Holistic Thinking

I realised recently that I tend to think holistically, which would suggest that I am giving myself airs and graces. But no, no judgement is involved, and further, along with it came the thought that it is in fact the default way we all live and breathe and have our being.

Here is a dictionary definition of the word "holistic":-

characterized by the belief that the parts of something are intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.

Yes indeed. Surely that is the way it is? The trouble seems to be that when we start trying to think and figure it out we slip into a "one thing at a time" mode that really does not correspond to reality. The conclusion would seem to be that life can be lived, but not "thought", at least as far as explanations are concerned. 

Every so often I dip into "Four Quartets" by T S Eliot. Often it acts like a sedative; then again, sometimes it just bemuses me, but always I just love the flow of the words, understood or not. Near the end of the fourth quartet, "Little Gidding", are some words that I often muse upon.......

We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

Little Gidding

Why? And what is the result of my musing? Well, I'm not too sure, but I read recently of the musing of another who suggested the lines are about "the end of the conditioned self and the beginning of existence", which would mean for me that true existence is nowhere - because unable to be thought - and once we arrive there we are ready to move forward, actually living. 

There are another few lines of verse, written by W H Auden, that I always associate with those of T S Eliot quoted above. Close companions, as they speak of the "exploration", the thinking mode and of how we need to arrive beyond all beliefs and explanations, into Reality itself. The lines come from "For the Time Being", a poem concerned with "how love can conquer eternity".......

For the garden is the only place there is, but you will not find it until you have looked everywhere and found nowhere that is not a desert.

Another quote from Auden

Philosophically, digging deeper, all this has much to do with what are termed "Internal Relations" - rather than "External Relations"; i.e. if A and B are related, in external relations they both exist independently and any relationship between them becomes a third factor, C. By contrast, in internal relations, the necessary third factor is that which overlaps, or interlinks, in fact the shared part of A and B. This obviously has implications for the relationship between "knower" and "known", subject and object. In external relations, such a relationship becomes "knowledge", and then theories arise as to what would make the "knowledge" true. Within internal relations, knowledge becomes that which overlaps, is interdependent. Therefore "we are that which we understand", which is exactly what the zen thinker Dogen has said. There would be no obstruction between mindfulness and reality and further suggests it is how we live in the world, how engaged we are, that is more important than what we may or may not think about it.

The two modes of knowing also implies that the passing on of knowledge, rather than something objective being transmitted systematically to another via words, is better known and understood as the relationship between human beings - knowledge as "love", "compassion", "empathy", all known in action. We learn by being loved, by loving others, within the heart of life itself.

Perhaps all this is a bit heavy but no one seems to be reading this anyway......

Related Quotes:- 

A work of art is not a piece of fruit lifted from a tree branch: it is a ripening collaboration of artist, receiver, and world.

 (Jane Hirshfield, from "Ten Windows.")