6 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2025
    1. I crave sweet closure and am averse to uncontained ambiguity, there are those moments of proprioceptive insight that can bring the bittersweet flavor and “contained uncontainment” of the soul.

      for - proprioception - adjacency - proprioception - contained uncontainment - bittersweet (w)holeness - Zen Koan - The elbow does not bend backwards

      adjacency - between - proprioception - contained uncontainment - bittersweet (w)holeness - nonduality - Zen Koan - The elbow does not bend backwards - adjacency relationship - These ideas of proprioception, contained uncontainment, bittersweet (w)holeness - bring to surface the Zen Koan that the elbow does not bend backwards - There is freedom in limitation - Every morphic form of a living organism's body constrain it to be adapted to a specific environment - Every human cultural artefact that we produce, for instance in engineering, constrains its use - Yet there is a freedom in that limitation - The nondual includes the dual itself

  2. Jan 2025
    1. Sacredness puts us into contact with the Numinous, which basically exposes us to what is horrifying. At least at the limits of us, because it has an aspect of awe with a little bit more which is to remind us - humiliation in the original sense of the word - to keep us, to give us humility to remember that as we are feeling that sense of expansiveness with awe that we are precisely, ultimately, limited creatures

      for - adjacency - coexistence of the infinite and the finite - Daisetz Suzuki and the Zen Koan "The elbow does not bend backwards" - Meaning crisis episode 35 - The Symbol, Sacredness, and the Sacred - John Vervaeke

  3. Dec 2024
    1. When D. T. Suzuki came to this country later, he said he had a great realization contemplating the Japanese expression, “The elbow does not bend backwards.” The idea is that the elbow only bends inward, bends one way. Is that a limitation of the elbow? Is it a defect? That a really good elbow would bend both ways? Is it a design flaw that we’re stuck with? Instead, it’s a matter of seeing the particular irony in what we would think of as a limitation rather, as a definition, a part of what we intrinsically are, and freedom is not a question of being able to do something, to do anything whatsoever, but to fully function within our design and our capacity.

      for - quote - The Elbow does not bend backwards - Dasietz Suzuki - contradiction - the finite and infinite in one being - meme - to be or not to be, that is the question - to be AND not to be, that is the answer

      quote - The Elbow does not bend backwards - Dasietz Suzuki - Barry Magid - When D. T. Suzuki came to this country later, he said he had a great realization contemplating the Japanese expression, “The elbow does not bend backwards.” - The idea is that the elbow only bends inward, bends one way. Is that a limitation of the elbow? Is it a defect? That a really good elbow would bend both ways? Is it a design flaw that we’re stuck with? Instead, - it’s a matter of seeing the particular irony in - what we would think of as a limitation rather, as a definition, a part of what we intrinsically are, and - freedom is not a question of being able to do something, to do anything whatsoever, - but to fully function within our design and our capacity. - The full freedom of the functioning of the elbow takes place in bending inward, not outward.

      comment - the contradiction of our life is that - the infinite and the finite exist in the same mortal coil - this consciousness which is capable of unlimited imagination - is housed in a fragile, time-limited body - Yet all life exists in the concrete form of living / dying individual's housed in bounded, albeit dynamic bodies - Each of us takes on a unique and specific morphological form, determined by the genetic material passed on to us intergenerationally - Each individual belongs to a unique species, a unique replicable template that is unique - And yet, all life derives from the same reality - So each species, and all individuals belonging to each species, have unique bounded bodies - While that universal wisdom articulates itself uniquely in each species and each individual of a species, it is nonetheless a universal wisdom behind it all - So the elbow does not bend backwards in the human - and the wings flutter only one way in birds - and the fins only project one way in fish - etc, etc.... - Can we trace ourselves from the perceived limited - all the way back to the unlimited infinite? - To be or not to be, that is the question - To be AND not to be, that is the answer

    2. The fact that we are not going to go sit in a cave for nine years, or the fact that we’re not going to leave home and be monastics or leave home and live the life of a homeless recluse, that is not a limitation. It’s the equivalent of the elbow not bending backwards.

      for - The elbow does not bend backwards - D.T. Suzuki - interpretation - by Barry Magid - Our daily, mundane life is the equivalent of this phrase.

  4. Sep 2024
    1. our love of freedom is is one of the ways that we as apparently limited beings return naturally to our original condition

      for - comparison - Rupert Spira - limited human being striving for return to natural condition - Dasietz Suzuki - The elbow does not bend backwards - insight - freedom is our natural state - because in our contracted human form - we desire to return to our original expansive form - Rupert Spira comment - As Dasietz Suzuki observed, within the limitations of our form, there is a freedom - After listening for a 2nd or 3rd time, I noted something I missed on the 1st listening. A metaphor helps - My nickname reflects this desire to return to the original expansiveness. "Bottled up" and existing in a "contracted" human form, - we possess a natural desire to expand out of the contracted human form back into its original, primordial expansive state - This is indicated by our innate desire for freedom

  5. Jun 2022