Re: Hollywood Lee's Koo-Koo-Ka-Choo (was Re: Bhikkhu Nanananda's Koo-Koo-Ka-Choo)
halfawake
> On Oct 19, 3:48 am, halfawake <epstein...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>DharmaTroll wrote:
>>
>>>On Oct 15, 11:43 pm, halfawake <epstein...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>DharmaTroll wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On Oct 13, 11:37 pm, halfawake <epstein...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>Hollywood Lee wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>On 10/12/2009 4:54 AM, Bodhidumba wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>DharmaTroll wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>On Oct 11, 7:19 am, "Bodhidumba"<bodhidu...@emptycranium.com> wrote:
>>
>>>>>>>So, what about this description is metaphysical?
>>
>>>>>>for one thing, consciousness is one of the aggregates, so has it stopped
>>>>>>clinging to itself, or what? consciousness too is supposed to cease in
>>>>>>classical nibbana.
>>
>>>>>>Robert
>>
>>>>>>= = = = = = = = =
>>
>>>>>What do you mean, consciousness is supposed to cease,Robert? Are you
>>>>>claiming that one has to be in a coma to be awakened? The Buddha was
>>>>>conscious and walking and talking for 45 years after his awakening.
>>>>>Maybe you're substituting 'consciousness' for 'sense of self/ego'
>>>>>here.
>>
>>>>>--DharmaTroll
>>
>>>>It's been a big issue in Theravadin commentary. Many many Theras argue
>>>>that Nibbana represents total cessation of experience, and that the
>>>>"flame being blown out" is a clear metaphor that there is no more
>>>>experience in nibbana, not just no more clinging. I disagree with this
>>>>and apparently so do you; as do all Mahayana Buddhists for the most
>>>>part.
>>
>>>No more experience in nibbana? Yes I disagree with that. The point is
>>>to have experiences and pleasure and pain, but to be totally unshaken
>>>and serene in a state of nibbana. And not that there is no experience
>>>(that would start to sound like that nutters with their
>>>Undifferentiated Nondual Oneness abstract talk).
>>
>>But I like Undiffrentiated Nondual Oneness. And you put it so well!
>
>
>>Come back to the dark side.
>
>
> Join the forces of Darth Brahma? Never!
>
>
>> I know you really want to join the Nondual Oneness freaks.
>> Somewhere back there you had a very bad experience with
>>Nondual Oneness, and now you've rejected it to avoid reliving that
>>trauma. With a high-starch diet and long lectures we can work through that!
>
>
> Hah! Maybe it's all about God. Maybe Nondual Oneness is just your
> version of God (not the Santa Claus anthropomorphic version of the
> evangelicals, but the mystical mature God of the Catholic monks).
>
> Some folks, like yourself, only find meaning if they posit a higher
> Supernatural reality of some sort, call it God, or Ground of Being, or
> The Void, or Nondual Oneness. And some only find meaning if they don't
> appeal to anything TransEmperical and focus on the here and now
> (though the former types claim to do that as well).
>
> It might all be just a linguistic distinction, Robert. The rift here
> between the Empiricist/Transcendentalist is pretty much the same as
> between the Atheist/Theist. I propose cutting orthogonally to make a
> different sort of distinction, between mystery and complacency. Some
> theists or transcendentalists thrive on a sense of awe and mystery,
> and by God they mean a sense of the utter unknowable; this adds
> meaning to their spirituality (to deny the Transcendental would be to
> reduce life to Dr. Phil or just savagery for them). And some atheists/
> empiricists find a sense of awe and wonder in nature, and this gives
> them a sense of mystery (to add the Trancendental to them would cover
> the mystery, cheapen it, rather than express it). And some theists use
> "God" or "Oneness" or "Undifferentiated" to hid from mystery, to
> escape from nature, to explain away the mystery so that they can have
> security in their answers. And some atheists hide the mystery and live
> a life of complacency as well, just trying to get more sex, money,
> security, and pretending that the person with the most toys wins when
> you die.
>
> Really, which side of the God/Transcendent vs. Atheist/Empiricist side
> you are on may be just a matter of the language you're taught. Which
> side makes no difference. It's the mystery/complacency schism that's
> the salient one. Developing a sense of awe and wonder and mystery may
> be all that counts, and the Theist/Atheist or Transcendentalist/
> Empiricist debate may be only a superficial linguistic one.
>
> Anyway, that's one of my metatheories. What it could mean is that
> you're babbling about Transcendental Oneness because you fear that
> without it, you lose that sense of awe and mystery (hence your Dr.
> Phil comments). And it could mean that I'm babbling about Naturalism
> and rejecting woo-woo because woo-woo would mask and cheapen that
> sense of awe and mystery. Maybe we're already in complete agreement in
> terms of wanting to delve into awe and mystery and eschew complacency,
> but we're simply arguing from different arbitrary linguistic
> frameworks? Let's see what you think about that zinger.
I think I babble about a mystical reality beyond the apparency of
material existence because I sense, experience and intuit it at
different times and in different ways. You have discounted your
supernatural experiences as hallucinations as I understand it, or as
relatively meaningless visions under the influence, and I can understand
why you might do that. But I don't have a perspective that demands
that. While I remain agnostic, I take those experiences seriously.
Since I know human beings have very specific and narrowly focused
sensory and mental equipment, designed for survival, I doubt very much
that we are able to fully perceive the nature of reality, and so my door
is open not for random UFOs and imagined spookies, but for serious
experiences and reports that seem to open a door worth looking through.
I'm also very focused on the quality of experience in the here and now,
and I don't feel that one has to choose one or the other.
>
>
>>>>But the fact is that consciousness is one of the five aggregates
>>>>in Theravadin Buddhism and it would cease along with the others in
>>>>nibbana, but not before.
>>
>>>You mean in death, don't you?
>>
>>Nope, that's parinibbana. There's a problem in Thera with that
>>distinction too. Some have it, some don't. I, of course, have the
>>right view, and know that they are different.
>
>
> Right, but in parinibbana, the aggregates are gone, but in life they
> are present. I'm still toying with some ideas here. While the arahant
> is alive, first, nibbana can't mean the permanent ceasing of, say,
> consciousness, which would be a coma.
That's right. Nibbana, to continue toying, is either the momentary
experience of total cessation which then remains as an underlying form
of knowing when experience returns - similar to jhana - or it is an
ongoing state that is totally detached and undefiled. Whatever you call
these states, I think that both are ones that take a place in the
Buddhist repertoire.
>>>The only thing that ceases in nibbana is
>>>craving, aversion, and delusion. The Buddha didn't cease to be
>>>conscious and slip into a coma. He walked around and talked for 45
>>>more years!
>>
>>Then why does he say that nibbana is the cessation of the five
>>aggregates? And why is consciousness one of them? You have to grapple
>>with the facts of the case.
>>
>>It's okay for a mystical type like me. I just postulate an awareness
>>beyond consciousness for nibbana and I'm all set! But for you...
>>Better eat some wheat germ before tackling this one.
>
>
> Ok, not only wheat germ, but I drank some of my blueberry/pomegranate
> juice and put extra arugula and baby organic spinach in my salad, and
> here's what I've come up with so far, Robert.
:)
>
> There seems to be another use of consciousness (besides being
> functioning mentally and not in a coma) that seems to be the salient
> one here. You see, the key to parinibbana is that the generation of
> consciousness is what causes rebirth, an 'evolving' or 'conductive'
> consciousness (samvattanika), which causes the crucial link between
> rebirths. At death, the momentum set up by constructing activities
> (and craving) is not cut off, but impels the evolving flux of
> consciousness to 'spill over' beyond one life and start the next one.
This is very close to my view of rebirth. The generative or motor
function of the kandhas, which include the intention to perpetuate their
habitual patterns [which could also be seen as mere inertial propulsion
of a more complex set of kinetic currents] impels the recreation of a
vehicle for those tendencies, also known as a "person."
>
> While there is no soul that transmigrates, the person in the next
> rebirth is neither the same person nor a wholly different person (the
> metaphor of lighting a new candle from a dying one expresses this --
> the flame is neither the same fire nor a wholly different one). And
> the rebirths are linked precisely by the flux of consciousness and the
> accompanying seeds of karmic results, so that the character of one is
> the development of the character of the other.
Yup.
>
> Well, the idea of parinibbana is that this 'spill over' and 'evolving'
> or 'conductive' consciousness (samvattanika) has been extinguished,
> and so no more rebirths are possible. That's the deal with
> parinibbana.
Yup; the question still remains whether there is such a thing as
absolute nothingness, which is what this form of parinibbana would be,
and whether it breaks the Buddha's own rule of eschewing annihilationism
as well as eternalism.
>
> So now we have to look at the "nibbana with subtrate" or nibbana while
> the arahant is alive and thinking and feeling and walking and talking.
> Again, there has to be a parallel with parinibbana, where there is no
> 'spill over' where consciousness is perpetuating into the future
> moment by moment, so that when the arahant dies, there similarly is
> none of that evolving or conductive consciousness to spill over into a
> new rebirth.
>
> But the arahant is 'conscious' in our normal sense if seeing and
> feeling and thinking and walking and talking, and isn't in a coma
Right, although I would take issue with the idea that one can assume
that the thought-process is the same when unconscious "defiled"
tendencies that cause kamma has been removed from both perception and
thought-process. Some say that vipaka, the immediate reaction to
perceptual objects, has been deleted, since it is the vital link in the
cycle of DO which causes kammas to proliferate and accumulate. One of
the results of kamma is suffering-inducing thought-processes. One
wonders what sort of perception and thought would remain when these
sorts of automatic belief-and-projectional thoughts and
feeling-reactions have been deleted. I don't think it is "all the same
stuff," it is some "very different stuff."
Everyone from Hui-Neng to your old buddy Heidegger have distinguished
between automatic thought-streams of the "junk and garbage/racing
thoughts" kind and "thinking" as an intentional creative act.
Hui-Neng said that from "thought-moment to thought-moment," an English
translated concept which I have always liked a lot, one should have a
mind "free of defilements" and in touch with "the essence of mind." In
Theravada terms I think that could loosely translate to thought that at
every moment is in mindful touch with what is happening rather than
being lost in rumination or fantasy ["a pound of flax" in zen terms] and
is also quite scientific in the sense that it starts out with the
thought or acknowledgment of "what is actually present," and, I would
guess, doesn't think randomly about it "just for the hell of it," but
expresses some intentional sense of "what it is." [Just a rough sketch.
Now I'm starting to think about my favorite property of mindful
thought, vitakka, which "turns its object over" and "beats the object"
repeatedly in order to further investigate its nature. But another time...]
> (which isn't what that 'spilling over' or 'evolving' or 'conductive'
> consciousness is referring to. My guess here is that there is a total
> 'blowing out' while still alive that involves none of this spilling
> over from moment to moment, so that at whatever moment death comes,
> they'll be nothing to spill over into the next life. And this is the
> ceasing that you were talking about. But there is no implication this
> implies something of a woo-woo nature, such as regular consciousness
> gone, and a Magical Transcendental Super-Conscious-Awareness that has
> direct Spiritual Wormhole to be able to grok the Transcendental
> Oneness, or something like that, which is what I assume you're trying
> to get at.
I'm trying to get at a couple of things which don't jive for me:
1/ why do so much training in heightened awareness only to reach the
goal of destroying all awareness. This does not make logical sense to
me. One could possibly have a much more streamlined approach that would
not involve so much specific awareness of so many properties of mind and
life in order to just observe enough of the three marks to let go of all
dhammas and reach a state of non-clinging, leading to cessation. It
seems to me that the Buddha overteaches in the awareness department in
such fine detail if that is the only goal.
2/ complete snuffing out of all awareness is inherently
annihilationist/nihilist. If Buddha had said "there is one form of
annihilation that is allowable and that is the complete snuffing out of
all consciousness, including the base awareness that allows for all
things to be known by sentient beings, in other words to become
insentient," I would say "okay, that's the Buddha's message." But he
warned against the extremes of believing in annihilation or eternalism,
and I am left to wonder what is inbetween. I know that annihilation
fans argue that "there is no annihilation because the self isn't real,"
but that is not the point. Experience is real and if you annihilate the
very base of experiencing, you have a nihilistic intent and final action
no matter how you slice it. To my mind, by this measure, Nietzche in
his worst moments is the ultimate Buddhist. Again, this does not jive
with my sense of Buddhism.
3/ Buddha did not only promote perfect peace of cessation. He was
quite enthusiastic about the "subtle happiness and joyful abiding" that
was achieved by higher states of mindfulness and deeper states of jhana.
Why get into such states when they are highly fine-tuned and
callibrated states of unfettered awareness, to me the exact opposite of
cessation. I don't see how such enthusiasm for non-clinging joy jives
with total wipeout. Again, does not make sense to me. Maybe it does to
you, I will be happy to hear how you think that all works. But I can't
buy it.
I think there is a nice, naturalistic way for there to be a
> total 'blowing out' of the evolving consciousness that "spills over"
> into the future of the next moment (and thus causes rebirth), without
> any transcendental stuff added.
Well you have to admit in any case that by scientific standards as they
now exist this kind of spillover is pure science fiction. From the
Buddhist perspective it's not a bad explanation, and its similar to what
I've arrived at, which supports my contention that you are a Buddhist
first, and a scientist second.
>
> Whether I can find some support for this in the suttas is another
> story. Maybe our list scholar Tang will snap out of Doctor Evil mode
> and dig up just the right kind of passage which he has translated
> himself and help me out here. Or not. But anyway, this is what I'm
> going after, Robert, in terms of the ceasing in nibbana while alive.
> Not bad, eh?
Yes, you're doing fine, and I like the "living nibbana" explanation and
it makes sense to me, always has. I have a bigger problem with
"parinibbana," since to me if it is without the slightest experience
left, it seems escapist and annihilationist to me. Maybe it is, and
that's just Theravada. Mahayana is not into cessation; they keep the
Bodhisattva working, even after his clingings are all gone. That seems
the biggest difference to me.
I can see parinibbana as a death that leaves no residual tendency
towards birth and suffering, but not one which involves total
unconsciousness. So I'm left with a slightly supernatural bent, as one
might expect. Not that your kandhas that keep on ticking into a new
life are *not* supernatural, they certainly are.
Best,
Robert
= = = = = = = = = = = =
Allen Barker
> 2/ complete snuffing out of all awareness is inherently
> annihilationist/nihilist. If Buddha had said "there is one form of
> annihilation that is allowable and that is the complete snuffing out of
> all consciousness, including the base awareness that allows for all
> things to be known by sentient beings, in other words to become
> insentient," I would say "okay, that's the Buddha's message." But he
> warned against the extremes of believing in annihilation or eternalism,
> and I am left to wonder what is inbetween.
Dogen instructed:
Students cannot gain enlightenment simply because they
retain their preconceptions. Without knowing who taught
them these things, they consider mind to be thought and
perceptions and do not believe it when they are told that
the mind is plants and trees. They think of the Buddha
as having marvelous distinguishing marks, with radiance
shining from his body, and are shocked when they are told
that he is tile and pebble. Such preconceptions were not
taught them by their parents, but students come to believe
them for no other reason than that they have heard about
them from others over long periods of time. Therefore,
when the Buddhas and Patriarchs categorically state that
the mind is plants and trees, revise your preconceptions
and understand plants and trees as mind. If the Buddha
is said to be tile and pebble, consider tile and pebble
as the Buddha. If you change your basic preconceptions,
you will be able to gain the Way.
[...]
[From Dogen's _Shobogenzo Zuimonki_, IV-7, translated by
Reiho Masunaga, University of Hawaii, 1971.]
Hollywood Lee
> DharmaTroll wrote:
>> Whether I can find some support for this in the suttas is another
>> story. Maybe our list scholar Tang will snap out of Doctor Evil mode
>> and dig up just the right kind of passage which he has translated
>> himself and help me out here. Or not. But anyway, this is what I'm
>> going after, Robert, in terms of the ceasing in nibbana while alive.
>> Not bad, eh?
>
> Yes, you're doing fine, and I like the "living nibbana" explanation and
> it makes sense to me, always has. I have a bigger problem with
> "parinibbana," since to me if it is without the slightest experience
> left, it seems escapist and annihilationist to me. Maybe it is, and
> that's just Theravada. Mahayana is not into cessation; they keep the
> Bodhisattva working, even after his clingings are all gone. That seems
> the biggest difference to me.
>
> I can see parinibbana as a death that leaves no residual tendency
> towards birth and suffering, but not one which involves total
> unconsciousness. So I'm left with a slightly supernatural bent, as one
> might expect. Not that your kandhas that keep on ticking into a new life
> are *not* supernatural, they certainly are.
So, given your formulation above, you are left with the polar opposites
of either annihilationism or eternalism to explain the experience of a
Buddha after death. The difference, I suppose, is that the therevada
could say they take no position on what happens after the death of a
Buddha, whereas select mahayana have assembled and built-up their entire
belief structure on top of the sense that the Buddha remains pervasively
active within samsara for limitless beings to the end of time.
DharmaTroll
I was gonna say the same thing, but in a more obnoxious way.
I'm reminded of a conversation on The Simpsons last night:
Marge: You don't have to join a freak show just because the
opportunity came along.
Homer: You know, Marge, in some ways, you and I are very different
people.
--DharmaTroll
DharmaTroll
> >>>>>>Hollywood Lee wrote:
> >>>>>>>On 10/12/2009 4:54 AM, Bodhidumba wrote:
> >>>>>>>>DharmaTroll wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>On Oct 11, 7:19 am, "Bodhidumba"<bodhidu...@emptycranium.com> wrote:
>
Well, that's an interpretation, like Brian's woo-woo, you see.
It might be a correct interpretation, but it needs to be examined.
The words 'sense' and 'experience' are misleading.
'Intuit' is better, as an intuition is a gut interpretation based on
past conditioning.
By saying "I sense, experience, and intuit a woo-woo reality" you're
trying to appeal to authority, and claim certainty of objective
knowledge. You could easily have said, "I sense, experience, and
intuit the presence of The Holy Spirit".
What I'm suggesting is not to 'dismiss' anything, but rather not to
blindly believe your conditioned interpretations to begin with, and
instead to pause. Just pause and examine how your interpretations rush
in about your experiences. Arguing about woo-woo is post-
interpretation and sometimes is helpful but doesn't get us far
usually. I'm suggesting that you pause, and find that gap, that empty
space between experiencing and interpreting that you sense woo-woo.
> You have discounted your supernatural experiences
No, I have not. I've never had a 'supernatural' experience. My God,
Robert, now you're question-begging by shoving your dogma upon my
experiences that you didn't even experience!
> as hallucinations as I understand it,
No. There were no hallucinations. (I haven't done Peyote, which causes
these, but I'd like to). Let's just pick one typical LSD trip. Rather,
I would listen to a song on the radio, and suddenly the thought
entered my mind that the Universe, the Anima Mundi, was speaking
directly to me. So there was the auditory experience, and then there
was a thought.
And then another thought, that I was God, and all music was just
messages to myself, in a Cosmic Dance, and that Trollpa was just one
voice in a Cosmic Fugue, that plays eternally, endlessly trying out
different variations.
So there was an experience, and then a thought. And then another cool,
creative 'mystical' thought. And then a warm euphoric feeling and
resonation, like a "Yeah!" including pleasant bodily sensations of
relaxing and tingling in the body, following the thought. Now, I can
sound much more 'mystical' if I collapse all this together and say, "I
had a supernatural experience where I sensed, intuited, and grokked
(you didn't use my favorite teenage term) a mystical higher reality".
So no, I don't claim to have hallucinated, Robert. I claimed to have a
succession of natural experiences. I had auditory sensations. Then a
thought. Then bodily sensations. Then more thoughts, and more bodily
sensations, all in less than a second, and the cascade of all this was
a euphoric mystical feeling of 'Wow!' followed by a final thought, "I
am God", followed by uncontrollable giggling, which I maintained by
staring into a mirror, seeing my own body language, and continuing the
cascade of thoughts and bodily sensations.
> or as relatively meaningless visions under the influence,
NO!!! They were intensely meaningful. They still are. They led me
directly to practicing Buddhism. And then the Vipassana practice that
I learned as a result of the meaningful experience led me to examine
my experiences more closely. And when I did, I noticed that there
wasn't anything supernatural at all, but rather a meaningful,
beautiful, creative waterfall of sensations and thoughts. 100% Organic
and Natural. No Trans-Fats added.
> and I can understand why you might do that.
I can understand why you deliberately prevaricate about my experience.
Because if you looked, you might have to admit that your experiences
are just like mine. But as long as you can believe that I claim to
"hallucinate" or claim my experiences are "meaningless" then you can
label me as silly, closed-minded, objectivist, behaviorist, whatever,
and you can stick with your woo-woo story instead of examining
closely.
Indeed, I like the "mobius strip" nature of my progression: "woo woo"
experience leads to mindfulness practice leads to paying attention to
experience leads to finding no woo-woo or self or supernatural but
rather 100% Organic experiences with no Trans-fats added.
And Robert, let me share a secret with you: 100% organic raw food
desserts can actually taste as yummy and as meaningful as your
Transcendental Twinkies. No Trans-fats doesn't mean no meaning.
> But I don't have a perspective that demands that.
I know. You insist on your Big-Mac with the "Special Sauce".
It's Thousand-Island Dressing, Robert. Really, it is.
> While I remain agnostic, I take those experiences seriously.
You don't remain agnostic. You claim authority by not examining your
interpretations. Agnostic would be to describe your experiences just
as I do, but remain open as to why you felt the "Wow" and consider the
possibility that your interpretations may indeed be true. That's
agnosticism, and I'm actually agnostic, but I favor the Organic, No-
TransFats story in lieu of not having more evidence to claim that the
"I AM THAT" story is more than a useful, beautiful metaphor.
Now, you are going to have to acknowledge that I don't claim
"meaninglessness" and you're going to have to admit that it is
possible that my organic treats might actually be as yummy and
meaningful as your Twinkies and Big-Macs with the Special Sauce for us
to discuss this meaningfully.
> Since I know human beings have very specific and narrowly focused
> sensory and mental equipment, designed for survival, I doubt very much
> that we are able to fully perceive the nature of reality, and so my door
> is open not for random UFOs and imagined spookies, but for serious
> experiences and reports that seem to open a door worth looking through.
First, that "seem" involves a "seem through the lens of heavily
filtered religious supernatural dogma".
And yes, our senses are limited. That's why we built the Hubble
telescope and electron microscopes and particle accelerators. And we
do find things that exist which we can't ordinarily sense: bacteria
and viruses are a wonderful example of this. But if you look at your
experience dispassionately and mindfully, as I do mine, I suspect you
will find sensations and thoughts, and sensations, and thoughts, and
the swirl of all of those together lends itself to interpretations
that can be supernatural. They may indeed be true (and by admitting
that I'm the agnostic here), but they are still interpretations (and
if you don't admit that, then you're a dogmatist, not an agnostic).
> I'm also very focused on the quality of experience in the here and now,
> and I don't feel that one has to choose one or the other.
Well, it's from my being super-focused on the here-and-now that I came
up with my sensations-and-thoughts story that opposes your Trans-fats
and Special Sauce story. What irony, eh?
(Ooh, good place to stop. This is making me hungry. Seriously. I'm off
to lunch. Or out to lunch. Your choice.)
--DharmaTroll
"One important aspect of what makes a person an artist is having a
psychological make-up of thin boundaries, which includes the ability
to experience and take in a great deal from inside and outside, to
experience one’s own inner life in a very direct fashion and
(sometimes an unwanted ability) to experience the world more directly,
more painfully than others."
-Earnest Hartmann
brian mitchell
> . . . I've never had a 'supernatural' experience. My God,
>Robert, now you're question-begging by shoving your dogma upon my
>experiences that you didn't even experience!
Which is precisely what you do. How does it feel?
DharmaTroll
No, I don't think there is a symmetry there.
(1) I first of acknowledge that I make an interpretation, which
differs from yours.
(2) I then acknowledge that I may be wrong, and yours may be right.
(3) I then argue why I go for my naturalism over your Supernaturalism.
But you folks instead start out by claiming to be the Pope and to have
an Infallible Transcendental Pipeline to God. And then, taking that as
a premise, there can't even be a discussion of why we each like our
various interpretations. If you start out by being the Pope (claiming
"direct experience" or any other claim of certain objective
knowledge), then it's just dogmatism, Brian, and Robert, and all you
nutters and woo-woo-ers out there.
--DharmaTroll
"Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the
commonplace."
-Elbert Hubbard
Déjà Flu
...
> (Ooh, good place to stop. This is making me hungry. Seriously. I'm off
> to lunch. Or out to lunch. Your choice.)
>
> --DharmaTroll
>
> "One important aspect of what makes a person an artist is having a
> psychological make-up of thin boundaries, which includes the ability
> to experience and take in a great deal from inside and outside, to
> experience one's own inner life in a very direct fashion and
> (sometimes an unwanted ability) to experience the world more directly,
> more painfully than others."
> -Earnest Hartmann
Woah! What? You're fond of wish-doctors now?
BTW - I think it was "Ernest" (as in "The Importance of Being Ernest").
Hopefully, he'll be dead pretty soon.
Also hopefully, lunch was better that that gibberish. Hartmann reads
like Oprah would if she was a PhD philosopher and able to prescribe
her own drugs at the same time. "Psychiatrists" not only need
a psychological evaluation and a good projector, but an MD.
Both seem rather easy to get these days.
I have no credentials
And no authority
The only place I have to stand
Is where I stand to pee.
--
Ubi dubium ibi libertas
DharmaTroll
Truth is, Fu, I've never heard of Earnest Hartmann. This was in one of
my lists of cool quotes, and I scrolled the list until one I hadn't
used jumped out and seemed somehow to relate to the post I was
posting. That's how I pick quotes except in special cases -- it takes
about 10 seconds, I scan one of my collections and as soon as the
first one that relates in any way to my post catches my eye, I cut and
paste it.
In any case, I thought that quote was insightful and worked well
there.
--DharmaTroll
"I hate quotes. Tell me what you know."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson.
zenworm
still "i"?
ZN :D
absolute permanent perfection overflowing without action
zenworm
> I learned as a result of the meaningful experience led me to examine
> my experiences more closely. And when I did, I noticed that there
> wasn't anything supernatural at all, but rather a meaningful,
> beautiful, creative waterfall of sensations and thoughts. 100% Organic
> and Natural. No Trans-Fats added.
Was this examination during the
'meaningful experience'?
If no, how long after the 'meaningful experience'
was the examination that led you to the conclusion
'there wasn't anything supernatural at all'?
(zenworm is not implying there was)
in clarifying this, how do you account for the
potential alteration/modification to memory as events/experiences are
remembered?
You raised this several times as evidence of
the unreliability of remembered events particularly those 'remembered'
after time has passed.
Given your advocation of honest examination is it
possible that the content structure of the memories
may be 'modified'? Particularly since substance
induced states tend to be more focused and
intensified at the exspence of the simultaneous
wholistic perspective which may have a tendency
to flip attention between these perspectives which
might create an 'illusion' of alternation when in actuality
those perspectives were simultaenous making the
after 'remembered' order of experience - thought -
experince - (etc) fallicious.
Do you 'see' a simultaneous sense of this now
or are you still seeing experience - thought -
experience - as alternating?
brian mitchell
>On Oct 30, 5:51�pm, brian mitchell <brainm...@fishing.net> wrote:
>> DharmaTroll wrote:
>> > . . . I've never had a 'supernatural' experience. My God,
>> >Robert, now you're question-begging by shoving your dogma upon my
>> >experiences that you didn't even experience!
>>
>> Which is precisely what you do. How does it feel?
>
>No, I don't think there is a symmetry there.
>
>(1) I first of acknowledge that I make an interpretation, which
>differs from yours.
Yes.
>(2) I then acknowledge that I may be wrong, and yours may be right.
If so, it must be buried in the really really small print.
>(3) I then argue why I go for my naturalism over your Supernaturalism.
Yes, mixed in with a great deal of this:
>But you folks instead start out by claiming to be the Pope and to have
>an Infallible Transcendental Pipeline to God. And then, taking that as
>a premise, there can't even be a discussion of why we each like our
>various interpretations. If you start out by being the Pope (claiming
>"direct experience" or any other claim of certain objective
>knowledge), then it's just dogmatism, Brian, and Robert, and all you
>nutters and woo-woo-ers out there.
You're essentially a missionary, with a missionary mindset. The
curious thing is that you're very largely preaching to the converted.
Rational physicalism is the presiding basis across all these x-posted
newsgroups, with few exceptions (fortunately for you, there are one or
two exceptions). Even among those, I may be the only one who comes
right out and declares for so-called paranormal or psychic perception
and/or experience. Actually, I'm amazed that people who have spent
years supposedly deepening their sensitivity to what-is and clearing
their minds of the clamorously personal *don't* encounter these kinds
of things --although perhaps they do and are just too cultured and
discreet to mention it in public. It might, though, have to do with
one's understanding of mindfulness. If it's seen as a process of
locking down conscious attention to the physical, that would rather
coarsen the mind than anything else. Krishnamurti notes that
concentration is no part of meditation. A meditative mind can
concentrate, but a concentrated mind cannot know meditation. What
would you say to that?
Julian
"Becoming a Buddha is nothing extraordinary." - Nichiren
DharmaTroll
No, I interact with a lot of Buddhists. A lot of them are rational.
And then there are the woo-woo-ists who want to escape from their
bodies and nature and go for the transcendental woo-woo stuff. And for
years, I've seen the woo-woo-ists pelt the rational folks with
judgments and insults demands that Buddhism be just another fucked-up
supernatural one-up-man-ship belief system.
Well, it's time for the rational folks to stand up to the nutters.
There are enough psychic energy healers, crystal channelers,
acupuncturists, and now there's Sarah Palin on top of all that. I say,
enough of the insults and put-downs from nutters. Enough of their
trying to put their astrological Creationist blather into science
classes! Enough of their insulting me for trying to argue for some
basic sanity, instead of your crackpot nonsense where woo-woo-ists
claim to dream the future or open trans-dimensional portals to Nondual
Undifferentiated Woo-Woo-Fluff.
No more! I am the totally awesome DharmaTroll and I'm gonna kick all
your Brahmanist, Shamanist, Woo-Woo-ist Buttinskis! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!
Ok, I'm finished ranting. Anything else?
> Actually, I'm amazed that people who have spent
> years supposedly deepening their sensitivity to what-is and clearing
> their minds of the clamorously personal *don't* encounter these kinds
> of things --although perhaps they do and are just too cultured
> and discreet to mention it in public.
Or maybe their federations aren't short a few planets, so they don't
give absurd woo-woo interpretations, and look at their non-standard
experiences in more rational, sane ways. Every consider that?
> It might, though, have to do with
> one's understanding of mindfulness. If it's seen as a process of
> locking down conscious attention to the physical, that would rather
> coarsen the mind than anything else. Krishnamurti notes that
> concentration is no part of meditation. A meditative mind can
> concentrate, but a concentrated mind cannot know meditation.
> What would you say to that?
I had the pleasure of seeing Krishnamurti speak at the Kennedy Center
at two of his last lectures before he died. He's probably the most
awakened dude in the last century, from my point of view. Krishnamurti
was kidnapped by a bunch of woo-woo-ists like you and Robert and
Bodhidumba, and they educated him and sent him to Oxford, and then
they made him the world guru, the head of all your neumanal theosophy
woo-woo. And at his inauguration speech, he rejected his title, called
you all a bunch of sheep, dissolved the organization, claiming that
there were enough stupid organized religions duping folks as it is,
and then said he would dedicate his life setting folks totally,
unconditionally free.
K opened elementary schools and gave lectures on philosophy, the last
of which I had the privilege of seeing live. I spent the night in DC
between his two lectures by crashing at the local Rajneeshi house,
btw. They were all as nutzo as Keynes, except they were funny instead
of insulting in their absurdity. They would say grace and prayed to
Rajneesh (now known posthumously as "Osho") before supper: "Oh
Bhagwan, please help us realize that life is a cosmic joke -- and the
joke is on us!" And then they would all burst out laughing demonically
"Bwahahahaha", and I felt I was in the Charles Manson cult or
something. But they cooked great vegetarian food and were really nice
to me. Anyway, they all went to see "the old fart" as they called
Krishnamurti, because Rajneesh said that all the other big gurus he'd
met (like that Maharishi Mayesh Yogi TM guy) were fakes just like
Rajneesh was, but that Krishnamurti was the real deal and really was
enlightened.
Anyway, like Krishnamurti, I have never liked concentration practice,
and have been a mindfulness (Vipassana) junkie from the start. I
actually do think that most woo-woo comes from concentration -- and
that the jhanas, while possibly useful exercises, don't provide
portals to any kind of objective truth about reality, but allow us to
go bonkers in all sorts of woo-woo. I tend to ignore talk about the
jhanas, except when arguing what is nibbana and referencing them in
the discourses. Whereas for me, mindfulness has always led away from
the supernatural and transcendental and back toward what Chogyam
Trungpa called "ordinary magic".
So I would agree with Krishnamurti, but I will acknowledge my bias as
a Vipassana fan, that I see mindfulness as having "intrinsic value" as
a potent force of psychotherapy; whereas concentration gives me an
immediate high and cool altered states, but for the most part only has
"instrumental value", as I do need to have a minimum level of
concentration in order to do mindfulness/insight meditation. So I just
add some concentration, like sweeping/scanning or metta at the
beginning of a sitting if I'm feeling spacey.
Indeed, I explained my interpretation of an alleged "supernatural"
experience in terms of mindfulness to Robert. (In terms of
concentration, I probably would babble about grokking ultimate
reality, because concentration is lacking in reflection, and so it's
easy to just babble that "it is beyond discursive thought" and then
add the woo-woo flavor of your choice.) What I said to Robert was:
They were intensely meaningful. They still are. They led me directly
to practicing Buddhism. And then the Vipassana practice that I learned
as a result of the meaningful experience led me to examine my
experiences more closely. And when I did, I noticed that there wasn't
anything supernatural at all, but rather a meaningful, beautiful,
creative waterfall of sensations and thoughts. 100% Organic
and Natural. No Trans-Fats added.>>
Indeed, I could have been describing my experiences sitting in
mindfulness meditation. Same thing: sensations, thoughts, sensations,
thoughts -- a waterfall of them, sometimes combining to form really
weird shit, or really awesome cosmic insights. But still, there are
sensations, thoughts, sensations, thoughts. No woo-woo, no self, no
Transcendental Nondual Undifferentiated Magic Fairy Dust.
So yeah, I agree with Krishnamurti, that mindfulness is much more
valuable to psychological/spiritual growth than is concentration
practice. Though lots of Vipassana folks who do mindfulness are also
up to their ears in woo-woo interpretations. And lots aren't. That's
why I think mindfulness in conjunction with critical thinking / wise
reflection is the ticket. That and some really good weed to smoke.
--DharmaTroll
"To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition
to enslave a philosophy."
-William Ralph Inge
Déjà Flu
The local Authentic Korean food is fairly well presented,
but quite badly made. I wouldn't recommend it.
DharmaTroll
> On Oct 30, 1:36 pm, DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> > I learned as a result of the meaningful experience led me to examine
> > my experiences more closely. And when I did, I noticed that there
> > wasn't anything supernatural at all, but rather a meaningful,
> > beautiful, creative waterfall of sensations and thoughts. 100% Organic
> > and Natural. No Trans-Fats added.
>
> Was this examination during the
> 'meaningful experience'?
>
> If no, how long after the 'meaningful experience'
> was the examination that led you to the conclusion
> 'there wasn't anything supernatural at all'?
> (zenworm is not implying there was)
This examination was during similar altered-states experiences,
whether tripping on shrooms or being at a long-term Vipassana retreat,
etc., and paying attention to the experience while it was happening. I
became increasingly aware of how much I interpreted what the nutters
here would call "direct experience".
> in clarifying this, how do you account for the
> potential alteration/modification to memory as
> events/experiences are remembered?
Oh, I can't. Just as Brian probably had an experience that reminded
him of his dream, and then stored some of the real, new experience
back into his dream memories, and then concluded that his dreams
foretold the future, I could have really gone through a
transdimensional portal into Undifferentiated Nondual Fluff and
realized that I was indeed God, and now am denying it because it
doesn't fit into my rational, scientific worldview. Sure, that's
possible, and I don't know that didn't happen. But I think that
interpreting according to books I'd read (such as Kapleau and Watts
and Ram Dass) is a better and more likely explanation, that's all. I
may be wrong. But I don't have evidence that I'm wrong.
> You raised this several times as evidence of
> the unreliability of remembered events particularly those 'remembered'
> after time has passed.
>
> Given your advocation of honest examination is it
> possible that the content structure of the memories
> may be 'modified'? Particularly since substance
> induced states tend to be more focused and
> intensified at the exspence of the simultaneous
> wholistic perspective which may have a tendency
> to flip attention between these perspectives which
> might create an 'illusion' of alternation when in actuality
> those perspectives were simultaenous making the
> after 'remembered' order of experience - thought -
> experience - (etc) fallicious.
>
> Do you 'see' a simultaneous sense of this now
> or are you still seeing experience - thought -
> experience - as alternating?
You can always unpack the 'wholeness', because there are small
insights that bubble up, and then they all come together, like heating
water and then it finally boils. One way to not examine your
experience is to pretend it happens all at once, when if you pay
attention, tons of stuff is going on, coming and going. Even a simple
pain isn't simple if you examine it, and contains, lots of tinglings
and twistings, and burnings all coming and going.
An of course, it's always possible that I'm misinterpreting now, and
not when I was younger. As I always say (like Feynman), sure, it's
possible, but what's possible isn't the issue. I don't think that
that's what's going on. I think that more likely the nutters that
claim "direct experience" are about the stage I was at psychologically
and spiritually when I was in my teens, and than now I'm older and
more mature, and they are still stuck in time, adolescents with
wrinkles on the outside. Take the Tang-banger, a brilliant fellow in
some ways, a savant, who still goes into autistic trances and babbles
long fake biographies of posters who bother him and who still doesn't
seem to have embraced his humanity. Or Keynes, who at least could have
moved on to a new form of nuttery but still embraces his same old
cartoon physics and didn't pay attention when I carefully pointed out
what physics actually said, and he just calls me a 'parrot' and goes
on babbling nonsense endlessly. In some ways, usenet thus reminds me
of my favorite classic arcade games -- last night at my board game /
pumpkin-carving gathering at a friends house, our host turned on his
old authentic huge video games from the '80s, and I spent a half-hour
playing my favorite one, which, like this list, hadn't changed a bit
in years and was nostalgic. But I'm growing and progressing, and I
think my rational explanations are better and more likely to be true
than my old woo-woo explanations. I think that unlike the nutters
around here, I'm learning and growing and improving. That's what makes
me the totally awesome invincible...
--DharmaTroll
"Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a
mistake when you make it again."
-Franklin P. Jones
possum
> DharmaTroll wrote:
> >On Oct 30, 5:51 pm, brian mitchell <brainm...@fishing.net> wrote:
> >> DharmaTroll wrote:
> >> > . . . I've never had a 'supernatural' experience. My God,
> >> >Robert, now you're question-begging by shoving your dogma upon my
> >> >experiences that you didn't even experience!
>
> >> Which is precisely what you do. How does it feel?
>
> >No, I don't think there is a symmetry there.
>
> >(1) I first of acknowledge that I make an interpretation, which
> >differs from yours.
>
> Yes.
>
> >(2) I then acknowledge that I may be wrong, and yours may be right.
>
> If so, it must be buried in the really really small print.
>
> >(3) I then argue why I go for my naturalism over your Supernaturalism.
>
> Yes, mixed in with a great deal of this:
>
> >But you folks instead start out by claiming to be the Pope and to have
> >an Infallible Transcendental Pipeline to God. And then, taking that as
> >a premise, there can't even be a discussion of why we each like our
> >various interpretations. If you start out by being the Pope (claiming
> >"direct experience" or any other claim of certain objective
> >knowledge), then it's just dogmatism, Brian, and Robert, and all you
> >nutters and woo-woo-ers out there.
>
> You're essentially a missionary, with a missionary mindset.
brian
thinking if the 'essentially' could be dropped, one could rather view
it as being on a blues brothers mission, without being an asshole...
The
> curious thing is that you're very largely preaching to the converted.
> Rational physicalism is the presiding basis across all these x-posted
> newsgroups, with few exceptions (fortunately for you, there are one or
> two exceptions). Even among those, I may be the only one who comes
> right out and declares for so-called paranormal or psychic perception
> and/or experience. Actually, I'm amazed that people who have spent
> years supposedly deepening their sensitivity to what-is and clearing
> their minds of the clamorously personal *don't* encounter these kinds
> of things --although perhaps they do and are just too cultured and
> discreet to mention it in public. It might, though, have to do with
> one's understanding of mindfulness. If it's seen as a process of
> locking down conscious attention to the physical, that would rather
> coarsen the mind than anything else.
Krishnamurti notes that
> concentration is no part of meditation. A meditative mind can
> concentrate, but a concentrated mind cannot know meditation. What
> would you say to that?
i'm too ignorant and a useless meditator to answer, but will admit say
that meditation is not a feature of my practice, unless other stuff i
do, whatever, counts as meditation...i don't know...i think there's an
issue about convergence, but i don't know what that means or what i'm
talking about. i think that's ok but i'm too cream'-crackered to
check... : )
possum
Déjà Flu
in oyster stew, all is never lost.
possum
hai fu
i found this sue x sue interview
green and black.
field and moor.
do brains generate consciousness?
too tired now even to be silly...
can anyone here slice through the linguini?
possum
Keynes
wrote:
How lucky we are that dTroll isn't dogmatic at all.
Everything has been explained.
What hasn't been explained yet will be explained.
Everything is explainable.
There is nothing that can not fit in the map.
What can't fit in the map is excluded on principle.
That's how it works. (And how it doesn't work.)
"Stones falling from the sky? Impossible!"
-- The enlightened french scientific community
herbzet
> Actually, I'm amazed that people who have spent
> years supposedly deepening their sensitivity to what-
> is and clearing their minds of the clamorously
> personal *don't* encounter these kinds of things
> --although perhaps they do and are just too cultured
> and discreet to mention it in public. It might,
> though, have to do with one's understanding of
> mindfulness. If it's seen as a process of locking down
> conscious attention to the physical, that would rather
> coarsen the mind than anything else.
So far so good.
> Krishnamurti notes that
> concentration is no part of meditation. A meditative
> mind can concentrate, but a concentrated mind cannot
> know meditation. What would you say to that?
Huh? WTF? I see the words, I see them combined into
grammatical sentences -- I have no idea what the
sentences are supposed to mean.
I guess it depends heavily on what the words "meditation"
and "concentration" are taken a meaning. I have no idea
how Krishnamurti is using these words.
Any guess from you would be appreciated -- I'm lost.
(I liked the one taped lecture by Krishnamurti I
listened to many years ago.)
--
hz
DharmaTroll
> brian mitchell wrote:
>
> > Krishnamurti notes that
> > concentration is no part of meditation. A meditative
> > mind can concentrate, but a concentrated mind cannot
> > know meditation. What would you say to that?
>
> Huh? WTF? I see the words, I see them combined into
> grammatical sentences -- I have no idea what the
> sentences are supposed to mean.
>
> I guess it depends heavily on what the words "meditation"
> and "concentration" are taken a meaning. I have no idea
> how Krishnamurti is using these words.
>
> Any guess from you would be appreciated -- I'm lost.
>
> (I liked the one taped lecture by Krishnamurti I
> listened to many years ago.)
>
> --
> hz
By 'meditation', Krishnamurti means the mindfulness end of the
spectrum, where one opens to and pays attention to whatever is
present. Krishnamurti on the other hand, was not a fan of
concentration practice, such as mantra meditation, where one focuses
on a single object. For example, K writes:
"In trying to concentrate, the conflicting thoughts-feelings are
suppressed or pushed aside or overcome, and through this process there
can be no understanding. Concentration is gained at the expense of
deep awareness. If the mind is petty and limited, concentration will
not make it any the less small and trivial; on the contrary it will
strengthen its own nature. Such narrow concentration does not make the
mind-heart vulnerable to reality; it only hardens the mind-heart in
its own obstinacy and ignorance and perpetuates the self-enclosing
process."
--DharmaTroll
halfawake
Can you explain to me how this is so? How does mind = inanimate objects?
Robert
- - - - - - - -
halfawake
well I'm not saying that either. But I challenge anyone to say, without
playing a trick, that there is a viable alternative to the two extremes
the Buddha warned against. I think personally that the only solution is
to say that there is an impersonal type of awareness that is not subject
to delusion or self-concept, and that this type of awareness is nibbana.
I would agree that what happens after death is not as important as
what nibbana consists of while one is alive.
halfawake
To me, the words I chose do not suggest any form of objective certainty;
just an explanation of why I am not content with explanations that do
not do justice to what I have experienced. I have no certainty about
this, but I also will not say baaa just because the other sheep think
it's sensible.
>
> What I'm suggesting is not to 'dismiss' anything, but rather not to
> blindly believe your conditioned interpretations to begin with, and
> instead to pause. Just pause and examine how your interpretations rush
> in about your experiences. Arguing about woo-woo is post-
> interpretation and sometimes is helpful but doesn't get us far
> usually. I'm suggesting that you pause, and find that gap, that empty
> space between experiencing and interpreting that you sense woo-woo.
Explaining why I look at things a certain way is not an intellectual
interpretation; just an attempt to communicate. You do me an injustice
if you think I have not continued to examine what I know and what I
don't know.
>
>
>> You have discounted your supernatural experiences
>
>
> No, I have not. I've never had a 'supernatural' experience. My God,
> Robert, now you're question-begging by shoving your dogma upon my
> experiences that you didn't even experience!
As usual, you overstate the case. I'm just characterizing things in a
general way the way I see them. If you don't like the characterization
just correct it. I don't know why you get so overexcited. Why can't
you be calm like me?
>
>
>>as hallucinations as I understand it,
>
>
> No. There were no hallucinations. (I haven't done Peyote, which causes
> these, but I'd like to). Let's just pick one typical LSD trip. Rather,
> I would listen to a song on the radio, and suddenly the thought
> entered my mind that the Universe, the Anima Mundi, was speaking
> directly to me. So there was the auditory experience, and then there
> was a thought.
>
> And then another thought, that I was God, and all music was just
> messages to myself, in a Cosmic Dance, and that Trollpa was just one
> voice in a Cosmic Fugue, that plays eternally, endlessly trying out
> different variations.
>
> So there was an experience, and then a thought. And then another cool,
> creative 'mystical' thought. And then a warm euphoric feeling and
> resonation, like a "Yeah!" including pleasant bodily sensations of
> relaxing and tingling in the body, following the thought. Now, I can
> sound much more 'mystical' if I collapse all this together and say, "I
> had a supernatural experience where I sensed, intuited, and grokked
> (you didn't use my favorite teenage term) a mystical higher reality".
Fine for you; but not fair to use your sense of your experience as a
measure of mine. You should listen to the sense of what I am saying for
myself, rather than try to see where it is fucked up, your default program.
>
> So no, I don't claim to have hallucinated, Robert. I claimed to have a
> succession of natural experiences. I had auditory sensations. Then a
> thought. Then bodily sensations. Then more thoughts, and more bodily
> sensations, all in less than a second, and the cascade of all this was
> a euphoric mystical feeling of 'Wow!' followed by a final thought, "I
> am God", followed by uncontrollable giggling, which I maintained by
> staring into a mirror, seeing my own body language, and continuing the
> cascade of thoughts and bodily sensations.
>
>
>>or as relatively meaningless visions under the influence,
>
>
> NO!!! They were intensely meaningful. They still are. They led me
> directly to practicing Buddhism. And then the Vipassana practice that
> I learned as a result of the meaningful experience led me to examine
> my experiences more closely. And when I did, I noticed that there
> wasn't anything supernatural at all, but rather a meaningful,
> beautiful, creative waterfall of sensations and thoughts. 100% Organic
> and Natural. No Trans-Fats added.
>
>
>>and I can understand why you might do that.
>
>
> I can understand why you deliberately prevaricate about my experience.
> Because if you looked, you might have to admit that your experiences
> are just like mine.
Or vice versa. Who's to say your rationalization of the categories
rather than the content of your experiences is not an equally
interpretive version of what happened to you? Who says mine is the
misinterpretation and yours is not?
But as long as you can believe that I claim to
> "hallucinate" or claim my experiences are "meaningless" then you can
> label me as silly, closed-minded, objectivist, behaviorist, whatever,
> and you can stick with your woo-woo story instead of examining
> closely.
Nope, just telling you what I see. This led to your fuller explanation
which is informational if nothing else.
>
> Indeed, I like the "mobius strip" nature of my progression: "woo woo"
> experience leads to mindfulness practice leads to paying attention to
> experience leads to finding no woo-woo or self or supernatural but
> rather 100% Organic experiences with no Trans-fats added.
It's a fine narrative, and may even be true.
>
> And Robert, let me share a secret with you: 100% organic raw food
> desserts can actually taste as yummy and as meaningful as your
> Transcendental Twinkies. No Trans-fats doesn't mean no meaning.
Other than the condescending tone, I find this interesting.
>
>
>> But I don't have a perspective that demands that.
>
>
> I know. You insist on your Big-Mac with the "Special Sauce".
> It's Thousand-Island Dressing, Robert. Really, it is.
condescending.
>
>
>> While I remain agnostic, I take those experiences seriously.
>
>
> You don't remain agnostic. You claim authority by not examining your
> interpretations.
That's not true. I just don't buy into your interpretations which you
see as gospel truth.
Agnostic would be to describe your experiences just
> as I do, but remain open as to why you felt the "Wow" and consider the
> possibility that your interpretations may indeed be true.
That's your definition. I am describing things, and I don't claim
objectivity. Sorry I'm not following your footsteps like a subservient
doggie.
That's
> agnosticism, and I'm actually agnostic, but I favor the Organic, No-
> TransFats story in lieu of not having more evidence to claim that the
> "I AM THAT" story is more than a useful, beautiful metaphor.
It either points to a legimate experience or it doesn't. Are you in a
position to know that? Maybe talk to me again after nibbana, okay?
>
> Now, you are going to have to acknowledge that I don't claim
> "meaninglessness" and you're going to have to admit that it is
> possible that my organic treats might actually be as yummy and
> meaningful as your Twinkies and Big-Macs with the Special Sauce for us
> to discuss this meaningfully.
I'll agree with part I and stay agnostic on part II. That doesn't mean
I'm dismissing it, it means I haven't got enough evidence to decide,
just in case you'd like my definition. "might be" is fine, as far as it
goes.
>
>
>>Since I know human beings have very specific and narrowly focused
>>sensory and mental equipment, designed for survival, I doubt very much
>>that we are able to fully perceive the nature of reality, and so my door
>>is open not for random UFOs and imagined spookies, but for serious
>>experiences and reports that seem to open a door worth looking through.
>
>
> First, that "seem" involves a "seem through the lens of heavily
> filtered religious supernatural dogma".
that's a prejudicial assumption on your part. no evidence for that at all.
>
> And yes, our senses are limited. That's why we built the Hubble
> telescope and electron microscopes and particle accelerators. And we
> do find things that exist which we can't ordinarily sense: bacteria
> and viruses are a wonderful example of this. But if you look at your
> experience dispassionately and mindfully, as I do mine, I suspect you
> will find sensations and thoughts, and sensations, and thoughts, and
> the swirl of all of those together lends itself to interpretations
> that can be supernatural. They may indeed be true (and by admitting
> that I'm the agnostic here), but they are still interpretations (and
> if you don't admit that, then you're a dogmatist, not an agnostic).
no, the way to true agnosticism is not to follow the wordings of the
Great DT. There's more than one way of formulating doubt that is open
to further investigation. Mine doesn't have to mirror yours. "Only one
can be the true agnostic" is indeed dogma, and you are steeped in your
own righteousness as the one true spokesman of the possibility of the truth.
Try being dispassionate about *my* statements, not just your own
experiences, and then I'll think you may be agnostic, not just attached
to your own version of dogma, disguised as detached observation.
>
>
>>I'm also very focused on the quality of experience in the here and now,
>>and I don't feel that one has to choose one or the other.
>
>
> Well, it's from my being super-focused on the here-and-now that I came
> up with my sensations-and-thoughts story that opposes your Trans-fats
> and Special Sauce story. What irony, eh?
No, it's foolish to feel superior because your personal metaphor is more
comfy than someone else's. Give it a rest.
>
> (Ooh, good place to stop. This is making me hungry. Seriously. I'm off
> to lunch. Or out to lunch. Your choice.)
Well that was cute. Carry on.
>
> --DharmaTroll
>
> "One important aspect of what makes a person an artist is having a
> psychological make-up of thin boundaries, which includes the ability
> to experience and take in a great deal from inside and outside, to
> experience one�s own inner life in a very direct fashion and
> (sometimes an unwanted ability) to experience the world more directly,
> more painfully than others."
> -Earnest Hartmann
Yeah, well, that's why so many of them commit suicide. But not as many
as Swedes or children of shrinks.
herbzet
DharmaTroll wrote:
> herbzet wrote:
> > brian mitchell wrote:
> >
> > > Krishnamurti notes that
> > > concentration is no part of meditation. A meditative
> > > mind can concentrate, but a concentrated mind cannot
> > > know meditation. What would you say to that?
> >
> > Huh? WTF? I see the words, I see them combined into
> > grammatical sentences -- I have no idea what the
> > sentences are supposed to mean.
> >
> > I guess it depends heavily on what the words "meditation"
> > and "concentration" are taken a meaning. I have no idea
> > how Krishnamurti is using these words.
> >
> > Any guess from you would be appreciated -- I'm lost.
> >
> > (I liked the one taped lecture by Krishnamurti I
> > listened to many years ago.)
>
> By 'meditation', Krishnamurti means the mindfulness end of the
> spectrum, where one opens to and pays attention to whatever is
> present. Krishnamurti on the other hand, was not a fan of
> concentration practice, such as mantra meditation, where one focuses
> on a single object. For example, K writes:
>
> "In trying to concentrate, the conflicting thoughts-feelings are
> suppressed or pushed aside or overcome, and through this process there
> can be no understanding. Concentration is gained at the expense of
> deep awareness. If the mind is petty and limited, concentration will
> not make it any the less small and trivial; on the contrary it will
> strengthen its own nature. Such narrow concentration does not make the
> mind-heart vulnerable to reality; it only hardens the mind-heart in
> its own obstinacy and ignorance and perpetuates the self-enclosing
> process."
Ok, thanks.
--
hz
herbzet
*That*
would be telling.
;-)
Be seeing you!
--
hz
"They've given him a number, and taken away his name."
zenworm
> > wholistic perspective which may have a tendency
> > to flip attention between these perspectives which
> > might create an 'illusion' of alternation when in actuality
> > after 'remembered' order of experience - thought -
>
> > Do you 'see' a simultaneous sense of this now
> > or are you still seeing experience - thought -
> > experience - as alternating?
>
> You can always unpack the 'wholeness', because there are small
> insights that bubble up, and then they all come together, like heating
> water and then it finally boils. One way to not examine your
> experience is to pretend it happens all at once, when if you pay
> attention, tons of stuff is going on, coming and going. Even a simple
> pain isn't simple if you examine it, and contains, lots of tinglings
> and twistings, and burnings all coming and going.
what is being pointed to is the structure of how interpreting/thinking
is such a powerful function
of what the doing aspect of the body/mind does
that it seems like there is an alternation of experience -
thinking - experience - thinking when in reality there
is one ongoing ever-present experiencing and a
thinking interpreting focusing evaluating process that
seems to habitually drive where/what our attention is
focused upon. It seems through 'practice' we can learn
to allow our attention to rest at the experiential level
which is huge basically all the information that is
bombarding us all the time. (-enter the 'reticular activator')
This kind of parallel processing enables us to
simultaneously perceive an huge amount of
information and have a functional doing that
taps the information as it unfolds.
The apparent bug in the system is the habit of the
mentational process to highjack (claim exclusively)
our attention onto future projections out of past
evaluations causing an appearance of intermittency
of contact with the present moment.
It seems the doing mind habitually 'mentally ferments'
in an out of control manner wherein the bandwidth of
our capacity for attention is wasted with emotionally
charged fretting over future projections out of past
experiences that we can not at the present time do
anything about. This doer also continually seeks
evidence not specifically to enable the addressing of
immediate worldly functionality, but to defend emotionalize
and consolidate theoretical positions. When we calm the
mental fermentation this emotionally charged tail-chasing
which is fruitless starts to drop off (law of conservation)
due to the huge mental and energy drain. The mental
resources previously derailed come back online as
available. If we pay attention we find we can actually consciously
assign this bandwidth to growing attention
in the Moment. (for perception not processing)
With this we see Moment ongoing a deepening
unending experiencing and at the same time a functional
thinking/doing that is not emotionally charged and
distracting (owned) but functional. (possessed)
The focus shift of growing bandwidth into experiencing
Moment as an underlying sensing of This (capitalized
to delineate an unspecific as much as possible This)
The capitals do no designate woowoo but indicate the uninterrupted
sensing with the bandwidth so allocated
either consciously or by default.
the way the brain grows into a function and actually
develops through activity specific neurocellular growth
for that activity is another 'miraculous' but non woo-woo
physical functionality. As we delineate brain bandwidth
to the sensing perception of this ongoing Moment our
brains actually grow the cells needed to continue
increasing the bandwidth. This is a good argument for
practice and gives a powerful rational meaning to spiritual
cultivation. there have been some interesting studies for
example on how just visualizing an exercise without
actually doing the exercise increases the muscular
fitness of the muscles imagined to be exercising.
Returning to the specifics of of what you have shared
and as a follow up to the question above:
Do you 'see' a simultaneous sense of this now
or are you still seeing experience - thought -
experience - as alternating?
Can you see the underlying experiencing as a
constant with thought intermittently masking or
is there still intermittency?
Where do you see your progression going?
What are you growing into?
Keynes
It's meant to be a koan for those who take Dogen seriously.
Others might notice that in perception, the outside is the
whole content of the inside. The term 'mind' is used in
many ways by zen. Some masters say that mind isn't
really mind at all. (Inferring that the standard model
is invalid in actual experience without conjectures
or concepts.) The self stands apart from nature, even
if self is one part of it. But in real self-less seeing
there is no self and no other-ness. No separation.
Lee Rudolph
>How lucky we are that dTroll isn't dogmatic at all.
>
>Everything has been explained.
>What hasn't been explained yet will be explained.
>Everything is explainable.
>
>There is nothing that can not fit in the map.
>What can't fit in the map is excluded on principle.
>That's how it works. (And how it doesn't work.)
One of the big subfields in robotics these days is called SLAM--
Simultaneous Localization and Mapping.
Could be used as a metaphor, or sumfin.
Lee Rudolph
DharmaTroll
Yes, we are constantly daydreaming, and "leaning into the future".
Sometimes that can be helpful, as in rehearsing a script for a
conversation we're going to have, but more often than not it's useless
chatter and obsession that 'uses up' our attention so that we are not
present to our experiences.
Yes, I understand. If I eat mindfully, for example, and slow down and
pay attention to my eating, I can enjoy the food much better, because
I am using most of my 'bandwidth'; whereas it's easy to be lost in
future planning and so forth, and then to realize that I've gulped
down my meal and barely tasted it, as most of my attention was off in
the daydream. I don't mind this happening when I'm driving, as I can
drive on 'autopilot' and 'wake up' at my destination, as sometimes I
have a lot of creative thoughts, but when I'm eating and doing other
everyday actions, it can become trance-like and what's happening in
the present is ignored. Being more present to my experience in
everyday life is one of the most helpful things that meditation has
done for me.
> the way the brain grows into a function and actually
> develops through activity specific neurocellular growth
> for that activity is another 'miraculous' but non woo-woo
> physical functionality. As we delineate brain bandwidth
> to the sensing perception of this ongoing Moment our
> brains actually grow the cells needed to continue
> increasing the bandwidth.
Well, I of course love that idea, and always want to connect our
mental activity with what's actually taking place in our brains.
> This is a good argument for
> practice and gives a powerful rational meaning to spiritual
> cultivation. there have been some interesting studies for
> example on how just visualizing an exercise without
> actually doing the exercise increases the muscular
> fitness of the muscles imagined to be exercising.
Now that's interesting.
> Returning to the specifics of of what you have shared
> and as a follow up to the question above:
> Do you 'see' a simultaneous sense of this now
> or are you still seeing experience - thought -
> experience - as alternating?
Well, is does seem that I can multitask somewhat: I think of a
situation where I'm talking enthusiastically about something and
making some point. I'm wrapped up with what I'm saying, but I'm also
multi-tasking and looking at the body language of the other person to
see if they are following me, and I'm looking for cues for when they
want to respond, such as taking a big breath and holding it in,
waiting for the chance to jump in and speak; so that when I notice
that I come to the end of a sentence and pause for them to speak.
Whether I'm doing all that simultaneously or very quickly jumping back
and forth with my attention I'm not sure.
> Can you see the underlying experiencing as a
> constant with thought intermittently masking or
> is there still intermittency?
I don't know if experience is constant, or if there is just a rapid
succession of experiences too fast to track. When excessive thoughts
and that 'leaning into the future' kind of trance are avoided,
experience does seem more continuous, but whether it is or not, I
don't know. As I said in another post, when I've got 'maximum
bandwidth' to my attention here and now, it seems as if my attention
is jumping around and 'touching' all the different sorts of
simultaneous sensations in a really fast succession, like the
television rewriting the screen constantly pixel by pixel, to give the
effect of a continuous movie. But I'm not sure, really. In any case,
there is more of a 'smoothness' to the underlying experiencing.
I have no idea. I mainly am focused on having fun now, and riding as
many roller-coasters as I can before I'm too old to enjoy them without
getting achy or nauseous. I have no desire for enlightenment anymore,
just more moments where I have more of that 'bandwidth' directed in
the present moment so that I enjoy life and don't waste to much of it
in a wasted trance of daydreams. Just being kinder to people, being
more present to and thus enjoying more of everyday experiences like
eating, just more of that is where I want to progress into. I rarely
think more than a week ahead, but I would like to travel and see
Europe someday, especially Greece and Italy. Ideally I'd like to go up
and be in orbit in a space station or starship, and watch the sun set
on the moon, but I was born in way too primitive times for that to
happen, so leaving the continent will have to do, given practical
constraints.
--DharmaTroll
"It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say
'I don't know'."
-W. Somerset Maugham
Hollywood Lee
You challenge anyone to provide an alternative (to either eternalism or
annihilationism) regarding the fate of the Buddha after death?
The alternative is Buddhism 101, and the anyone, according to tradition,
is the Buddha.
Go read your Vacchagotta and the undetermined questions. Of related
interest, you might enjoy Nanananda's explication of the Vacchagotta
suttas at
http://www.what-buddha-taught.net/Books8/Bhikkhu_Nanananda_Nibbana_Sermon_20.htm
where he hints at the interpretive battles within therevada regarding
this important issue.
DharmaTroll
Well let me state this differently then: by using descriptions like 'I
sense' to discuss the entire package of experiencing and interpreting,
the nuances get lost. It's like that example I gave in another thread
of saying to someone "you're annoying." The statement is misleading
because that verb is a two-place predicate and someone can only be
annoying -to- a specific someone else; hence, the deep structure of
the statement gets covered up, which is "when you do X, I react by
feeling annoyed." By just saying "you're annoying", it's as if you're
saying "you're fat", a property solely of the other person, and you
can avoid responsibility for your conditioning and choices in your
reactions. Just so, by saying "I sense Woo-Woo", you're covering over
so much of the interpretative structure which has to do with your
prior conditioning and your present choices. I want to examine that,
in the same way I would want you to instead of saying "you're
annoying", switch to the more accurate description, "when you do X, I
react by feeling annoyed." That's what I'm getting at Robert; I'm not
just trying to insult you.
> > What I'm suggesting is not to 'dismiss' anything, but rather not to
> > blindly believe your conditioned interpretations to begin with, and
> > instead to pause. Just pause and examine how your interpretations rush
> > in about your experiences. Arguing about woo-woo is post-
> > interpretation and sometimes is helpful but doesn't get us far
> > usually. I'm suggesting that you pause, and find that gap, that empty
> > space between experiencing and interpreting that you sense woo-woo.
>
> Explaining why I look at things a certain way is not an intellectual
> interpretation; just an attempt to communicate. You do me an injustice
> if you think I have not continued to examine what I know and what I
> don't know.
Oh Robert, you've probably examined your experiences more than most
folks around here. I figure by now you know that I know that, and that
I like to give you a hard time. Do you really think that I think
you're an ignorant dolt, or maybe could it be I have a sense of humor
and like giving you a hard time?
> >> You have discounted your supernatural experiences
>
> > No, I have not. I've never had a 'supernatural' experience. My God,
> > Robert, now you're question-begging by shoving your dogma upon my
> > experiences that you didn't even experience!
>
> As usual, you overstate the case. I'm just characterizing things in a
> general way the way I see them. If you don't like the characterization
> just correct it. I don't know why you get so overexcited. Why can't
> you be calm like me?
Hah! What a statement, coming from one of the most emotionally
volatile posters of all time! I hope you were expressing some self-
humor with that statement.
And I always overstate my case. That's part of my shtick. When I'm
editing my post before sending it, I ramp up the language to make it
more controversial. You don't think I'm really shocked, do you?
Anyway, I was pointing out how once again you equate my not adding
Magical Fairy Dust to necessarily imply that any experience without
such Woo-Woo is 'meaningless' and a 'mere' this or that. You're using
the same trick that the Evangelists use when they say "Without a
Personal God, there would be no values, no love, and life would be
meaningless -- so God has to exist!!!" You're saying the same thing.
Except instead of God it's you're Borg-like Oneness or Mind or
whatever. I don't thing we need God and I don't think we need your
trans-dimensional portals to Woo-Woo to have profound, meaningful
experiences, or to have values, or to be kind to one another, or to be
enlightened. That's always been my underlying point.
> >>as hallucinations as I understand it,
>
> > No. There were no hallucinations. (I haven't done Peyote, which causes
> > these, but I'd like to). Let's just pick one typical LSD trip. Rather,
> > I would listen to a song on the radio, and suddenly the thought
> > entered my mind that the Universe, the Anima Mundi, was speaking
> > directly to me. So there was the auditory experience, and then there
> > was a thought.
>
> > And then another thought, that I was God, and all music was just
> > messages to myself, in a Cosmic Dance, and that Trollpa was just one
> > voice in a Cosmic Fugue, that plays eternally, endlessly trying out
> > different variations.
>
> > So there was an experience, and then a thought. And then another cool,
> > creative 'mystical' thought. And then a warm euphoric feeling and
> > resonation, like a "Yeah!" including pleasant bodily sensations of
> > relaxing and tingling in the body, following the thought. Now, I can
> > sound much more 'mystical' if I collapse all this together and say, "I
> > had a supernatural experience where I sensed, intuited, and grokked
> > (you didn't use my favorite teenage term) a mystical higher reality".
>
> Fine for you; but not fair to use your sense of your experience as a
> measure of mine. You should listen to the sense of what I am saying for
> myself, rather than try to see where it is fucked up, your default program.
I am trying to listen to you, Robert, but when you say "I sensed the
presence of a Supernatural Beastie" or "I sensed Ineffable Oneness" or
whatever, I want to know exactly what you saw or heard or smelled or
tasted or touched. Because I don't think you sensed any such thing. I
think you had regular human experience like I do, and then you added
supernatural interpretations. You're probably going to get angry and
throw a hissy fit just for my saying that, but you're going to have to
say a lot more than "I sensed Magical Fairy Dust in the Astral
Plane".
> > So no, I don't claim to have hallucinated, Robert. I claimed to have a
> > succession of natural experiences. I had auditory sensations. Then a
> > thought. Then bodily sensations. Then more thoughts, and more bodily
> > sensations, all in less than a second, and the cascade of all this was
> > a euphoric mystical feeling of 'Wow!' followed by a final thought, "I
> > am God", followed by uncontrollable giggling, which I maintained by
> > staring into a mirror, seeing my own body language, and continuing the
> > cascade of thoughts and bodily sensations.
>
> >>or as relatively meaningless visions under the influence,
>
> > NO!!! They were intensely meaningful. They still are. They led me
> > directly to practicing Buddhism. And then the Vipassana practice that
> > I learned as a result of the meaningful experience led me to examine
> > my experiences more closely. And when I did, I noticed that there
> > wasn't anything supernatural at all, but rather a meaningful,
> > beautiful, creative waterfall of sensations and thoughts. 100% Organic
> > and Natural. No Trans-Fats added.
>
> >>and I can understand why you might do that.
>
> > I can understand why you deliberately prevaricate about my experience.
> > Because if you looked, you might have to admit that your experiences
> > are just like mine.
>
> Or vice versa. Who's to say your rationalization of the categories
> rather than the content of your experiences is not an equally
> interpretive version of what happened to you? Who says mine is the
> misinterpretation and yours is not?
Sure, I may be the one misinterpreting, and of course we probably both
are, to some extent.
I just think that when you 'go off the deep end' and start positing
something magical or transcendental, you better have a good reason to
do so. Again, it's like seeing a dent in my car. I may guess that
another car came by and bumped it, or that someone leaned against it,
etc. But if my explanation is that an angry deva materialized from
another realm and gave it a kick, and then de-materialized back into
its woo-woo deva realm, then I better have a hell of a lot of evidence
for that kind of explanation. And it's the former kind of explanation
I'm making, and the latter that you are. And the funny thing is you
are so indignant about it, with this "how dare you be so condescending
when I tell you a deva kicked my car -- can't you see the dent,
dammit?" To me, that's exactly what you are doing.
> > But as long as you can believe that I claim to
> > "hallucinate" or claim my experiences are "meaningless" then you can
> > label me as silly, closed-minded, objectivist, behaviorist, whatever,
> > and you can stick with your woo-woo story instead of examining
> > closely.
>
> Nope, just telling you what I see. This led to your fuller explanation
> which is informational if nothing else.
Well, you seem to have that theme "if it isn't woo-woo or magical,
then it's meaningless" popping up again and again. Where does that
come from?
> > Indeed, I like the "mobius strip" nature of my progression: "woo woo"
> > experience leads to mindfulness practice leads to paying attention to
> > experience leads to finding no woo-woo or self or supernatural but
> > rather 100% Organic experiences with no Trans-fats added.
>
> It's a fine narrative, and may even be true.
I'm starting to think so.
> > And Robert, let me share a secret with you: 100% organic raw food
> > desserts can actually taste as yummy and as meaningful as your
> > Transcendental Twinkies. No Trans-fats doesn't mean no meaning.
>
> Other than the condescending tone, I find this interesting.
Have you no sense of humor? I can't even make a joke without you
whining about being 'condescending'. I'm just trying to make a point
and express how you come across to me, and I'm even making fun, clever
analogies. Must you be such a wet blanket every time I make a joke? I
bet you go to stand-up comedy shows and boo the performers and throw
tomatoes at them, too, don't you?
> >> But I don't have a perspective that demands that.
>
> > I know. You insist on your Big-Mac with the "Special Sauce".
> > It's Thousand-Island Dressing, Robert. Really, it is.
>
> condescending.
No, I'm serious. McDonald's 'special sauce' really turned out to be
1000-Island Dressing. And your "Mind" and fantasies about 'pure
awareness' or whatever, may turn out to be just self-referential
thoughts. You're really bent on finding magic, and this theme
"everything is meaningless without magic" just keeps popping up in all
our conversations. You really crave that 'special sauce', Robert. And
maybe it really has Magic Fairy Dust in it, but I'm guessing it's
plain old 1000-Island Dressing.
> >> While I remain agnostic, I take those experiences seriously.
>
> > You don't remain agnostic. You claim authority by not examining your
> > interpretations.
>
> That's not true. I just don't buy into your interpretations which you
> see as gospel truth.
No, I don't. I remain open, and then say "I like this interpretation,
and think it's probably most likely to be the case because of X,Y, and
Z". That isn't "gospel truth". Whereas you start with the
interpretation as a precondition, and you won't even examine how you
add it or why. And when I try to get you to examine your
interpretations, and this goes for most of the other dogmatists and
woo-woo-ists around here, the answer is to ignore your act of
interpreting and your conditioned dogma and babble nonsense about
"direct experience" and then insult the Trollpa for asking to to dare
actually examine how you interpret your experiences.
> > Agnostic would be to describe your experiences just
> > as I do, but remain open as to why you felt the "Wow" and consider the
> > possibility that your interpretations may indeed be true.
>
> That's your definition. I am describing things, and I don't claim
> objectivity. Sorry I'm not following your footsteps like a subservient
> doggie.
Hah! Paying attention and not just automatically adding
interpretations isn't being my subservient doggie: it's being more
self-aware and introspective.
> > That's
> > agnosticism, and I'm actually agnostic, but I favor the Organic, No-
> > TransFats story in lieu of not having more evidence to claim that the
> > "I AM THAT" story is more than a useful, beautiful metaphor.
>
> It either points to a legimate experience or it doesn't. Are you in a
> position to know that? Maybe talk to me again after nibbana, okay?
Hah! That's like the Born-Again telling me "let's discuss God after we
get to Heaven."
It's not a matter of a 'legitimate' experience. It's about
interpretation. Personally I'm getting disgusted with some of the
things that used to turn me on. I gave many copies of Nisargadatta
Maharaj's "I Am That" to friends, as it was, and still is, the coolest
example of the "tripping" experience. Yet that old bastard sold
cigarettes for a living. What an evil or at least clueless bastard,
writing all that blissful tripping talk, but selling cancer sticks and
making people get sick and die in real life. Ignoring real humans, and
woo-woo-ing out with an impersonal "We are Borg" attitude. It's like a
spiritual communism, where you are to conform and identify with the
state. I don't think identifying with the Borg, or 'Mind' or 'Oneness'
is any better than identifying with your small petty ego. I go for not
identifying at all, versus clinging to anything, no matter how
grandiose and ideal.
> > Now, you are going to have to acknowledge that I don't claim
> > "meaninglessness" and you're going to have to admit that it is
> > possible that my organic treats might actually be as yummy and
> > meaningful as your Twinkies and Big-Macs with the Special Sauce for us
> > to discuss this meaningfully.
>
> I'll agree with part I and stay agnostic on part II. That doesn't mean
> I'm dismissing it, it means I haven't got enough evidence to decide,
> just in case you'd like my definition. "might be" is fine, as far as it
> goes.
>
> >>Since I know human beings have very specific and narrowly focused
> >>sensory and mental equipment, designed for survival, I doubt very much
> >>that we are able to fully perceive the nature of reality, and so my door
> >>is open not for random UFOs and imagined spookies, but for serious
> >>experiences and reports that seem to open a door worth looking through.
>
> > First, that "seem" involves a "seem through the lens of heavily
> > filtered religious supernatural dogma".
>
> that's a prejudicial assumption on your part. no evidence for that at all.
That's a barb, intended to get a reaction from you. But I do think you
go off the deep end a bit here. Just because we only see a very, very
narrow spectrum of visible light out of all the various wavelengths of
electromagnetic radiation doesn't give us reason to assume that there
are tons of invisible critters all around us that we can't see.
> > And yes, our senses are limited. That's why we built the Hubble
> > telescope and electron microscopes and particle accelerators. And we
> > do find things that exist which we can't ordinarily sense: bacteria
> > and viruses are a wonderful example of this. But if you look at your
> > experience dispassionately and mindfully, as I do mine, I suspect you
> > will find sensations and thoughts, and sensations, and thoughts, and
> > the swirl of all of those together lends itself to interpretations
> > that can be supernatural. They may indeed be true (and by admitting
> > that I'm the agnostic here), but they are still interpretations (and
> > if you don't admit that, then you're a dogmatist, not an agnostic).
>
> no, the way to true agnosticism is not to follow the wordings of the
> Great DT. There's more than one way of formulating doubt that is open
> to further investigation. Mine doesn't have to mirror yours. "Only one
> can be the true agnostic" is indeed dogma, and you are steeped in your
> own righteousness as the one true spokesman of the possibility of the truth.
>
> Try being dispassionate about *my* statements, not just your own
> experiences, and then I'll think you may be agnostic, not just attached
> to your own version of dogma, disguised as detached observation.
Hah. We'll go over this round and round forever, I'm afraid. My point
is that you assume the Transcendental Woo-Woo from the very start. I
want to start with our very mundane here-and-now physical experiences
and look at each step of the way. My goal is to point out that if we
break things down, at no point are we ever justified at taking the
leap into Woo-Woo. I don't know if I can succeed at that goal.
> >>I'm also very focused on the quality of experience in the here and now,
> >>and I don't feel that one has to choose one or the other.
>
> > Well, it's from my being super-focused on the here-and-now that I came
> > up with my sensations-and-thoughts story that opposes your Trans-fats
> > and Special Sauce story. What irony, eh?
>
> No, it's foolish to feel superior because your personal metaphor is more
> comfy than someone else's. Give it a rest.
Well, I think the metaphor fits. Just as I think it's more healthy to
eat whole foods and not add trans-fats, I think it's more spiritually
healthy to focus on the here and now and not add fantasies of the
transcendental. I just want to get rid of unnecessary obsessive
thoughts that form a false sense of self. You want to be assimilated
by the Borg or something bizarre like that. I find that rather odd.
Somehow death is more comforting to you if you merge with the Borg, I
suspect.
> > (Ooh, good place to stop. This is making me hungry. Seriously. I'm off
> > to lunch. Or out to lunch. Your choice.)
>
> Well that was cute. Carry on.
Heh
> > --DharmaTroll
>
> > "One important aspect of what makes a person an artist is having a
> > psychological make-up of thin boundaries, which includes the ability
> > to experience and take in a great deal from inside and outside, to
> > experience one’s own inner life in a very direct fashion and
> > (sometimes an unwanted ability) to experience the world more directly,
> > more painfully than others."
> > -Earnest Hartmann
>
> Yeah, well, that's why so many of them commit suicide. But not as many
> as Swedes or children of shrinks.
>
> Robert
>
> = = = = = =
Well, don't you think it ironical that having less boundaries and
experiencing the world more directly is seen as blissful nirvana by
religious folks, and as painful and leading to suicide by artists?
Isn't that juxtaposition a bit paradoxical to you? Not that I'm making
any point -- I just ran across that quote in my collection and that
paradox jumped out at me when I read it.
--DharmaTroll
"Thinking about suicide is a potent consolation:
it helps us to get through many a bad night."
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Keynes
wrote:
>
>I don't know if experience is constant, or if there is just a rapid
>succession of experiences too fast to track. When excessive thoughts
>and that 'leaning into the future' kind of trance are avoided,
>experience does seem more continuous, but whether it is or not, I
>don't know. As I said in another post, when I've got 'maximum
>bandwidth' to my attention here and now, it seems as if my attention
>is jumping around and 'touching' all the different sorts of
>simultaneous sensations in a really fast succession, like the
>television rewriting the screen constantly pixel by pixel, to give the
>effect of a continuous movie. But I'm not sure, really. In any case,
>there is more of a 'smoothness' to the underlying experiencing.
>
If the past is nothing more than a present memory,
then continuity is a mind-made operation.
How can the notion of continuity can be explained
in physical terms, since looking backward and forward
are both fallible mental creations in the present?
Without the habit of clinging to the past and grasping
for the future, there is no continuity-karma.
Isn't it the desperate attempt to make sense (so that
the self can survive and prosper) that requires the
uncomfortable tip-toe posture of a timely view?
Allen Barker
If I were to try to explain it I might just add another
layer of intellectual interpretation, rather than stripping
another such layer off.
brian mitchell
What DharmaTroll said, only a little more.
Concentration is a mind-directed activity ('mind' here meaning thought
at the level of motive and intent) and thus cannot lead to any freedom
from the mind --mind is all over it like white on rice.
The "little more" is that means and modes of meditation are also
mind-directed activities, certainly if they have a purpose or goal.
And what of mindfulness itself, is that not a mind-directed activity?
He drives one into this chute.
herbzet
Well said -- and applies not only to this, but to many topics here.
A good reminder to all of us -- thanx.
--
hz
zenworm
wrote:
no try
no add
no interpret
no strip
no future
no fear
trust?
herbzet
brian mitchell wrote:
Well, as Keynes never ceases to remind us, this whole enterprise is
shot thru and thru with contradictions: willfully abandoning willfulness?
Avidly pursuing not-doing?
Our very nature is paradoxical in many ways. We're left with trying
to muddle through, one way or another.
Oh, well.
--
hz
zenworm
muddle through?
This?
halfawake
Oh for God's sake, you telling me this whole thing is based on a tv
series? :)
Robert
= = = = = = = = =
halfawake
BTW, I don't think that Dogen is saying that sentient beings are = to
rocks and trees. I think he is saying that awareness and objects are
not separate. Therefore, it is not that the mind is the equivalent of
rocks and trees, but that the rocks and trees are alive as part of mind.
If you see Buddha as the simplicity of the mystery of rock and tile, and
throw the radiant imagery of the Buddha's shining body, etc. out the
window, you are left with the "simple radiance of what is" as I like to
call it, seeing that all things are given through mind only, and that in
fact the Buddha like all objects is not separate from the simple reality
of mind or awareness. All roads lead back to the nature of mind. Can
you turn and see it directly? It's not "nothing." If you think that
way you will fall into annihilationism and be subject to Hui Neng's
admonition: "There is a group of people who practice diligently on
emptying their mind of all thoughts. These people have become so
stupified that we can no longer even talk to them." Be careful, forced
emptying of mind is a dangerous route if it does not come from stilling
of fabrications and is based on suppression of natural expression of
awareness.
Robert
===========================
Robert
halfawake
that's good.
robert
halfawake
nope, as I said, I am referring to nibbana while still alive. After
death is another issue, but yeah, it would be annihilationism to make no
distinction between parinibbana and death.
>
> The alternative is Buddhism 101, and the anyone, according to tradition,
> is the Buddha.
>
> Go read your Vacchagotta and the undetermined questions. Of related
> interest, you might enjoy Nanananda's explication of the Vacchagotta
> suttas at
> http://www.what-buddha-taught.net/Books8/Bhikkhu_Nanananda_Nibbana_Sermon_20.htm
> where he hints at the interpretive battles within therevada regarding
> this important issue.
sure, I'll check it out, but I doubt "this important issue" with all its
"battles" is thus "Buddhism 101." Can't be both at the same time, can
it? BTW, if something is "undetermined" that doesn't really answer the
question, it's just a doctrinal copout.
herbzet
Well, as usual you make an attractive and intellectually satisfying
interpretaton. You've *got* to stop doing that! :-)
> Can you turn and see it directly? It's not "nothing."
I'm going to say that what it is, "nothing" or otherwise, remains
speculation on your part.
> If you think that way you will fall into annihilationism
Aah, so what? Who cares? The Buddha took no position on that, if
I understand you guys correctly.
In any case, what one thinks about the matter doesn't matter -- right
or wrong, it's just more mentation to get past.
> and be subject to Hui Neng's
> admonition: "There is a group of people who practice diligently on
> emptying their mind of all thoughts. These people have become so
> stupified that we can no longer even talk to them."
Clearly, to practice the stilling of thoughts in meditation is different
from rejecting thought *outside* of meditation to the point that you can
no longer hold a conversation.
> Be careful, forced
> emptying of mind is a dangerous route if it does not come from stilling
> of fabrications and is based on suppression of natural expression of
> awareness.
a) When you intentionally turn your attention from the ticking of the
clock to the book you're reading (or vice versa) this is the wilful
exclusion from awareness of one object for the other, and we do it
all the time. It's a natural function.
b) Yes, it would probably be best to perfect one's character before
attempting anything spiritually strenuous, but some people may be
in more of a hurry. It is forseeable that some unstable people
are going to crash at this game
c) Don't be such an old lady.
--
hz