On Play: Jazz, Basketball, and Writing

There are many Ways to play.  All Ways share a common practice – exploring the Limits of Self. 

Through countless hours of practice the musician makes their instrument an extension of themselves, so they no longer require awareness of the instrument itself, and instead can focus on what they are trying to express through their music.  In an ensemble, the musicians are also focused on the score: what they are trying to express in harmony with the other musicians.    

In basketball the instruments are the players themselves, and the play is completely dynamic – there is no "score" to focus on.    In basketball, the players are focused on the play itself, and in doing so on being so aware of themselves that they are no longer self-conscious.  On being so aware of their team mates that they "lose" their minds - to become Mind.  So that each player moves as effortlessly in Formation as each would move their own limbs.  Five fingers of One Hand.  They lose themselves in the Now so they can find Themselves.  They let go of the score so they can Score. 

When I write, I play.   And the writing instrument is an extension of myself that allows me to focus more on what I am trying to say and less on how I am trying to say it.  So that I can communicate the why.   So that I can be that communication.  So we can commune. 

Induction, Communion, and the Gender of God

Induction: 
1. Admission to an institution.   
2. Knowledge of general laws gained through experience of particulars.
3. The production of an electromagnetic state by the proximity (without contact) of an electrified or magnetized body.

 ***

In the beginning was the Word...  

... 

...He said, "Let there be Light," and there was Light.... 

... 

How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! ...You said in your heart, 'I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high... 

Light. The Positive. Yang. 

***

The First Communion is Baptism - induction into the church by washing away the primordial sins of independent Being and Knowing – the sins of our Exile from Eden through partaking in Forbidden Fruit. Exile through our primordial communion with Other. 

Communion is being one with god.  In Christianity this is through partaking in the blood and body of Christ. It is carnal knowledge of the Logos Incarnate.  So that we can give ourselves over to God and become one Mind, one Spirit, one Body.  To release our finitude in Infinity.  To relinquish our subjectivity to Other.  To return to Eden. 

The Miracle is Creation. But Creation is the communion of Male and Female. 

Abrahamic Monotheism recognizes only the Male: the Presence, the Light, the Exposition.  It denies the Female: the Absence, the Dark, the Mystery. 

Western science and engineering in general, and logical positivism in particular, is the ultimate expression of monotheistic metaphysics. It exposes all.  It conquers, controls and recreates nature in the image of Man's Will.  It explicitly aims to destroy all mysteries and metaphysics.  To uncover all, to completely eliminate all subject and thereby expose the pure Object.  And it thus Decides all in binary, digital, mechanical, automated, external, artificial intelligence.  The Pure Intellect.  It is the Cult of Other.  The Cult of Man.  The Fetish of the Phallus.  It is the triumph of Pure Ego as Super-Ego.  It is the superiority complex sprung from the fear of the unknown – fear of the Feminine and loathing of the inferior Self.  It is re-creation of the male through subjugation and denial of the female.  It is the creation of god in Man's Image.  It is Hubris. 

The Tao is Yin and Yang.  Complementarity of Opposites.  Dynamism of Figure and Ground.  Affirmation of Both.  

Buddhism is Neutrality.  Freedom through Dynamic Stasis.  Mutual cancellation of opposition.  Affirmation of Neither. 

Selflessness in Christianity and Buddhism  

The Selflessness of Christianity is exclusive and authoritarian.  You are Chosen or not.  It is the denial of subjectivity in favor of the Ultimate Other.   It is communion in the complete denial of subjective identity and thus of consistency.  It is the forlorn love of the abandoned child.   It is Image Worship without Love. 

The Selflessness of Buddhism is inclusive and empowering.  You choose yourself.  It is the affirmation of self and other in the recognition of common subjectivity.  It is communion in consistent incompleteness.  Is the mutual love of an equal friendship.  It is Love without image or Worship. 

Buddhism may be the anti-religion.  The freedom of transcendental immanence.  Now.  In this Life.  The religion of Being Self.  The religion of Knowing, Believing and Being Nothing.  The Presence of Absence and Absence of Presence.  All and Nothing. Of being full because of being empty.  The fertility of Openness.  The Way of Becoming. 

Induction.... 

Logos

...

On Counterpoint and Fugue

Meaning is at the cusp of Figure and Ground.   It is the tension between Sanity and Madness.  Order and Chaos.    Being and Nothingness. 

Often we talk past each other.  Or worse try to talk over each other.  When really we are looking for a dialogue.  For Harmony. 

There is so much to lose in Competition, and so much to gain through Complementarity.  Evolution is Co-evolution.  Point and Counterpoint. 

In the Synthesis between Thesis and Antithesis, each extreme is re-interpreted as the limit of the other.  From the limits of the poles of one axis emerges a new independent and complementary axis.  Thus in the Synthesis, Either-Or becomes BothandNeither.  Opposition is transcended through the limits of its immanence.   

This Negotiation – the creation of a shared perspective -  requires common reference points and a common system of representation.  It requires an Origin and Orthogonality. 

For a student to truly make new knowledge her own, she must restate it in her own words.  This is not Recitation, but Reinterpretation – Redefinition of Self and Other. 

For in order to learn we must first Know: to be aware and to understand.  This is Mind. 

For when we Know, then we can Believe: to relate our knowledge to our own experiences and Core Values.  This is Heart. 

And finally, when we Believe then we can Be: to practice and live our known beliefs as Truth Procedure.  This is both Body and Spirit. 

And when we are Being in the World we can Encounter: to discover the limits of our own true knowledge, values, and actions.  The limits of our Consistence and Completeness.  the Limits of Self and Other. 

And when we Encounter we can Transcend: to Interpret the Ambiguity of the Text. To reevaluate all values.  To see that Faces and Vase, Point and Counterpoint, Thesis and Antithesis, Figure and Ground -  are both Affirmed, are both Denied.  To see both coexist in complementary Truth and Harmony. 

And when we Transcend, then we can Know anew.... 

All Life is a Remix – but this is not to say life is plagiarism.  Quite the opposite.  Meaning is created in the reweaving and interweaving of Self and Other.  And in Good Faith is Attribution -  not for Ego, but for both Respect and Perspect.  It is to anchor our respective maps in a common Territory.  It defines Objectivity as what joins our Subjectivity. 

For we are  the Intersection – the Nexus – of our Relations.  We are the limit of that which Binds and Separates. 

Is it a first salvo or the first olive branch?   What does this even mean? 

What is offered is the opportunity for mutual growth. Not competition but cooperation – co-evolution. 

A Gift of Mutuality.   

A Return of Favour. 

Could it be that in saying that an unexamined life is not worth living we are acknowledging the necessity of a mind for reading? 

Yes, I agree completely - we need a dialogue. 

For we are all texts.  And each student is her own essay. 

This essay is incomplete.  It is still being writt 

Objective Knowledge is Subjective Knowledge

My objection to the absolutist edifice of Western Thought in general, and the Abrahamic Religions in particular, is that ultimately they preach the concession of control and judgement to an external authority (note: the Realist authority of “Objective Truth” in Scientism is no exception).  This attitude encourages dependency and anxiety and devalues and humiliates the subject.  While I wholeheartedly believe humility is a necessary condition for enlightenment, I also believe that this humility rests - not on guilt, shame or inferiority - but the exact opposite.  Humility is Compassion, and the latter can only arise through the subject’s acceptance, love and faith in Self.   Any philosophy that is grounded in an external authority is both manipulative and irresponsible.  Any “freedom” granted by an external authority is at best contingent; while faith in the authority’s magnanimity and power to forgive and save may be seen by some as the freedom to release their personal burdens, that “freedom” comes with an even larger burden of fealty to an unknown authority whose values you cannot truly know and thus have no reason to believe you share.  Because the values you are taught to judge yourself by are not your own you have no means to determine whether you can ever measure up.  Thus you are forever Unworthy.  That this is psychologically toxic goes without saying.

The only person who has the right and the authority to judge and forgive you, is You.  The opinions of others are only valid to the degree their values align with your own.

True happiness is self awareness:  to be so conscious of your Self that you are no longer self-conscious.

True happiness is determined by the locus of control.  Self control. I cannot accept Western religion in particular but absolutist western philosophy in general because it is founded on authoritarianism: the core concept is that the locus of control -Truth - is grounded exclusively externally to the subject.  It devalues the subject.

I agree that the subject by definition is incomplete - Being is always the process of Becoming.  However this does not preclude the ability of the subject to be Consistent.  For at the very least the subject is by definition the subject: this is Identity.  And through continual focus on the core of their evolving identity - consistency with their own true Values, and thus on becoming their own true self, the subject’s perspective is valid - particularly to the degree that their values align with those true subjective values of others.  Then the negotiation of reality between subjects becomes a search for mutual consistency through shared values.  The negotiation depends on a shared system of representation and meaning - ie language.  Negotiation is a calibration of subjective meaning to find shared meaning through a common focal point grounded in a common set of values and mediated through a common language.  Exactly as two eyes create depth perception, negotiation between subjects gives rise to objective truth, at least epistemically.  The core of postmodern thought is the understanding of the validity of this negotiation and the fact that this is the only means we have to expand our horizon of Completeness.  This is the foundation for the evolution of Knowledge.  This is Being in Time.

I do not deny the possibility of external objective truth.  That would be solipsism and would kill the ability of the subject to learn and grow.  I merely deny the exclusive and absolute authority of the external objective truth.  I argue that we have no choice but to recognize the authority and validity of the subject, for if we are truly honest, this is the sole foundation of our Epistemology.

出家

17才の時、「欲」に満ち溢れた、腐敗しきった世界に絶望し、出家を決めかけていた僕へ、亡き父が贈った言葉:

「悟り」には袈裟が不要。
「悟り」にはお寺が不要。
「悟り」には出家が不要。

充分かもしれないが、必須では無い。

44才の今、僕がやっとたどり着いたところ:

「修行」の目的は「自分」を知り、「自分」を認め、「自分」を極めることで「悟り」を目指すことである。

「悟り」には「形」が無い。
「悟り」とは「形」の超越である。
「形」が無いから、「形」にこだわる以上、「悟り」に至らない、辿れない。

そして「悟り」は「場所」では無い。

「悟り」は「道」である。
「悟り」は「未知」である。
「悟り」は「無知」の「道」である。

「道」には袈裟が無用。
「道」にはお寺が無用。
「道」には出家が無用。

「道」とは真の「家」(うち)を知る、「真」の「家」に帰る、「心」の「家」に生きることである。
常に「心」の「家」に生きることで初めて「家」を超越する可能性が生まれる。

「家」を知るには、外から見つめる方法もある。でも、必須では無い。充分かもしれないが、必須では無い。

「道」には「無用」
「道」には「無要」

「道」は無形である。
「道」は「無形」である。
「道」は「無家」である。

お父さん、ただいま。

Quantum Logic and Time - Gesundheit!

What will be the new logic for quantum computing and qubits?  Can it - should it - be binary?  What does this mean for the Church-Turing Thesis and the Halting Problem? In other words: what is Decision?

Decision is Choice: bifurcation into either/or.  It is the collapse of the wave function.  Choice is the differential calculus.

Can Choice also be Integration? Can it be the regeneration of the superposition state of both/neither?

Is the question rooted in the arrow of time?  Is the Limit of our universe the limits of integration?  Is it because information - the constant C - was lost in the the Differential?  Is it because there are infinite possible situations depending on how you choose C?  Is it because in the Limit, Integration makes the constant C thus a variable?

Can we choose C?  Can we choose All C in the Limit?  Can we transcend constancy and variability, Consistency and Completeness? Can we transcend the arrow of time?

Can we choose to unchoose?

This is the Entscheidungsproblem.

Gesundheit!

Open for Business

All Knowledge is tentative.  Our Axioms are what we accept - for now.  Our Laws of Nature - but even our Laws of Mathematics - are not immune to epistemic question.  Laws are merely hypotheses, Induced from experience and thus subject to overturn by a single exception.  Their strength - or rather the strength of our conviction - comes from the rigour of our testing and the heretofore absence of contradiction. But we must admit to ourselves that in laying these Laws at the Foundation of our Reason, we are taking a Leap of Faith.

Inquiry has no finality.  All conclusions are merely where we have decided to leave off - for now.  All decisions are tentative.

We are Open.

My Obsession - an Exerpt

From an unfinished letter to a friend long ago.  Long and prosaic, but that in itself is revealing…

***

…My passion is to explore the relationship between the physical world and the conscious mind.  In particular I am fascinated by how inert matter can become "alive", through incorporation into a certain pattern, and how learning and memory is encoded at different time scales.  That is to say for instance, that life has a physical/chemical language for hard-coding information (memory) about its Identity as a library of historical Solutions to environmental challenges, both at the Species ("genome") and the individual (“genes”) level.  Life has a mechanism to adapt to its physical environment (learn) both at the Species level through multiple generations of individuals (evolution),  but also at the individual level over the individual's life span (somatic-development and neural-learning).  Further and significantly, we as humans have an additional dimension: a “virtual” language that not only soft-codes our learning but allows us to communicate our experiences and thus virtually learn from each-other (“natural language").  And this virtual language has a “life” of its own at the Species level,  arising from and existing through the minds of individuals, with Culture and History evolving in the "virtual world" as a result.   We each learn, carry and create a thread of that cultural "genetic" history over the course of our life times.  And through this kind of verbal intercourse that you and I are engaged in right now that thread gets woven into new combinations, spawning new ideas, new virtual life forms…

More to come...

Fashion-Do: The Way of Fashion

Fashion is Artifice, but not Art.   Fashion is the purest distillation of The Spectacle.  To be harsh and crude, Fashion in particular - but the Spectacle in general - is the Whoring of Signification. It intentionally divorces “seeming” from “meaning” to create Appearance-for-Itself.  It Allures but does not Reveal.  It only Obscures and any illusion of “depth” it promises is merely the vacuous barren tunnel of Funhouse Mirrors.  It is Pure Dissemblance for Exploitation and Profit.
Maya-in-Itself.

Fashion-Dou:  The Way of Losing The Way

The Spectacle Consumes All

My guess is that if I share my critique I will later find it as a new Brand or Line of Clothing:  “Fashion-Do”
With catchy prints such as “This Shirt Is False” or “Ceci n’est pas un Shirt”

The Uniform:  Mindfulness and Mindlessness of Signification.

My thoughts turn to the white Honda uniform which allows worker and manager alike to see which processes need attention.  In its whiteness it is vulnerable - all wear their hearts on their sleeves.  As Derrida says, we are all texts, evolving and open to interpretation.  The text is more legible on a uniform background.  Meaning exists on the frontier of Figure and Ground.

The intent of uniform apparel is to remove the need for signification through fashion.  To calm the mind.  But that Act itself Signifies, at least through its Pragmatics.  The ultimate irony is the Monk’s Robe.  It has come to signify the opposite of its intent.  My understanding is that the robe originally was constructed from discarded rags of the laity.  Plainness.  Humility.  Respect. Equality.   Now it signifies Exclusivity.  Secrecy. The Religious Elite.
Has the Robe become a form of Fashion?

This Buddhist Monk Is A Celebrity Makeup Artist And His Instagram Is Fierce As Hell

Meet Kodo Nishimura, Japan's badass makeup monk.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/this-buddhist-monk-is-a-celebrity-makeup-artist-and-his-inst
https://tricycle.org/magazine/buddhist-life-kodo-nishimura/

I applaud and admire Nishimura’s desire to help himself and others find happiness.  The part I am unsure of is how or whether he is able to guide the search for Self and the calming of the Mind.

Makeup is the Covering of self in order to Appear for others.  At first blush it seems to be antithetical to the Buddhist Way, because it places the criteria and power of Value Judgement externally to the subject - as the indigestible and unsatisfiable but yet internalized Ideal of Other.  This is the most dangerous form of Maya because the subject substitutes the foreign Ideal for their own beliefs.  This is the most painful form of misery.

If he is doing this intentionally as a an extreme purging and subversion, taking Fashion to its Limits in the manner that logical positivism took Physical Science to its limits, then it is a deep exploration indeed.  But it is fraught with extreme difficulty and danger, for it is none other than redefining the Blue Pill as the Limits of the Red, and vice versa.   This Way is long and treacherous, but noble as it plumbs the depths of Differance:  how is the Signifier different from the Signified, and how can Signification be Transcended.