Part 1 — Heraclitus: Flux is lit … and wet
When Heraclitus said all is fire, he wasn’t just flicking his Bic.
Metaphorically, the universe has the nature of flames. Everything — including us — is born and consumed in an eternal dance of creation and destruction.
That all existents share the quality of impermanence, or anicca in ancient Pali, is glaringly obvious. But here’s the lit part: Everything is hungry for metaphysical fuel to not only keep blazing — but grow as strong as possible as a form of dominion.
Heraclitus also compares existence to water in a river. Far from dampening the main metaphor, he points out how you can never step in the same river twice because you’re not the same person and it’s not the same river. This cosmic watercourse is continually replenished by two types of what I will call existential fountainheads, hidden springs from the underworld.
One is fed by lethe, a Heideggerian term resonant of the mythical river where the dead drink to forget their earthly concerns before reincarnation. Lethe is the concealed aspect of physis — nature’s self-welling forth as a being-as-becoming polarity providing the “contingent ground” of everything as not-itself. It’s the existential fountainhead providing refreshment to aletheia, which is the other part of physis — the one revealing itself to us. Lethe is Nietzsche’s mysterious Dionysian force complementing aletheia, the realm of visible Apollonian forms tempting our gaze.
Superimposed existentially upon this is another polarity of dependent, contingent existence — called a saṅkhāra in Pali. This is mind, or citta, which is an existential fountainhead for your thoughts, feelings, intention (cetanā) and consciousness.
Both saṅkhāras — citta and physis — are concealing-revealing contingent polarities as opposed to complete things in themselves. Citta secretes nothingness, allowing phenomena to appear in consciousness (among other profound effects making us feel uneasy from a lack of being) — and Plato was mistaken to think the wellspring of physis is a world of absolute form instead of a raging underground river.
While we can’t see the fountainheads directly, we can intuit their nature via their dependently arisen signs. Called nimitta in Pali, these revealed aspects of physis and citta can be either dangerous illusions or keys to liberation. The trick is to not let aletheia — lethe-nimitta — blind us to the more mysterious flux of existence on the one hand, while, on the other, keeping the forms that are appearing in our mind — citta-nimitta — from being hijacked by idols. These false gods include your self-idol, which is composed of Darwinian (and parasitic) cultural memes making you think you are being — as opposed to your true nature of becoming.
Do we have the freedom to pull out of this honeytrap, or are we just kamma’s cuck?
Read Part 2: “Burned by Bad Faith.” (Originally shared on X)
Rob Robill 