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.
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
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)
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.
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
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, MPro-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 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. |
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.
For centuries the adhan, the Muslim call to prayer, has been a changeless feature of life in the Arab world. In war or peace, prosperity or famine, the same rhythmic chant echoes across cities and towns five times each day. Midway through comes an exhortation to worship. But on March 13th a muezzin in Kuwait, his voice plainly cracking with emotion, made a small tweak. Instead of “hayya alas-salah” (come to prayer), he told the faithful “as-salatu fi buyutikum” (pray in your homes). Words that seemed immutable were no longer such. (—from, Prayer in a Pandemic, 19mar20, The Economist)Walking down hall to WC I think about the book I was reading while soaking in tub last evening. Traditional theology about a perfect God and a sinning couple, the fire of God scorching anything other than himself that seems unfaithfully separate, the incarnating Christ a perfect sacrifice, how no personal goodness does the trick, how only blood sacrifice brings us in.
“Long ago a monk asked an old master, “When hundreds, thousands, or myriads of objects come all at once, what should be done?”The master replied, “Don’t try to control them”What he means is that in whatever way objects come, do not try to change them. Whatever comes is the buddha-dharma, not objects at all. Do not understand the master’s reply as merely a brilliant admonition, but realize that it is the truth. Even if you try to control what comes, it cannot be controlled.”
― Dōgen, Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master DogenAnd:
“This is the Way of Dōgen Zenji. For him, the Way is not simply one direction from starting point to goal; rather, the Way is like a circle. We arouse bodhi mind moment by moment, we practice moment by moment, we become fully aware moment by moment, and we are in nirvana moment by moment. And we continue to do it ceaselessly. Our practice is perfect in each moment and yet we have a direction toward buddha. It is difficult to grasp with the intellect, but that is the Way that Dōgen Zenji refers to in Bendōwa. So our practice is not a kind of training for the sake of making an ignorant person smart, clever, and finally enlightened. Each action, each moment of sitting, is arousing bodhi mind, practice, awakening, and nirvana. Each moment is perfect, and yet within this perfect moment we have a direction, the bodhisattva vows. "However innumerable all beings are, I vow to save them all. However inexhaustible my delusions are, I vow to extinguish them all. However immeasurable the dharma teachings are, I vow to master them all. However endless the Buddha's way is, I vow to follow it." These four bodhisattva vows are our direction within our moment-by-moment practice. And yet each moment is perfect. Since our delusion is inexhaustible, at no time can we eliminate all our delusions. Still we try to do it moment by moment. This trying is itself the manifestation of the buddha way, buddha's enlightenment. But even though we try as hard as possible to do it, we cannot be perfect. So we should repent. And repentance becomes energy to go further, to practice further in the direction of buddha. That is the basis of bodhisattva practice. Our practice is endless. Enlightenment is beginningless.”
(― Dōgen, The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Eihei Dogen's Bendowa, With Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi)(Goodreads)
“Nature loves to hide” (Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεί), Heracleitus of Ephesus is famously credited with having said.1 But where does nature hide? In what place or space? Has it always hid from the beginning? Or is the beginning the event of the hiding? Nature and the elemental are inextricably connected. And the question of the elemental is bound to the question of the beginning. Does nature hide behind the elemental? Or is the elemental the open hiding place of nature?You are who you are. I am what I am. What is seen is what is there. The internexus — the connection between, of seeming opposites, their border transit, like contemporary and ancient migrations — tell the tale of our longing for interpenetration, marriage, coalescence.
(—from, Hiding Between Basho and Chōra Re-imagining and Re-placing the Elemental, Brian Schroeder, Rochester Institute of Technology, Research in Phenomenology, brill.com/rp)
Altering the ways in which we think about and respond to the global problem of rapid environmental change is the first step toward adequately addressing a long-term solution for our current and future problems. Fundamental to the East Asian perspectives presented here is the emphasis on the principles of unity and balance from a holistic and organic standpoint. This has implications for the way that causality is conceived in the external environing world and for understanding internal life-movements. Arriving at this realization of balance and unity necessitates turning away from our anthropocentrically based conceptions of nature, space, place, ecology, environment, and world toward a vision of shared dwelling on the Earth, wherein the metaphysical and epistemological dualisms that still hold sway over the popular mind-set are “cast aside” or “drop off,” to use Dōgen’s expression.4 Though distinct, the classic philosophies of Daoism, Buddhism, and Zen (as well as Confucianism, which will not be taken up here) share the common perspective that the human and the nonhuman inseparably coexist. How we view this interrelationship is what defines our existence. At the risk of over-generalizing, this standpoint is what distinguishes East Asian philosophies from most Western philosophical, theological, and scientific perspectives. (—ibid)As everything shuts down — schools, businesses, church gatherings, restaurants, pubs, border crossings, predictability — fears slowly insinuate into daily routine.
If I could return to that job interview from more than three years ago, to that moment when I was asked about my responsibility as a creative-nonfiction writer in the post-truth world, I know what I would say now: Our allegiance as nonfiction writers is not so much to truth as it is to honesty. Because truth can be spoken into a void, while honesty implies an audience, a reader, real people to whom you commit to tell your story as accurately and truthfully as you can so that they can then differentiate for themselves the facts from the lies, the truth from the fiction.In an instant, in seems, what we once called truth is optional in the hands of some people. The false and the fake litter our minds and clog our experience.
(--from, The Accusations Were Lies. But Could We Prove It? by Sarah Viren, March 18, 2020, The New York Times)
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| beginning solitude |
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| zazen seat, 19 degrees |
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| when skiing is done for the season |
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| and ice sings its final echoes with departing cracking arias |
In My Own Way 2008/08/08 “Why – and again why – do you want to know whether there is a God, whether there is a life after death, or what method you should follow to become enlightened, liberated, or realized? Could it be that you identify yourself with a merely abstract ego based on nothing but memories? That therefore you are not alive and aware in the eternal present, and thus worry interminably about your future? Furthermore, don’t you realized that when you accept someone as a spiritual teacher, you do so by your own authority and choice? You yourself license the Bible, the Koran, or the Gita as infallible. Wake up!…and, without putting it into words, watch what is, now. You thus realize that there is no ‘feeler’ apart from feelings, and no granular, billiard-ball ‘self’ confronting the universe.” (--Posted in quotes | Tagged eternal present, ji-ji-mu-ge, Krishnamurti, spirituality )
Very stable genius. Millions of Trump’s supporters aren’t blind to the president’s clownishness and ignorance. But they’ve been relatively indifferent to both, because they find the first entertaining and the second irrelevant to his overall performance. Who cares what a president knows about epidemiology, so long as the markets are up?
They care now. The coronavirus has exposed the falsehood of so many notions Trump’s base holds about the presidency: that experts are unnecessary; that hunches are a substitute for knowledge; that competence in administration is overrated; that every criticism is a hoax; and that everything that happens in Washington is B.S. Above all, it has devastated the conceit that having an epic narcissist in the White House is a riskless proposition at a time of extreme risk.
Will Trump’s declaration of a national emergency change this?
Maybe, and the president has a belated opportunity to demonstrate seriousness he has lacked so far. But nobody should forget that such seriousness would only be a function of political expediency. Should coronavirus recede in warmer weather, you can depend on Trump to declare his premature victory — not warn that winter is coming.
It should not have had to take a deadly virus to expose this presidency for what it is. But it’s fitting that it has. A man who thinks he can twist every truth to suit his needs has at last discovered that he cannot twist the truths of nature and of one of nature’s gods. Her name remains Nemesis.
(from, Trump Meets Nemesis, Punisher of Hubris, By Bret Stephens, March 13, 2020, NYTimes)Even the most fun roller coaster ride ends. Wheels stop. Safety bar releases. Riders step out and can’t believe they survived. They wander off to the midway for hot dog and cotton candy.
