The Tile and the Mirror

Handling Superiority

Its a reference to Zen … the oft quoted ' polishing a tile for a mirror ' … referring to intention and the actions we engage with regards to its achievement. It began with … admonishing the aspirant about collecting merits in life … in some way qualifying for a place in heaven. But it has since evolved beyond the symbolic … to the physical. These days they simply ask in a tone of incredulity ' how does polishing a tile make it a mirror?'

The turn to the conspicuously physical … is probably deliberate … and it echoes the long frustrations about getting the congregation in these times … to wake up and smell the coffee. It tosses out defenses … and like the sound of a ruler rapped on a table … shakes the individual … to act … and create a response to new experiences. Its certainly a new abruptness … in the instructions of faith … but is an effort to get the aspirant to see ' with his own eyes.'

In modern parlance … we probably would refer to it as a curve ball … thrown after a moment of sizing up the batter … and gauging his mindset on the play. In a societal context … it is communication between equals … that affirms the position of the other … while creating a cognizance of what the speaker is saying. It draws on the impulses of the listener … to a fascination with the new cognizance … and in time … create a mountain outside his window … turning into the tangible … an idea in the ephemeral.

Quite often we engage that ourselves … speaking with reasoned argument … to the passions that rest on the already known catalog … of issues that it figures it is already familiar with. In doing so … we create the awareness … that it is not the indulgence of pure reason … but is about our lives in the world. For the experience of pure reason is drawn as affirmation from the passions … hence repeating it in a new label back to the passions … constitutes the worst kind of pedantry there is.

On the other hand … in finding out that the passions have been fairly accurate … in their intuition about things … brings the mind to assure the passions that such is the case … but it has been necessary for the mind … to engage it in physical reality … and affirm it itself. This may sound curious at first … why the need to confirm with the mind … what the passions discern in their joys of living? The answer of course … lies in the arguments we make for a balance.

In such a balance … the mind seeks to educate the passions … that it needs to find a place for itself … to preserve its own experience of the self. Unlike its customary tendency to simply diffuse into its environment of experiences … it ought to make a new partnership with the mind of man … to relate to the concerns … that its joys are founded on the management of change … and the dynamism we engage to maintain a healthy mind in a healthy body.

The difficulties that the passion encounters are basically of two types. One … its contact with its vast store of possibilities … assures itself that there is nothing new under the sun … and any attempt to bring a communication on the issues … disregards such a vastness and generosity of heart. Two … is the unspoken ethic of its own decorum about what it intuits in its understanding … and creates an arena of superiority … and social concern … that attempts to wrestle with its own position … into a situation of live and let live.

In its own way … it works at an understanding of life in the world … and as illustrated by the life of John Forbes Nash … it seeks to express that in some way … Game Theory being a popular model. Its a mathematical based scheme of view … that explains the sunshine in algebra … and the rain in numbers. On the other hand … an individual who lives with a view of his common heritage … is likely to see the Germans as having flaunted the superiority … as the only way it could be expressed in a heart that cares … but is wound in madness over its own indulgence.

In much the same way … it may view the Spanish as … living on a song … or the French as shutting themselves off from the world in a pastel urbanization of self delight. But it may also view them … as not unlike itself … and to borrow on the experiences of its neighbors … as lessons learnt in a heart … that lives and loves … and is coming into a corral of the mind … as regards itself. Its a new sharing … a specialization of knowledge … a greater identity … that transcends the politics of borders … and self serving patriotism. In the experience of its nativity … it breaks the body's sculptured experience of gender … by the untethered volition of the mind … to exercise its right to think.

And beyond the neighborhood is a world that's related to our experiences … that we may dive into with mind … with our passions close behind … in a reflection of what the heart always has been … the whole wide world. Its our world … in a new realm of possibilities … that a reasoning mind will confirm … and an emboldened heart dream. And while we do this … out there … the buses will still run on time … and the highways still carry signs for the right exit.