From spatiality to temporality
Originally written March 30, 2025
The common Zen adage goes: first, there is a mountain; then, there is no mountain; finally, there is a mountain. Yet why, then, do most (popular) Zen teachings hinge so proximately on ideas of no-self and non-duality? That is, why stop at stage two? If the dissolution of the concept is the goal of Zen, then why is there a third stage at all, one of reification? It is said that to affirm Good is to immediately give rise to the Evil, to affirm black to immediately produce the white, and so on. It is said that we must move past such conceptions. But there is an absolute neurosis lurking in this non-dual space. It is a neurosis that either consumes you or leads you to an inauthentic performance of the values of Zen.
See, for example, the ecstatic expressions of American counterculture in the late 20th century. In a move of pure irony, the of seeming release from the shackles of Self led only to a heightened selfishness. There was reproduction of coloniality and capitalism within the subgroups and communes that sprang up, where relationality was replaced with interactions of pleasure and obligation to the world was replaced with a dear clinging to personal freedom.
But even outside of this movement, there is still a deep-rooted skepticism of the Concept that may stretch yet further back. I have spoken with people who are, maybe rightly so, critical of any conception of the Good. They worry that conceptions of the Good are ripe grounds for fascism. These are people who, in so many aspects, are such wonderful personifications of what is good in the world, of the forces we contain that move against currents of fascism and authoritarianism. But this skepticism of the Good seems to have a chokehold on them, aided only by 20th century moves towards scientific positivism, the eroding of ecological institutions, and more.
I want to argue that we often stop at stage two of the adage because it represents the final spatial stage of the treatment of the Concept, and we are not prepared for what’s next: stage three is temporal. (This analysis is, of course, all upaya and not a strict ontological claim. The lightness of it, however, cannot be expressed through the written word. In this way, the spoken word is more powerful.) To move from the second to the third stage requires a shift in cognition that can only come through Practice; there is, in many cases, quite a large gap. For one not aware of the size of the Great Lakes, Lake Michigan may as well be an ocean. Until they are shown — or at least told — of the opposite shore, they may never realize its existence. Such is the status of the third stage. Moreover, I want to argue that moral relativism belongs to the second stage, not the third, and that because moral relativism is but another reproduction of colonial morality, that the first two stages both are ripe grounds for coloniality to take root. While I am not sure about whether the third stage is inherently non-colonial (I’m inclined to think not, if only because to hold such a position would itself be paradoxical), I am sure that there is tremendous opportunity for non-coloniality within it.
I am not speaking of a whole-body (or whole-being) movement from one stage to the next. (Maybe such a whole-being movement is possible, or maybe there are possible movements that I cannot even imagine that are known by monks and proper teachers.) We can just as well track these movements through specific concepts or tendencies. Relevant here, of course, is the concept of the Good.
Stage one represents a tight, solid calcification of karma. When wound up so tightly, karmic constructions seem fully opaque and fully spatial, expressing or containing an essence that is eternal. No wonder, then, that such a conception of the Good can be dangerous. It is not inherently dangerous, but it follows that if all karmic seeds bear karmic fruits, then in spaces where karmic seeds are planted so densely, the potential for an explosion of fruit is shockingly large. Thus, the move towards nonduality that most people undertake when they first encounter the teachings of Buddhism is an attempt to loosen up this plaque.
(To clarify: it is neither necessary for one to encounter the Dharma in order to begin playing around with stage two, nor for one to progress linearly through the stages. I have already demonstrated the first, namely with regard to the skepticism of the Concept already prevalent in the West. The second is demonstrable by the fact that the sunya nature is already present within all of us, to varying extents, and that there are many among us who, while never having encountered Buddhism, live and cognize in a way that is light, temporal, and treads softly.)
Seeing the negative affirmation presupposed in all concepts, and thus denying concepts their affixing power, allows us to tread a little softer. This sort of spatial deconstruction can take us quite far down the Zen path (at least, ontologically speaking). The second stage is not to be taken lightly. Affirming nonduality eventually breaks down the distinction between stages itself, and this truth of the non-distinction between stages can be empirically verified; one who is deep into the practice of nondual cognition no doubt already manifests a large portion of the power of the third stage, namely, temporal cognition. Yet the skepticism inherent in this stage is not free from its own authoritarian dangers. To stop at a distrust of reason (to use Bendik-Keymer’s words) and a distrust of flourishing-in-itself is to hand over one’s agency to live a good life. It is to deny one’s own capacity for compassion and to allow the goal of the Good to be appropriated into material goals. Nagarjuna has said that he holds no position of his own, but had he stopped there, he would have never advised his dear king to administer the land well, to deal kindly with subjects rich and poor, or to practice heedfulness of action. And he would have never said there is no emptiness.
Herein lies the second aspect of the neuroses of the second stage (the first aspect being a fall into relativism, distrust, and groundlessness). To attach oneself to nonduality means resigning oneself to an infinite regress of destructive propositions in which, surprisingly, the winner is not the one who finds a logical escape, but the one who leaves the whole thing behind out of sheer exasperation. Nagarjuna’s catuskoti (fourfold logic) attempts to get us close to a logical escape from the situation. It is not that the chair exists; it is not that the chair does not exists; it is not that the chair both exists and not exists; it is not that the chair neither exists nor not-exists. Unfortunately, we cannot stop here, and each of the four propositions can subsequently be analyzed with the same logic (it is not that existence exists…). For some of us, if we never get past stage two, we are bound to descend into an ugly place.
Stage three, as I mentioned, does not necessarily come after stage two. It could just as rightly be called stage two, only in its finality. It could also be rightly called a return to stage one, with a difference that is vast, yet at the same time, indistinguishable. It could, of course, also be rightly called the middle way between stages one and two — a veritable stage 1.5. Stage three is not only a shift from spatiality to temporality, but a shift from the hardening of karma to the passage of karma. (Remember that attachment to nonduality is itself a calcification.) Karma cannot be dissolved. The only thing one can ever do with their karma is to let it play out without adding to it. Karma, in this way, is pure positivity. And the only way to do this is let it pass temporally. This is the move from Hegel to Nietzsche that Deleuze ascribes. And this is the move that Deleuze lauds Bergson for making. Karma is pure positivity; the only way to get past the confining negative duality of the concept is to let the mental activity of the concept pass. This is a pure temporality, construed not as a spatial construction of past and future, but as durée, the ever-present Now.
Any move other than letting the concept pass — namely, any move to negate the concept — would be an argument in favor of the Hegelian negative self-affirmation. Deleuze says that Nietzsche escapes this apparent Catch-22 by affirming and only affirming his position. This is not a moral relativism. To affirm the Good when it arises, and to let it pass when it ceases, is not to give up the power of the Good to an external agency. But at the same time, it is not to clutch to it so tightly that it becomes an individual morality. To move and flow with the arising and ceasing of the concept is to tread in a way that is open to compassion, that is connected but not self-destructive.
It is a movement that is sometimes light, sometimes heavy — but almost always forgetful. The moment one begins to remember that they are participating in a temporal movement, they become almost immediately seized by an affixation of the [karmic] world around them. In this way, remembering is but an act of desire. To read this post and to hold onto an image of the third stage is, ironically, to move further away from it. If stage two is the stage of Not, then stage three is the stage of Is. It is the domain of the purely positive force of difference-in-itself and repetition-in-itself. It is nomadic in that it traverses not all spaces, but all spatial conditions, ineffable in its capture, not an animal to be caged but a partner to be danced with. Above all, it is a partner that wants you to leave them; it finds its greatest happiness when you forget it; its true power is as a tool of Practice, as a way to get you to stop the usual mechanizing and instead act — not freely and carelessly, but not rigidly either.
It is also a shift from a practice of right cognition to a practice of skillful cognition. The middle way is a knife’s edge; one does not move through the stages like grade levels in school but instead gets tossed between them like a pinball. To conceptualize, to scorn, to reify, to become tired, and to repeat this over, and over, and over again is only natural. What one ends up developing is not a true conception of the world, but a skill in navigating the conceptual world.
What bugged me about this for a moment, which I then resolved, was this: how can I even provisionally hold on to the Good if the Good is co-arisen with the Evil? (Or the Bad, or simply the Not-Good.) How can I hold onto this concept? The answer came quickly: I had been caught up in wordplay. The “amorous” true repetition is what I considered Goodness. Call it animacy, karma, difference in itself, sense, or whatever. I ascribed to it not only a metaphysical positivity, but a moral one, too. I think Deleuze might say, however, that the true repetition is pre-moral (though I am not well-versed enough, and may take this back at a later time). The true repetition is more akin to the Way of things that Daoism talks about, or the tathata (Suchness) of things that Mahayana Buddhism speaks of. There is, in other words, a sort of moral neutrality to this movement. So perhaps, I thought, it is best to leave the Good in its dual form, paired with the Not-Good, and consider the temporality of things, the true repetition, to be a mere Isness or Suchness. But this was even more unsatisfying. I want Suchness to be a program of the Good, because without this program, I think it automatically falls into the realm of the Evil, or at least, the realm of that which is to be avoided. We shirk away from the temporal Isness of the world; we build up castles of karma to avoid the mere ordinary. Destroying this is the whole point of practice. So while I may need an internal footnote that always reminds that Goodness is not inherent in Suchness, and that Goodness must always be, at least in part, an active practice, I do not think it a fallacy to ascribe the Good to the Is.
Furthermore, I think the coincidence between the conceptual Good and the repetitive Good is a beautiful one, and also a meaningful one. The such-and-such carries with it in our culture such a connotation of sterility that it might do us good to call it Good. This is the inspiration behind all Practice.
