Teardrops of the Stars - An Ecology of Cyclicality in Constant Flux

Teardrops of the Stars ...

In the Book of Tea (茶の本 Cha no Hon), Japanese author Okakura Kakuzō reflects, "Tell me, gentle flowers, teardrops of the stars, standing in the garden, nodding your heads to the bees as they sing of the dews and the sunbeams, are you aware of the fearful doom that awaits you? Dream on, sway and frolic while you may in the gentle breezes of summer. To-morrow a ruthless hand will close around your throats. You will be wrenched, torn asunder limb by limb, and borne away from your quiet homes." Again, we are reminded of the merciless reality of impermanence, whose grasp tightens around even the teardrops of the stars.

These teardrops, the flowers that dot the earth, are the epitome of the ephemeral.

Flowers, it would seem, lack an awareness of their own mortality. Dreaming, they remain blissfully ignorant. Humans, however, know all too well of their impending demise and have thus devised myriads of distractions to disguise what otherwise lies right before our eyes. At funerals, we dress corpses up with the finest of clothing, painting their faces with rosy cheeks to make them appear alive and well. Yet in other contexts and cultures, death is a viscerally visible vicissitude, needing no concealment. The metamorphosis of bodies as they decay and return to the earth is immediately present and uncensored for all to bear witness. While the phrase "teardrops of the stars" sounds mournful, conjuring an image of the heavens bearing witness to death, it also conveys an ecology of cyclicality. A flower is as connected to the earth in which it's planted as it is to the cosmos beyond.

An Ecology of Cyclicality

Recently, we delved into the muddy waters that sustain the lotus, exploring its symbolism in the early Buddhist tradition. Recall the image of the lotus, resting on the water's surface yet with roots extending deep into the primordial stew of the earth, an image to which the Buddha is likened. Revealing a contemplative ecology supportive of liberation, not only of oneself, but of other beings as well, such a path of neither clinging-attachment nor uncaring-detachment strikes the balance that characterizes the middle way.

Here, we take an even more explicit turn toward existential ecology. Recall from the lotus metaphor that cutting off a flower from its roots only ends its life. Not only does the severed flower wilt and die, it further decomposes as its petals decay and fragrance fades, returning to the soil that nourished and sustained it. Maintaining one's presence through continued connection to the mud below enables those who are awake to assist in waking others still dreaming. Yet the process of eventual demise can perhaps open our eyes to another important reality: that of impermanence.

The lotus, cut from its stalk, separated from its roots, wilts and returns to the very mud that gave it life. Even without having been severed from its source of sustenance, all life will eventually and inevitably cease in its present form. Rather than some bleak outlook on mortality, however, we offer here an exploration of the ecology of cyclicality and its relationship to the contemplative path.

In Constant Flux

This process of deterioration, as depicted by the flower's wilting or its being plucked, is universal to all organic matter. A similar cycle of disintegration even occurs psychologically, whether through injury to the biological systems that allow consciousness to manifest in vivo, or due to the aging process, even for reasons still unknown to us. The very aggregates, both mental and material, that comprise our bodies and minds cycle through their own process of de-coagulation and re-coagulation, their own ecology of cyclicality. Even the lotus emerged from mud and shall return to the mud from which it bloomed.

Before birth, the ingredients that will comprise our experience are integrated into a being through complex processes. Likewise for non-human animals and plants, each of whose bodies are comprised of the same basic organic material. Throughout our early life, as demarcated by childhood and adolescence, these ingredients transform in physical shape, size, and psychological signature.

All is in constant flux.

During late adulthood, sometimes even sooner, we experience the disintegration of such psycho-physical ingredients. Old age and sickness take their toll. The body malfunctions, the mind glitches. Assembled, hypothetically, from infinitely dissectable pieces organized into increasingly complex systems and sub-systems, the biological machinery that holds together and houses the processes that most will claim as their "own" sooner or later malfunctions. Despite its astounding capacities, the mind in all its nuance and complexity glitches like a computer gone rogue.

Even without a literal belief in rebirth, this cycle occurs organically through decomposition and disintegration of such ingredients, which are recycled into the environment at large, then re-utilized in the process of reintegration in a differently-arranged macro-form comprised of largely the same micro-ingredients. This body consists of atomic building-blocks tracing themselves to previous life-forms no longer present, to vegetation, to the same air breathed by beings several millennia ago. Its presence and activities cast a ripple into that which is yet to unfold, to be felt by future generations.

Embedded

On a practical level, what lessons can be gleaned from such reflections? Obviously, Okakura's inquiry is embedded in a far wider context, with but one tea leaf from the Book of Tea conveyed in the passage on flowers as "teardrops of the stars," dreaming away their short lives. What can we extrapolate from such an inquiry?

Briefly, perhaps in recognizing our place in the dream, awakening to the dynamic tapestry in which we ourselves are suspended, connected ecologically, cyclically, with all other processes, we will cease to perceive ourselves as the center of the universe. With this realization comes the ability to empathize with others, shifting the focus to beings beyond our own artificial bounds. Greater care for the rest of existence, knowing no separation to exist between oneself and all else, might just be possible. Perhaps a return to our own roots may lend itself to a more sustainable world.

As always, we invite your reflections. Please leave us a comment if there's anything on this or related subjects you might like to share. Many thanks for your continued presence in this constant flux.

Consciousness Flickers - Process and Reality

Process and Reality ...

"Consciousness flickers; and even at its brightest, there is a small focal region of clear illumination, and a large penumbral region of experience which tells of intense experience in dim apprehension."

—Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, page 267

Mathematician-turned-metaphysician, Alfred North Whitehead was a philosopher who walked the narrow edge between worlds. Responsible for founding the field of "process philosophy" or "process metaphysics," he paved the way for a growing interest in the ebbs and flow of conscious and unconscious experience. For Whitehead, these two aspects, conscious and unconscious, comprised an essential continuum.

Whitehead's process approach, as its name suggests, emphasized the perspective that all phenomena are processes forever in flux as opposed to concrete, solid entities fixed in time and space. In Process and Reality, he outlines this "philosophy of organism," as he calls it, reflecting that existence is a process of becoming, which in turn is a creative advance into novelty.

Here we provide a close reading and unpacking of a particularly striking quote from Whitehead on consciousness, hopefully illuminating its potential as a stepping stone into his work.

Consciousness Flickers

Consciousness flickers, reflects Whitehead.

In the above quote from his magnum opus, Process and Reality, Whitehead employs imagery relating to light and darkness to illustrate and thereby illuminate the nature of conscious experience. Consciousness flickers insofar as it makes itself known, like a candle's flame in an otherwise dark room. Yet even at its brightest, its power to illuminate reaches only so far. A single candle, even with flame at full strength, cannot illuminate an entire expansive dungeon. Much remains in a penumbral region, a shadowy darkness, which reflects another aspect of experience that often goes unnoticed. Even in this darkness, in this unconsciousness where apprehension is at best dim, can exist intense experience.

Manifest consciousness, that which is perceptible subjectively to one who is conscious and intersubjectively to other consciousnesses, is but the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface, in the shadowy depths, resides an oceanic unknown waiting to be plumbed.



In other words, unconscious experience, that which is below or beneath consciousness, is the ground of consciousness. In this sense, the unconscious comes first and is foundational. Consciousness, then, is a differentiated evolutionary outgrowth of an undifferentiated unconscious undergirding. If consciousness is the tip of the iceberg, the unconscious is all that lies under the water. According to Whitehead's philosophy, consciousness only occurs at the latest stage of "concrescence," where the term concrescence refers to becoming concrete.

What does concrescence mean? We can perhaps envision the process as a gooey substance, perhaps tree sap to use a particularly salient example, slowly solidifying. If you've ever gathered sap from a tree with your bare hands, you may be familiar with its tendency to stick stubbornly to clothing, hair, and skin alike. Yet when warmed under hot water, it returns to its viscous state, a sort of plasmic existence between solidity and liquidity. Perhaps this sort of transformation and shape-shifting could be what Whitehead was getting at with the process of concrescence.

In particular, concrescence refers to emerging from that which was previously without form. An actual entity, believe it or not, can manifest from this formlessness. It is essential to keep in mind, however, that actual entities, for Whitehead, were occasions of experience, consistent with his process-oriented approach. Such entities were not substantial in the usual sense of the term, but temporally serial composites, thus inextricably embedded in time as unfolding processes. Whitehead maintained that "actual entities are drops of experience, complex and interdependent," waxing poetic.

Clear Consciousness

That may seem somewhat complex, indeed, and potentially unclear. For the sake of grounding such a philosophical perspective, we return to the quote in question, contextualizing it within what comes immediately thereafter. The passage continues:

"The simplicity of clear consciousness is no measure of the complexity of complete experience. Also this character of our experience suggests that consciousness is the crown of experience, only occasionally attained, not its necessary base."

—Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, page 267

Here, the image of the iceberg is again indirectly invoked. In referring to consciousness as the "crown" of experience, we can see the tip of the iceberg emerge. Whitehead maintains that consciousness is not the base of experience, which instead lies in the unconscious.



Deep in this pulsing primordial, penumbral pre-consciousness, ideas ooze and ferment. We are perhaps brought back to the image of the wax or sap⁠— coagulating, decoagulating, and recoagulating dependent on the flux of temperature. The conscious and the unconscious undergo similar transformations.

Practical Purpose

Such notions are little nuggets of poetry, but what practical purpose can they serve? What relevance do Whitehead's notions have for us today?

Such contemplations on consciousness, even through a single paragraph from Whitehead, hopefully stir the primordial ooze of one's self-understanding. Left unstirred, uninterrogated, our unconscious remains unknown to us. By drawing on imagery such as the iceberg, light, or sap, perhaps the relationship between the conscious and unconscious can be illuminated and brought out of the dark.

Once we've illuminated the relationship between the conscious and unconscious dynamics of our experience, we stand to make significant changes in our thinking and behaviors. Habits previously left unquestioned may now be scrutinized in the light of day and skillfully evaluated for whether they conduce toward adaptive or maladaptive outcomes.

Those habits that cause us and others harm may then be critically probed and dissected. We may target their source in the unconscious, in the otherwise penumbral region of experience, and uproot them.

Simple, though by no means easy. How would you go about illuminating the connection between the conscious and unconscious? How would you transform yourself from the inside out? Leave us a comment below.