Causation

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Tomas
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Re: Causation

Post by Tomas »

-Eric-
The question of being itself, outside of mind and math (without relating itself to nothing), is my greatest problem.

-Dennis-
Meaning makers can't rest in emptiness.
Ineffable silence.
They want more, more, more.
They have to infer, construct models, assert, believe, have faith, assign labels.,
pretty soon they come up with cherubs and santa claus.

You don't know.

-Tomas-
Dennis has hit upon the solution.

Reach out and touch faith > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48JFIv9LZ2w
Don't run to your death
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Causation

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Eric Orwoll wrote:
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:But these truths could just as well be formulated in terms of properties of subjective human perception. So a systematic categorizing of our own instrument and how it interacts with "the great other". But are we really describing the other or our complex biological instrumentation? Are there any alternative rule sets possible?
All alternative rule sets are not only possible, they are actual. Outside of perspective, being and nothingness have no location and so they interact everywhere. All syntaxes are generated independent of observation. Observation is the experience of a syntax from within. All syntaxes exist, not all syntaxes have observers.
What's a syntax without interpretation? You seem to imply "order" to be universally meaningful compared to chaos from some imagined ultra-objective detached stance. This is impossible to be certain about from a logical perspective at least.
Mathematical truths are not properties of human perception because they can be verified from any perspective.
Why would you think a certain mathematical truth is not just bound to a certain perspective (or perhaps its ultimate self-expression)? Its universality would seem impossible to prove! It boils down to statements of faith. God rewrapped into scientific terms?
This verifiability transcends all individual perceivers. It applies to all perceivers. What is it that all perceivers are referring to and agreeing upon? An informational existence outside of perception.
Reference and agreement only in terms of the assignment of meaning, or discerning order to begin with. But you still have to make a case for order itself. Chaotic beings living in chaos having chaotic nonsensical existences, which defy any known mathematics, might just as well exist. Although meaningless to us of course, one cannot falsify this idea so easily.

The only thing we appear to do is to perceive and describe order because our perception is ordering itself. But it might not mean much on the scale of totality; eternity or rising and falling of complete universes. Our meaningful universe is so little, that much science can show us these days.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Causation

Post by Dennis Mahar »

It is what I say it is,
that's my isness ising.

If I can enrol you in my is,
and we can get another 8 monkeys enrolled,
we have an army of isers ising a consensual reality.

the problem is always enrolment.

If there's sufficient enrolment,
we have order.
we have affinity.
Pye
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Re: Causation

Post by Pye »

Diebert [rightfully] concludes: The only thing we appear to do is to perceive and describe order because our perception is ordering itself.
All thinking is abstraction - the placement of "things" before the mind's eye that are not at present concretely there; abstractions of these things into mental forms, i.e. conceptualizing, be it memory, meaning, or math. I try every year to grow 2s in the garden, but I cannot seem to make them appear. It is curious, as FN noted, that it seems to require things that do not concretely exist in the world (e.g. numbers, x-y graphs, lines, etc.) in order to describe, to order, the world.

Dennis, are you completely, utterly, absolutely (etc.) certain that emptiness itself escapes the notion of meaning or conceptualization?

You mean something by meaninglessness.

No escape; no exit :)
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Re: Causation

Post by Dennis Mahar »

ultimately,
its empty and meaningless,
THAT,
its empty and meaningless.

THAT refers to the situation.

the SITUATION.

Shakespeare quipped,
a life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury THAT signifies nothing.

because the situation is THAT,
to discuss it would build MEANING around it and VOIDNESS would be impossible to experience.
It's not up for discussion.

existentially, we are meaning making machines.
there's nothing wrong with THAT.
we give existence its meaning.
what's on the menu?

we have our little pots of paint and brushes and colour it in.
possibilities for existence,
for being, existentially.

Neitschke declared we are literary philosophers and then he set about making a story up as a possibility to live in to for the ultimate sake of attaining a position of strength for an individual.

then he died.
it didn't work out too well.
Pye
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Re: Causation

Post by Pye »

Dennis writes:
Neitschke declared we are literary philosophers and then he set about making a story up as a possibility to live in to for the ultimate sake of attaining a position of strength for an individual.

then he died.
it didn't work out too well.
(:D)

okay then, THAT-ness, it is.

How's things in the void?
I take it they are not void of experiential substance . . . ?

(btw, hi!)
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Causation

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Dennis Mahar wrote:Existentially, we are meaning making machines. There's nothing wrong with that: we give existence its meaning. What's on the menu?
But how well can one signify, existence, life, truth or meaning? The machine is not just an assembly line where robots construct meanings all equal and shiny. This all sounds too mechanical, too binary and simplistic. It's important to realize how meaning and meaninglessness does relate but it's still a blunt tool; stunning- but that word can mean two different things.
N̶e̶i̶t̶s̶c̶h̶k̶e̶ Nietzsche declared we are literary philosophers and then he set about making a story up as a possibility to live in to for the ultimate sake of attaining a position of strength for an individual.
Because he didn't dismiss his own meaning making machinery. He followed his path and who can tell if there was a wiser way for him? Do you still follow yours or are you stunned instead?
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Dan Rowden
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Re: Causation

Post by Dan Rowden »

Pye wrote:I take it they are not void of experiential substance . . . ?

(btw, hi!)
Hi! Just curious, Pye, can you state what "experiential substance" consists of?
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Re: Causation

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Hi Pye,
thanks for the greeting.
Nice hike?

The THATNESS of the situation is intrinsically void of meaning.
that is the necessary background grok that releases freedom for being.
People get stuck in a formulaic fixed response in any and all situations.

the same formulaic smile, firm handshake, exchange of pleasantries usually about the weather.
general aloofness.
wariness.
keeping the lid on it.
a way of being broadly enrolled in by human beings.

its that machinery which can be broken thru'.
how did it get like that?
it's empty and meaningless.

what's possible?
Pye
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Re: Causation

Post by Pye »

Hi Dan!

1. I've been sending you periodic thinkings for your best of health, and
2.
Just curious, Pye, can you state what "experiential substance" consists of?
Well see now, that's rather what I was curious for Dennis to do. And he replies here:
its that machinery which can be broken thru'.
. . . and still I want to know what one breaks through to! Is it also void of meaning?
Dennis asks: Nice hike?
One month of deep woods hiking = bliss
Returning to the vicissitudes of modernity = tough adjustment . . . .

Dear Dennis, I know you're onto something, have always known.
Just wondering if it has to reach wittgensteinian silence (hence, I press you for words :)
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Causation

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Pye,
All your ruminations, as you've said, have led you to the conclusion that love is the answer.
In your situations, love-in-action is your grandest possibility,that you make a good fist of.
that is your thatness,
'I am that', for the most part, as a commitment, puts the thatness in the situation.
Who you are being.
What you bring to the table.

Good work, sound reasoning, well done, thankyou.

Wittgensteinian silence,
Nargajuna's ineffable silence,
Zen's mu (nothingness)
Heidegger's clearing
David says 'there's nothing there'.

What are these philosopher's getting at?
Pye
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Re: Causation

Post by Pye »

Wittgensteinian silence,
Nargajuna's ineffable silence,
Zen's mu (nothingness)
Heidegger's clearing
David says 'there's nothing there'.

[Dennis asks:] What are these philosopher's getting at?
Well, as we've gone round about this before, it's not nothing. It is definitely not nothing.
It's really really something.

Love's not a recommendation, an 'answer.' It's the condition of all. All mergence-with and the subsequent creation of further being, and far more than the creation of more beings themselves. All things in the universe merging, always and constantly in exchange, creating infinite configuration, further being.

Like you say, the possibilities . . . .
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Re: Causation

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Well, as we've gone round about this before, it's not nothing. It is definitely not nothing.
It's really really something.
Love means nothing.
the condition is nothing.
That's why it's said nothing exists.

We have to leave the significance out of love and let love be, natural and easy.
unconditional.
allowing people and things to be is love-in-action.

ordinarily, when someone says they love another,
they are actually fixated on another,
have designs on the other,
draw the other in to a web of desire,
manipulate and control the other and spit them out when no longer useful.

Love-in-action is really non-action.
nothing to do. nothing to say.
it's hard to keep the mouth shut but what's available is an intimate conversation that is mostly 'listening'.
it gets ruined when significance creeps in.
making a mountain out of a molehill.

Love means nothing.
nothing exists ultimately.
love or nothing as the condition simply means freedom to be.

you are your causal continuum, I am mine.
let each other be.
no right, wrong, good, bad.
no mental projections.


love and hate are absent of meaning until they are made significant by an observer.
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Tomas
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Re: Causation

Post by Tomas »

Dennis Mahar wrote:Ordinarily, when someone says they love another, they are actually fixated on another, have designs on the other, draw the other in to a web of desire, manipulate and control the other and spit them out when no longer useful.
Weasel words.
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Re: Causation

Post by Dennis Mahar »

I bet you've seen that pattern a thousand times Tommy.
What's happening for you?
Don't tell me you don't have to manage it and jump hoops for it.
Pye
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Re: Causation

Post by Pye »

I'm talking physics, Dennis. Attachments by default.
One even becomes attached to their disattachment . . . .
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Re: Causation

Post by Dennis Mahar »

I'm using the word 'nothing', perhaps clumsily, for your taste.

If you get my drift, what word would you use?

nothing means not finite, not having thingness in the philosophical sense.

people project love on to other as the cause of love and seek to possess other.
love becomes finitely situated in other, thingified.
love becomes a territorial imperative.
love is trapped in 'rules'.
inauthenticity ensues.
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Re: Causation

Post by Dennis Mahar »

I'm talking physics, Dennis. Attachments by default.
One even becomes attached to their disattachment . . . .
I'm not particularly attached to any kind of machinery.
I have a fling now and then to explore the possibilities of intimacy.
I can only engage a girl sensorially,
if she shows up in my eyesight in a certain way, (black hair/brown eyes like my mother who I adored)
if she sounds cool in her speech,
if she smells earthy and slightly sweaty and not lathered in cheap scent, although patchouli oil is a turn on,
if she's responsive to touch
and its fun.
and there's no overarching necessity to commit...
The smell and the sound of the girls voice enrol me in her mostly.
I don't want to own her and her own me.
like ships in the night exploring the possibility of pleasure in an intimate conversation.

I hang out Tuesdays with committed Buddhists who have taken to the robes.
They live inside a tight bunch of rules that show up to me as 'heavy machinery'.
That doesn't interest me.
They reckon I'm a dilettante.
Who cares?

I can see that ultimately love is non-discriminating.
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Re: Causation

Post by Pam Seeback »

I hang out Tuesdays with committed Buddhists who have taken to the robes.
They live inside a tight bunch of rules that show up to me as 'heavy machinery'.
That doesn't interest me.
They reckon I'm a dilettante.
Who cares?

I can see that ultimately love is non-discriminating.
Is it not possible that what you interpret as "a bunch of rules that show up as 'heavy machinery'" is not, instead, the expression of non-discriminating love of which you speak?

The ultimate goal of a Buddhist is to realize the unborn, to realize Nibbana. The lay Buddhist rarely acknowledges this ultimate goal, for it means he must give up everything of the world, sex being top of the list, for it is by way of sex that man is born into the five aggregates. And by being born into the five aggregates, I don't just mean the appearance of a zygote continuum in the womb, I mean just the thought of sex begins this process of attachment.

There is nothing wrong with being a lay Buddhist or being [re]born any more than there is something wrong with being a monk [with or without robes] who is ending his cycle of being [re]born, they are simply different 'directions' of a causal continuum. A monk, for me, is a model of perfect dedication to being cleaned out of craving, ergo, is a model of perfect love.
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Re: Causation

Post by Pye »

movingalways writes: A monk, for me, is a model of perfect dedication to being cleaned out of craving, ergo, is a model of perfect love.
I would be inclined to take this even a further step to suggest that sages of all stripes are the 'greediest' of lovers of all, in that what they seek to merge with is no particular thing or things, but nothing less than mergence with everything . . . . . Far from being 'cleaned out of craving,' theirs is the most indiscriminate and far-reaching craving of all, for all. Nothing less will do.

Dennis, whilst it's interesting enough, your thoughts on what would engage you with girls, why are you talking about them here? Perhaps you have the same [narrow] reactiveness to the word "love" as many here, in that it can and is only referring to a small bandwidth of its appearance - that which is expressed in human romance, mating, emotionalism, etc. I'm using this word in the most empedoclean of senses - for lack of a better word, that which is mergence/attraction of any kind to create more being, be it the molecules that [temporarily] hold your body together to any and all phenomena that appear. The human will toward love (mergence) is but a tiny portion of any and all mergence that takes place expressing a phenomenal world at all. Philos (love) is there with "sophia" for a reason. Desire to merge with the truth is desire, love, indeed.

But then you, like many, mistrust appearances, think them unreal. The fact that all phenomena are temporal, that there is dependent origination for any given thing such that it has no traction with its thing-hood by virtue of its dependence and temporality (a kind of thing described as "non-inherent," etc.) - well these views appear to be laden many with a question of value. How can such temporal, changing, impermanent, dependently arisen things be of any value, up to, and especially including the phenomenal appearance of a self? How can any meaningful matter be drawn up in such a scheme of things? No, only permanent things will do, only permanence itself, absolute and unchanging. We are a long time getting over this hangover of Plato's; a long time getting over our "meta"physical cravings and our distrust/devaluing of the phenomenal world: the human condition of suffering over the vicissitudes of its phenomenal temporality, and the desire to escape it. We've always been jealous of eternity. A living thing that can become conscious of its own passing, assuaging the suffering attendant to its own end might rather merge with at least something more lasting than itself . . . . It's pathological.

But then, existence is all there is; phenomena are the only expression of it; is it.

Further, it seems disingenuous to claim no interest in the mechanics - the 'machinery' - when acute attention to it alone is necessary to produce the aforementioned 'enlightened' view of dependent origination, non-inherency, etc. This molten, ever-changing (movingalways :) condition of temporal phenomena within [an assumed] permanent scheme of same is about as mechanical as you can get.

The problem is, this alone is not the last thought. Stopping there is getting stuck on 'no mountain' . . . . .
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Re: Causation

Post by Pam Seeback »

Pye: I would be inclined to take this even a further step to suggest that sages of all stripes are the 'greediest' of lovers of all, in that what they seek to merge with is no particular thing or things, but nothing less than mergence with everything . . . . . Far from being 'cleaned out of craving,' theirs is the most indiscriminate and far-reaching craving of all, for all. Nothing less will do.
Sages who are lovers of truth crave to merge with everything until they awaken to the realization that they are already everything. Craving must be dissolved before the veil of birth [emergence of consciousness] is lifted and the unborn is realized.
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Re: Causation

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Is it not possible that what you interpret as "a bunch of rules that show up as 'heavy machinery'" is not, instead, the expression of non-discriminating love of which you speak?
The life of these Buddhists is like this.
They have been sent to set up a chapter of a sect that has its head office in America.
Their days are filled with chanting/ meditation.
praying to Rinpoche for his blessings.
They are low on the totem pole in their sect.
They can't talk about emptiness because that's a lama's job who is higher up the pecking order.
They get annoyed if I mention emptiness.
Their job is to raise money.
They have to send money to head office and they are trying to raise another 140,000k to put a deposit on the 20 acre section they presently rent which is for sale at 500,000k.
After that their project is to raise another 1 million to erect a stupa.
Their possibility for me is that I join them and wear the robes and hand over all my assets which they can use for their project.
If I did that I would be as low on the totem pole as one could get.
They can't do regular jobs because they are monastics.
They sell incense and jade buddha relics on ebay.
They canvas philanthropic persons and institutions for bequests.
They seek funding from the local council and the state govt.
They work weekend markets, selling incense, prayer flags and buddha trinkets.
They hassle (very nicely) everyone for donations.

That's 'heavy machinery' in my book and its not my thing.

In my travels I pick up saleable, recyclable stuff that clutters the houses of friends and relatives that those people no longer want and give it to the buddhists to sell at the markets.
I also help them in their vegetable patch.
I enjoy their company and meditate with them.
That's the extent of my commitment to the project.

They also suffer the blues periodically because their egos want a different life.

Do you think you could do that Pam?
I don't think it's necessary.
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Re: Causation

Post by Pam Seeback »

Pye: No escape; no exit :)
If you are a student of the Buddha, then what you say above contradicts his words:
There is monks, an unborn - unbecome - unmade - unfabricated. If there were not that unborn - unbecome - unmade - unfabricated, there would not be the case that emancipation from the born - become - made - fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn - unbecome - unmade - unfabricated, emancipation from the born - become - made - fabricated is discerned. (Nibbana Sutta, Ud 8.3, Thanissaro 1994)
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Re: Causation

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Dennis, whilst it's interesting enough, your thoughts on what would engage you with girls, why are you talking about them here?
I'm just saying I have a discriminating consciousness interested to some degree in experiencing worldly pleasure and avoiding pain.
Certain sense data attracts me and I tend to fall for it and play it carefully lest it turns into pain.
A bit of a world-eater.
I don't call that love as some might.
More like desire.
I can see love ultimately is non-discriminating.

Enlightenment is regarded as non-discriminating.
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Re: Causation

Post by Pam Seeback »

Do you think you could do that Pam?
I don't think it's necessary.
Obviously you are free to interpret Buddhism and your weekly visit with the monks however you want, as they are free to interpret the teachings of the Buddha however they want. I don't know that what they practice is perfect love, I was making a suggestion for your consideration that perhaps this is what is happening.

Either one's single-eye/I is focused on the born or the unborn. For most of the day, mine is focused on the unborn. It is my hope that daily, this focus grows so that eventually, the born will no longer arise in my awareness. Precept by precept, line by line, here a little, there a little.

Concentration, dedication, obedience. Anything short of this is to be a player. No problem with being a player if that is one what wants.
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