jennypenny wrote: ↑Wed Jun 29, 2022 1:23 pm
Hopefully that explains why I don't think keeping busy is a way to
avoid the big questions in life. To my mind, it's a way to act out who you are and what your thought processes are at the moment. If you can get to the place where 'being' and 'doing' meet, you'll start to find some clarity. You might also discover that you were asking the wrong questions, or that, in the end, it was more fun spending time walking on the beach or having sex instead of trying to resolve your existential crises.
Spot on.
The being/doing nexus was my way out of my times of crisis. It wasn't rumination.
There are times when just getting into nature can get us to this here, or love in its various forms, but another big one is creation. I have noted this as fulfillment-via-craft here, though I'm not sure how many people saw it, or saw it as applying at the time
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(If nothing else, skip down to the Peter Korn quotes in the "Fulfilled" section. But of course if I thought the other writing was pointless, I wouldn't have written it).
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Also, I'm going to go for the jugular here and point out that rumination just creates words. And words suck. They are traps, and leaning on Christopher Alexander from
A Pattern Language fame, the good qualities in life are not only more important than words (which should have been enough) they are more
objective than the words. Good god, don't take my word for it. Here's a write up I did of the opening of Alexander's
A Timeless Way of Building, which knocked my socks off on this point:
Many of the best works on daoism don't even mention the word "dao." This makes perfect sense. After all, the daodeing, though it is a book that uses the word dao still begins with the warning
Dao called Dao is not the eternal Dao
Names that can be named are not eternal names.
One book that is long on daoism, but short on using the word is
The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander. After the opening pages of the book, which read as mysticism [1], Alexander proceeds in pages 29 to 40 to prove the need for the mystical language by giving a demonstration of the inadequacy of language to describe what makes spaces wonderful to be in and around. To begin with, he tries to use the dichotomy of alive/lifeless:
Things which are living may be lifeless; nonliving things may be alive. A man who is walking and talking can be alive; or he can be lifeless. Beethoven's last quartets are alive; so are the waves at the ocean shore; so is a candle flame; a tiger may be more alive, because more in tune with its own inner forces, than a man (pg 29).
But alive is just a metaphor, and that leaves the word too imprecise.
The metaphor makes us believe that we have found a word to grasp the quality without a name. But we can only use the word to name the quality, when we already understand the quality (pg 30).
So, he tries the word "whole," but then finds that whole implies enclosure. The word is more cramped than the quality (Quality?)
So, he tries "comfortable." But you can become so comfortable that you become lifeless, too sheltered.
So, he tries "free." But finds that could be "too theatrical: a pose, a form, a manner" (pg 34). So-called "free style" art is often not whole, and certainly rarely comfortable.
So . . . "a word which helps restore the balance is the word exact" (pg 34). That's an odd turn for mysticism, no? Well, so be it. Alexander uses the example of trying to add a table to a landscape so that blackbirds would made us of it. To make it work, you need to make it exact in ways that work for the birds. If you keep observing and adjusting, you'll probably get there.
Of course "exact" is loaded down with too much linguistic baggage as well -- too mechanical, cold, cookie-cutter.
So. . . egoless? But we're not trying to efface the creator. The creator has forces that need to be balanced harmoniously as well.
So . . . eternal? No.
It hints at a religious quality. The hint is accurate. And yet . . . It is not mysterious. It is above all ordinary. What makes it eternal is its ordinariness. The word "eternal" cannot capture that (pg 39).
As a person who had made a study of daoism/quietism for some time before reading these passages -- which, I had read after
A Pattern Language -- and thought I had a good grasp on the subject, I was greatly surprised and then moved by this argument that the dao is unnameble because it is more precise than any word we can use [2]. I felt my mind put up resistance to the idea, but quickly realized it was the truth [3].
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[1] For example
There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named. pg ix.
The dao meets architecture and city planning.
[2] See Sarah Perry for a discussion of Alexander's sense of objectivism.
One,
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/04/06/deep-laziness/
two,
https://carcinisation.com/2015/03/30/centers/
three
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/08/04/t ... ss-museum/
[3] My first understanding of dao all had to do with pace. I noticed the beauty in those who take their time. I saw it in my grandparents, and I saw it the unfolding of nature over a season. I now realize that one takes ones time in order to make sure their is precision where it matters. I system needs double checks and thus needs slack.
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