Dogen, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Samuel Becket, concepts, meaning, and incomprehension

excerpted from THE WAY OF WONDER: a return to the mystery of ourselves, by Jack Haas

“To study ourselves is to forget ourselves.”

Dogen

            That is, to study ourselves is to dis-recognize ourselves.

            The more we look into ourselves with sedulous, blank honesty, the more we lose the words we were given to describe ourselves; and the more we step out of our everyday habits and perceptions, the more we realize we have no clue about ourselves, except that we suddenly become a greater and greater mystery continually, at every moment. That is when we begin to see ourselves truly.

           Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj stated: “You give reality to concepts, while concepts are distortions of reality. Abandon all conceptualization and stay silent and attentive. ...[For] the spirit touches matter and consciousness results. Such consciousness, when tainted with memory and expectation, becomes bondage. Pure experience does not bind... Self-forgetting is inherent in self-knowing... Free from memory and expectation, I am fresh, innocent, and wholehearted.”

            And Samuel Beckett synopsized this realization nicely when he wrote: “All has proceeded all this time in the utmost calm, the most perfect order…the meaning of which escapes me. No, it is not that their meaning escapes me, my own escapes me just as much. …Dear incomprehension, it’s thanks to you I’ll be myself, in the end.”

excerpted from:

THE WAY OF WONDER: a return to the mystery of ourselves

by Jack Haas

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Mystical books, visionary art, and fine art photography by Jack Haas