Diving into the Alaya-vijnana where subject and object are not yet divided with a beta-watermelon - Reading Claude Lévi-Strauss's 'Mythologiques' through deep semantics (29_ 'Mythologiques 2: From Honey to Ashes' - 3)

This is the 29th installment of an attempt to 'creatively' misread Claude Lévi-Strauss's 'Mythologiques' from the perspective of semantic segmentation theory.Theprevious articleis here.

You can read all the previous articles here.

You can enjoy this article on its own, even without reading the previous ones.

Introduction

In this series of articles, I read Claude Lévi-Strauss's'logic of myth'asa mandala-like structure of double four-term relations (eight-term relations) such as those Kukai describes in 'Unjigi', or rather, as 'things' where pulsations that make mandala-like patterns emerge like ripples resonate with each other.

Empirical distinctions become conceptual tools

At the beginning of his massive work on the logic of myth, Lévi-Strauss writes the following:

Extracting ideas by using empirical sensory distinctions (discrimination) as conceptual tools (in other words,superimposing discriminations to segment meaning), and connecting these ideas (linearly chaining one-to-one static pairs of signifiers and signifieds) is 'how it is done'. If we simulate this 'how' on a model of the pulsation of generation and extinction of a mandala-like semantic segmentation system, it looks roughly like the following.

The algorithm (movement) of the logic of myth

In other words, at the end of the narrative, myth aims to draw a stable mandala-like pattern by separating Δ1 to Δ4 in Figure 1, while connecting them without being too separated or too attached.

To achieve this, the narrative first describes movements of amplitude, such as the beta-term extending long toward the first and third quadrants, or the beta-term extending long toward the second and fourth quadrants, or gathering at a single central point.

Moving ambiguous mediating terms away and closer

In myth, the beta-term takes on forms such asa human who does not know how to use fire and pecks at the ground like a chicken, a jaguar that walks on two legs wearing clothes and carrying a bow and arrow, the moon that transforms into a porcupine to seduce a human woman, or a human who separates their lower body from their upper body and dives into a river with only their upper body, luring fish with the smell of flowing blood to catch them. Such things do not 'exist' in an empirical or sensory sense, but myth aims to capture the movement of the '/' just before one becomes able to distinguish whether somethingexists or does not exist, and to stabilize this. For this reason, it dares to narrate states where two poles that should beempirically diametrically opposed, such as human/animal or prey/hunter, overlap into one state where it is impossible to tell which is which. Offering vomit as food in the myth of Ogetsuhime is also an example of this. Things that show movements of amplitude that violently go back and forth between such empirically opposing poles, or things that exist in a way that is both or neither of the two empirically opposing poles, are calledambiguous mediating terms (beta relative to Δ in Figure 1).

Like kneading mochi, potter's clay, or pie dough, just when two of the four terms seem to have become excessively combined on the first axis, they simultaneously become excessively separated on the second axis, which is orthogonal to the first. These 'axes that cause separation' and 'axes that cause combination' swap at high speed.

Turning from there, pulling the betas out in all four directions, and at the point where the four beta terms are separated at an equidistant position without being attached or detached (drawing a square), this movement of pulling out and the force trying to return to the center balance. Here, the speed of expansion and contraction decelerates infinitely. Thus, in the 'between' of these beta terms, room opens up for four regions or objects, 'that which is not that, distinguished from that which is not that' (Δ), to flicker in a way that continuously maintains their outlines.

The meaning of the world for each of us is something articulated as a combination of oppositional relationships.

Here, a world meaningful to us, where it can be said that 'Δ1 is Δ2', a 'world' that can be linguistically stably distinguished where the various Δ terms have already been separated and neatly arranged as individual objects, is generated. Any empirical world, and the myths that tell of the origins of the elements of that world, have this kind of logic.

Just beneath the surface of our empirical world, the movement to readjust the frequency of β and regenerate the world as a different four-term relationship by derailing it from the fleeting 'four' square of the here and now never stops moving. The meaning articulation system that feels as if it has arranged given elements into a rigid structure, as shown in Figure 2, which floats on the surface consciousness of discriminative mind, is actually like the expansion and contraction of a pulsating wave (the period T[s] of periodically repeated vibrations expanding and contracting) viewed with narrowed eyes.

*

Being well-versed in the logic of myth makes it possible to observe how our experience of the world, including ourselves, as something meaningful is made possible by discrimination (funbetsu), or how patterns of meaning articulation emerge and disappear in various aspects, and it also makes it possible to assemble such ways of discrimination and meaning articulation quite consciously and freely.

Beta-watermelon

'Watermelon' is a very suitable Δ term for becoming β.

In the world we live in, sense, and experience daily, various things appear to exist, but we provisionally call these things Δ terms.

And Δ terms are always paired with their exact opposites.

Hot and cold, high and low, up and down, bright and dark, Dry / Wet, Edible and inedible, Self and other, Existence and non-existence, Inside and outside

We take two sets of oppositional relationships of Δ terms, that is, using four Δ terms, articulate the meaning of the world we live in.

For example, 'cool is good, hot is not good' and so on.

Cool / Hot || || Good / Not good

Meaning articulation

Just by living our daily lives, we are made to think that the opposition of the oppositional relationships of Δ terms has existed as such since ancient times and will remain fixed for eternity.

Basic Δ binary oppositions such as cool/hot, up/down, left/right, pleasant/unpleasant, high/low, dazzling/dark, good scent/pungent odor are, before we reflect on them or put them into words, before consciousness, in sensory perception, in terms of the Buddhist 'eight consciousnesses', they are 'articulated' by the 'first five consciousnesses'.

While being scorched by direct sunlight under the blazing sun, even if you drink no water and bluff by saying 'It's cold today, isn't it?', your body will not cool down; rather, you will get heatstroke.

For humans, articulation is bodily and vital before it is linguistic.

＊

By the way, among the 'eight consciousnesses,' humans also have 'consciousness' excluding the first five, namely the remaining three: the sixth 'intellectual consciousness', the seventh 'ego-consciousness', and the eighth 'storehouse consciousness'—these 'consciousnesses'.

The sixth consciousness referred to here is the consciousness that articulates the sensed world, which emerges as a result of the articulation by the first five consciousnesses, as a 'object' (target) versus a 'subject'. Here, the subject—that is, something like 'I who am perceiving the sensorially grasped objective world'—is separated from what is not, and its outline is brought to the surface.

The seventh ego-consciousness is the consciousness that generates 'ego-attachment,' that is, it continues to articulate that 'I,' the 'I' as a 'subject,' does not not exist but rather exists. It is precisely because the articulation of this seventh consciousness is active that the sensorially perceived objective world”not domain becomes a consistent domain of the subject, a domain of the subject.

The above seven consciousnesses form the external world and internal subjectivity that are felt to exist consistently in the same form by strongly repeating certain fixed ways of dividing. In contrast, the eighth storehouse consciousness is like a bundle of 'swells' where the articulating movements before solidifying into specific patterns of division are generated and extinguished in countless numbers. In the first place, articulation is something that is not non-existent but exists. Because of this, sprouting from this eighth consciousness, the seventh, sixth, fifth, fourth, third, second, and first consciousnesses are formed as things that consistently possess specific colors and shapes, like the branches and leaves of a single type of plant.

＊　＊

And in the case of humans, 'language' overlaps with the eight consciousnesses, and language before the four-term relationship of meaning articulation solidifies is deeply rooted in the eighth storehouse consciousness.

While we daily utter words that feel as if their meanings are firmly fixed—such as the sensations of the first five consciousnesses or the 'I/Me' of the sixth and seventh consciousnesses ('hot is hot')—by shaking the meanings of those words from a fixed state into a loosely moving state (that is, by intentionally shaking, stretching, and shrinking the framework of the four-term relationship that is daily repeated and fixed, making each term of the four-term relationship into a suspended state of vibration where one can neither distinguish which is which nor fail to distinguish them), we can create an oppositional relationship of oppositional relationships of 'inapprehensible' words whose 'what' cannot be decided or determined, and using this as a weapon, we can freely dive into and emerge from the unfathomable depths of the eighth consciousness.

Leaving behind the fixed four-term relationship of meaning articulation = attachment

'Words' that penetrate 'consciousness' from the deep layer to the surface layer (and from the surface layer to the deep layer). Words come in pairs, and those pairs further form pairs, creating a four-term relationship in their minimal configuration, thereby triggering 'meaning'.

This oppositional relationship of oppositional relationships of words is felt to be something very strongly fixed on the surface layer (the first five consciousnesses and the sixth consciousness).

However, the reason it was divided from a non-fixed state into a fixed state is due to the function of the seventh consciousness, a function called 'attachment'.

And before that, in the eighth consciousness, the oppositional relationship of oppositional relationships has not yet solidified. Or rather, it is a neither solidified nor non-solidified, indescribable looseness.

＊

For example, let's consider the life/death opposition of words.

And for example, it is said that everyone must necessarily go from one side of the life/death opposition to the other.

However, if one were to "go," one gets the feeling that there must be some kind of passage, or perhaps an entrance and exit, or a connecting point between life and death, which should be clearly separated.

Here, we humans realize that between two things that are empirically sharply opposed, we are forced to conceive of an intermediate, ambiguous, and in some sense 'incomprehensible' (unknowable) realm that is neither one nor the other.

The world of this intermediate state (which I will tentatively call β in relation to the Δ binary in this article) is what our thinking simulates with its language, which is the 'mythical' thinking that Claude Lévi-Strauss analyzes in 'Mythologiques'.

And myth reveals that the various Δ terms that fill our everyday empirical and sensory world are not actually things that exist (are) by themselves, but rather that they emerge later as if they were shadows of the movements of β terms as they repeatedly join and separate.

This was elucidated on an overwhelming scale by Claude Lévi-Strauss, who can be called one of the greatest intellects of the 20th century, in his massive work 'Mythologiques'.

* *

The 'mythical thinking' referred to here is not something limited to the so-called 'world of myth.' Mythical thinking, which describes the shadow where the vibration of β terms maps the oppositional relationship of Δ terms, and especially its various four-piece sets of β terms, becomes the strongest weapon for us to become able to ' freely dive into and emerge from the unfathomable depths of the eighth consciousness.'

The four-piece set of β terms forms an ' opposition of oppositions of purely 'incomprehensible' words that can neither be decided nor determined as to 'what' they are.'

Immediately β-ize the words that form the empirical, sensory, pre-five-consciousness, conscious, and attached fixed Δ four-term relationship, exactly as they are! Even when told that, when one thinks, 'What on earth should I do...', mythical thinking clearly and concisely teaches the method.

So, this time, let's β-ize a 'watermelon'.

A wolf flips a turtle over and roasts it whole...

So, let's read ' Mythologiques 2: From Honey to Ashes' Part 1 ' The Dry and the Wet' from Claude Lévi-Strauss's work, and read ' The Thirsty and Hungry Animal.'

First is the myth M192, 'The Origin of Honey.' This myth begins with a story from a time when
humans and animals were not yet separated.

Human / Animal

This distinction also seems, empirically and sensorially, like an opposition of two Δ terms that has existed for a long time and will continue to be clearly separated in this way, but mythical thinking does not set any ready-made binary opposition as its starting point.

Myth begins from a place of non-discrimination, non-distinction, no distinction, where even the presence or absence of distinction cannot be distinguished. From a place that is neither that there is a distinction nor that there is not.

In a world of non-discrimination, where there are no distinctions, the first 'bias' arises.

The location of the honey is biased toward one of the two opposing poles.Thus, the

distinctionbetween those who have honey and those who do not begins.

Those who have honey / Those who do not have honey
||
Wolf / Other animals (represented by the tortoise)

This distinction immediately turns into non-distinction.

The tortoise, representing those who do not have it, gulps down the honey that the wolf monopolizes.

The tortoise, while drinking this honey, is in a position that isnot having honey yet having it, unable to drink yet drinking freely,an 'unattainable' position that cannot be said to be either pole in terms of the opposition of having or not having honey.

The way the tortoise isneither of the empirically opposing polesis symbolized by the fact that he is'unburned even when roasted by fire'.

Raw (unfired) / Cooked (fired)

This opposition is also a decisive empirical and sensory distinction for living humans. The tortoise in this myth has become beta-ized as an existence that isneither of the poles of the opposition 'raw/cooked'and istherefore unattainable as either.

Beta-Tortoise and the Race - Slow but fast, fast but slow

Flipped upside down,the inside of his belly is moist, filled with honey, while the surface of his body is dry, roasted by fire, this appearance of the tortoise,

Inside/Outside
Dry/Wet

symbolizes that between the opposing poles, he is both, neither, and cannot be decided as one or the other.

Thisstrange existence of the 'tortoise that is roasted while drinking honey,' which separates and yet combines inside/outside and dry/wet, is later transformed into a 'watermelon'.

Growing fruit filled with moisture while bathed in the hot sun on dry land during the dry season,the watermelon is also an existence whose outside is dried while its inside contains water.

From here, the 'game of tag' begins.

The situation of 'being scorched by fire and (the surface) being dry'continues.
This state of excessive dryness (while the interior remains filled with water) is precisely what keepsthe turtle in a beta-ized state.

In this beta-ized turtle, a situation can occur where the turtle, which seems to be the slowest and furthest from the goal, ends up arriving at the goal first.

Slow/FastThe two poles ofbecome indistinguishable from one another.Slow is fast, and fast is slow,the world of the tortoise and the hareopens up.

The game of tag begins.
The game of tagis,

The chaser / The chased

who, while being distinguished and opposed to each other, approach and move away from one another.

The game of tag very well symbolizes theamplitude of the distance between opposing terms, the pulsation of separation and union, as the two opposing poles separate, unite, separate, and unite again.

During this game of tag, the wolftransformsone after another, first into a red-winged tinamou, then into a honeybee.

Transformationis also a process where one entity changes into another, but for it to be said that A transforms into B, A and B must first be distinguished, and while being distinguished and different from each other, they are converted from one to the other and from the other to the one.

In the course of this game of tag and transformation, a wild tree that bears edible fruit called a 'coconut palm' and a 'honeybee's nest' where honey 'grows' are demarcated.

Do not delta-ize the honey, but keep it at the position of the beta term

And finally, the animals obtain a little bit of honey.

The tortoise, the leader of the animals, proposes 'cultivating' the honey they obtained. For honey to continue to exist in the empirical and sensory world of humans, it must seem as though, no matter how much is eaten, new honey is obtained one after another.

This strange scene of honey cultivation also unfolds in a place that is 'too hot'. Thanks to this, the tortoise can continue to keep open an undifferentiated, intermediate state before the articulation of the empirical world fundamental to humanity, such as dry/wet or inside/outside prior to such distinctions.

In this intermediate state, the animals, led by the tortoise, attempt to regain contact with 'honey'.Four types of birds,

Reach the destination / Stop on the way
Small / Large
Bring good news / Bring bad news
Dry season (forest) containing remnants of the rainy season / Mere dry season
Scorching heat containing moisture / Mere scorching heat

separate the poles of such oppositional relationships.

Through the separation of these opposing poles, the sensory object known as 'honey,' which exists in the empirical world, also has its existence semantically articulated.

* *

However, this myth maintains separation and combination very carefully.

Cultivation in the honey 'field' succeeds once, but the animals eat it all at once. And then a crisis of honey loss arrives.

So the tortoise stops keeping bees in the field and releases them into the forest.

In other words, it stopped cultivation and returned them to the wild.

Cultivation / Wild

*

Simply put, for something to become human property, to become an object of culture or technology, means it ceases to be wild nature itself and belongs to the human side of the human/nature opposition.

Honey, too, by passing from the wolf into the hands of the animals (in this myth, humans before humans), became an object of 'culture,' an object of 'non-nature,' once it fell on one side of the human/nature opposition.

However, in the actual lives of the people who tell this myth, empirical honey is not something that is always in the realm of 'human' culture from the beginning, but is something gathered in the wild forest during the dry season each time.

To tell the origin of honey, it must be moved so that it belongs to 'wild things'.

Many human foods are articulated by the superposition of the following binary relationships.

Human food /
Things that are not human food
||　　　　　　　　||Cultivated/cooked things / Things left in their wild state

Humans, for example, almost never bite into wild animals to eat them directly; they eat things that have undergone technical and cultural processing, such as cooking.

However, honey can sometimes be eaten in its wild state without such processing. In that case, in the case of honey, the above relationship becomes twisted.

Honey is a mysterious entity that, while existing within the human experiential and sensory world, twists and reveals the Δ-four-term relationship that usually stably articulates that human world.

Various actors appear in myths surrounding this β-term, honey.

There are stories of tricksters who try to get honey but fail, get too much and end up in trouble, or become excessively connected or excessively separated in their antagonistic relationship with honey.

The β-fox as a container

Speaking of tricksters, there is the fox.
Next, let's look at M208.

Four β-terms are required for the minimum configuration, but there may be more than four.
What is important in β-pulsation is not that a 'term' 'exists'.
Whether a 'term' exists or not, or how many there are, in other words, means that the interference fringe patterns of the ripples of pulsation that can also be observed as 'terms' are appearing and disappearing, and it is the movement of the pulsation that draws these interference fringes that is important.

Forgetting about the pulsation and declaring that a 'term' is an entity that exists by itself, and arguing about whether it exists or not, or how many there are, is unfortunately missing the point.

Of course, we who live the 'first mind-state' in the 'Ten Stages of Consciousness' (Jūjūshinron) cling to such terms every day and delineate 'my share' or 'my possessions', and it is irritating to be told that this is 'missing the point', but even so, missing the point is missing the point.

A container separates and connects the inside/outside while opening a passage

'Being pierced' opens a hole in the boundary surface between inside/outside, and while the inside/outside are separated, a passage opens there, and where the passage opens, the inside/outside are no longer separated.

'Being pierced (piercing)' opens a passage between the two poles of the inside/outside, which are extremely fundamental and solid antagonistic relationships in terms of experiential sensation, while keeping them separated.

Above the treesoccupies the position of an intermediate term (beta-term) for the basic empirical and sensory opposition between heaven and earth.

Also, 'swamps' and 'shores' occupy an intermediate position between the aquatic realm and the terrestrial realm, which are also domains that are sharply opposed for humans in terms of empirical sensation (after all, humans cannot live underwater).

And the treetops and the swamp are opposed as beta-terms to each other. A story that shifts scenes between the two poles of the treetops and the swamp (shore) is 'The Crab and the Monkey'.

Moreover, this swamp, quite obligingly, fills with water and dries up.

A swamp is an aquatic realm that can also dry out.

When a swamp is dry, it becomes the same as the terrestrial realm.

It can be wet, and it can be dry. The swamp is a place that is neither one nor the other (incomprehensible) between the two poles of the basic empirical and sensory opposition of dry/wet.

In that incomprehensible place, there is a frog that looks like a water balloon.

In this case, the frog is a bag filled with water.

*

And speaking of bags, in the previous scene, the fox succeeded in putting 'honey' into a bag.

A bag is a folded boundary surface that can separate the inside from the outside, and it is a highly symbolic intermediate term that allows the inside and outside—a fundamental empirical and sensory opposition for life—to be separated while simultaneously brought into contact.

Among the companions of the bag, there are things like jars.

Earthenware jars that can be filled with water and also placed over a fire are also highly symbolic intermediate terms that separate and combine empirically decisive oppositions such as inside/outside, dry/wet, and fire/water, opening passages between the two poles or triggering 'transformations' between them.

These 'jars' or 'bags' that can separate the inside/outside while opening a passage between them as needed appear as powerful beta-terms in other myths as well.

For example, the article below discusses a story about a jaguar village where many bags filled with honey are hung.

Come to think of it, the myth that decorates the finale of 'Mythologiques 1' was also a story of 'clumsy pottery making'. A clumsy piece of pottery that looks like it would leak water. How very beta-like. This is also interesting, so please read it.

Containers like bags, pottery, or gourds must not be sealed in such a way that the contents cannot be taken out.

Unless a container can clearly separate the inside/outside while allowing the contents to be taken out when necessary, it cannot be called a beta-term.

In this myth, too, the 'water bag' frog is immediately opened with something like a needle, and the water is taken out.

The frog's belly, which had separated the inside from the outside, is partially torn, opening a passage between the inside and the outside.

The needle-like object and the bag-like container form a set; just as they separate the inside from the outside, they also open a passage there once again.

What was separated is now joined. Then, the 'swamp,' which had been separated from 'water' in the form of being dry even though it could be wet, is filled with water once again.

The 'swamp' moves from one pole of the dry/wet opposition to the other.

And with the water from this swamp, the dead fox is revived.

The 'fox' moves from one pole of the life/death opposition to the other.

For this fox, which revives as soon as it touches water, the distinction between life and death seems to be an almost trivial event.

◇ ◇

Water moves from one side of the inside/outside opposition to the other,
the swamp moves from one side of the dry/wet opposition to the other,
and the fox moves from one side of the life/death opposition to the other.

The poles of inside/outside, dry/wet, and life/deathall tend to becomeDelta termsthat emphasize self-identity in an empirical and sensory way.

It is theBeta terms—ambiguous mediating terms, especially tricksters—that can freely go back and forth from one side of such Delta term oppositions to the other.

Since Beta terms are also spoken of in language, they must be described using a combination ofsubject-like words and predicate-like words.

The frog / holds / water
The thorn / sprays / water / from the frog

For example,the noun 'water'is an intermediate term with respect to the dry/wet or inside/outside oppositions, but water itself can also be opposed to things like fire.

Water/Fire

Simply saying 'water' does not automatically mean 'Ah, we are talking about an ambiguous mediating term.' Water must act as a mediator, freely moving back and forth between the poles of oppositional relationships such as inside/outside or dry/wet.

Beta Frog

Here, the 'frog,' which is the carrier of water and the container of water, makes its appearance.

When a frog is a tadpole, it is just like a fish (a creature of the water realm), but when it grows, it develops legs (a creature of the land). The frog itself is something that moves one-way from one pole of an opposition to the other, making it suitable as a 'predicative' existence that travels and moves around between inside/outside and dry/wet.

M20 continues further.

Brewing or fermentation, especially in the case of honey, is considered important as a process that transforms honey, which is difficult to drink in its raw state due to its toxicity, into something drinkable.

Undrinkable / -> fermentation -> / Drinkable

Here too, the fox was driving the movement of mediation that triggers transformation and conversion between the two poles that are empirically and sensually opposed: fermentation.

That fox tries to climb to the 'top' of the tree.
It is to become one with the lizard, i.e., to unite.
However, the lizard rejects the fox, and the fox, without reaching the top of the tree, ends up suspended in the middle of the trunk.

Or, even without the lizard casting a spell, while a small and light lizard might manage, it seems unreasonable for a large-bodied fox to ride on the branches at the 'top' of a tree.

At the beginning of this myth, there was also a story about climbing a tree to get honey, but in that case, the 'treetop' was likely not the very top, but somewhere along the trunk.

The 'top' of a tree is likely too close to the sky.

Only by being an intermediate between heaven and earth can a tree serve as a site of mediation that triggers transformation and passage between opposing poles. Even if it is a tree, if it is too close to the heavens, it is already 'heaven,' sharply opposed to and separated from the 'earth,' and holds no possibility for union.

The fox, having failed in its attempt to reach the 'top' of the tree, hangs on the trunk, that is, suspended between heaven and earth, where it has its 'belly' opened up just like the frog.

It is interesting that here the fox is treated as something like a 'bag' or a container, just like the frog.

Being container-like means being in the middle of the empirical and sensory opposition of inside/outside.

And so, the myth ends with the intestines being removed from the 'inside' of the container-like fox, which then transformed into a 'vine' that humans can eat.
It seems the beta-fox never came back to life.

What this myth ultimately articulates is the distinction between 'things humans can eat' and those they cannot. At the same time, it seems to persistently refer to the opposition of 'wet inside' / 'dry outside', where inside/outside and dry/wet are paired.

Things humans can eat / Things humans cannot eat
||
Wet inside / Dry outside

Here, there is something that exists as if to embody this dual opposition: 'the wet inside is edible for humans, while the dry outside is inedible (difficult to eat)''. It is a watermelon.

Not limited to watermelons, even with cucumbers, the water repellency on the surface of melon-type fruits is quite fascinating. A way to soften this water-repellent surface as it is, is to turn them into fermented foods like nukazuke (rice bran pickles).

And fermentation was a typical beta-ization event that shakes the boundary of the oppositional relationship between edible and inedible.

Watermelon, fish, and honey as mediators/tricksters

Let's look at M210.

In this myth, the boundary between the inside and outside of the fox overlaps with the boundary between the wet world and the dry world, and on either side of that boundary, fish, honey, and watermelons go in and out.

The pair of fox and bird (a set of two terms), which had been acting together as one in harmony, separates into the two poles of the opposition: one who catches prey / one who does not catch prey, and furthermore they fight and part ways.

The first articulation is carved into the undifferentiated.

Here, the fox, separated from the bird, is promptly transformed into a beta-term: a "bag filled with honey." A bag filled with honey occupies an ambiguous and intermediate position that cannot be assigned to either of the two poles of the empirical and sensory oppositional relationship of inside/outside or dry/wet.

Through the boundary of the "inside and outside" of the beta-fox's body, which has become the beta-term "bag" relative to this inside/outside and dry/wet, fish, honey, and watermelons go in and out.

Moreover, what the fox tried to eat thinking it was "fish" brought to the land world across the water/land boundary was actually honey as well, and eventually, the bag-fox, stuffed with too much honey, lets the honey overflow. When that touches the ground, watermelons appear in turn.

A watermelon is a container containing water that rolls on the dry ground of the dry season.
It is an excellent mediator that separates while connecting the dry and the wet.

(What contains) Inside / Outside (What is contained)
||
Container / Contents
|| ||
Dry / Wet
↓
Watermelon

The "watermelon" as a trickster embodies the contradiction spanning these two poles of empirical opposition: inside/outside and dry/wet.

A watermelon is dry on the outside, but wet on the inside.

If you hold a large watermelon and think about whether it is a dry thing or a wet thing, if you say it is dry, it is dry, and if you say it is a lump of moisture, it is a lump of moisture; it cannot be clearly assigned to either dry or wet.

* *

Here, the distinction between inside/outside is a very fundamental and primordial distinction for our human 'mind' or 'consciousness (conscious, unconscious)'. Regarding this, philosopher Takashi Shimizu discusses the following in 'On Kukai / On Buddhism'.

How essential is the opposition of inside/outside?

Regarding this topic, Shimizu's 'Today's Animism' is also detailed. As I have also thought about that book in the article above, please refer to it.

'What contains' and 'what is contained' separate or swap places. Honey, fish, and watermelons are put in and taken out of a fox's belly. As 'what is contained' changes its form one after another, it makes the dynamic fluctuations of the possibility of articulation—not 'already' articulated, but distinguishing while not distinguishing inside/outside—pulse, so to speak.

Making the opposition between what wraps and what is wrapped unattainable

Levi-Strauss points out that needles, thorns, and the like that break bags, such as the 'tree' that split the fox's belly and pulled out its 'intestines', which have appeared several times before, can also take a position similar to 'watermelon' with respect to various empirical and sensory oppositional relationships.

What is interesting here is the point that 'all plants that arose from the fox are food of the dry season.' Both 'fish' and 'honey' are also experienced as food of the dry season in the region where this myth was told.

Moreover, these foods are all 'moist things' contained within the dry season. Honey is a moist thing collected during the nomadic life of the dry season, and fish are wet things that can be abundantly caught in rivers that still hold water even in the dry season.

What contains and what is contained, each one after another, also contain other things or are contained by other things.

What contains what and what is contained by what cannot be stopped and fixed in place; it is as if it is wrapped, then it wraps, and while wrapping it is wrapped by something else, and from there it wraps something else...

The distinction between wrapping/being wrapped emphasizes to the utmost the work of the pair of opposing movements of 'wrapping/being wrapped', which makes the separation and combination of 'inside/outside' pulse by separating or combining them.

Water and dryness—regarding these two poles that are empirically and sensually opposed, what demands a situation where the former is 'contained' in the latter is the existence of 'honey' and the existence of 'fish' gathering in the river during the dry season.

The movement of the container-like beta-term, which makes the oppositional relationship of containing/contained unattainable, and the movement of the needle-like beta-term, which pierces the container, even between the Delta-ized binary oppositional relationships that are felt as empirical, sensual, and very certain, such as dry/wet, opens up an intermediate region where one can no longer tell which is which.

Finally, let us look at what Mr. Lévi-Strauss writes regarding the opposition between 'contained things' like honey and fish, and the beta-container 'containing things' like the fox or the watermelon.

It is interesting to call the fox (watermelon) a 'makeshift mediation.'
A 'makeshift mediation' is performed at 'a point equidistant from both above and below.' In terms of the 'Sarukani Gassen' (The Crab and the Monkey), this is exactly the realm of the 'persimmon tree' where the monkey and the parent crab confront each other. In the confrontation at the persimmon tree, the oppositional relationship of the oppositional relationship of the beta-terms is articulated. And after that, at the 'monkey's house,' the oppositional relationship of the oppositional relationship of the Delta-terms is articulated once again, and the meaningful world in which humans live is articulated.

The fox (watermelon) is itself a 'thing that wraps.' Honey and fish are both 'things that are wrapped.'

Containers like bags or jars, 'things that wrap' being mediatory is, in a sense, easy to understand, or rather, because there is something that wraps, the fact that the inside/outside is separated is extremely intuitive, sensual, and empirical.

In contrast, the mediatory nature of 'things that are wrapped' is easily overlooked if one does not notice it. When one thinks of honey, it seems as if honey itself exists, and when one thinks of fish, it seems as if the fish itself exists as itself.

It requires training to imagine another oppositional relationship on both sides of honey or fish.

However, once we become able to quickly and immediately Beta-ize these things—honey and fish—which are naively experienced as a kind of Delta-term, we, as humanity, will be able to directly Beta-ize and see the various Delta-terms of our usual daily familiarity as they are.

Delta is Beta, Beta is Delta.

Without 'extinguishing' the world of Delta and entering a world of only Beta—a world of only foxes and watermelons—, the wisdom to see that while living the Deltas as they are, they are pulsating Betas.

This is what is important.

To be continued

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By the way, what I associate with the Beta-watermelon is the peach of Momotaro. The peach also has a striking contrast between the water-repellency of its surface and the moisture inside.

However, Momotaro's peach is not something rolling in a dry savanna, but comes floating down a river, from upstream to downstream.

Covering something watery with a water-repellent skin, and then letting it flow in the water.

What makes Momotaro different from the watermelon myth is that a healthy baby boy is inside the peach. This Momotaro is likelya son of the sun, a mini-sun.

Fireis wrapped in a water-repellent material andset afloat in the water world.

Against the all-too-solid and sharp opposition of fire and water as sensory materials, human thought confronts it by 'beta-izing' watermelons and peaches. And perhaps that intelligence is also connected to the kind of thinking that questions the very foundation of why matter is the way it is, the very basics of physics.

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