Objectile Madhyamakhorakaka

Continuing the IPS OOO discussion:

Balder: Bryant says it isn't a choice between being and becoming; rather being is becoming, becoming is being.  If being is becoming, meaning being isn't merely ongoing sameness but allows for or involves novelty and emergence, then we could also say that being is or involves a kind of ongoing creation.  So, if being involves ongoing creation, and if this creative becoming is none other than being, then being is also 'creator'.

theurj: Creation, yes. Even creator suobjects, to a degree through emergence. A creator "immutable god," no. Now we can argue whether shentong keeps their luminosity free of the "putative sin of Advaita" or not. They at least admit it is a sin and try to avoid it. That seems less likely the case with Thatamanil.

I find this from Morton's article in Speculations II relevant. He sees the parts of rhetoric "as simultaneous aspects of any object that render that object mysterious and strange yet direct and in your face. Accounting for them in this way prevents us from distorting them as present-at-hand entities or metaphysical substances" (214).


Balder: Personally, I see that such is also possible in using three terms like ground, contingency, and relation together (as mutually entailing), though I prefer being to ground.  To name being God, in this sense, is not to name an immutable, detached whatsit off somewhere else, but rather just to address the mysterious, creatively unfolding, in-your-face this of reality in second person terms.  "God" language is not my language of choice, personally, but used in such a way, it does not arouse any objections from me.

Thatamanil's language is not wholly satisfying to me either, but I think he is at least trying to avoid metaphysical dualism when he says, "Speaking here in my own stead rather than as a Mādhyamika thinker, I would argue that when the truth of relationality is obscured, then the co-herence of reality is lost. Nothing holds together. Even our theologies are radically compromised. As a consequence, we risk accounts of God as an unrelated and immutable ultimate..."

theurj: I'm not opposed to ground either, but prefer it be framed more like khora in this previous thread. I also like the way Bryant frames it, as he uses differance and the withdrawn to do so. I find neither view nihilistic as both posit a ground, but to use the expression in the khora thread, through the negation of negation rather than through a positive assertion of existence and/or consciousness. I find this same sort of notion in rangtong as emptiness of emptiness. All three keep the ground dependently originated, or immanent, which is also neither one nor many, not one or two, aka nondual. So I use that trinity to "build a mystery."

Objectile Madhyamakhorakaka maybe? Sort of like projectile vomit, but with kaka as in explosive diarrhea. Very purging and liberating, but really messy and stinky rather than sweetness and light. Reminiscent of the horror thread, and the James thread. All hail Cthulhu!