Friendship, Love, Freedom

"It is all in the day's work; everything I do, I do con amore; and so too I love con amore."
-Soren Kierkegaard (Johannes Climacus), "Either/Or"

There is a commonly known expression: "If you love someone, set them free." It seems these words are actually closely related, and this relation goes back a long ways.

The etymology of the word "friend" can be traced to Proto-Indo-European, where we find the present participle form of the root, "*pri-". "*pri-" means "to love," and the present participle form, "*pri-ont-" could roughly be translated to "loving." We also find that "*pri-" is closely related with the Old Church Slavonic "prijatelji," which means "friend," as well as Welsh "rhydd," which means "free."

Love loves, and does nothing more. All love accepts that which it loves, letting the beloved freely be that which is loved. Why do I say this? Because the moment we decide that the beloved must be changed, it follows that by changing, it must be changed into something else—something entirely different. Therefore, the desire to change the beloved is something other than the initial love, even if a bit of love remains.

All friendship has love at its roots. Why do I say this? Because when we call somebody our true friend, we accept them for who they are and allow ourselves to abide with them, that is, to stay by their side. While it is theorized that the kinship between the words "free" and "friend" has its factual historical basis in the association between free men (as opposed to the association between a master and slave), I find that there is an even richer way of looking at the relationship between these words. To love someone, we let them be, that is to say, we let them be free. When we love our friends, we let them be who they are. If we seek to change a perceived quality in a friend, it is because the quality that has appeared is something that we cannot abide with, and thus cannot love. It is in this way that I find "love" and "freedom" are still related in today's usage.

What are the things that we love about somebody? We may find that we love their way of saying and doing things. We may find that we love their courage or their compassion. We may love their sadness or anger. We may even love just about everything about them. That which we are able to love about someone depends on how we see them, and if we see someone behave a way in a situation, or see someone display a certain quality, we then are capable of loving this behavior, or loving this quality. In other words, if we believe someone is a certain way or has a certain quality, we can then dispose ourselves towards that quality in one way or another. We could approve of said quality, or disapprove of it. We might scorn it or desire it. We might hate it, or we might love it. This entry simply focuses on how we love. Those things that we love about somebody are those things that we stay with, and, so it seems, those things stay with us.

Some may find this to be an oversimplification. For I say "love," and perhaps different meanings come to mind for different readers. But when you look at it more closely, love is actually quite easy to understand. The tricky part is that we never seem to be feeling just one thing purely. Oftentimes with love of any degree, whether it be a kindly friend's love, a concerned family's love, or a passionate love of romantic attraction, etc., there are other feelings that happen at the same time, for instance, striving, needing, lamenting, anger, or hate. All of these kinds of experiences have led people to say things like "love is really sadness," "if you love something, you need it," and "love is really akin to hate." Many people think that love is happy, love is sad, love is angry, love is needy, on and on and on. Many people think that love needs, love laments, love fights. But really, these are  overcomplications that lead people to think love is so hard to define. They overcomplicate because they add more to love than what love itself is. The truth is, love loves.

Now I would like to move from exploring the more general sense of love to a more specific sense. I would like to explore the sense of love that we often call "romantic love," which the ancient Greeks called "eros," a name which was also used for the god, Eros, who we commonly refer to by the Latin name, Cupid. Before diving in, I want to make note of the way that the Greeks' use of love is tied up with a sense of desiring or wanting. In the Platonic dialogue, Symposium, Socrates and his friends discuss the nature of eros, and before getting into it, he establishes a couple things: one is that "everyone who desires, desires that which he has not already, and which is future and not present," and the other is that "when you say, 'I desire that which I have and nothing else,' is not your meaning that you want to have what you have now in the future?" Making note of these remarks, we can see how if love is tied with desire, then this desire either seeks to be with that which it has not, or seeks to stay with that which it has. This seems to fit just perfectly with my earlier characterization of love as wanting to abide or stay. For abiding is a disposition towards the future. Now I will remind the reader that I do not think that love necessarily connotes desire, for we do not lose the sense of "loving" if we take away the sense of "desiring." However I think it is important to deal with the sense of "desiring" as it is commonly connected with love. It is by assuming there to be a correlation between love and desire that people often mistake love for lust, or assume that love involves lust. Really, lust is just a form of desire that can accompany love, especially eros. I think we can conclude from this digression that if love sets its gaze towards the future, it can easily bring about a strong desire, but this desire, which looks towards the future, is not the same thing as love, which in the present simply loves.

Now to resume the exploration of romantic love. The old Proto-Indo-European term "*leubh-", which means "to care, desire, love," is closely related with Latin "lubet" which means "pleases," and, (my favorite version), Lithuanian "liaupse," which means "song of praise." Closer to our English language term, we have Old English "lufu," which means "love, affection, friendliness," which is closely related to the Old High German and Old German words for "joy" and "praise." In all of these we see a common thread. That sense of joy, praise, care, and, as some, such as Indians and Greeks, use it, desiring.

To return to the Greeks, they considered eros to be love of the beautiful. "For the beloved is truly beautiful, and delicate, and perfect, and blessed" (Symposium). It does seem to always be the case that when we love someone in a romantic way, we find them beautiful. To reconnect with my earlier conviction that love abides, we might make this distinction: In loving a beloved friend, there are many different things about them that we may find ourselves loving; while in loving someone in the romantic sense (aka eros), the quality which we find standing out is beauty. So when the beloved is seen in a romantic way, their beauty is what is most loved, and the beauty is what stays with the lover. (I don't just mean beauty in the way we might say a waterfall is "beautiful." Here, and fitting the context, I mean it in the sense of "attractiveness," "seductiveness," and in the oldest sense, "revered." This is what I think the Greeks had in mind when talking about "beauty" regarding eros.)

The Lithuanians seem to get closest to the activity of love with their phrase, "liaupse." If there were any action that would be a perfect parallel for love, would it not be music? A song exists as an expression in itself, not sung for any means, but simply to be sung. Love is the same way: it has no end, yet is an end in itself. Joy is one of our words in the English language which has not departed far from its Proto-Indo-European origins. "*gau-" means "to rejoice," and it is very closely related to the Ancient Greek word, "gaio." This sense remains in the Old Germanic words that are closest to Old English and its daughter language, the English we speak today. When we love something, we praise it, we rejoice in it, and the joy needs not achieve any purpose, but is simply rejoicing. So it is that when beauty becomes the object of love, we find in many of those cases the all-too-familiar lover's poem or song.

The core revelation that Socrates arrives at in his effort to understand the nature of love is the idea that the highest form of love loves beauty in itself, "beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting" (Symposium). We take note that Socrates would often postulate things in terms of "eternal Forms." He would often say that all things in the material world derive their qualities from immaterial, objective, eternal "Forms." What he is talking about in Symposium is the "Form of Beauty," a Form that every beautiful person, animal, and object partakes in, just as every instance of justice would take its quality from the "Form of Justice," and so it goes with any Form. I am not inclined to believe in the existence of Platonic Forms, and it seems to me that the knowledge of such Forms may be impossible. In other words, I don't believe there are such things as beautiful people. One of my favorite parables from the Chuang Tzu goes as follows: 

Men claim that Mao-ch'iang and Lady Li were beautiful, but if fish saw them they would dive to the bottom of the stream, if birds saw them they would fly away, and if deer saw them they would break into a run. Of these four, which knows how to fix the standard of beauty for the world?

 It seems clear to me that no one creature understands what true beauty is. But then, no one man or woman knows this either. Could it be that beauty truly lies in the eye of the beholder?

We need not deal with the confusions of asserting objective, ethereal Platonic Forms, to understand what I find to be the kernel of truth in what Socrates says: When we love something in the romantic way, it is not that we love a thing that is beautiful, but, rather, we love the beauty in that thing. When the lover feels eros, the beloved is seen as beautiful by the lover. Bearing in mind the semiotic angle that this exploration takes, it seems no small stretch to take these words of Socrates in a semiotic sense: "beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities" (Symposium). When he says this, Socrates seems to imply that we are seeing into the "eternal reality" of the "Form of Beauty." However, if we understand, via semiotics, the way in which a mind is always affecting and creating its reality by the way it defines things, we might say there is yet some truth in his words, and here's how I would express it: Regardless of whether there is an eternal "Form of Beauty" or not, it seems that whenever we love in this way, we bring forth beauty. There is no eye that can behold beauty but the eye of the mind.

Now, to take a final turn in this exploration, let us examine the role love can play for us in life. Love is a feeling that makes itself known. If there is a life worth living, it is a life loved. Whatever we love, we are willing to stay with it, and if we let love prevail, this acceptance warms the heart. Nietzsche wanted to be a lover of fate. In section 276 of The Gay Science he says:

I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.

Amor fati is Latin for "love of fate." Even our fate we can learn to love. Can we see life and fate as beautiful? Can we bring forth the beauty in life? To have such a love that we are inspired to make music out of it, to sing a song of praise, ah, now that seems like a powerful view to take on life, (a view we take with the mind's eye). To truly love life would be to let it be, to let it be free. Being a friend to a beloved friend, we need not change them, but simply be their friend. Being a lover of a beloved lover, we need not change them, but simply love them. To love life is to set it free, which means not trying to change it, but to live it. Those who wish to be lovers of life with me, can you sincerely say these words? "I do what I love and I love what I do. I am what I love and I love what I am." If you can say these words, if you can love your life—set it free! The music will surely follow.

Know Thyself

Shall I ask wealth or power of God, who gave
An image of himself to be my soul?
As well might swilling ocean ask a wave,
Or the starred firmament a dying coal,-----
For that which is in me lives in the whole.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Gnothi Seauton"

Much remains beyond the reach of our current sensory apparatus. The idea that we could somehow understand the entirety of what is going on in the universe seems so incredible that one might, in a more conservative mindset, call such a striving hubris. Nietzsche makes a relevant comment in On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense, saying that "if we could communicate with a midge we would hear that it too floats through the air with the very same pathos, feeling that it, too, contains within itself the flying center of this world." Certainly the wavelengths of sound and light that we perceive are limited to those which can be received by the eyes and ears, and interpreted by the brain, and the same could be said for the variety of sensation experienced by any organism.

Image by Abstruse Goose

 The illustrator of the above image added their own caption noting that "we are all pretty much blind and deaf." It a a rather frank manner of speaking, but it is not too far off when you consider, for instance, the immense amount of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes are simply not designed to take in. We are really no different than a midge or ant in that each of us relates what we perceive to our unique and limited overall experience and memory. Yet we are capable of imagining what this different experience might seem like. For instance, even though we are not ants, with our tool-set of language we can in abstracto conceptualize the way that an ant comes to a bent flower stem and sees it as a walkway or bridge to get where it is trying to go. Yet while we may imagine and come up with words to describe imagined differences, much remains unknown.

Now, to expand this exploration beyond mere sensory perception and into deeper matters of our very thoughts, I think it would yield some insight for us turn this exploration to the modern psychological idea of the "unconscious." Many people nowadays suppose that there is a sphere of being which remains unknown and  mysterious: that part of every person which seems to operate behind his or her awareness and deciding. Alan Watts discusses this unconscious, claiming that the ancient mystic traditions understood it in terms of gods and demons. He refers to the ancient maxim to know thyself as an encouragement that  a man realize "that his being was not a simple unit but a pantheon of gods and demons." I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Hesse's Steppenwolf: "The breast and body are indeed one, but the souls that dwell in it are not two, nor five, but countless in number. Man is an onion made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made up of many threads." I find the use of the metaphor of a texture made of many threads to be quite insightful, for if we look into the etymology of the word "context" we find it to mean a weaving (textus) together (con-). So every context in which we find ourselves or consider ourselves to be in is actually made by us, like picking and choosing a few colorful strands from the infinitude of threads, and weaving them together into the tapestry that is our life story. In this sense, life is like a work of art, and here I refer to the even older sense of "texture" which comes from the Ancient Greek "techne," meaning "art" in the sense of a craft, and from Sanskrit "taksati," meaning "fashions" or "constructs."

Watts reflects on this truly immense myriad of mystery, which we may in a religious tone call a pantheon, and says that "when people started talking about the unconscious as though it were just a repository of repressed sexuality, the occultists laughed outright, knowing that it contained far more divinities than libido, who was just a little imp dancing on the surface." The whole point of this discussion of his is to get at the point that people try to impose simple rules on themselves, aligning their lives to some sort of reasoned purpose or identity, when the truth is that there is much of what we are is mysterious and unknowable. Just as far as the expanse of the universe we cannot sense or even comprehend extends in every direction, so within the depths of consciousness there lies an unknown just as infinitely great, and just as powerful.

It is in this sense that I think comes the true force of the inscription on the arch anyone had to pass under in Ancient Greece when they went to visit the Oracle at Delphi: "γνωθι σεαυτόν" it read, (pronounced "gnothi seauton"). When one went to visit the Oracle, one was getting a communication from the gods—from beings who were supposed to be beyond our mere ability to comprehend through reason. Socrates is famously known to have said "I know one thing: that I know nothing." This is sometimes called the "Socratic paradox." The phrase is perhaps most well-known in Plato's Apology, wherein Socrates claims that when he visited the Oracle, the Oracle told him that "Socrates is the wisest in all of Athens." Socrates interprets that the Oracle must have said so because unlike most others, Socrates knows how little he truly knows, and in that rests the wisdom the Oracle spoke of. Perhaps this was merely a rhetorical device used by Socrates to encourage others to have dialogues with him, but whether it actually happened or not, the point of the story sticks.

It is from this base understanding of the limits and vastness of consciousness that we can begin to see how "God," which some may call "gods and demons," while others may call it "Tao," while still others may just call it "all of creation," rests within the moment of consciousness, where we all live now. With sharp discernment, Watts notes how "too many would-be mystics and occultists try to follow the rationalist technique of imposing a discipline upon themselves without first understanding the nature of the thing to be disciplined."

Saint Matthew said (7:15) "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." I find it is equally true to say "Take heed of thoughts in sheep's or wolf's clothing, but inwardly they are shining gods." Regarding the words inscribed on the arch at Delphi, Eckhart Tolle provides a valuable interpretation. "Knowing yourself deeply has nothing to do with whatever ideas are floating around in your mind.  Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind" (A New Earth, 186). For indeed, to be lost in the mind is to lose that expansive eternity from whence the mind is born, from whence the mind is constantly dying and being reborn.

Ah, it looks like we have arrived at another paradox. For while it would seem that we cannot bend our thoughts to comprehend the vastness of all of creation, at the same time, it turns out that all of creation is contained within our minds. How mysterious that while we conceive of the incomprehensible vastness of eternity, we also find that now is the time where we conceive of eternity. Alan Watts says of this eternity: "that infinitely small and therefore infinitely great point of time is called the present moment." How mysterious: "infinity" is a concept that denotes what is so vast we cannot in thought comprehend it, and yet we are the ones who thought of "infinity."

Inspiration and Enthusiasm

“I am a hole in a flute that the Christ’s breath moves through. Listen to this music.” -Hafiz

Have you ever watched someone who is truly in love with an art, such as dance, or music, seem completely carried away by what they are doing? For them, in that moment, what they are doing is everything, and the past and future do not matter. I have known such moments, when music moves to dance like a reed in the wind, or the ocarina flute is played in a frenzy.

Arthur Schopenhauer writes of what he calls "genius," and while he thinks some people are born with a predisposition to be geniuses, he also thinks that almost anyone can potentially have a "moment of genius." The Latin word genius can refer to a type of guardian deity or spirit. Schopenhauer thinks a moment of genius is very much like a “rapture,” an old word which means "being seized and carried off." Genius, then, is not merely some kind of person—it is something that takes possession of someone, in a sense akin to the way that Ancient Greeks viewed artistic inspiration as coming from the Muse, which was a divine spirit or goddess that worked through artists. Homer began his epic poems with the phrase: "Sing, oh heavenly Muse...," invoking the divine spirit to speak through him.

The root of the word “enthusiasm” in fact comes from the Ancient Greeks. The word is constructed with the prefix “en-“ attached to “theos.” One is literally “enthused,” or filled with the spirit of the Muse or inspiring god or goddess (theos), which enters their body and acts through them. The relevance of Schopenhauer's opinion is that he characterizes the work of genius as a work done not as a means to some practical end, but as work which is an end in itself. In other words, it is not the kind of work done to fulfill some purpose, but it is work which is itself fulfilling. But then, it would seem the more appropriate word here would not be work in our usual sense, which we tend to correlate with drudgery and tasks, but rather, the work of a genius seems also like some sort of play. 

The word "inspiration"comes from "in-" + "spirit," and "spirit" comes from "spirare," which meant "to breathe." The word "inspiration" is constructed in such a way as to mean not simply breathing in, but rather a being breathed into. If we look at the oldest known root of the word "spirit," we find the Proto-Indo-European word "(s)peis-" which meant "to blow," a term which is similarly derived in the form of "pisto" which would be translated today as "to play a flute." From the idea of blowing into a flute, then, is where we get the sense of "blowing" in "inspiration." To make things even more interesting, another fact is that the oldest instruments archaeologists have discovered are flutes made from rocks, branches, or bones. It would seem that the very word "inspiration" can be traced back to the earliest forms of music.

A prehistoric bone flute. Photo by José-Manuel Benito Álvarez

 So, then, it seems that the inspired creator which we might in a broad sense call "genius" does not do work, but the divine work is done through them. The inspired creator does not so much play, but they are played. It is often said that such creations are immortal.

But how could he or she who writes now know if his or her work will become timeless as the plays of Shakespeare? How can he or she who plays now know if his or her song will be timeless as the symphonies of Mozart? As much as we may treasure and cherish the works of these geniuses and call them “timeless,” these works, too, are ephemeral. Each step in the inspired dance is over as soon as the next one begins, and the notes of a heartfelt solo may be heard by none but the player, and even if that tune is recorded and played for millions, billions to hear, it too will dissipate with the passage of time. But then, what is timeless, immortal, about an immortal work? Perhaps just that it will come again in the passing of infinite time, and every time we hear it, play it, dance it, we are out of time, and in eternity, the eternal moment, which Alan Watts calls "that infinitely small and therefore infinitely great point in time." The eternal moment—what’s that? The moment that has no past or future? But these moments, even the eternal ones, seem like they end so quickly… Ah, sometimes we have such fun we wish the moment could never end. But you see, the catch is—it will never end.

Saying Some Thing

So many different ways to say—

Every moment of which we are aware includes the thoughts and words that are present. I like to call words "linguistic objects," as they stand out in our world, existing to sensory perception as sound. Thoughts, too, exist, and as such they stand out, and as such they are as real as anything else in our experience. 

When responding to a situation, a curse can fly to one’s lips just as rapidly as a prayer—and the words uttered in the way they are uttered cast their color over the whole moment. By thinking we are able to focus on the aspects of a situation which aren’t. Thinking gives form to what would without the aid of conceptualizing, without the aid of an organized system of representation, be formless. The same is so for saying, though the mark left by words spoken is more easily noticed. The great paradox of language is that it names only the part of the present moment it names, though it is meant to hold on to something in the future or past. But language, which exists in the present, cannot be of a form to fit these fabricated futures and pasts, as they are nonexistent, for all that exists is the present. Rather, these fabricated futures and pasts are formed fitting language. Language can only reflect or anticipate—so even if the words seem situated in the present reality, there is only so much that they say. Seeing as one cannot say what has never yet been said, (for having said it, it has thus been said), so we are never really saying anything about the future, as there’s not a thing to say anything about, but rather we say the future (or think it).

When we cultivate a careful listening to not just the words and thinking with which we are surrounded, but also the tone in which they are said and thought, we become much more expansive and powerful.

The slightest, quietest little words that show up in our thoughts almost unnoticed can affect us in remarkably deep ways. “So and so has got better things to do than call me back…”—a phrase like that can slip in so slightly that it could be mistaken as the whole reality, without it being realized that such a statement is borne of the particular elements of one's experience of the situation and one's presupposed notions, and is thus a part of a very limited and probably preconditioned understanding.

Suppose you are about to do some work. You might think: “Oh, what a situation I’m in…I’ve got hard work ahead of me…” which is a very different way of phrasing from "High ho! Off to work we go…" These are of course a couple of extremes, as there are countless ways of phrasing and framing one's experience in thought. These different sayings (thoughts) could all even occur very close to one another, in the same train of thought.

If the smallest little thought patterns have such power over us, how much more power we have when we realize this. Upon this realization we can begin to decide which patterns to which we habituate ourselves, simultaneously breaking free from patterns that had been unnoticed.

Much of our thinking is in a language with a vocabulary. Some thoughts seem familiar, as if they have been thought before. But even if we use the same words at surface, every thought beneath this surface of vocabulary is borne of this moment, and is thus what it is now, despite the resemblance to previous forms. This is a trick language plays on us. An aspect I have noticed which brings certain thoughts their familiarity is not just the concepts which words are meant to denote, but the very way, the tone, in which they are presented. When considering the tone, for instance, with which one might regard their listing off of errands to run, or the attempting to communicate approval/disapproval to a young child, or the preparation to go to an anticipated event, etc., we see how drastically different can be the effect of the same words when they are said differently. This difference in saying is marked by various factors in the situation out of which the speaking arises, including intention, but also one’s culture, the context of what is being said, and, perhaps most often taken for granted, the fact that one becomes accustomed to this or that way of saying (thinking).

Now, focus in and realize our power. What one eventually ends up in the habit of thinking may seem the least controllable aspect of one’s forms of thought, but it is by our very actions and intentions that we direct ourselves to do the things which, through enough repetition, eventually evolve into habits. What people do not seem to be terribly observant of in most contexts in our society are the ways one is habitually accustomed to behave—one's ingrained patterns of thinking or speaking—and these patterns are taken for granted, as though oneself were to be known by these familiar patterns which show up as highlighted aspects of the experience because they are so easily recognized. We identify ourselves with certain behaviors which are most often repeated—and what happens is we forget the creative, self-driven role that is played when one chooses to behave a certain way or not.

Here are some examples:

• "I am lazy"—Are you this word we named "lazy," or are you just in the habit of not getting things done?

• "I am stupid"—Are you this word we named "stupid," or are you just accustomed to having difficulty grasping things, and perhaps blundering due to ignorance (which can be corrected through education and practice). 

• "I am beautiful"—Are you this word we named "beautiful," or are you just accustomed to receiving people's love and adoration and praise of your appearance and actions?

The above examples remain helpful when thought of with the chosen adjectives' converse terms inserted.

Carry enough words around with yourself, and you'll begin to feel the weight.

We take the behaviors chosen as being the self, but the real self, if it were to be identified by anything, would be much better described as the very choosing that led up to the occurrence of those behaviors. From the stillness from which we choose, something which we might call pure consciousness, how much better one can hear the many sayings (thinkings) that are taking place than when instead one mistakes the baseline as the drone or slight whisper of certain statements, allowing them to go unheeded, their reality-sculpting force taken for granted. For indeed, every word or thought grants something. Do we define ourselves or do we create ourselves? If we consider ourselves defined, the things we think seem granted; whereas if we consider ourselves created, we grant the things we think.

Our English word "grant" comes from the old Anglo-French "creant" which means in one of its senses, "will, wish, pleasure." We often like to say to each other, "be careful what you wish for." I have found that thinking stands out in its granting of things, so much so that I sometimes feel more inclined to call it "thinging" than "thinking."

Ah, did you have a wish? But give voice to it, and it shall be granted. —A tautology?

Singing

A sigh. I caught this notion on the way, and rapidly took the readiest, poor words to hold it fast, so that it might not again fly away. But it has died in these dry words, and hangs and flaps about in them and now I hardly know, when I look upon it, how I could have had such happiness when I caught this bird. (Friedrich Nietzsche, Gay Science, 298)

There is a way that language will lay itself out, building, as it is spoken or written, a structure which responds to itself in its complexity, which works much in the same way as a song or a poem, always bringing you back… back where? To some sort of cusp—a horizon where the language first emerged out of stillness.

To capture a moving fluid moment with solid words would seem to cut off aspects of the whole, to impoverish it, dry and restricting. We say "bird" but to see and be with the bird is not in the word "bird" we use to refer to it. To think of the world as only a world of words is to try to put into certain frequencies a manifold song, to cage the bird. And as Alan Watts said: "life is like music in this: if any note or phrase is held for longer than its appointed time, the melody is lost." Each word rings forth with its own song, so if we think the words we use are themselves the meanings which we communicate, it is often frustrating, even if we roughly accomplish some sort of response that at surface seems like an agreed meaning. This is to be caught up in one's own tune, without being attuned to the rest of the world around.

Everything we do and everything we say rings forth, and it takes a certain sensitivity and a patient stillness to see the way these ringings intersect and play off of each other. It takes a letting things be as they are to hear the harmonies as they ring forth, and they are always ringing forth—there is no way to stop, freeze everything, and see where the next chord is going to hit. To refer again to the words of our friend the Englishman: "There is nothing you can catch hold of, nothing other than a most lively fact, as much alive as the passing moment which can never be made to stay. And a bird is a bird; you hear its song, but you cannot seize the notes to make them continue" (Alan Watts, "Zen").

What shall the reaction be, to fuss about it and beg for the peal to stop, even just for a brief moment, so we can get our bearings? Or shall we with joy be a part of the play, accepting this ceaseless motion? The moment to listen is here, and if the song stops, there is nothing to listen to. Go ahead, listen. Do you hear it?