.... it is creative imagination that is being tapped, an intentional conscious 'dreaming' that is an interlude, a space, that benefits the self [which buddhists negate] or soul [which religions affirm] or beings in their human condition, ultimately a means to control their ends, to alleviate the reality of finitude
But is finitude a reality?
Btw, it seems Buddhists seem more concerned with how reality is perceived and our usual attitude toward it:
this very self and the mundane world are not mundane at all; (they) have all the qualities of transcendence, only our conditioning leads us to believe that this world and the self are mundane. Since the Bodhi or Buddha Nature is immanent, and the very self is sublime, the belief that there is Manifestation and Dissolution is invalid, as all is Bodhi or Buddha Nature.
Btw, it seems Buddhists seem more concerned with how reality is perceived and our usual attitude toward it:
this very self and the mundane world are not mundane at all; (they) have all the qualities of transcendence, only our conditioning leads us to believe that this world and the self are mundane. Since the Bodhi or Buddha Nature is immanent, and the very self is sublime, the belief that there is Manifestation and Dissolution is invalid, as all is Bodhi or Buddha Nature.
The world of forms is perpetually in flux, but the Buddha nature is eternal.
l hope not, l can't wrap my head round infinity but l like to believe in it. l should have said 'perceived', or as above, 'conditioned' in our limited human pov, where life [forms] lives and dies continually. lt was just a reaction to the previous posts ..but goes to show how common both are in belief in something, eternal, continuing, and how prayer and meditation is a connecting mediating zone for this in the present now, yet with an [inner] eye to the future [transcendence].
We're constantly engaged in acting out the social rituals of face making and status pushing. One thing that ritual does is serve as a vehicle for status making. One cannot convincingly confer status on oneself, rather one has status conferred by another via ritual. Competition is ritual, if you think about it.
I make coffee every morning, open my curtains and then check if my plants need water, (and usually give breakfast to a partially disabled herring gull I call Livingston), then plug in here to see how much trouble I'm in.
I get what you're saying. I tend to use a more carefully delineated definition, as I have long been interested in the difference between ritual and habit. The pop culture parlance isn't very useful for studying and distinguishing between very different types of human behavior. Unless there is deep symbolic meaning and a social statement behind making your coffee, it just ain't the same thing as taking communion or attending a funeral.
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Much of art is ritualistic, artists tend to stick to a ritual formula that makes it consistent, and thus recognisable. I think there is an artist in everyone.
I would agree, though I would again bring up the problem of distinguishing rituals from habits. Otherwise, it's a big ball of activities that are just not a categorically useful bunch of stuff to lump together for study.
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So I think I was not using the word ritual out of context but rather you were using one definition where I was using another.
I agree. There is some blurring between the two types of ritual, but the type I'm talking about is useful in social science for studying a particular way that people move about socially and symbolically, while the stuff that is not like this is habitual actions that do provide order but not necessarily meaning.
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I am using the word ego to mean the combined whole. Which I think is valid as none of them are ever entirely independent in expression.
I understand. I tend to call the ego the ego and the superego the bigger self, higher self, whatever you want to call it. Well, not entirely, because I distinguish between that which is interconnected to all beings and that which is socially conditioned. They may be intertwined, but I don't find it as useful to lump them all together. I think in evolutionary terms, you are a lumper and I am a splitter. Maybe due to my background, I don't know, I feel the need to delineate a great many things about humans and work on the complexity there.
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I wrap them tightly together in the context of the OP and would say that the practice, (of prayer/meditation), would not exist without at least the hope that there will be some reward from it. The practice is not independent, it is co-dependent.
That is not true, however. One can pray or meditate without thought of reward. One can just do a behavior without an ulterior motive.
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That is like saying I think it problematic my friendly herring gull does not ask for a book to read. What you say implies that I would judge a person without the capacity based on someone who did have the capacity. I am able to discriminate a little better than that
But who are you or I to judge another's enlightenment? Who are you or I to judge who is subject to which limitations or disabilities, and therefore has become enlightened as it pertains to them? Some disabilities, like my uncle's are "worn" on the outside. But everyone has limitations, and to say enlightenment is bound to knowledge, rather than enlightenment is sometimes intertwined with knowledge, presumes a level of capacity in the population as a whole. Instead, I look at actions- are people more understanding of others? Loving? Patient? Kind? Joyful? Peaceful? Then they have something going on.
There is a deeper issue here, and that is the difference between what you might think is enlightenment as an atheist and what I think it is as a panentheist. I don't think enlightenment is simply bettering one's wisdom or becoming a nice person, though both are results of enlightenment. There is a question of what is really going on that relates to this issue of who is the proper judge of enlightenment in another.
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Enlightenment is another one of these words that is easilly contextually missapplied or missunderstood. And in this case you seem to first apply it to knowledge then change to spiritual, makes for wobbly goal posts
I have always viewed enlightenment as a spiritual endeavor. It can be, for some individuals, related to knowledge (more appropriately to understanding or wisdom). But my point is the two are not at all the same, and one needn't have knowledge to be enlightened. It all depends on the individual and their unique learning style and purpose whether or not knowledge is part of their becoming enlightened. I think we can observe humanity and note a great deal of individual difference, and so while enlightenment (or in Christian parlance, deliverance or salvation) is open to all and will show the same transformational results (more loving, understanding, etc. individuals), the path to get there is a very personal, individualistic one. What transforms me may not be what transforms you.
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I am poetic and artsy about science and knowledge, and if science is not about possibility then I do not know what it is about. Every answer in science seems to throw up a myriad of new questions, a sea of possibilities. To say that it lacks richness is wrong.
I have never said it lacks richness. However, science is not only about possibility. It is limited by its methodology and tools for measurement, which are ever expanding but always behind human thought (naturally). This is why a lot of physicists talk about ideas that they can express in language or math (another language) but may not be able to prove. You spoke of real and virtual knowledge... and said you wished to confine yourself to the real. I speak of potentiality and the human imagination, and say I don't wish to confine myself at all. Science plays catch up to the human imagination- and my love affair with both science and mysticism is dancing on the edge of new ideas and questions without regard for their current designation as "real" or "virtual." It is the ideas, the new thoughts, that I am after.
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Yet despite such accusations I am also regularly called 'slippery', even by you
I think you're a flip-flopper, depending on your mood, what you've recently read, and whether or not you're posting in the morning.
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Some people cannot seem to accept that I have no solid foundational doctrine as my start point. Even though I have often said "I make it up as I go along". Not that I make it up from nothing, I have opinions huen from my educational experience. What I do not do, and I think this is what makes some people uncomfortable, is adopt a doctrine and pass everything through it and reject or remould it to be consistent with that doctrine.
Likewise, for me. This really isn't something that original. Now, if you ask me to believe that you have no beliefs, I'll say that's hogwash. It's simply not how human brains operate. But if you ask me to believe you have no foundational doctrine, I would entirely agree that is consistent with your writings here.
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I think I am 'spiritually' at peace with chaos. Where as 'believers' are determined to find order, and adopt paradigms designed to give them the succour they crave. I fully accept that I will one day die and everything I am and everything I learned will be lost forever. And it does not bother me. I am just grateful that I had the chance to look at all. I think many believers have a tendency to take themselves far too seriously. Prayer and meditation, as described in the OP, are all to often merely tools to take oneself too seriously.
I agree with this. It's about how I see it, except that I guess I could pass on what I've learned through writing and touching other human lives. We live on socially.
I think there is an afterlife, as it is consistent with my own experience, but I don't know what that looks like and it wouldn't change things for me if there wasn't one.
My experience of prayer and meditation is that it is its own reward. Maybe I am just one who enjoys it and it comes naturally to me. It is a way of living, for me, not something that I do. Prayer, to me, is giving thoughts and feelings over to the Divine. Meditation, to me, is listening to the Divine. Since for me, the Divine is in all things, all of it chalks up to living a life in which I am open to the world around me and to what any being might share with me.
The world of forms is perpetually in flux, but the Buddha nature is eternal.
Eternal in what sense? It's easy to believe that Buddha nature exists where the causes and conditions that give rise to conscious organisms have successfully produced such organisms. However, what about where or when conscious organisms do not exist? Is Buddha nature in existence in such times/places?
Who knows what is eternal and what is not? If the definition is that it's been around as long as anybody can remember... I guess that's okay. But it's a term that I try to avoid.
I get what you're saying...
I would agree, ...
I agree.
That is a good start
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I understand. I tend to call the ego the ego and the superego the bigger self, higher self, whatever you want to call it. Well, not entirely, because I distinguish between that which is interconnected to all beings and that which is socially conditioned. They may be intertwined, but I don't find it as useful to lump them all together. I think in evolutionary terms, you are a lumper and I am a splitter. Maybe due to my background, I don't know, I feel the need to delineate a great many things about humans and work on the complexity there.
For all that I am a "lumper" as you put it, and I agree, that lumping is not just blanket inclusion, it is derived from a developed appreciation of holistic principles. Even a champion of the SuperEgo like Ghandi was a slave to the other components of self. I am human, I do fail, but I go to great effort to be as inclusive as possible, (lumper), in that I consider far more information than may be apparent before making a statement. The problem seems to come in the writing, where it is conciseness and readability that cause limitations. Where as you wish to seperate out ritual from habit I see them both as inextricably bound in the psyche. To the point that seperating them is actually impossible. If you are not praying out of ritual obligation nor with deliberate purpose then you must be doing so out of habit. You can come up with any number of clever rejoinders but nobody prays or meditates for no reason. And that reason always springs from the self. Which takes us to..
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That is not true, however. One can pray or meditate without thought of reward. One can just do a behavior without an ulterior motive.
I am amazed that you, having a solid grasp of biology, would state this. What you are saying is that human beings at prayer are the only organisms that expend effort for no reward. Sorry PoO, but that does just not wash.
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But who are you or I to judge another's enlightenment? Who are you or I to judge who is subject to which limitations or disabilities, and therefore has become enlightened as it pertains to them? Some disabilities, like my uncle's are "worn" on the outside. But everyone has limitations, and to say enlightenment is bound to knowledge, rather than enlightenment is sometimes intertwined with knowledge, presumes a level of capacity in the population as a whole. Instead, I look at actions- are people more understanding of others? Loving? Patient? Kind? Joyful? Peaceful? Then they have something going on.
What is enlightenment but a self-made claim of gnosis? What real value does it have? As Alan Clements says in the above videoclip he spent years on his ass figuring out...."I breathe". Thats it. There is nothing deeper. Nothing more than wishful thinking anyway. Nobody changed anything sat on their ass counting their breathes. Sure it gives you plenty of time to think things through, but that is not meditation, that is thinking things through. Meditation without thought and without purpose is just pure self-indulgence, a little bit of time out from worrying about whatever it is that worries you. If you are lucky/ good at it. This is not the kind of prayer/meditation the OP addresses, though it does include it.
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There is a question of what is really going on that relates to this issue of who is the proper judge of enlightenment in another.
So who is this proper judge?
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What transforms me may not be what transforms you.
And how many people seek "transformation". Are not most of them not really seeking escape?
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I have never said it lacks richness. However, science is not only about possibility.
I agree. It is also about turning possibility into reality. And is remarkably successful at it. Yet all these people praying and meditating through the lens of their 'enlightenment' contribute nothing concrete at all. In fact most of them are busy building walls that separate each group from the other groups, each claiming a superior enlightenment. Science does not do favouritism, it either works or it does not. What is real in China is real in Brazil.
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I think you're a flip-flopper, depending on your mood, what you've recently read, and whether or not you're posting in the morning.
It is a highly complex body of knowledge we have access to, plenty of scope for dissonance... and I am not immune
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My experience of prayer and meditation is that it is its own reward. Maybe I am just one who enjoys it and it comes naturally to me. It is a way of living, for me, not something that I do. Prayer, to me, is giving thoughts and feelings over to the Divine. Meditation, to me, is listening to the Divine. Since for me, the Divine is in all things, all of it chalks up to living a life in which I am open to the world around me and to what any being might share with me.
And I would still maintain from everything I have seen you write that what you call divine is an externalisation of self. It is your own sense of poetry. It is your own appreciation of feeling alive. Of living, breathing, loving, feeling and all our human emotions all wrapped up in a stabilised answer to existential angst. In your case it seems to be entirely healthy. But all too often it is not. Usually when fear is imposed. Which is why religions love a hefty portion of fire n brimstone.
Tao, if your contention is that all human behavior-including scientific pursuits-is goal-directed, OK, yeah. But so what? Speaking of science, here is a short article on how Buddhist meditation affects the structure and function of the brain: Netscape Search
So, this is a case of the quality of consciousness causing the brain to function in a particular manner, not the other way around. Implications? Gets back to that whole is consciousness merely an epiphenomenon of the brain or a semi-autonomous phenomenon itself. Though the deeper question-a Buddhist koan if you will that they sometimes use-is "Who/what" is being enlightened? Koans are in part the Buddhist way of continually pointing the practitioner beyond all pat, conceptual answers to the question of what is mind? The "answer" is the ultimate mystery of consciousness itself. earl
What is enlightenment but a self-made claim of gnosis? What real value does it have? As Alan Clements says in the above videoclip he spent years on his ass figuring out...."I breathe". Thats it. There is nothing deeper.
Alan Clements could have saved himself a lot of knee pain if only he understood the words of zen master Rinzai, who 1,000 years earlier described his enlightenment as, "When I'm hungry I eat, when I'm tired I sleep." Why does anybody have to sit in meditation for years in order to realize this simple, basic thing?
Tao, if your contention is that all human behavior-including scientific pursuits-is goal-directed, OK, yeah. But so what? Speaking of science, here is a short article on how Buddhist meditation affects the structure and function of the brain: Netscape Search
So, this is a case of the quality of consciousness causing the brain to function in a particular manner, not the other way around. Implications? Gets back to that whole is consciousness merely an epiphenomenon of the brain or a semi-autonomous phenomenon itself. Though the deeper question-a Buddhist koan if you will that they sometimes use-is "Who/what" is being enlightened? Koans are in part the Buddhist way of continually pointing the practitioner beyond all pat, conceptual answers to the question of what is mind? The "answer" is the ultimate mystery of consciousness itself. earl
maybe l've posted this before but its the same monk in the above article
Alan Clements could have saved himself a lot of knee pain if only he understood the words of zen master Rinzai, who 1,000 years earlier described his enlightenment as, "When I'm hungry I eat, when I'm tired I sleep." Why does anybody have to sit in meditation for years in order to realize this simple, basic thing?
Maybe you should sit and think about that.
It's funny - I remember about 12 years ago I felt my mind was so empty of distractions, my ego so suppressed, that I had reached a certain level of enlightenment.
And in that state, simplicity was everything.
Enlightenment was not about having a "higher awareness", as much as just being able to see through all the noise of daily life to those things which matter, have meaning, are important.
And, I saw and heard people speak of things which were true and enlightened, only the simplicity of their explanations didn't easily wash with others, or they felt intimidated, because such explanations lacked a certain human complexity in their description.
I would therefore suggest enlightenment is about seeing the simple in the complex, rather than the human habit of trying to make the simple complex.
"All is love" is one of the most enlightened comments anyone can make. However, others may demand an explanation of what that means. In trying to explain, you move away from a position of enlightenment and towards one filled with irrelevant human noise.
It's funny - I remember about 12 years ago I felt my mind was so empty of distractions, my ego so suppressed, that I had reached a certain level of enlightenment.
And in that state, simplicity was everything.
Enlightenment was not about having a "higher awareness", as much as just being able to see through all the noise of daily life to those things which matter, have meaning, are important.
And, I saw and heard people speak of things which were true and enlightened, only the simplicity of their explanations didn't easily wash with others, or they felt intimidated, because such explanations lacked a certain human complexity in their description.
I would therefore suggest enlightenment is about seeing the simple in the complex, rather than the human habit of trying to make the simple complex.
"All is love" is one of the most enlightened comments anyone can make. However, others may demand an explanation of what that means. In trying to explain, you move away from a position of enlightenment and towards one filled with irrelevant human noise.
Just a rambling 2c.
l agree, enlightenment isn't about knowledge but a realisation of non duality, a lack of separation between supposed subject/object, of other minds, and a general feeling of at ease 'in the world' even when life seems complicated. Distress come when the ego or false self sets up barriers against 'the world' [ie everybody else]; prayer or mediation, or any activity which provides a space to dissolve ego [fishing?!] carries out positivities into normal public space.
It's funny - I remember about 12 years ago I felt my mind was so empty of distractions, my ego so suppressed, that I had reached a certain level of enlightenment.
And in that state, simplicity was everything.
Enlightenment was not about having a "higher awareness", as much as just being able to see through all the noise of daily life to those things which matter, have meaning, are important.
And, I saw and heard people speak of things which were true and enlightened, only the simplicity of their explanations didn't easily wash with others, or they felt intimidated, because such explanations lacked a certain human complexity in their description.
I would therefore suggest enlightenment is about seeing the simple in the complex, rather than the human habit of trying to make the simple complex.
"All is love" is one of the most enlightened comments anyone can make. However, others may demand an explanation of what that means. In trying to explain, you move away from a position of enlightenment and towards one filled with irrelevant human noise.
Just a rambling 2c.
I think you're quite right. Seems the nature of the human mind is to over-complicate things and the living of life itself. That's why when you read all the ancient statements made by ostensibly enlightened Buddhists particularly of the Chan/Zen variety, they are ones of startingly "everyday" simplicity. But, it seems that even millenia ago it took folks to engage in meditative disciplines to achieve such, not just in today's world of increasing social complexity and stress. earl
07-15-2009, 05:00 PM
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