Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Apr 24, 2015 - 10:00pm PT
|
Sullly, if you read this can you come up with a figure from literature who is comparable to Mr. Werner Duck?
|
|
paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
|
|
|
Apr 24, 2015 - 11:46pm PT
|
Hey that's interesting... that science folks think Groucho Marx is a literary character.
I nominate Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield... didn't he say literary figure?
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
Apr 25, 2015 - 07:27am PT
|
the mind evolved the capacity to grok symbology (language) because it improved survivability. that talent has been recently repurposed to create the modern world.
bidness as usual, evolutionarily speaking.
Largo, you gettin kinky on me?
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Apr 25, 2015 - 11:01am PT
|
Hey that's interesting... that science folks think Groucho Marx is a literary character.
For the purposes of this thread he is as half the audience can't distinguish fiction from non-fiction or imagination from reality, falling back to TV seemed a credible option.
And, for Werner as a long-time Yosar member, every day is a veritable "You bet your life" show. And we don't even need to go into his duck popping off here all the time.
But, if you must be literal, then I would have to say Oskar of Gunter Grass' Tin Drum.
Oskar: There was once a credulous people... who believed in Santa Claus.
That, and the fact Oskar and Werner choose to keep to similar confines (though Werner beats a Kanjira).
|
|
paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
|
|
|
Apr 25, 2015 - 11:53am PT
|
Werner could easily fit into any Oscar Wilde play as well.
No doubt he's Earnest.
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
Apr 25, 2015 - 01:13pm PT
|
grouchoz right on - a clown often depicted as a duck.
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
Apr 25, 2015 - 01:56pm PT
|
my Children.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 25, 2015 - 02:08pm PT
|
Sez Dingus: No werner you have not been paying attention. This whole discussion was started by Largo making grand pronouncements about the fundamental nature of physics.
Not remotely so. The whole discussion originally came from realizing that the objective and subjective realms required specific modes of inquiry that were mutualy exclusive but which had some overlap - though no body is quite sure where and how much and so forth. Fundamentalists from both camps have often claimed that knowing belings tho ther camp alone - the quantifiers, and the transcendentalists. I have advocated what the Suffis call the middle-way, appreciating full well the limititations of both measuring and open focus empirical study.
Of course you are going to run into the Dingus' who can't really grasp what is being said and try and "pork the football," so to speak, and this always involves conflating many thing into a kind of knuckleheaded pie we can all get hold of with our sense organs. But what is Dingus holding onto so fiercely?
The belief that stuff and every phenomonon has a physical extgent or exists as a physical thing. When we point out that which has no mass or physical extent he simply shifts to the effects without pausing to ask WHAT it is that is rendering the measurable effect. That is, if for a moment we removed the physical efect, WHAT is there that has no mass?
Of course there are those like John G. who claim that asking such qustions (for reasons only he can answer are by his definition "religiously inspired") are not useful because they do not lead to an understanding of what a phenomenon DOES. This is to be entirely beholded to the DO school, and rightly so since science is rarely about asking what reality IS, but what are the mechanical aspects that we can measure. When we move ino the subjecive, the human "being" or pure experiential part is quite naturally not served by measuring so a fundamentalst measurer will simply yell to quick looking and to get back to calculating, or will write off the whole experiential realm as fruitless for the lack of numbers forthcoming.
Meanwhile Dingus will keep shouting that phenomnon with no mass and no material and no "body" is in fact a "thing" just as a football is a thing because we can derive measurements - but from WHAT, exactly, do such measurements arise? What IS it?
JL
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 25, 2015 - 02:21pm PT
|
Healyje said:
Well, by that definition one could certainly state that, when we meditate, one can pigeonhole what is experienced into thoughts, the "effects" of things including bodily sensations, and no-thing else. The challenge then remains the same sort of 'framing' question Paul is asking relative to order before the beginning of material existence: what is the experience / perception after shutting down discursive thought and just hanging out in that 'being' state?
--
Where I would have you focus is on the "WHAT (content) is experienced" part that you refer to in the above graph. While you present an elegant explanation on why one should "cowboy" your experiential path, and that other following the normal mode of study involving teachers, experts, empirically tested techniques and so forth are by nature "folowers" too fearful to go it alone, your "what is experienced" betrays that you are still focused on content, as opposed to probing into the fundamental narture of that which experiences.
This is the hardest thing to penetrate and get past for someone still fixated on the "what," the stuff, the content, the experience/perception of some mysterious, inpenetrable stuff or mysterious event horizon "out there" that we can't ever get at cha cha cha.
But you're still missing the mark there, Healje. As mentioned before, I'm not sayhing you are doing it "wrong," rather you and not doing it at all. That is not to say you are doing nothing worthwhile and gratifying with your isolation tanks and cowboy meditations, but it is not what I am driving at whatsoever.
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Apr 25, 2015 - 02:53pm PT
|
Where I would have you focus is on the "WHAT (content) is experienced" part that you refer to in the above graph. Your injection of 'content', while ably setting the stage for your strawman to follow, is entirely wrong.
While you present an elegant explanation on why one should "cowboy" your experiential path, and that other following the normal mode of study involving teachers, experts, empirically tested techniques and so forth are by nature "folowers" too fearful to go it alone, your "what is experienced" betrays that you are still focused on content, as opposed to probing into the fundamental narture of that which experiences. Fear is certainly one reason, other possible reasons are a socialization where a person feels the institutional approach is for them, and yet another is a 'buying into' the all the cultural trappings and appearances of the form.
This is the hardest thing to penetrate and get past for someone still fixated on the "what," the stuff, the content, the experience/perception of some mysterious, inpenetrable stuff or mysterious event horizon "out there" that we can't ever get at cha cha cha. Again, the "what" is your fixation and strawman, not mine.
But you're still missing the mark there, Healje. As mentioned before, I'm not sayhing you are doing it "wrong," rather you are not doing it at all. That is not to say you are doing nothing worthwhile and gratifying with your isolation tanks and cowboy meditations, but it is not what I am driving at whatsoever. Amusing, but again, entirely mistaken. You seem incapable of getting past tilting at your own strawmen which have no real applicability here. And really, when you say:
...normal mode of study involving teachers, experts, empirically tested techniques...
It implies there exist words which teach, inform, and provide insight - how is that possible when you yourself are so unable to provide any here? How is it a Zen tradition survives at all?
...open focus empirical study... Now there is an idea - but let me guess, you can't state any thing or no-thing about said study what with there being no communicable syllabus or agenda and nothing to "report back" (even though Amazon Books will sell you endless words about Open Focus and Zen meditations).
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
|
|
|
Apr 25, 2015 - 04:19pm PT
|
healeyje-
I'm curious about your experience in the deprivation tanks. I've read that almost everyone begins "halucinating" a few hours after being introduced to one. Of course one person's hallucination is another one's unconscious imagry. I'm wondering if you or anyone you knew ever got past the imagry, and if so what was the next stage?
|
|
Lynne Leichtfuss
Trad climber
Will know soon
|
|
|
Apr 25, 2015 - 06:29pm PT
|
I've read a bit of this thread off and on, can't believe how many posts it has. I guess that makes it worthy. But as to points of knowledge and learning, a few have made me really think about the posters ideas, but overall I'm going with William Shakespeare "much ado about nothing" or at least not much. Jess sayin'. :)
Edit: But I could be considered shallow, who knows? Only the shadow.....
|
|
cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
|
|
|
Apr 25, 2015 - 06:54pm PT
|
Yep, except when you Do The Work™ you get to call it "Not-Much."
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Apr 25, 2015 - 07:10pm PT
|
So much of my muchness I never really had to lose in the first place. And now to be told I never really had it to begin with and have been looking for it in all the wrong ways and places. Well, I say! I simply must get an Oraculum and a wabbit as I shall never find my way on my own!
And when the day comes that I do find my muchness I shall once again futterwackzen...vigorously.
|
|
BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
|
|
|
Apr 25, 2015 - 08:56pm PT
|
“The art of ship building is not in the wood.”
Can you be sure trees didnt have a dream to cross the Nile?
Or atleast a mathematical possibility.
|
|
BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
|
|
|
Apr 25, 2015 - 10:52pm PT
|
My guess would be both matter and physical law came into existence simultaneously. But at the point of origin of the universe (if it does indeed have an origin) time and space may have appeared but with the chronology strangely distorted and incomprehensible now.
I'm trying to break that down.. Firstly, without matter, seems like physical law cant happen?
(as much as I want to believe law preempted matter). Then, for physical laws to work on matter mustingly shouldn't there already be space? Otherwise, earth created all the spaces inside ElCapitan.
Thirdly, doesn't 1+1=2 constitute a time continuum? Another words, math takes time. But at the same time requiring less space?
Under that logic time should be a prerequisite for mathematics.
Maybe our father who art in heaven is a big clock?
What's a more loving gesture than the offer of more time.
Edit: other than to a prisoner ofcourse.
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
Apr 26, 2015 - 07:21am PT
|
try learning some sometime
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Apr 26, 2015 - 08:25pm PT
|
Under that logic time should be a prerequisite for mathematics
Well, doing math can sure absorb a lot of time. Try reading an advanced math text. Literature people enjoy a delightful passage rolling through the mind, re-reading and savoring. Math people mull over a paragraph or even a word, repeatedly reading the same passage, hoping for a moment of illumination.
Extrapolation back to the origins of the universe leads to a singularity, an infinite density. I can mimic this in a simple BASIC program by sending the leading point of a generated contour closer and closer to zero in the exp(1/z) vector field. Bad things happen and I get error messages.
Trying to order the births of time, space, mathematics, etc. at the singularity is highly speculative. Relax and have a beer.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
|
|
|
Apr 26, 2015 - 11:01pm PT
|
Tvash”: the universe is more of a 'how' kind of place. It's a big machine.
How in the heck could you know that?
Moose: If so, you are a phenomenon, . . . .
Truer words could not have been spoken. . . . and now what?
Jgill: what is energy? (JL). . . . A good question, but unproductive. Better questions humans can come to grips with, How does it behave, What are its effects and measurable properties?
Good lord, can you hear yourself? If you can’t say what a thing is, how is it that you can properly describe what IT does and how to measure it? How in the hell can you know what the heck you are talking about?
Sigh . . . Werner continues to get it right, IMO. 4/24 at 2:46 pm.
Healyje: If his [Largo’s] Zen masters can find the words for the experience, journey and exploration then I can only assume it's either a matter of poor training or unwillingness that he cannot.
How can you say such things? Surely you are not this ignorant or without imaginative intellect. You’re arguing that nothing exists which cannot be articulated and clarified. You must have the omniscience of a God.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!