“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Sunday, January 16, 2011

The Roshi Does Aristotle

He leans forward, and with one swift graceful movement sweeps up the small teacup from which he had been drinking. “This cup is ‘round’,” he says. “Roundness is right here, in the cup in front of us. This concept is not related to any distant concept of ‘roundness’, nor is it to any other words we may have built up in our mind.”
James Austin, Zen and the Brain, 62

1 comment:

Michael- said...

Hell yeah! That is the post-metaphysical realization par excellence! The roundness is right THERE, of the cup, in all its suchness - not substantially behind it, or otherwise withdrawn from the roundness thus encountered.