RE-SEEING THE WORLD VIII

If it is true in us that our own perspectives evolve along with our ceaseless transformations and yet we remain able to unify them all and affirm them as our own single self-expression, surely it is also true of others. And if it is true in others then in this we are all the same and can therefore unite self and other to form a oneness. In recognizing and affirming our own perpetual stumble forward, we can allow others to do the same. This is little more than the previously mentioned folk wisdom that we should walk a mile in another’s shoes before condemning them.

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Thus, we can understand how the Confucians and the Mohists, for all their significant differences of opinion, are the same in that they are each one merely speaking from the perspective of their unique experiences. We can unite them to form a oneness. Such a movement does not negate their differences, and we can still judge between them as to which best facilitates human flourishing, only now we are informed of a higher view that enables us to affirm them all as “This”, as right. All that “is” is right by virtue of its existing at all. All is well in the Great Mess of contraries in evolving and historical staggerings. This is the broadest of affirmations derived from the empirical, the “obvious”. We shall later consider a more immediate and intuitive point of entry.

RE-SEEING THE WORLD VII

This argument turns on an appreciation of the subjective, perspectival nature of all knowing and discriminating. “This” is a perspective that of necessity chooses one point of view to the exclusion of others. But every “this” is also everyone else’s “that”, and that is their “this” (perspective). How we deem things, whether right or wrong, beneficial or harmful, is determined by our perspective. This is most easily appreciated when seen in inter-species differences of perspective:

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“When human beings sleep in the cold and damp they wake up in pain—but is this also true of eels? When human beings climb trees, they tremble with fear—but is this also true of monkeys? Which of these three knows the best place to be? . . . . Male monkeys like female monkeys, bucks mate with does, male fish play with female fish, and humans think certain women are great beauties—yet when fish see them they take to the depths, when birds see them they take to the skies, and when deer see them they take to the woods. Which of these four knows what it truly beautiful? From my perspective, all definitions of humaneness and correctness, and of right and wrong, are all hopelessly tangled and confused. How could I figure out which is the ‘best’ one among them” (2:49)?

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Eels like it cold and clammy; humans like it warm and cozy. We wouldn’t suggest that eels have got it wrong, while humans have got it right. There is no one “right” dao among these infinite daos. This is easily appreciated, though still it challenges us to broaden its implications. Can we say the same of the different daos which humans follow? This is more difficult to envision. We might start by understanding how it is true in our individual experience, how over the passage of time we change our perspectives and yet unite them in the experience of a single “me”.

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“When Lady Yi was first captured and brought to Qin she wept copiously, but after some time sharing the king’s bed and eating fine foods she wondered that she had wept at all” (2:55).

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“Zhuangzi said to Huizi, ‘Confucius went along for sixty years and transformed sixty times. What he first considered right he later considered wrong. He could never know whether what he presently considered right was not fifty-nine times wrong’” (27; Ziporyn, p 115).

RE-SEEING THE WORLD VI

“Only someone who experiences this uniting into oneness can ‘understand’ it. Such a person does not impose her definition of ‘rightness’ on the world and its ‘things’ but rather affirms them all just as they are and allows them to be just as they are. Seen from the point of view of Dao, their ordinary reality is understood as united with every other ordinary reality and this enables the affirmation of all things. This view from Dao is also just a point of view, and not an imposition of a definition of ‘rightness’ or ‘correctness’ upon the world. Viewing things thusly, as a matter of course, and not because you consider it the ‘right dao’, is Dao”(2:24).

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This idea of Dao as the Convergence of daos is only just another dao, albeit a helpful one. It can however become a negating of other daos, unless it becomes more than just an idea. It must become our natural, spontaneous interface with the world.

RE-SEEING THE WORLD V

Our judgments are a result of our perspectives (daos); different perspectives lead to different daos. In recognizing this, reason naturally wishes to unite them in a new category. Yet such a movement must overcome our deep attachment to right and wrong and ultimately, self and other. If accomplished, however, this unity becomes a new dao, Zhuangzi’s view from Dao:

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“When we are able to see that sense in which they are no longer opposites, this can be called Dao as Convergence, the point of view (dao) that allows all daos to converge into a oneness” (2:19).

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This is an idea, a product of the reasoning mind, even though it overturns reason’s claim that what it knows is fixed and “true”. We remain in the realm of reason, but it has now reached its limit; it has come to that frontier, the end of its world, where it can only imaginatively and vertiginously consider what lies beyond. This imagining invites a further movement, one that we can only describe as mystical and transformative.

RE-SEEING THE WORLD IV

“We think of our theory as ‘this’, as right, and the other’s theory as ‘that’, as wrong. But everyone and everything is clearly both a ‘this’ and a ‘that’, so in this sense they are the same. But we cannot easily see another’s ‘that’ as a ‘this’ being bound as we are by our own subjectivity, by our own ‘this’”(1:17).

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“This” and “that” also imply self and other. “This” is the subjective self and “that” is its objectified other. Yet, every “this” is someone else’s “that”. Everyone is thus both “this” and “that”. This being the “obvious” case, we are invited to move to the next level and unify them into a oneness.

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“Thus, every individual thing can be said to be ‘right’ and ‘acceptable’. If we say that this thing is a ‘beam’ and not a ‘pillar’, or that a leper is ugly and the famous beauty Xishi is beautiful, there is still a perspective from which someone can say that the opposite is true. Thus, there is yet another dao that allows these two perspectives (daos) to open up into each other, and to thereby combine to form a oneness” (2:22).

RE-SEEING THE WORLD III

“Thus, we have the competing rights and wrongs of the Confucians and Mohists who affirm what the other negates and negate what the other affirms. But if we want to affirm what they both negate (that both can be right) and negate what they both affirm (that one must be right and the other wrong) then nothing works so well as shining the light of the obvious upon them” (2:16).

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What is “obvious” to Zhuangzi, in the light of their being equally expressions of Nature and thus in that sense on a par with the chirping of baby birds, is that they are both right and both wrong. Their mutual this-ing and that-ing, moreover, cancels out that of the other and this renders them both an affirmable “This”. The chirping of a sparrow is as affirmable as the scream of a hawk. All expressions are affirmable. But here we already have made use of a broadening perspective to recontextualize ourselves so as to see the world in a different way. This speaks to that level at which all things can be deemed as of equal value. Zhuangzi is fully aware of how difficult this perspective is to envision, given how counter-habitual it is. That it is even more difficult to realize in experience once envisioned speaks to our bondage to the ideas of right and wrong, truth and falsity. Yet, these are precisely the bonds from which he would release us—not by means of their annihilation, but by their mutual affirmability.

RE-SEEING THE WORLD II

ZHUANGZIAN PERSECTIVISM

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We have saved a most important aspect of Zhuangzi’s critique of reason, his perspectivism, for consideration in the context of his implied methodology of imaginative meditation, specifically, the envisioning of new, broadening and mind-opening perspectives with a view to a transformative recontextualization. His perspectivism and its application are knit together in one piece.

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He begins by critiquing the bifurcating terms “this” and “that”. These were much in use among the debaters of his time, the Confucians and especially the Later Mohists. We needn’t concern ourselves with the specific doctrines that led to the use of these categories, however, since the one thing they both had in common was the one that Zhuangzi sought to overturn. This was their belief that “this” (which also means “right”) must negate “that” (which also means “wrong”). Our differences of opinion must mean that one of us is right and the other wrong. Zhuangzi did not concern himself with the validity of the content of their respective points of view—that would have been to enter the debate at their level. Instead, he questioned the validity of their premise that there was one “right” dao, and thus that differing daos must oppose and therefore negate each other.

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“Thus, we have the competing rights and wrongs of the Confucians and Mohists who affirm what the other negates and negate what the other affirms. But if we want to affirm what they both negate (that both can be right) and negate what they both affirm (that one must be right and the other wrong) then nothing works so well as shining the light of the obvious upon them” (2:16).

AS THE COOKIE CRUMBLES / 5 / RE-SEEING THE WORLD I

We have seen that Zhuangzi fully appreciates the distinctly human faculties of reason and language while also appreciating their limitations. These limitations are themselves positively affirmed as an invitation to a pre- and post-cognitive experience of our being in the world. Limitations are, in fact, the necessary precondition to a sense of limitlessness and freedom. Zhuangzi uses the metaphor of “soaring” to describe this unbounded sense of freedom, and we are only able to accomplish this because air is a source of resistance. We “chariot upon whatever seems true of the cosmos and everything and anything that happens” (1:11). The daily stuff of living with all its demands is the very occasion for our soaring.

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Why would we want to soar? Because we experience ourselves as a lack, an emptiness that reason cannot fill. Fullness, freedom, makes use of emptiness, the “useless”. Here again we see that philosophical Daoism negates nothing of the human experience, but rather embraces it all. Not only is what we perceive as useless essential to the useful, but the usefulness of the useless is in direct proportion to the degree of its uselessness. The greater the obstacle, the greater is our possible soaring.

RE-THINKING THINKING XXII

It is very likely that the Commander of the Right lost his leg through the actions of man, but even this, he assures us, is also of Nature. Humanity is both of Nature and not of Nature, though the former trumps the latter. Language, its words and ideas are all of Nature, though they are incapable of fathoming Mystery, where everything is in effect mystery—“Mystery upon mystery”. This again is the fundamental though paradoxical principle of walking two roads at once that informs all of Zhuangzi’s philosophy.

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All this has been simply to establish the usefulness of ideas in the transformation of our interface with the world and ourselves. Philosophical Daoism, especially the Zhuangzian version, does not dismiss words or the ideas they convey, but rather suggests their fullest realization in pointing us to where words cannot go. We will next consider Zhuangzi’s use of imaginative meditation which necessarily uses language and reason to affect a transformative recontextualization of our being in the world.

RE-THINKING THINKING XXI

[YESTERDAY’S POST MIGHT HAVE BEEN LOST IN THE ETHER; IT CAN BE FOUND ON THE BLOG SITE.]

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The question of what is of Nature and what is of humanity is an important one in classical Chinese philosophy which mostly concerned itself with finding a dao (guidance) that could ensure the greatest social and personal harmony. Can principles be discovered in Nature that will provide a “constant” dao? Or is it up to humanity to formulate its own? The Daodejing (1) tells us that a Constant (Heavenly) Dao, cannot be articulated thus rendering every dao a merely human and therefore relative dao. Yet we are also told that at a higher level these two are one. We quote the first chapter in its entirety:

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The way that can be spoken of
Is not the constant way;
The name that can be named
Is not the constant name.
The nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth;
The named was the mother of the myriad creatures.
Hence always rid yourself of desires in order to observe its secrets;
But always allow yourself to have desires in order to observe its manifestations.
These two are the same
But diverge in name as they issue forth.
Being the same they are called mysteries,
Mystery upon mystery—
The gateway of the manifold secrets (Lau).

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The mystery of inexplicable Dao, though it relativizes the language-bound daos of humanity, does not negate the value and affirmability of human daos or of language; it merely re-embeds them in Mystery and thereby renders them equally mystery. The use of language (like “desires”) is thus completely endorsed. Only it is now informed by Mystery and must therefore understand itself as also mystery and in this sense as incoherent, that is, not capable of articulating a constant and unchanging dao.