In Buddhist terms, the conditioned, subjective mind is unable to comprehend its own inability to comprehend, although it is able to cultivate a sense of tolerance (ksanti) towards the incomprehensible. How does this tolerance operate? If I am uncertain about a concept or an experience, or if I become aware of a certain ambiguity in my own consciousness, I do not try to control that ambiguity by clasping on to a fleeting and fictitious sense of conviction or assurance, but try instead to observe that uncertainty with a sense of open-minded acceptance. There is no grasping involved in the practise of ksanti; as [John] Cage repeatedly reminds us, indeterminacy entails giving up personal intention and diminishing authorial control in favour of acknowledging a wider, less containable condition of experience.
Peter Jaeger, John Cage and Buddhist Ecopoetics
