Greetings, I'm only to page five, but I find this an extremely interesting paper. Sorry I forgot the url:
http://www.gampoabbey.org/translations2/Co-arising%20of%20SOWS-Waldron.pdf Marsha On Aug 17, 2010, at 4:22 AM, MarshaV wrote: > > On Aug 17, 2010, at 4:04 AM, Magnus Berg wrote: > >> Hi Marsha >> >> On 2010-08-17 09:07, MarshaV wrote: >>> Yes, I am quite sure my understanding developed from Buddhist texts. >> >> I'm sure, but that wasn't my question. I asked: >> >> are you sure you >> would have come to the same conclusion had you not known about Bo's >> version beforehand? >> >>> Buddhism is all about self and objects. But I had a head start by >>> studying Hatha Yoga, Vedic texts and meditating in the 80's. Where >>> does what you know come from? >> >> I know hardly anything about Buddhism, especially not first-hand. But I >> thought its aim was to merge the self with reality, not to divide the self >> from objects? That's why I questioned why even SOM was a problem in >> Buddhism, I thought it simply didn't exist. >> >> Magnus > > > That would be one way of stating it, but I read gazillions on the > _illusion_ that self and objects (explicitly mentioned) are taken > to be independent, permanent entities. Take for instance: > > "The ways in which the relationship between mind and world have been > considered for the last few hundred years in Western thought and science are > being radically reconceived and ideas from a wide variety of sources are now > being taken more seriously than ever. Philosophical perspectives from the > Buddhist traditions of India are of particular interest because they have > long addressed issues that are currently in contention: if we are not > Cartesian subjects essentially alienated from our bodies and the material > world, as many have previously accepted, then who and what are we? And what > then is the status of the “world” we purportedly stood against? Or our > perceptions of it? Or the consequences of actions within it? And if the line > between self and world is not nearly as clear or hard and fast as we have > assumed, where or what is it? > > We propose to address such questions by considering a wide range of ideas > from Indian Buddhist traditions and various scientific fields. We shall find > thinkers in both areas who have reached surprisingly similar conclusions on a > number of key issues: they similarly conclude that (1) the “self” is a > designation for interactive processes rather than the name of an autonomous > entity, and (2) that cognitive awareness only arises as a result of > interaction between subject and > object,whicharethemselves,however,(3)ultimatelyinseparable.1 > Theseconclusionsleadthem to the counter-intuitive idea that (4) such > awareness occurs neither solely inside nor wholly outside of the brain, but > only at the interface of “self” and world. We are further surprised when we > find thinkers in both these areas who therefore (5) understand the “world” as > necessarily correlative with specific organisms or species, and then (6) go > on to suggest similar causal patterns—i.e. circular causality—whereby these > “worlds” and species-specific awareness of them concomitantly come about > (i.e. they co-evolve), (7) disclosing, for our human “world,” the > indispensable influences of language and society. And, finally, we are > astonished to discover that some Buddhists and scientists agree that our > sense of self, object, world, and society, (8) not only occurs mostly > automatically and unconsciously, but also necessarily (9) includes the whole > network of language users, past and present, leading them, at last, to (10) > concur with the epigraph above that, at least for man, mind “hath no place to > lay its head.” > > That these views are even comparable only becomes clear when they are seen in > light of one another. That is, the startling implications of various > scientific understandings of perception, world and mind, could easily be > overlooked if they were examined one by one, without the perspective that a > well-developed and integrated world view such as Indian Buddhism provides. > Conversely, the relevance, and oft-times even the import, of basic Buddhist > ideas could be occluded without the fresh perspectives that scientific > inquiries into the arising of awareness provide. > > We will pursue this mutual edification of Buddhist and scientific > understandings of mind and world by pursuing a single line of inquiry to its > logical, if vertiginous, conclusion: the idea that awareness arises in > dependence upon an ultimately indefinite range of causes and conditions and > is therefore a function neither of the subject by itself nor of the world > alone. In this light, we shall see that our selves, our worlds, and our minds > can be understood more fully and more deeply if we consider them not as > autonomous entities originally existing apart from each other and only > subsequently coming together, but rather as aspects of recurrent patterns of > interactions that concurrently arise. The objects of such analyses, in other > words, are not really objects at all, but specific, recurrent relationships. > This perspective is most succinctly stated in the classical Buddhist formula > of dependent arising (pañicca-samuppāda): > When this is, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises. When > this is not, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that > ceases. (M II 32, etc.). > > This shift in focus—reframing questions from “who did what to whom?” to “how > do interactive processes come to occur?”—replaces the implicit metaphysics of > autonomous agents acting upon independent objects with a view of the complex > and patterned arising of phenomena. This alone largely explains one of the > most overlooked similarities between scientific and Buddhist modes of > inquiry: that in their common attempt to understand not the essence but the > arising of things, they have both found it necessary to dispense with the > notions of substantive entities, unchanging essences or independent agents > altogether. This is a momentous shift entailing ever-widening implications. > We shall gradually draw out these implications by examining three aspects of > interdependence: between self and object, self and world, and self and > society." > > > Marsha > > > > > ___ > > > 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/md/archives.html ___ 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/md/archives.html
