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Bern Shanfield's avatar

Ownership by naming or value requiring usefulness as we define it.

“…remembrance without ownership” sparked remembrance.

Here is a dialogue in a seminar recounting Heidegger’s conversation with a Japanese scholar about acknowledging a domain that must remain unowned, unspoken, and unusable yet present, comes to mind.

“I know I've read this to some of you before and I want to read it again anyhow, both as a review and for those who haven't heard it to hear it for the first time. This is from Martin Heidegger on the Way to Language. It's a conversation between Martin Heidegger and a Japanese philosopher, one of whose professors had been trained by Heidegger.

So the Japanese says, "We Japanese do not think it strange if a dialogue leaves undefined what is really intended or even restores it back to the keeping of the undefinable." Heidegger responds, "That is part, I believe, of every dialogue that has turned out well between thinking beings.”

What Heidegger means by thinking is very much different than what an anybody's self means by thinking. “As if of its own accord,” Heidegger says, “it can take care that that undefinable something not only does not slip away. but displays its gathering force ever more luminously in the course of the dialogue.”

That's the methodology of the seminar. That's the methodology of transformation. Not a definition, not a description, not a narrative, not a story, not an understanding, not information. But whatever it is he’s speaking about when he says displays its gathering force ever more luminously in the course of the dialogue.

And he doesn't mean display like something to look at, but rather something to be. The Japanese response, "Our dialogues with our teacher probably failed to turn out so well. We younger men challenge him much too directly to satisfy our thirst for handy information.”

We are a culture that listens for handy information. Something's useless if you can't use it, isn't it? You see, maybe what empowers people cannot be used by them. Maybe we need a kind of listening that can be present for what is powerful and not useful.

Heidegger responds, "Thirst for knowledge and greed for explanations never lead to a thinking inquiry,” transformational inquiry. “Curiosity is always the concealed arrogance of a self-consciousness that banks on a self-invented rationality."

What does he mean by that? He means that you think that you were born in such a way that anything which is valid, you are going to understand. Therefore, anything you don't understand must be invalid. That's what he means.

“The will to know does not will to abide before what is worthy of thought.” He's saying exactly what I just said a moment ago, that this will for information, this will for tips, this will for prescriptions, this will for how am I going to use it, how does this apply, how am I going to fix it, how is this going to help me to fix it, is no will to be with what is worthy of being with. It's different to be with than the will for knowledge or information or usefulness.”

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Nancy's avatar

There's an old song that starts:

When She danced on the water

And the wind was Her horn

The Lady laughed

And everything was born

And when She lit the sun

And its light gave Him birth

The Lord of the Dance

First appeared on the Earth...

[chorus]

Dance, dance, wherever you may be

I am the Lord of the Dance said he

I live in you as you live in Me

And I lead you on in the Dance, said He

Apparently, it's set to a gospel tune about being washed in the blood of the Lamb, etc., or maybe that hymn got its music from this way more "pagan" one.

By the end of the song, the Two are all but one, as Mother/Son/Co-Consorts etc., and if memory serves, they welcome humanity to dance with Them. :)

Probably not the same idea, but I think us humans sometimes need a chronological sequence... ;)

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