Where Buddhism/existentialism overlap

[SeekerOfWisdom]

which means that when a person-suffering comes to the end of their consciousness of existence, they come to the end of death.

Moving has explained it rightly, and undoubtedly is on this path.

You'll find her meaning in 'consciousness of' existence and referring to awareness of time(suffering) or egotism(suffering).

As opposed to 'existence continues, but he is not aware of it'. Timeless, not subject to birth and death. Like a man in deep sleep, does nothing.

What do you think of the definition of 'ego' as one's sense of self? It's the condition of that sense that someone or other might parse about. But always and ever, one's sense of self - as the immediate, only and irrefutable access to anything. If you can see 'ego' in this context unreactively, that'd be neat, too. work for you?

Well yeah ego=sense of self, so that's fine.

The second part 'as the immediate, only and irrefutable access to anything' is the problem.

The point is that ego is a delusion. So I'm not sure how a delusional and impermanent sense is our only access to anything. Imagine a person saying that only a small part of their Self was 'me'- and that it was their foot, that's insanity for even the ordinary.

I'll accept the use of 'Self' despite how unnecessary it is, as a reference to our existence.
Yet 'looking' at existence, everything experienced is either 'in' Self and is Self, or don't use the word. 'I in you, you in me, unity'. No part of form is Self, that is egotism, the closest you can get is the whole experience of it or awareness.

[Dennis Mahar]

seeker,
WTF?

You think you 'have' something.
What you 'have' is a theory.
You 'do' that theory.

To be that theory isn't to 'have' that theory, nor is it to 'do' that theory.
To be that theory is to recognise you generate that theory.


You are taking 'what's so' and arresting it.

I don't 'have' love,
I don't 'do' love.
I generate the possibility of love as a Context to live from at the instant I recognise emptiness.
I 'took' responsibility and created it.
I create it in my conversation as a possibility to be 'heard'.

sans Elisabeth Ishelle as I hear her.
Existential thinking.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

As said, the use of the word Self is unnecessary,without intrinsic meaning, often deceptive. I don't have any theory.

Not sure what love has to do with it, but I get that you are saying it's meaning made.

[Dennis Mahar]

As said, the use of the word Self is unnecessary,without intrinsic meaning, often deceptive. I don't have any theory.

You are generating that.
Geddit?

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Nope?

[Cahoot]

For myself, I've never heard any of the wise say they were perfect in the practice of their lives/thoughts (this is not about the-addressing of suffering itself - that is every sentient being's thing to do); or say they had a 'final arrival.' All I know have been generous about their remaining imperfections-in-life, good-natured about it. Every one of them spoke in words, more or less, of more-to-do.

Would this not be pointing to more-to-become in existence and recognized as such? Hence, no 'final destination,' no being-arrested (perfected state) ?
(phrased here as end-of-being (becoming) whilst in being (still becoming).

movingalways, if you want the word 'death' to refer to the coming-to-be and passing-away of all things in existence, then most certainly could the other take on this [dramatic] vocabulary (and does).

Seeker, so you don't have a problem with the existentialist conception of self, you heard it 'unhysterically' :)
What do you think of the definition of 'ego' as one's sense of self? It's the condition of that sense that someone or other might parse about. But always and ever, one's sense of self - as the immediate, only and irrefutable access to anything. If you can see 'ego' in this context unreactively, that'd be neat, too. work for you?

The perfection called reality that is observable in the phenomenal is the unchanging stage upon which the inevitability of cause and effect plays out, which may or may not be pleasant to desirous mind attached to expectation.

[Dennis Mahar]

Pye drew your attention to a Nietzsche distinction, which is a distinguishing announced by most of the great thinkers.
It accesses a kind of thinking about thinking that gets at 'what is going on'.
Existential thinking.

There are modes of thinking.
Pye made mention of 'difference and sameness'.

For difference to show up categorical thinking (splitting self/other) is the access.
For sameness to show up (Emptiness/Unity) a kind of thinking is generated as a possibility for a Context to show up reflecting Unity which 'grabs' the 'fine house' of loving kindness.

Some women understand this better than men.


The earliest gender-discrimination I can find is a Story that Godot pinched Adam's rib when he wasn't looking and turned rib into chick.
Guy made up Story.
What a load of shit.
The effect of that is women became 'relative to' men making men in a sense absolute.

I'm shopping Monday for a miniskirt and stillettos.
Don't get any ideas seeker, I'm hard to get.

What I hear is Elisabeth has distinguished 'emptiness' and out of that shows up in her conversations as a stand or Context for generating loving kindness.
The effect of that as a mood/understanding for Elisabeth if I'm representing Elisabeth's thinking correctly is that Elisabeth has an access to 'radiant mind'.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

If the situation presents or merits action then alright, but I won't be flying over to Africa to save the people and lessen suffering.

Consider the opportunity: I overheard a small group of teenage girls discussing the old testament no doubt for some kind of church discussion. They spoke about their sins, jealousy, how God knows everything, even what Abel was thinking when he did, etc. I made no effort to intervene or say anything, despite how much delusion I see present in others (unless someone is asking, warrants a reply). The question is, do you make efforts to intervene in such situations? How does that fit in with your 'nothings wrong or out of place' motto?

[Dennis Mahar]

who can make the sun rise?

[Cahoot]

The Candy Man.

[Pye]

The question is, do you make efforts to intervene in such situations? How does that fit in with your 'nothings wrong or out of place' motto?

interjecting, Seeker, but isn't the grasp of a world not-wrong in itself thus 'sanctioning' so to speak the presence of things in need of attendance within it? It's one of those ambiguities, if one is inclined to see that way.

and the other hell of it is, no one can answer your question about when/how to intervene, not under the basis of any system that can 'justify' everything about it. There is no ethics or natural law (in the structured sense) to cite that will hang itself around everything. Essence does not precede existence; it's the other way around.

You have to decide, you have to decide. And to decide, we must value, value some quality in it best wanting protection, action, and then act there. O would (says ubiquitous Nietzsche somewhere) that we could become not-valuers, but sentient beings bead themselves on a string of values - don't matter whether they're very aware of those values or not, just as the animal proceeds by 'valuing' this path or field over another, this place of water better than that . . . etc. One can say they're not-choosing those values, say they're simply proceeding thusly, or one could look toward those values and the thinking they are based upon, think about the thinking. There's the only place you can't get rid of the ones you don't want anyway. This act as conscious. We're moving by them all the time anyway, so why not?

So, we come up on existential sentence #3: The only reality is in action.

Bear with. If in this so-called ambiguity, the self and the other are revealed both as subject-in the world and object-to the world; and they are mutually and abjectly dependent upon one another for confirmation of both - i.e. none of these human-beings (dasein) can really be talking about and acting-for or out-of any 'other' kind of being. Their being cannot be established in a world of no others, this fleshly truth stands.

A value does not stand until a thing is chosen to make-it-so (valuable), and our personal choice of it has no reality without the other(s) to confirm its having happened. The only reality is in action, for being nothing first but ourselves and our conditions, we have only 'other' to tell us what we want or do not want.

No exit, Sartre might say: "Hell is other people" - it's where we're 'stuck' in this eternity of concretion, both a thing that processes a whole world inside, and a thing-in the world, objects to other subjectivities in it. These existentialists think it is this very pressing point of ambiguity (some might be thinking of a different word they might use. Perhaps this original, lived sense of schizophrenia (ambiguity) is what gives birth to the notion of dualities) - anyway, it is this very pressing point of ambiguity where world gets made anyway.

Action is meaningless without others to confirm what it is and what it is not, what we are - both self-defined and necessary of others to confirm we are so. A thought of an action is not an action. Sanity wouldn't confuse a belief about oneself ("I'm courageous" or "I'm interested in philosophy," etc.) unless actions bore that out. Hence, the only reality is in action.

As for the few serious holinesses I've gotten to meet or hear, I also hear nothing about in-action in the world - not-projecting oneself forward in power of effect upon the world - to 'go with the flow' means to move eventual mountains like water in the Tao (another ambiguity, like soft overcoming hard), achieve the concretion of values, for one will be concreting something or other. good work then paying attention to the shape and dialectic of this shared ambiguousness (yet another ambiguity :) I really like your question, Seeker, it's the right question, it bears down on the thing-of-it.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

The question that wisdom asks before "it" speaks is: does this word or image continue to give life to dependent origination (suffering) or does it contribute to the bringing to an end the life of dependent origination (suffering).

Finally! It took a couple of weeks but someone addresses the topic I started raising here. At least we have now another way of formulating the "unsettled" issue. Pam uses the term "giving life to dependent origination ". It's of course not making things that much clearer yet and it might need some further expansion. But so far everyone but Seeker has danced around the problem of "consciousness landing" with in its wake all the dread, boredom, alienation, absurdity and nothingness associated with existentialist but necessary skulduggery.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Action is meaningless without others to confirm what it is and what it is not, what we are - both self-defined and necessary of others to confirm we are so.

Meaning by consensus. Great! Perhaps you were looking for something as consistency, created by the web of relations in which some action is occurring? This is also the mechanism of distinguishing between dreams and waking state. Dreams evaporate for us as they are not internally consistent for long. They cannot take hold as there's too much disconnect with memory and daily affairs. An insane person however has created an internal rather skewed consistency and his sense of reality and actions are now meaningful to himself in that context. But to prevent collapse of the system, extreme behavior is in order.

A thought of an action is not an action. Sanity wouldn't confuse a belief about oneself unless actions bore that out. Hence, the only reality is in action.

But actions were just meaningless without confirmations, right? And confirmations take often the shape of thoughts and words, shared, accepted, objected to, whatever.

[Pye]

Diebert writes: But so far everyone but Seeker has danced around the problem of "consciousness landing" with in its wake all the dread, boredom, alienation, absurdity and nothingness associated with existentialist but necessary skulduggery.

Make sure these descriptors match what it is being put here, Diebert, and not just something one cuts out of box of existential cereal flakes . . . . :)

[SeekerOfWisdom]

who can make the sun rise?

The Candy Man.

Still don't geddit.

isn't the grasp of a world not-wrong in itself thus 'sanctioning' so to speak the presence of things in need of attendance within it?

I agree suffering is in 'need of attendance', being rightly aware of it and what causes it presents the possibility of cutting it off, no longer ignorantly setting coals alight, and then continuing on to walk over them.

Yet to go out and 'help' is to make-up a purpose.

I 'took' responsibility and created it.

(I'm not saying I don't do this or am apart from it, I do every day, luv and a girlfriend, as real as it gets, but I'm also aware it is only attachment, without that attachment (meaning-making) it doesn't otherwise exist)

Two relevant phrases:
1) The sentence which is a famous one in my mind as I've heard it so many times,
"Those selfish Buddhists, not doing shit to help other people, sitting 'round doing nothing"
2) "If all that's relevant to you is your own suffering/situation, why help others?"
Or in this case, why take action, if you are creating the meaningfulness of 'taking action'.

why not?

Why?

why not?

Is it sympathy, empathy? When seeing others create their own suffering I 'feel that', then it fades.
What's the plan, change the infinite, impermanently.

To me it depends on how your seeing things, for a "godian" they have more than enough reason.

To go out with the intention of 'taking action' seems only to be attachment. An idea of a 'real' or lasting self/world doing 'real' or lasting acts.
Some more to consider: "People are miserable because they constantly exert effort, but no one understands this"
And again, since you mentioned the Tao, "does nothing, and leaves nothing undone".

Since to me any discussion is one based on what we experience, (reality can only be 'understood' through awareness/contemplation of what we experience), how does 'caring' arise? Like anything else, you imagine something, your immersed in it, thoughts of future maybe, all of a sudden you realize nothing was there and you were just fantasizing.

[Pye]

Diebert: . . . in its wake all the dread, boredom, alienation, absurdity and nothingness associated with existentialist but necessary skulduggery.

But we could do that, that's where Camus goes, that where Kierkegaard was when he interpreted the garden of eden situation not as guilt, but as dread (of freedom i.e. nothingness]) in the face of a prohibition (again here is being 'negatively defined'). Kierkegaard goes there in the dialectic of faith - that "monstrous paradox" [ambiguity] - where in a person chooses a content (value); resigns it to the impossibility of thinking it/reasoning it (i.e. it's not there; does not-have being); but leaps in a feeling anyway, past thinking - on the strength of the absurd (not-reasonable), saying nevertheless I believe it anyway.

The monstrous paradox of Abrahamic faith:

Content of whole life: Issac
God: you must resign him (sacrifice him)
Abraham: I will, nevertheless I believe it won't happen (leaping on the strength of the absurd)

Kierkegaard's fascination with Abraham is that the fellow must surely be anguishing.
He's got to interpret the message alone;
He can't tell anyone the sense of what he's doing because it makes no sense/reason
He's got to sit three days on the back of an ass to get there
this deed towering over his shoulders, knife sharpening,
and he absolutely follows-through until he's "stopped
until he gets Issac back.

Kierkegaard sees it that Abraham's unthinkable act of placing
himself (the particular) overtop of the universal (the ethical) is an act of faith.
And that Abraham's anguish is as much a part of the story
as anything; his solitude; his chosen content; his willingness to understand it doesn't exist
(because we are nothing yet until we choose content out of a lack)
He kills it with reason, then picks it back up in passion
so that the impossible thing (that Abraham should be willing to sacrifice Issac
but nevertheless believes it won't happen [the irrational; passion])
Made it exactly such that he received Issac back in life.
Very important, that "in life."
Abraham didn't believe he'd have Issac again in the afterlife;
he believed it would happen here, past all reason.
The realization of any content to ourselves is an anguish and an act of faith.
Choosing, realizing it's out of thin air, making it happen anyway
creating being out of this lacking anyway.

The monstrous paradox about the leap of faith for Kierkegaard
(which could be seen as leaping toward any content whatsoever to life
and stuck as we are to realize ourselves)
is that in this act, the individual places itself over the universal
- a seemingly impossible thing -
to find that this particular stands over the universal and in absolute relation to the absolute.
That this is the irreducible truth to human existence
Each stands in absolute relation to the absolute;
there is nothing else come-between to mediate this
this side of the self-other dialectic, this side absolutely alone.

[Pye]

Seeker writes:
I agree suffering is in 'need of attendance', being rightly aware of it and what causes it presents the possibility of cutting it off, no longer ignorantly setting coals alight, and then continuing on to walk over them.

Yet to go out and 'help' is to make-up a purpose.

Exactly right. Making-up purpose. Made up out of nothing but our valuing it, making it so.
Conscious act of becoming . . . .

Seeker: being rightly aware of it and what causes it presents the possibility of cutting it off, no longer ignorantly setting coals alight, and then continuing on to walk over them.

So here is content.
Willing to resign it as not-so? (you 'complain' enough here about the scripts of others :))
Take the leap?
to make it so in this life?

for this, too comes out of your nothingness . . . made something

[SeekerOfWisdom]

I didn't make 'suffering', or cutting it off, all I did was refer to it. And I'm not 'complaining' :).

[Pye]

Self-consciousness is a[n ambiguous] circumstance
of becoming something of an other to oneself
more not-this; not-that whilst being this and that.

In self-othering like this - acts of [examined self-] consciousness -
we perform upon ourselves the same irritating and beneficial, if you will
dynamic and dialectic that all-other irritates and benefits the disclosure of our/being.

dejavu (some will remember) had a way of saying this that
we meet with ourselves in everything.
self-consciousness - a conscious act - brings
ourselves to ourselves for more to meet-with,
more disclosure of being.

[Cahoot]

Combining two premises,

1. There is only existence, and
2. All existence is becoming

It follows that, because truth exists, truth is becoming, which makes truth changeable.

[Cahoot]

who can make the sun rise?

The Candy Man.

Still don't geddit.

The Candy Man makes everything he makes satisfying and delicious.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Diebert writes: But so far everyone but Seeker has danced around the problem of "consciousness landing" with in its wake all the dread, boredom, alienation, absurdity and nothingness associated with existentialist but necessary skulduggery.

Make sure these descriptors match what it is being put here, Diebert, and not just something one cuts out of box of existential cereal flakes . . . . :)

But I'd prefer any cardboard cutting over the pouring of scream of consciousness milk into the little mouths of school kids :-)

So far my sense of this thread is that it's trying to overlap the nihilistic tendencies of late Buddhism (illustrated often by Dennis as you might not realize) with some of the nihilism that existentialism generally suffers from, perhaps even arose from. The overlap becomes then apparent but is not wisdom related but culture related: decline related!

We could go on talking about some unbearable lightness of being (Milan Kundera) or Nietzsche's "horrifying" notion of recurrence while still whispering: "as deeply as man looketh into life, so deeply also doth he look into suffering". But to talk about overlap without entering cultural analysis one has to first distill the core ideas from Buddhism and perhaps compare them with very specific individual existentialists (as if existentialism would allow for anything else!) This is how overlap might happen in my view, while the alternative is a form of cultural skulduggery and cherry picking to end up knotting together decadence in both "traditions".

Which is why I started to find out what people know about suffering as Buddhism addresses that and suggesting taking it to the level where it works on the most profound as well the most mundane experiences and interpretations. While it's existential and thus experimental, the challenge is to reach for something in these discussions nevertheless.

[Pye]

Cahoot: It follows that, because truth exists, truth is becoming, which makes truth changeable.

Ambiguous, isn't it. But is this any much more different from a world-itself that is 'perfect' with things within it that are not? Again, no need for recommended paths from anyone if what-is couldn't also be what-could be. For existentialists, the ambiguity of existence IS this truth, and all metaphysics and philosophies that try to ignore or resolve that would be thought of as turning-away from the irreducibly ambiguous conditions of existence.

"Consoling" metaphysics, Nietzsche called them: side-places, sunny places, resting places that we are led time and again by 'sick thinkers.' And any metaphysic that seeks to place the essence of the world Apart, Beyond, Outside, Above permits him to ask the question if a poor relationship with one's existence is going on, tossed beyond it this way. Essence does not precede existence; it's the other way around. (What essence to anything except the lack we're working it out of? this nothing-ness?) This also means - paradoxically(ambiguously) - the material (existence) is the spiritual - that from which all experience of spirit is grounded. Existence before essence. Essence before existence is metaphysics, and metaphysics qua metaphysics seeks to speak before-or-after the "physical" (existence). Past it; beyond it.

Anyway, here's how Camus would do the existential angst thing that I kierkegaarded above:

There is only one question the human being faces with its existence,
and that-is whether to exist or not; to be or not to be.

If you say yes to it, you then have another question: how shall I exist?

This means we actually choose to exist
and we choose it everytime we put food in our mouths
everytime we sleep, eliminate, think, speak, carry on, etc.
And between the past and future - neither of which is anything in this moment -
we have the present, which is nothing unless we choose/will ourselves to continue being (i.e. becoming) in it.

To say that we are not choosing existence
is to be lying to oneself, be in self-deception, i.e. "bad faith"
for of human nature, one cannot put any essence before it
even to claim that everyone of us wants to live.
Not every one of us wants to live
and when any one of us says no to the question of existing
we are all reminded of this possibility
defined by the possibility of not.

For Camus, we're all Sisyphus, pushing our pointless rock uphill
watching it fall back down again and again (this creating something out of nothing)
in the midst of an indifferent universe.
But Sisyphus says, fuck-you, gods.
If this is what it takes to exist, thrown me anything
I'll push it back up the hill . . . .

sure, lots to look at of how consciousness finds itself - how/what it lands.
Lots of rock-pushing to contemplate . . . .

of what does this rock consist? how shall I push it?
again, upon what system of ethics can these questions be fully resolved?
None, until it's made one by the act of choosing.

[Cahoot]

Ambiguous, isn’t it.

Based on another conclusion, that truth exists and is not changeable, then not all existence is changeable, i.e., becoming.

[Pye]

Cahoot: Based on another conclusion, that truth exists and is not changeable, then not all existence is changeable, i.e., becoming.

Yes, based on another conclusion. Ambiguous, isn't it?

not intending to be annoying with it, but it's multifarious manifestations helps see it as foundational. btw, ambiguous, that too . . . .

The point of course is in such a situation, what is it that we shall do?
All things that we think we are, all content we think we have is placed there
by ourselves in dialectic with all-else
and these only have reality in action that at least we ourselves are performing toward ourselves,
much less all that stands only as reality before others.

whether to live, and how.
Choosing not to do anything about either
is to choose something about them anyway.