The Sensorium
Some Fun from My Taoworld!
Please Share Your Own... The Sensorium is a tentative translation of the Chinese term
huntun. Taoists are engulfed by their world. We swim in a sensorium, our brains and senses delight in a cascade of information, a media sea, both mental and physical, and now, most importantly electrical....sensory, in all aspects, a la Daoist
Yang Chu. (Also see
Warning.)
Lichen on Stone Wall, near to Baggy Point
On the cliff at Charmouth, Dorset
Sunlight and Water
The Five P-Words of the Yijing come to mind : people, passion. position, penetration and possession. Our sensory world includes all of these. People are all human-kind (ren 仁 is fundamental). Passion is of course qi-breath-energy 氣 . Without this we would not be alive. Position is li 立. It is where we stand and also propriety, ruler and minister, father and son, guest and host, etc. Penetration is stimulus and response - at the heart of the Yijing. Can be described by tong - 通 or better, gan-ying - 感应 interaction. Read Hexagram 61 Inner Truth on the Marsh Crane. Lastly possession yu 有 . Here we get to the heart of it. Of course not to possess is to possess. 'The more you make, the greater the love you take' (The Beatles). Read Hexagram 14 Great Possession. We all seek possession - it is our fleshly need.
The Dragon About to Fly
Our immersion in this sea of experience and sensation - a deeply physical appreciation of our world. Natural sounds, food, music, sex, gardening, walking, swimming, sport, movies, the list is endless. You may want to include a few suggestions of your own!
The important thing is to be comfortable as we swim through the sensory world. This was a central tenet of my friend and teacher, master and Taoist sage Gia-fu Feng. The
huntun may be loosely translated as 'chaos' (both Chinese characters contain the water radicals) - but for the Taoist, for the individual -
which we are - the crux is 'order'. Now chew on that for a while...
More on Gia-fu later. See Wikipedia link
Gia-fu Feng.
Chaos - Order
Order - Chaos
Wittgenstein, the greatest philosopher of the 20th century said (in his Tractatus): "the boundaries of myself are the boundaries of my world". Great saying. Shame he never read Lao Tzu.
Also the great Neoconfucian thinker Wang Yangming (1472 – 1529) believed that
World and
Mind were one. In this way Confucianism and Buddhism blended into a workable, neatly honed institution in late Ming China.
Mind - World
World - Mind
Now what about other minds?!
Well then you have what we might delicately call the 'contact boundary', an idea derived from Gestalt Therapy. When I have time I'll load up my
Visionary Politics. A steamy work from my early twenties focusing on the Eight Principles of contact, confluence, artist, therapist, mind, body, movement and stillness.
Stillness of course opens the door out of the Sensorium.
Moor Road