--- In [email protected], "matrixmonitor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > ---Well spoken!...(below,) we all have multiple "selves"; a concept > more consistent with the Buddhist notion of "components" rather than > the Hindu concept of a "jiva" or reincarnating Soul.
To follow up on this some more, I find this idea of "components" liberating. If part of the enlightenment game is to get over the identification with self and its attempts to be important, it just feels easier for me to think of identifying less each day with different "components" than it does to think of identifying less with something concrete and fixed like a "self." But to be honest, this subject makes some people bristle. You'd be amazed how uptight some people, even within spiritual circles, get at the idea that there might not be an individual soul, or self, that even within the illusion of Maya, we might just all be sharing different interactive, unindividualized component selves. For me this uptightness or uneasiness is itself the assertion of the self, even within traditions that ostensibly are seeking to transcend that self. Even seekers who are committed to the full-time pursuit of Self and the transcendence of self prefer to believe that there is only *one* of those selves in there -- a jiva, a soul, one entity that must be transcended. Go figure. Pragmatically, I've tended to find that spiritual trad- itions who believe strongly that there is no fixed self or individual jiva have an easier time leaving the set of components that make you *believe* there is an indi- vidual self behind than those who firmly believe that there really is one -- and only one -- self to leave behind. Unc P.S. Slightly related one-liner: "Paranoid schizo- phrenics outnumber their enemies at least two to one." :-) To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
