The reading of PPM15 happens on the mezzanine of the lobby of the Millennium Knickerbocker Hotel, Chicago, which is the first road trip recording; this in keeping with the spirit of the original meditations, which were written each day from wherever I happen to be. In terms of substance, this meditation returns to the original question, How are we turned around to Learning, i.e., to our encounter with Being's presencing? The jam on this question includes terminology that has been developed thus far in the experiment, and I write, "The turning around, the adjustment (tuning) toward attunement, toward the condition of Learning, constitutes a relocation, or repositioning. Our repose is the result of our being re-posed...to be 're-posed' is to be 'posed again'...as in making us questions." To be made a question is to be placed into the modality that constitutes the heart of the relationship between Being and learning. In other words, when we 'become' questions we are ready for learning. And what makes us ready for learning is the evocative speech that convey the "tidings of the thoughtful word." Fundamental words, or first words, such as 'Nothing' or 'wu-i-wu' or even 'freedom,' when heard evocatively have the effect of re-posing us into learning. This is why the reading of first philosophers is so important. They prompt us to toward thinking.
February 13, 2014 was the 10th anniversary of the original experiment that produced 363 phenomenological mediations, published as 'Being and Learning' (Brill: 2012). Each day between Feb 2014-15, I returned to the original meditations, and my commentary is documented here. And then, again, on February 15, 2024, on the 20th anniversary of the first days of the original experiment, I revisit and comment on a daily basis, once again.
3.0 (20/10 yrs later) - context 10 years ago...on the road in Chicago; 20 years later, on board the flight that was diverted to Hartford! (normally i fly from Portland to NYC and arrive at Hofstra in 3.5 hrs). Apparently there was *fog* that had descended onto La Guardia, and is now lifting. Tempting as it is to ruminate on the descending and ascending fog that causes diversion and delays, I'll pass...or perhaps not. This experience is recalling the medieval mystical text I studied as an undergrad at Fordham, when I was heavily invested in mysticism, that strange place in between philosophy and theology, that place of mysterious spirituality, that place where we might be placed when we receive the evocative beckoning of the open via the question, "How is it with the 'Nothing'?" When we are attentive we are capable to receive displacement from the chronological and linear flow of everyday life as a gift, a crisis that reveals the essential: freedom. We too often 'forget' freedom, the essential, which is primarily a quality of Being: spontaneity, improvisation, creation. In this forgetfulness we reduce 'freedom' to ourselves, to the will. When we are recalled to Freedom we encounter that primary quality.
ReplyDeleteThe aforementioned medieval text: "The Cloud of Unknowing"
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