OPM 156, July 20th Meditation (commemoration)

The prompt for my commemorative commentary comes straight from the writing made this day ten years ago.  The meditation begins by asking “How does the ‘hidden harmony’ appear?”  And continues, “We might respond to this question by referring to Heraclitus’ fragment ‘Sound thinking is to listen well and choose one course of action.’” 

These first two lines prompted me to revisit the question I have been exploring the past week that has emerged from my attempt to understand what is actually involved in the turn from the mind to the heart.  The opening lines on ‘hidden harmony,’ ‘listening,’ and ‘sound thinking’ made me curious about the writing of yesterday’s commentary, specifically that moment when I was overwhelmed by the songs of birds resounding off the tall trees on this very steep hill that lead straight down into Casco Bay.   A moment before I was inundated by these songs I was intending to address the irony of writing about the deeper relationality from a place of solitude.   In that moment I envisioned I would muse on the aporia of writing from the place of solitude.  Yet, before I could begin that musing the bird songs overwhelmed me and I was reminded that solitude is an anthropocentric modality; indeed, a modality that comes from that singular subjectivity that this post-humanist project has viewed with suspicion.   This suspicion is precisely what Foucault expresses when he arrives at his distinction between ‘philosophy’ and ‘spirituality,’ identifying the former with the Cartesian meditation that ‘discovers’ the human mind is already capable of knowing the truth.    While there are certainly important implications for politics and ethics, the danger that I see in this perspective is the presumption that this cogito ego is self-sufficient, and, further, always on the brink of placing itself at the center of reality: not simply capable of knowing the truth, but in fact representing the Protagorean ‘measure’ of such truth, which is almost implying being the ‘maker’ of truth.   The danger of overestimation otherwise known as hubris is one that has lead to devastating consequences throughout human history.

With Heraclitus and most the ancients we always have the thinker diminished before the truth, which is to say, the ancient philosopher was not just reverential but a deeply perceptive and receptive thinker.  The question was one of finding the best way of receiving the truth.  And for Heraclitus the best way was listening.  Returning to his fragment: “Sound thinking is to listen well and choose one course of action.”  The translation tempts me to do something with the phrase ‘sound thinking,’ which would be a repetition of the path I took ten  years ago today when I explored the connection between Heraclitus’ ‘sound thinking,’ and the bodhisattva Wondrous Sound.  Today, however, after re-reading the meditation and placing the writing within the context of the question I have been pursuing this past week, I believe it’s unnecessary for me to make things more complicated than need be.  It seems enough to write: sound, listen.  And then the following fragment, distilled from this day’s meditation:

To think from the heart one must begin with listening.  Listening first to the rhythm of the heart, next to one’s breathing, and, finally, with ears focused, to Nature’s consonance.  To write from the heart would then entail writing detailed descriptions of the display of this sonic power.  And perhaps it would also entail composing melodies and rhythms that would be inspired by and express that power of sound.