Chris...

Why would I do that? 

It's a lot of effort (programming).

Google "data scraping" and get back to me. Take a look at this:

https://www.scrapestorm.com/?type=pricing

Buyer's market for sure...You guys may want to consider that...

aloha chris,

  (mahalo for listening, btw...)


   There have been number of threads dealing with the paradox of enlightenment, being a sage while at the same time being perceived as an ordinary person. The taoist ideal is of a person entirely free in the sense of being innocent, spontaneous and sincere in all situations. This person is unified and unreflective. The world is preceived immediately, intuitively, without representation. The eyes of a child: the eternal return of beginner's mind.

   As kant informed us, there are two fundamental mental organs, with a number of functions. He called them Reason and Intellect. Let's call them Soul (or Heart) and Thinking Mind.

   The undifferentiated "mind" or soul is the sixth sense, the unifying sense which insures that all the inputs from all the senses combine in one intuitive world. This sense is not conscious, we cannot control what we perceive, no matter how we control the senses. The world as it appears is the world as it is, all the senses will agree. This is "common sense." It is unified and nondualistic; it's not always right (there are illusions and misapprehensions) but it is never wrong (seeing is believing). On the other hand, we have the thinking mind, along with all conscious mental contents; mainly: judging, willing, and thinking.

   Where I want to connect the dots is between this understanding of normal mental functioning and the radical notion that we can dispense with thinking, willing and judging in a state of grace, of enlightenment. Escaping the prison and walking in daylight along the great way.

   The child opens its eyes on a world which "makes no sense' and doesn't even know that it makes no sense. The famous opening line of aristotle's metaphysics reads:

"ALL men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight."

   How does the child learn? Communication skills - languages - begin immediately. The child cries, and quickly learns that crying induces a feeling of urgency in the beings around him, and quicker attention to needs. The child imitates, and learns that smiling communicates mutual support. The child learns what it feels like to urinate and defecate, to be full, to be cold and wet and miserable, initially as just positive and negative.
 
   All children learn to speak, with so few exceptions as to make this quality a cardinal characteristic of our species and life generally, though each species lives in its own sense-world/s. Speech is essential to learning, as negotiating with other members of our species is a critical survival skill. And yet, chidren are innocent, spontaneous, sincere. They "think" insofar as they use language to acquire a common sense view of the world, with an automatic sense of unity, in that all perception is coordinated to produce a world of sensation which is one pearl in its essence. Beginner's mind is essentially nondualistic, and the child and the world are not separate, not two.

   The learning of language thus does not indicate of itself reflective thought. Every object the child learns to "recognize" has been substantiated by the common sense that not only we as individuals but we perceive "others" who verify our perceptions that objects exist. In the course of this verification - by "idle chatter" and "gossip" - objects acquire names and may be classified and inferences drawn. Thought  begins to extend to a dualistic realm which is competely detached from the world of senses. Speculative thinking, including memory and representation, arise from nowhere and have no temporality. Judging, willing and thinking are reflective in nature and require an ego, an I; the unitary thinking of the unreflective child, crazy person, drunk or sage does not. 

  ()When I was not even all that little my father would yell at me for something I did, and demand, "Why did you do that?" I could only answer "I don't know." I could hardly answer otherwise, but it was quite true, I had no idea other than, "it seemed like a good idea at the time" which even I knew was weak. But better "don't know" than try to explain.

   Thinking, willing and judging as mental formations arise on their own and bring with consciousness and a self to do the mental activity, and from this dualism arises. When thinking, willing and judging subside, the self subsides with them.

   As the child learns, the soul's "thinking" acts as an error correction process. As kant also pointed out, there are certain permanent illusions that don't go away, the perception of a flat earth, and that the sun rises and sets, for example. We know otherwise but the illusion is not dispelled. With most things, when we see through an illusion, as when we see a snake is really a rope, we have a corrected version of the "seems to me" reality, and we go through numberless corrections every day as impermanence takes its toll on the world, and as our horizons expand. We may ask, "did you see what I saw?' Someone looks up, and we look up too, and see what they see, in the aggreagate creating a common sense world on which we all collectively depend.

   The scientist uses thinking in this sense of error correction to discern what is hidden, the atoms and particles and currents, the general knowledge which knits together apparent differences into a more perfect whole. One true to the intuitive universality of common sense. The best science is completely detached from any motive but the desire to know, that primordial wonder. It is desire which turns knowledge into tools.

   The world as intuitively presented to us is prima facie "true." We use reason to make our notions conform to this reality. All of this is perfectly natural; language, thought, science.

   What of philosophy, art? They too are science. In fact, they are all literature. All attempts to make sense of the world. 

   So where do we get in trouble, why do we suffer? Using - using -   the mind for thinking, judging and willing. It is not that thinking, judging and willing are bad, that is the essence of the problem, this determination of good and bad. The difficulty is in being attached to the results of these natural processes, and distorting them, creating a pathological condition, a "whole mass of suffering." It is in using willing, judging and thinking that attachment forms. The putative dualistic self tries to hang on to objects or distance from them, and is powerless, thus frustrated. It is not desire itself, the instincts for preservation and reproduction and to know, to have power in the world, to see and be seen, act and be acted upon, but the interference of ego and its grasping.

   Sometimes an idea becomes so familiar that its familiarity conceals it. The idea that activity is "agencyless" becomes a cliche; oh, I know that, of course. Nonself is fundamental insight, like impermanence. We experience an ongoing unity of perception, a river or cataract which seems to remain the same though the water itself  is rushing by and is the only true existence. It seems like the scenery is going by but the boat is going by and the scenery is gone, gone, gone.

   The unity of perception does not imply an actual self, this is where kant does not see the implications of his own work. There is no "thing in itself," no imperceptible essence, no mental theater, no inner space. Just a rush of phenomena we have learned to name and cope with, and the act of naming and coping. Verification, analytical philosophy concludes after vast debate, amounts to "snow is white if and only if snow is white."

   Any child, drunk, crazy, or sufi zen master knows that. The universe is self-evident, even if you look very closely. It isn't good or bad, it just is. We all know it. But we love to specuate. The utter consistency of not-knowing is so boring, the tao has no flavor. On the other hand, love of the senses has no savor, everything is transient. Only in the one pearl itself can we find rest, comfort, and fulfillment.

   So, one accepts the world as it is, without looking too closely. The world reveals itself in its own time, as we are ready, if we are open to it. No need for violence. No need for chatter, or gossip, "news" of yesterday. The sun will rise again tomorrow, and the ground will still be flat.

   The idea that consciousness is actually nonself is inherently unthinkable. Yet we can never bring into appeance that unitary awareness of the sense world itself, the thinker, judger, willer, discriminator. Even as thinker it only appears when thinking, and is inseparable from thinking, thus just another appearance."To know the self is to forget the self" (dogen).

   All we are left with is 'a tacit awareness" that the world of common sense is a collective artwork, and that the Only True Being is "that lone brightness here listening to the dharma."


terry




EYES OF A CHILD
(moody blues)

Listen, hear the sound
The child awakes
Wonder all around
The child awakes
Now in his life, he never must be lost
No thoughts must deceive him
In life he must trust
With the eyes of a child
You must come out and see
That your world's spinning 'round
And through life you will be
A small part of a hope
Of a love that exists
In the eyes of a child you will see
Earth falls far away
New life awaits
Time it has no day
New life awaits
Here is your dream
And now how does it feel?
No words will go with you…