If words are bad, and thinking is bad

what is good?




Words can’t fully get at the experience of Douglas Hofstadeter’s marvelous Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, a smart and clever unfolding of the ways of thought. The book makes perfect sense. It shows, among so many other things, the connections between art, math, and music. But, to say that, in some way, limits the work’s power.

Although this book is a challenge, my advice: jump in. You won’t regret the ride.

—from “Escher and Zen”

“In questioning perception and posing absurd answerless riddles, Zen has company, in the person of M.C. Escher. Consider Day and Night, a masterpiece of ‘positive and negative interwoven’ (in the words of Mumon [Zen master]. One might ask, ‘Are those really birds, or are they really fields? Is it really night, or day?’ Yet we all know there is no point to such questions. The picture, like a Zen kōan, is trying to break the mind of logic.

* * *

“There is a delicate haiku-like study of reflections in Dewdrop; and then there are two tranquil images of the moon reflected in still waters: Puddle, and Rippled Surface. The reflected moon is a theme which recurs in various kōans. Here is an example:

Chiyono studied Zen form many years under Bukkō of Engaku. Still, she could not attain the fruits of meditation. At last one moonlit night she was carrying water in an old wooden pail girded with bamboo. The bamboo broke, and the bottom fell out of the pail. At that moment, she was set free. Chiyono said, ‘No more water in the pail, no more moon in the water.’”

Puddle
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid,
by Douglas Hofstadter (Basic Books, 1979)

Ten Books That Will Ripple Your Thinking ... Number 10