I was scrolling through the timeline on one of my social media, and came across the following:
We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel; But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends.
We turn clay to make a vessel; But it is in the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.
We pierce doors and windows to make a house: But it is in these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends.
Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not. (chap. 11 tr. Waley)The above quotation was shared by one of our admins. It spoke to me in its paradoxically silent way.
I’ve been contemplating the recent lull and silence, not just here in our blog, but there is subtle and pervasive uneventfulness in the air. This is the domain of the Black Swan principle (N. N. Taleb), and in my personal world, though it took 34 years (since 1978) to happen, on September 23 2012, a sublimation and concrescence occurred, based on the very principle of the Black Swan. Nothing needs to be explained (it is impossible to explain anyway, which is apropos), because that very non-explanation is the world of the Lost Horizon, the world of uneventfulness, the world in which the unsaid and unseen broaches the forefront into pure Presence.
As an aside, Dark Energy and Dark Matter from cosmology are non-dual. The former pulls apart (perhaps the very hypostasis of entropy), the latter glues together, simply put, but these two things are not in conflict, as nothing conflicts in the Cosmos, they’re aspects of the Cosmic dance of perfect harmony. Both are dynamic aspects of Cosmic elements and consciousness. And even if in some future date the twofold dynamic are shown to be as insubstantial as the hypothetical, luminiferous aether of the 19th century, it does not matter (so to speak), because it would be most apropos that skillful placeholders provisionally manifested as signposts, and vanish to the recesses of universal Mind, thereby in sheer silence having spoken and still speaking aloud of the paradoxical persistence of uneventfulness, and the infinitude of non-events that make reality to unfold.
Here was another quotation, immediately under it on my timeline, from another PB contributor:
“My Creator, if I get into a situation today that needs me to respond with silence, help me to use my silence in a good and sacred way. In my silence, let me be talking to You and You talking to me. Silence is the way of the warrior." (Charles Alexander Eastman, Ohiyesa Santee Sioux)While the idea of ‘Creator’ is provisional also, the above prayer is perfectly in tune with the quotation which preceded it. The vanishing of the Event Horizon when the shore is reached, the revelation of Totality of nondual Being and Becoming in singularity and infinitude, unfolds in the all-embracing repository of the conscious Womb. It is dark in there, but imbued with the paradoxical light of the Life Force.
Maria Jacobs as Odile, the Black Swan, in Ballet San Jose's SWAN LAKE. Photo by RJ Muna.
