture, our dismissive excluding evaluative rationalizations --  we currently reside in a deficient structure of consciousness that sacralizes either/or and executes or eliminates what is considered not me, not us, not our kind.

We watch as the COVID-19 moves through our midst, as leaders attempt to respond with antiquated consciousness creating a lexicon and actions utilizing the metaphor of war and winning at a time when a deeper understanding is asking to be set free.

But -- what do I know?  I live as a solivagant eremitic mendicant, voluntarily, on mountain bottom, on whose foothill footfalls the passing presence I once called I, but now wander referenceless and idiotically, step by step, walking mountain, walking field, walking alone.

quelque chose qui ressemble à un chant grégorien.

The quiet delight.

Evening Vespers from Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux, a Benedictine monastery in southern France that streams their chanting liturgy of the hours online.


It puts you there as you practice being here.

conversing with dead men

Lead quotes in the Introduction for Madness and Death:

I would like to make a Book that will derange men, that will be like an open door leading there where they would never have consented to go, in short a door that opens onto reality.
—Artaud 

We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men. My course of study was philosophy.
—Borges

(--from, Madness and Death in Philosophy, by Ferit Gūven, 2005)

Perhaps

that book is

Being

written. 

in lieu of 108 prostrations or deus in adjutorium meum intende

Trouble is 

it's all been a slapstick comedy-set-shtick show 

for last four years: 

rah rah rallies, 

snide swipes at press and democrats, 

issuing presidential orders in favor 

of America-first 

and anti-brown/black immigration, 

filling court vacancies, 

snuggling with autocrats and dictators, 

and me, me, me/ tweet, tweet, tweet. 

Now that there is a serious situation 

calling for more than bluster and belittling, 

the man and his Republican social class 

are at a loss as to how perform in full view 

on this new improvisational theater stage.

I'm hoping some wisdom appears. 

The schoolboy hijinks to give way 

to thoughtful responses. 

The embarrassing solipsism giving way 

to a hidden resource of genuine caring. 

The nonchalant king-of-the-mountain giving way 

to real and present effectiveness during 

a troubling time of threat and worry.

I trust this man can find the depth of his being, 

serve well what needs his guidance, 

and be what we long for --

the president of the United States --

for all of us, 

for all the world to see. 

with a devout humility

I read the observations of a respiratory therapist --  (A Medical Worker Describes Terrifying Lung Failure From COVID-19 — Even in His Young Patients, by Lizzie Presser, March 21, 5 a.m. EDT, Pro-Publica). Riveting and sobering.  I look in on the Trump briefing about virus. Something doesn't feel right about the way he does and does not do what he says is being done. There's too much praising and happy talk, sidestepping, bullying. He is continuing his rallies in a different format. There is an undercurrent. 4. Tota die iniustitiam cogitavit lingua tua sicut novacula acuta fecisti dolum 5. Dilexisti malitiam super benignitatem iniquitatem magis quam loqui aequitatem 6. Dilexisti omnia verba praecipitationis linguam dolosam  ...  4. All the day long thy tongue hath devised injustice: as a sharp razor, thou hast wrought from deceit.  5. Thou hast loved malice more than goodness: and iniquity rather than to speak righteousness. 6. Thou hast loved all the words of ruin, O deceitful tongue.            (--from, Psalm 50 (51)  Meanwhile, there is dark apprehension and bewildering concern over the inability to provide the most basic testing for those affected and protective gear for those giving care. This, another hard story in NOLA.com: 39-year-old New Orleans woman tested for coronavirus. She died before getting her results.She tested for coronavirus, and her results were delayed. Five days later, she was dead in her kitchen.BY JESSICA WILLIAMS | STAFF WRITER   PUBLISHED MAR 21, 2020 AT 11:26 AM | UPDATED MAR 21, 2020 AT 5:17 PM .  Sometimes you're keeping social distance, sheltering in place -- and sometimes the gravity of personal stories and losses just fold you with sorrow.

It's not just about toilet paper and canned soups, not being able to go out to your favorite restaurant, pub, or church. Sometimes it's about the realization of fragility, the tenuousness of civil society, the greed and arrogance of thoughtless players in some cultural-political theater.

We like to say we pray -- for this, for that.

Sometimes we do pray.

This is a good time to actually enter into the uncertain absurdity of prayer with a devout humility.

yū and mu

Living mostly in the world of form, I have little familiarity with the formless. But at times I wonder if that is really the case.  How much of my life is lived just outside the edge of consciousness, just beyond the corner of form? We chant the Prajna Paramita several times a week. In it — That which is form is emptiness, that which is emptiness, form. (cf. Commentary by Venerable Zasep Tulku Rinpoche). 

John W.M. Krummel writes about yū and mu (being and nothing, form and formlessness):

Being and Nothing, Form and Formlessness 

Nishida often characterizes the distinction between being and nothing in terms of the cultural contrast of West and East.  In the preface to Hatarakumono kara mirumono e(『働くものから見るものへ』 ; From the Working to the Seeing) of 1927, he contrasts the “brilliant development of Western civilization that takes form as being…” and “the root of Eastern culture that harbors within itself that which sees the form of the formless and hears the sound of the soundless” (Z3 255) — a formlessness that has nurtured the traditions of the East.  The distinction he makes here between West and East is that between form (keisō 形相, katachi 形) and formlessness.  Being (yū) corresponds to form and the nothing corresponds to the formless.  Beings accordingly are what are present in determinate form, contrasted and differentiated from one another.  In Tetsugaku no konpon mondai (『哲学の根本問題』; Fundamental Problems of Philosophy) of 1933-34, Nishida reiterates this contrast by stating that the thought of being is at the root of Western culture while the thought of the nothing is at the root of Eastern culture. (Z6 348)  Here as well, reality for the West is grounded in being qua form, while reality for the East is grounded in the nothing as formless.  Because the European tradition conceives the root of reality to be being (yū) or the “possession of form” (yūkei 有形), it prioritizes “the form-possessing [katachiarumono 形あるもの], the determinate [genteiseraretamono 限定せられたもの], as reality [jitsuzai 実在].” (Z6 335-36)  On the premise that “something cannot be born from nothing” (ex nihilo nihil fit), the ancient Greeks came to conceive of the source of all beings in terms of a constant and unchanging primordial being.  The prime example here would be the Platonic ideas serving as principles of the actual world, and among which the ultimate source would be the “idea of the Good.” The Platonic concept of the idea (ἰδέα) etymologically means “form” (eidos, εἶδος), which also literally means the “look” of a thing, and hence that which can be objectified in its visibility to the eye, or by extension, its intelligibility.  In Nishida’s view, ancient Greek philosophy that became the source of Western culture took form in this sense as the ground of what is real.   By contrast, the Eastern tradition takes a certain formlessness or non-substantiality — as in the Buddhist sense of the emptiness of substance (Skt. śūnyatā, Jp. kū 空; Skt. nihsvabhāva) — to be the source of everything.  Nishida makes the same contrast in 1940 in Nihon bunka no mondai (『日本文化の問題』; The Problem of Japanese Culture) when he speaks of Western antiquity as conceiving the root of reality to be being (yū) and the formed (yūkei 有形), and Eastern antiquity as conceiving the root of reality to be the nothing (mu) and the formless (mukei 無刑). (Z9 60)

(—from, Chapter 17, Anontology and the Issue of Being and Nothing in Nishida Kitarō, [Published in JeeLoo Liu & Douglas L. Berger (eds.). Nothingness in Asian Philosophy. London: Routledge, by John W.M. Krummel)

The wind gusts hard through night. The frightened border collie is finally calm and sleeping after trying to climb onto desk and settling awhile on bed. Rest comes hard for the anxious.

The gate to dooryard is closed. Sheltering in place (a good name for hermitage) serves as a novitiate of sorts for the many, few of whom would voluntarily choose it. There is a split between the anxious and the skeptical as to what this current state of affairs means or portends.

I read, take walks, read numbers to worker’s comp numbers cruncher, eat peanut butter and jam on toasted english muffin, take morning coffee, do silent sitting, listen to medieval chants and music, and wonder.

About the root of reality.

And this interchanging spate of time.

We move, uncertainly, through.