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Post by Deleted on Sept 5, 2019 8:12:58 GMT -5
You can offer the pointer to some, very few and they'll swim across the river Styx on their own, without further assistance. Others who understand the pointer, conceptually, need a raft or craft, a practice, of some kind to finally get across. They discard the raft once across. Still others will reject the pointer and the raft altogether and continue their search for happiness on this side of the river.
Rewording, or rephrasing pointers will do little good to those who can't swim. It's strange how slowly some come to recognze futility.
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Post by zendancer on Sept 5, 2019 8:17:57 GMT -5
*silently points at what is commonly distinguished as "tree" with index finger of right hand* Sorry it's not clear where you're pointing. Are you pointing at the big oak tree by the fence or are you pointing at the tall pine tree in the distance. Keep it non conceptual. 😀 Haha! Well, you're not physically standing beside me, so you can't see the giant oak tree I'm pointing at. Nevertheless, I'm simply giving an example. The issue of distinction is one of the major subjects in gestalt psychology, but it deals with how we look at "what is" and imagine images that represent what we see. For most people the image/idea/symbol "tree" is synonymous with the actuality (what is standing outside my window). By contrast, some people discover the difference between the two, and that discovery usually goes far beyond any particular distinction. Lines of longitude and latitude are imaginary, and everyone knows that they're imaginary because those lines are not actual. The same is true for states or countries (there is no actual line separating France from Spain for example). It's much harder to see that everything (every thing that is thought to exist as a separate thing) is imaginatively distinguished in the same way. E. likes to say that "perception is creation." I prefer to say, "distinction is creation" because, from my POV, direct sensory perception does not require thought. If I stop thinking, and simply look, I see only "what is." I can't talk about "what is" without using language, and to use language requires making distinctions and thinking about the world dualistically. This is why I use the term "attending the actual." When there is only direct sensory perception, conceptualization and imaginative separation into distinct states is not necessary.
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Post by satchitananda on Sept 5, 2019 8:32:31 GMT -5
When there is only direct sensory perception, conceptualization and imaginative separation into distinct states is not necessary. Well of course it isn't. If I glance at a tree there doesn't have to be any thinking associated with the perception, only recognition. Life would be intolerable if there was conceptual thinking about every object my gaze settled on throughout the day. You wouldn't be able to deal with such an avalanche of thinking. The thinking only arises if the perceived object has relevance. Even then there often isn't much need for thinking. If you go and look for your car in the parking lot, as you approach it to open the door you don't think, ah, this is a car which has an engine and four wheels and it is also my car which I bought six months ago from the local car dealer which is owned by a friend of mine who likes baseball. Then again you might. There's no realization in any of this.
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Post by zendancer on Sept 5, 2019 8:35:05 GMT -5
You can offer the pointer to some, very few and they'll swim across the river Styx on their own, without further assistance. Others who understand the pointer, conceptually, need a raft or craft, a practice, of some kind to finally get across. They discard the raft once across. Still others will reject the pointer and the raft altogether and continue their search for happiness on this side of the river. Rewording, or rephrasing pointers will do little good to those who can't swim. It's strange how slowly some come to recognze futility. Yes, this issue arose during the recent TAT retreat. I had mentioned that for 15 years I spent a lot of time shifting attention away from thoughts to direct sensory perception. During that time I never listened to a radio when driving a vehicle because I didn't want anything to distract me from looking, listening, feeling, etc. to the world around me. I theorized at that time that if the mind became sufficiently silent (no mind talk or very little mind talk), sooner or later I would discover what I wanted to understand. After the sense of "me" vanished, I finally understood, and it then no longer mattered whether there was mind talk or silence. Today I often drive a car or hike in the woods while listening to jazz on earphones. Sometimes the mind is talkative, and at other times it's silent, but it no longer matters. Learning that I no longer made any effort to remain mentally silent, someone said, "I don;t understand why it no longer matters to you what the mind does." I said, "Because it was realized that the "me" who was imagined to be at the center of all efforting disappeared and was realized to have never existed. I said, "It's like Buddha's boat. After you get to the other shore, you can leave the boat behind." IOW, from my POV all meditative practices are simply a means to an end--attaining sufficient mental silence for realizations to occur. There seems to be a strong correlation between mental silence and realizations, but after it's realized what's going on, the mental silence is no longer necessary. Apparently some people are more strongly attached to ideas than others, so some people may require a great deal more internal silence before the obvious can become obvious. They may have to row that boat a long way to get to the other shore.
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Post by zendancer on Sept 5, 2019 8:40:36 GMT -5
When there is only direct sensory perception, conceptualization and imaginative separation into distinct states is not necessary. Well of course it isn't. If I glance at a tree there doesn't have to be any thinking associated with the perception, only recognition. Life would be intolerable if there was conceptual thinking about every object my gaze settled on throughout the day. You wouldn't be able to deal with such an avalanche of thinking. The thinking only arises if the perceived object has relevance. Even then there often isn't much need for thinking. If you go and look for your car in the parking lot, as you approach it to open the door you don't think, ah, this is a car which has an engine and four wheels and it is also my car which I bought six months ago from the local car dealer which is owned by a friend of mine who likes baseball. Then again you might. There's no realization in any of this. Well, for some people who are totally lost in their heads, there can be a huge realization regarding this matter. In fact, Zen calls that realization "passing through the gateless gate," and the potential power of it can be enormous. It's like being shaken free from a conceptualized world and discovering the actual world that underlies the imaginary one. Perhaps in your case there was never that kind of initial lostness. If so, you were quite lucky.
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Post by enigma on Sept 6, 2019 20:21:19 GMT -5
I'm not sure what he's saying either. Obviously, there is the perception of a tree, and there is the conception of it. I'm sure that's obvious to him too. What I'm struggling a bit with is trying to imagine it NOT being obvious. (to most humans) A tree is not non conceptual. If you ask what is a tree then you will get a conceptual answer. An object cannot be non conceptual because for something to be a concept, it is considered as an object which is a duality. You cannot have non conceptual duality. Maybe the word 'non-conceptual' is inadequate to describe what we're referring to. The perception/experience of a tree is not an idea. The idea of a tree is added to that perception.
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Post by enigma on Sept 6, 2019 20:24:03 GMT -5
satch is just wrong. A tree is non conceptual. This is easy to see, Were there trees before people? Yes, of course. (Trees came first to make oxygen for people). No people no concepts. I don't know what satch is saying here. That's why, like you, I don't identify myself as a nondualist. When you look at a tree without naming it or thinking about it, it is what it is, an object that is perceived. Where is the concept or non concept? There is none. Hencely, non-conceptual.
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