"Fundamentally there is just open space, the basic ground, what we really are. Our most fundamental state of mind, before the creation of ego, is such that there is basic opennness, basic freedom, a spacious quality; and we have now and have always had this openness. Take, for example, our everyday lives and thought patterns. When we see an object, in the first instant there is a sudden perception which has no logic or conceptualization to it at all; we just perceive the thing in the open ground. Then inmediately we panic and begin to rush about trying to add something to it, either trying to find a name for it or trying to find pigeon-holes in which we could locate and categorize it. Gradually things develop from there.
This development does not take the shape of a solid entity. Rather, this development is illusory, the mistaken belief in a "self" or "ego". Confused mind is inclined to view itself as a solid, on-going thing, but it is only a collection of tendencies, events. In Buddhist terminology this collection is referred to as the Five Skandhas or Five Heaps. So perhaps we could go through the development of the Five Skandhas.
The beginning point is that there is open space, belonging to no one. There is always primordial intelligence connected with the space and openness. Vidya, which means "intelligence" in Sanskrit-precision, sharpness, sharpness with space, sharpness with room in which to put things, exchange things. it is like a spacious hall where there is room to dance about, where there is no danger of tripping over things, for there is completely open space. We are this space, we are one with it, with vidya, intelligence and openness.
But if we are this all the time, where did the confusion come from, where has the space gone, what has happened? Nothing has happened, as a matter of fact. We just became too active in that space. Because it is spacious, it brings inspiration to dance about; but our dance became a bit too active, we began to spin more than was necessary to express the space. At this point we became self-conscious, conscious that "I" am dancing in the space.
At such a point space is no longer space as such. It becomes solid. Instead of being one with the space, we feel solid space as a separate entity, as tangible. This is the first experience of duality-space and I, I am dancing in the space, and this spaciousness is a solid, separate thing. Duality means "space and I", rather than being completely one with the space. This is the birth of "form", of "other".
Then a kind of blackout occurs, in the sense that we forget what we were doing. There is a sudden halt, a pause; and we turn around and "discover" solid space, as though we were not the creators of all that solidity. There is a gap. Having already created solidified space, then we are overwhelmend by it and begin to become lost in it. There is a blackout and then, suddenly, an awakening.
When we awaken, we refuse to see the space as openness, refuse to see its smooth and ventilating quality. We completely ignore it, which is called avidya. A means "negation", vidya means "intelligence", so it is "un-intelligence". Because this extreme intelligence has been transformed into the perception of solid space, because this intelligence with a sharp and precise and flowing luminous quality has become static, therefore it is called avidya, "ignorance". We deliberately ignore. We are not satisified just to dance in the space but we want to have a partner, and so we choose the space as our partner. If you choose space as your partner in the dance, then of course you want it to dance with you. In order to possess it as a partner you have to solidify it and ignore its flowing, open quality. This is avidya, ignorance, ignoring the intelligence. It is the culmination of the First Skandha, the creationg of Ignorance-Form"
Trungpa, Chögyam. "The Development of Ego". Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1973. Pp. 122-124
After that, the development or birth of the articulate or inarticulate, discursive subject, oh precious little bundle, is just on its way...
Thursday, 20 November 2008
Sunday, 16 November 2008
without which I cannot speak
thought we were dead, uh?
Gottcha! :-)
"Where there is an 'I' who utters or speaks and thereby produces an effect in discourse, there is first a discourse which precedes an enables that 'I' and forms in language the constraining trajectory of its will. Thus there is no 'I' who stands behind discourse and executes its volition or will through discourse. On the contrary, the 'I' only comes into being called, named, interpellated, to use the Althusserian term, and this discursive constitution takes place prior to the 'I'; it is the transitive invocation of the 'I'. Indeed, I can only say 'I' to the extent that I have been addressed, and that address has mobilized my place in speech; paradoxically, the discursive condition of social recognition precedes and conditions the formation of the subject: recognition is not conferred on a subject, but forms that subject. Further, the impossibility of a full recognition, that is, of ever fully inhabiting the name by which one's social identity is inaugured and mobilized, implies the instability and incompleteness of subject-formation. The 'I' is thus a citation of the place of the 'I' in speech, where that place has a certain priority and anonymity with respect to the life it animates: it is the historically revisable possibility of a name that precedes and exceeds me, but without which I cannot speak"
Judith Butler. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 'Sex'. New York, London: Routledge, 1993. 225-6
Gottcha! :-)
"Where there is an 'I' who utters or speaks and thereby produces an effect in discourse, there is first a discourse which precedes an enables that 'I' and forms in language the constraining trajectory of its will. Thus there is no 'I' who stands behind discourse and executes its volition or will through discourse. On the contrary, the 'I' only comes into being called, named, interpellated, to use the Althusserian term, and this discursive constitution takes place prior to the 'I'; it is the transitive invocation of the 'I'. Indeed, I can only say 'I' to the extent that I have been addressed, and that address has mobilized my place in speech; paradoxically, the discursive condition of social recognition precedes and conditions the formation of the subject: recognition is not conferred on a subject, but forms that subject. Further, the impossibility of a full recognition, that is, of ever fully inhabiting the name by which one's social identity is inaugured and mobilized, implies the instability and incompleteness of subject-formation. The 'I' is thus a citation of the place of the 'I' in speech, where that place has a certain priority and anonymity with respect to the life it animates: it is the historically revisable possibility of a name that precedes and exceeds me, but without which I cannot speak"
Judith Butler. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 'Sex'. New York, London: Routledge, 1993. 225-6
Saturday, 23 August 2008
from the ex-centric rhizo-mind
your last post called up a number of voices:
difference, similarity, self? Santideva (8th c.) replies to the Samkhya premise that we are all the same manifesting in different ways, like actors:
"After all, if difference is false, then on what basis is there similarity.
That which is not conscious is not 'I' because it lacks consciousnes like an object such as cloth. If it is a conscious thing because it possesses conscioussness it follows that when it stops being conscious of something it perishes.
If the self is in fact unchanged, what is achieved by its having consciousness? It is agreed that the nature of something which is unconscious and does not partake in any activity in this way is the same as space.
If you argue that the connection of action and consequence is not possible without a Self, for 'If the agent of the action has perishes who experiences the consequence?',
[our response is:] For both of us it is established that the action and the consequence of the action have a different location. Moreover, since the self does not have any function in this, surely arguing this point is irrelevant here.
The one who provides the cause is connected with the consequence? Such an ocurrence is never seen. It is taught that there is an agent and an experiencer of the consequence in terms of a unity of the continuum of consciousness.
The past or future mind is not 'I' since that does not exist. If the present mind is 'I' then, when it has ceased, the 'I' does not exist anymore.
Just as the trunk of a banana tree is nothing when split into pieces, in the same way too, the 'I' is not a real entity when hunted out analytically"
Santideva. Bodhicharyavatara X, 67-74. Translated from the Sanskrit by Kate Crosby and Andrew Skilton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
So, yes...
"Space has neither color nor shape;
It is changeless, it is not tinged by black or white.
Likewise luminous mind has neither colornor shape;
It is not tinged by black or white, virtue or vice
[but!]
Though it may be said that space is empty,
Space cannot be described.
Likewise, though it may be said that mind if luminous
Naming it does not prove that it exists.
Space is completely without locality.
Likewise, mahamudra mind dwells nowhere."
Tilopa (10th c.?) "Mahamudra Upadesa" from Trungpa, Chögyam The Myth of Freedom. Boston: Shambhala, 2002.
and well, since "we" are "here" let's roar:
"The lion's roar destroys the dualistic psychology in which value and validity are attributed to things because there is the other thing happening- the Brahma, or God, or whatever you like to call it. The dualistic approach says that because "that" happened, therefore, "this" also is a solid and real thing. In order to become Him or Her, whichever it might be, we should be receptive to that higher thing. This approach is always problematic. And the only way to destroy that dualistic setup is to arouse Padmasambhava's crazy-wisdom aspect to destroy it.
From the point of view of crazy wisdom, "that" does not exist; and the reason "that" does not exist is because "this", the self, no longer exists. In some sense, you could say that here the destruction is mutual destruction. But at the same time, is favorable from the nontheistic point of view. If Jehovah or Brahma exists, then the perceiver has to exist in order to acknowledge that existence. But the crazy-wisdom approach is that the acknowledger does not exist; it is no longer there, or at least it is questionable. And if "this" does not exist, then "that" is out of the question altogether. It is purely a phantom, imaginary. And even for an imagination to exist, you need an imaginer. So the destruction of the centralized notion of a self brings with it the nonexistence of "that".
Trungpa, Chögyam. Crazy Wisdom. Boston: Shambhala, 2001.
difference, similarity, self? Santideva (8th c.) replies to the Samkhya premise that we are all the same manifesting in different ways, like actors:
"After all, if difference is false, then on what basis is there similarity.
That which is not conscious is not 'I' because it lacks consciousnes like an object such as cloth. If it is a conscious thing because it possesses conscioussness it follows that when it stops being conscious of something it perishes.
If the self is in fact unchanged, what is achieved by its having consciousness? It is agreed that the nature of something which is unconscious and does not partake in any activity in this way is the same as space.
If you argue that the connection of action and consequence is not possible without a Self, for 'If the agent of the action has perishes who experiences the consequence?',
[our response is:] For both of us it is established that the action and the consequence of the action have a different location. Moreover, since the self does not have any function in this, surely arguing this point is irrelevant here.
The one who provides the cause is connected with the consequence? Such an ocurrence is never seen. It is taught that there is an agent and an experiencer of the consequence in terms of a unity of the continuum of consciousness.
The past or future mind is not 'I' since that does not exist. If the present mind is 'I' then, when it has ceased, the 'I' does not exist anymore.
Just as the trunk of a banana tree is nothing when split into pieces, in the same way too, the 'I' is not a real entity when hunted out analytically"
Santideva. Bodhicharyavatara X, 67-74. Translated from the Sanskrit by Kate Crosby and Andrew Skilton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
So, yes...
"Space has neither color nor shape;
It is changeless, it is not tinged by black or white.
Likewise luminous mind has neither colornor shape;
It is not tinged by black or white, virtue or vice
[but!]
Though it may be said that space is empty,
Space cannot be described.
Likewise, though it may be said that mind if luminous
Naming it does not prove that it exists.
Space is completely without locality.
Likewise, mahamudra mind dwells nowhere."
Tilopa (10th c.?) "Mahamudra Upadesa" from Trungpa, Chögyam The Myth of Freedom. Boston: Shambhala, 2002.
and well, since "we" are "here" let's roar:
"The lion's roar destroys the dualistic psychology in which value and validity are attributed to things because there is the other thing happening- the Brahma, or God, or whatever you like to call it. The dualistic approach says that because "that" happened, therefore, "this" also is a solid and real thing. In order to become Him or Her, whichever it might be, we should be receptive to that higher thing. This approach is always problematic. And the only way to destroy that dualistic setup is to arouse Padmasambhava's crazy-wisdom aspect to destroy it.
From the point of view of crazy wisdom, "that" does not exist; and the reason "that" does not exist is because "this", the self, no longer exists. In some sense, you could say that here the destruction is mutual destruction. But at the same time, is favorable from the nontheistic point of view. If Jehovah or Brahma exists, then the perceiver has to exist in order to acknowledge that existence. But the crazy-wisdom approach is that the acknowledger does not exist; it is no longer there, or at least it is questionable. And if "this" does not exist, then "that" is out of the question altogether. It is purely a phantom, imaginary. And even for an imagination to exist, you need an imaginer. So the destruction of the centralized notion of a self brings with it the nonexistence of "that".
Trungpa, Chögyam. Crazy Wisdom. Boston: Shambhala, 2001.
Wednesday, 20 August 2008
mathematics? no: rhizomatics
The following is here just because it's one of the best "beginnings" ever:
"The two of us [Deleuze & Guattari] wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd. Here we have made use of everything that came within range, what was closest as well as farthest away. We have assigned clever pseudonyms to prevent recognition. Why have we kept our own names? Out of habit, purely out of habit. To make ourselves recognizable in turn. To render imperceptible, not ourselves, but what makes us act, feel, and think. Also because it's nice to talk like everybody else, to say the sun rises, when everybody knows it's only a manner of speaking. To reach, not the point where one lo longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves. Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied" (3-4)
And the following is here for sheer narcissim: because it feels nice to know that I am, that is, that we are -or rather: that we move- not alone in this funny business of rhizomatic, ex-centric lives:
"The rhizome itself assumes very diverse forms, from ramified surface extension in all directions to concretion into bulbs and tubers"
Characteristics of the rhizome:
" Principles of connection and heterogeneity: any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be" (7)
" Principle of multiplicity: it is only when the multiple is effectively treated as a substantive, 'multiplicity', that it ceases to have any relation to the One as subject or object, natural or spiritual reality, image and world. Multiplicities are rhizomatic, and expose arborescent pseudomultiplicities for what they are. There is no unity to serve as a pivot in the object or to divide in the subject. There is not even the unity to abort in the object or 'return' in the subject. A multiplicity has neither sujbect nor object, only determinations, magnitudes and dimensions that cannot increase in number without the multiplicity changing in nature (the laws of combination therefore increase in number as the multiplicity grows)" (8-9)
"Principle of asignifying rupture: agaiinst the oversignifying breaks separating structures or cutting across a single structure. A rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines. You can never get rid of ants because they form an animal rhizome that can rebound time and time again after most of it has been destroyed" (9)
"Principle of cartography and decalcomania: a rhizome is not amenable to any structural or or generative model. It is a stranger to any idea of genetic axis or deep structure" (13)
...and a few conclusions:
"A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo. The tree is filiation, but the rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance. The tree imposes the verb 'to be' but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction 'and... and...and...'. This conjunction carries enough force to shake and uproot the verb 'to be'. Where are you going? Where are you coming from? What are you heading for? These are totally useless questions" (27)
"Between things does not designate a localizable relation going from one thing to the other and back again, but a perpendicular direction, a transversal movement that sweeps one and the other away, a stream without beginnign or end that undermines its banks and picks up speed in the middle..." (28)
Deleuze, Gilles, Guattari, Felix. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia London: Continuum, 2004 [1980].
"The two of us [Deleuze & Guattari] wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd. Here we have made use of everything that came within range, what was closest as well as farthest away. We have assigned clever pseudonyms to prevent recognition. Why have we kept our own names? Out of habit, purely out of habit. To make ourselves recognizable in turn. To render imperceptible, not ourselves, but what makes us act, feel, and think. Also because it's nice to talk like everybody else, to say the sun rises, when everybody knows it's only a manner of speaking. To reach, not the point where one lo longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves. Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied" (3-4)
* * *
And the following is here for sheer narcissim: because it feels nice to know that I am, that is, that we are -or rather: that we move- not alone in this funny business of rhizomatic, ex-centric lives:
"The rhizome itself assumes very diverse forms, from ramified surface extension in all directions to concretion into bulbs and tubers"
Characteristics of the rhizome:
" Principles of connection and heterogeneity: any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be" (7)
" Principle of multiplicity: it is only when the multiple is effectively treated as a substantive, 'multiplicity', that it ceases to have any relation to the One as subject or object, natural or spiritual reality, image and world. Multiplicities are rhizomatic, and expose arborescent pseudomultiplicities for what they are. There is no unity to serve as a pivot in the object or to divide in the subject. There is not even the unity to abort in the object or 'return' in the subject. A multiplicity has neither sujbect nor object, only determinations, magnitudes and dimensions that cannot increase in number without the multiplicity changing in nature (the laws of combination therefore increase in number as the multiplicity grows)" (8-9)
"Principle of asignifying rupture: agaiinst the oversignifying breaks separating structures or cutting across a single structure. A rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines. You can never get rid of ants because they form an animal rhizome that can rebound time and time again after most of it has been destroyed" (9)
"Principle of cartography and decalcomania: a rhizome is not amenable to any structural or or generative model. It is a stranger to any idea of genetic axis or deep structure" (13)
...and a few conclusions:
"A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo. The tree is filiation, but the rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance. The tree imposes the verb 'to be' but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction 'and... and...and...'. This conjunction carries enough force to shake and uproot the verb 'to be'. Where are you going? Where are you coming from? What are you heading for? These are totally useless questions" (27)
"Between things does not designate a localizable relation going from one thing to the other and back again, but a perpendicular direction, a transversal movement that sweeps one and the other away, a stream without beginnign or end that undermines its banks and picks up speed in the middle..." (28)
Deleuze, Gilles, Guattari, Felix. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia London: Continuum, 2004 [1980].
Saturday, 9 August 2008
refugees
despite all the jewishness, I'm a buddhist boy and contagiated as I am it is hardly impossible not to make the connection (I'm about to make). And now I turn all self-explanatory. The nomadic image evoked in me the ceremony of taking refuge, the formal entrance in the sangha or buddhist community. Despite being a moment of committment which could be construed as the beginning of some sense of belonging, Trungpa describes it in these terms:
"By taking refuge, in some sense we become homeless refugees. Taking refuge does not mean saying that we are helpless and then handing all our problems to somebody or something else. There will be no refugee rations, nor all kinds of security and dedicated help. The point of becoming a refugee is to give up our attachment to basic security. We have to give up our home ground, which is illusory anyway. We might have a sense of a home ground as where we were born and the way we look, but we don't actually have any home, fundamentally speaking. There is actually no solid basis of security in one's life.
[...]
Relating to being lost and confused, we are more open. We begin to see that in seeking security we can't grasp onto anything; everything continually washes out and becomes shaky, constantly, all the time. And that is what is called life.
So becoming a refugee is acknowledging that we are homeless and groundless, and it is acknowledging that there is really no need for home, or ground. Taking refuge is an expression of freedom, because as refugees we are no longer bounded by the need for security. We are suspended in a no-man's land in which the only thing to do is to relate with the teachings and with ourselves"
Chogyam Trungpa. The Heart of the Buddha. Shambhala South Asia Editions: Boston, 1999 p.87-88
"By taking refuge, in some sense we become homeless refugees. Taking refuge does not mean saying that we are helpless and then handing all our problems to somebody or something else. There will be no refugee rations, nor all kinds of security and dedicated help. The point of becoming a refugee is to give up our attachment to basic security. We have to give up our home ground, which is illusory anyway. We might have a sense of a home ground as where we were born and the way we look, but we don't actually have any home, fundamentally speaking. There is actually no solid basis of security in one's life.
[...]
Relating to being lost and confused, we are more open. We begin to see that in seeking security we can't grasp onto anything; everything continually washes out and becomes shaky, constantly, all the time. And that is what is called life.
So becoming a refugee is acknowledging that we are homeless and groundless, and it is acknowledging that there is really no need for home, or ground. Taking refuge is an expression of freedom, because as refugees we are no longer bounded by the need for security. We are suspended in a no-man's land in which the only thing to do is to relate with the teachings and with ourselves"
Chogyam Trungpa. The Heart of the Buddha. Shambhala South Asia Editions: Boston, 1999 p.87-88
Wednesday, 6 August 2008
orphan tongues
...and the ontological (in)securities and freedoms symbolic nomadism entails:
"My own work as a thinker has no mother tongue, only a succession of translations, of displacements, of adaptations to changing conditions. In other words, the nomadism I defend as a theoretical option is also an existential condition that for me translates into a style of thinking. One of the claims of this volume is both to develop and evoke a vision of female feminsit subjectivity in a nomadic mode" (1)
"Though the image of 'nomadic subjects' is inspired by the experience of people or cultures that are literally nomadic, the nomadism in question here refers to the kind of critical consciousness that resists settling into socially coded modes of thought and behaviour" (5)
"Nomadic subjects are capable of freeing the activity of thinking from the hold of phallocentric dogmatism, returning thought to its freedom, its liveliness, its beauty. There is a strong aesthetic dimension in the quest for alternative nomadic figurations, and feminist theory . . . is informed by this joyful nomadic forces" (8)
"The polyglot is a linguistic nomad" (8)
"The nomadic polyglot practices an aesthetic style based on compassion for the incongruities, the repetitions, the arbitrariness of the languages s/he deals with. Writing is, for the polyglot, a process of undoing the illusory stability of fixed identities, bursting open the bubble of ontological security that comes from familiarity with one linguistic site" (15)
Braidotti, Rosi. Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
"My own work as a thinker has no mother tongue, only a succession of translations, of displacements, of adaptations to changing conditions. In other words, the nomadism I defend as a theoretical option is also an existential condition that for me translates into a style of thinking. One of the claims of this volume is both to develop and evoke a vision of female feminsit subjectivity in a nomadic mode" (1)
"Though the image of 'nomadic subjects' is inspired by the experience of people or cultures that are literally nomadic, the nomadism in question here refers to the kind of critical consciousness that resists settling into socially coded modes of thought and behaviour" (5)
"Nomadic subjects are capable of freeing the activity of thinking from the hold of phallocentric dogmatism, returning thought to its freedom, its liveliness, its beauty. There is a strong aesthetic dimension in the quest for alternative nomadic figurations, and feminist theory . . . is informed by this joyful nomadic forces" (8)
"The polyglot is a linguistic nomad" (8)
"The nomadic polyglot practices an aesthetic style based on compassion for the incongruities, the repetitions, the arbitrariness of the languages s/he deals with. Writing is, for the polyglot, a process of undoing the illusory stability of fixed identities, bursting open the bubble of ontological security that comes from familiarity with one linguistic site" (15)
Braidotti, Rosi. Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
Thursday, 31 July 2008
beginnings or the suit of armor
Well, it doesn't. It does not begin in any positive sense. However, we seem to be 'here', embedded in beginnings and suits of armors, and people wonder:
"Q: How do you take off your suit of armor? How do you open yourself?
A: It is not a question of how you do it. There is no ritual or ceremony or formula for opening. The first obstacle is the question itself: 'How?' If you don't question yourself, don't watch yourself, then you just do it. We do not consider how we are going to vomit; we just vomit. There is no time to think about it; it just happens. If we are very tense, then we will have tremendous pain and will not really be able to vomit properly. We will try to swallow it back, try to struggle with our illness. We have to learn to relax when we are sick"
Chögyam Trungpa. Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. London: Shambhala, 2002. pp 49-50
"Q: How do you take off your suit of armor? How do you open yourself?
A: It is not a question of how you do it. There is no ritual or ceremony or formula for opening. The first obstacle is the question itself: 'How?' If you don't question yourself, don't watch yourself, then you just do it. We do not consider how we are going to vomit; we just vomit. There is no time to think about it; it just happens. If we are very tense, then we will have tremendous pain and will not really be able to vomit properly. We will try to swallow it back, try to struggle with our illness. We have to learn to relax when we are sick"
Chögyam Trungpa. Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. London: Shambhala, 2002. pp 49-50
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