Guest guest Posted January 23, 2003 Report Share Posted January 23, 2003 Hi Shawn, Apologize for delay, been out-of-town. I see you live in Hawaii, you lucky fellow. The big island is my favorite. In 1999, my buddy and I tried to ride mountain bikes up Mauna Kea, just to be silly. We almost made it. Coming down was a religious experience (like a near-death experience . I merged our conversations under a more accurate subject. A couple more comments are below. > Sun, 19 Jan 2003 22:33:55 -1000 > shawn <shawn > Re: Re: who is motivated > > >> Listen carefully: *my* rational part....does it belong to you? > > > > Yes, as far as the relative world is concerned. > > > >> If so, why? > > > > Because you didn't have my thought, and if you trip over a stone, my > > toe won't hurt. > > Do you wish it to hurt? No. I like my toes to feel good. Happy toes. > Sometimes people get the same idea at the same time, > whos idea is it? Many authors write of a collective consciousness that we can all access in certain states. Needless to say, it might be disorienting if we experienced everyone's thoughts around-the-clock. > What *is* a "thought?" The product of a brain. If you look at heart cells under a microscope, the individual cells are pumping. It is fascinating. Hearts know how to pump. Brains know how to think. Brains exude thoughts. > Do you keep all your thoughts with > you...somewhere and pull them out when needed? In a sense. Buddhism talks about the five skandhas, one of which includes our mental dispositions or habitual patterns, whether inherited from previous lives or created in this one, repeated thoughts and reactions to events in our daily lives that give us a (sometimes annoying) sense of personality. Hinduism (Patanjali) has a similar model. I don't have my books with me, but he had three levels of processing (manas, budhi, and ahamskar???), the last of which corresponds to our ego or I-sense. > The "you" of your thoughts, is a thought? Yes, but I think it is stronger than a simple thought, more like a felt sense of identity when I am thrashing in samsara. Feelings often occur prior to, and are stronger than thoughts. > >> Don't you choose to claim them as yours? > > > > No, I'm stuck with my thoughts. > > > >> Do you have to? > > > > No. Ultimately, they come from nowhere (or habitual patterns). How > > I view them depends on my present state of mindfulness. > > Okay Dave...*what on earth* does *that* mean? You have admitted that you > don't create "your" thought...how are you stuck with them? I am stuck with my brain. Dave (not Shawn) experiences its output. I experience whatever habitual recordings my brain likes to exude. > Don't they leave > as easily as they come? Like ripples on a lake. Except for the really good ones that I may cling to for a while. > By "state of mindfulness" I suppose you are > referring to the habitual identification, the fluid ego...no? Mindfulness is a Buddhist term, another practice for staying awake throughout the day. When eating just eat, when sitting just sit, etc. This practice quiets a discursive mind, similar to Maharshi's practice (Who is eating? Who is sitting?). > The idea of a > solid vs a fluid ego is mute when we are talking about a "concept," a mental > construct, an illusion. Everything we talk about here is a concept (of a concept of a concept...). We are playing in the relative. In the absolute (maybe similar to Tony's Nirguna), no concept is found. I'll talk more about watery egos below. > This illusory "I" gets caught up and really runs off > with some thoughts...why, who does this...a thought? Sure. When you are thinking, the Witness is dreaming, and vice versa. > >>> In the relative, we > >>> still need to relieve suffering and improve ourselves and our > > world. Etc. > >> > >> Are there two different worlds? > > > > Yes, for the purposes of consciousness. > > > > Nagarjuna used to say stuff like "In the relative, Atman is real. > > In the absolute, neither Atman or Anatman is real." (This is > > similar to the earlier discussion.) > > Nevermind what so and so says, I notice you quote lots of Maharaj and Nisargadatta. ;-) > *are* there two different worlds? Same answer(s). > Fine. Your buffalo poops and then Joyce slips in it...why would she blame > you for gassing up the buffalo, she knows you thought it was a lexus! I don't remember where this all started so I would probably just buy Joyce a new skirt with lots of laces and ruffles in hopes she would not hold a resentment toward Burt, my pet buffalo. > > Atman is impersonal. Shawn has humor, insights and personality. > > We "recognize" you and label this ego and say it is real as far as > > the relative world goes. > > These are your concepts. Actually, "ego" is in the dictionary and I plagiarize most of my writing. :-) > Yes yes as far as the relative.... Yes, yes. > but we are > engagaed in a transcending process The process of transcending the relative, discovering the absolute, is what we talk about here. I am only trying to transcend and Include the relative in a larger view rather than simply dissociating from it and labeling it "illusion." Dissociation can create pathologies. For example, one might declare "illusions cannot die" and jump off a tall building and physically die. Also, process (change) happens in the relative world. So it may behoove us, as students of this process, to explore what changes (aka watery egos). > and in *that* process the understanding > is that the person is an illusion, the bodymind is *there* but consciousness > is not identified. In the absolute, you See directly that person-ego is a concept. "Bodymind is *there*" is an interesting concept. > The stubbed toe still hurts, but it hurts the body...the > unkind word hurts the identified mind, not the witness of these things. Yes, this is said to be the experience of a jnani, an Effect of one's being able to rest stably as Witness, an apparently rare condition. Without that, these are just the words of Maharshi. > Another version: The Self who is being Shawn has humor and all qualities, > since no other exists. When playing with these ideas, it is tempting to reframe our little egos as God. I would say that Self is dreaming as soon as Shawn appears, and vice versa. I cannot witness thoughts as I am thinking them; I only notice them in retrospect. > > Now if you start sounding like Maharshi, we might say "There is > > Atman" or "Poor Shawn died." :-) > > An illusion cannot die. .... in the absolute. In the relative, the "illusion" is real enough, and its absence is like a death. The expression "To die before you die" refers to this "illusionary" ego-death. May we all die soon. :-) > Sun, 19 Jan 2003 23:18:43 -1000 > shawn <shawn > Re: Re: "my" consciousness > > >>> So I'm suggesting a continuous, fluid, changing ego rather than > > the on / off > >>> model of relative / absolute conflationists and guru wannabes. > >> > Yes! Of coarse! Who cares if it is claylike? What is the point? I don't > understand, on-off? What are you talking about? For give me, I know not what > you mean? Of coarse the ego is everchanging, it fears it's demise, and uses > every experience as more knowledge to protect it. It might be better to talk > of the ego as an activity, not an entity. On / off refers to apparent paradoxes like ego / no-ego that show up when we compare relative / absolute. Fluid refers to changes our ego (self-sense) goes through in the relative, and suggests that absolute (no ego) is a natural endpoint for this progression. And I think this is really interesting because it integrates an enormous body of relative scientific developmental psychological into what was previously just "religion." This is more about enlightening society than enlightening Shawn or David. An interesting corollary is that enlightenment is a natural byproduct of evolution but that is another topic. > > Conflate means to confuse two different things as the same. For > > example, in reductionism or elevationism discussed above, and also > > sometimes in common speech, mind and brain are conflated. Mind is > > interior, brain is exterior (and some argue you can't have one > > without the other but that's another topic). > > ...and some might say the brain is in the mind! That would be consistent with elevationism. Reductionism would say the "mind" is in the brain. Some argue that neither contains the other, both are equally important. > I love this pretending to know stuff. Maybe you like pretending to not know stuff. ;-) peace, david. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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