victorialis

I see what you mean. The concrete image is much more accessible -- not to mention available, unlike Voidness, which is implicate.

Do you see no poetry in Voidness? Its sheer potentiality, if nothing else, is profoundly evocative. There are also qualities of total acceptance, of balance, completeness and enclosure. Isn't that something like the pleroma, except that the pleroma is already more or less explicate in gnostic thought?

I'm with you so far. Any particular thoughts on what value is being served by this process of emptying? Do we need some idea of its purpose?

Suffering in itself can be quite instructive -- there are some important things that happiness does not teach -- but the opposite is just as valid; and there can be joy in getting out of some forms of fixed "thingness."

[ May 21, 2002: Message edited by: victorialis ]</p>

boneyard bill

Victorialis writes:

Of course one can look at Voidness that way. I tend to think of it as analogous to light. Light is invisible but if you put it through a prism is breaks up into discrete colors. So maybe our minds are like a prism that breaks up the unity of the void into the discrete entities that make existence possible.

However, in Buddhism, emptiness is a concept, and I don't see the poetry in it in the same way as one finds it in mytho-poetic forms.

Emptying is what we are. It is our true nature. It doesn't need to serve any other purpose. We just have to realize that we are this process of emptying ourselves into the world rather than being a thing that the world acts upon.

AdamWho

boneyard bill:
We will have to agree to disagree on this one.

St. Robert:
You seem to have accepted the first noble truth (there is suffering) and through your faith you have sacrificed your desire leading to a reduction in your suffering.
It seems that you are more Buddhist than you think and me saying so does not invalidate you faith it just points out the universality of the principles in both religions.

[ May 22, 2002: Message edited by: AdamWho ]</p>

victorialis

Emptiness is not just a concept in Buddhism. It's also an experience, which is privileged over the concept.

Months ago on another board I read a comment to the effect of, "when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you." In the context of the discussion this remark was intended to be cautionary; it alerted me to the ominous qualities widely attributed to Voidness. Those ominous qualities are pure mythopoeia (dark/empty/absent = bad, dangerous -- because light/full/present = good, safe).

Voidness is a natural state. There's nothing spooky about it -- it's the ground of being. As a concept, it's no less "there" than "being" is. What monsters appear in the Void are only what we brought along with us. Zen calls these makyo, or illusions: there are layers of them, some are awful, others are seductive, and through persistence we outlast them all.

boneyard bill writes:

Not both? The world does continue to act upon us; ideally, it would cease to be bothersome. But that's a negative state, which is why I raised the question of purpose.

I would agree that the expression of our true-nature doesn't have to serve any particular purpose. It simply is. But because "emptying" has an obvious opposite, I expect the "emptying" model of self to have similar (if not, finally, identical) dysfunctions to the model we abandoned in its favor. There is still an agent; the agent has simply switched to an opposite mode of self-expression -- a more logical one, in light of mortality.

boneyardbill already pointed out the synthesis in Christ of the inherent contradiction between a beneficent God and a sinful earth. St Robert says he finds comfort in contemplating this synthesis in the image of Jesus. This approach has the advantage of addressing and settling the agency problem once and for all, by providing a way to look at it: salvation as a person.

boneyard bill

Adam Who writes:

If we agree to disagree, it means we both consent, and I'm not going to consent until I've put up an argument.

Consider the Michaelson-Morley experiment way back in 1887. They wanted to discover some of the qualities of the ether so they measured the speed of light. They figured that if they measured its speed in the morning when the earth was moving toward the sun, they could compare that with the speed at noon when the earth was moving parallel to the sun. Difference in velocity would tell them something about the nature of the ether. But to their surprise, there was no difference.

This just completely violates common sense. After all, if I am moving toward an object that is also moving toward me, our relative speed should be greater than it is if I am standing still.

This experiment led eventually to Einstein's theory of relativity. Because the speed of light is constant regardless of the motion of the observer, we cannot pinpoint any concept of simultaneity which means that space and time cannot be understood as absolute and separate qualities. (Which in turn makes it impossible to deal with a concept like cause and effect). So Einstein resolved the problem by abandoning absolute space and time and used the speed of light itself as the fundamental, unchanging constant in his system.

All well and good. Einstein solved the problem and preserved cause and effect within a four-dimensional space-time structure instead of a three dimensional space and one of time.

But suppose for a moment that the velocity of light has nothing to do with the "objective" physical world. Suppose the velocity of light is actually a reflection of our own mental capacity. In that case, the Michaelson-Morley experiment is exactly the result we would expect to get. If the velocity of light is a function of human vision, then it would be constant in all directions regardless of the motion of individual observer.

My point is not to dispute Einstein or to offer some new theory. I don't begin to know enough about these things to do that. My point is to illustrate the importance of self-knowledge. And by self-knowledge I don't mean my specific idiosyncratic complexes. I mean the nature of the individual observer and the individual mental processes. Because indeed, if it could be shown (and I have no idea how it could) that the velocity of light is function of the mental capacities of the observer, it would revolutionize physics. (Ironically, by resurrecting a good deal of the Newtonian world-view).

This is why I say that a proper understanding of self is essential even for a proper understanding of the physical world. Who knows maybe the next great leap in physics will come from a scientist who is also a mystic.

Now, I will rest my case.

boneyard bill

Victorialis writes:

The world acts upon us if we do nothing. But if we are involved in the world and understand our nature to be an interactive process, then we are not acted upon because we are part of the action. As the Bhagavad-Gita says, "Action is inaction and inaction is action." An assailant may try to act upon the martial arts master, but the master in martial arts knows that he is not a statue that can be victimized so easily. He knows also that his assailant's energy can be put to good use by the master to defeat him. This, of course, helps to illustrate why Buddhism isn't the passive religion that is so often claimed.

boneyard bill

Victorialis writes:

I think my previous post shows why I would disagree with this. The opposite of self-emptying would be to be a static and immovable "thing" and that is our dysfunction and our error.

AdamWho

boneyard bill:
Your response is what I expected; similar beliefs among Buddhist I know prompted me to start this topic. I feel that this is the same "clinging to manifestation" that has infected Christians and is inherent in all religions. I haven't seen anybody challenge its existence in non-Abrahamic religions maybe because stray Buddhists don't cause too much trouble.

It is common to "try" to justify religious beliefs / metaphysical speculations using science, YEC do it all the time. Even respectable physicists are jumping on the band wagon by publishing pseudo-science to fill the needs of the pseudo-buddhist-new-age-universal-consience cult so popular these days.

Bottom line is:
The universe doesn't care how you feel, reality doesn't depend on your state of mind, and only your actions can affect the world.
If you want to defend "my feelings alone (without any action) effect physical reality" I will listen to your argument.

But I am sure in the end we will have to agree to disagree.

boneyard bill

Adam Who writes:

I don't get your point. Your response has nothing to do with the argument I was making.

AdamWho

Here are some posts that might explain why I stated The universe doesn't care how you feel, reality doesn't depend on your state of mind, and only your actions can affect the world.

boneyard bill
Question:
Do you believe that how you feel about the world changes the world? Your answer: YES.
From these posts and others I reason that you believe that your emotions/feelings were a valid way to understand the external world. (Irrationalism). By my saying "we will have to agree to disagree" is my acknowledgement that there can be no meaningful discussion in this area (metaphysical and epistemological). That is, if you actually believe that you emotions or feelings can either provide you with information about or affect the external world.

That is why I asked you to give proof or defend the claim:
"Feelings alone (without any action) effect physical reality"

We can just speculate about what Buddhism “means” (according to our feelings) or we can toss around quotes from Buddhist texts like fundamentalist Christians.

Correct me if I have made an error.

[ May 24, 2002: Message edited by: AdamWho ]</p>