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<\/a>In his first chapter of nothingness and emptiness<\/span>: a buddhist<\/a> engagement with the ontology of jean-paul sartre<\/span>, Steven Laycock describes the enigmas of the lotus and kelp, both of whom live in dual worlds of muck and pure beauty (for the lotus) and rooted darkness and straining toward light (for kelp). He uses these as metaphors for life, for reality, and for spirituality. He states:<\/p>\nThe enigmas we have sensed\u2013 the interpenetration of temporality and the timeless, transparency and reflection, self and selflessness, presence and absence, light and dark, appearance and reality, the visible and the invisible\u2013 are patterns of reciprocity, entwinement. The lotus is the site of manifold crossings and recrossings. Its being, then, is that of the chiasm, the abyssal locus, the \u201cinterrogative space,\u201d of the chi, the X, the determinable indeterminate, the enigma. (p.5) We are faced with the truth <\/span>of the falsehood of the pure beauty of the lotus. Caught up in its beauty, we are lost in a pleasure which is itself dukha<\/span>. It is only by realizing the causes and conditions of the beauty, the muck and mud from which it grows, that one \u2018sees things as they truly are.\u2019<\/p>\n We are drawn constantly, by ignorance (avidya <\/span>in Sanskrit, ma rig pa<\/span> in Tibetan), to \u2018pin down\u2019 one side of a given phenomena: its \u2018badness\u2019 its \u2018goodness\u2019, its \u2018beauty\u2019, and so on. This is the function of consciousness (vij\u00f1ana <\/span>in Sanskrit, rnam shes<\/span> in Tibetan), the \u201cmind [which is] like the imprudent moth entranced by the flame, incautious, unmindful of condition or consequence\u2026\u201d(p.9)<\/p>\n I feel like a thousand lessons can come from this simple realization: from the blessing of our enemies to the foolishness of our quests for unending pleasure in material things. It\u2019s nice to find so much in the opening pages of a book these days. But, when thinking about it, I should note that I\u2019ve recently had similar experiences with the Zen teacher Steven Hagen\u2019s book \u201cBuddhism Plain and Simple\u201d and Theravadin exmonk Matthew Flickstein\u2019s \u201cSwallowing The River Ganges: A Practice Guide to the Path of Purification.\u201d Both of those are far more practical than Laycock\u2019s book\u2026. maybe\u2026 \ud83d\ude42 But I\u2019ll be taking a course on Sartre this semester, so I\u2019m stuck with Laycock for now, and happy to be.<\/p>\n In his first chapter of nothingness and emptiness: a buddhist engagement with the ontology of jean-paul sartre, Steven Laycock describes the enigmas of the lotus and kelp, both of whom live in dual worlds of muck and pure beauty (for the lotus) and rooted darkness and straining toward light (for kelp). He uses these as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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