On Phenomenology and Abstraction, PART 001

This is a personal piece; don't let the title fool you into believing some extravagant academic lecture is about to take place.

“My memory of the past often takes me to places that seem odd; no matter how many times the memory comes back to me. I remember that during that desperate time, I wrote about a distant memory whose own absurd abstraction still makes me feel solitude and downright phobia of the surreal. Of course, I did not see that moment in that way at the time it took place. I was lost in my own world. It felt as if I had separated from the rest of the human race. The feeling was not unlike that of “The Little Prince.” I was in another world, at some exact time feeling fear and joy, elation and panic. Perhaps I am over-examining the memory of that place. As an adult, I can create all sorts of interpretations, recreating the event and giving it additional meanings. But the time and place—what really happened that day and the feeling of complete isolation were kept in some corner of my brain. Why do I still remember that day? Did I experience what Kitaro Nishida calls “Pure Experience?” Technically, the memory simply includes the setting, knowing that my parents nearby but not with me, the weather—I remember vividly that it was very cloudy and the air gave the distinctive feeling that it was about to rain. So where’s the absurdity? Where’s the surreal image? Perhaps the image is what stuck to my mind, waiting for me to reach adulthood and a have the intellectual capacity needed to defeat the symbols of that absurdity. That is not to say I needed to read Freud or Jung to make sense of this episode and scenery, but it does help to know the potential of this being a universal feeling or experience, one of those things that happen to people every day. It is not what happened, really, but the feeling that the moment was important and meaningful in a way I might never be able to explain. Of one thing I am certain: if I seek back far enough, I will find the appropriate, if not adequate theory to go with the interpretation I have formulated.

“I hope I am not giving the impression that this event has haunted me, rendering me incapable to defeat the fear/phobia and reach an understanding of it. What makes the memory come to life in picture? The weather, the fact that my parents were a few hundred yards away but I still felt incredibly lost, and, perhaps the most important or ridiculous part of the experience: I was on a skating rink with skates on. I forgot to mention that the beach was also a stone throw away; hence, my parents at a fishing pier not within eye sight but close enough. So, if I combine all of those things, and feel the experience was meaningful in some deep level of understanding, where do I begin to unravel its meaning, its significance, the real meaning behind all of those symbols? Of course, I hear myself loudly enough about how I am making more of this than I should. This is not as if I was trying to decipher a dream; that, I suppose, would be a little less complex. Could I look at it as it were a dream from long ago? Possibly, but I would not be able to do that without robbing it of something essential: the fact that I am looking at an actual event in my life and not some sort of activity in my brain while in the deep recesses of slumber. This happened on the outside; it was perceived and retained, and now meaning seems to be forcing itself on the memory. See, if it had been a dream, then it would go without saying that meaning would creep up on it by the fact that dreams, by default, seek meaning. Books have been written about it (Freud, again). Why tackle this now? Why not leave it at what I wrote about it back in 2005? Why? I’ve become a different person in the last five years. There are still many of the same emotions I had then in my “present-mindedness,” and I cannot overlook the fact that I am a more stable person today. And it is this stability that allows me to look at the past in this way. Would I be able to look at this very event in the same way? Suppose I return to it 20 years later, what would I say about the feeling of complete abstraction? I mean, we are not talking about an event that visually resembles a Guernica; it is simply what it is: a childhood memory.

“I suspect that there’s danger in going to opposite way and pretend that the memory means nothing. I do not subscribe to the idea of nothingness—even thoughts and memories embody substantiality. Millions of cells do “their thing” in order to bring the memory as a picture. That, even at the molecular level the picture/memories have substantial, matter-like meaning. I know that the memory means something, that the symbols embedded in it are there for a reason and that I need to interpret them in my own way. Nevertheless, I should try and avoid “trading” one interpretation for another as the years continue to pass. I know I said earlier that by default I create different interpretations with every year that passes, but the seductive power of the status quo can be strong—let’s just leave things the way they are. Jean Paul Sartre said as much, “Things are exactly what they are, and behind them there is nothing.” Of course, I have to steady the memory itself and the impact it continues to have on me by giving it its proper value, quality and characteristic. I mustn’t, however, seek for over-simplifications (Sartre was often accused of obfuscating the topic at hand if he did not know enough about it). The skating rink as a symbol of going around in circles and making the same mistakes again and again is a valid interpretation, but what if there’s much more than that and by accepting that I neglect other approaches, other theories? Could different interpretations of the same event survive side by side? What if they contradict each other? How do I select one over the other and know I am making the right choice? What I have neglected to say here is that all I have done with this memory/picture is to study it from a phenomenological stance, a manifestation within a manifestation. That is to say, above all different meanings behind the actual visual memory, the simple act of having experienced that moment in that place and at that time is textbook phenomenology. It also goes without saying that I could never experience that again, anymore than I could experience Marine Corps boot camp any other different way.

“Going back to the skating rink, were it to be different if I remembered the date of the occasion? For example, I remember the date and time of the first kiss I gave a girl in the seventh grade. The fact that I remember the date seems to solidify the memory; it seems to stabilize it but not in an ordinary way. The date and time give the experience a framework to depart from—so 29 years ago, when I took that girl in my arms and kissed her remains in my mind as “Pure Experience.” “Pure Experience,” as per Japanese rational philosopher Kitaro Nishida stipulates that experience can only be pure (its highest state) only when judgment of said experience is superseded the experience itself. For example, I see the color red. When did I see that color for the first time, and when was I told that the color red looked that way (in all its variations)? Well, the time I saw the color red before there was anyone there to explain it to me is, as per Nishida, “Pure Experience.” With the memory of the skating rink I would have to say no (because of the fact that I knew what the skating rink was, and what I was doing there was known to me). But a little more digging reveals the impossibility of “Pure Experience” interpretation. By remembering a date and time, we subscribe the memory/picture to a man-made concept: the Gregorian calendar, so that the experience becomes memory by means of a day of a month of a year at a specific time of that day, invalidating both “Pure Experience” and phenomenology. Another example of this is how people experience history. There is a large movement in the United States of people who gather to recreate Civil War battles. Is the experience of recreating an experience more real/valid than watching, say, Ken Burns’ “The Civil War” on PBS the first time it aired? We can’t go back in time, so we engage in simulacra (not exactly play “pretend”) and call it experience.

“I still wonder what it was about the skating rink that burned the memory in my brain. Was it the weather that set the mood, the dark clouds gathering with the promise of a summer storm? In some way I believe it did. Would I remember and see that moment the same way if it had been clear outside, the sky so bright and sunny it hurt my eyes to look at it? I think I am making progress. My personality—from a very early age—has had the propensity for the melancholy. The process of that memory (visual and philosophically) was branded in my mind by means of a deep feeling of self-awareness (perhaps the first I ever had in regards to emotions). Self-awareness of one’s own physical existence happens much earlier. The memory of the skating rink is something I believe to be metaphysical. It gave me the first glimpse into the world of thought. It was impossible to realize what was happening at the time; these were issues beyond my maturity. It is only later that we can begin to ask, what are we suppose to remember? What do we do with a memory that is more than a glimpse to the past? Should we mold and shape our lives by the discoveries we make looking back and philosophizing the memory? What are these symbols? The skating rink, me going in circles, the weather threatening, my parents (far away as if in another world), and that split second of self-realization?

The Religion of the Samurai -- Zen & Reality: A Comparative Analysis

The book I am reading right now "Zen: The Religion of the Samurai" by Professor Kaiten Nukariya is a complex examination of Zen, its origins in China, its transport to Japan, and its impact on the Bushido philosophy. Nukariya explains early in the book about the two main schools of Zen that evolved from the core Buddhism as it originated in India and China. The Hinayana Tripitaka and the Mahayana Tripitaka evolve from the desires of monks to explain the mysteries of Buddhism into more practical methods. The origins of Buddhism in China are explained from a sketchy history, since many of the documents that held the facts of that history have been lost through the decay of history, and most of what survives from the origins come from a rich oral tradition. The title of the book is a bit misleading. The mention of the Samurai/Bushido mentality/philosophy is not mentioned until page 30 and that for a small paragraph. The book goes back to history of the religion in general, and then a brief comparison of Zen monks and Samurai warriors as being more similar than it originally appears. The Histories are, of course, interesting, and I have learned a great deal about Buddha in general, as I did when I read "An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World" by Pankaj Mishra.

Professor Nukariya offers a definition of Enlightenment that is a bit confusing; it appears more a Zen koan than a real definition, since it is composed of a revolving/circular reasoning that leads to its own premise. His explanation is more an effort at discouraging a definition of Enlightenment in general. As Louis Armstrong said once when asked about the meaning of Jazz: "If you have to ask what it is, you'll never know."

The different levels of spiritual and objective reality are examined closely from the Zen perspective. The question of what constitutes spirit and how it connect all things appears in this book as over-simplistic, but someone who may not know about Zen can definitely appreciate such. All things, explains Nukariya, are alive and connected--even inanimate objects! He challenges the idea using the premises of sub-atomical structures that dictate that even inanimate objects are constantly on the move at that level, and that their moving is as chaotic as fate is to knowing animals (humans). Sub-atomic composition is, for Nukariya, a level of spirituality, a soul of sorts. I am afraid to ask one of our Physics Department professors for fear of being laughed at. They'd probably turn me away telling me not to ask questions that concern the soul. I can appreciate that.

All of this reminds me of my study of Kitaro Nishida's "An Inquiry into The Good" when I lived in Japan in 1994. The introduction, written by Yale Professor Masao Abe, explains how the question of whether or not there's "real" philosophy in Japan has been asked over and over again. His premise is that if you look for Western-based philosophy (objective/rational inquiries) in Japan, you'll only find Nishida as the originator of a philosophy based on Zen but aimed at explaining phenomena objectively. So, all in all, Nishida's book aims to incorporate both schools. He uses the principles of Hegel, James, Heidegger, etc., but gives it all a Zen twist. What I remember the most from this book is Nishida's introduction to the idea of "Pure Experience." As he explains it, "Pure Experience" takes place in the instant we see some object, but cannot know what it is for. For example, a person looks at a tool but doesn't know what the tool is for. Well, before he can tell what it is for, he or she can tell it is a tool, that it is grey in color with red handgrips, etc. That, in a sense, is post-judgment. But if we to "freeze-frame" the moment his or her eyes first encounter the instrument/tool, before any type of judgment is made about it... that, in a nutshell, is "Pure Experience." That, of course, is an over-simplistic example, but looking deeper into "Pure Experience" and applying it to different more serious situations, we find that "Pure Experience" is an area of inquiry worthy of study, as much as, perhaps, pragmatism, absolutism, etc. are. One other example of this might be the encounter (First Contact) that occurred recently between "modern" men in an airplane and a tribe of natives in the deep forest of the Amazon. Whatever it was that the tribe first saw, before they could even react to the plane as a threat and, as they truly did, started shooting arrows at it, it was "Pure Experience." Before it was a threat, before they ran for cover because they felt threatened, the tribe must have looked up in wonder at the thing flying above them. That is "Pure Experience."

The fact that the tribe connected the plane to a threat touches back to Nukariya in "The Religion of the Samurai." Humans need a complete detachment from phenomena to achieve "Pure Experience." Which develops into an even more interesting question or questions: What, besides First Contact, can bring about "Pure Experience?" How is the world of technology helping to expose us to "almost everything," making us unable to see "Pure Experience." Do we already see that technology as predictable? Has the Internet made our possible encounter with "Pure Experience" null?

Going back to Zen in general, a few things are worth mentioning further. The main differences between Hinayana and Mahayana is that they are considered polar opposites. That is to say, Hinayana is considered pessimistic in nature, while Mahayana is more associated with optimism and positive outcomes. It is because of this that some Zen sayings are considered (incorrectly) as nihilist. Further notes about Zen and spirit yields another conflict with Western ideas of the soul. Zen problematizes the fact that the Western "soul" continues to carry with it the personality, irks and quirks, peccadilloes, etc. of the individual who has just expired. Buddhism in general urges the opposite: detachment, separation, "egolessness," etc. Egotism, argues Nukariya, makes people selfish enough to consider they need to continue to exist in their souls, ad infinitum. This is the cornerstone of egotism as it is known in the West.... what is considered the ultimate betrayal to the Truth in Buddhism.

"The Religion of the Samurai" in general has a lack of connection to how Zen applies to the Samurai and how Zen ended up being part and parcel of the warrior spiritual life. It's already page 90 out of 127 and the link to Bushido has not been clearly established. Perhaps Nukariya has saved the best for last. Next on my reading list: a re-read of Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum."