Being What Is Not While Not Being What Is—bwinwnbwi

Existentialism And Mysticism concluded
Jan. '78

“All things that are in the world are linked together, one way or the
other. Not a single thing comes into being without some relationship
to every other thing. Scientific intellect thinks here in terms of
natural laws of necessary causality; mythico-poetic imagination
perceives an organic, living connection; philosophic reason
contemplates an absolute One. But on a more essential level, a system
of circuminsession has to be seen here, according to which, on the
field of sunyata, all things are in a process of becoming master and
servant to one another. In this system, each thing is itself in not
being itself, and is not itself in being itself. Its being is illusion
in its truth and truth in its illusion. This may sound strange the
first time one hears it, but in fact it enables us for the first time
to conceive of a force by virtue of which all things are gathered
together and brought into relationship with one another, a force
which, since ancient times, has gone by the name of 'nature' (physis).

“To say that a thing is not itself means that, while continuing to be
itself, it is in the home-ground of everything else. Figuratively
speaking, its roots reach across into the ground of all other things
and help to hold them up and keep them standing. It serves as a
constitutive element of their being so that they can be what they are,
and thus provides an ingredient of their being. That a thing is itself
means that all other things, while continuing to be themselves, are in
the home-ground of that thing; that precisely when a thing is on its
own home-ground, everything else is there too; that the roots of every
other thing spread across into its home-ground. This way that
everything has of being on the home-ground of everything else, without
ceasing to be on its own home-ground, means that the being of each
thing is held up, kept standing, and made to be what it is by means of
the being of all other things: or, put the other way around, that each
thing holds up the being of every other thing, keeps it standing, and
makes it what it is. In a word, it means that all things ‘are’ in the
‘world.’” (Religion and Nothingness p.149)