David,
David Quinn: A thing always has the capacity to be mentally divided into parts.
So even though to you, in a particular moment, a thing might appear as a unity, another person could easily come along and conceive of it as having parts.
Jason: The existence of other people's consciousness, let alone the contents of their consciousness, is uncertain.
DQ: That's true, but not relevant to this issue. It is sufficient that we can imagine a hypothetical observer mentally breaking the thing into parts. The key point is that a thing has the capacity to be mentally split into parts at any time.
So this "proof" of yours consists entirely of imaginings and hypotheticals. I think that's an exceedingly weak proof indeed, so weak in fact that we can safely ignore it. But if that
is the type of proof you think is relevant I've got a humdinger for you:
"It is sufficient that we can imagine a hypothetical Jason being faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. The key point is that Jason has the
capacity to be Superman at any time."
DQ: I'm not denying the appearance of boundaries in our moment-to-moment experiences. Indeed, it is only through the appearance of boundaries that consciousness can operate and we can distinguish anything at all. But nonetheless, these apparent boundaries only find their existence in the moment of their appearing to us. They aren't really "out there" in the world. They are simply a product of our conceptual frameworks.
J: Yes all we have is momentary appearance, that being the case, if boundaries exist in the moment then they are the very bedrock of what reality is. I find that your philosophy and book in general repeatedly try to cast boundaries in a light that suggests that they are unreal, imaginary, delusional, projected and so on, and I think that's one of the dominant and fundamental flaws with your ideas and/or your teaching style/arguments.
DQ: Maybe we are at cross-purposes here. I agree with you that in a particular moment the boundaries that we experience form the bedrock of reality. But this doesn't conflict with idea that boundaries are imaginary projections.
Again, projected onto or over what? This is one of the core and recurring problems I see with your arguments in this tread. If you can address this we might make some real progress.
J: Secondly, reality includes within it the mind, and if we take your belief that the mind creates boundaries, then reality must also therefore include the boundaries that the mind creates.
DQ: Yes, so when I say that there are no boundaries in reality, I am meaning it in the sense that there are no boundaries outside of what our minds "choose" to project onto reality at any given moment.
J: If there is nothing but/beyond/behind direct appearances of the moment, then why use the words "project onto reality"? That gives the impression that there is something beyond that can be projected onto. It suggests that appearances and boundaries are less real, because they are projected over real reality.
DQ: It helps people break free of the idea that things inherently or objectively exist.
So this argument of yours about "projecting" boundaries onto reality is not actually truth, it's just a teaching method? A technique you use to mold peoples minds into the shape you want, despite the fact you know it is ultimately false? Isn't it kind of dishonest to try discuss truth on a philosophy forum knowingly using false ideas presented as truth? How can I make progress with this discussion if you are going to do that?
DQ: If a person can see that all beginnings and ends in nature are illusory, then he is a position to understand the interconnectedness of all things - or better yet, the formless nature of all things.
Riiiight. So is this just more teaching? Any understanding a person gets from a misleading teaching argument would be baseless, with no foundation of truth.
Anyway, saying I play along with what you wrote: you agreed before, boundaries make up the very bedrock of reality, yet you also believe we should see all beginnings and ends as "illusory"? Wanna tell me how that works?
DQ: When a person realizes, for example, that the boundaries of his own self have no more substance than the lines of longitude and latitude that we project onto the earth, then that can be a powerful, life-changing insight.
Is that a truth, or a fundamentally false "intermediate" truth/teaching-method? If it is anything but a truth, you also might want to consider exactly what the great value is in having a life-changing insight that is based on falsity.
What is real, ultimately, is just what
is. If the self happens to exist then the self is ultimately real, if the self doesn't happen to exist then that is what is ultimately real. Yet you want to push this idea that not having a self is somehow more real and true.
J: Third, pure direct experience at this exact moment shows that there is no lack of boundaries - this is beyond doubt.
DQ: Yes, the appearances of each moment are undeniable.
J: Agreed, so why imagine(or phrase ideas like) there is some reality that is beyond our perception of momentary apperance, upon which we "project" boundaries?
DQ: Because the average person locked within the conventional mindset, still being spellbound by the idea that the physical world objectively exists, will have more chance grasping the intermediate truths that I phrase. In Buddhism, these intermediate truths are called "relative truths". They are truths which, while ultimately false, deal effectively with the issues that are being grappled by those who are still lost within gross delusion.
What you propose is to replace this conventional mindset with false truths. But I don't want to get bogged down in critiquing your teaching methods at the moment. The perhaps bigger probem is that you seem to have actually used these false intermediate truths, such as "we project boundaries onto reality", to form central aspects and foundations of your final philosophical conclusions, which has then led to the serious errors and flaws in your so-called enlightenment.
DQ: Another example of a relative truth is, "All things are created by the mind." While this is false from the ultimate perspective, it nevertheless has the capacity to help people break free of their attachment to materialism and objective existence. Another example of a relative truth is, "There is only momentary appearance".
I find with this discussion that as I press you on each of your "intermediate" teachings, and you in turn relinquish each subsequent intermediate teaching as just a teaching tool which is actually false, you incrementally lose the foundations that form your final realization. So the final realization is false because of its rotten foundations.
I started this thread because I was having little success in engaging you in arguments against your philosophical ideas at the higher levels of realization. The difficulties apparently arose, according to you, because I must have misunderstood some of your more fundamental points that supported your final conclusions. But now I come down to engage at the more basic levels and I find you agreeing with me that your intermediate teachings do, under closer scrutiny, fail and are false. So it leaves me wondering what substance or foundation there is, if any, supporting your final realizations.
DQ: The fact that boundaries can change from moment to moment is proof enough that they are mentally-created.
J: If that's sufficient proof, then you have certainly set a low bar for proof in this particular instance.
DQ: How would you account for the fact that the same physical object can have different boundaries, depending on how you look at it?
I'm not sure there is even any need in serious philosophy to "account"(in the way you seem to propose) for this in the first place. No more need than say figuring out why the sky is blue, or why water runs downhill.
In the end it doesn't even really matter if we were to accept that the mind creates boundaries. You think that by asserting that the mind creates boundaries that it somehow weakens boundaries, but that is not the case. The stuff of mind is no less real than anything else. You are playing on the commonly held belief that there is some objective universal substrate existing beyond the mind and senses, and that the subjective mind projects delusionary and false boundaries onto this substrate, and that you are here to remove those delusions and errors and uncover the objective univeral substrate. But you know as well as I do that there is no beyond mind, no beyond appearance. Mindstuff and boundaries, related or not, are as solid as a rock, they are as real and as fundamental and true parts of reality as anything else.
DQ: Where a thing's boundaries are imagined to exist is dependent upon how one conceives of the thing in question.
J: If boundaries are absolutely certain and undeniable appearances, it is ridiculous then to say they are "imagined". Imagined compared to what? There is nothing imagined because there is no alternative, there is no hidden "non-imaginary" reality beyond these so called "imagined" boundaries.
DQ: Are you denying that the mind plays a role in shaping what we experience in each moment?
It's amazing how many words you have in your arsenal to push the idea that beyond our minds there is something that is objective, and that we are overlaying and projecting onto this hidden reality. The mind doesn't "shape" reality, because that suggests, yet again, that there might be something beyond our minds that we are shaping. If I were to say what relationship mind has with experience, I would say: the mind is
part of experience.
J: So your proof is invalidated then. My very point was that part of your argument in your last post was based on the use of something resembling the scientific method, which went something like this:
1. The last fifty times my perspective changed, boundaries changed also.
2. There must be a link.
3. I'll assume therefore that boundaries are caused by perspective.
DQ: As I say, empirical experiences can suggest truths, but it is only later with logic and infinite understanding that these truths can be proven or disproven in an absolute sense.
That's another one of your arguments/teaching methods dispensed with then.