FREED UP FOR THE PUBLIC - WAS SUBSCRIBER ONLY MATERIAL
"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man."
Every now and then I enjoy investigating various analysis of Heraclitus’s fragments, including this famous expression. There are quite a few varied interpretations of it. As is usually the case with philosophers, many spergs foister the great crime of "logicide" upon this famous fragment.
I believe many genuinely have some kind of intuition about its meaning and the oft-touted downstream references to reality-in-flux. As we will see however, an intuition is not necessarily the same as glimpsing reality as it is.
In the context of Buddhist traditions, what Heraclitus is pointing to with this fragment is considered an accessible experience or shift in perception. A fundamental perceptual shift induced by the practice of mindfulness.
Heraclitus was pointing to nothing less than the reality of our conscious experience. Interestingly, some German philosophers argued the Buddha and Heraclitus were the same person. Whilst we may debate how similar these two philosophers are, I will show you that at least with this fragment, there is an indisputable commonality of the experience that is being alluded to. Pointing, in their own ways to a tangible experience of the nature of awareness.
This statement confirms for me that Heraclitus was more-so a wandering seer and ascetic than an autistic map maker, as we’ve come to understand philosophers.
The question may be rightly asked, "If this expression points to something that is the case, why don't we all notice it all the time? Why does everything feel familiar and continuous to us?"
Many in this work assume there is a destination, found through knowledge, where such an understanding of is eventually “given birth to” when all these elements are put together, as if it was not there before. In our minds, the mixing together of the ingredients of knowledge that we find outside of ourselves produce a kind of new end-substance that we’re then consumed by. In this case a “state of mind” that was not there before.
It is better to understand our work here are being the opposite in process. It is rather a deconstruction or reorienting of how we notice what is going on without us. The pointing instructions allow us to dissolve assumptions, or to short-circuit ingrained habits of self-reference, and reveal to us nothing exceptional or mystical as such, but simply what is actually the case. This can feel mystical, but more often than not it is quite ordinary in a certain manner of speaking. Hence the Zen term ordinary mind.
This misunderstanding is in fact a significant hurdle for Western Meditators, one that took me many well over a decade to truly understand. We are sold a bill of goods, all manner of mystical outcomes. When you engage here, no expectations and no goals is really the only way to proceed.
I believe in pointing work for Western minds because as a practice instructions like this very effectively balance the hemispheres. For minds that typically demand evidence, a quick glimpse is probably more effective than a Vipassana or even Zazen (Soto type - without ko’an) sitting for several decades, simply waiting for something extra-ordinary to happen - and maybe even then, still missing the point.
I believe catching a glimpse for us as modern Westerners can then encourage us to take the time through normal meditative practice to stabilise what we have experienced.
It is clear to me Heraclitus spent a lot of time wandering in nature, taking special note of his momentary experience, in much the same way we know Eastern ascetics to do nowadays. Clearly, the ancients lived much more closely to the immediacy of nature when compared to us in our complex, attention-draining civilisation. I would guess that the closeness in which they lived to this primordial isness facilitated an ease of noticing not available to most of us in our current imbalanced state.
For us, noticing or seeing is more likely going to result from the deconstruction of intellect, or better yet, its re-contextualisation - which really means putting the intellect in its proper place. Once one has seen, not theorised, but seen what is occurring, the drive-to-intellect takes its place as a necessary, but not tyrannical ruling entity in the general crowd of what goes on in our awareness.
This is access to so-called right-brain oceanic experience, in which the certainty of intellectual acculturation is momentarily put aside, and we are free to rest in uncertainty. When done properly, it really is rest. And greatly energising. Our thoughts, their rapidity, uncontrollableness and intensity, as we all know can be quite exhausting. The great irony is I think our thought becomes of a much higher quality if we out ourselves through this process daily.
As we get better at this, we learn let go of our concept of a destination as just another concept. No longer obsessing about things past and future, we become more concerned with the qualities of the infinite moment in flux.
It is then that we may have the chance to glimpse the inarguable reality that "no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man". Both these things are experientially true at the same time, because we or the man and the river are all phenomena of the mind itself, things that arise within experience within the moment that has no stability or grounding.
With this in mind, from this famous quote we will build, or better yet deconstruct some more on the previous weeks. To reiterate, this isn’t a lecture, these are pointings aimed at facilitating seeing and an opening up to what the ancients really meant. Beyond the rather shabby modernist experiment in abstraction that we’re so used to. Because there is no way to know this through such means. As far as I can tell from his writing, I would imagine Heraclitus would have disliked that kind of wordy thing.
Like with most of these direct path insight practices, even a short glimpse of the truth tends to lead to a gradual unfoldment. I advise that you meditate daily (this is key) and use these instructions every now and then on top of your normal discipline.
What are the advantages of this work? I’ve found that mindful insights free-up “dammed-up energy”, since entrenched patterns restrain us from genuine flexible living. What is best called self-defined living. We speak about this in the bio-individual podcast as an end-goal or a process for living. We as a rule are not self-defined beings in spite of us thinking we are. This becomes apparent as we wade further into such practices.
Self-defeating hangups and general ignorance tend to dissipate more easily after these types of practices, and there is a species of power or energy that is freed up as a result. Mostly as a matter of biological economy, because if we’re busy reinforcing or reifying stupid or no longer useful behaviour, we don’t have much left-over for things we want to do in a self-directed way.
These energies become available when we experience, not just understand intellekshually, what Heraclitus meant with this fragment.
And how eternal flux is the undeniable truth of human experience.
Please enjoy.
An eye opening article. Thank you.