10-12 - Gen's Gems

2009.07.10 01:00 - Sharing a Shirt is Eating the Cone

Can the Self/subject exist without an object? Is the subject a given?

Vajra Raymaker: okay, well then I shall say that this is a very interesting topic to me, ever since I started dabbling in Buddhist literature, because before that time I held it as either gospel or as a mainstay assumption that the mark of the mental is that it is intentional, i.e. has an intentional object, i.e. has some object that it is about.
Vajra Raymaker: So I am quite strongly pulled by the arguments on both sides, either that all mental states do have objects or that not all of them do.
Vajra Raymaker: The latter being the buddhist idea, and also the yogi idea
Pema Pera: usually that is the case, yes, the question is whether there are exceptions, and also whether the "usual" case is fully as it seems to be, whether there are no other ways to look at the seemingly appearing of subject and other (responding to your first longer sentence)
Pema Pera: all mental *states* do have objects, I agree -- the question is whether there is more to the mind than "states"
Vajra Raymaker: Well that comment is a bit mysterious to me. I think of a state of mind as a way that the mind is during a moment or duration
Vajra Raymaker: However you could also set things up so that at any given moment the mind is in several states at once, if you somehow compartmentalized the mind, I suppose
sophia Placebo: greetings
Vajra Raymaker: Hi Sophia!
Pema Pera: the whole idea of "no self" in Buddhism in connected with other ideas such as "no time" and therefore also "no state" . . . this is a big topic :-)

Is time intrinsic to the self?

Vajra Raymaker: Is this feeling of heat, me? Is this itch, me? Is this sense of longing, me? Is this belief that Arizona is a state in the U.S., me? No, none of them. There is no impression of me -- htat's what he said
Pema Pera: I like that kind of analysis! It's a great start
Pema Pera: but I think we have to go further than Hume did, more radically questioning everything.
Pema Pera: what I tried to say, when I dropped out, is that the sentence you quoted just before has all kinds of assumption in it, for example the assumption that everything we deal with plays out in a linear past-present-future time line -- that is one thing I think we have to drop, when we really want to talk about the notion of "no-self"; that notion only really makes sense within the vantage point of a fourth kind of time, a different orientation to time . . . .

Pema Pera: but *if* we want to really talk about no-self and no-time, we have to drop almost anything we normally take for granted, and we have to be very meticulously critical about hidden assumptions
Pema Pera: we have to use words, yes, and that is fine as long as we don't take the words to reify the notions they point to -- quite hard to do that
Vajra Raymaker: But we can't talk about no-self until we have a reason to believe that there is no self, no subject of experience
Pema Pera: well, we can explore the assumption of "no-self"
Pema Pera: what would the world have to be like, for such an assumption to make sense
Vajra Raymaker: Pema, I thought you were wanting to bring up the experience of time, and then it seemed you shifted to the reality of time.
Pema Pera: at first it doesn't seem to make any sense, so we then critically investigate our assumptions
Pema Pera: sure, I'm happy to talk about the experience of time
Pema Pera: but as long as we couch that experience in terms of past-present-future, we have also introduced a kind of self, traveling through that linear time

A little later...

Vajra Raymaker: This may be true, what you say, that if we couch the experience in terms of past, present , future, we have introduced a self. This is point to attend to

On atman, experience, and ice cream

Pila Mulligan: that is the dilemma
Pila Mulligan: am i me or am I atman
Pila Mulligan: so the easy answer is you are nothing :)
Pila Mulligan: but I like i am my expereince
Pila Mulligan: my ice cream
Vajra Raymaker: Yes, that would be another answer I suppose.
Vajra Raymaker: But what unifies your various experiences/
Vajra Raymaker: ?
Vajra Raymaker: Why are they all yours, and not some of them Sophia's, for example?
Pila Mulligan: they can be shared of course, and they have their own continuity to the degree that we accurately preceive them
Pila Mulligan: but there are those tiny nuances that are not really collectively perceived
Pila Mulligan: except by emnpathy
Vajra Raymaker: But suppose you are eating icecream right now. And it tastes delicious. Why is that taste sensation one that is part of YOU and not something that is a part of Sophia?
Vajra Raymaker: What makes it a part of you?
Pila Mulligan: no doubt to the degree that she can perceive it the ice cream expereinceis part of ther also
Pila Mulligan: but if she is not perceiving it she is not epxer3eincing it
Pila Mulligan: consciously
sophia Placebo: i dont like choclate ice cream
Pila Mulligan: :)
Pila Mulligan: vamnilla?
sophia Placebo: sure :)
Pila Mulligan: or mango?
Vajra Raymaker: lol
sophia Placebo: no not the mango
Pila Mulligan: mango is yummy
Vajra Raymaker: Mango is my favorite
Pila Mulligan: :)
Pila Mulligan: mango vanilla -- see we can sahre some of it
Vajra Raymaker: Vanilla is good too
Vajra Raymaker: Now let's say you have the cone and Sophia's body is no where near. Do you want to say that it is an experience that is part of you but not part of Sophia?
sophia Placebo: we can share the preceptions but not like sharing a shirt i guess
Pila Mulligan: that question involves a lot of aspects, Vajra
Pila Mulligan: in a pre-conscious kind of sensation, Sophia may be just as much involved in the cone as I am
Vajra Raymaker: How do you mean, Soph?
Pila Mulligan: but only I am actually ingesting it
Pila Mulligan: yes
Pila Mulligan: sharing a shirt is eating the cone

2009.07.10 19:00 - Appreciating bad things

Pema Pera: Appreciating presence seems to fundamental in all traditions I know of, that you would think that it could be addressed in a tradition-independent way -- but perhaps you do need a tradition, any tradition, to find a way to point it out
Pema Pera: *so fundamental
Dakini Rhode: I've been exposed to some attempts to point it out in nontraditional ways, not sure if I would exactly call them tradition-independent though
Pila Mulligan: in cases I've seen, the perosn is not in a situaiton to relate to ultimate realizations, such as there fundamentally are no problems -- when they are in too much distress for that conversation
Dakini Rhode: I think it can be done, the crux of the matter though is that i think it's experiential
Pila Mulligan: yo need to work up to iy
Pila Mulligan: it*
Dakini Rhode: you need to offer people the experience
Dakini Rhode: their own experience

2009.07.11 13:00 - Words of Encouragement

SophiaSharon Larnia: i was walking the other day, and i saw quickly that it is all complete here, that nothing is missing
SophiaSharon Larnia: I didnt know how to take it, i resisted it as soon as it arose
SophiaSharon Larnia: my resistance was a clue
Storm Nordwind: Step by step we can come closer. It may seem like tumbling over a cliff and we resist...
Storm Nordwind: But then we see there is no cliff. We are the cliff. We are the path to it and all others watching as we fall and fly!
SophiaSharon Larnia nods
SophiaSharon Larnia: in your opinion, do these types of discussions help or slow this process, because to me, it seems to slow it at times
SophiaSharon Larnia: not at others
Storm Nordwind: I cannot speak for others only for my self...
SophiaSharon Larnia: yes
Storm Nordwind: These lay the ground work but in my case that ground work was laid more than 30 years before a meditation brought the vision of reality
Storm Nordwind: I do not know whether I would have made those steps without the discussions
SophiaSharon Larnia: yes i see
Storm Nordwind: I do know one thing though
Storm Nordwind: I know that these discussions can be an inspiration...
Storm Nordwind: they are like messages shouted back along the way...
SophiaSharon Larnia smiles
Storm Nordwind: from others who are just a little further on...
Storm Nordwind: and they are words of encouragement!
SophiaSharon Larnia: i seem to be proceeding both too fast and too slow (as in circles)
SophiaSharon Larnia: but it is fun :) and that is what counts