Dear John and dear Learners,
> . I'm choosing the comfort of reading (reading is noble -- we all know that
> -- so I'm excused, right?) to avoid searching for my passionate voice.
I am not a scholar in Confucian texts.
I am not sure if I have answered a recent and perhaps rhetorical question
to both myself and my friend and good guide in many steams (upstream and
downstream) Hanching as to the provenance of a quoted Confucian saying.
I have one book upon which I rely. I find it satisfactory. I look for a
common threads in matters of provenance. What I find in (that which I take
to be genuine) Confucianism is like a jewel with many facets, one is
convinced there is more light (beauty) is still inside than is allowed out
at any one looking, in this way I always see pastpresentfuture.
Timelessness and beauty seem companions. Listen, look;-)
9:11. "Yen Ywaen sighed deeply and said, I look up and find it lofty, I
bore into it and find it hard; I behold it and find it in front of me, and
then suddenly it is behind. Our Master in his solicitude is good at
guiding people. He broadens me with culture: he limits me with propriety.
I want to desist, but I cannot, and when I have utterly exhausted my
capacity, it seems there is still something there, towering up
majestically, and though I want to go toward it, there is no path to
follow."
Now I 'think< feel', that many people reading those words will feel a
knock at the door. Why search?
3: 15 The Master entered the shrine, and at every stage asked questions.
Someone said, Who says this son of a man of Dzou knows ritual? At every
stage he asks questions. The Master said, THAT is the ritual. (Admire your
friend's Monet, but do not presume to give him a lecture upon the subject
of impressionism;-) - This 'saying'' came in an age of the thaumaturge, a
technician of ritual or a Master of ceremonies. There are still some such
here;-)
How to serve God without touching the world? Put away the books. Pick up
the mind of Nature.
"Nature, why do you bring forth your works (bifurcations)"
Nature answered according to Plotinus (Ennead III, Eighth Tractate, Nature,
Contemplation and the One)
" It would have been more becoming to put no question but to learn in
silence, just as I myself am silent and make no habit of talking. And what
is your lesson? This; that whatsoever comes into being is my vision (John,
we are her 'being' visioned into our owned becoming!) since in my silence,
the vision that belongs to my character who, sprung from vision, am vision
loving and create vision by the vision seeing faculty within me. The
mathematicians from their vision draw their figures (are you visioning
At?) but I draw nothing: I gaze and the figures of the material world the
take being as if they fell from my contemplation ( how easily nature works
for us all). As with my Mother (the All-Soul) and the beings that begot me
so it is with me; they are born of a contemplation and my birth is from
them, not by their Act but by their Being, they are the loftier
Reason-Principles, they contemplate themselves and I am born."
15: 29 The Master said, A man can broaden a Way, it is not the Way that
broadens the man.
(This was a Confucian swipe at the Dauists, whose methods implied that
individuals could oftenmost by mediation become more effective than they
were)
You know, I used to get confused by terms like genetic-algorithms until I
saw they were simply recipes, done in silence.
At, Rainbows? You have to be there. Move and they follow. Inside brighter
than outside. John, have you figured the circle from the line. Upon that
figured leaf is the light (TS Eliot), the light of May and the Light of
the World.
The Lamb sits all day beside the Mother.
A patient cycling is this learning. A gentle turning.
Love,
Andrew
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