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.
Monday, April 14, 2014
Eduardo Duarte Being & Learning 2.0 PPM61 April 14, 2014 2:48 PM
PPM61 (Being and Learning, pp. 96-97) gets underway after a pre-reading commentary that takes up a few lines from The Bhagavad Gita, which I read and discussed earlier this afternoon with Stacy Smith at the Black Cat Cafe in my hometown of Portland, Maine (enjoying the drink we co-invented: el dominicano -- see pics included below). The lines from the Gita that caught my eye resonated quite powerfully with the commentary I made after reading PPM60 yesterday, specifically when I wrote about the part to whole relationship between the 'truths' and Being, and between 'education' and Learning. From the Gita, book 7, line 12, the voice of Krishna (the voice of Being?), says: "And know that the three Gunas, the three states of the soul, come from me: peaceful light, restless life, and lifeless darkness. But I am not in them: they are in me." These lines caught my attention because they seem to resonate with the trinity of the 'truths' of Being: the truth of disclosure, and the two moments of the truth of concealment (the absence of what is present beyond what is disclosed, and the absence of the future, the 'not yet'). In the video, both before and after reading PPM61, I discuss how these lines of the Gita do in some resonate, but are also offering up a different kind of part whole relationship, distinct from the reciprocity between Being and Learning I write about in PPM61. I write of the twofold play as the co-existence of two phenomenological forces (presencing, absencing) that co-exist reciprocially, relating one to the other through a reciprocal exchange. "The twofold play is thus a process of a reciprocal exchange, an 'unincorprated association.' To be 'incorporated' is to be united or combined into one body...To identify the twofold play as a reciprocal exchange is to recognize the two moments as distinct yet together in a common purpose. To stress the two moments as being 'unincorporated' is to emphasize the manifold nature of Being's processural unfolding." As I say in my post-reading commentary, the key for me is the ontological difference between Being and human being, and the enactment of freedom, or Learning. Without the difference, which is always present as the gap between Being and beings, as well as the gap between beings and beings, then there is no possibility of learning, no enactment of freedom, no repair and renewal of the world, no making of worldly objects (artifacts of our learning). Here is where it seems I depart from Krishna insofar as I want to mark the difference between the totality of existence and the singularity of existents. Does this mean that learning is happening in the "mysterious cloud of appearance" and thus falls short of moving "beyond the wold of shadows"? (line 14 from the Gita) And, if so, is there an analogy here between remaining in the cave versus moving into the open region beyond and outside it? This requires further thinking, because while it might sound or appear as if Krishna, and Plato, are emphasizing the 'higher value' of the 'highest transcendence' there is a sense in which the one who struggles to wander beyond the cave or the world of shadows remains very much a terrestrial being, moving now purposefully on the ground. And here Parmenides is helpful, for in his version of this story -- and let's face it, the story is more or less versions of the same song....more or less! -- it all about how we move along the earth, and what path we take, or the way we move on the 'path of humanity': one path, different 'ways' of moving along it. Perhaps. But there is still more work to do on this, and many many more meditations to read and comment on! However, on this day, when there is a full moon, and also a lunar eclipse happening, I have to call attention to a particular line that appears in PPM61: "...this most ancient understanding of Being and 'truth' was gradually forgotten, and over time, the stress was laid, emphatically by science, on the one side of appearance. Concealment was concealed, but in the essential way of concealment, for it was forgotten and thereby eclipsed. But the twofold is likened to an eclipse, where the brilliance of the Sun is momentarily shaded by the Moon, yet retained on the rims and made visible to the attentive and perceptive." May our study by brilliant, indeed!
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3.0a - there's a lot happening in both the original meditation and the 2.0 commentary, which is one of those that poignantly captures this day 10 years ago, where I was then in contrast to where I am today. Still in Portland, but the cafe where I met Stacy is under a different name and ownership, and the drink I created is a faded memory. And, unfortunately, so too the almost weekly gatherings with Stacy who I've more or less loss contact with. I mentioned her in a previous 3.0 commentary when I was writing about coincidences, serendipity, and synchronicity. Noteworthy and again, coincidentally, yesterday I made a note in my Routledge notebook, to include within the dialectic the two poles of Western and Eastern philosophy. To avoid contrivance I will refer back to this project. But if and only if I include John Cage, who I identify in my proposal, Cage's relationship with Zen Buddhism is noteworthy. However, I doubt Cage will be included. Nevertheless, the Chan School of Buddhism, which I highlight below, seems to be more than relevant. The question will be when to take it up! And I do think the African philosophical Ubuntu, the description of "I and We," might be another way to emphasize the learning community. There could and perhaps should be a connection made between Ubuntu and V.F. Cordova's essay on the "The We and the I." This will be taken up in part 3 Dialogue, and will focus on the limits of the Western philosophical understanding of the learning community. And this relationship between individual and community brings us back to the main theme of the original meditation from this day: the relationship between parts and whole, Being and beings, Learning and learners. The former denotes the actuality of Existence appearing/disappearing in the singular: a moment of the totality. The latter denotes the actuality of Learning appearing/disappearing in the singular as well, but as an existential modality. Learning only ever appears in the modality of the singular event. On this day I want to depart from the claim made 10 years ago: "Here is where it seems I depart from Krishna insofar as I want to mark the difference between the totality of existence and the singularity of existents." I depart from the departure. Currently the project is less inclined to denote "Being" as a totality, nor as distinct from beings. The two co-exist, co-emerge, together. If the original project was propelled by the desire to return to the form and content of the questions I was taking up as an undergrad at Fordham, then the mystical/philosophical undercurrent of those questions is flowing throughout the 2004 writing. 20 years ago the project was exploring mystic philosophy without naming it as such. If the sacred remains a part of the project it resides in the work of art, the significant object that stand out and remains in solitude (to borrow a term from M. Blanchot). Transcendence here is horizontal: the work of art captivating and re-placing the 'self' and its ego, if only for a moment.
ReplyDeleteNoteworthy: ten years ago there was a total lunar eclipse, which causes me to wonder about the cycles of eclipses, the patters of orbits, given last Monday's totality event.
3.0b- Here is the Stanford Encyclopedia's opening paragraph on Chan Buddhism: "The Chan School (Chan zong, 禪宗) is an indigenous form of Chinese Buddhism that developed beginning in the sixth century CE and subsequently spread to the rest of East Asia (Japanese: Zen; Korean: Sôn; Vietnamese; Thiền). Although the Sinograph “chan” (禪) transliterates the Sanskrit dhyāna or “meditation”, and Chan zong can thus be translated as the “Meditation School”, Chan was not distinctive within Chinese Buddhism in its use of meditative techniques. What distinguished Chan were its novel use of language, its development of new narrative forms, and its valorization of the direct and embodied realization of Buddhist awakening. In contrast with the epistemic, hermeneutical and metaphysical concerns that shaped other schools of Chinese Buddhism, Chan’s defining concerns were experiential and relational—concerns that fit most comfortably, perhaps, within the horizons of philosophical anthropology."
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