The Fool (selected fragments)

This is for your own works!!!
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Jean Fournell
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The Fool: 8.0 – An unparable

Post by Jean Fournell »

One man's trash is another man's treasure

Someone once had called a ruler the happiest of men. For this reason, at a banquet a naked sword suspended by a horsehair was hung above his seat.

They say that his appetite seemed somewhat hampered while the meaning of the word "precarious" began to make sense to him.



Maybe a century earlier, someone else ran away from a tiger and was stopped by a precipice with a long vine hanging into it. He swiftly climbed down the vine until he reached its end in mid-height of the wall; and now he noticed a second tiger, waiting for him underneath, while above two mice were busily gnawing at his vine.

At that moment, he saw directly in front of him a grape with marvellous ripe berries. The vine firmly in one hand, he picked that grape with the other.

He could not remember to ever have eaten such delicious fruit.



Tastes differ.
___________________________________________________
Therefore know that you must become one with the bow, and with the arrow, and with the target
to say nothing of the horse.

... for a while
... for a little while...

(Just a filthy beggar blessing / What happens to the heart)
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Jean Fournell
Posts: 302
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 4:09 pm
Location: Provence

The Fool: 8.1 – A well-known pit-fall

Post by Jean Fournell »

An image

The fool was a bit stunned as he slowly made his way homewards.
Whatever "Those-who-work-with-the-not" might be doing in detail, it seemed to do them good but pretty obviously it was no good for himself. Somewhere this was a pity, he found, but discipline was not his strong point; and so quite probably he wouldn't be made for this hardly comprehensible self-discipline either, which showed no signs of coercion, but on the contrary seemed to spring from a great, free unburdenedness...

He all but bumped into the painter.

"Your picture gave me no rest crazy ideas like that are seldom found. I don't know whether it will help you, but surely not without other things being required as well. I know nothing about horses, so wisely listen to better advisors. For my part, I did my best. It's not much, and it has no artistic value at all but then, that's not what we're after, is it? Just a little gift."

Saying this, the painter pulled a picture out of his backpack and handed it to the fool. It showed a horse and rider, and around their contours the same outline again, only a little bigger and quite sharp. Then again the outline, yet bigger, and again and again, but each time less clear-cut, hazier, until beyond the rim, and finally almost invisible.

Inside the contour, there was the same feature too, beginning with a tiny sharp figure in the centre, surrounded by ever dimmer outlines, finally a mere breath filling horse and rider.

"Now what's that?" the fool asked.

"That's a horse and rider, and both are inside the Great Centauress, who becomes ever more transparent, until only her spirit remains. Inside, she once again is first small and compact, then ever airier. When your horse is about to run away with you, her spirit contracts from the outside and gives shelter, while from the inside it radiates and reassures the horse.
As I said, this is of no artistic value whatsoever; it's just a crazy idea answering a crazy idea.
Well, and now I had better return to start preparing myself for my preparations."

"Looks like you're having a hard time with your exhibition, don't you?" the fool asked.

"You can say that again! These preparations, with me, are something where everything gets stuck in everything, and vice versa."

"Oh, oh! Everything in everything and vice versa, how well I know this!"

"That I'm willing to believe. It seems to me that the difference between us the normal ones and you the fools consists mainly in the fact that you've got a few more of those places than we have maybe sometimes a few too many for your own wellbeing."

"It's a nuisance indeed when there are always who knows which serpents eating their tails and there's no way of getting anything done. But thanks for your picture! I like it maybe just because I'm a fool, maybe also because it might be useful. At any rate, I'll try it and I hope that the Great Centauress will give me certainty that the picture is meant for the horse, and that humans must search for solutions to problems, and that riding both of them must be mindful."

Visibly, even the fool practised the occasional atrocious babbling...

● — ● — ●

The fool just wished to briefly tell the cook that now he had got a not-run-away picture, that it wasn't that difficult at all, and, elated, he loped back to the House of Non-Fear.

But the cook, all of a sudden, was dead serious: "There you stumbled into a pit-fall which we here know only too well because we too stumble into it again and again, even though we know its mechanisms."

"Stumbled into a pit-fall?"

"Just look at it: if your horse runs away with you and you want your picture to be of any help, you'll have to bring the Great Centauress to life. Are you able to do that?

And even if you succeed, she'll have to understand the situation and find a solution and establish contact with the horse. Do you have that much time?

And if you don't succeed, or not quickly enough and I never heard of anybody who'd have achieved such a thing , then you'll have wasted your time and energy on some pointless messing about, and meanwhile let the situation get out of hand for good the contrary of what you were looking for, actually."

"Then it doesn't seem to be such a good plan..." the fool hesitated.

"You can do as you like, and I'm not to order you about. Only, the consequences of your actions are things you generally won't escape. One of us who'd find it too tiresome to work with the not and that concerns us all might easily take to schemes of manipulating the something.

As long as one knows what one is doing, that's perfectly alright: in our 'pauses' we work in the garden, on the fields, in and about the house, in the kitchen we're always changing things in the something, all the time. The affair becomes problematic when people play the sorcerer's apprentice."

"You mean, it's not a simple error?"

"It's more than a simple error. A picture like 'After the second bunch of weeds, left' tells the horse what you want to do; and if you are sufficiently attentive, this will succeed pretty often, without your noticing all your other little influences; and you can enjoy the finesse your horse can be steered with if you are not asking for too much and you might possibly turn away from the habitual gross methods, if you haven't yet.

Your image however does not tell the horse what it's all about and does not produce your corresponding subliminal bodily or mental influences. So far it is a simple error.

But your image also weakens your ordinary capacity of doing the right thing in your daily life; and that is an error in your learning, an error which might entail many other errors.

And thirdly it is an error in the order of magnitude: you cobble together some all-encompassing world helmswoman or string-puller, and then you want to put yourself above her in order to tell her how to do her job. From inside you act as though you were outside the outside. You leave your place in the world, go beyond the world itself, and also beyond your string-puller, and from this position, distorted by at least three orders of magnitude, you want to be the great manitou.

Where this kind of error is taken seriously, the general term is madness; in our specific case it would be a madness called megalomania.
For us here, it is recommended not to get stuck in there."

"The painter said, the picture was a crazy idea answering a crazy idea."

"If you want my advice: leave it within that frame."
___________________________________________________
Therefore know that you must become one with the bow, and with the arrow, and with the target
to say nothing of the horse.

... for a while
... for a little while...

(Just a filthy beggar blessing / What happens to the heart)
User avatar
Jean Fournell
Posts: 302
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 4:09 pm
Location: Provence

Re: The Fool (selected fragments)

Post by Jean Fournell »

(Added the beginning of fragment 6)
___________________________________________________
Therefore know that you must become one with the bow, and with the arrow, and with the target
to say nothing of the horse.

... for a while
... for a little while...

(Just a filthy beggar blessing / What happens to the heart)
User avatar
Jean Fournell
Posts: 302
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 4:09 pm
Location: Provence

The Fool: 8.1.0 – A little sleight of mind

Post by Jean Fournell »

A self-proclaimed philosopher named Ryoku, he boasts:
"Hey, Nansen, think of it, here in this poem
there is a goose-egg being introduced
into a pumpkin-bottle, and kept warm.

The gosling then is fed, and so it grows
as long as in the bottle there is room to spare.
But now, what's to be done you, who are so astute
lest the goose stifle, or the bottle burst?"

Zen-master Nansen first stands still as death;
suddenly bellows (like a lion's is his roar):
"Ryoku!", who all but starts out of his shoes:
"Yes, Nansen?" "See! Now it is free, your goose."

(This is probably about Nan-ts'uan P'u-iuan (Japanese: Nansen Fu-guan), 748-834.
But here, he might just be the hero of some legend.)

A head full of bees gone nuts

1.1.1.1:
The bottle.
The goose.
Either the bottle or the goose.
Both the bottle and the goose.
Neither the bottle nor the goose.

1.1.1.2:
No bottle.
No goose.
Either no bottle or no goose.
Both no bottle and no goose.
Neither no bottle nor no goose.

1.1.2.1:
The goose in the bottle.
The bottle around the goose.
Either the goose in the bottle or the bottle around the goose.
Both the goose in the bottle and the bottle around the goose.
Neither the goose in the bottle nor the bottle around the goose.

1.1.2.2:
No goose in the bottle.
No bottle around the goose.
Either no goose in the bottle or no bottle around the goose.
Both no goose in the bottle and no bottle around the goose.
Neither no goose in the bottle nor no bottle around the goose.

1.2:
No goose in no bottle.
No bottle around no goose.
Either no goose in no bottle or no bottle around no goose.
Both no goose in no bottle and no bottle around no goose.
Neither no goose in no bottle nor no bottle around no goose.

2.1.1.1:
An internalised bottle.
No internalised bottle.
Either an internalised bottle or no internalised bottle.
Both an internalised bottle and no internalised bottle.
Neither an internalised bottle nor no internalised bottle.

2.1.1.2:
The goose in its inner bottle.
The goose not in its inner bottle.
Either the goose in its inner bottle or the goose not in its inner bottle.
Both the goose in its inner bottle and the goose not in its inner bottle.
Neither the goose in its inner bottle nor the goose not in its inner bottle.

2.1.2.1:
The goose like a hermit crab.
The goose not like a hermit crab.
Either the goose like a hermit crab or the goose not like a hermit crab.
Both the goose like a hermit crab and the goose not like a hermit crab.
Neither the goose like a hermit crab nor the goose not like a hermit crab.

2.1.2.2:
An imaginary snail shell.
No imaginary snail shell.
Either an imaginary snail shell or no imaginary snail shell.
Both an imaginary snail shell and no imaginary snail shell.
Neither an imaginary snail shell nor no imaginary snail shell.

2.2:
A bigger bottle.
No bigger bottle.
Either a bigger bottle or no bigger bottle.
Both a bigger bottle and no bigger bottle.
Neither a bigger bottle nor no bigger bottle.



Nansen causes a downpour,
the ego stands aghast like a dying duck in a thunderstorm,
the wanderer fills the bottle,
the goose waddles through the puddles.

Which in turn means, that...



The double moral of this story goes:
"Perfect duality of bottle 'n' goose."
"Grow real, because 'too late' is coming soon."
"Perfect..."
"Grow..."
"...


● — ● — ●

Hooves all been taken care of? Good. Then put the tools away.
___________________________________________________
Therefore know that you must become one with the bow, and with the arrow, and with the target
to say nothing of the horse.

... for a while
... for a little while...

(Just a filthy beggar blessing / What happens to the heart)
User avatar
Jean Fournell
Posts: 302
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 4:09 pm
Location: Provence

The Fool: 8.2 – A sure-aiming woman

Post by Jean Fournell »

Master, what's coming after death?
I don't know.
But you're a master!
Yes. But not dead.

A piece of clarity

The cook was speaking with a woman, and when the fool came closer, he recognised the woman he had seen on the grass in front of the sanitary building, and who had impressed him with the surprising precision of her movements.

"Who is that?" she asked the cook.

"A fool", came the answer. "There is something he does not want, so now he wants to make unto himself a picture of the not."

"Ah yeah."

The woman looked at the fool, and a shock raced through him, in comparison to which that of his first encounter with the cook was virtually innocuous.

This woman did not only look freely into him, and right through him, she not only had nothing to hide, but she radiated something the fool had no notion of.

In a soft, calm, firm voice, audible in the whole room, the woman said: "Your heart does not belong to you alone!"

The fool was stricken by awe like by lightning and thunder at the same time, by the kindling of a dawn which just as suddenly as gradually took to glow in the foul, stinking rot of his self; a friendly day, which drove away both his mental night and its phantoms, and which all the cells of his body welcomed arms open wide, and enclosed in their hearts; which lit up all these hearts that did not belong to themselves alone, and of which the fool consisted, not like chain links locked into each other, but like loose cloud formations floating along together.

"I'm not me at all!" This dissolution was not death and not folly; it was understanding his self as a door swinging to and fro in the wind, on one side a house, on the other a garden, and on both sides other living beings.

The fool saw without disgust, and therefore all the clearer, his inner putrid sludge, and he knew which plants might grow from which compost of this self and how to take care of them; his shuddering with terror was rather a vibrating; his fear was present but did not actually have any room left; and even he himself, his body, was like empty, and this empty body swung and was conscious, and was ready like a harrowed field.

"The ball does not belong to you alone!" That had been a beginning, and at that time there had been a lot to do. Was that true, actually? What was it the frog had said? Was it really "The ball"?

No doubt: The frog also had said "Your heart does not belong to you alone!", only the fool had not understood it correctly because the frog had been too weak then. And at that time the ball had been much more important, too.

Now, however, the fool saw it clearly and undeniably: He did not stand outside the world; it did not belong to him, as a wayward affair that drove him to despair.

On the contrary, he stood inside the world; he could act, plan, calculate, revolt but not against the world, not for it, not without it, not with it, but in it. He belonged to the world, not the other way round. Everything was there, he just had to acknowledge it.

"Your heart does not belong to you alone!"

It was immediately true, quite simply true, utterly true; and this completeness, the entirety, the unconditionality of this unquestioningly unquestioning questionlessness it was overwhelming, and the fool knew that he did not know, and he knew nothing to say, and he bowed to thank this strange-familiar woman.

Only when he straightened up again did he notice that she too had bowed before him and was just straightening up, as all the others as well, who were just straightening up.

Yes, he had to act, but not in a hurry this time. He got hold of a blackened pot that was waiting in a corner for someone to have time for it. As he was scouring, he heard with one half ear the woman saying to the cook: "And then we also need soap for the washrooms", before she left the kitchen. "I'll write it down", the cook promised.

When the pot was clean, the fool had regained a semblance of composure: "What was that?" he asked.

The cook smiled like in deepest peace: "Our president showed you that you have access to truth, and that you can find this access if you look for it. But that you know yourself."

"That's right. Yes, I know it myself. But I didn't know that I know it. And I just don't grasp what happened there at all."

"Don't even try. We say: she touched your mind with her mind, and that caused your mind to wake up, and there was no more 'I want', and no more 'I don't want'. Because there was no more basis for those things, and therefore you were free."

"That's quite an impressive trick. Does she often do such things?"

"Occasionally. But it is not a trick. She can only show you how you are if you are ready to see yourself. And even the word 'show' is an exaggeration already.
All she can do is try to wake you up. The searching, finding and seeing you have to do yourself then."

"But how can I wake up, if I am already awake?" "Well, you just experienced it. Something was different. We say: the I was not there." "The I?"

"The I which hinders us to see ourselves and the world; which always wants something or doesn't want it, and on top of that often enough the contrary as well, all at once. At times a pretty bothersome flibbertigibbet, this I.
And since in a second you're going to ask anyway: we bow when things take place which needn't be talked to death:

If one is unable or unwilling to fight the truth, then one must bow to it. If however one has learned to welcome truth, then one will notice quite often when it occurs and then the easiest thing is to bow. Not to somebody, not in submission, not out of weakness or flattery, not as one of those many cunning little duplicities one happens to know, but to the occurring of truth, be it in ourselves or elsewhere. One bows, as it were, within oneself in one's own realising truth."
___________________________________________________
Therefore know that you must become one with the bow, and with the arrow, and with the target
to say nothing of the horse.

... for a while
... for a little while...

(Just a filthy beggar blessing / What happens to the heart)
User avatar
Jean Fournell
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Location: Provence

The Fool: 8.3 – A wrong word

Post by Jean Fournell »

You wisecrack!

"Before, mountains are mountains and waters are waters during this experience, mountains are not mountains and waters are not waters afterwards, mountains again are mountains, and waters again are waters."

"Nice saying; but who is the know-all to believe that really is again?"
"That really is again? Oh, that I must have been myself."
"Well and so?"

"Before, mountains are mountains and waters are waters during this experience, mountains are not mountains and waters are not waters afterwards, mountains really are mountains, and waters really are waters."

"That's better.
Because, after all, this saying is ascribed to Ch'ing-yuan Wei-hsin ("Spirit Only" of Ch'ing-yuan Japanese: Seigen Ishin).

Some pretend that he truly existed, that he lived in the time of the T'ang dynasty (there was one from 618 to 906, and two more from 906 to 960) or Song dynasty (960 to 1279).

That totals over six and a half centuries pretty material for "Spirit Only", one should think. So we don't want him to turn over in his grave as well, do we?

And besides, the 'again' leaves traces on the Mirror of Pure Cognition.
Mindfulness is simple, but what's simple isn't easy. Mindfulness requires a lot of energy.
It's no coincidence that the cook has the second highest rank."



It was true. The fool indeed saw the world not with that kind of clarity which often announces a change of weather he saw it without the inattention which generally shrouds it in its veil, like in some light mist.

Of course he re-cognized everything, but it was alive, and real; and he felt how, between the world and himself, there was an exchange going on, as though parts of himself and parts of every phenomenon were busily travelling back and forth, in all directions.

It was a living world, different every moment, and so was he; and this beauty in perpetual change could not be etched into an 'again', but only be perceived ever anew.

This beauty resplended back from him into the surroundings, and from them back into him, in an endless to and fro, as it always had only now he saw it.

There was no secret, everything was out in the open, as always. Everything was magnificent and near in its reality.

The fool was deeply moved by so much unpretentious normality.
___________________________________________________
Therefore know that you must become one with the bow, and with the arrow, and with the target
to say nothing of the horse.

... for a while
... for a little while...

(Just a filthy beggar blessing / What happens to the heart)
User avatar
Jean Fournell
Posts: 302
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 4:09 pm
Location: Provence

The Fool (selected fragments)

Post by Jean Fournell »

(Completed fragment 6)
___________________________________________________
Therefore know that you must become one with the bow, and with the arrow, and with the target
to say nothing of the horse.

... for a while
... for a little while...

(Just a filthy beggar blessing / What happens to the heart)
User avatar
Jean Fournell
Posts: 302
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 4:09 pm
Location: Provence

The Fool: 8.4 – A mirror

Post by Jean Fournell »

"Mirror, Mirror on the wall,
who's the fairest of them all?"
(Grimm Brothers, Snow White)

The Mirror of Pure Cognition

"Well, it's a small world!" the fool heard a voice he knew. He looked up from the image he now would not make unto himself.
"The horse-patterer's got dissolved", he joyously returned the greeting, without wondering what might have brought the wild rider here to Those-who-work-with-the-not.
"Glad to hear that", the wild rider declared. "And the image?"
"The cook explained it to me. It seems to be as the painter had said already: a crazy idea."

"Good. Because when it comes to horses, we must also take into account that they know what's right. In this respect they are our betters, and we should only commit small follies which they still can compensate."
"Wha-wha-what?" the fool stammered. "The horses know and compensate our follies? I thought we have to make clear what it's all about when we ride them. And have them execute things that were drilled into them."
"That way you won't get very far, though."
"Yes, that's what I'm starting to believe too, because I really don't get very far with my horse but that still doesn't tell me how it could work otherwise."

"It can only work otherwise", the wild rider said. "Look: if in your horse you don't see the horse which is actually standing before you, but one which yesterday went sure-footed through the rocks, you might easily become inattentive and foolhardy.

If you see a horse in it which yesterday ran away with you, you might easily fear that today it will run away with you again, although possibly there's no such thing in store at all. Probably, however, your relationship with the horse will deteriorate in the long run. And certainly today's ride will be spoiled by your fear, already before the horse runs away, if it does and just as well if it doesn't.

So far this description applies to whichever situation in human life; but for horses there's more: they are most intuitive and might run away because of no more than the simple reason that you fear it, and that you contaminate them.

Or the other way around the horse can contaminate you with its fear; and sometimes the interaction of mutual cross-contamination might entail an exemplary resonance disaster namely if you can't overcome the circle of the 'again' and of the self-fulfilling prophecies.

One could sum up: Your fears, the original ones, the induced ones, the built-up ones, they prevent you from seeing the horse as it is.

Or more currently: You see the world through prejudice-coloured spectacles.

We say: Your traces of the past besmudge the Mirror of Pure Cognition; they accumulate and overlap just as in the horse the residues of insufficiently grounded ('grazed away') fears accumulate and build up until eventually, for next to no reason, it 'incomprehensibly' runs away.

Except that humans live two, three, four times as long as horses, and can build up a lot more than two, three, four times as much, and thus get pretty mixed up in their heads.

In both cases: not much good will come of it."

Just like way back then the wild rider nodded very gently now to be seen only by the mischievous conniving wrinkles grinning around his eyes , and he went to work with the not.



That for humans there is an eightfold path to come to terms with weird phenomena is meant symbolically, because seven is the number of completeness.

Humans thus have all the possible possibilities and then yet quite a few spare ones, a bit less current maybe.

Your horse: have it graze and be its Great Mother. It's as simple as that.

Therefore let's say:

Do not besmudge the Mirror of Pure Cognition.
May your horse always be new.
May peace live in your horse's soul.
May your horse instil calm in your spirit.

Would this find comprehension in your heart.
___________________________________________________
Therefore know that you must become one with the bow, and with the arrow, and with the target
to say nothing of the horse.

... for a while
... for a little while...

(Just a filthy beggar blessing / What happens to the heart)
User avatar
Jean Fournell
Posts: 302
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 4:09 pm
Location: Provence

The Fool: 8.5 – A tile

Post by Jean Fournell »

McMurphy drew eyes to him like a sideshow barker. Beside him, I found that I was obliged to be looked at too, and with people staring at me I felt I had to stand up straight and tall as I could.
[...]
McMurphy talked a while about the fight, and my back got to hurting more and more; I'd hunkered in my chair in the corner for so long that it was hard to stand straight very long. I was glad when a little Jap nurse came to take us into the Nurses' Station and I got a chance to sit and rest.
She asked if we were calm enough for her to take off the cuffs, and McMurphy nodded. He had slumped over with his head hung and his elbows between his knees and looked completely exhausted it hadn't occurred to me that it was just as hard for him to stand straight as it was for me.

Ken Kesey, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

(McMurphy and Chief Bromden, the narrator, had revolted against the inhumane treatment inflicted upon a fellow inmate and then been brought "up on Disturbed", later to be punished by electroshock "therapy". Chief Bromden had "hunkered in [his] chair" for about twenty years.)



"Aha!" thought the peasant, "here is another who has no wick in his lamp!"

Grimm Brothers, Wise Folks

.

Blind Bend! — Danger! — Slippery Road!

On the way home the fool waved his hand at the one with the spade, and he had almost reached the gate, when he saw, behind a curve of the path, as though waylaying him, one who was scratching at a tile with a stone, as if to remove old mortar.

"For the building site?" asked the fool with feigned knowledge.

The other's look hit him full blast: "I'm polishing this tile into the Mirror of Pure Cognition."

"Tile into mirror?" the fool judged: "That's balderdash. But it's no reason for me to make your undertaking even more impossible."

Astonished, he saw the man bow; and somewhat clumsily he hastened to ape him. He hadn't come very far with his bowing when suddenly the mere aping was gone and it rang all through him, clear and powerful and free in the full meaning of the word:
"Do not besmudge the Mirror of Pure Cognition!"
Therein he realised the truth of what he had just said; and he realised that the other had perceived it, even before he had, that in fact it was only by the other's testimony that he had noticed it, which yet had occurred in himself.

Which came first, which was the result?

In the question of hen and egg, the answer was easy enough: the gene pool of one or maybe two not-yet-quite chicken had been modified by unknown influences, and the result of this mutation had turned out to be a now-perfectly-chicken egg.

In the case of horse and chewing one could, under the snickers of drivers and bitless riders, argue long and to no point whether we conversely calm a horse by causing it to chew (through snickering back leading by example, instead of playing at the bit), or whether we thus make it understand that we stand by it, after all, and that things are not that grim.

But here, whether the absence of the ego makes room for truth to occur, or whether in the occurring of truth the ego abdicates, or whether it is two sides of only one coin, which for its part dances and whirls about and spins, and which sometimes will boldly stand on its edge here behind the sequence of events no before or after could be made out, nor was there any possibility for a circular description one might come up with in timelessness: A causes B causes A causes B..., for it was taking place inside passing time. And for a revelation of preexisting truth there was neither proof nor circumstantial evidence: what could have preexisted here?

What had happened successively had come about simultaneously. Here one stood perfectly alone and destitute, and there was no hiding behind cause and effect. Here the meanest coward still showed as much heart as barely any knight escaped from which old myths soever:

Just strike sail, my little monkey, you'd contrive no explanation. Come, I'll take you by the hand, and do not fret about it. By dint of dissecting into reason and reason behind reason you'd forget your boat, and once that's wrecked, it doesn't matter any more whether it hit this rock or that.

Here the devil bites his tail, and all his pain and grudge and offended selfishness drive him to hell, where his rightful place is at least that's what complacency would have him believe; but down there a vast reforestation program is in full swing, and awaiting him beneath the entrance gate, ready for combat, knees bent and with a broad grin, stands the abolition of the law of the strongest: "Finders keepers, losers weepers! This is mine now; and your collaborators are fired; and all your prisoners, they are free."

What could he do? Nothing but shamefully, woefully, dolefully and wretchedly, as the spiritual precariat he was indeed, emigrate to America, which then however did not yet exist at all, wherefore he fell over the western rim and out of the world, and nobody ever hauled him back aboard.

O ye one-hoofed sulphur flight-saurians, ye!
Thus shabby may nobody knows your fate grind to a standstill.

"Is that how truth works?" the fool asked.
"That's how your own unalienable truth works in this one unalienable Here-and-Now."
"So there are several truths?"
"There are as many truths as there are numbers."
"Then why is truth spoken about as though there were only one?"
"We humans are a few thousand million, and we are referred to as only one humanity; there are many kinds of motherly feelings, and they are called maternal love as though there were only one; there are many mindful moments, and we speak of mindfulness.

The abbreviations are not the thing itself; they merely serve as a convenience. That's all right as long as we don't forget it and as long as everybody knows their meaning, obviously.

And you now must go to your horse because that's why you came as though it were no abbreviation."

"No abbreviation, each time new?"
"Each time itself, not your calculations."
"Itself, not my calculations..."

"And I'd better return to polishing my tile."

The fool shuddered as he understood the sense in the nonsense of this polishing, and he felt inside himself a wild power of gratitude, over which he bowed protectively; and when the two of them, anew, were standing high and tall, both in their own truth authenticating the truth of the other, he was sorry for having been so clumsy.

"That is the beginner's mind. That you must preserve."

"I'm to preserve the beginner's mind?"

"If there is only little you can learn, learn at least what's most important: preserve the mind of the beginner. And if you can learn a lot, learn it often: preserve the mind of the beginner!"

.

If in the beginner's mind each polishing is new, then there is no great risk that the tile might yet eventually become a mirror.

Let's say: if the Tile of Pure Cognition remains a stone of stumbling, then this leads to our not falling for the two sides of the coin, which, as a trickster with a pocket mirror, we would consider simultaneously, always however with one of them inverted. What matters is the coin.

Second, this would be of no avail if in the process we forget that the coin is an abbreviation, which stands for the innumerable individual cases of ordinary wear and tear.

And third, that still wouldn't help if we get the order of magnitude wrong. The Impact of Practical Cognition is the tiny difference between Utter Despair and the one where we realise: "You've got yourself deadlocked, it won't work that way. Let go, step back, think it over; and then try a new approach."

Thus trust will grow in the glow of the trifles of everyday life.

Thus, annual ring by annual ring, the oaken tree of trust will grow in the inconspicuously radiant deep glow of the trifles of everyday life.

That's why there are people like that one over there (Nan-iueh Huaï-jang Japanese: Nangaku Yego, 677-744), who's been around the bend, as though he were waylaying us, for twelve times a hundred and eight years now, and who, by his tile-polishing, is so outrageously covering himself with ridicule that any reasonable person would long since have wished for the ground to swallow us so as to, in the face of Utter Despair, (not) hold up the Mirror of Pure Cognition.
___________________________________________________
Therefore know that you must become one with the bow, and with the arrow, and with the target
to say nothing of the horse.

... for a while
... for a little while...

(Just a filthy beggar blessing / What happens to the heart)
User avatar
Jean Fournell
Posts: 302
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 4:09 pm
Location: Provence

The Fool: 8.5.0 – An insight

Post by Jean Fournell »

The polishing of a tile

Of course the Mirror of Pure Cognition, just as the Ancient Mirror, and the Clear Mirror, and the Mirror Mirror on the wall, and the mirror of Through the Looking-Glass, and as any mirror, results from the polishing of a tile. Who would go and doubt that!

But this doesn't mean that the Mirror of Pure Cognition should be produced a second time not from a tile, nor from a stone, nor from another mirror. Because the Mirror of Pure Cognition, and each and every mirror, they have been brought about by the polishing of a tile already, that requires no repetition.

Ever since the very oldest of times, with no exception, the tile polishers have performed most thorough polishing: there is not the slightest trace of a tile to be found on any mirror anywhere not with the traditional test methods, nor with the modern ones. These polishers, who steadfastly polished tiles with the utmost accuracy, cannot be convicted of the least botch, do not incur the tiniest hint of a blame.

Therefore there is equally no reason to polish the Mirror of Pure Cognition, or whichever other mirror, into a tile. Such a polishing to and fro, into a tile, then into a mirror again, and no end, that's nothing else than the travelling to and fro of the broom, which is fetching water without let-up, and which the sorcerer's apprentice cuts right through with axe's sharpness, whereupon the pieces, from each run to the river, only bring back all the more water now.

The art of the Old Masters consists in polishing a tile for good, so there is nothing whatsoever that might need touching up. This art the homo sapiens have learned from the homo neanderthalensis; and unto them, in turn, it had come through an uninterrupted chain of direct transmission, from each species to the next, reaching back to the homo ergaster. Because the primates (the first-year pupils) have always known the polishing of a tile even if it is important for two-hand apes to preserve the beginner's mind, for otherwise it would be in danger of getting lost, or of degenerating into mere routine.

In any case, however, there is nothing to be added to the polishing of a tile.

.

Think not, because no man sees,
Such things will remain unseen.

In the elder days of Art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the Gods see everywhere.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Builders

.

Archaïscher Torso Apollos
Rainer Maria Rilke

Wir kannten nicht sein unerhörtes Haupt,
darin die Augenäpfel reiften. Aber
sein Torso glüht noch wie ein Kandelaber,
in dem sein Schauen, nur zurückgeschraubt,

sich hält und glänzt. Sonst könnte nicht der Bug
der Brust dich blenden, und im leisen Drehen
der Lenden könnte nicht ein Lächeln gehen
zu jener Mitte, die die Zeugung trug.

Sonst stünde dieser Stein entstellt und kurz
unter der Schultern durchsichtigem Sturz
und flimmerte nicht so wie Raubtierfelle;

und bräche nicht aus allen seinen Rändern
aus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle,
die dich nicht sieht. Du mußt dein Leben ändern.

.

We did not know his unexampled head,
therein the eyes like apples ripened. Still yet
his torso's glowing like a candelabrum,
in which his gazing, only screwed back down,

lives on and gleams. If not, the breast's prow could
not blind you thus, and in the subtle turning
of loins a smile could not be going
to that midpoint which bore the fathering.

If not, this stone would stand defaced and short
under the shoulders' see-through lintel piece
and would not scintillate like wild beast furs do;

and would not, from its very boundaries, break
forth like a star: for there's no single spot that
does not see you. You'll have to change your life now.

.

Queue-de-rat 33%.jpg
___________________________________________________
Therefore know that you must become one with the bow, and with the arrow, and with the target
to say nothing of the horse.

... for a while
... for a little while...

(Just a filthy beggar blessing / What happens to the heart)
User avatar
Jean Fournell
Posts: 302
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 4:09 pm
Location: Provence

The Fool: 9 – A few banalities

Post by Jean Fournell »

.
The discovery that you are the unrepeatable center of your own vision is simultaneous with the discovery that I am the center of my own.

James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

.
Back with the horse

"Something has happened", the fool said to his horse, and the horse looked at him. Not the slightest "Do you think I didn't know that?" would it utter.

There was small crunching noise when the stone of disappointment slid into the fool's path. The fool watched her lovingly, as she dug her cute pale-yellow rubber boots into the ground in order to roll and to heave at this far too heavy rock.

The horse did not reply: "It was about time, too!", nor: "So now we can start out with each other in earnest."

"Why don't the hoRse speak me?" the writing on the stone said.

The fool chewed down a hazy "Let it be, Sigmund", and took to not painting the missing "with" in its place in deceptively well imitated children's script, of course.

"I'm right back!" Little-Pointey skipped about in the meadow, picking a bunch of flowers for her mother.

"The cook said, horses cannot work with the not."

While the horse now neither mirrored his soul, nor answered "It is with your kind of not that we cannot work, just as you cannot gallop with our hooves", the fool sensed that at long last the foundations for a genuine mutuality had been laid.

And as the horse and the fool looked at each other with the eyes of the sure-aiming woman, he became aware of his delight and his deep admiration for the elegant craftsmanship of the true master with which the horse kept to itself all these banalities that everybody knows anyway.
___________________________________________________
Therefore know that you must become one with the bow, and with the arrow, and with the target
to say nothing of the horse.

... for a while
... for a little while...

(Just a filthy beggar blessing / What happens to the heart)
User avatar
Jean Fournell
Posts: 302
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 4:09 pm
Location: Provence

The Fool: 9.1 – A calming hand

Post by Jean Fournell »

.

"To have a calming hand lying somewhere on the horse:

This helps the horse, in case of uncanny phenomena, to delete the traces of provenance that is, to ground them in such a fashion that no leftover adrenaline residues remain."

"Hm-mh... And then, what do you mean by traces of provenance?"

"If you want to negate something, you need a negating element and that which is to be negated. And even if what's negated is not transformed into its opposite, it's not completely reduced to zero, but the negation is left with traces that show whence it comes.

Thus inhuman is the contrary of human; and someone I declare unknown to me is not just anybody, but one precise person whom I distinguish from my acquaintances.

For horses, since they cannot work with the not, these traces of provenance are often enough all they take over of such an affair. That's why fear remains if the deleting is insufficient.

A calming hand now helps the horse to dissolve such traces, instead of interpreting the world from that angle of view.

For us it would be a bit as though we could call a new-born baby a non-smoker without finding that it sounds strange because the smoker would have been deleted from the non-smoker, but with the baby still remaining."

"And how is that supposed to work?"

"For us? Certainly not on purpose. It's not possible to forget intentionally, after all.
We can replace unwished-for things by desirable ones; that is often a pretty effectual method.

It still sounds strange, however, if we say that the baby is not a non-smoker but an anti-alcoholic, or maybe isn't...

And yet: what became of the horse-patterer?

Being blown away (or die away, or blow over, or ebb off), as far as I know, works better than anything else, only we cannot force it.

And a horse cannot lay a calming hand on itself.

Therefore know for that's why I'm telling you that your horse needs you for this!"

And all of a sudden the fool did not stand in his own way any longer, and a comprehensiveness unfolded, and he took in the wild rider's word, and he preserved it in his conscience.
___________________________________________________
Therefore know that you must become one with the bow, and with the arrow, and with the target
to say nothing of the horse.

... for a while
... for a little while...

(Just a filthy beggar blessing / What happens to the heart)
User avatar
Jean Fournell
Posts: 302
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 4:09 pm
Location: Provence

The Fool: 9.2 – A useless piece of advice

Post by Jean Fournell »

.
"Grazing is rather easy, too:

Of course it is nonsense for the horse to pull the reins out of your hand in order to graze; and of course it is nonsense for you to prevent it from grazing.

Tell it to graze, and tell it to let you hold the reins.

If both of you give the other what he needs, then both of you have what they need.

This is very hard to understand, which is why nobody knows it; and it is very hard to learn, which is why nobody teaches it.

So drop the futile theorising do what's required and don't speak about it."
___________________________________________________
Therefore know that you must become one with the bow, and with the arrow, and with the target
to say nothing of the horse.

... for a while
... for a little while...

(Just a filthy beggar blessing / What happens to the heart)
User avatar
Jean Fournell
Posts: 302
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 4:09 pm
Location: Provence

The Fool: 9.3 – A statement

Post by Jean Fournell »

"Just strike sail, my little gee-gee, this one here you cannot manage. Come, I'll walk you line in hand, and do not fret about it."

Where had this word come from? There was a small, warm-hearted breeze blowing through the fool's mind, and he sensed a wild joy rumbling inside him and performing such antics that the iron bars took to rattling in their sockets.

Whence came the calm the horse suddenly explored the surroundings with, as if they were a perfectly familiar new world? Into the realm of which powers had he welcomed the horse as though they were his own? Whence came this free, alert serenity in which he felt the horse's mind and knew that the horse felt his mind as well? And then what kind of matter was it made of, this mind, which can't actually be material at all?

These thoughts, like sparrows, were busily skittering about; and horse and human watched them, watched the leaves and the trees, the grass, the lake, the blue-white-cloudy sky; and stood side by side, linked to each other from their innermost depths, and belonged together.
With no questions, with no reasons, with no answers.

That is so.
___________________________________________________
Therefore know that you must become one with the bow, and with the arrow, and with the target
to say nothing of the horse.

... for a while
... for a little while...

(Just a filthy beggar blessing / What happens to the heart)
User avatar
Jean Fournell
Posts: 302
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 4:09 pm
Location: Provence

The Fool: 10 – A connoisseur

Post by Jean Fournell »

Je trouvai enfin un Dictionnaire de rimes et une Encyclopédie des sciences occultes dans laquelle je me plongeai, non sans boire après chaque article, avec les délices que l'on éprouve toujours à trouver plus sot que soi.

(Lastly, I found a Rhyming Dictionary and an Encyclopaedia of Occult Sciences, which I immersed myself in not without drinking after each entry with the delight one always takes in finding stupider than oneself.)

René Daumal, La Grande Beuverie
(The Great Drinking Bout)

Pictures at an exhibition

When things were ready, the painter had sent the fool an invitation, too.

Invitation 88%.jpg
And the fool wanted to show his gratitude and dropped in.

Now he was well aware that the Painter-at-Court was a master of his art indeed, but he himself was unable to make head or tail of any of the pictures exhibited here. So he strolled around, catching loose bits of conversations, until he chanced upon one who seemed to know what he was talking about:

"There is a veil to every phenomenon, a veil we are to lift" he learned, for instance.

"Uncover what's hidden beneath deceptive appearances, decode the deeper and deepest significance. Because Heraclitus already deemed the invisible structure more harmonious than its visible aspect."

And: "What the painter means in these pictures is not what naïve observers may imagine they recognise; what the painter actually means is the primer coat."

The champagne at the refreshment stand was lukewarm, thus had openly unfolded its aromas, and consequently tasted awful. But the orange juice was to his liking, the fool found. And it required no mental contortions.

Then he made the art connoisseur a present of what resembled a delicately chased box of ebony-like Bakelite, wherein was preserved an authentic piece of the Titanic's unsinkability. So far he had never been quite sure just whom, one day, he might honour with it and now he was not going to miss this unique opportunity.
___________________________________________________
Therefore know that you must become one with the bow, and with the arrow, and with the target
to say nothing of the horse.

... for a while
... for a little while...

(Just a filthy beggar blessing / What happens to the heart)
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