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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Something else than? Something that does not come from the physical world?
Look at the above closely. It assumes that reductionism stops with the almighty “physical,” that is, all people, places, things and phenomenon arise from or are created by antecedent physical things, however big or small. But there are problems with this. First, why stop reducing when you get down to small bits of matter that underscore the physical world as perceived by our senses. Where, exactly, did this matter come from? What is matter reducible down to?
What’s more, what, exactly, is this almighty matter?
In fact, “matter" is an ill-defined concept. In general usage, matter is a generic term for "stuff," and what's that? Everything with mass? Good luck with that one. As we’ve seen, photons aren't matter. You begin to see the problem here?
"Matter," in the end, is just an intuitive concept with no objective meaning and not a quantity we can measure. We can measure proprieties of matter, like gravitational pull, etc., but not "matter" itself, because "matter" isn't a quality or quantity that can objectively be said to be measurable.
Also, to the discursive mind, all phenomenon has to "come from" or be sourced from some other thing or stuff or (fill in the blank). What if this too is entirely wrong, that there are fundamentals that were never created...
JL
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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And to say you need a teacher or even that a teacher is highly advised isn't much better. There's plenty of folks who've found their own way on their own.
Now Largo may be speaking of group synergies and energies, which are fantastic, but those meditative experiences are quite different from those which you can ultimately only have by and through yourself.
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This is the old "cowboy" thinking, that "I don't need no stinking teacher." And that anything I can learn with a teacher I can do on my own.
This is the most certain indicator of gross ignorance per the experiential adventures, that one can simply invent their own practice and viola, they wrangle down the beast.
Of course nothing in the real world works like this. Everyone seeks instruction per difficult tasks and the better the instruction, the faster you mature.
Imagine learning how to climb with no gear and no teachers or people to watch and trying to do it all on your own.
You learn the basics in a group and then foray out into solo practice. When I say, "experiences worth having" I am talking to those who have never had the opportunity to study in a normal educational manner with a class and an acknowledged expert teacher and so forth in the way we learn any difficult subject.
JL
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Of course nothing in the real world works like this. Everyone seeks instruction per difficult tasks and the better the instruction, the faster you mature.
Well, that's debatable.
Got a name for Da Vinci's tutor?
Edison's successes weren't due to any teacher we can identify.
Steve Jobs got a lot of help from a prof I know at Reed College on fonts ( the guy is a Luddite and doesn't even do email) but otherwise, Jobs was a college dropout. I'll argue in some fields instruction is a hindrance.
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WBraun
climber
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Got a name for Da Vinci's tutor?
Disciplic succession.
If one only just relies on ones five senses one will never see how knowledge is always revealed according to time and circumstance ....
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Or...
If you live to be 100K years old, you will learn everything.
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WBraun
climber
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428,000 years to go and people will live to 100,000 years again .......
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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My point per instruction is if you looked at 100 acknowledged experts in any field requiring focused study, the vast majority would have spent time around teachers. Who out there doubts this is the normal way of things. DiVinci was surrounded by art his whole life. I would bet good money that somewhere at some time, other artists passed on little technical tips on what materials to use and how to mix the paint and so forth. In fact, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter Andrea del Verrocchio.
Arguing to eschew teachers and instruction is not a practice that generally will get you taken seriously in today's world of specialization. Nobody taught DiVinci his basic talent, but using the example of a genius to, say, skip college and to bone up on brain surgery on your own, won't get you far. There is a reason they award degrees - but yes, we can certainly learn a lot solo.
JL
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Also, to the discursive mind, all phenomenon has to "come from" or be sourced from some other thing or stuff or (fill in the blank). What if this too is entirely wrong, that there are fundamentals that were never created...
Yes. What if? It is good to question but where is your answer?
Science has good evidence of the origin of all matter and energy but sources "all phenomena" in only a general way and long ago discovered the impossibility of exact knowledge of what individual small bits of matter are going to do.
Your stated complete lack of interest in what you called the technical aspects of math and physics leaves you in a poor position to question physics, JL.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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This is the old "cowboy" thinking, that "I don't need no stinking teacher." And that anything I can learn with a teacher I can do on my own.
This is the most certain indicator of gross ignorance per the experiential adventures, that one can simply invent their own practice and viola, they wrangle down the beast.
Of course nothing in the real world works like this. Everyone seeks instruction per difficult tasks and the better the instruction, the faster you mature.
Imagine learning how to climb with no gear and no teachers or people to watch and trying to do it all on your own.
You learn the basics in a group and then foray out into solo practice. When I say, "experiences worth having" I am talking to those who have never had the opportunity to study in a normal educational manner with a class and an acknowledged expert teacher and so forth in the way we learn any difficult subject.
Dogmatic claptrap, start to finish. Oh, and I was climbing way before I ever met a climber, in fact, I met my first climber on the rock climbing and the small clutch of us did in fact teach ourselves.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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What is matter reducible down to? (JL)
We all know the answer to this, teacher! Now, in unison class, . . .
(I was pretty much self-taught as a climber, also)
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WBraun
climber
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No you weren't.
Everyone has a teacher in some form or other besides their own self.
There is absolutely no living entity besides God himself who is absolutely completely independent.
Thus there is absolutely no one who's ever been self taught.
All knowledge is eternally already there .......
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Healje said"Dogmatic claptrap, start to finish. Oh, and I was climbing way before I ever met a climber, in fact, I met my first climber on the rock climbing and the small clutch of us did in fact teach ourselves."
You know how to climb by the time your 1 yr old. Most climbs in the gym can be done by 7 yr olds with very little work.
Meditation is not self evident especially if the practitioner thinks it is a self improvement method. It can be used for self improvement but it will have very limited value.
My guess is if you tried to learn meditation by yourself a person would have a reason for doing that (usually to escape suffering). I have a friend who I rarely see but the last time I saw him he announced to me that he meditates everyday now. so I asked what he does and he says he completely "blanks everything out" for 20 minutes and he feels great afterword. I told him he might want to go to a teacher but he had no interest in a teacher . I have no idea why he thinks that is meditation?
What he is doing is pretty absurd ; but if he keeps sitting the landscape will change. He is closing down rather than opening up. But regardless of him.; if you like the path of teaching yourself meditation then that is your path.
From Werner's point of view you have endless life times to work it out; so no problem; you will eventually get it. IMO you only have one lifetime and a good teacher might save a lot of time ; he might even give you some climbing shoes instead of those rubber boots that are 3 sizes too big! But that analogy doesn't work because with the boots you are actually climbing where when you invent your own meditation practice who knows what you are doing?
These days with all the internet meditation instruction is much more accessible; but if it is self improvement oriented it is BS IMO. It is really about experiencing and working with dualism and that is much less obvious than learning to climb.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Dogmatic claptrap, start to finish. Oh, and I was climbing way before I ever met a climber, in fact, I met my first climber on the rock climbing and the small clutch of us did in fact teach ourselves.
This is pretty off topic but if the above is true then how do you explain the advances in difficulty with regard to climbing or any other sport. If you're watching someone with better skills, you're being taught... and this is true in any field. The world is a didactic environment in and of itself and humanity is a particularly receptive species.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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healyje: Dogmatic claptrap, start to finish.
That everyone relies on those who have gone before them--innumerably, ubiquitously, and rampantly--makes such assessments truly stupid.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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PSP also PP wrote about learning to meditate something that could be taken as "objectifying" meditation... though careful not to actually explicitly go there. I find it odd, and a bit of an affectation ("it can't be objectified!"). It would be nice for the meditators to drop this affectation entirely and just own up to it...
to wit: "What he is doing is pretty absurd..." which I largely agree, but it does bring up the point that there is a "right" way and a "wrong" way to meditate, and that the goals of the practice are important.
"IMO you only have one lifetime and a good teacher might save a lot of time..." seems to imply that there is something to learn, and that a teacher can help you learn it... the "it" here is meditation.
"...when you invent your own meditation practice who knows what you are doing?" well, only you know what you are doing, apparently (in Largo's universe) so in that sense, even when you are being "taught" you are teaching yourself (seems twisted, but that is the way the logic works).
Either there is something that you are learning to do, properly, applying techniques that are known to achieve "mastery" or you are figuring things out for yourself.
But certainly, the interesting part of this last statement is: "...who knows what you are doing?"
who indeed... when we get together as a group with our teacher, we reveal what we experience, and we compare experiences, and especially the teacher interprets our experiences, assessing where we are in our learning.
While the image painted can be one of "intellectual discussion" it need not be so, many things we learn are by watching and imitating, but the "teacher" is aware of what we are doing, and will offer corrections and advice.
The teacher knows what we are doing.
How can that be?
So far, Largo hasn't replied, I suspect it is because he has to invoke something that he doesn't want to... that there is something, which is so close to being "an object" that he it is uncomfortable to say it (given his banging about "no thing").
"No thing" is not describable... yet a teacher can walk you on a path all around it, and even evaluate whether or not you've achieved "the actual article"... And not only that, we learn that people who have taken this path to their practice, group practice with a teacher, might be skeptical of claims that someone has taken another path to their practice.
As Jan has pointed out, her teachers and her practice are quite different from other paths described here (or at least labeled here).
But once again, we are being taught "something," in this case a technique to achieve a particular "state."
We do this in a group, we do this with some demonstration of progress along a path, and an evaluation of a teacher, who also indicates when we've mastered the lessons.
This process is not "subjective" even if the difficulties of navigating a particular path might be due to our individual experiences. The very word we use to describe it, "path," invokes a strong, recognizable metaphor, as does the our characterization of it as "a practice."
Extending the practice metaphor, and tying in with PSP also PP's post above, good practice reenforces mastery, how do we learn how to practice? who evaluates our practice? and what is it that we are practicing to do?
The answer to these questions are not a mystery of our subjective experience, they are, for meditation, available in the historic literature to the very earliest times of history, and probably extend beyond that time, in oral tradition.
Aside from the tip-toeing around it, this is not "no thing," it is a "thing" and it has been for a long time.
If you see "no thing" walking down the path, kill it.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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I was just considering almost exactly what Ed just posted about objectivity/subjectivity and this Zen orthodoxy as presented here. He summed it up nicely, I think. I would only add that I think JL and PSP probably have had some profound experiences or revelations that they attribute to their Zen training and would perhaps like to share them without being pigeonholed into some kind of argumentative defense. I could also suggest that this was achieved not because of their training but in spite of it. Who can say especially in a subjective sense? I think the human desire to achieve such hallowed states of mind can get us to our goal through any number of disciplines, whether they are concretized or not, especially in our modern Information Age.
The time of priests, prophets, spiritual masters and channelers of messages, of all intermediates will disappear. Little by little more humans will seek their inner guidance and will thus find their path in an individual and independent way. These people will not feel the need any more to find their truths outside.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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If I remember correctly one of the first things the Buddha declared after achieving enlightenment was "This cannot be taught." Perhaps the step into enlightenment cannot be taught but the path that may or "may not" lead to it can be.
There is a parallel here in regard to the mind. The objective material of mind is elusive. Despite firing nerves and chemical compounds as gross comprehensible material their product, experience, remains specifically undefinable and incomprehensible. Where is the material stuff of the experience of taste?
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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When you become enlightened you realize we are all enlightened.
when you achieve mastery, you see we are all masters.
Before that, it does not make sense. Sense is the wall that separates us from that pure state of being.
Now i sound like the smoking duck. Put that in your pipe.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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^^^^
lol!
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Ed, I haven't responded because an old psychological law that came out of NLP says, "Never argue with a person stuck in a perspective." That person will not be receptive.
But here goes anyhow...
When we normally think of learning to "do" something, we imagine or actually start following a set of rules or instructions on exactly what and how we are to do what we are trying to do - in this case, we are trying to meditate "correctly."
Now no-mind meditation is actually the art of doing nothing, as I have said, but you can never start off there because the ego will always be casting about for some technique or thing to do and some goal to accomplish and so you will start efforting in that direction.
So during the initial stages of practice - and because our egos are constantly telling us what to do and so forth - we learn how to sit (upright, straight spine), learn how to relax and stretch out the breath, and to attach our attention to breathing or a mantra to get grounded and to anchor the attention onto something lest it gets shanghaied by the strongest thought, memory, etc in our awareness.
Slowly, you learn to detach from all content (ideas, feelings, sensations, insights, revelations, and internal urgings to do this or to concentrate on that, etc.) and whatever arises naturally is simply allowed to be there, without any interference or efforting to change it or hold onto it or anything at all. You simply are sitting there with your eyes open and soft focused and not "doing" anything. And, paradoxically, this requires all we have to stay in that non-place. If this were an easy practice we wouldn't need all the help and support and instruction and so forth.
This space of not-doing is the gateway beyond which the practice actually begins in earnest. You can certainly say that the process of learning to do nothing is a discursive or objective process but where it leads you is a threshold beyond which all labels and words and objectifications and evaluations fall away. And as mentioned, this is not the end game, but the start.
So you see it is not a matter of, "How do I do this correctly," when if you are trying or efforting or attempting to get anywhere or do anything or be a certain way you are not "doing it wrong," because "doing" is not the practice - right, wrong or otherwise. Being is the practice. Being and presence.
JL
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