John - thanks for the wonderful discussion! Looking forward to exploring Nishitani's work more with you in the future. :)

@Mystery_G

4 жыл бұрын

YES!!!! Sincere thanks and gratitude to you both! As someone with an RS background, this is exactly the kind of conversation I've been salivating for. My own experience from my studies firmly held the idea that only by inter-playing between hard science and RS could we begin to bridge a new realization of and evolution to re-recognition and communion with this Other. Would love so much to see not only more additional conversations on Buddhism and specifically Nishitani (edit: My unconscious mind seemed to be playing with Nishikigi), but other schools of Buddhism, as well as the vastness of other wisdom tradition's plays on John's modernist RR research. Again, sincere gratitude to you both. PS "It is a good service you have done, sir, A service that spreads in two worlds, And binds up an ancient love That was stretched out between them. I had watched for a thousand days. Take my thanks, For this meeting is under a difficult law. And now I will show myself in the form of Nishikigi. I will come out now for the first time in colour." www.gutenberg.org/files/8094/8094-h/8094-h.htm#link2H_4_0002

@ZDogNight16

4 жыл бұрын

I'm your biggest fan Jared

@CrystallineWyvern

4 жыл бұрын

Hey Jared, this was excellent, I appreciate it. Is there a link to the reading group you're doing? I'd be very interested in joining, and have been considering getting into Corbin.

@JaredMorningstar

4 жыл бұрын

@@CrystallineWyvern Hi Connor - the Corbin group just started this weekend but I'd be happy to have you and it wouldn't be too hard to catch up. Discussions are at 7:00pm central time if that works for you. Contact info is up on www.jaredmorningstar.com :)

Talking about this shit is so ironic… super grateful for the attempt and the insights that came with it gentlemen. You articulate it much better than I ever could.

I'm reasonably new to philosophy, but am an 'advanced' meditator, and have had 'awakening' experiences. So I can see that the speakers are trying to describe the all-pervading nothingness in philosophical language, and to place it into a philosophical context. However, I find it amazing that so many words were spoken, and not one of them was 'meditation', nor any description of how it feels to access the nothingness in meditation and then to open your eyes and maintain that connection to the nothingness, and to feel that it extends through you and through everything, and that while it feels empty, it also feels very rich and fulfilling at the same time. If it wasn't for the fact that I know that John is an avid practitioner of meditation, I'd have to assume that they didn't include such experiential descriptions because they had never experienced them for themselves, and that all this talk was based on a theoretical parsing of technical words, rather than on a lived experience of what it all actually refers to. This is not a put-down - I love the work you're doing John - it's an encouragement to also include some of the personal, experiential descriptions, that aren't filled with technical jargon. I think such descriptions will help to make your valuable work reach the wider audience that you're after.

Thanks for doing this, Jared and John, and upregulating the signal for this book while giving people a taste. I fully agree on the significance of it as an exemplification of the kind of complex integration of Eastern and Western thought we need to address the meaning crisis. I picked up Religion and Nothingness after hearing John in one of the old youtube Buddhism and Cog Sci classroom lectures claim it to be the best book on nihilism he'd ever read. Only after reading it did I hear John advise not to begin with it directly. With my relevant background being some Nietzsche, some Buddhist texts / meditation practice, John's series, and going through Nishitani's prequel-esque book first (The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism) I found it a slow, hard read but profoundly impactful. As an aside, if you read Nishitani's first book did either of you guys find it a worthwhile read apart from Religion and Nothingness, and / or would recommend it as one of the primers? From memory it seemed mostly to be an analysis of Western thinkers' attempts to grapple with nihility thus far, a 'problem-formulation' with the book discussed here more of an attempt to address the problem. I definitely think it helped me transition into understanding RaN. The diagram on page 140 and the next few pages of writing was incredibly helpful for me in getting a sense of the nature of self / being, and the relationship between something's "home-ground" and nihility, sensation & reason (the relationship of which to the home-ground reminds me of Blake's notion of reason as the outward circumference of energy). And it managed to somehow convey the beautiful idea of 'God as a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere' despite using a circle diagram. His critique of Descartes' cogito as duplicating itself to form an illusory sum (when the sum of the home-ground was there prior to the cogito in the first place) was great. And Pg. 33 was an amazing critique on the objectivization of nihility in Satrean existentialism, which uses it as a springboard at the bottom of a well for the ego rather than breaking through the floor entirely into sunyata I also appreciated the section near the end on work and play becoming one on the field of sunyata (picking up on John's 'Serious Play' idea though perhaps not directly related to its gnosis aspects), with each task becoming a telos for itself. A quote from the book I still find relevant: "Christianity cannot, and must not, look on modern atheism merely as something to be eliminated. It must instead accept atheism as a mediation to a new development of Christianity itself." Perhaps relevant especially in this space for Jonathan Pageau. At the very least nontheism could replace atheism as an initial smoother provocation point for its evolution. Not sure if the reading group Jared mentioned is open / online but I'd be very interested in it; I've been considering getting into Corbin.

I think it may be antithetical to your project to give priority to certain talks, but I feel like this was fundamental. Just gleaning the core concepts has incredible value. Thank you as always for your tireless efforts exploring what is normally inaccessible to us in the working class dealing with the fallout of existence in a post-teleological society.

One of the most mind-changing books i've ever read

I've had "Religion and Nothingness" on my shelf for quite some time now... Don't quite dare going there yet 🙂

Great! Thank you.

Thank you so much Jhon and Jared great discussion! Jon I would like to ask a favor of you to talk about ajata and how it fits in

21:30 The stuckness of nihilism is not an error but rather part of the path. Trying to diagnose why we fall into nihilism in order to avoid it is futile.

Great stuff

Brilliant insights

@JaredMorningstar

4 жыл бұрын

Thanks Sean!

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION SAT. WITH JARED. 26:40 reference in video. Q. We may realize absurdity metaphysically, for who doesn’t find joy and truth in paradox, for instance, or laugh at the three-in-one witness of ME watching myself correcting my other self? However, HOW DO WE VISCERALLY ACTUALIZE ABSURDITY in our lives? It seems to break egocentricity we must take a deep dive, arms locked around meaninglessness. We can’t want it, can’t be in control, can’t care if our bottomless pit might have a bottom, after all. Yet, somehow in surrender, we exit these states with deep meaning. Do you have experience of this existential process, or quotes from Nishitani?

I’d love you two to talk in conversation with pageau!

Thanks Jared and John.

@johnvervaeke

4 жыл бұрын

Thanks Lee.

"anarchist zine library nishitani" in web search, 2nd link below, brings PDF of "The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism" by Nishitani, a later book, looks easier! Not sure if this is the book Jared mentioned.

Feeding the algorithmic gods.

Can anyone elaborate more about the double aspect of everying from Nishitani?

Who's the guy he mentions draws a comparison between Heidegger and the Neoplatonists?

Earth’s internal negation of it’s nonexistent disclosure in haunting itself as an other

@jasonaus3551

4 жыл бұрын

Word soup, as usual

How does shunyata and agape relate? I found myself thinking, "realizing" that nihilism & emptiness is, in a way, the purest, most dynamic, and connected form of love - - agape. Interested in your thoughts?

@JaredMorningstar

4 жыл бұрын

Good intuition! Nishitani discusses agape in connection with emptiness multiple times throughout his text. Very briefly, he links this notion to the kenosis (self-emptying - a Greek term) of Christ and considers how only on emptiness can we ever truly be fully other-oriented, as otherwise we are stuck within a paradigm of representation and objectification, where other people and other things are always evaluated over and against the self. This other-orientation we achieve on the field of emptiness is agape.

@robertrex4462

4 жыл бұрын

@@JaredMorningstar yes exactly! i had that "realization" when during one of my intense grief moments it occurred to me that non-attachment is LOVE (non-attachment i suppose is a form of emptiness)

What is the connection between emptiness and intelligibility?

@JaredMorningstar

4 жыл бұрын

Hi Guy! Love your videos. In connection with intelligibility and emptiness, Nishitani speaks readily of a "knowing of non-knowing" in a typical Zen fashion. The important notion here is that this is a fundamentally non-objective, non-representational knowledge - it is an existential encounter with the thing on its own home-ground, which, ultimately is also the context where the self returns to its primordial selfhood. Basically, this is to say (if I am understanding Nishitani correctly here) that intelligibility in its deepest sense as a convergent being-mode between "self" and "other" is grounded in emptiness, as it is only here where the full interdependence and interpenetration of self and other are fully realized. This is a distinct conception of intelligibility from rational representation of a thing in a particular objective mode which allows you (viewed as a distinct agent-subject) to relate to or utilize a particular thing as a means to an end. As I went through Nishitani's text with my fellow travelers in our book club, we'd consistently circle back to questions of "well, what does this idea afford us?" - which is very understandable, as there is no a clear answer to this question. What's the "point" of a knowing of non-knowing? Here its important to reframe Nishitani's project back in his own methodology, where he is approaching all these questions from a religious standpoint - that is to say, from a standpoint of the real self-realization of reality. In this paradigm, we are blocked from making the move of constantly relating objects / events / others back to the ego-self to evaluate utility as it may relate to any particular telos the self has come to identify with. We are already in this non-dual continuity grounded in emptiness for Nishitani, and ultimately this is the field which allows for the existence of higher-order rationalistic explorations of various phenomena, but it is also the field which undermines the perceived ultimacy / supremacy of such projects and reorients one back to a standpoint of the selfhood of non-self where things can again be encountered on their own home-ground. Hope things brings you deeper into relation with the nature of this question - as a paradigm of "answering" would already place us on this presumed field of separation of self and other, where we would only ever be meeting this question in relation to how we represent it in accord with the telos of our selfhood.

one thing that i found interesting was your argument that the west never was able to deal with nothingness.We need to keep in mind that even our concept of zero was discovered and transmitted by the indians.

First time l have come across Mishitani, looks very interesting, is he saying we need a telelogy which is not a telelogy, what would this look like? It can not be the naturalistic reductionism of science and its accompanying their is no purpose in the universe, nor could it be the theistic christian telelogy culmulating in the escaton or any religon for that matter which posits a final end, it can not be a non theistic view like Tillichs either because you could not say anything about the Ground of Being without distorting it, it is beyond Keats negative capability/capacity, so it seems we are left in the liminal, a place of possiblity were like atomic particles everything is simultaneously arising and falling away in a flux where purpose and non purpose are simultaneously possible, depend on each other in a deep way and are intricately related to time/eternity in some way which might be beyond our understanding but then again, maybe it is beyond understanding/ non understanding.

No one’s sleep under so many lids...

DEDICATED TO NISHITANI by Karima From silence to silence, speaking to no one that ever could exist: Let go of going Let go of coming Let go of being and of the concept of... concepts. Unravel quickly now notions of meaning. Release all but this moment, release “Allness,” return “Oneness” to Itself, let go of “Itself” of “It” of “That,” “now,” “only now,” and even... “This”... Return to nowhere... nowhere... not even a void... not even opposites in union forever... not even forever. Now stop thinking. Burn these words. Quit being any thing, any one, any, all... quit... (I HEAR MUSIC!) No matter what anyone will ever tell you, remember, in all your complete forgetting, this honeymoon never has ceased, and never will, as boundless Love with the Nameless One. Both isness, and isness-less. Neither isness nor isness-less surrender, now, to silence. Within which even “It” goes, round and round. Where It comes out, not even It knows.

@Luke-c

9 ай бұрын

Beautiful

Going through religion and nothingness as a non native English speaker and without philosophical background and without preparation. God bless ChatGPT. In some parts of the book I'm not sure if the author himself knows what he is trying to say. It sounds nonsensical.

Not sure that I'm sold on the practicality of this information - which is claimed at the end of the video. Great talk, but if, in fact, this Kyoto school has practical, actionable ways of dealing with these issues, then I'm unsure of the point. Not that I mind philosophy for the sake of philosophy, mind you.

It's just Deleuze

Philosophy is the Rationalist’s distorted attempt at psychology. Also, acceptance/integration of nihilism doesn’t happen without the Will, doesn’t happen without confrontation.

@ctucker1129

4 жыл бұрын

28:25 cannot be emphasized enough; it’s not an intellectual/rational process.

@ctucker1129

4 жыл бұрын

I like ‘the great doubt’, might have to steal that.

@ctucker1129

4 жыл бұрын

I haven’t read this book but talk of ‘emptiness’, ‘no self’, and discouraging subjectivity are potential red flags. We need to watch out for the dispersion of self consciousness by rationality. Identity and persona will be deconstructed but the resistance will often try to promote an ‘emptiness’ in order to suppress the inner conflict and disperse our consciousness. The ideas of freedom and detachment will similarly be distorted. The masculine and the Will need to be part of the process to prevent these deceptions.

@ctucker1129

4 жыл бұрын

45:00 That is only a short term, non sustainable answer to nihilism and meaning crisis. It’s appealing because the whole point is to be in conformity or contact with reality, but it’s trying to skip to the end. It takes more work than simply a perspective change.

@ctucker1129

4 жыл бұрын

46:00 We shouldn’t attempt to escape into the ‘oneness’ while we are still two - that leads to blindness. Taste the oneness but don’t try to consume and inhabit it. The oneness that we desire most and that sustains is not readily accessible to us. Reject the counterfeit oneness that doesn’t sustain in order to aim at the one in our imagination that calls to us.

Hmmmm.... I see this as the kind of drift into esoteric and, to me anyway, ultimately empty talk that will occur every time we forget to link our existence to our evolutionary past. Besides, sounds like a lot of first-world, petit-bourgeois sort of "problem," and even then, I guarantee 99% of the people even in Western society cannot relate to this conversation (although I would admit that percentage might be decreasing). Too busy finding meaning in raising kids (which includes materially providing for a family), pursuing one's interests (I find training for and running marathons and long-distance triathlons, playing Chopin on the piano, learning about the latest in science and technology, reading philosophy and history, cooking a good meal, tasting a fine wine... Shall I go on?) is quite enough to ward off nihilism. We live on this Earth for reasons unknown, accept it and deal with it. Don't try to be a great man, just be a man (or woman; or pick your gender of choice).

@CrystallineWyvern

4 жыл бұрын

I agree with your point on remembering our evolutionary heritage in our lives and in embodying meaningful pursuits (e.g. Rafe Kelley's work), but there should also be space for abstract philosophical inquiry; who knows where it might lead, and the hunger for the deep roots of truth and reality is a noble and healthy impulse that can lead into such esoteric trails. There are many routes to meaning. This includes Donald Hoffman's work as well, which I think you misinterpreted in your talk with Paul Vanderklay. There ought to be space for all kinds of vocations that come from a healthy source. I do appreciate your hard-nosed (and very ENTJ) inputs though, Karl, and your advocacy for the benefits of hardcore exercise in the form of marathons.