choice, datum

1 Position Satement

2005-08-27T20:55:00.000+08:00

1.1 I begin with a theorem of investigation. This concerns the conception and question of choice. My theorem position may be stated as follows:

If there is any real "primary" choice in life, it can only be the choice to be born or not. Do human beings choose to be born? They do not. There is no choice.

1.2 The primmediate component in this "theorematic study" is the conception and position of datum (Latin, plural data). For what would be the point or purpose of a research – with line-in reference to "data choice" – when the very proposition of a pure, uncompromised, unchosen datum is left in the lurch? If a human (researcher) has no primary choice, then secondary and tertiary choice eludes him too. What significance does this theorem hold for the application of the scientific method? If everything, i.e. all phenomenon goes and comes in an unchosen manner, then everything is pure and freely received data. But then how would the researcher grasp, collect, or gather such a datum of purely given phenomena? Furthermore, how would this impact on the notion of assemblage? For assemblage naturally implies an order or design with taxonomic purpose. Only by arriving to this present departure may a research agent be fully enabled to respect the primacy of the scientific method.

1.3 Going forth in this theorem as "investigative source," the question of purpose is of resolute primacy. I therefore intend as an academic subplot to investigate the nature of purpose itself as motive and reason in scholarly activity. I further suggest that the invisible, hence unexamined procedure of hypotheticization in the academic protocol is deficiently asymmetrical in its neglect of the counterbalancing hypertheticization. If made more conceptually balanced, hence symmetric – vis-à-vis the synthesis-antithesis coupling – what would the ramifications hold for an allegedly "proof-based" scientific paradigm in particular regard to the sanctum of philosophy?

1.4 I will set out on a narrative of exploration and documentation that will at once be vividly self-reflexive and self-aware, and whose terms and tools, whose methods and procedures will stand in need of persistent revaluation and renewal. I will track the pursuit of keeping up with data with a critically suspicious "hermeneutic of materials" in specific reference to a layeredness and deep multiformity of textuality that unreservedly de-self-centers both its audience and its avowed purpose. I will aptly investigate the notions of cross-contaminated data, corrupted data, as well as forced – i.e. hurriedly gathered, analyzed, and interpreted – data. I will adopt my terms and concepts while simultaneously problematizing them. My strategy will maintain a heightened ambivalence and a provocative relationship with the very tools it brings to play, and use these as a set of minimalist props. I will subject my theorem to intensive testing.

1.5 My procedure in disclosing this "no choice theorem" – described for the first time ever, I believe – will be richly dialogical and relational throughout.

1.6 I will further make an Indo-European cultural comparativistic scrutiny of the (s)ind(h)ic episteme of dharma, and then reconcile this with the early nous of the Persian-born Anaxagoras, with Aristotle's nous poetikos, and with the Unmoved Mover as god as brahman as quasi historical Buddha himself. I will then return to sati and vipassanā and address their function as data accrual strategy and once and for all hermeneutically expose this specious twosome as masked marauding metaphors for Rgveda hymn I:103, with all due respect to the hair raising Harsha and his holy blistering jihādic arsenal. In fuller demonstration of the praxial[1] theorem, an academic sub-plot would trace a single epistemological tendril as it re-self-generates, extends and disperses its salient metagenealogical dynamic amid the following ten milieux: (i) Bauddhic sati, (ii) Patañjali's īśvara, together with (iii) kaivālya and its associated state of (iv) kaivālya-mukti, but contrasted with (v) Sāmkhya's īśvara-variation and (vi) its consequent retreatment in Īśvarakrsna; (vii) Advaitic sakshin and (viii) the later fourteenth century Sāmkhya revival, which assumed a strong theistic character, (ix) the eventual baroque blend of Sāmkhya and Yoga where the former provided a metaphysical basis and the later an ascetic research technology, and finally (x) Kant's custom fitted "extra layer" to account for the transcendental unity of apperception.

2 Docility (or feeler notes re. methamethodological scopes & disciplinary sanctums)

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2.1 Data Acquisition in an Open Universe (Bauddha Metaphysical Methodologies)

The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose (Wittgenstein 1953: no. 127).

In the developmental processes of Bauddha[2] historicization there arise three generic, quasi self-referential classifications. These are Theravāda, Mahāyāna, and Tantrayāna. Viewed primarily as research models, each has its own characteristic relationary approach to gaining favor, i.e. data, from an a priori "open" universe. In this way 'Jaino-Bauddhic' Theravāda watches it; faith-driven Mahāyāna travels to it; and Tantrayāna yogically becomes it.

The school of the theras or five-hundred "elders"[3] accepts a rather dry, spectatorial tact and aims to objectify the greatly analyticised facets of its perceived emotional impinging universe. But with the dawning of the bhakti-driven Mahāyāna, we see the "Great Vehicle" has inherited an expanded, new and boldly unfastened universe that ignites and 'explodes in all dimensions' (Gombrich 1996: 38). Here Mahāyānic science turns phenomenological and launches deep probes in the purity and faith through the essentialized and redescribed vastness of its expanse. Tantrayāna yogically becomes its own alterity[4] through the hyperthetic reach of a corporeal-perceptive instrumentation. Such extensive retoolings compel its researchers to dilate the ontologic vein of eclipse and don, as it were, the body of the universe.

Despite the sustained attempts in its primitive texts to stratify the heavens, and to specify and catalogue everything knowable, there remains 'a gaping vagueness at the top – in fact, there is no top at all' (38) – but a vast expansiveness, immeasurable and ineffable. Thus the Bauddha universe is plainly open-ended, in very marked contrast to its cousinly Jaina conception, which likes to represent the cosmos by closed-in diagrams (38). But more than unbounded by 'all spatial dimensions' (38), the Bauddha universe is unrestrained by 'time.' And so in vivid contrast to the Shemitic sense of temporal eternity, Bauddha apperception of its spatial dimension is rather one of timelessness and infinity.

Can deeper implications be brought to light through sustained transcultural examination of our growing catalogue of ontological archetypes? Transculturally mapping ontological archetypes ought to be an essential project of comparative religious and philosophical studies. This could well hold answers to the cultural formulation of variant conceptions of being-in-the-universal, their influence on social manipulation and formation.

2.2 Primmediate Principles and the Scientific method
We cannot close our eyes to the foundational primacy of the scientific method, per se, where the observer/scientist may only gather data that is freely given, that is, freely received. The extent to which a data is freely exchanged is a marker of the data's relative immediacy, hence purity. This is data as a totem: no strings attached.
Yet due to its primmediacy, the imagination may well be the purest form of accessible data. One could also argue that when gathered unrushed and in the absents of exertion and momentum of the mind, the flow of creative imagination is the output of revelatory (epi)phenomena. Yet are we researchers permitted to collect them? Capture and encage them, assuming this was even possible? Or to foster the conditions for their manifest destiny, letting them speak and act for themselves as it were?[5]

Study and praxis seem inseparable here in attempt to lay bare the primmediacy of principles. But ultimately ones study is ones self as praxis, which defines by default ones methodological persuasion; the method is self-evident, ones natural bent.

So one need not be concerned with other(s) methodologies. However, if one is, one needs to understand that one is likely making a cult of methodology. This is data as fetish. It is the choice and application of methodology for the sake of some sort of self-aggrandizement. Exposing a procedure as cult gives it value.

2.3 The Fetishism of Human Choice

This critical turn, this defocus of the discourse relates to a range of abstract constraints; not merely to the seminarist's 'sense of language centered on the sign of God,'[6] and whose relationary logics – the many toward the One – would certainly necessitate inherent constraint (vis-à-vis Roberts 2004: 161). No. We hone in(stead) – constrain via foci – on a corollary wrong headed ethics of choice; we isolate and fasten on the claims of the impulse emposturing its specious metaphysics of vagrancy. And heedless to constraint, we run chasing after (her), trying to keep up with the tempting datum that is always "in excess of any foresight, any comprehensive structure" (Williams 2000: xv, cited in Roberts: 161, n). The fetishism of human choice is the methodological impasse of a paradox. It reaches one no further than the standard, the norm, which is more or less nowhere (new).

2.4 Radically Restringing the Polarized Dichotomy

It is the tasking of the mind, in any dimension, that inevitably 'subverts ones research strategy'[7]. And so subversion it is. Now all singularity, all particularized "datum" become in an instance radically revalorized, as well as upsetting to the normative discourse. From now any point, any iterated focus gets immediately invested with a sense of transcendence, and likewise to some irreducible degree, gains a certain situatedness beyond the scope of human apprehension. This is not without its Shemetic relevance. For in analogous mode to "the monotheisms derived from the Hebrew Bible" (Roberts' frame), our datum is rendered "in some sense unknowable" while "all our words and arguments" concerning it remain as "finite and fallible" as we are (160). This radical restringing of the polarized dichotomy produces a trangressive shift in tensions greatly effecting the epistemological and transcendental buttressing of the social, theological, and philosophical disciplines as we know them.

2.5 A Certain Docility, an Authoritative "laying down"
There is a certain docility[8] lulling one calmly towards the dialogic interstice of limnos and reflection; a brash, interrogative invocation quelled by a sequenced pace of particulars. And one senses an authoritative "laying down here,"[9] the first measured stroke towards the treatment of the theme; the extended expounding of a nuanced position to be proved over time (can it be). Nor to ever overlook the balance of arsis, the step unaccounted for, the sound of the undropped second shoe.

*

I have let my easeful sails be filled with the gracious winds of three recent contributions to the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, whose essays – the downloaded copies of which literally dropped in my arms – are aesthetic, instructive, and literarily packed with performance-enhancing phraseology and reference – an unchosen boon of data indeed. The essayists are American Tyler Roberts (2004), Englishman Gavin Hyman (2004), and Norwegian Ursula King (2002). The theological, philosophical, and religious studies concerns of these texts, provide a rich array of structures and terms, and to some degree a stimulating context to explore the metamethodological scopes and disciplinary sanctums that are bound to avail themselves in the course of my own philosophical study.

2.6 The Historicization of Bauddha Interiority (as microcosm)

Taking the historicization of Bauddha interiority as microcosm, we witness a vigorous protectionist enterprise accomplished largely though a process of cultural shedding; it was a reargued shredding of vestments and visages of the seriously implicating paper trails exposing its conformity, affinity, or complete identity with its greater (S)ind(h)o-Brāhmanical field. It was the rigorous and thoroughgoing de-vedicization of its social image, its projected self, its Janus-face of theory and praxis. It was meticulously aimed to establish and perpetuate a solely unique and inviolable situatedness beyond the grasp of enfolding, protean-horde religiosity on the one hand, and the ascendant structures, strictures, and scriptures that traded on a sense of remote and authoritative transcendence on the other. Thus the early Bauddha exhaustively strove to portray itself in exacting, clear-cut contradistinction to any antecedent or contemporaneous research or soteriological methodology. Thus in its sustained millennia-long campaign to embank itself off from the rising seas of homologic (s)ind(h)ic culture, we see the emergence of a radical asceto-empirical institution of subjecting itself to these serial viscerectomies, purging itself of the faintest traces of "transcendent authority," or any other tīrthaka-esque functions for that mater. Why? To re-caste itself as immanently blameless and pure[10]. Yet when nothing could be done to extract or obliterate its sly little reification complex-strain – or conversely, simply found to conducive to the cause – Bauddha reverted to its original birth pang mode of subsuming data via redefinition and re-explanation. For it is after all true, indeed, patently true, that no religious leader would ever stand in front of his faithful congregation and proclaim that "the other teacher is better – go follow him."

2.7 Indra and his Weapon: The Episteme Sati-Vipassanā
So where is the god(head) or "transcendent authority" to be found in Bauddha interiority? It is found in the concept of sati. Doctrinal Bauddha, as Tambiah remarks (1984: 181), imbues "all humans with intentionality." "Intentionality" is the Bauddha re-definition of Sanskrit karman (Pāli kamma), i.e. from "sacrificial ritualistic action" in the earliest sense, followed then by 'ritual prescriptions,' general 'action' in the social sense of 'work,' and then finally to what Gombrich (51-6) explains as 'intentionality.' "I posit that 'intention' leads to kamma, 'involvement,' is Gautama's answer to Brahmin ritualism' (51)[11]. But we should not be diverted from our microcosmic concern here of "human interiority" and Bauddha sati, which modern English 'Buddhism' institutionalized as "mindfulness." However sati has no intention of itself, nor can one intend (to) sati, it (is not a verb it) would seem. Does sati really exist? Can we label it a fetish? Sati is portrayed as an element, as an impulse, as a function that "sees." It is said to be "mindful," as of objects. Yet sati is not the mind itself. Why? Because it sees, "barely notices" (Tambiah 42) the mind itself. Therefore sati is not the "self," nor the person, the ego, nor the 'you,' nor the 'I.' Why? Because Bauddha dogma rules these out, vis-à-vis anatta. We shall come to this later.

As elaborated out of the vipassanā doctrine, sati is said to be something "promoted by restricting attention" (Tambiah 42); and so sati is not "attention" either. So what does sati do? It mindfulnesses, one might awkwardly presume; that is, if sati can be said to do anything. Problem is, this cannot be said. Sati is nonetheless situated, that is in the course of vipassanā, which is troublingly rendered as either 'insight' or 'meditation,' or worse as "insight meditation." Sati as paired and combined with vipassanā is very much the basis of early Bauddha data acquisition and formulation. Or if not the actual data 'gathering,' then data 'analysis' to be sure. Sati-vipassanā (or satipatthāna) is described as "noticing...attending to the facts of perception as they arise," as physical senses "or in the mind" (42). Sati then is situated independent, autonomous, and transcendent of the body and the mind, not to mention the Bauddhic non-existent "you" in accord with Bauddha doctrine. Still professor Tambiah faithfully rehearses Buddhagosh's Path of Purification (Vishuddimagga),

In due course, the normal illusions of continuity and rationality that sustain cognitive and perceptual processes give way to a correct apprehension of the random discrete units out of which reality is continually being structured. With emergence the true realization of these processes, mindfulness matures into insight (42, emphasis added).

Until finally,

Contemplating mind and its object, previously separate, are now nondualistially conjoined, and in unbroken succession occurs a chain of insights of mind knowing itself, culmination in the state of nibbāna (43).

This is quite a tidy strategy; indeed, nothing short of a veritable Bauddhic revolutionary manifesto of soteriological interiority; classically modern in its grand monolithic systematization and its universal embrace of all mankind and the entire cosmos. Yet try to notice the glib discontinuity when at some non-point sati transfers its perceptive load-function and the ball gets passed to vipassanā ('insight'). It is a tricky maneuver, a sleight of foot that has far too long gone unnoticed, ignored and thus uninterrupted. But with a flash of hermeneutical suspicion-cum-insight this fundamental sati-vipassanā strategy, which has always seemed dour is rather now disclosed as counterintuitive, the only way to render its sub-plot plausible. Otherwise how on earth else to interpret the invincible duo? – but as the metaphor for Indra and his lightening bolt. If sati is Indra the king of the gods, then vipassanā is Indra's holy weapon: to wit, his adamantine research tool.

Indra's favorite weapon is commonly understood to be the vajra, usually rendered as thunderbolt. But this heaven-hurled weapon is elsewhere said to be composed of metal or stone. In any case, Indra's jihādic arsenal certainly comprised a number of delivery systems, including slings. What is more, his sky-borne projectiles were not the only vajra, but included, as mentioned above, strokes of lightening, together with meteors, comets, and rocks. "Although Indra's weapon is usually explicitly designated by the term vajra," writes Gonda, "and vajra is generally described as metallic (ayasa), it is incidentally spoken of as a rock (parvata) or 'stone of, or: from, the heavens' (divo asmanam)" (1959: 63). In the very early Rg Veda verse the missile-welding Indra is described as such: "He hurlest forth from heaven iron missiles..., he hurleth his bolt, his dart of death." Concerning this verse, Griffith (1889) notes that Indra stands for a 'terrible God who sends affliction'[12].

As a corporal function, Indra analogues the heavens as the universal backdrop; a role metaphorically equivalent to sati; i.e., an independent, transcendent, autonomous, situatedness – an isolated witness appertaining to the data below, as it were[13]. And the diamond-like lance of his brandished vajra? It is a piercing, lance-like, surgical-strike weapon of data penetration vis-à-vis vipassanā – 'meditation!

2.8 Mythic Discourse in a Globalized world
I have put forth the following simple case: If Bauddha sati is equated to Indra the king of the gods, then vipassanā, or so-called "insight (meditation)," is the godly weapon that Indra welds. In Bauddha doctrine Gautama teaches the ancient path of "insight" (vipassanā) that tears asunder the veil of ignorance, brings knowledge, and liberates people from the cycle of birth and death. It may be worth mentioning that, more specifically, Indra is known in Bauddha tradition as Śakra (Pāli Sakkra). Well then, if it actually bears truth that sati is Indra the king of the gods, and if vipassanā is the god's holy weapon, then I have just used this weapon to tell a new story. Why? That we may finally move beyond. I have demonstrated how to plumb an old myth and retell in a way that subverts the dead meaning. I have demonstrated how to bury but one of a bewildering number of the counter-hermeneutical snares and red herrings with which this path is insidiously laden, that it loosen its cultish grip on you, and you distance yourselves from rash identities, and open yourselves to the sequenced pace of the things that are now, that you may finally understand that "Buddha-ism" is historically and culturally derived form Brāhmanism, and that the entirety of its ethical, religious, and philosophical outlook is but a grand unmitigated plagiarism of earlier, largely Vedic conceptions and sources.

I return again, if only briefly, to the limnological thoughts of Roberts and Hyman – as well as to Fiorenza (1993), McCutcheon (2001), Santner (1998), and Winquist (1995), as cited in Roberts; and to Bell (1998), as cited in Hyman. I am also using Jean-Paul Sartre (1949) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953) as unassuming garnish to my text.

*

WE SPEAK OF THE UNIVERSE as "data, " as "object," as "other," as "she," as śakti. We speak of the it in terms of "transcendence," naturally. Now there is definitely a rhetorical propensity in this; but then rhetoric imbues almost any kind writing, descriptive, discursive, normative, what ever – so long as it utilizes terms and concepts "while simultaneously problematizing them." And in this way, rhetorical texuality as a discipline is bound to have "an ambivalent and uneasy relationship with its tools" (Hyman 207). "We are [afterall] entering an era," writes Bell,

in which what we want to learn cannot be learned if our terminology over determines the theater of engagement. It is after all an era in which our terms are best used as a minimalist set of props with which we can begin to engage ideas and inquire into practice that may well modify the surroundings (220-221).

Still whenever we study religious scripture that belongs to a particular narrative tradition, and indeed world-view (e.g. Vishuddimagga), we are dealing with text whose heritage invests in it an absolute authority, the basis of which, in McCutcheon's view, is a "kind of inspiration from beyond history" (107). We are after all living in a globalized world where human products correspond to a worldwide sense of standardization and quasi-political correctness, and where packaging and labeling are key defining factors that confer on each its certified identity. This underlying market-driven push toward sameness is destined both to rid and rob the religious traditions of their pre-postmodern claims to inalienable, and indeed inviolable uniqueness. Thus in the academic climate we live it becomes highly untenable to confer such authority on any set of religious texts or sources (Fiorenza 35). For this would only make our study another "mythic discourse," which according to McCutcheon (101) ought to be "excluded from the academic study of religion." Unless, I would add with measured agreement, these myths stay myths and are not passed off as factual accounts. This is how the "Buddha myth" ought to be studied. But it is also here an incumbent obligation that I clearly differentiate the "Buddha myth" from the philosophical narrative that designates the Bauddha.

2.9 Data as a Moment of Perceptive Choice

I am broaching the notion of "singularity" here as a moment of perceptive choice where there will always be reflexive and resonant arsis – a lightened measure of poetic foot down lanes with 'sully-bare walls of anonymity' (Sartre), as it were – reechoing sounds of plastic sandals plunging through the silence of gravity's fault-line. So one needs to be attuned to the overlooked marvel, to the points (or regions) of infinite mass where space and time find sweet distortion through the languid feints of self-reproof, through the pulls of her breath as she sighs the world, through the ecstasies resultant from entering whole.

This becoming attuned to a "singularity" — described by Roberts as a "critical practice" — is "the tension with which deconstruction works as a practice of memory [whereby] its task is to remember singularity over and against its inevitable forgetting" (162).

This theological narrative has borrowing power too. For its descriptions – even if confessionally placed – of precise phenomenological rediscriptions, amalgamate well to our current direction. These furthermore reflect an appropriate concern for an apparent lack of a metamethodology. And such logical progression is hugely desirable, if not inevitable, even if distinction would need to be made in contouring the scopes and periscopes of the metamethodological primmediacy, as this naturally cuts across disciplinary sanctums and spawns fresh flows of revealing phenomena, returning one again to questions of restraint in particular regard to the scientific method and whether we "philosophers" are permitted to form them. But we are surely speaking of a kind of "revelation" here, in particular regard to the purity of data, which, properly speaking, must be given "freely" or "primmediately." And yet by delicate contrast (via Wittgenstein's rāga), the question comes to this: What can be revealed that is not concealed?[14]

Through commitment to a non-confessional approach to the acquisition of revelatory data, this theology – specifically: a discourse of singularity – is "an intervention into the very syntax" of experience, writes Santner (118), who leans, in spite of everything, on the "absolute empiricism" and radical confessionalism that defines and refines Rosenzweig's vision of "attunement to the surplus of the real within reality" (118). Winquist, for his own part, views singularities as "points of resistance within the interpretive meaning of experience." These are facets of life that (redolent again of Wittgenstein) go unnoticed through the heedlessness of "homogenization, abstraction, or universalization" (48-50).

2.10 Singularity of Datum, Revelation of Data

As a finalizing gesture to this early gambit, I would only reconfess that I am moving towards a process of primmediatization. It is the reiteration, refocus, and abstraction of singularity as datum, as through presently attending to the singularized moment of perceptive choice. This may also find resonance in the "discontinuities of experience" put forth by Winquist (29); and yet whose "task," at least in Roberts' view, is

not to explain or decipher, but first of all to open discourse to them, to interrupt or disturb ordinary ways of communicating and interacting with others and ways of "being ourselves" in order to attend to the disturbances caused by that which is ordinarily, and necessarily, excluded from consciousness or occluded by various discursive strategies (162).

And this once again hints of Wittgenstein, correct or not? And yet to what extent are we really in need of an interpretative methodology to explain these revelations as data, and to render meaning to our 'sentences around them'? Does the truly revealed require explanation? "How do sentences do it?" asks Wittgenstein rhetorically; and answering rhetorically: "Don't you know? For nothing is hidden" (no. 435).

Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. – Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us. One might also give the name 'philosophy' to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions. The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose (nos. 126, 127).

And yet is Wittgenstein's "assembling" a matter of choice?[15] And what are we to make in regard to his "purpose"?

We may return to these questions later.

3 Two Conflated Probes

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This is not at all teaching; that type of rāga you can create yourself. Teaching is something else; teaching means guidance, constant focusing and guidance which I consider a very, very deep and responsible thing. If I accept you as my student the whole responsibility is mine! (Nikhil Banerjee 1985)[16].

What has already happened is (perhaps) beyond choice: this is vaguely safe to say. And if we cleave to such a mode one may easily be lulled into believing that the coast is clear; that the sun is shining and the swell as firm as the southwest movement of air across the salt sea: the freshly painted light tower fixed upon the rock at the end of the promontory: two red horizontal bands over white: which marks the safe haven of a recess cove: a tīrtha[17] of the mind and the beached imagination of breathers on the sands near the sanctum of the palm groves....

Or a barbecue pit on the beach at nightfall as N.J. Allen appears to moot (1998: 1, n. 12). Calypso, book five of Homer's Odyssey ends with the shipwrecked and sole surviving Odysseus crawling, storm-tossed, cut, and ravaged on to the beach in the land of the Phaeacians. Then the Greek hero hides in a tangled thicket, covers himself over in a heap of leaves, and then sleeps the sleep of the dead. Here, from the standpoint of an 'Indo-European cultural comparativist,' Allen deduces an episode of tapas (Sk. literally 'heat') when Odysseus, asleep in his pile of leaves, "is likened to a firebrand (dalon) carefully kept alight under a heap of ashes (5.487)." Allen compares the heroic ordeals of Odysseus with ascetics from pre-historic Indian traditions, and points to a series of Śvetāmbara Jaina scriptural stories where a king that becomes an ascetic similarly undertakes intense austerities, and is likened to 'fire confined within a heap of ashes.' If accepted, notes Allen, "the rapprochement has bearing on the history of the notion of tapas."

Ths incident is evocative of Gautama's remarks about his own ordeals with yoga tapas, stating, 'As two big men might grab hold a weaker one and hold him over a barbecue pit, when I finally stopped my kumbhaka practice a terrific heat arose in my body.' Here we have proof that the yogic technique of producing psychic heat or 'kundalinī' tapas is by no means a mere baroque innovation. I have studied the ancient Majjhima-nikāya with intent. Though expressing itself in an archaic and ill-defining idiom, it describes nonetheless the heat or tapas obtained through the practice prānāyāma or "breath regulation." In the scriptural Dhammapada, too, the Buddha is described as "burning": buddho tapati tejasa (verse 387)[18]. Following through with our Homeric reference, book six (Nausikaa) begins the next morning with the Phaeacian Princess Nausikaa and her two handmaids going down to the rocks (where Odysseus sleeps) to do the laundry and to bathe. After having lunched 'to their hearts' content, the princess and her retinue throw their veils to the wind [and] strike up a game of ball' (6:110-1, trans. Fagles 1996). Suddenly Nausikaa drops the ball into the stream and the shrieks of the girls arouse Odysseus and he springs up naked from his hiding place. Then Odysseus "all crusted, caked with brine" (6:51)[19] starts chasing the girls like a crazed wild man. All of them flee except Nausikā who stands undaunted before the stranger. Odysseus keeps his distance and approaches the Princess with charming discourse. His tactful manner soon pays off and the princesses guides him to the village for help. But she does not introduce him to her parents.

3.2 Regarding Purpose

It could also be said with a certain degree of surety that "purpose" is an ethical concern; however, if and only if it is purely ethical; i.e. if and only if it pertains to the good life – here defining "good" to the exclusion of all morality, all soteriology, all end games. Good and bad cannot be unzipped into a folder named "right and wrong"; wrong if and only if the correlative sense is "incorrect"; right if and only if the antonym is "left." The inherent hypertheticism of morality and soteriology has little relevance for this choice philosophical discourse. Every morality seeks to reproduce itself. All soteriologies are inherently teleological, i.e., steeped in end logic and rhetoric.

3.3 The Theorem of Correctness

One comes to light upon the theorem of correctness through the combined application of precepts, yoga, and intellect. In Bauddha parlance these are sīla, samādhi and prajñā. One fine morning guru Chod spoke of prajñā as "intellect." This struck me as odd. "What do you mean by 'intellect'?" I asked him. "I mean use your head," he bluntly replied.

To indicate "correctness," a protocol or practice exhibits (demonstrates) or elicits five marks of affection (rāga)[20]. These are precepts, pleasure, beauty, benefit, and higher aim. But these have to be uncovered, plumbed, and understood in a balanced, natural, and unforced manner. This rediscovered theorem advances the ideal or true inner form of a yogic ontology. It naturally conforms to the rule-ensemble and contributes the treasure trove nestled at the heart of the fragrance-emitting mandala. To approach this teaching is to enter the mandala. One goes to the center: one simply falls up.

3.4 'Datum as Shakti': The Choicest Metaphor

With regard to the extent and reach of the acceptance of "choice" as metaphor – vis-à-vis a datum (girl) and the eighteenth century Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus who classified flowers by the hour they bloomed – Can we name noon's fragrance?

Also, what do we mean – what is really implied – through the metaphorical assignation of raw/rough data (material stuff) as a contemptible girl of loose moral principles? What on earth is at play here? Would she really talk back – Oui, dans la langue des fleurs et des choses muettes! (Baudelaire 1857)[21].

3.5 Choice as Antithesis of destiny/chance

If there is really no choice then destiny rules. Chance=karman (Sanskrit 'action, deed, work, esp. holy work, sacrifice, rite; result, effect; organ of sense; the direct object; fate, destiny')— in other words, luck[22]. There are two kinds of karman: one you can't do anything about; the other you create yourself.

3.6 Demonstration is not Proof

To demonstrate, to show, is not the same as to prove. It is the demonstration of a procedure, showing how to do something. With regard therefore to the "theorem of correctness," its demonstration does not "prove" its correctness; it just demonstrates it.

3.7 Choosing to be born

The concept of choice denotes "I will"; it implies ones influence on one's own future events: I will make something happen, I will cause something to be; give birth to; my own birth. Choice is primmediately choosing to be born. It is really not a question of whether or not the choice is actually availed to you; it is simply not willfully exercised or implemented by you. Your birth was not a matter of your choosing. But be careful not to fall for "indefinite deferrals," with reference to the line of thought – "Wrongly informed, I stupidly chose birth; but only this time. Next time round I will get it right. Next time round I will surely know better."

3.8 Etymology of Theory

We would firstly profit by lending thought to the closely related conception of "theory." John McCumber (2004) has graciously disclosed its etymology. Theōria in Greek, is compounded of the words theia, "divine things," and horaō, "to see." It originally meant to witness divine things and was the activity of a theoros, one who consulted an oracle. Because divine things are on a higher level than we humans, we cannot change them. Thus, "theoretical" knowledge came to mean knowledge which, in contrast to "practical" knowledge, does not change its object (2).

Thus for McCumber, "theory" as a term 'is no mere empty sound which we may take up and apply to things without consequences.' But rather in its higher, perhaps 'true sense,' it leads us to "see" the philosophical practice of "theorization" as something that concerns things of 'reason, truth, and scholarship.' It "pushes" us to see its reelucidated meaning "as involving the cognition of things which are, or are taken to be, outside of time – a view which runs counter to every basic impulse...of what today is called 'theory'" (3, emphasis added).

3.9 Etymology of Theorem

So what exactly means theorem, then? Theorem entered English usage in 1551, from Middle French théorème, from Late Latin theorema, which is the same as the original Greek. Now just like theōria, Greek theorema contained the compound word theia, which pertained no less to "things divine." [Can the second word be isolated here?] But in contrast to theōria ('divine-thing-seeing'), theorema implied a 'divine thing gazing/fixing on/ probing.' The Liddell and Scott Greek-English Lexicon confirms this sense, that theorema was something looked upon deeply as in theorein "to consider," as in regard to a "spectacle" or "speculation," something "to look at," thus more at "theater." And though by this time no longer necessarily divine, the extent to which the spectator was drawn into the spectacle, marked the extent to which the spectator was altered. For to the extent that divine things existed on a higher, unchanging plane than men, man's theorematical capacity to probe bore a 'timeless' knowledge which – in contrast to mere "theoretical" cognition – dramatically, indeed, irreversibly transformed the knower in a process which the Greeks called apotheosization ('man becomes divine').

But in later usage a theorem came to signify a specific truth derived from such a theorematic inspection, and thence something proven. Thus in its modern, particularly mathematical sense, a theorem is both the statement and the proof of something seen and understood to be true. 'And so the unchangeability of a theorem's truth is all that remains of its ancient sense – a vestige of the divinity and the timeless cognition that the word originally conveyed' (McCumber, private correspondence 2004).

But what are its consequences?

3.10 Lacunae of Sources

The basic notion of a book, a dissertation is largely a throwback to modernity's "grand narrative" – one man, one idea, marshalling gads of supportive data towards one elaborate proof.… But no crack in the wall, no crying child, no equatorial ephemerae. Mirrored reflections in lacunae of sources we enter in whole and swim. But we must also try to rise above looking at a book as something that simply begins and ends. It is the culture of inscription that inflicts the sense lateral drift. There are three guiding principles: (i) each assertion has got to be prepared to take the stand, (ii) there can only be perfection in the present moment, (iii) you have to be prepared to die in the moment (otherwise the thing just drags on and on).

Nor can we call it a fatalism, either; but more at destiny, 'destiny-ism' – with no room for redemption. Awareness of ones destiny – ones destined unknowing – promises advantage to no one. There is no one. But less expectation, maybe, less disappointment. You have no perduring presence in this world. The teleological hypertheticism intrinsic to soteriology is utterly irrelevant to this choice philosophical discourse.

3.11 The Theorematic Inquisitor

Upon reflection, then, the theorematic inquisitor shifts now slightly – broadens only slightly: but significantly; in so far as we now have to isolate and separate the two conflated probes. Namely: that humans have and/or utilize [the (given)] choice [to be born], as we partially dangle 'birth' for the moment. In other words, these are the separate questions of having or not having choice, on the one hand, and the utilization, employment, implementation, or activation of that choice, on the other. But the question as to whether or not you possess this choice may just be another imprimmediatable inquiry. Still the hyperthetic theorematic statement remains: You do not choose [birth]; that is, even if you did possess the capacity. Which, in any case, you do not, as birth [which is choice] is not [a freely] given [datum].

Footnotes

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[1] "Praxial" was coined by University of Louisville professor Philip Alperson in What Should One Expect from a Philosophy of Music Education? 1991. For the use of "praxial" in a purely philosophical discussion see Calvin O. Schrag, 2004, A Conversation with Calavin O. Schrag. Symposium: Journal of the Canadian Society for Hermeneutics and Postmodern Thought Vol 8/No 1 (Spring 2004).

[2] From bauddha, Sanskrit: borne in mind (not spoken out), relating to the intellect or to Buddha; Buddhist.

[3] The term 'thera' (elders) does not refer to just any 'elders,' but to a specific 'historical' or foundational group: the five hundred arahats who allegedly recited and collected the teachings of Gautama at Rājagŗha about one year after his death. This is stated, for example, in the fourth century C.E. Dīpavaµsa, the earliest chronicle from Sri Lanka that has been handed down to us. Compiled from early sources that are lost to us (Bechert 2003), the Dīpavaµsa is specifically concerns with school formation and affiliation, stating, 'the Council performed by the Theras is called the Theravāda' (Dīpavaµsa 4:8, therehi katasaµgaho theravādi 'ti vuccati). Interestingly, thera only appears twice in the entire early Pāli Buddhist scriptures themselves as uttered by the canon's chief protagonist. In both these instances, Gautama's 'thera' refers to his own two 'elders,' the gurus Ālāra-Kalama and Uddaka-Rāmaputra.

[4] Altarity in the senses of alter (another), alternate, alterity (altérité), and alter. See Mark Taylor 1987: xxviii-xxix.

[5] "that which allows the self-disclosure of the structure of understanding as such," writes Malpas (2003) in the context of Heidegger's early thinking ('The Hermeneutics of Facticity') where "hermeneutics is presented as that by means of which the investigation of the basic structures of factical existence is to be pursued – not as that which constitutes a 'theory' of textual interpretation nor a method of 'scientific' understanding."

[6] According to Roberts (161, n), Charles Winquist (1995: 96) argues that "theology (at least in certain forms) already engages in the "critique of logocentricism."

[7] I acknowledge use in a different context the phrase "subvert a research strategy" (Braun 2000: 5, cited in Roberts 148).

[8] Latin docilis, from docere to teach, cf. Medieval Latin doctor, Middle French hence Middle English doctour.

[9] Vis-à-vis "thesis," Middle English, from Late Latin & Greek; Late Latin, lowering of the voice, from Greek, downbeat, the more important part of a foot, literally, act of laying down.

[10] Why have I become so visceral myself here? Clifford Geertz in an interview (1991) commented, "The main reason I didn't like the normal/abnormal business is that both in my field and in general it has all the overtones of abnormal as sick. I don't like the medical model applied in general." And I concur with Geertz's sentiment here. I simply cannot help myself.

[11] In Bauddha, Sanskrit karman (Pāli kamma) becomes 'intention,' cetanā, a mind-emphasis word,' like cetas/ceto, 'thought/mind' (Gombrich 60). But it is odd that Gombrich gives not the precise Pāli for 'intention' in his discussion of the evolution of karman, which to my mind simply means a 'modification of thought,' 'mentation.' "I posit that 'intention' leads to kamma/'involvement,' is Gautama's answer to Brahmin ritualism,' (51) '[T]hat' (finite karman) 'does not remain there' (61). Karman: Sanskrit (noun): action, deed, work, esp. holy work, sacrifice, rite; result, effect; organ of sense; the direct object; fate, destiny. See note 8(?) above.

[12] Griffith's work is considered by some to be a badly outdated English translation (Witzel 2001); yet still it is commonly used (Koenraad Elst 1999).

[13] "One side of me is in the sky," states a Rg Veda hymn, "[and] I have drawn the other down." In a similar intention, Gonda (1989: 17) cites RV I:103:1, which depicts Indra spanning heaven and earth.

[14] "The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something – because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his (sic) enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him. – And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful" (Wittgenstein 1953: no.129).

[15] I will develop this theme in segments to come. For now I merely note the etymologogical data vis-à-vis the term "choice": Middle English chois, from Old French, from choisir to choose, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German kiosan, to choose, Latin gustare to taste. Greek yeia: <> Sanskrit ju, jushate, (-ti) delighting in, attached to, visiting, frequenting; to choose. pp. jusha, be pleased or satisfied; be fond of, delight in, enjoy; like to, resolve upon; dhyai, prefer or choose (a certain place), i.e. visit, inhabit. Cf. joshayate (-ti) like, love, approve of, choose. (abhi-) like, visit, frequent. (upa-) cheer, gladden. (prati-) cherish, fondle; delight in, be pleased with (acc.). Cf. fondle, caress. Cf. prajusha, delighted with (loc.), and samjusha, visited or inhabited by, filled with.

[16] Interview by Ira Landgarten, 11 November 1985, the day before Nikhil Banerjee's last U.S. performance at Carnegie Hall, New York.

[17] An interesting analysis of the Sanskrit term tīrtha is to look at its in Pāli form, tittha, from the root tarati. As a verb it means to 'get beyond,' 'surmount,' 'pass through,' or 'ford.' As a noun, tīrtha means a 'fording or landing place,' as well as a 'convenient place for bathing' as in Pāli canon text "Gotama tittha," with reference to "the Buddha's bathing place." Figuratively it signifies a means or place for helping a person over or through a difficult or doubtful situation. In its original sense, a tīrthankara is a "ford maker." There are more than 12 references to tīrtha in the Pāli Canon. But at one point in Bauddha doctrinal history, tīrtha comes to imply hereticism while a tīrthankara denoted a "heretic" or 'holder of wrong views,' an obvious polemic slap in the face to the Jaina and the Ājīvika order.

[18] I.B. Horner, trans. The Collection of Middle Length Sayings (Majjhima-nikāya) I, 244 (1954-59). This is my interpretive translation of Majjhima-nikāya (I, 244). The text clearly speaks of the magical "heat" produced by holding the breath. Here we see is the ancient and widespread notion of "magical sweating" and "inner light" that if found among various shamanic peoples. See I.B. Horner, trans., The Book of the Discipline (Vinaya-Pi aka), vol. 4, and Mahāvagga, 35, n. See also his Gradual Sayings III (Anguttara-nikāya), 175: "Lo! See Angirasa, illuminant/As the midday sun, all radiant." For the Buddha "burning," see Eliade, Yoga, 331.

[19] "…as a mountain lion exultant in his power / strides through wind and rain and his eyes blaze / and he charges sheep or oxen or chases wild deer / but his hunger drives him on to go for flocks, / even to raid the best defended homestead. / So Odysseus moved out. . . / about to mingle with all those lovely girls, / naked now as he was, for the need drove him on " (6:143-9). Robert Fagles, Homer, The Odyssey , trans. New York, Viking Penguin, 1996.

[20] Masculine noun: coloring, color, especially redness; charm, loveliness; affection, feeling, passion; joy, pleasure, delight in, longing after, love of; musical mode (Cappeller Sanskrit English Dictionary). The act of coloring or dyeing; color, hue, tint, dye, (esp.) red color, redness; inflammation; any feeling or passion, (esp.) love, affection or sympathy for, vehement desire of, interest or joy or delight in (Monier-Williams).

[21] "In the language of flowers and mute things!" Elévation, Les Fleurs Du Mal.

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