25

There was something formless and perfect
before the universe was born.
It is serene. Empty.
Solitary. Unchanging.
Infinite. Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name,
I call it the Tao.
It flows through all things,
inside and outside, and returns
to the origin of all things.

The Tao is great.
The universe is great.
Earth is great.
Man is great.
These are the four great powers.
Man follows the earth.
Earth follows the universe.
The universe follows the Tao.
The Tao follows only itself.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, trans. by Stephen Mitchell

Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt, (The limits of my language define the limits of my world) – Tractatus Logico Philosophicus 5.6 by Ludwig Wittgenstein 1922

Strictly speaking, here ought to be nothing, just nothing but a blank screen. By rights nothing more is to be said.

This excerpt from Lao Tsu is an attempt to characterize the beating heart of existence, to coin, to conjure up language where language cannot go. The physicists term “big bang” has been popularized. No one, physicists included, knows what it means. What does “before” even mean anterior to anything at all?

A favorite philosopher of mine, Wittgenstein once taught his students that language is employed for describing what is within the frame of one’s world. And the frame, that-which-holds the content in relationship cannot be said. You and I have no words for what was prior to “world” or universe… To just shut the fuck up and bow in acceptance of the mystery is all that I can do. To attempt to do, to say more is a clue that I am clueless.

On a positive note, the primal, framing, life-force perennially flows through everything. On occasion you can feel the flow (even when you cannot think it). I suspect that children feel it most easily. As we acquire language our powers of agency grow, self-hood grows, but at the expense of contact with the source. We lose ourselves in the thicket of linguistic and social limits.

Well. I have said too much.

This is a fucking great song, Read My Mind by The Killers. I love the Elvis impersonator with the band in Kabukicho, Tokyo.