Let it lie there

“But if man is to find his way once again into the nearness of Being he must first learn to exist in the nameless... before he speaks man must first let himself be claimed again by Being, taking the risk that under this claim he will seldom have much to say”- Martin Heidegger, Letter on Humanism.

“The mind of a sentient being is destined to desire to know it’s own self. However those whose eyes see their true selves are exceedingly rare indeed; Buddha alone sees it... What Buddha means by the self is precisely the entire universe. Thus, whether one is aware of it or not, there is no universe that is not this self...” Eihei Dogen, Shobogenzo

However vast this universe of activity, change, life, death, space, time, expanding, cycling, retracting, differentiating, opposing, struggling, collapsing, returning may be – it is inseparable from these beings that appear as myself and yourself. In any event, what is ‘matter’ really? Grinding the world down analytically to the smallest particles is nothing more than elaborating on phenomena by means of other phenomena.

As long as the structures and strictures of analytical thinking, the assumptions of the paradigm of subject and object duality, are not understood as limited to relative practical knowledge and are rather taken as absolute, the destiny of all human effort in understanding will be the reduction of being to mechanism, domination, dissatisfaction, destruction and death. Freedom and determinism are just concepts. Nature and humanity are relative and abstract classifications. Do not demand that either (or anything) fit finally and ultimately into neat, discrete geometrical categories.

Be generous with being, acknowledging it’s impenetrability and it’s mysterious workings. Forget the vain fantasy of mastering the world or other beings. Forget even the mirage of self-mastery. Do no harm and retrieve the mind that wonders at the shocking majesty of being, but which understands that it can never understand, nor insists that it ever should.