--- ventouxboy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- Well, oringinally I had one question, now I have > two. First, > what's The Alex Conundrum? It was mentioned in an > earlier post from > someone else; sounded like a joke there.
This being the Zen discussion group, the guiding light is the "teaching beyond words, concepts, etc." The so-called Alex Conundrum deals with my insistence that intellect is our sharpest, most powerful tool for staging the so-called breakthough. As one would suspect, most people on this list violently oppose that. Intellect for them is a dirty word, it is the witch, the boogeyman that is the culprit for all our woes, and as such must be hunted down, beaten violently, tortured, then hanged, then burned, then tossed to the dogs, etc. Many people react the same way. I remember when I was starting to teach my first course on Madhyamika, a Buddhist friend asked me what would my approach be, and, upon hearing that it will be 100% based on intellectual reasoning, simply flew off the handle. Much to my shock, he started reviling me, calling me stupid and immature and so forth. Such is the fear of half-baked Buddhist practitioners towards anything intellectual. > And now, what's your take on Buddha's statement > about arguing? > Don't leave me hanging man! As I said before, > different opinions are > how we learn. Thanks for the comments, Guy. The best way to explain this is to use an analogy (with a caveat that all metaphors, analogies, similies, illustrations and such are valid only up to a point, after which they invariably tend to break; plus, this is going to be a slightly far-fetched example, so please bear with me): Let's say that I go with a friend to the train station. The station is completely empty, so we pick a spot and stand there on the platform chatting, waiting for the train to come. Suppose we see two strangers enter the station and pick a spot several paces away from us. Obviously, the two newly arrived people don't know each other. Now, as I'm chatting with my friend, I happen to catch the most startling event: I see how one person placed his hand in another person's pocket and took some money out of it, placing the stolen money quickly in his own pocket. Alarmed, I ask my friend: "Did you see that?" "See what?" replies my friend. Oviously, he didn't catch the fleeting moment. Agitated, I rush to the phone and call the police. The police arrives in a minute, luckily before the train managed to arrive. They immediatelly put everything on hold, instructing everyone to stay put, and then start interrogating us. First, they talk to the caller (me) and ask me to repeat what I saw. Then, they talk to the thief. The thief flatly denies the accusations. The police search him, and sure enough find a hundred dollar bill in his pocket. Then they turn and talk to the victim. Much to his shock, the victim realizes that the hundred dollar bill that he had in his pocket has now disappeared! Of course, the thief claims that the hundred dollar bill belongs to him, he took it with him when he left the house this morning. So, it's his word against the other guy's word. So now the police has no recourse but to talk to my friend. My friend claims that he didn't see that the money was stolen from that person's pocket. Now, it's my word against my friend's word. In addition, unfortunatelly the security cameras were out of range in this case. We have now reached an impasse. This is a fertile ground for argumentation. Pretty soon, the lawyers may get involved, and then the whole thing may end up in the court. What's at stake here is the investigation in the nature of evidence. What kind of evidence would be sufficiently strong to reach an objective, reliable verdict in this case? Of course, as we know, the opinions will always differ on these matters. But, the can of worms of arguing has been opened, and it will be very hard to reach a general consensus on the matter. Now, let's shift gears and examine a variation of this scenario. In this new scenario, I will be the person who suffers from impaired perception. I will arrive at the same train station with the same friend. We will pick a spot and begin chatting, waiting for the train. Now, because I have these bouts of hallucinations, I will start imagining that two strangers arrive at the station. I will then imagine that one person stole the money to another person.I will then rush to the phone and call the police. Upon arriving, the police will find a different scene than they had in the previous scenario. Now, they will see only me and my friend standing on the platform. In my hallucinatory state, I will claim that the two strangers are still standing over there, in that corner. The police will look worriedly at me, and so would my friend. "Acost the thief!" I would yell, pointing my finger at the imaginary person. Would there be any grounds for argumentation in that case? There will certainly be grounds for putting me in the mental (or detox, as the case may be) institution, but no further argumentation will ever take place regarding this incident. Now, the Buddha had been, throughout the 49 years of his teaching career, forced to face many practitioners and people from all walks of life, who would approach him and ask him to clarify certain situation for them. The Buddha could invariably clearly perceive that all these people were suffering from severe hallucinations. Thus, he couldn't see any grounds for even beginning an argument with these people. Same as if someone wakes up from a nightmare where the terrorists have attacked the city we live in, and starts mobilizing everyone to flee to the country side, no one is going to entertain their warnings. However, deluded people would get agitated by the Buddha's refusal to entertain their hallucinations, and would start to argue with him. To which the Buddha would say: "You may argue with me, but I'm not arguing with you." Basically,what he was saying is, "there is nothing to argue about. If you'd like to argue about something, please bring something substantial before us, and I will gladly oblige you." However the problem is, no one has ever been able to find anything substantial to present for the argument, and consequently the Buddha never argues about anything. There is absolutely no point in arguing with someone about the dream they had. Alex ===== No karma was produced during the composition of this letter __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Would you Help a Child in need? It�s easier than you think. 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