Receiving

“The Ditch” is a marvellously eerie radio play by Paul Evans. It is set on the coastal fenlands and salt marshes of East Anglia. It tells the story of a wildlife enthusiast’s disappearance, having fallen under the spell of this wilderness of land and sea which (quite literally!) speaks so that he can hear. I like it for itself, but also appreciate it as representing a direct – if very particular and somewhat exaggerated- encounter with the way the World communicates, teaches, and reveals itself. What in Zen is referred to with the phrase “everything is proclaiming the dharma”, and what was according to Heidegger, the originary revelation of Greek philosophy seems to me to point to the same vision; the world, universe, cosmos, the entirety, the integration of all realms of experience, of being, is the apparition, revelation, and the teaching. It is there for all, with all, in all, as all. Words, books, writings can only ever be secondary and at best aid us in receiving what is the unconcealing of reality to itself.

According to Heidegger’s reading of Parmenides, Being as Phusis, the constant appearing of all that appears as the World (literally everything; universe, self, others, cosmos, chaos, nature, matter, mind, spirit, dream) unconceals (alaetheia) itself as the way all things gather together (logos) to be apprehended (noein) by us (and since we are part of the appearing of Being, it is a case of Being appearing to and being apprehended by itself).

Heidegger insists that with Parmenides belongs the absolutely fundamental insight of the Greeks, which could and did only become covered over once unconcealing was transformed into the effort to grasp idea/correctness, and logos was transformed to being taken to mean truth/assertion of the correct idea.

In other words, once the analytical impulse in human thinking took over.

Then philosophy ceased to dwell at the hinge of its original living revelation. The discipline became an intellectual franchise which simply incorporated and developed any and every other facet of experience in a more or less standardised model; logic, assertion, negation, subject, category, contradiction etc . In a sense, much of the history of at least western philosophy (with notable exceptions) was the story of the cult of the intellect and it’s many sects and contract-works for (and sometimes against) whoever and whatever constituted the ruling powers and institutions.

But what the original philosophy was about, what it was directed towards, is that which is constantly around us, and in us, before us, beneath us, above etc; The living immensity that is prior to and yet grounds all differentiation, Phusis – Being as the blooming forth, the emerging sway of the all, of the World.

It revealed itself to and through those like Parmenides in mystical experience. It is there for everyone, whether we want to (or are permitted by ruling authority, access to resources, time, education, leisure etc – which we should be as our common inheritance and birthright as humans) encounter and recognize it or not.

(Below is a link to the radio play, “The Ditch”, on YouTube)

https://youtube.com/watch?v=oihs0lXNoFU&si=5jyQRsEUccwobDiX