David Michael Levin (Redux)

[Balder]

On the previous IPS forum, I started a thread on the work of David Michael Levin -- primarily based on his book, The Opening of Vision.  [You can find an archived copy of the discussion here.]  Recently, I just picked up another of his books, The Listening Self: Personal Growth, Social Change, and the Closure of Metaphysics, and I have continued to appreciate his articulation of an embodied, postmetaphysical approach to spirituality (as well as psychological and social well being).  In The Opening of Vision, Levin explored the 'spiritual' possibilities inherent in the transformation of the field of vision or seeing; in The Listening Self, he approaches the transformation of the self (and society) in the context of a phenomenological hermeneutic exploration of the evolution of our listening.

 

As in The Opening of Vision, he traces out a developmental sequence which involves an hermeneutic recovery, and 'integration,' of a primordial form of embodied experience.  Here is his summary of the four main stages of this developmental process:

 

"Stage I

 

The first stage is one I am calling our Zugehorigkeit.  Taken from Heidegger, this word will refer to the fact of our inherence in, belonging to, and attunement by the dimensions of the auditory field as a whole.  Since this field, an utterly open, incommensurable matrix of sonorous energies, is how the Being of beings primordially manifests itself for the organs of our hearing, Zugehorigkeit is a pre-ontological understanding (or an ontological pre-understanding) of Being.  Heidegger never recognized in this Zugehorigkeit a pre-ontological understanding of Being.  Although he introduced this term into his texts because he wanted the auditory significance it carries (horig, gehorig) to resonate within the discourse he was setting in motion, he did not in fact use the term as we shall here, namely, to describe the hearing modality distinctive of our earliest infancy, when our hearing is minimally complex and is functioning with relatively little figure-ground articulation and little differentiation of the positional being of the listener from the encompassing being of the whole auditory field (the sonorous topology of Being) as a whole.

 

In this 'first' phase, our hearing may be said to inhere in, and be attuned by, the field of sonorous Being as a whole: the infant lives in a bodily felt inherence in the openness of the sonorous matrix and hears with -- hears through -- the entire body.  The infant's ears are the body as a whole.  Hearing in this rudimentary phase is global, holistic, syncretic, synergic, ek-static; it is an elemental hearing, deeply, symbiotically embedded in the elemental ecology of nature.  Our experiences during this phase are constellated under the influence of familiar feminine archetypes: the 'uroborus,' roundness, wholeness, openness, receptiveness, embodiment, feeling, communion with the matrix of soundings.  During this earliest phase of our lives, our hearing is pre-personal and pre-egological: since no selfconsciously continuous centre of experience has yet coalesced and no strong-boundaried ego-logical identity yet emerged, the auditory situation is not yet structured as subject with object.

 

By grace of this initial state, the gift of a primordial openness to the sonorous dimensionality of Being, the infant may be said to 'enjoy' the gift of a pre-ontological understanding of the Being of beings.  Naturally, the infant is not (much) conscious of this relationship with Being; nevertheless, this experience of being so related, with which, as a hearing being, the infant is always and already graced, is at work in all motivations, movements, and gestures: it is an understanding borne entirely by the auditory body as a whole.

 

In the next chapter, I shall tell this story -- about the embodiment of our pre-ontological understanding and the development of this initial gift -- in more detail.  Heidegger tells us only that there is a pre-ontological understanding of Being always assigned to us, and that we have an inveterate tendency to 'forget' it, to conceal it from ourselves.  He gives no account of our self-development in this regard; nor does he explicitly embody this pre-ontological understanding, although he writes of the fact that Dasein is always embodied.

 

In the process of socialization, we inevitably lose touch with this pre-ontological relationship to, and understanding of, Being; and as we mature, the utterly open dimensionality of our hearing is increasingly repressed -- sometimes getting psychotically split off.  This 'renunciation' of our primordial ecstasy is in fact a necessary condition for the further development of our auditory capacity.  What is unfortunate is not its Aufhebung, its sublimation, in stage II, but our continued abandonment of Being, in the time of our maturity.

 

Stage II

 

In the second phase, extending from later infancy to adolescence or adulthood, our hearing is gradually developed.  In the course of our socialization, the biological potential naturally manifests; by the time the infant is a year old, there is already, in fact, a well-developed auditory competence: the child can discriminate between and recognize many different sounds and sources of sound; can recognize different patterns of sound; can accurately imitate tones of voice.  Stage II culminates in a hearing that is personal, adequately skillful in meeting the normal demands of interpersonal living, and ruled over by the ego, which habitually structures all the auditory situations in which it finds itself in terms of subject and object.  In the modern age, this structuring has become peculiarly willful and oppositional: the auditory Gestalt, manifesting the distinctive character of our present historical situation, accordingly becomes an enframing -- a Gestell, obliterating the ontological dimensionality of the field.

 

Stage III

 

As adults, we are capable of assuming responsibility for our hearing; hearing is a skillfulness we can develop beyond what normal living, normal socialization, minimally requires of us.  In stage III, the individual is committed to further training, a practice of self-discipline.  By virtue of this commitment, this work on oneself, the self-responsible individual grows beyond an ego-logical identification and begins to live the more creative becoming of a Self.  Recognition of the difference between (the being of) the ego and (the being of) the Self is crucial.  Whereas the ego is a defensively adaptive structure identified with an essentially fixed, socially conforming content, the identity which begins to form in the work of stage III, the way of living I am calling the 'Self,' is an ongoing process of self-development, a structure of individuation creatively open to change, a structure organized by, and identified with, processes that carry forward learning and growth.

 

There are many different goals that can motivate such work on oneself.  We shall be considering four specific fields of self-disciplinary practice: in Chapter Four, the ecology of nature, the art of music, and the interactions of psychiatry; and in Chapter Five, the discourse of politics.  In Chapter Four, I will argue that, in the third stage of listening, we are essentially involved in developing our listening as a practice of compassion, increasing our capacity, as listeners, to be aware of, and responsive to, the interrelatedness and commonality of all sonorous beings.  (Although distinct from this compassion practice, the development of hearing as an aesthetic skill both contributes to, and is in turn advanced by, the development of hearing as an organ of compassion.  For the aesthetic is precisely the cultivation of sensibility, a deepening of our capacity for sensuous and affective appreciation.)  In Chapter Five, then, I will argue that the development of a deeper awareness of the reversibility dynamics in all auditory situations -- an awareness necessary for the emergence of a sense of justice, an understanding of reciprocity principles, and participation in rational processes of consensus formation -- is a third-stage development; and, moreover, that it is a developemnt which must take place, if our capacity for hearing is to be fulfilled in the good life of a just and democratic society.

 

Stage IV

 

Borrowing a term from Heidegger, we will be calling this stage 'hearkening' (das Horchen).  Very few people ever attempt to continue the development of their hearing beyond the kinds of skill belonging to stage III.  Even fewer attempt to do the kind of work necessary for the achievement of 'hearkening.'  Hearkening requires the disciplined practice of Gelassenheit, i.e. letting-go and letting-be, as a mode or style of listening.  In learning Gelassenheit, the art of 'just listening', listening without getting entangled in the ego's stories and preoccupations, one learns a different way of channelling, focusing, attending.  There is a restructuring of the figure-ground difference, with an awareness that it manifests the appropriation of the auditory field by the double tonality of the ontological difference.  Hearkening makes, or lets, this ontological difference -- the difference between beings and Being -- be manifest, be audible, within the Gestalt of the auditory situation. 

 

The Gestaltung of stage IV is a distinctively spiritual accomplishment.  The work of this stage begins with the practice of Gelassenheit and gradually performs an ontological recollection, a recollection of the utterly open dimensionality of the auditory field, as which the sonorous Being of beings manifests for our (properly) listening ears.  Though never finished, this recollection realizes and fulfills our potential as human beings in relation to the Question of Being.  With the achievement of this ongoing recollection, not as a cognitive operation separate from our listening, we may enjoy an authentically ontological relationship to, and an existentially meaningful understanding of, the Being of beings: in particular, (1) Being as such and (2) the dimensionality, the radical alterity, of other human beings.  The pre-ontological relationship and understanding that we once inhabited (during our infancy), and that we subsequently lost touch with in the course of our socialization (our ego-logical development), we begin to retrieve in stage IV, getting it back, this time, in a highly conscious, thoughtful, and articulate experience, meaningfully integrated into the auditory situations of our daily lives.

 

Our practice at stage IV is a practice that needs to take place under the influence of the feminine archetypes: there ust be an appreciation of and a recovery of experiencing modalities that, in our culture, have been traditionally constellated through these archetypes.

 

By virtue of our existential work, our channelling is opened up.  In this state, it 'invites' a gathering of all sonorous, audible beings from all sonorous dimensions, bringing them into a Gestalt that we will call, again borrowing from Heidegger, das Geviert -- the Fourfold.  Whereas, at stage II, the auditory Gestalt is enframing, is a Gestell, here the structure becomes a gathering of sonorous Being: a gathering mindful of its utterly open dimensionality, attentive to the primordial difference by grace of which all auditory structures are possible, and respectful of the incommensurability of the Being of sonorous beings, letting the inaudible be inaudible.

 

... The developmental model I am proposing in this study -- and not only the model, but also the design of the table [see below], which cannot accommodate a hermeneutical time-dimension -- will be open to some very destructive misunderstandings unless, anticipating them here, I can successfully ward them off by clarification.  That is what I shall now try to do.

 

First of all, it is essential to understand that the developmental process is not a straightforwardly linear progression, but rather a dialectic of sublimations and sublations: a dialectic for the evolution of which Hegel introduced the term Aufhebung.  In other words, each phase of the process is carried forward: not only transformed, but also preserved, as transformed, by the subsequent stage.  Thus, the first stage, Zugehorigkeit, is never entirely left behind, nor is it ever totally split off, when the infant undergoes the process of socialization.  To be sure, socialization gradually installs an ego-logically boundaried centre in the 'place' where an ecstatically open centre once functioned; but the auditory body always continues to bear within it some 'traces,' or an echo, of this primal experience with the sonorous dimensionality of Being.

 

In this regard, it is crucial to keep in mind that the 'primordial relationship with Being' attributed to infancy is a past that has never really been present -- a past that never was what it now, i.e., from the vantage point of stage IV, presents itself as having been.  Zugehorigkeit is a projection, a reconstruction, an understanding constituted after the fact, redeeming an experience that 'from the very beginning' fell short of itself; fell short, I mean, of being 'the beginning,' a primordial experience of the pure and total presence of Being...

 

...Even though there never was an 'original' experience with Being as absolutely pure and total presence in the first place, the advances of stage II are not achieved without a loss: a loss that we may call, using Heidegger's phrase, a 'loss of Being,' or a loss of contact with ecstasy (ek-stasis) of Being -- 'Being' understood here as the utterly open ek-static dimensionality of the auditory field, the sonorous field.  And yet, this loss of contact (which, as noted, never was an experience of pure presence) is not total, and therefore not irrevocable and irremediable: by grace of our embodiment, echoes of our earliest experience with the Being of sonorous field are preserved and continue to resonate, so that, later in life, after the ego is firmly established, it becomes possible to 'return' to these echoes, not only making contact with our bodily felt sense of that pre-ontological openness -- whatever sense of that 'primordial ecstasy' we may now, by virtue of some directed exertion, be able to feel -- but also 'retrieving' it and freeing it for an ongoing integration into present living.

 

In principle, then, the infant's experience of Zugehorigkeit, a 'primordial' inherence in the openness and wholeness of Being, is always to some degree retrievable.  And when it is retrieved, it is always also more than retrieved, as well as less, since it is only nachtraglich, after the fact and belatedly (as Freud would perhaps have wanted to suggest), that this experience, which the infant lived through without (much) consciousness, gets to be recognized for what it was (is) and accordingly comes to be understood as an ontological relationship.  The 'retrieval' therefore retrieves in two senses:  it brings back what was 'forgotten'; but it also redeems it by 'making' it what it never was.

 

The recollection of Being -- the very same movement by which we grow beyond our ego-logical identifications -- is a hermeneutical movement: we must first 'go back' to Zugehorigkeit, 'back,' as it were, to the 'beginning,' in order to develop beyond the ego-logical stage of ontological forgetfulness in listening.  Or rather, to state this point more accurately, since in truth this 'beginning,' this 'origin,' can never be retrieved now as it actually was then, we must first generate within ourselves a presently felt sense of our 'pre-ontological beginning.'  This movement forward, this growth, requires a hermeneutical movement backward: a movement, however, that must not be confused with an infantile or psychotic regression.  It is essential to understand the difference between this hermeneutical 'return' and a pathological regression.  Regression is a movement in one direction only; it repeats what came earlier instead of redeeming it; and it is always a movement, therefore, that closes the process of personal growth.

 

We are always free, of course, to continue living in the stage II reality of anyone-and-everyone (das Man), virtually deaf to the dimensionality of Being that resounds all around us.  But after we have achieved the maturity of stage II, we can still continue to grow, committing ourselves to a practice of the Self by virtue of which we begin to grow beyond the ontologically alientated condition of being-an-ego to find ourselves more opened up to this dimensionality of Being and enjoying a spiritual wholeness not otherwise possible.  The hearkening of stage IV, a gathering embrace of whatever may be given to our ears for their hearing, is an achievement that brings with it a self-fulfillment altogether different from that which comes at stage III: a self-fulfillment that is not possible at all in stage II."  (Levin, 1989, pp. 45-56)

 

[I will include Levin's table of the stages of listening here later this evening, once I have a chance to copy it out]

 

 

[Edward theurj Berge]

In looking through MJ's chapter 4 it had only a fraction of the referenced chapter 7 in Levin's book. And nothing as to Genlin's techniques. What was of interest though, in relation to a point I'm making in the IPN thread, is that the structure-forms, as in language, are meaningless in themselves without the felt sense of a body-mind to provide that meaning based in its experience. So culture per se does not reside in the books alone. It requires an embodied person who has been embedded in and developed by a culture to re-embody the meaning back into the words of that book with each reading. Here's the relevant passage:

"The fateful error...is to overlook much of what goes into making something meaningful to us. Then we are seduced into mistaking the forms for that which they inform.... We think that if we have succeeding in abstracting a form...then we have captured the full meaning. Moreover, this exclusive attention to stable structures can entice us to succumb to the illusion of fixity, that is, the illusion that meanings are fixed, abstract entities that can float free of contexts and the ongoing flow of experience" (80).

[Balder]

I was reading some of Jean Klein's writings in relation to another discussion this morning, and came across a passage which I think is worth adding to this thread (although Klein's neo-Advaitic approach is not postmetaphysical).

Questioner: As one comes closer to you, at some point or other you encourage your friends to learn to appreciate beauty in art and music and our surroundings. You obviously feel this is a very important “sadhana.” How exactly can an appreciation of art help us ask “Who am I?” more effectively?

JK: All our senses, sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell have been channelled or dispersed towards personal defense and aggression, used as tools to maintain the person. Through artistic appreciation the qualities of sensitivity and receptivity are awakened. Energy is sustained and the sense organs find their organic multi-dimensionality. In real listening the ear does not grasp the sound but remains totally relaxed and receptive to sound, silence and rhythm. It becomes a creative tool for the transmission of sound to the whole body. The senses no longer function fractionally but the body is one whole sense organ. Without this welcoming openness, global feeling and sensitivity, the question “Who am I?” remains intellectual. If it is ever to become a living question it must be transposed on every level of our being. The openness in the living question is the doorway to the living answer.

[Balder]

In The Listening Self, Levin outlines a vision of spiritual development and deepening of human capacity that uses metaphysical-seeming categories, such as "Being" and "the ground," but he employs and interprets these terms in a post-metaphysical way by using them to indicate an enactable human potential (in this case, an auditory capacity or range of experience), without postulating any "ultimate" condition of reality or the universe. This could strike some folks as too "immanentist," too much of a concession to a "naturalistic" perspective, but interestingly he relates this to advanced Zen and Dzogchen experience. I'll post his discussion of his use of the term, Being, here, and will include some of his Zen and Dzogchen reflections in a later post.

From his introductory chapter:

"Sounding the more primordial depths of our listening capacity and its historical pathology, we will find, however, as the present study argues, that listening is a capacity whose development, and pathological failures to develop, call for interpretation in relation to the Question of Being. Thus, first, we will be considering a diagnosis that brings out our experiential, auditory closure to the dimensionality of Being as a whole; then we will initiate a recollection of Being in a process through which we make contact with this dimension and retrieve for present living the as yet unrealized potential that lies in our renewed belonging to, and being once again attuned by, the dimensionality, meaning, and wholeness of Being.

Here we are going to interpret what Heidegger calls our 'forgetfulness of Being' in terms of our experience with listening closures. Correlatively, we will interpret Heidegger's concepts of the 'Being of beings', 'Being as a whole', and 'Being as such' as terms referring to the immeasurable, primordial ground of our listening experience, the dimensionality of the auditory field in its wholeness. 'Being' is not another name for God, nor is it to be identified with some other (kind of) being or entity: in terms of our traditional metaphysical framework, it is, then, nothing: no thing. But let us avoid mystification: in the context of this study, 'Being' refers very specifically to the disclosure, the audible fact, that our auditory situations, and all the audible beings we encounter in them, constitute an essentially open dimension of meaningfulness. The 'presence' of Being, the Being of beings, is simply the audible manifestation of this dimensionality.

Within the context of this study, we shall assign to the Es gibt, to Heidegger's concept of the 'dispensations of Being' an auditory sense. Particular configurations of sounds and silences, events which take place in the auditory field of our present world-age, as well as the historically distinctive tonality of the field itself, which has, as ground, become increasingly flat, hollow, and empty, are therefore to be understood as historical 'dispensations of Being.' These 'dispensations' can never be brought totally under our individual or collective control; however, they are never totally outside the sphere of our influence, our capacity to determine their formation and impact.

The conception of 'Being' at stake in this book is therefore neither a continuation of the old metaphysics nor a fall into ontotheology. For what I am calling 'Being' is none of the following: an unconditional ground, an absolote and separate reality, a nonempirical or supersensible reality, a world-transcendent principle, a first cause, an immanent telos, an immanent and final reason, a total presence, a being, an ideal meaning, a highest genus, a universal form, an ultimate cognition, a deity, a divine power, a spiritual force, a foundation for knowledge, an absolute truth, or an encompassing mind." (Levin, 1989, pp. 5-6)

[Edward theurj Berge]

The last paragraph pretty much sums up the various definitions of the term "metaphysical" when we talk about what postmetaphysics is not. Given those limitations it's much harder to describe what it is, since "is" (being) is part of what it is not, at least in itself. Even descriptions like "the disclosure...[of] an essentially open dimension of meaningfulness" skirt metaphysics. Which once again brings up the ages-old and continuous debate, even within Prasangika Madhyamaka schools past and present, on whether it is possible or advisable to make such positive statements on, and our direct relation with, "it."

[Balder]

Dawid, over on the Integral Archipelago forum, shared the following video on noise and sound that I thought would be appropriate to post on here on Levin's thread on developing our capacity to listen:

[e]

(aside)

Edward: Which once again brings up the ages-old and continuous debate, even within Prasangika Madhyamaka schools past and present, on whether it is possible or advisable to make such positive statements on, and our direct relation with, "it."

Hey Edward, just finished reading Kalupahana’s take on Nagarjuna’s MMK. I think you would quite like it, I sure did. He feels Nagarjuna’s and Buddha’s positive statement on “it” was Dependent Origination.

Kela, how was Kalupahana received in the book laden community? I doubt he received much fanfare as he feels Chandrikirti and Murti were fairly off in their understanding of Nagarjuna and Buddha. I always felt that Nagarjuna was talking to Buddhists about Buddha’s Dharma and pointing out their misunderstandings… basically truing and re-centering what became a wobbly wheel of the Dharma at Nalanda and not turning a new and improved wheel for humanity. Kalupahana makes the same argument with much more scholarly acumen than I could ever muster.

[bonnitta roy]

"Hearkening requires the disciplined practice of Gelassenheit, i.e. letting-go and letting-be, as a mode or style of listening. In learning Gelassenheit, the art of 'just listening', listening without getting entangled in the ego's stories and preoccupations, one learns a different way of channelling, focusing, attending. There is a restructuring of the figure-ground difference, " ...

I love everything DM Levin writes. This is a great distinction! I just finished a workshop with Suzaane Cook-Greuter and on the 4th day I did an experiential where we practiced switching figure-and-ground, and did a session called "following with yang" - where one is focussed and attending, fearlessly allowing... and Suzanne shared that it reminded her of the Native Americans' notion of "still hunting" - where one is motionless, silent and focussed, awaiting for the prey to offer itself....

Love to see this work interweaving as it does.

Bests,

Bonnie

[Edward theurj Berge]

e: "Hey Edward, just finished reading Kalupahana’s take on Nagarjuna’s MMK. I think you would quite like it, I sure did. He feels Nagarjuna’s and Buddha’s positive statement on “it” was Dependent Origination."

I've read parts of that book and quoted them in past threads. For now an excerpt follows from Batchelor's "letting daylight into magic":

"...it should not obscure the real and potentially divisive philosophical and doctrinal differences that exist between the Nyingma and Gelugpa ideologies. The Nyingma teaching of Dzogchen regards awareness (Tib., rig pa) as the innate self-cognizant foundation of both samsara and nirvana. Rig pa is the intrinsic, uncontrived nature of mind, which... represents the very apogee of what the Buddha taught, whereas Tsongkhapa’s view of emptiness as just a negation of inherent existence, implying no transcendent reality, verges on nihilism.

"For the Gelugpas, Dzogchen succumbs to the opposite extreme: that of delusively clinging to something permanent and self-existence as the basis of reality. They see Dzogchen as a return to the Hindu ideas that Buddhists resisted in India, and a residue of the Ch’an (Zen) doctrine of Hva-shang Mahayana, proscribed at the time of the early kings."

[Balder]

Hi, Bonnitta, yes, I really appreciate his work as well. I read The Opening of Vision a number of months ago, and am now making my way through The Listening Self. I haven't seen Wilber mention his work (or vice versa) but he seems to have made significant contributions to the articulation of an integrative, postmetaphysical approach to spirituality (and more). (His framing might even help reconcile Ed to Dzogchen, particularly if Dzogchen's notions of "the Base" and "rigpa" are interpreted in the ways that he suggests... :-) ).

Are you aware of whether Levin has ever mentioned or written anything about Wilber and the whole Integral project? I've actually been considering writing him and asking him about that...

[Edward theurj Berge]

"His framing might even help reconcile Ed to Dzogchen."

If anyone can do it it would be Levin. But given the research I've done I seriously doubt that this interpretation or recontextualization was in the traditional views. And I'm still not convinced that trying to fit a postmetaphysical interpretation onto the traditional practices and forms will somehow magically transform them. More likely practicing the traditional forms will just move their metaphysics further into subconsciousness, more deeply buried under an overconfident translation. But maybe, we'll see. As I said, if anyone can do it...

[e]

Ed quoting:

"...it should not obscure the real and potentially divisive philosophical and doctrinal differences that exist between the Nyingma and Gelugpa ideologies. The Nyingma teaching of Dzogchen regards awareness (Tib., rig pa) as the innate self-cognizant foundation of both samsara and nirvana. Rig pa is the intrinsic, uncontrived nature of mind, which... represents the very apogee of what the Buddha taught, whereas Tsongkhapa’s view of emptiness as just a negation of inherent existence, implying no transcendent reality, verges on nihilism.

"For the Gelugpas, Dzogchen succumbs to the opposite extreme: that of delusively clinging to something permanent and self-existence as the basis of reality. They see Dzogchen as a return to the Hindu ideas that Buddhists resisted in India, and a residue of the Ch’an (Zen) doctrine of Hva-shang Mahayana, proscribed at the time of the early kings."

--

It’s kinda inevitable Ed. Imagine Buddha stepping outside of his culture and having an understanding that would not fit into the ready made dogmas of the day (i.e. eternalism and nihilism) and EVERYONE around him is bound by those two extremes (ironic how our cultural wars eschew the same views i.e. God believers and scientific reductionalist matierialists). Fast forward 500 years to Nalanda and the teacher is long gone and the two extreme views have surrounded and infiltrated the Dharma from the culture at large. Fast forward another 500 years or so and the same thing happens in Tibet. Fast forward another 1000 years and folks in the west cherry pick the dharma interpretation that most appeals to their metaphysical sensibilities. So the problem is never the Dharma but because we all start out ignorant it is the ontological baggage each person brings to it.

[Lol]

Bruce,

You wrote: "Levin outlines a vision of spiritual development and deepening of human capacity that uses metaphysical-seeming categories, such as "Being" and "the ground," but he employs and interprets these terms in a post-metaphysical way by using them to indicate an enactable human potential (in this case, an auditory capacity or range of experience), without postulating any "ultimate" condition of reality or the universe. This could strike some folks as too "immanentist," too much of a concession to a "naturalistic" perspective, but interestingly he relates this to advanced Zen and Dzogchen experience. I'll post his discussion of his use of the term, Being, here, and will include some of his Zen and Dzogchen reflections in a later post."

I'm looking forward to reading these "Zen and Dzogchen reflections" you're planning to post -- will this include how Levin suggests interpreting "Dzogchen's notions of "the Base" and "rigpa""?

It strikes me his use of the term "Being" could also apply to the "capacity and range of experience" of the other 'special' senses. I can appreciate why he uses the term "...as referring to the immeasurable, primordial ground of our listening experience, the dimensionality of the auditory field in its wholeness" (after all, sound is the first of the Dzogchen teaching's "three primordial potentialities", sound, light and rays), but isn't it the case that the same depth of presence of awareness involved in "hearkening ... letting-go and letting-be, as a mode or style of listening" can equally apply to the sensory experiencing ennacted in seeing, tasting, smelling and touching? And I've always liked KW's "the felt sense of Being" in reference to such a presence of awareness.