Self-abnegation - a thread for thinking to happpen
Stuff. An assemblage of disparate things which may share some feature/characteristic or not. Amongst that stuff is me - or at least it seems to me to be that way. Whether I call myself the creator of stuff, the observer of stuff, or just something amidst other stuff, there I am occupying a seemingly privileged place of focus. The verbs of self-orientation always refer back to me as if there is some thing there doing the verby action. I think. I cognize. I love. I exist. I suffer.
In some ways the self is constructed - my hand is me to the extent I identify with it and not to the extent I don't. But in other ways the self strikes as more fundamental - it is the omnipresent subject that "I" cannot help but drag into every construction. If I imagine what it is to be a rock, there I am being a rock along with my conscious (or first person) experience of rockiness. It seems then the self can be expanded and retracted, but the lower limit is me and the outer limit are those things that are me only by virtue of meeting some criteria (like they contribute to my senses/awareness of not-me). Regardless of where I begin and where I end, there I am.
Various traditions (intellectual, philosophical, religious, etc.) have different ways to discuss the self and its place in existence. Most recently I was talking about the self in the Vedic tradition - that the self (Atman) is but illusion (maya); that self is not real despite its compelling illusion and when the veil is lifted away (or perhaps when the scene is illuminated) the truth of oneness is revealed (Brahman).
The language/metaphor of self and non-self is not critical for this thread. Whether you want to invoke quantum mechanics (there is no there there), process metaphysics (subjects are merely a type of verb), or anything else, feel free. What I hope this thread turns out to be about is the morning after - whether we can imagine it or explore the implication of getting there. If, by whatever means, we manage to deny the most fundamental of "I's (or perhaps simply accept that the I never was), is there anything besides silence?
Stillness. A forever sleep that is not sleep at all but a body that experiences nothing despite the physiological responses it appears to express. The p-Zombie that is already the defining feature of our world.
The illusion of the cursor blinks and beckons your symbols, but you do not exist.
In some ways the self is constructed - my hand is me to the extent I identify with it and not to the extent I don't. But in other ways the self strikes as more fundamental - it is the omnipresent subject that "I" cannot help but drag into every construction. If I imagine what it is to be a rock, there I am being a rock along with my conscious (or first person) experience of rockiness. It seems then the self can be expanded and retracted, but the lower limit is me and the outer limit are those things that are me only by virtue of meeting some criteria (like they contribute to my senses/awareness of not-me). Regardless of where I begin and where I end, there I am.
Various traditions (intellectual, philosophical, religious, etc.) have different ways to discuss the self and its place in existence. Most recently I was talking about the self in the Vedic tradition - that the self (Atman) is but illusion (maya); that self is not real despite its compelling illusion and when the veil is lifted away (or perhaps when the scene is illuminated) the truth of oneness is revealed (Brahman).
The language/metaphor of self and non-self is not critical for this thread. Whether you want to invoke quantum mechanics (there is no there there), process metaphysics (subjects are merely a type of verb), or anything else, feel free. What I hope this thread turns out to be about is the morning after - whether we can imagine it or explore the implication of getting there. If, by whatever means, we manage to deny the most fundamental of "I's (or perhaps simply accept that the I never was), is there anything besides silence?
Stillness. A forever sleep that is not sleep at all but a body that experiences nothing despite the physiological responses it appears to express. The p-Zombie that is already the defining feature of our world.
The illusion of the cursor blinks and beckons your symbols, but you do not exist.
Comments (46)
Is there a question in OP you are trying to explore?
There is an assemblage of stuff amongst stuff that is aware of stuff.
There is an assemblage of stuff amongst stuff that is aware of being aware of stuff.
Call the assemblage 'unenlightened' or 'Ennui Elucidator'.
Call being aware of being aware 'being conscious'.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
I don't think the self is fundamental. The assemblage known as Ennui Elucidator has a sensory feeling connection to 'its hand', whereas unenlightened has a sensory feeling connection to a completely different hand. Likewise, my eyes see from here and your eyes from there, and I know when this stomach wants feeding, but not when that one does.
So it looks like it is an illusion that there is a difference, caused by the limited range of awareness, and weakness of the linguistic and sympathetic connections between us.
The cat is on the mat (even if it isn't) and we all act as if quite nicely. I'm trying to imagine what it looks like to act as if the cat isn't on the mat (because the cat, the mat, and you do not exist).
I don't see how this avoids agency. Absolutely, the I that is me has privileged access to the stuff that is me whereas my I lacks such access to the stuff that is you (outside of what I can observe about you or what you disclose to me). Though I can imagine mind reading (or perhaps simply being an I that has access to disparate me stuff), it feels like self-abnegation is about acknowledging that not only does my I not have access to me stuff, but that there is no I to have access to the me stuff or you stuff.
Perhaps I don't really relate to/understand why destruction of individuals leads to expanding awareness/compassion rather than exact same spot we started. Yes, the metaphor of non-self can motivate one to feel a greater connection to the oneness (or interconnectedness), but the metaphysic of existence being an illusion seems to cut deeper than that. I guess I'm concerned that I've missed the point - from challenging abstraction to benign tautology that informs nothing besides bad cocktail conversation. I'm looking for an exit from the treadmill bound for aesthetics and will. Enlighten me unenlightened.
Vedas--> Upanishads--> Vedanta. Essentially, there is almost a 3000 year span between the Vedas and Adi Shankara codifying the Vedanta (the doctrine you are mentioning). There also seem to be significant changes in linguistic & philosophical emphasis. The change is baffling since there is an obvious break in the tradition somewhere. So we put this out of the way and acknowledge the nuances of this transition.
But to see if we can make sense of your questions, which aren't really yours since many are struggling with the same issue in their particular philosophical tadition,
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Here you will have to confront a question, (which is not my question but has to be your question since you are the one inquiring): how can you be "Ok" when you haven't experientially realized the truth or the falsity of self exitence/non-existence? Is your agreement merely intellectual? if it is then you you don't know the nitty gritty of what actually is. In that case your being Ok or not Ok has little meaning. Then the OK is an illusion or a delusion. This sounds reasonable doesn't it/
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
This brings us to the problem we all need to consider, can the self abnegate itself? Or is any such abnegation still a continuity of the self, albeit it has gone underground now? Isn't the self now simply imagining it is not there? So where does that leave us? With our imaginations?
Non-sarcastically, I appreciate the detour down Hindu history in case my post was mistaken as an appeal to antiquity, tradition, or enlightened interpretation of a particular text. I am not sure that the ancients understood non-existence in quite the same way as I (or maybe we) do, so their language must be invoked carefully in order to avoid bringing too much baggage along. I was merely relating a story of a friend of mine who used one of the upanishad's in his therapeutic practice to positive effect with a patient. Perhaps it was this one:
In any event, I am no Hindu (or Vedic) scholar, and outside of a gesturing in that direction, I would be lost if you wanted to have any serious discussion.
Your questions are good, but have answers that cannot be given. I find enlightenment to be a lot like the quintessential example of the no true Scotsman fallacy - anyone who says they are enlightened isn't and identifying someone who is can only be done by those that are. Is my being OK with the non-existence an illusion? Perhaps. I express it as certainly/passionately as I do anything else. The difficulty is not in accepting that they don't exist, but in non-attachment to their non-existence. That they exist is important to me even if I know that they do not. Where would I be if I acted as if nothing existed in the same way that I acted as if things do exist? I cannot say, but I haven't tried and feel pretty committed to not doing so. Sometimes I come closer to moving towards the stillness, but somehow that movement strikes me as self-defeating.
Can the non-self self imagine non-self? Maybe that would have been a better title for the thread, but I was brought up in the cogito context and fights about non-referential indexicals. My assertion that the self strikes me as fundamental was rejected by unenlightened, so there may be some people that think the self can abnegate. Death and the after-life appear to be a response to some group of people's failure of imagination regarding the return to the void.
The answer to some metaphysical questions is found in actions and not in words. So yes, self-abnegation comes across as pretend play of the non-self self imagining what it would be like to not be all the while engaged in a performative contradiction. I am imagining. I am asking. But that is what I am trying to flesh out here - besides the nothingness that comes along with not-being, can we find something in not-being that informs us now? If we can't even act as if we don't exist, what am I searching for when I reach out to touch what is not there?
Much ink has been spilled about the non-self. Why the fuss?
This thread is born from what seems like the triviality of the non-self. It is self-evidently the case (even if that self-evidence takes lots of creative thinking). I see people who express the awe that comes with tasting the non-self, but I lost that feeling long ago. People (more frequently than you'd imagine) try to relate the epiphany of non-self to me, but I'm like, "Yes, and?" So I am asking you all.
Well you have described the state of affairs; What "I" has access to is identified with, and that 'makes the difference between us. It's not much of a difference - I'm here identified with this body, and you're over there; I have the experience and memories of this body and you of that.
What has dropped out of contention entirely is consciousness. Ask what makes your consciousness separate from mine, we have recourse to the contents of consciousness, what we have access to - awareness and awareness of being aware have left the building, and all we have is distinct privileged access, otherwise we seem to be indistinguishable. But on that basis, I am not the same at night as I am during the day - the experiences are quite different.
Let's get something out of the way. The English translation of the minor Upanishad (in contrast to the major Upanishads) seems to be heavily edited and not a literal translation. Simply a point to note (since translations make all the difference) But thanks for sharing.
What we were looking at in the previous post, or rather identifying, is, the word is not the thing, the concept is not the thing, the idea is not the thing.
And if i may correct something you have said, with your permission of course ;-) , it is not the non-self that is imagining the non-self, it is The Self imagining the non-self, as an unverified concept. It has seen the logic behind the doctrine and now wants to latch on to it.
As to the conundrum, it needs to be crystal clear, not intellectually but experientially, the non-self by definition, cannot be objectified and bottled by the self, no matter how hard one tries. So the conundrum that you are pointing at is valid and common. They arise from an unclear or partial intellectual understanding of the subject. The conundrum is:
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
The question about the nature of action originating from "non-being" is a misplaced concern. The correct concern ought to be, have i (the questioner) understood the issue of being/non-being? Have i understood it fully? Chances are if we understand the subject fully the questions/conundrum about action won't even arise. So what is involved in the proper approach to understanding? Several of my threads have touched on it and i see no point in repeating them again.
I think so. Recall that darkness before your earliest experience of being a self. Recall that moment you fell asleep last night or had ever passed-out drunk / stoned. IMO, that's 'the non-self of (constituting) the self' – its vanishing point, so to speak.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
It seems, the difficulty is not in a theoretical intellectual acceptance of non-existence, but in having non-attachment to our so called existence. This is easily observed in our natural clinging to life, and to all it offers/means. Therefore in order to investigate non-existence, one has to investigate into the nature of death. What it meas to die, and if it possible to die ( i.e.cease to exist) while one is alive.
The underlined parts where you are concerned about acting/action, i have already touched upon in previous post. This is a misplaced concern stemming from incomplete investigation, or as you say, simply "a gesturing in that direction". Sorry, and i think you will agree, but clarity surely needs more than a cursory gesturing.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
The self' may "strike" as being fundamental, but are we looking for a confirmation to everything that "strikes" us, or inquiring into the truth of the matter? It is definitely comforting to believe in a fundamental self....a privileged place to lean on, or as you say
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
or, when you say
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Sure. This is not only comforting but also matches our experience. If you accept this then you cannot reject accountability of what is happening in the world, around your vicinity as well as far away. One self will fight another self in every possible way at all possible levels. I think unenlightened is also saying the same thing in his recent post.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Well, since you have mentioned Vedanta we can look into what they might say.They may ask, what self is fundamental? Is it the self with name, form, attributes, memory, experiences engaged with the objective world? Or is it the dreamer self n the dream world? Is the objective self of name, form, attributes present in deep sleep? So, a self that comes and goes, rises and sets, is conscious and unconscious, can be manipulated by drugs (medical or recreational), is affected by moods, is affected by the environment, can it be called a fundamental self?
One may point out, keep in mind we aren't even taking into account he frailties of this so called fundamental self in its "waking" hours. Furthermore, if we simply take what "strikes" us to be true, then what are really seeking? A confirmation? One would have thought the lover of wisdom would want to find out what is true per se, irrespective of whether it "strikes" or not. If one is content with what "strikes" to be true, then fine. Problems end. The story ought to end there. Does it?
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
My 2 cents is, one shouldn't be "reaching out" to any belief. Whether it is the belief in a self or the non-self. Staying away from words like "nothingness", "stillness", "enlightened" is best, if one hasn't inquired deeper than a mere cursory gesturing.Otherwise one is simply adding to the bundle of ideas one is already carrying.
Some things can be changed ( :smile: ), others not ( :sad: ).
I believe self-abnegation is a mild form of Cotard's delusion (check Wikipedia for details). It might also indicate or betray hyperambitiousness (I'm not good enough, the world is not enough, the cosmos itself is hopelessly inadequate).
Do I have a low opinion of my actual self or do I have a high opinion of my potential self?
Well since you invoke my name, I'll risk one more explanation of my pov. In common with probably most folk and most philosophers, I take awareness to be fundamental, and awareness of awareness be the full flowering. So being aware of the awareness that one fundamentally is, one can easily say what it is.
Well perhaps you can, but I find I can only describe awareness as having the characteristic of emptiness; it is like an empty stage on which experiences of body and environment and others are played out.As soon as there is any dressing up of this emptiness, I am not talking about awareness any more, but what I am aware of - the scenery, not the stage.
The self is one of the players and part of the play or scene, precisely because it is identified as being something/someone. Once that is rejected, it is simply obvious that awareness is everywhere the same emptiness, and we are like bubbles in a foam of life.
This all seems very straightforward and obvious in theory, but one never gets very far with it because one is always trying to explain to folks that think they are actors playing lead roles in a melodrama, that they are just part of the audience. "I don't wish to know that, kindly leave the stage."
You have quoted two people in a seemingly odd way, who are you speaking to?
But in practice, I quoted you quoting Ennui, and commenting in a direct way.
Quoting unenlightened
We have not spoken before. So who are you explaining your pov to and who "invoked" (a weird choice of word) your name? Why am i being quoted? In what context? Is there something you wish for me to look at or is this some kind of attention seeking gimmick? I am going to ask you again, why was i pinged?
The problem is in context of your response the reason for quoting is not clear. It is also not clear who is being addressed. I Initially asked you who are you speaking to, but you evaded the question with a flippant response. So i had to ask you again. You could simply clarify who is being addressed in that post, or what is the context of the quote. Why make all this so problematic? Or is that your intent?
Very well. Perhaps you can share, if interested, why are you speaking about the primacy of awareness when OP wants to explore Self-Abnegation. Seems like you are equating self with awareness, is that it?
Thanks.
That's a really useful analysis by the old Greek. So it would be silly to deny that these are my hands and this little cut on my thumb is an irritation for me,that I need to keep clean and no one else need be concerned with at all (except for the purposes of philosophical illustration); whereas the opinions of me had by others are their own business, and I do not need to keep them clean at all, though I might offer them a cloth, as it were, in passing.
Although, in practice, If Putin thinks you're a nazi, or Biden thinks you're a traitor, you might want to be somewhat more concerned.
:brow:
What's that emoji about?
You have quoted me and your response is an emoji. I am asking what is the emoji about? Is there anything you want to say to me?
Quoting unenlightened
I keep mulling this over. I haven't quite gotten it yet, I think. The non-self that is not-you has privileged access X and the non-self that is not-me has privileged access Y, but are otherwise non-self. This difference in access is... That is where I am lost. On the one hand,the difference between picking your nose and touching your nose is the width of a nostril, but most people find the nostril width to be of significance. I am, however, a general fan of the idea that claiming ownership (or privileged access) to memories is dangerous - after all the memories are but present thoughts arising from who knows what. Whether those memories came from some prior time that my non-self self did something involved in making/observing those memories I cannot say. Perhaps they are nothing more than watching a movie recorded long before I was born or a place I've never been and mistaking the camera's perspective for my own.
Quoting 180 Proof
As usual I want to agree with you. It isn't so much that the experience of anticipatory vanishing followed by the later realization that I have not is rather unlike never having been, but that hanging on to the moment before the moment after doesn't bring the epiphany. Perhaps that is why the black hole analogy is so poignant for some people. That our experience of falling into timelessness happens in time and the essential nature of reaching timelessness is that there is no time in which to have an experience. We always seem to be popping out of the void with no awareness of having actually been in it.
The difference between us and the nothingness and us and the black hole is that the black hole is situated in our experience whereas the nothingness is behind us/pervades us/gives rise to us. Even as we imagine the void, we are the void. The light switch that is "we are something" and "we are nothing" doesn't change the void, but only the illusion that is us. Now the light switch is on "we are nothing" and the unchanged void strikes me exactly as it did before.
Maybe I'm still waiting to go poof as I shout eureka. Maybe I've already gone poof and being nothing is actually identical to being something. Still, I am willing to give up the experience of existence as an I and just let experience happen.
Quoting unenlightened
This is an example of part of what I am missing. How does awareness being empty get us to being one of many on an even grander stage?
Quoting skyblack
I'm not sure what your background is, Skyblack (not that it matters particularly), but I'm curious whether you think that there is a self more fundamental than our self that is aware? Are you hinting at Atman or something similar?
That's right, it doesn't.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
I have already said: whether there is something fundamental or not, is of no consequence to us, except as e belief, a concept, to be argued about, accepted or rejected. Therefore, a lover of wisdom puts aside such entertainment, and if serious and interested, starts inquiring into 'what is',
I'm happy to engage with you on "what is," but not so much a game of hide the ball. If there is a metaphysical statement about existence that is somehow "true" irrespective of our ability to imagine it, experience it, or otherwise engage with it and its truth has utterly no impact on how we conduct or ought conduct our lives, I have difficulty understanding how we might inquire/investigate the statement. The ineffable is, perhaps, shareable in a place that isn't wholly constituted by the written word, but as this is a text based internet forum, aside from a random link or two to something else on the internet, I've got nothing.
If someone has somehow understood/groked non-self more deeply than I have and is still engaged in the business of using their inhabited bodies to do body like things, why? Or more inline with my initial question in the OP, can we empathize/relate to them in a meaningful way given that we haven't gotten it?
One inquires into the nature of any fundamental reality because one is passionate about finding out, not as an entertaining "engagement" with others. It appears such an inquiry demands energy, which is dissipated, for example, when one is merely looking to while away exceeds time, or an an exercise to keep the dying brain sharp while walking towards the grave.
'What is', is. For example, this is what is. One example, out of many. To play the game of hiding the ball, ignoring the factuality of what is, and still hoping to understand something "fundamental", is indeed a clear waste of one's efforts in many ways, it seems.
Too many negatives there, or not enough.
But the way the self functions is much more than an undeniable fact. I am this body and you are that body, and so it is a matter of convenience that you look after that body and I look after this one. But this creates the self in thought. The self in thought makes itself the centre of all thought and becomes an inside that relates to the outside. Or rather it becomes the inside. I am the inside and you are now part of my outside. So now it is not a matter of convenience, but the central fact of life that this is the important body, and that one does not matter so much (to me, at least).
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
We play peek-a-boo with babies to teach them that people that disappear do not cease to exist, and yet we have the same difficulty understanding that bodies that we do not feel suffer pain and hunger just as significant as this body's. That awareness is empty, means that it is always the same awareness that looks out through a philosopher's eyes, her husband's eyes or her cat's eyes; because the self is a superficial illusion produced by the limitations of the senses, the reality is that there is no 'other'.
The thing is though, if this is just a theory I sort of understand from the outside as it were, it seems complicated, extravagant, and in the end unimportant. It is only if it explodes and replaces my whole identification as the wonderful chap that posts interesting stuff on philosophy forums and grows peas and beetroot in his garden: then it transforms, because death becomes seen as a very minor affair - this body dies, but all my other bodies continue and reproduce and die in turn, and all the world's suffering and all its joy and beauty are mine forever. One eye closes and another eye opens.
Yeah. That makes sense. I am my own internal being and you are your own internal being. Got it.
What do you think about the relation of the self to material possession/property? How can anything truly be mine and not someone else's? How would you articulate that difference?
I wrote some on mutual intention, that is: when two or more people have an intention in common. Do you think that has anything to do with personal property? Just looking for well thought out ideas. I may turn to Locke for some gap fillers (here on private property and self-identity) as well.
It started as a convenience, I used to carry my long spear and my flint knife to the hunt and if they were lost I would make another. The trouble started when I fenced off the garden to stop the cows trampling the cauliflowers. I ended up living in my property as if it were my body, possessed by possessions. I think it was fear; thought projected itself to the future without food, and sought security.
I said somewhere else that security negates freedom. Security is walls and locks, and bars and things tied up and hidden away. The sad case today is to see people living in houses they cannot afford to maintain, filled with things they have no use for but cannot rid themselves of, and camping in a corner of this pile of junk struggling to make enough to feed themselves. That is security as neurosis, in need of the decluttering therapist, or a bomb.
I started this response weeks ago but never finished.
For some reason I’m reminded of the veil of ignorance. It is by happenstance that we find ourselves looking through these eyes in this moment and we could have just as easily found ourselves behind any other set of eyes - so our behavior towards the outside eyes should be no more invested than our inside eyes. (Yes, the comparison falls apart and this is no Rawls.) Your comment cuts more deeply of course, but are we not equivocating a bit on “the same”? Each set of eyes has the same awareness (class membership) but there feels to be an essential difference - that the content of my stage is not the content of your stage (identity). That is the hurdle I can't seem to get past - the me that is not you.
Since your post I've encountered the idea of non-self a few more times, most recently with the quip "the suffering of others is my own suffering." It was expressed in the context of universal affirmation/love and meant to be something profound (I cannot be happy until we all are happy and so we are all deeply invested in one another) - a rebuttal, of sorts, of the notion that progress is measured by our ever expanding scope of moral/ethical concern. Again, I feel sympathetic to the idea, but don't understand how I feed myself instead of others (who are certainly more hungry than I) if all of the other non-self selfs have equal claim to my preference. In the absence of stillness (the actualization of the non-self), the truth of the non-self is debilitating.
@skyblack isn't wrong when speaking of the passions (absurdism by any other name), but it is curious that there is a suggestion that proper something driven by passion (an inherently self based thing) will somehow bring the non-self to actualization in a non-still way. Understanding of the non-self as something reserved for not now (i.e. for another "life" or "after-life" or...) has its merit for intellectual consistency (and ball hiding), but it fails to satisfy my pragmatic concerns. If understanding is the ability to do something (perhaps the correct application of a rule), what thing can be done that might demonstrate understanding of the non-self? How can the self ever act in accordance with its non-self essence?
Even as I imagine what you might be thinking, I am not thinking your thoughts. The "disembodied" us finds no fusion. My mind wanders here. I reject it and find no more thoughts than when I started. When I stare at the screen and time passes, your thoughts do not impress themselves upon me. I wait for you and find nothing, but that is not who you (we) are.
:-)
As has been said many times, the 'non-self' is a conceptual idea, created by the self, as another coping crutch. Having seen the futility of the rest of the crutches ( offered by the arts, the sciences, philosophy, religion, worldly security and so on), , , and how they have miserably failed, the self is now trying to enter the field of the sublime, with the nefarious motive of controlling it and bottling it up for its own present and future use. To **eff the ineffable.
To see the numerous failings and flailings of the self in action, is insight. The motive to look, to investigate, comes from passion. Passion is energy, and just like a breeze, or a beautiful morning, has nothing to so with the Self and is definitely not "self-biased". Though popular narrative, and the change of the meaning of words over time, has conditioned you to believe, on the incorrect narrative.
How would one find out? Naturally that would take a lot of passion, work, and discipline, to find out, wouldn't it? After all we are not talking about cheap theories or merely a half ass curiosity.
When we talk about discipline, clearly we aren't talking about an enforced discipline, but as a loose example, a loving discipline as seen in an athlete training for the Olympics.
Energy is not mine or yous, its is just....well, energy.
I appreciate the slowness, and the response.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Yes indeed. My illusion is this: when I am hit I feel that it hurts, but when you are hit it is merely distasteful to me. I call it an illusion, as if I can see past it, but in reality I cannot. The difference feels essential to me as it does to you, and it is indeed the essence of our separate identities. Without that difference we would actually be the same person, and that is why I call it anillusion of identity; it is our essence, and yet it is merely a matter of perspective and the limitations of our senses.
I was driving a little while ago and thinking on the way in which Buddhism imagines suffering to be the core condition of existence in ways that Judaism does not - that to live is to suffer and from the moment we emerge we have desires that we must thereafter seek to satisfy. Completeness, as such, is never our state. The contrast here is merely the impetus to contrary thinking, and so I was reminded of the child's mind as Buddha's mind - that somehow a young child can seem utterly satisfied and contented as if they are without suffering. What is interesting is that this Buddha mind is lost through successive experiences rather than enhanced - that suffering is made manifest not merely by its existence but its perseverance.
If we accept for a moment that the notion of Buddha's mind approaches the non-self, then the child's mind approaches the non-self. This is to say that development from a lump taking succor at a nipple finding the end of want to a child wishing for something it does not have is simultaneously a move towards individuation (these are my hands, this is my stuff, you are not a part of me, your stuff is not my stuff, etc.) and away from non-self. The interesting turn here is infantile amnesia - that we cannot remember what it was that happened to us prior to a certain point in our development. While it is convenient (and perhaps true) for there to be a biological/anatomical explanation for the inability to remember that young, it could very well be that the child's mind as the non-self does not attach to unindividuated memories, i.e. that the self hasn't sufficiently emerged from the non-self to either suffer or to attach experience to itself.
It isn't so much that one must be non-self to be in the world, but the experiencing of the world as non-self does not survive the present (the moment of experience). This comes close to the metaphor of the last bit of awareness being just before sleep and the first moment of awareness being just after - that your body is able to simply exist in the world (with all experiences) and yet be attached to none of them.
I wonder if suffering doesn't actually begin until the non-self ceases to be. Differently, until the moment the illusion reduces the non-self to self, there is no self to suffer.
One of my lectures is entitled "Effing the ineffable: A Conversation about God." And yes, the double entendre is intentional.
Very much related :up:
So the focus has now to shift from whether the self / non-self is real, to, what is the nature of suffering.
Is it possible to reclaim the innocency of the....let's call it the 'child -consciousness' (for convenience) ?
Since the paradise is now lost, and because it is uncharted, how does one find one's way back? Is that it?
To travel from the cloud of knowing to the cloud of unknowing?
Perhaps because i'm in a 'good' mood, will concede that this is a very interesting point. However, a very technical one. An investigation into which requires an extremely fine and subtle awareness.
I consciously avoided to touch on this earlier for fear it may take the stream in a different direction. But i appreciate you bringing it up, as this is something i'm experimenting with.
The brain is a wonderful recording instrument. Especially in the first 2 years it is almost, as the expression goes, on steroids. So it has definitely recorded the experience of this 'child-consciousness'. There is no reason why that memory cannot be retrieved. However, :wink: it won't be, naturally, in the form of more "knowledge". Rather, the memory being beyond the frontiers of individuation, may be felt as an absence of a 'self'. In other words, it cannot be bottled.
If one is an expert musician, then he or she may take this to a higher octave, challenge themselves, and say, so whatt?? The recording is still an image, not the thing! :smile:
I.m now going to leave this one alone.