On David Quinns' WOMAN EXPOSITION....

[Alex T. Jacob]

David wrote: "This is Christianity. Full of trepidation, horror, excitement, and hope. A plunging into the unknown. A gamble. A dangerous movement in the here and now. The very essence of life. What you are doing, in relation to studying Roman Catholicism and political history and "framing questions" and worrying about becoming a "whole person" and the like, is infinitely removed from this."

Take a look at what you have done. You remove from a context the forceful ideas you wish to highlight but forget that those who 'put their hands to the plow' and entered into service of The Word, became the servants of people who were alive and in bodies, in time, through time, in history. I don't disagree that spiritual life has those elements: trepidation, horror, excitement, hope, jumping into the unknown, risking everything. That is certainly part of it and has been, I think, for many people who take that plunge. But it is ALSO about other things, basic things, simple things, things far less grandiose.

The issue for me, in talking to you, is not to wipe off the board a radical commitment to spiritual life and, as you say, 'a plunge into the unknown', it is to see spiritual processes in a broader way, and not to minimize the different levels where consciousness operates.

Something from Isaiah:

8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the LORD.

9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

10 As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

It is always troublesome to quote scripture because it can be read in many different ways, but the idea expressed here has a certain transparency, I think. Into a sphere of life or consciousness (our world) 'the Word' is sent: a vibration, an essence, a potency, one could also say a telos, 'om', veda. The nature of this Word is beyond the ken of men. What it does is its own business, or, what it is doing is necessarily beyond the ken of men. We can never and will never be able to understand the sphere of consciousness in which we exist, in which we ourselves are taking place, in which we have life. It is a mystery in the face of which there can only be awe. No one can possess The Word in this sense. You can't own it, dole it out, control it, and you might not ever be able to understand it. In an unfathomable process: something fructifies and gestates consciousness within a sphere of life, a world. It has been doing this since forever, and through all parts of the Kosmos, it precedes us and will continue forever after us. You could only ever hope to become some part of that process, and in an expanded, mystical sense, that is all a person could do. There is no way, in fact, to be outseide of it, there is no way to 'rebel' against it. The curious thing is that it has a will peculiar to itself. What it is doing and why it does it will always be speculative. It is like trying to get an answer to the question 'Why does existence exist?'

For me I am not too interested in getting into a spiritual pissing match with you or anyone. For me, the core of one's spiritual life is a very private affair, and most people, in their inner moments, know where they are in a process: it is the one, main thing that is always right in front of them.

I am interested in a wider conversation that has to do with 'keeping open conceptual pathways' and 'keeping alive a metaphor' that a dissolving person, an attacked and split person, a person who stands in front of forces of annihilation, can avail themselves of to be able to begin a process toward wholeness. There has to be 'lifesavers' sent out into the psychic world, and our world of inner life, inner consciousness, is a psychic world (a world of the 'soul'). All the gurus and masters can rise up in unison and tell me I am a fool or an ignorant dope (or procrastinator, or beginner) for localizing myself within this project and it doesn't matter much to me. With relish I will jump into the conversation and do my best to express my points. There is always a wider readership.

It's about the conversation. Con--verse---ation. The 'conclusions' come with the process.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Something from Isaiah (...) It is always troublesome to quote scripture because it can be read in many different ways, but the idea expressed here has a certain transparency, I think. Into a sphere of life or consciousness (our world) 'the Word' is sent: a vibration, an essence, a potency, one could also say a telos, 'om', veda. The nature of this Word is beyond the ken of men.

It's troublesome only when reading it in a divisive manner. But the words of a supposed prophet, spirited, "man of God" - all these qualifiers are a clue this is not about an abstract mystical Word, it's simply about the act of speaking words by a wise man, wisdom being by and large seen as the divine gift. And I dare you to cite traditions or religions not confirming this. A wise man who got wise by knowing himself, so the nature of "this word" or logos is known by definition. In proverbs it says: "The heart is the source of wisdom flowing from the mouth." The heart being essence, the heart of the matter, as in somethings core nature - the nature of himself and his reality.

Now if one would read the bible verses in this light one could see it very simply describes the way and reason of words spoken by wise people. There's no need, especially in Judaism of all things(!), to suggest cosmic vibration, some Divine Alien who is shaped like a word or some mystery never to be fully penetrated. The suggestion alone is like the acts of an evil man erecting concrete blocks on a road for others to be discouraged and hindered, since he plans to never going to walk there himself. Why would they?

Actually this is the main problem: the conviction it cannot happen, that it cannot be understood, which might be one of the largest stumbling blocks on such journey. Even the slightest hint, the tiniest amount of suspicion, call it faith for now, that it actually would be available opens up a crack which never will close up anymore. Or at least, it's very hard for me to imagine how it would.

[Alex T. Jacob]

Diebert wrote: "Now if one would read the bible verses in this light one could see it very simply describes the way and reason of words spoken by wise people. There's no need, especially in Judaism of all things(!), to suggest cosmic vibration, some Divine Alien who is shaped like a word or some mystery never to be fully penetrated. The suggestion alone is like the acts of an evil man erecting concrete blocks on a road for others to be discouraged and hindered, since he plans to never going to walk there himself. Why would they?"

I see what you're putting down Frère Diebert. But would you then say that all this crazy material of Kabbalah is just the concrete blocks on the road to keep one from 'real understanding'?

Are you saying that you have answered the question: Why Does Existence Exist?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

I see what you're putting down Frère Diebert. But would you then say that all this crazy material of Kabbalah is just the concrete blocks on the road to keep one from 'real understanding'?

It has become for all intent and purposes basically a perversion of wisdom, like all things woman could be seen as a perversion, or a decline of what is manly. Perhaps it should have remained an oral tradition for its own sake. But so much has devolved in similar ways that I'm near to concluding it's the way of all higher teaching to turn into its opposite in time, as if its very age or perhaps popularity becomes a cancerous disease.

Are you saying that you have answered the question: Why Does Existence Exist?

Not only that, I totally demolished, utterly destroyed the question. With good thoughtful arguments too. Most recently in the "There is no logic for existence" thread. Feel free to address it. A free sample outside the context:

The axiom of existence: that something exists and not not-exists. It comes before the "why".

As logic cannot go further than the axioms it's based on, the question "why" cannot address existence. This does not annihilate logic, it only shows how logic is the consequence of having existence of anything at all.

[Alex T. Jacob]

Diebert wrote: "It has become for all intent and purposes basically a perversion of wisdom, like all things woman could be seen as a perversion, or a decline of what is manly. Perhaps it should have remained an oral tradition for its own sake. But so much has devolved in similar ways that I'm near to concluding it's the way of all higher teaching to turn into its opposite in time, as if its very age or perhaps popularity becomes a cancerous disease."

Do you think you could reconcile this notion with the Jewish idea of the origin of the world? A world brought into existence, created if you will? It remains the lynch-pin unless I have misunderstood.

If we cannot avail ourselves of such an idea---say, that all the universe and all universes are an idea brought forth by a Creator---what is the stone-cold alternative for you? How shall we look upon existence, that things exist?

What is the manly way?

In my own view, though I think I do understand what you say, such a mystical-metaphysical story or interpretation is just one of a group of different idea-tools one has at one's disposal.

The thing that always seems to remain constant is the ground under our feet.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

The thing that always seems to remain constant is the ground under our feet.

Unless you're hung upside down, like St. Peter or St. Francis were experienced with, or so they say. But there's indeed a constancy, a heart beat if you will, to each and every existence and experience. It's like laying ones ear to the ground and listening to how it moves. There's much to learn and listen to here and yet an all-compassing description would make it sound like void.

[David Quinn]

Are you saying that you have answered the question: Why Does Existence Exist?

Not only that, I totally demolished, utterly destroyed the question. With good thoughtful arguments too. Most recently in the "There is no logic for existence" thread. Feel free to address it. A free sample outside the context:

The axiom of existence: that something exists and not not-exists. It comes before the "why".

As logic cannot go further than the axioms it's based on, the question "why" cannot address existence. This does not annihilate logic, it only shows how logic is the consequence of having existence of anything at all.

Indeed. Alex obviously thinks that becoming a "whole person" involves chasing phantoms all over the place.

A person isn't whole unless he is chasing phantoms. LOL.

-

[Alex T. Jacob]

Okay, okay, that was fun I guess. Thank you, Frère Diebert! Oh Annihilator of Questions!

I rather think that the 'question', which of course is not a vocalized question for a university theology course, but rather a confrontation with existence, and the essential experience behind all experience, the 'asking' of which is really the beginning of spiritual life.

Diebert wrote: "Actually this is the main problem: the conviction it cannot happen, that it cannot be understood, which might be one of the largest stumbling blocks on such journey. Even the slightest hint, the tiniest amount of suspicion, call it faith for now, that it actually would be available opens up a crack which never will close up anymore. Or at least, it's very hard for me to imagine how it would."

Well, when it happens for you please let me know, and then talk about it. I can't put myself in anyone else's consciousness of course, but it is my own conviction that there is no way to unravel or explain existence in rational terms, which is what I said a couple of posts earlier. To use an allegorical language, in the face of something so vast, does not seem in fact to be 'feminine', not exclusively anyway. But, I do agree that to wrap oneself up in mysteries, like in luscious cloth, could be interpreted as 'feminine'. I think the real manly question is What am I doing now? What is my actual effect in the world? They are therefor two poles: grand questions about Existence, and a localized question for the here-and-now.

Diebert wrote: "It has become for all intent and purposes basically a perversion of wisdom, like all things woman could be seen as a perversion, or a decline of what is manly. Perhaps it should have remained an oral tradition for its own sake. But so much has devolved in similar ways that I'm near to concluding it's the way of all higher teaching to turn into its opposite in time, as if its very age or perhaps popularity becomes a cancerous disease."

I guess I don't accept the basic premise. I don't think that you can or do define what is 'wise', nor do you control or administer the process by which the wise is determined. Such a bold assertion, a reckless assertion, might be described as bravado or a kind of machismo, and as most know machismo is compensatory and might not be really that 'manly' after all. Also, to throw up a smoke-screen---which is more than anything what I think you have done---could also be interpreted unfavorably as a sort of female activity, couldn't it? Subterfuges...hiding behind ivory fans...effete, political phrasing...the time-worn mamby-pamby of the Genius Forum?

Let us at all cost avoid any mincing of words! Let's say what we really mean!

Diebert wrote: "Unless you're hung upside down, like St. Peter or St. Francis were experienced with, or so they say. But there's indeed a constancy, a heart beat if you will, to each and every existence and experience. It's like laying ones ear to the ground and listening to how it moves. There's much to learn and listen to here and yet an all-compassing description would make it sound like void."

Stunning!

Turn St Francis back around, quick! His culotte is showing...

;-)

[Diebert van Rhijn]

I think the real manly question is What am I doing now? What is my actual effect in the world? They are therefor two poles: grand questions about Existence, and a localized question for the here-and-now.

Those questions, no matter which end of the stick you'd like to grasp (the shortest one perhaps?) are both merely the operating system of the mind. A "what's next" anticipation machine. Continuous evaluations on what's happening and what might happen. A better, vastly superior question therefore is: why am I asking this what and again this why? What drives me to evaluate the questions of local and cosmic existence and why am I starting with one and always seem to end up with a bigger one to deal with?

The answers, and I'm just rephrasing my earlier posts - aren't we always - are to be found in complete reorientation, a true reversal: not a why leading to an answer (like "why exactly consciousness?") but more like consciousness, awareness of any existence and therefore the experience of existence necessarily leading to seeking, missing, answers and desired completion.

Compared to this forever orbiting but never closing in on any "grand questions about Existence" would be as dull as playing eternally a game of hangman.

[Alex T. Jacob]

Uh-huh.

[Tomas]

.


-Ryan Rudolph-
A sage simply sees women for what they are - imperfect creatures.

-tomas-
And that sage will live alone.


-Ryan-
He doesn't feel hate towards them, but he doesn't place them on a pedestal either.
It is merely a matter of seeing both sexes as they are, without any distortion.

-tomas-
Yeah, as a non-sexual "bi-sexual" sort of thinker, a neutered masculine/feminine thinker.


-Ryan-
David's critique prevents this from happening, prevents men from idolizing women without seeing their
faults, but he could have went into a bit more detail of not falling into the trap of hating women.

-tomas-
No experience is ever necessary.


-Ryan-
A hatred of women usually happens when the spiritual seeker is young, has a lot of libido, and is
frustrated by his inability to connect with women on a deeper level, and frustrated by his
inability to have constant sexual fulfillment and the women of his choice. Most sexual crimes
against women occur due to this frustration that builds up in men.

-tomas-
Ah, so this is why Westernized white people are becoming a minority.


-Ryan-
Here is relevant poem that illustrates how men can idolize women as goddesses,
denying their true nature and even their worldliness. It is almost as if he sees
the divine in her, and ignores everything faulty and human about her. Men have
fallen into this trap throughout the ages, and fell into the trap of putting all their
energy into sexual/romantic pursuits, while ignoring philosophy and wisdom.

-tomas-
Oh, there's so many things to have done differently saith the hindsight.


-Ryan-
The end result is a man that is a shell of what he could be, and his
life ends up filled with despair, loneliness and negative karma.

-tomas-
Sounds like the vast majority of the posters here - wandering aimlessly, looking to one-up the latest wordsmith*.
Keep practicing the italics, Diebert and Alex, your time is gonna come.

PS - Ryan, keep plugging away.

*A special thanks to Carl. Really...

[Jason]

I do not use the word philistine, but rather uneducated and preliterate. There is a solution: gaining education and literacy. One does that through wide reading. Beginning to become familiar with the bases that the Occidental structure is built on.

As people fall further and further away from such basic familiarity with our traditions, their capacity to compare ideas, to see a greater whole, and to think in wider terms becomes progressively reduced. People who have a limited structure of mind, who yet see themselves as complete and capable of making decisions about grand questions, only end up doing harm. The solution---taking ones education seriously, going back to school.

One of the main elements that makes for the fantastic reductions that occur on this list, an inability to see a wider picture, to understand the questions on a fuller dimension is just this reduced mental palette. Sorry, bro, I do not mean to offend. It is offered in the same spirit as your Truth.

No offense taken, I appreciate your offering.

Maybe our goals differ. I have always been drawn to fundamental understanding. I can think of two main reasons for this. First: I've never been satisfied with accepting and then stopping at any particular answer, I always continue to ask "Why?" of any answer given. That naturally leads deeper and deeper. Second: I appreciate the fact that if you understand the fundamentals and the principles, you can often then understand the whole and its workings in their entirety. It may be reductionism of a type, but it works - simple as that.

Since I was a child I've been intensely and consistently practicing self-reflection, observation of others, and observation of the society and culture in which I found myself. I think an understanding of psychology - one's own, others and society as a whole - is far more fundamentally powerful, insightful and explanatory than the route of "gaining education" that you're suggesting. Understand the psychology and you can begin to understand what is actually behind the religious mindset, behind the social structures, behind the history, behind the traditions.

Studying quaint ancient fairy tales in religious books and reading the often biased, fragmented and contested accounts of long-gone history has tended to seem like so much superfluous fluff to me when compared to uncovering the fundamental psychological underpinnings of these things.

Well, the real question here is What shall you create? Or, What are you creating? The Western tradition has opened up all the avenues that are considered or explored on this list. Verily, verily I say unto you: it is the stuff with which we have made Self. Maybe if you actually knew a little more about this stuff that you seem inclined just to sweep off the board, you would also know how to select out of it what is relevant, even sublime. Because it is there, even if you cannot see it.

I'm not interested in just wholesale "sweeping things off the board." I'm interested in examining and then critically evaluating culture and society. I accept that I may be ignorant of much of what makes certain things valuable or "sublime." I'm open to anyone who can help me better understand, examine and evaluate these things - that's one of the reasons why I continue to converse with you.

To know where to go, youd have to know where we have been.

To know where we have been may be helpful, but as far as my goals are concerned, knowing who we are as the human animal, is the most central guide of where we should go.

[Alex T. Jacob]

Hi Jason,

I think it is correct to focalize on 'goals' whenever we get into conversations or disputes with other people. It is after all the essential 'goals' that make for different activities. Along with one's 'goals' there are also one's 'pre-suppositions', the axioms that are primary and which direct one's forming of values, the projects one engages in, etc. I find it interesting and I have spent a good deal of time thinking about why it is that both my goals and 'pre-suppositions' are so different from that of the Q-R-S (even though they are not uniform in opinion, it is a mistake to think they are).

Unfortunately, what often happens here is that a very rigorous and rigid measuring stick is applied to all ideas, and certainly those that have to do with spiritual life. There is of course a primary axiom expressed by this rigorousness: spiritual truth is a singular thing, one absolute thing. One size fits all. There is only one goal. This seems to me so utterly false that I think only a stupid person could think it. Or as I say, an 'uneducated' person.

It begins to become an excercize in futility to rehash what I have said over and over again. You might ask why I do it. The simple answer is just the opportunity to clarify my own ideas, to better be able to express them. In this latest round I really only wanted to work on some ideas having to do with---well, all the stuff that I wrote out. It is of course disappointing to me that so few are interested and capable of coming forward, rising to the intellectual occassion as it were. Like, what the heck happened to Pye? I sometimes wonder if what I wrote was so devastating that she just didn't know what to say (unlikely of course), or if she just thought, Oh, that worm. Doesn't dignify a response. Even though David and others are more capable on-going discussion, still I am rather unsatisfied with what I get on this forum.

Jason wrote: "Studying quaint ancient fairy tales in religious books and reading the often biased, fragmented and contested accounts of long-gone history has tended to seem like so much superfluous fluff to me when compared to uncovering the fundamental psychological underpinnings of these things."

I appreciate the effort at a jab, but this is not at all how I would define my activities. And my intersts do not exclude going to the core of things as you propose. My original interest, in this latest round, was only to express (and converse) about this fact that we live in the aftermath of a uniform, sensible universe...and we are rudderless in many ways as we head into a very uncertain future. Mentally and spiritually there are so many casualties along the road: the modern era, for individuals, is an era of casualty. The fragmenting individual. An increasing sense of pressure from all sides. To me, that IS going right to the most important core of the question. That is essentialism. It leads to the most meaningful and relevant questions a person can ask: Who am I? Why am I here? What am I to do? I suggest that Q-R-S is taking a stab in the dark that has many positive and relevant features, but they do not fundamentally bring this questions and concerns to an end. Just above, Diebert (so strangely, so murkily in my view) explains how he demolishes the question. He explodes it from within. What can you say? If it feels good, do it? To my view, it looks insincere and vacuous. But I am sure he has a very different view.

"Second: I appreciate the fact that if you understand the fundamentals and the principles, you can often then understand the whole and its workings in their entirety. It may be reductionism of a type, but it works - simple as that."

My impression has been that this is how David (and perhaps others) describe their understanding of a totality---the whole problem of life, incarnation, consciousness, etc. I assume that you feel you have such essential knowledge yourself. You say 'it works'. But does it indeed 'work' when it comes to the presuppositions and the conclusions of, say, Quinn? While that is not where I began this conversation (this latest round) it does seem to be (boringly perhaps) where it has would up. Laird, myself and perhaps some others feel that the conclusions are too rigid, and this would point to an error in grasping 'fundamentals and principals', no? Is this altogether an invalid perspective on our part? So, you say this reductionism: 'it works---simple as that'.

I would say that it is possible that it isn't working. Therefore, knowledge has to expand. One has to go back to the fundamentals. I am never going to stop looking at written material, at history, at different viewpoints. This does not mean that on an inner level I do not have some strong guide-lines. But I don't think it is wise to give up one's self-education. Otherwise one might fall into a rigid reductionism. In spiritual life---this is so evident---in religious life, this is a destructive trend.

[Carmel]

David Quinn:
Given this, it is pretty disappointing to hear him talk down his ascetic period. It wasn't really the renunciation of his asceticism which helped him become enlightened, but rather the combination of his participating in it and then renouncing it.

Carmel:
I figured you'd say that. It could be argued that he had to participate in the opposite extreme of hedonism, as he did, in order to understand that there is no lasting satisfaction in that lifestyle. Is it enough to understand intellectually that either extreme is not the key to enlightment(as I contend)? Does one necessarily have to experience them first hand?

David:
He then turns around - rather immaturely, in my opinion - probably flush with the excitement of having renounced asceticism and subsequently becoming enlightened - and teaches people a completely different path. A far more mediocre path which, on the face of it, disturbingly seems like a sales pitch to get people to follow him.

Carmel:
That's not how I view his actions. He experienced both extremes...from hedonism to asceticism and realizes that truth doesn't reside in either polarization. For me, "The middle path" always represented non duality, renouncing or blending(?) of extremes.

David:
Having said that, even the "Middle Way" that he teaches is pretty stringent and austere. Attaining "right understanding", for example, means renouncing all wrong understanding. It doesn't mean being content with, say, a balance of right and wrong understanding.

Carmel:
I've read The Dharma a few times. It's not quite as simplistic as your quote suggests. There's room for subjectivity when interpreting some of the passages, especially the more obscure ones and he never intended for his teachings to be dogma...or the "absolute truth".

David:
I've got you in my net, don't worry. Struggle all you like, but you'll be perfuming my feet in no time.

Carmel:
lol! Whoa again! ...I'll listen to what you have to say, but there will be no anointing. :)

David:
If a person isn't appalled and offended by what a life of truth demands, then he is either very wise or not seeing it at all.

Carmel:
...

David:
It is definitely a huge step up from religions like Christianity and Islam - no question.

Carmel:
(On Buddhism) it is. I have to view it is a philosophy rather than a religion as it's the only way I can overcome my strong anti-religious bias. I'm trying to give you the same courtesy. ;)

David:
I don't really devalue the emotions as such. Always, the prime focus is on irrational conceptions and ignorance. It's just that emotions cannot arise in the absence of irrational conceptions and ignorance. In a wise person, the series of causal connections inside the body which lead to the emergence of an emotion is broken. A vital piece in the chain has disappeared. The whole mechanism has ground to a halt.

This has enormous ramifications for those who have a desire to break through into enlightenment and become wise, in that if a person isn't willing to give up his attachment to a life of emotional highs and lows, then he will be subconsciously restricting his own mind to ensure that it won't fully dismantle its irrational conceptions and ignorance.

Carmel:
I don't disagree with this, but contend that not all emotions arise from irrationality. One can experience healthy emotions which are conducive to spiritual life, particularly, compassion which I associate with empathy(feeling). Do you experience compassion as a feeling or merely a consequence of logic?

[guest_of_logic]

Hi Alex,

As I indicated to you privately, I'm collecting my thoughts in this thread. This response is more of a placeholder than a substantive contribution to the discussion, which by the way I am very much appreciating.

I tried to get at your questions in these responses to Frère Jason and Frère David. To be utterly truthful my basic presupposition is that there does exist a Supreme Being. I think the Q-R-S negate this essential view of things and recoil into a reasoning position as a way to deal with existential issues. I don't think this position is tenable. I also don't think it can define 'wisdom' or an 'absolute' since, ipso facto, it is flawed from the start. But, to define a Supreme Being as an agent of personalism is no less daunting an enterprize. It is, as I see it, the stuff that a New Mysticism will arise from. David's position is in fact rather complex since he begins to look more and more like a monastic, a sort of St John of the Cross popping his head out of a kangaroo pouch...

Their position when it comes to a Supreme Being is one of minimisation. "Yes, it's possible, but ... [cue references to 'an "alien" being' who is less than the Totality and therefore necessarily 'finite', and who essentially deserves no more respect than a human given that it differs only in degree of power and degree of consciousness]".

The primary presupposition is really a group of assertions and choices, as I see it. It is a radicalism borne of a kind of desperation. A crisis of modernity. A solution to nihilism. A quick solution to oppressive materialism. It seems to me at its unconscious core a fanatically religious position, but one that incorporates deeply relevant positions and suppositions. As a strict rationalistic position, and one that does not and cannot take the 'whole person' into consideration, it is doomed to produce a distortion, and the distortion is essentialla misperception, a misapprehension. I have a strong feeling that it will produce malaise and not 'liberation' in the practitioners of it. To some extent that 'malaise' is notable in the practitioners. It is reductionsim and shrinking of the human spirit.

Still, there are very positive elements and those have to be carefully separated out...

So far as I have been able to observe as an everyday neighbour the originating prophet of this religious position, the liberation in practical terms is one of rational self-interest and attempts towards objective insight: of not getting sucked in to scams, of avoiding drama, of bearing witness to the insanity of the dysfunctional relationships and dynamics that surround one. All very practical in a dog-eat-dog world, but compassion gets only lip service - it's interesting to see Carmel comment on compassion in her own post.

My own presuppositions have been included in my posts over the course of a long while. I don't believe in a 'short-list' and I don't believe (in this context) in abbreviation. I don't mean to avoid the question, but it would have to be developed over time. I don't consider myself to be in a radically different or better position, and I see 'the problem' as being one of 'incomplete birth' (perhaps). The value in having these conversations is no small thing. I don't think we should at all minimize each other and what we are attempting.

Unfortunately, minimisation is the name of one of the main games around here. "Emotional", "feminine", "henid", "incapable of understanding" ... take your pick - at some point, one or another will be used against you if you express disagreement with the prevailing views.

What irony ensues from the exaltation of intellectual comprehension alongside the denigration of intellectualisation.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Since I got the impression from a private conversation that Alex is starting a new hiatus from the forum, I'll provide some input here to assist the thought-collection.

Their position when it comes to a Supreme Being is one of minimisation ... minimisation is the name of one of the main games around here.

Could you expand on the problem you see with the minimization, especially from a more general point of view. Over time, every time I stepped back from the forum and the type of conversations here, I realized the power is about the simplicity, the effort to zoom into what matters, what existence deep down is, without getting into the form of whatever manifests. So much wisdom hides in what is not discussed and what is discarded and devalued in the way the discussions are set up.

The ever-shifting games of meanings, or perhaps even the decline of meaning giving itself, is not even beginning to scratch the issue of our own awareness. And for sure, enlightenment will not provide a box with a set of new meanings to apply to history and future. And the reverse: one will not inch much closer by researching endlessly the boxes. But life itself, the practical dealing with issues including the process of science is all about giving meaning, values, priorities. Also about having some theories, suspicions, "sense of the mystery", concept of god or whatever.

Life itself is not minimized , not discarded but in the context of getting to the everlasting true nature of existence (sorry but I'm not aware of a less ambitious sounding phrase that would suffice here) it should be made very clear that any obsession or attachment to divine beings, deeper meanings, objects, pasts and futures very quickly will cloud the view. It's as if our human nature is geared towards getting distracted with it and somehow overlay eternal truth with contemporary fluff.

The best approach is then to encourage people to minimize the fluff whenever they desire to understand more deeply. It's not a case of demonizing, forbidding or ridiculing the fluff - daily life is all about dealing with fluff, like an acrobat juggling with burning pins - but it's about putting it all into perspective for those desiring, no: demanding a lasting perspective.

[Alex T. Jacob]

Today, browsing in a used bookstore, I found a 1954 Argentine (Losada) edition of Otto Weininger's 'Sexo y Caracter' (Sex and Character). I browsed through it and would have bought it except that the asshole who owned it previously underlined it terribly. But, I did see so much in it that is basically the 'capsule' for a good portion of what occurs on GF. I know, this is neither here nor there.

(The interesting thing: I am aware of my attraction to reductionist ideas.)

Haven't quite left yet, but of course no hard feelings. I try to affirm what I think is positive here but, like suspicious dogs, the Sons of Thunder don't have much use for me. If I say it, it must conduce to ignorance...

It is a great forum and yet it could be better if the closed loop of ideas could expand. Not into stupid chatter and back-story, but into more thorough and genuine explorations of the World of Ideas. I don't know exactly what to think of 'enlightenment' but 'Truth, Courage, Honesty, Logic, Masculinity, Wisdom, Perfection' are good values.

[Tomas]

Haven't quite left yet, but of course no hard feelings. I try to affirm what I think is positive here but, like suspicious dogs, the Sons of Thunder don't have much use for me. If I say it, it must conduce to ignorance...

It is a great forum and yet it could be better if the closed loop of ideas could expand. Not into stupid chatter and back-story, but into more thorough and genuine explorations of the World of Ideas. I don't know exactly what to think of 'enlightenment' but 'Truth, Courage, Honesty, Logic, Masculinity, Wisdom, Perfection' are good values.

1)You are interesting enough if you'd leave the bull-shit out of your dialogue.

2)Speak only to those who you deem worthy of a response.

3) This is your third go-around here, like in baseball .. strike three and you are out.

(No foul tips, dropped balls by catcher etc., on a called third strike) Ninety feet to 1st base with all of us dogs a'chasing you.

PS - If you can't run with the Big Dog stay on the porch.

Good luck in all your endeavors, Alex. Really :-)

Warm Regards,
Tomas

[David Quinn]

Haven't quite left yet, but of course no hard feelings. I try to affirm what I think is positive here but, like suspicious dogs, the Sons of Thunder don't have much use for me. If I say it, it must conduce to ignorance...

It has nothing to do with you personally. It isn't a case of my thinking, "Alex is saying this, therefore it is wrong by default". My issue with you is that your priorities are all askew, which, ironically enough, prevents you from achieving what you claim to desire - namely, "wholeness", to give it a crude label.

My pitch all along has been that the oneness of the Universe needs to be understood first before a person can begin to truly understand its multiplicity and find cohesion within it.

Attempting to understand multiplicity without first understanding oneness can at best only result in a disparate collection of disconnected understandings and views with no real cohesion between them. In the past, people tried to resolve this by superimposing a religious order onto things, thus creating at least a feeling of cohesion. But that option is quickly drying up as religion becomes less and less believeable. Instead, most individuals remain floating in a sea of disconnectedness, as Jason touched on - or fractured, as you put it. It is easy to understand why a person would become obsessed with "wholeness" in such a situation.

But you can't become "whole" simply by stringing bits of multiplicity together and hoping that the outcome will be a pleasing, coherent success. You need to first dive down into the unity underlying all things. And then, after that, you can go back into the world, as it were, and begin the study of multiplicity in a coherent fashion, with each step of this endeavour thoroughly grounded in unity. And in the light of this unity, things like "wholeness" and "cohesion" can be re-evaluated and placed into proper context.

I can't really emphasise this point enough, such is its importance.

-

[Carl G]

you can't become "whole" simply by stringing bits of multiplicity together and hoping that the outcome will be a pleasing, coherent success. You need to first dive down into the unity underlying all things. And then, after that, you can go back into the world, as it were, and begin the study of multiplicity in a coherent fashion, with each step of this endeavour thoroughly grounded in unity. And in the light of this unity, things like "wholeness" and "cohesion" can be re-evaluated and placed into proper context.

Heh, reminds me of a poem I wrote many years ago, which if I remember correctly, goes:

Behind appearance of simplicity
Lies the wondrous multiplicity.

Behind the multiplicity
Lies the Ultimate Simplicity.

.

[David Quinn]

David Quinn:
Given this, it is pretty disappointing to hear him talk down his ascetic period. It wasn't really the renunciation of his asceticism which helped him become enlightened, but rather the combination of his participating in it and then renouncing it.

Carmel:
I figured you'd say that. It could be argued that he had to participate in the opposite extreme of hedonism, as he did, in order to understand that there is no lasting satisfaction in that lifestyle. Is it enough to understand intellectually that either extreme is not the key to enlightment(as I contend)? Does one necessarily have to experience them first hand?

If you can abandon the world entirely and enter into nirvana without having to do those sorts of things, then fine.

David:
He then turns around - rather immaturely, in my opinion - probably flush with the excitement of having renounced asceticism and subsequently becoming enlightened - and teaches people a completely different path. A far more mediocre path which, on the face of it, disturbingly seems like a sales pitch to get people to follow him.

Carmel:
That's not how I view his actions. He experienced both extremes...from hedonism to asceticism and realizes that truth doesn't reside in either polarization. For me, "The middle path" always represented non duality, renouncing or blending(?) of extremes.

The trouble is, anything can be regarded as "extreme", just as anything can be regarded as "balanced". All it requires is a shift in perspective.

From the perspective of enlightened wisdom, the "middle way" of doing everything in moderation represents an extreme form of lifelessness.

David:
Having said that, even the "Middle Way" that he teaches is pretty stringent and austere. Attaining "right understanding", for example, means renouncing all wrong understanding. It doesn't mean being content with, say, a balance of right and wrong understanding.

Carmel:
I've read The Dharma a few times. It's not quite as simplistic as your quote suggests. There's room for subjectivity when interpreting some of the passages, especially the more obscure ones and he never intended for his teachings to be dogma...or the "absolute truth".

He knew that his understanding of Reality was absolutely true, though, and he openly claimed it as such. His teachings, in turn, stemmed from that understanding.

Your use of the word "dogma" is misplaced here. Can it be called "dogmatic to strive and reach full understanding of the nature of Reality, and then teach others about it? If so, then the Buddha was dogmatic.

Yes, he encouraged people to think for themselves, but in his own mind his understanding of Reality and the path to enlightenment was "unsurpassed" and beyond question. And he didn't regard anyone else to be "enlightened" unless they had reached that same high level of understanding themselves.

David:
I don't really devalue the emotions as such. Always, the prime focus is on irrational conceptions and ignorance. It's just that emotions cannot arise in the absence of irrational conceptions and ignorance. In a wise person, the series of causal connections inside the body which lead to the emergence of an emotion is broken. A vital piece in the chain has disappeared. The whole mechanism has ground to a halt.

This has enormous ramifications for those who have a desire to break through into enlightenment and become wise, in that if a person isn't willing to give up his attachment to a life of emotional highs and lows, then he will be subconsciously restricting his own mind to ensure that it won't fully dismantle its irrational conceptions and ignorance.

Carmel:
One can experience healthy emotions which are conducive to spiritual life, particularly, compassion which I associate with empathy(feeling).

In the early stages, yes.

Do you experience compassion as a feeling or merely a consequence of logic?

The former, when my mind is not quite on song. The latter, when it is.

What is normally called "compassion" is the limited, emotional attempt to mirror what is unsurpassed in the fully-enlightened person.

-

[David Quinn]

you can't become "whole" simply by stringing bits of multiplicity together and hoping that the outcome will be a pleasing, coherent success. You need to first dive down into the unity underlying all things. And then, after that, you can go back into the world, as it were, and begin the study of multiplicity in a coherent fashion, with each step of this endeavour thoroughly grounded in unity. And in the light of this unity, things like "wholeness" and "cohesion" can be re-evaluated and placed into proper context.

Heh, reminds me of a poem I wrote many years ago, which if I remember correctly, goes:

Behind appearance of simplicity
Lies the wondrous multiplicity.

Behind the multiplicity
Lies the Ultimate Simplicity.

Exactly. And knowing both, being thoroughly at home in both, integrating both, being able to switch from one to the other at will.....is wisdom.

-

[guest_of_logic]

Hi Diebert,

Thanks for the input.

Could you expand on the problem you see with the minimization, especially from a more general point of view. Over time, every time I stepped back from the forum and the type of conversations here, I realized the power is about the simplicity, the effort to zoom into what matters, what existence deep down is, without getting into the form of whatever manifests. So much wisdom hides in what is not discussed and what is discarded and devalued in the way the discussions are set up.

The problem will probably become self-evident when I explain what I mean by minimisation: that is, to (deliberately) reduce to a minimal degree the true significance of a thing or concept.

I think that you are talking about something else: focus. The focus of this forum is, at its broadest, agreeable to me; it's only when defocussing turns to minimisation that I hear alarm bells ringing.

Life itself is not minimized , not discarded but in the context of getting to the everlasting true nature of existence (sorry but I'm not aware of a less ambitious sounding phrase that would suffice here) it should be made very clear that any obsession or attachment to divine beings, deeper meanings, objects, pasts and futures very quickly will cloud the view. It's as if our human nature is geared towards getting distracted with it and somehow overlay eternal truth with contemporary fluff.

The best approach is then to encourage people to minimize the fluff whenever they desire to understand more deeply. It's not a case of demonizing, forbidding or ridiculing the fluff - daily life is all about dealing with fluff, like an acrobat juggling with burning pins - but it's about putting it all into perspective for those desiring, no: demanding a lasting perspective.

That's helped with the thought-collecting.

I find it interesting that you refer to "obsession or attachment to [...] deeper meanings" as "[clouding] the view", and in the next paragraph imply that "deeper meanings" are "fluff". Clouding the view of what? "The everlasting true nature of existence"?

This is where I see a process of minimisation happening on this forum, and it speaks perhaps to a pre-supposition, or at least to a hasty conclusion: that ultimately meaning is accidental; that ultimate understanding is "empty"; that what we feel when we contemplate the unanswered (or unanswerable) is meaningless; that feeling itself is meaningless; that neither meaning nor feeling have any relevance to "the everlasting true nature of existence".

Meaning and feeling, so dismissively swept off the table. A cold and impersonal reality; mechanistic: machine-like even. The inevitable clockwork of the stars; and no starry-eyes for robots: would you minimise yourself to a machine?

Still collecting my thoughts: that's just an immediate reaction to your comments, and will probably be refined.

[Alex T. Jacob]

Hi David,

I will use Brother Tomas's number system:

1) You, and your posse, don't have the 'authority' to finally decide what is a skewed priority or what isn't. If you could understand this one point you would understand why you receive opposition, from me anyway.

2) You could be off-base yourself about 'priortites'. If that were so, everything that would come from your own choices (in yourself and reflected in others who adopt your attitudes and practices) would of course reflect the initial distortion. I suggest that this is precisely the case.

3) It may be true that 'the Universe' needs to be 'understood' before one could integrate the individual (a being who clearly suffers with material and psychological malaise, that is perhaps the one constant of human existence, all sentient existence). But this poses the question: What constitutes such 'understanding'? How does one arrive at it? Again, you and your crew don't finally decide this question. There are many explorers of this question, and there are many possibilities. Each person will go down their road. Our existence is all about 'going down the road'. In the end, you and I are both doing to die and disappear from the surface of the planet. What we do here...is part of a 'dance' or a 'gesture' we make with God, the Cosmos, and the Universe. It cannot be abbreviated or encapsulated. Every man must grapple with this serious question. (Or not of course. 'Not' is also an option, not a recommended one but a common one).

David wrote: "Attempting to understand multiplicity without first understanding oneness can at best only result in a disparate collection of disconnected understandings and views with no real cohesion between them. In the past, people tried to resolve this by superimposing a religious order onto things, thus creating at least a feeling of cohesion. But that option is quickly drying up as religion becomes less and less believeable. Instead, most indivduals remain floating in a sea of disconnectedness, as Jason touched on - or fractured, as you put it. It is easy to understand why a person would become obsessed with "wholeness" in such a situation."

4) Here, we begin to diverge even as we agree (I agree with portions of this). First, I do not suggest an understanding of multiplicity without a focus in the self. So, your diversion here does not describe anything I am talking about or recommending. It all hinges on how one goes about defining 'oneness' and what one does with the self to achieve it. I suggest now and have always suggested that your methods are too exclusive because they do not seem to arise from a whole person (mind, emotion, will etc.). They themselves are 'fractured' methods. There is no one thing I could bring up to 'prove' this, and I am not interetested in 'proofs'. I suggest the results of your methods is self-evident and anyone can see it.

5) To 'save oneself' from the 'sea of disconnectedness' is what I have been trying to talk about in this last round of postings. To me, this is exactly the question, and it remains a question.

"But you can't become "whole" simply by stringing bits of multiplicity together and hoping that the outcome will be a pleasing, coherent success. You need to first dive down into the unity underlying all things. And then, after that, you can go back into the world, as it were, and begin the study of multiplicity in a coherent fashion, with each step of this endeavour thoroughly grounded in unity. And in the light of this unity, things like "wholeness" and "cohesion" can be re-evaluated and placed into proper context."

6) However I never suggested even remotely such a 'stringing together'. It seems to be true enough about seeking unity in oneself. Not only from an intuitive perspective but from a psychoanalytic perspective. The implication is finding the core within oneself and living in the world from that core. But, all the criticism one makes of your presuppositions, your praxis, is only to suggest that this process is open-ended, fluid, personal, and is always (I suggest) conducted against the background of eventual death. All the roads we travel lead to the same place. All the choices we make have to be considered from that perspective. I think this knowledge might keep us from getting too grandiose about our own selves, our mission, etc.

[Carmel]

David:
The trouble is, anything can be regarded as "extreme", just as anything can be regarded as "balanced". All it requires is a shift in perspective.

Carmel:
That's true up to a point, but wait...It's so black that it's white?! so hot that it's cold? We do live in a dualistic world, afterall.

Yet, we can still strive to think less in less extreme terms... more holistically.

David:
From the perspective of enlightened wisdom, the "middle way" of doing everything in moderation represents an extreme form of lifelessness.

Carmel:
It's not about "moderation" or lifenessness. It's about knowing when to engage in life and when to detach from it. That takes wisdom. It's easy to live in a cave.

David:
He knew that his understanding of Reality was absolutely true, though, and he openly claimed it as such. His teachings, in turn, stemmed from that understanding.

Carmel:
That is why Buddhism is considered a religion, rather than a philosophy, by most people. His views were subjectively true, not absolutely true, regardless of what he claimed.

David:
Your use of the word "dogma" is misplaced here. Can it be called "dogmatic to strive and reach full understanding of the nature of Reality, and then teach others about it? If so, then the Buddha was dogmatic.

Carmel:
I say he's not dogmatic because he wasn't forceful about teaching his views. He wasn't trying to recruit people to his ideology, in fact, it's said that originally, he didn't want his teachings to be put in writing for fear that they would be misinterpreted by the masses.

David:
Yes, he encouraged people to think for themselves, but in his own mind his understanding of Reality and the path to enlightenment was "unsurpassed" and beyond question. And he didn't regard anyone else to be "enlightened" unless they had reached that same high level of understanding themselves.

Carmel:
Yeah, what a schmuck! ...j/k, actually I've been rereading some of "The Dharma"...I've come across some relevant passages, I may them post at a later time(or start a new thread).
--
Carmel
Do you experience compassion as a feeling or merely a consequence of logic?

David:
The former, when my mind is not quite on song. The latter, when it is.

Carmel:
ok, what if a playful, frolicking puppy, approached you. Would you respond to him or ignore him?

Sorry, if the question sounds trite, but I'm trying to understand how far you take your detached state.