Saturday, January 07, 2012

tidaiyedemisteboyu, (n)

A certain grotesqueness is carried by things that are empty (sunyata) and that have been pulled and pushed beyond their capacity to be real. It is like the uncanny valley, but not for living being, but for things. For instance, the fake computers emplaced at various office furniture stores possess tidaiyedemisteboyou. A small piece of molded wet cardboard in a certain light. A piece of crushed clay. It is, some say, more terrifying and/or horrifying than the authentically dead: a simulacra of the real. Merely deferring to avidya for the classification of imaginaries leads one to mistakenly classify all imaginaries as avidya: this is a mistake. One should be able to tell which imaginaries are worthy of a proper Wick rotation, and those that aren't.

Reward the ability to distinguish between imaginaries worthy of realization: that process of realization is the creative spark, from the ability to create those imaginaries that are substanceless, or painful, or diseased, or corrupt in character, with a rubbery and oily visage to them. The first possess a vibrancy to them, an odor, something that impinges the nascent senses. The second terrify: the mind that intentionally births the second repeatedly bears watching, and frequently it is useful to distance oneself from that sort of mind. On the other hand, the mind that is good and adept at the first bears proximity: they sparkle and fluoresce.

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