The Unnamable Quality

What drew me in about the Timeless Way of Building is that it speaks about the act of human creation in a very unusual and very compelling way. It speaks of a quality that is objective and precise but cannot be named because there is not one word to fully encapsulate it. It speaks of a method that frees us from all methods and produces buildings and systems that are truly natural in their context.

Describing the quality requires many words that overlap with the quality but ultimately fail to fully express it because they are overloaded with other meanings or miss a crucial element of this quality of timelessness. It’s a “you know it when you see it” kind of quality. It’s eminently accessible and recognizable. It emerges from a multitude of ordinary events and actions. It is generative and self-maintaining. It’s the easy grace of a space at once at rest and alive. All internal forces are accounted for and in perfect balance.

It can readily be encountered in the wilderness but can also be present in the built environment and in people. It is present in can be trees bending in a wind storm. Both wind and trees are fully true to their nature and yet they are in balance and the strength of the storm does no violence to the trees. It may be the interior of a temple that conveys a sense of awe, reverence, rest and peace. It may be a person who is fully comfortable in their own skin and fully present to the people around them. It may be a poem or a song that expresses something true and eternal. It may be a Japanese garden that is constructed by man but feels as if it had always been there.

The expression of the quality is unique in every instance because it takes the shape of the particular space or person it inhabits. It is a subtle kind of freedom from inner conflict, when all forces and events at play in it are fully expressed and yet in balance. A system (thing or person) with the quality is alive like waves on the seashore, a well built fire or a tiger are fully alive. Another word that approximates but not fully captures the quality is wholeness. The more free of inner contradictions a system is, the more healthy and whole it is, yet it is not finite or isolated.

It is comfortable, in the sense that everything in the system has its place and function and can be accessed and enjoyed readily without strain, yet so sheltered that it deadens the senses. It is free in the sense that it appears to have been created not with a specific image in mind but created with abandon as its nature required. It is exact in that even small forces that have not been accounted for can throw off the balance could cause internal conflicts but it not an exact match to any external image or design. It is egoless, in that it is true to its own nature rather than that of its maker. It is eternal in the sense that the person, building or space is so present that it is hard to imagine a time when it wasn’t there, or that it would ever be destroyed. It is truly natural.

TODO: transition to “where do we go from here?”

We are a people that values freedom but we have lost access to our innate sense for what truly makes us free. When we say freedom today, we usually mean our ability to do and get what we want. Ironically, true freedom comes when we have nothing to lose, live up to, or protect including our own ego. In the same way the timeless way requires that we as builders give up any external images and help our systems emerge from the natural forces within its components and their interactions in their context.

Despite my best efforts and the efforts those speaking the loudest in the US religious context to disqualify Christianity as a viable path to life, I could not shake the suspicion that the Timeless Way of Building had touched on the quality of the Kingdom of God Jesus talks about in the Sermon on the Mount. According to that scripture we have to become poor in spirit, that is to let go of our own conceptions and images, our false selves, before we can become co-creators in the timeless realm.

All the great Wisdom traditions circle around the same ineffable quality in their parables and kuans that have no resolution in an either-or context. They require us to go through a process of self-emptying (kenosis) in order to allow forces in these paradoxical stories to come into balance at a higher level of awareness where we can celebrate the both-and reality of this world.

Kenosis is the process by which we rid ourselves of harmful patterns of being and it is what allows us to reconnect to our life-giving center. We will be able to recognize the quality with no name in ourselves and others and collaborate in building a world that expresses it well.