The Great Mystery As Teacher I: The Source As Mystery

Scott Bradley

For the title of the sixth chapter of the Zhuangzi Ziporyn translates "The Great Source as Teacher" and Mair has "The Great Ancestral Teacher". In both cases we are directed to 'that' from which all things originate. Since all the titles of the Inner Chapters are almost certainly the additions of a later editor, we should not take them as necessarily how Zhuangzi himself would have summarized this (again likely editor created) assemblage of his writings.

A great deal of what Zhuangzi is saying here does, however, direct us to consider the implication of an unknown Source and to allow this to teach us how best (most happily) to engage in the life experience. The guiding principle in this is that despite an undeniable sense that there is a Source, we cannot honestly say anything about 'It'. Even to say that 'It' is, is saying too much. "The [Dao] has a certain realness and reliability to it, but no deliberate activity and no definite form." (6:30; Ziporyn) It is this double-edged sword of there seeming to be a necessity on the one hand and a total lack of the definite on the other that makes this experience so poignant. It is very much like emptiness, a something that is nothing. And it is in this that the human experience is rooted; we seem full and real, and yet we are a morning mist, soon dispersed.

Thus, for my part, I have put a more interpretive spin on the title of this chapter: "The Great Mystery as Teacher". Because the Source is utter Mystery, all things are utter Mystery. This is perhaps the first lesson it has to teach us. However much we know about things, still we truly know nothing. When everything is explained, what is most fundamental still remains unexplained. In this sense all knowledge is, as Zhuangzi tells us, "peculiarly unfixed". Kierkegaard uses the image of sewing with an unknotted thread; as we sew it all unravels behind us; all well and good for our immediate purposes, but never really sewing things up.

Mystery does not tell us to abandon knowledge any more than it tells us to abandon life; it simply teaches us to live as in the constant presence of Mystery, that is, peculiarly unfixed. What we learn from Mystery in affirming it as fundamental to everything is to release ourselves into it, letting go every pretense of fixed substantiality.

Zhuangzi makes free and loose in his references to Source. He is not hung up on words, does not fear he might say the wrong thing. Too much precision may be more a sign of a false belief that something can actually be said, than careless words. (Thus is it anathema to say "One", as if "non-dual" were closer to the 'truth'.) Thus, we have "Dao", "The Great Clump", and the "Creator of Things". There is freedom here; evidence of freedom. The fish-trap has been forgotten; “who has forgotten words, that I might have some words with him?”

You can check out Scott's writings on Zhuangzi here.

At Play With Self I

Scott Bradley

Kierkegaard tells us that the more we are aware of self, the more self we have. For him, this is a positive outcome since being an aware self is the prerequisite for a relationship with that "power which constitutes it", its Creator. The alternative would be to be bound within an encapsulated self which cannot see beyond itself. As alien as this may seem to those of us of a more "Eastern" persuasion where self is generally seen in a negative light, still I think Zhuangzi might have smiled in agreement with such a view.

To be self-aware is to be a self that sees itself. What does it see? It sees its foibles, its stupidities, its smallness. But if it sees itself, then it more than itself; or rather, it is more than its encapsulated self. Zhuangzi's hypothetical sage who has "no self" might also be described as one who has so much self that she doesn't have to be that ridiculously encapsulated self. She also "has no name", but my guess is that if we called her name she would look up.

One manifestation of being self-aware is the ability to laugh at one's self. Zhuangzi does this all the time. He makes pronouncements, then admits that they are groundless. There is good evidence that the whole of the Inner Chapters are a kind of joke. Zhuangzi figures that if he can get us laughing we might be set free from the seriousness that accrues to fixation on . . . well, things "fixed". It's hard to imagine Xunzi with all his rights and wrongs and pseudo-rational proofs of the truth of his way having a good laugh at himself. No, this is all very serious stuff, this spirituality. This is perhaps why he is able to so readily endorse the "five punishments" (tattooing, nose chopping, foot lopping, castration, and death).

One reason I love the humor of Woody Allen is its self-deprecating nature, as for instance, when he admits to being one of the 'few' males who experiences "penis-envy", an attribute that Freud intended only as descriptive of females. (A projection, no doubt.) This kind of self-awareness obviously does not make one a sage, but it's a good start.

To be self-aware is to have a self to play with. Monopoly is fun because it's a game. When we know it's a game we have fun; when we take it seriously we get angry, or hurt, or vengeful, or throw a tantrum. He who can play with his self, is also more likely to able to play well with others.

To have this larger self to which Kierkegaard aspired is to experience a kind of self-transcendence. This may not meet the specifications of no-self and other more radical pronouncements of ultimate spirituality, but for us novices in the way, it's a great first step.

You can check out Scott's writings on Zhuangzi here.

A Way Without Grace II

Scott Bradley

In this morning's post, we saw Kierkegaard's argument for the necessity of grace for a human being to apprehend the truth. Being in a state of "untruth" (sin), we are incapable of realizing truth. This is analogous to our inability to climb out of our subjectivism to see ourselves objectively. The subject cannot be objective. Grace is the 'divine' intervention which is absolutely necessary for the inherently incapable to become capable.

But this is really just Christian theology and is far removed from Daoist and, ostensibly, Eastern thought generally. The differences between these are so profound as to render them irreconcilable. (The East may be able to absorb the West, but the West cannot absorb the East without the loss of its essential belief in revealed, objective truth.)

However, the reason I chose to address this issue is that one frequently hears those who subscribe to an Eastern perspective speak of grace and its derivatives as part of the spiritual experience. The Universe "moves" and "guides" us. It "has a purpose" for us. Things "happen for a reason". So what? — apart from a certain degree of inconsistency and muddle-headedness, what difference does it make? Hopefully, my concern isn't with orthodoxy. It isn't. My concern is simply to clarify what is Philosophical Daoism's point of departure because it is that from which everything else flows.

In order to experience the philosophy of life that it espouses, we need to apply its presuppositions to life. If life is a casino, and I decide to play craps, I need to know the rules. Those rules do not apply to blackjack, nor do they tell blackjack players that their rules are wrong. Blackjack players need to follow blackjack rules to profit from choosing and playing blackjack. Craps players need to follow craps rules to profit from playing craps. Philosophical Daoists need to understand Daoism's perspective to fully benefit from pursuing that path. Christians need to understand the Christian perspective to benefit from that path. And this latter was precisely what Kierkegaard wanted to accomplish in the face of nominal, state Christianity, on the one hand, and Hegelianism (which "explained" everything), on the other. If you want to be a Christian, he said, then be one; live it out in life.

Philosophical Daoism is essentially monist; there is One Reality. All things are one cloth. Dao does nothing, yet nothing is left undone. All things arise without having been made to arise. There is one, contiguous ontological Reality. Philosophical Daoism is non-dual. Creation requires a Creator, and a Creator requires that there be two. The Creator cannot be Its creation — ever. If there are two, one can act upon the other in grace and guidance. If there are two, one can be separated from the other. If there is one reality, there is no divine intervention. Nor is there any essential difference between one thing and another; Dao is all things and all things are Dao.

Daoism is the way of nature because it recognizes no separation between nature and ultimate reality and it is nature that we are and with which we interface.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

A Way Without Grace I

Scott Bradley

In demonstrating the similarities between Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi, Ivanhoe and Carr (The Sense of Antirationalism: The Religious Thought of Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard) must also reveal the very substantial ways in which they differ. Perhaps the most profound among these is in the primacy of "grace" in Kierkegaard and its complete absence in Zhuangzi.

The easiest way to understand what grace is might be to follow Kierkegaard's argument for its necessity. (This same argument is also the clearest explanation of why a teacher is absolutely necessary for 'awakening' that I have yet to read; and thus why Zhuangzi saw no similar need.)

Kierkegaard begins by contrasting Christian and Socratic epistemology. For Socrates, truth is already in the individual and its recognition is a question of 'recollection'. A teacher's only task, therefore, is to act as midwife, helping one rediscover their own truth. But for Kierkegaard (and Christianity), not only is the truth not already in the individual, but the ability to discover and receive it are also completely absent. This is because humanity is in a condition of "sin", separation from God (and truth) as an essential, irremediable fact. Humanity is inherently fucked-up (“fallen”). (For Socrates, "sin" is merely ignorance.)

Truth, therefore, must come from outside, from a teacher. But it is not enough to offer truth, for the human is not able to understand and receive it; the human abides in a state of "untruth". A teacher, therefore, must also provide the condition whereby truth can be received. This requires extraordinary (miraculous) transformation. And it is this unmerited gift of transformation that is grace.

But no ordinary teacher could possibly provide this transformation. Only a teacher who is not in a condition of sin could do so. But how could this one be free of sin except by the transformational grace of another, and that one of another, ad reducio? This teacher must, therefore, be so extraordinary as to have never been in a state of sin. But then this teacher is not a teacher, but a Savior. (You know the rest of the story.)

Those who proclaim the necessity of a teacher-as-the-means-to-awakening must, it seems to me, answer the question of where this power of the bestowal of grace originated. Grace implies external intervention. Where did it come from?

One often hears of grace, life-purpose, “being led”, and all manner of other miraculous events in the speech of those who otherwise make no claim to belief in a supernatural Entity. It’s not so much these ‘small’ beliefs which give one pause, but the larger inconsistencies. But does it really matter? Probably not; we don’t have to get it right to get it. But from the Zhuangzian perspective, it does matter what I believe because those beliefs determine my point of departure. It matters in all manner of practical ways that I understand, for instance, that all things arise without having been made to do so. The way of Zhuangzi is without grace, which is not to say it is graceless towards those who differ.

You can check out Scott's writings on Zhuangzi here.

Transparently Grounded

Scott Bradley

Carr and Ivanhoe (The Sense of Antirationalism) make passing reference to Kierkegaard's concept of the ultimate human good: that one should be "transparently grounded in the power that posits it". Though his conception of what that "power" "is" is very different from the Daoist perspective, the outcome of his vision is nonetheless in many ways remarkably similar to that of Daoism. It is instructive in itself that two radically different starting points can arrive at such a similar psychological experience.

Admittedly, it might be argued that these words meant something very different to Kierkegaard than they mean to philosophical Daoism, but I think if we just let the words speak for themselves they reveal something so fundamental as to be beyond their differences.

Both visions understand the importance of surrendering into, and thus being identified with, the Totality. The identification is seen in the "transparency". Daoism speaks of the Great Transparency, Dao understood as that in which all things are equal and participate equally in Reality. In the final analysis, this is the Daoist goal, to hide oneself in the Totality where nothing is lost. For this to happen, however, one must realize the "transparency" which admits no fixed and concrete self-identity. This is the price of admission, but since it is giving up what one never truly had in the first place, an illusion which is the source of every experience of disharmony, it is really just free. Still, to release our hold on this illusion would seem to be the hardest thing of all.

The idea of "being grounded" is not one that sits well with Daoism because it would seem to imply a thing to ground and a something into which to be grounded, neither of which is assumed to be the case. Nevertheless, "far and unfettered wandering" is an experience had by 'someone', on the one hand, and that happens 'somewhere', even if that be "the vast wilds of open nowhere", on the other. To the extent that one can be "grounded" in the ever-transforming and the never-to-be-known, Daoism invites us to experience just that.

In the end, despite being the hardest thing to do, to be transparently grounded in the vastness is the simplest solution to the human experience of suffering. Its simplicity consists in its already being the fact of the case. It is neither earned nor attained; it is. All one need do to experience it is to release into it.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Indirect Communication

Scott Bradley

I have begun reading Carr and Ivanhoe's The Sense of Antirationalism: The Religious Thought of Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard. If you have been following my ramblings for long you will know that these are my two most favorite philosophers and that I have often made mention of the similarities between them, so you will understand my enthusiasm for this study.

In their introduction to Kierkegaard's philosophy they make mention of his commitment to indirect communication, an aspect which I am sure they will later relate to the technique of Zhuangzi, who never quite delineates anything as cut and dry. For Kierkegaard, the use of pseudonyms was the principle means by which he sought to communicate indirectly. But this was not simply a question of using false names, but also of taking contrary positions. The value of this approach is multifaceted.

Most importantly, Kierkegaard understood that 'truth' is a subjective experience and has to be "appropriated" by each individual through existential struggle. No one can spoon feed it to another. In this, he was a devout follower of the Socratic Method wherein one acts as a 'midwife' in helping a person to realize their own 'truth'. Socrates helped people question their assumptions and believed that that was enough to set them on their own path to understanding.

Secondly, he understood that when you tell someone something they automatically set up defenses against it. Believing that nominal Christianity had robbed people of the true Christian experience (think of this as a form of enlightenment), he did not tell them that he was a Christian and they were not, but instead that they were and he was not, in such a way that they questioned if they really were. Nearly every attempt that I have made to share the Daoist vision has ended in failure, so this speaks to me directly. I won't pretend that my failure to live my blabber had no part in this failure or that my presentation was well conceived, but I have also seen how this innate defensiveness comes into play.

Thirdly, this allowed Kierkegaard to say more than was true for him. By writing pseudonymously he was able to distance himself from what he wrote: "Thus is the pseudonymous works there is not a single word by me. I have no opinion about them except as a third party, no knowledge of their meaning except as a reader, not the remotest private relation to them . . ." (Concluding Unscientific Postscript). I have said the same of Chen Jen and Zhouzi and say the same to a lesser extent about these posts. They are 'poetic' aspirations, not expressions of my actualization and speak to me as to a third party.

Returning to Zhuangzi, it is probably the case that all of these aspects of indirect communication apply in his use of fantastic stories, anecdotes, and seemingly contrary assertions. Above all, we are invited to think — to think ourselves out of our boxes and to discover truth that is true for us.

You can check out Scott's writings on Zhuangzi here.

More Self

Scott Bradley

Kierkegaard, in the opening paragraph of his The Sickness unto Death, tells us that "the more consciousness of self, the more self." For him, more self is a positive value. Since self-consciousness might be described as the most defining attribute of the human experience, one would think that this affirmation of self would be near universally affirmed, yet within the various religious traditions this is frequently not the case. Instead, we are told that self is somehow evil or at least an impediment to spiritual realization.

Kierkegaard's project was essentially a religious one; he sought rest in God. He understood the fullest self-relationship (for self is a relationship) as a necessary requirement to union with God, not as an impediment. Yet the two-ness of self, like a two-legged stool, if left to stand alone, can only fall into one of various forms of despair. (Despair is the sickness unto death.) What is required is that this self-relationship be united with "the power that constituted it"; it is then that that most sturdy of structures, the three-legged stool that cannot wobble, is established.

It seems self-evident that if the human experience is essentially relational, then the fullest realization of that experience would likewise be relational. But a relationship requires a minimum of two, and two is thought to be the enemy of one. Yet where the One is expressed in and as the Many, not-One is also One.

There are traditions which advocate self-realization as the realization of self as Self. This self that I am is the Self that is All. There are traditions which advocate the loss of self, a no-self that realizes All. In the end, is there really any difference between them? When Zhuangzi says, "Heaven and earth emerge together with me, and I and the ten thousand things are one", he affirms both the One and the Many. I am all things; all things are me. All things are subsumed in me; I am subsumed in all things. We become nothing or we become everything, but the end is the same.

You can check out Scott's writings on Zhuangzi here.

Metaphysical Nakedness

Scott Bradley

I have previously referred to what W. Giegerich (The End of Meaning) calls "metaphysical nakedness". This is intended to describe the condition of 'modern man'; humanity after the death of God, without the cosmologies and myths that have previously sustained it.

This is not, of course, the actual condition of the vast majority of human beings. And it is a bit of a leap to suggest that those few of whom it is descriptive are the avant garde of what will become universal. I suspect that it might be, but that is of little importance from the point of view of my own metaphysical nakedness.

Not only do I not wish to believe in the mythical cosmologies on offer today or that I might be able to manufacture myself, I am not able to do so. Yet, we all have our mythological fig leaves; this is, I believe, unavoidable. The work of what I call (in the spirit of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche) returning to critical zero, is largely a matter of identifying these fig leaves and, even where they are sure to remain or return, thereby realize some freedom from them.

The point of this pursuit of nakedness is to discover a spirituality that requires no overt mythology, a mysticism without myth. Nakedness is a pre-condition for such a discovery.

What one discovers is no great mystery. We are all rooted in Mystery. And we all, in every act of living, entrust ourselves to that Mystery. The mysticism arises from the exploration and nurture of that entrusting.

The "understanding consciousness", the mind that sunders the unity of things, if allowed to reign supreme, takes metaphysical nakedness as a complete negation of the possibility of spirituality without myth. Yet we are so much more than the ratiocinating mind. And in the end, however much we might learn of ourselves, life and the universe, we discover that absolutely nothing is reducible to understanding, nothing is ever truly explained. And reason is, of course, itself an act of trust.

Metaphysical nakedness, an affliction largely attributable to the intellectual evolution of humanity, is an opportunity, not only for the negation of spirituality, but for an exploration of new and more honest forms of spirituality.

In the final analysis, our rootedness in Mystery and our absolutely necessary trust in that Mystery in the very living of the life that we are renders an appreciation of the bare spirituality of the human experience the most honest response possible to the death of mythological cosmologies.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Trusting Trust

Scott Bradley

I concluded the last post with the assertion that we are born into "connectedness", that "in-ness" is a given. If this is true, then no assertion is required, for if it be 'true', it is already true in us.

Kierkegaard required "a leap of faith" for truth to be true for him. Why? Because, despite his understanding that "truth is subjectivity" and his railing against the belief that spirituality is obtained through assent to objective truth, he still had something objective to which to leap. There was something that required belief.

Trust requires no leap, for it is a "normal function" of life. We can nurture trust and grow in trust, but only when we have discovered it as already in ourselves.

What might hinder awareness of our native trust? W. Giegerich's criticism of Jung, who sought it in the unconscious, demonstrates what is probably the attitude that most alienates us from life's natural trust. "The end of meaning" is a crisis of faith precipitated by the triumph of reason; the old objective cosmologies can no longer stand. We are now devoid of a raison d'etre, a reason to be.

Giegerich criticizes Jung for looking somewhere other than to reason for a sense of belonging in the world. Yet it is he who sunders the human experience and insists that the exercise of reason, the "understanding consciousness", is the only valid and "adult" way by which to orient oneself in the world. As wonderful as the gift of reason is, however, there is a lot more to the human expression than this. Nor should we think that reason stands opposed to our other, more visceral, dimensions. When, as Zhuangzi says, "the understanding consciousness rests in what it cannot know", it has reached its fulfillment. Its fulfillment is found in its harmony with the fullness of the human experience.

Does this mean that reason must give superstition its proper place? Not at all; for what is superstition but belief in objective ‘truths’? Superstition belongs to reason, not to trust. Trust has no content; it requires no belief.

If trust requires trust, then it is only that it trust in itself. It is to trust in life, because life is trust. The process and the élan that is life is trust. We see it everywhere in Nature — trust unaware. It is the human privilege to find and awarefully nurture trust in itself. Or, we can be ‘more’ than life, and nurture despair. This, too, is life.

“To put your trust in the Heart-Mind [where trust abides] is to live without separation, and in this non-duality you are one with your Life-Source.” (Hsin-Hsin Ming; Clarke) In the end, trust is gladly being who you are.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Truth Is Subjectivity

Scott Bradley

In his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Soren Kierkegaard tells us that "truth is subjectivity". Like so many things Kierkegaardian, this lends itself easily to quoting, but not so easily to understanding. Apart from the difficulties I find in following his arguments, all of which are rooted in personal psychological insight, there is also the problem of its own subjectivity. Kierkegaard wants to be a Christian and asks how this might be possible. Unless one shares his faith, it is easy to lose sight of just how applicable to every serious commitment it is.

One might think becoming a Christian is easily accomplished; a large chunk of the world's population is Christian and at the time of his writing, in Denmark, the place of his writing, everyone was a Christian. But SK tells us in another work (Attack on Christendom) that "when everyone is a Christian, no one is a Christian". Nominal assent to objective truth, is not Christianity; only a profound subjective experience makes one a Christian, and only then does it become truth. Thus, truth is subjectivity.

This being the case, SK must necessarily speak out of his own subjectivity; it has to be specific to his own struggle to believe; no generalizations are possible. Nevertheless, we see how applicable this existential and subjective absorption is to whatever "truth" we wish to create. Create? For SK, the only truth there is, or at least the only truth that matters, is that which becomes true in us, and that is a happening.

For SK, Christianity is like one big koan. It is objectively and intellectually ungraspable. It has to be transformatively experienced to be real. If visions of tears at the altar come to mind this is not what he had in mind. For him, the realization of truth subjectively was something more along the lines of satori or that "turning about in the depths of the mind" which others call enlightenment.

There are two aspects to this koan. With reference to Paul's observation that the "gospel" is "to the Greeks (philosophers) foolishness, and to the Jews (the religious) a scandal", SK considers how he might overcome the Greek and the Jew in himself. One aspect of his answer is his (in)famous "leap of faith".

Christianity is foolishness to the philosophers because it is historical; it works from something believed to have happened, not from something thought through. It is concrete. For the religious, specifically the Jews in whose religious context it takes place, it is scandalous because it declares this man here, the one relieving himself behind the tree, is God. In either case, it is mind-bending and mind stopping, and thus requires a transformative experience to become "true".

We needn’t concern ourselves with the objective truth of Christianity, or with Christianity at all, to get a sense in which all transformative “truth” must necessarily be subjective.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

One Branch

Scott Bradley

"The forest is vast, yet the cuckoo requires only one branch to build her nest." — Zhuangzi

"Unmon said, 'Look! This world is vast and wide. Why do you put on your priest's robe at the sound of the bell?'" — 16th koan of the Mumonkan

I am one of those people who has never been able to 'settle down'. No spouse, no family, no career, no home. When I felt I needed a 'home', I bought a sail boat and took off around the world. When I ask myself where, in all the places I've been, I could settle, I can think of none. Yet, here I am on a ranch in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada of California. One must be somewhere.

There is vastness and there is the particular place or thing. There is the equality of all things and there is difference between every thing. There is transcendence and there is concrete involvement. The fullest life participates in both. The most complete life walks two roads.

The ideal and happy cuckoo participates in the freedom of the vast forest, yet concretizes herself in a specific activity, in a particular place. Were she to 'space out' in the vastness, forget her one branch and her nest, she would not be a true cuckoo.

Though "many are the ways to approach the Great Dao", we must choose one. And, in choosing, we must give ourselves to that way completely. When the bell rings, the Zen monk need not respond like a Pavlovian dog, but can be both free in the vastness and entirely committed to his life as a monk.

I have offered a piece of my story as an example of too much vastness. Kierkegaard would call it too much 'potentiality' and not enough 'actuality', one manifestation of the "sickness unto death", that is, of despair. Yet, another manifestation of despair is too much actuality and not enough potentiality. I do not regret my wandering, and would still prefer it to a 9 to 5 life in the plant, the 'burbs, and the bondage of a stale marriage. But this choice is a false one. Wherever one is, whatever one is doing, whether wandering or raising a family, it is possible to be both free in the vastness and immediate in the moment. This is wholeness.

If one is truly free in the vastness, then whatever path one chooses and however committed one may be to it, he does not lose sight of the vastness of the forest, nor forget it is full of trees. Putting on our robes at the sound of the bell, committed to one path, we do not become narrow and forget there are uncountable paths.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Loving What Is

Scott Bradley

Loving What Is is the title of a book by Byron Katie. The title alone sums up the practical side of not only her philosophy, but that of philosophical Daoism. "What is" is reality. And Katie calls herself "a lover of reality".

I have used the lower case, "reality", but I might just as well have written it "Reality". Lower case reality is Reality. Dao is what happens. Though Dao may be Nameless, it is also the Mother of the Named, and these "two", according to the Laozi, are "the same". If we would "Walk Two Roads", both aspects of the Totality must inform us. Daoism is not a flight from reality, but an encounter with Reality facilitated by our acceptance of reality.

Failing of this, we suffer. But that, too, is reality. Our apparent reality is full of good times, as well as suffering, but they have no discernable foundation and thus must ultimately succumb to suffering. Kierkegaard likened this precarious condition to sewing without having put a knot at the end of the thread; however elaborate our creations, they all unravel even as we sew.

We are the cause of our own suffering. If someone hurts our feelings, we are the cause of the hurt, not someone else. It is how we respond to reality (someone else's unkindness) that causes the hurt; that same unkindness could also be an impetus to joy. If this seems counter-intuitive and ass-backwards, good — we have found a place of traction by which to overturn what passes for normalcy. Everything is ultimately a matter of how we choose to interpret it.

Katie focuses on belief in our thoughts as the cause of this suffering. I believe someone has hurt me, because I believe there is a 'me' to be hurt, that words can hurt, that whatever they said cannot be true (because it hurts), that if it is true, it is more than I can face, etc. She would have us examine our thoughts so as to develop new, non-suffering thoughts. It's never a question of trying to eliminate thoughts, just to bring them into accord with reality.

Ah, but what is reality? It is Reality. And this we have, hopefully, experienced as Good; we have said Yes to what is, affirmed the Totality, "abandoned" ourselves to "the Vastness at the root of things". In the context of Dao, how could anything harm us? How could anything fail to be a teacher leading us further into the release of acceptance?

This unnecessary suffering is a near universal reality of human experience. This, too, is Dao. Dao is what is. And what” is” is what happens. Shit also happens. Dao did not "do" it, so it would be ridiculous to "blame" it. I'm all for calling Dao "God", only before we can do so we must put a holly stake through "his" heart, or at least through the heart of our "discriminating consciousness" which thinks only in terms of right and wrong, cause and effect, me and other. Failing of this, we suffer. So what? So, we suffer. Only, if we can realize this manifestation of Dao, we can experience another, peace and joy. In either case, nothing was ever required of us; there are no conditions which must be met to be who and what we are (sufferer or joyous one), which can only and always be Dao.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Understanding the Journey I

Scott Bradley

"We must not make a pretense of doing philosophy, but really do it; for what we need is not the semblance of health, but real health." (Epicurea; Usener 220)

This Epicurean commitment to doing philosophy reveals two basic assumptions about its goals and scope. It was believed that one could understand the most fundamental principles of the cosmos and that this understanding would enable one to know how best to live in it. Until recent times, most every act of philosophizing, both Eastern and Western, made these assumptions.

Daoism often likewise participates in these beliefs. Statements regarding Dao, that It 'does' nothing, is amoral and impartial, and cannot be intellectually grasped, for instance, all tell us how we should live. Sagacity is the pinnacle of human fulfillment, and to be sagacious is to be Dao-like.

Are these Daoist assumptions about Dao justified? Indeed, is the assumption that there 'is' Dao justified? Strictly speaking, I don't think so. Scientifically, these assertions are improvable. And within the context of Daoism itself they represent a glaring contradiction. 'Dao' represents what is beyond all knowing; how then could we assign it attributes?

In this case, "a pretense of doing philosophy" would be to uncritically accept that philosophy can in fact uncover ‘truth’. 'Real' philosophy would thus have to radically shift its focus and scope, though not necessarily its goal. We would no longer be in pursuit of 'facts' and 'answers', but rather of a means of best living without them. This cuts the cord to a prescribed path; nothing tells us how to live, because nothing speaks definitively. We are left to make sense of our lives based on our unique experience.

It might be helpful to clarify what "doing philosophy" means in this case. Perhaps the simplest place to begin is to say that we all do it. It is not a specialized science pondering esoteric imponderables, but the daily effort to understand how best to live.

Philosophy, because it cannot discover truth, thus becomes an end in itself. We philosophize because we are human. And our fulfillment is in the exercise of this humanity. This is the rationale for the Socratic dictum: "The unexamined life is not worth living." The more one's life is informed by self-awareness, the understanding of what makes one tick, the more authentically human it is. Similarly, this is what Kierkegaard meant, in part, when he said "the more awareness of self, the more self”, for self is this self-awareness.

Even Daoism, which eschews all reliance on “the understanding consciousness” (and thus philosophy that ‘knows’), understands itself as informed by an understanding of the world, even if that understanding is that it does not understand.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Relational Reality

Scott Bradley

The only reality of which I can speak is my reality, a subjective reality. This conceptual reality has absolutely nothing to do with the way things actually are; that would be Reality. As to what Reality may 'be' I have no idea, and consequentially, even the idea that there is such a thing is entirely theoretical and 'unreal'; without someone to pronounce it, it does not exist as an idea.

However, I suspect that even the unreal, if thought, is Reality, in that something unreal thought of something likewise unreal. If Reality is the Totality, then nothing that happens is not Reality. If I think of unicorns this does not make unicorns real, of course, but it does mean that unicorns were really imagined.

But then perhaps nothing really happens. In this case, Reality also includes the non-happening experience of a non-entity that believes things happen. As for the foundation of the universe, "It's turtles all the way down."

This (whatever it is) having been established, I would like to discuss reality as relational. To speak of relational reality requires two or more things which can relate. This may likewise be illusory; indeed, it seems likely that it is. Nevertheless, it is my reality, and as such, I am obliged to live it.

Kierkegaard made the obvious enough observation that the self is a relationship with itself. I find this reassuring in that I now know that there was at least one other who talked to himself. It is by virtue of an internal dualism that my thought is made possible. As I have said before, I suspect self is the source of all imagined dualism. So, since the very condition of this experience of human existence requires dualism, let's hear it for dualism.

The primary experience and source of relational reality is thus one's relation with oneself.

Then there is 'the world'. I hope you will forgive me for saying so, but that includes you. You are the 'other', just as the rocks and empty space are the other. If it makes you feel any better, know, too, that Dao, Heaven and God are also 'other'. Everything that is not me is, in fact, other. And I, as a relational reality, am obliged to have a relationship with the lot of you.

So there are really just the two of us, me and the other. But I understand that this likewise applies to your experience. I am your other. This helps to determine my relationship with you. You are to yourself as I am to myself. We are the same. Here we have a foundation for ethics.

But this particular ramble is not intended to deal with ethics as such. What I wish to say is that reality as experienced by the human is essentially relational. This is not optional. It is a given. It is inescapable. It is the condition of being human. This being the case, it is in understanding the nature of these relationships and how most effectively to nurture them that the work of harmonizing within our particular realities takes place.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Realizing More Self

Realizing More Self
by Scott Bradley

"The more consciousness of self, the more self, the more self, the more consciousness." -- Soren Kierkegaard

This is not truly a quote, but a paraphrase from my favorite of Kierkegaard's works, The Sickness Unto Death. If you have trouble with this thinking, it might help to substitute 'awareness' for consciousness. But still, the idea of self as a positive value might not sit well with some of you. Yet this is not the egoic self that closes us off from the world, but that human capacity of self-awareness which enables us to open up to the world. It is another way of saying, Know thyself.

I have previously quoted a relatively modern Chinese scholar who made a clear distinction between Buddhism which emphasizes Emptiness and Taoism which emphasizes Vastness. He suggested that the twain cannot meet. Yet I would suggest that they are but two sides of one Reality. Fullness and Emptiness are the same. Emptiness is the realization of boundlessness. Boundlessness is the realization of Vastness.

This applies equally to self, to the emptiness of no-self and the fullness of realized self. Emptiness is liberation from the self that limits. Fullness is the expression of the self that dwells in Vastness.

Stepping back and observing one's self is a recurrent theme in recent posts. This is a prelude to breaking the bonds of the self which cannot see beyond itself. And this is the liberation of self, not its destruction.

And these definitive statements are just my speculative ponderings.

The sickness unto death, by the way, is despair in many forms. And despair, according to Kierkegaard, is the consequence of a failure of the self to realize its relationship with the Whole.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

A Leap of Faith

A Leap of Faith
by Scott Bradley

Every now and then I pull up short and ask myself, What the hell are you doing? This is when I catch the scent of religion wafting from my mind. Let this be my own hang up, but I do not want to believe anything. So I must periodically ask myself what it is that I currently believe.

What do I believe? I could say that I believe in Oneness and the inherent Rightness of Reality. But when I stop to ask and answer, I find that I hold to these things only as working paradigms, ideas that work for me, but only ideas.

Soren Kierkegaard is probably best known for his advocacy of a "leap of faith". The essential Christian message is an absurdity: God became man. But, as an idea, this still might be reasonable. So, it is necessary to take the next step: God became man, and this man here relieving his bowels is He.

There is no bridge of reason that can cross to the other side where such a thing is embraced with all one's being. One can only truly believe this absurdity through a leap of faith. (I say 'truly', because Kierkegaard saw Christian faith as a radical and all-consuming commitment — he stood opposed to conventional and largely nominal Christianity.)

What do I believe? I believe in the efficacy and natural affirmation of a leap of trust. All of life is an act of trust; to live is to trust. To utterly surrender in trust within the context of our utter not-knowing is, I believe, the most natural expression of the human experience. In this sense, it is no leap at all, but simply the expression of who we are. Yet we fear the unknown and cling to our tentative selves, and thus we must choose and leap. We must choose to say Yes.

For all his opposition to the erroneous belief in the ability of reason to explain Reality, Kierkegaard allowed that belief to determine his path. Absurdity is the mutually generated antithesis of reason. Chen Jen's saying, "Embrace the right, and the wrong shall rule", is intended to convey this very reality. Right exists only in contrast to wrong, and to embrace one is to have been ruled by the other. But Kierkegaard could not escape this net, because he believed that there were things to believe.

Trust is a path that follows the natural inclination of the human heart and needs not know a What or a Why.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Critical Zero II

Critical Zero II
by Scott Bradley

"The something I am...is precisely a nothing....Existenz at that critical zero...between something and nothing, a mere perhaps." — Soren Kierkegaard

I shared this quote in a former post and would like to here again consider the theme of critical zero. What is it? It is first and foremost, a realization of the peculiar human experience of becoming, of both being and not being.

As Sartre has it: "A being such that, it is what it is not, and is not what it is." It was this that Kierkegaard realized and nurtured as the place of critical zero where authentic, self-reflective existence takes place. It is the ever conscious awareness of the unfixed nature of the human experience.

Super-impose over this the words of Zhuangzi and you might discover an interesting agreement: "The Radiance of Drift and Doubt is the sage's only map."

Jaspers, from whom I have this quote from Kierkegaard, moves from this view of the human reality to a discussion of how Kierkegaard was careful to acknowledge that his philosophical pronouncements were likewise unfixed and unrealized. They were aspirations. They were forays into the unknown and could not be unlinked from what is basic to human existence, that it stands on no firm ground upon which to build an edifice of supposed truth. He was careful to return to critical zero. To return to critical zero is to come back to reality. It is to return to honesty.

Because it is what is most essentially human, critical zero is also ground zero for the realization of the human capacity for transcendence. It is never out there in truth and knowing, but always right here in this tenuous flow. It is always and only being just who you are.

I have spoken against 'seriousness' as that attitude which believes it knows or is about to know truth. It is as if one went forth from oneself and forgot to return — forgot what it is to be human, forgot to return to critical zero and have a good laugh.

Authentic spirituality, I believe, is above all else, honest. And this may very well mean that it appears as no spirituality at all. For it does not hide its warts nor present a made-up face. And it may be more manifest in a laugh at one's own expense than in a wise and sober brow. For to laugh at oneself, is to be truly self-aware. And without that, one will certainly forget to return home.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.