The ‘Vita Contemplativa’ of Byung-Chal Han requires that you have a mind prepped by stillness to benefit by it. However in the erratic course of my rackety life I get pulled over. He let me off with a caution.
Some thoughts on ‘Absolute Lack of Being’ a chapter I dove into.
Lack of being is our fate.
We have to fill up that empty space with activity. ‘Getting and spending we lay waste our days’.
What happened to being? Did we lose the sense of its necessity and get caught up in contingency? Time taken like that does not fructify. We stare at our plants willing them to grow. Was it a Chinese sage that told us not to pull up our onions to see how the roots are getting on?
I see that I have nothing but questions and no dwelling in the immediate answer.
Just look and grok on the fullness. Sit.
‘The gods do not act’ says Aristotle says Byung-Chal Han and quotes extensively. Bottom line — they contemplate. He does not quote Denis Devlin if he even knows about him but I will as I’m sure he would approve:
Ank'hor Vat by Denis Devlin
The antlered forests
Move down to the sea
Here the dung-filled jungle pauses
Buddha has covered the walls of the great temple
With the vegetative speed of his imagery
Let us wait, hand in hand
No Western god or saint
Ever smiled with the lissom fury of this god
Who holds in doubt
The wooden stare of Apollo
Our Christian crown of thorns;
There is no mystery in the luminous lines
Of that high, animal face
The smile, sad, humouring and equal
Blesses without obliging
Loves without condescension:
The god, clear as spring-water
Sees through everything, while everything
Flows through him
A fling of flowers here
Whose names I do not know
Downy, scarlet gullets
Green legs yielding and closing
While, at my mental distance from passion,
The prolific divinity of the temple
Is a quiet lettering on vellum
Let us lie down before him
His look will flow like oil over us.
