Vulnerability

Kyoto Oishi Shrine

No, no not the vulnerability of cherry blossoms! Those are quite the opposite. First they defeat every forecast: they don't show up at all —blaming it on the cold, on growing on partial sun, on the couple of meters altitude— then they start coming out laughing, disdaining the snow that falls on them, the wind that blows through them. And there they are: marvelous, full, uncountable. At some point they start falling down and even on the ground they are laughing. Too beautiful to be true. They don't talk to other flowers. They are the first and the best. (Well, they don't really regard the forsythias as flowers, even if they bloom at the same time —they think they are some kind of bush gone mad).

Sendai Eisho Ji

Vulnerability is where meaning comes from. 
Like a dialogue at lunch between people who have no real expectation of who they are, not really sure if they can speak any common language well enough, not sure if there will be anything to talk about to start with. The topics pop up unexpectedly. A tip on a nearby temple or restaurant morphs into a casual hint on different assumptions at work in finance and philosophy, to an exciting exchange of reading tips. Chiding someone slightly for not picking up a tip reveals an action done from a great spirit of care. 

Sendai Rinnoji with Florence!

Checking if one's decision to collate the content of two different little dishes is acceptable turns into having one's table manners tagged as 'juvenile'. "Sorry, did I give you the feeling I was  essentialising the Japanese?" "Did I splash you while eating the spicy ramen?" "I am not sure I can follow your tip, since I might look brave but I still did not dare to drive a car on the left side of the road". 

Sendai Aoba Jinjia

"Could I come to your office to ask how to look up kanji if you cannot copy and paste them into the dictionary online?" "Can I visit your class, even if I don't have the right level?" "Can you give me an introduction to Japanese supermarket shopping?" Why do you like Dogen?" My lunches at Tohoku University have been one of highlights of my stay. I think that it might be because there is no script, no role, we are curious about each other, and thus we can be vulnerable; real human encounters happen, which give meaning to being around.

Ogawara - picture beautified by my Dad 

While I was impatiently waiting for the lazy cherry blossoms to come out, I was also preparing for my first class: a comparative philosophy class in a course co-taught by three other professors and me. I do the first classes. In English. The other will speak Japanese. The students are Japanese. I have heard so many warnings —"nobody will show up", "I am not sure if they can speak English at all", "What? you have an interactive class in mind?" "Have you assigned readings?!" "They will never speak up!" And other comments plus horror stories. 

Sendai Kawauchi Campus

I could not wait. I might have missed students in these last months. The class was full. I started introducing intellectual virtues: openness to other points of view, courage, intellectual humility, desire for epistemic friction that might lead to complete or correct our views; the importance of dialogues across differences... Then I said that, as philosophers, we might all have these virtues and attitudes. So I asked them to define philosophy. 

Ogawara picnic

It worked. And they kept being engaged, later, when they gave me examples of philosophical comparisons they did in the past (without calling it comparative philosophy), when they looked for assumptions on who they are. 

In order to introduce the theme of my series of lectures— "Momentous personal identity"— we watched a fragment of the brilliant animé Ghost in the Shell by Mamoru Oshii.  
Only one admitted to have watched it before. Well it might be because in 1995 they were not born yet. Then there was this magic moment when nobody seemed to breathe, when I announced we will be looking at a theory that could offer a different take to the determinism vs freedom puzzle. The theory comes from the medieval Japanese Dogen, who apparently they don't consider a philosopher but a poet and a monk. 

Morning before teaching

At the end I asked them for feedback and they were very honest: my English was acceptable; they wanted the slides, they needed a break, they confessed to have been nervous.  

It was a great experience. 

I might be fantasizing but I believe that some real human encounters happened. 

Sendai Tsutsujikaoka park - Hanami with Christopher's international students

Part of what made this possible might well have been the vulnerability with which we approached our encounter. I cannot wait for the next classes. The next one will be on the 7th of May. 

Perhaps part of the magic of being at a university comes from the vulnerability involved in dialogues between teachers and students.