The Koan and other contradictory ways of showing something new

[novella]

ignorant enlightenment

desperate euphoria

restless contentment

destructiveness of possessive obsession

"you are perfect and you can use improvement"

Something I always see in the most artful literature is the ability (often times unconscious) of the author to use contradictions to get at something complex in the nature of a character or a situation.

It makes me think of koans and how they are used to show something between two ideas that maybe can't be put into words directly.

I was wondering if anyone else sees this use of contradiction -- something that Virginia Woolf, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Wordsworth and contemporary writers use very well--as something noticeable and interesting?

Does anyone practice koan thinking? Do you ever find it in what you are reading, lurking there between what is written?

The Wordsworth phrase "unremembered pleasures" comes to mind.

 

[bobbyburns]

they're just there to point you in the direction of something that can't be explained directly, like enlightenment. there's that story of the student who would sit and meditate everyday, until one day he had a horrible nightmare. he went to his teacher to tell him about it. the teacher's response was, "let it go". of course, the next day while meditating he had this wonderful enlightening experience, and so he told his teacher all about it. the teacher's response was, "well, in a sense, let that go, too". the secret of enlightenment is realizing that there is no enlightenment.

 

[novella]

Do you see instances of where the principle of the koan extends to artful writing? Or even to visual and physical art?

For instance a phrase like "I was never here" has the same innate contradiction as a koan. Or a story thjat is told by a narrator whose account the reader can't trust.

 

[bobbyburns]

in the 'proteus' episode of ulysses, stephen dedalus is walking along sandymount strand with his eyes closed.

INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE VISIBLE: AT LEAST THAT IF NO MORE, thought through my eyes. signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. limits of the diaphane. but he adds: in bodies. then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. how? by knocking his sconce against them, sure. go easy. bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. limit of the diaphane in. why in? diaphane, adiaphane. if you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. shut your eyes and see.

it's been a while since I've talked about joyce with anyone, but the guy was nearly blind his entire life, so in ulysses, among other things, he tried to show both the beauty and the limitation of the senses. seeing not with the eyes, but with consciousness, yet not ignoring the physical world, because it is not separate from the mind.

 

[novella]

That's a great example, especially culminating in: shut your eyes and see. I remember that line "ineluctable modality of the visible" so well--I had a professor who went there more than once. That makes me want to reread Ulysses.

I think poetry often relies on the meaning between such seeming contradictions, but it's harder to recognize it in prose. It's definitely there many times just when I think: this is something cool to think about.

Like this about life and death by Roethke

I am renewed by death, thought of my death,
The dry scent of a dying garden in September,
The wind fanning the ashes of a low fire.
What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air.

which is essentially one huge koan and also not, because you can find the sense of it in the idea of dormancy, but it contradicts the cliches about renewal.

 

[bobbyburns]

I think a lot of what we attribute to "beauty" is just the mind being forced into a state of no-thought. a koan does this through contradiction. it's a way of leading thought into a puzzle that it can't solve, so it has no choice but to click out. that's why poetry can sometimes seem like bizarro logic. when you're describing a character, it's never the character you think it is. a condition is never the condition you think it is. the world is never what it appears to be. it's noticeable and interesting when you realize that.

 

[novella]

That is so true! The best way to write a character is to write around it and let it take up the empty space and just exist. It's like listening very hard to nothing and hearing all the sounds around the nothing and then the shape of the nothing is revealed.

When you try to write it directly, it disappears into a mess of generalized meaninglessness.

 

[ruach]

Joyce is still king.

"You see I use the word arrest. I mean that the tragic emotion is static. Or rather the dramatic emotion is. The feelings excited by improper art are kinetic, desire or loathing. Desire urges us to possess, to go to something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. The arts which excite them, pornographical or didactic, are therefore improper arts. The esthetic emotion (I used the general term) is therefore static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing.
"But we are just now in a mental world, Stephen continued. The desire and loathing excited by improper esthetic means are really not esthetic emotions not only because they are kinetic in character but also because they are not more than physical. Our flesh shrinks from what it dreads and responds to the stimulus of what it desires by a purely reflex action of the nervous system. Our eyelid closes before we are aware that the fly is about to enter our eye.
"In the same way, said Stephen, your flesh responded to the stimulus of a naked statue, but it was, I say, simply a reflex action of the nerves. Beauty expressed by the artist cannot awaken in us an emotion which is kinetic or a sensation which is purely physical. It awakens, or ought to awaken, or induces, or ought to induce, an esthetic stasis, an ideal pity or an ideal terror, a stasis called forth, prolonged, and at last dissolved by what I call the rhythm of beauty."

 

[Crystal]

I liked this thread!

That is so true! The best way to write a character is to write around it and let it take up the empty space and just exist. It's like listening very hard to nothing and hearing all the sounds around the nothing and then the shape of the nothing is revealed.

When you try to write it directly, it disappears into a mess of generalized meaninglessness.

It is REALLY good to hear what others' interpretation or some different voices.

What I got from what bobbyburns said was that, as the writing kept going/evolving, the characters won't be the same as what the authors intended them to be or what they had once formed in their minds. The words that flow from your pen aren't the ones that your mind had thought. (not sure if I was clear.)

I didn't think he talked about the roundabout way of writing about a charactor, but about the products and process thing. Did you, bobby?


By the way, ruach, thanks for the quotes! and a welcome for you.

 

[Crystal]

I think a lot of what we attribute to "beauty" is just the mind being forced into a state of no-thought. a koan does this through contradiction. it's a way of leading thought into a puzzle that it can't solve, so it has no choice but to click out. that's why poetry can sometimes seem like bizarro logic. when you're describing a character, it's never the character you think it is. a condition is never the condition you think it is. the world is never what it appears to be. it's noticeable and interesting when you realize that.

Edited: forget about it. I was talking cliche.

 

[ruach]

watercrystal,

Thanks. Have you read Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man? Mainly the fifth chapter, it is has his theory of art.

 

[bobbyburns]

watercrystal, I'm not sure I understand what you're saying I said.

 

[novella]

What I got from what bobbyburns said was that, as the writing kept going/evolving, the characters won't be the same as what the authors intended them to be or what they had once formed in their minds. The words that flow from your pen aren't the ones that your mind had thought. (not sure if I was clear.)

I didn't think he talked about the roundabout way of writing about a charactor, but about the products and process thing.

watercrystal,

If you've ever tried writing a character, then you know how vague, slippery and unreliable so-called 'author's intention' is. The product always is what it is outside the author and is different for every reader. But that's a different discussion, about subjectivity and perception and experience.

The point that I was driving at in this thread, and one that I think bb is also exploring, is that in order to build the perception of complexity and truth you need to build something like a koan with your medium. That all art that is perceived as interesting and 'true' has that quality. It's not something explicit in the author's intention most of the time, and it's not consciously perceived by readers most of the time, but when you read something really good and though-provoking and 'true' chances are you will find it there--the empty space between two contradictory formulations.

IMO, bb often speaks in koans when he is striving for a point, so I do think he knows what I mean.

 

[ruach]

Let's see what, Joyce, has to say...

"--Rhythm, said Stephen, is the first formal esthetic relation of part
to part in any esthetic whole or of an esthetic whole to its part or
parts or of any part to the esthetic whole of which it is a part.

PULCRA SUNT QUAE VISA PLACENT.

--He uses the word VISA, said Stephen, to cover esthetic apprehensions of
all kinds, whether through sight or hearing or through any other avenue of
apprehension. This word, though it is vague, is clear enough to keep
away good and evil which excite desire and loathing. It means certainly
a stasis and not a kinesis. How about the true? It produces also a
stasis of the mind. You would not write your name in pencil across the
hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle.
--Static therefore, said Stephen. Plato, I believe, said that beauty
is the splendour of truth. I don't think that it has a meaning, but the
true and the beautiful are akin. Truth is beheld by the intellect which
is appeased by the most satisfying relations of the intelligible;
beauty is beheld by the imagination which is appeased by the most
satisfying relations of the sensible. The first step in the direction
of truth is to understand the frame and scope of the intellect itself,
to comprehend the act itself of intellection. Aristotle's entire system
of philosophy rests upon his book of psychology and that, I think,
rests on his statement that the same attribute cannot at the same time
and in the same connexion belong to and not belong to the same subject.
The first step in the direction of beauty is to understand the frame
and scope of the imagination, to comprehend the act itself of esthetic
apprehension. Is that clear?
--But what is beauty? asked Lynch impatiently. Out with another
definition. Something we see and like! Is that the best you and Aquinas
can do?

--Let us take woman, said Stephen.

--Let us take her! said Lynch fervently.

--The Greek, the Turk, the Chinese, the Copt, the Hottentot, said
Stephen, all admire a different type of female beauty. That seems
to be a maze out of which we cannot escape. I see, however,
two ways out. One is this hypothesis: that every physical quality
admired by men in women is in direct connexion with the manifold
functions of women for the propagation of the species. It may be so.
The world, it seems, is drearier than even you, Lynch, imagined. For my
part I dislike that way out. It leads to eugenics rather than to
esthetic. It leads you out of the maze into a new gaudy lecture-room
where MacCann, with one hand on THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES and the other hand
on the new testament, tells you that you admired the great flanks of
Venus because you felt that she would bear you burly offspring and
admired her great breasts because you felt that she would give good
milk to her children and yours.
--This hypothesis, Stephen repeated, is the other way out: that,
though the same object may not seem beautiful to all people, all people
who admire a beautiful object find in it certain relations which
satisfy and coincide with the stages themselves of all esthetic
apprehension. These relations of the sensible, visible to you through
one form and to me through another, must be therefore the necessary
qualities of beauty. Now, we can return to our old friend saint Thomas
for another pennyworth of wisdom.
--To finish what I was saying about beauty, said Stephen, the most
satisfying relations of the sensible must therefore correspond to the
necessary phases of artistic apprehension. Find these and you find the
qualities of universal beauty. Aquinas says: AD PULCRITUDINEM TRIA
REQUIRUNTUR INTEGRITAS, CONSONANTIA, CLARITAS. I translate it so: THREE
THINGS ARE NEEDED FOR BEAUTY, WHOLENESS, HARMONY, AND RADIANCE. Do
these correspond to the phases of apprehension? Are you following?
Stephen pointed to a basket which a butcher's boy had slung inverted on
his head.
--Look at that basket, he said.
--I see it, said Lynch.
--In order to see that basket, said Stephen, your mind first of all
separates the basket from the rest of the visible universe which is not
the basket. The first phase of apprehension is a bounding line drawn
about the object to be apprehended. An esthetic image is presented to
us either in space or in time.
What is audible is presented in time, what is visible is presented in
space. But, temporal or spatial, the esthetic image is first luminously
apprehended as selfbounded and selfcontained upon the immeasurable
background of space or time which is not it. You apprehended it as ONE
thing. You see it as one whole. You apprehend its wholeness. That is
INTEGRITAS.
--Then, said Stephen, you pass from point to point, led by its formal
lines; you apprehend it as balanced part against part within its
limits; you feel the rhythm of its structure. In other words, the
synthesis of immediate perception is followed by the analysis of
apprehension. Having first felt that it is ONE thing you feel now that
it is a THING. You apprehend it as complex, multiple, divisible,
separable, made up of its parts, the result of its parts and their sum,
harmonious. That is CONSONANTIA.
--The connotation of the word, Stephen said, is rather vague. Aquinas
uses a term which seems to be inexact. It baffled me for a long time.
It would lead you to believe that he had in mind symbolism or idealism,
the supreme quality of beauty being a light from some other world, the
idea of which the matter is but the shadow, the reality of which it is
but the symbol. I thought he might mean that CLARITAS is the artistic
discovery and representation of the divine purpose in anything or a
force of generalization which would make the esthetic image a
universal one, make it outshine its proper conditions. But that is
literary talk. I understand it so. When you have apprehended that
basket as one thing and have then analysed it according to its form and
apprehended it as a thing you make the only synthesis which is
logically and esthetically permissible. You see that it is that thing
which it is and no other thing. The radiance of which he speaks in the
scholastic QUIDDITAS, the WHATNESS of a thing. This supreme quality is
felt by the artist when the esthetic image is first conceived in his
imagination. The mind in that mysterious instant Shelley likened
beautifully to a fading coal. The instant wherein that supreme quality
of beauty, the clear radiance of the esthetic image, is apprehended
luminously by the mind which has been arrested by its wholeness and
fascinated by its harmony is the luminous silent stasis of esthetic
pleasure, a spiritual state very like to that cardiac condition which
the Italian physiologist Luigi Galvani, using a phrase almost as
beautiful as Shelley's, called the enchantment of the heart.
--What I have said, he began again, refers to beauty in the wider
sense of the word, in the sense which the word has in the literary
tradition. In the marketplace it has another sense. When we speak of
beauty in the second sense of the term our judgement is influenced in
the first place by the art itself and by the form of that art. The
image, it is clear, must be set between the mind or senses of the
artist himself and the mind or senses of others. If you bear this in
memory you will see that art necessarily divides itself into three
forms progressing from one to the next. These forms are: the lyrical
form, the form wherein the artist presents his image in immediate
relation to himself; the epical form, the form wherein he presents his
image in mediate relation to himself and to others; the dramatic form,
the form wherein he presents his image in immediate relation to others.
--Lessing, said Stephen, should not have taken a group of statues to
write of. The art, being inferior, does not present the forms I spoke
of distinguished clearly one from another. Even in literature, the
highest and most spiritual art, the forms are often confused. The
lyrical form is in fact the simplest verbal vesture of an instant of
emotion, a rhythmical cry such as ages ago cheered on the man who pulled
at the oar or dragged stones up a slope. He who utters it is more
conscious of the instant of emotion than of himself as feeling emotion.
The simplest epical form is seen emerging out of lyrical literature
when the artist prolongs and broods upon himself as the centre of an
epical event and this form progresses till the centre of emotional
gravity is equidistant from the artist himself and from others. The
narrative is no longer purely personal. The personality of the artist
passes into the narration itself, flowing round and round the persons
and the action like a vital sea. This progress you will see easily in
that old English ballad TURPIN HERO which begins in the first person
and ends in the third person. The dramatic form is reached when the
vitality which has flowed and eddied round each person fills every
person with such vital force that he or she assumes a proper and
intangible esthetic life. The personality of the artist, at first a cry
or a cadence or a mood and then a fluid and lambent narrative, finally
refines itself out of existence, impersonalizes itself, so to speak.
The esthetic image in the dramatic form is life purified in and
reprojected from the human imagination. The mystery of esthetic, like
that of material creation, is accomplished. The artist, like the God of
creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork,
invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his
fingernails."

 

[novella]

How is that quote relevant?

Also, do you realize the essential contradiction of you quoting this as "what Joyce has to say" and what is said here about the artist in relation to the art?

 

[ruach]

Relevant, ok. The koan, a paradox, an oxymoron, a contridiction, whatever you label it is a tool to show, as you put it "something complex and thought provoking." I see it as similar to Joyce's "stasis." Both of them are try to reach the observer on a level beyond the mundane.

A contradiction, no I don't see it. I was giving credit where it was due.

As for 'these things' in visual art, maybe try Hilaire Hiler.

 

[novella]

Ruach, I'm finding the contradiction or the irony in your quoting Joyce when he says the following, which is a distancing of the author from the work, to the extent that the author disowns the work, which just becomes a thing apart:

"The personality of the artist, at first a cry
or a cadence or a mood and then a fluid and lambent narrative, finally
refines itself out of existence, impersonalizes itself, so to speak.
The esthetic image in the dramatic form is life purified in and
reprojected from the human imagination. The mystery of esthetic, like
that of material creation, is accomplished. The artist, like the God of
creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork,
invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his
fingernails."


Do you not find such a quote ironic?

Also, it would be helpful when posting such a large quote to locate within it the nexus of where you see relevance. I still don't find it here, in relation to the idea of a koan and the empty place within that where the apparition of art may be perceived.

 

[ruach]

"remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork"

Not ironic at all.

If you are still looking for relevance, maybe stop interposing your own ideas into the text and let it stand as it is.

 

[Sitaram]

Sitaram ventured into koans

The Broken Tray Koan and Commentary


There once was a little hut called Fei-t’ien, meaning rich field, where a monk lived for thirty years.
(Fugai: Maybe he did not know how to move.)
(Sitaram: Wherever we are is a "rich field" of experiences, Sukkha and Dukkha, in which we may find meaning and solve the Koan of Self. Wherever we are may be a sacred Tirth, if we cultivate the proper mood or bhava.)

He had only one tray made of clay.
(Fugai: Expensive things are not always precious.)
(Sitaram: All possessions are made of clay, in that they are temporary and we must relinquish them at death. We too are clay.)

One day a monk, who studied under him, broke that tray accidentally.
(Fugai: The real treasure appears from the breaking.)
(Sitaram: The real treasure, the only treasure, is non-attachment and the realization of the futility of the fulfillment of any and every gratification. This does not mean that we cease to gratify desires, but only that we cease to view gratification as our goal.)

Each day the teacher asked the student to replace it.
(Fugai: Why do you want another?)
(Sitaram: There is no end to desires. The fulfillment of one desire spawns dozens more. Nor do we ever escape regret.)

Each time the disciple would bring a new one, the teacher threw it out saying, This is not it. Give me back my old one!
(Fugai: I would open my hands and laugh.)
(Sitaram: Nothing ever satisfies us. We can always imagine a perfection which transcends any possible reality. This ability of human imagination to conjure impossible perfection is both a curse and a blessing.)

(Genro: If I were the disciple, I would say, Wait until the sun rises in the west.)
(Fugai: I will search for it before I am born.)
(Sitaram: Desire is the source of all suffering. Even desire for the cessation of desire is itself a desire).

Genro’s Poem

It is broken;
(Fugai: The whole tray remains.)
(Sitaram: The whole tray is our hope, our dream, our memory, our regret.)

Run fast after it.
(Fugai: The sword disappears in the water.)
(Sitaram: As the Gita says, there is never a moment when WE cease our activity, nor is there a moment when God ceases activity. Were there such a moment, countless worlds and beings would perish. But we have some choice as to that activity which engages us. Abandon all fruits of activity.)

The disciple cannot understand it.
(Fugai: It has returned to him already.)
(Sitaram: All wisdom is subjective and experiential. Such wisdom can never be translated into words which can substitute for experience and manner of life.)

Call an iron kettle a bell.
(Fugai: You can call the earth heaven . . .what’s wrong?)
(Sitaram: Every word is a finger pointing at the moon, but the finger is not the moon.)
==============================

Sitaram's Koans -

If only one human remained alive in the universe,
Then which is the "One True Faith"?

"Zen Koan practice is an attempt to break through the noise of the rational mind's lust for comprehension and reach the silence of simply Being."

The answer to every koan is a flower and a smile.

================================

"For what matters above all is the attitude we take toward suffering, the attitude in which we take our suffering upon ourselves. Everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. We needed to stop asking ourselves about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life-daily and hourly. Nothing and nobody can deprive us of what we have rescued into the past. What we have done cannot be undone. This adds to man's responsibleness. For in the face of the transitoriness of his life, he is responsible for using the passing opportunities to actualize potentialities, to realize values, whether creative, experiential, or attitudinal. " - Viktor Frankl

"There are some words that I have never really understood, such as sin...For if there is sin against life, it lies perhaps less in despairing of it than in hoping for another life and evading the implacable grandeur of the one we have." - Albert Camus

We do what we are and we are what we do. Abraham Maslow:

"We must love life more than the meaning of it." - the character Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

"In the silence I saw what it was that I wanted...to be rid of the sin of existence" -Jean-Paul Sartre, from his novel "Nausea"

"Man does not exist in order to be free subsequently. There is no difference between the being of man and his being-free."-Jean-Paul Sartre, Being & Nothingness

"Man is condemned to be free." -Jean-Paul Sartre, from his lecture,

"Existentialsm is a Humanism" - Sartre

Sartre said that IF THE WORLD WERE A PLENUM of being with NO NON-BEING.. then there WOULD BE NO FREEDOM, for everything would be pure causality.
===============================================

The human problems which we deal with are unchanging. No matter how fast computer chips might become, patience will always be a virtue. The more powerful and effective weapons and missiles become, the more essential it is to learn meekness and nonviolent methods of resolving disputes. No matter what progress science makes in birth control, genetics and cloning, our primordial sexual desires will always present a profound challenge to us as a source of temptation, misconduct and addictive behavior. No matter how many continents or planets we conquer and colonize, we will always have to face the emptiness and loneliness of a Universe in which we seem out-of-place and extraneous. No matter how wise and ancient we become, medically and genetically extending our life span indefinitely, there will always remain buried somewhere deep within us a weeping child seeking the consoling love of a heavenly parent.

- Sitaram