Earth is Paradise

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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guest_of_logic
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by guest_of_logic »

Dude. Talking with you is futile. You just don't listen.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Diebert,
becomes what could be called Dieb's Ah's-and-Oh's model.:

O -> A -> B >- C -> B' -> A' -> O
From totality (O), the "error" is having a thing neceserally isolated and identified as impression (A). Then it needs "existence" because not everything needs adressing. Here existence also means "reality", something asking for a response, a question, a burning (B of burning). We come to doing a "right or wrong action" which looks like a choice (C), this is the response to the real issue (B). This works like an operator on B, or in other words reality changes (B moves on to B'). But even when doing the right thing, it's still seen as existence with unknowns and therefore error (A') and when let go we're back to square O.
This theory in Plato-speak is 'saving the appearances'.
The appearances are kept isolate from any 'why'.
It accounts for observed phenomena so that their present occurrence is seen as a matter of course and future occurrences are accurately predicted.
It makes phenomena intelligible by predicting their behaviour, without explaining why they behave as they do.

Sailors didn't require 'why' stars moved; where stars were and where they went next gleaned from observation was 'the users guide' for sailing.
utterly predictable.

The transformative quality is supreme confidence in knowing 'where it's at'.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by Dennis Mahar »

John,

Laird's metaphysical predilection is Occam's Razor.

cuts away presumably superfluous considerations.
You have to look at what elements he sees as superfluous.
what he sees as crucial and what he sees as garbage.

Sort out if you are talking to a Scientific Realist who holds that phenomena has an independent existence apart from consciousness.
That would be his crucial and anything else would be the garbage.

The main objection to the idea of a participatory universe stems from the belief that the mind is an accidental side effect of matter.
It is crucial to sort that out.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Dennis Mahar wrote:How does one breakthru' to Buddhamind?
Like we have no "mind", and there's only activity, to reach any "buddhamind", there's only buddha doing.
SeekerOfWisdom
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

"Practice not doing and everything will fall into place"

"I am like an idiot my mind is so empty"
Dennis Mahar wrote:The main objection to the idea of a participatory universe stems from the belief that the mind is an accidental side effect of matter.
It is crucial to sort that out.

How do you sort out such a belief?
I can understand how certain one might be on this topic before realizing emptiness.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by Dennis Mahar »

How do you sort out such a belief?
You have a project now.
seek Seeker.
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Gestalt the Subject Cogniser, Occams Razor.

It's throwing out a lot of Nature isn't it?
a dualistic perspective,
crucial v superfluous.

The subject cogniser, play of causality,
emptiness,
'inherent existence can't be found',
sees seamless whole,
totality,
nonduality.
SeekerOfWisdom
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

Dualism cannot be abandoned for as long as it is the fundamental basis of the belief "This is me caused by body".

And "This is me caused by body" can never be abandoned unless you actually observe "me" (meditate and practice wakefulness)

Hence why it is that the way can only be pointed to, "It is for you to swelter to the task".

Pointing only gets harder while people think they know more and more.

No one ever thinks observing themselves is worthwhile or useful, especially when it is believed that the answers can only be found externally.

People have been trying to accomplish this project forever, the best they would have gotten is a 1/1000 rate and that is already only for people who have actually read the texts or had teaching.

The best I have been able to do is get people to read from sages, that is going pretty well at least. I've had hundreds of people reading many a mindphuck quote from Buddha or Lao Tzu :D
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by Dennis Mahar »

mindphuck

No!

mindfrack.
SeekerOfWisdom
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

sorry
Pye
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by Pye »

Diebert writes: Like we have no "mind", and there's only activity, to reach any "buddhamind", there's only buddha doing.
I am in favour of verbing all nouns like this. Perhaps there are no nouns at all - only verbs. So rather than 'thing' (i.e. mind), there is process (thinking). Rather than a 'state' (buddha-mind), there is kinesis (buddha-doing). Instead of 'being,' there is the always-coming-to-be (becoming). There are many insightful thoughts (thinking:)) that can come about from unloosing the thing-nature of many nouns and seeing them for the verbs of process/movement that they are.

Seeker, I've been thinking about your demands for proof of knowing when we are awake and when we are asleep. I get that you believe the common ground of sensation between the two means there's no external reality of 'things' being sensed - just sensation itself, coursing in its own closed loop.

Given your aforementioned belief, I will not have argumentative recourse to support my own knowing. Given what you believe about consciousness as precedent; ungrounded in the physical; a singular substance extended to many, I won't be able to support my support. And given what you say of the impossibility of knowing at all, we'd be stuck trotting around the hermeneutic circle till we're out of breath.

Anyway, I offer the following statements I think I have knowledge of in my own experience (mind and all):

I am only confused about the whether-awake-or-dreaming thing when I am dreaming/asleep. It is true I have many times thought myself awake there only to be, sometimes repeatedly, fooled. This I can know in the dream (lucidity) and afterwards (awake). But it is experiencially true that I cannot always tell when I am asleep, dreaming, any distinctions between these, so called, two-worlds.

However, I can always tell when I'm awake. I have never been awake and thought to myself, is this a dream? - only in those few moments of life-trauma when the scene before one can take on a dream-like quality; have I noticed a dream-like quality? yes, but never have I confused it with sleep or dreaming. In retrospect, I considered the dream-like quality that can accompany trauma to be perhaps a subconscious protective desire that the events unfolding before me should only end up being a bad dream (i.e. not-be 'real.')

So, I'm not sure we have a proper parallelism here. Because the confusion takes place in sleeping/dreaming, only one side of this faux-pposition is unable to make distinctions. This becomes an interesting thing in an argument where the dreaming-portion is thought to be the reduced condition of all. It's only when we're dreaming that we can't make the distinction . . . . and I figure human becomings have been struggling up out of the dream-soup slowly and painfully for a very long time. And that the protective instincts of dreaming say something about what we're able, or not able, to wake to in life . . . .
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Pye wrote:
Diebert writes: Like we have no "mind", and there's only activity, to reach any "buddhamind", there's only buddha doing.
I am in favour of verbing all nouns like this. Perhaps there are no nouns at all - only verbs. So rather than 'thing' (i.e. mind), there is process (thinking). Rather than a 'state' (buddha-mind), there is kinesis (buddha-doing). Instead of 'being,' there is the always-coming-to-be (becoming). There are many insightful thoughts (thinking:)) that can come about from unloosing the thing-nature of many nouns and seeing them for the verbs of process/movement that they are.
If a human creates (himself) through language, the impact of such a change might indeed be significant. Like writing and talking in preferably E-Prime finds its uses in therapy and academia. Easier to start with than noun-less language. I had to dig deep in memory but Borges wrote something about a language without nouns spoken by staunch idealists in a story. After a Google: here i̶t̶ ̶i̶s̶ appearing happens. With gems like "mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of men".
SeekerOfWisdom
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

I'm glad you were thinking about it, the seeds have been planted.


The question is Pye, is it that you have never confused waking state to be a dream...

or

That you've never been confused you were Pye while you were Pye?


The question is, are you somehow distinguishing between which sensations are dream-like and which are real?

Or are you simply distinguishing between what is crazy/weird/fleeting and what is "normal" Pye life?

Could you see how maybe this seems real only because it is what you are currently "returning" to?
Or as some might say, because it is your current life in this round of rebirths? (Rebirths being nothing but changing sensation)
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brad walker
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Re: Earth is Paradise

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Pye
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by Pye »

Seeker, you seemed to have missed the 'doomed' nature of this dialogue - by virtue of your own parameters, and in what I wrote.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

SeekerOfWisdom wrote:The question is, are you somehow distinguishing between which sensations are dream-like and which are real?

Or are you simply distinguishing between what is crazy/weird/fleeting and what is "normal" life?
Most people assume there's a fundamental difference in quality of the sensations or events transpiring between waking and sleeping. And because this is not necessarily true (I agree with you there) your question is fair enough. But in my experience it doesn't lead to any fruitful discussion very often either.

Perhaps people who have experienced a couple of extremely realistic and meaningful dreams would have less difficulty following your questioning. But it all just shifts to the next question: how stuff becomes meaningful and relevant in the first place? In the terms of my recently posted model: when becomes A (sensation) a pressing matter B (burning) or "real" to us?

Waking life we call "real" because I think it normally provides way more connections, shifting and transforming inputs, reactions to actions and events which mean something to us, which connect through memory with what we know and dreams do not or to a way lesser degree, below a certain threshold of seriousness. Also memory functions possibly differently and dreams "fade" quickly. Like a stunning dream can be almost forgotten ten minutes later. You can feel its universe slipping away! I've always remembered dreams after waking up, rarely I cannot recall.

And yet, I had dreams, at least I think they were dreams which were more vivid, meaningful and connective than anything I remember ever having experienced. They are also being remembered like any other important event in my life. Perhaps it was closer to mystical experiences or visions but I do not know what those are exactly either. Dreams also have occasionally introduced ideas to my mind which were way harder to understand in any waking state. A bit like being high I suppose but it's rare though. So to me it's perfectly understandable to hesitate between the drawing of lines between dream and wake as some final demarcation line of the real.

The question always returns: what is meaningful to you? What hurts? What presses? Follow that and you'll find real.
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote: Waking life we call "real" because I think it normally provides way more connections, shifting and transforming inputs, reactions to actions and events which mean something to us, which connect through memory with what we know and dreams do not or to a way lesser degree, below a certain threshold of seriousness. Also memory functions possibly differently and dreams "fade" quickly. Like a stunning dream can be almost forgotten ten minutes later. You can feel its universe slipping away! I've always remembered dreams after waking up, rarely I cannot recall.

And yet, I had dreams, at least I think they were dreams which were more vivid, meaningful and connective than anything I remember ever having experienced. They are also being remembered like any other important event in my life. Perhaps it was closer to mystical experiences or visions but I do not know what those are exactly either. Dreams also have occasionally introduced ideas to my mind which were way harder to understand in any waking state. A bit like being high I suppose but it's rare though. So to me it's perfectly understandable to hesitate between the drawing of lines between dream and wake as some final demarcation line of the real.

The question always returns: what is meaningful to you? What hurts? What presses? Follow that and you'll find real.

True, in reality it is only the connections/memories we feel that create a sense of "real".

Without those connections, with a more wakeful and impartial eye, that familiarity doesn't hold and that sense of "real" fades with it.

You don't properly retain not-Diebert memories while being Diebert, it's just how things are, those connections that make it seem what is "real" would otherwise be disintegrated.

It is only self-clinging that makes this experience appear the real way of things. It is only a transient experience, when it fades and there is a new experience, the mind automatically assumes? that the experience is what is real and acts accordingly, even in efforts to save it's imagined self from imagined foes.

Diebert and this world will pass away and the connections to the false self and the ego will be lost illusions, recognition of the true self, which is the truth that "you" are transient and that all is only an experience of mind, is where the truth of eternal experience is found.

What is meaningful is based on the present, it is always changing.

Every feeling of familiarity, every memory and connection, every single thought, comes in the moment, it arises and passes away.

They are all new experiences of that present.

I know that when I look at my Self or think of my past, all that is occurring are more illusory manifestations of mind in that new moment, those connections, they arise and pass away, they are transient, and any particular manifestation is never the reality.

There is nothing that is the "real" but change and changing sensation.

The uncaused and unoriginated is the true self, clinging to the false self, what is experienced now, (Nothing more than a particular of eternal experience) is the cause of our identification with suffering, it is the start of accepting delusion as truth and leads to erroneous understanding at the most fundamental level "This is me, mind is caused by body" vs "This am I not, this body is a particular experience of mind".

I read a passage from the Buddha the other day saying something very similar to Jesus, "Love thy neighbor as thy Self", though he spoke it more a long the lines of implying "Love them, as they are your self".

You are enlightened yes Diebert? What do you think, is the meaningful and real always changing for you?
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by Dennis Mahar »

There's a Context in situ John that John faces.

'I am not heard'

How is 'I am not heard' dealt with?

What has to happen for 'John to be heard'?

How can 'John heard' be created?

Your background is physics isn't it?
Some of the things you say are 'as if' Heisenberg.
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by Bobo »

SeekerOfWisdom wrote:The uncaused and unoriginated is the true self, clinging to the false self, what is experienced now, (Nothing more than a particular of eternal experience) is the cause of our identification with suffering, it is the start of accepting delusion as truth and leads to erroneous understanding at the most fundamental level "This is me, mind is caused by body" vs "This am I not, this body is a particular experience of mind".
The body is a particular experience of mind which is caused by the "eternal experience".
So the "eternal experience" is a particular experience of the mind - which is a contradiction - or the "eternal experience" is not a particular experience of the mind, which you don't experience (if you did it would be a particular experience of the mind) - and is also a contradiction.
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

Bobo you just twisted the words to say body or mind is caused by eternal experience, what does that even mean?

Mind is, experience is eternal, body is a particular experience, experience goes on after death of body.






Physics before I quit, I would say as if to all of them, it makes me laugh that people try to discern the nature of the universe through detailing the external manifestations completely unaware of the mystery.

Consciousness observation is where to go,
how can you know anything about what your seeing if you aren't even willing to investigate how it arises and exists?
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by Dennis Mahar »

The 'I' self can't be found under analysis.
ultimately it doesn't exist by way of investigation.

That doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
It exists conventionally.

you have to be careful with emptiness,
the subtlety it plays in.

Each experiencing 'island of consciousness'.
not any not experiencing 'island of consciousness'.

you in your causal continuum. I in mine.
Not absolute, relative.
not one. not two.

interrelated.

normally we feel absolutely separate from other and environment.
we are told we are related in family.
by marraige into another family.
if we live in the same state we are somehow related.
gender related,
related in nationality.
racially related.
related in religion.

all that is refuted in the Inquiry.

nevertheless it exists,
and not recognising it as an operating condition is to be barking up the wrong tree.

if you are transformed in your 'island of consciousness' with respect to this matter, well and good.

Impermanence is the monster,
the deadset motherfracker,
where the grief is.

Taking that on,
accepting that,
gets one in the Spirit of things.
Pye
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by Pye »

Dennis writes:
Impermanence is the monster,
the deadset motherfracker,
where the grief is.

Taking that on,
accepting that,
gets one in the Spirit of things.
Grief and feast, for once past the bitter taste, no longer motherfracker, but mother; no longer grief, but joy; no longer just acceptance, but seeing, becoming; being-with, rather than 'against.'

Soooooo many philosophies of permanence belie that deadset motherfracker. So many expressions of a what-is desperate to affix itself into what-always-is: a god, a human soul, every passing thing, a dream . . . . anything but this.
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Re: Earth is Paradise

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Bobo
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by Bobo »

SeekerOfWisdom wrote:Bobo you just twisted the words to say body or mind is caused by eternal experience, what does that even mean?

Mind is, experience is eternal, body is a particular experience, experience goes on after death of body.
I'm saying that if mind is a particular experience it is the same as the body, and if mind is not a particular experience it is the same as an external reality.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Earth is Paradise

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

SeekerOfWisdom wrote:True, in reality it is only the connections/memories we feel that create a sense of "real". Without those connections, with a more wakeful and impartial eye, that familiarity doesn't hold and that sense of "real" fades with it. What is meaningful is based on the present, it is always changing.

There is nothing that is the "real" but change and changing sensation.... What do you think, is the meaningful and real always changing for you?
But would you agree that not all changing sensations are equally meaningful or part of the attention? Selections are done based on connections and meanings already given.

Some kind of "weaving" perhaps where the next thread is lined up to have some fabric at all. Without falling in line with the pattern there will be no fabric. The pattern is not random chaos. It is always changing yet ever constant. One could say thousands of things about it but never really describing it.

Again I'd like to return to the problem of choice -- our course of action. Deliberation, assessment, knowledge wielding. There are concerns, this is why people came up with answer, methods even science. As a response to actual concerns. They present themselves and do not leave when closing eyes or embrace the role of neutral witness.

I'm going to draw something for myself, to extent the Ah's-&-O'sh model with a low-end graphic:

Code: Select all

Leading up to a decision-action-moment

   Cause & Effect

  A              A'
    A         A'
      A     A'
       B   B'
        B.B'
         c
         !
The moment of c does not exist, like light speed approached but never achieved. And yet it's the base for our sense of free will, of response-ability. But no matter if it's choice or just action -- the moment value is asserted (and with that life, existence) -- we need to discuss "right choice".

The reason of the drawing leading to some kind of funnel, the V for Vendetta, is purposeful. The intent is to show a narrow road which in my view is also the middest road, a razor's edge to walk. Strangely enough such sharp edge cannot be walked successfully without confidence, not without intuitive strides. It's a natural path of doings but like any "art of archery" still very precise. This ultimately is what I propose, that awareness should sharpen the ability to walk the smallest of roads, leading through narrow gates like Needle's Eye. No formula and yet it's full of intent. No desires or hopes and yet full of purpose.
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