thanks for the company

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

thanks.

peace & love. keep in touch

art by nychos

you all have happy holidays. it's been a real pleasure!

atRifF
ps: keep in touch through mbourbaki.

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. 

how to present the final paper

the final paper must be presented on the day of the final exam.1,200 words, doubled spaced, stapled.

*no binders
*no cover page

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.

phallocentrism as a history of the world

atRifF

yesterday, after briefly introducing immanuel kant (MWF class 11am) i said that kant was a "phallocentric" philosopher.* i didn't mean that as an insult. had i been born in 1724, i would not have been that different, if not probably worse, than herr kant. then i said that "the history of the world is a history of phallocentrism" (also meant androcentrism and patriarchy).

i'm aware generalizations of this sort are problematic. but i stand behind them. mind you, i don't owe to this realization to self-discovery. i have learned these ideas from the courageous work of many feminist women. they finally made their plight known. all the while, men were -for the most part- silent. and when the time came to harken women's claims of servitude and exploitation, men felt, well, threatened. & they fought back. why? what was a stake was -men thought- too dear & significant to loose: political power. 

to realize that patriarchy & phallocentrism characterize the history of the world just follow the smell. for centuries upon centuries, who enjoyed absolute political power?* men (east & west). who exercised it? men. who owned the sources of wealth, means of production, capital, etc? men. who were the prophets, scribes and priests? mostly men. who enjoyed the kingdoms and fiefdoms? men. who had best access to schools and universities? men. who are the great artists and poets of antiquity & the great scientists of the ages? men. until the 20th century women were non-political entities!

(what's the role of women in world politics today? roughly a 20%. what progress!

which brings us to philosophy & the importance to question our received assumptions. the mysterious alliance between history and phallocentrism becomes an imperative: why?

from the patriarchal & androcentric POV men enjoyed more opportunities by keeping women exploited. they were taken care of, made wives & had offspring because of women. kant can lend us a hand here. his second formulation counsels: treat people as ends and never as means to an end. the male philosopher makes a fabulous argument in favor of a symmetry that he didn't really practice. men enjoyed centuries of, how to put it? uncontested impunity.

men are smart enough to come up with all sorts of justifications for their historic mess: 1- it's the woman's biology!  women bearing children and being less fit to take the early tough tasks of hunting and fighting for survival. 2- the sociological hypothesis of patriarchy claims that fathers (paterfamilias) assume an important "roles". some of these roles seem structural, as in the case of  maurice godelier's hypothesis that paterfamilias as provider of  financial support and making critical decisions, some of which must be obeyed without question by the rest of the family members. but following godelier's marxist argument, there must be economic conditions of production that perpetuate this sort of system. what's first, the chicken or the egg? 3- freudian psychoanalysis elaborataes the "penis envy" & "hysteria" hypotheses. did freud ever think that his sexual perceptions of what it is like to be a woman begged the question of his own gender? not that i know.  yet in honor to freud, he was able to observe that, as feminist naomi goldenberg puts it, "God the Father was responsible for keeping huge portions of the human community stupid" (goldenberg, p. 27).

it's at this point that i sensed a resistance from young, smart, males in the class. jeremy objected: "what is the problem of god being male (or father)?" none whatsoever. but remember that a woman may equally retort, "why not a female god?"

ideas come from language and language comes from practice & habits. women feminists have thought us how phallocentric language works. words carry a memory. they express cultural conventions & habits: "all men are created equal," words like "actor," "firemen," "chairman", "freshman," "salesman," "man-made," and so on, (these words in fact show who were in charge of these professions) "mankind," "fatherland." in spanish "patria" sounds feminine but it's masculine as in french "la patrie", german "vaterland." is this use of language not androcentric?

at some point aslan interjected that the east had a different history than the west. he mentioned a few islamic scholars, philosophers, scribes, etc. well, the west has them too. that doesn't change history's history because these examples constitute a negligible minority. in fact, defending this negligible minority only corroborates my point of male resistance to phallocentrism's alliance with history. 

of course, this discussion of whether god is male or female happens because we as humans need to  anthropomorphize theology's huge abstractions (god is the best example that comes to mind). ok, let's agree that the god of monotheism doesn't have gender. if god has the attributes that theology endows (which gender you prefer now? him, her, IT?) with, god has to be genderless.

yet, phallocentic language stubbornly re-appears. in the bible: "Not that any man has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father." (john 6:46). in the Qur'an 112:3–4: "He begets not, nor is He begotten. And none is like Him [It]."

theologians (christian, islamic) retort that "he" really means "it", but the problem is that humans are gender-centric. Hu or Huwa are commonly translated as he. ** check out this video. an islamic scholar is presented with the same question: is allah a he or she? he tries really hard to explain that though referred to as he, allah is really genderless. but his explanation is totally circular. why? it begs the question on the use of language! which is precisely the feminist point: allah is genderless! yet, it's presented as he. why? oh, because of the conventions of the arabic language. and what are language conventions if not practices and habits translated into language?

the question persists, why? 
_________________________

feminist and scholar amina wadud in her excellent Quran and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective explains:

 (...) The established order within the Arabian peninsula at the time of the revelation was patriarchal: a 'culture built on a structure of domination and subordination ...' which 'demands hierarchy'. It was a culture with an androcentric bias, one where the male and the male experience are looked upon as the norm. (wadud, p. 79)

let's give the male species the benefit of the doubt. when they handle & own theology, (philosophy, science, etc) they forget they become androcentric. this is what wadud calls "male authority": 

Although the basis of Qur'anic discussion on society was particular to the existing system, it also gives general principles from which to derive solutions to social problems in other contexts. With regard to authority, the prevailing attitudes were patriarchal. As with other matters in society, the Qur'anic solutions to social problems reflect the prevailing attitudes in ancient Arabia. The general principle for leadership in the Qur'an is similar to the rule for fulfilling any task, that it should be filled by the one 'best suited'. That person is the one best suited on the basis of whatever qualifications or characteristics are necessary to fulfil that task: biology, psychology, education, finance, experience, etc. This principle works in a number of complex social arrangements: the family, society at large and leadership. (wadud, p. 88)

 wadud cites islamic scholar Al-Zamakhshari, who stated:

(...) that men are 'preferred' by Allah over women in terms of 'intelligence, physical constitution, determination and physical strength', although he cites no place in the text which states this. Such an assertion cannot be erased by saying that 'men have no right to overcome women by coercion, or display arrogant behaviour towards them'. Al-'Aqqad says that men deserve preference over women. (wadud, p. 35)

a note: when i said to aslan "i am arab" (which frankly doesn't add anything to the argument), my intention was merely to show you that i also feel invested and not just being flippant about these important issues. this is a minor point. 

____________________
* kant, listing all those unfit to vote because of their dependence and subordination, remarked that they (women) had "no civil personality and their existence is, so to speak, purely inherent." He included in this group "women in general" (anne phillips, p. 108). after the enlightenment, men's "sexual contract" was essentially an agreement among men on sexual hierarchy based on sexual difference. & this difference would be used to exclude women from citizenship and keep them subordinate within families. ** so, as it were, androcentrism enters through the back door of theology. i'd like to share with you some feminist views from the middle east:

the well-known declaration of women in islamic societies of 1997 (signed by a distinguished group of middle eastern scholars and muslim feminists, amongst them: mahnaz afkhami, seema kazi, mervat tallawy, etc).

egyptian author mona eltahawy on aljezeera.

repressive policies against women in iran.

fatema mernessi, a well-known arab feminist presents the problem as such:

in western culture, sexual inequality is based in the biological inferiority of the woman. in islam is the contrary, the system is based on the assumption that the woman is powerful and dangerous. all sexual institutions (polygamy, repudiation, sexual segregation) cab be perceived as a strategy for containing her power. 

it needs to be said that feminism in islam is a variegated phenomena. there is islamic feminism (with proponents like ziba mir-hosseini, mai yamani & nilufer gole, they deal with the issues of equality from within islam). for many of them the issue of discrimination and exploitation of women comes not from the teachings of the quran, but instead from prevalent androcentric attitudes of men's interpretations and fabrication of theological systems within islam. islamic feminists work within the traditions to preserve and change them. some are conciliatory, some are more radical. malika hamidi, french, of algerian origin, points to the needs of muslim women:

"victims of domestic violence, polygamy, those threatened with honor killings, circumcision, discrimination of all sorts, forced marriages, with little Turkish and Moroccan girls in Brussels just disappearing to be married. Muslim women are not involved enough in these debates, but we have to denounce that these are traditional and cultural practices - it has nothing to do with Islam."

let's come back to our initial question. if none of this has to do with islam (christianity, judaism, hinduism, you name it), why does it happen? 

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.

until we have an answer

we had a discussion last class (11am, MWF). rather it was a moment in the discussion when imane made a point about trying to understand that some good can come out of history's horrors, i.e., this grasping can make us understand & build character, that besides the absurd horror, there's something redeemable.

i can see imane's point & agree with her up to a point, but i need to make very clear why i still have a problem with this argument.

this is not just suffering we're talking about, but unnecessary, undeserved, unfair, suffering that for ever destroys a life. worst yet, nonredeemable in the sense that it is anonymous & forgotten. we feel for those that we have loved and pass on. they are gone but are part of our memories. how about this interminable legion of nobodies throughout history? women, children, young men, elderly: talented, hopeful, bright, with full lives ahead of them. sentenced by being-there, in the wrong time & place. victims of ignorance, backwardness, hatred, hypocrisy, victims no one ever cared for. an interminable choir of ghosts with no past to claim for justice. where are they? can we see their faces, can we fathom their harrowing fate?

until we have an answer, it's better to just be quiet and silent. to keep silence, deliberately, not to try anything other than to honor their forgotten memory.

red meat, cancer, heart disease

heed the advice while there's time:

People who ate more red meat were less physically active and more likely to smoke and had a higher body mass index, researchers found. Still, after controlling for those and other variables, they found that each daily increase of three ounces of red meat was associated with a 12 percent greater risk of dying over all, including a 16 percent greater risk of cardiovascular death and a 10 percent greater risk of cancer death.

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.

length of our final paper

our final paper should be around 1,200 words. that's about 4 pages, double spaced.

i want to see some paper outlines!

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.

your vote is crucial!

all this week is early vote in florida

you believe the system is crooked. it is.
you believe our politicians are not up to the test. they aren't.
you believe we need an overhaul. we do.
 
as students, we have vital interests to protect. 
as women, we have important rights to defend. 
as citizens, we have achievements to uphold. 
as humans, we have an environment to preserve. 
as partners, we have prejudices to fight. 

don't let social anomie and indifference get the best of you.
time is running out.
let's vote!

on religious pluralism

keeping you posted of interesting discussions in my classes. this one on the topic of religious pluralism over religious fundamentalism.

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, 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 which helps one deal with the world. Rituals are a form of cultural transmission which involves at least  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 internalizes 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. That is the key to Confucian ritual ideals.

concerning the fool

this is my post on the fool that i have commented in class.

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.

i'm extending the post deadline until tomorrow tuesday @ 11pm

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.