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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Aug 22, 2018 - 11:25am PT
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Thanks, PSP.
"Through spiritual practice we can go beyond our egoistic point of view. We can touch the core of time, see the whole world in a moment, and understand time in deep relationship with all beings."
It would be interesting to see a comparison of this Zen perspective to Bergson's notion of time. I suspect there is some difference in that Zen seems to veer toward scientific objectivity in passages like this:
"Dogen Zenji said that most people are not able to acquire the way-seeking mind of spiritual awareness without deeply understanding that a day consists of 6,400,099,180 moments. This is a wonderful number. I don’t know where Dogen found this number, but saying that there are 6,400,099,180 moments in a day is not talking about a mysterious idea; it is talking about something real. A moment is called ksana in Sanskrit. Sometimes we say that one finger snap has sixty moments, so one finger snap equals sixty ksana. A Buddhist dictionary may say that a moment equals one seventy-fifth of a second. According to the Abhidharma scriptures, a moment consists of sixty-five instants."
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 22, 2018 - 11:57am PT
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John, in what sense, to you, is time a realm?
In the math I used to do back in the bronze age, time was the seqence of events. In physics, I'm told that time is a measurement.
Neither seem to infer a domain, sphere, area, field, etc.
In both cases, note that "time" refers to something else.
In certain mental fitness practices, you focus on some phenomenon in and of itself, with no reference to someting else. In every case the point of focus is always found to be empty, with no stand alone or independent existence.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Aug 22, 2018 - 12:16pm PT
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you focus on some phenomenon in and of itself, with no reference to someting else. In every case the point of focus is always found to be empty, with no stand alone or independent existence.
Unsurprising. You get that result by definition alone. What could the point of focus be independent of, if you exclude reference to everything else?
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 22, 2018 - 03:34pm PT
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you focus on some phenomenon in and of itself, with no reference to something else.
In every case the point of focus is always found to be empty, with no stand alone or independent existence.
It's like a koan and you'll have no idea what he means because you haven't done any of the work.
Just guessing, mental speculation, academics and theories is all you have.
They are all ultimately useless to understand reality itself.
Those that have done the real work can immediately understand ......
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Aug 22, 2018 - 04:08pm PT
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Hey, thanks for that last post, Jan! I mostly post extemporaneously (it's my MO). It's nice to have one's instincts be not dismissed by a SME.
Btw, for all of this talk of work, you seem to be coasting, IMO, WB.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Aug 22, 2018 - 05:16pm PT
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I just gots to get this out -- more tree logic. I don't know how much you got from my dependency tree screenshot. Here's the main point. Each of us, as well as all organisms that are born, can be represented as nodes on a "tree-like" (mental) structure. The two lines going from your parents' nodes to you can be considered as vectors (they have a direction; your parents to you). If you have children, there will be vectors from both you and your spouse to each of your children. So, what we have here are evolutionary nodes and vectors. There is a direction. It is dictated by time.
Starting at any arbitrary node, EVERY node will be able to follow a continuous path backward from node to vector to node to beginning of the tree of life (more or less:)). Going forward, on the other hand, any arbitrary node may or may not continue to the present. Many "branches" die out (for example, all of our hominid cousins, not to mention the trilobites and graptolites). Starting at a node (e.g., me), the looking backward tree is what I would call a source tree. The looking forward tree is what I would call a dependency tree. The hemoglobin molecule must have a whopping dependency tree (me, not so much).
This doesn't exactly explain mind, but it speaks to a logical architecture for constraining likely solutions, IMO.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Aug 22, 2018 - 05:24pm PT
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A realm, an expanse over which a monarch rules. The expanse is reality itself and the monarch is the defining quality of time, change. In math, time is a variable in the complex plane, normally a positive real quantity.
This takes us back to Peter Lynds and his treatise on time, which you were going to unpack a couple of months ago. Not a big deal.
How does time in Zen compare to Bergson's perception of time? Does no-thingness exist in time? Or does time "cease" in that mental state? Can you actually experience empty awareness without moving through time?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Aug 22, 2018 - 09:15pm PT
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Just guessing, mental speculation, academics and theories is all you have.
They are all ultimately useless to understand reality itself.
I don't even understand a tree, forget reality itself.
I'm glad to hear that someone has done the real work, though.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 23, 2018 - 08:05am PT
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why does there have to be a "mind" to appreciate Beethoven...
Easy to find out. Just ask something that doesn't have a mind and have it break down the shades and nuances of its appreciation of, say, Beetohoven's Symphony No. 7, Op. 92. Just have it riff on the first movement. That's plenty.
Might I sugest running the question by Blue Gene/Q "Mira," IBM's 10 peta-flop computer, four times faster that the Tianhe-1A. Quite naturally we're not interestedin any technical data per Symphony No. 7 - that's another kind of question altogether.
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Trump
climber
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Aug 23, 2018 - 08:23am PT
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In every case the point of focus is always found to be empty, with no stand alone or independent existence.
It’s a kind of a test to determine whether or not you’re doing it right. If this is the result you get when you do it, then you’re doing it right, and you’re part of the intelligent class. Like me.
No I here in my thinking processes - just life confirming itself (in my thinking processes). Yea me/life! It beats the alternative.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Aug 23, 2018 - 08:32am PT
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Don Paul: Increased population density led to more need to deal with other people in every way, as the TED talk posted a few days ago mentioned, the more complex the environment, the smarter you have to be to survive it.
Unbounded speculation. Think about it. How could a population density, per se, have an impact at the level you’re speculating? Are we talking about 10 people per 100 square miles, or 10 people per square mile? Real population density can’t start to have a significant and systematic impact until people’s form into societies (not tribes) and those social structures that underlie them start to show differentiation and complexity. In other words, when people are “dealing” with many other people, you have the organization of a society. Population growth as you seem to suggest must lead to social structuring beyond simply tribal organizations (let’s say, under 25 people). The practices and consciousness of primitive social structures (religion, roles, strength of social bonds, etc.) have been argued to be *very* different than early society structures. (Now add in special or unique contextual differences, and things get very specific and unique.)
There is a tendency to see cultural evolutions monolithically. It’s my reading that sociologists and anthropologists left that position many years ago. Cultures are far more complex and contextually unique than that.
Second, I don’t know what TED talk you watched, but if that’s what the fellow or woman said (the more complex the environment, the smarter you have to be to survive in it) is just wrong (ala, the literature). What the speaker or presenter might have been thinking about is a theory called, “requisite variety.” That theory says that environmental “fittedness” (sorry about mangling language) requires that an organism is equally complex as the environment to survive. It’s a speculation to say that to survive one must be “smarter.” If one faces a stable environment, then one might be able to organize oneself to perfectly suit that environment. When one faces a highly dynamically changing environment, one might instead emphasize more experimentation or mutations or adaptability, none of which are necessarily the result of being “smart”—whatever that really refers to.
BTW, these considerations about requisite variety, adaptability, etc. have been discussed at great length in business strategy with regards to choosing products to suit market segmentations. Staid industries would exhibit tightly structured (“ossified”) organizations that could not respond to innovative market incursions or the emergence of new market spaces: the automotive industry, the steel industry, movie rental industry, etc. As it turned out, great success was the best predictor of failure.
The Duck rules!
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 23, 2018 - 08:42am PT
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So I had that faint ringing in the ears the other day like every so often I do. And then after drawing my attention and after a few seconds it went away.
When this occurs, esp with my background in systems science, neuro and EE, I'm struck by the particular perception - that being more or less the same sensation/perception of a pure audio sinusoid, perhaps around 200 to 1,000 Hz.
What in particular struck me the other day though after experiencing this ringing - and I've actually had this same thought before - was just how much more "believable" or "understandable" or "grok-able" this simple perception (simple waveform if seen on an oscilloscope) was - as compared to anything way more complex (e.g., visually, a gorgeous landscape rich in details) - as resulting from brain circuitry.
We don't know how brain circuitry does it - how it generates the sensation/perception/feeling of a simple, faint, fleeting 400 hz sinusoid, for e.g.; but if it's ever figured out, I bet it'll be deemed, perhaps ultimately shown, to be among the basic building blocks (pixels) to our much more encompassing mega-polymeric, mega-multifarious "mind."
...
We might call this basic building block... responsible for linking circuit element (hardware) to sensation (qualia)... a phreneme.
From the Gr: phren, mind + eme, part
So our minds, in all their exquisite glory, esp regarding that most mysterious qualia (from the color red to the sounds of Pink Floyd), might be conceived as a billion-times-over buildup of these simple phrenemes.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 23, 2018 - 08:42am PT
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It’s a kind of a test to determine whether or not you’re doing it right.
In my experience this is the natural conclusion of NOT doing. It's not an intelligence test about external objects, phenomenon, or information for which one may be right or wrong, though I can understand your impulse to consider it in those terms.
But why take my word for it. I didn't take anyone else's word on it, nor did Mike, PPsP or anyone else I know who has shown interest in mind itself.
If you try it on for size and find some phenomenon, force, realm, etc. that DOES stand alone, independent of mind, matter and void, clue us in on what "that" might be, what fundamental stuff it is "made" out of. What it IS.
And John, what "mental state" are you totally unable to observe or be aware of, no matter how marginally? True, the consciousness process in an on-going adventure of becoming aware of what is going on per the content and architecture of mind, and we never get to the end, where the discoveries are over. But each step we become aware of what we were blind to before, including "states." Throughout we don't actually have "expanded awareness," rather our conscious recognition is what expands.
Our awareness doesn't change - to use a poor metaphor - anymore than light changes the more objects we place befor it. That's been my experience, anyhow.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Aug 23, 2018 - 10:38am PT
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find some phenomenon, force, realm, etc. that DOES stand alone, independent of mind, matter and void
Be careful now. Are you sure you there isn't anything else the phenomenon, force, realm, etc., must stand alone from?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 23, 2018 - 02:56pm PT
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MH2, your bias is showing - to simply flip any assertion and parry with the opposite.
Do you doubt that yours is actually an epistemic question, betrayed by the word "know?"
What criteria would meet "knowing" in this regards, if not the proof required to wrangle external objects, forces, phenomenon, etc.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Aug 23, 2018 - 03:15pm PT
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"And John, what "mental state" are you totally unable to observe or be aware of, no matter how marginally?"
Your ability to talk about empty awareness proves that the mental state in which that occurs is one you are aware of. As are all. If you recoil from the expression mental state, then perhaps the Buddhist enlightenment might be more appropriate, keeping in mind that enlightenment requires consciousness of some sort, even without the unifying structure "I".
Bergson vs Zen re: time?
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Aug 23, 2018 - 05:50pm PT
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Largo starts at Largo. That is just the wrong starting point. Science starts at agreed-upon facts by a body of humans (scientists and other science-knowledgeable humans). Starting point is everything.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 23, 2018 - 07:08pm PT
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If you try it on for size and find some phenomenon, force, realm, etc. that DOES stand alone, independent of mind, matter and void, clue us in on what "that" might be, what fundamental stuff it is "made" out of. What it IS.
I guess it's an interesting question: "what IS" anything?
Ultimately we find that we can't answer that question for anything.
Why would highly subjective meditative introspection lead to any different result than intensely objective scientific experimentation?
However, while we don't know what an electron IS, we can make them dance to create these screens we are reading and writing...
One wonders then whether the OP question is something that was worth 21865 (and counting) posts to discuss.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 23, 2018 - 08:09pm PT
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What is color? There are red trucks and red balls, but where is "red" in your head? Part 2 of the informative, insightful Michael Shermer Colin Mcginn dialog...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLsPq11QkDQ
The power of youtube, huh?!
What is it like to be a human?
https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/what-is-it-like-to-be-a-human/
...
re: Leibniz Gap vis Leibniz Mill
"It must be confessed, moreover, that perception, and that which depends on it, are inexplicable by mechanical causes, that is, by figures and motions, And, supposing that there were a mechanism so constructed as to think, feel and have perception, we might enter it as into a mill. And this granted, we should only find on visiting it, pieces which push one against another, but never anything by which to explain a perception. This must be sought, therefore, in the simple substance, and not in the composite or in the machine." -GL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz%27s_gap
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Aug 23, 2018 - 08:10pm PT
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Do you doubt that yours is actually an epistemic question, betrayed by the word "know?"
I doubt that you read the question correctly, since the word 'know' does not appear.
JL,
Don't take me too seriously and then we are even.
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