Vern Barnet TFN86

CREDO

86. Interbeing

      Any universe simple enough to be understood is too simple
     to produce a mind capable of understanding it.

     The world is one, namely many.

A lion and a butterfly are one
   when Paradox will pounce and fly in song
     as with love’s pleasant arrow we are stung
     and what is right is showing what is wrong.
We cannot see the sun except through screen
     or else our eyes will blister, burn, and blind;
     the film or veil is what reveals the scene
     as circumstance displays what’s in the mind.
The world’s components make no sense, nor fit;
     injustice and dire lack too often rule.
     Yet from this mess the fire to serve is lit,
     the sacred singular discerned from dual.
When vision clears, each nod and node reveals
     how in each jot the universe congeals.

The title comes from Thich Nhat Hanh (1926-2022). Hua-yen Buddhism embraces paradox to convey a vision of integrated, interpenetrating, interdependent totality, pratitya-samutpada, from which Zen arises. Nagarjuna (150?–250?) taught that “things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves.” In De Docta Ignorantia, 1440, Cusa cites Anaxagoras (?500–?428 BCE): Each thing is in each thing. E2: Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945) almost sounds like William James (1842-1910). Are Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and the EPIGRAPH from John D Barrow’s 1990 The World Within the World similar in some profound way? Such a perspective is illumined in Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach, 1979. In his Confessions, Lutheran mystic Jakob Boehme (1575-1624) accesses a spiritual parallel to the paradox of interbeing: “And finding that in all things there was evil and good, as well in the elements as in the creatures, and that it went as well in this world with the wicked as with the virtuous, honest and godly; also that the barbarous people had the best countries in their possession, and that they had more prosperity in their ways than the virtuous, honest and godly had; I was thereupon very melancholy, perplexed and exceedingly troubled . . . . Yet when in this affliction and trouble I elevated my spirit . . . , as with a great storm or onset, wrapping up my whole heart and mind . . . whereby I might understand his will and be rid of my sadness. And then the Spirit did break through.” Perhaps above all Muslim mystics, Ibn ʿArabī (1165-1240) taught a subtle version of wahdat al-wujûd, the unity of being or perhaps the ground of being out of which all things are manifest. The hand and the nose are distinct features of a united body, but the hand is not the nose. Veil: >«Just Try To Kiss Me». Δ For a 4-verse Sursum Corda text (10.10.10.10.), add: “Injustice makes the Cross routinely real; all rent, its hidden beauty bursts to heal.” This sonnet is paired with the preceding one.

Page Design, Symbols, Notes, References