Chinese Thought, Wegner & Beyond

[Guest guest]

Much of meditation in the subcontinent of India on up through Kashmir and the Himalayas is a training in how to operate the "empirical will". The mystic writer Ibn Arabi refers to it as the "creative imagination". The word "raga" is offered up as something like Ravel's Bolero wherein one accomplishes many small successes. Each small success rests upon the shoulders of the previous effort. It builds momentum, force, direction and new dimensions. The first "one thousand and one nights" is a preparation for the novice to become an initiate. One may become conscious in the present moment beyond cognition into the realm of the heart, feelings, values, qualities and beyond. Thought and cognition only has referents and antecendants outside of the present moment. Such a small conscious orb lacks authenticity of being. Authenticity in the present moment is without predication. Hence all the practices of zazen, vipassana, satipatthana, vajrayana are all aimed at samadhi state ... authenticity of being which precedes essence. Or being without predication. The "schools" of such training offer many lifetimes of training. I've worked hard at such meditation for only 27 years and see only an endless and glorious road ahead with each horizon leading to other more intriguing horizons. A human lifetime is so short in the face of such a pathway. If the process requires a "beginner's mind" or a state of ecstatic wonder, then unlearning while yet functioning with precise knowledge is the path upon which we must tread. The oral traditions link so many lifetimes of continuous effort. It's like finishing a graduate program only to find you've just entered the first year of school. Reading about and considering one human's efforts (like Wegner) engaged on such a path is indeed wonderful and profound. Actually engaging in the practices of a many thousands of years lineage is yet another matter. Sort of like actually climbing through a telescope through hundreds or thousands of lifetimes of culture and realization. One engages in the slowly developing raga or bolero of each realization gaining momentum with each day's practice.

So, Jim, that too is "like" the dao .... though we can't say that it "is" the dao. That would "predicate" the dao which can not be predicated. ;-)

If you haven't had a few immortal laughs by this point, I'm afraid I've failed in my presentation.

Emmanuel Segmen

 

 

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James Ramholz

Thursday, March 13, 2003 6:14 PM

Re: Chinese Thought

, "dragon90405" wrote:the tools of> traditional Chinese medicine may provide> signficant insights into this subject> as well as the origins and history of> consciousness.Ken:Much more interesting things have been happening on the Western science side. Have you been reading "Science and Consciousness Review"?http://psych.pomona.edu/scr/If you haven't look for Tom Clark's review of "The Illusion of Conscious Will", by DM Wegner (Cambridge, MIT Press 2002). It's a fascinating and persuasive book---even scarey. In the review of it, Clark states:Wegner says, plausibly enough, that the feeling that we consciously will action – that an act is ours – ordinarily arises whenever conscious intentions precede behavior: "We tend to see ourselves as the authors of an act primarily when we have experienced relevant thoughts about the act at an appropriate interval in advance." Our folk-psychological theory of action interprets this regular sequencing of intention and behavior as causal, with the conscious, mental intention (the will) driving the physical effect (behavior). But, Wegner says, the actual causal story behind human behavior involves a "massively complicated set of mechanisms," what he calls the "empirical will," that produces both intention and action. Since we aren't in a position to observe or understand these mechanisms [in ourselves], instantiated as they are by the complex neural systems of our brain and body, we construct an explanation involving the experienced, phenomenal will: we, as conscious, mental, willing agents, simply cause our behavior."Sounds like Daoism to me!Jim Ramholz