Diebert van Rhijn wrote:They are signs of the stubborn unwillingness to admit to the full emptiness of the subject which will show the emptiness of all the objects, the world and its things. It's that depth, that abyss, which is offered here.
Nice post Diebert, I wonder if we're on the same page, you'd have to tell me:
There should be no difference between a metaphysical 'investigation' and an experiential 'investigation'.
In other words, when you're trying to understand the nature of reality, the moment your focus drifts away from what is true in your experience, you start working within irrelevancies, you cling to specific imaginations, words, thought processes, events, metaphors, world views and thought experiments. These should initially be considered irrelevancies in regard to metaphysics because they are not yet resting upon a foundation of understanding. To one caught up in one form of experience, such as a particular conceptual groundwork, there is often a self-perpetuating creation of complex answers to questions which only appear logical within the context of misguided metaphysical assumptions. When you're investigating the very nature of reality, the further you cling to that mass of imagination, the more immersed you are in it, and the less clarity you experience in regard to the core of the issue- their arising. You're focused on specific appearances, 'the surfaces', and not on their nature, 'the depths'.
Instead, when you focus on the nature of your own experience, what you 'see' is that all appearances are constantly changing. You also 'see' that you are not some omnipotent god with free will dictating which appearances will arise, that instead, all appearances are a direct 'manifestation' of reality. In other words, this very sentence is a manifestation of reality, as are your thoughts and imaginations. This is then realized for every aspect of life, every interaction, every event, and every idea.
The ignorant one does not 'see' the nature of appearances and their impermanence, and cannot see that they are not created or put in place by any greater self, he is unaware that they do not come from any deity, source, external reality, brain, physical realm, or body- that fundamentally, they do not require causal or scientific explanation. He does not *know* emptiness, and so any understanding he might have on the topic is usually conjecture, hearsay, or purely based in some specific concept he deems agreeable. He cares little for contemplating the nature of his own experience, but in his investigation looks out to what he believes is ‘external’, and through ignorance, becomes ‘entangled in a cocoon of discrimination', in which distinct 'objects' are spoken of as having inherent existence. Thus he holds faith in some ridiculously complex metaphysical platform, from which he attempts to explain the appearance of the world he believes in using causality. In this case we have scientific materialism, which reduces the significance of investigating the experiential reality we know and instead asserts that it is only an aspect of- a viewing window used to investigate- a wider mysterious universe.
The fact is, Jupiviv is just plain delusional. The ‘physical world’ he believes in doesn’t exist, though the appearances are very real, they are very empty. There’s nothing 'physical' ‘behind’ them, as he clearly believes.
To know whether you are caught up in delusional or imaginative 'surface' beliefs, start from the very beginning of philosophy, which is to investigate your own 'mind'. Experiential investigation, introspection, meditation, contemplation of the senses, and so on.
Recognize that first you have the impermanent experience, and then by virtue of only one aspect of that experience- thought - entire worlds and realms are created and believed to be real. Stop clinging to any imagined explanation for what you're seeing for but a moment, and right there is the nature of reality, just now it is without the distortion of delusion or conceptual narration. Does this mean one is abandoning reason, thinking and logic? Or that these are useless in regard to knowledge, elucidation, and understanding of truth? No, all it means is that you should stop to contemplate the actual nature of conceptual platforms before you build on them :)