Beans or Nothingness

It is not like nature

It is not like nature to be naked, but naked it was… a patch of blackberry vines in the sun, across the street from me, basking in its thinghood…

And I was sitting inside the apartment with my door open.  I was at the wooden table writing hesitantly. No matter how resolved I was in my mind that I knew reality as an a priori truth, it was no match for the luminescence of the green of the blackberry existing in its own right. It certainly did not need to apologize to me.

You can discuss Sartre’s Being and Nothingness all you want to now, but at that moment in the past with that particular arrangement of table, pen and notepad,

my vision and heart, yes, heart too for my body tingled. The blackberry paid no attention to me, how I felt, my doubts about existence, and so forth. It had achieved naked existence. The most fundamental of being. Yet, it didn’t alienate me. Though I was not part of that sector of reality because my mind was outside of its bounds, I did not begrudge to be left out as a painter who would leave his patron out of the painting because the latter is too concerned with his toiletry and is too late to show up, and as revenge to being made to wait, the artist will simply leave the rich patron out of the portrait altogether.

And this was in the small logging and fishing town of Aberdeen on the Washington coast.  Seekers of enlightenment generally go to mystics in inaccessible places. I was living quite modestly as a writer, but if I close my door, hang my hat and coat on the hooks on the wall, I would be in the Himalayas. No need to go to Tibet. Myths and lies are perpetrated to this day. What did Buddha say? Straight from the horse’s mouth? He said anyone can be a Buddha. Seek enlightenment and that will make you a Buddha, and once you are a Buddha, go forth among the sick and malformed, the prostitutes and the crooked cops, the unhappy rich man, and anyone else in pain because of earthy joys. Help them. But don’t pretend you are the only legit one

OK, now, you students of philosophy, do you understand me now? It is Beans or Nothingness. The wretched of the earth all can understand me. And you plan to go to graduate school, so first clear yourself of this muddle.