Hi glen, john and all,
>> Elliot wrote:
> "First, if language limits why accept it as necissary? second, biological
> patterns only limit our perception if one accepts that ALL that we
> experience is of the 5 senses. But it is our lot as humans to struggle
> for enlightenment. the five senses, like words, are an obstacle to
> enlightenemnt, but they can be transcended. We do not know what all the
> sources are from which we experience quality. and thridly, language
> doesnt just limit our ability to convey experience but it limits our
> experience. Rather than letting the world be what it is, we break it up
> into categories. Thus an event becomes the idea "Dog" performing the act
> of "Chasing" to "the ball". These distinctions are not reality, they are
> not fundemental, they are a product of thought and language. One must
> forget the names of the piles of sand and realize their unimportance to
> look up and see the landscape. This is why any static patter of thought,
> even the MoQ, is a burden to enlightenemnt and mysticism, because it
> becomes a tool of reason used to carve up the world, which is not by its
> nature ever divided."
>
> Glen replies:
> I see no reason why language is necessary to obtain experience. Do you
> think it is possible to gain experience without a biological pattern with
> which to experience? Why does language limit my ability to experience?
> Certainly any communication to another about the event using language is
> secondary but my individual experience of the event is not composed of
> language but of experience. (Of course it changes again once it is past
> and is recorded as a memory.) Again I wonder how the mystical experience
> of enlightenment is different than an experience about which I cannot
> communicate but only remember (and perhaps the memory is very different.
Words do determine your experience. Im MoQ terms one can say that
experience needs to be translated trough the social level to reach us first
(words and common conventions and such). But how does one determine what
is what? what is one thing and what is two different things. A chair has
arms and a seat and a back, but if we did not name these things, there
would just be one chair with no parts. We can differentiate the floor from
the chair because ligusticly we have divided them. As you view the world,
your mind chops it up into concepts such as "chair" and "floor" and "dog",
but these things are hardly absoultes, they are determined by the structure
of the language drilled into you since birth. You can imagine how
different watching a dog catching a ball would be without the concepts of
dog and ball, just the concepts of atoms dancing, or if there was dog tail
and the various dog parts that seemed to move together without any notion
of "Dog" to tie them together. I believe both time and space are also
distinctions taught to us along with these subject object divisions, but i
hardly expect most people to accept that. But how different would your
experience be if you did not differentiate past from present from future?
regardless, language does determine your experience (or your thoughts of
experience) amd the goal of mysticism is to forget the words and the
concepts, to stop thinking, and just experience.
Glen replies:
The goal of the mystical experience is to get beyond thought? Or is it to
get beyond thoughts that can be communicated?
Elliot:
It is to get beyond thought, which is a static pattern. Most thoughts i
think cant really be communicated, or atleast not very accurately. But
thought its self is division of the fundementally undivided, it brings up
objects and subjects.
Finnaly id like to say that the MoQ is a very strong metaphysics because it
does stress experience beyond all else. But if pure knowledge from
experience is to be gained, somewhere way down the path, finnaly the MoQ
itself must be given up as a static pattern. But that is the last thing
that must be given up i think, and the MoQ can help for the majority of the
journey. It is a good map, but the chasm at the end of the path is
uncharted, and one must abandon even the map to get to the heart of
everything. I think we dont dissagree on the quality of MoQ as a
metaphysics, but i do dissagree that any doctrine (static pattern) will
lead to transendance of static patterns. MoQ is a discription and it is a
burden to experience to fit everything into its divsions, because as i say,
the world is fundementally undivided.
Are there techniques for achieving enlightenemnt? yes. They are not static
patterns of thought or doctrine, there are koans designed to destroy
logical thinking and catagorization. Also, the teachers decide dynamically
how to treat each student based on their relationship with them, and push
them when they need to be pushed, perplex them when they need it, and act
from their own enlightenemtn dynamically rather than writting a book. The
students progress is based on his own experience and understanding of the
indescribable (judged by his facial expressions and tone of voice), not on
his understanding of teachings. I refer here mostly to Monastic Buddhist
practices (for zen monks) and the books by carlos castaneda (about the
teachings of the sorcerer Don Juan). They have no map, no static method of
teaching.
Elliot
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