Abstract:

According to Laozi:

He who knows does not tell and he who tells does not know.

The power of unknowing and not doing is celebrated in Chinese philosophy. Also in the Western tradition. For example, Meister Eckhart in one of his sermons speaks of the attainment by the soul of darkness and unknowing and he imagines a bystander asking him:

‘But what is this darkness and unknowing and what is its name?’ To this he replies, ‘I can only call it a loving and open receptiveness which however in no way lacks being. It is a receptive potential by means of which all is accomplished.’

This suggests the fertility of union between a creative principle and a receptive, womb-like space in which something is to grow: a process. It’s of this encounter, this process, that I wish to speak today.

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