GENIUS FORUMS

Leyla, Why does a person stop reading after one sentence? Please, please do not assume that. Let me elaborate. To me, Kevin explains his position with his comments following the sentence you quoted, Sapius. What was it that caused you to give no attention to the whole but instead pick out the first ...

Jason: ego and suffering are valid expressions of Nature(aka "Reality"). That is why they can still exist in a person who comes to perfectly realize the nature of Reality. Kevin: Literally all things are expressions of Nature. It doesn't mean anything to say that they are "valid"...

In turn, I have stated in plain language that it is about the work of coming to know the nature of one's own mind -- its sicknesses and tape-loops and obsessions and justifications; and its conceptual entanglements that base themselves upon these. Not by category or received acceptance that this is...

Meditation is like doing push-ups. Fine, if you are unfit, but it shouldn't be confused with the climb up to Mount Everest. David, are you sure about it being like push-ups? I personally have nothing against meditation, only that I find it hard to think of it even as push-ups. It is like that perso...

Sapius, whose thoughts I've appreciated reading before on this forum, the better answer to your question of "Isn't the present a concept" would have been for me to take my shoe off and conk you over the head with it . . . . if you were present here . . . . You'd know right what it is then...

hades wrote:meditation = mental masturbation

Why?

Pye; Very well analyzed post on meditation, just one thing though... One cannot arrive to the present (truth, reality, eternity, infinity) by conceptual recipe. Isn’t the above statement a concept too? How can one actually realize it as truth, reality, or whatever, other than through knowing what ...

Rhett wrote: People often make predictions of the future, and make mistakes whilst doing so. Yes they do. These predictions fall into the realm of appearances; they are an appearance, as such. Sure. - They might hold their predictions to be certain representations of future events, ignorant of the f...

Jason wrote: No I do not conceive of the future as an empty box, it has contents. I just understand that the future and it's contents are entirely appearance. There is nothing to predict only in the sense that prediction cannot relate to something beyond appearance. Just asking. If, there is nothing...

Nick, I don't think it's wrong for a philosopher to get pissed off. Well I think it is, and one need not be a Buddha to get a grip and face the world without getting all emotional. Further more, for some strange reason I do not expect it form a person who really means what he says here… It is kind...

Nick, It is kind of discouraging to see, after years and years of anti-discrimination messages, ethnic cleansing still going on in many parts of the world. What does it take to get through to people that if we value our lives, so do others? If we are interested in our own self-interest, it is more i...

Actually, I think the "personal profiling" is an interesting dimension of the thread and could make a lively and useful sub-thread. You may be right there, Dan. I hate to indulge in an old genius-l in-joke but I'm half waiting for Nick to announce that he has three testicles. Hehehe..... ...

This thread has become far too complicated, encompassing far too many meaningful themes; I think it's unfair to expect Nick to be able to meaningfully respond to all of them, though that is the expectation that I'm seeing. So, perhaps at this point either Nick or participants in this thread might l...

Now……now, boys, we are grownups, aren’t we. I don’t see how people who devote their life to philosophy could get pissed off in any way, after all, they are the ones who investigate the core of all cores, the mind, and supposedly understand it much more than others. I truly believe that patie...

Nick wrote: All humans should have a right to promote and protect their flourishing survival, not just some at the expense of others. You really shouldn’t do to others what you wouldn’t want to have done to you. Nick, in my opinion, your efforts towards what you actually want to achieve is to ma...

David wrote: Since there is no logical conflict between conceiving of all phenomena as "subjective" and our direct experience of the world, there is no compelling reason to believe that phenomena have to be "objective". I agree, but why then call it “subjective” itself? What...

Dan wrote: Also, I don't quite understand why Nox is denying the existence of conceptual unicorns. Unicorns as a concept certainly exist, it's just that they lack any known empircal referent. A concept that exists is a contradiction, it’s like a married bachelor, or a round square. That which exi...

Diebert……. The notion of an 'objective reality' or even a 'nothing' simply loses meaning when you seperate it from the observer or any process of observing, as Nick implied. And certainly something doesn't become suddenly 'objective' just because we cannot change it by the power of wishes and wh...

Kevin wrote: Why do you ask David, "How do you actually know these things exist in the absence of an observer?", when David has already said that nothing can exist independently of an observer? I thnk it is obvious because David said..... How do you actually know these things exist in the...

Nick wrote: Existentialists refer to things-in-themselves, fixed objects other than humans, and things for themselves, humans, the subjects. They picked this up from people like Kant and Hegel. I understand, and I also understand the basic human nature of being selfish and self-centered no matter wh...

Nick wrote: Many things do change, but some things are permanent. I think the essence to which I was pointing is permanent and universal. I think it will take you some time to actually communicate with people here. The first thing to be clarified is definitions. “Things” include all mental attri...

Nick: I still think there is an essence of humanness which is permanant and universal and pre-existent. Humans are, essentially, rational creatures, the only living things that manipulate symbols in a structured form. They are the subjects in the subject object dichotomy. They are not entirely one ...

David wrote: If you want to disagree with this, then you need to provide some proper evidence. Put your hypothesis into practice and use your sensory apparatus to seek out an actual phenomenon in the world which doesn't fall into the category of a "thing". Let me know how you go. On the (c...

Sapius wrote. DQ: The beauty of this definition is that it refers to all empirical realities out of logical necessity, and yet, at the same time, its validity isn't dependent on any specific empirical evidence. No matter what kind of empirical evidence is before us, a "thing" will always ...

Sevens: Ya also gotta keep in mind, his approach. His technique, his style. Everyone drinks from their own cup, the same liquid. David: That isn't true. Often the liquid is a very diluted form of Truth, or indeed another kind of liquid entirely. UG makes too many compromises, and thus, at best, the...