William, That too, but it's much more basic than that. It's a little tough to explain if you haven't studied in detail how the eyes and other sensory organs work and how the mind constructs individual discrete objects out of raw sensory input that is continuous, and cobbles them into an illusory framework that it thinks of as the physical material dimensional world.
The great difficulty in programming robotic systems to extract what it calls individual objects out of continuous flows of color, sound, chemical odors etc. is functionally equivalent to how organismic minds do it. Thus a carefully study of robotic systems, the functionality of the eyes etc. is all necessary to understand the nature of the mind's illusion AND thus the nature of the reality behind the illusion. As a very simple example reality doesn't consist of focused visual images we think it does. Focusing light occurs only in the eyes because the eye has lens that focus the light. Thus there simply ARE NO VISUAL IMAGES of anything in the real world out there, they exist only in the mind's illusory model of reality.... Those who think the real world consists of actual individual visual colored things have NOT realized the true nature of things, and thus are still far from Zen Mind.... And that is just the beginning. When everything the mind adds to reality is subtracted away ALL that remains is pure information forms devoid of any individual substances that exist like ripples, eddies and waves in the sea of pure Tao or Buddha Nature, what I call ontological energy, the space of reality in the present moment. For example the real world has no size and no orientation and no position because these are measures the mind imposes ON reality relative to itself. Without the mind as observer these simply do not exist is reality... One must understand all these things and many more to understand the true nature of things. Edgar On Apr 18, 2013, at 4:50 PM, William Rintala wrote: > > So when we look a a chair we see "Chair" with all of the baggage that we've > accumulated with regards to chairness. In truth there is no chair. There is > an object in space that someone could hit you with but the concepts, memories > and words are all illusory. There's just this...thingness. > > From: Edgar Owen <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Sent: Thu, April 18, 2013 12:36:18 PM > Subject: Re: [Zen] Re: Hello > > > William, > > > Well to start with it's simply the way the senses and the brain work. > Actually reality is nothing at all like the model of it our senses and mind > constructs. > > The world that we think we live in is entirely a construct of our individual > brains with the exception of it's logical structure which the mind must > approximate to a certain degree of accuracy for us to be able to function in > reality... > > Zen is understanding how this works so that one can realize the truth nature > of things beyond the mind's model of them.... > > Edgar > > > > On Apr 18, 2013, at 12:38 PM, William Rintala wrote: > >> >> >> Is this illusion of the senses akin to Kant's Ding an sich? That we can >> never know the objects of our senses but only what our senses perceive. >> >> From: Joe <[email protected]> >> To: [email protected] >> Sent: Thu, April 18, 2013 11:01:51 AM >> Subject: [Zen] Re: Hello >> >> >> Edgar, >> >> We observe how they work through the senses. Understanding them this way is >> perfectly circular. And that is our reality. So, I'd say, don't play it up >> as something special. We have what we have and make of it what we will. >> >> The understanding you build of things like this is a model. It is nothing >> better or closer to reality than that. It is a model. >> >> The view you express has a technical term, and it is not a put-down. It is >> an accurate and polite categorization: "Naive Realism". >> >> There you have it. Make of "IT" what you will, also. >> >> Many of us have been there, done that. Especially the Scientists among us. >> >> --Joe >> >> > Edgar Owen <edgarowen@...> wrote: >> > >> > Bob, >> > >> > Of course you are right and Bill is wrong. The senses are illusions. They >> > are not reality as it actually is. This is abundantly clear to anyone who >> > understands how they work... >> >> >> > > >
