From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Mon Aug 15 2005 - 09:16:27 BST
Matt, David,
>Sometimes it seems like what counts as
>mysticism is easily assimilated into pragmatist terms. Sometimes it
>doesn't.
Paul: A brief suggestion on this. I think assimilating mysticism into
pragmatist terms could be achieved, or at least started, by reading a
typical mystic assertion that 'reality is undivided' as saying something
like 'reality isn't inherently divided and related in any particular way'
and therefore that 'reality can be divided and related in every possible
way'. This is in accordance with e.g. the Buddhist conception of 'no-self'
which states that nothing has inherent self-existence but is dependently
originated.
The pragmatist idea that reality is divided in such a way as to best cope
with it doesn't contradict anything here as far as I can tell. Nor does it
contradict the MOQ idea that something is only distinguished from something
else if it is valued.
Rorty says in "A World without Substances or Essences":
"We antiessentialists would like to convince you that it also does not pay
to be essentialist about tables, stars, electrons, human beings, academic
disciplines, social institutions, or anything else. We suggest that you
think of all such objects as resembling numbers in the following respect:
there is nothing to be known about them except an initially large, and
forever expandable, web of relations to other objects. Everything that can
serve as the term of a relation can be dissolved into another set of
relations, and so on for ever."
In these terms, enlightenment isn't about seeing 'the way the world really
is' e.g. "it really is an undivided whole," but is more about being aware
that 'the world really isn't configured in any way in particular'. I think
mysticism differs from pragmatism in that it promotes an experience in which
all 'sets of relations' are temporarily 'dissolved'. But I think the
philosophical consequences of both are very similar. (This is what I was
trying to say in Liverpool, David.)
In terms of Zen practice, it is aimed at experientially showing the lack of
inherent self-existence and this can be quite a traumatic, overwhelming and
profound experience which may lead to people referring to the experience
itself as enlightenment. Of course, it *is*, but I think the returning to
'divided reality' with this awareness should also be considered
enlightenment and is the actual benefit of mysticism.
Hope this helps.
Regards
Paul
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