A meaningful debate

The world is a rich tapestry of events and interrelationships. The marvellous documentaries put out by the BBC on the Oceans and the myriad organisms living in our seas. A world of breathtaking beauty and of immeasurable complexity. The Savannah's of Africa with its multitude of life form evolved to cope with the excesses of living and dying,  side by side, moment to moment. The majestic elephant, tied (as we are) to a life long family relationship which has the pathos of an old age, something many animals don't experience. The pecking order (sic) of the vulture, the organisation and the energy of the ant, the grace and unique evolution of the giraffe, the alert, sensitive springbok and, amongst them all mankind with his hobnailed boot oblivious to the damage he causes, crashing about with a force enhanced by the ability to kill at a distance. As we grow up we are bound by our upbringing to believe that everything serves our purpose as we crash around looking for stimulation. 

The need to look under the stone comes later when less sure of our infallibility we turn to questioning !!  Rich though it all is, what is the purpose, are there any rules and what at the end is the outcome. For many much of this is simplified by subverting oneself to a faith in a deity where the religious place their hope in a book which gives direction through a set of rules. 

I am teetering around on the edge tiptoeing around the pool, not yet willing to take the plunge. I, like so many people of my age ask questions that a busy life left no room. 

The philosophy that Buddhism bases its its reasoning on is very attractive being tied to our human condition and not a mystical wish list. The nature of self analysis through meditation has a sensible ring to it, its practical and can do no harm. The business of rebirth is different and has the ring of a religious promise to it which boarders on faith, something I find difficult !!                  

Hi John,

Thank you for your further post.

Indeed we may just be specks in the evolutionary journey of the universe, our concerns of no weight and our search for meaning perhaps homespun, who knows.

But for me at least there are pressing problems of alleviating the 'dukkha' (suffering, disatisfaction, however you want to translate it) of myself and others.

If,as a speck, I am to travel a brief time then a pleasant journey is more preferable if possible.  And my, quite possibly rash, assumption is that others would prefer that too.

So my homespun, puny, mere intellectual exercise is to try in some way to lessen mental dukkha and the habits and behaviours that act as causes for that in myself and others in whatever small way I can.  

To that end I encourage people to think about whether they and others are really as unchanging, fixed and gloopey as they sub consciously 'think' or whether personal mental and interpersonal physical/ mental interactions are a bit more vibrant and dynamic than that and to relate it their daily life and the interactions of daily life; to encourage them to be less obsessive, less stuck about anyone and anything.

It seems that gloopey thinking underlies so many of our day to day problems.  The propositions of selflessness and emptiness of personality and the momentary events upon which we base our views of who we are directly, these propositions found in Buddhism, oppose gloopey stuck habitual thinking.  

Best wishes

Mike

Hi Mike again many thanks for your wise words.

When I started to think about the things we take for granted in this world around us, particularly considering our inability to see, hear or smell much of what is out there, it brings home to one the audacity of our self centred view of the world. 

Like our galaxy,the Milky Way we are on the edge of what is visible, perhaps knowable. Quantum Physics has pushed the boundaries beyond comprehension as the theories probe parallel universes to try to comprehend what came before the big bang. We are puny in the scheme of things, an accident of evolution which with man made climate change, could be extinguished in another century or so. Our search for meaning in this life is perhaps homespun, an intellectual exercise. Thats not to say the effort isn't worth it, as with exercise, it requires time and effort and the 'well being' one receives is very beneficial. But my question is, is it fundamental. 

You point out that The 'I' has two features. 

1. It identifies that I exist.  2. It also takes on baggage, not of the fundamental 'I' but the inconsequential elements, driven by our ego, of what we comprehend to be important. But what if this is in our genes and we, like other animals of the animal kingdom are but a speck in the evolutionary journey of the universe. Our concerns are of no relevance purely a philosophical attempt to give our existence weight ?                       

Hi John,

Please remember there are two senses of I. 

The first an underlying simple mere identity (passport like) I which is healthy and cannot be removed (as it is refering to something real).   We don't carry our passport around all the time nor do we think of it all the time, occasionally it has its uses, but it doesn't dominate or organise our lives 24/7/365.  This is usually swamped by the second.

The other an overblown internal mental discourse about an essential unchanging 'I' and 'my' and 'mine' which is not only unhelpful but unnecessary and phantasmagoric and the source of all our mental dramas.

It is only the second that Buddhism encourages us to get rid of.  But the only way we can do that is by disentagling the mix of simple mere I and fantastical oveblown high drama I which are so utterly bound up together in unenlightened living. ' Others' are very powerful methods for showing us the overblown I and what we need to stop believing in, stop obsessing on, stop identifying with.

This false I is not one with your consciousness, it is simply one amongst thousands of mental constructs produced by your consciousness.  Unfortunately for us, whereas we seem happy to recognise the others as 'just a thought', 'just a concept', etc with the overblown drama queen I we seem utterly in the necromancer's thrall.  When we step back and look it is really most bizarre that we give such credence, such power to this one thought over all the others.  It seems as if we are bewitched.  Hence 'necromancer'.

The mere fact that you are conscious and therefore have intention means that you can travel on the path and engage with your consciousness, but in a healthy illuminating spacious way, not in tight 'me, my, I' way

Best wishes

Mike

Hi Mike Thank you for your detailed response.

Well where do I start. Obviously I have taken the concept of the moment to moment, birth/death, birth/death the aggregate concept too literally. 

The Buddha initially went into the wilderness to escape and hone his mental rebirth through  time honoured asceticism, insulating himself from virtually everything to devote all his mental capacity for self examination. Much of my understanding of this search for Dependent Arising (everything is interdependent) was the establishment of a clear understanding, to the exclusion of all else, the belief in my uniqueness, the I.   It seems I got it wrong ? 

So the aggregate of all those experiential  moments is the consciousness that I know. The aim is not to find and define myself as a succession of single, unique moments, unadulterated by external factors, such as an ascetic would do but to recognise my conciousness, which is unique, stemming from experiences that are mine and only mine, is also interdependent with the humanity around, recognising that we are both unique and the same. 

The path is not one of isolation and self discovery but rather the discovery of the self through the mental integration of ourselves with others,  ever mindful of our responsibility to stay on the path. 

"Life" as you say does not stop when I do but surely in essence it does for me, since I can no longer pursue the path or "engage" my consciousness, which by definition is who I am. 

 (I'm glad I am not a ladder of gnats legs stretching from earth to heaven. I love the imagery).             

Good morning John,

Thank you for your two sends.

Okay the critique from the Buddhist point of view is that the writer seems to have got stuck on the 'empty' side of the coin of the core teaching of Buddhism, Dependent Arising.  

Empty implies empty of something.  In Prasangika Madhyamaka what is that thing?  It is a deeply engrained/ ingrained emotional response to the transitory momentary instants of our daily experience that invests them with stability, endurance over time, with an essential nature, a 'svabhava' (an own being') to use the technical Sanskrit term.  A svabhava that simply is not there, could never be there, a svabhava that is a complete and utter superstition, a hallucination.

At the same time as we understand that this is the problem (and many Buddhist schools don't, at least not the extent of the Prasangika Madhyamaka), and we can identify it and effectively oppose or eradicate it when it arises we need to look at the operative and functional nature of our experience.  

We do exist, otherwise the writer would not be writing the blog.  The writer is not 'a ladder made of gnats legs stretching from earth to heaven', 'a warming cloak made of turtle hair', 'the son of a barren women' (to use very traditional images of non existents).

Not only do we exist but we are conscious, we know we exist (to what extent most people are self aware is debatable, but offer them death or live and they usually will choose life, and even those that choose death will choose it because they want this existence to end).

We know that in amongst the plethora of rapid mental instantaneous moments we experience that some promote calm, contentment, ease, joy and happineass (but here the words 'joy' and 'happiness' are not describing the joy and happiness that comes with emotional feeling highs and 'buzz' but to something still, clear and calm, like the water of a crystal clear pool).  We also know that we experience moments of benevolence, care, delight in another's good fortune, of impartiality and the like and that to a greater or lesser extent we have tendencies and habitual leanings to these - admittedly often very weak, but not entirely absent either.

We also know that there are moments of pain, anxiety, distress, sorrow, lamentation - like a she camel that has lost its calf (to use another traditional image).  And we know that we have moments of anger, obsession, clinging, jealousy, arrogance etc that cause us pain etc.  We also know that we have tendencies and habitual leanings to such unhelpful mental states that come with such unpleasant affective states.

The 'path' is a mental path (which of course spills over into the vocal and bodily actions of daily life) which consists of being on the ball enough, mindful enough, to not re-inforce unhelpful habits, to re-inforce helpful habits, to deal with unhelpful mental instants when they arise, to deal with the imposition of false ideation about own being of instants and moments that underlies unhelpful habits and unhelpful mental instants.

As for the goal, there are two models of nirvana put forward.  One sees it as complete withdrawal from samsara (its opposite) like the Jaina liberation or the nirvana put forward by some teachers in the Theravada.  

The other, the model found in the so called 'Mahayana' schools, sees it as a totally pacified mind no longer under the influence of anger, attachment and ignorance, but as a mind that that continues to engage with others.  A mind that that continues to engage with others in order to help them gain freedom from samsara.  

The underlying model of the mind in this second model does not see it as essentially flawed, but as essentially unflawed with  unhelpful thoughts, emotions and feelings as a surface covering of dirt or a temporary removable pollution, like gold covered by filth or muddy water - whether covered in filth or not gold remains gold, and whether muddy or not water remains water (H2O). 

Yes things are empty of own being, but that is precisely why these momentary phenomena are able to operate, to function.  If moments and instants had fixed natures it would mean they could not change.

So now, having some idea of the teaching of the emptiness of a fixed core personality in beings or a fixed 'own nature' in the momentary instants that make up our experience the writer of the blog needs to look at what remains once you remove the hallucination of own being, the superstition of own being from the experiential mix.  

'Life' doesn't stop when you do so.

Traditionally in the five levels of spiritual development in the Mahayana the last three levels run from the first glimpse of selflessness/ emptiness.  Those 3 are again divided into 10 stages  The first comes with the initial non conceptual understanding of emptiness that comes with the third level and the first stage.  But later in the sixth level on the fourth stage the understanding of emptiness is greatly refined and enhanced.  At all levels and stages the bodhisattva is engaging with others, because they can only become Fully Enlightened Buddhas through engaging with others.  Even at the end, the Nirvana of Fully Enlightened Buddhahood, there is engaging with others.

Keep well, be happy

Mike

Sitting in the sunlight on a rare sunny day I am thinking about Impermanence. Following on from my musings about not having a stable basis for believing, we see, hear or smell and therefore have to conclude a so called rationalised assumption of what is going on around us, it leads one to question virtually everything we have previously taken for granted. 

One of the pillars of Buddhist teaching is the understanding of Impermanence and the importance of a cycle which we can call the journey of life to death and the Buddhist would add, rebirth. Tied in with this is the acknowledgement of Suffering as a constituent of life. Much of our suffering is our attachment, to not only physical things but also the mental development of the person I think I am. 

Like our reliance on the fallible senses, the self image is purely a concoction and has no reality in truth. 

To overcome this albatross we have to start again, acknowledging the baselessness of our lives and reconstruct a substitute based on fundamental contemplative ideas on what philosophically can be gleaned from a lifetimes study. To understand that everything is Impermanent and what has concerned us and made us suffer is of little importance. Our concerns of what drives us and makes us who we are is irrelevant, Religion as a focus on how to be a better person becomes irrelevant, our sins become irrelevant in terms of seeking forgiveness from a higher being. Society becomes irrelevant other than the need to behave in uniformity to societies norms as a way of human cohesion. The linchpin of my world, my ego has to be substituted not by an alter ego but by something disconnected from my worldly understanding of the place I occupy. This ultimate nirvana, this mental plateau which can only be obtained through years of study and immersion and then, for most of us, not even then, is the goal. As important is the "path" which we should undertake to know more about the essence of what life and death is really about and it is this journey which makes the Buddhist Philosophy so intriguing.