Beyond the Seven Branches of Philosophy: The Introvabile Nature of What Is

We often find ourselves lost in the intricate structures of human thought, perhaps even trying to categorize our existence through the **seven branches of philosophy**. We analyze logic, ethics, and metaphysics, hoping that by refining our concepts, we might finally grasp the "pepita di realtà"—that nugget of solid reality we believe is hidden beneath the surface of our daily lives. But what if the very act of seeking is what obscures the obvious? What if the investigation itself reveals that everything we touch is, in its essence, introvabile—unfindable? Consider a simple object before you, perhaps a pen or a blade of grass. When we ask what it truly is, it begins to slip through our fingers. The pen refers us to the ink, the plastic, the factory, and the worker. The blade of grass refers us to the soil, the rain, the sun, and the gravity of the entire absolute. Nothing exists in isolation. Everything is a pointer to something else, a node in an infinite web of relations. If every thing only exists because of its relation to another, and that other is equally dependent on something else, where is the center? Where is the "thing" itself? When we look deeply, the object vanishes into a network of pointers, and the network itself cannot stand if there is no solid ground to hold it. This is not a failure of logic; it is the liberation from the world of concepts. Concepts are useful tools—we use the concept of a "pen" to write—but they are not the reality. They are merely reflections. The separate self is the ultimate concept we cling to. We imagine a "me" inside this body-mind, a captain navigating the ocean of experience. But the wave does not "become" the ocean; the wave is already the ocean expressing itself as a crest. To ask for the meaning of this expression is to miss the point entirely. The absolute, in its infinite creativity, expresses itself through heights and depths alike. It is the sun and the moon, but also the pain and the pleasure, the life and the death. It adds the multiplicity of "little flames" of aware presence to its incorruptible integrity, not as fragments, but as ornaments. It is the totality being creative without limits. We often get caught in the trap of thinking that we must "achieve" a state of conscious presence or that we must follow a this moment. But the seven branches of philosophy can only take us so far before they must be discarded like the sticks used to start a fire. Once the fire of intuitive understanding is lit, the sticks are consumed. The Indian schools of old suggested using subtler and subtler concepts to displace the gross ones, while the Chinese schools suggested simply sitting and leaving the mind free of all concepts. Neither is a "way" to get somewhere else, because there is no "somewhere else." The space inside the heart is as vast as the space that contains the galaxies. It is the same space. Even our notions of ethics and love are often misunderstood through the lens of the separate self.