From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Sun 24 Nov 2002 - 20:54:35 GMT
PERCEPTION
For EP, perception is the realization of sense experience; this
realization of its facticity as a phenomenon involves the
imposition of a
significance to this realization. Since one is part of the perceived,
this
meaning is both (and correlatively) externalized and internalized.
This
is another aspect of Being-in-the-World as a correlative --
authentic
perception of the world involves the creation of meaning for one's
perception(s). Since Dasein is temporally finite, this meaning is of
necessity contingent, not absolute. The fact of human meaning's
contingency does not, however, detract from its world-referential
structure; it simply establishes that structure as a point-of-view (in
geometry, a point occupies no space yet possesses position).
Perception, therefore, is not only valid, it also comprises the
ground for
the manifestation of Care. The realization of its particularity,
however
(absence of universal god's eye world-view), entails the further
realization of its incompleteness. Thus possibility outstrips
actuality
even in perception and choices are perpetually being made in the
inposition of meaning (determination as negation of alternatives).
These choices still reflect the imposed-upon, and are relational to
them,
and gain further validity (in the sense of multiplicity of shared
perspectives) from corroboration; shared perception and shared
meaning are less contingent than their solitary apprehension and
creation. The existential leap is an outgrowth of the
phenomenological
apprehension of the lived world tempered bynthe reflective
realization
of its contingent nature as interpretive.
In Zen, this leap is analogous to Satori. The preceding
exposition upon EP and perception is intuitionally encapsulated in
the
Zen statement, "When I bagan to study Zen, mountains were
mountains
and rivers were rivers; when I thought I understood Zen,
mountains
were not mountains and rivers were not rivers; but once I came to
full
knowledge of Zen, mountains were once again mountains and
rivers
were one again rivers". These mountains and rivers, however,
possess
a deeper and less naïve meaning after Satori.
LANGUAGE
In EP, language is the "means by which" and the "condition
without which" of intersubjectivity. Language is the meaning of
corroboration and the common ground by which expression is
achieved
(not FROM whichthat would be the Being-in-the-World
interpenetrated
by the Being-of-the-World). The danger is in confusing the sign
(word)
with what it signifies or refers to in the world; this mistake places
the
primary importance falsly upon the means rather thatn the end
(corroboration of phenomena and the differing yet similar
perspectives
concerning them).
Zen sees a deeper problem. The use of language tends to
falsely dualize a separate reality of language even before this
'reality'
becomes an inauthentic primordial (which is EP's concern). To
say, for
instance, "This is a stick" is to linguistically separate "This" and
"stick"
both by the use of two different descriptive terms and by the use
of a
mediating (therefore bifurcating) relational term, for to state the
identity
of the "two" is to implicitly acknowledge the necessity of such an
equivalence. Koans are linguistic guards against this kind of thing;
among other things, they expose words for the 'entrapping tools'
they
are. By using words against themselves through the direct
apprehension of their ambiguity and absurdity rather than by the
multiplication of their semiotic web (as self-defeating (chuckle!)
gesture), Zen makes admirable use of William of Occam's dictum
that
simplest is best.
METAPHYSICS
There is no metaphysical study in EP; any 'metaphysics' is
actually ontology, the study of the structures underlying existence
and
experience. The thing independent of Dasein's lived world is
eschewed
as a purposeless study in that things are not existent in and of
themselves, but are dependent, as phenomena, upon our
imposition of
meaning into our perceptions. Transcendentals (unapprehended -
not
apparent or immanent) are not of the phenomenal world
(phenomenon -
what appears to perception). In the same way, the concept of a
personal deity is a pseudoleap possessing not even contingent
support
from the phenomenal field. It is an unsupported article of belief,
not an
extrapolation from knowledge. The very concept of such a deity
as
having a persona or any human-derived attributes is an
illegitimate
anthropomorphization(humanity creating gods in its own image -
even
to determination of sex).
The Zen perspective on metaphysics is well reflected in the
shocking (to the believer) statement which is the title of a book by
Sheldon B. Kopp; "If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill
Him". My
interpretation of this statement is , "If an ideology or metaphysics
strives
to render the lived world into an appendage of the transcendental,
eschew it". Sheldon's equivalent is a different way of saying the
same
thing, and appears on the front cover of his book. As he puts it,
"No
meaning that comes from outside of ourselves is real. The
Buddhahood of each of us has already been attained. We need
only
recognize it. A grown-up can be no one's disciple, for the most
important things that each of us must learn no one else may teach
us."
The apprehension of a God in Zen is western wishful thinking.
This is one of the most significant goals of Zen - to help people
to learn to stand on their own two feet.
CONCLUSION
There is much work to be done in the field of comparative
philosophy, and one of the richest comparisons still to be made in
depth
(although both D.T. Suzuki and Stephen Batchelor have
substantially
addressed it) is that of Zen and EP. We have barely scratched the
surface within this preliminary study, but we shall nevertheless
risk a
few imporessions on their conjoint future.
EP is an intellectual revolt against the sterile intellectualism of
the scientistic formalist who threatens to destroy subjectivity by
objectifying everything; Zen is an intuitional revolt against the
transcendental mysticism of the everyday Hindu. They seem to be
on
converging paths. Why?
The two could be naturally complementary, as are the
intellectual and intuitional aspects of the brain. This
complementarity
is, however, not the final stage if such is the case, for as the
individual
is the synthesis of the two as a concrete bearer of reality, so would
the
truth each is in its own way approaching be found between them.
Zen
already involves intellection, and EP intuition. This truth is lived -
they
agree on this. The continuation of the present convergence would
thus
most likely involve dynamic interpenetration.
Both of them are growing more popular as they converge. This
would suggest that their respective zeniths of popularity - or the
points
at which they are each appropriated by the greatest number of
individuals as ways to the understanding of life - will coincide
with their
synthesis in a Hegelian sense (with the truths of each prteserved
within
their commin supercession). That this is perhaps better understood
as
synthesis in F.S.C. Northrup's terminology rather than in Hegel's is
a
realization to which one comes when one contemplates the
number of
various schools of thought comprising each of them. Not the two,
but
the many converge. This involution cannot help but stimulate
evolution,
and as yet unsupposed insights which will at the same time be
widespread and readily accessible. The effect snowballs, the East
and
West rush towards their appointed meeting, and - purely
subjectively - I
nod, smile, and perhaps even applaud a little. Such a fertile
playground
is grist for the mill of a future synthecizer in the spirit of Aristotle,
Kant
and Hegel, and the revolutions themselves are temporally closer
as
time goes on. The next cannot come soon enough for me.
CONCLUDING AESTHETIC POSTSCRIPT
"What we cannot speak anout", says Wittgenstein, "we must
pass over in silence'> What we can speak of, we must and will,
and the
only way to find out is to try, replies EP. Zen answers that we
cannot
speak about the foundations from which the speakers themselves
spring except imperfectly and incompletely. At that moment, the
silence
casts light upon, rather than passes over, this primordiality.
EP might just agree already; or so Albert Camus seems to be
saying. In the beautiful words of an intuitive intellectual:
"The secret I am seeking lies hidden in a valley full of olive
trees, under the grass and the cold violets, around an old house
that
smells of wood smoke. For more than twenty years I rambled over
that
valley and others resembling it, I questioned mute goatherds, I
knocked
at the doors of deserted ruins. Occasionally, at the moment of the
first
star in the still bright sky, under a shower of shimmering light, I
thought I
knew. I did know, in truth. I still know, perhaps. But no one wants
any
of this secret; I don't want any myself, doubtless; and I cannot
stand,
apart from my people. I live in my family, which thinks it rules
over rich
and hideous cities built of stones and mists. Day and night it
speaks
up, and everything bows before it, which bows before nothing: it
is deaf
to all secrets. Its power that carries me bores me, nevertheless,
and on
occasion its shouts weary me. But its misfortune is mine, and we
are of
the same blood. A cripple, likewise, an accomplice and noisy,
have I
not too shouted among the stones? Consequently, I strive to
forget, I
walk in our cities of iron and fire, I smile bravely in the night, I
hail the
storms, I shall be faithful. But perhaps someday, when we are
ready to
die of exhaustion and ignorance, I shall be able to disown our
garish
tombs and go and stretch out in the valley, under the same light,
and
learn for the last time what I know."
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