What is "Mind?"

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WBraun

climber
Sep 28, 2016 - 08:07am PT
(non-materialistic) notion because those notions don’t conform to consensus reality,
they cannot be validated and verified through scientific means,


Oh yes they can!

The modern gross materialists so foolishly have completely forgotten how.

They've brainwashed themselves into soulless robots .......
BASE104

Social climber
An Oil Field
Sep 28, 2016 - 10:07am PT
Mike, I dunno about DMT. He never makes long posts, so I assume he posts from a phone. Maybe he is big on Twitter, and that is why he is so brief. He likes to heckle.

As for your state of mind, this realization that nothing around you can actually be pinned down as real, you gotta remember that this is a human construction.

A dog wouldn't tear its hear out over the meaning of life, or whether that steak was real, and yes, I think dogs are conscious. Perhaps they don't have the ability for introspection, but they do just exist and do their thing. They aren't lost in a maze of philosophers.

The curse of man. Trying to find meaning where there is none to be found.
PSP also PP

Trad climber
Berkeley
Sep 28, 2016 - 10:44am PT
"Not only is the emperor not wearing any clothes, there’s no emperor. " thanks MikeL

what I think irritates people is they don't see that you can hold both POV's it isn't either or; it is both. things have names because we gave them names so we could communicate; no problem. But before we gave everything names what were they? they are as they are without names. people have generally completely forgotten that, or just can't go there, or don't get what good reason is there in going there. Like WTF cares.

Experiencing the world before names has generally been lost in our modern society and consequently the moon is the moon goddamit!
Wayno

Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
Sep 28, 2016 - 11:17am PT
Good points. I think what Mike is saying fits well on this thread. It is another perspective and he has spent some time trying to elucidate it. This is after all a sort of balancing act.

Now if we were working on getting something done and had some time constraints I would probably just tell him to stfu and get to work, but his work is not my work. Or is it?
jogill

climber
Colorado
Sep 28, 2016 - 11:32am PT
I once read of Tibetan monks whose spiritual goal was to awaken each day with a fresh and open acceptance of the world, everything new and fascinating. Carried to the logical finale, no memories would exist to contaminate an excitingly clear perspective of their environment - where words and labels would cease to apply. Attendants would then see to their needs, cleaning out the messes in their cells, feeding them and showing them how to drink water.

What a delightful scenario.
i-b-goB

Social climber
Wise Acres
Sep 28, 2016 - 11:40am PT
"Not only is the emperor not wearing any clothes, there’s no emperor. "

Isaiah 61:10
I will rejoice greatly in the Lord,
My soul will exult in my God;
For He has clothed me with garments of salvation,
He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness,
As a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,
And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

...very stylish!
PSP also PP

Trad climber
Berkeley
Sep 28, 2016 - 11:56am PT
John you should write for monty python! You are falling back to only one or the other POV. Both can be held. Just no attachment to name and from and no attachment to emptiness. easy to say harder to do.

The Heart sutra is all about this point.

http://www.openbuddha.com/2011/07/04/the-heart-sutra-commentary-by-zen-master-seung-sahn/
jgill

Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
Sep 28, 2016 - 02:57pm PT
John you should write for monty python!

Thank you, Paul. I would if I could.



(However, I imagine that any quest to avoid habituation would have pitfalls)

healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Sep 28, 2016 - 08:37pm PT
I don't know Mike, you and Dingus have more in common than almost anyone else here - you the postmodernist and Dingus basically views the world from an ambiguous grey fog at the summit of every conceivable bell curve - all positions down from that uncertain peak are extremist and committing. It's all about a middle ground where sacred cows of all stripes are gored on the spot without exception. You just couch it better, but then eschewing such wordsmithing is indicative of what he's basically about and where he's coming from.
i-b-goB

Social climber
Wise Acres
Sep 28, 2016 - 08:40pm PT
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Sep 29, 2016 - 08:01am PT
For anyone interested, Sean Carroll (The Big Picture) gives the clearest model, otherwise thinking, on so-called "freewill" in simple straight-forward terms as anyone of late.

BASE should check it out. Read it. Perhaps twice. 😉
PSP also PP

Trad climber
Berkeley
Sep 30, 2016 - 03:57pm PT
An excerpt from the article email address below. May shed some light on emptiness and MikeL's posts.

"From an ordinary Buddhist point of view we could even say that the Heart Sutra is not only crazy, but it is iconoclastic or even heretical. Many people have complained about the Prajnaparamita Sutras because they also trash all the hallmarks of Buddhism itself, such as the four noble truths, the Buddhist path, and nirvana. These sutras not only say that our ordinary thoughts, emotions, and perceptions are invalid and that they do not really exist as they seem to, but that the same goes for all the concepts and frameworks of philosophical schools—non- Buddhist schools, Buddhist schools, and even the Mahayana, the tradition to which the Prajnaparamita Sutras belong. Is there any other spiritual tradition that says, “Everything that we teach, just forget about it”?"






http://www.lionsroar.com/the-heart-sutra-will-change-you-forever/

Wayno

Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
Sep 30, 2016 - 05:05pm PT
“Everything that we teach, just forget about it”?"

Even the Heart Sutra itself? Wow, that was easy. I feel all light and stuff.
the Fet

climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
Sep 30, 2016 - 05:20pm PT
The curse of man. Trying to find meaning where there is none to be found.

I've had much more success contemplating the purpose of life.
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Sep 30, 2016 - 06:37pm PT
“Everything that we teach, just forget about it.”


Who is the we that is referred to, here?

What do you think of simplifying the process and not learning anything to begin with?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Molaison
MikeL

Social climber
Southern Arizona
Oct 1, 2016 - 07:55am PT
PSP, I especially liked the end of your article referring to it as the “heart attack sutra.”


When I no longer see “things” so concretely or seriously, I no longer become wedded to “things.” I start to see, hear, taste, touch, think, feel as textures, blotches, colors, energies, fuzziness that are fleeting. I thought my visual world was made up of distinct lines, boundaries, definitive images and patterns that repeated themselves (implying the permanence of things.) Today I’m seeing maybe more “artistically.” A neon sign for a restaurant (“Open”), a blank wall that’s been stucco’ed, a soup can, an infant’s scribbling with crayon, or notice the arcs of billowing clouds, . . . these “things” are freeform energies. “Art” is everywhere in everything.

I’ve also noticed that the process of many great artists’ expressions of creativity and imagination often seems to make them squirrel’ly, dysfunctional, depressed, neurotic, psychotic, often addicted to substances, damaged—not what we would typically consider exactly sane, normal, or regular. Why is that? Is that “the dark side” of consciousness, of creativity, imagination, awareness; or does it simply signal the meaninglessness of normalcy? “Mind” is central to all of these musings for me.

“Form as empty, and emptiness as form” is taking on some new meanings for me recently other than simply “one cannot say what anything is.” Mind is not just unknown and indescribable analytically.
Ward Trotter

Trad climber
Oct 1, 2016 - 10:23am PT
I’ve also noticed that the process of many great artists’ expressions of creativity and imagination often seems to make them squirrel’ly, dysfunctional, depressed, neurotic, psychotic, often addicted to substances, damaged—not what we would typically consider exactly sane, normal, or regular. Why is that? Is that “the dark side” of consciousness, of creativity, imagination, awareness; or does it simply signal the meaninglessness of normalcy? “Mind” is central to all of these musings for me.

The negative things you've mentioned are not the direct result of creativity and self-expression per se.
In Mason Curry's book Daily Rituals in which the general habits of over a hundred artist,writers, notable intellectuals ,scientist,etc., over the last 200 years, reveals to my way of thinking some rather obvious things. Although Curry draws no conclusions of this sort in his book ,its clear to me that many modern artists live lives somewhat disconnected from nature, in many cases radically so.

Highly creative artists of the period before the start of the twentieth century usually were not night owls , to pick just one daily habit; leading lives in which they did some of their best work in the early morning. Many of them were inveterate walkers like Beethoven or Erik Satie. Satie might walk up to 10 miles or more a day. The impressionist painters spent hours in their gardens and countrysides.

Of course these lifestyles did not inoculate them from suffering and misfortune, but it provided the physical framework for many of the greatest works of art (their misfortune in earlier times usually revolved around the unwillingness of the social order to adequately support ther craft) I tend to draw a direct line from such strong underlying elements in their lives rather than an inescapable condition of mandatory suffering and romantic depression often proffered. Suffering nearly always tells me that something is wrong in the person's environment -- the choices that individuals makes being paramount, whether artists or car mechanics.

The brilliant 20th century pianist, Glenn Gould, illustrates my point like no other. Gould lived in urban Canada, a region of lower solar yield, yet he unknowingly adopted an almost strictly night owl existence, actually growing to loathe the sun, never going out before the late afternoon if he could avoid it, and scheduling recording sessions in the wee hours only.
All this suffering had the predictable result of rendering Gould a prescription drug hypochondriac, beset by numerous ailments, a bizarre eccentric with self-destructive tendencies galore.

Gould's once stellar performing career was over by the age of 30 and he died 2 days after his 50th birthday.

jgill

Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
Oct 1, 2016 - 01:50pm PT
. . . leading lives in which they did some of their best work in the early morning

For those painters this meant trying to capture the early morning light. Nowadays that may not be so important.
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Oct 1, 2016 - 04:59pm PT
yet he unknowingly adopted an almost strictly night owl existence


How could this happen unknowingly?


I have heard night shift work called The New Frontier. Those, like myself, who worked the night shift, had to make our own rules, like John Wayne, when there was no sheriff to impose a rule of law.



http://www.jstor.org/stable/2094758?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents



Night is the new frontier.
Ward Trotter

Trad climber
Oct 1, 2016 - 05:54pm PT
Gould lived in urban Canada, a region of lower solar yield, yet he unknowingly adopted an almost strictly night owl

Read the entire sentence. He "unknowingly" exacerbated his disconnected state by being unaware of the fact that in an environment of low solar yield he already had one strike against him.

those painters this meant trying to capture the early morning light. Nowadays that may not be so important.

Not just painters but scores of writers, musicians, and other creatives, who discovered their optimal circadian functioning. Unknowingly.
Hemingways son ,Gregory, reported his father would drink prodigious amounts of alcohol from the early afternoon ,carousing and fighting onwards until the wee hours, at which time he would collapse for 2 hrs of sleep only to arise at the break of dawn to put in 3-4 hours of work in on The Old Man And The Sea.

Van Gogh moved to the south of France and commenced an incredibly productive period because he was outside early in the sun all day . Alas it was a bit too late in his life as regards his mental condition, perhaps a legacy from his formative years in Northern Europe.
He died by his own hand at age 37.

Nowadays that may not be so important.

Yes, you're making my point for me.

Toulose-Lautrec was one painter who hardly ever ventured outside, electing to spend his almost exclusively night time existence indoors in bars, theaters,and brothels.
He died at the age of 36. His death was attributed to the effects of inbreeding in his family line.
Methinks there were more important epigenetic factors at work, although his constitution played an underlying role of course.
Familial inbreeding versus chronically low Vit. D production. I'll go with the low D on Lautrec.
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