Who means?

It has been said of Boehme that his books are like a picnic to which the author brings the words and the reader the meaning. The remark may have been intended as a sneer at Boehme, but it is an exact description of all works of literary art without exception.

— Northrop Frye (1947, 427-8)

This would certainly apply to works of literary art – and to scriptures – which function as turning symbols. Do they differ in this respect from scientific works, or philosophical works, which can also work as turning symbols? That depends on the nature of the objects of these symbols, and the nature of the collateral experience of those objects which the reader brings to the act of meaning. That is always the reader’s act, although the Truth of the symbol (argument or proposition) must be, for the reader, independent of the reader’s personal belief.

Cognation

Do you read me? Then you have to believe that your experience is cognate with mine. Co-gnatus, ‘born together’ (or ‘descended from the same ancestor’), derives from the Latin verb gigno (earlier geno), meaning ‘beget’ or ‘bring forth’. Its root forms -gn-, -gen- and-gon- have begotten the stems of many English words, along with its complement verb nascor (‘to be born’), through its participial form natus (or gnatus), source of English words such as nature and native.

Turning how?

How can scripture reading come to pierce an ox hide?

— T’ien-t’ung (Cleary 1997b, 322)

Where does a gnox hide? Who knows?
Our habit is to read utterances like these as rhetorical questions – as if we gnew the answers. A reading practice like Dogen‘s challenges this habit, challenges us to penetrate the shell of habits. Symbols which are only symbols do not act as turning signs: ‘Strictly pure Symbols can signify only things familiar, and those only in so far as they are familiar’ (Peirce, CP 4.544n, 1906). The turning symbol must involve an Index directing attention beyond the familiar.

Where is the Index in this sentence?

Nor are Symbols and Indices together generally enough. The arrangement of the words in the sentence, for instance, must serve as Icons, in order that the sentence may be understood. The chief need for the Icons is in order to show the Forms of the synthesis of the elements of thought. For in precision of speech, Icons can represent nothing but Forms and Feelings.

— Peirce, CP 4.544, ‘Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism’

How do you Feel?

Scatterlings

And among His Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the living creatures that He has scattered through them: and He has power to gather them together when He wills.

— Qur’án 42.29 (Yusuf Ali)

To ‘gather them together’ is to un-differentiate them, i.e. to uncreate them. On the other hand, the scattering is only through physical spacetime. In eternal meaning space, the myriad beings together now constitute the Living One, the buddha-nature, the Universe of Firstness. And since the world is inside out, each individual is a recreation of that singularity. ‘The entire universe suffers the pangs of a new creation in and through a person’s existence’ (Kim 1975, 172, after Dogen).

Creativity and karma

Rainer Maria Rilke tells us that a good poem can only emerge from a lifetime of experiences, which are not only remembered but, you might say, inhabited. (Or you might say that they inhabit you.)

For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning. You must be able to think back …

And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves—only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.

from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Mitchell 1982, 91)

If we turn from the creation of a poem to the creation of the cosmos, turning the act of creation inside out (as it were), we get the concept of cosmic memory or karma. This is epitomized in Bhagavad-Gita 8.3, as translated by Gandhi (1926/2000, 136-7): ‘The Supreme, the Imperishable is Brahman. Its manifestation is adhyatma. The creative process whereby all beings are created is called karma.’ Gandhi’s comment on this verse personalizes the process into an act: ‘Creating all beings and keeping them in existence is an act of renunciation and is known as karma.’ In the act of creation, Brahman renounces His Supremacy and Imperishability.

This seems to resonate with the Joycean idea that creation was the fall and the sin of the All-Father. Joyce would not have described creation as an act of renunciation, but Alan Watts (1966) comes close in his version of the Vedic story: the One Subject of experience disguises himself as myriad sentient beings, each of which forgets his identity with the cosmos and takes his individual role to be his real self. The object of this differentiation game is to remember the cosmic self – which cannot be truly remembered (experienced) unless it has been forgotten! So here too we have the One renouncing its omniscience in order to rediscover it. The equivalent in the Joycean myth is the felix culpa, ‘fortunate fall’ or ‘happy fault.’

I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of my covenant between me and the earth.… the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.

— Genesis 9.13-15 (KJV)

There can be no rainbow without the rain (as well as the sun), no covenant (and no Ark) without the Flood. The bow is the sign of creative tention (Chapter 3).

Seeing things

We see what we focus on: what we see distinguishes itself from the visual field: the dynamic object determines the sign to determine its interpretant. Cognition begins by making distinctions; recognition continues with emergence of relations among things, now that things have emerged from the scene.

A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called so.

— Chuangtse 2 (Watson 1968, 40)

The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells doing what they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite rhythmic patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts from itself and proliferates as the branches take names. But a metaphor can reverse the process by unmaking a familiar distinction, revealing a richer and stranger relationship. By thus renewing our vision, metaphors ‘literally create new objects’ (Jaynes 1976, 50) – immediate objects. Naming is creation, metaphor recreation. “A road” is a metaphor: a road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called so.