Showing posts with label koan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label koan. Show all posts
Friday, 2 July 2010
Sunday, 27 June 2010
Thursday, 23 April 2009
The Intellectual Koan Again
Expanding a little, and even perhaps alot- immeditate time will tell- on the very recent post, whose very short entirety amounted to the title Strange, and the line:
This was written years ago.
I am in the disadvantaged position of having produced the line and finding it harder to approach it as nakedly as would be desired, but anyway, is it really strange, and if so why?
Perhaps it really was written years ago and has only surfaced 'now', this moment, before the gaze of the viewer. But even if it was written years ago it still claims to have been written years before, regardless of when one is seeing it. But maybe it is not the original; maybe someone else had written the line years before and this is but a copy, and a humble acknowledgement of such. So it really was written years ago. Ah, but even then the original line claims to have been written years ago. But perhaps that 'original' wasn't really the original, and it really was written years earlier. But even then...and so on.
But even this is a kind of mental taming of the linguistic phenomenon of the line, rendering it less nakedly direct. It could, I think, be included in the bracket of the Intellectual Koan, an utterly condensed but explosive form of literature of which I am perhaps, for all I know, the humility drenched originator and sole exponent. Other recent examples of the form-collapsing form possibly being, though possibly not:
This is the first word of this sentence.
"This sentence is shit."
"What a harsh judgement. I think it's a wonderful sentence."
Most thought perhaps amounting to the tightening of a knot, genuine thought perhaps the loosening of the knot, while these the positive unravelling of it, though they could certainly do without being lumped together within stagnation breeding 'form'; leading to the degeneration of something 'known', or 'understood', instruments within the intellectual armoury, upon which edifices of certainty these intellectual koans would perhaps sneer, were they to bother to recognise their existence, which, given their nature, they wouldn't.
This was written years ago.
I am in the disadvantaged position of having produced the line and finding it harder to approach it as nakedly as would be desired, but anyway, is it really strange, and if so why?
Perhaps it really was written years ago and has only surfaced 'now', this moment, before the gaze of the viewer. But even if it was written years ago it still claims to have been written years before, regardless of when one is seeing it. But maybe it is not the original; maybe someone else had written the line years before and this is but a copy, and a humble acknowledgement of such. So it really was written years ago. Ah, but even then the original line claims to have been written years ago. But perhaps that 'original' wasn't really the original, and it really was written years earlier. But even then...and so on.
But even this is a kind of mental taming of the linguistic phenomenon of the line, rendering it less nakedly direct. It could, I think, be included in the bracket of the Intellectual Koan, an utterly condensed but explosive form of literature of which I am perhaps, for all I know, the humility drenched originator and sole exponent. Other recent examples of the form-collapsing form possibly being, though possibly not:
This is the first word of this sentence.
"This sentence is shit."
"What a harsh judgement. I think it's a wonderful sentence."
Most thought perhaps amounting to the tightening of a knot, genuine thought perhaps the loosening of the knot, while these the positive unravelling of it, though they could certainly do without being lumped together within stagnation breeding 'form'; leading to the degeneration of something 'known', or 'understood', instruments within the intellectual armoury, upon which edifices of certainty these intellectual koans would perhaps sneer, were they to bother to recognise their existence, which, given their nature, they wouldn't.
Sunday, 8 February 2009
The Intellectual Koan
A monk asked, "All things are said to be reducible to the One, but where is the One to be reduced?" Chao-chou answered, "When I was in the district of Ch'ing I had a robe that weighed seven chin."
D.T. Suzuki offers the above as an example of the koan exercise in his essay The Reason of Unreason: the Koan Exercise, and says:
The worst enemy of Zen experience, at least in the beginning, is the intellect, which consists and insists in discriminating subject from object. The discriminating intellect, therefore, must be cut short if Zen consciousness is to unfold itself, and the koan is constructed entirely to serve this end...A psychological impasse is the necessary antecedent of satori, and we at once notice that there is no room in the koan to insert an intellectual interpretation. The wall against which the Yogin has been beating( in trying with his intellect to 'solve' the koan) hitherto to no purpose breaks down, and an entirely new vista of consciousness opens before him.
Well if the discipline does yield the desired results, then there is no questioning its usefulness, but I suspect the koan is perhaps too removed from Western consciousness to be an especially fruitful discipline here- taking my own self as a symptom rather than a case in isolation. Rather than feel compelled to attack with my mind the koan, thus hopefully yielding the results, it simply doesn't especially interest me, and not having supplied the necessary mental tension there arise no results.
What is essentially being aspired to here is the movement from the finite to the infinite, from the centre of the intellect bound self to the living state of consciousness which actually produces the manifestations of intellect, from the abstraction of a word sustained sense of being to the organic centre of actual life. However, thought is a manifestation of the mind and perhaps through the very route of thought itself a different but related path can be cut leading to the same desired inner destination. And this is the point in what probably appears a strange, pointless post recently like Another Trapdoor, where was written:
This shouldn't be written.
Well, what is so interesting about that? Like the koan a rational explanation is the enemy for there the intellect finds a place of rest, a meaning, and it moves on very much as it already was, and so 'explanation' is very double-edged, but here perhaps necessary, given how unusual this form of thought actually is. What I presume is most likely happens with this line is that the reader sees "This shouldn't be written", and moves immediately along the normal logical path the mind works on, and for a brief moment wonders why it shouldn't be written, doesn't know, finds it a bit strange, pointless and inelegant, an odd essay in humour perhaps; and moves on to read something else. But am I trying to claim there is something extraordinary about such a simple line?
The line is not preceded by something like, "All humans are scum and deserve to die", then followed by- "This shouldn't be written." No, all we have is "This shouldn't be written."
'So you're saying "This shouldn't be written" shouldn't be written? Why not?'
No, that's not what is written. Such a reader isn't looking at the line with enough directness, but jumping aboard the normal logical routes to the imagined intellectual destination. But here we just have "This shouldn't be written", not "This shouldn't be written shouldn't be written." But here is the point and the problem in explication for me- I cannot do the work for the reader. It's a thought that has no linguistic flaws, is perfectly ordinary, and yet the mind cannot find rest in it. It defies the normal logical path, but is not an illogical line.
"Do you mean 'This' shouldn't be written, as in the word 'this'? No, you're not looking directly enough. All we have is the line "This shouldn't be written."
"Well what does the "'This' in the line refer to?" "Ah, now we're getting somewhere. 'This' refers to the line 'This shouldn't be written"...
And because the train of thought is itself the enemy to the direct existential perception, the isolated line again:
This shouldn't be written.
An earlier similar thought produced repeated below, later examined with reluctance here:
This is a translation.
D.T. Suzuki offers the above as an example of the koan exercise in his essay The Reason of Unreason: the Koan Exercise, and says:
The worst enemy of Zen experience, at least in the beginning, is the intellect, which consists and insists in discriminating subject from object. The discriminating intellect, therefore, must be cut short if Zen consciousness is to unfold itself, and the koan is constructed entirely to serve this end...A psychological impasse is the necessary antecedent of satori, and we at once notice that there is no room in the koan to insert an intellectual interpretation. The wall against which the Yogin has been beating( in trying with his intellect to 'solve' the koan) hitherto to no purpose breaks down, and an entirely new vista of consciousness opens before him.
Well if the discipline does yield the desired results, then there is no questioning its usefulness, but I suspect the koan is perhaps too removed from Western consciousness to be an especially fruitful discipline here- taking my own self as a symptom rather than a case in isolation. Rather than feel compelled to attack with my mind the koan, thus hopefully yielding the results, it simply doesn't especially interest me, and not having supplied the necessary mental tension there arise no results.
What is essentially being aspired to here is the movement from the finite to the infinite, from the centre of the intellect bound self to the living state of consciousness which actually produces the manifestations of intellect, from the abstraction of a word sustained sense of being to the organic centre of actual life. However, thought is a manifestation of the mind and perhaps through the very route of thought itself a different but related path can be cut leading to the same desired inner destination. And this is the point in what probably appears a strange, pointless post recently like Another Trapdoor, where was written:
This shouldn't be written.
Well, what is so interesting about that? Like the koan a rational explanation is the enemy for there the intellect finds a place of rest, a meaning, and it moves on very much as it already was, and so 'explanation' is very double-edged, but here perhaps necessary, given how unusual this form of thought actually is. What I presume is most likely happens with this line is that the reader sees "This shouldn't be written", and moves immediately along the normal logical path the mind works on, and for a brief moment wonders why it shouldn't be written, doesn't know, finds it a bit strange, pointless and inelegant, an odd essay in humour perhaps; and moves on to read something else. But am I trying to claim there is something extraordinary about such a simple line?
The line is not preceded by something like, "All humans are scum and deserve to die", then followed by- "This shouldn't be written." No, all we have is "This shouldn't be written."
'So you're saying "This shouldn't be written" shouldn't be written? Why not?'
No, that's not what is written. Such a reader isn't looking at the line with enough directness, but jumping aboard the normal logical routes to the imagined intellectual destination. But here we just have "This shouldn't be written", not "This shouldn't be written shouldn't be written." But here is the point and the problem in explication for me- I cannot do the work for the reader. It's a thought that has no linguistic flaws, is perfectly ordinary, and yet the mind cannot find rest in it. It defies the normal logical path, but is not an illogical line.
"Do you mean 'This' shouldn't be written, as in the word 'this'? No, you're not looking directly enough. All we have is the line "This shouldn't be written."
"Well what does the "'This' in the line refer to?" "Ah, now we're getting somewhere. 'This' refers to the line 'This shouldn't be written"...
And because the train of thought is itself the enemy to the direct existential perception, the isolated line again:
This shouldn't be written.
An earlier similar thought produced repeated below, later examined with reluctance here:
This is a translation.
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