Hi Bill, Ed, In my 'experience', what we take as our experience is also muddled with our concepts. It is not the experience as is. As we describe the experience, it is within our frame of reference.
In your example of tasting peach below, I wonder how one would describe the experience without any concepts. siska -----Original Message----- From: "Bill!" <[email protected]> Sender: [email protected] Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 02:05:57 To: <[email protected]> Reply-To: [email protected] Subject: [Zen] Re: Questions ED, The way I was using the word in my post below 'experience' is sensory awareness. In more coarser words it is anything you see, feel, hear, touch or taste. I used the word 'experience' in my post below to contrast with the word 'explain'. In that sense, 'experiences' are made up of sensory sensations in contrast to 'explanations' which are made up of concepts. An example would be describing the taste of a ripe peach (experience) in contrast to explaining how the sugars and acids of the peach excite your taste buds and then transmit electical impulses to different areas of your brain which are translated into concepts (like 'good') by your discriminating mind. ...Bill! --- In [email protected], "ED" <seacrofter001@...> wrote: > > > > > Bill, > > What are 'experiences' and what are not 'experiences'? > > Thanks, ED > > > > --- In [email protected] > <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Zen_Forum/post?postID=4f9XRg1jUQkxrPFD0f0\ > ZldCR1MGlncMtcJN366lunTJFuhFBsRYXt1OsSdl2cwHDdn0PuzgDZi_BsgV63wMY> , > "Bill!" <BillSmart@> wrote: > > > > Anthony, > > > > ED's concepts are not too complicated. If you want to engage with him > or anyone else in an intellectual discussion you're going to have to > employ concepts. I just think having an intellectual discussion about > zen is about as useful as investigating quantum mechanics using Tarot > cards. In each case you're just not employing the righ tool for the job. > > > > ED, in my opinion, doesn't DESCRIBE his experiences, he tries to > EXPLAIN things - and usually they aren't even HIS explanations, they are > someone elses (like a link to some other person's explanation). Most of > the time ED does not even indicate if he agrees or disagress with the > link to which he's pointing us. > > > > ...Bill! >
