Category: Symbols Turning

rePatch 18

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)

A prayer for darklings

O Loud, hear the wee beseech of thees, of each of these thy unlitten ones! Grant sleep in hour’s time, O Loud!
That they take no chill. That they do ming no merder. That they shall not gomeet madhowlattrees.
Loud, heap miseries upon us yet entwine our arts with laughters low!
Ha he hi ho hu.
Mummum.

— Joyce, The Restored Finnegans Wake, 204

Primal flow

The sacred text is what the sacred river is currently reading, the streambed of consciousness.

(Stoop), if you are abcedminded, to this claybook, what curios of signs (please stoop) in this allaphbed! Can you rede (since We and Thou had it out already) its world? It is the same told of all.

— The Restored Finnegans Wake, 14

Drawing nearer to take our slant at it (since after all it has met with misfortune while all underground), let us see all there may remain to be seen.

— Finnegans Wake, 113

The act of meaning the sacred text involves collision and collusion with the limits of language.

Beware lest ye be hindered by the veils of glory from partaking of the crystal waters of this living Fountain.

— Bahá’u’lláh, Kitáb-i-Aqdas ¶50

But give glad tidings to those who believe and work righteousness, that their portion is Gardens, beneath which rivers flow. Every time they are fed with fruits therefrom, they say: “Why, this is what we were fed with before,” for they are given things in similitude; and they have therein companions pure (and holy); and they abide therein (for ever).

— Qur’án 2:25 (Yusuf Ali)

Divinely inspired

Divine revelation is always human at the point of delivery.

— Anthony Freeman (2001, 15)

No messenger is ever sent save with the tongue of his own people.

— Qur’án 14:4 (Cragg 1994, 55)

All inspired matter has been subject to human distortion or coloring. Besides we cannot penetrate the counsels of the most High, or lay down anything as a principle that would govern his conduct. We do not know his inscrutable purposes, nor can we comprehend his plans. We cannot tell but he might see fit to inspire his servants with errors. In the third place, a truth which rests on the authority of inspiration only is of a somewhat incomprehensible nature; and we never can be sure that we rightly comprehend it. As there is no way of evading these difficulties, I say that revelation, far from affording us any certainty, gives results less certain than other sources of information. This would be so even if revelation were much plainer than it is.

— Peirce (CP 1.143, c. 1897)

The fountain of youth

Interpretations at any level are selective processes, and conscious selection is grounded in natural selection.

The problem is that natural selection among variant types causes the population to lose variation as the superior type comes to characterize the species. That is, selection destroys the very population variation that is the basis for its operation.

— Lewontin (2001, 80)

This seeming paradox, which explains why the little life of an organism or ecosystem tends toward senescence, also explains why any reading or explication has the effect of aborting other possible readings, in effect preventing what may have been equally implicit from ever becoming explicit. In the same way, the growth and development of the child progressively aborts most of the mature individuals he might have become. You don’t get another chance at living this day. With a turning symbol, on the other hand, you can return to a replica of it and resurrect the meanings that you missed by meaning something else by it previously.

Turning the Dharma wheel

If the natural world is ‘the primary scripture’ (Berry 1988, 105), the quality of our presence on this planet depends on how we read the earth and practice what it preaches. As for our reading of the secondary scriptures, our judgments of their relative worth are worthless; what counts is the practice our reading determines, the turning of the symbols we are. Dogen Zenji offers a Buddhist perspective on this:

Be well assured that for a Buddhist the issue is not to debate the superiority or inferiority of one teaching or another, or to establish their respective depths. All he needs to know is whether the practice is authentic or not. Men have flowed into the Way drawn by grasses and flowers, mountains and running water. They have received the lasting impression of the Buddha-seal by holding soil, rocks, sand, and pebbles. Indeed, its vast and great signature is imprinted on all the things in nature, and even then remains in great abundance. A single mote of dust suffices to turn the great Dharma wheel. Because of this, words like ‘the mind in itself is Buddha’ are no more than the moon reflected on the water. The meaning of ‘sitting itself is attainment of Buddhahood’ is a reflection in a mirror. Do not get caught up in skillfully turned words and phrases.

— SBGZ ‘Bendowa’ (Waddell and Abe 2002, 16-17)

Natural signs

Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot.

— Joyce, Ulysses (45)

What geomancy reads what the windblown sand writes on the desert rock? I read there that all things live by a generous power and dance to a mighty tune; or I read there that all things are scattered and hurled, that our every arabesque and grand jeté is a frantic variation on our one free fall.

— Annie Dillard (1974, 70)