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Post by laughter on Sept 28, 2017 13:23:32 GMT -5
Yet another conversation from years past. The nice thing about not remembering any of the conversations is that they're always fresh. Well, another thing I remember is more than one forum peep trying to pawn-off (sometimes seemingly deliberate) temporary amnesia for "being present"/"living in the now".
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Post by enigma on Sept 28, 2017 17:10:56 GMT -5
The nice thing about not remembering any of the conversations is that they're always fresh. Well, another thing I remember is more than one forum peep trying to pawn-off (sometimes seemingly deliberate) temporary amnesia for "being present"/"living in the now". Are you saying I'm doing that?
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Post by laughter on Sept 28, 2017 18:14:44 GMT -5
Well, another thing I remember is more than one forum peep trying to pawn-off (sometimes seemingly deliberate) temporary amnesia for "being present"/"living in the now". Are you saying I'm doing that? no, I'm describing other peeps, some of them even trying to mimic you in a bad impression of "coming empty".
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Post by enigma on Sept 28, 2017 19:21:46 GMT -5
Are you saying I'm doing that? no, I'm describing other peeps, some of them even trying to mimic you in a bad impression of "coming empty". Wow, I'm glad I don't remember that. Hehe
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Post by laughter on Sept 28, 2017 19:34:03 GMT -5
Well, I'm a one-time atheist who confirmed as a Catholic a few months ago, but I'll be the first to tell you that there is no God deciding who gets to realize the existential truth. Paradox isn't inevitable, it's only created in a mind that applies thought to ideas that can only ever lead to more conceptualization, varied and different forms of the existential question, and an overall mental/physical kinematic effect that obscures, rather than illuminates. Mostly mental. Reincarnation is a great example of a misleading mental construct, very clearly bourne of existential confusion. I see our debate as mirroring an analogous debate in Western philosophy. Some held that all paradox was simply wrong thinking, or thinking where thinking was inapplicable (e.g. Wittgenstein). But others said some things were perfectly legitimate questions but simply beyond the ken of mind to answer (e.g. Kant). So I guess we both have illustrious intellectual predecessors in these positions. What makes you think God isn't making decisions about realization? Where do all the images in experience come from, for instance? The very notions of the senses, the qualitative feel of thoughts and feelings... from whence do they all come? In what cosmic forge are they forged? They aren't created in front of us, and nonduality simply keeps silent.
Wherever they come from and whatever intelligence makes them -- we call God.
Isn't mind made from that forged stuff? So if God forges them, is it not God who decides to finally polish some particular mind to a clean and classy sheen?Sure, a script was just a metaphor. Though frankly we have no idea whether creation is re-writing itself or whether all events already exist eternally. Try to be everything to everyone and you'll be nothing to no one. The teacher who possesses a hammer should know it and seek out nails. But is it futile? Still, it's a good point to think on for me. Thanks. Sure, you're quite welcome, thanks for your interest in reading. Meditation wasn't and isn't futile in relative terms. I've always found it .. well ... pleasurable. And that doesn't do what I've gotten out of it as a person any real justice. But telling someone who thinks that they can meditate or somehow otherwise practice their way to self-realization that they're banging their heads on a wall is just being honest with them. That's a sharp point about the nails. The way I'd respond to this would depend on what I could glean ahead of time of the state of mind of the person posing the questions. Would you like me to give you some hypothetical examples? This is useful background but please don't feel obligated to read it. The only overtly spiritual folks I've met in the flesh have been Christian, and I'd be most likely to invite them to seek the answers in prayer with them. The form of the prayer would be different for a Catholic, Jehovah's Witness or a Mormon, or whatever. The structure and sequence of the ritual is important to them. The response would be completely different to someone with an interest in Advaita, and different again to someone from my own conditioned background of secular humanism with new-age influences. I'm always looking for cracks in the glass though -- for opportunities to engage people who might have an interest in existential inquiry. I completely disagree with the idea that "creation isn't forged in front of us". In fact, trying to catch the exact instant of thought formation can be a very informative meditation. As far as the philosophers and paradox is concerned, peeps have been talking about this stuff likely long before recorded history and it will likely continue for thousands if not many more orders of magnitude of time assuming that we survive in one form or another. Repetition of the same conversations is inevitable. Somewhere in the notes to this version of the Diamond Sutra they quote the Bhudda as saying, essentially "just ignore the trolls and they'll go away". Kant was a product of the age of reason, and it seems to me that there's some genuine insight from both him and his contemporaries, even the one's that disagreed with him. But they were looking to express a system of metaphysics styled after the sciences that were rapidly taking shape around them in their lifetimes. While science and neti-neti share some qualities the differences are also quite clear. Science is done by a process of challenging, testing and refining beliefs over time to evolve and improve the underlying conceptual system. Neti-neti is a process of becoming conscious of beliefs and not replacing them with anything, but instead, just letting them fall away. Science is objective attention directed outward. Neti-neti starts off (or at least, gets serous as) as subjective attention looking inward, and self-realization is the final dissolution of the illusion of any real boundary between "inner" and "outer". Kant did the best he could with the tools he was conditioned to use, but wisdom doesn't require intellect. The paradoxes I was referring to were very specific. There are many that don't involve Ramana's question of self-inquiry: "irresitible force meets immovable object", "kill your great-grandfather", etc. And I don't think that existential paradox is wrong thinking, but is instead an opportunity: a stop sign for the intellect. I wasn't offering some philosophical answer to the material question of whether all events in future time have already happened or not. I was just playing the role of thief from the thinker by offering a pointer: the absence of volition doesn't imply the possibility of predetermination. Neither is the case, and neither is it the case that there is some greater, higher intelligence hired as a Cosmic Bookeeper to monitor and evaluate peeps spiritual progress and deciding to hand out enlightenment as a reward for great service to others, endurance of great suffering, hard work or having perfected their devotion to an state of divine surrender.
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Post by laughter on Sept 28, 2017 19:40:36 GMT -5
no, I'm describing other peeps, some of them even trying to mimic you in a bad impression of "coming empty". Wow, I'm glad I don't remember that. Hehe (** muttley snicker **)
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Post by redglove on Sept 28, 2017 23:11:04 GMT -5
I'm always looking for cracks in the glass though -- for opportunities to engage people who might have an interest in existential inquiry. I completely disagree with the idea that "creation isn't forged in front of us". In fact, trying to catch the exact instant of thought formation can be a very informative meditation. If I may, let's boil all this down to something very concrete. Take the color red. Where does it come from? I don't mean the wavelength or the scientific measurements of it. I also do not mean the concept of it. I mean the actual experience of it in some particular moment that is simultaneously specific and universal. That color red that we can do no more than name as red... that particular red which is different every time we see it, changing even as we see it, and also the same. That color red which manifests only in combination with all the other sights and sounds and thoughts and feelings we might have at one specific instance of it, yet is not simply that combination. Who or what invented red? Might not the wavelength red have been experienced very differently by others? In fact, by some people it is. The color-blind presumably see it differently, the blind don't see it at all. But even those who claim to see red just like us might in fact have a very different experience. We could never be sure. But if someone does experience it, however they experience it, it is something indefinable, never completely sayable, and yet infinitely specific. It is what it is, ultimately. It is like other things and unlike other things. We may analogize it to other senses: a "loud" red or a "delicious" red. We may speak of it in the way it affects us: a "sad" red or an "angry" red. We may speak of the objects in which we see it... the red of blood, the red of roses. But red itself is not contained by any of these. Nor is red nothing. Nor is red everything. Nor is red beyond all duality. Red is most certainly not any other color but red. It is not any other thing but red. At the same time it is connected to everything else. So what is red? And where did it come from?
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Sept 29, 2017 13:19:45 GMT -5
I'm always looking for cracks in the glass though -- for opportunities to engage people who might have an interest in existential inquiry. I completely disagree with the idea that "creation isn't forged in front of us". In fact, trying to catch the exact instant of thought formation can be a very informative meditation. If I may, let's boil all this down to something very concrete. Take the color red. Where does it come from? I don't mean the wavelength or the scientific measurements of it. I also do not mean the concept of it. I mean the actual experience of it in some particular moment that is simultaneously specific and universal. That color red that we can do no more than name as red... that particular red which is different every time we see it, changing even as we see it, and also the same. That color red which manifests only in combination with all the other sights and sounds and thoughts and feelings we might have at one specific instance of it, yet is not simply that combination. Who or what invented red? Might not the wavelength red have been experienced very differently by others? In fact, by some people it is. The color-blind presumably see it differently, the blind don't see it at all. But even those who claim to see red just like us might in fact have a very different experience. We could never be sure. But if someone does experience it, however they experience it, it is something indefinable, never completely sayable, and yet infinitely specific. It is what it is, ultimately. It is like other things and unlike other things. We may analogize it to other senses: a "loud" red or a "delicious" red. We may speak of it in the way it affects us: a "sad" red or an "angry" red. We may speak of the objects in which we see it... the red of blood, the red of roses. But red itself is not contained by any of these. Nor is red nothing. Nor is red everything. Nor is red beyond all duality. Red is most certainly not any other color but red. It is not any other thing but red. At the same time it is connected to everything else. So what is red? And where did it come from? Red is formed by the human nervous system as a response to a certain wavelength on the electromagnetic spectrum. Red doesn't exist ~out there~ in the world.
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Post by laughter on Sept 29, 2017 14:42:34 GMT -5
I'm always looking for cracks in the glass though -- for opportunities to engage people who might have an interest in existential inquiry. I completely disagree with the idea that "creation isn't forged in front of us". In fact, trying to catch the exact instant of thought formation can be a very informative meditation. If I may, let's boil all this down to something very concrete. Take the color red. Where does it come from? I don't mean the wavelength or the scientific measurements of it. I also do not mean the concept of it. I mean the actual experience of it in some particular moment that is simultaneously specific and universal. That color red that we can do no more than name as red... that particular red which is different every time we see it, changing even as we see it, and also the same. That color red which manifests only in combination with all the other sights and sounds and thoughts and feelings we might have at one specific instance of it, yet is not simply that combination. Who or what invented red? Might not the wavelength red have been experienced very differently by others? In fact, by some people it is. The color-blind presumably see it differently, the blind don't see it at all. But even those who claim to see red just like us might in fact have a very different experience. We could never be sure. But if someone does experience it, however they experience it, it is something indefinable, never completely sayable, and yet infinitely specific. It is what it is, ultimately. It is like other things and unlike other things. We may analogize it to other senses: a "loud" red or a "delicious" red. We may speak of it in the way it affects us: a "sad" red or an "angry" red. We may speak of the objects in which we see it... the red of blood, the red of roses. But red itself is not contained by any of these. Nor is red nothing. Nor is red everything. Nor is red beyond all duality. Red is most certainly not any other color but red. It is not any other thing but red. At the same time it is connected to everything else. So what is red? And where did it come from? What I've written about the source of thought and perception is only incidentally related to the philosophy of qualia. There is nothing more "real" than the here and now. One good deep breath, and what we see, hear, feel and smell/taste in that instant can shatter the illusion. But I'm not referring to any sort of theory the mind -- either intellect or emotions -- can ever wrap itself around.
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Post by redglove on Sept 29, 2017 15:11:30 GMT -5
Red is formed by the human nervous system as a response to a certain wavelength on the electromagnetic spectrum. Red doesn't exist ~out there~ in the world. If you think the nervous system can explain consciousness, we're probably too far from common ground to engage in a productive discussion. But look up debates on qualia if you like...
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Post by redglove on Sept 29, 2017 15:12:28 GMT -5
What I've written about the source of thought and perception is only incidentally related to the philosophy of qualia. There is nothing more "real" than the here and now. One good deep breath, and what we see, hear, feel and smell/taste in that instant can shatter the illusion. But I'm not referring to any sort of theory the mind -- either intellect or emotions -- can ever wrap itself around. Yeah, I'm referring to the one good deep breath after that one, where it turns out that the shattering of the illusion is itself nothing but the final illusion. Uh oh, here come the toucans to peck out my eyes...
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Post by laughter on Sept 29, 2017 20:16:53 GMT -5
Ok, it's enough of a digression that I'm going to write about it separately. What leads you to associate this idea with that? You've stated that realization requires grace. Have you stated a "verbal certainty about what can or cannot be and absolutely be stated about what Is"? No -- because I'm more than happy to admit that such metaphysical speculation is just that -- a best guess, not the absolute truth. "Grace" is obviously a mental category, and whatever Is is beyond the mind. If you want to call your "no explanation" theory a speculative theory, I'd be happy to agree with that classification. I'd still disagree with the content, of course. But it seems like -- and please do correct me if I am wrong -- you are suggesting that disagreement with that verbal speculation suggests the presence of "a false sense of identity" in the one who disagrees. And that's what I was referring to above. Well of course. The mind could be stopped by the words, koan-like, if it were seeking Itself. Outside the mind, paradox and non-paradox don't apply, obviously. If the mind is not seeking, however, it has no reason to attempt to still itself, and may proceed to the philosophical import of the words -- thus the labeling. The mental realm of labeling is not destroyed by the realization of the nondual, but exists as a sphere inside it. This blueprint of the mind perpetuating it's motion is an abstraction, yes, and we could call it a theory, sure. It's a dynamic description of a mechanistic structure. But the pointer of grace isn't a theory. Pointer's aren't meant for intellect. We can all agree on the ineffable -- at least in principle. So the idea that anyone's trying to state an absolute truth just doesn't seem to me to apply to the dialog at all. But I'm not uncertain about the nondual pointing, and I'm not speculating.
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Post by laughter on Sept 29, 2017 20:25:44 GMT -5
What I've written about the source of thought and perception is only incidentally related to the philosophy of qualia. There is nothing more "real" than the here and now. One good deep breath, and what we see, hear, feel and smell/taste in that instant can shatter the illusion. But I'm not referring to any sort of theory the mind -- either intellect or emotions -- can ever wrap itself around. Yeah, I'm referring to the one good deep breath after that one, where it turns out that the shattering of the illusion is itself nothing but the final illusion. Uh oh, here come the toucans to peck out my eyes... Well, I'll say this much, it seems that there's no shortage of peeps who believe they've penetrated the illusion of selfhood.
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Post by laughter on Sept 29, 2017 20:41:06 GMT -5
Red is formed by the human nervous system as a response to a certain wavelength on the electromagnetic spectrum. Red doesn't exist ~out there~ in the world. If you think the nervous system can explain consciousness, we're probably too far from common ground to engage in a productive discussion. But look up debates on qualia if you like... Well, to be fair, your question of " what is red?" strikes me as rather redundant given how you defined it so comprehensively. While in my opinion, you did write enough to distinguish your interest from one in a material explanation of the source of the sensation, again, to be fair, you didn't explicitly link the subjects of qualia and consciousness in what you wrote. Now, if you'd like to see where I'm coming from on the question of whether or not "creation happens in front of us", I'd invite you to consider a related question. Creation, is temporal. So, when was red created?
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Sept 29, 2017 23:30:03 GMT -5
Red is formed by the human nervous system as a response to a certain wavelength on the electromagnetic spectrum. Red doesn't exist ~out there~ in the world. If you think the nervous system can explain consciousness, we're probably too far from common ground to engage in a productive discussion. But look up debates on qualia if you like... So...you can be conscious apart from the physical body? I'd like to hear about that.
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