BigMoaner
We will all go together
try as i might, and i have many times, i don't know how that can be refuted. it all points to what i am saying.
What do you think happens after death?
- Thread starter AnnO'Neemus
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mojo pixy
שיר חדש
An overwhelming likelihood it will be do with some physical or emotional need, or whatever task you're engaged in at the time (or a combination)
I'm not sure you are all ears though .. you seem to have firm ideas about the universe, matter, and mind. Stuff you believe cannot be refuted. But that's an attitude, not a fact. Where does belief come from? What are attitudes? How do such subjective impressions from tiny, insignificant creatures on an obscure, cold world relate to "all is one" across unquantifiable distances we can't even sense?
That Schopenhauer quote is a kind of forerunner of "it is what it is, man...". I think he had more to say than that, and the mene format is a bad one for philosophy IMO.
BigMoaner
We will all go together
to be clear though even the "idea" that the universe is one thing is a conceptual game. Obvisouly fundementally ungraspable, space-time in representation or appearance only - if you think it's understood, it's not it. A few mental footsteps to the void. But I still suspect that the "what ever it is" I am not somehow the seperate observer of it.
mojo pixy
שיר חדש
Well thanks for that then.
BigMoaner
We will all go together
okay, but you still haven't answered how we are seperate from the universe.
mojo pixy
שיר חדש
I never claimed we are!
But if that's your "all is one" then my questions are .. what's the point of it? How does it help me? Where is the comfort in it? How does it speak to the Human Condition?
mojo pixy
שיר חדש
I think anything worthy of the name 'philosophy' should address all those questions tbh.
Here's a good one .. Tell me who you are?
Here's a good one .. Tell me who you are?
BigMoaner
We will all go together
I am surprised you're suggesting this....more spiritual, no?
An Enlightenment Intensive is a group retreat designed to enable a spiritual enlightenment experience within a relatively short time. Devised by Americans Charles Berner along with his wife Ava Berner in the 1960s,[1] the format combines the self-enquiry meditation method popularised by Ramana Maharshi with interpersonal communication processes[2] such as the dyad structure of co-counselling[3] in a structure that resembles both a traditional Zen sesshin (meditation retreat) and group psychotherapy. Religious teachings and philosophical concepts are generally avoided.
zen and maharshi????
i have given up on any idea of enlightement. i don't think there are enlightened folk. enlightened moments perhaps.
but the who am I am question is probably one of the best questions that have come out of those traditions. i have tried to answer that question for decades, mainly sitting on buses to work. and i have never got to a final answer.
i guess the question has made me calmer, less anxious. didn't stop my wife cheating on me. didn't stop me being the usual needy, neurotic, self. but sure with that question you can get into some extremely weird head spaces, especially asked over time.
mojo pixy
שיר חדש
Honestly, the label / school isn't the point - the point is, achieving moments of existential clarity beyond what can be expressed in words. But none of it means I won't break my shoulder, won't catch covid, won't be lonely, won't die etc.
Truth is great, but it's cold and hard, and I think as creatures of feeling and relationship, we need more than cold, hard truth.
But there is a chooser of thoughts; you can choose not to choose, but that's still a choice. etc.
Truth is great, but it's cold and hard, and I think as creatures of feeling and relationship, we need more than cold, hard truth.
But there is a chooser of thoughts; you can choose not to choose, but that's still a choice. etc.
BigMoaner
We will all go together
but where does the choice come from? a chooser? find it!
BigMoaner
We will all go together
i agree, but, in my view and experience, there is no chooser of it. or if there is, i have never found it. i just had the thought "make a coffee". but there was nothign within me pulling it into awareness. it just came. like everything else, birds, trees, clouds. the whole as a happening. but the self that i assumed for years was "doing it", i cannot find.
it's like seeing. i am looking at this laptop now. then i have the thought "I am seeing". the self claims it. but when i try to find that self, i can't find it, but the seeing persists.
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existentialist
Tired and unemotional
I can recommend "Being and Nothingness", by J-P Sartre. I hope that you get further through it than I did...
mojo pixy
שיר חדש
(physical) eyes admit light; (physical) brain converts the light, with help from learned concepts, into an image; gives it (from memory) a label - laptop.
None of this is 'self', yet.
But something else observes the seeing, can describe the conversion process, and analyze for most suitable labels. This thing cannot see itself, objectively. But that does not stop it from 'existing' in meaningful ways - and in particular, ways that are meaningful to the host-body and psyche that contain (or contains, since body and mind are one entity) the 'choosing' self, the agency, Will - your 'chooser'. Whatever you call it, and whether you choose to admit its existence or not, there it is, busy choosing away every moment. Cup of coffee, or kill myself? as some wag once quipped. Speaking of which...
I read it; finished it. It was hard going, but Kant's Critique of Pure Reason was harder
BigMoaner
We will all go together
fire cannot burn itself. you cannot use one finger to scratch the same finger. that which is the knower, as you say, can never be known. ever. to know the knower we'd have to know everything. we agree, i think. but can you see then how subjectivity is just a concept? in my view it truly is on an experiential level. it's something that can, perhaps only briefly, be let go of - what's left?! i'm still finding out. "no self" in buddhist/zen terms can never be experienced because you'd need an experiencer to experience no self. turtles all the way down! but with that knowing there is no way out, there come release.(physical) eyes admit light; (physical) brain converts the light, with help from learned concepts, into an image; gives it (from memory) a label - laptop.
None of this is 'self', yet.
But something else observes the seeing, can describe the conversion process, and analyze for most suitable labels. This thing cannot see itself, objectively. But that does not stop it from 'existing' in meaningful ways - and in particular, ways that are meaningful to the host-body and psyche that contain (or contains, since body and mind are one entity) the 'choosing' self, the agency, Will - your 'chooser'. Whatever you call it, and whether you choose to admit its existence or not, there it is, busy choosing away every moment. Cup of coffee, or kill myself? as some wag once quipped. Speaking of which...
I read it; finished it. It was hard going, but Kant's Critique of Pure Reason was harder
and i agree about the seeing - it is a neurological experience in the brain. that what is out there exists as a chemical experience in the brain - objects don't fall into the eye, light does and we convert as you say. but unless you're a full on idealist, that brain that is seeing and knowing is also part of the external world?
BigMoaner
We will all go together
i as an experiencer need an experience to experience. if conciousness or awareness was purely matter, then that wouldn't be so. i could sit in a dark room with nothing in it and see my laptop as i would see it if it was actually there. the experiencer that is here is because of all that out there. it has bought me into being like it has bought the clouds or trees or Jeremy Clarkson into being. the seer is the seen.
mojo pixy
שיר חדש
I said (and you quoted):
"Fire cannot burn itself" - the fact remains that fire exists, whether or not it ''burns itself''. It burns other things, and that is meaningful. Lacking a sense of itself, doesn't negate the meaningfulness of its burning things.
But in this exchange, you are the party saying essentially there is no self (that's definitely not my contention) .. so where are you going with that? You appear to be running yourself around in circles, I don't think you really need an external interlocutor here
The brain is physical. Its electrical impulses are physical. But somewhere inside, is an (as yet) ineffable 'thing' that can conceive that it is essentially made out of electrical impulses in a mammal's brain. I agree we do not as a species yet understand what that is, how it is, or why it is - but denying it exists at all is a bit silly IMO.
BigMoaner
We will all go together
it exists - i exist as this form. but i would say that to describe myself fully, conclusively and fundementally, i would have to know everything. which is impossible. so therefore the self as a fixed thing, an actual thing, disolves.I said (and you quoted):
"Fire cannot burn itself" - the fact remains that fire exists, whether or not it ''burns itself''. It burns other things, and that is meaningful. Lacking a sense of itself, doesn't negate the meaningfulness of its burning things.
But in this exchange, you are the party saying essentially there is no self (that's definitely not my contention) .. so where are you going with that? You appear to be running yourself around in circles, I don't think you really need an external interlocutor here
The brain is physical. Its electrical impulses are physical. But somewhere inside, is an (as yet) ineffable 'thing' that can conceive that it is essentially made out of electrical impulses in a mammal's brain. I agree we do not as a species yet understand what that is, how it is, or why it is - but denying it exists at all is a bit silly IMO.
david hume prattled on about this for years - he tried to find the self and couldn't find it. he just found a collection of perception, thought and senses. it's not just the eastern stuff.
the self that is not the self is another way of putting it. or the self that is not only the self.
mojo pixy
שיר חדש
In as far as 'I' exists, it doesn't have a form as far as we know. Physical form, anyway.
Why do you have to know everything? Knowing yourself would seem the place to start a quest for knowledge, not a place to end it. IMO of course.
That's just a zen-like equivocation really. Imagine an apple that is not there. It's not an insight, it's a paradox to meditate on.
BigMoaner
We will all go together
speaking of zen, this has been a favourite for years, christ knows what century it's from, but i love it and think of it at least once a day.
A sudden crash of thunder.
The mind's doors open.
and there sits the ordinary old man.
or this one
How vast Karma is,
but what is there clinging or to cling to?
Turning, I am blinded by a ray of light.
the good thing about zen is that it encourages sudden experiences that can be had. what value those experiences, i am not really sure. but they can be had. but as with all "practices" they are ruined in my view by over use. practice enough and you just replace "ordinary ego" with "spiritual ego". i would say i practice this stuff occasionally, when i feel the need to, rather than some sort of regime. as buddha said "use the raft to get to the other side, but ditch it when you do get there, it's not longer needed". medicinal rather than dietry. spiritual path as something to do and amusing and interesting rather than some life and death ultimate metahphysical thing.
A sudden crash of thunder.
The mind's doors open.
and there sits the ordinary old man.
or this one
How vast Karma is,
but what is there clinging or to cling to?
Turning, I am blinded by a ray of light.
the good thing about zen is that it encourages sudden experiences that can be had. what value those experiences, i am not really sure. but they can be had. but as with all "practices" they are ruined in my view by over use. practice enough and you just replace "ordinary ego" with "spiritual ego". i would say i practice this stuff occasionally, when i feel the need to, rather than some sort of regime. as buddha said "use the raft to get to the other side, but ditch it when you do get there, it's not longer needed". medicinal rather than dietry. spiritual path as something to do and amusing and interesting rather than some life and death ultimate metahphysical thing.
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