Wednesday, June 23, 2010

neti, neti

ANYTHING,

"physical", "conceptual", or "experiential",

that

"you" can refer to

AS "IT"

is not

"IT"!

5 comments:

  1. That which has no qualities

    but without IT

    no qualities would be known.

    Thank you for this clarifying post. The non-object is more real than the object...but somehow so present and ubiquitous that IT is elusive.

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  2. I posted here on Feb.12th, an excerpt from a long poem by Yung-chia that has the famous line, "it is only when you hunt for It, that you lose It."

    Aldous Huxley included the above line in a short excerpt which is in his anthology "The Perennial Philosophy."

    I think you would enjoy my excerpt which is based on Huxley's excerpt and a few lines from a complete translation of the poem. This complete version is titled, "Song of Realizing the Way," and is contained in a Zen anthlogy called "The Roaring Stream" (edited by Foster and Shoemaker).

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  3. I read the post from 2/12 and loved it, thanks for referring me to it. I also ordered "The Roaring Stream", which had all five stars reviews on Amazon. Thanks for sharing the wealth of wisdom Tom.

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  4. I did see this, had forgotten. Again, for me it is incomplete without its corollary which is "IT is that which you see before you" and "The kingdom of god is spread out over the whole earth."

    So, THIS is IT, but not extended, conceptualized, divided...

    The line you mention ("hunt for it") is either the one I was thinking about, or is very similar to the one "grasp it and you miss it"

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  5. DJH, maybe we agree that one screwdriver isn't usually considered enough to make up a complete toolkit. But...it might get the job done.

    Wayne L. said something like, "Everywhere you point IS IT, but when you grasp IT as an object, it's NOT IT."

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