We normally look at everything in the Third Person (remember your high school grammar) where everything is a person, place or thing. If it’s a thing it’s an IT. In third-person everything is an IT. Remember the Sky People in Avatar?
Noah’s Ark is a thing but is it a thing in space-time history, or in the imagination. Either way, it’s still a thing, an IT. Third Person.
The Zen way of seeing is First Person. I am Noah! Je Suis Noah! What does that mean?
The Ark is not an IT in mind or matter but Your World, and it comes as choices, as arguments and conflict. Rarely are we atonement, at one with the world. These moments of non-conflict, of non-duality, are rare and fleeting. The bi-polar world of the Third Person returns like algae on a pond.
First Person Noah is not to be found in history or in matter. Noah counts everything on the ark, but the counter is missing. Noah cannot count himself. If he were to count himself, then he would be an IT on the ark and the counter would still be missing. Noah is always missing. The counter of the pairs-of-opposites, the bean counter is never among the beans. Who are you?
This is the Zen Shift from Third-person knowing to First Person knowing. Both are valid but incompatible. You cannot be Noah and the ITS of the ark at the same time. You cannot be One and Many at the same time.
You cannot be at the center as First Person and on the periphery as IT at the same time. This is the Wah Wah of our consciousness…this Buddha says is the cause of our suffering. We cannot be One and Two at the same time, yet we must.
We want to be IT, the ONE, but the One in the IT mind is IT. I can never be IT in the third person. But when I’m the First Person, there is no IT.
Noah is the most honored ONE…Noah Knows the ark, the world of form, the pairs-of-opposites. The Knower is One…that has no second, or form because the Knower is empty of form. The Knower cannot be known…but you can be Noah. We are a bi-polar nation now, Kanye West. We are lost on Noah’s Ark in the vast ocean of being where everything comes in pairs of opposites. Where is Noah? Where is the cosmic mountain upon which we can come rest, the One that has no second?
Only Noah is ONE. Everything else is a duality. Who is Noah? If you say Noah is something, you are wrong. Noah (we are in metaphorical land here) is the first person I AM who creates the ark but is not counted on it. Noah is primary Knowing, the aroused mind that does not rest on the duality of form, does not get caught up in the teeter-totter of bi-polar perception.
Noah is Zen. You are Noah…we are all Noah but he is not to be found on the ark.
But bi-polarism creates or activates the imperative There Must Be One. As the tension between the double-bind of the bi-polar reality, it reaches a saturation point and a new world, a new vision will burst forth like a baby born.
The bi-polar or two poles that are incompatible generates energy going faster and faster like a dog chasing its tail. At some point, this energy becomes creative, or it becomes totally self-destructive. Either total destruction or total creative will erupt at some point in the bi-polar feed-back loop. The mike in the microphone cannot be sustained.
Leave a Reply