Intellectual Nomadism: Dante, Zen, and Deleuze

I was recently listening to an audio-book of some of Alan Watt’s lectures, and he highlighted an interesting parallel between a passage at the end of Dante’s Paradiso and a prime principle of the ‘Zen’ endeavour.

The passage from Dante’s Inferno is given at the end where he is in presence of the vision of god, and goes as such:

“my desire and will were moved already — like a wheel revolving uniformly — by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars”

In the context of Zen, one of the (admittedly paradoxical) principles, is to become unprincipled, or ‘un-sticky’ in our relation with all concepts and experiences; not becoming set in one way of being or acting.

Deleuze wrote on the concept of an form of ‘nomadism’ that transcends the physcial non-attachment to one geography, and highlights the importance of being ever on the move in terms of identity, intellectual pursuit, and in the values that we live by.

There is a common theme here then, of a balanced fluidity in being; a state of non-attachment to a concrete concept of ‘self’.

I’ve not much more to say on the subject at the moment, but I find it interesting that there are such parallels across different times and philosophical domains.

One walks,

The I,

The they,

Along and among the peaks and troughs

of mind and the world

In and within the streams and valleys

of cascading time

Never the same river twice they say

So sometimes we walk in circles

A different mind, different they, different I

Every time

And sometimes

The one

The I

The they

Wander aimlessly

Sometimes with purpose

To explore new concept

To invent new self

Or to appreciate the well-worn paths already trod

And to take in view

The horizon

With the same eye of reason

The same discernment

The same openness of experience

The same wholesome acceptance

As for the rock

And the river

And the dirt

And the wind

As the whole mountain range

The whole mind-scape

The whole psyche-space

Being of self, and else

Undifferentiated

Never all at once,

And never completely without form

But wandering

Wondering

Walking

Dreaming

Changing

Like the one above and around

Made in imagination