>But there IS a "you" in that existence/being/awareness/presence are all right here, right now, and you know it.
As far as pointers (metaphor/poetry) go you’re right, I just wonder less about its truth and more about the wisdom of its use. Is the pointer pointing at the dharma, clarifying ultimate reality…or is it illusorily resuscitating the ego that isn’t.
>That's as good a "you" as anything because if those things were NOT here, you wouldn't be here either :)
I’m really taken with the middle way right now, about half way through. Some very frustrating ambiguity in it, but Garfield has a brilliant contextual disambiguating. The subject you’re talking about is “emptiness”. The construct of ego is not, but the construct of ‘person’, ‘awareness’ is. To say the latter two are not is nihilism. To say they literally are is reification. The middle path is that they exist but without essence, not independent but interdependent, enmeshed in the causal matrix. The necessary perception of independent existence is neurally conditioned perception.
They are very interesting and subtle differences, these shades of existence and non-existence of constructs. And when you look at the average nondual person, you generally find nihilism or literal reification predominating, which I think is the product of misleading poetic pointers. I love poetry and playing with language and bending perceptions for psychedelicesque experiences, it’s phenomenal the power of language. To go from the default dual state yesterday, then tuning into Harris radio, he nearly fully removed my sense of self for 5 minutes with no effort, just by stringing together sounds.
So I guess I can meet you halfway and say the pointers are good as a raft to get to the other side, or for just plain fun, but as philosophy it’s best to be a bit more scrupulous.
With your intelligence, and staying in zen forums for so long, you should take look at Nagarjuna and what he thinks is difference between triple-world and out of triple world.
i find that studying buddhism helps in this area. specifically, this book https://www.amazon.com/Fundamental-Wisdom-Middle-Way-lamadhyamakak/dp/0195093364
this will allow you to not fall into the trap of equating conditions with an object or an object with conditions, which is based in our innate misunderstanding of reality.
In case someone qualified (absolutely not me) doesn't answer, I'd recommend studying an analysis on Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika.
>Buddhism acknowledges that we experience of sense of self, but it points out there is nothing solid or permanent in that self. It too depends on causes and conditions. That's actually good news. It means we can change, evolve, grow.
I think you’re over selling Buddhists belief in the self a bit.
It’s true that skandha makes up the “self grasping” of the sense of self. But what is the difference between the “sense of self” as you put it, and an actual self? The former exists dependently (arising from conditions), the latter doesn’t exist at all. A “person” arises dependently, a sense of self arises dependently, but a “self” does not exist at all (ontologically nihilist).
Nāgārjuna is brilliant at revealing the emptiness of everything conventional (including emptiness) through reductio ad absurdism, but on the question of morality, he just assumes it. He argues ‘If there were no agency, then there’d be no morality and compassion wouldn’t matter.’ He’s completely correct there. Except he denies the consequent whereas I think it’s necessary affirm the antecedent. No self = no agency/free will.
And how could there be a self? There’s just neurons, atoms, quarks, fields etc empty of essence. Science, western philosophy (Hume) agree with the Buddha, there is no self; only a ‘sense of self’ which is a delusion that leads to suffering.
Which is the other problem. If there is no self, then suffering is no different than pleasure…they are both phenomena appearing in consciousness. Worldly, other worldly, pleasure, pain etc, all equally appearances.
So why do we choose to reduce suffering if all phenomena are equally just appearances? It doesn’t make any sense unless you acknowledge that we choose to identify with the delusion of self just enough to be ‘happy’. Why?
Call it “conditioned perception” or “conceptual imputation”—the phenomenal world (conventional perceived reality) constructed by our neurons, conditional upon our genes etc creates craving and grasping….and we identify with it just enough to survive, otherwise, why satisfy hunger? Why treat suffering as different from pleasure? These questions are unanswerable if there is no self. They’re just identifying with conditioned perception.
I would recommend a gloss over the wiki article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagarjuna
And finally, you could also watch this https://youtu.be/4Jaj29DKj7s
Nothing is independent . There is no way in which causal origination makes sense.
If we are to say that something is caused of itself, then it already existed, and therefore needn't be caused. Thus to say that a self-caused thing was caused is redundant.
If we are to say that something is caused of an other, then we must observe what the formal cause is, which will reveal that nothing is created but only reformed or re-arranged.
Finally, if we are to say that something is caused neither of itself nor of an other, then it is eternal, which means it wasn't caused in the first place.
I am not sure about the larger context of the book, but I will try to have a go.
A lot of big topics are mentioned here.
> To Zen linear thinking is nothing but a delusion, one of the many that keep us unhappy. Reality is nonlinear, Zen says.
I am not exactly sure what it means, and I even doubt that it means anything exact in the first place. Precisely, I am unclear as to what 'linear thinking' or "nonlinear reality" is supposed to mean. If I have to guess, the author probably uses them in a roughly colloquial fashion where 'linear' correlates with ideas of 'oversimplicity, rigidness' and such, whereas non-linear may be correlating with ideas of 'complex, flexible, dynamic' etc. The essential idea here is probably that thought isn't fully capable of properly representing reality as it is.
It also seems to be suggesting (if not explicitly) that we should try to abandon thought (since it's supposedly nothing but a delusion and a cause of unhappiness). I don't think this completely aligns with Buddhism at large. AFAIK, there is no special emphasis in Buddhism (as opposed to 'popular ideas' surrounding Buddhism) to become thoughtless for day to day living.
Even if you consider Hui Neng (one of the big guys of Zen):
https://www.iep.utm.edu/huineng/#SSH4aiii
(it is clear that he espouses something more subtle than abandoning all thoughts - or simply disregarding all thoughts):
“No thought is not to think even when involved in thought. . . To be unstained in all environments is called no-thought. If on the basis of your own thoughts you separate from the environment, then, in regard to things, thoughts are not produced. If you stop thinking of the myriad things, and cast aside all thoughts, as soon as one instant of thought is cut off, you will be reborn in another realm.”
> No future, no past. All is now.
"all is now", "power of now" etc. are trendy ideas, but I am not sure how well it aligns with Buddhism (though I am not as knowledgeable on Zen Buddhism which the author seems to be speaking about). As far as I have seen there isn't a special emphasis on 'living in the present moment' in Buddhism. The emphasis is on cutting the root of suffering by gaining insight into the nature of reality. This also supposedly requires a peek into the unfabricated (the 'end of cosmos' - cessation of phenomenal appearances which is far more radical than what one might think of having 'no thought'). At some point, it may be required to even abandon the ideas of some distinct present moment, some 'eternal now' all of which may be fabrications to some extent.
> In every religion, it seemed, self is the obstacle, the enemy. And yet Zen declares plainly that the self doesn’t exist. Self is a mirage, a fever dream, and our stubborn belief in its reality not only wastes life, but shortens it. Self is the bald-faced lie we tell ourselves daily, and happiness requires seeing through the lie, debunking it. To study the self, said the thirteenth-century Zen master Dogen, is to forget the self. Inner voice, outer voices, it’s all the same. No dividing lines.
This is a whole another beast. Surely just a paragraph is far from sufficient to elucidate this topic. The author is right that in Buddhism, the 'self' is treated as an illusion. However, if we start exploring this topic more deeply, all of these can start to get complicated.
To start with, here's a sutta link to where Gautama discusses the idea of 'no-self': https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.059.mend.html
Here, you can see how in Buddhism it is recommended to live without the idea of 'self': https://suttacentral.net/mn1/en/bodhi
And here's a much more succinct version: https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/KN/Ud/ud1_10.html
One thing to understand here is that the primary concern of original Buddhism is soteriological - the end of stress and suffering. Many of the concepts and ideas are therefore only introduced for a soteriological end. The primary reason to abandon the 'self'-view is because clinging to it results in suffering (whether that's true or not may be better suited to empirical research, psychology, or even personal experience than philosophy). I think everyone can agree on the soteriological dimension, but things can get complicated when discussing the ontological dimension - 'does self truly don't exist - as opposed to merely being an unfruitful view that leads to stress?'. The standard interpretation seems to be that Buddhism is indeed saying that the self doesn't exist even in an ontological sense. That it is merely a delusion. However, there are still questions: what is exactly meant by 'self' in Buddhism? And how do we know that it doesn't exist?
Well, we supposedly need to discover this through meditation and having experiences and insights of the world without 'self' - but that doesn't mean we can't do philosophical analysis on it. One interpretation of 'no-self' view is that it is similar to the bundle theory of self ( David Hume ) - i.e in Buddhism, 'no-self' means there is no permanent subsiding self - and the person is merely a bundle of impermanent ever-changing five aggregates. For more on bundle theories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundle_theory (check the references if you want to dig deeper).
However, that may not tackle the nuances of the 'self-view' that we should be trying to get rid of, following Buddhism. I think Miri Albahiri's analysis on this is interesting (particularly, her idea of personal ownership and identification as it relates to the self-view): http://www.elibrary.ibc.ac.th/files/private/Analytical%20Buddhism%20The%20Two-tiered%20Illusion%20of%20Self.pdf
In addition, Miri Albahiri argues that (early) Buddhism doesn't, in fact, reject self altogether and that it may be sympathetic to the existence of a form of unconditioned witness (nibbanic)-consciousness which is even similar to the ideas of 'atman' in some of the later Upanishadic philosophers. Thanissaro Bikkhu (who is more of a Buddhist monk than a philosopher) happens to have similar views. Nevertheless, such ideas are very controversial and not the mainstream interpretation (which doesn't mean it's wrong). For an alternate interpretation: https://www.scribd.com/document/249165097/What-the-Nikayas-Say-about-Nibbana
Also check out: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-indian-buddhism/ for an overview.
> Especially in competition. Victory, Zen says, comes when we forget the self and the opponent, who are but two halves of one whole.
This part seems sketchy. Buddhism, or Zen AFAIK, is not about competitions or victory. 'Forgetting self' may help in competitions but I don't remember such ideas being focused on or preached by Buddhism explicitly. The 'no-self' view ( more precisely, it is about 'lacking' a self-view as opposed to adopting an explicit 'no-self' view - a subtle but drastic difference. Buddhism is oriented towards moving beyond the tangles of views ) is argued for primarily for a soteriological end, not for winning competitions.
> All is emptiness
The idea of Emptiness is related to 'no-self' and also to dependent-arising. But it's not very clear what the author understands by it. It is a commonly misunderstood idea. Anyway, if you want to explore more on the idea of what Buddhism means by emptiness, here are a few links to get you started:
https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/wiki/emptiness-crash-course (this is a good starting point. This is more practice-oriented than philosophy. Nevertheless, there are still philosophical elements in there. In the further studies section, there are good recommendations where you can find more clarity of some of the concepts and ideas alluded to before. )
For something more heavy on the philosophy of emptiness: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nagarjuna/
If you want to dig deeper on the philosophical interpretations, you can check out Jay Garfield, and Jan Westerhoff
Death is nothing like an endless void since death/nothingness isn't real at all. Another perspective from Wittgenstein:
> Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits.
Beyond death there are many other existential facts and uncertainties you could despair over. For example, you could fear the opposite of death, eternal life: not being able to die. You could become anxious over literally anything if you are creative enough and find a way to perceive it as a threat. Then to think your way out of the fear and see how it could be based on a misperception, you have to get even more creative! Academic philosophers, who handle these kinds of thoughts at the distance of the intellect, are very good at this. Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, often held up as the most important philosophical work of the 20th century, could go a long way toward curing you of your existential anxieties.
Fortunately or unfortunately, uncertainty lies beneath everything. You can't consciously ground yourself in that uncertainty; it would be like drowning in an endless ocean with nothing to hold onto. The Buddhist solution is to relinquish attachments (to the world, to self/ego - everything): to learn to float and stop grasping after permanence and substance, and to embrace emptiness (which is held as the essential nature of existence).
Without non-attachment, ignorance, evasion or denial, I think the only way to "get over" it was described by Kierkegaard, the originator of existentialism (who IMO has not been surpassed and who Wittgenstein declared the most profound author of the 19th century). He explores it from a Christian perspective in The Sickness Unto Death, and his remedy is faith:
> The formula that describes the state of the self when despair is completely rooted out is this: in relating itself to itself and in willing to be oneself, the self rests transparently in the power that established it.
>given the knowledge we currently have, consciousness is immaterial.
It is fundamentally immaterial. If you assume the existence of matter, you can prove that matter doesn't exist. It's a little bit involved, but not terribly complicated. In order to prove the non-existence of matter as something substantial (which is what we usually think about matter existing), you need to perform analysis of boundaries. Boundaries are always immaterial and insubstantial upon analysis. So the key aspect of matter, which is form, depends on an insubstantial function of the mind, namely being able to perceive these boundaries where there are inherently none. Many Buddhist logicians have dealt with the issue of insubstantiality of matter-appearances, so if you want a more formalized exploration of the matter, look for Buddhist philosophers that lived long time ago. You might want to try reading Nagarjuna and see how it goes. But there are more thinkers than just Nagarjuna. Verses from the Centre -- unfortunately only a web cache. I have no idea where the real page went. (edit: I think I found the new URL: http://www.stephenbatchelor.org/nagarjuna/verses%20centre.html , looks like the URL moved, and here is the same text translated by a different translator with decent commentary, in paper form).
Gaining confidence in insubstantiality of consciousness is a big step. Most people can't understand this, and some people who can understand it intellectually (superficially) don't understand all the implications of this.
> So, how do we see the world through different sets of eyes, with different viewpoints and perspectives?
You just answered your own question. A set of eyes is a viewpoint. To see through another set you need a different viewpoint. In order to change your viewpoint you need two things: you need to intend to do it, and you need to be unchained from your original viewpoint. If you are attached to your current viewpoint, and most people are, it won't be enough to intend to switch, because the majority of your intention will be to stay with your current viewpoint. In essence this will be a splintered intention working against itself, with most of your intention invested in staying and only a small part invested in switching. So in order to switch you need to be wholehearted in your intention. Your intention has to be complete and deeply sincere. That can only be accomplished if you're non-attached to your current viewpoint and you're not afraid of the unknown, etc... and this obviously has some implications. This way of being in the world leads to a different life.
> What decides which body your consciousness is in, and are they really unique to each person?
Intent, as conditioned by your core beliefs, values and expectations, or in other words, by your mindset. The driver is intent, but the intent is structured by your beliefs. You can't sincerely intend to do something you don't believe in, or that you believe is seriously harmful to you (if you intend to preserve yourself, and most of us do intend to preserve ourselves).
Hey, no probs, glad to be of help.
Yeah I also consider my self an anarchist, though I got into anarchism through Taoism (via Taoist martial arts)
Diogenes: The link you've made to Diogenes is quite astute. Most peeps don't even consider the idea that Taoism has cognates at all let alone picking a seminal thinker like Diogenes as channeling Taoism. Conversely the other crowed likes to hammer Taoism into quantum, mechanics which is just a big mistake imo.
Anyway a couple of things first. The Tao Teh Ching wasn't written by one man "Lao Tzu" (old master) the received view is that it was written by a number of different people. With that in mind, later Taoism (of the tao de ching as opposed to various religious sects) was probably also influenced by the Greeks and Indians. Specifically, I would say the Pyronian skeptics (though Diogenes also and possibly Zeno) and the Madhyamaka-school. Here's a paper I uploaded on those two:
http://speedy.sh/3dK2u/pyrohnism-and-madhyamika.pdf (hope it works :/ )
Dualism: Dualism is usually the view that consciousness has both a material and immaterial (spirit) aspect. So I'm going to use the word "bivalent" for the idea that the the the logic of Daoism is two valued. In addition to this most bivalent logics also have the property that every proposition can either be true or false not both and not neither.
I think that the logic of Daoism is probably paraconsistent. That is, it is contradiction tolerant, so, it allows that both a proposition AND its negation can be true and false at the same time) For example, the statement "this sentence is false" is a contradiction, if what is says of itself is true then it is false, (because the sentence is false) but then it accurately describes itself, so it must be true.
Consider now the The first passage of the classical Tao Teh ching:
"The tao that can be expressed is not the eternal tao"
the passage in quotes is a statement about the tao AND it is expressed. It maintains that it accurately describes the Tao - so it is true, but if it is about the Tao then it cannot be expressed. (so it is false - (false in that it claims to be an expression about the Tao)
So much for duality.. ;)
As for Yin and Yang - that concept doesn't come from Taoism per se - but is rather a concept born out of the Chinese naturalist school (yin Yang Jia). Though, perhaps, useful as a way of understanding material phenomena - it is not really core Taoism. - I don't see any references to it in my copy of the Tao. Though perhaps it is in there buried somewhere. Either way it's playing a trivial role.
As a side note, the logic of the mullamadyimaka is four valued (tetra valent) Naragajuna takes a proposition and argues that it is true, false, neither, both. Thus destroying that category. (so much for gender ;) Nargajuna describes the Buddha as the destroyer of categories, i.e the destroyer of logic itself. This is had-core Buddhism, not the pop stuff that's normally sold to the kids. Nargajuna is a logical nihilist! (My view is that Nargajuna and pyrohnians give a better feel for taoism than the taoist do)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Fundamental-Wisdom-Middle-Mulamadhyamakakarika/dp/0195093364
Translations: There are now three versions of the Tao Teh Ching. Prior to 1973 we had one version - the "wang bi" version. That WAS the tao teh ching and there were various translations of that - pretty much all the same. However, In 1973 in a sealed tomb in Mawangdui a previously unknown version of the Tao Teh Ching was discovered. This is now called the Mawangdui version.
Yet again, In 1993 a third version was found, now called the "Guodian version". It is much more tolerant toward Confucianism, has passages missing from the original wang bi version - And has passages that were excluded from the wang bi. (though weather excluded or added later is controversial). I side on the view that the Guodian version has been hammered in to be Confucian tolerant form though it also has passages missing from the "original" version.
So get all three and compare them :)
As for translations, just go for an academic one, google the translator. I use
Hendricks is pretty good - I should pick up his other stuff >_>
The I ching: I don't have many thoughts on the I-ching. It seems to be a book of divination and understanding the relationship between phenomena in the natural world. My exposure to it comes from my training in Baguazhang (a Taoist martial art based on the i -ching) having said that the connection between the two seems more of a marketing gimmick to me. Tbh I don't get a lot of value from the I-ching.
Hope that helps :)