[Xmca-l] Re: Thought and language as oscillating and pulsing [or not]

[Martin John Packer]

Hi Annalisa,

If you Google 'Heidegger and Zen' you'll get 360,000 hits!

Martin

On Jan 26, 2015, at 5:57 PM, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu> wrote:

> Yes, Martin,
> 
> The BBC radio show on Phenomenology was really good! Thank you!
> 
> Unfortunately, as one of the guests pointed out, Heidegger only points to epochs of Western Civilization; I find it interesting that Heidgger himself wanted to "return to the source" and yet could not make a leap to examine Eastern thought, if only to use his methods to reveal a genealogy of thought, or better, a genealogy of beingness.
> 
> That might be because he didn't know there was a there there, or because he didn't care about Eastern thought, who knows?
> 
> The notion of "gap" might be similar to Buddhism's "nothingness," if only that it employs negation as Sartre's existentialism does. My scholarship on Buddhism is spotty, but they have a concept of "sunya" (pronounced "shunya") that means "emptiness." Oddly, this word is a Sanskrt that also means "pregnant" or "fullness" and I suppose adherents of Buddhism and Vedic thought have been debating the meaning of sunya since the inception of Buddhism. 
> 
> What I found fascinating is that Heidegger after deconstructing beingness in his own way, was not able to reconstruct it (as the radio guest said, Being and Time was left unfinished). If there is an independent existence in which supports these epochs of beingness, then what is that like and where is it located?
> 
> For something to change, there must be a witness of change, something that is constant. If human consciousness is indeed changing, then there must be something independent of human consciousness within us to detect this change. Perhaps this is what Heidegger was getting at. My intuition feels this is the case, but I confess that I'm not of the diamond mind with regard to my Heidegger scholarship.
> 
> In Vedic thought, there is a method of "neti-neti" which is quite easy to do and is a part of inquiry, but only the start of inquiry. The harder part is what might be considered, from a place of not knowing, or a position of ignorance, a reconstruction, and I see that thinkers in the West had/have this same problem. I have learned it isn't a reconstruction. But it's not something I can explain easily, because my understanding is sketchy about it, but I can say without a doubt there is something there worthy of examination. I could make an attempt to explain it, but as you must all know, teaching something is an entirely different task from understanding something. Not being able to teach something doesn't mean one doesn't understand something. So for now I'll just offer that there is something relevant there. That there is a there there, and I'm not talking about Oakland, California. :)
> 
> You will be shocked to learn that is more I could say, but I will refrain for now.
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Annalisa
> 
>