Musings, Critiques.

[Kunga]

I had a direct experience of absolute

If YOU had a direct experience of anything,
it wasn't what you thought it was.

[Dennis Mahar]

conventionally speaking.
I can experience my experience.

we can't say existence doesn't exist else we move to nihilism.
we can't give phenomena selfhood or its own essence either.

the conversation is HOW it exists.

[Kunga]

conventionally speaking.
I can experience my experience.

we can't say existence doesn't exist else we move to nihilism.
we can't give phenomena selfhood or its own essence either.

the conversation is HOW it exists.

Then for the sake of this conventional conversation,
can you explain your experience as to HOW you
experienced the Absolute ?

[Dennis Mahar]

I listened.
I heard.

favourable conditions.

[Kunga]

I listened.
I heard.

favourable conditions.

listening & hearing what ?
WHAT did you experience?
Was it a one time thing/experience
or over a period of time?
days ,
years ?
WHO/WHAT
did you listen to ?
WHAT did it feel like ?
WHAT happened ?
WHY don't you explain your experience ?
WHAT were the favorable conditions ?
Your karma was purified ?
It took eons before Buddha could "geddit ".

[Dennis Mahar]

listening & hearing what ?

wisdom

WHAT did you experience?

clear light

Was it a one time thing/experience

comes and goes

access to the machinery.
ships passing in the night.
moon in water.

[Alex Jacob]

Might I enrol one of you in passing the potatoes, please?

[Kunga]

listening & hearing what ?

wisdom

WHAT did you experience?

clear light

Was it a one time thing/experience

comes and goes

access to the machinery.
ships passing in the night.
moon in water.

That's a little vague Dennis.

What does clear light feel like ?

One thing that bothers me about people,(myself included)
is that they always have to be right about everything,
you always seem to be defending yourself. You can never be wrong. You still have an ego. Did the Buddha have an ego ?

[Kunga]

Might I enrol one of you in passing the potatoes, please?

You vegetarian ?,
You seem like the rare type to me !

Pass the joint..

[Dennis Mahar]

Keep this in mind please.

The Buddha never explicity denied the existence of 'God' or 'Brahmin' or whatever.

He was looking elsewhere than 'thingifying' that which can't be 'thingified'.

He is explicating phenomenal existence.
HOW it exists.
Emptiness means 'harmonious relations' between people.

[Kunga]

The Buddha never explicity denied the existence of 'God' or 'Brahmin' or whatever.

It was Brahma (The highest God), that requested him to teach after his Enlightenment. It is said also that Buddha taught the Gods .

He was looking elsewhere than 'thingifying' that which can't be 'thingified'.

Is that why you cling to emptiness & The Absolute ?
The Tao that can be named is not the Tao.

Emptiness means 'harmonious relations' between people.

LOL,
does that include sex ?

[Dennis Mahar]

The Tao that can be named is not the Tao.

Exactly.

And Nagarjuna's 'ineffable silence'.

smarter than the average bears.

LOL,
does that include sex ?

I wonder if sex and harmonious relations constitute a contradiction in terms.
It's possible I guess for a time being.

[Kunga]

And Nagarjuna's 'ineffable silence'.

Exactly

And Nāgārjuna criticized those who conceptualized emptiness:

The Victorious Ones have announced that emptiness is the relinquishing of all views. Those who are possessed of the view of emptiness are said to be incorrigible.

I wonder if sex and harmonious relations constitute a contradiction in terms.
It's possible I guess for a time being.

It is even said,
that the experience of sex (orgasm) is experiencing emptiness. (One of many ways)

[Dennis Mahar]

And Nāgārjuna criticized those who conceptualized emptiness:

Nah, he criticised those who dwelt merely in a conceptual understanding of emptiness and didn't push on to a profound experience of emptiness.

It is even said,
that the experience of sex (orgasm) is experiencing emptiness. (One of many ways)

more like the experience of 'empty wallet'.

[Kunga]

the experience of 'empty wallet'.

bitch

[Dennis Mahar]

bitch

can I have fries with that?

[Alex Jacob]

Seen from one angle this recent display, to me, is evidence of a bankrupt system of thinking. Maybe it is that as Westerners it is so fundamental to our methods of being to focus on the tangible, that in attempting to make these doctrines 'real' for us, we only demonstrate the seeming vacuity of the ideas and render ourselves ridiculous. Emptiness, 'experience of emptiness', ineffable silence, conceptualized emptiness, enlightenment, 'thingification', Tao, Absolute: what a vain waste of time! There are so many substantial things to focus on, what is the possible value of this crap? Would we sacrifice the Western liberal traditions...for this shite?

[Kunga]

the Western liberal traditions

I was impregnated by this shit,
in my youth.

Then the lotus grew.
What a screw.

[Jamesh]

[Specifically, I am a bizarre crypto-Christian gnostic who also has very strong links to a form of Heroic Greek Paganism! ]

Wiki:

Gnostic systems (particularly the Syrian-Egyptian schools[which?]) are typically marked out by:
The notion of a remote, supreme monadic divinity, source — this figure is known under a variety of names, including "Pleroma" (fullness, totality) and "Bythos" (depth, profundity);

AKA The Totality

1. The introduction by emanation of further divine beings known as Aeons, which are nevertheless identifiable as aspects of the God from which they proceeded; the progressive emanations are often conceived metaphorically as a gradual and progressive distancing from the ultimate source, which brings about an instability in the fabric of the divine nature;

AKA People. It is inferring the distancing of their selves from reality as a result of their Aeonic ego.

2. The introduction of a distinct creator god or demiurge, which is an illusion and a later emanation from the single monad or source. This second god is a lesser and inferior or false god. This creator god is commonly referred to as the demiourgós (a technical term literally denoting a public worker the Latinized form of Greek dēmiourgos, δημιουργός, hence "ergon or energy", "public god or skilled worker" "false god" or "god of the masses"), used in the Platonist tradition.

AKA Alex and other religious folk who spiritualize the relationship between emotions and ego.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

2. The introduction of a distinct creator god or demiurge, which is an illusion and a later emanation from the single monad or source. This second god is a lesser and inferior or false god. This creator god is commonly referred to as the demiourgós (a technical term literally denoting a public worker the Latinized form of Greek dēmiourgos, δημιουργός, hence "ergon or energy", "public god or skilled worker" "false god" or "god of the masses"), used in the Platonist tradition.

That's interesting: "public god or skilled worker". This whole demiurge as artificer. Ranging from one creator in the sky to ourselves as creator or organizer of destiny, success and history. "He who manifests the world into being". This is where atheism can become a spiritual undertaking.

[Alex Jacob]

James: what about the Heroic Greek Paganism? :-)

The definition you offered has next to no relationship with my definition (or understanding). I would define Gnosticism as a personal, subjective experience and understanding of existence or one's life and existence. It corresponds to mythology insofar as it is understanding mediated by symbols. My own view at least right now is that it is an unreliable and subjective means of understanding, similar to how a dream organizes and expresses an understanding through a story and through images. It is meaningful insofar as it expresses allegories. But the substantial tool that we have is our reasoning mind within our heritage of humanism and materialism and this also points to an area of focus: ourselves in the tangible world.

Our rational selves and our emotional selves are deeply intertwined, forever intertwined. It would appear that the challenge is to strive for the best and highest level of ratiocination and the higher levels of emotion (more feeling perhaps as emotions are passing). 'Greek Heroism' is a way of being human in a vital way, struggling creatively within the limits of a tragic situation (our rapidly approaching death that subsumes everything, and the pain and distress of having a body). I guess it would be a kind of Heroic spiritualization of man within his human circumstances where 'God' (idealism) becomes ideals to be lived tangibly, things to do, things to create. That is usually how the gods appear in heroic Greek poetry: possibilities for man.

In fact, it is substantially through the time I have spent on this forum and in contact with people who, by and large, have mind-fucked themselves out of a way to live 'tangibly' that I have been forced to define a 'cure'. That is where the term 'shamanism' becomes relevant: when you come into contact with sickness (in the Nietzschean sense) something inside of you ('vitality', will-to-live) goes to work to strengthen your link with life. You 'do' that inner work and in this way offer an alternative to, say, an early death or, as you indicated pretty clearly through your own story, a sloppy cynicism rendering one ineffective in the world and resigned to self-destruction.

Here again the notion of 'conversion' arises. If a given set of ideas (the 'installation') is not serving us vitally we are often subject to third-person forces who will 'order' us on some level. Another alternative is to remodel our ideas: thought-reform as I am calling it. Everything hinges on how the 'thought-reform' is undertaken and on the basis of what sort of thinking!

The advantage in dealing with a bunch of half-dead people---angry ghosts---is that it is rather easy to see the way to tangible solutions. When Odysseus visited the underworld he had to bring an offering of vital, red blood. He had to 'make those ghosts real' if only for a few minutes to get anything out of them!

Dennis, although he cannot be said to represent 'Buddhism', and God forbid he should represent GoFerism and QRStianity or Quinnism! is a fairly clear example of someone who has died while alive. The recent 'conversation', on the basis of shadows and murk, is the bickering of 'angry ghosts' who, though dead, strive to live. If we could only help them to get out of the self-created box, a murky, ineffective Hades! But, when people are creating their own box, and using all their powers mental and spiritual to define their prison, well, this is a special problem!

Nota bene: When in the Underworld, if they offer you food (potatoes, for example) DO NOT ACCEPT! Politely decline!

[brad walker]

The conversation is how to proceed.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Some attempt to get the ongoing conversation developing in a better direction. This time by rehashing some material in quote form.

....evidence of a bankrupt system of thinking. Would we sacrifice the Western liberal traditions..

But what about the Western liberal traditions, how healthy are or were they because:

Maybe it is because of what our culture has become. Over the last 10-15 years I have witnessed a transformation that I really can no longer bear. I don't want to live here anymore. Just walking down the street, in the supermarkets, in public, listening to people, I see things that make me 'sick to my stomach'.

.. the civil culture is in so many ways essentially female, run by women, dominated by women's values and attitudes, but these are not the women I admire or respect, I don't know how else to put it. I don't know what to make of that. To be truthful---and again it is difficult for me to assess my own objectivity because these observations do hinge on feelings, on senses, and are not only intellectual---if I had to say it, I really feel I have so very little left in common with my own culture, and with many people of that culture.

But just so you and I understand each other a little better: the whole notion and the fact of 'jettisoning' cultural---what is the word?---attainments and accomplishments? all that is a sort of basic cultural capital, is an on-going phenomenon almost everywhere. One aspect of postmodernism as a serious problem is that it is fractured thinking by fractured people. The postmodern problem, in my view, is the postmodern person who can no longer think.

....industrialization of society on the 'spiritual nature' of culture, the effect of the atomization of the individual as a by-product of modernity, and the increasing tendentiousness of our desires. In that sense I do see the higher and the better aspects of the religious impetus as part of the 'holy cure', and I do see the irresponsible and reckless use of our faculties as part of a 'disease'. There are core agreements, therefor. ....it operates like a disease until it takes over the whole organism. This is really what I am attempting to get at, the difference between what is diseased and what is wholesome.

This reminds me of Nietzsche's note:

• The 20th century has two faces but one of decay. The same grounds, from which could spring forth souls more potent and comprehensive (unprejudiced, amoral) than ever, push weaker natures toward decay. There develops perhaps a kind of European Chinesedom, with a placid Buddhist-Christian faith, and in practise clever-epicurean, like with the Chinese: reduced people. [Umwertungsheft Frühjahr 1884, 222]

How about it, Alex? Does this summarize your issue with Western culture (and in your view also the culture of his forum); its disease and its promise?

[Alex Jacob]

The dangers of the present are all the blind, mechanical forces that work against our 'integrity'. The mass culture that we fear and abhor is one that essentially has no interior structure, or a very soft one, and so cannot distinguish, perhaps, the real and the important from what is superficial and valueless. In this specific sense, and in this I still am in strong agreement with Q and R and S, a 'woman's culture' has grown up around us. I am not exactly sure if that is a direct result of the Western Liberal traditions but certainly feminism as a political and social movement is: if only in the sense that women can be much fuller beings than they were at another time. What has happened in American culture to so lower the standards is a pretty complex question.

The way I look at things all depends on how seriously people are engaged with important, substantial ideas. To the degree that they are, and allow the time and space for this ('conversation'), is all the difference between a dynamic, thinking people and the opposite. It seems to me that we are 'healthy' when we are engaged on these levels.

In that sense I do see the higher and the better aspects of the religious impetus as part of the 'holy cure', and I do see the irresponsible and reckless use of our faculties as part of a 'disease'.

Yes, I feel that to be 'responsible' is to engage in thinking about 'substantial and important things'. Sobriety in the present is a 'holy cure'. The role that religion plays, or religiosity, is up in the air for me. Perhaps like you (if I read you right) the strongest platform is to reject 'the gods' (especially the 'artificer') for a form of effective atheism?

Diebert wrote: How about it, Alex? Does this summarize your issue with Western culture (and in your view also the culture of his forum); its disease and its promise?

I don't place a critique of American culture in the same grouping as a critique of Genius Forum philosophy. Do you?

How would you define your own position in regard to your own question?

[Kunga]

This article pretty much sums it up:
http://kangartc.tripod.com/essays/hpl2reflective.htm

I think, but I am not a prolific writer of thoughts. I express in art & poetry what words fail me . I do read a lot, used to read 3-4 books at a time...but now reading puts me to sleep....
Alex, it would be nice if you could condense your thoughts instead of the profuse elaborations to show off your deep wealth of literacy. You would like to see some intelligent elaborations comming from me, but I prefer to get it straight to the point without elaboratons...make it clear & simple as possible.
My experience of the Western Liberal Life is what revolted me & I rebelled seeking refuge in Eastern concepts (less is more). I have no regrets. I have lived my life fully, as that is the only way to get it out of your system (unlike the life of a monk sheltered from worldly life). I admire anyone that can live their life simply, without hoarding selfishly, to give excess away.....
How has this WLT improved your life ? The Austrailian Aboriginals take better care of the Earth, than any Western Liberal ever could. "The meek shall inherit the Earth".