Today marks the 100th day of writing, and, appropriately so, it is one of the longest mediations. So long in fact, that it was necessary for me to record two separate videos. There is palpable enthusiasm in the writing, and rather than summarize or make commentary, I'll present a few excerpts, which include some important citations, beginning with the beginning:
"The purposeful wandering of the learning community unfolds in the profound and mysterious silence that follows the evocative speaking of the Sage. Where does this wandering take place and how does it proceed? Where does the learner land when she responds to the invocation invitation of the Sage and makes the Leap into poetic dwelling? What does this landing land? What is the land?"
"This region where the apprentice lands after she takes her leap into learning, and submits herself to the guidance of the Sage, is called an enchanted region because it is the domain where poetic dwelling unfolds. Poetic dwelling enacts the en-chantment of Being's calling conveyed through the appeal of language....Thus this region is said to be built for and by poetic dwelling. It is the building as abode, as the place for the wandering to take place, and the building as the making or ground-breaking of this path. This region can be assigned the name 'Tao' because it signifies a path-way and the way of moving along this path."
"To be authentically related to Being, what we are calling 'learning,' is to have a regard for Being's unfolding. To care for Being is to be painstaking in our listening to the call of the wholly Other, this 'Mystery' and to ek-sistent as the proper other of Being. To be the proper other of Being is to be 'the ek-sisting counter-throw [Gegenwurf] of Being, [which] is more than animale rationale precisely to the extent that he is less bound up with man conceived from subjectivity. Man is not the lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being. Man loses nothing in this 'less'; rather, he gains in that he attains the truth of Being. He gains the essential poverty of the shepherd, whose dignity consists in being called by Being itself into the preservation of Being's truth. The call comes as the throw from which the throwness of Da-sein derives. In his essential unfolding within the history of Being, man is the being whose Being as ek-sistence consists in his dwelling in the nearness of Being. Man is the neighbor of Being."
"Thus we respond to the question, Where does the apprentice land?, by reiterating the way of learning as action that produces a location. This is the poetic phenomenology of learning as the creative letting-be that releases the unified play of plurality. Heidegger has captured this with the name 'field of vision,' which denotes the perspective of the learner and the horizon that opens up and gathers this perspective. 'Therefore the field of vision is something open, but its openness is not due to our looking...It strikes me as something like a region, an enchanted region where everything belonging there returns to that in which it rests...And the enchantment of this region might well be the reign of its nature, its regioninng..."
"The purposeful wandering of the learning community unfolds in the profound and mysterious silence that follows the evocative speaking of the Sage. Where does this wandering take place and how does it proceed? Where does the learner land when she responds to the invocation invitation of the Sage and makes the Leap into poetic dwelling? What does this landing land? What is the land?"
"This region where the apprentice lands after she takes her leap into learning, and submits herself to the guidance of the Sage, is called an enchanted region because it is the domain where poetic dwelling unfolds. Poetic dwelling enacts the en-chantment of Being's calling conveyed through the appeal of language....Thus this region is said to be built for and by poetic dwelling. It is the building as abode, as the place for the wandering to take place, and the building as the making or ground-breaking of this path. This region can be assigned the name 'Tao' because it signifies a path-way and the way of moving along this path."
"To be authentically related to Being, what we are calling 'learning,' is to have a regard for Being's unfolding. To care for Being is to be painstaking in our listening to the call of the wholly Other, this 'Mystery' and to ek-sistent as the proper other of Being. To be the proper other of Being is to be 'the ek-sisting counter-throw [Gegenwurf] of Being, [which] is more than animale rationale precisely to the extent that he is less bound up with man conceived from subjectivity. Man is not the lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being. Man loses nothing in this 'less'; rather, he gains in that he attains the truth of Being. He gains the essential poverty of the shepherd, whose dignity consists in being called by Being itself into the preservation of Being's truth. The call comes as the throw from which the throwness of Da-sein derives. In his essential unfolding within the history of Being, man is the being whose Being as ek-sistence consists in his dwelling in the nearness of Being. Man is the neighbor of Being."
"Thus we respond to the question, Where does the apprentice land?, by reiterating the way of learning as action that produces a location. This is the poetic phenomenology of learning as the creative letting-be that releases the unified play of plurality. Heidegger has captured this with the name 'field of vision,' which denotes the perspective of the learner and the horizon that opens up and gathers this perspective. 'Therefore the field of vision is something open, but its openness is not due to our looking...It strikes me as something like a region, an enchanted region where everything belonging there returns to that in which it rests...And the enchantment of this region might well be the reign of its nature, its regioninng..."
3.0 - The 100th day!! I remember when my kids were in elementary school, and the 100th day was a day of celebration! I'm feeling that joy today as I mark the 100th day of 3.0 of this experiment that first happened 20 years ago and then was repeated 10 years ago. It never occurred to me when I was writing in 2004 that 20 years later I would be revisiting the daily writing. I frankly I hadn't planned for a 3.0. That's why it started a few days after the 14th of February, which is the day in 2004 when it all started. I believe it was on the 16th of Feb that I remembered it was the 20th anniversary of what I was then calling "363," which means: each day for a year minus 2 days out of humility. It turned out that I completed 366 daily meditations because 2004 was leap year. I do recall feeling challenged to complete my daily writing when I was in Edinburgh, Scotland for a conference. And here 20 years later I'm at it again and grateful I am doing it because it's really priming me for the sabbatical writing I'm just about to begin. It's like a daily exercise. Some mornings I get into the substance of the original meditations. Other mornings, like today, I'm in a more reflective mood. And I promised myself that in 3.0 I wouldn't put any pressure on myself to match the intensity of the original writing, which is noted above in all of the fragments that are quoted. By day 100 in 2004 I was really out there in the exploration, and under the heavy influence of Heidegger! That reminds me of my attempt to write a dissertation, and the manuscript I produced that was almost 200 pages long. It was a Heideggerian reading of Thomas Aquinas' mystical moment. I was working with Reiner Schürmann, who as supportive although somewhat skeptical of my ability (or non-ability) to read Latin. I had already encountered the same problem with Hegel and my inability to read German. I had written my MA thesis on Hegel under the advisement of Agnes Heller, and she never insisted I read Hegel in German. But a doc dissertation is really what distinguishes a scholar. But it turned out that the dissertation I ended up writing, on dialogue and learning, introduced me to the field of philosophy of education, and allowed me to combine my educations in philosophy from Fordham and the New School. The common threads between the two were Socrates and Habermas, and the dissertation continues to resonate! Only yesterday, in a high leverage meeting with the Provost, I quoted my dissertation thesis, which came to me like the bright clear songs of the birds singing this morning in the forest behind my home here in Portland. I can't imagine that my original Heideggerian dissertation would have such resonance 28 years after I defended it! All of that to say that the spirit of that original dissertation is moving through the Being and Learning project. And this is mostly because of the writing, the freedom of thinking, the poetic play with language, and the mystic overtones! "Therefore the field of vision is something open, but its openness is not due to our looking...It strikes me as something like a region, an enchanted region where everything belonging there returns to that in which it rests...And the enchantment of this region might well be the reign of its nature, its regioning..."
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