Morning...
At 03:58 AM 9/21/2008, you wrote:
Morning Marsha
Speaking of "seeing through", I can't see much through this fog we
have here today. Let's hope it's not indicative of a mental fog as well.
Here I could go on for a very long time. I am suggesting that
humans have really no access to the phenomenal external
world. (Unless of course you are a Buddha.) If you have a direct
experience of an external world, the moment you add a word or image
to the experience, it overlayed with pattern. And that would be
conceptual pattern.
I agree that an experience gets conceptualized as soon as you attach
a word to it, but that does *not* mean we have no access to the
phenomenal world!
What the Buddha, or anyone meditating, is doing is to try to access
as much dynamic intellectual experiences as possible. It may seem
that if you access dynamic *intellectual* patterns, it's easier to
conceptualize them because they are already concepts to begin with.
But the fact is, as you conceptualize any pattern, intellectual or
other, the dynamic aspect is removed and that's the important part.
The dynamic aspect is what gives liveness, real-time and cutting
edge to the experience. All those things are gone after conceptualizing.
But what I'm trying to say is that if you acknowledge that the
Buddha has access to a phenomenal world, then you should also
acknowledge that everyone else has access to it. Perhaps it's not
very common for people to have dynamic intellectual experiences,
eureka-moments or whatever you want to call them. But we do have
other types of inorganic, biological and social experiences every
single second of every single day.
When you say that all those experiences are conceptual, you're
referring to our internal, second hand, intellectual
conceptualizations of those experiences. You do not refer to the
experiences themselves. A concept, being an intellectual pattern,
cannot *be* another type of pattern, it can only *represent* it via a language.
I agree with you. Nirvana and samsara are said to be
not-different. I get that.
I will consider well what you have written here.
The elephant in your mind is conceptual. Any speculation you do
for that elephant is conceptual. The minute you attach a word or
image to your experience of elephant it is conceptual. All your
methods to recognize an elephant is conceptual. All that you know
about elephant behavior is conceptual. Have you ever directly
experienced an elephant without your thoughts and images? Have you
ever directly experienced the moon without your thoughts and images?
Nothing wrong with concepts. But they are not direct experience of
a phenomenal world.
I think you're headed toward Descartes "I think, therefore I am",
aren't you? Since all you can really know is conceptual, everything
else might just be your imagination.
No, everything is connected to everything and is
ever-changing. No reason to call me despicable names. I think the
truth makes you uncomfortable.
But I think the MoQ has something to say about that. Since concept
are intellectual patterns, and intellectual patterns are dependent
on all lower levels, it *proves* that the underlying patterns are
just as real as the intellectual concepts that we do know to be real.
You wrote "that we do know to be real" What is this knowing??? And
what is this real??? Listen to the words of Lila.
No, conceptual experiences are real too, empirically real,
conventionally real. A real that is dependent on ever-changing,
collections of overlapping, interrelated, inorganic, biological,
social and intellectual, static patterns of value.
Be careful with that slogan. You know it doesn't mean anything if
you can't connect it to a coherent model of reality.
It might not be the conventional model of reality, but it's the
model I'm working with. How is it incoherent?
As I wrote 2 days ago:
Yes, I agree it's a better description, but I'm a bit burnt by how
people usually follow that description to its conclusion. The
problem usually starts as they start dissecting which different
types of patterns there are, and if those types are, as the thread
name states, discrete and dependent. The end result is often that
the levels are neither discrete nor very dependent and on top of
that they are also degraded to a "convenient" division of reality
but with no real connection to it. At this point, the original
statement about "interdependent patterns" are long forgotten and no
second thought is given to the fact that the removal of
discreteness, dependency and realness have perverted the original
sound statement into a very flat and incoherent slogan.
I think the four (4) levels are ingenious, perfect in fact. But I
agree there is a problems. I had to go to Buddhism to make the
levels meaningful. But that meaningful seems to indicate much more
than what goes into what bucket. Four ways of knowing? Maybe, but
that's not quite right either. I don't know what to say. Let the
author speak. Really! Or if you think you can explain their
significance, please do. I used the word significance purposefully.
I think I need to declare a disclaimer. I'm just working with what
I have at the moment. I make very definitive statements, but for
sure I'm thinking, playing, testing & etc. I'm not a trained
scientist, but doing my best see if this hangs together, and where
it might lead next.
That goes for me as well. I might have a slightly longer time
horizon, but I'm here to test my theories and see if anyone can refute them.
Hurray!
Marsha
.
.
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.........
.
.
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