my words are like-testify to my time;

they are falsely smooth, falsely grey.

Beauty, Wisdom and the Golden Mean

Gaining in insight has a structure:
Newly introduced or perceived information make one reread (reconsider the meaning of) a phenomenon.  The resulting reading may later be replaced by a newer reading when yet more information becomes available that changes the way in which the text is understood.  Ad infinitum.

The suchness of this process is backward-looking—made up of moments of rereading—for the reason that information relevant to the understanding of a phenomenon-text is revealed and perceived over time.
When we recount how our analyses of particular phenomena have changed over time, this is the kind of process we describe.  We sometimes call it “revelation.”

It is the structure of linguistic parsing, of academic discourse, and of zazen—processes that make proper reading of phenomena their goal.

An example:
Frida and Frederico are at a restaurant.  They stand slightly removed from a table set with food, around which three other people are seated.  Frederico utters the syllable: “ðeɪr.”   At first, Frida lacks the information necessary to decide whether Frederico’s utterance is the first syllable in a word like “thereof,” “therewith” or “therein” or a single-syllable word like “their”, “there” or “they’re.” (Let us assume that Frida and Frederico’s immediately preceding conversation makes either of these possibilities equally likely).  Frederico points to the food on the table, failing to supply a plausible second syllable, leading Frida to settle on the likely and thus “working” reading of “ðeɪr” as representing the word there—a single-syllable word signifying “that place,” to which, it is likely, Frederico is pointing.  In other words, she reads “ðeɪr” through two nested lenses; Frida reads “ðeɪr” first through the absence of Frederico’s utterance of a plausible second syllable, which yields a reading of “ðeɪr” as a single-syllable word, then she reads what she has decided is a single-syllable word through Frederico’s pointing.  However Frederico next utters the syllable “fud,” such that relative stresses on “ðeɪr” and “fud” are as follows: ðeɪr ‘fud.  Had Frida’s initial reading been correct—Frederico intended “ðeɪr” to signify the word there—the emphases on “ðeɪr” and “fud” would have been equal, as in: “There.  Food.”  Frida is compelled to reread the significance of the utterance “ðeɪr” as well as the significance of Frederico’s pointing, checking the available information (Frederico’s pointing in the direction of both people, and food, his phrase: “ðeɪr ‘fud,”)  against the two remaining monosyllabic words (“their” and “they’re”).  She isolates “their” as the more probably-intended of the two meanings, at which point, she reads Frederico’s pointing and his utterance “ðeɪr” in light of the multiple people seated at the table.  She decides that his phrase is intended to be parsed as “Their food.”  But Frederico foils her one last time.  He walks over to one of the people seated, takes a bite out of an exposed arm, and issues a sound of satisfaction as he chews.  Frida, astonished, is amazed to find that she must again reread the phenomena before her, as she settles on the most unlikely, however truest, reading yet.  She reads the phrase “ðeɪr ‘fud” in light of the currently most salient piece of information, Frederico’s cannibalism, deciding that his utterances may be interpreted as: “They’re food.”

We are not surprised at Frida’s astonishment.

That is because coming to see greater Beauty is the emotional valence of the process of coming to see greater Truth.

It is the experience of the miraculous.
The conch shell structure I describe can be understood as moving outward from the seemingly general, frequent, obvious and experientially mundane, to the new, particular, less-than-obvious and experientially miraculous.

I first felt the truth of this thesis while watching a scene from a documentary—Jest to Be the Best.  In one scene an American street performer in the “jester” tradition interviews an instructor at a British school of circus performance.  The theoretical language the instructor uses to describe his school’s approach to teaching performance techniques, language like “advanced hatwork,” and the level of rigor of study he describes compelled me to consider street performer as “serious,” against the common understanding of the street performer as without a formal education.  The presence of a mediocre American jester looking on, presumably wishing he were “real,” like the British instructor adds to the uncanniness of the whole affair which is further compounded by the fact that such uncanniness is caught on film, and not staged.  My respect and appreciation for the documentary grew with each revelation.

Another example: a performance becomes more impressive when a new trick is added.

Imagine a woman balancing on a unicycle.

Now imagine that she’s blindfolded.

Now imagine that she’s pedaling down a hill at 40 mph.

Now imagine that she’s darting around obstacles.

Now imagine that when new obstacles are introduced into her path…she STILL navigates around them deftly.

Each new piece of information forces us to reconsider how the other skills were performed, and result in a reading of the entire performance as more impressive, more astonishing, more Beautiful.

This is why narratives have “arcs” and climaxes…why time is required for a story to develop.  We must acquire the knowledge necessary to properly read the events of the story.  Were we to have all of the information at the outset, the reveal, the feeling of qualitative newness that constitutes the experience of breathtaking Beauty, would not exist. Beauty always swoops in from the wings…because newness comes from what is before us…what is within us…or both.

As a hermeneutic process, the labor of imbuing the reader of a text with the feeling of astonishment at the significance of the text is divided between the text and the reader.
Those heralded as the greatest artists create texts that work to make clear Beauty’s depths to their readers.  Through their texts, they make the experience of “this is Beautiful” inescapable.  We call these people geniuses because they are able, against the exponentially increasing difficulty (or seeming difficulty) of the task, to find new interpretative lenses that allow hitherto differently understood phenomena to be read in a new light.

Those with the greatest insight carry with them the capacity to see infinite Beauty in all things.  They do the work that the text does not.

God’s eyes

an elaboration on simone weil:

as narenda says, difference is only a matter of degree.  the differences between one human being and another, between a human being and a rock, a rock and a quark, are only ever a matter of degree.  what is it but a few degrees of difference that separates the way a person “sees” from the way a rock “sees”?  or experiences? God needs each of us to be His eyes…to help Him see the Creation in exquisite detail.

imagine a fractal…whether differences appear to be minute details or large contours depends on the level of magnification.  the differences amongst human beings are simultaneously great and slight.  as are the differences between human beings and rocks.  or rocks and rocks.  or rocks and quarks.  each of us touches the Creation in a way that is unique, and yet patterned through our relationships to each other.  the Creation is infinitely intricate in its manner of experiencing itself.

even in one moment, infinitely many possibilities are being lived out, and yet, God has this Creation to enjoy for eternity, watching it morph every minute, as the possible gives birth to the possible gives birth to the possible…

poem

she doesn’t love through tiny holes.

she would rather her love burst from her tear ducts, the soles of her feet, mouth, hands…

then let the latticework of her thoughts, or the tangles of her sinews, muscles and nerves

stem her love.

gnan and bhakti

form and power
gnan and bhakti

bhakti is a fire, born of the heart.
gnan is an oil lamp, born of the mind.

both are born of Love.

without gnan, bhakti cannot be wielded, but burns everything, making the body a flaming hell for the soul.
without bhakti, gnan has no worth. words on a page must be illuminated by the heart to become true.

but these things are only true when gnan and bhakti are impure, not themselves.

pure bhakti contains gnan.
pure gnan contains bhakti.

Beauty

is meaning in a space.

the bigger the space, the harder it becomes to avoid diluting the meanings one wishes to frame, to compact and make real-recognizable those meanings.

a frame is a space.

but so is a life.
or pauses in conversation, during which, we look for words.

time is always bracketing spaces to be filled.

greater Beauty must always be built within parameters, and within a timeframe.

genius is about arriving at the fifth thought within a certain timeframe, where for most, the first thought would be “the expected”…the baseline instinct. maybe the third thought would be “impressive.” the fourth starts to sound crazy.

compacting

meaning must be compacted to be made recognizable, sometimes from nearly invisible particles.

making meaning is like building a sand castle. when enough particles are clumped together…”lo suficiente”…the meaning becomes recognizable.

a meaning ceases to be itself when we dilute it with irrelevancies, tangents or seductive yet incorrect words. sometimes this matters, sometimes it doesn’t.

if i wish to communicate what it is i am thinking, i must not settle for words that are not my thought, that would dilute my thought, even if i am reaching the place that sounds like it should be the end of my sentence.

drafts

drafts from the last year that i never published:

“the birth of every new concept (change in discourse, wording, ideology etc) has valences that bear on every possible ideology (religious, conceptions of body etc)

roll of faith in knowledge production–we accept on faith what is there the moment we begin to look for it”

Last edited by finluiniel on February 12, 2008 at 7:40 pm
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title: a suspicion…

“much of what goodness is is not super-cultural.

the actions of goodness become intelligible as signifying “goodness” through utilization of culturally specific symbols.

suicide means “goodness” in one context–the man who

this is so.”

Last edited by finluiniel on March 30, 2008 at 3:51 am
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“academic writing demands that the scholar
“know” what exists. the essence of “critique” is to point out what is missing–deficiencies in logic, evidence, contact with reality or imagination.”

Last edited by finluiniel on April 19, 2008 at 6:08 pm
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“white men dream of great”

Last edited by finluiniel on April 27, 2008 at 2:36 am
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title: Beauty, Wisdom and the Golden Mean

“the experience of seeing Beauty and gaining in insight are the same process:

new information is introduced that makes one reread (reconsider the meaning of) a phenomenon.  the resulting interpretation, logically derived from  the information available, is an insight.

the sixth sense

a person points to a table set with food, around which people are seated and utters: “ðeɪr”.  the pointing, which indicates a direction, might lead us to settle on the preliminary interpretation of these sounds signifying “there.”   however the next linguistic constituent we hear from this person is  “fud” = highly likely correct interpretation: “their food.”  but then the person pointing walks over to the people seated, and takes a bite out of one of their arms.  astonished, we settle on the highly unlikely, but nevertheless correct interpretation of the meaning of the sounds originally issued: “they’re food.”

• the golden mean
• change in degrees, must apply NEW lens, not just the old again…must create reconsideration

• becomes exponentially harder to “zoom out”…find new interpretive lens that allows all pieces of constituent information to make sense in an entirely new way.
• however infinitely many reinterpretations are possible.

the magnitude of the experience of “this phenomenon is Beautiful” is proportional to the number of hypotenuses or “depth” brought to the reading of the phenomenon.  This is how “unlikelihood” ties in.  Ex: unlikelihood of British ‘academic circus performance instructor’ talking about methodology and theory of “circuswork”.  Made more astonishing and Beautiful by the presence of a mediocre American jester looking on, wishing he were “real,” like the instructor.  Made MORE astonishing and Beautiful by an additional piece of information: this is a documentary, and this drama actually played out.  Each new piece of information alters the significance of ALL the information.

another example: a performance becomes more impressive when a new trick is added.  imagine a woman balancing on a unicycle.  now imagine that she’s blindfolded.  now imagine that she’s pedaling down a hill at 40 mph.  now imagine that she’s darting around obstacles.  now imagine that when new obstacles are introduced into her path…she STILL navigates around them deftly.  each new piece of information forces us to reconsider how the other skills were performed, and result in a reading of the entire performance as more impressive, more astonishing, more Beautiful.
this is why narratives have “arcs” and climaxes…why time is required for a story to develop.  because we must acquire the knowledge necessary to properly read the events of the story.  were we to have all of the information at the outset, the reveal, the feeling of qualitative newness that constitutes the experience of breathtaking Beauty, would not be there. Beauty always swoops in from the wings…either because newness comes from what is before us…or what is within us.

that is why Beauty is always experienced OVER TIME.  the process of coming to see GREATER Beauty in a phenomenon is the processes of acquiring new knowledge that changes meaning of the original phenomenon ad infinitum.  it is a motion of swirling outward in the shape of a nautilus.

• always possible to see down, from whence we came, the content of each level beneath.
• WISDOM/RESPONSIBLE/HARD DECISION-MAKING = knowing how to read phenomena in the way that it is intended to be read.  justice is about reading phenomena correctly and incorrectly.   it is quite challenging to read a piece of phenomena issued from another correctly.   shared social location makes it possible to
• That’s why it is so hard to “come down”…for me, to be in the world.”

Last edited by finluiniel on December 16, 2008 at 4:02 pm
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“we put different words to facets of the same phenomenon.

but wisdom is a kind of brilliance.  in fact it is the pinnacle of brilliance.”

Last edited by finluiniel on January 18, 2009 at 9:39 am
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bodhisattva?

OKC user X:

I think any true Bodhisattva would never claim to be one.

Finluiniel

think whatever you will.

OKC user X:

do you claim to be one?

Finluiniel

i don’t think “things” exist.

we believe that words represent inviolable and absolute phenomena but they don’t.

i said exactly what i meant:

“i don’t identify with words…but i might look like a bodhisattva to you.

or i should, if you’re paying attention.”

OKC user X:

While it’s understood that in monist thought there is a single universal whole, that compartmentalization of thought created by words places a separation on the world that is not there, and that words are inert vessels for holding the meaning which we place on them; it is also understood that words do an okay job of allowing us to share our experience with the world and create meaning.
For this same reason, the Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao, the name that can be named is not the true name. But we can still talk about it. Lao-Tzu talks about it for 81 poems in the Tao te Ching. He uses words but acknowledges that words cannot fully describe the true nature of being, but that this nature can be experienced.

The word “Bodhisattva” is generally accepted to mean something like “a being who has reached Nirvana and returned to teach others the way to enlightenment.”

If one should look like a bodhisattva with the condition that others are paying attention, claims that you have reached enlightened nirvana, and now claim to be capable of teaching others the path to enlightenment, AND that if one does not see your enlightened state, they must not be paying attention.

In the Bagahvad Gita, Artuna is taught that words veil true meaning, that there is one universal whole, but that these illusory separate things are real because of the nature which flows through this veil to prop up the word for the thing and give purpose and delineation to the item, or Dharma. A dog is a dog because of its dog-nature, and is distinguished from a spoon, by it’s not having spoon-nature. Spoon-nature and Dog-nature are real, but the words are not.

To pre-empt your statement with the caveat that one does not believe in words seems to be an attempt to be intellectually dishonest, in dissuading argument that one might NOT be a bodhisattva in a game of intellectual nihilism. This is a problem with words. They do not have to carry meaning if one divorces the meaning from them. But that does not mean that meaning can be divorced from meaning.

This is the nature of Dharma.

So whether or not you identify with words or not, it would seem that you claim to be something which one cannot claim to be, as defined by it’s Dharma.

Nameste,
Asher

Finluiniel

i have no interest in claiming to be or not to be something. to make such a claim is to acknowledge that a bodhisattva exists absolutely.

again, that is why i use the words “i might look like a bodhisattva to you. or i should if you’re paying attention.”

a “bodhisattva” is a pattern of being that a person (not myself) might recognize in what i am because it is something they have heard of, it is a ready-made image. and for many, like yourself, the existence of the bodhisattva is held up as a koan–that which is inviolably true…

but we need to see truth with our own eyes.

patterns in the seeming natures of “things” exist, but if we are truly honest with ourselves, we must understand these patterns as coincidence.

what i see may or may not be what others have seen before…if i’m worrying about whether or not what i’m seeing “actually is” what others have seen/saw…then i’m not really looking, listening, seeing.

you seem to think the that bhagavad gita, the tao te ching, and all buddhist teachings are descriptions of things, rather than words born in a moment, from vantage points.

these philosophies touch a truth, but a truth only experienced as such in moments.

to live out one’s suchness, at a certain point, one has to stop asking “is this what the buddha saw?” “is this what the story of the reluctant hero in the bhagavad gita was meant to teach me?” “is this *really* the meaning of mu?”

i wholeheartedly embrace the qualitatively new, because only the new is the truth that i have seen. in explaining myself and ways/states of being/ideas, i generally steer away from words like “Enlightenment”, “bodhisattva” etc because i neither refute nor accept them as preexisting states. my words must always shine the newness that i feel-see, rather than mimesis, or performance for someone else.

and as i wholeheartedly embrace the qualitatively new, i embrace contradiction.

i embrace surprise, the unexpected…the sheer hilarity and amazingness of what is NOT performance. what is strictly and undeniably lived and true.

i embrace what has hitherto been not-thought-of, or imagined as impossible.

because impossibility is only named from the outside…never from the inside.

i am so much more likely to trust the “legitimacy” of someone who, out of earnestness and care, argues “with” the bible, or the bhagavad gita, or the upanishads, or the tao te ching, having seen where certain words came from and then, with the proper insight, comes to his or her own words, than i am likely to trust someone who defends them as representing, or absolutely alluding to “what is”.

the word “bodhisattva” is a cue that i give. i don’t imagine anyone will magically know what i mean. which is why i welcome those who say “huh?”

my feelings are these:

one should never do a thing *because* it has been done by others.
and one SHOULD DEFINITELY not do something *because* it hasn’t been done by others.

a person can certainly use the words and thoughts of others to reach his/her own honesty.

it’s fine if honesty leads one down a well-traveled path…but hey, it could easily have been another path altogether.

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i deleted my OKC account so i don’t have the words in front of me…but he replied with:

“your response was mostly obfuscation”

and something  about it was too bad i was questioning his “legitimacy”

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originally posted 3/19/06…

bedtime story
i just tucked my twinnybean into bed. she requested a bedtime story. so i began to tell her a story of old (one inspired by stories we both knew…made up…lived…as twins)…and we finished the story together.

once upon a time there was a baker named puffy. puffy was a hearty, stout, dimpled, magic baker with bright eyes and a wide grin. she liked to bake muffins all day long. for her muffins, she was renowned.

one day she made an extra special muffin. endowed with super-duper magicalness. it looked different from the other muffins. when she took the batch out of the oven…lo and behold…out popped a beautiful twinkling fairy. her name was muffin. muffin the fairy. sometimes called angelmuffin.

and it just so happens that many many many many many years ago, this same fairy had planted a bean…a rinnybean…in some fertile soil. after a while a glorious flower appeared, and when it had fully bloomed…puffy jumped out…baker’s hat and all.

tricky stuff.

puffy and muffin got along splendidly. they lived together and had tea for their friends every wednesday. they’d invite them all over. the woodland creatures. the cute little duckies. their goblin sister. their other muffin. the grannies and the mommies and daddies of the village. their stepmother. even the stupid dog. and it was good. the muffins flowed. and the tea was piping hot and well-brewed.

they became quite famous for their unusual and awe-inspiring muffins.

they made
saffron muffins
mocha muffins
imploding muffins
infinite regression muffins
invisible muffins
muffins that made their consumers glow in the dark
pineapple muffins
banana pumpkin muffins
curry muffins
fizzling muffins
muffins that sprouted wings and flew around
jumping muffins
adzuki bean muffins
twinkling stardust muffins
dragon muffins
teff flour muffins
and so on…

and the muffins were all made with love.

and puffy and angelfairymuffin covered the world in muffins…bringing everyone a little morsel of joy

but one day angelmuffin fairy grew skeptical. she asked puffy: “how do we know our muffins can help? there’s too much badness in the world.” and puffy said: “all we can do is give the love we have and the muffins we make.”

and muffin the angel fairy asked “but aren’t muffins bad for you?”

and puffy said “no…they’re your friends.”

muffin fairy angel’s eyes cheered up.
they were twins…puffy and muffin.
so they decided to live happily ever after.

and they did.

the end.