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people went through all the options: the ropes, the chasis, the cargo, the decorations. the buddha just kept shaking his head.
finally the buddha reveals the answer: there is none! see, you need ALL of these components to have a functioning chariot. none of them defines it because they are all necessary to have a chariot.
a chariot with no wheels doesn't work. does this mean wheels defines the chariot? no! cuz you ALSO need ropes, a driver, animals to pull it, and a reason to drive the chariot in the first place
there is no essential chariot! there are assemblages of matter, arranged in a particular way for a particular purpose in a particular time and in a particular context
and that's how everything in the world is. there is no self. a central hindu principle was "atman" or the essential self or "soul", but really it was the thing that gets reincarnated and is not bodily. but the buddha shat all over that! ANatman, he said. no-self.
so basically, the word for this is impermanence. the english translation of the sanskrit, or the best we can come up with, is "interdependent co-arising", or the principle that everything co-originates with everything else, at the same time. it's relational, dialectical.
if you struck a mask, a scientist would say it was the chemical composition of the match head, with the presence of oxygen, and the added friction when you struck it which contributed the energy to cause a chemical reaction. cause, effect.
for a buddhist, however, it is those things, plus the fact that yr not underwater. the fact that you had breakfast which allowed you to convert energy from the sun into the striking motion. it's the fact that humans evolved opposable thumbs which allowed u to hold the match.
the specific instance contains within it relations which far exceed it, stretching out in all directions. everything has infinite causes and infinite effects. the existence of a single atom in a single position in a single moment implies the existence of the entire universe.
another buddhist image is called indra's net. it is an infinite net in a void, with gemstones at each knot of the net. there is light flowing through the gemstones but it has no origin, it is simply the reflection of a reflection of infinite reflections.
in each gem stone you see the face of every other gemstone in the net reflected infinitely. you can see the whole in each of its parts. this is how the buddha views the world, in simulacrum, as an infinite series of relations that mutually imply one another.
this is what it means to say there is no essence, that everything is relational. it is also what derrida (and saussure) meant when they said language is differential. p is defined through not-p. "tree" is different in meaning from "three" because the H changes its meaning
context matters. it defines. it creates. everything is the result of much larger forces than itself. things are defined from the outside in, not the inside out.
and this is also what it means to say "i am dust and to dust i will return"
during rosh hashanah services, my rabbi broke down for almost 10 minutes in the sanctuary because for the first time on rosh hashanah, he was completely alone.
one of the other rabbis communicated to him the outpouring of messages in the zoom chat. "we are here, you are not alone, G?D is closest to the brokenhearted, this too is holy, we love you, we support you, we are here and we're not going anywhere"
he said afterwards that this High Holidays season he was looking for a Jewish concept of impermanence. "tohu v'vohu", chaos and creation is my synagogue's high holidays theme. it comes in the Torah before the world is created. it is dynamic, without order or composition.
but in this chaotic void of creation and destruction, our rabbis taught, teshuva existed. teshuva, the possibility of return, was around before the world was. it is the condition of possibility for our lives. teshuva was the Jewish concept of impermanence my rabbi was looking for
teshuva is characterized by movement. the movement of return, which mimics the celestial bodies which move elliptically around a gravitational center.
it enacts what it describes, it is performative. the movement of re-turn, to reorient ourselves. towards what? towards HaShem, the path of the righteous, towards heaven, in short, towards nothingness
sin in Judaism is "chet" it is "missing the mark". "kavanah", or aim or intention, is essential to avoiding sin. with the right aim you can hit the bullseye, with the wrong one you will miss the mark. that's all. no evil, no self-flagellation, only deprivation from the good.
the universe came into being when G?D tore G?D's self asunder, and into that void sprung the universe spontaneously. so at the heart of creation is this void which shattered divinity, infusing even the basest matter with holiness that just needs to be elevated to rejoin the whole
evil is nothing but nothingness. it is simply the correlate to creation, this void out of which the universe came into being. G?D said "I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse, therefore choose life, that you and your children may live"
all that means is that life and death are co-present in any moment, and righteousness is simply navigating that complex moment, selecting the good and upholding it. but this does not disband death; nothing does.
teshuva is a return to nothingness, or heaven, which is nothing. this is why the righteous one walks the path with two slips of paper in their pockets: one which reads "for my sake the world was created" and another which says "i am dust and to dust I will return"
and this is the ultimate point of both Buddhism and Jewish liturgy during the high holidays: everything is absolutely worthless and so, so full of purpose at the same time.
teshuva shows us that the process of repair and reconciliation is there from before the beginning, it is an always-already present possibility at the heart of our relationship to G?D and death and all that jazz
it is in fact ASSUMED that we will fuck up, because we are creatures of impermanence unlike G?D. our sages teach then when teshuva is working the whole world is healed at once. if this is not confirmation of Buddhist teaching that everything is related to everything idk what is
through an opening the size of a pinhead created by teshuva, vast doorways of change can be opened. massive transformation are afforded to the smallest act of forgiveness or repair.
teshuva is impermanence, is "interdependent co-arising" precisely because it leads to a sense of urgency, of transformation. if nothing is here to stay, if "gam zeh ya'avor" this too shall pass, then i better get my head and heart right, and soon, before i lose my chance.
the buddha was once asked a series of questions, including metaphysical ones like, "is there life after death? is there a soul? is the soul created, uncreated, both, or neither? is the world created, uncreated, both, or neither? and the buddha was like fuck off w that shit lol
the buddha responded your house is on FIRE. you are literally inside of a burning building and everyone you love is in danger and you are asking about metaphysics that seriously don't matter right now! i'm trying to get everyone out of the burning house first. time for that later
and this is the High Holidays, too. we don't ask metaphysical questions: we seek to set our affairs between G?D and fellow humans right because we could die at any moment. there's extreme urgency because life is impermanent and everything is in flux so who knows what will happen
one final parable. a woman came to the buddha asking for his help. her child had died. the buddha said yes i will help you. go to the house in the village that "has not been touched by death", and there you will find a plant that can prepare a potion to bring back yr child
the woman searches desperately from house to house, but can't find a single space untouched by death. she comes back to the buddha, defeated, and says "there is no house anywhere near here that hasn't been touched by death". and the buddha is like ya lol
that's the fucking POINT. death is all around us, especially now. we live in its context, the very air we breathe is the life that has left the lungs of those who we've lost. their Ruakh, their wind. death is always the context for life.
"slow down, child slow down
slow down and listen to the wind"
i love this song basically because that's all yom kippur and the high holidays are, a pause, an accounting of where we are in a particular moment and context. we are sitting with nothingness, digesting it, allowing..
slow down and listen to the wind"
i love this song basically because that's all yom kippur and the high holidays are, a pause, an accounting of where we are in a particular moment and context. we are sitting with nothingness, digesting it, allowing..
...it to digest us. we are on the cusp of a moment, a moment that breaks apart into nothingness which comes together into a new moment. and that moment implies the whole of creation.
so we have to, we need to, pause and do nothing for a time so that we can feel that great flow flowing through us, the movement of teshuva, of return towards life, which travels through death and on the wings of angels, crossing from void to void
