Hi Ham, I would agree in the lack of metaphysics. It may be a result of depending on constant stimulation from the outside. You would think that the current recession would be good for the soul, but all I hear is despair, wanting things to get back to the usual distractions. People cannot live with themselves anymore. Perhaps they have forgotten how or maybe not been educated properly.
I think I've posted before, that for every word concerning self knowledge in English, there are forty in Sanskrit. Now that was a language in which to discuss metaphysics. I agree that the current phase in Western thought is either that matter and mind are the same thing, or that mind does not exist. I know differently. I know that you don't talk politics, but the current political phase believes that even if self exists, it needs a lot of direction in doing so. Baa, Baa. I get a different feeling from Buddhism from reading and discussions with Buddhist. While, in one sense it can be considered total escape and denial, it can also be considered an awakening. The Buddhists I speak with are not free from pain and suffering, they just let it blow through them. They try to remove from the attachment and meaningfulness of it. When I get that way, I find my mind more free to contemplate. I don't believe a Buddhist behaves as though things do not exist, more that they are illusions that exist. Cheers, Willblake2 On May 19, 2009, at 10:17:04 PM, "Ham Priday" <[email protected]> wrote: Hi WillBlake -- > Yes, letting go of self, of the ego, of self consciousness. > The attainment of truth, liberation, as the Upanishads, Buddha, > Taoism, Zen, would all claim. I believe in that and am working > towards that too. > > It would seem from recent interpretations of MoQ (which is > obviously still in the making) that such release is not consistent > with this philosophy. In fact the claim is we are subject to > group behavior not individual expression. Sad but true. One has to acknowledge the self of consciousness before he can let go of it. Relegating ego and consciousness to a collective intellect is a step in the opposite direction. It denies the very self that seeks liberation and truth -- even the freedom to choose that path. For if there is no knowing 'I' to realize truth, if we have surrendered the subjective self to the objective universe, what is there left to liberate? > But, as Pirsig has said in interviews, MoQ is waiting for the next > independent thinker, to carry it along. It would seem Pirsig is > waiting as well. Plato had his academy, current philosophies have > the Internet. Much more powerful and capable of generating > a synthesis of ideas, and even new ones, if there is actually > something new under the sun. What an opportunity! There's nothing new under the sun, but there is much to be revealed about existence if we don't approach it with a closed mind. Socrates said "The unexamined life is not worth living." But introspection is meaningless to those who deny the insight it can afford us. How often has Science been accused in this forum of failing to answer ultimate questions? Yet, the same voices are quick to demean spirituality and metaphysical insight as mythical remnants of an unenlightened age. Psychiatrist Richard Schain has written: "The tendency to neglect the metaphysical aspect of human life has always existed in the history of mankind but no era has so depreciated and disparaged metaphysics as the current one. Metaphysics is relegated to the realm of scholarly study or traditional religions where it exists in a tethered, tradition-bound form of little use to those seeking to develop their position in the universe. ... "'...[T]he essential feature in the life of an individual is his valuation of his interior self, i.e. his subjective self. There is no greater tragedy than the failure of an individual to realize this value. What hinders this development, however, is the modern view that there is no such thing as the self, that there is only a complex arrangement of synapses and neurons in the brain, giving rise to the illusion of self. Without a belief in the metaphysical self, humans are at the mercy of their environment, which in the present age fares little for the development of an interior self. Only a radical metaphysics will save the individual from drowning in the swamps of the materialist dogmas of contemporary society." -- [R. Schain: "Toward a Radical Metaphysics"] > Me, I want to live from the inside out, not the outside in; I want to > radiate, not absorb. . . I want to be a sun, not a black hole, I want > to be responsible, not a victim. All this can result from freedom > of the confining, needing, ego, "grasping and clinging" as a > translation of the early writers of Buddha's teachings would stress. As agents of value, we are all potential "suns". But if we cease desiring, as the Buddhists prescribe for "avoiding pain", we shut off the value sensibility that connects us with our essential source. That's retreating to a "black hole" existence in which being-aware has no more meaning than the insentient rock and human beings are pawns of biological evolution. We'll never understand man's place in the universe by pretending that subjects and objects don't exist. I share your sentiments, Will. Thanks for giving me this opportunity to reflect on them. Essentially yours, Ham Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
