The Environment & Your Self

The Environment & Your Self Trent S. H. 3/21/09 12:02 PM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Trent S. H. 3/21/09 12:02 PM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Trent S. H. 3/21/09 12:41 PM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Gozen M L 3/21/09 2:29 PM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Kenneth Folk 3/21/09 2:46 PM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Trent S. H. 3/21/09 5:32 PM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Kenneth Folk 3/21/09 6:42 PM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Wet Paint 3/21/09 7:37 PM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Jackson Wilshire 3/21/09 8:07 PM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Wet Paint 3/21/09 8:13 PM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Wet Paint 3/21/09 8:34 PM
RE: The Environment & Your Self tarin greco 3/21/09 11:21 PM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Trent S. H. 3/22/09 4:42 AM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Jackson Wilshire 3/22/09 5:19 AM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Chuck Kasmire 3/22/09 6:09 AM
RE: The Environment & Your Self triple think 3/22/09 7:25 AM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Kenneth Folk 3/22/09 8:23 AM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Trent S. H. 3/22/09 9:12 AM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Kenneth Folk 3/22/09 10:03 AM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Trent S. H. 3/22/09 10:58 AM
RE: The Environment & Your Self triple think 3/22/09 11:44 AM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Mike L 3/22/09 12:07 PM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Wet Paint 3/22/09 12:16 PM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Hokai Sobol 3/22/09 1:00 PM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Kenneth Folk 3/22/09 1:21 PM
RE: The Environment & Your Self Trent S. H. 3/22/09 1:42 PM
RE: The Environment & Your Self tarin greco 3/22/09 9:07 PM
Trent S H, modified 15 Years ago at 3/21/09 12:02 PM
Created 15 Years ago at 3/21/09 12:02 PM

The Environment & Your Self

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Forum: Dharma Overground Discussion Forum

Some theory & practical pointers on your "self." Written sort of rigidly, excuse my laziness.

You can only "be," imagine, or think about what you have experienced before, and/or a combination of things which have been experienced. Phenomenologically, this may be because they are all experienced and recalled into the same plane of manifestation.

Who you are is a reflection of being exposed to institutions, schools, television, this forum, your parents, friends, other family, etc.-- you are bits and pieces of all of that. You may even get glimpses of a person's face in your mind when you act in a way that was adopted from them. Why are some things adopted and some things not? Due to precedence-- what is conditioned first lays the ground work for what criteria are checked against before the adopting or changing of a current behavior/belief/etc. In other words, your past self constituted your current self and your current self constitutes your future self. This is a big reason why early childhood affects people in such profound, deep, long-lasting ways.

Imagine that your body is a sponge and that the rest of the world is water. You are literally soaking up whatever you come into contact with, and what you come into contact with constitutes "who you are," even for the enlightened person. Even for the Arhat-- how are they able to see what they see and know what they know? It is because of what they have been exposed to; teachers, books, dharma friends, progressive experiences, and so forth. Also note that your body is part of that environment, which essentially puts everything in the same realm.

(Cont.)
Trent S H, modified 15 Years ago at 3/21/09 12:02 PM
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Thinking further in this way should lead to all sorts of practical pointers. Why hang out with enlightened folks? Why read? Why can't you just think yourself into enlightenment at a whim and why are we using these techniques? Why is the path (at least subtly) different for each person? How does causality play into this chain of conditioning and your current life circumstances?

An analytical technique to use in regard to this-- meditate on dependent origination and "who you are" as a result. Start with this present moment and reflect-- why do I smile the way I do? Why do I love X or hate Y? (Are these preferences relatively arbitrary based on this line of thinking?) Make note of these events and their predecessors. Make note of how you ARE literally "the outside." If you are the outside, then can there be an "inside?" What is this habitual dual split we project in the world and why does it arise? Why can't I imagine the unimaginable? Is this why it's hard to communicate these experiences?

Have fun,
Trent
Trent S H, modified 15 Years ago at 3/21/09 12:41 PM
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Thought of one more thing to add that is sort of in the same vein of thought.

The sense of a separate watcher/separate doer is, from one perspective, a defense mechanism. It is largely held up by fear and denial, which is nothing to be ashamed of, as we all feel those feelings. When we feel scared, anxious, uncomfortable, etc; most of us instantly begin to withdraw from the situation. We pull "inside" of ourselves. Hence, the split. The suffering piggy-bags into your reality due to the denial, but what's the relationship between these factors?

The watcher fundamentally thinks that by staying separate, it can somehow alter causal events. Say you get socially anxious, for example. You enter an area such as a bar and your automatic reaction may be to close inside of yourself and then distract yourself by thinking about unrelated things. In essence, your side of the split is attempting to "fight" the "other side" of the split. Your mind is trying to fight reality with an "alternate" reality. This takes massive amounts of energy, and that is where suffering enters.

But why is it important to realize this? Simple: whatever happens is going to happen and there is nothing the separate watcher/doer can do about it. In the example above, the bar continues to operate the same way it did before. Look at your past and look at the chain of dependently arising events. They could not have happened in any other way. The causal links will continue on into the future indefinitely, and the watcher cannot alter them at all. Accepting this can end some of our suffering.

Hope this helps.
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Gozen M L, modified 15 Years ago at 3/21/09 2:29 PM
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Thanks for posting these thoughts Yaba. This is very fertile territory for inquiry.

The conditioned-repsonse mechanisms that we tend to identify as self are an illusion. That is to say, they really exist as mechanisms, but they are neither the "doer" nor the "watcher" that we usually believe them to be.

So the question of free will comes up. Does this watcher/doer make free choices?

There is some scientific evidence that indicates the answer is "No." Brain studies by B. Libet and others have shown that the brain prepares the body to act before the "watcher/doer" claims to have decided on that action. See the following for more info:
http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2008/04/libet-redux-free-will-takes-another.html

Gozen
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Kenneth Folk, modified 15 Years ago at 3/21/09 2:46 PM
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Gozen, thanks for the link. Great stuff. My wife and I talk about this a lot. She is very matter-of-fact about it. If I ask her why she did something, she'll say, "I can tell you what I'm thinking about it now, but I'm not sure that had anything to do with why I did it."

This is my experience as well. Some choice is made and I come up with rationalizations after the fact.

Trent, thanks for the provocative topic.

To those who abhor abstract nonsense like this: Lighten up! It's OK to have a little fun with your homies now and then. Enlightenment is not brain-death. :-)

Kenneth
Trent S H, modified 15 Years ago at 3/21/09 5:32 PM
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I'm not sure I understand you-- how is a post-structuralist perspective on no self overly abstract or nonsensical?
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Kenneth Folk, modified 15 Years ago at 3/21/09 6:42 PM
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Surely you jest.
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Wet Paint, modified 15 Years ago at 3/21/09 7:37 PM
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RE: The Environment & Your Self

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Author: garyrh

There is a theory of mind that all conscious functions were at one time unconscious. So the conscious mind is "aware" of the already unconscious functions, rather than the more intuitive belief that the conscious is somehow directing the mind. I also use the word unconscious and not subconscious, the unconscious is as much mind as conscious, this Gozen has noted. I all this fits well with the idea that enlightenment is a continuation of this process of the conscious becoming aware of the unconscious. All the "exercises" meditation, mindfulness and conceptual frameworks etc caused those unconscious workings to be conscious.
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Jackson Wilshire, modified 15 Years ago at 3/21/09 8:07 PM
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Hi garyrh,

I respectfully disagree with your statement on two grounds...

First, the "unconscious becoming conscious" model applies primarily to the psychoanalytic school of psychology (Freud, Jung, and others). The psychological models, when used as models of awakening, aren't nearly as good as either Daniel's Non-Duality model or the physio-energetic model proposed by Kenneth (IMO, of course).

Second, I would argue that most of the exercises done in meditation (especially vipassana) have to do with processes that it would be difficult to label as "unconscious". Is something unconscious simply because we don't notice it without applied attention? I would say no. Watching the arising and passing of phenomena is a conscious activity.
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Wet Paint, modified 15 Years ago at 3/21/09 8:13 PM
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RE: The Environment & Your Self

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Author: garyrh

Hi Kenneth,
Since this abstract stuff does bother some could you organise dividing discussion into an "abstract discussion" and "practical discussion" (call them what you want).
It has occurred to me practical is a bad word here. One persons "practical" is anothers "entertaiment of ideas".
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Wet Paint, modified 15 Years ago at 3/21/09 8:34 PM
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Author: garyrh

Hi Jackson,

The psychological models were not modeling awakening it was not my intention to convey that they ever would. I bit like atomic theory will not replace quantum theory but there is a commonality.

The psychological models already have the unconscious being made conscious thru attention. In fact this very phenomena is the basis of much therapy. The confusion may arise from the fact there are differing levels of unconscious activity (for example personal unconscious and collective unconscious).
So consciously watching the previously unconscious arising and passing is a continuation of this development.
I do not think we have disagreed yet; but I have made myself clearer. emoticon
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tarin greco, modified 15 Years ago at 3/21/09 11:21 PM
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i've thought about this one a lot and there is something about it that resonates strongly. all notions of whether something is a psychological model or a dualistic model or a non-dualistic model aside, there is something that strikes me as very true about how awakening renders some certain mental processes transparent, such that they largely remain as they are but are seen through, and as a result, are no longer troubling. the old indian example of seeing a rope in a dark room and no longer imagining it to be a snake comes to mind. this is a very clear example of an unconscious process becoming conscious and losing its troubling quality.

the worst of the hell realms clearly (to me anyway) depend on a myriad unconscious processes and it's only when i was caught off guard that they could have arisen. also, this leads to the matter of how mind-noise conditions reality. the depths of the mind, accessible at solid 4th jhana levels, have a tendency to spit up all sorts of weird reality-conditioning mind-crap, but much less of a tendency to do so when there is a conscious presence at these levels of mind. this, i feel, is a good argument for staying in equanimity regarding formations for long periods of time and making good investigative use of it, getting to know the dhammas (fleeting occurrences) that arise and pass there... that is to say, becoming conscious of what was previously deeply, deeply unconscious.
Trent S H, modified 15 Years ago at 3/22/09 4:42 AM
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Not at all...

Allow me to modify the typical "wave in the ocean" analogy. This analogy is pretty flat and boring normally, but what if we throw salts and minerals, various chemicals, microorganisms, etc. into the water? Imagine that these are paralleled with conditions such as enlightenment, inferiority complexes, bodily illness, scars, preferences, etc. A wave (an "individual") has no choice but to absorb the various non-water elements into itself, just as the human has no choice but to absorb and BE the various arbitrarily designated "outside" elements that it comes into contact with. Pre-enlightenment isn't just the wave thinking it's separate, it's the H20 & the wave thinking that it is purely H20 and separate. That is pretty simple, right?

This understanding of no self helped me more than any other. In that, it is the very definition of practical. Funny and sad that most of the spiritual community disdains philosophy when it is just another tool toward furthering growth and understanding.
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Jackson Wilshire, modified 15 Years ago at 3/22/09 5:19 AM
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Hi garyrh,

Thanks for clarifying. The psychoanalytic model does show some parallels to the process of awakening. The idea of plunging the depths of the unconscious to gain insight in to one's reality is somewhat analogous to this thing we're doing. The reason I am reluctant to validate this way of talking about awakening is because people already tend to see meditation as an opportunity to work on their "stuff" (i.e. the content of their experience). The unconscious mind is FULL of content, and it definitely bubbles up the surface during meditation. But without applying an experiential understanding of the characteristics of the content, "insight", as is used in the context of awakening, will not be attained. That's how I see it, and maybe I'm still misunderstanding you. If so, that's all right emoticon

I never meant to say that you were way off, or that the idea doesn't make sense. Even if you understand the difference, I hate for others to confuse insight practice with the psychoanalytic process. I wouldn't want someone to think that they could just work with a psychoanalyst and get enlightened by drudging through their stuff.
Chuck Kasmire, modified 15 Years ago at 3/22/09 6:09 AM
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Yabaxoule: very nice stuff - getting right to the heart of the issue. I think these kinds of teasing out practices are really helpful. The last part you added on fear I found really great. There are lots of ways to make use of that material. Your posts here remind me of how useful it is to maintain a sense of curiosity and creativity.

Thanks,
-Chuck
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triple think, modified 15 Years ago at 3/22/09 7:25 AM
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The OPs had me initially reflecting on parallels between natural healthy growth and maturity of mind and body and the growth and maturity of awakening insight and liberating wisdom. A lot of models can offer kinds of cross sections, like a stop motion photograph over various period of time.

The only model that I can really continually reference is the mind/body which we each base all these other conceptual models upon. Not having been a scribal early sangha, we don't have the core group's emails and postings. Just finished formal speeches and consensual models which became canonical.

I like all the models at times during critical reflection and I like pitching them all to actually apply myself. I love wave models, even the particulate or persisting aspects break down into wave functions. In this mind and body wave models probably predominate where there is a lot of clarity on phenomena and processes. A lot of it has to do with a very thorough music training and education which is richly parallel and has well integrated and effective models.
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Kenneth Folk, modified 15 Years ago at 3/22/09 8:23 AM
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Some people like philosophy and some don't. I wouldn't put a value judgment on a person's preference in that regard. While philosophy tends to appeal to more academically-minded people, even that doesn't always hold true. My wife, for example, who earned a B.A. in Philosophy from a highly regarded liberal arts college, no longer cares to discuss philosophy. She finds it annoying and ultimately unsatisfactory.

As for me, I find philosophy delightful when it is well presented. But I think of it as part of a rich, well-rounded life, rather than as a support for awakening. On the other hand, philosophy has had a role to play in my awakening, as a kind of goad to find out what is truer than thought. In the late 80's Daniel Ingram and I spent a lot of time searching for truth through philosophy. Our great mutual revelation was that truth was not to be found there; if we wanted to know truth, we must know it directly, without the intermediary of thought. We decided to forsake philosophy for the time being and dedicate ourselves to the direct apprehension of reality.

I don't think anyone who regularly contributes to this board is caught up in thought to the exclusion of systematic meditation practice. But I don't know about those who may read these words while remaining silent. So I think it's important to stress that any kind of thought, including philosophy, is just thought. It has its uses. But it is not to be confused with the insight that arises from dedicated contemplative practice. Dedicated practice can mean direct apprehension of the changing phenomena of mind and body (vipassana) or it can mean inquiring into the nature of awareness (advaita), to name just two proven approaches. I believe our primary mission here is to help people awaken.
Trent S H, modified 15 Years ago at 3/22/09 9:12 AM
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I agree with you on the quoted section. As I said, apprehension of philosophy has been one of my biggest aides in awakening.

Why is it that we call "waking up" by the words that we do? Enlightenment, realization, awakening-- they seem to imply the understanding of something that was previously not understood. This has two parts, direct apprehension of reality and interpretation; which are not separable. The two parts are not mutually exclusive. If you have an opinion on what awakening is, then you are philosophizing.

With this as the case, the point "[philosophy] is just thought" is lost. Your thoughts are also experiences, and you never had a realization that had no "thought" to predicate the opening. Perhaps the thought wasn't accurate in the moment, but it led to the opening none-the-less. So again, the two are not mutually exclusive.

If I may, it seems the reason you have brushed philosophy away as you have is because you experienced "philosophy" in some way or another, but without meditation and meditative techniques. Due to that, there were no experiential shifts. I think the same can go the other direction, though. Someone with all the meditative techniques in the world and no conceptual knowledge is going to sit for an eternity with very little progress.

So I guess my point is this: philosophy is useful, we all do it, and it'll always accompany "first-hand, experiential realizations." If you have a realization, you also experienced thoughts about it.

Not only that, but contemporary philosophic thinkers have most of the pieces put together even if they had no experiential understanding. The reason is pretty bland-- east and west thought have converged in many ways. Our dear friend Gautama was read by our good buddy Nietzsche, for example. Like waves exchanging their minerals.
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Kenneth Folk, modified 15 Years ago at 3/22/09 10:03 AM
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This assertion is contrary to the evidence. Indeed, the reason the mushroom culture has endured so long is that it works. Consider the peasant girl described by Daniel in the Hurricane Ranch Dharma Discussion. Daniel's point was that this simple young woman was kicking his butt in terms of meditative progress in spite of his presumably superior education. It is taken as a given in vipassana circles that anyone who practices the technique will make progress, irrespective of his or her thoughts about the process. Jack Engler tells a story about how Dipa Ma guided her mentally retarded relative (niece?) to stream-entry in just a couple of weeks.

Enlightenment, as I define it, is a physio-energetic fact. Thoughts and opinions do not change it any more than your thoughts or opinions change the biological reality that you are an adult male human.

You wrote: "direct apprehension of reality and interpretation... are not separable. "

Of course they are. You separate them when you use two words to describe them...unless you are invoking the Absolute, which I don't believe you are, as that would be a category error in this context.

I would further suggest that the ability to separate the direct apprehension of reality from what you think about the direct apprehension of reality is fundamental to discussions like this one. The conflation of distinct but related concepts is not conducive to clear communication.

None of this is intended to impugn thought. Thought is wonderful. Philosophy is delicious. But philosophy is not insight, and as the Buddha is said to have pointed out, "In the thinking is just the thought."
Trent S H, modified 15 Years ago at 3/22/09 10:58 AM
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Kenneth,

As I said, the thoughts do not need to be accurate, or "superiority educated" for progress to be made. But there are thoughts happening in accordance with each realization. What you are saying is akin to a no-thought model. We WILL think about the realizations, and the two are part and parcel in that way. So although we can conceptually break them into two separate things, they will hold hands while the path is walked.

So what is the point? Some people work with thoughts, ideas and concepts because those thoughts help them make sense of things, which is part of turning the wheel. I myself am a relatively analytical person-- I make sense of my reality by noting relationships between phenomena and so forth. A peasant girl with no knowledge of what a metaphysical thought is or what the theory of relativity is (etc), doesn't need to be taught that, and it is indeed useless to her realization. We are different. Point is: the peasant girl is still interpreting reality, pre and post realization, and unless she is in a permanent state of cessation, there's no stopping that.

The folks on this forum are highly educated people who will progress greatly in the light of intellectual illumination. This talk may may be unnecessary to some people, but there is also no reason to withhold something that will help the others clear up obstructions. Your way is not the only way, man.

Lastly, I am not saying philosophy "is" insight, I'm saying that insight and philosophy are two sides of a coin and that the separation of the two sides of a coin is an arbitrary boundary. The "distinct but related" concepts seem to be divided into "thoughts" or "experiences." This raises the question-- is a thought not experienced? Causal events stemming from thoughts and experiences will chase each other around until death do they part.
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triple think, modified 15 Years ago at 3/22/09 11:44 AM
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I would go in the direction of thinking that the bare mindful attention is supreme and that the cognition that takes place beyond that is about opening up that process to even more comprehensive awareness of what is being taken in. So the cognitive processing beyond raw perception is about engaging in a process of ordering that input and when the order breaks down it has to be adjusted appropriately to go back to the further refinement of more clarity with perception so I would make the perceptual aspect the ocean and the conceptualization potentially raft like. Intentionality, also tied to the conceptual and the straight up perceptual development is the 'passenger' aboard that raft. When the raft is finished it covers that ocean in full contact with both the near and far shore. It has gone all the way and come full circle. There is no need for further reflection.
Mike L, modified 15 Years ago at 3/22/09 12:07 PM
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The two sides of a coin go everywhere together, but as Yabaxoule notes, "contemporary philosophic thinkers have most of the pieces put together even if they had no experiential understanding". They may have a partial picture of a coin, but that's not the same as the coin of experience itself.
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Wet Paint, modified 15 Years ago at 3/22/09 12:16 PM
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Author: garyrh

Exactly.

The peasant girl and Trent then teaches or pass on what they know with whom each reasonants. Even though the process seems very mechanical whereby it is just a case of doing it and you'll get results there is an incredibly rich horizontal development that makes it all very interesting. The vertical and horozontial development are very much bound up in each other.

BTW - at the risk of sounding a little corny - Kenneth this is what makes contributions here important your comunication style reasonants with many. And it is important for DHO to attract and keep a diverse contributing members if the Dharma is to be taught in the manner of Daniels vision statement.

Of course by mentioning Kenneth I am not excluding other contributors - I singled Kenneth out because he has contributed a lot recently, that I value highly.
Hokai Sobol, modified 15 Years ago at 3/22/09 1:00 PM
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Thanks, Trent. I'm in agreement with the points you made on thought and interpretation. Fact and interpretation ARE the two sides of the same coin, just as relative and ultimate are. So, there's no way around interpretation, and no way around thought. Let cows and dolphins have the thoughtless satori. There are good awakenings, and there are better awakenings. Also there are good interpretations, and then there are better interpretations of these. It's best to aim for the better of both.

As for Buddha's stance on conceptuality, putting "right view" as #1 in his noble path says volumes.
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Kenneth Folk, modified 15 Years ago at 3/22/09 1:21 PM
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Agreed.

I'm bewildered by what appears to be an almost universal misinterpretation of my original point. Remember, the comment that started the controversy was this one:

"To those who abhor abstract nonsense like this: Lighten up! It's OK to have a little fun with your homies now and then. Enlightenment is not brain-death. :-)"

My intention was to validate those who prefer something less heady while at the same time expressing my own appreciation for a good intellectual discussion. I certainly never meant to muzzle anyone, and frankly, reading over the thread I don't see where I've written anything that suggests that.

Was it the "nonsense" word that gave offense? I apologize for that. It's hard to convey humor over the internet.

Kenneth
Trent S H, modified 15 Years ago at 3/22/09 1:42 PM
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No worries. Has been a good discussion all around. Thanks to all for the comments and pointers.
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tarin greco, modified 15 Years ago at 3/22/09 9:07 PM
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i completely agree with this and want to emphasise a point i think yabaxoule made there, which is that thoughts don't have to be accurate (correspond well with all the other thoughts) in order to be useful, since they are, as triplethink points out, a means of 'engaging in a process of ordering' pre-thought sensory perception. so long as they do the job of opening someone up to 'an even more comprehensive awareness of what is being taken in', i would say that they serve their purpose well.

another perhaps more controversial point i'd like to make - bear with me - is that it may not be necessary to have everyone have compatible thoughts. might there actually come some good from the confusion and sometimes conflict that arises from incompatible streams of thought and irreconcilable concepts? i think so. just as novelty and creativity do emerge out of harmonious, consistent and successfully self-referential thought-streams, different points of novelty can emerge from fractured, disharmonious, cultural hodgepodges of thought-mess because they allow elements (that ordinarily have their contact points sacrificed for the sake of a more cohesive whole) to meet that otherwise wouldnt. i certainly dont want to convert the whole world to my way of thinking... just enough of it that i am able to wield and find useful.

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