If I say one, It is not If I say two, it will be a violation Let 'It' be what 'It' is says Kabir upon contemplation
why only one or two? why not so uncountable many the number is meaningless? as would be every name we might invent for any of them, nor knowledge we might claim or imagine to know about them. but yes, this kabir makes a valid point. two alone, and in opposition, is a logical violation of its self.
Well, one can perceive the countable existence of three, but you are in this puzzle still at two. :sunny:
"The emperor Bu of Ryo invited Fu Daishi and asked him to lecture on the Diamond Sutra. Daishi thereupon mounted the rostrum, struck the lectern once and descended. The emperor Bu was astounded. Shiko asked him, "Did Your Majesty understand it?" The emperor said, "No." Shiko said, "Daishi has already finished his Sutra lecture."" - The Blue Cliff Record.
A nice story, and a valuable one. The thing is though, Zen masters use their own direct means of communication, which is as far as I know, usually non verbal. Poets, like Kabir, on the other hand, use the word. And of course bring their own cultural and philosophical baggage to the table as well. We humans are more or less forced (excepting the Zen master) to use our conceptual minds, and to have some kind of way of explaining to ourselves what is reality. So - here we are on the Hinduism forum, and as we know well, Hinduism says 'all is one' or all is not one, depending on which school of Hinduism you look at. Some are a bit of both. Sri Aurobindo says the one and the multiplicity exist at once. To me that seems a reasonable summary. But, as Gurdjieff pointed out the idea of a duality anywhere is flawed. Always a third force is called for. At least, there has to be a background against which these two play out their duality. If they can be reconciled into that background, we then have a zero, and not a one, as they cancel each other out. So, having agreed that silence is best, I've blurted out a lot more guff. Or maybe not. Love.:sunny:
Yes, and here all we have is words. But the conceptual mind dwells in concepts, of necessity. It has trouble reconciling the paradox of One being Many. The aim of the Zen Koan is to escape the conceptualizing mind to see beyond concepts. Oops, I forgot we were in the Hindu forum! Perhaps this is more apropos... One begets Two, Two implies Three, Three engenders All, All 's contained in One. ...or something like that!
This is similarly expressed in a saying by the Buddha, "Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two." So when you say one to express the infinite consciousness or Brahman, you already brought duality into this, which violates the idea of unity. Kabir and Buddha used these explanations to make the seeker understand the futility of thought in grasping the infinite, and to centre the seeker in awareness or mindfulness, which is the only way to perceive the infinite .
