The Three Jewels as Hyperobject.
One of the most common objects in modern western Buddhism is the "vow of the three jewels". Sometimes called taking refuge, or the novice precepts. There are many translations of this vow but the one I want to use as an example is the following:
I take refuge in the Buddha
The Buddha takes refuge in me.
I take refuge in the Dharma
The Dharma takes refuge in me.
I take refuge in the Sangha
The Sangha takes refuge in me.
One is struck at once by the inside/outside quality, the absence of a definite place for the nouns, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Where do these things reside? When do they appear?
Also for this post I am using this definition of "Hyperobject" by Tim Morton.
"Hyperobjects are objects that are massively distributed in time and space. ..."
"Hyperobjects are viscous. Viscosity here means that the more you know about a hyperobject, the more entangled with it you realize you already are."
While I add my own take on the word Hyperobject:
*While hyperobjects have often been described as huge unfathomable catastrophic events like global climate change, they can not be anthropomorphized, they by their "hyperness" are withdrawn from human values. A hyperobject is both within us and we within it. Yet as removed from the sense forms of good/bad, right/wrong, as a neutrino is from normal byronic matter.
Hyperobjects are scale invariant and dimensionless in time, space and any form of cognation. They exist.
I am very new and untrained in the philosophy of OOO (object orientated ontology) and hyperobjects, and any mistakes here are my own and not others. My aim is to find a hyperobject that might do no harm.
I am old friends with the 3 jewels having spent almost every morning in reflection and meditation beginning with this vow from around 1974. We go way back. It is indeed a rich and viscous thought pattern. It sticks to me. I am not sure that it has never done me harm, but by and large it has filled me with mystery, grace, puzzlement, and often a sense pragmatic impermanence.
It is this word "refuge" that connected for me the world of OOO, hyperobjects, and Buddhism. Here it is both noun, and verb. It is not a place in the Newtonian fashion, with three coordinates in space and one in time. Nor is it an invoking spell that magically calls forth some Buddhist enlightenment. Being a refugee is damn hard work. Plus the idea that Buddha, Dharma, Sangha are inside me, as either potentials or real day to day actions can stun one into a kind of delusional religiosity. " My Dharma is better than yours." So the entry point for me was seeing that I can not see it.
Many words have been spilled in trying to parse this vow, books, teachings, videos, whole industries of modern Buddhist retreats, and spas. It has become the upper middle class of Buddhist thought. Yet spend a decade or two with it, and it hardly changes. One of the qualities of a hyperobject is that we can't make a dent in it. Sure I could talk about the "I" and the not "I" the no-self, the no-me. All that discontentment born out of western abundance and guilt. I won't. None of that grasps the fucking enormous size and shape of this vow.
This dude, (Buddha), this teaching, the way things are, (Dharma), this community, (Sangha) have been actively walking the skin of this planet for 2,000 years. Bumping into other cultures, and virally changing them for as long. We see the thinest wedge of this intersection between culture and Buddhist thought and still what we see can overthrow whole minds, and institutions. Big powerful messy stuff. So this hyperobject of a poem has three very large and timeless nodes, interconnected, filling our heads and us moving around in a tiny bit of its meem space. It has even been translated into hipster slang. ..... "There ain't no free lunch, You can't get away with shit, and what side are you on?" (not to my mind any kind of accurate interpretation, but hey.)
So .. just as we spend a lifetime getting to the end of our breath. Replicating this vow over and over, taking instruction from wiser minds, bonding with others, becoming refugees and finding shelter from the storm. We still only move outward into an ever expanding field of emptiness. This is the defining attribute of a hyperobject, that it is at once empty, and full (yet withdrawn) of everything.
Please feel free to comment.
One of the most common objects in modern western Buddhism is the "vow of the three jewels". Sometimes called taking refuge, or the novice precepts. There are many translations of this vow but the one I want to use as an example is the following:
I take refuge in the Buddha
The Buddha takes refuge in me.
I take refuge in the Dharma
The Dharma takes refuge in me.
I take refuge in the Sangha
The Sangha takes refuge in me.
One is struck at once by the inside/outside quality, the absence of a definite place for the nouns, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Where do these things reside? When do they appear?
Also for this post I am using this definition of "Hyperobject" by Tim Morton.
"Hyperobjects are objects that are massively distributed in time and space. ..."
"Hyperobjects are viscous. Viscosity here means that the more you know about a hyperobject, the more entangled with it you realize you already are."
While I add my own take on the word Hyperobject:
*While hyperobjects have often been described as huge unfathomable catastrophic events like global climate change, they can not be anthropomorphized, they by their "hyperness" are withdrawn from human values. A hyperobject is both within us and we within it. Yet as removed from the sense forms of good/bad, right/wrong, as a neutrino is from normal byronic matter.
Hyperobjects are scale invariant and dimensionless in time, space and any form of cognation. They exist.
I am very new and untrained in the philosophy of OOO (object orientated ontology) and hyperobjects, and any mistakes here are my own and not others. My aim is to find a hyperobject that might do no harm.
I am old friends with the 3 jewels having spent almost every morning in reflection and meditation beginning with this vow from around 1974. We go way back. It is indeed a rich and viscous thought pattern. It sticks to me. I am not sure that it has never done me harm, but by and large it has filled me with mystery, grace, puzzlement, and often a sense pragmatic impermanence.
It is this word "refuge" that connected for me the world of OOO, hyperobjects, and Buddhism. Here it is both noun, and verb. It is not a place in the Newtonian fashion, with three coordinates in space and one in time. Nor is it an invoking spell that magically calls forth some Buddhist enlightenment. Being a refugee is damn hard work. Plus the idea that Buddha, Dharma, Sangha are inside me, as either potentials or real day to day actions can stun one into a kind of delusional religiosity. " My Dharma is better than yours." So the entry point for me was seeing that I can not see it.
Many words have been spilled in trying to parse this vow, books, teachings, videos, whole industries of modern Buddhist retreats, and spas. It has become the upper middle class of Buddhist thought. Yet spend a decade or two with it, and it hardly changes. One of the qualities of a hyperobject is that we can't make a dent in it. Sure I could talk about the "I" and the not "I" the no-self, the no-me. All that discontentment born out of western abundance and guilt. I won't. None of that grasps the fucking enormous size and shape of this vow.
This dude, (Buddha), this teaching, the way things are, (Dharma), this community, (Sangha) have been actively walking the skin of this planet for 2,000 years. Bumping into other cultures, and virally changing them for as long. We see the thinest wedge of this intersection between culture and Buddhist thought and still what we see can overthrow whole minds, and institutions. Big powerful messy stuff. So this hyperobject of a poem has three very large and timeless nodes, interconnected, filling our heads and us moving around in a tiny bit of its meem space. It has even been translated into hipster slang. ..... "There ain't no free lunch, You can't get away with shit, and what side are you on?" (not to my mind any kind of accurate interpretation, but hey.)
So .. just as we spend a lifetime getting to the end of our breath. Replicating this vow over and over, taking instruction from wiser minds, bonding with others, becoming refugees and finding shelter from the storm. We still only move outward into an ever expanding field of emptiness. This is the defining attribute of a hyperobject, that it is at once empty, and full (yet withdrawn) of everything.
Please feel free to comment.