A Couple of Rat Turds - more insights on The Witness and The Observer ...

This post is an addendum to The Witness and The Observer posted a few days ago. As with that post, those of you who don't have an interest in the boundaries between hermeneutic-phenomenology and spirituality might like to skip this.

Adding to what was already written ...

The Witness is the home of meaninglessness. The Observer is the home of meaningfulness.

The Observer exists in the domain of opposites, polarities, and paradoxes (e.g., good and bad, warm and cold, male and female, existing and not existing). The Witness never experiences opposites, polarities, and paradoxes.

The Witness has no structure or form and is outside of time in the eternal Now. The Observer has a narrative structure and is temporal, having a past, present, and future.

From the interpretation of The Observer we exist as an historical being - a self. From the experience of The Witness we are an ahistorical being - a Self.

As a self, we have concerns, emotional reactions, beliefs, intentions, goals and agendas, and conditioned tendencies (habits). As a Self, we have none of that. As a self we have choices. A quality of the Self is choicelessness.

The Self is the self's possibility for freedom and transformation.

It is within the dialectic between The Witness and The Observer that transformation of The Observer occurs.

This dialectic at once (partially) deconstructs The Observer through experiences of meaninglessness and  reconstructs The Observer as meaning is construed and constructed.

The Self is the "nothingness" out of which declarations are created. Declarations always refer to the world of The Observer.

Transformation of The Observer changes the form of our existence to ourselves in the present. The Witness is never transformed for that which is formless cannot be re-formed.

Transformation of The Observer allows us to take greater responsibility for the historical being we are. In taking greater responsibility for our historical being, we can live into new future possibilities through declaration of new self-narratives.

This distinction of The Witness and The Observer is dualistic. This brings to mind the notion from the Heart Sutra "Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form." Form characterizes The Observer whereas emptiness characterizes The Witness. But as Hakuin says in his commentary on the Heart Sutra, "A nice hot kettle of stew. He ruins it by dropping a couple of rat turds in."

A couple of rat turds - form and emptiness, The Observer and The Witness. Perhaps we shouldn't ruin the stew.

I recall an instance when I was volunteering in the kitchen at Green Gulch Zen Farm with a friend of mine who is also a student of spirituality and philosophy. We were "talking shop" as we cooked and in the middle of our conversation he asked "But what or who experiences non-duality?" And without a moment's hesitation to think I said, "Non-duality 'experiences' non-duality." And within the distinctions I'm exploring here that means no Witness and no Observer can experience non-duality.

Hope you enjoyed this ...

-Steve

Comments

[Lisa Christie]

Steve, Wow! Great and deep post! I look forward to reading more of your blog.

-Lisa

[Steve]

Lisa,

Great to hear from you. I'd love to reconnect. Drop me an email (see the email link just below my picture).

-Steve