Something to think about ...
B^0
Not water,
Nor fire,
Nor wind,
Not space,
Not consciousness.
Nor is he or she all of them,
Yet what person is there separate from these?
And just as a person is not perfectly solid
Because he or she is what can be designated
On the collection of the six constituents,
Likewise, none of the constituents are perfectly solid
Because each is what can be designated on a collection of parts.
- Nagarjuna
fengshu...@my-deja.com
http://www.fengshuihelp.com/philosophy.htm
In article <3a2d129...@news.halcyon.com>,
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
musas...@my-deja.com
not... all based on what we're focusing on at the time.
If you're analysing what your body composition is then you are all of
these: earth (body tissue made of minerals), water (H20), fire
(electrical currents & body metabolism), wind (oxygen, nitrogen, C02
etc, space (space in physical space & space between molecules and body
parts)... but when you are sleeping, imagining and dreaming, you still
exist but earth, water, fire, wind, space doesn't necessarily exist.
Consciousness is all that exists here.
musashizen
if you're going
Karl Senior
> Consciousness is all that exists here.
compared to what?
we worry about death knowing only life........?
so how can you know unconsciousness doesn't exist knowing only
consciousness?
Karl
:o)
DharmaTroll
"Karl Senior" <karl.s...@virgin.net> wrote:
> so how can you know unconsciousness doesn't exist
> knowing only consciousness?
>
> Karl
> :o)
That's actually fairly easy to answer, Karl.
When you are awake, you can observe than everyone else sleeps, yet
later cannot recall the events during that period when they were asleep.
When you are asleep, or in a coma, other people can observe you, and
you can even set up a video camera.
Given both of these data, the most rational explanation is that you
indeed were unconscious.
A lot of useful and reliable knowledge comes by way of inference.
--DT
Dzogvi Gzboli
Senior" <karl.s...@virgin.net> wrote:
> > Consciousness is all that exists here.
>
> compared to what?
>
> we worry about death knowing only life........?
>
> so how can you know unconsciousness doesn't exist knowing only
> consciousness?
>
> Karl
> :o)
Gzboli comments:
BINGO.
--
http://www.quiknet.com/~cattours
or find "Dzogvi Gzboli" in www.Google.com
Daryl
DharmaTroll (dharm...@my-deja.com) wrote...
>
>In article <WsrX5.510$4N5....@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
> "Karl Senior" <karl.s...@virgin.net> wrote:
>
>> so how can you know unconsciousness doesn't exist
>> knowing only consciousness?
>>
>> Karl
>> :o)
>
>
>When you are awake, you can observe than everyone else sleeps, yet
>later cannot recall the events during that period when they were asleep.
>
>When you are asleep, or in a coma, other people can observe you, and
>you can even set up a video camera.
>
>Given both of these data, the most rational explanation is that you
>indeed were unconscious.
Oh no it isn't. What actually happens is that the entire
universe suddenly undergoes a massive state change
periodically and everyone and everything else adapts
to create the perceptual effects that would be necessary
to lead me to that conclusion. It even goes so far as
to make it appear that there are others essentially like
me who do in fact become unconscious, so that the
conclusion seems all the more tenable.
Solipsistically yours,
--
Daryl - 2 email me, remove the 2's
http://www.ajiva.com/daryl/rel/
Matt Thalman
> >> knowing only consciousness?
> >>
> >> Karl
> >> :o)
> >
> >That's actually fairly easy to answer, Karl.
> >
> >When you are awake, you can observe than everyone else sleeps, yet
> >later cannot recall the events during that period when they were asleep.
> >
> >When you are asleep, or in a coma, other people can observe you, and
> >you can even set up a video camera.
> >
> >Given both of these data, the most rational explanation is that you
> >indeed were unconscious.
> >
> >
> > --DT
> >
> >
> How can you be sure the videos were not doctored? How can you know
> that your memory of going to sleep the night before is not a false
> memory? I assume that it is accurate, but I can never know for sure.
>
> How do you know that everything you experience is not part of some
> vast delusion that is being perpetrated on you without your knowledge
> by a race of superhuman beings who are experimenting on how you react
> to their stimuli? All your memories are artificially inserted into
> your brain before you wake, and are completely fictitious. Everyone
> you encounter is taking part in the deception. As far as they are
> concerned, you are just another attack hamster going through their
> maze. As soon as you figure it out, they will reveal the true nature
> of your reality to you. How about that?
>
This is known as the "brain in the vat" theory. Basically it's just like
you said. All we are is a bunch of brains sitting in vats controlled by
"evil scientists" feeding us stimuli which we perceive to be our reality.
It is explored in the wonderful book which I highly recommend, Labyrinths of
Reason: Paradox, Puzzles and the Frailty of Knowledge. The book is by
William Poundstone. A MUST read.
matt
DharmaTroll
kwans...@eol222.ca (Daryl) wrote:
> >DT:
> >That's actually fairly easy to answer, Karl.
> >
> >When you are awake, you can observe than everyone else sleeps,
> >yet later cannot recall the events during that period when they
> >were asleep.
> >
> >When you are asleep, or in a coma, other people can observe you,
> >and you can even set up a video camera.
> >
> >Given both of these data, the most rational explanation is that
> >you indeed were unconscious.
> Oh no it isn't. What actually happens is that the entire
> universe suddenly undergoes a massive state change
> periodically and everyone and everything else adapts
Yes, that is also possible.
But note my very sneaky wording: "most rational" explanation.
Sure, the *entire* universe could have changed to fit your ego.
Or -- you were asleep. Like, which explanation is more plausible?
You've raised a wonderful point that often gets missed by fans of
idealism (mind-only theories). At first glance it would seem that
idealism is simpler, and that to posit an external world would entail a
more complex theory requiring more assumptions than simply that there
is the mind and there are sensations, without any so-called 'things'
which are 'out-there' that can never truly be known. So it appears that
Occam's razor (following the simpler of two competing views which both
equally explain the data) favors idealism.
But as your example indicates, it is just the reverse, isn't it?!
For to deny an objective universe one has to add all *sorts* of bizarre
assumptions to get anything to work out, such as that the *entire*
universe could have changed to create the sensations you experienced.
Take the simple experience of seeing a table in your living room. You
walk out of the living room and you have no sensation of the table. You
walk back into the living room and there is the table. To claim that
the table didn't exist independently of your perception of it would
mean that you would have to add all sorts of assumptions about the
table disappearing and then being recreated again when you enter the
room. (Bishop Berkeley went as far as to claim that this is proof that
God exists, as God must be constantly observing the table!)
So it turns out that idealist or mind-only claims turn out to be much
more complex and involve many more bizarre assumptions and claims to
work right than does simply granting that the external world exists.
> Solipsistically yours,
>
> --
> Daryl
Yeeheeheehee -- hey I used to use that line!
Pantheistically nobody's,
--DT
<< Oh, there was a young man who said, "God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be,
When there's no one about in the quad."
Dear Sir, your astonishment's odd
I'm *always* about in the quad
And that's why the tree
Continues to be,
Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God! >>
piet...@my-deja.com
> kwans...@eol222.ca (Daryl) wrote:
>
> > >DT:
> > >
> > >When you are awake, you can observe than everyone else sleeps,
> > >yet later cannot recall the events during that period when they
> > >were asleep.
> > >
> > >When you are asleep, or in a coma, other people can observe you,
> > >and you can even set up a video camera.
> > >
> > >Given both of these data, the most rational explanation is that
> > >you indeed were unconscious.
>
> > Oh no it isn't. What actually happens is that the entire
> > universe suddenly undergoes a massive state change
> > periodically and everyone and everything else adapts
>
> Yes, that is also possible.
>
hmmm, now how could I hijack this thread so as to get
DT and Daryl discussing David Deutsch's common-sense view
of the many-worlds interpretation as described in his
'The Fabric of Reality'?
hmmm, that would be a thread worth archiving in the
Universal Turing Machine's asymptotically infinite and eternal
memory banks!
> But note my very sneaky wording: "most rational" explanation.
>
> Sure, the *entire* universe could have changed to fit your ego.
> Or -- you were asleep. Like, which explanation is more plausible?
"We are each in the midst of myriads of Worlds."
-Suzi 'Q' roshi, zmbm
>
> You've raised a wonderful point that often gets missed by fans of
> idealism (mind-only theories). At first glance it would seem that
> idealism is simpler, and that to posit an external world would entail
a
> more complex theory requiring more assumptions than simply that there
> is the mind and there are sensations, without any so-called 'things'
> which are 'out-there' that can never truly be known. So it appears
that
> Occam's razor (following the simpler of two competing views which both
> equally explain the data) favors idealism.
>
> But as your example indicates, it is just the reverse, isn't it?!
>
> For to deny an objective universe one has to add all *sorts* of
bizarre
> assumptions to get anything to work out, such as that the *entire*
> universe could have changed to create the sensations you experienced.
>
alas, DT, I fear your formidable powers of reasoning are failing you! :)
Even I, with atrophied neurons beyond counting, can see the
flaw in this conclusion. There is in fact *no* 'entire universe' in
the above contrived conundrum, it is superfluous to the hypothesis.
Ergo, no problem. (I think?)
"Sunday is a day off,
but what a pity: I have to give a talk here.
I have indeed come into this world to
accept my karmic retribution."
-Ch'an master Sheng-Yen, 1993, http://www.chan1.org
DharmaTroll
piet...@my-deja.com wrote:
> hmmm, now how could I hijack this thread so as to get
> DT and Daryl discussing David Deutsch's common-sense view
> of the many-worlds interpretation as described in his
> 'The Fabric of Reality'?
Peachie-Pie to the rescue. Yay!!!!
Btw, everybody checkout Pietzsche's new (honorary) web site.
This is really a fun site!!!
http://www.netstore.de/~god/Welcome.html
> > At first glance it would seem that idealism is simpler,
> > and that to posit an external world would entail a more
> > complex theory requiring more assumptions than simply
> > that there is the mind and there are sensations, without
> > any so-called 'things' which are 'out-there' that can
> > never truly be known. So it appears that Occam's razor
> > (following the simpler of two competing views which both
> > equally explain the data) favors idealism.
> >
> > But as your example indicates, it is just the reverse, isn't it?!
> >
> > For to deny an objective universe one has to add all *sorts*
> > of bizarre assumptions to get anything to work out, such as
> > that the *entire* universe could have changed to create the
> > sensations you experienced.
> alas, DT,
> I fear your formidable powers of reasoning are failing you! :)
You mean because I shamelessly copied that idea right out of Bertrand
Russell? It still is a fascinating insight, even if I didn't come up
with it.
> Even I, with atrophied neurons beyond counting, can see the
> flaw in this conclusion. There is in fact *no* 'entire universe'
Sure. But I was granting Daryl that, and not quibbling on such matters
and simply responding to his example, and showing that the
justification of idealism always involves more assumptions than does
realism, which is not intuitively obvious at first glance. Daryl had
written (jokingly, I hope):
>>> Oh no it isn't. What actually happens is that the entire
>>> universe suddenly undergoes a massive state change
>>> periodically and everyone and everything else adapts...
Since I pretty much knew what he meant by the 'entire universe', Pi
Chi, I didn't want to get bogged down quibbling with such details when
I had such a stronger whopper of a comeback, a la Bertrand Russell.
But thanks for mentioning Deutsch, Pi Chi. I have bought his book on
your recommendation, yet haven't gotten into it yet. I will try to do
so over the holidays.
--DT
Daryl
piet...@my-deja.com (piet...@my-deja.com) wrote...
>
>DharmaTroll <dharm...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>> kwans...@eol222.ca (Daryl) wrote:
>>
>> > >DT:
>> > >
>> > >When you are awake, you can observe than everyone else sleeps,
>> > >yet later cannot recall the events during that period when they
>> > >were asleep.
>> > >
>> > >When you are asleep, or in a coma, other people can observe you,
>> > >and you can even set up a video camera.
>> > >
>> > >Given both of these data, the most rational explanation is that
>> > >you indeed were unconscious.
>>
>> > Oh no it isn't. What actually happens is that the entire
>> > universe suddenly undergoes a massive state change
>> > periodically and everyone and everything else adapts
>>
>> Yes, that is also possible.
>>
>
>hmmm, now how could I hijack this thread so as to get
>DT and Daryl discussing David Deutsch's common-sense view
>of the many-worlds interpretation as described in his
>'The Fabric of Reality'?
You could start by reading it to me at bedtime.
"All of the universe that needs to change to cause me to
perceive evidence of sleep" just isn't as elegant as
"the entire universe".
So what's this many worlds idea anyway? Some kinda fancy
third-man thing?
Daryl
DharmaTroll (dharm...@my-deja.com) wrote...
Ya, I was pointing out the absurdity of the mind-only
idea, while also hinting that neither idealism nor realism
obtain the status of "necessary" truth.
>Since I pretty much knew what he meant by the 'entire universe', Pi
>Chi, I didn't want to get bogged down quibbling with such details when
>I had such a stronger whopper of a comeback, a la Bertrand Russell.
>
>But thanks for mentioning Deutsch, Pi Chi. I have bought his book on
>your recommendation, yet haven't gotten into it yet. I will try to do
>so over the holidays.
So, like, come back and explain it, will ya?
DharmaTroll
kwans...@eol222.ca (Daryl) wrote:
> >But thanks for mentioning Deutsch, Pi Chi. I have bought his
> >book on your recommendation, yet haven't gotten into it yet.
> >I will try to do so over the holidays.
>
> So, like, come back and explain it, will ya?
>
> --
> Daryl
Oh, I can do that now. Heck, I'll let David do it himself. Below are
the 'crib notes' to Deutsch's book, an article which appeared in
Frontiers magazine in December 1998.
--DT
<< http://www.qubit.org/people/david/Articles/Frontiers.html
David Deutsch’s Many Worlds
[Our universe is just one of many, linked together by the astounding
phenomena of the quantum world. David Deutsch believes this multiverse
view of reality could hold the future of computing.]
A growing number of physicists, myself included, are convinced that the
thing we call ‘the universe’ — namely space, with all the matter and
energy it contains — is not the whole of reality. According to quantum
theory — the deepest theory known to physics — our universe is only a
tiny facet of a larger multiverse, a highly structured continuum
containing many universes.
Everything in our universe — including you and me, every atom and every
galaxy — has counterparts in these other universes. Some counterparts
are in the same places as they are in our universe, while others are in
different places. Some have different shapes, or are arranged in
different ways; some are so different that they are not worth calling
counterparts. There are even universes in which a given object in our
universe has no counterpart — including universes in which I was never
born and you wrote this article instead.
On large scales, universes obey the laws of classical physics, and so
each behaves as though the others were not there. But on microscopic
scales, quantum mechanics becomes dominant and the universes are far
from independent. Universes that are very alike are close together in
the multiverse and affect each other strongly, though only in subtle,
indirect ways — a phenomenon known as quantum interference.
Without quantum interference, electrons would spiral into atomic
nuclei, destroying every atom literally in a flash. Solid matter would
be unstable, and the phenomena of biological evolution and human
thought would be impossible. And as I shall explain, it is quantum
interference that provides our evidence for the existence of the
multiverse.
Through interference, each particle in our universe can be affected by
its counterparts in other universes. What we see as a single subatomic
particle is really a sprawling trans-universe structure, spanning a
large region of the multiverse. Although we cannot see the parts of
this structure that are outside our universe, we can infer their
presence from the results of experiments. Perhaps the most striking
involve quantum computers — devices that collaborate with nearby
universes to perform useful computations.
How do they do that? While conventional, non-quantum computers perform
calculations on fundamental pieces of information called bits, which
can take the values 0 or 1, quantum computers use objects called
quantum bits, or qubits (pronounced queue-bits). A qubit can also
either represent 0 or 1, but its value can vary from universe to
universe.
Hence, in the time it takes a conventional computer to perform a given
calculation, a quantum computer with its counterparts in other
universes can perform many such calculations. In particular, they can
each perform different pieces of a complex computation simultaneously.
Using quantum interference, the computer in our universe can then
combine its results with those of its counterparts, to arrive at the
overall answer.
Not all types of computation are capable of being shared out among
universes in this way. Within one universe we are free to shuffle
information about from place to place, and to perform whatever logical
operations we like on it, but in the multiverse, things are not so
convenient. The laws of physics severely restrict the operations that
we can perform. Nevertheless, quantum computers offer fundamentally new
capabilities, including absolutely secure methods of communication,
ways of breaking the best existing codes, and seemingly miraculous
algorithms for solving mathematical problems that are currently
intractable.
For instance, Deep Blue, IBM’s chess-playing supercomputer, can examine
about 200 million chess positions per second by sharing the work among
its 256 processors, each of which examines almost one million positions
per second. A quantum computer, running a search algorithm discovered
by Lov Grover of AT&T’s Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, could outclass
Deep Blue by sharing the work among many universes.
Grover proved that if there were time to search N items using a
conventional computer in one universe, his algorithm could exploit the
multiverse to search a total of N2 items in the same time. Thus a
single quantum processor, with the same clock rate as one of Deep
Blue’s processors, could examine a trillion chess positions in one
second — and in two seconds it could examine four trillion, in three
seconds nine trillion, and so on.
Research groups worldwide are now racing to build the first practical
quantum computer. Any physical object that can store a bit can in
principle also serve as a qubit, but in practice, because interference
is harder to control in larger systems, qubits have to be microscopic
objects such as individual ions or atomic nuclei. The most powerful
prototype quantum computers in existence have only a handful of qubits
each, but they can already demonstrate modes of computation that no
existing computer can match.
To predict that future quantum computers, made to a given
specification, will work in the ways I have described, one need only
solve a few uncontroversial equations. But to explain exactly how they
will work, some form of multiple-universe language is unavoidable. Thus
quantum computers provide irresistible evidence that the multiverse is
real. One especially convincing argument is provided by quantum
algorithms — even more powerful than Grover’s — which calculate more
intermediate results in the course of a single computation than there
are atoms in the visible universe.
When a quantum computer delivers the output of such a computation, we
shall know that those intermediate results must have been computed
somewhere, because they were needed to produce the right answer. So I
issue this challenge to those who still cling to a single-universe
world view: if the universe we see around us is all there is, where are
quantum computations performed? I have yet to receive a plausible
reply.
NeoLazarus
> On Sun, 10 Dec 2000 19:48:24 GMT, DharmaTroll
> <dharm...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> >When a quantum computer delivers the output of such a computation, we
> >shall know that those intermediate results must have been computed
> >somewhere, because they were needed to produce the right answer. So I
> >issue this challenge to those who still cling to a single-universe
> >world view: if the universe we see around us is all there is, where are
> >quantum computations performed? I have yet to receive a plausible
> >reply.
>
> The multiverse IS the universe.
ta-da!
everything and all is possible and probable
-NL
NeoLazarus
take this for what its worth
I think it is an expression meant to convey
that the sum total of all human knowledge
could just be not enough to 'know' any truths
or absolute truths about the nature of anything.
Uni- versus Multi- versus Omni- or whatever.
Describing or cataloging things doesn't make
them any less illusory...
-NL
NeoLazarus
> On Sun, 10 Dec 2000 18:23:42 -0900, NeoLazarus
> <rwnos...@alaskancrypt.net> wrote:
>
> >I think it is an expression meant to convey
> >that the sum total of all human knowledge
> >could just be not enough to 'know' any truths
> >or absolute truths about the nature of anything.
> >Uni- versus Multi- versus Omni- or whatever.
> >Describing or cataloging things doesn't make
> >them any less illusory...
>
> Where is your basis in saying that the universe is an illusion?
> Everything is in flux, but it exists even if labels can't describe it.
personal experience
the universe (or whatever) as we perceive it, describe it, &tc.,
isn't necessarily as it might _really_ appear to be, eh? Or is there
only human 'truth'?
-NL
NeoLazarus
Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus wrote:
> If nothing exists, then how do we explain the processes that we
> experience so persistently? How do we explain our own consciousness?
> Something must exist in order for me to be able to think. My thoughts
> did not create the universe, did they? If something exists, then
> everything exists. I think, therefore I am.
>
> As I understand it, Buddha did not deny reality, only that our
> perception of it was illusory. It is still there, even though we can
> only see it through our limited senses.
>
it's not nihilism - that nothing exists...
it's that perhaps our perception of what
does exist might not be absolute knowledge
or absolute truth, just our perception.
-NL
> >
> >-NL
> >
Tang Huyen
NeoLazarus wrote: <<take this for what its worth
I think it is an expression meant to convey that the sum total of all human
knowledge could just be not enough to 'know' any truths or absolute truths
about the nature of anything. Uni- versus Multi- versus Omni- or whatever.
Describing or cataloging things doesn't make them any less illusory...>>
The Buddha says: "What and what they think it, it is otherwise". Reality can be
described and understood by us to some extent with our baskets and cages, but
ultimately our baskets and cages are incoherent within themselves and
inadequate to the job of describing and understanding reality, any reality at
all, right down to the least bit of dust.
Tang Huyen
Lapidary
> > The multiverse IS the universe.
Conventional QM asserts that the calulation is perfomedd by
a superimposed state which then collapses on observation.
Many Worlds asserts that collapse never occurs. Both give basically
the same account of what happens inside a quantum computer.
QC does not prove MW.
--
Regards, Peter D Jones .
"Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali.
He was using a dotted line.
He caught every other fish." -- Steven Wright.
Gileht
That is true, but it is incomplete. You are saying that all views are
flawed, that the real nature of reality is inconceivable, beyond all
conceptualization, beyond any views. But, still, here we are in samsara
using whatever means we can to try to escape this cycle. And whatever
we are using is just a temporary imperfect raft. And according to the
Buddha, there is a way out. So we should not reject evrything, but use
a raft. Otherwise it is nihilism and there is no way out.
Gileht
http://www.geocities.com/gileht/index.html
Mark S D
Germanicus <clau...@empire.net> wrote:
>On Mon, 11 Dec 2000 05:36:02 GMT, dar <rokt...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
>>>As I understand it, Buddha did not deny reality, only that our
>>>perception of it was illusory. It is still there, even though we can
>>>only see it through our limited senses.
>>
>>Thats the point, the reality we see is a product of our senses.
Equally our senses are a product of.
>Yes, but that implies that there is a reality for us to sense. We have
>a distorted, limited view of reality through our senses. Therefore
>there is a reality which is independent of our senses. Therefore the
>universe exists.
It's more that it's generalising in it's objectivity rather than
distorted, but without that it would be like painting a picture
without brushes. I think it's more that to see the brushes arn't the
whole story and the picture and the painter are not simply separate,
nobody owns the brushes, there is only ignorance that assumes such a
thing and clings to opinions at the painters expense.
--
-- Msd
Mark S D
<rwnos...@alaskancrypt.net> wrote:
The truth shall set us free.
--
-- Msd
Thomas Oltman
"Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus" <clau...@empire.net> schrieb im
Newsbeitrag news:5kr83t4sjguta25ik...@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 11 Dec 2000 05:36:02 GMT, dar <rokt...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> >>As I understand it, Buddha did not deny reality, only that our
> >>perception of it was illusory. It is still there, even though we can
> >>only see it through our limited senses.
> >
> >Thats the point, the reality we see is a product of our senses.
>
> a distorted, limited view of reality through our senses. Therefore
> there is a reality which is independent of our senses. Therefore the
> universe exists.
No, it does not follow that there is a reality *independent of our senses*.
There is that what we choose to call "reality" and we are a part of it,
interwoven in it, not separable from it. Nothing is independent.
A swirling stream of interactions between processes we can relate to
(observe) which we interpret and name: mass, light, heat, gravity, inertia
... Codependent arisal. We interpret the relationships between us and
other discernible processes, not any objective thing or Ding-an-sich. I can
only define myself in relation to something else which itself is dependent
on everything else, thus constantly changing, dying, being born. NoSelf.
Then we talk about it or write books about it, describing the relationships
and objectifying the everything so it can be analysed. Then we can see the
things that were, and the scientific method grabs hold.
Systems within systems. All of it together is sometimes called "suchness"
or "that's the way it is" - or whatever. A system has no top, and thus no
name. I guess you could say "it exists". It is, however, quite empty.
Tom Oltman
Thomas Oltman
> On Mon, 11 Dec 2000 17:52:44 +0100, "Thomas Oltman"
> <tom.o...@oltman.de> wrote:
>
> >
> >"Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus" <clau...@empire.net> schrieb
im
> >Newsbeitrag news:5kr83t4sjguta25ik...@4ax.com...
> >> On Mon, 11 Dec 2000 05:36:02 GMT, dar <rokt...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> >>As I understand it, Buddha did not deny reality, only that our
> >> >>perception of it was illusory. It is still there, even though we can
> >> >>only see it through our limited senses.
> >> >
> >> >Thats the point, the reality we see is a product of our senses.
> >>
> >> Yes, but that implies that there is a reality for us to sense. We have
> >> a distorted, limited view of reality through our senses. Therefore
> >> there is a reality which is independent of our senses. Therefore the
> >> universe exists.
> >
> >No, it does not follow that there is a reality *independent of our
senses*.
> >There is that what we choose to call "reality" and we are a part of it,
> >interwoven in it, not separable from it. Nothing is independent.
>
> can't perceive it very well. Therefore, our senses do not create the
> reality around us, and some of us may perceive a different reality
> than others. But it does exist.
> >
> >A swirling stream of interactions between processes we can relate to
> >(observe) which we interpret and name: mass, light, heat, gravity,
inertia
> >... Codependent arisal. We interpret the relationships between us and
> >other discernible processes, not any objective thing or Ding-an-sich. I
can
> >only define myself in relation to something else which itself is
dependent
> >on everything else, thus constantly changing, dying, being born. NoSelf.
> >
> >Then we talk about it or write books about it, describing the
relationships
> >and objectifying the everything so it can be analysed. Then we can see
the
> >things that were, and the scientific method grabs hold.
> >
> >Systems within systems. All of it together is sometimes called
"suchness"
> >or "that's the way it is" - or whatever. A system has no top, and thus
no
> >name. I guess you could say "it exists". It is, however, quite empty.
>
> Do you refer to emptiness of meaning? Do you refer to physical
> emptiness?
>
"Empty" as it's used in a buddhist context: not permanent, everchanging,
arising and ceasing - not before your very eyes, but changing with you, as a
part of you.
Empty of meaning, then: Who would assign a meaning to what?
Tom
> >
> >Tom Oltman
> >
> >
>
Dean Crabb
>
> "Empty" as it's used in a buddhist context: not permanent, everchanging,
> arising and ceasing - not before your very eyes, but changing with you, as a
> part of you.
>
> Empty of meaning, then: Who would assign a meaning to what?
>
I experience emptiness as lacking any fundamental substance that permanently
exists and is the basis for its existance. In that sense when things are seen
as empty they are seen completely through.
Dean
DharmaTroll
"Thomas Oltman" <tom.o...@oltman.de> wrote:
> "Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus" <clau...@empire.net>
> > On Mon, 11 Dec 2000 05:36:02 GMT, dar <rokt...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> >
> > >Thats the point, the reality we see is a product of our senses.
> >
> > Yes, but that implies that there is a reality for us to sense.
> > We have a distorted, limited view of reality through our senses.
> > Therefore there is a reality which is independent of our senses.
> > Therefore the universe exists.
>
> No, it does not follow that there is a reality *independent of our
> senses*. There is that what we choose to call "reality" and we are
> a part of it, interwoven in it, not separable from it. Nothing is
> independent.
I think this is wrong, and that Thomas Oltman here is muddling things
up by conflating what there *is* with what we can *experience*.
> We interpret the relationships between us and other discernible
> processes, not any objective thing or Ding-an-sich.
Sure, but that is what we can *know* or *interpret*, and is an
epistemological question, and not a question about physics and what the
universe actually *is*, which we can only ever know to some degree.
> I can only define myself in relation to something else which itself
> is dependent on everything else, thus constantly changing, dying,
> being born. NoSelf.
NoProblem.
However, while I will grant that self-existing things don't exist
independently of each other, but rather in relationship, that does
*not* in any way imply that *you* (or any observer) is necessary for
them to exist in relationship to each other. You've inserted your own
ego here as a necessary condition for anything else to exist, which is
rather laughable.
Before we evolved, say 12 billion or so years ago, there were no
observers existing to experience the universe. Yet according to the
data we have from the Hubble Space Telescope, the universe was there,
extant, without any conscious observers yet. This data clearly refutes
your claim.
-DT
NeoLazarus
> when choosing a raft
> better to choose one that floats
be the raft
-NL
DharmaTroll
--Alexandre Dumas >>
In article <3A34BE0F...@yahoo.com>,
Tang the Merciless <tang_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> The Buddha says: "What and what they think it, it is otherwise".
> Reality can be described and understood by us to some extent
> with our baskets and cages, but ultimately our baskets and cages
> are incoherent within themselves and inadequate to the job of
> describing and understanding reality, any reality at all
> Tang Huyen
Oh, big whoop. Sure, the word is never the think itself, but symbols
and representations certainly can be useful, and nobody expects the
symbol to be reality, only to represent it. As it turns out, we choose
concepts for their usefulness, not for their completeness, you silly
rogue. So all your crap about "our baskets and cages are incoherent
within themselves" is ridiculous, Tang.
And this is nothing unique in Buddhism.
Look at the opening verses of Lao Tzu's _Tao Te Ching_:
<<
The Tao that can be followed is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the origin of heaven and earth
While naming is the origin of the myriad things.
Therefore, always desireless, you see the mystery
Ever desiring, you see the manifestations.
These two are the same--
When they appear they are named differently.
Their sameness is the mystery,
Mystery within mystery;
The door to all marvels.
The Tao which can be expressed is not the unchanging Tao;
the name which can be named is not the unchanging name.
>>
I think that just about says it all. Yet remains nothing.
Hahahahahaha.
Well, not quite.
Moving forward to the 20th century, we have Alfred Korzybski's neo-
Kantian dictum that "The map is not the territory"; or, as Gregory
Bateson further explained, "a mental representation is not the thing
represented."
This isn't some magical mystical secret that you have grokked, Tang,
and now are imparting on the ignorant masses. It's common knowledge,
and you aren't saying anything new, you rogue: you're just using a lot
of big words to confuse things, just like your guru Hegel. Heh.
In the below snip from his 1933 _Science and Sanity_, Korzybski clearly
articulates that as the map is not the territory, words are not the
things they represent. Rather, they preserve structure, patterns. You
*do* know the difference between content and structure, don't you Tang?
--DT
<< From:
http://www.the-intuitive-
self.com/website/author/memoir/supplements/map_territory.html
The scientific problems involved are very extensive and can be dealt
with only in a large volume. Here I am able to give only a very sketchy
summary without empirical data, omitting niceties and technicalities.
(a)
Paris Dresden Warsaw
*_____________*_____________*
(b)
Dresden Paris Warsaw
*_____________*_____________*
If we consider an actual territory (a) say, Paris, Dresden, Warsaw, and
build up a map (b) in which the order of these cities would be
represented as Dresden, Paris, Warsaw; to travel by such a map would be
misguiding, wasteful of effort. In case of emergencies, it might be
seriously harmful. We could say that such a map was 'not true,' or that
the map had a structure not similar to the territory, structure to be
defined in terms of relations and multi-dimensional order. We should
notice that:
A) A map may have a structure similar or dissimilar to the structure of
the territory.
B) Two similar structures have similar 'logical' characteristics. Thus,
if in a correct map, Dresden is given as between Paris and Warsaw, a
similar relation is found in the actual territory.
C) A map is not the territory.
D) An ideal map would contain the map of the map, the map of the map of
the map, endlessly. This characteristic was first discovered by Royce.
We may call it self-reflexiveness.
Languages share with the map the above four characteristics.
A) Languages have structure, thus we have languages of elementalistic
structure such as 'space' and 'time', 'observer' and 'observed', . . .
which allow verbal division or separation. Or we have languages of non-
elementalistic structure such as, 'space-time', the new quantum
languages, . . . which do not involve verbal division or separation;
also mathematical languages of 'order', relation', . . . which apply
to 'senses' and 'mind', that is, can be 'seen' and 'thought of'.
B) If we use languages of a structure non-similar to the world and our
nervous system, our verbal predictions are not verified empirically, we
cannot be 'rational' or adjusted. We would have to copy the animals in
their wasteful and painful 'trial and error' performances, as we have
done all through human history. In science we would be handicapped by
semantic blockages, lack of creativeness, lack of understanding, lack
of vision, disturbed by inconsistencies, paradoxes.
C) Words are not the things they represent.
D) Language also has self-reflexive characteristics. We use language to
speak about language, which in fact introduces serious verbal and
semantic difficulties, solved by the theory of multiordinality.
Tang Huyen
DharmaTroll wrote: <<Oh, big whoop. Sure, the word is never the think
itself, but symbols and representations certainly can be useful, and nobody
expects the symbol to be reality, only to represent it. As it turns out, we
choose concepts for their usefulness, not for their completeness, you silly
rogue. So all your crap about "our baskets and cages are incoherent within
themselves" is ridiculous, Tang.
And this is nothing unique in Buddhism. [snip]
Moving forward to the 20th century, we have Alfred Korzybski's neo- Kantian
dictum that "The map is not the territory"; or, as Gregory Bateson further
explained, "a mental representation is not the thing represented."
This isn't some magical mystical secret that you have grokked, Tang, and
now are imparting on the ignorant masses. It's common knowledge, and you
aren't saying anything new, you rogue: you're just using a lot of big words
to confuse things, just like your guru Hegel. Heh.
In the below snip from his 1933 _Science and Sanity_, Korzybski clearly
articulates that as the map is not the territory, words are not the things
they represent. Rather, they preserve structure, patterns. You *do* know
the difference between content and structure, don't you Tang?>>
Hahahahahahahahaha!!!
What you say is quite agreeable to me, but quite disagreable to the
Platonists, the Aristotelians, the Brahmanists/Hinduists, the followers of
the Religions of the Book, and the followers of the Tantra, because they
all think the contrary, namely that the words *do* represent their
referents -- how else can shamans manipulate things if the things are not
*directly and fully* represented by words or symbols?
TONGLEN - 'Sending and Taking' BY THRANGU RINPOCHE, Samye-Ling, December
1993:
<<TongLen is a meditation done in conjunction with one's breathing, and in
relation to one's parents, friends and enemies, to all beings gathered
around oneself. As one breathes out, imagine that with the exhalation out
goes all one's happiness and all the causes of happiness, all the good
karma that one has, in the form of *white light rays*. These light rays go
out to all beings to touch them, so that they obtain present temporary
happiness and the cause for the ultimate happiness of buddhahood. With
inhalation one imagines that all the suffering, the causes of suffering and
the bad karma that beings have, are drawn into oneself with the incoming
breath, in the form of *black light rays*. These black rays enter and merge
into oneself, so one thinks that one has taken on the suffering of all
other beings. Thus this Sending & Taking meditation involves giving away
happiness and taking on suffering, in combination with one's breathing.>>
Tonglen Instructions by Ane Pema Chodron 2/4/83: <<You breathe the anger
in; you remove the object; you stop thinking about him. In fact, he is just
a useful catalyst. You could be grateful to everyone. You could drive all
blames into yourself, breathing them in. This doesn’t mean to say that you
blame yourself, but you own it completely. It takes a lot of bravery, and
it’s extremely insulting to ego. In fact, it completely destroys the whole
mechanism of ego. So you breathe in.
Then, you breathe out sympathy, relaxation, and spaciousness. Instead of
just a small, *dark* situation, you allow a lot of space for that feeling
to exist in. Don’t slow down the process by trying to think what the proper
antidote would be. Just allow space. When you breathe out, it is like
ventilating the whole thing, airing it out. Breathing out is like opening
up your arms and just letting go, altogether. Fresh air. Then you breathe
the rage in again: rage ...the *black*, heavy hotness of it. And then you
breathe out, ventilating the whole thing, allowing a lot of space.>>
See, DT, wihite/light and black/dark, sending and receiving/taking are
thought of realitistically and literalistically here.
Tang Huyen .
Thomas Oltman
"DharmaTroll" <dharm...@my-deja.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:913usc$bkp$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
But I didn't say that "you" (or any observer) is necessary for them to exist
in relationship to each other. An observer (if possible, an objective
observer) is necessary to analyse the knowable and build theories that
describe that past (which doesn't exist any more). But he is, as we know, a
fiction. The scientific method works just fine, telling us plausible
stories about the processes that have run and giving us the possibility -
based on the stories - to make predictions about the future (which doesn't
exist yet). Great stuff, we all do it. With rigour, it's called science.
>
> Before we evolved, say 12 billion or so years ago, there were no
> observers existing to experience the universe. Yet according to the
> data we have from the Hubble Space Telescope, the universe was there,
> extant, without any conscious observers yet. This data clearly refutes
> your claim.
As abover: What claim might that be? In any case I suppose the universe
has always been there, how could it not be?
You seem to be muddling things up. (That's a fun word: muddle).
Klaus Schmetterling
"Tang Huyen"
> What you say is quite agreeable to me, but quite disagreable to the
> Platonists, the Aristotelians, the Brahmanists/Hinduists, the followers of
> the Religions of the Book, and the followers of the Tantra, because they
> all think the contrary, namely that the words *do* represent their
> referents -- how else can shamans manipulate things if the things are not
> *directly and fully* represented by words or symbols?
The advantage they CAN have over you is that they *know* they are doing
symbolic things and using symbols, words etc. I am not so sure where you
stand with you non-mentation and your dropping. Aren't you "manipulating"
"things" as well when you try to "drop" them?
> See, DT, wihite/light and black/dark, sending and receiving/taking are
> thought of realitistically and literalistically here.
Who exactly is doing the thinking of here Tang? Can you read mind?
Mike Austin
<tom.o...@oltman.de> writes
>
>You seem to be muddling things up. (That's a fun word: muddle).
>
Hi Tom,
Yes, it is isn't it? Anyone for the Muddle Way - the Mulamudyamaka?
--
Mike Austin
Maury Markowitz
news:913usc$bkp$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> Before we evolved, say 12 billion or so years ago, there were no
> observers existing to experience the universe. Yet according to the
> data we have from the Hubble Space Telescope, the universe was there,
> extant, without any conscious observers yet. This data clearly refutes
> your claim.
Not really, depending on whether or not you think that "wavefunction
collaspe" is non-local (or even exists). In the multiverse version of
things, the traces of certain timelines goes to zero, leaving a number of
possibilities all roughly similar (in a universal sense) to the one we live
in.
Maury
Thomas Oltman
"Dean Crabb" <dean....@dingoblue.com.au> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:3A3567DD...@dingoblue.com.au...
utmost concentration at that point where you see through it.
Or somewhere else.
Tom
Tang Huyen
Klaus Schmetterling wrote:
Tang: <<What you say is quite agreeable to me, but quite disagreable to the
Platonists, the Aristotelians, the Brahmanists/Hinduists, the followers of the
Religions of the Book, and the followers of the Tantra, because they all think
the contrary, namely that the words *do* represent their referents -- how else
can shamans manipulate things if the things are not *directly and fully*
represented by words or symbols?>>
Joy: <<The advantage they CAN have over you is that they *know* they are doing
symbolic things and using symbols, words etc. I am not so sure where you stand
with you non-mentation and your dropping. Aren't you "manipulating" "things" as
well when you try to "drop" them?>>
Hahahahahahahahahaha!!! Honestly, Joy.
How do you know that they are "doing symbolic things and using symbols, words
etc."? It seems to me that they -- the teachers of the Tibetan religion in
general and the teachers of Tong-len in particular -- take their symbols and
words literally and not symbolically.
Tang: <<See, DT, white/light and black/dark, sending and receiving/taking are
thought of realitistically and literalistically here.>>
Joy: <<Who exactly is doing the thinking of here Tang? Can you read mind?>>
I don't need to read mind here, but only to read words, and when the Tong-len
teachers talk about white/light and black/dark, sending and receiving/taking,
they take those things realistically and literally. Let us take the following:
<<As one breathes out, imagine that with the exhalation out goes all one's
happiness and all the causes of happiness, all the good karma that one has, in
the form of *white light rays*. These light rays go out to all beings to touch
them, so that they obtain present temporary happiness and the cause for the
ultimate happiness of buddhahood. With inhalation one imagines that all the
suffering, the causes of suffering and the bad karma that beings have, are drawn
into oneself with the incoming breath, in the form of *black light rays*. These
black rays enter and merge into oneself, so one thinks that one has taken on the
suffering of all other beings.>>
This is quite different from the Four Divine Dwellings, which, as I have said
all along and repreated just recently for you (in "Clear light"), are pure
platonic excercises in which nothing happens except in one's mind, nothing and
nobody benefits from them except oneself. The Four Divine Dwellings and the
totalisations are purely "voluntary adhesions" (adhimukti, adhimoksa) which are
engaged in with full knowledge that they are purely mental and internal, as
opposed to affecting the outside world in any way. Now read the above quote
again:
<<These light rays go out to all beings *to touch them*, so that *they obtain
present temporary happiness* and the cause for the ultimate happiness of
buddhahood. ... These black rays enter and merge into oneself, so one thinks
that one has taken on the suffering of all other beings.>>
Now are those descriptions symbolic or realistic?
Tang Huyen
Thomas Oltman
"Mike Austin" <mi...@lamrim.org.uk> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:Hg153eAP...@clara.net...
Can one be muddlesome? I know some people who I think would be muddlesome
if it were allowed.
TomOltman
Klaus Schmetterling
"Tang Huyen"
> Joy: <<The advantage they CAN have over you is that they *know* they are
doing
> symbolic things and using symbols, words etc. I am not so sure where you
stand
> with you non-mentation and your dropping. Aren't you "manipulating"
"things" as
> well when you try to "drop" them?>>
> How do you know that they are "doing symbolic things and using symbols,
words
> etc."? It seems to me that they -- the teachers of the Tibetan religion in
> general and the teachers of Tong-len in particular -- take their symbols
and
> words literally and not symbolically.
I don't, that is why I wrote CAN (in capitals to wake you up, but you didn't
notice it). Anyway, how do you know they take their symbols and words
literally and not symbolically?
> Tang: <<See, DT, white/light and black/dark, sending and receiving/taking
are
> thought of realitistically and literalistically here.>>
> Joy: <<Who exactly is doing the thinking of here Tang? Can you read
mind?>>
> I don't need to read mind here, but only to read words, and when the
Tong-len
> teachers talk about white/light and black/dark, sending and
receiving/taking,
> they take those things realistically and literally. Let us take the
following:
Hahahahahahahahahaha!!! Honestly, Tang.
You say you "only need to read words", it is you who take their words
realistically and literally.
Highly symbolic. Never has a single being's suffering entered my nostrils,
except for some little flies.
Poor Tang. I can imagine you sitting on your cushion, trying to practice
Tong-len and then getting angry when only some snot comes out of your
nostrils. Now who is a literalist?
aeholling
DharmaTroll wrote:
Moving forward to the 20th century, we have Alfred Korzybski's neo- Kantian dictum that "The map is not the territory"; or, as Gregory Bateson further explained, "a mental representation is not the thing represented."
The above errs. For us, the "thing", when it become 'equipment'
(cf. Heidegger), is almost entirely representational.
In other words, the fly only recognizes shit—not the 'lawn mower'.
Bateson should understand that it is exceedingly difficult to peel off
the categories of reason from the thing itself. Some would argue
that it can't be done; that even the thing itself is abstract thought (pure
being or the same, pure nothing).
Ae
Tang Huyen
Klaus Schmetterling wrote: <<Highly symbolic. Never has a single being's
suffering entered my nostrils, except for some little flies.
Poor Tang. I can imagine you sitting on your cushion, trying to practice
Tong-len and then getting angry when only some snot comes out of your nostrils.
Now who is a literalist?>>
Hahahahahahahahahaha!!! Honestly, Joy. Have you just dropped down from Mars or
what?
Last year Stef Gmaj complained of depression and asked for hep, and somebody
posted this reply:
<<There are a good many practices I know of which seem to have good effect on
depression. I for one would reccommend some of the visualized practices in
particular that of Chenresig as well as the Tara practices.
Why Chenresig? Because in particular this practice removes the focus off
oneself.
You are visualizing and sending out great compassionate love and giving living
beings all they need. It is very hard to remain self focused and dwell upon your
own miseries when you are seeing to the happiness of all living beings. It is a
practiced, planned, specifically organized time when you take that focus off of
yourself.
That practice contains a good many other helpful things which can offset
depression. First of all it is a purification, in which you literally make
yourself empty of all your negative characteristics, everything that has
depressed or stressed you, everything you feel as bad about yourself, literally
seeing it all pouring out, and leaving you transparent like a rainbow. Just
visualizing that helps you to forget that you are depressed.
Then you see the bodhisattva sending you kindness and loving compassion and you
acknowledge it. Then after that you in turn, send it to all living beings, and
every one is sending whatever everyone needs to everyone. It is actually a very
wonderful mental exercise and what I have described here is only the tiniest
part of the practice.
Think to yourself, that somewhere there are people who are suffering. There are
tiny babies who are hungry and wet, there are people who have no food, there are
animals who are chained without food or water or in cages.
There are people in horrible inhumane prisons. There are those in hospitals
whose illnesses have no hope of cure. As a part of your visualization you can
picture all of these receiving food, shelter, peace, healing, whatever they
need. You can be as specific as you want, after all it is your mind, and your
practice!
The most important thing is at the end, you dedicate any merit you may have
gained to all living beings, and pray for this to continue to happen. Also for
the rest of your day you envision that when people see or speak to you they are
speaking to the little bit of chenresig that you carry at your heart. When you
are carrying that idea with you, you are also keeping that idea and the memory
of the attitudes you generated in the practice alive in your mind.>>
As the post says: "it is a purification, in which you *literally make yourself
empty of all your negative characteristics*, everything that has depressed or
stressed you, everything you feel as bad about yourself, *literally seeing it
all pouring out, and leaving you transparent like a rainbow*. Just visualizing
that helps you to forget that you are depressed."
So how symbolic is that? By the way, this is a mere variation on the Tong-len
theme. All very Gnostic.
Tang Huyen
DharmaTroll
"Thomas Oltman" <tom.o...@oltman.de> wrote:
>>> No, it does not follow that there is a reality *independent of our
>>> senses*. There is that what we choose to call "reality" and we are
>>> a part of it, interwoven in it, not separable from it. Nothing is
>>> independent.
DT:
>> I think this is wrong, and that Thomas Oltman here is muddling things
>> up by conflating what there *is* with what we can *experience*.
>> ...
>> However, while I will grant that self-existing things don't exist
>> independently of each other, but rather in relationship, that does
>> *not* in any way imply that *you* (or any observer) is necessary for
>> them to exist in relationship to each other. You've inserted your own
>> ego here as a necessary condition for anything else to exist, which
>> is rather laughable.
> But I didn't say that "you" (or any observer) is necessary for them
> to exist in relationship to each other.
Oh yes you did. You said:
"it does not follow that there is a reality *independent of our senses."
> An observer (if possible, an objective observer) is necessary to
> analyse the knowable and build theories
Right. In other words, an observer is necessary only for *knowing*, as
opposed being necessary for or the cause of what actually exists.
> The scientific method works just fine, telling us plausible
> stories about the processes that have run and giving us the
> possibility - based on the stories - to make predictions about
> the future (which doesn't exist yet). Great stuff, we all do it.
> With rigour, it's called science.
Right, but science is mouch more than about giving predictions.
It's about finding out what the structure of the universe really is.
Ptolomy's theory yields accurate predictions, yet it is still wrong.
So I hope you're not going instrumentalist on me (which is just one
hair shy of full-blown idealism anyway).
> In any case I suppose the universe has always been there,
> how could it not be?
Ok, then no problem. Some folks are so deluded though that they claim
that consciousness was prior to the universe, or that there is no
universe, only mind, rather than mind being an emerging property of the
existing physical universe. Glad to see that you weren't going there.
--DT
Mike Austin
<tom.o...@oltman.de> writes
>
>"Mike Austin" <mi...@lamrim.org.uk> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
>news:Hg153eAP...@clara.net...
>> In article <915fjr$35v$1...@news.online.de>, Thomas Oltman
>> <tom.o...@oltman.de> writes
>> >
>> >You seem to be muddling things up. (That's a fun word: muddle).
>> >
>>
>> Hi Tom,
>>
>> Yes, it is isn't it? Anyone for the Muddle Way - the Mulamudyamaka?
>>
>> --
>> Mike Austin
>
>Can one be muddlesome? I know some people who I think would be muddlesome
>if it were allowed.
Hi Tom,
They can be meddlesome, but I've not heard of muddlesome. We could still
use it though!
--
Mike Austin
Mike Austin
deja.com> writes
>
>Ok, then no problem. Some folks are so deluded though that they claim
>that consciousness was prior to the universe, or that there is no
>universe, only mind, rather than mind being an emerging property of the
>existing physical universe. Glad to see that you weren't going there.
>
Hi DT,
I don't want to get into another lengthy dialogue, but I presume you are
not asserting that mind is an emerging property of the existing physical
universe? Just a simple yes or no would suffice.
--
Mike Austin
Thomas Oltman
Let's go from here:
"DharmaTroll" <dharm...@my-deja.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:915pih$pga$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> In article <915fjr$35v$1...@news.online.de>,
> "Thomas Oltman" <tom.o...@oltman.de> wrote:
> > But I didn't say that "you" (or any observer) is necessary for them
> > to exist in relationship to each other.
>
> Oh yes you did. You said:
> "it does not follow that there is a reality *independent of our senses."
>
And I say it again: there is no reality *independent of our senses."
There was, probably, a reality without "our senses" and there will be again.
But the past does not exist, nor does the future, despite the science
fiction. There is no absolute time, time is only relative (to our senses).
There are only permutations of - dare I say it? - reality.
You are right, of course: we can do much more than predict, we can - and
do - describe the structures of reality and the processes that flow through
them, making pictures of how they evolved from beginning to end (though
those 2 end points are tricky). The structures and the processes determine
one another, and we line them up on a time line determined by us (by our
senses), relative to the rest of reality. And there it is: The Self. A
very real thing. At this very moment. Codependent with the reality it
perceives right now.
And then everything changes. If we've got things under control, we'll be
expecting - more or less - the changes. (We perceive and we measure
changes - and nothing else). But they are certainly not independent of our
senses.
TomOltman
DharmaTroll
First, In article <Rec4OQAQ...@clara.net>,
Mike Austin <mi...@lamrim.org.uk> wrote:
> Hi DT,
>
> I don't want to get into another lengthy dialogue, but I presume
> you are not asserting that mind is an emerging property of the
> existing physical universe? Just a simple yes or no would suffice.
No! Of course I *am* asserting that mind is an emerging property of
organised systems withing the existing physical universe.
And a simple yes or no won't suffice. I'm making a claim of mind/body
supervenience, and the philosophical position I'm defending is known as
naturalism. To avoid the usual caricatures and stereotypes from flamers
and other assorted bozos, I shall now briefly define my terms.
Jaegwon Kim defines *supervenience* as the idea that "once all the
physical facts about your body are fixed, that fixes all the facts
about your mental life... [W]hat mental properties you instantiate is
wholly dependent on the features and characteristics of your bodily
processes. This 'supervenience physicalism' may be regarded as... the
weakest commitment any physicalist must make" (p. 580 of "Mind-body
problem, the" by Jaegwon Kim in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy
edited by Ted Honderich). Kim also points out that "[o]thers maintain
that the mind-body relation is adequately characterized as one of
'supervenience' -- that is, in the claim that there could not be two
entities, or worlds, that are exactly alike in all physical respects
but differ in some mental respect... [T]he reductionist, the
functionalist, and even the epiphenomenalist are all committed to
mind-body supervenience" (p. 576 of "Problems of the philosophy of Mind"
by Jaegwon Kim in _The Oxford Companion to Philosophy_ edited by Ted
Honderich).
*Naturalists* (philosophical naturalism) might also claim that human
consciousness is totally natural -- i.e., not supernatural -- yet still
nonphysical (lacking physical properties). In such a view, natural
would be seen as being more inclusive a term than physical: e.g., a
naturalist might believe that the term natural encompasses everything
physical, nonphysical mental states, and perhaps nonphysical abstract
objects like numbers. That's pretty much DT's view: supervenience
physicalism and naturalism. Got it, Mike?
Next, In article <9167iq$bii$1...@news.online.de>,
"Thomas Oltman" <tom.o...@oltman.de> wrote:
> Let's go from here:
>
> > > But I didn't say that "you" (or any observer) is necessary
> > > for them to exist in relationship to each other.
> >
> > Oh yes you did. You said: "it does not follow that there is a
> > reality *independent of our senses."
>
> And I say it again: there is no reality *independent of our senses."
> There was, probably, a reality without "our senses" and there will
> be again. But the past does not exist, nor does the future,
Ahhhh. Very sneaky. Ok, I'll buy that. From a subjective view there is
just this moment. I meant by 'exists' the possibility that a would
could exist without critters to observe it, and I was pointing out that
this very universe was like that for billions of years until we fools
came along and tried to steal all the credit.
> There is no absolute time, time is only relative (to our senses).
Noooo! Relative to a frame of reference. Our senses happen to be in
this frame of reference. Small point, but important.
> You are right, of course: we can do much more than predict, we can
> - and do - describe the structures of reality and the processes that
> flow through them, making pictures of how they evolved from beginning
> to end (though those 2 end points are tricky).
Nothing that the anthropic principle can't handle.
> The structures and the processes determine one another, and we line
> them up on a time line determined by us (by our senses),
by our particular space/time relativistic frame, you mean. Continue...
> relative to the rest of reality. And there it is: The Self.
Nooooo!!! You were doing so well, and then the capital letters!!!!
> A very real thing. At this very moment.
Nooooo!! Just an interpretation to organise the experiences taking
place with these senses at this place in space/time. No 'Self'. No
Genie. No Spookie. Why add the capital letter crap?
Anyway, back to the cool stuff before you went voodoo on us:
> You are right, of course: we can do much more than predict, we can
> - and do - describe the structures of reality and the processes that
> flow through them, making pictures of how they evolved from beginning
> to end (though those 2 end points are tricky).
Tricky indeed! Edward Tryon of the City University of New York first
argued that the Big Bang could be understood as "quantum tunneling from
nothing" back in 1973 [in Nature 246, no. 14 (14 December 1973), page
396].
Then Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University developed a variation of an
inflationary model of the expanding universe which accounts for the
birth of the universe "by quantum tunneling from nothing." "Nothing,"
for Vilenkin, is a "state with no classical space-time...the realm of
unrestrained quantum gravity; it is a rather bizarre state in which all
our basic notions of space, time, energy, entropy, etc., lose their
meaning" [in "Birth of Inflationary Universes," in Physical Review D,
27:12 (1983), page 2851].
As for those two tricky end points, Tryon extrapolated a model from
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle to create a viable model showing how
the entire universe everges *naturally* from nonthing without violating
various conservation laws (as something can't come from nothing in the
naive sense). The cause of a Big Bang is the unstable nature of the
vacuum, or vacuum fluxuation. Once you postulate this, then if you have
one Big Bang, you are going to have an infinite number of them, so it is
like a cosmic heartbeat, with big bangs followed by big crunches,
followed again by big bangs and so forth. Cool, eh?
The vacuum in terms of quantum microstructure is a sea of creation and
annihilation where particle/anti-particle pairs continually come into
existence for incredibly brief periods of time. The effects of these
virtual particles have been empirically confirmed to one part in a
billion.
Tryon went on to demonstrate that what obtains for microcosms can also
obtain for the universe as a whole. The universe can be thought of as a
fifteen-billion year old vacuum fluctuation, and the energy shift from
the pre-big-bang step to now is actually zero! No overall change has
been made in energy from the intitial conditions.
The only condition that has to be met is that the universe is closed,
rather than open. Think of the two-dimensional sphere in 3D. The surface
is 'closed' in that there is only one-side to the surface and it wraps
back upon itself. Now think of space-time as a four-dimensional sphere
(actually there may be up to 11 dimensions) so that it wraps back onto
itself. That's why the big interest in 'dark matter' as we need more
mass than we have found so far to guarantee that the universe is indeed
closed and wraps back upon itself. If it is closed, Tryon writes:
<< "Then it would be topologically impossible for any gravitational flux
lines to escape. If the Universe were viewed from the outside, by a
viewer in some larger space in which the Universe were imbedded, the
absense of gravitational flux would imply that the system had zero
energy. Hence any closed univers has zero energy: ...our Universe may
have zero net values for all conserved quantities. If this be the case,
then our Universe could have appeared from nowhere without violating any
conservation laws....Quantum theory does, however, imply that the vacuum
should be unstable against large scale fluctuations in the presence of a
long-range, negative energy, universal interaction. Gravitation is
precisely such an interaction, so I am encouraged to believed that the
origin and properties of our Universe may be explicable within the
framework of conventional science." --from Edward Tryon, "Is the
Universe a Vacuum Fluctuation?" in "Nature" 246, 1973, pages 396-7) >>
Tryons's model has been improved by sages Alan Guth and Alexander
Vilenkin. Guth demonstrated that the properties we observe in the
universe of homogeneity, isotropy, and apparent flatness can be
accounted for if the universe passed through a de Sitter phase of
exponential inflation, which now has developed into the almost
universally accepted "inflation theory" of today's cosmologists.
As the radius of the the Sitter space aproaches zero as a limit, its
ten-parameter group of motions goes over into the so-called Poincare
group, and then all sorts of weird shit starts happening, like that
past a certain limit you can get from one point to another without
going through the points in-between them, which is the precursor to
the quantum tunneling we hear about these days.
Vilenkin applied the quantum tunneling concept to the universe as a
whole and argued that we can explain how something comes from nothing
after all, but from a very interesting *unstable* nothing, you see.
Now according to Tyron's model, each Big Bang gets its structure from
the collapse or "Big Crunch" of the previous universe, which would be
denoted as the "boundary conditions" of the new universe. A Big Crunch
each time would leave a residual empty structure in which the next
Big Bang would occur.
The cool think that Vilenkin added was to demonstrate that no initial
conditions at the big bang -- that is, no boundary conditions -- are
actually necessary at all for the universe to arise spontaneously from
unstable nothingness, in ways which don't violate any known laws. That
is so cool. That means that universes can fully spontaneously appear out
of the unstable vacuum all the time, bubbling up out of nothing, in the
middle of nowhere. Sort of like the way thoughts do.
DharmaTroll
aeholling <hs...@buddhist.com> wrote:
> DharmaTroll wrote:
>
> > Moving forward to the 20th century, we have Alfred Korzybski's neo-
> > Kantian dictum that "The map is not the territory"; or, as Gregory
> > Bateson further explained, "a mental representation is not the thing
> > represented."
Ardie:
> The above errs. For us, the "thing", when it become 'equipment'
> (cf. Heidegger), is almost entirely representational.
No. While Heigegger is a phenomenologist, claiming that some
philosopher at some point in history has a different point of view
hardly means that I have erred. Really, Ardie! You can be so silly.
> Bateson should understand that it is exceedingly difficult to peel
> off the categories of reason from the thing itself.
Sure. Maybe it is impossible for us. But that again is an epistemic
problem about our knowing, and not an ontological problem about the
actual universe.
Heidegger discerned between things that were present-at-hand, which is
just plain stuff, and ready-to-hand, which is the equipment you are
talking about, and Dasein, or a sentient being whose being is at issue
for it.
The point of 'equipment' for Heidegger was that we subjectively know
things first and most prior as ready-to-hand. An example is that your
computer is known for its function and our relationship to it. Only
when the darn thing crashes does it then reveal itself as stuff or as a
present-at-hand object. But Heidegger's view again is from a
phenomenology perspective, and is from a subjective point of view, and
not a scientific one. Both views are important in dealing with
different issues.
The coolest thing about Heidegger's talk of 'equipment' is that it
renders everything interconnected in what he called a 'referential
context'. Interestingly, this very much correlates to Dependent
Origination. Let me explain.
According to Heidegger, there cannot be a self-existing hammer, all by
itself. A 'hammer' can only be a hammer because of its function (as
equipment) of hammering. To understand a hammer, you also have to
understand 'nail' and 'wood'. But that's not all. You also have to
understand people and human needs, such as the human need for shelter.
The whole thing mushrooms, and it turns out that there can't be a
hammer without the whole universe existing in relation to it.
In this sense, the world of *concepts* is completely interdependent and
consciousness and human culture is needed for its existence. However,
when we are talking about the physical world, which existed before we
came along with all our concepts, abstractions, and symbols, then we
are talking about a different matter (no pun intended).
> Some would argue that it can't be done; that even the thing itself
> is abstract thought (pure being or the same, pure nothing).
Yet that is exactly the kind of nonsense that Bateson and Korzybski are
warning us about: confusing the map with the territory. To claim that
the thing itself is abstract thought is to eat the menu and not the
meal. What is known as a use/mention error. Such mental masturbation
about 'pure being' and 'pure nothing' and equating them is laughable
nonsense. Just the play of words.
--DT
Mike Austin
deja.com> writes
>Hi Mike Austin and Tom Oltman!!!
>
>First, In article <Rec4OQAQ...@clara.net>,
> Mike Austin <mi...@lamrim.org.uk> wrote:
>
>> Hi DT,
>>
>> I don't want to get into another lengthy dialogue, but I presume
>> you are not asserting that mind is an emerging property of the
>> existing physical universe? Just a simple yes or no would suffice.
>
>No! Of course I *am* asserting that mind is an emerging property of
>organised systems withing the existing physical universe.
Oh dear me! It's worse than I thought!
--
Mike Austin
soma junkie
>>No! Of course I *am* asserting that mind is an emerging property of
>>organised systems withing the existing physical universe.
"There is a plenum - recent experiments in quantum physics tend to back this up
- a holographic plenum of information. All information is everywhere.
Information that is not here is nowhere. Information stands outside of time in
a kind of eternity - an eternity that does not have a temporal existence about
which one may say, "It always existed." It does not have temporal duration of
any sort. It is eternity. We are not primarily biological, with mind emerging
as a kind of iridescence, a kind of epiphenomenon at the higher levels of
organization of biology. We are hyperspatial objects of some sort that cast a
shadow into matter. The shadow in matter is our physical organism."
~ Terence McKenna
brian
/(o\
\o)/
Son Myoung Jae
obtain present temporary happiness* and the cause for the ultimate happiness
of buddhahood. ... These black rays enter and merge into oneself, so one
thinks that one has taken on the suffering of all other beings.>>
Now are those descriptions symbolic or realistic?
Jigme>The Buddha's response to such queries was that neither category quite
fits the case. Like a true Zen master, he might even have called that
querent a fool. This is because the dichotomy or axis by which you frame
the issue in your mind is strictly literalist and dualistic whereas the
particular practice described is aimed at overcoming both erroneous views.
That the above words are broadly psychological as opposed to narrowly
representational would be obvious enough for even George W. Bush to grasp.
The difference between an intellectually challenged Bush and a willfully
ignorant Tang is that, while the former simply lacks the intellectual
subtlety to process the information, the later suffers from such a state of
hyperactive intellectual ferment that he is incapable of dropping the narrow
representational schemes through which he filters reality.
Fortunately, there is a cure. The practices of Buddhism - from Vajrayana to
Zen - are aimed at loosening those rigid structural frameworks and leading
one from intellectual egoism to unbiased receptivity.
The Vajrayana methods of moving beyond discursive thought, however, might
prove unsuitable for those who are so rigid and defensive. Instead Zen
treatment might be indicated since such mental diddlers often need to be
slapped around a bit to reestablish a link to mundane reality. I would
highly recommend some time engaged in silent and humble work at Old Freedom
Monastery.
DharmaTroll
Tang the Merciless <tang_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> DharmaTroll wrote: <<Oh, big whoop. Sure, the word is never the
> thing itself, but symbols and representations certainly can be
> useful; and nobody expects the symbol to be reality, only to
> represent it. As it turns out, we choose concepts for their
> *usefulness*, not for their *completeness*, you silly rogue.
> So all your crap about "our baskets and cages are incoherent
> within themselves" is ridiculous, Tang.
>
> And this is nothing unique in Buddhism. [snip]
>
> Moving forward to the 20th century, we have Alfred Korzybski's
> neo-Kantian dictum that "The map is not the territory"; or, as
> Gregory Bateson further explained, "a mental representation is
> not the thing represented."
>
> This isn't some magical mystical secret that you have grokked,
> Tang, and now are imparting on the ignorant masses. It's common
> knowledge, and you aren't saying anything new, you rogue:
> you're just using a lot of big words to confuse things, just like
> your guru Hegel. Heh.
>
> In the below snip from his 1933 _Science and Sanity_, Korzybski
> clearly articulates that as the map is not the territory, words
> are not the things they represent. Rather, they preserve
> structure, patterns. You *do* know the difference between
> content andstructure, don't you Tang?>>
> Hahahahahahahahaha!!!
>
> What you say is quite agreeable to me,
So you agree then that DT is right?! Heh!
> but quite disagreable to the Platonists, the Aristotelians,
> the Brahmanists/Hinduists, the followers of the Tantra...
In other words, your own silly stereotypes and caricatures of other
people, which you then refute.
As Klaus so astutely pointed out yesterday:
> << Hahahahahahahahahaha!!! Honestly, Tang.
>
> You say you "only need to read words":
> it is *you* who take their words realistically and literally....
>
> Poor Tang. I can imagine you sitting on your cushion, trying to
> practice Tong-len and then getting angry when only some snot
> comes out of your nostrils. Now who is a literalist? >>
Klaus has a good point, Tang: you tend to only knock over the straw-men
which are your own creation. Certainly there are a few posters who fit
the silly descriptions of the people you attack, such as Ardie, for
example, who writes "even the thing itself is abstract thought (pure
being or the same, pure nothing)". And of course, that psycho KiSSer is
back. But in general, Tang, you have been running around labeling
people 'Brahmanists' the way Senator McCarthy ran around labeling
everyone as 'communists' in the 50's. Get a grip, Tang.
--DT
Son Myoung Jae
yourself empty of all your negative characteristics*, everything that has
depressed or stressed you, everything you feel as bad about yourself,
*literally seeing it all pouring out, and leaving you transparent like a
rainbow*. Just visualizing that helps you to forget that you are depressed."
So how symbolic is that? By the way, this is a mere variation on the
Tong-len theme. All very Gnostic.
Jigme>That you need to frame things in such artificialist terms as
"Gnosticism" speaks of the extreme rigidity of your mental framework.
The passage cited describes a practice for loostening (toward the end of
eventually dropping) all affective/intellectual frameworks until one is
free of and unburdoned by them (transparent).
You parrot "Buddhism is dropping" but show no sign of understanding.
Daryl
DharmaTroll (dharm...@my-deja.com) wrote...
>
...
>Now according to Tyron's model, each Big Bang gets its structure from
>the collapse or "Big Crunch" of the previous universe, which would be
>denoted as the "boundary conditions" of the new universe. A Big Crunch
>each time would leave a residual empty structure in which the next
>Big Bang would occur.
>
>The cool think that Vilenkin added was to demonstrate that no initial
>conditions at the big bang -- that is, no boundary conditions -- are
>actually necessary at all for the universe to arise spontaneously from
>unstable nothingness, in ways which don't violate any known laws. That
>is so cool. That means that universes can fully spontaneously appear out
>of the unstable vacuum all the time, bubbling up out of nothing, in the
>middle of nowhere. Sort of like the way thoughts do.
>
> --DT
Okay DT, you've convinced me. God isn't such a nutty notion
after all. I just love the idea that an unstable vacuum is
nothing.
--
Daryl - 2 email me, remove the 2's
http://www.ajiva.com/daryl/rel/
Daryl
>
>In article <90vilr$khv$1...@news.eol.ca>,
> kwans...@eol222.ca (Daryl) wrote:
>
>> >But thanks for mentioning Deutsch, Pi Chi. I have bought his
>> >book on your recommendation, yet haven't gotten into it yet.
>> >I will try to do so over the holidays.
>>
>> So, like, come back and explain it, will ya?
>>
>> --
>> Daryl
>
>Oh, I can do that now. Heck, I'll let David do it himself. Below are
>the 'crib notes' to Deutsch's book, an article which appeared in
>Frontiers magazine in December 1998.
>
> --DT
>
>
><< http://www.qubit.org/people/david/Articles/Frontiers.html
Great article DT. I even basically understood it. Thanks!
Klaus Schmetterling
"Tang Huyen"
> Hahahahahahahahahaha!!! Honestly, Joy. Have you just dropped down from
Mars or
> what?
<Description of Chenresig practice to fight depression>
> So how symbolic is that? By the way, this is a mere variation on the
Tong-len
> theme. All very Gnostic.
IMO to practice Buddhism in order to fight depression, to heal cancer, to
allow oneself to contaminate others with aids, to achieve oblivion etc. is
to practice it for the wrong reasons. And to present Buddhism as being able
to achieve these things is a mistake. It is not very helpful.
DharmaTroll
soma...@aol.com (soma junkie) wrote:
> "There is a plenum - recent experiments in quantum physics
What particular experiments? References, please.
> tend to back this up - a holographic plenum of information.
> All information is everywhere. Information that is not here is
> nowhere. Information stands outside of time in a kind of eternity -
No quantum physics claim has ever backup up *that* statement.
The claim "outside of time" itself is incoherent, and comes from some
sort of pre-relativistic physics period of time.
This sounds like an obsolete religious view being falsely plastered
onto quantum physics. My guess is that it is straight out of Plato.
> an eternity that does not have a temporal existence about
> which one may say, "It always existed." It does not have temporal
> duration of any sort. It is eternity.
What do you mean by 'eternity'? Unchanging?
> We are hyperspatial objects of some sort that cast a shadow into
> matter. The shadow in matter is our physical organism."
That is from the cave scene in Plato's _Republic_.
> ~ Terence McKenna
>
> brian
Ok, this is all a quote.
I just did a search of "Terence McKenna" and found that he is a hippie
who did tons of drugs and was into Shamanism. His claims about quantum
physics are nonsensical and the rest of his talk is swiped from Plato
and Shamanism and the run of the mill New Age babble.
The web sites are full of hilarious quotes from McKenna such as, "At
still higher doses, psilocybin triggers this activity in the language-
forming capacity of the brain that manifests as song and vision.
Psilocybin may have synergized the emergence of higher forms of psychic
organization out of primitive protohuman animals. It can be seen as a
kind of evolutionary enzyme, or evolutionary catalyst." Boy it would
have been fun to have gotten stoned with this guy, don't you think?
Now Brian, I suspect you are one of Tang's henchmen, offering up a
passage by a drugged-up shamanist hippie who stole his ideas right out
of Plato, so that Tang the Merciless may then babble about Platonists,
Shamanists, Brahmanists, and then include the fine folks who seriously
practise Tibetan Buddhism in with this crowd, wrongly equating TB with
freakazoids like this McKenna fellow. You're the guy in the back of the
volleyball court that sets the ball up for Tang to slam it over the
net, aren't you?
(Yeah, I know: you've never heard of Tang the Merciless, nor have you
posted on artb before, and you tend to mostly post on alt.magick and
alt.drugs.psychedelics, right? But you still will serve to feed Tang's
fire.)
Oh, some interesting news: this Terrence McKenna seems to finally have
overdosed and "joined the ancestors at 2:15 a.m. Pacific time, April 3,
2000", according to one site. Now we can only pray that KiSSer Omadman
joins the ancestors as well, and then the world will be short even one
*more* babbling fruitcake. Hahahahahaha.
Maury Markowitz
> No! Of course I *am* asserting that mind is an emerging property of
> organised systems withing the existing physical universe.
Isn't it *way* early to state anything like this? (nless you _require_ it
to be so, as some do) What's more complex, a galaxy or a human brain? Can we
answer that question in any meaningful fashion?
> Nooooo!! Just an interpretation to organise the experiences taking
> place with these senses at this place in space/time. No 'Self'. No
> Genie. No Spookie. Why add the capital letter crap?
_That_ is a _very_ debatable point. No, I am not invoking some sort of
non-naturalism here, but the specific claim that "self" is nothing more than
a term we give to a set of events seems to fly in the face of a lot of
developmental research.
Maury
DharmaTroll
"Maury Markowitz" <maury@remove_this.sympatico.ca.invalid> wrote:
> I am not invoking some sort of non-naturalism here, but the specific
> claim that "self" is nothing more than a term we give to a set of
> events seems to fly in the face of a lot of developmental research.
>
> Maury
Actually, I don't know any research that supports a self or soul
independent of a brain. AFAIK, the developmental research is piled high
and deep on the side of the naturalist. Btw, look how your biased
language "nothing more than" and "set of events" is begging for a
spook to be added, as you don't acknowledge the incredible
organisation and complexity involved in this brain process which we
call 'consciousness'.
I'd be interested in knowing what study in particular you have in mind,
as I haven't ever come across any such research.
I think that the problem is stated most clearly by Daniel Dennett, who
calls this the fear of "creeping mechanism," which seems to threaten
our role as autonomous agents, and along with it much we hold dear:
personal responsibility, control of one’s destiny, spontaneity, and
what we identify with as a 'self'.
The question is, how founded is that fear? And I say, it is a totally
irrational fear. I claim that none of these things rests upon a claim
that there exists some non-physical further fact added to the mix.
That's really the issue here.
Daryl
Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus (clau...@empire.net) wrote...
>
>On 13 Dec 2000 06:34:36 GMT, kwans...@eol222.ca (Daryl) wrote:
>
>>In article <916efh$c9i$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>
>>DharmaTroll (dharm...@my-deja.com) wrote...
>>>
>>...
>>>Now according to Tyron's model, each Big Bang gets its structure from
>>>the collapse or "Big Crunch" of the previous universe, which would be
>>>denoted as the "boundary conditions" of the new universe. A Big Crunch
>>>each time would leave a residual empty structure in which the next
>>>Big Bang would occur.
>>>
>>>The cool think that Vilenkin added was to demonstrate that no initial
>>>conditions at the big bang -- that is, no boundary conditions -- are
>>>actually necessary at all for the universe to arise spontaneously from
>>>unstable nothingness, in ways which don't violate any known laws. That
>>>is so cool. That means that universes can fully spontaneously appear out
>>>of the unstable vacuum all the time, bubbling up out of nothing, in the
>>>middle of nowhere. Sort of like the way thoughts do.
>>>
>>> --DT
>
>
>If the universe did arise spontaneously then in my view it would have
>occurred as the result of a discontinuity. Change from non-existence
>to existence would be a discontinuity. Discontinuous equations produce
>fractals. The universe is self-similar, so it has fractal properties.
>Could it be that the universe is a fractal?
Could it be that a fractal is an object of mind which demonstrates
by it's very similarity to natural events how our minds work when
perceiving those events?
>If there is a universe, and another universe arises, don't they become
>subsets of the universe as a whole?
One would think so except that physicists seem to have developed
a special restricted sense of "universe" separate from the
common "all that is" sense. I can't help but see "multiverse"
as just a fancier more complex universe. It's a cool theory
still, although it's philosophical significance eludes me a
little.
> Wouldn't that lead to a steady
>state? (Assuming that universes are appearing all the time.) That
>would imply that the universe has no actual beginning.
Back to the drawing board. :)
>>Okay DT, you've convinced me. God isn't such a nutty notion
>>after all. I just love the idea that an unstable vacuum is
>>nothing.
>
>If God exists, then it is the universe itself, and we are the "eyes"
>of it.
You won't have to work too hard to sell me on that idea.
Maury Markowitz
message news:6iif3t0rq71lobeap...@4ax.com...
> Yes. The galaxy contains many billion human brains and probably a lot
> of non-human ones too. The galaxy is therefore more complex.
So why don't they seem to be intelligent? No, containing intelect is not
the same as having one - I can contain carbon atoms, that doesn't make me a
carbon atom.
If a galaxy is more complex than the brain, why aren't we playing chess
with them if this is nothing more than complexity? I know, it's not the same
KIND of complexity, but that's exactly my point.
Maury
Maury Markowitz
> Actually, I don't know any research that supports a self or soul
> independent of a brain.
But I do know a lot that clearly suggests that the sense of "self"
suddenly turns on in humans at about 18 months of age. Clear changes take
place at this point, for instance the child starts using the word "I", and
they can make decisions based on the understanding of another person's
mental state (which they can't before). Similar events happen in some of the
other primates, and dolphins I believe.
The actual complexity of the brain before and after this time is basically
the same. Of course emergence is all about that "basically", but with the
massive differences between the human brain and the other primates (for
instance) it does not appear that you can simply say "x connections equals
sense of self".
> I'd be interested in knowing what study in particular you have in mind,
> as I haven't ever come across any such research.
I think that's because you misnuderstood what I was saying. But New
Scientist has a series of thought provoking articles on the topic over the
last few months. Go nuts.
> I think that the problem is stated most clearly by Daniel Dennett, who
> calls this the fear of "creeping mechanism," which seems to threaten
> our role as autonomous agents, and along with it much we hold dear:
> personal responsibility, control of one’s destiny, spontaneity, and
> what we identify with as a 'self'.
Well I don't know (or care) about this. What I do know is that a sense of
self does not appear to be some linearly explainable function of raw
complexity.
Maury
Son Myoung Jae
depression, to heal cancer, to allow oneself to contaminate others with
aids, to achieve oblivion etc. is to practice it for the wrong reasons. And
to present Buddhism as being able to achieve these things is a mistake. It
is not very helpful.
Jigme>Not precisely, at least according to the Buddha. If you are
suggesting that Buddhism should not be practiced toward the end of personal
gain, oddly enough, that particular appeal is employed by the Buddha in the
sutras. Dukha niroda - overcoming angst - and avoidance of suffering are
examples. Desire for nibbana was as well, and it was upheld as a valid
motivation in the practice that leads to the extinction of desire.
Yet another sutra describes certain practices aimed at overcoming fear,
since that is seen as a needless obstacle or hindrance on the path.
Certainly depression is another such hindrance and the Buddha did not look
down his nose at employing Buddhist methods to deal with such emotional
issues.
Now, I suppose, to finish off this post in true trb fashion, I should
conclude with an ad hominim comment about certain trb posters who are
emotional trainwrecks with Buddhism only appearing to make them worse.
Noel Friesen
"NeoLazarus" <rwnos...@alaskancrypt.net> wrote in message
news:3A3447AD...@alaskancrypt.net...
> Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 10 Dec 2000 19:48:24 GMT, DharmaTroll
> > <dharm...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> >
> > >When a quantum computer delivers the output of such a computation, we
> > >shall know that those intermediate results must have been computed
> > >somewhere, because they were needed to produce the right answer. So I
> > >issue this challenge to those who still cling to a single-universe
> > >world view: if the universe we see around us is all there is, where are
> > >quantum computations performed? I have yet to receive a plausible
> > >reply.
> >
> > The multiverse IS the universe.
>
> ta-da!
> everything and all is possible and probable
Everything is. Nothing is.
Isn't all this about Emptiness and Form? There seems to me no reason
why Emptiness shouldn't give rise to many universal forms so.... is this
what is meant by Emptiness and Form?
Emptiness is what came "before" the big bang when the rules of Form aren't
established, so Emptiness gives rise to our present condition at this
moment.
I just realized i'm going around in circles. It's already been said clearly
and succinctly.
Emptiness is Form. Form exactly emptiness.
Angelo
Tang Huyen <thu...@bu.edu> wrote:
<snip>
> Just visualizing that helps you to forget that you are depressed."
>
> So how symbolic is that? By the way, this is a mere variation on the
> Tong-len theme. All very Gnostic.
Gnostic it may be - therpauetic? I very much doubt it. Trying to do
this when depressed is likely to send you over the edge. I wouldn't
recommend it! Just take the Prozac and get a good cognitive therapist.
Angelo
Angelo
"Klaus Schmetterling" <klaus.sch...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> IMO to practice Buddhism in order to fight depression, to heal
> cancer, to allow oneself to contaminate others with aids, to achieve
> oblivion etc. is to practice it for the wrong reasons. And to present
> Buddhism as being able to achieve these things is a mistake. It is
> not very helpful.
One can't really practice the Dharma very well while in the grips of
intense physical or mental pain. The Buddha that appears in the hell
realms, primarily offers relief from suffering. If certain practices
give relief from illness and pain - thereby allowing one to practice
more fully - then I don't see anything wrong with that.
But lets not kid ourselves that meditation can cure every ill - in the
case of mental illness meditation can make it worse! Better to have a
healthy psyche to start with.
DharmaTroll
"Maury Markowitz" <maury@remove_this.sympatico.ca.invalid> wrote:
> > Actually, I don't know any research that supports a self or soul
> > independent of a brain.
>
> But I do know a lot that clearly suggests that the sense of "self"
> suddenly turns on in humans at about 18 months of age.
Well, a 'sense' of self, sure. And baboons have it as well. The baboon,
when seeing a blotch of red paint on its reflection in the mirror, will
move its hand to to spot. So will a baby at 18 months of age.
However, an organised 'sense of self' is not the same as there existing
some spook or genie which is independent of the body/brain.
> The actual complexity of the brain before and after this time is
> basically the same.
Say What??? The brain is constantly *growing* at that age, increasing
in neural pathways and complexity at an amazing rate daily at that age.
The neural pathways are growing more complex constantly. Children at
that age with bright, complex toys grow heavier brains, for instance.
> > I think that the problem is stated most clearly by Daniel Dennett,
> > who calls this the fear of "creeping mechanism," which seems to
> > threaten our role as autonomous agents, and along with it much we
> > hold dear: personal responsibility, control of one’s destiny,
> > spontaneity, and what we identify with as a 'self'.
>
> Well I don't know (or care) about this.
You don't care about personal responsibility, control of one's destiny,
or spontaneity? Those are really the important things to care about.
In fact, these are the issues which are most likely to lead one to
cling to believing in souls or selves independent of bodies. I'm trying
to get to the real issue, about which you don't care. Next, you try to
dismiss a silly claim which nobody would ever claim:
> What I do know is that a sense of self does not appear to be some
> linearly...
Well we can stop there. Of course not. I have no problem dismissing
silly over-simplified views which nobody believes. Who said linear
anything? It's probably a stepwise function in any case, as we develop
through stages, but that wouldn't imply a self. (Or are you claiming
that a soul enterys the body at 18 months old? Usually the claim is at
conception; in the Catholic Church it was at the 'quickening' when the
baby first kicks, but I've never heard a claim that souls enter at the
age of 18 months before. Are you claiming this?)
I don't know what you are disaggreeing with, but it's not anything
that I said. I think you've set up a strawman to knock down here, and
aren't really yet considering what I'm saying.
For example, *nobody* I've every read has every claimed that mind is an:
> explainable function of raw complexity.
Complexity is only one component, and is a necessary, but certainly not
a sufficient condition. And the self-concept is developed in many
stages and many directions, and is a much different topic that
arguments for a spook, or anything non-physical or separable from
brains.
As for the self-concept, I am especially fond of George Herbert Mead.
Mead, a good friend of the pragmatist Dewey, founded the school in
sociology known as Symbolic Interaction, or the Chicago school. In his
most famous work, _Mind, Self, and Society_, Mead makes a case for
individual minds or selves as as being emergent from the communication
process between organisms.
Mead challenged the received view that separate individuals collectively
form a society. He saw society or culture as the more basic layer, and
selves were constructed/emerged from interaction with others. We learn
to take the role of specific others, for example, and then we learn to
create an abstract 'generalised other' from such interactions, from
which we view ourselves from the outside as a person. That abstracted
generalised other eventually gets internalised as our sense of self.
So in Mead's view, who we are is deeply interconnected and dependent
upon our environment, and the idea that selves are basic and separable
from bodies, or more importantly, from society, would be nonsensical.
DharmaTroll
"Maury Markowitz" <maury@remove_this.sympatico.ca.invalid> wrote:
> "Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus" wrote:
> > Yes. The galaxy contains many billion human brains and probably a
> > lot of non-human ones too. The galaxy is therefore more complex.
No, the brain is incredibly more complex than the galaxy. It is the
interconnections among the components that determines complexity.
A brain is made of neurons (nerve cells) which communicate via
junctions called synapses. Neurons are extremely simply units that can
be viewed as switches. What creates the complexity of the brain is the
synapses that connect the neurons. A human brain has about 100 billion
neurons and 60 trillion synapses. This not only outnumbers stars in a
galaxy, but the important factor is the dynamic action among them.
Under appropriate conditions, a neuron emits an action potential, which
a synapsis converts into a neuro-transmitter and sends to other
neurons. This chemical messenger can cause each receiving neuron to
either excite (start firing an action potential of its own) or inhibit
(stop firing the action potential).
> If a galaxy is more complex than the brain, why aren't we playing
> chess with them if this is nothing more than complexity?
Again, galaxies aren't even as complex as the brains by a long stretch.
Also, galaxies are relatively static, and do not process information
selectively in any way that would resemble a brain.
At birth a newborn brain has fewer synapses than an adult brain. While
the brain comes with some synapses pre-wired, many are formed in
response to the environment. The number of synapses increases rapidly
during the first two years of life. Concurrent with the explosion of
synapses is a rapid pruning away of those that do not get used. The
brain is built through the interplay of genes and experience. The
newborn brain comes equipped with a set of genetically based rules that
specify how learning takes place. Then the brain is literally shaped by
experience.
The infant's brain organizes itself under the influence of waves
of "trophic" factors. Such factors are chemicals that promote the
growth and interconnections of nerve cells. They are released in waves
so that different regions of the brain become connected sequentially.
Again, the process is modulated by experience.
Besides the creation and deletion of synapses, the brain undergoes
another phenomenon that shapes its ability to "think": synapses change,
again, in response to the environment. Synapses are not simple links
between neurons, they are more or less effective in implementing such a
link.
A hypothesis first formulated in the late 1940's is that the basis for
neural development lays in a selective strengthening or inhibition of
synapses. Synapses that get used are reinforced, while synapses that
are not used are inhibited. This dual process molds the structure of
the brain in a Darwinian fashion: the more "useful" synapses are the
ones that survive. This is what's called a "stochastic" process, and is
how we learn and retain memories.
Anyway, I'm just describing what we knew about the complexity of the
brain before 1950. The kinds of things we have been discovering in the
last couple of decades are amazing, and we still have just scratched
the surface.
DharmaTroll
No.
> There seems to me no reason why Emptiness shouldn't give rise
> to many universal forms so.... is this
> what is meant by Emptiness and Form?
No.
> Emptiness is what came "before" the big bang when
No. Not in the Buddhist sense. In physics, the "pregnant nothing" is
more like everything averaging to zero than nothing in the sense of a
lack of things. Imagine a rope with two waves coming at each other in
opposite directions. when they pass each other, for a moment the rope
is completely flat, as the waves cancel out. Then they continue on.
That's like the 'nothing' in the universe.
In Buddhism, empty means something else. It means empty of self or
essence. That is all things are empty in that they are not self-
existing indivisible separate essences, but rather are collections of
other things, and that they are never solely their own cause, but are
at least in part caused by external causes.
> I just realized i'm going around in circles.
Yep.
> It's already been said clearly and succinctly.
>
> Emptiness is Form. Form exactly emptiness.
But the meaning has been lost in translation, and now people take it as
a fortune cookie slogan and think this means anything. It has nothing
to do with physics.
Tang Huyen
Son Myoung Jae wrote: <<Now, I suppose, to finish off this post in true trb
fashion, I should conclude with an ad hominim comment about certain trb posters
who are emotional trainwrecks with Buddhism only appearing to make them
worse.>>
Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!! Honestly, Jigme.
Just within an hour of your post, Angelo commented first on my post in this
thread, then on Joy/Klaus' post also in this thread:
<<Gnostic it may be - therapeutic? I very much doubt it. Trying to do this when
depressed is likely to send you over the edge. I wouldn't recommend it! Just
take the Prozac and get a good cognitive therapist.>>
<<One can't really practice the Dharma very well while in the grips of intense
physical or mental pain. The Buddha that appears in the hell realms, primarily
offers relief from suffering. If certain practices give relief from illness and
pain - thereby allowing one to practice more fully - then I don't see anything
wrong with that.
But lets not kid ourselves that meditation can cure every ill - in the case of
mental illness meditation can make it worse! Better to have a healthy psyche to
start with.>>
So, Jigme, do you think that Angelo was running ad hominem attacks on certain
TRB posters who are emotional trainwrecks with Buddhism only appearing to make
them worse?
Tang Huyen
PR
The followers of Theravada are moralists,
of Mahayana compassionate cosmologists
and of Vajrayana spiritual magicians.
--
Peter Reber
"Life knows its needs"
Maury Markowitz
> No, the brain is incredibly more complex than the galaxy. It is the
> interconnections among the components that determines complexity.
If you say so, but I'm not at all convinced of this fact.
However this simply demonstrates my point, there are different _kinds_ of
complexity. Thus my hesitation to consider any claim that complexity gives
rise to intelligence all on it's own. In fact it's not clear that the system
needs to be complex at all, it might just need connectivity, or perhaps
coherence.
My issue here is that you have drawn a straight line, self-awareness (or
was it intellect "period"?) comes from complexity. I say it's far to early
to make that claim.
> A brain is made of neurons (nerve cells) which communicate via
> junctions called synapses.
[snip]
Yes, I'm very much aware of how a brain works in the conventional model.
However the conventional model has any number of problems (apparent ones
anyway) and is poorly understood anyway. Once again it's simply too early to
say one way or the other.
> be viewed as switches. What creates the complexity of the brain is the
> synapses that connect the neurons. A human brain has about 100 billion
> neurons and 60 trillion synapses.
There are something on the order of 4 quadrillion transistors connected on
the internet. Yet we have not seen the internet become self-aware (at least
no one's noticed). Numbers don't impress me in this regard.
> Again, galaxies aren't even as complex as the brains by a long stretch.
Only if you count stars and say that's all there is to it. Are you willing
to do that? What about gravitational interactions? Alfven interactions?
Potential interactions with WIMPs, strings, etc.?
> Anyway, I'm just describing what we knew about the complexity of the
> brain before 1950. The kinds of things we have been discovering in the
> last couple of decades are amazing, and we still have just scratched
> the surface.
Well exactly. So any statement saying complexity = anything must be
premature, right?
Maury
Maury Markowitz
> However, an organised 'sense of self' is not the same as there existing
> some spook or genie which is independent of the body/brain.
And what led you to believe I was suggesting anything of the sort is a
complete mystery.
> You don't care about personal responsibility, control of one's destiny,
> or spontaneity?
Well this appears to be turning into a Matti thread. See ya.
Maury
Thomas Oltman
"DharmaTroll" <dharm...@my-deja.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:916efh$c9i$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> Hi Mike Austin and Tom Oltman!!!
>
> Next, In article <9167iq$bii$1...@news.online.de>,
> "Thomas Oltman" <tom.o...@oltman.de> wrote:
>
> > Let's go from here:
> >
> > > > But I didn't say that "you" (or any observer) is necessary
> > > > for them to exist in relationship to each other.
> > >
> > > Oh yes you did. You said: "it does not follow that there is a
> > > reality *independent of our senses."
> >
> > And I say it again: there is no reality *independent of our senses."
> > There was, probably, a reality without "our senses" and there will
> > be again. But the past does not exist, nor does the future,
>
> Ahhhh. Very sneaky. Ok, I'll buy that. From a subjective view there is
> just this moment. I meant by 'exists' the possibility that a would
> could exist without critters to observe it, and I was pointing out that
> this very universe was like that for billions of years until we fools
> came along and tried to steal all the credit.
>
> > There is no absolute time, time is only relative (to our senses).
>
> Noooo! Relative to a frame of reference. Our senses happen to be in
> this frame of reference. Small point, but important.
>
> > You are right, of course: we can do much more than predict, we can
> > - and do - describe the structures of reality and the processes that
> > flow through them, making pictures of how they evolved from beginning
> > to end (though those 2 end points are tricky).
>
> Nothing that the anthropic principle can't handle.
>
> > The structures and the processes determine one another, and we line
> > them up on a time line determined by us (by our senses),
>
> by our particular space/time relativistic frame, you mean. Continue...
>
> > relative to the rest of reality. And there it is: The Self.
>
> Nooooo!!! You were doing so well, and then the capital letters!!!!
>
> > A very real thing. At this very moment.
>
> Nooooo!! Just an interpretation to organise the experiences taking
> place with these senses at this place in space/time. No 'Self'. No
> Genie. No Spookie. Why add the capital letter crap?
>
Capital letters? Because it's a name, a proper noun, the title of a story.
No Genie, no spookie, just a name like Dharma Troll . The name of the story
I tell myself and have told to me. It's all about how the world looked from
my particular space/time relativitic frame (to my senses). All about the
past with guesses about the future.
> Anyway, back to the cool stuff before you went voodoo on us:
>
> > You are right, of course: we can do much more than predict, we can
> > - and do - describe the structures of reality and the processes that
> > flow through them, making pictures of how they evolved from beginning
> > to end (though those 2 end points are tricky).
Amongst all the stories about those end points, I like those best which have
the universe breathing, in,out ... ín, out... in, out... People who do
breathing medítation tell you to watch those two points.
TomOltman
many tricky end points follow
>
> Tricky indeed! Edward Tryon of the City University of New York first
> argued that the Big Bang could be understood as "quantum tunneling from
> nothing" back in 1973 [in Nature 246, no. 14 (14 December 1973), page
> 396].
>
> Then Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University developed a variation of an
> inflationary model of the expanding universe which accounts for the
> birth of the universe "by quantum tunneling from nothing." "Nothing,"
> for Vilenkin, is a "state with no classical space-time...the realm of
> unrestrained quantum gravity; it is a rather bizarre state in which all
> our basic notions of space, time, energy, entropy, etc., lose their
> meaning" [in "Birth of Inflationary Universes," in Physical Review D,
> 27:12 (1983), page 2851].
>
> As for those two tricky end points, Tryon extrapolated a model from
> Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle to create a viable model showing how
> the entire universe everges *naturally* from nonthing without violating
> various conservation laws (as something can't come from nothing in the
> naive sense). The cause of a Big Bang is the unstable nature of the
> vacuum, or vacuum fluxuation. Once you postulate this, then if you have
> one Big Bang, you are going to have an infinite number of them, so it is
> like a cosmic heartbeat, with big bangs followed by big crunches,
> followed again by big bangs and so forth. Cool, eh?
>
> The vacuum in terms of quantum microstructure is a sea of creation and
> annihilation where particle/anti-particle pairs continually come into
> existence for incredibly brief periods of time. The effects of these
> virtual particles have been empirically confirmed to one part in a
> billion.
>
> Tryon went on to demonstrate that what obtains for microcosms can also
> obtain for the universe as a whole. The universe can be thought of as a
> fifteen-billion year old vacuum fluctuation, and the energy shift from
> the pre-big-bang step to now is actually zero! No overall change has
> been made in energy from the intitial conditions.
>
> The only condition that has to be met is that the universe is closed,
> rather than open. Think of the two-dimensional sphere in 3D. The surface
> is 'closed' in that there is only one-side to the surface and it wraps
> back upon itself. Now think of space-time as a four-dimensional sphere
> (actually there may be up to 11 dimensions) so that it wraps back onto
> itself. That's why the big interest in 'dark matter' as we need more
> mass than we have found so far to guarantee that the universe is indeed
> closed and wraps back upon itself. If it is closed, Tryon writes:
>
> << "Then it would be topologically impossible for any gravitational flux
> lines to escape. If the Universe were viewed from the outside, by a
> viewer in some larger space in which the Universe were imbedded, the
> absense of gravitational flux would imply that the system had zero
> energy. Hence any closed univers has zero energy: ...our Universe may
> have zero net values for all conserved quantities. If this be the case,
> then our Universe could have appeared from nowhere without violating any
> conservation laws....Quantum theory does, however, imply that the vacuum
> should be unstable against large scale fluctuations in the presence of a
> long-range, negative energy, universal interaction. Gravitation is
> precisely such an interaction, so I am encouraged to believed that the
> origin and properties of our Universe may be explicable within the
> framework of conventional science." --from Edward Tryon, "Is the
> Universe a Vacuum Fluctuation?" in "Nature" 246, 1973, pages 396-7) >>
>
> Tryons's model has been improved by sages Alan Guth and Alexander
> Vilenkin. Guth demonstrated that the properties we observe in the
> universe of homogeneity, isotropy, and apparent flatness can be
> accounted for if the universe passed through a de Sitter phase of
> exponential inflation, which now has developed into the almost
> universally accepted "inflation theory" of today's cosmologists.
>
> As the radius of the the Sitter space aproaches zero as a limit, its
> ten-parameter group of motions goes over into the so-called Poincare
> group, and then all sorts of weird shit starts happening, like that
> past a certain limit you can get from one point to another without
> going through the points in-between them, which is the precursor to
> the quantum tunneling we hear about these days.
>
> Vilenkin applied the quantum tunneling concept to the universe as a
> whole and argued that we can explain how something comes from nothing
> after all, but from a very interesting *unstable* nothing, you see.
>
> Now according to Tyron's model, each Big Bang gets its structure from
> the collapse or "Big Crunch" of the previous universe, which would be
> denoted as the "boundary conditions" of the new universe. A Big Crunch
> each time would leave a residual empty structure in which the next
> Big Bang would occur.
>
> The cool think that Vilenkin added was to demonstrate that no initial
> conditions at the big bang -- that is, no boundary conditions -- are
> actually necessary at all for the universe to arise spontaneously from
> unstable nothingness, in ways which don't violate any known laws. That
> is so cool. That means that universes can fully spontaneously appear out
> of the unstable vacuum all the time, bubbling up out of nothing, in the
> middle of nowhere. Sort of like the way thoughts do.
>
DharmaTroll
"Maury Markowitz" <maury@remove_this.sympatico.ca.invalid> wrote:
> "DharmaTroll" <dharm...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
> news:919isq$v5j$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > However, an organised 'sense of self' is not the same as there
> > existing some spook or genie which is independent of the body/brain.
>
> And what led you to believe I was suggesting anything of the sort
What you wrote in your last post, silly.
> > (So) You don't care about personal responsibility, control of
> > one's destiny, or spontaneity?
>
> Well this appears to be turning into a Matti thread. See ya.
Never heard of Matti. Yet the fear that without a self we we would be
lacking in personal responsibility, spontaneity, and control over our
own destinies is often just the emotional punch behind clinging to a
self view.
soma junkie
>I just did a search of "Terence McKenna" and found that he is a hippie
>who did tons of drugs and was into Shamanism. His claims about quantum
>physics are nonsensical and the rest of his talk is swiped from Plato
>and Shamanism and the run of the mill New Age babble.
>
Yeah, I don't believe everything McKenna has to say (and i doubt he did so
either, he was a real avid speculator who never took himself very seriously.)
Yes, he is very heavily influenced by Shamanism and Plato and the Gnostics. I
don't think that the fact that he did drugs invalidates his opinions either. Do
you really think that anyone who does psychedelics are automatically kooks that
should not be heard from? But about him being a New Ager....I read a quote
where he said he wasn't a new-ager, he was for what he called "archaic revival"
not "newage sewage".
>The web sites are full of hilarious quotes from McKenna such as, "At
>still higher doses, psilocybin triggers this activity in the language-
>forming capacity of the brain that manifests as song and vision.
>Psilocybin may have synergized the emergence of higher forms of psychic
>organization out of primitive protohuman animals. It can be seen as a
>kind of evolutionary enzyme, or evolutionary catalyst." Boy it would
>have been fun to have gotten stoned with this guy, don't you think?
>
Fuck yeah, it would have ruled! I would have loved to picked that man's brain.
He explains this theory about mushrooms contributing to the evolution of
mankind very well in his book "Food Of The Gods". You should check it out with
an OPEN MIND and you might be suprised.
>Now Brian, I suspect you are one of Tang's henchmen, offering up a <snip>
I don't know Tang nor do I care about his personal crusades against
whomever....I personally have a distaste for his opinions and don't feel the
need to encourage him. I was merely offering a contrary opinion to see how you
would respond.
>(Yeah, I know: you've never heard of Tang the Merciless, nor have you
>posted on artb before, and you tend to mostly post on alt.magick and
>alt.drugs.psychedelics, right? But you still will serve to feed Tang's
>fire.)
>
Well, I should point out that I don't do any drugs and do not practice magick.
I'm only 24 years old and am very varied in my interests. Tibetan Buddhism is
one of my primary interests, but I do not know enough about it to post on the
newsgroup all the time.
>Oh, some interesting news: this Terrence McKenna seems to finally have
>overdosed and "joined the ancestors at 2:15 a.m. Pacific time, April 3,
>2000", according to one site.
That site was WRONG or you failed to apprehend what was really being said. He
didn't "overdose" he died of an inoperable brain tumor that had NOTHING to do
with his drug usage. He said himself in an interview that he thinks the tumor
was most probably caused by when he used to work with rocket fuels when he was
younger. His doctors assured him that the drug use and the tumor were
completely unrelated.
Now we can only pray that KiSSer Omadman
>joins the ancestors as well, and then the world will be short even one
>*more* babbling fruitcake. Hahahahahaha.
>
> --DT
Hmm. Ok. Hope you're joking.
Well Dharma Troll......I have to say that I have been reading your posts for
quite a while (as a lurker) and I have respect for your knowledge...but as you
claim that McKenna's opinion is "obsolete religious view being falsely
plastered onto quantum physics"...have you ever thought that your views reflect
an atheist/reductionist/existential/materialistic fundamentalist view that you
have falsely plastered onto the dharma?
peace
brian
/(o\
\o)/
DharmaTroll
soma...@aol.com (soma junkie) wrote:
> Dharma Troll wrote
>
> >I just did a search of "Terence McKenna" and found that he is a
> >hippie who did tons of drugs and was into Shamanism. His claims
> >about quantum physics are nonsensical and the rest of his talk
> >is swiped from Plato and Shamanism and New Age babble.
> Yes, he is very heavily influenced by Shamanism and Plato and the
> Gnostics. I don't think that the fact that he did drugs invalidates
> his opinions either. Do you really think that anyone who does
> psychedelics are automatically kooks
No. That would be an ad hominem argumentum, attacking the person and
not the theory. His opinions rest solely on the validity of his
reasoning and evidence.
> he said he wasn't a new-ager, he was for what he called
> "archaic revival" not "newage sewage".
That's a new one.
> He explains this theory about mushrooms contributing to the evolution
> of mankind very well in his book "Food Of The Gods". You should check
> it out with an OPEN MIND and you might be suprised.
I'd rather do some 'shrooms myself and see whether or not *I* evolve.
> >Now Brian, I suspect you are one of Tang's henchmen, offering up a
<snip>
>
> I don't know Tang nor do I care about his personal crusades
I know, but it was a chance to take a pot shot at Tang in passing,
since this kind of shamanism is what Tang accuses everyone of.
> Well, I should point out that I don't do any drugs
Boy are you missing out. Heeheeheehee
> and do not practice magick.
Too bad. I was hoping you'd turn Omadman into a goat, perhaps.
> That site was WRONG or you failed to apprehend what was really
> being said. He didn't "overdose" he died of an inoperable brain
> tumor that had NOTHING to do with his drug usage.
It just said that he died. I added the overdose part to have some fun.
> Well Dharma Troll......I have to say that I have been reading your
> posts for quite a while (as a lurker) and I have respect for your
> knowledge...but as you claim that McKenna's opinion is "obsolete
> religious view being falsely plastered onto quantum physics"
Yes, the fellow reads mystical crap onto quantum inkblots about which
he is clueless. His ideas about mushrooms might be interesting.
> have you ever thought that your views reflect an
> atheist/
Yes, but more non-theist. I see God as a metaphor, not a fact/falsehood
> reductionist/
That's me, with respect to the self and soul
> existential/
Definitely! Existence preceeds essence! Woo Hoo!
> materialistic
Of course! I am a naturalist all the way! (see www.naturalism.org)
> fundamentalist view
No, that stuff I reject. See Tang if you want some fundamentalism.
Or any of these bozos who take sutra strories about reincarnation and
magical powers or walking on water to be true, instead of as metaphors.
> that you have falsely plastered onto the dharma?
I haven't falsely plastered anything. I find connections between these
and I back them up with evidence and reasoning. The quantum babble by
Perennialists tends to be quite nonsensical, however. I am much more
rigorous and critical of a thinker than your intoxicated hero.
I do, btw, have deep respect for Paul Davies' _God and the New Physics_
and his other works and for various books by Fritz Capra. However, this
McKenna fellow is too sloppy and doesn't seem to know what he's talking
about and again is seeing faces in inkblots (which is much easier to do
when one is stoned, btw).
DharmaTroll
"Thomas Oltman" <tom.o...@oltman.de> wrote:
> Amongst all the stories about those end points, I like those best
> which have the universe breathing, in,out ... ín, out... in, out...
Me too.
> People who do breathing medítation tell you to watch those two points.
Yup.
>
> TomOltman
--DT
<< "A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe'; a part
limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and
feelings as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical
delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for
us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few
persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison
by widening our circle of compasion to embrace all living creatures and
the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this
completely but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of
the liberation and a foundation for inner security."
--Albert Einstein >>
Dirk Bruere
"Daryl" <kwans...@eol222.ca> wrote in message
news:90vilr$khv$1...@news.eol.ca...
> In article <90trs5$ppt$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>
> >> > At first glance it would seem that idealism is simpler,
> >> > and that to posit an external world would entail a more
> >> > complex theory requiring more assumptions than simply
> >> > that there is the mind and there are sensations, without
> >> > any so-called 'things' which are 'out-there' that can
> >> > never truly be known. So it appears that Occam's razor
> >> > (following the simpler of two competing views which both
> >> > equally explain the data) favors idealism.
> >> >
> >> > But as your example indicates, it is just the reverse, isn't it?!
> >> >
> >> > For to deny an objective universe one has to add all *sorts*
> >> > of bizarre assumptions to get anything to work out, such as
> >> > that the *entire* universe could have changed to create the
> >> > sensations you experienced.
> >
> >> alas, DT,
> >> I fear your formidable powers of reasoning are failing you! :)
> >
> >You mean because I shamelessly copied that idea right out of Bertrand
> >Russell? It still is a fascinating insight, even if I didn't come up
> >with it.
> >
> >> Even I, with atrophied neurons beyond counting, can see the
> >> flaw in this conclusion. There is in fact *no* 'entire universe'
> >
> >Sure. But I was granting Daryl that, and not quibbling on such matters
> >and simply responding to his example, and showing that the
> >justification of idealism always involves more assumptions than does
> >realism, which is not intuitively obvious at first glance. Daryl had
> >written (jokingly, I hope):
> >
> >>>> Oh no it isn't. What actually happens is that the entire
> >>>> universe suddenly undergoes a massive state change
> >>>> periodically and everyone and everything else adapts...
>
> Ya, I was pointing out the absurdity of the mind-only
> idea, while also hinting that neither idealism nor realism
> obtain the status of "necessary" truth.
Idealism that does not insist *my* mind is the totality of Mind, nor that
memory is necessary for Mind to exist.
Gassho
Dirk
Dirk Bruere
"Mark S D" <mark.sd...@virgin.net.invalid> wrote in message
news:5ts93tgrdfaseoo06...@4ax.com...
>
> The truth shall set us free.
>
Depends on whether one has committed a crime or not.
Dirk
DharmaTroll
"Dirk Bruere" <art...@kbnet.co.uk> wrote:
> Idealism that does not insist *my* mind is the totality of Mind,
> nor that memory is necessary for Mind to exist.
>
> Gassho
> Dirk
Oh hi, Dirk.
Yes, we discussed that earlier in the thread too.
Bishop Berkeley went as far as to claim that this is proof that
God/Mind exists, as God must be constantly observing the table!
As in that famous Oxford limerick:
<< Oh, there was a young man who said, "God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be,
When there's no one about in the quad."
Dear Sir, your astonishment's odd
I'm *always* about in the quad
And that's why the tree
Continues to be,
Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God! >>
--DT
Dirk Bruere
> In article <yAy_5.7734$T%5.11...@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
> "Dirk Bruere" <art...@kbnet.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > Idealism that does not insist *my* mind is the totality of Mind,
> > nor that memory is necessary for Mind to exist.
>
>
> Yes, we discussed that earlier in the thread too.
No doubt.
I've been in Paris working on an ebook.
Returning to AZ and seeing several thousand unread posts tends to bludgeon
the discriminating mind.
Still, I rather doubt that there is anything new to say.
On a related topic, what do you make of 'awareness'? From an introspective
POV it does not depend on memory or sense impressions.
Maybe the lowest common denominator in neural structure underlying
consciousness?
Gassho
Dirk
Tenzin Choedrak
Tang Huyen wrote in message <3A363B58...@yahoo.com>...
>See, DT, wihite/light and black/dark, sending and receiving/taking are
>thought of realitistically and literalistically here.
So, according to you, when Thrangu Rinpoche is teaching his students to
practice compassion by sending out white light to others and taking in
others' suffering with black light, that is a literalistic? So, according
to your misinterpretation, this simple teaching represents the ultimate
truth?
I have explained the relative and absolute truth various times, and so have
many masters (well, to you the Tibetan ones don't even count), but begin
with Chih-I who clearly defined them as a major part of his tradition.
Words are apart of the relative truth, realization is apart of the absolute
truth.
Unless you allow yourself to take your "raw sensations" or any other
teaching or bunch of words as literal --as being contrary to the absolute
truth-- then you cannot take the words of others as any different.
"Practice what you preach and preach what you practice." (as said by the
XII Tai Situpa)
regards...
DharmaTroll
"Dirk Bruere" <art...@kbnet.co.uk> wrote:
> On a related topic, what do you make of 'awareness'?
It's a relationship. First, I suppost that there is always awareness of
something or other. But I find it to be a mysterious process.
> From an introspective POV it does not depend on memory or sense
> impressions.
Say what? From an introspective view, it necessarily depends totally on
memory and sense impressions, I'd say. I have no idea what you possibly
could mean by that statement.
For example, I can think of a direct awareness of a table in front of
me. This involves (1) current sense impressions, in conjunction with (2)
a matching of these sense impressions with memories of experiences
of 'tables'. When there exists such a match, I then say that I am aware
of a table.
Hence, awareness of the table seems to consist of sense impressions,
memories, and a mapping of one to the other. Perhaps you mean that the
awareness is not either the sense impressions or the memories, but
rather is the mapping and matching up of the two. Is that what you mean?
piet...@my-deja.com
>>> Where is your basis in saying that the universe is an illusion?
>>> Everything is in flux, but it exists even if labels can't describe
it.
> >
> >personal experience
> >
> >the universe (or whatever) as we perceive it, describe it, &tc.,
> >isn't necessarily as it might _really_ appear to be, eh? Or is there
> >only human 'truth'?
yes, that is the crux of the 'illusion' allusion, imho.
that, 'it ain't necessarily so', or, as Suzuki roshi
used to say: 'Not always so'.
just like the counting of dimpled chads, the more you count,
the more different results you have, and the assumption that there
is some 'fixed' absolute number that one could arrive at is
just another parochial 'limited human view' due to our
ignorance.
i.e. prior to QM collapse, a superposition of infinite
possibilities obtains.
but which of the possibilities is 'real'?
depends on which universe you happen to be 'in' after the collapse.
maybe its best just to just stop picking and choosing and
be done with all the annoying collapsing hooey altogether, imho.
aka nibbana
e.g. 'make the smallest distinction,
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart'
i.e. the superposition of heaven and earth
fractures/collapses upon the observer's
'picking and choosing'.
Karl Senior
> In article <WsrX5.510$4N5....@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
> "Karl Senior" <karl.s...@virgin.net> wrote:
>
> > so how can you know unconsciousness doesn't exist
> > knowing only consciousness?
> >
> > Karl
> > :o)
>
> That's actually fairly easy to answer, Karl.
Intellectually, maybe..........
Does day follow night or night follow day?
Is day apart from or a part of the same night?
Where does day begin and night end?
Where does conciousness begin and end?
Does it begin and end?
Or is it just another perception created by the thinking mind?
Karl
:o)
NeoLazarus
Karl Senior wrote:
> DharmaTroll <dharm...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
> news:90lo88$cvd$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > In article <WsrX5.510$4N5....@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
> > "Karl Senior" <karl.s...@virgin.net> wrote:
> >
> > > so how can you know unconsciousness doesn't exist
> > > knowing only consciousness?
> > >
> > > Karl
> > > :o)
> >
> > That's actually fairly easy to answer, Karl.
>
> Intellectually, maybe..........
>
> Does day follow night or night follow day?
"In the beginning the universe was void and without form...
then God said 'let there be light'!"
night first, then day... if you buy that old testament stuff.
>
>
> Is day apart from or a part of the same night?
all same, sunglasses can be worn at all times if you
don't mind bumping into stuff...
>
>
> Where does day begin and night end?
sunrise to sunrise... localized, of course.
unless you're Jewish then it's sunset to
sunset...
>
>
> Where does conciousness begin and end?
sunrise to sunrise... localized, of course.
unless you're Jewish then it's sunset to
sunset...
>
>
> Does it begin and end?
begins with 'i' and ends with 't'... it. simple, eh?
>
>
> Or is it just another perception created by the thinking mind?
dang, Karl... you sure know how to kill a party, ol' bean...
but yes -- it's just another perception created by a thinking mind.
>
>
> Karl
> :o)
-NL
(obviously bored at this moment)
Dirk Bruere
> In article <plP_5.9458$T%5.14...@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
> "Dirk Bruere" <art...@kbnet.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > On a related topic, what do you make of 'awareness'?
>
> It's a relationship. First, I suppost that there is always awareness of
> something or other. But I find it to be a mysterious process.
>
> > From an introspective POV it does not depend on memory or sense
> > impressions.
> Say what? From an introspective view, it necessarily depends totally on
> memory and sense impressions, I'd say. I have no idea what you possibly
> could mean by that statement.
OK. It wasn't too clear.
I mean a 'core' that is purely aware that it exists, independent of sense
impressions, memory etc.
It's what I always used to find as an irreducible minimum when tripping.
Gassho
Dirk
Tang Huyen
Pooka wrote: <<To paraphrase W. C. Fields, trying to pin down reality is
"harder than tying a hair ribbon on a bolt of lightning." (He was referring
to how hard it is to quit drinking.)
Reality is a moving target. The illusion is that it is fixed, unchanging.
Unfortunately, so many people, Buddhists included, think reality itself is an
illusion.>>
The Buddha says: "self and what belongs to self are unobtainable and cannot
be made known as real and established in the present things, the views,
fetters and latencies in the mind are unobtainable and cannot be made known,"
or: "The Tathagata is unobtainable and cannot be made known as real and
established in the present things." The former is a composite text from MA,
200, 765b29 and SA, 104, 31b1-2, the latter is at SA, 104, 31b1-2.
To the Buddha, the word, the concept and the referent have no necessary
relationship, and the existence of any of the three does not guarantee the
existence of the others. That is the basis for his denial of the "self/soul"
(atman), as to him (against the Brahmanical orthodoxy) that word does not
refer to anything real but is a mere composition (samskara), in modern terms
a logical construct that does not denote.
To him, the worst sin is to follow speech or thought to chase reality. To
him, thought and language are conventionally good enough to help us
communicate and survive, but ultimately they are inconsistent within
themselves and fail to match up with (be adequate to) the reality outside of
them. That reality is sensible reality, and it is fleeting -- he says that
feeling/sensation (the second aggregate) "arises in cessation" (nirvrti-jo).
But the thought and language and interpretation that we impose on sensible
reality helps us avoid that fleetingness and instability by freezing sensible
reality into concepts and categories, and the main concept and category in
that effort to congeal sensible reality is the self.
So he only denies what we add on top of reality, the thought and language and
interpretation that we impose on sensible reality. He never denies that
sensible reality. To him the awakened can avoid adding mental pain to bodily
pain, but cannot avoid bodily pain -- at least, not for long, though people
with meditative abilities (like him) can go into meditative states to avoid
bodily pain temporarily (in old age he often goes into the signless
concentration to avoid bodily pain temporarily).
Among us, we read daily posts of the followers of the Tibetan religion to the
effect that all is projection, that there is no reality beyond our projection
...
Tang Huyen
DharmaTroll
"Dirk Bruere" <art...@kbnet.co.uk> wrote:
> > > On a related topic, what do you make of 'awareness'?
> > > From an introspective POV it does not depend on memory or
> > > sense impressions.
DT:
> > Say what? From an introspective view, it necessarily depends
> > totally on memory and sense impressions, I'd say. I have no
> > idea what you possibly could mean by that statement.
Dirk:
> OK. It wasn't too clear.
> I mean a 'core' that is purely aware that it exists,
> independent of sense impressions, memory etc.
'Core' here sounds like a paraphrase for 'soul' or 'self'.
My guess here is that this is a mental construct, an organising
principal, much like the physics principle of 'center of gravity'.
By 'core' I wonder if this isn't an organising around the physical
center of the sensory fields. I am very suspicious of a claim of
something other than an organisation of or product of sense experiences
here. Some interesting historical remarks concerning Hume and Kant are
in order.
David Hume suggests that our experience consists of a bundle of
perceptions and sensations, that no experience of a core self is
to be found in it. Then Kant argues that an experience without
organisation cannot be an experience. In order to have an experience
there must be some source of *unity* to those impressions. Without
some structure unifying experience, we could not have any experience
or knowledge at all. Kant proposes that this source of unity can
only be in the application of certain principles that confer unity
on to the impressions; that weave them into experience.
Kant's categories (which I've mentioned in previous posts) consist
of synthetic a priori principles which Kant claims are fundamental
to the possibility of knowledge and experience. Unified experience
must have a regularity over time and employ the notion of causality
in order to understand how thing/events interact in the world.
Hence, our experiences are organized into a synthetic unity, which
accounts for our feeling of self/soul/spirit/ego, and which has the
function of allowing us to act and relate coherently in the world.
However, that unity is not a self in terms of a thing of some kind,
but more like an organizing principle, or "useful fiction", which is
empty of any ontological status. And that's what I'm guessing is going
on here, Dirk, when you talk about a "'core' that is purely aware that
it exists, independent of sense impressions, memory etc."
What do you think? Does this sound plausible? Or do you think that this
description doesn't cut it and is missing something?
DharmaTroll
"Karl Senior" <karl.s...@virgin.net> wrote:
DT:
> > That's actually fairly easy to answer, Karl.
Karl:
> Intellectually, maybe..........
>
> Does day follow night or night follow day?
Yes.
> Is day apart from or a part of the same night?
Apart, but they are 'in contact'. For example, Aristotle writes in his
_Physics_ that: "Things are said to be in contact when their
extremities are together."
> Where does day begin and night end?
Sunrise and sunset, silly. (Boy, this is easy!)
> Where does conciousness begin and end?
When you wake up and fall asleep. (What a piece of cake!)
> Does it begin and end?
Yes. It begins when you wake up and ends when you fall asleep.
> Or is it just another perception created by the thinking mind?
Nope, you've got it reversed: minds don't think and create perceptions;
rather, perceptions and thoughts form the illusion or useful fiction
called a 'mind'.
aeholling
DharmaTroll wrote:
Nope, you've got it reversed: minds don't think and create perceptions; rather, perceptions and thoughts form the illusion or useful fiction called a 'mind'.
Put another way, speaking Platonically you're saying that the appetitive
soul forms the rational soul. Okay. [snicker, snicker]
Ae
NeoLazarus
> In article <wYm%5.13585$cy5.2...@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
> "Karl Senior" <karl.s...@virgin.net> wrote:
>
> DT:
> > > That's actually fairly easy to answer, Karl.
>
> Karl:
> > Intellectually, maybe..........
> >
> > Does day follow night or night follow day?
>
> Yes.
>
> > Is day apart from or a part of the same night?
>
> Apart, but they are 'in contact'. For example, Aristotle writes in his
> _Physics_ that: "Things are said to be in contact when their
> extremities are together."
>
> > Where does day begin and night end?
>
> Sunrise and sunset, silly. (Boy, this is easy!)
so day begins at sunrise and night _ends_ at sunset?
>
>
> > Where does conciousness begin and end?
>
> When you wake up and fall asleep. (What a piece of cake!)
>
> > Does it begin and end?
>
> Yes. It begins when you wake up and ends when you fall asleep.
>
> > Or is it just another perception created by the thinking mind?
>
> Nope, you've got it reversed: minds don't think and create perceptions;
> rather, perceptions and thoughts form the illusion or useful fiction
> called a 'mind'.
show me your mind!
where do the perceptions and thoughts originate?
>
>
> --DT
>
> Sent via Deja.com
> http://www.deja.com/
-NL
Gileht
The need to transcend all conceptualization is also expressed clearly in
Tibetan texts:
++++++++++++++++++++
"Praise of Buddha Shakyamuni for His Teaching of Relativity"
-- Lama Tsong Khapa
http://www.geocities.com/gileht/tsongkhapa/praisedo.htm
"Buddha, I praise you, because you explained
how anything which comes into being
is dependent on other things,
and is totally devoid of any essence."
"Whatever depends upon conditions
is empty of every intrinsic reality.
What excellent instructions
could be more amazing than this"
Such being the case, who could discover
Anything even yet more wonderful
To sing your praises, oh Buddha
Than this your teaching of Dependent Origination
That something comes into being contingent on other things
And that something is therefore totally devoid of any essence
thing
And that these two are different ways of saying the same thing
What could be more wonderful a way to sing your praises
Than by saying that you taught this.
++++++++++++++++++++
A Lamp for the Enlightenment Path
Composed by Atisa
http://www.geocities.com/gileht/atisha/atisha_lamp.html
53.
Thus, not to perceive intrinsic nature (So, meanwhile, see everything as
an illusion)
In any phenomenon whatever
Is to contemplate its Non-Self; which
Is the same as contemplating with Insight.
54.
And this Insight which does not see (This direct, non conceptual,
realization of Emptiness is the Wisdom to cultivate)
Intrinsic nature in any phenomena
Is that same Insight explained as Wisdom.
Cultivate it without conceptual thought.
55.
The world of change springs from conceptual
Thought, which is its very nature;
The complete removal of such
Thought is the Highest Nirvana. (The whole world is merely imputed by
the mind, but we think it is real)
56.
Moreover, the Blessed One declared: (See through the traps of
conceptualization)
"Conceptual thinking is the great ignorance, (?? - or is it "grasping to
its objects" that is the problem? The ignorance is not knowing how
conceptualisation, the mind, works; thinking we have objective
perception of absolute objects and phenomenon, having absolute
attributes.)
And casts one into samsara's ocean; but
Clear as the sky is his contemplation who
Remains in Concentration without concepts." (Clear as a mirror without
taints.)
57.
And he also says in the Non-Conceptual Progress Formula: (See the
emptiness of the three: virtuous objects, virtuous actions, subject)
"When a son of the Victor meditates on
This holy Doctrine without conceptual thought, (??)
He gradually attains the non-conceptual."
58.
When through scripture and reason one has (First understand emptiness
conceptually, then realize it directly, without concepts)
Penetrated the non-intrinsic
Nature of all non-arising phenomena,
Then contemplate without conceptual thought.
59.
And when he has thus contemplated Thatness, (When you directly realize
emptiness, without the help of concepts, then you are not far from the
Eternal Bliss.)
And by stages has attained "Warmth" and the rest,
Then he will gain the "Joyous" [Level] and on up:
Buddha-Enlightenment is not far off.
++++++++++++++++++++
Gileht
http://www.geocities.com/gileht/index.html
Gileht
There is no real (as we think it is) beginning (origination), not real
cessation (end), no real duration (existence). There is just the flux of
interdependence without any inherently existing thing in it. There is no
real things that are changing, just the changement.
See Nagarjuna Kakarikas - Section 21 - An Analysis of Origination
(sambhava) and Disappearance (vibhava)
Gileht
http://www.geocities.com/gileht/index.html
DharmaTroll
NeoLazarus <neola...@altavista.com> wrote:
>> Sunrise and sunset, silly. (Boy, this is easy!)
>
> so day begins at sunrise and night _ends_ at sunset?
Day begins both at sunrise and sunset; same with night.
Transcend your biased subjective standpoint and graph them. You will
see that each day has two end-points and is bounded on either side by
night. Each night has two endpoints and is pointed on each side by day.
'Begin' doesn't have to mean go forward in time, if you graph them.
> show me your mind!
I'll show you the sound of one hand clapping -- upside your head. Heh.
> where do the perceptions and thoughts originate?
Probably small clusters of neurons firing, which trigger other ones.
Dirk Bruere
> In article <Xqs%5.13325$T%5.21...@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
> "Dirk Bruere" <art...@kbnet.co.uk> wrote:
> Dirk:
> > OK. It wasn't too clear.
> > I mean a 'core' that is purely aware that it exists,
> > independent of sense impressions, memory etc.
> 'Core' here sounds like a paraphrase for 'soul' or 'self'.
Depends on definition.
> My guess here is that this is a mental construct, an organising
> principal, much like the physics principle of 'center of gravity'.
No. I'm referring to the minimal neural construct that can possess
consciousness.
If the latter is some kind of feedback loop, it need not rely on anything
but its own existence.
> By 'core' I wonder if this isn't an organising around the physical
> center of the sensory fields. I am very suspicious of a claim of
> something other than an organisation of or product of sense experiences
> here. Some interesting historical remarks concerning Hume and Kant are
> in order.
That depends on whether consciousness can be neurally localised.
> David Hume suggests that our experience consists of a bundle of
> perceptions and sensations, that no experience of a core self is
> to be found in it. Then Kant argues that an experience without
> organisation cannot be an experience. In order to have an experience
> there must be some source of *unity* to those impressions. Without
> some structure unifying experience, we could not have any experience
> or knowledge at all. Kant proposes that this source of unity can
> only be in the application of certain principles that confer unity
> on to the impressions; that weave them into experience.
Even so, the unity is going to have a neural base to operate from, even if
it is only a measure of interaction. What is the minimum requirement in
neural terms? I suggest that it may be very small.
> Kant's categories (which I've mentioned in previous posts) consist
> of synthetic a priori principles which Kant claims are fundamental
> to the possibility of knowledge and experience. Unified experience
> must have a regularity over time and employ the notion of causality
> in order to understand how thing/events interact in the world.
>
> Hence, our experiences are organized into a synthetic unity, which
> accounts for our feeling of self/soul/spirit/ego, and which has the
> function of allowing us to act and relate coherently in the world.
> However, that unity is not a self in terms of a thing of some kind,
> but more like an organizing principle, or "useful fiction", which is
> empty of any ontological status. And that's what I'm guessing is going
> on here, Dirk, when you talk about a "'core' that is purely aware that
> it exists, independent of sense impressions, memory etc."
I'm referring directly to minimal neural structure. The absolute minimum
beyond which there is no consciousness.
> What do you think? Does this sound plausible? Or do you think that this
> description doesn't cut it and is missing something?
I think we may be talking apples and oranges.
Gassho
Dirk
DharmaTroll
"Dirk Bruere" <art...@kbnet.co.uk> wrote:
> > My guess here is that this is a mental construct, an organising
> > principal, much like the physics principle of 'center of gravity'.
>
> No. I'm referring to the minimal neural construct that can possess
> consciousness.
OIC. Ok.
> If the latter is some kind of feedback loop, it need not rely on
> anything but its own existence.
Well, I don't know how you can say that. It would need to have sense
organs of some sort and a central processing unit of some sort. I would
imagine that the bare minimum you speak up would still be enourmously
complex, at least much more complex than any supercomputer we've
created so far.
> I'm referring directly to minimal neural structure.
> The absolute minimum beyond which there is no consciousness.
> What is the minimum requirement in neural terms?
> I suggest that it may be very small.
I suggest that may be very large. I don't think that a small feedback
loop could account for consciousness. Then again, I don't know what the
heck could account for consciousness. It is truly weird.
I'm not sure about all the microtubule stuff, but in any case, I don't
see how it could be very small. Consciousness might involve many layers
of feedback loops and billions of interacting parts to even get off the
ground, I would suspect.
I'm what's called a 'functionalist'. According to functionalism,
consciousness is an abstract class of relational mappings.
Functionalism was first proposed by Hilary Putnam in 1967. His initial
articals are worth the read. See, for example "The Nature of Mental
States" and "Philosophy and Our Mental Life" in Putnam's _Mind,
Language and Reality_, reprinted in various other anthologies as well.
The basic point about functionalism is that we are conscious because of
the kinds of functions our brains compute. If the same functions could
be computed by silicon instead of neurons, we could build a conscious
robot (e.g., one that felt pain, knew what it means to fall in love,
etc.). So if we are going to talk about the minimum structure
necessary, the first thing is not to talk about neurons but rather
about what are the most minimal set of functions need to be computed
for consciousness to be a possibility. I have no idea how to answer
that.
Dirk Bruere
> In article <%UM%5.15238$T%5.25...@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
> "Dirk Bruere" <art...@kbnet.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > > My guess here is that this is a mental construct, an organising
> > > principal, much like the physics principle of 'center of gravity'.
> >
> > No. I'm referring to the minimal neural construct that can possess
> > consciousness.
>
> OIC. Ok.
>
> > If the latter is some kind of feedback loop, it need not rely on
> > anything but its own existence.
> Well, I don't know how you can say that. It would need to have sense
> organs of some sort and a central processing unit of some sort. I would
> imagine that the bare minimum you speak up would still be enourmously
> complex, at least much more complex than any supercomputer we've
> created so far.
I do not see how it follows that it would need sense organs, or even data to
process beyond a minimum that could guarantee consciousness. Nor a time
sense (clock).
As for the complexity, that too is unknown although I assume it would be
large by modern computational standards, but I don't know.
> > I'm referring directly to minimal neural structure.
> > The absolute minimum beyond which there is no consciousness.
> > What is the minimum requirement in neural terms?
> > I suggest that it may be very small.
> I suggest that may be very large. I don't think that a small feedback
> loop could account for consciousness. Then again, I don't know what the
> heck could account for consciousness. It is truly weird.
What is the smallest brain that can support consciousness? Is a mouse
conscious?
> I'm not sure about all the microtubule stuff, but in any case, I don't
> see how it could be very small. Consciousness might involve many layers
> of feedback loops and billions of interacting parts to even get off the
> ground, I would suspect.
Probably. Intuitively, I'm hypothesing that the 'minimal awareness' that I
experience when tripping is such a structure. That any chemical interference
that breaks down the neural interactions any futher would result in no
consciousness.
> I'm what's called a 'functionalist'. According to functionalism,
> consciousness is an abstract class of relational mappings.
> Functionalism was first proposed by Hilary Putnam in 1967. His initial
> articals are worth the read. See, for example "The Nature of Mental
> States" and "Philosophy and Our Mental Life" in Putnam's _Mind,
> Language and Reality_, reprinted in various other anthologies as well.
>
> The basic point about functionalism is that we are conscious because of
> the kinds of functions our brains compute. If the same functions could
> be computed by silicon instead of neurons, we could build a conscious
> robot (e.g., one that felt pain, knew what it means to fall in love,
> etc.). So if we are going to talk about the minimum structure
> necessary, the first thing is not to talk about neurons but rather
> about what are the most minimal set of functions need to be computed
> for consciousness to be a possibility. I have no idea how to answer
> that.
You know the Einstein's Brain thing, where the functions are reduced to
equations and written in a book (paper)?
Gassho
Dirk
Dean Crabb
DharmaTroll wrote:
I can't believe you guys are even discussing this.
Dean
NeoLazarus
> In article <3A3F2DE2...@altavista.com>,
> NeoLazarus <neola...@altavista.com> wrote:
>
> >> Sunrise and sunset, silly. (Boy, this is easy!)
> >
> > so day begins at sunrise and night _ends_ at sunset?
>
> Day begins both at sunrise and sunset; same with night.
>
> Transcend your biased subjective standpoint and graph them. You will
> see that each day has two end-points and is bounded on either side by
> night. Each night has two endpoints and is pointed on each side by day.
>
> 'Begin' doesn't have to mean go forward in time, if you graph them.
>
or "day is light, night is dark"
except in Alaska where at 12 midnight
in the summer months, it's light.
it doesn't matter how you graph it...
it's all discrimination and a discursive mind
>
> > show me your mind!
>
> I'll show you the sound of one hand clapping -- upside your head. Heh.
I doubt you could manage that, especially the pain that would
happen to your fingers before you had a chance to pull your
one hand clapping away. WHACK! CRACK! Ow.
>
>
> > where do the perceptions and thoughts originate?
>
> Probably small clusters of neurons firing, which trigger other ones.
and this is...?
>
>
> --DT
-NL
Dean Crabb
Dean Crabb wrote:
Just walk outside and watch. What there to discuss? (And that's a
rhetorical question so don't answer it)
Dean