OPM 115 is the meditation that constitutes the last pages of Being and Learning chapter 7, "The Saying of the Sage." As I say in my post-reading commentary, OPM 115, and, hence the culmination of chapter 7, is Taoist, with Lao Tzu's teaching of diminishment, which describes so elegantly the move of the sage that allows for what Heidegger calls the teacher "who lets nothing but learning be learned." OPM 115 returns to one of the very first modalities taken up: the juridical voice (cf. OPM 9, 10, 19). Here in OPM 115 what was initially described as the hermeneutics of destruktion (which indicates a radical phenomenological posture insofar as the subject is totally displaced by the disclosure of the other -- hence why the listening is 'painstaking') is here described as renunciation. Releasement, the willing of non-willing, the ongoing renunciation of the juridical voice, is thus 'diminishment' in the sense of the Taoist 'non doing'. Meditative thinking in this sense is 'preparatory' for a form of phenomenological teaching that fulfills what Heidegger, cited in OPM 114, calls the essence of truth...freedom: "being free for what is opened up in an open region. Such being free points to the heretofore uncomprehended essence of freedom." In OPM we encounter the complementary from Lao Tzu, which speaks directly to the way meditative thinking takes the sage into the midst of the dynamic relationship between Being and learning: "He who devotes himself to learning (seeks) from from day to day to increase (his knowledge); he who devotes himself to the Tao (seeks) from day to day to diminish (his doing). He diminishes it and again diminishes it, till he arrives at doing nothing (on purpose). Having arrived at this point of non-action, there is nothing which he does not do."(The Tao, II:48)
There is no more radical a phenomenological posture than the one here described by Lao Tzu as diminishment. But, as I have taken up a number of occasions in this blog, and more so in Being and Learning, it is one thing to describe such diminishment as an aspirational ideal, and quite another to take the leap of faith via renunciation of the self-certain ego (the normative academic persona). An authentic leap will remain open to what is consistently described as the 'unforseeable' and 'uncertain' and, in following the Taoist teaching, this will completely diminish the faculty of judgment. To diminish is thus to be in that place that Nietzsche identified as beyond good and evil. Again, a most radical phenomenological position, and one that can only be felt as completely disorienting for those of us so accustomed to habit of judging, and who live within an economy that so clearly identifies 'best practices' and so forth. In OPM 115, the Buddhist Master Kumarajiva elucidates this point when he writes of the one who practices meditative thinking: "He then puts aways all that is fine about him. He does so till he has forgotten all that was good in it. But the bad was wrong, and the good is right. Having diminished the wrong, and also diminished the right, the process is carried on till they are both forgotten. Passion and desire are both cut off; and his virtue and the Tao are in such union that he does nothing; but though he does nothing, he allows all things to do their own doing, and all things are done."
There is no more radical a phenomenological posture than the one here described by Lao Tzu as diminishment. But, as I have taken up a number of occasions in this blog, and more so in Being and Learning, it is one thing to describe such diminishment as an aspirational ideal, and quite another to take the leap of faith via renunciation of the self-certain ego (the normative academic persona). An authentic leap will remain open to what is consistently described as the 'unforseeable' and 'uncertain' and, in following the Taoist teaching, this will completely diminish the faculty of judgment. To diminish is thus to be in that place that Nietzsche identified as beyond good and evil. Again, a most radical phenomenological position, and one that can only be felt as completely disorienting for those of us so accustomed to habit of judging, and who live within an economy that so clearly identifies 'best practices' and so forth. In OPM 115, the Buddhist Master Kumarajiva elucidates this point when he writes of the one who practices meditative thinking: "He then puts aways all that is fine about him. He does so till he has forgotten all that was good in it. But the bad was wrong, and the good is right. Having diminished the wrong, and also diminished the right, the process is carried on till they are both forgotten. Passion and desire are both cut off; and his virtue and the Tao are in such union that he does nothing; but though he does nothing, he allows all things to do their own doing, and all things are done."
3.0 - (Saturday) This past week I was reflecting a bit on the differences between the OPM project and the sabbatical book I'm currently writing. And I started by emphasizing the difference in style and content between the two. But as the week concluded I realized that the sabbatical book is a more distilled version of the OPM project, which is to say that the core ideas I explored in the original writing are still very much at the center of what I am now working on. Memory figures importantly here: the recognition of continuity between then and now. I definitely need to be a bit stubborn about my work. I was reminded of that yesterday when I was working on the part 1: Reading. I started to venture away from my principal sources and then caught myself from going any further. I need to be stubborn about my sources and get rid of the habit of looking over my shoulder or rather imagining that someone (the figure of authority, the academic judge) is looking over my shoulder. Where does the expectation of what I "should" and "should not" do come from? That's a complex question that is part cultural/historical and part psychological. What's necessary is that the writing/thinking is an expression of what I have been doing in the classroom all these many years (31 to be precise!). That's what I need to share. Folks will be critical either way, so I might as well stand on ground that I am familiar with. It's a defensive posture, for sure. And that's what is different about this project. The OPM project which I am revisiting this year, 20 years after the original daily writing/thinking experiment, was an expression of the content itself: wandering, searching, exploring, what Glissant calls "itinerant" thinking. The original OPM project was designed to roam. Hence OPM 114 calls the essence of truth...freedom: "being free for what is opened up in an open region. Such being free points to the heretofore uncomprehended essence of freedom." When life at the university felt increasingly closed, I was called to find a space of freedom. I was bored and frustrated with academic writing. The sabbatical 2024 project is the opposite. It's an attempt to reanimate or breathe life back into the campus. In a sense, it's about the return of the wandering sage.
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