Body

I sometimes listen to lectures given online by Prof Paul Cockshott. A very interesting one he gave concerned the ideas we have about infinity and the endless division, or extension, of numbers. In the lecture he mentioned a theory that understands our concept of number and counting to come through a cognition of repeated movements – such as strides in running – which appeared in our consciousness through the evolutionary process. This seems to me a persuasive theory, at least one rooted in a sensible view of experience.

This theory – of the pre-cognitive roots of counting and number and subsequent notions of finitude and infinity- implies that the presumed-entirely objective realm of mathematics is rooted in experience; not simply subjective, but not excluding of subjective experience. In other words, mathematics is developed from basic experience, and that even such intellectual enterprises as metaphysics are articulations from an innate base. This places a more intimate foundation beneath the debates characterising such trains of western philosophy as materialism/idealism, realism/empiricism/rationalism. It could be seen to recontextualise all the above dualities as abstracts from living experience. This foundation is neither subjective nor objective, but inclusive of both realms within the embodied experience of human beings. It reminds me of a teaching by the Pure Land/Shin Buddhist thinker and reformer, Soga Ryojin.

In his discussion of the human being as both a creation of and embodiment of the ‘alaya vijnana’, the Storehouse Consciousness, the enlightened aspect of which he personalised as Dharmakara Bodhisattva, or Amida Buddha, he spoke of the immanence of the entire history of the Earth in the human form. A very basic way of saying it is that we emerge ‘out’ of the Earth, we are supported by the Earth, and we share interpenetrating existence with all the other forms of life on the Earth. The experience and pre-cognitive ‘awareness/knowledge’ of the development of life of and on the Earth is embodied in us, and as dynamic beings, we carry that creative dynamism further in every moment of life.

Of course , we could push that understanding further and say that the Earth itself is a creation of the universal creative dynamism, and just as all the history of the Earth is embodied in us, so the Earth too is an embodiment of the total history of existence. But this is not history as some abstract narrative, or logical progression, or any product of the intellect (though inclusive of all such derivations); it is real history as presence, like a great living organism, containing all, forgetting nothing. This living history, this presence, appears as the unobjectifiable, multifaceted unity of “all this” around us, in us, as us; the entire universe, being-time, which is the egoless Self.

From this, our history, in the ordinary sense of the word, is derived and constructed. Therefore our history is necessarily artifice, approximation, and (without any dismissive implication) relative. Ordinary history can be relatively true. It can be accurate or inaccurate. But it is bound up completely with human life. Without human life supporting human intelligence and producing these understandings of relative history, there can be no such history. Our life, as a phenomenon of this Living History As Presence, is more fundamental than the products of the intellect.

And so, (I say) valuing life, protecting life, ameliorating the suffering in life (or at least not adding to it) is or should be a basic imperative before all other notions and ideologies can be given evaluation as to their relative and potential benefit.

Ordinary history is a product of the human intellect.

Embodied history is the living present which transcends mere words and concepts.