Category: the point

Universe

The whole Truth

In his 1818 preface to Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Arthur Schopenhauer told readers that his whole book was really ‘a single thought,’ which he could find no shorter way of imparting. Despite the linear order imposed by the book format, the real order connecting the parts was ‘organic’:

every part supports the whole just as much as it is supported by the whole; a connexion in which no part is first and no part last, in which the whole gains in clearness from every part, and even the smallest part cannot be fully understood until the whole has been first understood.’

— Schopenhauer (1859, xii)

His advice to the reader, therefore, was to read the book twice. My advice to the Ideal Reader of Turning Signs is to take the whole thought of the Obverse as context for every point to be presented on the Reverse (and here in the Universe).

Here we have another turn of the hermeneutic circle. But if the ‘single thought’ of the book cannot be expressed in a single sentence, or indeed in any shorter form than the book itself, how can any actual reader see it as a single thought? Can you really see it all at once? This question applies to the meaning cycle in all its guises, because it arises from the very nature of signs, which according to Peirce are of virtually unlimited size and complexity.

Giving to the word sign the full scope that reasonably belongs to it for logical purposes, a whole book is a sign; and a translation of it is a replica of the same sign. A whole literature is a sign.

— Peirce, EP2:303

Nor is the question limited in scope to books, or even to language in all its forms. Every sign is ‘connected with the “Truth,” i.e. the entire Universe of being’ (Peirce, EP2:303). A complete and explicit model of the connections would take up no less meaning space than that Universe itself, ‘perfused with signs.’ But a model working implicitly can be represented by the smallest possible sign, which will then show simply the wholeness of the “Truth.”

Bodykins

The body of the world which is broken into pieces is the body of the god. As the Christians say: others bequeath to their heirs their property, but he bequeathed himself, that is the flesh and blood of his body. The fall is the Fall into Division of the one universal man.

— N.O. Brown (1966, 21)

Literally, the Bible is a gigantic myth, a narrative extending over the whole of time from creation to apocalypse, unified by a body of recurring imagery that ‘freezes’ into a single metaphor cluster, the metaphors all being identified with the body of the Messiah, the man who is all men, the totality of logoi who is one Logos, the grain of sand that is the world.

— Frye (1982, 224)

W(here)

A thing may be said to be wherever it acts; but the notion that a particle is absolutely present in one part of space and absolutely absent from all the rest of space is devoid of all foundation.

— Peirce (CP 1.38, c. 1890)

According to Swimme and Berry (1992, 28),

to speak of a proton as a separate particle restricted to a certain patch of space-time is to speak of its microphase mode of being, a valid though limited understanding. The macrophase mode or presence of the proton includes all particles with which it is correlated, which includes all those particles it has interacted with at any time in the past. Since the universe bloomed from a seed point, this means that a full understanding of a proton requires a full understanding of the universe. The fireball manifests itself as a quintillion separate particles and their interactions, but the nature of each of these particles speaks of the universe as indivisible whole. No part of the present can be isolated from any other part of the present or the past or the future.

Nutshells

The shorter the scripture, the more it says to the deep reader. For instance the very compactness of the Sefer Yetzirah contributed greatly to its seminal nature as the primary source of so much Kabbalistic symbolism. ‘Everyone found in the book more or less what he was looking for,’ as Scholem (1962, 34) says. Likewise you can find your turning symbol in the fragments of Heraclitus, the Tao Te Ching, the Gospel of Thomas, or Dogen’s ‘GenjoKoan’, if you read them recreatively.

For Thomas Traherne it was the Cross: ‘There may we see the most Distant Things in Eternity united: all Mysteries at once couched together and Explained’ (First Century 58). The Cross is, of course, the point of Crossing, or of fixation or final determination – or, as the icon of extension, the monad pulled in the four directions at once, the point turned inside out.

Here it is

There is nowhere the knowledge of the enlightened does not reach. Why? There is not a single sentient being who is not fully endowed with the knowledge of the enlightened; it is just that because of deluded notions, erroneous thinking, and attachments, they are unable to realize it. If they would get rid of deluded notions, then universal knowledge, spontaneous knowledge, and unobstructed knowledge would become manifest. It is as if there were a great scripture, equal in extent to a billion-world universe, in which are written all the things of the universe.… Though this scripture is equal in measure to a billion-world universe, yet it rests entirely in a single atom; and as this is so of one atom, it is also true of all atoms. Then suppose someone with clear and comprehensive knowledge, who has fully developed the celestial eye, sees these scriptures inside atoms, not benefiting sentient beings at all, and with this thought— ‘I should, by energetic power, break open those atoms and release those scriptures so that they can benefit all sentient beings’— then employs appropriate means to break open the atoms and release the great scriptures, to enable all sentient beings to benefit greatly. Similarly, the knowledge of the enlightened, infinite and unobstructed, universally able to benefit all, is fully inherent in the bodies of sentient beings; but the ignorant, because of clinging to deluded notions, do not know of it, are not aware of it, and so do not benefit from it. Then the Buddha, with the unimpeded pure clear eye of knowledge, observes all sentient beings in the cosmos and says, ‘How strange! How is it that these sentient beings have the knowledge of the enlightened, but in their folly and confusion do not know it or perceive it? I should teach them the way of the sages and cause them to shed deluded notions and attachments, so that they can see in their own bodies the vast knowledge of the enlightened.’

— The Flower Ornament Scripture (Avatamsaka-Sutra), Book XXXVII (Cleary 1993, 190)

One sound preaching the Dharma is the arrival of the time.

— Dogen, ‘Bussho’ (Waddell and Abe 2002, 96)

Uncountable

When one bit of dust is raised, it includes the great earth; when one flower opens, the whole world is aroused. When a single moment of thinking is dropped away, the eighty-four thousand afflicting delusions are removed. When one phrase hits our true function, eighty-four thousand Dharma gates are fulfilled. For example, it is like when one pulls the main line and immediately the whole net follows, or when one lifts the collar and the whole cloth quickly comes as well. The one is uncountable, and the uncountable is one. The large manifests within the small, and the small manifests within the large. On one hairtip, the sanctuary of the jewel king appears; within an atom, the great Dharma wheel turns. Great assembly, please tell me, how does the sanctuary of the jewel king appear; how does the great Dharma wheel turn?

— Dogen, EK 6.458

Stopping point

How do we get to the point in the empirical sciences?

Every test of a theory, whether resulting in its corroboration or falsification, must stop at some basic statement or other which we decide to accept. If we do not come to any decision, and do not accept some basic statement or other, then the test will have led nowhere. But considered from a logical point of view, the situation is never such that it compels us to stop at this particular basic statement rather than that, or else give up the test altogether. For any basic statement can again in its turn be subjected to tests, using as a touchstone any of the basic statements which can be deduced from it with the help of some theory, either the one under test, or another. This procedure has no natural end. Thus if the test is to lead us anywhere, nothing remains but to stop at some point or other and say that we are satisfied, for the time being.

— Popper (1934/1959, 86)

Mediately present

Every mind which passes from doubt to belief must have ideas which follow after one another in time. Every mind which reasons must have ideas which not only follow after others but are caused by them. Every mind which is capable of logical criticism of its inferences, must be aware of this determination of its ideas by previous ideas. But is it pre-supposed in the conception of a logical mind, that the temporal succession in its ideas is continuous, and not by discrete steps? A continuum such as we suppose time and space to be, is defined as something any part of which itself has parts of the same kind. So that the point of time or the point of space is nothing but the ideal limit towards which we approach, but which we can never reach in dividing time or space; and consequently nothing is true of a point which is not true of a space or a time.
… ideas which succeed one another during an interval of time, become present to the mind through the successive presence of the ideas which occupy the parts of that time. So that the ideas which are present in each of these parts are more immediately present, or rather less mediately present than those of the whole time. And this division may be carried to any extent. But you never reach an idea which is quite immediately present to the mind, and is not made present by the ideas which occupy the parts of the time that it occupies. Accordingly, it takes time for ideas to be present to the mind. They are present during a time. And they are present by means of the presence of the ideas which are in the parts of that time. Nothing is therefore present to the mind in an instant, but only during a time. The events of a day are less mediately present to the mind than the events of a year; the events of a second less mediately present than the events of a day.

… Let us now see what is necessary in order that ideas should determine one another, and that the mind should be aware that they determine one another. In order that there should be any likeness among ideas, it is necessary, that during an interval of time there should be some constant element in thought or feeling. If I imagine something red, it requires a certain time for me to do so. And if the other elements of the image vary during that time, in one part it must be invariable, it must be constantly red. And therefore it is proper to say that the idea of red is present to the mind at every instant. For we are not now saying that an idea is present to the mind in an instant in the objectionable sense which has been referred to above, according to which an instant would differ from an interval of time; but we are only saying that the idea is present at an instant, in the sense that it is present in every part of a certain interval of time; however short that part may be. The first thing that is requisite to a logical mind, is that there should be elements of thought which are present at instants in this sense. The second thing that is requisite is, that what is present one instant should have an effect upon what is present during the lapse of time which follows that instant. This effect can only be a reproduction of a part of what was present at the instant; because what is present at the instant, is present during an interval of time during the whole of which the effect will be present. And therefore since all that is present during this interval is present at each instant, it follows that the effect of what is present at each instant is present at that instant. So that this effect is a part of the idea which produces it. In other words, it is merely a reproduction of a part of that idea. This effect is memory, in its most elementary form. But something more than this is required in order that the conclusion shall be produced from a premise; namely, an effect produced by the succession of one idea upon another.

— Peirce, W3:68-71 (March 8, 1873)

Hsueh Tou directly says, “If you want to see the old yellow-face right now, every atom of dust in every land lies halfway there.” Usually we say that each atom is a Buddha-land, each leaf is a Shakyamuni. Even when all the atomic particles in the universe can be seen in one atom, you’re still only halfway there; there is still another half of the way yonder. But tell me, where is he? Old Shakyamuni didn’t even know himself; how would you have me explain?

— Blue Cliff Record, Case 94 (Cleary and Cleary)

Peircing Dogen

Dogen’s Genjokoan (‘Actualizing the Fundamental Point’) is Peirce’s phaneron.

It contains past and present, the three worlds, the ten directions, delusions, enlightenment, all buddhas, sentient beings, birth, and death.

— Nishiari Bokusan (Weitsman, Wenger and Okumura 2011, 12)

The Firstness of the phaneron is punctuated by its Secondness, while the two are married and mediated by its Thirdness. These elements of the phaneron do not obstruct one another as they collude in composing the interbeing of all phenomena.