2.15
“Awakening” is one way to express the gestalt shift of transformation, and a movement towards truth. Awakening involves practice. Transformative philosophy must walk: the philosopher must wander and stumble, and not just in ‘thought.’
Thought isn’t an activity that transpires in the head; thoughts aren’t ideas hovering in mental space. In part, they permeate how we (implicitly) understand and navigate even the most basic things: “When I go to the door of the lecture hall, I am already there, and I could not go to it at all if I were not such that I am there. I am never here only, as this encapsulated body; rather, I am there, that is, I already pervade the room, and only thus can I go through it.”[1] Thinking is an orientation and openness to understanding beings around us. Though, thoughts can also have a more explicit sense.
“Thoughts come at random, and go at random.”[2]
“We never come to thoughts. They come to us.”[3]
Thoughts of all kinds never start or stop with a subject: they come from beyond us. They come from places, intertwined with others of all kinds, as they visit and stay for a while.
We must transform thought. But practice and thought aren’t opposed. My thinking attempts to lead towards a new kind of practice and a new kind of thought: moving with thoughts differently, changing our orientation to beings. This practice cannot be delimited or defined ahead of time: it can be uncovered only by walking towards it, by preparing for it. — When we ‘go to sleep,’ really, we prepare ourselves for sleep; we get ready for bed. Sometimes, sleep doesn’t come. — Such preparation is a kind of offering.
We cannot just think or do philosophy on the side. Since the modern era, Western philosophy has often forgotten about an enactive side: in many Eastern traditions this divide was never instantiated. (Of course, there are exceptions in the West, for instance, Pascal,[4] Marxism and critical theory, and other praxis-oriented philosophy.) We need to disable our safe compartmentalization: over here is thought, over there is action; over here is philosophy, over there is the everyday. Instead, we should see how the first term, in both cases, bleeds into and taints the second; otherwise, we haven’t understood them. Understanding isn’t merely intellectual. Living responsively—coming transformatively to the truth—involves our whole being. Our ethical or practical question is: how do we carry on in the face of this?
[1] Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 155.
[2] Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1995), par. 542, p. 190.
[3] Heidegger, “The Thinker as Poet,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 6.
[4] Pascal, Pensées, par. 418, p. 124–5; par. 808, p. 244; par. 821, p. 247–8; par. 954, p. 307. For Pascal, reason is insufficient to lead us to God alone. Faith is required, which comes as a gift of God. Thus, while we wait, we do as others have done (this immediately follows Pascal’s famous wager): “They behaved just as if they did believe, taking holy water, having masses said, and so on. That will make you believe quite naturally […]” (par. 418, p. 125). Practice or habit can lead to faith: “The habit makes the doctrine” (par. 954, p. 307), for “we must resort to habit once the mind has seen where the truth lies, in order to steep and stain ourselves in that belief which constantly eludes us […]” (par. 821, p. 247). Thus, there’s an enactive side, but wrapped densely in a metaphysics not amenable to the position I’m staking here.