https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=p6nxo6kpnos
So welcome everybody to another Voices with Raviki. I’m very pleased to once again be talking with Daniel Zaruba. We had a fantastic discussion around Nishitani and the meaning crisis. And I asked Daniel to mention this at some point in the discussion, but I’m just going to put it up front. He’s running an amazing course, which many of you have noted. I’ve tweeted about it multiple times on Nishitani and how appropriate and pertinent Nishitani’s work is right now. And so some of you might know him from that. And I invite, in fact, I recommend everybody to get involved with Daniel’s work and the work he’s doing to make Nishitani more accessible to people in the so-called West. So welcome, Daniel. It’s great to be talking with you again. Thank you for the invitation, John. I’m also very happy to speak with you again. So go ahead, go ahead, Daniel. Now maybe I’ll say a few things on the course. So kind of the first round is almost over now, but I am planning to do the course again, maybe next year somewhere, maybe in the summer again. Excellent. Yeah, I’ve also taken in some of your feedback and I’m trying to establish now also meditation group kind of like continually. So we really do meditation on a regular basis because that’s so important. I’ve also realized in the course, it’s so important to do the meditation practice on the side. So I’m now trying also to start this very soon, but we also get maybe a meditation group going. Excellent. Yeah, that’s what I’m now planning to do. But we had this yesterday in the seminar that all this conceptual language is so, it’s also so hard to get out of those, let’s say, of the participatory from the propositional knowing, to use your term, into the participatory knowing when you’re not used to it through practice. Yeah, that’s very well said. Yeah, I do think that I’m coming to sort of a firm position. It’s not novel to me. I think it’s very much a Doe’s position that, yeah, if you want to practice phylosophia, you have to be doing mindfulness practices, meditative practices, contemplative practices. I’m working on a book chapter on exactly that argument right now. So yeah, and the fact that you’re doing that, I think, is going to be welcome. Please let me know when you’re going to do the course again, because I’ll do everything I can to let people know about it so you can get a lot of people attending and benefiting from it. So I thought maybe we could, you said there’s a few things you’d like to talk about to me. And although I’m the host, maybe that’s an interesting way, a little bit of role reversal to get things started. And so I’ll turn it over to you. What would you like to talk about? What would you like to engage in? I was really, really impressed when I saw your latest videos with Paul VanderKlay, J.P. Marceau, John Hall and Guy Sangstock on your project of identity deduction. Kind of like what Nishitani is kind of like talking all the time. And one Kyoto school scholar, John Cromwell, characterizes Nishitani even as having an ontological position, which means that the thing is always beyond, it’s inexhaustible beyond exhaustion. It can never be captured by any way of reification that we want to put on it. It’s always like the aspects always exploding, bursting through into the mourners, so to say. And maybe you can talk about how we can use that kind of like those trans aspectual aspects of the thing. Because when we did this dialogue course with Chris and Guy and you, I had this wonderful moment where not even with an object, but let’s even say with an idea or virtue. Let’s say we did this that we circled around, let’s say virtue. I did it once and then in private group, we did it with filial love. And we kind of like, right, there’s this even with non-object, let’s say you see that there is almost an inexhaustibility to them when you do the eduction and when you do the dialogical eduction. Yeah, I’m glad you’re seeing that because the part of the argument I’m working towards, I was working with Jordan and with Guy was the deep interconnections between diologos and idetic eduction, trying to get clearer about how the phylaea and the sophia come together, if you’ll allow me that. One of the things I was trying to do with that, especially with the, because I explicitly told Jordan and Guy about it, is I wanted to show both within dialogue and between dialogues, I was trying to exemplify the very thing I was trying to talk about. And I’m experimenting a lot with the medium and the format and how can we use it to enrich our philosophical practice. I’m glad you picked up on that because that was the intent, in fact, of even doing the sequence. I want to do that again with other things. Yeah, the idea is, this came out of work I’ve been doing with Dan Chiapi, my co-author on a bunch of papers, we released a couple of recent ones, we have another one coming out soon. We were reading very carefully Schindler’s book, Plato’s Critique of Impure Reason, and then we’ve been reading, we re-read together Mano Ponti’s preface to the phenomenology, and we’re going through John Roussin’s work on Bearing Witness to Epiphany. And so Roussin and Schindler are like doing this to me, especially about the idea of integrating the phenomenology and Platonism together. Now, the problem for that for many people with a philosophical background is post-Heidegger, these are often seen as somehow oppositional to each other. But if you look at Husserl, it’s clear that they were meant to be very closely, Husserl is using all this platonic language all the way through his attempt to articulate what’s going on in phenomenology. I think he was engaged in a project very similar to Plato’s, which is trying to explicate, I don’t have quite the right noun, I want to say something other than process, but the process of intelligibility, and trying to disclose that. And so I’ve been thinking about, well, what might that look like, informed by the work I’ve been doing and some of the stuff from object-oriented ontology and the work I’ve been doing with Dan and Guy and Jordan, and then try to work out what that would look like as a practice, a practice that I’ve come to call eidetic reduction. And the basic idea of it is, you can see it’s a variation, maybe even an exaptation of Husserl’s eidetic reduction and things like that. But the basic idea is this, I was trying to come up with a new, maybe an old, way of understanding what a platonic eidos is, a form, and get away from being bound to the shape metaphor that we’ve been sort of bound into by the term form for the eidos. And the fact that eidos actually translate originally more like something like the look of something made me think, oh, wait, and this made me think of both Heidegger, but especially Wittgenstein and aspect shifting and all the work from Gestalt Psychology and all the work I do on insight. And I was thinking, well, and then, of course, in Husserl’s phenomenology is any object, anything that we think of as an object. So here’s my jackknife. And it has, you never actually, and this is one of, Husserl often says these things that are sort of simultaneously obvious and profound, which is you never see the object. You always only see an aspect of it because you can’t get the simultaneity of multi-perspectival of all the possible even spatial aspects of it, let alone the functional aspects. I can use this as a knife. I can use this as a measuring weapon. I can use this to stand for the letter I. I can use this, right? So you have multi-aspectuality, right? And that, of course, lines up with the work I do in cog sci about how every object is combinatorially explosive in the amount of information, which is relations it can bear within itself and to other things. But the thing that was getting to me, but Plato was trying to do something with this notion of the looks, all the aspects. And he’s trying to say something about, but the idos is itself not perceptual, right? It’s somehow trans perceptual. And then I realized, well, Husserl says something very similar. He says, right, although you can never, right, you don’t have this, nevertheless, within your phenomenology, you have to be really careful here about how we’re using that term. It is within your phenomenology, but it’s not a direct perceptible object. You nevertheless perceive the object. Right. And it was like and it just sort of hit me like, oh, right. Somehow out of right, this multi-aspectuality, this inexhaustible multi-aspectuality does not in full does not unfold chaotically. It does not unfold. It has a through line to it. It is relentlessly intelligible somehow. And they are not identical in terms of their content. All these aspects belong together. They somehow share and they share a non logical identity with each other. I call this like the through line. And I was thinking, oh, oh, and that’s that I think is a better model of what Plato means by the form. And then I was thinking and that also gives us would bind us back into the conformity theory of knowing because this is again, this is kind of a Harmon twist on on on Kant. The through line of this object is bound up with the through line of me. I am also multi-aspectual as I am picking up on all the aspects. So the through line of the I does of the thing is akin to use Plato’s language to the through line within me and that me and this of course, Hume made famous in a negative fashion is not not anything I ever observe. But nevertheless, it is a proper part of the phenomenology of the self because the self is experienced as something that is bound together in a non logical way. We try and capture that with narrative. So here’s the two. Here’s the two points. Right. That which binds all these aspects together is not itself an aspect that which binds all of me together is not another me. And those two are bound together in a dialogical wedding whenever I am trying to make intelligible anything. And I think that is much closer to what Plato is trying to disclose when he’s talking about the I does and the kinship between the Souq a the soul and the I does and it’s the by by bringing this back into a phenomenological experience and something one can practice. I’m trying to revitalize the platonic theory of the forms. Sorry, that was a lot. I needed to say sort of that whole argument to get it out there. Let me OK. I thought a little bit about it and I might I might work a little bit now with with J.P. Marsau’s kind of like his model that he laid out. Yeah. Yeah. So let’s say the aspects emerge from the bottom. Yes. From the from the ground of he would say non being the nihilum or emptiness or so. Yeah. Yeah. So the aspects emerge and kind of like so you say there’s this all the aspects all let’s say the characteristics of the whatness of an object of myself form and a non logical identity that isn’t itself higher. That is also kind of like a no thing. There’s not an aspect in itself. Yes. Something some some not not even something. No thing else. Something. Yes. And I think we could maybe say this is now this is now maybe the guys or something like that. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. It’s it’s it’s a it’s a kind of like um it’s a third kind maybe maybe we can use that that language even even um this is an insight from Nishida who was really also interested in kind of like the in Plato. He thought that that there is right there’s there’s being and non being right they always oscillate between each other in the in the in the in the choir. Yeah. Which was then this kind of like the centerpiece in Nishida’s ontology what was this receptacle the place the core kind of like in what what Plato called it three don genos a third kind something something ontologically different from all the other things. Yes. And I sometimes I think this is comes to your relevance realization in yes yes any kind of anyways so no that’s directly right I think that’s let’s come back to that because the process of relevance realization I think I don’t want to say it’s reflected because I’m not trying to speak like a form of berkelyan idealism but there is there there’s there’s a mirroring of the way relevance realization is unfolding in a way in way in which eidetic deduction is disclosing yes I think that’s important but please continue okay and then right jp talks then about there’s also right the the constraint the one emanates down yes yes yes and that’s that’s then kind of like I would say constitutes what right what the buddhists call first the suchness although maybe and then then yeah I tend to think of the moreness and the suchness as directional and and Heraclitus is the way up and the way down are the same way that I think of the way this comes in so let’s use the language of determination the way pearl does when you get the determination that gives you a determinant singularity right that can’t be cannot be captured categorically that’s the suchness but when you see that suchness right in terms of how it right proceeds into right this combinatorial explosiveness of all the possible intelligibilities it can participate in that’s what I think of as the moreness does that did that help or or yeah right there’s this um there isn’t all of that and that’s I think that’s that’s this wonder as well that you have an identity yes what you would say the non-logical identity very much yes it’s kind of like does it that’s a wonderful thing that that we we have that and and right there there’s even in in Nishitani like identity becomes so important in this what he used calls the siva yeah the siva is just this is this is indicates that that self-identity or self sameness let’s say between form and emptiness yes but but he uses it for all kinds of being and no thingness and yeah yeah and let’s say that the one and the no thingness yes the one and the many um yes and but but right he he points that that again the siva is in a sense is it’s a third kind it’s yes yes yes and and and I think the third kind has also been discovered convergently but also a little bit off by people like Derrida because I think what Derrida was doing with difference was trying to pick up on this as well um and he would but he was I see Derrida at times over emphasizing although towards the end he gets very interested in negative theology right and he’s like well not towards the end he keeps doing that becomes more prominent right because I think he he overemphasized I don’t know what you might call the private or or destructive aspects of difference for intelligibility even though his argument is based on the difference is actually constitutive in an important way of intelligibility and I think uh you know we I don’t know getting a more proper dialogue going between this I’m going to call it my attempt my and other people’s attempt to revise the platonic tradition um and the post-hidegarians like Derrida we tend to have a very negative view of the platonic tradition I think that could be very very fruitful I want to mention that the the discussion with JP right um like so we’re uh it’s deeply influenced and I’ve proposed this to JP uh it’s deeply influenced by John Scott it’s Aragina who I consider you know Aragina and Nicholas of Cusa for me are the culmination of the Socratic tradition it’s so interesting that by the time you get to Nicholas of Cusa his great insight is learned ignorance which is exactly where we start with Socrates it’s this beautiful beautiful beautiful explication and so Aragina’s notion of God is inherently dialectical dialogical and um I think this is part of and this is the part that’s unclear to me Daniel but I’m I’m groping this is part of what’s going on when Plato is trying to talk about the inherent goodness right that that right so the the the forms don’t form they don’t form an they’re not isolated right and they they it’s not only that there’s an idetic deduction of everything singular there’s an idetic deduction of everything plural right and and so Aragina is trying to get the emanation and the emergence right to right to explicate all of that but also to get us to disclose which is of course a fundamental Christian tenet but it’s also converges with the platonic tenet that there’s something inherently good about being that it’s not a moral goodness or an aesthetic goodness or an ethical goodness and the reason I’m saying all of this is this is the wonder like there’s a there’s an inherent wonder in this because and then this is Harmon’s point too but it’s a platonic point I cannot right I have to use this fundamental I don’t know what to call it ontological machinery of myself right in order to really get what this is really get what this object is it’s like here’s what you can hear I’m stumbling and Schindler tries to make there’s this argument too that this this deep deep kinship between my my my idos and the idoses or the idiac and I don’t know what the plural would be right that there’s a fundamental goodness there and the way I try to practice that is right the way in which my awareness can be for itself for its own sake and my life can be for itself in its own sake and my love can be for itself in its own that for its own sake that seems so fundamental to my sense of my realness and my unquestioned it can become egocentric but my unquestioned goodness of being then I realized but that is not centered in me the kinship is means it’s actually dependent on the way all of reality this is Schindler’s argument has that feature to it and so I cannot I cannot make any there’s no good grounds for privileging that within me and and there but there are some good crowns for actually privileging it without me and so that for me is my attempt to get at this idea of the good as the idos of the idos and you see me struggling and I did a recent video with with Greg Enriquez and Zachary Stein you know where we were criticizing the is ought distinction and the arguments around the is ought fallacy and trying to articulate this more primordial sense of goodness to me why that’s important and I and I really see Nishitani and Nishida trying to do this I really do for me I think that is part of the fundamental way of responding to nihilism is to get and to not as you said not to state it but to wonder and ponder and participate in that goodness this is this is really who I’m maybe maybe maybe we can we can okay that that’s what I had in mind so even right when you when you talked and right you get kind of like you you you dive you dive into that wonder of of all the aspects and see right there is there is something that is beyond all aspects yeah we say okay I and then we come to the to the goodness of being kind of like the ontological goodness that is that that is kind of like pervading going through kind of this through line what you said right yeah yes going going through all things yeah yes and through myself yes yes that’s that that’s the affinity the kinship yeah keep going keep going it is almost this right I almost had this right what Nishitani calls the the the dropped off body mind or this body man dropping off this yeah doujin yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah this drops off and then then they’re there it’s it’s almost right that you you you yourself kind of like become that infinite wellspring yes yes I would not maybe and maybe maybe I’m this is just an idea that I had right now please please this is this is the place for just having ideas right now we’re on the horizon of intelligibility here right you know you know in in classical in classical metaphysics there is always the distinction between the whatness and the deathness yes yes yeah that the sheer wonder of the deathness the sheer goodness of the deathness what is right this then you can come the that we are all moving let’s say in god and all participate in god yes god is let’s say the that the most the most intimate in augustine’s language right the the most intimate of myself is yeah is god and that we we we learn to participate we we become but through identity induction we become aware of that that ontologically different sheer wonder of the deathness yes of all things yes um which is which is a different kind of wonder and the whatness of all things that this is in itself inexhaustible yes you come you come towards the goodness of being yeah yeah yes that’s good I like that and I like I like the idea yeah what I was getting from you was right and that so there’s there’s also right there there’s an identity deduction right that’s not that you know I’m trying to get that that you you you start to as you said the mind and body kind of thing drops away and you get the through line from suchness to moreness right the through line and I don’t mean to say religiously I mean it exactly the opposite you get the through line of god right you get right you get that and and and like I said for me I also and this is the phenomenology you know what’s the author of the book the phenomenology mysticism and he talks about the givenness which isn’t the same thing as what sellers criticize when he criticized the myth of the given but what it means is right this sense that that through line is is somehow deeper and the source of the through line that I inherently love in myself because I’m an autopoetic being right that I can’t if I if I if I’m if I do not it an autopoetic being is a being that takes care of itself fundamentally cares about itself because if it doesn’t do that it ceases to be it just it would just be a self-organizing system like a tornado and so there’s something about and I get this also in this shita in the shitani right there’s something about being alive that’s not ontologically privileged but it’s epistemically privileged because it gives us a way of reflecting on and being aware of this like see I’m really struggling here because I’m falling into the subject object language that I’m trying to transcend but the point is because I’m an autopoetic being I inherently and don’t you I know you’re taking this the right way I inherently love myself but because I’m an autopoetic being I can also get the affinity participate in the affinity of the through line of God and they’re even and therefore even more so love that through line that there’s an ontological move here that and I can’t make an argument for it because it’s it’s grounds I think all because if you think about it the standard models of goodness base are based on this thing is good for me and I’m good for myself right but but remember we talked about the third kind but what makes all of that fit together we’ve never wondered well why what why does that like why does that all work as goodness and what I’m trying to get at is well because it’s like it’s like what Heidegger did with Alethea below the correspondence theory of truth there has to be the Alethea that makes the correspondence possible here here think about it like this and I did this with with Paula and JP we take we take truth to be inherently good right but why why right what we’re saying is there’s something about realness that in and of itself is inherently good so we think of truth in the aletheic sense there’s a goodness in the aletheic sense that makes all the correspondence senses of goodness possible for us that’s what I’m trying to say that there I feel better about that than I’ve said it before so how does that land with you is that helpful or is I just going off on a stupid tangent no no no but but even even this is not what I learned in the dialogous course even when you do this this kind of like this homing yeah they write that there is a reason why Nishida talks about basho as a as a place or a field yes yeah Heidegger talks about the clearing and all of this yes yeah right the clearing of intelligibility and Nishitani talks about fields all the time yes exactly because they and and this is the same idea with the third kind there is a kind of like an ontological place yeah that that that that makes everything that appears so they shine in goodness yes something like that both the shining goodness and the beautiful mystery right they’re bound together the the the the beautiful withdrawal like the like you know like a sacred night right I’m thinking of the Louis Armstrong song or the bright blessed day right the two together kind of thing exactly because right this ground is not it’s not it’s not a like yeah yeah yeah it’s an it’s an it’s an off ground a ground that is ever withdrawing yes or the or the non-ground in the language of the mystics right think of so that yeah yeah the non-ground yes yes yes yes and right and then this is this this important let’s say ontological move that that Nishitani makes where he says right Nietzsche failed to do that he could only think about the abyss and and was kind of like he was kind of like um um absorbed by the abyss yes and kind of like couldn’t see that that there is this this what what in Dogen what we could say the body mind drops off there’s this bottomlessness of yeah of the ground there is yeah that’s good keep going that that makes this right that this is the name where we could say then um where the the what is the what is the opposite of goodness kind of like the um when we when we revenge against being in this kind of like in this right resentment resentment against being yeah and this then turns into the goodness of being yeah where we can see that this this non-ground um is is in a sense maybe the through line yes goes through all all beings yes i i think so because you and i think i’m proposing a way of like integrating sort of the hosurlian marlo ponti with uh nish nishitani’s idea of the interpenetration of all things right and trying to get a way of talking about it but i wanted to pick up on what you just said about nicha because it made me think at that moment perhaps derrida is still too influenced by the nichian strain coming out of heidegger he’s also bound in a particular way he can also although he he does talk about it as constituting um intelligibility nevertheless he frames his project as deconstruction right and therefore he’s not he’s also like nichi he’s bound up in the critique but he can’t get to the critique of the critique to what we use one of nishitani’s moves right um and i think that’s very important and it’s for me what’s very interesting is like i said about getting to the place we’re in right now like this this place this was it basho i think right the the place that we’re in right now right this to me is the place that i see at the beginning with socrates and i see coming to fruition in erigina and nicholas of kusa of what is meant by learned ignorance right there’s learn i even want to sometimes say it’s both learned ignorance and learned ignorance it’s it’s doing both of these uh together and for me therefore i’m trying to make a case that’s what i’m doing i’m making an argument that rather than seeing this and this is where i’m critical of heidegger as a rejection of platonism i think it is actually especially through the whole neoplatonic mystical tradition i think this is actually the culmination of what originated in socrates in a powerful way okay that’s a provocative thing to say i know um and i i should also talk to johanna said sometime about this uh but um right there are sometimes i read heidegger and that they are there are you know there are some texts where he then he mentions someone like echart and yes and you see he kind of like he doesn’t abandon that tradition like holy but he’s so he’s so anxious about talking about anything that it’s always it’s always it’s always hard to um um with heidegger it’s always hard to kind of um kind of get them what what he wants to say also he he’s in this project he really tries but he tries to get out of the language that is so is so burdened by our history um and in that sense and he really he really writes he writes i don’t know how many pages for like 100 volumes right we had this last time um and and at the same time that that there are many heideggerian he right he shot up his whole life but what what you say right that there is there is actually there is not what but there’s not what heidegger would say there’s not the end of history but actually there’s the and there’s i think i see some theologians like david bently hart yes very very very critical of post-modern theology in its entirety yeah yes and he he in his books he’s he’s also he’s speaking very fondly of the neoplatonic tradition very much like ariagina and echard and angeles and all these people yeah very much and he says this this whole this whole thing with what you said with derrida of deconstruction when you think about it it’s it’s absurd he even makes even he’s he’s also very almost an acerbic writer he says something like um talking about post metaphysical metaphysics or so is like is like talking about post atmospheric air it’s inherently absurd yeah and what you said is right it’s it’s it’s actually a culmination and if you if that argument kind of like can be sustained and further explicated in the future also with people like shimla what you mentioned yeah i think that would be lovely if we could actually like bring that and culminate that platonic tradition um and not deconstructed in the in the in the inexhaustibility of academic papers in in right where we are just critical in criticism i think that’s a thank you for saying that that i appreciate that that’s very encouraging yeah i i wanted i want to i want to get out of whether or not it’s heidiger it’s at least a heideggerian argument of playdo as the father of metaphysics and metaphysics as the history of nihilism there’s an important truth to that and you know that i i follow that truth and i try to develop it i really try to work it out in awakening from the meaning crisis but there’s something else right that you and i are talking about here that there’s a way of recovering that tradition and rereading and a lot of people are doing it you know the third wave that gonzalez talked about right about reading playdo and rereading this and what’s coming out right now i think of pearl’s work as just exemplary um what’s his book thinking being uh the uh metaphysics in a classical sense and and and when you and if you read the first chapter i mean he’s going to do something very similar what we’re doing here but he argues that the appropriate what we’re actually trying to do is get into right relationship with reality and the appropriate relationship with reality is religious which is not meant like you know he’s meant it’s a sense of this profound affining reverence um and and i take it that that that that that that that response that’s not just conceptual not just effective not just existential but all of them together that’s the that is the final way i don’t mean in the sense of completion but i don’t think that we’re looking for anything deeper when we are asking for a response to nihilism and the meaning crisis yeah and right he makes the argument that the the kind of like where let’s say the ontological difference between beings and being collapsed was with don scotus yes when he yes when he called right he makes that argument i read the book when yeah when you recommended it once he was he he said okay being is right he collapsed everything into normalism yeah and then right so so right the right way and then we even think that we can talk even about something like being in the way of the large b with in a sense in a conceptual in a propositional sense yes and then we and then we we develop let’s say all these errors yes right that the right way to approach the ontological difference is like the the like the people in antiquity did not just by a conceptual way but through let’s say what you would say a participatory knowing yeah a transformative participatory way i think yeah i think that’s right um there was something i wanted to say about that that was that was really you were triggering something very good in something that is right there’s beyond the transformation and the induction maybe come back to that the adeptic induction yeah there is an there’s an there’s something inexhaustible that goes beyond the transformation itself yeah well it’s the transformation becomes this ascending trajectory that points towards you know what gregory of nissa calls uh epic tasis right the constant that god goes from being the the final object or or of rest right instead of god is the uh is the eternal field of self-transcendence by which things are constantly engaged in this project of deeper and deeper disclosure oh i remembered what i wanted to say in relationship to that this idea of depth and levels of reality because normalism so scottis isn’t the normalist but he makes occam possible right and so the scottis occam connection is where normalism comes out and you get that univocally of being right there’s only there’s there’s there are no levels to being and the problem if you watch that and you watch that unfold in our history what we get to is we get to like what we get is we get levels of being again but now inverted because and this is the point i was making to paul and to jp reductionism is a levels of being ontology where people say all that’s real is the bottom level love is just chemicals and chemicals are just quarks and you get so there’s all these levels and only the really real is the bottom level that’s just neoplatonism inverted it’s just yeah you know here’s the here’s all the levels and the highest level is the really real it’s it’s the same metaphor just turned upside down they don’t realize it’s just inverted platonism so i think of normal normalism has completely and darida is going to get pissed off at me because he’s almost ultimately anomalous but normalism has completely deconstructed itself it is completely deconstructed itself the nile then there is a deep interweaving between nihilism and reductionism as right as as an existential stance in an ontological position but reductionism reductionism presupposes a levels of being ontology and it’s only in the levels of being ontology that it can justify nihilism as a stance and all of that just says but why that because i can give you completely symmetrical argument for going the other way and you know everything we’re doing here right now so yeah i think i think we’re at a place where we’re at a real cusp because i think that that turning point given to us by scottis and arkham has completely undermined itself and we are now in a place where we can we can get a post nominalist neoplatonism that will allow us to recover the religious reverence for being hmm well said thank you that’s another argument i’ve been working on with with you know you again like i’m doing this like i’m doing it with you now i’m doing with paul i’m doing with jp i’m doing with jordan i’m doing with guy it can’t be no nobody can do this when i say i’m working on these arguments i don’t mean that to say i’m crafting it as a model i’m trying to like i’m trying to get everybody to do the platonic circumambulation because to return to the idetic adduction right the point and dan shappey and i are going to be reading marlaponte’s visible and invisible right because you can extend this is part of what corban is on about and i think perhaps even young for in the psyche you can imaginarily extend the idetic adduction right you can imagineally extend the idetic adduction and that discloses even more of the inexhaustible without and within and the inexhaustible between right and then right and that and that goes right more and more out and you can see how this starts to overlap with dialogue within and without and also with religion as the serious so i was talking about religion as this idea of imaginarily augmented reality detection but now i’m thinking of it as imaginarily augmented idetic adduction that discloses reality in a more and more powerful manner and affords a reverential love for being with the deepest through line of oneself namely one soul and so that is um trying to i’m trying to draw it all together um and so this has to be done with others ecclesia it has to be done in in that sense of an ecclesiastically the gathering we have to gather together because we my ego set i’m so limiting in the multi-aspectuality i can extend it imaginarily but if i extended imaginarily with you in dialogue then so much more and then more like and then we start to get a sense again of the wonder the the the bottomless wonder of being you know there’s this um there’s this paper from from nishitani um um called um sameness and emptiness i sent it to you yes yes yes don’t know if you if you had time to read it i believe i looked at it i don’t think i read it thoroughly yet i will i’ve there is there is a very similar argument to what you said with the imaginal yes kind of because he says something like um right there is a there is a middle ground when we between let’s say but we have let’s say the the idea yeah to use this in platonic sense the idea let’s say of a circle yes and then all the circles in reality yeah kind of like never achieve the the goodness the fitness of the ideal circle yeah yeah and how we can participate and right even even nishitani and he invokes the platonic participation the metaxis in the first chapter of religion and nothingness yeah very much because we write there must be there must be a way to participate with those within those of reality yes yes yes exactly um otherwise otherwise we again left with just propositional knowing yeah yeah yeah and so we need that let’s say that that um participatory knowing and he says in the middle of that is is the imagination as kind of like again a third kind of third realm yeah that is it’s kind of like he in this paper he discusses it in in kind of like with emptiness and kind of like also with the inexhaustibility and don’t have to get into this now but i just want to say he mentions in there and this is perhaps where we can get right there are all these zen master dialogues the monk talks with the with the with the master and then the master replies something right there are so many even in in japanese yeah poetry yeah the dialogue japanese love love poetry is often there is an there’s someone writes something and then there is an answer there’s this there’s very very dialogical it’s not just it’s not monological right it’s always like someone says something write something to someone then there comes an answer back and he he kind of like tries to get it how how poetry kind of like is in the in the in the in the let’s say in the right in the in the immediacy of the of the idea and thus gets out of that subject object and distinction which then also creates how poetry right it often often explodes the boundaries of what can be said yes yes yes very much and that’s kind of what he goes nishitani talks about all these things um religion as the imaginably augmented identity deduction that’s that’s really wonderful thank you well the part of what well thank you i mean there’s so if that works i mean it’s reach it reaches into and i think you’re right i agree with you nishitani is one of the great thinkers of the 20th century like he’s just he is so important but it’s a this idea right that you know religion as the imaginably augmented idetic deduction reaches up if i can use those metaphors into nishitani but it also reaches down into empirical work like the work of that there’s a brilliant anthropologist she’s maybe one of the best cultural anthropologists around right now and she’s working right now her name’s lerman and she she’s written a book i’m making my way through it called how god becomes real and she has all of these wonderful papers and articles out there she is brilliant and she’s bringing back anthropology she represents a stage of anthropology that’s getting beyond the endless sort of her humanodic deconstructive thing and getting back to like let’s do anthropology like let’s try and understand culture um and she talks about and she’s talking about like she talks about and this is the the third way in which right the third the third way that you were talking about here and the mataksu that the god the god and by the way bearing witness to epiphany russians take on the great gods astonishingly brilliant astonishingly brilliant but anyways lerman is doing something similar she talks about that the god the gods or god god is not real either in a subjective or an objective sense of realness um and so she talks about that’s why the book is entitled how god becomes real this process right that’s very much what we’re talking about here and she says and she she goes in and she again brilliant people do this they take stuff that’s so obvious and then they go see what this means and you go oh my gosh i didn’t realize that and she said notice that when people talk about um i’ll use one of her examples and i do not mean anything uh irreligious or disrespectful not neither does she right and she’s talked and i i brought this up with paul i think in jp um and she’s because one of her ethnographic groups was a christian evangelical community and they when she and she says you know jesus is real but not in the same way that people talk about their feelings being real or rocks being real um she gives this example she’s talking to someone as you know jesus is real but you wouldn’t you wouldn’t you wouldn’t you wouldn’t say uh jesus will do my homework right like you can ask jesus for wisdom right but you don’t like i don’t worry about my homework jesus will do it like that’s ridiculous nobody thinks that way and and like and it’s like and the fact like it’s like yeah when they say jesus is real and then they do this weird thing that is confusing they say jesus is real to me and then they try to make reality a subjective thing in some sort of berkeleyan idealism which just goes nowhere but she says notice that and notice that the realness is something that you have to constantly work at which made me think of the central argument that right the thing that scottis was rejecting and especially when it comes to fruition and daycare the idea that certain truths especially in the ontological sense are only available available to us in transformation people have to constantly undergo transformation in order to i don’t know what to say in order to preserve uh that’s the realness of jesus right but but but that even saying it that way makes it sound too subjective the point is she’s trying to she’s trying part of what’s happening in her ethnography is she’s trying to articulate the processes and the phenomenology of this third way in which things are real this imaginal way that’s doing the idetic induction and drawing things out and putting us into reciprocal opening and she talks about and she says look at all the hard work people do they have to do all this work in order to make god real but once it happens they don’t then claim that they made it happen it’s this weird thing and i think the fact that right there’s this i think i i highly recommend the book it’s brilliant it’s brilliant because it’s getting at that this notion that we’re talking about and we are quite rightly talking about it in you know quite profound philosophical language but it comes into the phenomenology of people’s personal religious experience that right i don’t want to say concrete because that’s not the right word but we’re talking we’re not talking about something that’s abstract conceptual just philosophical it is transformatively present in people’s lives and experience the problem of course with fundamentalism is it tries to say that’s just the same way rocks and trees are real or it’s just the same way that my feelings are real right it’s trying to and what she’s trying to say is no there’s this other important way in which things are real i highly recommend the book because it’s convergent with what we’re talking about but it grounds it in ethnography of i just every i don’t know this sounds i don’t want to be i don’t want to sound but but people who are not pursuing philosophy per se nevertheless are invoking in an existentially pivotal way what we’re trying to talk about right here right now so right this again this realness is a is a kind of other kind i think even nishitani makes this point of the first chapter he says something like right um he asked sometimes as a kind of core kind of like maybe right how is this in the chapter he says something like man can sneeze god cannot he makes this argument but we can we can do we can we can do all sorts of things that god of course cannot do jesus cannot do the homework um and but right he was he was up to something important right that that god is of a different kind yes yes then then we we imagine it’s not a it’s not a being like like like a rock or anything but a different kind of being and this right go on i just wanted to say i just wanted to supplement god is neither a being nor an experience right that right getting beyond both of the being a being little b god i would even say you because this language has come to be so not god is neither an object right of experience nor a subject of experience right god is not a not a thing or an experience right god is something beyond right both of those in a profound profound way it’s it’s like what you know when you read dinesis right and right and god being right especially even more so the one the ground of being is not real in the way that the things are sandy’s book on the parmetides he says the main thing that player is trying to do with dialectic is to free us from thinking that the core of what was at normalism which is the unquestioned intuition that the really real things are the individual objects right and to realize that’s exactly the wrong way to think sorry i wanted to just put that out there as as something and that’s also that’s also the that’s also why nishitani for example and myself we kind of like i reject all all isms yes but all idealisms then they want to say there’s just the mind or the spirit right we again left with just a being or a thing yeah but also also all sorts of and right then that’s that’s also then this comes also to an object yes right that’s what he says i can’t neither reduce this let’s say to an idea nor to uh to pure material yes yes it it explodes yes in both directions so yes yes yes totally we make the same error then with beings once that ontological difference between let’s say god or being and beings is is collapsed then then we fall into confusion um but that that’s important that what the anthropologist said is is very important um and heidegger also they they he makes a similar point um we need to constantly hold ourselves in that so we can we have to hold ourselves let’s say in realness yes we have we we have to practice it all the time yes otherwise i think that i think i think what you’re coming to is what i would call the a revalorization and a re-understanding of ritual that’s what ritual is that’s what ritual is properly understood it isn’t a compulsive behavior that is ultimately meaningless it is instead you know ritual is the the the the practice of constantly comporting ourselves to be in right relationship yes exactly exactly okay now now i’m thinking for god well what i wanted what i wanted to say and where i want to go well you were saying how the anthropologist was right about that this is something we constantly have to hold we constantly have to renew we can’t we can’t take it for granted the way we can the realness of my couch it’s it’s not because right because because i think this is part of you know what what heidegger was trying to get on heidegger it was trying to get at with our mortality um in a certain way um but does that was that enough to trigger you what you wanted to say or did it help you remember yeah we we have to write we we we learn to hold ourselves and i think personally that meditation is a good way yes to to do that because right what we try to get out we we try to see okay we we we realize at some point okay my my mind is attaching itself at things all the time yeah yeah yeah yes but thoughts are coming and going and and right it’s so easy to like divide the monkey mind we grab something yeah yeah we and then then we are again left with let’s say a being and when we do this very carefully right and let’s say again with dogen yeah dropping off body and mind yes yes that there is this disclosure of that which is no thingness that which is never a being which however right is also real in a in a very real sense and yeah there’s this right and religion is as nishitani might say that the the real self-realization of reality reality yeah through like we we come to realize the realness of of no thingness which is again never a being but it’s nonetheless there yes yeah and right the hard way is that how can we how can we comport ourselves to something that is not a being yes yes exactly that’s the and that that’s the error right and then i’m wondering what that anthropologist then had to say about like when she did her research well i’m only halfway through the book so i i i fear of misrepresenting her argument through my ignorance of of the whole thing but she talks about she talks about ritual and how important it is to this whole process of training a comportment and of training a kind of humility and recognition of the need to constantly return to the practice of the workmen yeah i think meditation and contemplative practices are are very very crucial for that that really real and the thing about the really real is and i talk about this in some of my other videos i think also with the special the video series i did with zivi stavin on cognitive science and mysticism right about onto normativity there there yeah yeah the part of the way in which there’s a goodness of being is the way we experience it as demanding from us right onto normativity and that’s that’s another dimension to you know this ontological sense of goodness there’s a goodness that we we we experience that the onto normativity as yes exactly like that’s the part that’s so fascinating to yes exactly exactly right i should come more and more into conformity with this but that’s a way of saying there’s an ontological goodness to the real really real that transcends my subjective desires and wants and needs because it’s a reversal it’s not how is that useful to me because i value it it’s how can i conform myself to this to this and again that’s that’s like this is what the good the good like that i always you know i went through you know 30 years oh gosh more than 30 years it’s going to be 40 years now of education in play dough and for the longest time this is why i i for a long time i preferred the neoplatonic the one because i couldn’t get why why the good why the good i got some vague notion about normativity but now now this is the crux for me right this right and and like don’t you don’t you like i mean this is an honest question between friends like when you get to that state the prajna state like when you’ve done meditation and contemplation and you get to that and you get the the real self-disclosing of reality and i’ll now add the phrase for its own sake right right because it’s not doing it for you it’s just doing it like like the rose yeah yeah don’t you don’t you just feel a funda like feel isn’t even the right word don’t you realize a fundamental goodness in that yeah so right nishitani he talks about exactly the same thing in religion nothing is one of my favorite pages he says okay what is disclosed he calls it a field of aboriginality where all things show forth in their selfness in their suchness as they are he says this over and over yes and then then he says okay this discloses also also what he calls um a logos or a koto yeah so he says it discloses this again logos is also not really a thing yes yes of course of beings yeah and koto right maybe i don’t know if you’ve read the dialogue between heidegger and the japanese i did yes i did yes there is this where he says koto is that which is hardest to say what this actually is yeah yeah this is in the okay so he says when this field let’s say that this field of shunyata is disclosed to us beings again they show themselves for their own sake as they are and what the disclose is he says um first is this ontological order where there is odd distinction is bridged again yes yes because there is this on ontonomative yeah prolaptic rationality whatever we may call it yeah um and i will so what he says what what things things he says things on this field are preaching the dharma yes things are things are calling yeah even says it with heidegger he says there’s a there is a there’s a calling yes what do you say right yeah yes and that now now they are but what you have in meditation now all the things are calling yes calling out for being being minded as they are in their substance yes um and he he then nishitani right he quotes this um from the pine tree learn the koto of the the pine tree and yes the bamboo learn the koto of the bamboo yes the koto is this is like the logos it’s yes it’s this this what it’s this order that bridges between the is and the odd yes yes um and in through let’s say through this order of the logos or the koto the through line that is going through me and the pine tree or through me and the bamboo we become the bamboo yes the pine tree yes and then we also right we become we realize reality in its realness and in the sense we become we become reality yeah right but but that exactly and that becoming the the bamboo that realizing reality is the same way that god becomes real that lerman’s talking about it we don’t become the bamboo in the sense that you could cut me up and make a house out of me or something like that that’s not what you mean that you’re meaning that you’re meaning this third way right this third way of realness but but for me like that that point the the third way it’s like the third way takes us back to this point you’re talking about right and that nishitani is talking about because like shinder says like what play was trying to get us to believe is if things don’t if they’re not for their own sake if they’re if they’re not singing their own name if you’ll allow me to speak poetically then they can’t be they can’t be real because it is there there has to be something about them that is in no way for me in order for them to be real or else they are just subsumed within me right the thing that makes them real and we we tried to get this with the old notion of object that which objects to me right we but we’ve lost that insight we’ve lost the idea that right and that that that and we reduced it to the inertia of inertial matter and all this stuff let’s put that move aside and go back to no no there’s something this this has it for itselfness that right is it is its grounding of its realness and precisely because it is other than me it nevertheless calls to me it calls to me it calls to me because i am i am a i am a relation to realness and so anything that sings realness calls to me and that’s where the is and the ought are now there’s no distinction between them and this is what schindler’s argument is that playdo this brilliant book this is what schindler is arguing is at the core of playdo’s republic this is the core thing he’s trying to get us to see reminds me the way to think about it a good place is murdoch’s sovereignty of the good where she says at the core of morality deeper than morality is paying attention to things the way they deserve to be paid attention to and that is right that when you’re doing that there’s no distinction between the is and the odd you ought to be doing it because that’s what that thing is right and like i feel that this is getting so close right i feel all of this coming so close together but there’s like ah but that but that’s the wonder of it too right that’s the wonder of it i think of the browning i think of the browning line right a man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what is a heaven for which right uh and so uh and you know that goes back to what we’re talking about earlier about epic cases like like that that that there’s this like to come into right relationship with that through through the third way to that pivot point that you were talking you and i’ve been talking about like it’s i it’s hard not to agree with the neoplatonic christian tradition or i think also with an equal kind of move convergent move coming out of buddhism that that that’s it that’s what we’re seeking um insofar as we are beyond our seeking as animals which is to itself legitimate there is a seeking that we have um as persons and and and this is how i try to interpret and i think christians are going to get mad at me probably but this is how i try to interpret augustin’s idea that the heart is hungry for god in a profound way and of course that has been just turned into just horrible horrible things in the hands of fundamentalists and all kinds of and for the triumphalism of a certain political model of christianity and i want to reject all that bullshit but i do want that there’s something we are like this idea that well i’m just i’ve said there’s just that point and and and we are by being in relationship to that that point that that pivot that that that pivot point that where the sieve is that’s if a right exactly is it not yeah yeah exactly exactly right but the seve is again the seve is this is this point that establishes the identity yes the the you would say right the non-logical identity yes where whereby and now we can speak in a cartian terms maybe whereby my god is god’s ground and god’s ground is my ground yes yes there is and there is maybe maybe we have to this is hard to capture in language but they’re in that is there is this pivot point as well yes buddhist just do it more elegantly because they just they just throw like right those those chinese characters and then in between they throw this the seve this yeah yeah yeah soko in japanese that’s it’s it’s more it’s in in in western languages you have to talk in different ways but right we we the seve is that which is this point where where then i see let’s say through that that which through i can right become god and then then i immediately realize how god’s grounds are my ground yes yes there is a there’s a there’s a shared in that in all that calling we share the same we share the same identity which we always forget and that’s in a sense that’s the miss that’s a seve that is so important it’s this pivot point that yeah that connects that connects us all so yeah the dynamics yes it’s notice how we’re invoking this very different space and for me this space is outside or perhaps beneath the space that’s supposed to be exhaustively occupied by theism and atheism and i like we’re talking about god here and i do not think that’s inappropriate especially if god the origin is the origin from good which is given as one of the etymologies of that word i like well let me ask you from for me i find that another one of the things that this transcends and it and it is good pun intended it is good that it does so it transcends the theism atheism divide that it it it is trying to break the just i think of theism and atheism the same way i think of you know the upward hierarchy of being and the downward hierarchy of reductionism they’re just they’re just they they’re sharing the same structure they just invert each other’s right stance whereas we are trying to get out of it in a profound way to get to right the the the third way of knowing the third way of being like this third right this place where we come into right relationship with the third kind of realness that is somehow the really real and like i said i do not think it’s inappropriate to use the word god but i guess what i want to ask you is how do you use that word well standing or if you do i’m presupposing something in this question so you can challenge it how do you use that word because you use it and i and i’m finding it good in this discourse so don’t misunderstand me how do you use that word without falling into you know the calvinist cartesian project of right that’s now unfolding as the perpetual stupid uh irresolvable battle between theism and atheism right because i think that battle is not a place where we will find a resolution to the meaning crisis it is one of the deepest symptoms of the meaning crisis sorry that’s a long question but it’s like we’re talking about god so it’s got to be a long question right no that’s that’s good um no no for me right the god is god is i mean many people make this right they make a fantasy of god an image an idol yeah something right somewhere we don’t know where exactly yeah yeah but it’s kind of like it’s also god is in the in the inventory of beings so yeah yeah that’s often it’s even when some like right there are these there is just really i despise those debates between atheists and theists yes because it’s just this cheap dialectical way of exchanging arguments and then also making of god again being like comparing it i don’t know to a fairy or to something something in that kind of like sense yes but right right what for example this book from eric pearl is great yes he makes this line right that the sense of being starting with parmenides and then going on with plato yeah um platinus even up to thomas equinas right yes there wasn’t there wasn’t there was an essential recognition that um first of all right thinking and being are connected yes it means deep right being is intelligible it’s it’s not it’s not just right it’s not um it’s not just sheer material that has no yep intrinsic value or so like but there’s this tight link linking between being and thinking um and that god cannot cannot just be grasped like an object yes what that happened right what he says with dan scotus yes there we we made we made god an object um so when i’m talking about god i’m talking about this um um right how is this i think jp maussow would say something like right that the ground of yeah yeah grounds through which and in which all things exist yes in the world but something there’s again ground is perhaps even the wrong word because it’s a it’s a it’s an unground as the mystic right it’s always it’s always withdrawing it’s always it’s always more we cannot we can never capture it with no with no with any of our any of our notions um i think that i just want to say it has an ultimate for itselfness yeah right for its own sake right but keep going yeah yeah um um yeah that’s and and right they are even in the dense of notions right god calls calls us yeah to accomplish our own goodness so we come to our own selfness and that’s right then that’s even that’s even connected to freedom in in the classical metaphysics yeah so we are not libertarian freedom and this is also nishitami created as libertarian freedom at some point it’s not that we can pursue like any of our whims and any of our wants whatever okay now i i don’t know i want a hamburger yeah yeah i have to i have to freedom to eat 10 hamburgers because i’m i’m but it’s liberty in the sense is understood as as the freedom to accomplish your own being to come yes to come into your own so to say to come into your your your selfness so to say yeah come into your own suchness that that’s that’s freedom and there is a there’s a rationality behind this and this rationality is is connected to god’s calling so to say yes yes yes this is even in in aristotle that we find right there’s there’s a rationality to beings and it’s a tinnitus too yeah yeah yeah yeah um okay um this is good like you’re you’re really unpacking a very clearly an alternative way of using the term god so i think i think what what david bentley hart says because he says i listened to a lot of his stuff recently because i’m really interested in he and i are supposed to have a have a voices with verveki together which uh yeah yeah there’s uh there’s somebody who is uh follows both of our work who’s actively getting an email and trying to get us uh i i’d very much like to talk to him i uh i’ve read some of his books i’ll reread more i’m actually uh i’m doing lexio divina with his recent translation of the new testament um keep going i have it on my reading list yeah um there is right he’s a classical fiesta which is kind of like the position that that we had in in the neoplatonic tradition where’s this where’s this this this where’s the there’s a recognition of the mutual need let’s say of the apophatic the negative tradition and the cataphatic yes the cataphatic tradition yes um but there’s right there’s always like an initiative yeah we can’t talk about god is a no thing god is not this was like very clear for the for for people in antiquity as you said with right yeah yeah god is the eternal field yes field right the field of intelligibility um and i think i think right that that’s what we call then call this kind of like modern theism and this modern aphi as well yeah this is this is like this is like this coming from a lot of i guess errors that occurred after um yeah after we we end after with the cart after we kind of like um left the middle ages um and we kind of right but you say this often right we and now now we have post-modernism and it’s kind of like a virus on modernism yeah parasite but not not something right that creatively tries to develop something new yes or at least a continuation let’s say from that project that has clearly exhausted itself in our time yeah but going back and trying to revive the the neoplatonic tradition and the apophatic tradition yes yeah of course right we see it in heidegger we see it in derrida i see it in right to see it in you i see it in in nishitani also right holy nishitani yes yeah so so let let this is really good let me let me probe a little little further um because one of the things is like one of the things that i want to say and i think i hear you saying is so god isn’t the supreme being that’s a fact that’s probably the absolute worst way to think of god um and so instead we’re thinking like like the pivot point the uh the field or all the all this other language we’re trying to get but what we said earlier this and that’s why you know i remember i invoked lerman this isn’t this isn’t like sort of i don’t know esoteric math or something right it here’s the question then this involves me being in relationship to something that is in profound sense the ground of my personhood so it’s deeply personal to me but that does not mean i’m in relationship to a person right because the problem with the word person is we are bound to beings a person is a being right and even a supreme person is just a supreme being right and and so the the the is to try part of unlocking this and making it melt and flow what has been frozen is to realize you know spinoza says this the wise person pursues never never makes any effort in his intellectual love of god to have god love him in return he he like that is would be the absolute wrong thing to do because he he obviously sees the relationship there’s a new book out on spinoza’s religion which is fantastic by the way i can’t remember the author right now it’s called spinoza’s religion brilliant oh brilliant book and right the the the the point i’m trying to get to is and what i’m trying to unlock is this idea of a profoundly personal relationship to something that is profoundly not personal but that doesn’t mean that it’s impersonal either it’s neither the rock nor in intersubjectivity it’s not the objectivity of it’s not the realness rock of the rock it’s not the realness of the intersubjectivity of personhood it’s this other way in which the really real really is right so like yeah how do you make sense of a profoundly personal relationship to something that is neither personal nor impersonal i mean transpersonal is perhaps the best adjective we have right now what does that what does that what does that mean to you um the first thing right that comes to my mind is now nishitani right he says he says we have a personally impersonal or impersonally personal relationship yes yes exactly god unites right both of these aspects yes yes yes and he right he makes a lot of arguments for this right there are these these impersonal elements like like the sun is like it’s shining on all beings in the same way doesn’t make it there’s it there’s an essential non-dissertment yeah there that doesn’t the same right like agape yes yes yeah so this this is personally impersonal relation it it’s in a sense i think i think this is what agape achieves oh yes because because agape right oh and this is what jesus of nazareth is saying when he invokes that when he invokes the model of how god makes the sun and the rain keep going keep going yes so gapa is opening nishitani would say is disclosing this field again and then then so it’s a right there’s an impersonal move but there’s a there’s this this radical let’s say outpouring this self-emptying and then then i and by by impersonally loving reality things then shine forth as they are in their suchness right and then there then we can have a personal relationship relationship as well because we’re knowing the bamboo by being the bamboo yes yes but right that precedes this kind of like this precedes this is not a merely personal relationship no no it’s in it’s it’s at the same time it’s an impersonal relationship as well yes because i’m i’m kind of like i first need to yeah this is yeah first need this first need to open myself even towards something where i which i can never have really just a personal relationship too right right because this is this would then exhaust the whole thing if it would just be personal that’s very well said i’ve that i mean whenever i talk to you i i realize and i hope i hope i haven’t been guilty of plagiarism i realize how deeply and profoundly nishitani has has like has affected me and informed me i mean i read that book i studied that book twice at two different times and i keep coming back to nishitani’s work but that yeah that passage and the connection you just made to agape because one of the things that’s interesting me is i’ve become very interested in christian platonism where you have like we’ve invoked a lot of the christian platonists here where there’s an attempt and i think largely successful and even you know there’s you know um returning to reality christian platonism for today by taylor and others right there’s an attempt in christian platonism to integrate agape if i can put it this way this is don’t think this is reductive it’s just gestural where i can integrate the agape of of christianity with the logos of neoplatonism in a profound in a profound way and the move you just made there right of understanding the connection between agape and the impersonal personal and the personal impersonal that was brilliant that was really good thank you for that that was excellent right it’s almost as if agape opens that impersonal field and logos then opens the personal field where we then have again this with these all yeah this calling of the right the the flowers singing and calling for us so so we we mind them in their suchness but this is is kind of like simultaneously we we first have to to open that agapic field yes that that that makes that all possible in the first place i think that is very well said i suppose there’s a way in which the reverse is also the case that the logos field opens things up such that the relationships of agape become possible they mutually they mutually afford each other and i suppose that in some of the maybe like in maximus or or in dinesis that that’s what they’re trying to get at with sort of the mystical vision of christ as the logos grounding the agape and the agape grounding the logos so like and then the two together grounding the impersonal personal relationship with god that would be a very interesting theology of the sonship of christ right that would be very interesting way of thinking about i’m not but our job my job is i and i don’t think it’s your job i’m not trying to uh revivify christianity neither am i trying to destroy it i’m trying to i’m trying to i respect it as a powerful source especially christian platonism just as i respect the kyoto school the integration of uh sort of post-phenomenological western philosophy with buddhism that you see in the kyoto school i also regard that as you know just and for me a sacred source that i go to time and time again as i think it is for you for trying to wrestle with these these really deep questions again in a way apropos that is simultaneously most respectful of the impersonal and of the personal aspects of what we’re talking about here so so daniel this i i think we should probably draw to a close there that’s a good place i want to invite you to come on again to voices with reviki we have a lot more we can keep going we could obviously talk for hours and i think if we break it up into increments of an hour and a half or so that will be more digestible to people watching but i wanted to give you the opportunity to any last thing you wanted to say just just thank you i’m i’m i’m really i’ve come across your work um when quite quite long ago two or three years ago for the first time and it really it helped me a lot to be able to it helped me with with just many things just for for my own life you connected dots where i couldn’t see dots and not just right not just intellectually of course but it just helped me a lot in my personal life which was is or is not always easy um so so that there and your channel it has really become one of my one of my pillars let’s say where i can really i see i see the goodness of being let’s say coming to the fore when i when i listen to you and your interlocutors and that’s just something that i would like to say to you so thank you for all the things that you are doing thank you for saying that that’s very encouraging and uh you you have a beautiful soul so i’m glad that um i’m glad you’re finding a place a field a basho where it can come to greater fruition for its own sake so thank you very much very much daniel thank you