323
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_36
Chapter 36
Human Evolution at a Glance Within
Ryoan-ji
36.1 The Smallest Utopias in the World (Fig. 36.1)
Neoplatonist Roman/Egyptian philosopher Plotinus (204/5–270 C.E.), like so many
of his time, acknowledged the discipline of dialectical contemplation as the most
natural method for resolving the very bases of duality; of maintaining the vitality
necessary to heed not the twists and turns that torture those caught between joy and
sorry; rather, to be elevated by all that is virtuous and real in the animal nature
within humans, “a radiation from the All-Soul” and “The Absolute Transcendence
of the One”.
1
Over 1600 years later, in the Japanese Imperial Seat of Kyoto (Miyako, capital of
peace and tranquility, also known as Heian, city of purple mountains and crystal
streams, only much later named Kyoto), Hosokawa Masamoto, son of Hosokawa
Katsumoto, a powerful deputy of the Eighth Ashikaga Shogun Yoshimasa
(1434–1490), set about to pick up the ashes of the Upheaval of Ōnin, the worst
rivalry among samurai in the history of Japan. That a city so aptly, seductively
named after its landscape superlatives should fall prey to so vicious and protracted
a civil war (1467–1477) speaks volumes to the motivations of Plotinus and to the
very biological crisis that has so inextricably singled out our species as a window on
to what can go right and so horribly wrong. The Ōnin involved well over 160,000
sword-bearing combatants, ashigaru, foot soldiers, loyal to either the Hosokawa or
Yamana clans, together reducing one of the most beautiful and metaphysical cities
in the world, with its legendary 10,000 gardens, to rubble and the blood of tens of
thousands of civilians.
Yet, the city survived and would be quickly returned to esthetic glory. Plotinus
had once dreamt of just such a township, in Campania, where he died, but not before
1 See The First Ennead, I.i.12, “First Tractate,” p. 39; and “Third Tractate,” Plotinus: The Ethical
Treatises, Translated from the Greek by Stephen Mackenna, The Medici Society, London and
Boston, 1926, pp.50–55, and p.141.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_36
Chapter 36
Human Evolution at a Glance Within
Ryoan-ji
36.1 The Smallest Utopias in the World (Fig. 36.1)
Neoplatonist Roman/Egyptian philosopher Plotinus (204/5–270 C.E.), like so many
of his time, acknowledged the discipline of dialectical contemplation as the most
natural method for resolving the very bases of duality; of maintaining the vitality
necessary to heed not the twists and turns that torture those caught between joy and
sorry; rather, to be elevated by all that is virtuous and real in the animal nature
within humans, “a radiation from the All-Soul” and “The Absolute Transcendence
of the One”.
1
Over 1600 years later, in the Japanese Imperial Seat of Kyoto (Miyako, capital of
peace and tranquility, also known as Heian, city of purple mountains and crystal
streams, only much later named Kyoto), Hosokawa Masamoto, son of Hosokawa
Katsumoto, a powerful deputy of the Eighth Ashikaga Shogun Yoshimasa
(1434–1490), set about to pick up the ashes of the Upheaval of Ōnin, the worst
rivalry among samurai in the history of Japan. That a city so aptly, seductively
named after its landscape superlatives should fall prey to so vicious and protracted
a civil war (1467–1477) speaks volumes to the motivations of Plotinus and to the
very biological crisis that has so inextricably singled out our species as a window on
to what can go right and so horribly wrong. The Ōnin involved well over 160,000
sword-bearing combatants, ashigaru, foot soldiers, loyal to either the Hosokawa or
Yamana clans, together reducing one of the most beautiful and metaphysical cities
in the world, with its legendary 10,000 gardens, to rubble and the blood of tens of
thousands of civilians.
Yet, the city survived and would be quickly returned to esthetic glory. Plotinus
had once dreamt of just such a township, in Campania, where he died, but not before
1 See The First Ennead, I.i.12, “First Tractate,” p. 39; and “Third Tractate,” Plotinus: The Ethical
Treatises, Translated from the Greek by Stephen Mackenna, The Medici Society, London and
Boston, 1926, pp.50–55, and p.141.