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The
Awakening Icon
This, the 1st
sculpture of Victor’s Way, and which is actually a highly complex
icon, can be interpreted (i.e. clicked open) in 5 ways. 1.
A chick is born/liberated from the egg. 2.
The new is born/liberated from the old. 3.
The living is born/liberated from the dying. 4.
The future is born/liberated from the past. 5.
A solution emerges (i.e. is liberated) from (the prison of) an
unresolved problem. Note: the infant
is blind (Indeed, all biological systems are fundamentally
blind, that is to say, they operate on blind auto-pilot (or as an
un-initialised Bio-Nav
or Bio-Turing Machine), albeit
capable of learning to see/navigate via hind-sight/memory. The icon
depicts the moment (actually a state of the basic bio-function/program of) of
awakening to (≈ start-up as) a new reality/world, that awakening
(experienced as consciousness, Sanskrit: chit)
resulting from contact with any (random)
datum. Awakening happens if and when sameness, and which is dying, is touched
and changed by difference. It’s ‘difference that makes a difference’ and
gives life. Consequently it is ‘difference’, and any bit of difference will
do, that has a fundamentally ‘spiritual’ function. Impacted/touched (hence instructed) by a random
(or differential) contact/event (i.e. represented by the Finger
sculpture/icon, and in ancient Buddhism called ‘the other shore’, see the
final sculpture/icon, i.e. the Ferryman), the
infant (as new life) emerges into, and so becomes, a new reality. Since its
response to the new reality is as yet undeveloped, i.e. because first contact
is spontaneous and blind, it is totally overwhelmed by that impact. Because
the impact is total (because happening @c in a relativity vacuum, to wit, as
‘one without an other’,
therefore as Brahman) it is
experienced as absolutely real (≈ true, Sanskrit: sat). Consequently at
(initial) contact/awakening observer (i.e.
experiencer) and
observed (i.e. the experienced) are (experienced as) one. It is contact that gives
the infant (as it does a blind man) sight (indeed, memory operating as
hind-sight). Because the
initial impact (such as a first love, car or beer, to wit: a 1st,
hence a pure differential) is experienced as absolutely real ≈ true
(i.e. authentic), it also experienced as absolutely perfect. It’s because the
blind infant (i.e. the new and therefore not yet adapted, hence relativized
life) has not yet developed the capacity to relativize the contact/strike
that it experiences its response (to random contact) as absolute
undifferentiated (meaning total) ‘being/realness’. The infant responds to liberation
into/as that undifferentiated ‘is’ness’ (or
‘being’) with an overwhelming surge/tsunami or rush of energy (elsewhere
interpreted as enlightenment)
and boundless (Sanskrit: ananta) joy (Sanskrit: ananda). It’s the
initial response of absolute realness and perfection, hence of absolutely
pure at-one-ness (Sanskrit: kaivalya) prior to time, space and form (i.e. the parameters
of relativity), which so-called spiritual adepts, actually extreme ‘gymnasts’
of the profane, i.e. of actual
reality, seek (to re-access*).
They, like the Zen Masters of medieval China, want to re-experience with full
consciousness (and so be liberated by) the rush of the breath-taking rapture
that results from the awesome experience of absolutely real (because
authentic) and perfect ‘presence’ ≈ ‘is’ness’
(and which the ancient Indians called sat-chit-ananda, to wit, being-consciousness-bliss). The rotting fist represents yesterday, the decaying past (i.e. as egg-shell or prison), and which is experienced as sameness, relative and imperfect, hence sorrowful (sorrow signalling a decrease in survival capacity**). The infant (to wit: the new, as new view) represents tomorrow’s promise (i.e. as virtual fact, hence real to the brain) of the attainment of absolute realness, of perfection and of joy (joy signalling in increase in survival capacity*). See
… The Finger *… The ability to start over as new (to be, with Oscar
Wilde, young again), i.e. to experience the given, the ordinary or the common
as absolutely new and uncommon (i.e. as wholly different, to wit, to taste a
strawberry as though one had not tasted one before and be blown away by the
experience), thus to experience the undiluted impact (and joy, rapture or
bliss) of the new gets increasingly difficult as one grows older. The basic
training of Chinese Zen served to recover the ability to create authentic and
therefore enlightening (i.e. liberating) experience, meaning to live an fully authentic and therefore happy life. **See my book ‘How
to make and fake happiness’ |
