The ‘Law’ and its Application

 

presented in an initial message and supplemented by two later postscripts

 

Pender Island, September 15, 2006

 

www.goodshare.org/thelaw.htm

 

 

 

 

 

second postscript to The ‘Law’ and its Application as of September 15, 2006

 

in the original note, there is the clear assertion by Jesus that the ‘Law’ is a personal guide and that law is a ‘curse’ whose application is only to guide us on our way to enlightenment (‘faith’), yet in Christian teaching, though not in Buddhist and aboriginal teachings, the ‘Law’ becomes something generalized that must be complied with by all.  But from whence comes the foundations for a system of general application of the ‘Law’ and the establishment of an earthly authority empowered to interpret, impose and enforce the ‘Law’?

 

in this second postscript, citations from Augustine of Hippo, selected readings of Augustine translated and introduced by Mary T. Clark will serve to illustrate foundational thoughts embodied in a ‘historical’ (causal-deterministic) way of thinking that has been preserved in Christian teaching in this regard.

 

at the same time, citations from The Myth of the Eternal Return, a contrasting, alternative way of thinking about ‘organizing the social dynamic’ will serve to illustrate foundational thoughts embodied in a ‘trans-historical’ (spatial-relational mutual influence) way of thinking that has been preserved in aboriginal, Buddhist, Taoist teaching, which subsumes the imposing of general ‘Law’ and the ‘historical’ mode of thinking.

 

coming from a western ‘upbringing’, it is quite ‘startling’ to see these differences ‘come clear’ in a foundational sense, and to see the ‘civilized’ and the ‘uncivilized’ (‘primitive’) compared together with their respective foundational models of organization (‘Law’ and central-authority driven, ... and, ... continuous renewal induced).  For example, in our western Augustinian view, the decline of the Roman Empire was seen as a ‘rotting’ and ‘putrefaction’ due to constituent factions in the Empire falling to temptation and worshipping false gods (evil demons in disguise).  But that’s not all, because the model is general and applies also to the organization of the human body, aging and death in general are understood in terms of rotting and putrefaction due to the body becoming possessed by ‘evil spirits’ that need to be fought off.

 

picture the difference then, in the primitive cultures where aging and death is seen in the trans-historical (transcending-the-historical-view) terms of continuing renewal or ‘evolution’.  The death of the Roman Empire, and/or the human body, rather than being seen in the negative terms of something being eliminated, lost, destroyed, is seen in terms of a ‘sacred renewal’ or ‘metamorphosis’ so that the soul of an ancestral brotherhood (empire) and the soul of the ancestor continues to be included within the divine unity of Nature, in some transformed manner (in the manner that the animating soul of a hurricane continues on in the atmospheric space-flow because it never was contained inside of the hurricane but was ‘of the divine unity’ when it emerged (illusorily) as a seemingly locally coordinated entity with a self-center).

 

beyond this, the practice of the primitives was, and continues to be (so, ‘primitive’ might be a misleading term here and we could instead speak about the ‘naturalist’ which is inside of each of us) to eschew association with their ‘historical self’ and to embrace association with their ‘trans-historical self’ which equates to thinking in the terms that one is ‘of the ongoing evolutionary flow’ rather than that one is ‘of the material body’ with its finite ‘birth’ and ‘death’ (the ‘profound discontinuities’ that we must suffer, in Augustine’s view).  If we associate with the material body existence, then we just have to endure it as we age and our body is attacked by evil spirits, many of whom set up residence within us, chuckling and muttering as they consume our flesh and infuse it with toxic excrement.  This is a far cry from a vision that sees us as ‘of the divine All of Nature’ and undergoing a sacred metamorphosis that is the very essence of life, the continuing life of the natural Universe.

 

these very different understandings of the world and our relationship to it, come from our notions of ‘organization’ and how it is achieved, and thus to the concepts of ‘Law’ and its application and earthly Empires (nation-states) and kings (central governing authorities).

 

as in the initial portion of this note, it is easy to interpret the teachings of Jesus as being in the ‘naturalist’ camp together with Buddhists and Native North Americans etc., so what is presented here is really ‘evidence’ that suggests that Christian teaching, which is in many ways very close to what we call ‘western teaching’ (the continuing Euro-American cultural entrainment), has split off from the teachings of Jesus, and indeed many scholars describe Augustine’s works as having a heavy hand in this, ... but they do not say that Augustine’s teaching conflicts with the teachings of Jesus, but merely that he introduces the concept of a split ‘Church’ and ‘State’ where we now have the ‘city of God’ and at the same time the ‘city of man’ and that while the former must sit above the latter, the latter will have its own organizing and behaviour-‘guiding’ methods.

 

to be clear, the proposition i am suggesting in this note and its postscripts is that Augustine’s influential interpretations CONFLICT with the essentially ‘naturalist’ teachings of Jesus, a conflict that may have been aided and abetted by difficulties in translating Jesus words through Greek rather than the original Aramaic, as quite a number of religious scholars maintain.

 

the conflict can be encapsulated in the above imagery wherein (it is herein proposed that) Jesus intended that we are ‘of the continuing evolutionary flow’ (i.e. the ‘Kingdom of God’ is the evolutionary flow as with Buddhism and aboriginal belief traditions) but that we have lost our way and split apart the ‘male’ (material-causal historicism) from the ‘female’ (spatial-relational transformation) and that we must put the two back into one in order to enter the kingdom; i.e. in order to understand that we are ‘of the evolutionary flow’ rather than ‘of the material body’, the material body relating to the evolutionary flow in the manner that dust relates to the asserting persona of the tornado or spiralling clouds relate to the asserting persona of the hurricane (i.e. where we are dynamical forms of organization INCLUDED WITHIN the evolutionary flow-dynamic).

 

this shift in understanding exactly parallels to the shift in science (not yet assimilated into our culture) from the object-paradigm of Newton to the (energy-field-) flow-paradigm of relativity and quantum wave dynamics; i.e. what we formerly understood to be ‘objects’ that existed in their own independent right and enjoyed a temporal sequential historical life, become understood in the more comprehensive terms of dynamical forms of organization within a dynamically unified hostspace (the ‘spacetime continuum’ or energy-field-flow).

 

it is clear that Augustine ‘leaves out’ the participative role of space in the dynamics of man as did Plato in his Republic and apparently, Cicero in his de Republica.  this is a problem when one accepts that there can be a multiplicity of ‘good States’ each with their own paternalist central governing authority, since, we do not REALLY live in a euclidian space where all we have to concern ourselves with is the dynamics of independent objects, but instead, live within a space that is relative and relational where the multiplicity of States, each with their own central governing authority is innately related in the manner that a multiplicity of hurricanes are relative by being included within a common dynamically unifying atmospheric space; i.e. the individual entities are dynamical forms of organization within a common dynamical hostspace and their insides are not independent of their outsides; e.g;

 

 ‘And when you make the inner as the outer, and the outer as the inner, and the upper as the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one so that the male shall not be male and the female (shall not) be female, then shall you enter (the Kingdom).”  --- Jesus (per the Gospel of Thomas)

 

to understand Augustine’s argument as the nature of ‘the State’ and to the concepts of ‘justice’ and ‘Law’ bound up in it, ...it is useful to peruse his Chapter 21 in ‘City of God’, which follows in its entirety;

 

“This now, is the place where I should explain as briefly and clearly as possible what I promised in the second book of this work, that if we were to accept the definitions used by Scipio in Cicero’s De Republica, there never was a Roman state.  For he briefly defines a state as a commonwealth.  If this definition is true, there never was a Roman state, for there never was a commonwealth, which he wished to be the definition of a state.  For he defined a people as a numerous gathering united in fellowship by a common sense of right and common interests.  What he means by a common sense of right he explains by arguing that a state cannot be administered without justice; therefore, where there is no true justice, there can be no right.  For what is done rightly is surely done justly, whereas what is done unjustly cannot be done rightly.  For the unjust human inventions are not to be called or considered as rights, since even their makers say that right is that which flows from the fountain of justice, and deny the definition commonly given by those who misunderstand the matter, that right is the interest of the strongest.

 

So when there is no true justice there can be no gathering of men united in fellowship by a common sense of right and, therefore, no people as defined by Scipio or Cicero; and if no people, then no commonwealth, but only some kind of mob unworthy to be called a people.  Consequently, if a state is a commonwealth, and if that is not a people, that is, not united in fellowship by a common sense of right, and if there is no right where there no justice, then it certainly follows that where there is no justice there is no state.  Furthermore, justice is that virtue which distributes to everyone his due.  What justice, then,  is that which removes a man from the true God and subjects him to unclean demons?  Is this to give everyone his due?  Or is he who retains a piece of land from the purchaser and gives it to someone who has no right to it unjust, whereas he who takes himself from the Lord God who made him and serves wicked spirits in just?

 

Certainly this same book, De Republica, argues very sharply and vigorously against injustice and in favor of justice.  And since when it was previously argued on behalf of injustice against justice, maintaining that a state cannot exist or be administered except through injustice, it was put forward as the most valid position that it is unjust for some men to serve other men as masters, and yet an imperial city including a mighty state cannot govern provinces without pursuing such injustice: the answer to this argument on the part of justice was that the rule over provincials is just, because servitude is useful to such men and is established for their welfare when rightly established, that is, when license to do wrong is withdrawn from wicked men, and that those subjected will be better off because, when not subjected, they were worse off.

 

To confirm this reasoning a remarkable example is given, as though from nature and expressed this way: “Why, therefore, does God command man, the soul command the body, the reason command the passions and the other vicious parts of the soul?”  This example teaches clearly enought that servitude is useful to some men and service to God is useful to all.

 

For in serving God the soul rightly commands the body, and within that very soul the reason subject to God the Lord rightly commands the passions and the other vices.  Therefore, when a man does not serve God, how much justice can we suppose him to possess?  For when a man does not serve God, in no way can his soul justly command his body or his human reason command his vices.  And if there is no justice in such a man, without doubt there is no justice in a community of such men.  Here, then there is no common sense of right which transforms a multitude of men into a people, whose wealth has been said to be a commonwealth.  For why need I speak of the utility whereby also a gathering of men, according to our definition, is called a people?  Although, if you carefully note, there is no utility to those who live impiously as do all who do not serve God and serve demons --- demons all the more impious in demanding that sacrifices be paid to them as to Gods --- yet I think that all we have said concerning a common sense of right sufficiently demonstrates that in terms of this definition a people in whom there is no justice cannot be said to be a state.  For if it is said that the Romans in their state served not unclean spirits but good and holy gods, must we repeat what we have already said enough times, nay, more than enough?  For can he who has read the previous books of this work and has reached this point doubt that the Romans served evil and impure demons unless he is either exceedingly stupid or shamelessly contentious?  But aside from the character of the gods to whom they offered sacrifices, it is written in the Law of the true God: “He who sacrifices to any God except to the Lord only shall be utterly destroyed” (Ex. 22:20).  He who prescribed such a threatening commandment did not will, therefore, that sacrifices be offered either to good gods or to evil ones.“

 

 * * *

 

 it’s worthwhile here, to include the comments of the translator of his overall works, Mary Clark, to put this chapter into context of Augustine’s overall thinking in regard to the ‘Law’;

 

“Augustine’s famous charge that there never was a Roman Republic was made because Cicero’s definition of a State suggested a people united for justice, and since justice required that God be given due worship, the Romans who substituted for God a legion of devils were not a true Republic.  This highlights the Augustinian position that all legal rules are subordinated to justice and conscience. “Put justice aside then and what are kingdom’s but great piracies?”   “Now to war against one’s neighbour’s, and to proceed to the harm of those who do not harm you, for greedy desire of rule and sovereignty, what is this but flat thievery in a greater excess and quantity than usual?”  (Chapter iV.6)

 

The thrust of Book XIX is not political but eschatological.  Everyone seeks happiness and all seek it in some good that they choose.  There is no evil reality in itself but only a good proudly preferred to God.  Political power is not an evil, only inordinate love of power.  The vestige of God in every good thing calls on us to transcend it and allow the infinite longing of the human heart to find its true happiness in the Infinite God.  Unless love for God has priority in our lives the realities we seek --- wealth, power, honor, pleasure --- become idols.   As false gods they cannot give peace to persons who are “made toward” God.  All peoples seek happiness,  and complete happiness is to be found only in the supreme good, which is eternal life.  “where God shall be all in all, where eternity shall be firm, and peace most perfect and absolute. (XIX.20)

 

This happiness is visible only to the eyes of faith and is to be received from God for the asking.”

 

 * * *

 

one can recognize in these citations from and about Augustine’s thoughts/writing in regard to ‘the state’, a basic shortfall in the modeling paradigm that parallels that picked up on by Poincaré in the case of mathematics where there is an advance prejudice as to the existence of ‘objects’ which figure in all the theorems and proofs etc. of mathematical physics, but which are themselves accepted without any elaboration, and which would be of no use in a purely spatial-relational (fluid-dynamical) world where we would have to speak, instead, in terms of ‘dynamical forms of organization’ (spatial-relationships that are transforming in the continuing present)

 

that is, the existence of ‘States’ is an a priori prejudice and Augustine’s discussion focuses on ‘what is not a state’ and then what states can do and cannot do etc.

 

the existence of the ‘state’ is fundamental to the ‘historical’ perspective (seeing things in terms of the temporal-sequential actions and interactions of independent objects), but is otherwise not necessary to an understanding of  the world since spatial-relationships (dynamical forms of organization) are a more comprehensive way to go.

 

for example, we could make a historical movie on any particular nation-state, and indeed on a hundred particular nation-states within a contemporaneous era.   while there are frequent mentions of interactions with the world outside of the nation, the sense is preserved of the nation being an independent entity capable of authoring its own behaviour and driving and directing it from an ‘internal-to-the-nation purpose’.   now, how do we put all these individual temporal-sequential historical accounts ‘together’ as was in fact the condition within which they transpired?  What is the missing ‘dimension’? 

 

the ‘missing dimension’ is the common RELATIVE space, a dynamical space that wraps around the globe in all directions and back into itself from all directions.  we ‘unfolded’ these historical accounts from this common dynamical relational space; i.e. an historical account is an unfolding that synthetically extracts an account of a dynamical form of organization (DFO) included within a dynamical continuously unifying hostspace, and makes it FALSELY appear as if that DFO is an independent object with a ‘life of its own’; i.e. ITS OWN HISTORY.

 

there is a way to combine all the historical movies, or rather, to capture an integrated (non-unfolded) visual account and that is by way of a holographical dynamic or holodynamical graphic that includes anything/everything included in the object-animation but which is purely spatial-relational and has no dependency on objects-that-exist-and-do-stuff (e.g. objects that have a temporal beginning and ending).  you can picture this if you can picture the kind of holodynamics as seen in the disneyworld ‘haunted house’ and imagine if one were made that depicted the whole earth (in a translucent depiction) so that we would see the imagery of everything happening all around the earth in a true simultaneous mutually influencing manner, with everything pushing off of everything else so that the depiction was entirely spatial-relational-dynamical without any dependence on particular ‘independent’ objects and their ‘persisting temporal existence’ i.e. where there was only ‘flow’ (evolving energy-flow space in the continuing present) within which dynamical forms of organization (DFOs) took form, ‘lived and aged’ for some time, and were again subducted into or rather ‘subsumed’ by the dynamically unifying flow, such DFOs being the purely relative dynamical basis that we, the observer, then impose ‘objecthood’ on so that we can then re-render this real-world dynamic in the synthetic terms of a linear-temporal history of objects and their interactions.

 

if we stick with the holodynamical view (which is why natives cultivate understanding in sharing circles rather than by debating ‘what is the single real historical reallity), the native view follows that says that ‘canada’ and the ‘united states’ do not really exist but are the way that europeans fought over how to divide up what they stole’.   this is getting very close to Augustine’s . “Put justice aside then and what are kingdom’s but great piracies?” 

 

in other words, the ‘justice’ of giving every man his due is what ‘makes a state’, and giving every man his due means that his pursuit of wealth etc. rather than being an end-in-itself, is given a higher meaning in his love of God.

 

so, without God (outside of nature and above it) to give higher meaning to a ‘state’, the ‘state’ cannot exist since its material goals as ends in themselves are ‘false icons’.  the natives and buddhists, meanwhile, see Nature as all there is, as in the holodynamical evolutionary flow view where ‘states’ are no more than interdependent dynamical forms of organization.

 

so Augustine brings to us the notion of multiple states that are true states if the people in them believe that God takes precedence over their material pursuits, but it is all a circular argument and the only grounding that the ‘state’ is given in Augustine’s argument is ‘what it is not’.

 

and here we go with the same backward-implying meaning-giving for the oxymoronic (of one believes the teachings of Jesus) ‘just war’ by way of reference to a war that would not be just.

 

“Now to war against one’s neighbour’s, and to proceed to the harm of those who do not harm you, for greedy desire of rule and sovereignty, what is this but flat thievery in a greater excess and quantity than usual?” 

 

throughout Augustine’s argument, then, there is this dependence on a God outside of nature for a ‘state’ to exist, and for the state’s acceptance of that God as the supreme authority, for ‘war’ to be ‘just’; i.e. for God to be on the side of the nation that is waging war on another, the paternalist reason for doing so being given in the above citation, and repeated here for convenience;

 

it was put forward as the most valid position that it is unjust for some men to serve other men as masters, and yet an imperial city including a mighty state cannot govern provinces without pursuing such injustice: the answer to this argument on the part of justice was that the rule over provincials is just, because servitude is useful to such men and is established for their welfare when rightly established, that is, when license to do wrong is withdrawn from wicked men, and that those subjected will be better off because, when not subjected, they were worse off.”

 

the whole Augustinian argument leaves unexamined and unsupported, the advance prejudice of ‘states’ as independent objects that possess linear temporal existences, and thus, the ‘historical model’ is accepted without examination and supportive argument as an a priori prejudice or ‘convention’, ... which is the essential paradigmatic underpinning of the ‘just war’.

 

once we have ‘the state’, we have the paternalist central governing authority with a God-beyond-nature’s guiding hand on its shoulder and a justification for war (as a paternalist duty to ‘withdraw from wicked men the license to do wrong’).

 

just as the legitimacy of the object paradigm is left unexamined and unsupported in mathematical physics, as Poincaré brought out, with the result that spatial-relational paradigm (relativity) is occluded and not considered, so it is again in this case where the legitimacy of the nation-state paradigm is left unexamined and unsupported in Augustine’s city of god (he examines only when a state is not a state, but does not question that states can exist as independent objects with a temporal sequential ‘life-time’).

 

 * * *

 

that pretty much covers the essentials of Augustine’s modeling of the ‘state’, the ‘Law’, how ‘war’ can be ‘just’ and how all of that relates to God, the key point being that his whole argument is built upon a ‘historical view’ that accepts the existence of a state as an independent object, if it is ‘backed’ by a God-beyond-nature, and it leads to the notion of the aging and death of a state by way of the infiltration of evil that rots, decomposes it until it dies a death of ‘profound discontinuity’.

 

moving on to the alternative understanding of the ‘primitives’, or ‘naturalists’ who associate themselves with the ongoing evolutionary flow and regard their material bodies merely as dynamical forms of organization with the flow, the image of the self is somewhat more optimistic in that one understands himself as being included in the ongoing metamorphosis (the evolutionary dynamic) so that one’s death is innately supportive of ongoing life.  so, ‘aging’, rather than being ‘rot’, is understood as participation in the metamorphosis of the dynamical hostspace that one is included in, so that one’s self is of the timeless transhistorical ongoing evolution wherein all living forms are a dynamically unifying brotherhood and where one’s material body is akin to the substance that passes through an ocean wave or that passes through the tornado, or like the teachers, students and bricks that pass through the dynamical form of organization known as ‘university’; i.e. these material-constituents such as the teachers and students do not create the organizational form, the organizational form inductively actualizes and shapes their behaviours since the organization form is ‘of the community-hostspace dynamic’ in which the DFO of ‘university’ emerges and persists.  to characterize a university in the positivist terms of its material-constituent parts and ‘what they do’ would be to miss the point that they are a DFO within the community hostspace dynamic, the notion of themselves as an independent body that is driven and directed by an internal purpose, being a reductionist illusion that occludes the greater reality of their inclusion as a dynamical form of organization within a common dynamical hostspace.

 

in the following quotes from Mircea Eliade’s The Myth of the Eternal Return, ... which has been a common theme of ‘naturalist’ cultures not only in the eastern mediterranean but around the world, the world is seen as continuous dynamically unifying ‘All’ and this unifying is by way of cycles of renewal.  thus, in the belief traditions of these ‘naturalist’ cultures or ‘primitives’, what is put into precedence is keeping oneself OUT OF THE HISTORICAL view and instead associating ONE’s SELF with the continuously renewing flow of nature.  Eliade points out how profound, to the ‘naturalist’ cultures, is the renewal implied by the moon-cycle with is three days nothingness that mark a new beginning, and also how rituals like celebrating the Sabbath and ‘confessing the errors of one’s way’ are ways of orienting to the notion of renewal, new cycles of beginnings that originate within the mother-space in which we are included (i.e. we are continually being given renewal by the living natural universe we are included in).  in this view our experience is trans-historical; i.e. it is ‘of the dynamical hostspace we are included in’, the ‘evolutionary dynamic’ that transcends the temporal-sequential historical accounting in terms of independent objects and their finite life-times marked by the ‘profound discontinuities’ of ‘birth’ and ‘death’, and instead uses as grounding for the ‘self’ the flow that gives natural meaning to these objects (DFOs, according to the relativity and quantum view).  that is, the notion of a discrete object that pops up, lives for a while, rots and dies in an absolute finality, is total abstraction that occludes our life experience of inclusion within an ongoing flow, in a natural space wherein nothing is truly lost or destroyed or comes into existence out of nowhere, but where everything is included and everything is participating in an ongoing metamorphosis.

 

so, when reading the citations from Eliade, and trying to put oneself in the frame of understanding of the naturalist cultures (which is accessible to each of us, since we are equipped to be born into a naturalist trans-historical culture just as well as an abstractist-rationalist historical culture, one must imagine this quest to liberate oneself from the sense of being an historical object in the flow and instead of thinking of oneself as being the flow, but at the same time being a uniquely situationally included dynamical form of organization with it,... that DFO aspect being visible by way of the material structures that are continually passing through it.  this is easier to think of in the case of the university where we can understand that the teachers and students and bricks are given their organization over generations by the persisting ‘swirl’ within the community hostspace dynamic.  for the university president and faculty to ‘fall’ into thinking that they are at the helm of a powerboat that is fully under their central governing authority, that they can drive and direct from their own abstract inner purpose and destination-orientation, is a false view that denies and occludes the essential inner-outer attunement (the male-female androgynous nature of the dynamic) that constitutes the university DFO and which will render it a hollow lifeless shell, a mockery of its true nature that may be left to be powered by corporations as a robotic caricature of its former self, ... the same type of ‘fall’ that can happen to an individual human being if he can’t get out of understanding himself in terms of an independent entirely internally-driven historical object.

 

Eliade comments;

 

“What is of chief importance to us in these archaic systems [native and other ritual that puts things in the context of cyclic renewal as in ‘preserving the sabbath’ or confessing one’s sins] is the abolition of concrete time, and hence their antihistorical intent.  This refusal to  preserve the memory of the past, even of the immediate past, seems to us to betoken a particular anthropology.  We refer to archaic man’s refusal to accept himself as a historical being [one who ages linearly in time; i.e. the alternative is to associate with the continually renewing evolutionary flow itself], his refusal to grant value to memory and hence to the unusual events (i.e. events without an archetypal model) that in fact constitute concrete duration.  In the last analysis, what we discover in all these rites and all these attitudes is the will to devaluate time.  Carried to their extreme, all the rites and all the behavior patterns that we have so far mentioned would be comprised in the following statement: “If we pay not attention to it, time does not exist; furthermore, where it becomes perceptible --- because of mans ‘sins’ i.e., when man departs from the archetype and falls into duration --- time can be annulled.”   Basically, if viewed in its proper perspective, the life of archaic man (a life reduced to the repetition of archetypeal acts, that is, to categories and not to events, to the unceasing rehearsal of the primordial myths) [one of the most important is the moon’s disappearance in illo tempore for three days and its renewal], although it takes place in time, does not bear the burden of time, does not record time’s irreversibility; in other words, completely ignores what is especially characteristic and decisive in a consciousness of time.  Like the mystic, like the religious man in general, the primitive lives in a continual present. (And it is in this sense that the religious man may be said to be a ‘primitive’; he repeats the gestures of another and, through this repetition, lives always in an atemporal present.”

 

so, the disappointments we have experienced in our lives can comes from our ‘fall’ into ‘historical being’ where we see ourselves as ‘wearing out’ in time and ‘failing to achieve our life goals’.  but the archaic view which is really the ‘spiritual view’ understands that this frictional engagement that we are experiencing is engagement with/in the evolutionary flow and the temporal-sequential historical understanding is just illusion.   the evolutionary flow is invisible, in the same manner as waves are invisible (we see them indirectly, by the local disturbance of the water or by the dynamics of dust as in a Kundt’s tube experiment) but the continuously transforming energy-field-flow of relativity theory etc is the mother of the dynamical forms of organization that are tangible and visible.   (here it is useful again to think of the earlier-mentioned alternative imageries of the ‘university’, which make the point that we can regard ourselves as either a self-powered historical being that is confined to life as an asserting agent within historical time, ... or as a DFO who draws his power, form and direction, by way of inductive actualization/shaping, from the evolutionary flow in which he is included.)

 

as Eliade points out, the troubles the Romans were having (the myth of romulus and remus also predicted a finite duration for Rome, the arrival of a death day) were interpreted as the approach of the death of Rome, when the troubles were instead signalling the evolutionary dynamic itself, the continuing renewal, and it was only the death fixation of historical being and their clinging to ITS life that had them all shook up.

 

the Romans’ culture avoidance of accepting that the Roman Empire was inductively actualized and shaped by the dynamical hostspace or ‘world dynamic’ that they were included in, ... and instead thinking of themselves and ‘it’ in terms of ‘historical being’ which persists and is animated entirely from some internal vitalism is the historical model that pervades our present day culture and gives rise to such images of ourselves, man’ in terms of something which undergoes a historical progression or internals-driven, genetically determined future.

 

.

 

but that form is instead, inductively actualized and shaped by the dynamical hostspace-flow it is included in (which is entirely missing from the picture)....

 

that is, it is consistent with our experience to understand dynamical entities with an individual nature such as ‘man’ in terms of their having been inductively actualized and shaped by the dynamical hostspace they are included in, rather than tracking ourselves backwards in time, in historical style, as being causally determined by some genetic accident, that in turn can be tracked back to ‘the beginning of life’ (as if the energy-flow-field that constitutes the universe is somehow devoid of ‘life’) when some kind of earthy soup of chemicals under precisely the right conditions was infused with energy by a bolt of lightning and voila, ‘life was born unto a dead universe’.

 

which brings us back to ‘organization’ and the western historical view wherein organization is a ‘deliberately arranged’ thing as in the Augustinian argument with its ‘state’ and ‘Law’ and ‘just wars’, wherein man is made the puppet of a supra-nature battle between God and evil demons, both vying for our allegiance down here on the earth that God created for this experiment, beneath the supra-natural heavens.

 

in such a deliberate, rational (unnatural, abstract) scheme of organization, there is no place for the role of the dynamical hostspace we are included in, in inductively actualizing and shaping our behaviour.

 

but yet, when people are on the beach and the tide goes out, or the tsunami pulls all the water out, the crowd goes out to have a look.  moreso than organization driven deliberately from out the internals of independent object-peoplle, this is spatial-relational induced organization, ... and when the tide comes back in, the crowd is orchestrated, by the transforming of the dynamical hostspace it is included in, to retreat, and if they are not in phase, as when the tsunami comes back in or when one strays too far on the sands of Mont Saint-Michel where the tides are 40 feet and the ebb exposes sands for miles out, and they don’t retreat fast enough, then dissonance or ‘out-of-phaseness’ results within this pulse of space-induced organization.   but there is no way to describe this wavy, ‘continual-return’ kind of organization in the sense of historical beings and their forward progression driven from the internals of the animated people-objects. (the internally-driven motion of independent objects is of course, ‘absolute movement’, thanks to our imposing of absolute space on our mental modeling which objectifies (converts DFOs to independent objects and breaks them out of) the flow that we experience inclusion in and re-renders ‘reality’ in the ‘historical’ terms of these abstract ‘independent objects’ and ‘what they do’.).

 

the trouble in our current era is, that’s all the television news ever tries to do is to start with the untested and unstated assumption that there is ‘a historical reality’ based on ‘independent objects’ and what they do and they then debate over the explicit defining of that historical reality, how it is unfolding in time, and whether the US/Western Empire is going to fall or not and all that ‘historical’ obfuscation of our authentic trans-historical experience, that drives fear into people because it makes them cling to notions of duration and things that wear out with time and die with an explicit finality, and the profound discontinuities that are associated with all that.

 

primitive man (and the naturalist man that is in each of us) was not ‘denying reality’ by trying to get out of that sense of historical being since historical reality is an illusion (the cloud formation that attracts our eye, by which the hurricane is made visible to us on a satellite view, is not the real hurricane. the real hurricane is a DFO that is inherently included in or owned by the hostspace flow).   rather than associate the self within the illusion of historical reality with its internally-driven ‘independent objects’, primitive man chose to live in, and associate his ‘self’ with, the continuing present (the evolving space of the continuing present aka the evolutionary dynamic) wherein we are DFOs, dynamical forms of organization intrinsically included within or ‘of’ the flow, and when we notice our body aging, it is a reminder that we are participating in a metamorphosis along with our brothers, the brotherhood of man and all things that is a divine dynamical unity.

 

our theme, The ‘Law’ and its Application, is clearly bound up in these questions of how we understand ‘organization’ and whether it is ‘deliberate’ and driven by the internal power and direction of independent objects (as in the ‘historical view’) in which case the person who sees his ‘self’ as an independent object takes full credit for his assertive behavioural accomplishments, or whether it is space-induced in which case the person sees his ‘self’ in the trans-historical terms of a dynamical form of organization within the ongoing evolutionary flow, that is androgynous.  it is androgynous because his actualized behaviour is no longer seen as driven from the interior of his independently existing self, but as being mutually actualized by his local (internal in a relative sense) assertive potentials that are inductively actualized and shaped by the (external in a relative sense) dynamical hostspace in which he is uniquely, situationally included.    

 

so, what happens to our ‘assertive accomplishments’ when we are in a trans-historical understanding mode? 

 

well the first thing is, we no longer think in terms of independent power-boat like individuals, so the idea of ‘individual’ accomplishment goes right out the window, but not the idea of ‘individual engagement’ with the community hostspace dynamic, ... the thing that is sucking all the professors and students and mortar and bricks around into the dynamical form we call ‘university’ and continues to do so over multiple life-cycle generations of teachers and students and mortar and bricks.   

 

in the trans-historical understanding of ‘inclusionality’ (being dynamical forms within the evolutionary flow), we are tuning in to the ‘winds of change’, ... those winds that can turn a whole fleet of sailboats up into the wind at once, deflecting the wind at the same time (and as a necessary consequence, since if the flow induces change in something in the flow, the change induces changes in the flow; i.e. it is all ultimately ‘flow’ and ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ the parents of temporal sequence, meld back into inner-outer relative dynamics) so as to convert this inclusional attunement into directed and naturally coordinated motive power.

 

there is some place that the wind is asking us to go, not an explicit place but some place that will be determined by the manner in which we move to discover it since the winds of change that invite us to visit it transform in our taking up the invitation (i.e. as we move in the service of seeking to sustain harmony in the space we are included in).  and we are naturally sensitive to this ‘call of the winds of change’.   now the powerboat people (people who have ‘fallen’ into historical mode and are stuck in their powerboat view of self where the sailboat attunement is turned off) like the university president or faculty club who believes they are at the helm of a powerboat, attempt to take the organization where they want to take it (steering it around obstacles and difficulties, of course, but nevertheless ‘in control’ of things), ... but it cannot sustain its power in its own right (taken out of its inductively actualized coupling with the dynamical hostspace) forever, and if it is not drawing its power from attunement to the hostspace flow it is situationally included in, its bought or borrowed power will eventually dry up and then perhaps the self-styled powerboat operators will go back to the community and say, ‘don’t let me die, ... what do you want of me?, ... ask and it shall be done’.  but so long as things are ‘going fine’, the reason that is given for things ‘going fine’ is ‘the wisdom of those who are sitting at the helm in the central control authority’, ... and the people most responsible for persisting belief in this accreditation are, .... ‘those who are sitting at the helm in the central control authority’.

 

the fear of failing to achieve our goals (as comes with thinking in ‘historical mode’) tempts us to become the lackeys of the powerboat culture and to let our creative products serve powerboat goals, ... but our very nature is to resist that, and to stay with our attunement to the flow we are included in, ... and so when a person refuses to capitulate to the demands of the powerboat authorities, he has made his choice to stay with attunement to the flow and it is the flow that will prevail, that is for sure (though without explicitly predetermined form), and this is felt first by the more vulnerable and not by the powerful authorities; e.g. .

when riding on a motorcycle in Texas and New Mexico i was always attuned to the winds and the skies and adjusted my helm so as to bypass thunderstorms, but those in the security of their de-sensitizing metallic condoms aka ‘cars and trucks’ were too destination oriented for that, and i often came hailstones on the road and cars/trucks in the ditch that marked their lack of attunement that was born of their self-assumed powerboat-based invincibility, ... Invicta Roma Aeterna, ... Invicta Me Aeterna, that property of objects (and seeing ourselves as objects) which as Parmenides (a 500 B.C. proponent of the ‘historical view’) told us ‘either exist’ or ‘do not exist’, ... setting up a historical reality of ‘profound discontinuity’ indeed.

 

the news media is constantly trying to put us into ‘historical being’ mode and we have lost the ‘tricks’ (rites etc.) that enabled primitive man to avoid ‘the fall’ into historical time and to keep himself in the spiritually connected atemporal now (the evolutionary flow).

 

the powerboat people (we, when in that mode) are currently (post 9/11) convincing one another of the ‘death of an era’, the death throes of which are an ‘age of terror’, ... in the same manner as the Romans did to themselves and of course, we, the descendents of the Roman Empire continue to believe that ‘Rome did die’, that this was a profound historical discontinuity, ... when it was instead an artefact of the ongoing life-as-evolutionary-flow.  anyone who could, at the same time and without bias, appreciate the contemporary unfolding fortunes of all participants, the Romans, the Barbarians, the Vandals, the Arabs could appreciate things in the trans-historical terms of simultaneous good and bad and continuing renewal.  who has a better ‘grasp on reality’? ... those who are saying ‘these are bad times and we are on our way down’, or those who are at the same time saying ‘these are good times and we are on our way up?’  if we are of the ethic of ‘mitakuye oyasin’, we can acknowledge that both are true at the same time, and that our particular predicament does not equip us to capture reality in terms of what we see from our unique situational inclusion within the hostspace flow-dynamic.

 

if we accept the greater reality of the brotherhood of man which is necessarily in trans-historical terms as in the holodynamical visualization described earlier, and accept that a particular historical view is an abstract illusion then we no longer have to worry about the impending death of the western world or the US Empire, because in the transhistorical terms of continuous renewal and dynamically unified brotherhood, we are instead able to understand that we are undergoing metamorphosis and like the sailboat mode of organization, we can proceed by sustaining dynamical balance and harmony with the common dynamical community hostspace we are included in, rather than by resorting to our powerboat explicit destination-oriented mode of organization where the imagery is in terms of sustaining the life of our Empire even as the global hostspace dynamic it is included in is inviting it to participate in an all-inclusive metamorphosis or ‘evolutionary transformation’.   to reject our inclusion within a common hostspace dynamic and set about building defensive walls to protect us from ourselves, is a form of madness that comes bundled into historical thinking of the type advocated by Augustine with its ‘just wars’ (all wars are civil wars if we are a dynamically unifying brotherhood of One as in the transhistorical view)

 

the Augustinian view is a ‘historical’ view that grounds our impression of reality and our sense of self in the material existence of independent states populated by independent people which, being independent, must be directed in their behaviours by generalized ‘Law’

 

the ‘naturalist’ view is a ‘trans-historical view that grounds our impression of reality and our sense of self in our attuned, dynamical-balance seeking relationship with the dynamical hostspace in which we are each uniquely situationally included, as an individual and/or as a nation-state.

 

it seems clear to me, that this second ‘naturalist’ manner of understanding the world and our relationship with (within) it, is what is alluded to in the teachings of Jesus that we have ‘fallen’ out of, embracing instead the one-sided male, paternalist deliberate control based historical view of ourselves.

 

how do we get out of entrapment in this hollow historical way of understanding the world and ourselves?   

 

 

 ‘And when you make the inner as the outer, and the outer as the inner, and the upper as the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one so that the male shall not be male and the female (shall not) be female, then shall you enter (the Kingdom).”  --- Jesus (per the Gospel of Thomas)

 

as in the translations from the original Aramaic, ‘the kingdom’ is both within us and without us; i.e. it corresponds to the divine unity of nature, the ‘evolving space of the continuing present’.

 

we no longer need ‘Law’ when we re-enter the kingdom, the ‘tao’ or the ‘evolutionary flow’;

 

“Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.  But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.”

 

since the behaviour asked of us is unique and personal according to our situational inclusion within the flow, and we are made aware of it by sustaining inner-outer dynamical balance and harmony with the dynamical hostspace in which we are included.

 

 this getting in touch with ourselves as androgynous dynamical unifying of opposites is what the primitive spiritual tradition and the ‘Buddha Dharma’ (the ‘Law’ or ‘Truth’ of the way of the Buddha) is all about;

 

 

 

 

anyhow, this note is not about preaching religion, it is about presenting some things we have put into the foundations of how we understand the world and our relationship with it, that have been ‘buried’ and ‘obscured’ from our view by generations of accepting practice within our culture.

 

our embrace of deliberately imposed social order has been reaching new highs over the past century.  it amounts to an attempt to ‘stop evolution’ and to take over the helm and to manage evolution deliberately from here on in.

 

this attempt is fuelled by generations of convincing ourselves that we are truly at the helm of our own powerboat behaviour and that our assertive accomplishments are truly ‘our own’, a view that occludes the mother role (through inductive actualization and shaping of behaviour) of the dynamical hostspace we are all included in.

 

we are dismayed that our ‘empire’ is crumbling and that rot and putrefaction leading to its death is well underway.

 

that alternative view of the ‘naturalist’ in us, embodied in the teachings of Jesus and the Buddha and in the 10,000 year old tradition of the north american natives, is that we are all a brotherhood of One which continues on just as the evolutionary flow continues on since it is the evolutionary flow, and that we should chill out and accept our participation in a spatial metamorphosis, using the sustaining of inner-outer harmony as the orchestrative actualizing and shaping our behaviour, both as individuals and as local brotherhood known as ‘people-nations’.   the abstract notion of ‘the State’ with its ‘Law’ that is used to deliberately impose peace, is a recipe that is having us go to war against our own spiritual mother, the ‘tao’ or evolutionary flow.

 

 * * *  end of second postscript * * *

.

 

 

 

 

postscript to ‘The ‘Law’ and its Application’  as of September 12, 2006

 

 

This postscript is to cite a current example of ‘Christian Teaching’ which, to me, illustrates very well how Christian teaching departs from the teachings of Jesus and actually provides, unintentionally, a historical account of how this happened.   The article I am referring to, ‘Theology for an Age of Terror’, is in the journal Christianity Today and can be accessed at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/009/1.78.html

 

The central issue is ‘Law’ and whether ‘Law’ is to be conceived of as implicit, something to provide personal guidance, since we are all included in our common hostspace dynamic in a uniquely situated way, or whether ‘Law’ is to be conceived of as explicit and general so as to be applied by any person to other persons (equipping each of us to be ‘a Judge’ and an ‘Executioner’).

 

How we perceive ‘Law’ not only effects our social dynamical ‘management’ but also our ‘scientific’ manner of reasoning since ‘Law’ comes into play equally in our reasoned inquiry and the same questions as to the nature and application of ‘Law’ arise in the context of reasoned inquiry.

 

The article ‘Theology for an Age of Terror’ speaks in terms of a time during which the Roman Empire was ‘crumbling’ and the uncertainty and ‘terror’ which reigned at that time associated with the collapse of an unnatural imposing of ‘Law’ on a diversity of people in an extensive region (‘Empire’) in which Rome occupied the center as a ‘Central Governing Authority’.  Clearly the ‘Law’ was applied in an explicit and general manner wherein an individual conversant with the law was equipped to be both a ‘Judge’ and ‘Executioner’ and the distribution of authority to local communities to interpret and administer the law in local nations (regional peoples) and communities provided the basis for the Imperial social dynamics management.

 

What comes across in this current article of Christian teaching is the very issue of how does one reconcile the teachings of Jesus with the need for restoring peace and security in an ‘Age of Terror’.  As the author says, Christians were confronted with this question for the first time in the era (fifth century A.D.) where Augustine was writing his self-described ‘great and laborious work’ ‘The City of God’ which, according to this author and others; “For 1,500 years, it has been the bedrock of a Christian philosophy of history”.

For the first time, Christians had to think about what it means to follow Jesus Christ while also participating in civil governance. What does it mean to wage a just war? Can followers of a Palestinian peasant who declined to call armies of angels to deliver him from physical assault now sanction violence against heretics and recalcitrant pagans in his name?

It is not hard to see, when one reflects on it, that there are certain, shall we say ‘supremacist’, assumptions in the authors perspective that recall the Papal Bull Inter-Caetera of 1493 which gave Christian explorers dispensation to kill the savage pagans in the Americans and seize their lands, if they could not be converted to Christianity.

 

To be sure, this ‘supremacism’ is a western cultural characteristic and it has only been in my lifetime that the acceptance of ‘Empire’ has become somewhat ‘politically incorrect’ (e.g. the last ‘British Empire Games’ was in Vancouver in 1954. But in the wake of WWII and with India, the prize of the British Empire winning its freedom, the tide was turning against the ideas of Empire and the centralized control of vast regions and populations by an ‘elite’ (i.e. ‘paternalist-supremacist’) few.  The British Empire thus became ‘the British Commonwealth’ and considerable softened its ‘central control ethic’ even though as recently as 1987, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was helping the South African government sustain its Apartheid policy and labelling Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress party ‘terrorists’ (her Conservative party supporters wore ‘Hang Nelson Mandela’ badges in this era).  The interpretation of many is that the ‘State terrorism’ perpetrated by many governments (and remember, a ‘just war’ is a war that is duly authorized by an elected central governing authority) is often more odious than what those of a political leaning like Prime Minister Thatcher label ‘terrorism’.

 

How we look at ‘history’ is very much tied up in this question of reconciling Christian teaching with the teachings of Jesus and our conception of ‘Law’.    And the interpretation of history is very much in open contention as the furore over the remarks of UK Conservative Party David Cameron’s a mere two weeks ago have raised; i.e.

The Tory leader, who met Mandela in Johannesburg last week, made his most forceful break yet with the Thatcher years in an article written for today's Observer. His remarks were welcomed by veterans of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, who engaged in a fierce political battle with Thatcher during the 1980s as violence escalated in South Africa's townships while she resisted growing international pressure for sanctions to be imposed.

But his intervention drew sharp criticism from some of the ex-Prime Minister's closest allies. Her former spokesman, Sir Bernard Ingham, said: 'I wonder whether David Cameron is a Conservative.'

Describing Mandela as 'one of the greatest men alive', Cameron writes: 'The mistakes my party made in the past with respect to relations with the ANC and sanctions on South Africa make it all the more important to listen now.

'The fact that there is so much to celebrate in the new South Africa is not in spite of Mandela and the ANC, it is because of them - and we Conservatives should say so clearly today.' http://free.financialmail.co.za/06/0901/bookfront/ednote.htm

It is no coincidence that the current world is still split by those who would turn a blind eye to ‘State terrorism’ but who are quick to label those who resist State terrorism ‘terrorists’ and those who believe that the question is instead how to sustain peace and harmony.

 

In the presence of conflict that is leaving a wake of death and destruction, the restoring and sustaining of peace and harmony does not have to proceed by way of identifying ‘the guilty party’ and proceeding to ‘hang them’ or capture and incarcerate them.   It takes two to tango, as is David Cameron’s interpretation of history that has angered so many conservatives in the UK, and those who are ‘in control’ or ‘on the side of the ‘Law’ have no monopoly on righteousness any more than ‘the majority’ has a monopoly on ‘truth’.

 

So, while all of the instances of the proud phraseology ‘The British Empire’, the symbols of belief in maintaining centralized paternalist control by those who are ‘most evolved’ to ‘keep the peace’, have been ‘taken down’, they have not exactly been burned or thrown away.

 

Returning to the Roman Empire era and Augustine’s philosophical contribution to Church doctrine and the role of ‘history’ therein, we find the current author (Timothy George, Dean of Beeson Divinity School of Samford University and an Executive Editor of Christianity Today) equating the ‘crumbling of the Roman Empire’ with an ‘age of terror’ where the nature of the violence changed (others were beating up on the Romans rather than the Romans beating up on others) and the realization was coming through that Rome; “Invicta Roma Aeterna: eternal, unconquerable Rome ... "The city to which the whole world fell has fallen. If Rome can perish, what can be safe?"

 

The author falls into the trap of interpreting history through a particular pair of eyes, those of the people who were losing the security and prosperity that they had enjoyed.  But not everybody in the world was in freefall, others were rapidly improving their condition.   Natural evolution always prevails and Nature doesn’t crumble and die, collapse and and death is just one of view of the evolutionary dynamic that characterizes Nature, a view that comes to us if we ‘hold on’ to the perspective of a particular strain.  But as Antoine Béchamp observed ‘Nothing is the prey of death, everything is the prey of life’ (i.e. new life consumes older life but ‘life’ is the ‘operative agent’, not ‘death’.  ‘Death’ is an abstraction imposed by the observer by focusing on a particular history since there is nothing of the ‘dying organism’ that is lost or goes missing, all included in the new dynamical forms of organization that we refer to as ‘life-forms’).

 

Thus, the ‘death of the Roman Empire is more correctly about ‘new life’, the evolutionary dynamic which is spatial-relational life that persists as a diverse variety of dynamical forms of life outwell and inwell into it.  It is only particular perspective that casts the crumbling of the Roman Empire in a terrorific light.  These days were good for Barbarians and the Vandals, just as the rise of Mandela’s African Congress amidst the violent collapse of the Thatcher supported apartheid imposing South African government.   

 

The ‘Law’ was available to the Barbarians and Vandals as well as to the Romans.  The ‘Law’ was available to all from the time of Hammurabi (18xx – 1750 B.C.) and his ‘Code’, the last three of the 282 items of which follow, which show their inbuilt dependency on ‘who is in control’;

 

280.    If while in a foreign country a man buy a male or female slave belonging to another of his own country; if when he return home the owner of the male or female slave recognize it: if the male or female slave be a native of the country, he shall give them back without any money.

281.    If they are from another country, the buyer shall declare the amount of money paid therefor to the merchant, and keep the male or female slave.

282.    If a slave say to his master: If    If a slave say to his master: "You are not my master," if they convict him his master shall cut off his ear.

 Laws of justice which Hammurabi, the wise king, established. A righteous law, and pious statute did he teach the land.

 

Hammurabi, the protecting king am I.

 

So, whose law are we talking about?   Law is something that is imposed by a central controlling authority, but there can be many central controlling authorities, and thus the Laws of the Vandals, decree that certain things shall be done which are in conflict with that which the Laws of the Romans decree.   How then is Law anything other than a personal guide since its administration requires a central authority, and there is no way to establish, other than by war, who the ultimate local authority shall be.   If God is the ultimate central authority, he is not speaking up and settling arguments as to which of two disputing central authorities deserves precedence.

 

Which law shall I go with if I am a barbarian living within what Rome claims to be ‘its realm’ where ‘its laws prevail’? Which law shall I go with if I am a black south african living within what the apartheid-imposing South African Government claims to be ‘its realm’ where ‘its laws prevail’?   Jesus said;

 

Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.  But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.”

 

In this regard, we have this problem that multiple different self-appointed (and even democratically elected majorities have no monopoly on the truth; e.g. North American natives can argue very ably that ‘Canada’ and ‘the United States’ have no other grounds for their ‘central-authority-ship’ than the manner in which Europeans fought over how to divide up what they had stolen) ‘central control authorities’ claim that their law takes precedent over the law of the other.

 

The ‘Law’ may be a fine thing, but it needs a central control authority for its administration and there’s the rub, ... which central control authority shall prevail.  God’s not talking.

 

BUT, Jesus says that the ‘Law’ is only a personal guideline anyhow, to help us through the period wherein we are seeking enlightenment (‘faith’) but are not yet there.

 

Furthermore, he says that there is no ‘ultimately correct ‘Law’’ of the many that are proclaimed, imposed, administered by the various different groups that claim that the ‘real’ central control authority’ falls in their capital city, since these national distinctions are not real distinctions;

 

 “In Him the distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free man, male and female, disappear; ye are all one in Jesus Christ.

 

Now, the author of the ‘Theology for an Age of Terror’ article is a ‘westerner’ with a ‘western point of view’.  He is not interpreting history as a descendent of a Vandal might.  He is not interpreting history as an Arab might since the power of Arab society rose in the wake of Rome’s collapse (the fall of Rome is approximately put at 465 A.D.) and the Arab Empire took control over many of the lands that had been important sustainers of the Roman Empire.  The ‘Cliff’s Notes’ précis might be something like; ‘Those kept poor and backward by occupying Imperial armies finally got so fed up that they were will to die to break the yoke of imperial enslavement and so, even simple peasant folk became courageous (suicidal even) warriors that the imperial armies, softened by their own success (decades of peace), were overcome by them.  The people who were held in contempt for being backward, primitive, savage thus rose to power which was further fuelled by the wealth and growth that came with it;

 

The Arab Empire Of The Umayyads

Muhammad's
victory over the Umayyads, his capture of Mecca, and the resulting allegiance of many of the bedouin tribes of Arabia created a wholly new center of power in the Middle Eastern cradle of civilizations. A backward, non-agrarian area outside the core zones of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persia suddenly emerged as the source of religious and political forces that would eventually affect the history of much of the known world. But when the prophet Muhammad died quite suddenly in 632, it appeared that his religion might altogether disappear. Many of the bedouin tribes that had converted to Islam renounced the new faith in the months after Muhammad's death, and his remaining followers quarreled over who should succeed him. Though these quarrels were never fully resolved, the community managed to find new leaders who directed a series of campaigns to force those who had abandoned Islam to return to the fold.

Having united most of Arabia under the Islamic banner by 633, Muslim military commanders began to mount serious expeditions beyond the peninsula, where only probing attacks had occurred during the lifetime of the prophet and in the period of tribal warfare after his death. The courage, military prowess, and religious zeal of the warriors of Islam and the weaknesses of the empires that bordered on Arabia resulted in stunning conquests in Mesopotamia, North Africa, and Persia that dominated the next two decades of Islamic history. The empire built from these conquests was Arab rather than Islamic. Most of it was ruled by a small Arab-warrior elite, led by the Umayyads and other prominent clans, which had little desire to convert the subject populations, either Arab or otherwise, to the new religion.

Unaccustomed wealth and political power, which was reflected in the growth of new cities around Arab garrisons and the expansion of older urban centers, were the Arabs' rewards for these startling victories. The Umayyads, to the dismay of many of the faithful, developed into autocratic rulers who were more concerned with perpetuating their dynastic power than advancing the interests of the Islamic faithful as a whole. Their growing arrogance and adoption of a life-style stressing luxury and material gain exacerbated divisions within the Islamic community that had begun to emerge soon after Muhammad's death.

 

After a pause to settle internal disputes over succession [the Sunni –Shi’a Division], the remarkable sequence of Arab conquest was renewed in the last half of the 7th century. Muslim armies broke into central Asia, thus inaugurating a rivalry with Buddhism in the region that continues to the present day. By the early 8th century, the southern prong of this advance had reached into northwest India. Far to the west, Arab armies swept across North Africa and crossed the Straits of Gibraltar to conquer Spain and threaten France. Though the Muslim advance into western Europe was in effect checked by the hard-fought victory of Charles Martel and the Franks at Poitiers in 732, the Arabs did not fully retreat beyond the Pyrenees into Spain until decades later. Muslim warriors and sailors dominated much of the Mediterranean, a position that would be solidified by the conquest of key islands, such as Crete, Sicily, and Sardinia, in the early decades of the 9th century. By the early 700s, the Umayyads ruled an empire that extended from Spain in the west to the steppes of central Asia in the east. Not since the Romans had there been an empire to match it; never had an empire of its size been built so rapidly.

There is a general point to be made here.   The ‘Age of Terror’ mentioned in the September, 2006 ‘Theology for an Age of Terror’ article in Christianity Today, is only an ‘Age of Terror’ from a western viewpoint, ... the simultaneous flip-side view, rather than being a ‘loss of security’ was one of ‘rising freedom and empowerment’ since the Roman Empire had thrived by keeping its vast realm under the thumb of the central controlling authority in Rome.   Just as the ‘age of terror’ as the South African apartheid-imposing political regime was collapsing, in spite of support from Thatcher and her ‘Hang Nelson Mandela’ wearing fellow conservatives, had its flip side in the rising liberation and empowerment of those enslaved by the ‘State Terrorism’ of the prevailing central controlling authority.

Here is a picture of ‘evolution’ where new life is subsuming earlier life.   Only one particular side of the story is ‘collapse and death’, ‘uncertainty and terror’.

Why not the ‘evolutionary understanding’ instead of a particular perspective, that of those who have enjoyed a period of security and prosperity that comes from being members of the political group from which the ‘central controlling authority’ is constituted?

But that is not the way it works within our western culture.   The viewpoint we see in Christianity Today is the same viewpoint we see in the media, a form of communication that has itself become highly centrally controlled and which, like the author of the ‘Theology in an Age of Terror’ article, assumes that there is ‘one true reality’, and that ‘true reality’ is one in which he sees history in such terms as ‘the collapse of the Roman Empire’ rather than the subsumation of a particular dynamical form of organization by other dynamical forms of organization.  That is, even in the case of the empire of the human body, there is a continuing vitality of the participating dynamical forms of organization (alcohol producing enzymes etc.) that had until lately vitalized the now-inert corpse or carcass.  Nature includes everything; nature excludes nothing.   If we were participants in the Roman Empire, the ‘Age of Terror’ we would have experienced would be from the point of view of one who has supported the central control based management of social dynamics which has sustained security and prosperity for some time and is now threatened with collapse.  Of course, if we were Barbarians or Vandals or Arabs, it wouldn’t have been an Age of Terror at all, that is just the perspective of those who are ‘going down’ while others are ‘coming up’.

To every Age of Terror where the security of a central control authority which was for so long invincible begins to show chinks in its armour; Invicta Roma Aeterna: eternal, unconquerable Rome, or Invicta Londra Aeterna: eternal, unconquerable London or Invicta New York Aeterna: eternal, unconquerable New York (financial control center), ... the ‘terror’ is on the part of those who have been supporters of the central control based system.

Here, it must be recognized that not all cultures seek to manage their social dynamics by way of explicit, generalized ‘Law’ imposed and administered by ‘central control authorities’.   The Native American philosophical tradition did not approach its management of social dynamics by way of central control authority based administration of ‘Law’. 

The Native tradition, like Buddhism was pantheist (a-theist) and rather than visualizing God as a central control authority, recognized instead the divinity of Nature that we are included in; i.e. the ‘Great Mystery’ or ‘the ongoing Creation’ aka ‘Creator’ that is immanent in the living, flowing space we are all included in and which is a divine unity as in a ‘coniuntio oppositorum’ (union of opposites);

 "The Medicine Wheel is the shape of the Zero. The Zero is the symbol and fact of Creation. The Zero Chiefs say that the Zero is not nothing, but is instead Everything. . . . Creation, the Zero, is perfectly balanced. The Zero is Female (WahKahn) and Male (SsKwan), and has designed and birthed all of life."

This parallels non mainstream interpretations of the teachings of Jesus as Mircea Eliade notes in ‘The Two and the One’ (Mephistopheles et l’Androgyne) such as the Gospel of Philip;

“According to the Gospel of Philip (codex C of Khenoboskian) the division of the sexes --- the creation of Eve taken from the body of Adam --- was the principle of death. “Christ came to establish what was thus (divided) in the beginning and to reunite the two. Those who died because they were in separation he will restore to life by reuniting them!”.

Only a Roman (westerner) has the constrained, self-interested perspective of seeing things in terms of the ‘death’ of the Roman Empire.  Life goes on, evolution goes on, the divine spatial-relational energy flow of the Universe of Nature goes on.  Nature is God, God, Nature as Proclus said.  Only those that participated in the attempt to control the social dynamic using generalized ‘Law’ imposed and administered by a ‘central control authority’ saw things in terms of ‘the death of the Empire’ and an ‘Age of Terror’.

Those embracing the alternative interpretation of the teachings of Jesus, recognize that ‘death’ is an abstraction born of our nostalgia for a persisting dynamical form of organization which has outwelled into the common dynamical hostspace we share inclusion in, when it inwells or is subsumed by new dynamical forms of organization.  There is no ‘death-finality’ in the evolutionary dynamic of Nature there is only continuing life as new dynamical forms subsume prior dynamical forms with anything being lost, with everything continuing to be included as in Nature’s way.

As the author of ‘Theology in an Age of Terror’ notes, Augustine’s way to resolve ‘creation’ was by way of his conception of ‘history’  --- “The City of God, an opus magnum et arduum, as [Augustine] called it—a "great and laborious work." it has been the bedrock of a Christian philosophy of history.”  and, as he also says, it provided a way of dealing with the question that arose as ‘Rome collapsed’; ... “For the first time, Christians had to think about what it means to follow Jesus Christ while also participating in civil governance. What does it mean to wage a just war? Can followers of a Palestinian peasant who declined to call armies of angels to deliver him from physical assault now sanction violence against heretics and recalcitrant pagans in his name?”

Instead of acknowledging, as the non-mainstream interpreters of the teachings of Jesus did, that there was a problem of perspective with this notion of ‘death’ (the death of the Roman Empire) Augustine’s solution was to accept this notion of death as a ‘profound discontinuity’, to make it the ‘stake in the ground’ and to deal with it by thinking of ourselves as ‘resident aliens, in a world of profound discontinuity’.  In this manner we could keep our constrained self-interested perspective that brings to the notion of an ‘Age of Terror’ and the ‘death’ of an Empire (getting all dramatic about our vested interest within a continuously evolving hostspace dynamic).

“Augustine reminded his hearers that the City of God in its pilgrimage here on earth was not exempt from the ravages of time, that it was ever marked "by goading fears, tormenting sorrows, disquieting labors, and dangerous temptations."

Christians hold a double citizenship in this world. Like the apostle Paul—who could claim that his true political identity was in heaven (Phil. 3:20), but who also appealed to Caesar as a Roman citizen when his life was at stake—so believers in Christ live as sojourners, resident aliens, in a world of profound discontinuity and frequently contested loyalty.”

There are no ‘profound discontinuities’ in the natural world we live in,... there is only spatial-relational transformation.  That is all that energy-field-flow dynamics allow (relativity, quantum wave dynamics).  The objectification of ‘things’ is our objectification that we impose on our mental models of the world that is not imposed on Nature.  The native belief is that we as individuals are subsumed within the evolving space of the continuing now which does not deny our individuality any more than it would deny the individuality of a hurricane, or any other dynamical form of organization within the hostspace flow-dynamic.

How does this ‘unification of the sexes’ come into play? ... as in the Gospel of Philip;

. “Christ came to establish what was thus (divided) in the beginning and to reunite the two. Those who died because they were in separation he will restore to life by reuniting them!”

and again in the Gospel of Thomas;

“And when you make the inner as the outer, and the outer as the inner, and the upper as the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one so that the male shall not be male and the female (shall not) be female, then shall you enter (the Kingdom).”

 

and again in the Second Epistle of Clement;

 

“When asked at what moment the Kingdom would come, the Lord himself replied; “When the two shall be one, the outside like the inside, the male with the female neither male nor female.

 

As has been discussed in the body of the note on ‘The ‘Law’ and its Application’, the notion of ‘bringing the two sexes together’ (union of opposites) can be easily seen in systems inquiry wherein any ‘object’ can be dually interpreted as the outwelling of assertive behavioural potentials in ‘coniunctio oppositorum’ with the accommodating backpressure of the dynamical hostspace these potentials are included in.  Our dual understanding of a ‘university’ was given as an example.  Before we actually give a name to ‘the university’ and thereby ‘declare its objecthood or ‘existence’’ (as John Stuart Mill observed, this is an intellectual act whereby we impose the notion of object-existence on some persisting form), within the community hostspace dynamic, a behavioral pattern or form is inductively actualized and shaped by the community hostspace dynamic in which it is included.  Once we analyze it analytically (in an ‘in-and-back-out-again’ manner of inquiry),we come up with its constituent parts (departments, faculties, teachers, students, buildings, support staff) and ‘what they do’ and how this is all brought together by a ‘control center’ (chancellor, president, board of governors), ... so  that it appears as if we can understand a ‘university’ strictly in terms of its parts and what it does.   But what is more foundational to our understanding of a ‘university’ is the ‘out-and-back-in-again’ ‘synthetical’ inquiry that exposes how the MALE assertive potentials that are being actualized and shaped within the FEMALE accommodative backpressure (receptive/resistive) of the community hostspace dynamic.  Only when we understand things, INCLUDING OURSELVES in this ‘union of opposites’ manner will we have a spiritual understanding of the world and ourselves; i.e. only when we understand things in this manner will we be including ourselves in this divine evolutionary flow-space that is otherwise known as ‘the Kingdom’.

 

That is, our western tradition is to understand things, including ourselves, in purely masculine assertive terms, as independent objects that exist in the manner of the analytical view of the university where everything we need can be found inside of us, including the inner purpose that drives and directs our behaviour.  Such a view does not require our inclusion in a dynamical hostspace flow that inductively actualizes and shapes our behaivour; i.e. where the sexes are in union.

 

As the buddhists say, we must let go of the rigidity with which our eyes look out ot the world and objectify everything and judge the behaviour of the objects out there as if the were independently driven from their insides, since this is what holds us back from experiencing our inclusion in the evolving space of the continuing present.  Instead, we have to relax our crow’s eye judging and let the space out there come in through us and take us up within it.

Insight opens your mind.  An open mind leads to an open heart.  Openheartedness leads to justice.  Divinity is oneness with Tao.  Oneness with Tao is freedom from harm, indescribable pleasure, eternal life.

-Tao Te Ching

As Mircea Eliade notes, this theme where let go of the single masculine perspective in terms of independent objects (i.e. ‘independent’ and thus needing to be managed by a ‘paternalist central controlling authority) is a pervasive them for divinity in ancient cultures;

I am like a pitcher of clay floating in the water, water inside, water outrside.  Now suddenly with a touch of the guru the pitcher is broken.  Inside, outside, O Friends, all one.

-Kabir

How do we set out to lose the singular perspective that leads to ‘profound discontinuity’ as in ‘death’ and the ‘death of the Empire’?  How do we look out simultaneously through the eyes of the Barbarians, the Vandals and the Romans?  How do we look out through multiple different perspectives at the same time so that instead of thinking in terms of the ‘collapse of the Roman Empire’ we can sense the outwelling of new dynamical forms of organization that are subsuming its dying carcass?

 

The native approach is through ‘sharing circles’ where everyone is invited to share their heartfelt view and be respectfully heard, without any assumption as to ‘the existence of a ‘best’ view of reality’.  When people are so informed, they then let their own behaivour be guided by their understanding of multiple simultaneous behaviours, rather than keying their behaviour to a single ‘best’ view of reality.  In our western understanding of history, however, we seek a ‘best single reality’ such as ‘the decline and fall of the Roman Empire’.  The following sketches, drawn by a native friend, contrast the two approaches to understanding history.  The little circles are peoples heads with the eyelashes indicating we are looking at them from above.  In the western ‘debate’ format on the left, we seek to come up with a single compromised view of reality (that the central controlling authority will use) and this will inevitably involve inherent conflict and disagreement that will be settled by the principle of LaFontaine ‘La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure’. 

 

On the right is the native ‘sharing circle’ approach where there is no pursuit of a single reality, but rather an attempt to assimilate awarenesss of multiple simultaneous realities (the Romans are going down, the Barbarians, Vandals and Arabs are rising up) that allow the observer to understand in the manner of entering into the evolutionary flow.  The technique actually recapitulates holography where the imagery is spatial-relational and not dependent on ‘objects’ and ‘what they do’; i.e. one brings a diverse multitude of experiences into coherent connective confluence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, this postscript seeks to shed some light on the source of the ‘alleged’ gap between Christian teaching and the teachings of Jesus (union of opposites), and how this is being perpetuated in today’s society (e.g. the media with their quest of developing the best single view of reality).   

 

If the reader can see how ‘the death of the Roman Empire’ is a view of history in terms of ‘profound discontinuity’ that is false because it represents a particular perspective that doesn’t capture our experience of being included in an evolutionary dynamic, then the core point has been successfully shared.

 

An imposed single-reality view of history in terms of ‘profound discontinuity’ is what comes through Augustine and which has been made foundational in Christian teaching.

 

This single view of history is what is made foundation in the central control authority and used as the reference backdrop for the imposing and adminstration of ‘the Law’.

 

Essentially, this single view of history is what makes it possible to use a general explicit ‘Law’ as the basis for social dynamics management.  The apartheid supporting government of South Africa had to see itself, as did the Romans, as a just paternalist authority into which the central controlling authority is set like the jewel in the crown (Rome, London, Washington or New York).  Once this is accepted, we have the notion of The Roman Empire, The Arab Empire, The British Empire, The American Empire’.  Meanwhile these are simply ‘dynamical forms of organization’ and they do are constituted by birth-and-death as ‘profound discontinuities’, ... they only exist by virtue of our believing in their existence (that is to say, the world dynamic that we experience is not broken up into such divisions; i.e. the native american can choose to ignore the artificially imposed existence of ‘Canada’ and ‘the United States’ if no-one is watching him.  He need merely humour the ‘believers’ because if they catch him disbelieving, they will beat him about the head and try to make a believer out of him, ... that is the only basis for holding to be ‘real’ an object that depends upon imaginary-line boundaries).

 

So, the western and Christian single-reality-perspective of ‘history’ is what brings in the gap between ‘the teachings of Jesus’ and modern Christian teachings, and as we are only too aware, the struggle goes on by the media and those who influence it, to bring us this single reality view of history as it is playing out.  Those backward savage natives, who had a far better understanding of the way the world works, consistent with the teachings of Jesus we have all but killed off, .... er, ... subsumed by co-optation into our way of seeing things, ... and we have certainly put a gag on those traditionalists who have persisted in their more comprehensive understanding of the world, as well as those minority interpreters of the teachings of Jesus.

 

 * * *

 

 

[original email starts here below]

 

 

dear all,

 

this is an exploration into what we intend by ‘Law’ and how it effects our world view, and current political events, ...  for your possible interest.

 

 

 

 

 

The ‘Law’ and its  Application

 

 * * *

 

There are suggestions in the Bible (New Testament) that ‘Law’ is something that applies only to the individual and that cannot be applied by one person to another, as is its most common usage in modern Christian societies.  See for example Galations III which includes;

 

“Christ has purchased our freedom from the curse of the Law by becoming accursed for us --- because “Cursed is every one who is hanged upon a tree.”

 

“Why then was the Law given?  It was imposed later on for the sake of defining sin, until the seed should come to whom the promise has been made, ...”

 

“Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.  But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.”

 

This is clearly understood in Buddhism; i.e. the ‘Dharma’ or the ‘Law’ or ‘Truth’ is something that can only be understood personally, through ‘the path of awakening’

 

Why should it be that we should understand the law personally but not apply it generally, to others, as in a great many teachings in Buddhism and Christianity? e.g;

 

 

Buddha

Jesus

"Consider others as yourself." (Dhammapada 10:1)

Do to others as you would have them do to you." (Luke 6:31)

"If anyone should give you a blow with his hand, with a stick, or with a knife, you should abandon any desires and utter no evil words." (Majjhima Nikaya 21:6)

"If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also." (Luke 6:29)

"Hatreds do not ever cease in this world by hating, but by love: this is an eternal truth. Overcome anger by love, overcome evil by good ... Overcome the miser by giving, overcome the liar by truth." (Dhammapada 1.5 & 17.3)

"Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. From anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them back." (Luke 6:27-30)

"If you do not tend one another, then who is there to tend to you? Whoever would tend me, he should tend the sick." (Vinaya, Mahavagga 8:26:3)

"Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me." (Matt. 25:45)arises

"Abandoning the taking of life, the ascetic Gautama dwells refraining from taking life, without stick or sword." (Digha Nikaya 1:1:8)

"Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take the sword shall perish by the sword." (Matt. 26:52)

... all these do not equal a sixteenth part of the liberation of mind by loving kindness. The liberation of mind by loving kindness surpasses them all and shines forth, bright and brilliant. (Itivuttaka 27;19-2)

Just as a mother would protect her only child at the risk of her own life, even so, cultivate a boundless heart towards all beings. Let your thoughts of boundless love pervade the whole world." (Metta Sutta)

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friend." (John 15:12-13)

It's easy to see the errors of others, but hard to see your own. You winnow like chaff the errors of others,but conceal your own — like a cheat, an unlucky throw. If you focus on the errors of others,

constantly finding fault, your effluents flourish.You're far from their ending. (Dhammapada Mahavagga 252-253)

"Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, "Friend, let me take the speck out of your eye," when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye." (Luke 6:41-42)

"Do not look at the faults of others, or what others have done or not done; observe what you yourself have done and have not done." (Dhammapada 4:7)

He said to them, "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." (John 8:4-7)

But these three things, monks, shine openly, not in secret. What three? The moon, the sun, and the Dhamma and Discipline...(Anguttara Nikaya 3:129)

"That great cloud rains down on all whether their nature is superior or inferior. The light of the sun and the moon illuminates the whole world, both him who does well and him who does ill, both him who stands high and him who stands low." (Sadharmapundarika Sutra 5)

"Your father in heaven makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous." (Matt. 5:45)

"Let us live most happily, possessing nothing; let us feed on joy, like the radiant gods." (Dhammapada 15:4))

"Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." (Luke 6:20

"The avaricious do not go to heaven, the foolish do not extol charity. The wise one, however, rejoicing in charity, becomes thereby happy in the beyond." (Dhammapada 13:11)

"If you wish to be perfect, go sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven." (Matt.19:21)

 

 

What then, is the application of the ‘Law’ if we are to be tolerant and non-judgemental of the behaviours of our brothers?

 

The ‘Law’ = the Dharma = Truth = The path of awakening ... in Buddhism is an inner-outer attunement with the dynamical hostspace of Nature in which we are included.  It is not to do with ourselves as a solitary object whose behaviour is driven from our internal components and inner purpose, a scenario that makes us out to be ‘independent’ and solely responsible for the authorship of our behaviours, out of the context of our inclusion in a dynamical hostspace; e.g. our inclusion in a ‘brotherhood of man’, in the dynamical One-ness, as is stated in Galations relative to the issue of the application of ‘Law’;

 

 “In Him the distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free man, male and female, disappear; ye are all one in Jesus Christ.

 

This statement recalls the atheism/pantheism of the Buddha Dharma and of North American native atheism/pantheism where there is no separation between ‘the Divinity’ and the dynamical hostspace of Nature that we are all included in.   

 

The ‘Law’ starts to take on a different complexion when we understand the world in the terms that ‘we are all brothers’ that whatever happens, it is ‘our fault’ since we cannot split ourselves off from our brothers, as we might tend to if we are Jews and they Greeks or we are Christians and they Muslims etc. etc., ... for ‘In Him, the distinctions ... disappear; we are all one in Jesus Christ’

 

This recalls the laws of physics, as one shifts from Newtonian physics which uses the ‘object paradigm’ where dynamics are understood in terms of ‘independent objects’ and their ‘independent object behaviours’ as they act and interact within an absolute euclidian space that does not participate in their dynamics.  Meanwhile, when we shift gears to ‘relativity’, we find that we have to understand dynamics in terms of the fluid dynamics of the hostspace we are all included in, since ‘material bodies’ and ‘matter’ in general are merely local concentrations of energy in the energy-field-flow or ‘spacetime continuum’.  

 

In physics, we could equally say; ‘In Nature, the spacetime continuum, the distinctions between individual entities, protons and electrons, matter and void, disappear, these are all one in the Energy-Field-Flowspace’ (‘Spacetime Continuum’).

 

I do not intend to leave this issue of relativity versus ‘Law’ to such an esoteric statement, and the following examples may make the central point, which is that the space-excluding ‘object paradigm’ model of dynamics founded on ‘independent material bodies’ and ‘what they do’ is too simple a model to describe our everyday experience in the world, since it assumes the non-participation of the dynamical space we are innately included in, in the manner that a hurricane is included in atmospheric space or a whorl is included in river-flow (Heraclitus’ example of a world entirely in flux).

 

In relativity, ‘space is a participant’; i.e. the dynamical hostspace (energy-field-flow) inductively actualizes and shapes the behaviours of the entities included within it.  This is the source of ‘self-organization’ where things gather and scatter under one another’s simultaneous mutual influence (as in the dynamics of the ‘community’ of sun and planets).  Newtonian physics could only describe the movements of the individual planetary bodies relative to an absolute (Euclidian) space-frame and time reference (x,y,z,t).   But in fact, the planetary bodies move under one another’s simultaneous mutual influence since they are bound up in the gravitational field-flow (gravity does not come from matter, matter is a condensation of the electromagnetic field, inertial spatial concentration of energy that is included in the gravitational field).

 

Ok, with this foundational background that the reader can refer back to, ... there are some simple examples common to our experience that can convey how the behaviours of material entities/organisms are inductively actualized and shaped by the dynamical hostspace they are included in, ... as contrasted with the dynamics of material entities/organisms being understood in terms of THEIR actions and transactions (a standard scenario but one which implies ABSOLUTE motion of the objects/organisms or individual motion relative to an absolute space-frame).

 

Suddenly and all together, we see a collective of entities begin to move in a highly coordinated way.   Must these entities have highly developed faculties for coordinating their action.   Not if they are weathervanes whose behaviours are being actualized and shaped by the dynamics of the hostspace they are included in; i.e. by a gust of wind.

 

Their behaviour, although it IS highly coordinated is not deliberately/intentionally coordinated.  That is, the ‘Law’ of behaviours that orients to independent objects can say nothing about this sort of coordination which is sometimes referred to as the ‘self-organization’ built into nature; i.e. organization where no-one is in charge.

 

This is the nature of organization involved in the inverted ‘V’ formation flying of a flock of wildgeese.   One can feel it also in riding a motorcycle in a group; i.e. each individual is engaging with the common, shared (air-)space in which everyone is included, the inner-outer engagements perturbing that common space (one can imagine an invisible inverted ‘V’ zone of turbulence associating with each biker).  As the bikes scatter and gather, the individuals will note that there are some spatial-relational patterns formed by the bikes where their leathers stop flapping and they need less than usual ‘throttle’ to go a particular speed.   This represents a resonance between their collective dynamic and the dynamical hostspace in which they are included and it allows them, like the wildgeese, to go farther and faster for less expenditure of energy than they could ever do in solo mode.   

 

There is no ‘magic’ here, the same principles are in operation as in the dynamics of sailboats within the hydraulic regime of the ocean; i.e. the sailboat perturbs the water as its bow pushes into the water, generating a bow wave and its stern also perturbs the water by ‘leaving a hole’ as it moves forward, generating a stern wave.   At a certain speed called the ‘hull speed’, the bow wave and the stern wave interfere with one another so that the sailboat rides along continuously within the trough formed between the bow wave and the stern wave.   The hull speed in knots is given by 1.34 times the square root of the lengthe of the hull below the water line measured in feet.   Thus a 16 foot boat would have a hull speed of 4 (square root of 16) times 1.34 = 5.36 knots.   The speed goes up with the length of the boat because longer wavelengths in water travel faster; i.e. the bigger the trough of the wave the boat can ride along in, the faster the boat will go because the longer wave length propagates faster in water.

 

There are some obvious comparisons to ‘life’ and our response to it in this example.   As a sailboat type person, we can attune to the resonances in our engagement with the hostspace dynamic we are included in, and allow these to inductively actualize and shape our behaviour.   As a powerboat type person, we can focus strictly on the destination we want to expeditiously get to, and so develop our own source of power to push us through the dynamical hostspace we are included in, without attuning to it, without allowing it to inductively actualize and shape our behaviour.  What we lose in this power boat mode, is the opportunity for ‘self-organization’ as in natural communities and ecosystems, allowing the dynamics of the hostspace we are included in, to orchestrate our individual and collective behaviour. (e.g. when we ‘drive friendly’ on a crowded freeway, we are in sailboat mode where we allow our individual and collective behaviour to be inductively actualized and shaped by the dynamics of the freeway flowspace we are included in.  We essentially put our individual behaviour in the service of sustaining a harmonious spatial-relational flow dynamic).

 

For those of us who ‘power-boat’ our way through life, who do not attune to the dynamic of the hostspace we are included in, but ignore it and let our attainment of our destination take precedence, we cast aside the opportunity for mutual self-organization of our community/collective, and the organization must come instead from our deliberate acts, and the coordination of the community must come from our deliberate attempts at coordination.  The ‘Law’ in this case IS the law that pertains to ‘independent objects’ which assumes no participation of space (absolute motion rather than relative motion).

 

So for those who espouse a ‘power boat ethic’ social organization must be deliberately managed and this leads to a control hierarchy headed up by a paternal leader who calls the shots, ... much as in the monotheist religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

 

Buddhism is an atheist (no paternalist controllers imposing the ‘Law’ on everyone) belief system which depends upon a self-organizing brotherhood for its social organization, in the manner of the wildgeese and friendly freeway drivers, where each person is uniquely situated within the hostspace dynamic and allows their behaviour to be inductively actualized and shaped by the dynamical (brotherhood) community hostspace in which they are uniquely, situationally included.   This is why the ‘Law’ is a personal law and why it is described as the enlightened path since one must become deeply attuned to the one’s unique and personal situational inclusion in the hostspace flow-dynamic aka ‘the tao’.

 

This difference in belief is often missed by Christians in their understanding of Buddhism, as the following commentary from a Buddhist attending a ‘Fraternity of Faith’ meeting indicates;

 

http://www.sangharakshita.org/e-parliament.html

A Christian speaker at the Fraternity of Faiths meeting went a step further than Dr. Mookerjee, asserting that all religions believed in the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, and that apart from the former belief the latter was unthinkable. The Buddhist speaker who followed him had to contradict this statement, declaring that though Buddhism denied the very existence of God its followers have exemplified the spirit of Brotherhood more fully than the adherents of other religions. At the beginning of the speech from which we have already quoted Dr. Mookerjee said, 'Christianity, whose doctrine is love, broke out in a fury of persecution and vengeance even within its own fold. Likewise, Islam, preaching the mercy of God, brandished almost a merciless sword against non-Islamic religions and peoples. Hinduism in India expelled Buddhism and developed into a domineering doctrine'. It is significant that His Excellency could find no similar charge to lay at the atheistic door of the fourth great world religion, Buddhism.

How determined is the attempt which is being made in some quarters to force Buddhism into a doctrinal framework thoroughly repugnant to it was nakedly apparent in the Presidential Address delivered by the Sankaracharya of Puri at the First Session of the Congress. The Buddhist representative's emphatic assertion that Buddhism rejected the idea of God, and exhorted man to depend for deliverance upon himself alone, had apparently upset His Holiness, who spent nearly an hour attempting to prove that Buddhists, even though they professed not to believe in God, really did believe in him, and that atheists and theists were bound for the same goal.

It is time that Buddhists stopped allowing people of other religions to tell them what they 'really' believe. Buddhists do not believe in God, neither do they believe that all religious doctrines are true. If the organisers of Parliaments of Religions and Fraternities of Faiths make such beliefs their 'common platform' then it is obvious that such a platform is not broad enough to accommodate the followers of atheistic religions. Buddhists should be courageous enough to refuse to participate in any inter-religious meeting which endeavours to drag down the Dhamma of the Enlightened One into the morass of theistic superstition.

 * * *

.  

Now, this opens up an obvious question (i.e. what did the Jesus intend?) in view of all of the commonalities in the teachings of the Buddha and in the teachings of Jesus, a sampling of which were compared in the above table, a sampling which suggests that the ‘Law’ is not something to be applied generally to everyone as a means of assessing the goodness of their behaviour, since their situational inclusion within the common dynamical hostspace is unique and particular, and they must learn how to attune in an inner-outer sense and to let their behaviour be actualized and shaped by the dynamic of the hostspace so as to serve the sustaining of harmony on a continuing basis.   In the teaching of the Buddha, ‘there is no path to harmony, harmony is the path’.

 

The ‘Law’ or ‘Dharma’ or ‘Truth’ in the teaching of the Buddha is thus a personal Law which puts the individual in sailboat mode wherein simultaneous, mutual self-organizing harmony of the collective (‘true community harmony’) is possible.

 

For those of the powerboat mode who govern themselves according to a general Law that is prescribed for ‘independent objects/organisms’ whose motive power is sourced from their self-center (absolutism) and whose direction/behaviour is driven by their private inner purpose (‘self-interest’), the only form of ‘cooperation’ possible is by deliberate asserting by the individual.  Cooperation, as in a ‘community dynamic’  therefore becomes deliberately/mechanically constructed, architected, planned, constructed in power boat mode, so that the ‘ends’ justifies the ‘means’ (the desired future result ---- ‘the ends’, ... reaches back from the future (the abstract vision) to define the behaviours needed to get there --- ‘the means’).   By this ‘power boat’ approach to social organization, we get the Orwellian paradoxes, ‘war is peace’ (the ends of peace justify war as the means) contrary to the teaching of the Buddha ‘there is no path to harmony, harmony is the path’.  The other Orwellian paradoxes equally follow from this power boat mode of social organization, ‘slavery is freedom’ --- the individual commits to submission to central authority in order to preserve and protect his ‘freedom’, ... and ‘ignorance is strength’ --- those who follow rules blindly, as soldiers follow their commanding officer, get to share in the power to will and to command; e.g. as Thomas Mann says in Mario and the Magician addressing the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s;

 

“The capacity for self-surrender, he said, for becoming a tool, for the most unconditional and utter self-abnegation, was but the reverse side of that other power to will and to command.  Commanding and obeying formed together one single principle, one indissoluble unity; he who knew how to obey knew also how to command, and conversely; the one idea was comprehended in the other, as people and leader were comprehended in one another.”

 

One might ask, ‘who’ or ‘what’ is this sailboat mode self-organizing for, if it is not for man?  Why should we formulate ‘Law’ that is general when it imposes this power boat mode of organization on our human collectives?   It would seem, nevertheless, the naturally evolving human community most often makes use of the sailboat mode of organization where the individual allows his behaviour to be inductively actualized and shaped by the dynamic of the host flow-space he is uniquely, situationally included in, in pursuit of cultivating and sustaining inner-outer dynamical balance and harmony.   But as the pioneering phase of community is subsumed by urbanization, there seems to be a shift to the ‘deliberate coordination’ or ‘power boat’ mode of organizing which is purely assertive-constructive and which elicits hierarchical control structures.

 

In our community at large, then, we have a mixture of people who embrace the sailboat mode of organization and those who embrace the powerboat mode of organization.  We have those who understand ‘Law’ to be personal as in the Dharma so that it comprehends the individual’s unique situational inclusion in a common hostspace flow-dynamic wherein we move under one another’s simultaneous mutual influence (‘the tao’), and we have those who understand ‘Law’ to be general and to apply to the behaviour of each individual out of the context of his unique situational inclusion within a common mutually influencing dynamical hostspace (an implied understanding of the world dynamic that ignores the inductive behaviour-shaping role of the hostspace that individuals are uniquely situationally included in).

 

As mentioned above, a collective of objects/organisms can suddenly move together in concert, like a flock of birds or a school of fish.   Such individual and collective behaviour can be inductively actualized and shaped in the manner that a bevy of weathervanes affixed to the masts of sailboats in a marina are actualized (plotting the arrow positions on a map of the marina area would give the shape of the wind-flow lines in the passage of the wind through the marina area).   This space induced organization is a general mode of organization in nature, when the lion’s scent arrives on the wind, the behaviours of those animals that are prey to lions are actualized and shaped, ... organizing their collective behaviour in a highly coherent and coordinated way, a coordination that is entirely unintentional and non-deliberate on their part.  When the gunslinger comes to town, the saloon becomes emptier than usual.   The individuals involved did not deliberately ‘coordinate their behaviour’ yet their behaviour is highly coordinated/organized.

 

So, how do we account for this high degree of organization with a model or ‘Law’ that pertains to organisms that are ‘independent’ and whose behaviours are seen as ‘independent’ and self-authored, powered by their internal components (biochemistry, biophysics) and driven/directed by their notional ‘inner purpose’?

 

There is no way to account for this space-induced organization of collectives/communities by the forward asserting dynamics of a collection of independent objects/organisms.  The object paradigm (power boat) model is inherently inadequate for such an accounting.

 

In order to proceed in this discussion on ‘the application of ‘Law’’, there is a need to deepen our understanding of ‘what is wrong with making independent objects/organisms foundational in our modeling of how things organize.’

 

 

The problem with the notion of an (independent) object.

 

 

Once we ‘bestow objecthood’ on some material body, organism or system, we are then free to conceive of it having the capacity for independent behaviour, behaviour that fully and solely belongs to the object/organism.  

 

There is a fallacy in this that has been described in the systems sciences (Russell Ackoff) and in linguistics (George Lakeoff, Noam Chomsky, Moonhawk).  Ackoff uses the example of the ‘university’ to illustrate.   Within the flowing hostspace of a community, dynamical patterns begin to evolve like storms in the dynamical flow-space of the atmosphere, ... These behavioural patterns are inductively actualized and shaped by the dynamics of the hostspace pulling on ‘behavioural potentials’ within the hostspace.  What we bestow objecthood and call ‘a university’ then, rather than being a ‘thing’ in its own right, is a ‘dynamical form of organization  (DFO) like a standing wave in the turbulent water-flow and generations of teachers and students will flow through it.   It is inherently an included form within the community hostspace dynamic.   As Ackoff points out, it is possible to inquire into the nature of the university ‘analytically’ by ‘in-and-back-out-again’ inquiry and in so doing we discover that a university has internal structures, departments, faculties and internal processes, and after we look inside of the university and label the parts and processes and understand how they all work together, there is the impression that the university is a ‘thing in itself’ (‘Ding an sich’) that is capable of its own behaviour.  In other words, we can understand the university in the ‘power boat’ terms of an independent object capable of its own internally sourced and driven assertibe behaviour.   But as Ackoff points out, this would be a very incomplete understanding of a university, since its behaviour is inductively being actualized and shaped by the dynamical community hostspace it is included in.  Therefore the inquiry that is FIRST needed is ‘out-and-back-in-again’ inquiry that seeks to understand in sailboat mode terms the inner-outer attuned engagement of the university with the dynamical community hostspace, and the meaning of the university and its internal components, rather than embodying meaning in-their-own-independent-right, take on meaning relative to the dynamical community hostspace they are included in.

 

The natural self-organizing origins of the university suggest that it is decidedly not an independent object that is internally powered and driven, but that it is a dynamical form of organization included within the dynamical hostspace of the community.   If the university ‘dies’, nothing is lost other than a dynamical form of organization; i.e. the teachers, the students, the buildings are all continue on within new dynamical forms of organization (e.g. similarly when the human organism ‘dies’, nothing is lost but a dynamical form of organization, the enzymes that were a moment ago supporting cell-life and maintaining body structure are the next moment, without skipping a beat, producing alcohols and working within some new dynamical forms of organization).

 

The point is that analytical inquiry and the bestowing of objecthood work hand and glove together to break the dynamical form of organization out of its inductive behaviour-actualizing/shaping coupling with the dynamic of the hostspace it is included in, and re-render it in the power boat terms of an independently behaving object that is fully responsible for its own ‘internally driven and directed’ behaviour.

 

Of course, the university chancellor, president and faculty could start believing that they are an independent object/system with their own internally driven and directed behaviour, making ‘their own plans’ for their own ‘desired future’ out of the context of their behaviour having been inductively actualized and shaped by the dynamical community hostspace in which case the university’s sailboat style coupling to the dynamical community hostspace it is included in, would begin to collapse as the university took on a ‘powerboat’ persona, analogous to the individual who chooses to ignore attuning to the hostspace dynamic he is included in and to drive directly to his (self-interest defined) destination.

 

 

 

Here is the problem.

 

The inductive behaviour-actualizing/shaping relationship between the entity/organism and the dynamical hostspace it is included in, is INVISIBLE and available ONLY TO OUR INTUITION.   The rational view keys only to what ‘actually happens’, ‘what visibly and manifestly happens’ which is all in terms of ‘things’ and ‘what they do’.   The laws of physics will inform us on the behaviour of the weathervane and how it functions and how an applied force here will turn it like this etc. etc., ... but there is nothing in this understanding of objects and their behaviour (weathervanes and their behaviour) that will give us an understanding of how a community of them will, in a highly coordinated manner, co-form an ‘S’ shape in the marina hostspace they are included in.   Law that applies to individual objects and their behaviour, is not adequate to address the highly coordinated behaviour of collectives that is unintentional, that is not driven from out of the center or interior of the object.

 

Out of this ‘hole’ in the theory or ‘Law’ of behaviour based on individuals comes ‘conspiracy theory’.

 

When the person with smelly feet or bad breath comes into the room, a highly coordinated collective behaviour is triggered wherein a multiplicity of people withdraw from the space occupied by the ‘smelly one’.   Upon witnessing this withdrawal, the ‘smelly one’ may think that there is a conspiracy against him; i.e. that the people in the room intentionally coordinated their actions to shun him (he may forget about his smelliness) but in fact this coordination of collective behaviour may well be of the same nature as the highly coordinated behaviour of the sailboat weathervane collective in the marina.

 

The first time the collective withdrawal occurs, the individuals that withdraw operate in sailboat mode, by allowing their behaviour to be inductively actualized by the dynamical hostspace they are included in (by the dynamical flow of smelly air).  But the second time round, they may recognize the smelly one and they may all deliberately choose to avoid him (they may operate in power mode, to get them to a desired destination far from the smelly one)..   If he has meanwhile ‘cleaned up his act’ and the collective continues to withdraw upon his entry, ... then he can rightfully assess that their collective action is deliberate avoidance or groupthink.   They are certainly not in attunement mode where they allow their behaviour to be inductively shaped in the service of sustaining inner-outer dynamical balance and harmony.  They are instead ‘in-their-heads’ and one whispered ‘here comes that guy again’, can trigger a mass exodus.

 

All we know for sure in this case is in terms of the objects/organisms in the collective and ‘what they do’.  We can never get inside the experience of another to determine whether they are in sailboat mode attuning to the dynamical hostspace they are included in or in power boat mode where they are driving their behaviour on the basis of seeking to attain some desired future or destination.

 

Certain people will only trust ‘what they know for sure’ and this means that they will assume that the highly coordinated behaviour of a collective of humans is deliberate.  There is no way of proving otherwise.

 

Thus, one American may assume that the highly coordinated collection of incidents of violence directed against the US are part of a deliberately coordinated ‘let’s bring down the US’ conspiracy, while another American may assume that the collection of incidents involving violence directed against the US are induced by the ‘smelly feet’ of US foreign policy. 

 

To complicate matters, some of those who claim responsibility for the violence directed against the US may claim that it is indeed a ‘let’s get the US’ conspiracy even if it is not, in order to bring about a ‘fight to the death’ conflict.  For, if the US is convinced that it is a ‘let’s get the US’ conspiracy, then it matters not a whit whether or not the US ‘cleans up’ its foreign policy act.

 

There is no way of telling for sure (one can only use one’s intuition) as to whether the apparent coordination is inductively actualized by the dynamical hostspace, the malevolent wind blowing out of Washington that turns all the weathervanes in a region that the US seeks to control into a polar opposition against the wind, ... a situation that could be moderated by moderating the ill wind that blows out of Washington, ... or whether the coordination is deliberate and coming from the collection of individuals that deliberately polarize against the US.    As in the ‘smelly one’ example, initially the coordination could be hostspace induced but charges of conspiracy by the US reinforced by claims of conspiracy by the opposition, could convert the basis of the coordination from hostspace-induced to deliberate conspiracy by the group.

 

The factual information in terms of the collective of players and what they do is innately insufficient to determine for sure whether the coordination is hostspace-induced or deliberately conspired; i.e. ‘intuition’ is required to make such an assessment.

 

The following example, in terms of conflicting views in the US Senate during a debate on non-confidence in Donald Rumsfeld exposes the dilemma.  The following is a transcript from the September 6, 2006 Senate proceedings wherein Senator Conryn (Texas) uses a collection of events dating from the 1979 Iran Revolution (taking of hostages at the US Embassy in Tehran) through 9/11 to the present, to make the case that these constitute a deliberate coordinated conspiracy or ‘undeclared war’ on the part of Muslims to ‘bring down the United States’.   Senator Conryn takes this conspiracy as a ‘given’ and makes it a cornerstone of his argument, focusing the body of his argument therefore, how are we going to fight off this deliberately coordinated conspiracy.  Of course, once this conspiracy assumption is accepted, there is no place to discuss the backing off of US smelly-feet foreign policy wherein the collection of events involving violence directed at the US are hostspace induced by the ‘ill winds’ blowing out to the Middle East from Washington., since that possibility is OCCLUDED by the deliberately coordinated conspiracy assumption.   Following Conryn’s statement, there is a brief background to the Tehran hostage-taking that strongly suggests, intuitively (it cannot be known for certain) that the Tehran incident is not part of a deliberate conspiracy but was hostspace induced, by US smelly foreign policy.

 

 The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia is recognized.

   Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, at this time, we seek the benefit of the comments of the Senator from Texas.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas is recognized.

   Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, listening to the comments of our friends across the aisle, you would think this is more about an election than it is about winning a war. The problem is not so much in the eyes of the critics or the Islamic extremists who attacked the United States time and time again, until we finally woke up on September 11, 2001, and realized we were at war. The problem is not them; the problem is us. It is America. It is America's leaders. We are the problem.

   This is more important than any party. This is more important than any election. This is more important than any single person. This is about whether we will win this war that was declared against the United States that we finally woke up and realized was going on, on September 11. It dates back as long ago as 1979, when the U.S. embassy in Tehran was overcome and for 444 days American citizens were held captive by Islamic militants.

   Our friends on the other side of the aisle would like to claim that this is all about Iraq and a mistake that was made going into Iraq, and but for that mistake the world would be rosy and we would be at peace. But that is revisionist history.

   The fact is that in 1979, when our embassy was captured and Americans were kidnapped in Tehran, and in 1983, when 241 marines were killed in Beirut by Hezbollah, the same terrorist organization that has been lobbing Katyusha rockets, supplied by Iran through Syria, into Israel--yes, this is the same enemy that continued to attack American embassies in Africa in 2000, and killed 17 American sailors on the USS Cole. Yes, this is the same enemy that killed almost 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001, in New York City and Washington, DC, and but for the brave actions of a few on Flight 93, perhaps thousands more would have been killed.

   Recently, I attended a speech where the Deputy Secretary of Defense spoke. He asked the question:

   Do you know why it was that these Islamic extremists killed 3,000 people on September 11, 2001? It was because they could not kill 30,000, and because they could not kill 3 million. Is there any doubt in anyone's mind that an ideology that celebrates the murder of innocent civilians in order to accomplish their objective would stop at anything, use any weapon at its disposal to accomplish its ends?

   Mr. President, I disagree with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle that this war is limited to Iraq and that if we were to withdraw our troops precipitously, the world would suddenly be a rosy place and we would live in peace.

   Unfortunately, this debate seems to be more about criticizing those who are prosecuting the war. No, we are not going to be critical of the men and women in uniform, but our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are all too ready to criticize those who command them, the civilian leadership in the Department of Defense and the Commander in Chief. I am not saying they don't have a right to criticize them. I am not saying that they have been perfect and haven't made mistakes. But I think we need to keep our eye on the threat. The threat is not just Iraq, the threat is in Afghanistan, it is in Madrid, it is in Beslan, it is in London. It is a threat driven by an extreme ideology that celebrates the murder of innocent civilians to accomplish its goals. What would be the consequences of doing as our colleagues on the other side of the aisle suggest, leaving before the Iraqi security forces are able to provide security for their fragile and fledgling democracy? It would be the same mistake that we saw occur in Afghanistan. After the Soviet Union was defeated and Afghanistan became a failed state, we saw the rise of the Taliban and saw its partners in al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden.

   Our friends on the other side of the aisle talk about a change in direction, fresh ideas, new direction. Those are campaign slogans. They are not about solving the problem. They are not about beating the enemy, defeating the enemy who declared war on us as far back as 1979.

   I know that our colleagues have been critical. Again, they have every right to be. This is America. We believe in free speech. We believe in people being able to express their views no matter how mistaken, no matter how naive.

   This administration and the Secretary of Defense have been criticized for saying we need to stay the course, we need to keep the faith, that what we are doing in Iraq and what we are doing in trying to fight and defeat this enemy of Islamic extremism is important to the security of this country because if we were to do as some of our friends on the other side of the aisle suggest and leave Iraq before the Iraqis are able to provide basic security, it would become another failed state. And, no, this is not George Bush's Vietnam because after Vietnam, the Vietcong did not follow us here. That is exactly the threat with which we are confronted today.

   The Islamic extremists who have declared war on America and the West will follow us here unless we deal with them on the offensive there. And, yes, every time we seem to talk about the tools that are necessary to win this war, we run into a brick wall of opposition on the other side of the aisle, such as listening to international phone calls between al-Qaida operatives and their confederates here in the United States. Yet our friends on the other side of the aisle said: Foul; the President doesn't have the authority to do that. Only Congress has the authority to do that. So we get into a big food fight about who has the power, who has the authority, not about working together to solve the problem.

   When it comes to the issue of how do we deal with those who have been captured on the battlefield and detained in Guantanamo Bay--sources of important intelligence that have disrupted and deterred terrorist attacks and saved American lives--it seems as if the focus is all too often on what should we be doing to make the detainee's life better rather than what should we be doing to get that intelligence which will allow us to detect, deter, and disrupt terrorist activities.

   Now the world has turned an anxious eye toward Tehran once again, where the same radical ideology has caused them to supply, through Syria, weapons to Hezbollah, a terrorist organization that has killed more Americans than any other in the world, save and except al-Qaida.

   Is there any doubt that if Iran had been able to supply biological, chemical or nuclear weapons to Hezbollah in order to achieve its stated goal of wiping Israel off the map, is there any question that they would have withheld their hand, that they would not have done so?

   I have to say I think this must be a very strange picture to the civilized world, those who actually believe we are serious about fighting this enemy who has declared war against the West and against our way of life and against our values, that instead of focusing together on how do we defeat this enemy who declared war on us, we have somehow turned this into an election-year effort to discredit and vote no confidence for the Secretary of Defense. It is the wrong direction.

   Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle say there is no plan for success and, of course, there is. It is to provide training to the Iraqi security forces so they can provide security, and we can bring our troops home, allow this new Government in Iraq to resolve its differences after 30 years of tyranny, try to work through the sectarian conflicts by creating a coalition government, and then to allow the Iraqi people to enjoy the prosperity so they can see the benefits of self-determination and free and fair elections.

   But our colleagues on the other side of the aisle seem to be long on criticism, long on complaints, and short on plans. They have yet to offer a single concrete idea about what they would do differently to win this war and defeat this enemy. I, as one Senator, would welcome their ideas, if they have ideas, so we can work together to defeat the common enemy because, as I said, this is more important than any election, than any party or any person. This is about the safety and security of our Nation and our hope and dream that the values we represent can be exported--and the blessings of liberty along with it--to other nations that have never known anything but the boot heel of a tyrant.

   I hope our colleagues will reconsider and will not pursue this distraction, will not pursue this unwise and inappropriate vote of no confidence against the Secretary of Defense.

   Mr. President, I yield the floor.

 * * *

 

The collection of events that have involved violence directed against the US have in many cases been responses to political hostspace dynamics, conditioned by the US, that have induced violent behaviours particular to the region and circumstance, directed against the US.   This suggests that the coordination (many regions lining up together against the US) is not deliberate coordination on the part of the violence-doers, but represents behaviour that is being inductively actualized and shaped by the socio-political hostspace dynamic (by ill winds from Washington).   For example, the hostage-taking in Tehran has the following historical background;---  The democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh (1951 – 53) was overthrown by a coup led by US and British intelligence agencies after Mossadegh passed a bill to nationalize Iran’s oil industry (which had been controlled by the British).   The Shah, who was in on the planned coup took over, but was later toppled in 1979 by the Iranian Revolution;

 

“Although the 1979 revolution brought an Islamic republic to power, headed by the clergy and Ayatollah Khomeini, it was the urban poor that sparked the revolution--and the left that played a crucial part in organizing the protests. Ultimately, strikes and workplace occupations by Iran’s workers brought the Shah’s regime to its knees.”

 

The role of British and US intelligence agencies in the coup and the devious tactics used became public later on.  In March 2000 then secretary of state Madeleine Albright stated her regret that Mossadegh was ousted:

 

"The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons. But the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development and it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America."

 

 In the same year, the New York Times published a detailed report about the coup based on CIA documents.

 

There is strong intuitive evidence here that the toppling of the Shah was NOT part of an Islamic conspiracy to bring down the US, though some Islamic extremists may have claimed so (more likely the claims at that time were to ‘stay out of the Middle East’), but was induced by a political-social hostspace dynamic in which ill winds continued to blow out of London and Washington.    That is, there was every indication that the moderating of those humiliating foreign policy winds could improve the situation; i.e. as Madeleine Albright says; “it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America.”

 

There is siimilar intuitive evidence associated with other of the events involving violence against the US that

 

 

Summary of Part I of The Application of the ‘Law’

 

 

There is an innate ambiguity as to whether we understand organization of collectives or ‘community organization’ in terms of the deliberate behaviours of the individuals in the collective or in terms of the manner in which individual and collective behaviours are inductively actualized and shaped by the dynamics of the hostspace they are included in (as in the coordinated behaviour of weathervanes in common air-flow-space). 

 

An associated question arises with respect to the nature of ‘Law’ in natural philosophy and in religion.   Is ‘Law’ general and explicit and for describing the behavior of others?  Or is ‘Law’ personal and uniquely situational as in the ‘Law’ = Dharma = ‘Truth’ of the teachings of the Buddha?   An ambiguity arises in interpreting the intention, in this regard, of the teachings of Jesus since there is more accord between the teaching of Buddha and the teachings of Jesus that suggests that Jesus also intended ‘Law’ to be personal rather than general, though Christian teaching seems to accept that ‘Law’ can be general and explicit rather than personal and situational.  Is there a discrepancy here between Christian teaching and the teaching of Jesus so that the intention of Jesus falls closer to the teaching of Buddha than to the mainstream Christian teaching?

 

Related inquiry into the ambiguity in how we understand collective organizing has been done in the systems sciences (Ackoff) which shows that the ambiguity as to whether organization is causally driven or spatially induced is a general ambiguity that associates with our method of inquiry.  If we inquire in an ‘in-and-back-out-again’ analytical manner, we end up with a view of the system as an independent entity whose behaviour pushes is driven by internal power and directed by notional ‘inner purpose’ (as in the example of a ‘university’).  If, on the other hand, we inquire in an ‘out-and-back-in-again’ inclusional manner, we end up with a view of the system as a dynamical form of organization (DFO) within the dynamical community hostspace it is included in.  The DFO, unlike the independent object (we can use the example of university) is a flow-pattern through which the constituents pass; i.e. generations of teachers and students pass through the ‘university’ seen as a dynamical form of organization within the dynamical community hostspace.  

 

As people capable of both modes of inquiry, were we participants in the university, we could alternatively consider ourselves (a) as constituents of an independent object/organism that was powered from within and which was driven and directed from an inner purpose; i.e. a ‘deliberately’ constructed and operated organization, ... or (b) as dynamical forms of organization inclusionally nesting within a dynamical form of organization which in turn is inclusionally nesting within the dynamical form of organization known as community or habit (it is innately spatial-relational).

 

In the (a) mode of understanding ourselves, we choose what we want to do and we set about making it happen; i.e. we are in ‘powerboat mode’.

 

In the (b) mode of understanding ourselves, we allow our behaviour to be inductively actualized and shaped by the dynamical hostspace we are included in; i.e. we are in ‘sailboat mode’.

 

As participants in a ‘university’, or indeed in any sort of collective, we always have this (a) and (b) choice.

 

When we look out into the dynamical space we are included in, there are many people out there and many coordinated collective actions.   There is no way to know whether the organization of collectives that we see is coming about because of people being in (a) mode or (b) mode since the only tangible evidence we have available is in terms of ‘people’ and ‘what they do’.   If everyone makes themselves scarce when we come into the room, is this highly coordinated behaviour coming from (a) or (b); i.e. if we are ‘smelly’ it could be (b), a spatial-relationally induced organizing of behaviour, but it could equally be (a) a deliberate conspiracy on the part of the collective, perhaps because they’ve been told that we are ‘smelly’.   If I clean up my act and the withdrawal of others when I enter the room ceases, one might guess the organizing of behaviour was spatially induced, however, if there is no change, then one might guess that it is a deliberately coordinated ‘conspiracy’.

 

The example of US Senate discussions was used where these two different assumptions come into conflict.  That is, across the Middle East, in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan, there have been numerous incidence involving violent antipathy towards the US.   Should the apparent coordination of these incidents (barbed arrows in many locations all aimed at the US) be interpreted in the ‘weathervane’ sense of having been inductively actualized by the dynamical hostspace (by ill winds from Washington) or should the apparent coordination of these incidents be interpreted as the deliberately coordinated actions of independent agents acting ouf their free will and driven and directed by their inner purpose (without the inductive influence of the hostspace dynamic).  Certain Senators are making a case for the deliberately coordinated conspiracy although there is intuitive support for the ‘weathervane’ (hostspace-induced) case.

 

As the example of the university administration alternatives indicate, we could live in a world where everyone operates in power-boat mode all of the time, where we make up our minds as to what we want to do and commit our energies to achieving it, ignoring and bulling our way through the accommodating backpressures (receptive/resistive) of the dynamical hostspace we are included in.  Clearly this is not consistent with the ‘Law’ of the Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha, ... but is it consistent with the ‘Law’ of the teachings of Jesus?

 

If the ‘power boat mode’ was all she wrote, then Senator Conryn would be necessarily right in his claims of conspiracy, since all coordination of collectives would then be deliberate and no one would allow their behaviour to be inductively actualized and shaped by the dynamical hostspace they were included in, sailboat style, ... unless they could not avoid it (e.g. the Titanic was in power boat mode but the ice-berg filled hostspace dynamic it was included in, which it should have allowed to inductively shape its behaviour, had the last word).  That is, the power boat mode which resists allowing our behaviour to be inductively actualized and shaped by the dynamical hostspace we are included in can only be a tendency since we are inextricably included within a hostspace dynamic that present to us non-zero accommodating backpressure that can be receptive in places and resistive in others, relative to whatever assertive power we may muster (the sailboat master could strap a huge outboard on his stern to push him directly to his desired destination instead of attuning through tacks and jibes and helm adjustments to the flow he is included in, but in a severe storm, he must, if he and his vessel are to survive, relax his destination orientation and allow his behaviour to be orchestrated by the pursuit of dynamical balance and the sustaining of harmony with the dynamical space he is included in).

 

Within the One-ness of brotherhood, those with the most power may tend towards the ‘power boat’ destination orientation while those with less power may be obliged to seek attunement to the dynamical hostspace they are included in.  When a big power boat passes and leaves a giant wake, the small sailboat owner has no choice (if he is to survive) but to allow his course to change so as to ensure safe passage through the wake.

 

Finally (for Part I), Is ‘Law’ general and explicit and for describing the behavior of others?  Or is ‘Law’ personal and uniquely situational as in the ‘Law’ = Dharma = ‘Truth’ of the teachings of the Buddha?  And, did Jesus have the same intent for conveying an understanding of ‘Law’ as the Buddha, ... or Not?   That is, did Jesus intend to support the general application of ‘Law’ to guide and assess the behaviour of others as in mainstream Christian teaching?

 

 * * *

 

Part II  Language and the ‘Law’

 

This is essentially a supportive footnote to Part I, that briefly explores how the intent of the teaching of Jesus with respect to ‘Law’, had it been the same intent as the teaching of the Buddha, might have been ‘lost in translation’.

 

Clearly there is conflict in the Christian teachers interpretation of the New Testament’s = Greek Scripture’s capture (of doubtful integrity) of the teachings of Jesus.  As has already been mentioned, along with included examples in the table, there is great similarity between the teachings of Buddha and the teachings of Jesus on issues of ‘judgement’ of others, or rather of ‘suspending judgement of others’. For example, regarind the conjoined implications of the following;

 

“In Him the distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free man, male and female, disappear; ye are all one in Jesus Christ.” (Galatians III 28)

 

"Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, "Friend, let me take the speck out of your eye," when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye." (Luke 6:41-42)

 

There is the suggestion, as in the Buddha Dharma, of ‘inclusion’ in a common ‘All’ (the ‘All’ of the dynamical hostspace of nature) and the ‘speck’ in the neighbour’s eye recalls our failure to ‘see’ our own inclusion and interdependent involvement in the dynamics we purport to be ‘going on out there’;

 

"Do not look at the faults of others, or what others have done or not done; observe what you yourself have done and have not done." (Dhammapada 4:7)

He said to them, "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." (John 8:4-7)

 

These teachings of the Buddha and Jesus come to mind re the understanding that Senator Conryn would seek to have prevail.   That is, that one’s own participation in a common hostspace dynamic may be inducing the organized anger directed towards oneself (one’s community) that he claims is jump-started from a deliberate conspiracy on the part of others.

 

While the Buddha Dharma invites one to orient to inner-outer attunement and the sustaining of harmony and balance in the evolving common hostspace of the continuing present, ... Christian teaching in its popular deployment embraces an ‘absolute’, ‘explicit’ generalized ‘Law’ that can be applied to any/all individual, seeing them as independent objects/organisms possessing ‘free will’ who sole-author and are fully responsible for their own behaviour.   Meanwhile the evolving space of the continuing now of the Buddha Dharma implies that behaviour-inducing tensions (karma) that arise in the common evolving hostspace inductively organize our behaviours; i.e. this understanding of the origin of behaviour (which accords with relativity) transcends the notion that behaviour is sole-sourced from within the interior of independent objects/systems/organisms.

 

Thus when all the spears turn and point to the US at the same time, it is not necessarily the case that this coordination is deliberate and starts from the interior of the spearholders, it may be the case that hostspace-induced behaviour is involved here, as in the weathervane example.  If the common flow-space of Nature that we share inclusion in is an energy-field-flow space while our ‘independent beings’ who jumpstart their behaviours from out of their interior is an overly simplified mental model, then the practice of splitting out individuals and THEIR behaviours for assessment relative to absolute/explicit generally applicable ‘Law’ is also to oversimplify what is going on.   The alternative would be to embrace an ethic of seeking dynamical balance and harmony in the continuing present, as in the teachings of the Buddha (otherwise, we find Jean Valjean guilty as charged, though his criminal behaviour of stealing a loaf of bread was inductively shaped by a dynamical hostspace in which he could no longer stand hearing children crying out in hunger while they lived in the midst of plenty.).  The issue is not whether or not this view of causal criminal behaviour is ‘true’ any more than the view of a university as an independent system powered by its internal components and driven and directed by an inner purpose or strategic plan, ‘is true’.   The issue is whether the view of the university as a dynamical form of organization included within the community hostspace dynamic is ‘more true’ (and likewise for an ‘individual’ such as Jean Valjean).   Certainly on the ‘death’ of the university or of the individual Nature loses nothing (everything remains included and nothing is excluded).  It is the dynamical form of organization, that is lost as new dynamical forms of organization draw in what has been let go of by the outgoing dynamical form of organization, but dynamical form is a subjective experience that may not be shared across mice men and microbes though ‘everything is included’ in the overall dynamical hostspace.

 

What is at issue in the interpretations of the teachings of Jesus is the language translations (e.g. there are arguments over the primacy of the Aramaic version of the New Testament over the Greek Scriptures etc. (seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_primacy#Mistranslations  ) and also over the different interpretations implicit in the Aramaic spoken by Jesus which are not conveyable in Greek; e.g. work by Sufi scholar Neil Douglas-Klotz in exploring the deeper layers of meaning that can be enfolded in the Aramaic;

 

 

Unlike Greek, Aramaic does not draw sharp lines between means and ends, or between an inner quality and an outer action. Both are always present. When Jesus refers to the 'kingdom of heaven', this kingdom is always both 'within' and 'among' us. Likewise, 'neighbor' is both inside and outside, as is the 'self' that we are to love to the same degree as our 'neighbor'. Unlike Greek, Aramaic presents a fluid and holistic view of the cosmos. The arbitrary borders found in Greek between 'mind', 'body', and 'spirit' fall away."

 

This difficulty in conveying something as being, at the same time, an inductively actualizing form of organization within a dynamical hostspace AND a dynamical entity that is asserting in its own right, as in Ackoff’s ‘out-and-back-in’ inclusional inquiry that reciprocally complements the ‘in-and-back-out-again’ (analytical) inquiry using the example of ‘the university’, crops up in anthropological studies of many cultures, in the Kabbala, in Alchemy, in the psychology of C.G Jung and is discussed by Mircea Eliade in The Two and the One in the context of The Myth of the Androgyne, the recurring theme that recognized in God there is no more division for God is All and One;

 

“The androgyne is also vouched for by the Gospel of Thomas, which, while not properly a gnostic work, testifies to the mystical climate of early Christianity. .. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus said to the disciples;

 

 ‘And when you make the inner as the outer, and the outer as the inner, and the upper as the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one so that the male shall not be male and the female (shall not) be female, then shall you enter (the Kingdom).”

 

Other writings contain similar passages on the reunion of the sexes as an image of the Kingdom.  When asked at what moment the Kingdom would come, the Lord himself replied;

 “When the two shall be one, the outside like the inside, the male with the female neither male nor female. (Second Epistle of Clement).

...

 

Hermes Trismegistus reveals to Asclepius that ‘God has no name, or rather he has all names since he at once One and All’. Infinitely rich with the fertility of both sexes, he is continually bringing to birth all those things that he planned to create. ‘What, you say that God has both sexes, Trismegistus?’  ‘Yes, Asclepius, and not God alone but all things animal and vegetable.’

 

 

The point here, to which Eliade devotes an entire book, is that ‘this universal bisexuality as a model and principle of all existence’ which crops up everywhere ‘not only in the Mediterranean world of the ancient Near-East, but in a number of other exotic and archaic cultures, can only be explained by the fact that it offers a satisfactory picture of divinity, in other words of the ultimate reality, as an indivisible totality’.  The myth of the androgyne implies that ‘perfection and therefore Being ultimately consists of a unity-totality.   Everything that exists must therefore be a totality, carrying the coincidentia oppositorum to all levels and applying it to all concepts.’.  

 

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Relativity and quantum physics have brought scientists back to this simultaneous inner and outer reciprocal-complementary dynamics.  Matter itself as Schroedinger observes is ‘schaumkommen’ or ‘appearances’ since the basic ‘particle’ in quantum wave dynamics is radial inner-outer resonance (energy-field-flow).  Niels Bohr ("Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think." ) chose the yin/yang symbol for his coat-of-arms and the motto Contraria sunt complementa  (opposites are complementary).

 

The problem of representing a relative or quantum reality in words is that ‘objects’ will not longer do the trick since matter is now a local concentration within the ‘All’ of the energy-field-flow-space and everything is in a continuous flux or spatial-relational transformation.   What we call ‘objects’ are being dissolved in the energy-field-flow-space they are included in, and new objects are precipitating and others are undergoing accretion etc.  

 

This is essentially what has been described in the discussion on understanding ‘the university’ in the context of a dynamical form of organization that is being continuously inductively actualized and shaped by the dynamical hostspace in which it is included.   This is a general model that goes beyond simple objecthood by being fully spatial-relational. The ‘androgynous’ aspect is that the dynamical hostspace it is included in and which is inductively actualizing and shaping its behaviour (DFOs are made solely of spatial-relational behaviour) is the outside-inward sucking female aspect that is the mother that is giving it form, while the complementary reciprocal inside-outward-burgeoning assertive potentials are its male aspect. 
 
Hence Niels Bohr’s Contraria sunt complementa, not to mention the Gospel of Thomas and the union of opposites in Buddhism;  “the union of emptiness and form, nirvana and samsara, wisdom and compassion. The female aspect stands for emptiness, nirvana, and wisdom, as we saw in Chapter 22, where insubstantiality was represented in the form of the goddesses Nairatmya and Vajravarahi. The male aspect stands for form (phenomenal appearance), samsara, and compassion (skillful means).
 

Our ordinary language in terms of physical things does not really lend itself to the type of issues that associate with simultaneous ‘union-of-opposites’ and the difference between ‘objects/organisms and their self-initiated behaviours’ versus dynamical forms of organization that are included in the overall dynamical hostspace of Nature, and/or the associated issue of whether the organization of a collective is deliberately constructed or inductively actualized by the dynamical hostspace it is included in (as was at issue in the US Senate non-confidence in Rumsfeld debate).

 

This exposure to ‘lost-in-translation’ was handled in the preservation of the teachings of the Buddha by building an understanding of the needed two levels of language into the teachings themselves.  Thus the apparent internal conflict in conveying an understanding of ‘Law’ in Christian teaching (is ‘Law’ personal or is it general and appropriate for assessing and addressing the behaviours of others?) may have been bypassed in Buddha Dharma in the manner in which language was used transport the teachings of the Buddha over the centuries.  That the teachings of Buddha were not ‘language sensitive’ is an accepted fact as the following comments indicate;

 

2. EMBRACING DIALECTS

One of the most significant aspects of Buddhism is that it embraced dialects without any hesitation as fit vehicles for its scriptures. Gautama Buddha, thus, inaugurated a linguistic revolution. This position of Gautama Buddha was against the tradition of holding Sanskrit as the most sacred, if not the only sacred language, for Hindu Scriptures. Early Buddhist scriptures were all written in Pali, perhaps the dialect spoken by Gautama Buddha himself. Although Pali, thus, acquired an important place in Buddhism, the Buddhist monks and scholars were encouraged to use the dialects and languages of the people whom they were trying to lead to the Buddha Marga.

3. PALI AND BUDDHISM

Pali is considered to be one of the dialects of Middle Indo-Aryan. It appears that the Pali used in early Buddhist Scriptures, followed in Theravada Buddhism practiced in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, has many features common to other Indo-Aryan dialects as well. So, some scholars consider Pali to be a mixed language, rather than a distinct dialect. Some others consider it as the Avanti dialect spoken in Ujjain. Some consider Pali to be only a literary language, at least after it was used extensively in Buddhist Scriptures well beyond India. Over the centuries, Buddha's command that the Buddhist monks use the colloquial language of the people to communicate his teachings is not wholly practiced. In Buddhism Pali now occupies the position given to Sanskrit in Vedic Hinduism.

Although Pali is thus "frozen" in some sense in the philosophical discourses of Theravada Buddhism, Buddhist monks, in countries where Buddhism became the dominant majority religion, continuously adopted Pali terms for names, places, and processes and other words and changed their pronunciation and spelling according to the genius of their languages. The adaptations were not looked down upon, nor was it claimed that the sacredness of the Buddhist concepts was lost because of translation or adaptation.

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How were the teachings of the Buddha, which had the job of conveying many of the same subtle concepts as the teachings of Jesus, indemnified against loss-in-translation by their capture in different languages with different capacities for conveying meaning?  The following excerpt from an article on this topic presents the basics of the two-tiered system used to avoid such loss;

 

http://www.buddhadasa.com/naturaltruth/twolanguage1.html

 

(Note: ‘Dhamma’ is ‘Dharma’ in Pali (Dharma is Sanskrit copied in English; i.e. they are the same meaning)

It is essential always to interpret the Buddha's teaching in terms of Dhamma language as well as in terms of everyday language. Both meanings must be considered. Please take careful note of the following passages:

Appamatto ubho atthe adhiganhati pandito
Ditthe dhamma ca yo attho, yo ca'ttho saparayiko.

Atthabhisamayadhiro pan d ito ti pavuccati.

The wise and heedful person is familiar with both modes of speaking: the meaning seen by ordinary people and the meaning which they can't understand. One who is fluent in the various modes of speaking is a wise person.

This is a general principle to be applied when studying Dhamma, whether at a high or low level. It is also applicable in ordinary spoken language. The passages cited contain the unambiguous expression "ubho atthe," that is "both meaning" or "both modes of speaking." A discerning person must consider both meanings or modes of speaking and not just one of them alone. Anyone who, for instance, considers only the ordinary everyday meaning and ignores the other meaning, the meaning in terms of Dhamma language, cannot be called a wise or discerning person. As the Buddha said, a discerning person is one who is able to take into consideration both modes of speaking. It behoves us, then to be careful and to study diligently in order to acquire this ability to take into account both possible interpretations, the one in terms of everyday language and the other in terms of Dhamma language.

“We shall now consider some examples of what I mean. Each of the following words will be explained according to both everyday language and Dhamma language. This should enable you to clearly understand both modes of expression.

BUDDHA

The first example is the word "Buddha." As you know, the word "Buddha" in everyday language refers to the historical Enlightened Being, Gotama Buddha. It refers to a physical man of flesh and bone who was born in India over two thousand years ago, died, and was cremated. This is the meaning of the word "Buddha" in everyday language.

Considered in terms of Dhamma language, however, the word "Buddha" refers to the Truth which the historical Buddha realized and taught, namely the Dhamma itself. The Buddha said:

One who see the Dhamma sees the Tathagata. (a word the Buddha often used to refer to himself) One who see the Tathagata sees the Dhamma. One who sees not the Dhamma, though grasping at the robe of the Tathagata, cannot be said to have seen the Tathagata.

Now, the Dhamma is something intangible. It is not something physical, certainly not flesh and bones. Yet the Buddha said it is one and the same as the Enlightened One. "One who sees the Dhamma sees the Tathagata." Anyone who fails to see the Dhamma cannot be said to have seen the Enlightened One. So in Dhamma language, the Buddha is one and the same as that Truth by virtue of which he became the Buddha, and anyone who sees that Truth can be said to have seen the true Buddha. To see just his physical body would not be to see the Buddha at all and would bring no real benefit.

During the Buddha's lifetime, the majority of people were unfavorably disposed towards him. Some abused him and even did him physical harm. They didn't understand him because what they saw was only his physical body, the outer shell, the Buddha of everyday language. The real Buddha, the Buddha of Dhamma language, is the Truth in his mind, knowing which the man because "Buddha." When he said, "Whoever sees the Truth see me. Whoever sees me sees the Truth," he was speaking Dhamma language.

Again, the Buddha said, "The Dhamma and the Vinaya (Discipline), which I have proclaimed and have demonstrated, these shall be your teacher when I have passed away." Thus the real Buddha has not passed away, has not ceased to exist. What ceased to exist was just the physical body, the outer shell. The real Teacher, that is, the Dhamma-Vinaya, is still with us. This is the meaning of the word "Buddha" in Dhamma language. The "Buddha" of Dhamma language is the Dhamma itself, which made him Buddha.

DHAMMA

The second word to consider is "Dhamma" (Dharma in Sanskrit). At the childish level of everyday language, the word is understood as referring to the actual books that contain the scriptures, the "Dhamma" in the bookcase. Or it may be understood as referring to the spoken word used in expounding the Teaching. This is the meaning of the word "Dhamma" in everyday language., the language of deluded people who has not yet seen the true Dhamma.

In term of Dhamma language, the Dhamma is one and the same as the Enlightened One. "One who see the Dhamma sees the Tathagata. One who sees the Tathagata see the Dhamma." This is the real Dhamma. In the original Pali language, the word "Dhamma" was used to refer to all of the intricate and involved things that go to make up what we call Nature. Time will not permit us to discuss this point in detail here, so we shall mention just the main points. The word "Dhamma" embraces:

1. Nature itself;
2. The law of Nature;
3. The duty of each human being to act in accordance with the Law of Nature;
4. The benefits to be derived from this acting in accordance with the Law of Nature.

This is the wide range of meaning covered by the word "Dhamma." It does not refer simply to books, palm-leaf manuscripts, or the voices of preachers. The word "Dhamma," as used in Dhamma language, refers to non-material things. Dhamma is all-embracing; it is profound; it includes all things, some difficult to understand and some not so difficult.

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This two-tiered method of conveying the subtle ideas of religious teaching such as ‘union-of-opposites’ parallels the problem of conveying two meaning of ‘university’ as discussed earlier.  The one meaning is the everyday physical meaning in terms of the visible tangible structures, the teachers, the students.  But the higher level meaning of ‘university’ is as a dynamical form of organization inductively actualized and shaped by the dynamical community hostspace that it is included in, that the tangible elements flow through, and it is not a visible, picturable thing (it is a continuing union-of-opposites).

 

Summary of Part II of The Application of the ‘Law’

 

Part I of The Application of the ‘Law’ pointed out that there are many similarities between the teachings of the Buddha and the teachings of Jesus and that these similarities point to a view of ‘Law’ that is personal and not ‘general’ and ‘explicit’ such that the ‘Law’ can be used to assess and address the behaviour of others.  Also explored was an example of the split between people’s understanding of a common experience which exposes alternative ways in which we can understand collective organization, either by deliberate forward construction or by the inductive influence of the dynamical hostspace, and the fact that the hard data is innately lacking to prove which is ‘most true’ in any particular case.  This ambiguity was mapped to the issue of whether we found our understanding of reality on the basis of ‘independent objects/organisms’ and their ‘independent object/organism behaviours’, or whether we ground our understanding of reality in terms of dynamical forms of organization (DFOs) inductively shaping up within the dynamical hostspace they are included in.  Conceiving of ‘Law’ in explicit terms for general application is consistent with the object based world view (the ‘object paradigm’) while conceiving of law in the Dharma terms of the teachings of Buddha is consistent with the dynamical form of organization of ‘union-of-opposites’ view of the world.  The ‘bottom line’ is that there is a strong suggestion that the teachings of Jesus mirror the teachings of the Buddha with respect to seeing the ‘Law’ as personal ‘truth’ based on natural experience, even though the common Christian teaching is to conceive of ‘Law’ in explicit terms amenable to general application.

 

Part II of The Application of the ‘Law’ ;i.e. Language and the ‘Law’ explores how the intent of the teachings of Jesus with respect to the ‘Law’ that mirror the teachings of the Buddha, as is strongly suggested, might have been ‘lost in translation’.   What is suggested is that the teachings of the Buddha in themselves included a two-tiered language schema that ‘instructs’ the reader how to interpret the teachings as captured in language; i.e. there is explicit instruction that the language cannot be interpreted literally since the language used is nominally ‘everyday language’ in terms of physical objects.   The second tier language is the Dharma language which has the listener interpret the words in the sense of ‘flow’ (the word Buddha has the first tier meaning of the physical man while the word Buddha has a second tier Dharma meaning in the sense of the Truth that came to the Buddha and that he shared).  However one rates the two-tiered language capture of the teachings of the Buddha relative to the one tier let-the-Christian-scholars-and-priests-argue-it-out capture of the teachings of Jesus, ... what emerges clearly is that there is no doubt left to the reader of the teachings of the Buddha that the ‘Law’ is a personal law (as is also alluded to in Galations III of the New Testament).  Whereas, in the teachings of Jesus that mirror the teachings of the Buddha, there is a consistent implication that the ‘Law’ is personal, for our guidance on the way to enlightenment or ‘faith’, and that we cannot use it in an explicit, generalized form for assessing and addressing the behaviours of others.  So what comes out of the interpretations of the New Testament (which are still being argued over as to what has been ‘lost in translation’ is that there is a radical inconsistency between the mainstream Christian teachings (e.g. as to the nature and application of the ‘Law’) and what one would take to be the teachings of Jesus in their mirroring of the teachings of the Buddha (i.e. that the ‘Law’ is for personal guidance).

 

What does it matter anyway?

 

As explored in the example of the US Senate proceedings, our two different notions of ‘Law’ would have one group of people applying explicit law to judge others on the merits of their own behaviour seen as ‘independent’ and jumpstarted from their internal free will as driven and directed by their inner purpose that they are 100% responsible for.   This view fails to acknowledge that man, and all objects, are dynamical forms of organization (union-of-opposites) whose behaviours are inductively actualized and shaped by the dynamical hostspace they are uniquely, situationally included in (the reason why ‘Law’ must be personal); i.e. in other words that there is one brotherhood of man, the “all are one in Jesus Christ” just as “all are one in the Buddha Dharma”, .. so that as we as brothers move forward so must we as brothers accommodate our forward movement.  This is hardly realized when we rigidly hold out for achieving our private self-interest driven destinations.   If we are one brotherhood bound together in a continuing inner-outer balance seeking dynamic, then it follows that we must concede that the behaviours of our brothers in the Middle East, for example, reflect back to us our own behaviours and that they are not exclusively theirs.

 

This difference in how we conceive of the ‘Law’ and its application, therefore, maps directly into the split whereby we see others as deliberately coordinating polarized behaviours against us, or whether we understand their behaviours as being inductively actualized and shaped by the dynamical hostspace we all share inclusion in, an energy-field-flowspace in which some insensitive ill winds contributed by us may be bringing their spears around in a highly coordinated way to point at us, in the manner of the bevy of weathervanes in a marina responding as a group, but without deliberate coordination, to a windflow in the dynamical hostspace that they share inclusion in.

 

If we want to better understand the source of this split in views, we may want to question the intention in the teachings of Jesus in regard to how he conceived of the ‘lLaw’ and its application and if it does mirror the intention in the teachings of the Buddha and therefore, if there is not a contradiction in this regard between popular Christian teachings and the INTENDED teachings of Jesus.

 

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