With respect,
Good Evening Everyone,
A recent comment on a Facebook blog made me think a bit. One of my students posted a link to an opinion piece in a magazine by the renowned Dr. Noam Chomsky. I commented on it and a reader of my student’s page commented back that I was “dismissive” of a person who was a “vast fount of knowledge.”
This phrase has stuck in my mind. As well as the perception that I was dismissive. Perhaps I was. Is that wrong? Perhaps. Another time for this discussion, I think, but now I would like to address the notion of “knowledge.”
Knowledge is an area of philosophical investigation known as “epistemology.” Frankly, Zen is all about it. Epistemology examines how we know what we know, its scope and validity. Zen is all about this. We might say that Zen practice is the highest form of epistemological investigation. Why? Because it begins with a radical deconstruction of the knower and the known.
Descartes thought that he found a truth that served as the basis of all knowledge, he said, “Cognito ergo sum,” I think, therefore, I am. He supposed that knowledge was a reflection of internal brain processes, although he likely would not use that language. Many of us today make the same mistake, we think what we think is knowledge.
Yet thinking is just our mental processes at work. These bear no relation to the “objective” world, as if there is such a thing. But rather are reflections of our neurological activity, playing in the playground of our senses. A thought is just a thought. It represents something we have constructed from a perception, another set of electrical impulses striking our brain, but it is not the thing itself.
What do we know? Nothing. We create a system of thoughts, categorize and share them, and call it knowledge. The only true knowing is not knowing: it is prior to knowing, prior to sensation, it is the face you had before your father and mother were born. Anything else is an imposter posing as knowledge. Chomsky thinks. He relies on his thoughts, which are well organized and articulate, but just thoughts. Are these thoughts “knowledge”?
If you say yes, you are saying abstractions are the universe and more, it is the thought rather than the direct experience that counts. Zen says otherwise.
Thoughts do not count as knowledge. They are thoughts about something. What is the something? If you say it is this or that you are still in the abstraction. In Zen we directly experience the thing itself and let the thoughts drop away. This is true knowledge.
Be well.
1 comment:
Unfortunately there is no direct experience of the thing itself. Our experience is always a blend of stimuli, like mixing pastels on paper to create a picture.
Two people will look at the same scene and experience different things, even at the trivial level, I have different vision in each eye and so don't perceive depth too well. If I wear a contact lens then depth perception improves and yet with or without the lens I perceive the world the same way even though in one case vision is with one eye and in another it is with two. Yesterday I even put two lenses into the same eye because I'd forgotten despite the big difference.
If I look at a desirable woman sometimes I will see an idealisation, not the actual woman. The idealisation will emphasise things I like and deemphasise things I don't like. I will not necessarily be aware of it going on. I may only notice when the idealisation arises or departs.
Consciousness is always a blend of many elements even if we cannot see the blend. Even visual perception is a seamless mix of external and internal stimuli that play out in the visual cortex. Two people can look at a tree and one will see the squirrel, another a blue-Jay and not the squirrel. Even what we perceive, even if it is largely eternally triggered will be heavily edited.
All of this is normal awareness and consciousness.
If internal stimuli are drowing out external stimuli the you are still within the realms of nonthinking and may be in dreaming state or the realms of what we often just call madness.
Consciousness, perception and reality are a lot less solid than we think, a lot less solid than I would like. It's like trying to grasp the ocean, trying just makes you aware of it.
So what is left?
one day a woman looks beautiful
Another day she does not
One day I sm happy
Another not
One day the world is wonderful
Another day is not
The only constant is the dance
I can mostly enjoy the dance
There's nothing to grasp or cling to
Not even the dance.
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