martedì 22 aprile 2014

se fossi ricco penserei al Tao

Capitolo III

Io non credo all'infinito. Si fa presto a dire: Non finisce più. Possibile? A camminare in linea retta un milione di secoli, se le pare un miliardo di secoli, non si arriverà al termine dei termini? Capisca, ho detto un miliardo di secoli. E facciamo due miliardi, anzi.... Secondo me, si arriverebbe, in tanto tempo, anche più in là. Ma il problema mi pare un altro: da che parte dovremmo avviarci, a destra o a sinistra?

"Non saprei...." rispose la guida. Tacque alcuni minuti, poi riprese.

L'infinito, la morte.... Due cose, una cosa. Gli uomini non pensano all'infinito, non pensano alla morte. Creda, ognuno è convinto di non morire. "Oh, uno, uno solamente può cavarsela - pensano - se sa fare!" Non lo dicono a nessuno, neanche ai figli, perché se il numero ingrossa, la cosa diventa difficile. Vivono con questa segreta speranza; se no, andrebbero ai funerali con tanta disinvoltura?

Un'estate, a Saint-Moritz, ero seduto con il banchiere Schappen sull'orlo di un precipizio. Diceva Schappen: "Questa sera mangerò pernici con tartufi". Sarebbe bastata una spinta, una piccola spinta.

L'incoscienza di alcuni giunge a fissare appuntamenti per l'anno dopo: "Arrivederci a Biarritz...." Le mamme poi....; dicono ai figlioli: "Tesoro, quando sarai grande...." Matte!

Io non ignoro la mia sorte. Vivrò dieci anni ancora, cento? Ma gli anni, a saperli gustare, non sono pochi. Basta non essere come coloro che toccano i trenta, dicono, senza accorgersene, o in treno o in ufficio smaniano perché il tempo passi presto.

Così si capisce che i giorni se ne vanno come la sabbia fra le dita, e il vivere diventa una faccenda sbrigativa. Io, invece, considero la giornata, la divido in ventiquattro ore e bado al quarto. Sa quante cose si fanno in un'ora? Una cenetta, una fumata, due passi; guardiamo le vetrine, il passeggio, ci nascono talune riflessioni che a metterle in carta darebbero la fama. Quando mi pare che il tempo scorra troppo veloce, divido l'ora in minuti primi e, talvolta, in minuti secondi; tremilaseicento minuti secondi....

E immagina come passo i momenti più belli della mia giornata?

Davanti allo specchio. Prima mi guardo vestito di tutto punto, poi in mutande, poi senza. Il mio profilo è più delicato visto dalla destra; la maschera del dolore mi imbruttisce.

Mi alzo sulla punta dei piedi: perfetto: sarei perfetto, due dita più alto. Poi danzo, faccio inchini, saluti.... In complesso sono soddisfatto.

Poi dico: come sarei se fossi matto? Sbarro gli occhi, spalanco la bocca, mi arruffo i capelli, rido. È triste, ciò che io credevo possibile solo per gli altri, è possibile anche per me.

In fine faccio il morto: metto il letto davanti allo specchio, mi inciprio la faccia; mi distendo sul letto, sto lì a guardarmi con gli occhi socchiusi. Penso: "anch'io, dunque, fra vent'anni, fra cento, sarò tale e quale, con un altro vestito, forse con i baffi e la barba, ma così in sostanza". Seguito a riflettere e di solito mi addormento. In tal modo, un pochino alla volta mi abituo a morire.

La morte! È un mistero anche per me, per noi larve. Ci sembra di essere ancora lungo il viaggio perché siamo troppo simili a prima. La morte sarà una cosa ben più terribile. Udrete infatti nell'oltretomba parole come fossero dei vivi : ciascuno dietro ai propri sogni o dolori, che sono sogni o dolori nati nei pochi anni di vita terrena e che ci trascineremo dietro per miliardi di secoli, sin che a Dio piacerà.

Se fossi ricco passerei buona parte della giornata sdraiato in una soffice poltrona a pensare alla morte. Sono povero, invece, e posso pensarci solo nei ritagli di tempo, o di nascosto. Alcuni giorni fa il signor Better mi sorprese che guardavo incantato il soffitto e gridò: "Sia l'ultima volta che la trovo a pensare alla morte in ufficio".

Se fossi re obbligherei anche i bambini a pensarci almeno un'ora al giorno. Eccoli ancora accaldati per i recenti giuochi, con le braccia conserte sul banco, che pensano che pensano....

Presto andrò in pensione e sarò libero. Quando incontrerò il signor Better, per fargli dispetto, mi metterò a pensare alla morte con tutte le mie forze.

A me, da vivo, anche il destino si presentava come una forza più di ogni altra inesplicabile e meritevole di meditazione. Fu un fatto insignificante a scuotere la tranquillità del mio spirito. Ascoltate: "Un giorno passeggio per il mio giardino, vedo una mosca prigioniera in una tela di ragno tesa fra due rami. "Destino", penso. Sto per allontanarmi, mi viene un'idea: tolgo la mosca dalla rete. "Destino", penso. Ma un minuto dopo torno a mettere la mosca in prigionia. Quale sarà il destino di questa mosca? Trascorsa un'ora sono ancora lì a togliere e a mettere la mosca nella rete. Quale imbarazzo. Passa il mio vicino Smith. Lo chiamo, lo metto al corrente della cosa in due parole, gli consegno la mosca, mi allontano mentre egli se ne sta lì molto perplesso con l'insetto tra le dita".

Questo caso mi pare assai meno ossessionante di quello che mi riguarda.

Un mattino esco di casa verso il mezzodì. Ho mangiato un panino così piccolo che quasi non lo ricordo. Ero allora solo e poverissimo. Allo svolto della strada mi fermo davanti a Gypper, il pasticcere. Guardo le belle cose che sono nella vetrina. Il cagnolino di Milton mi arriva tra i piedi. Cosa fa il cagnolino di Milton? Sferro un gran calcio allo screanzato. Milton vede, mi offende, io rispondo per le rime, tanta gente sta intorno a noi. Mi allontano: ma prendo una via solitaria; l'episodio mi ha messo di un umore più tetro. Cammina cammina, nel primo vicolo che imbocco vedo un pacchetto per terra. Facciamola breve, mi metto in tasca le banconote e mi sento felice, così felice che mi vengono le lacrime agli occhi. Mi avvio a casa, voglio contare in pace il danaro. Davanti a Gypper c'è ancora un capannello di gente con Milton in mezzo che parla e parla. Passo, saluto Milton, saluto tutti. Sì, un po' di sterline sono la vita. Ma, ahimè, da quel giorno non ebbi quiete. Pensavo al caso, alla potenza del caso. Mentre ero in letto mi tormentavo: "E se giù nella strada c'è un pacchetto, un pacchettino di banconote? O ci sarà tra cinque minuti, o tra cinque secondi? Basta un secondo a decidere il bene e il male. Insomma non riuscivo a stare fermo, dovevo scendere subito, subito".

Tao Paradoxico-Philosophicus 17-19



    Un dieu donne le feu     
     Pour faire l'enfer;      
      Un diable, le miel     
       Pour faire le ciel.  
   



TRACTATUS PARADOXICO-PHILOSOPHICUS

17 Hierarchies: consider open organizations with two or more levels made of one or more observers.
17.1 For rule-following observers, the hierarchy follows a simple logic, a consequence of logical reasoning: a member who follows the rules expects promotion and praise; a member who does not, expects demotion or expulsion.
17.11 This simple logic, swiftly assimilated by rule-following members, implies for them that rules only flow (apply) from high to low so that self-reference (and paradoxes) cannot happen.
17.12 However, hierarchies must intersect with closed organizations to maintain their activity; for example, without the following loop hierarchies disintegrate:
17.2 “Rewards” (wealth, power, praise etc.), bestowed on those towards the top; “punishments” (enslavement, demotion or expulsion, etc.), bestowed on those towards the bottom; these latter, forced to close the loop that chains them, supply with their labor the “rewards” for those towards the top.
17.21 Other recurrent loops give hierarchies flexibility, but also remain unconceivable to rule-following members.
17.22 As hierarchies grow, these loops weaken and break; rigidity or disintegration result together with the silence of rule-pondering members.
17.3 Narrow goals, promotions decided from above and blind loyalties from below inevitably promote the most narrow-minded members towards the top.



18 Hierarchies in society: societies organize within a mixture of closed (non-hierarchical) and open (hierarchical) organizations.
18.1 Within hierarchies only few enjoy the product of the labor of the majority, who toils for survival and relentlessly loses hope of breaking the chains.
18.11 This and the breeding of rule-following observers within this majority ensure the survival, growth and propagation of hierarchies, an unhealthy recurrence that leads to a static stability difficult to disrupt.
18.12 Hierarchical societies replace their long-term goals with narrow short-term goals, similar to the “profits at all costs” of corporations, thus stimulating all their members to abandon their most cherished interests and place business above all.
18.13 In this context, human diversity of interests, curiosity, inventiveness, creativity, ingenuity, emotions, feelings, etc., decline to the point of extinction, so that something called “human” replaces human, with considerable loss.
18.2 Meanwhile, hierarchies take over one or more governments, dictate their own laws and logic, and make their actions (deemed always positive by propaganda and deception) accountable to none.
15.21 These observers develop a need to protect themselves from thinking, conversation, self-reference, paradoxes, uncertainty and unpredictability.
18.3 Without eliminating the hierarchies, every attempt at improving the life of humans has ended and will end in a failure.



19 Instruction: consider the members of a hierarchy “learning” to follow passively its rules.
19.1 Social relationships among rule-following observers need the predictability of observers with respect to each other.
19.11 Instruction makes observers predictable
19.2 Instruction reduces the number of possibilities (choices) available to observers, fostering the loss of meaning among observers and their environments.
19.21 For example, rule-following observers call “democratic” and “free” a nation ruled by corporations; “university” and “hospital” institutions run as corporations; “professors” and “physicians” those who neglect their declared vocation to participate as rule-following observers in corporate activities inside and outside their institutions; etc.
19.22 Meanwhile democracy, liberty, university, professors, physicians, etc., and their meanings, cease to exist for these observers and for those who follow them.
19.3 Instruction stimulates social knowledge, explanation, communication, logic, predictability, folly and illegitimate questions, questions to which the questioner already knows the answers.

Tractatus Paradoxico-Philosophicus

A Philosophical Approach to Education
Un Acercamiento Filosófico a la Educación
Une Approche Philosophique à l'Education
Eine Philosophische Annäherung an Bildung

Ricardo B. Uribe

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Tao Paradoxico-Philosophicus 14-16

Zobi, la mouche Taò

martedì 15 aprile 2014

Tao senza fondamento orientale e occidentale

Jacek Yerka
La ricerca del Sé e della Coscienza nella prospettiva enazionista, considerando mondi di coscienza ed esperienza senza fondamento analizzato secondo la tradizione del Buddhismo Abhidharma, trova in Nishitani Keiji e la Scuola di Kyôto un esempio rilevante di integrazione tra le prospettive orientali e occidentali:

WORLDS WITHOUT GROUND

Laying Down a Path in Walking

Nishitani Keiji

In our discussion of the Cartesian anxiety, we saw that there is an oscillation between objectivism and subjectivism that is linked to the concept of representation. Thus representation can be construed either as the "projection" (subjectivism) or "recovery" (objectivism) of the world. (Usually, of course, both aspects of representation are incorporated in accounts of perception and cognition.)
For Nishitani, this oscillation between subjectivism and objectivism arises for any philosophical stance that is based on what he calls "the field of consciousness". With this phrase Nishitani refers to the philosophical construal of the world as an objective or pregiven realm and of the self as a pregiven knowing subject that somehow achieves contact with this pregiven world. Since consciousness is here understood as subjectivity, the problem arises of how to link consciousness with the supposedly objective realm in which it is situated. As we have already discussed, however, the subject cannot step outside of its representations to behold the pregiven world as it really is in itself. Therefore given this basically Cartesian stance, the objective becomes what is represented as such by the subject. In Nishitani's words, "The mode of being which is said to have rid itself of its relationship to the subjective has simply been constituted through a covert inclusion of a relationship to the subjective, and so cannot, after all, escape the charge of constituting a mode of being defined through its appearance to us."
When the notion of objectivity becomes problematic in this way, so too does the notion of subjectivity. If everything is ultimately specified through its appearance to us, then so is the knowing subject. Since the subject can represent itself to itself, it becomes an object for representation but is different from all other objects. Thus in the end the self becomes both an objectified subject and a subjectified object. This predicament discloses the shiftiness, the instability of the entire subjective/objective polarity.
Nishitani's next move, however, displays the deep influence of the Buddhist philosophical tradition and mindfulness/awareness practice on his thinking. He argues that to realize the fundamental instability or groundlessness of the subjective/objective dualism is in a sense to slip out of the "field of consciousness". We do not "overcome" or step out" of this dualism as if we knew in advance where we are going, but we do see the arbitrariness and futility of going back and forth between the poles of a fundamentally groundless opposition. Instead our concern shifts to the very disclosure of this groundlessness. Nishitani then follows the pragmatic intention of mindfulness/awareness by emphasizing the existential role that this disclosure plays. The realization that we do not stand on solid ground, that things incessantly arise and pass away without our being able to pin them down to a stable objective or subjective ground, affects our very life and being. Within this existential context, we can be said to realize groundlessness not only in the sense of understanding but also in the sense of actualization: human life or existence turns into a question, doubt, or uncertainty.
In Zen Buddhism, the Japanese adaptation of mindfulness/awarenessin which Nishitani was raised, this uncertainty is called the "Great Doubt." This doubt is not about any particular matter but is rather the basic uncertainty that arises from the disclosure of groundlessness. Unlike the hyperbolic and hypothetical doubt of Descartes, which is merely entertained by the subject on the field of consciousness, the Great Doubt points to the impermanence of existence itself and so marks an existential transformation within human experience. This transformation consists of a conversion away from the subjective/objective standpoint to what is called in the English translation of Nishitani's work the "field of nihility." Nihility is a term used to refer to groundlessness in relation to the subjective/objective polarity; it is a relative, negative notion of groundlessness that Nishitani wishes to distinguish from the groundlessness of the middle way.
Nishitani distinguishes between these two kinds of groundlessness because his fundamental point is that European thought in its largely successful critique of objectivism has become trapped in nihilism. Here Nishitani's assessment of our situation actually follows Nietzsche's. As we mentioned, nihilism arises for Nietzsche when we realize that our most cherished beliefs are untenable and yet we are incapable of living without them. Nietzsche devoted considerable attention to the manifestation of nihilism in our discovery that we do not stand on solid ground, that what we take to be an absolute reference point is really an interpretation foisted on an ever-shifting impersonal process. His famous aphorism announcing "the death of God" is a dramatic statement of this collapse of fixed reference points. Nietzsche also understood nihilism to be rooted in our craving for a ground, in our continual search for some ultimate reference point, even when we realize that none can be found: "What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; 'why' finds no answer." The philosophical challenge that Nietzsche faced, which has come to characterize the task of postmodern thought, is to lay down a path of thinking and practice that gives up foundations without transforming itself into a search for new foundations. Nietzsche's attempt is well known: he tried to undercut nihilism by affirming groundlessness through his notions of eternal return and the will to power.

Friedrich Nietzsche, La volontà di potenza, Bozza autografa per il frontespizio
Nishitani deeply admires Nietzsche's attempt but claims that it actually perpetuates the nihilistic predicament by not letting go of the grasping mind that lies at the source of both objectivism and nihlism. Nishitani's argument is that nihilism cannot be overcome by assimilating groundlessness to a notion of the will - no matter how decentered and impersonal. Nishitani's diagnosis is even more radical than Nietzsche's, for he claims that the real problem with Western nihilism is that it is halfhearted: it does not consistently follow through its own inner logic and motivation and so stops short of transforming its partial realization of groundlessness into the philosophical and experiential possiblities of sunyata. The reason why Western nihilism stops short is that Western thought in general has no tradition that works with cognition and lived experience in a direct and pragmatic way. (The one possible exception is psychoanalysis, but in most of its current manifestations it has been unable to confront the basic contradictions in our experience of the self or to offer a transformative reembodiment.) Indeed, our scientific culture has only just begun to consider the possibility of pragmatic and progressive approaches to experience that would enable us to learn to transform our deep-seated and emotional grasping after a ground. Without such a pragmatic approach to the transformation of experience in everyday life - especially within our developing scientific culture - human existence will remain confined to the undecidable choice between objectivism and nihilism.
We should note that Nishitani's point when he claims that Western nihilism stops short of the groundlessness of the middle way is not that we should adopt Buddhism in the sense of a particular tradition with various cultural trappings. It is, rather, that we must achieve an understanding of groundlessness as a middle way by working from our own cultural premises. These premises are largely determined by science, for we live in a scientific culture. We have therefore chosen to follow Nishitani's lead by building a bridge between cognitive science and mindfulness/awareness as a specific practice that embodies an open-ended approach to experience. Furthermore, since we cannot embody groundlessness in a scientific culture without reconceptualizing science itself as beyond the need of foundations, we have followed through the inner logic of research in cognitive science to develop the enactive approach. This approach should serve to demonstrate that a commitment to science need not include as a premise a commitment to objectivism or to subjectivism.
Objectivist science, by its very ideals as well as its historical context in our society, has maintained a role of ethical neutrality. This neutrality has been increasingly challenged in the social discourse of our time. The need for planetary thinking behooves us to consider groundlessness, whether evoked by cognitive science or experience, in its full light in the total human context. Is it not the self that has been considered the bearer of moral and ethical potency? If we challenge the idea of such a self, what have we loosed on the world? Such a concern, we feel, is the result of the failure in Western discourse to analyze the self and its product, self-interest, with experiential acumen. In contrast, the ethical dimension of ego and egolessness are at the very heart of the Buddhist tradition. We tum now to take up, as our final consideration, the issue of what the mindfulness/awareness tradition might have to offer social science for a vision of human action at its best.

lunedì 14 aprile 2014

venerdì 11 aprile 2014

il Te del Tao: LXXII - AVER CURA DI SÉ

Fractal Yin-Yang, toa267
LXXII - AVER CURA DI SÉ

Quando il popolo non teme la tua autorità
allora sopravviene la grande autorità.
Non trovare angusto ciò che ti dà pace,
non disgustarti di ciò che ti fa vivere,
poiché solo chi non se ne disgusta
non disgusta.
Per questo il santo
di sé conosce ma di sé non fa mostra,
di sé ha cura ma di sé non fa pregio.
Perciò respinge l'uno e preferisce l'altro.

risveglio del Tao