I just stumbled across the following extract online and would like to share it with you…
Whilst not being Buddha-dhamma per se, it is a very secular way of presenting many of the themes we’re exposed to in the Buddha’s Dhamma, such as anatta (not-self), aniccata (impermanence), sankharas (fabrications) the limitations of concepts and language and becoming. This will be of particular interest to those who enjoy the Dhamma teachings of Venerable Nanananda.
DECONSTRUCTING THE NARRATIVE STORY DUALITY
It’s a lens that could be applied to anything really – from our personal “me”-centred beliefs and narratives, through to how we might view interpretations of the Sutta Pitaka.Deconstruction denotes what Miller calls “…playing on the play within language”
(Miller 2004, p. 188). Derrida’s notion of writing describes this as the endless play of
signifiers upon signifiers. In other words, deconstruction describes the continuous
movement of language, which derives from the impossibility of language signifying
essential truth. There is nothing essential being signified by the signifier. What we have
instead is what Derrida calls a differential network, that is “…a fabric of traces referring
endlessly to something other than itself, to other differential traces” (Derrida 2004, p. 69).
What is found when we look for the meaning of a text are nothing but other traces and
other interpretations. “The more one interprets the more one finds not the fixed meaning
of a text, or of the world, but only other interpretations” (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982, p.
107). Thus life is interpretation upon interpretation upon interpretation, where every
interpretation is an adaptation “…through which any previous “meaning” and “purpose”
are necessarily obscured or even obliterated” (Nietzsche 1992, p. 513).
Deconstruction happens in the moments of becoming (e.g. Derrida 1991, p. 274). While
the moment is constructed, the moment at the same time is being deconstructed. Words,
concepts and meanings thus conceal and erase themselves in their own production
(Derrida 1997, p. 7). Deconstruction implies, as noted above, the continuous instability of
language and interpretations and thus that words, concepts and actions are always open
for new interpretations and new meanings. Derrida capture this instability in the concept
of story which has no border lines; it is at once larger and smaller than itself, it is
entangled in a play with other “stories”, is part of the other, makes the other a part of
itself etc. and remains utterly different from its homonym, narrative (Derrida 2004, p.
82). Stories occur in the moment and they go on in unpredictable directions. As argued by
Boje (Boje 2001, p. 18), stories float in a soup of bits and pieces of story fragments. They
are never alone but live and breathe in a web of other stories and self-deconstruct with
each telling.
Feel free to discuss in whatever context you like. I just wanted to share it.
Metta,
Retro.
