Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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David Quinn
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by David Quinn »

RobertGreenSky wrote:
I'm sorry, but this is all gobbledy-gook. A person is either rational or he isn't. ... It is important to grasp that no one can ever move beyond the limits of reason. Not even the Tao itself is beyond the limits of reason ...
That is the gobbledygook! Nagarjuna and Laozi held otherwise and we've quoted the material again and again. We've quoted Laozi that the Dao [itself!] is beyond naming (= being beyond thinking).
Lao Tzu named it. He called it the Tao.

He even talked about it intelligently which shows that it isn't beyond the realm of thought.

Robert, you really need to back away from the scripts that have captured your mind and learn to look at what is actually happening in front of you.

When presented with direct information from two sources that Nagarjuna disputed A = A you simply ignored it. Agree with Nagarjuna's position on A = A or disagree with it, either way you lose.

Nagarjuna didn't dispute A=A. If you think he did, then you have no understanding of him at all. He was, in fact, strictly logical in all of his teachings - indeed, logical to the point of dryness. He was perhaps a bit too much like Spock.

Understanding the emptiness of all things, and living in its light, doesn't require us to reject A=A, just as it doesn't require us to reject concepts and goals. You're barking up the wrong tree here. Seriously.

We read from Huang Po and from your own webpage: If you would spend all your time - walking, standing, sitting or lying down - learning to halt the concept-forming activities of your own mind, you could be sure of ultimately attaining your goal. (- Huang Po)

Now given Huang Po said learn to halt the concept-forming activities of your mind, do you agree with Huang Po or do you disagree with him?
I wholeheartedly agree with him, but it doesn't mean what you want it to mean. Halting the concept-forming activities of the mind means learning how to stop making any movements towards enlightenment in the knowledge that nothing really exists. This is a very difficult process because our egos instinctively want to think of enlightenment as a place of security, or bliss, or insight, or some other kind of heaven that exists somewhere else, somewhere away from what is actually happening in the current moment. It takes a supreme act of faith, combined with the intellectual work of nipping deluded thought-processes in the bud, to 100% convince oneself of the truth - namely, that what is currently happening in the moment is in fact nirvana.

This is what is really meant by "samsara". It refers to a particular hell experienced by the advanced student as he chases mirages of enlightenment that have been whipped up subconsciously by his ego - or in Huang Po's language, that have been formed conceptually by the mind. The advanced student's natural propensity to seek enlightenment, formed by months and years of desiring the ultimate truth, causes his ego to turn it into a search for heaven, and as soon as he experiences a heaven of some kind, he instinctively thinks that he has experienced enlightenment, or at least that he is nearing its proximity. And then when the heaven dissipates and he is suddenly floundering back in the normal world again and the hells of dissatisfaction are gripping him, his ego is caused to want to seek heaven once more. And so he goes round and round the wheel of samsara - entering into nirvana, then leaving it again, then looking about for it once more - all the while not knowing how to get off it. And in his samsaric state, he doesn't realize that it is all an illusion.

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RobertGreenSky
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by RobertGreenSky »

Lao Tzu named it. He called it the Tao.

He even talked about it intelligently which shows that it isn't beyond the realm of thought.

Robert, you really need to back away from the scripts that have captured your mind and learn to look at what is actually happening in front of you.

- David
Laozi named it? After all this time you still cannot understand Tao te Ching 1:
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of the ten thousand things.

- tr. Gia-fu Feng, http://www.terebess.hu/english/tao/gia.html
Try to understand this: The Tao that can be told - the one we're thinking about right now and the word 'tao' on the page - is not the eternal Tao - is not the actual Tao itself. The ten thousand things is where we find the Tao we discuss. We do not find there the actual Tao itself since 'the name that can be named is not the eternal name' - 'eternal name' means 'the Tao itself'. How can you be so backward that you can't follow this?

Of the ten thousand things, from a Buddhist perspective they are what is dependently co-arisen.
... whatever is dependently co-arisen is verbally established. That is, the identity of any dependently arisen thing depends upon verbal conventions. To say of a thing that it is dependently arisen is to say that its identity as a single entity is nothing more than its being the referent of a word. The thing itself, apart from conventions of individuation, is nothing but an arbitrary slice of an indefinite spatiotemporal and causal manifold. To say of a thing that its identity is a merely verbal fact about it is to say that it is empty. To view emptiness in this way is to see it neither as an entity nor as unreal--it is to see it as conventionally real.

- Jay L. Garfield, Dependent Arising and the Emptiness of Emptiness: Why did Nagarjuana start with causation?
http://www.thezensite.com/ZenEssays/Nag ... rising.htm
'Verbal conventions' = 'naming', David. You need to catch up. Your primitive interpretations are doing your readers a disservice.
Nagarjuna didn't dispute A=A. If you think he did, then you have no understanding of him at all. He was, in fact, strictly logical in all of his teachings - indeed, logical to the point of dryness. He was perhaps a bit too much like Spock.

Understanding the emptiness of all things, and living in its light, doesn't require us to reject A=A, just as it doesn't require us to reject concepts and goals. You're barking up the wrong tree here. Seriously.

What is growing increasingly serious is your clinging to your mere beliefs - and to your near-idolatry of A = A - in light of growing evidence against them. I've already given two sources stating Nagarjuna opposed the idea of A = A.

Of MMK 1 David Kalupahana writes:
What sort of argument does Nagarjuna present in order to deny the existence of self-nature? ... Nagarjuna rejects self-nature ... because it is not evident. ... What is found here is a simple and straightforward denial of self-nature on epistemological grounds.

- Kalupahana, The Philosophy of the Middle Way, p. 33
Discovered Google search 'denial of identity in nagarjuna' http://books.google.com/books?id=0O6_co ... na&f=false
That's three. It's clearly time for you to quit making assertions like 'understanding the emptiness of all things ... doesn't require us to reject A=A ...' and show it to us, either in Nagarjuna's writings or through scholarly explication. You are clinging to A = A just as you are clinging to the idea that conceptualization can grasp the Tao even though Tao Te Ching 1, as above, puts the lie to it.
I wholeheartedly agree with him ... It takes a supreme act of faith, combined with the intellectual work of nipping deluded thought-processes in the bud, to 100% convince oneself of the truth - namely, that what is currently happening in the moment is in fact nirvana.

You then proceed to discuss the 'advanced student' as if you were in turn more advanced. Since you can't even get Tao te Ching1 your advancement is questionable. Halting the concept-forming activities of the mind suggests the 'dynamic stillness' of meditation wherein one directly sees into one's nature without relying on 'words and letters', recalling the quotation from Bodhidharma you're also ignoring - apparently it's all too clear in its meaning for you to openly misinterpret it. Yet you urge reliance on words and letters as you suggest enlightenment is somehow a matter of convincing oneself to be enlightened.
A special transmission outside the scriptures;
No dependence on words and letters;
Direct pointing to the mind of man;
Seeing into one's nature and attaining Buddhahood.

- Bodhidharma

Zazen is a Japanese term consisting of two characters: za, "to sit (cross-legged)," and zen, from the Sanscrit dhyana, meaning at once concentration, dynamic stillness, and contemplation. The means toward the realization of one's original nature as well as the realization itself, Zazen is both something one does - sitting cross-legged, with proper posture and correct breathing - and something one essentially is. To emphasize one aspect at the expense of the other is to misunderstand this subtle and profound practice.

- Eido Tai Shimano Roshi, What Is Zen, italics his, http://www.amacord.com/taste/essays/zen.html
Sit cross-legged or 'be Zen' while doing the dishes, it is a stillness that is not intellectual chatter, and certainly it is not convincing oneself to believe one is enlightened. That is lunatical.

You ignored a third time my request for clarifications on which of our translators you condemn as intellectually dishonest and which translators you are using in order to do it. In seeking to besmirch those translators and translations you have besmirched yourself. You turned to a fantasy in order to better escape answering those translations, just as you fantasize interpretations of what is readily apparent in those quotations.

Again, whether or not you agree with Nagarjuna's disputation of A = A, that disputation is reasonably established by three different sources and you are in error. You cannot agree with Huang Po's urging us to put an end to conceptualization by your urging us to conceptualize. Observing the three sources in Nagarjuna and the rejection of conceptualization clearly urged in simple inescapable language by Huang Po, you are in disagreement with both.
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skipair
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by skipair »

There is no telling what other people really meant.

And as if it meant something if there was.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by Kelly Jones »

I challenge Robert to explain his point of view without relying on any external authorities.

Can he do it? Does he know what is true inside-out, familiar with it like the palm of his own hand? Let's wait and see.


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RobertGreenSky
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by RobertGreenSky »

Kelly Jones wrote:I challenge Robert to explain his point of view without relying on any external authorities.

Can he do it? Does he know what is true inside-out, familiar with it like the palm of his own hand? Let's wait and see.


...
I'll let you know real soon - just keep waiting.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

RobertGreenSky wrote:...Nagarjuna's disputation of A = A, that disputation is reasonably established by three different sources
Utter nonsense. There's is no disputation of A=A (in the sense of Aristotle) for the simple reason Nagarjuna's context is not about proposition, or some object language but about subjects toward a totality. The tetralemma is not disputing A=A, because if it would compete in the same playing field it would be just logically flawed as argument (see for example here).

The tetralemma is about epistemic states, in the context of the inexplicable which is "self-referencing" symbolically. This does not refute A=A at all and this is not Nagarjuna's attempt or intent.
Crucially, it is only in the realm of the Absolute or Transcendent, where we are contemplating the nature of the ultimate, that contradictions are embraced; in the realm of ordinary reality, LNC operates and classical logic holds. In this sense, the logic of Nâgârjuna and of the Buddhist tradition more generally can be seen not as inconsistent but paraconsistent.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contradiction/
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Cory Duchesne
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by Cory Duchesne »

Laird wrote:
You know that you've experienced the appearance of evidence, this is absolutely irrefutable.
Let's keep riding the extremist train, because we haven't gone far enough yet: you know only that you are experiencing the memory of the appearance of evidence. You don't know that that evidence ever actually appeared to you: it might be an implanted memory.
It might be, but until there are actually other appearances that support such a view, there is no sense dwelling on it. All the food in my refrigerator might have been poisoned last night by one of Jupiviv's many midget assassins he perhaps has under his control, using them to vanquish his enemies. But there is no reason, no evidence to support such a view, so why even entertain the thought?
Now, you can go on and believe in polar bears in the North Pole, but that's not necessary, and it's definitely not the truth. In fact, there is no truth in modeling (science) at all, facts about the world are useful constructs, or, just as often, masturbation.
guest_of_logic: Woah there Nellie! "Definitely not the truth"? How in the world do you justify that?
When I refer to "the Truth" I am referring to the the the actual state of nature. Most scientists (I remember Dawkins saying something like this recently) will tell you that science attempts to capture the truth, but because it fails to capture all of the causes, it merely captures an approximation of the truth, and does not achieve truth. This is a fairly respectable level of consciousness. Even better would be realize the actual state of nature is the totality, which is always beyond form and perception, and thus always beyond the reach of science.
Scientific models can never reflect reality perfectly accurately. They are always imperfect.
And you know this exactly how?
Because symbols, models, language and thought are merely representations, by definition. The symbol is not the thing, by definition. We do not know things as they are empirically, we only know them as they are represented in our approximations. Richard Feyman had an inkling of this when he said near the end of his life: What I cannot create, I do not understand. All human empirical understanding is in an important sense, a creation of the mind, rather than a discovery of how things actually are. How things actually are, in an empirical sense, is an unsolvable mystery.
Cory Duchesne wrote:
Sure, in many instances I go ahead and have some beliefs for pragmatic reasons, or out of laziness, but they are not necessary for doing philosophy or science. Definitely helpful for being religious, though.
Glad we agree on the existence and sensibility of pragmatic beliefs. "Not necessary for doing science", though, I have a problem with: what about the provisional underlying beliefs of science that reality is consistent, and that results are replicable?
Like I said earlier, belief comes into play when evidence or proof is lacking. There is much emotional investment in beliefs that people merely intuit or feel are right, but haven't actually experienced or proved with irrefutable premises and conclusions. That reality is generally consistent in some important aspects is something we all experience everyday and hence we don't need to invest in beliefs. Like David said, there are natural assumptions we all make because we have every reason to, and then there are emotional beliefs we establish, that lack reason.
Laird: Perhaps we could try coming at it from this angle: hypothetically speaking, could the Totality as an entirety be other than it is right now, such that, for example, rather than reading my post at this instant of time, you are instead making a cup of tea, or, even more drastically, you never even existed?

Cory: You can't divide the totality up in parts like that and make contrasts without destroying it's totalness. You are comparing the finite with the finite.

Laird: You don't seem to have understood what I wrote. I wrote "as an entirety". That's the key phrase. I'm not destroying its totalness because any local changes would be reflected throughout the rest of the Totality, so that its causal integrity (which is what I think you mean by "totalness") was maintained. I only compared finite with finite as representatives of the respective (different) infinites to which they belong.

Cory: You spoke of the totality as it is right now which means you are misunderstanding the fact that the totality doesn't exist in time, the totality is all of time simultaneously. In other words, no time, no happenings, no contrast, no cause and effect, just an undivided continuum, a simultaneousness, an at-onceness, a timelessness. You can't speak of "happenings" when we speak of the totality.

Laird: All of these things are contained by/within the Totality. But taking your point about the Totality containing time, let me rephrase what I wrote then: "Perhaps we could try coming at it from this angle: hypothetically speaking, could the Totality as an entirety be other than it is-has-been-will-be, such that the contents of the present moment are different: so that, for example, rather than reading my post at this instant of time, you are instead making a cup of tea, or, even more drastically, you never even existed?"

If you still have a problem with that, then could you please make an effort to understand my essential point as well as merely criticising any minor problems with how I've framed that point?
It is incorrect to say that anything exists within or is contained within the totality. The totality is not a container holding finite things.

All possible events in time are an undivided chain or net, beyond time, but even this is not true, I'm just trying to use a thorn to remove a thorn. To use a koan: everything has already happened, without it ever happening. This is tough to wrap your head around, but once you do, you'll realize your inquiries are incoherent, they are incorrect questions that can only breed incorrect answers.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by Kelly Jones »

Laird's mistake is that he thinks of the totality as a particular empirical phenomenon. He's thinking of it through the lens of the scientific cosmologists' "finely-tuned Universe" theory, namely, that there is a particular history of events, and that the totality of these particular events, in that order, is the Totality. It's the same mistake we run into a lot here, where one person uses "Universe" to mean what scientists have discovered, rather than absolutely everything.

His question boils down to: could things have been caused to happen differently? Why has what has happened, happened this way, and not some other way?

His implication, that things could have happened differently, and (therefore, his mini-Totality could be different), is based on the belief that there are other causes outside the mini-Totality, such that something different could happen.

He wouldn't make the mistake if he realised that the Totality encompasses all causes, by definition. It is in that sense that the Totality must be as it is. I'm not speaking of the mini-Totality, or a historical "what-if" scenario. I'm speaking of the nature of the Totality, not its contents.


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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by guest_of_logic »

Cory, I'm going to leave the last word on the beliefs part of our discussion to you, because I'm not so interested in it, particularly as it doesn't have much relevance to my opening post. What I'm more interested in is this part of our discussion:
Laird: Perhaps we could try coming at it from this angle: hypothetically speaking, could the Totality as an entirety be other than it is right now, such that, for example, rather than reading my post at this instant of time, you are instead making a cup of tea, or, even more drastically, you never even existed?

Cory: You can't divide the totality up in parts like that and make contrasts without destroying it's totalness. You are comparing the finite with the finite.

Laird: You don't seem to have understood what I wrote. I wrote "as an entirety". That's the key phrase. I'm not destroying its totalness because any local changes would be reflected throughout the rest of the Totality, so that its causal integrity (which is what I think you mean by "totalness") was maintained. I only compared finite with finite as representatives of the respective (different) infinites to which they belong.

Cory: You spoke of the totality as it is right now which means you are misunderstanding the fact that the totality doesn't exist in time, the totality is all of time simultaneously. In other words, no time, no happenings, no contrast, no cause and effect, just an undivided continuum, a simultaneousness, an at-onceness, a timelessness. You can't speak of "happenings" when we speak of the totality.

Laird: All of these things are contained by/within the Totality. But taking your point about the Totality containing time, let me rephrase what I wrote then: "Perhaps we could try coming at it from this angle: hypothetically speaking, could the Totality as an entirety be other than it is-has-been-will-be, such that the contents of the present moment are different: so that, for example, rather than reading my post at this instant of time, you are instead making a cup of tea, or, even more drastically, you never even existed?"

Laird[cont]: If you still have a problem with that, then could you please make an effort to understand my essential point as well as merely criticising any minor problems with how I've framed that point?

Cory: It is incorrect to say that anything exists within or is contained within the totality. The totality is not a container holding finite things.

Cory[cont]: All possible events in time are an undivided chain or net, beyond time, but even this is not true, I'm just trying to use a thorn to remove a thorn. To use a koan: everything has already happened, without it ever happening. This is tough to wrap your head around, but once you do, you'll realize your inquiries are incoherent, they are incorrect questions that can only breed incorrect answers.
Your response is disappointing. I asked you to make an effort to understand my essential point as well as merely criticising any minor problems with how I'd framed that point, but you didn't even hint at such an attempt. You just nitpicked at my use of the word "contained", when you yourself have used that word in a past post: "All opposites are contained within [the Totality]" (emphasis mine). So, now you don't like that word: how difficult would it have been to have replaced it with a word that you do like, and tried to understand what I wrote anyway?

Far from being incoherent, my inquiries are as yet unrecognised by you, let alone answered. I'll try a different approach to try to get you to see what I'm pointing to: this time, please avoid nitpicking, and focus on the essentials.

There are many "possible worlds", where by "world" I really mean "Totality", and yet one of them is the case, and not any of the others: the house philosophy has no explanation for the fact that this particular "possible world" is the case and not one of the (infinitely?) many others. Do you have such an explanation?
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

guest_of_logic wrote:There are many "possible worlds", where by "world" I really mean "Totality", and yet one of them is the case, and not any of the others
Are we still at this?

Laird, while you might mean there are many possible Totalities, this is not how the totality should be understood. If for some reason there are many possibilities, like in parallel realities, all being played out, this all will still be part of one totality of possibilities. But no matter how many possibilities, there's still one appearance. Even if there would be many alternate scenarios all blending, all gravitating towards an ""attractor" of some kind: it will still end up being a certain appearance and part of the one totality which is addressed with something like "ultimate reality".

And we also have no way of knowing if really just "one" world is the case. The point is that at the moment of conception it appears like one: appearance is that world. If there would be a multitude of appearances possible of the same thing, there would be no cognition since any identification would become impossible. In other words: it would be undefinable. This can be logically reasoned out and experimentally understood. By the way, if for example a photon would appear to be at two places at once, this is still one appearance, since it's not some random thing at a random place elsewhere at the same time; the whole experiment is still definable while the photon appears now as function of some other appearance, like a wave.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by guest_of_logic »

guest_of_logic: There are many "possible worlds", where by "world" I really mean "Totality", and yet one of them is the case, and not any of the others

Diebert: Are we still at this?
Yes, we're still at this, because no one except Skip is willing to even acknowledge the problem, let alone propose a viable solution. Your own attempt at it is not of much help.
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:If for some reason there are many possibilities, like in parallel realities, all being played out, this all will still be part of one totality of possibilities.
I'm not saying that there are many possibilities being "played out"; I'm saying that there are many possibilities that might have been played out, but that are not, in favour of what actually does get played out.
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:And we also have no way of knowing if really just "one" world is the case.
Given that I indicated that by "world" I really meant "Totality", and that the Totality is defined as singular, then we do have a (definitive) way of knowing that just one world is the case.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

guest_of_logic wrote:I'm not saying that there are many possibilities being "played out"; I'm saying that there are many possibilities that might have been played out, but that are not, in favour of what actually does get played out.
Just like one cannot know if anything else is being played out right know beyond our comprehension, one cannot really know what might have been. It's really the same issue, one in terms of parallelism, the other in terms of a timeline that would be followed. For all the current appearances right now, the point is moot; they are caused.
Given that I indicated that by "world" I really meant "Totality"
It's rather confusing to equal those in most discourse.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by guest_of_logic »

guest_of_logic: I'm not saying that there are many possibilities being "played out"; I'm saying that there are many possibilities that might have been played out, but that are not, in favour of what actually does get played out.

Diebert: Just like one cannot know if anything else is being played out right know beyond our comprehension, one cannot really know what might have been.
That depends on what you mean by "know" - if you're as extreme as Cory, then very, very little can be "known". Let's substitute a more pliable word: "imagine". It is very easy to imagine what might have been. Right now I am typing a post to you, but if, say, the thought had instead entered my mind to have a cup of tea, then right now I might have been drinking a cup of tea instead of typing. For that thought to have entered my head, the antecedent causes would of course have to have been different. Let's grant then, that the antecedent causes might have been different. Now, for those antecedent causes to have been different, their antecedent causes would have to have been different. Let's grant then, that those antecedent causes might have been different. Continue ad infinitum (and into the future, not just the past), and we end up with an entirely new "possible world": a Totality that might have been. It's a pretty simple concept, really: the Totality that is might have been other than it is, and the house philosophy has no explanation for why it is the way that it is and not some other way.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by David Quinn »

I've never known anyone who chases so many shadows and yet creates so many mental blocks at the same time. Well, I probably have, but not for a while at least.

Your mental blocks are creating an issue which isn't really there. No one, no one at all, not even the "house philosophers", can possibly answer your question because the question doesn't have any rational basis to it.

The issue of why the world has a particular history and not some other one is essentially no different to asking why a piece of string has a particular length and not some other one. In each case, the answer, as always, lies in its causes.

Beyond this, the question has no meaning when extended to the Totality itself. The Totality remains the same regardless of what it produces. It is like an uncarved block devoid of any features. It is unborn, and beyond change.

I had to laugh when you called me a "materialist" on another thread, when your thinking in these matters is invariably materialistic in nature and displays no empathy for the transcendent, non-materialistic nature of truth.

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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

guest_of_logic wrote:the Totality that is might have been other than it is.
So would this be the same as imagining something is itself and might be not itself in the same instance?

The reality is that the image generated, no matter if it contains any house logic, always remains part of the total of all possible images. It doesn't matter if that image is called "totality", or "another possibility" or "a cup of tea" or "never mind, a cup of coffee instead".

The question "why" has no significance in the context as it would just be a question generated, always remaining part of the total of all possible questions...
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by Ryan Rudolph »

Laird,

I agree with how many of the others have responded to you. I would only add that it is a confused answer that gives rise to a confused question. When you empty the mind of confused answers, the compulsion to ask confused questions vanishes with it.

Basically, the rational mind cannot be stumped by questions pertaining to existence, reality and the mind itself, because the rational mind by its very definition is clear, transparent, without knowledge as belief, and therefore devoid of unresolved questions.

The way I understand it is that the abstraction totality merely points to the idea of "all things", which that cannot be fully imagined because it is infinite, it contains an infinite number of possibilities by its own definition. And It merely is what it is, and it cannot be anything else. So you can never come up with a complete imagined thought of what the totality is.

You seem to be confused of what the QRS are pointing to with this term, just try to imagine an infinite number of things, it cannot be done, that's what is meant by the totality. It is not a belief, it is a mental exercise, a limited definition, where cognition comes up short because cognition cannot capture the essence of the totality because cognition cannot imagine infinity.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by guest_of_logic »

David Quinn wrote:The issue of why the world has a particular history and not some other one is essentially no different to asking why a piece of string has a particular length and not some other one. In each case, the answer, as always, lies in its causes.
Like Diebert, and even after I clarified it to him, you seem to be misunderstanding what I mean by (possible) "world": I mean not just planet Earth, but everything that comprises the Totality.
David Quinn wrote:Beyond this, the question has no meaning when extended to the Totality itself. The Totality remains the same regardless of what it produces.
I wonder how Cory's going to react to a word like "produces" - that's far worse than "contains". So now the Totality "produces" things, and you're distinguishing the Totality itself from that which it produces... and thus dualism enters the picture again. I thought that the Totality was supposed to be non-dualistic. Apparently it depends on which particular argument you're engaged in.

OK, so I'll work with what you've given me anyway, regardless that it contradicts your supposed philosophy of non-dualism. Now that you've invented this dualism, I must talk of "that which the Totality produces" rather than of the Totality itself, and thus the issue that I've raised becomes: "that which the Totality produces might have been other than how it actually is, and the house philosophy has no explanation for why it is as it is and not some other way".
David Quinn wrote:I had to laugh when you called me a "materialist" on another thread
Were you throwing off the shackles of my oppression?
David Quinn wrote:when your thinking in these matters is invariably materialistic in nature
My thinking on these matters is a critique of your own thinking, and doesn't go much beyond that. I have ideas separate to yours, but they're not relevant to this critique.
David Quinn wrote:and displays no empathy for the transcendent, non-materialistic nature of truth.
I don't blindly accept your version of truth, and I've provided good reasons why not. Deal with it.
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:So would this be the same as imagining something is itself and might be not itself in the same instance?
No, it's not. It's simply imagining that something is itself and that it might have been something else, in other words, that a different thing might have instead been in its place.
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:The reality is that the image generated, no matter if it contains any house logic, always remains part of the total of all possible images.
Irrelevant. It doesn't matter that the image generated in the Totality as it is is a part of that Totality. What's relevant is that the image generated might have been the actual Totality.
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:The question "why" has no significance in the context as it would just be a question generated, always remaining part of the total of all possible questions...
You really are good at spin. Perhaps I'll start calling you Warnie.

The question has significance precisely because it illuminates that there are ultimate aspects of the Totality that are as-yet unexplained, whereas the house philosophy claims to have answered all meaningful ultimate questions.
Ryan Rudolph wrote:It merely is what it is, and it cannot be anything else.
This is the only sentence that I found in your response that's of relevance to the issue. "It just is" - this is the ultimate QRStian position with respect to the Totality, and yet, we can imagine other possible ways that it could have been, so the ultimate as-yet unanswered question remains: why this particular way out of all of the possibilities?
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David Quinn
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by David Quinn »

guest_of_logic wrote:
David Quinn wrote:The issue of why the world has a particular history and not some other one is essentially no different to asking why a piece of string has a particular length and not some other one. In each case, the answer, as always, lies in its causes.
Like Diebert, and even after I clarified it to him, you seem to be misunderstanding what I mean by (possible) "world": I mean not just planet Earth, but everything that comprises the Totality.

I realize that, but what you're not understanding that as soon as you pose that question of the Totality, it immediately ceases to be the Totality and instead becomes a section within the Totality. In other words, the question can never be directed at the Totality without falsifying it.

guest_of_logic wrote:
David Quinn wrote:Beyond this, the question has no meaning when extended to the Totality itself. The Totality remains the same regardless of what it produces.
I wonder how Cory's going to react to a word like "produces" - that's far worse than "contains". So now the Totality "produces" things, and you're distinguishing the Totality itself from that which it produces... and thus dualism enters the picture again. I thought that the Totality was supposed to be non-dualistic. Apparently it depends on which particular argument you're engaged in.

It's just a figure of speech. The real point was that the Totality never changes, regardless of what is happening in the world.

OK, so I'll work with what you've given me anyway, regardless that it contradicts your supposed philosophy of non-dualism. Now that you've invented this dualism, I must talk of "that which the Totality produces" rather than of the Totality itself, and thus the issue that I've raised becomes: "that which the Totality produces might have been other than how it actually is, and the house philosophy has no explanation for why it is as it is and not some other way".
Dear God .... sorry, I've lost interest in your shadow-chasing.

-
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

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David Quinn wrote:Dear God .... sorry, I've lost interest in your shadow-chasing.
Running away from difficult questions is no mark of an enlightened sage, David. Can't you at least admit, "I don't know the answer to your question".
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

guest_of_logic wrote:Like Diebert, and even after I clarified it to him, you seem to be misunderstanding what I mean by (possible) "world": I mean not just planet Earth, but everything that comprises the Totality.
Please try to imagine that I not only understood you perfectly clear but that you might be still misunderstanding what is meant by Totality, the whole inclusiveness of it. Just try to imagine a version of the Totality where you actually understood all different versions and possibilities are necessarily caused leading you to admit it's still the One Reality and all hypothetical versions would be nothing but variations on the same theme, still part of the same symphony.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by Ataraxia »

G'day Robert. It appears like Mark Twain, reports of your death were greatly exaggerated ;)
RobertGreenSky wrote: (Btw, not once in 35 years reading have I ever come across any source, whether J. Krishnamurti or any voice in Daoism, Zen, or Buddhism, who ever wrote a damned thing about A = A, not once! You're bullshitting yourself about its significance.)
Perhaps not specifically. But they do/did regularly refer to contrast - to "thing" and "not that thing" do they not?

For example here is a ready to hand vid of Alan Watts talking about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLrMVous ... HbufVKANfE
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by Ryan Rudolph »

Laird,
we can imagine other possible ways that it could have been, so the ultimate as-yet unanswered question remains: why this particular way out of all of the possibilities?
It depends on what you mean by this particular way? If you mean, by this particular planet, this way is governed totally by causes. Causes create unique conditions. For instance: the distance the sun is from the earth, the size of the earth, the types of atoms created in this universe, all governs what is possible for earth. However, these causes can be different in other parts of the universe therefore other possibilities emerge. The key point is that a possibility is determined by its related causes in reality, not the human imagination.

One could speculate that other universes may have different laws of physics resulting in different containers for consciousness that we cannot even imagine. But the point remains: Those possibilities would be dependent on unique causes that would be unique for that particular space and time.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by Dan Rowden »

guest_of_logic wrote:
David Quinn wrote:Dear God .... sorry, I've lost interest in your shadow-chasing.
Running away from difficult questions is no mark of an enlightened sage, David. Can't you at least admit, "I don't know the answer to your question".
Excuse me, but why do you imagine that any set of conditions could have been any other way? Because we can imagine it? Perhaps you ought - first - consider if this product of imagination is sensible. The "house philosophy" explains why it isn't, perfectly. The simple, seemingly insurmountable truth is, you don't understand one iota of that philosophy.

In what way does causation not account for - and resolve - your imaginary dilemma?
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by RobertGreenSky »

Hey, Ataraxia.
Perhaps not specifically. But they do/did regularly refer to contrast - to "thing" and "not that thing" do they not?

- You.

We always know what we mean by contrast. We know what we mean by white in comparison with black. They must come into being together. ... Now it's amazing what doesn't exist in the real world. In the real world there aren't any things, nor are there any events.

- Alan Watts, from the YouTube.


Contrast is necessary for language to be sensible but contrast doesn't visit real existence on the contrasted - both contrast and things contrasted exist only by virture of convention, according to Buddhism and Daoism, just as there aren't any things and there aren't any events (emptiness).

Just as Watts gave 'white in comparison with black', the Laozi had (and Nagarjuna had similarly):
Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.
All can know good as good only because there is evil. ...
Front and back follow one another.

- Laozi 2, tr. Gia-fu Feng, http://www.terebess.hu/english/tao/gia.html#Kap02
Zhuangzi often refers to the problem of "That's it, that's not"; when that way of thinking lights up, the Dao is obscured. What is he criticizing? One target is the logical analysis that philosophers go in for, in particular that of the Chinese sophists and Mohists of Zhuangzi's own time. ... Insofar as all thinking tends to alternate between "That's it" and "That's not", between assertion and negation, this type of critique tends to end up incorporating all conceptual thinking, including all that we usually identify as knowledge. This most general understanding is consistent with Buddhist emphasis on letting-go of all concepts and the Zhuangzi passages on mind-fasting, which negates such thinking. Yan Hui "expels knowledge" by learning to "just sit and forget" (ch. 6, 92), and Old Dan teaches Confucius to practice fasting and austerities to "smash to pieces your knowledge" (ch. 22, 132)

- David Loy, Zhuangzi and Nagarjuna On the Truth of No Truth http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-MISC/101801.htm emphases mine.
I've presented three sources indicating A = A is disputed in Nagarjuna, two of them directly - that trumps anyone here, in my view. But on Genius Forum does A = A have some special meaning of which Laozi, Nagarjuna, Aristotle, the authors of the quoted materials, and everyone else alive or dead have no knowledge? Has someone put on the Emperor's new clothes?
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by Kelly Jones »

Robert,

I had some chats with a guy who had similar views to yourself. He said that Buddhism and Daoism disproved A=A. His reasoning was this, basically:

1. A is a symbol representing a finite, contrasted thing. It is relative to not-A.
2. Ultimate Reality / Suchness / Tao is: real, not-real, both real and not-real, neither real and not-real
3. "Real", and "not-real" are two finite contrasting things. Therefore, one can substitute "real" for "A", as follows:
4. The Tao is A, not-A, both A and not-A, neither A and not-A.

So, he concluded, A=A is not true, since the Tao is A, not-A, both, and neither.


Is that how your thinking goes?


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