OPM123 June 16th Meditation, Being and Learning, ch 8, pp.203-204

There is a sticky note that I attached to the writing that happened this day ten years ago.   I must have written the note when I was 'copy-editing' the material after I received the contract from Sense.  (There wasn't much in the way of editing, or copy-editing, especially the latter, and the result is a book that is delightfully messy and full of typos!).   Anyway, the sticky note declares "This is a terrific representation of this work!"  Now, I must confess that part of me reads this and has a bit of a snide laugh, because the note reminds me of some of the most generic comments I write on my students' papers.   With this project, however, I could never be so self-effacing or ironic.  In fact, this writing is completely devoid of irony, cynicism and sarcasm.  It is one hundred percent sincerity, and is, for that reason, anachronic for the cultural era it was written.   To write poetic phenomenological mediations in the time of post-modernity is to be writing something from another lost time...and this is precisely what the project is about, without being romantic.  To recall the ancient beginnings, and anticipate new arrangements in the order of things.  This is the way of originary thinking.
OPM 123 is a reminder of the spirit of the project, its audacious sincerity that borders on expressing the naivety of faith, or the writing of a 'holy fool':  "Diminishment or emptying of the self prepares the way for the stewardship that is the devotion of the Tao, the care for Being...In turn, the one who devotes  himself to the Tao is the one who bears the tidings of the relationship between Being and Learning.  The bearing of the news...is identified in the comportment of the Sage, [his] poetic dwelling that we identified as 'humility'.  Humility is manifested to all the world...in his offering himself as most capable of learning."
Here we see the phenomenology revealing the force of the faith in the project.  Nothing but faith would give someone the confidence to write, with utter sincerity, about the devotion to the Tao and care for Being.  Of course both parts of that are referential and can be identified in specific moments in the writings of Lao Tzu and Heidegger.  But this would never be known if one hadn't encountered those citations along the way.  In lexicon of musical soloing this is call 'indexing,' when a specific phrase (usually the basic melody of a well known song) is 'quoted' by the soloist unexpectedly.  The index only works, however, if you recognize the melody, and in this sense the performer is demanding both a high level of attention (what I call 'painstaking listening') and a fairly robust musical literacy.   The same is expected with Being and Learning, which, as Sam Rocha noted in his review of the book, makes it appear as if a line of thought will be suddenly discontinued only to be taken up again twenty pages later.   This non-linear writing par excellence.   A kind of writing that demands the reader sustain an almost impossible amount of patience.  But in this sense the writing is calling forth to the reader with the very ontologies being documented in the meditations.   And in this sense the meditations have the epistle quality of Paul, the exemplary community builder!
It is not at all surprising to make this comparison with St. Paul, especially when describing this project as reducible to the faith of the holy fool.  While my primary reference to the figure of the holy fool is Dostoevsky, he derives his literary figures that are express that persona from Paul's writing of the 'fools for Christ.'  The holy fool is the counter-cultural figure who flaunts their faith in the public or rejects the conventions of that same public by exiling himself from it.  Examples are too numerous, but the ones I am most familiar and inspired by are:  Francis removing his fancy clothing in the square of Assisi and declaring himself a brother of Christ (and from that moment onward donning only a habit), and the 5th century Syrian saint Simeon, who stood atop a column for 39 years.  (I learned of Simeon when I was in Spain and studying the films of Luis Bunuel, specifically, his 1965 film Simon del Desierto)

I suppose what I am saying is that the daily writing of these meditations has a lot of characteristics of the holy fool behavior, not to mention the content of what they represented.   It goes without saying that the experiment of writing each day with the style I used is 'foolish' from the expectations of academic philosophy.   And the 'rationale' (if one can use this word to describe a work propelled by faith) is found in what is said each day in the writing.   We find this in OPM 123: "To be a learner is to be 'devotional,' to be dedicated and wholly applied to the task at hand...The diminished self is the emptied self...Openness is the bourne that is borne in upon the learner.  When a bourne is 'borne in upon' it becomes the bearing of the one who has received it.  The bourne that is 'borne in upon' "becomes one's firm conviction."  This is the 'devotional' modality of the learner..."