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shadowplay


Registered: 05/15/10
Posts: 1,337
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Does reality exist? 1
#13256573 - 09/27/10 10:11 PM (13 years, 4 months ago) |
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Everyone seems to have a different idea of what reality is. But then some people say that reality is what you make it. I don't believe this. But at the same time, I have a pretty negative view of my reality, and what do ya know? My reality sucks. Is this because I think it sucks? Or is this why I think it sucks, becuase it really does suck? Discuss!!
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johnm214



Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 17,582
Loc: Americas
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: shadowplay]
#13256662 - 09/27/10 10:28 PM (13 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
shadowplay said: Everyone seems to have a different idea of what reality is. But then some people say that reality is what you make it. I don't believe this. But at the same time, I have a pretty negative view of my reality, and what do ya know? My reality sucks. Is this because I think it sucks? Or is this why I think it sucks, becuase it really does suck? Discuss!!
It seems a trivial thing to determine that reality exists. Are their things? Yep, so reality exists.
I don't understand your question as to your reality sucking. Of course you think it sucks because you've determined it sucks. The only other thing I could interpret this question to be is questioning whether you believe it sucks because its objective naturer is sucky, however; as these terms are wildly impercise and subjective and you've not defined them, and answer is not possible.
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g00ru
lit pants tit licker



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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: shadowplay]
#13256918 - 09/27/10 11:26 PM (13 years, 4 months ago) |
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It sucks because you think it sucks, imo. If your attention is always going towards sucky thoughts, then sucky things are more likely to manifest in your life.
And yes, reality does in fact exist, I feel confident in that much at least.
-------------------- check out my music! drowse in prison and your waking will be but loss
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circastes
Big Questions Small Head


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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: g00ru]
#13257027 - 09/28/10 12:00 AM (13 years, 4 months ago) |
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Reality is just the opposite of fantasy. It refers to things that happen when you're not reading a book. Sometimes these things are important, sometimes they are not, sometimes they are important to one person and not to another. But there is no special place you can go where you hit THE baseline and are suddenly 'in' reality. I repeat: THERE IS NO BASELINE! What you see is mostly what you're brain is doing. The rest is who knows what - scientists don't know, don't bother asking them. Particles? Waves? Well both are an invention of the apparatus you're using, and before that, are simply a model that behaves in a similar way to the phenomena observed, most of the time. We don't have answers, but what exactly is the problem? You're concerned about some concept called reality? Are you waiting for something to just slap you in the face and tell you to pay attention? Is that reality? Is there something out there floating in space called reality? That's starting to sound a bit like God. Is 'reality' just another name for the Christian God with brain damage such that he has no personality? A bunch of physical laws amounting to Nature by some horrific accident? Read Eddington, or Schroedinger, or pretty much anyone with a clue, and they'll tell you there are no laws but just models that work according to laws, which we use to manipulate physical matter and we get it right, but that doesn't mean the physical matter IS the model. What's left to call reality? Maybe you can think of some other things... fear? You can't show a person God, you can't show a person reality. Just like you can't show someone anything you're just thinking.
There's some kind of something that appears to be happening and may or may not disappear when we're not looking at it according to studies of 'physical matter', studies which were wrong about almost everything up until a hundred years ago, but now at least admit they're undecided.
I personally think it's up to us. Sure, we can't walk through walls, but what's important in life is our decision to make. We can even decide life isn't important and kill millions, if not ourselves. Is life shit? Maybe you just feel shit. Is life great? Maybe you just feel great.
But go ahead and worship Reality if you wish. Just remember all you're doing is clinging in a new, stealthy way.
-------------------- My solitude... My shield... My armour... TESTED WITH FULL FORCE
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totallymyhat
Dr. Mr. Mrs. Prof. Skulhed Face



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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: circastes]
#13257525 - 09/28/10 03:31 AM (13 years, 4 months ago) |
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Idealism vs. Materialism. Either answer I believe requires what Kant referred to as a rational hope. He of course used this to describe the belief in God, but I think it can be applied to any number of things we trust but cannot "know". For example, I hold that it is a rational hope to believe that reality exists beyond my own mind since I tend to agree more with a materialistic explanation. Since this cannot be known objectively however, it may well remain nothing more than a hope although a rational one.
-------------------- "When we are dead seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men." -Rumi
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery



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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: shadowplay]
#13257775 - 09/28/10 06:57 AM (13 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
shadowplay said: Everyone seems to have a different idea of what reality is. But then some people say that reality is what you make it. I don't believe this. But at the same time, I have a pretty negative view of my reality, and what do ya know? My reality sucks. Is this because I think it sucks? Or is this why I think it sucks, becuase it really does suck? Discuss!!
Sounds like a chicken and egg thing. It originally sucked (nurture) and you are programmed with suck now and perpetuate it as a basic program.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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spectralis


Registered: 08/29/09
Posts: 196
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why not say 'what you see is entrirely what the brain is doing'? Our representation of physical reality can melt, dissolve or rearrange (dreams). It's always incidental that what we see exists.
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bigmike7104
Stranger

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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: spectralis]
#13258075 - 09/28/10 08:45 AM (13 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
spectralis said: why not say 'what you see is entrirely what the brain is doing'? Our representation of physical reality can melt, dissolve or rearrange (dreams). It's always incidental that what we see exists.
That's true, reminds me of when I first read about how we don't directly see something, but our brain's representation of it. Light goes into our eyes, then the brain processes the information, then we see that information. Makes me wonder if the world is really the way as we see it.
-------------------- Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind Withering my intuition, missing opportunities and I must Feed my will to feel my moment drawing way outside the lines
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learningtofly
Ancient Aliens



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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: shadowplay]
#13258823 - 09/28/10 11:57 AM (13 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
shadowplay said: Everyone seems to have a different idea of what reality is. But then some people say that reality is what you make it. I don't believe this. But at the same time, I have a pretty negative view of my reality, and what do ya know? My reality sucks. Is this because I think it sucks? Or is this why I think it sucks, becuase it really does suck? Discuss!!
Reaity isn't what you make it because by definition that is not reality
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g00ru
lit pants tit licker



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you mean, by definition that's not consensual reality. I don't think there is a clear agreed upon definition for reality, except for most people's assumption that it begins and ends with the material world.
-------------------- check out my music! drowse in prison and your waking will be but loss
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NetDiver
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What do you mean by "reality"? What do you mean by "exist"?
If you get pinched on the arm, you will feel pain.
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learningtofly
Ancient Aliens



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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: NetDiver]
#13258883 - 09/28/10 12:10 PM (13 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
Samurai Drifter said: What do you mean by "reality"? What do you mean by "exist"?
If you get pinched on the arm, you will feel pain.
Not necessarily.
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I AM SWIM
doin' thangs



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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: NetDiver]
#13258886 - 09/28/10 12:11 PM (13 years, 4 months ago) |
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You think thats reality you're existing?

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Kickle
Wanderer


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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: I AM SWIM]
#13258970 - 09/28/10 12:33 PM (13 years, 4 months ago) |
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-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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Ahimsa
µdose



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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: shadowplay]
#13259010 - 09/28/10 12:43 PM (13 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
shadowplay said: Everyone seems to have a different idea of what reality is. But then some people say that reality is what you make it. I don't believe this. But at the same time, I have a pretty negative view of my reality, and what do ya know? My reality sucks. Is this because I think it sucks? Or is this why I think it sucks, because it really does suck? Discuss!!
It is too late to change some things. Thus they are here to stay for real. Other things may be changes so they don't become real in that sense that they will not bother you. Only you know what is what.
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OrgoneConclusion
Blue Fish Group



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Quote:
Makes me wonder if the world is really the way as we see it.
What does that mean? Seriously?
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spectralis


Registered: 08/29/09
Posts: 196
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I think he means when we look out at the world, our limited senses don't see the microwaves that heat the pizza etc and would be suprised if we could sense it all.
Edited by spectralis (09/28/10 03:23 PM)
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spectralis


Registered: 08/29/09
Posts: 196
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: spectralis]
#13259650 - 09/28/10 02:42 PM (13 years, 4 months ago) |
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Also, translucent/ transparent brick walls / human skulls that the radio waves must travel through to get to the TV / radio. It really would be suprising
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bigmike7104
Stranger

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Quote:
OrgoneConclusion said:
Quote:
Makes me wonder if the world is really the way as we see it.
What does that mean? Seriously?
Because the brain gets information from the light that goes into our eyes, then we see what our brain processed. It just got me wondering if maybe the brain wasn't 100 percent accurate at processing this information, which would mean reality or the world around us would look at least somewhat different from the way we see it. This is the way optical illusions happen, our brain can't make sense of the whole thing, so if like reality was just one big illusion. I don't know it was just a thought, nothing important.
-------------------- Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind Withering my intuition, missing opportunities and I must Feed my will to feel my moment drawing way outside the lines
Edited by bigmike7104 (09/28/10 03:20 PM)
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shadowplay


Registered: 05/15/10
Posts: 1,337
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Sorry about that first post not making sense. I was drunk.
This is something I think about, and I'd love to stay and discuss it now that I'm sober, but I really need to stop spending so much time on the internet...
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learningtofly
Ancient Aliens



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Quote:
bigmike7104 said:
Quote:
OrgoneConclusion said:
Quote:
Makes me wonder if the world is really the way as we see it.
What does that mean? Seriously?
Because the brain gets information from the light that goes into our eyes, then we see what our brain processed. It just got me wondering if maybe the brain wasn't 100 percent accurate at processing this information, which would mean reality or the world around us would look at least somewhat different from the way we see it. This is the way optical illusions happen, our brain can't make sense of the whole thing, so if like reality was just one big illusion. I don't know it was just a thought, nothing important.
it is widely, widely, widely accepted that the brain filters out a lot of information.
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OrgoneConclusion
Blue Fish Group



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Quote:
which would mean reality or the world around us would look at least somewhat different from the way we see it
You still are not making sense.
An unperceived universe doesn't look like anything at all.
So you want to compare a human's perception to what, exactly? To a tsetse fly, a machine, to nothing?
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OrgoneConclusion
Blue Fish Group



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So what? My question has still not been answered.
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bigmike7104
Stranger

Registered: 07/12/10
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Quote:
OrgoneConclusion said:
Quote:
which would mean reality or the world around us would look at least somewhat different from the way we see it
You still are not making sense.
An unperceived universe doesn't look like anything at all.
So you want to compare a human's perception to what, exactly? To a tsetse fly, a machine, to nothing?
I don't mean an unperceived universe or compared to another organism, I mean we see it but the brain alters our view of the universe. It's not like I'm saying that's true but with how we see what our brain interprets(not the object directly) I was just posing that question. I don't know it's hard to exactly say what I'm thinking.
-------------------- Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind Withering my intuition, missing opportunities and I must Feed my will to feel my moment drawing way outside the lines
Edited by bigmike7104 (09/28/10 10:54 PM)
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: shadowplay]
#28219738 - 03/07/23 09:17 PM (10 months, 16 days ago) |
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“Reality” and “existence” become a matter of personal opinion instead of insight into truth. What are they really?
The lens through which we see is always anthropomorphic.
An amoeba perceives certain electrical and chemical gradients, the equivalent of eyes and ears. A sophisticated network of organelles and gels provides a universe of wonder and possibility, of mortality and joyful reproduction. The most sophisticated intelligence in the universe is probably mycelium.
Same same all the way up and down the line. Its turtles all the way down. “Great fleas have little fleas, upon their backs to bite’m; little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.” There are probably intelligent - or at least aware - networks of galaxies.
Liberated from anthropomorphism we can see that each droplet in life’s ocean has a consciousness of its own, an existence of its own, is a node of the cosmic internet, a facet of indra’s jewel, and is itself a reflection of the one pearl. “The moon in a dewdrop.”
So, “existence” is what each dewdrop - that’s you and me and all our relatives, the granularity of life - experience. What we are aware of, conscious of; what makes impressions, memories, and evolving response patterns. “Reality” is the endless chaos of potential stuff that experience tastes, like a fish tastes salt water.
What makes “reality” seem obvious and unquestionable to the naive observer is that we unconsciously accord 95% of our responses to each other in totally conventional and mutually understood ways or we are deemed crazy and ostracized or killed.
The mystic experiences reality directly, accepting chaos and not allowing the net of words to attempt to contain it. The amoeba will always be naive, and think it lives by itself in a vast universe. Not so sure about mycelia. What do the whales sing of, what do dolphins perceive holographically? (Well, sex of course, but this is all just sublimating eros.)
——————
A quote from dogen’s shobogenzo:
Upon attaining the Way, he would instruct people with the words, “All the universe is one bright pearl.”
A monk once asked him, “I’ve heard you have said that all the universe is one bright pearl. How can I gain an understanding of that?” The master said, “All the universe is one bright pearl. What need is there to understand?” The next day the master asked the monk, “All the universe is one bright pearl. What is your understanding of it?” The monk answered. “All the universe is one bright pearl. What need is there to understand?” “Now I know,” replied Hsüan-sha, “that you are living in the Cave of Demons on Black Mountain.”
Edited by terence (03/07/23 09:24 PM)
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redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,530
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28220022 - 03/08/23 03:09 AM (10 months, 16 days ago) |
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do words have meaning?
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Buster_Brown
L'une


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Reality is the pursuit of happiness which depends on other people's sacrifices so we could assume that the ultimate reality is revelling in the misfortune of others.
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Kickle
Wanderer



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Assuming others' sacrifices leads to misfortune?
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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Buster_Brown
L'une


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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Kickle]
#28220163 - 03/08/23 06:30 AM (10 months, 16 days ago) |
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Assuming the pursuit of happiness embraces deceit and murder one may unknowingly revel in another's misfortune in sacrificing their life.
Or we could consciously accept that the continuance of the species ensures constant opportunity to revel in someone else's misfortune.
Edited by Buster_Brown (03/08/23 06:33 AM)
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Buster_Brown
L'une


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Men could revel in the fact that women have to go thru the pains of labor.
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RJ Tubs 202



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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence] 1
#28220205 - 03/08/23 07:05 AM (10 months, 16 days ago) |
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Quote:
terence said:
The amoeba will always be naive, and think it lives by itself in a vast universe.
That is quite poetic!
It's rare I see someone's first post on The Shroomery
Welcome
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sudly
Darwin's stagger

Registered: 01/05/15
Posts: 10,797
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: shadowplay]
#28221171 - 03/08/23 05:26 PM (10 months, 15 days ago) |
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Quote:
shadowplay said: Everyone seems to have a different idea of what reality is. But then some people say that reality is what you make it. I don't believe this. But at the same time, I have a pretty negative view of my reality, and what do ya know? My reality sucks. Is this because I think it sucks? Or is this why I think it sucks, becuase it really does suck? Discuss!!
Nah mate you're all a figment of my imagination and rocks and trees are all a part of the cosmic oneness of the cosmos energy that intertwined and results from an as of yet undiscovered force that I will say is the prerequisite to this belief.
So yeah nah it is what it is, you can't argue the truth of the bubble foam universe!
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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Kickle
Wanderer



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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28221191 - 03/08/23 05:41 PM (10 months, 15 days ago) |
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Does reality exist? #13256573 - 09/27/10 10:11 PM (12 years, 5 months)

Good to see you sudly
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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sudly
Darwin's stagger

Registered: 01/05/15
Posts: 10,797
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28223206 - 03/10/23 02:44 AM (10 months, 14 days ago) |
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Quote:
The most sophisticated intelligence in the universe is probably mycelium.
Could this not be an anthropomorphic view? I mean some slime molds at least seek the most efficient pathways for nutrient transmission, they find the shortest routes to sustenance, and while they may seem intelligent, I think it could also be called simple efficiency.
I would call mycelium elegant and efficient, but I don't think ascribing them with sophisticated intelligence really makes sense.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,530
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28223258 - 03/10/23 04:55 AM (10 months, 14 days ago) |
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yah, slime mold is amazing but not multi-talented. (mycellium on the other hand is fascinating as it is one cell(with multiple nuclei) fibrously branching across a vast space with an interconnection property that we do not yet understand. It also may not be multi-talented, but it truly is amazing - especially the fruiting bodies)
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terence
Stranger
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yes
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sudly
Darwin's stagger

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I might call a nervous system a most sophisticated intelligence, and we are more closely related to mycelia than we are to plants. But I wouldn't say we don't understand it to a good degree.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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terence
Stranger
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: do words have meaning?
I'm tempted to just say yes and leave it at that, but the question is pertinent.
Without words there is no existence. Through words, as rumi says, we know a Friend. All things emerge from the darkness of chaos by being named.
In the sufi tradition, the hadith "God said, 'I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known,'" is the beginning of the Creation of existence. God taught adam - the quintessential, primordial human - all of the Names. That is to say, all nameable things were brought into existence. Thus we have our world of objects.
In reality, all objects are empty. "Form is emptiness; emptiness is form." Speaking of a bridge over a river, zen tells us that it is the bridge which is flowing, the river which is still. This is because the idea of an object as a fixed entity is false. As heraclitus says, "everything flows." There is no stable object, all are melting and changing, some just melt faster than others. Use time lapse or slo-mo photography and all objects can be seen to change, to come into and go out of existence as objects while all the while everything remains the same, like waves passing through water. Dogen says, "Inch time foot gem."
The real existence of objects is not in the mundane world of constant transformation but in the imaginal world of the muhammedan reality (as ibn arabi calls it. The world of platonic forms, of neo-platonic emanations. There is a place where space and time do not apply wherein the angels and jinns dwell, and we can visit. Like Swedenborg's heaven and hell. Here is where words have their origin and meaning. The true Word is the object itself. Words as we know them are the names of the Names.
from rumi, fihi ma fihi:
If you want to get to know people, engage them in speech. By their words you will know them. If they are imposters, even if someone told them that people can be recognized by their words and they watch their words carefully to avoid being caught, still, in the end you will come to understand who they are.
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terence
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Quote:
RJ Tubs 202 said:
Quote:
terence said:
The amoeba will always be naive, and think it lives by itself in a vast universe.
That is quite poetic!
It's rare I see someone's first post on The Shroomery
Welcome 
thanks
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terence
Stranger
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly] 1
#28224578 - 03/11/23 12:03 AM (10 months, 13 days ago) |
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Quote:
sudly said:
Quote:
shadowplay said: Everyone seems to have a different idea of what reality is. But then some people say that reality is what you make it. I don't believe this. But at the same time, I have a pretty negative view of my reality, and what do ya know? My reality sucks. Is this because I think it sucks? Or is this why I think it sucks, becuase it really does suck? Discuss!!
Nah mate you're all a figment of my imagination and rocks and trees are all a part of the cosmic oneness of the cosmos energy that intertwined and results from an as of yet undiscovered force that I will say is the prerequisite to this belief.
So yeah nah it is what it is, you can't argue the truth of the bubble foam universe!

A monk was walking with the master one day and they came upon a worm which a farmer had cut in half with his plow. Both halves were wriggling. The monk said to the master, what I want to know is, which half contains the buddha nature?
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28224580 - 03/11/23 12:10 AM (10 months, 13 days ago) |
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Quote:
sudly said:
Quote:
The most sophisticated intelligence in the universe is probably mycelium.
Could this not be an anthropomorphic view? I mean some slime molds at least seek the most efficient pathways for nutrient transmission, they find the shortest routes to sustenance, and while they may seem intelligent, I think it could also be called simple efficiency.
I would call mycelium elegant and efficient, but I don't think ascribing them with sophisticated intelligence really makes sense.
We define intelligence in terms of our varying ability to use words. What is the language of mycelia? God knows they are communicating, if "they" they are.
All "things" are communicating all the time. Everything we perceive is organic, is part of us. There is nothing "out there."
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sudly
Darwin's stagger

Registered: 01/05/15
Posts: 10,797
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28224581 - 03/11/23 12:14 AM (10 months, 13 days ago) |
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Life has existed without our human words for all time before us.
Labels, descriptions and concepts emerge from our use of words to name things.
I don't think ribs were in a transient void before we called them so.
The hidden treasures of the forms of emptiness are infentesimal in nature, on a grander scale we don't have quantum interactions.
Objects fall to entropy, even rocks erode and continents drift. Everything surely in a sense does flow, but this is in time and is observable to say the least.
You'll have to expand on what you mean by neo-platonic emanations if you want to label yourself as believable imo.
I somehow doubt the name of a volkwagon emanated from Swedenborgs heaven, but hey, these are just words right.
Nowadays we ask if that worm is your girlfriend.
Trees and the like certainly do communicate but they don't use the same heebyjeeby sort of language as we do.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28224598 - 03/11/23 01:07 AM (10 months, 13 days ago) |
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Quote:
sudly said: I might call a nervous system a most sophisticated intelligence, and we are more closely related to mycelia than we are to plants. But I wouldn't say we don't understand it to a good degree.
I agree with asmongold who was recently asked about his own spirituality and replied that he regarded himself as a hyper-intelligent monkey whose grasp of how the universe worked was about equivalent to that of a dog.
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sudly
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28224602 - 03/11/23 01:15 AM (10 months, 13 days ago) |
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Perhaps if he held himself in higher regard he would ask a dog for their opinion and reflect upon this statement.
Your use of faulty syllogisms are leading me to believe you have pansychic tendencies and if that's the case then all I have to say is that the belief relies upon an as of yet undiscovered fundamental force. Which is a fine view to have but one I think requires being honest about the nature of.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly] 1
#28224604 - 03/11/23 01:21 AM (10 months, 13 days ago) |
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Quote:
sudly said: Life has existed without our human words for all time before us.
Labels, descriptions and concepts emerge from our use of words to name things.
I don't think ribs were in a transient void before we called them so.
The hidden treasures of the forms of emptiness are infentesimal in nature, on a grander scale we don't have quantum interactions.
Objects fall to entropy, even rocks erode and continents drift. Everything surely in a sense does flow, but this is in time and is observable to say the least.
You'll have to expand on what you mean by neo-platonic emanations if you want to label yourself as believable imo.
I somehow doubt the name of a volkwagon emanated from Swedenborgs heaven, but hey, these are just words right.
Nowadays we ask if that worm is your girlfriend.
Trees and the like certainly do communicate but they don't use the same heebyjeeby sort of language as we do.
We do not perceive something and then name it, we perceive the object as an existing thing immediately. We don't conceptualize a perception, we taste it directly already named and by that fact objectified. The illusion is that we live in a world of existing objects. The reality is that there are no existing objects. Existence itself is the world-illusion, maya. A fantasy based on our appetites, our desires, our care and love. Dogen says, because we love flowers, weeds come into existence.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly] 1
#28224606 - 03/11/23 01:24 AM (10 months, 13 days ago) |
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Quote:
sudly said: Perhaps if he held himself in higher regard he would ask a dog for their opinion and reflect upon this statement.
Your use of faulty syllogisms are leading me to believe you have pansychic tendencies and if that's the case then all I have to say is that the belief relies upon an as of yet undiscovered fundamental force. Which is a fine view to have but one I think requires being honest about the nature of.
Perhaps you underestimate dogs.
I pray you encounter your as yet undiscovered force.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28224608 - 03/11/23 01:32 AM (10 months, 13 days ago) |
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"Dogs and philosophers do the most good and get the least credit."
Diogenes of Sinope
aka, Diogenes the Cynic ("cynic" meaning "dog")
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sudly
Darwin's stagger

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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28224617 - 03/11/23 02:01 AM (10 months, 13 days ago) |
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Sounds likea good description of schizophrenia to me.
For a lot of your words to have any meaning I think there must be a fundamental force in play that is as of yet undiscovered, so you may want to look in a mirror for that one.
Dogs and cats probably would have a lot to teach about meditation, but I don't see their input in regard to, 'the creative principle which lies realised in the whole world'.
Perhaps the joy and companionship they bring to our lives is worth noting, and their endearing nature is admirable. I mean that a dogs contribution to the happiness, success and progression of a philosopher should not be undermined, but that I don't think the dog itself is contributing to that philosophising.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly] 1
#28224621 - 03/11/23 02:10 AM (10 months, 13 days ago) |
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Quote:
sudly said:
snip
You'll have to expand on what you mean by neo-platonic emanations if you want to label yourself as believable imo.
snip
You didn't ask about platonic forms so presumably you are familiar with those. Neo-platonism commenced with the work of plotinus, the enneads. Plotinus (2nd cent ce) felt he was expanding on plato's work. He posited an entity slash nonentity that was beyond being and nonbeing he called "the One" or sometimes, "god." Between the One and the material world plotinus posited a number of "emanations" that emanated from the One and progressively unfolded more and more articulated realms until the mortal realm of space and time was reached. These angelic circles were elaborated over time by his many successors. The west eventually came to ridicule this sort of thinking as "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" and the imaginal world was abandoned for a near total embrace of maya as "true reality" which is confused with existence. In the east there are many philosphies, scriptures, spiritual romances and poetic verses based on various elaborations of these neo-platonic emanations.
Eastern philosophies have room for imaginal realities as ephemeral representations of the One, glints of light, illuminations of things that cannot be explained and can only be experienced by an alone spirit, "alone with the alone" as henry corbin says. Alone because incommunicable.
Like psychedelic experiences.
"My spiritual power is that I sleep when tired, eat when hungry. Fools will laugh at me, but the wise will understand what I am saying." ~rinzai
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28224624 - 03/11/23 02:14 AM (10 months, 13 days ago) |
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Quote:
sudly said: Sounds likea good description of schizophrenia to me.
For a lot of your words to have any meaning I think there must be a fundamental force in play that is as of yet undiscovered, so you may want to look in a mirror for that one.
Dogs and cats probably would have a lot to teach about meditation, but I don't see their input in regard to, 'the creative principle which lies realised in the whole world'.
Perhaps the joy and companionship they bring to our lives is worth noting, and their endearing nature is admirable. I mean that a dogs contribution to the happiness, success and progression of a philosopher should not be undermined, but that I don't think the dog itself is contributing to that philosophising.
Dogs and cats have millions of years of evolution behind them and are vastly more mature species than we are, as wise and generally wiser than humans. We would have a great deal to learn from them if we weren't already doomed by our immaturity to an early extinction. It isn't very intelligent to destroy your planet. Cats and dogs are too sophisticated, too intelligent to do more than adapt.
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sudly
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28224628 - 03/11/23 02:21 AM (10 months, 13 days ago) |
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So you tripped and felt one with the universe..
Riddle us with an example of one of these 'emanations' if you will.
All life has a history of billions of years of evolution including humans, and I think we learn a lot about companionship and general positivity from our animal brethren.
I think a lot of our technological advancements arose from our breaking away from a nomadic lifestyle that freed us from the worries of foraging and allowed us time to take on more creative endeavours. Opposable thumbs were helpful too.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28224676 - 03/11/23 04:31 AM (10 months, 13 days ago) |
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do cats and dogs use words?
(I used to love Rumi but the quotes posted here miss the heart of what I liked about him - one needs to drink a cup of wine after each one - boozy)
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sudly
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My cat communicates very well and rather specifically with meows and tail language.
He's not scared of the vacuum cleaner and although I consider him an intelligent and picky being that knowingly communicates some of his needs and desires, I don't think he'll be teaching electronics classes anytime soon.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28224711 - 03/11/23 06:01 AM (10 months, 13 days ago) |
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My friend Lori's cat says her name pretty clearly when she wants something.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28225148 - 03/11/23 01:33 PM (10 months, 13 days ago) |
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from “Ibn Arabi - Heir to the Prophets” by william c. chittick
The results of disassociating being and consciousness become obvious when we glance at the history of Western thought, especially in recent times. Scientists, philosophers, and even some theologians look upon life and consciousness as epiphenomena of existence, latecomers on the cosmic scene. We moderns are happy to think that “existence” came before consciousness, or that living things gradually evolved from dead and inanimate matter. For Ibn ‘Arabi and much of Islamic thinking (not to mention kindred visions in other traditions), no universe is thinkable without the primacy of life and awareness, the presence of consciousness in the underlying stuff of reality.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28225167 - 03/11/23 01:45 PM (10 months, 13 days ago) |
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dogen describes reality as:
"A foot of water; a foot of wave."
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Kickle
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28225178 - 03/11/23 01:49 PM (10 months, 12 days ago) |
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oh goodie, my favorite kind of posts. out of context quotes from others
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28225226 - 03/11/23 02:38 PM (10 months, 12 days ago) |
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Quote:
sudly said: I don't think the dog itself is contributing to that philosophising.
Philosophy means love of truth. Dogs have a nose for it.
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Kickle
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28225233 - 03/11/23 02:45 PM (10 months, 12 days ago) |
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ah, also truth posts, extra credit!
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28225252 - 03/11/23 03:02 PM (10 months, 12 days ago) |
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"So you tripped and felt one with the universe.."
There is no me and no universe. You are trapped in subject object thinking. I am trying to break you out.
"Riddle us with an example of one of these 'emanations' if you will."
ok...
Sweet Angel (jimi hendrix)
[Verse 1] Angel came down from heaven yesterday She stayed with me Just long enough to rescue me And she told me a story yesterday About the sweet love between The moon and the deep blue sea And then she spread her wings high over me She said she is going to come back tomorrow
[Chorus] And I said, "Fly on, my sweet angel Fly on through the sky Fly on my sweet angel Tomorrow I'm going to be by your side"
[Verse 2] Sure enough this morning came unto me Silver wings silhouetted against the child's sunrise And my angel she said unto me "Today is the day for you to rise Take my hand, you are going to be my man You are going to rise" And then she took me high over yonder
[Chorus] And I said, "Fly on, my sweet angel Fly on through the sky Fly on my sweet angel Forever I will be by your side"
[Instrumental Outro]
'All life has a history of billions of years of evolution including humans, and I think we learn a lot about companionship and general positivity from our animal brethren.'
98% of wildlife have already been hunted or driven to extinction. We are about a third of animals (by weight) and the rest are predominantly pigs, cows and chickens kept in abominable conditions, slaughtered and consumed. We could be learning cooperation community and sustainability from our animal relatives but we are too stupid ignorant and immature.
Billions of years of evolution instantaneously flame out.
"I think a lot of our technological advancements arose from our breaking away from a nomadic lifestyle that freed us from the worries of foraging and allowed us time to take on more creative endeavours. Opposable thumbs were helpful too."
Moving to an agrarian lifestyle is well known to have diminished our health, intelligence and especially our individual happiness. The vast majority of humans since the agricultural revolution have been domesticated as slaves. Capitalism impoverishes and forces people to sell labor on the slave market to survive. Our ability to manipulate our environment has led to the colossal egotism and hubris that characterizes our race in its titanic and doomed aspirations.
The eagle flies high but has its eyes firmly fixed on carrion.
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: do cats and dogs use words?
(I used to love Rumi but the quotes posted here miss the heart of what I liked about him - one needs to drink a cup of wine after each one - boozy)
My shepsky has quite a vocabulary, beyond whines and barks, she rounds out her mouth and woo woo woos. I've known birds who knew a number of english words and when to use them, and some are reputedly multi-lingual. Konrad lorenz in his book "king solomon's ring" describes how he learned the language of jackdaws and could himself speak (whistle) it and make himself understood.
My dog understands a lot of what I say, interpolating words she doesn't know from the context and her desires. She not only knows "ball" she knows when we say "bee ay ell ell" what's going on.
Like humans the dog wants to impose her mental desire-driven grid on infinite reality. All sentient beings do this sort of world creation.
Dogs and cats speak the languages they devise to communicate, as needed.
Dogen says: "When a bird wants to use just a little sky, she uses just a little sky; when she wants to use a lot of sky she uses a lot. When a fish wants to use just a little water it uses a little water; when it wants to use a lot, it uses a lot."
from the essential rumi, trans barks
WEAN YOURSELF
Little by little, wean yourself. This is the gist of what I have to say. From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood, move to an infant drinking milk, to a child on solid food, to a searcher after wisdom, to a hunter of more invisible game.
Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo. You might say, "The world outside is vast and intricate. There are wheatfields and mountain passes, and orchards in bloom. At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding."
You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up in the dark with eyes closed.
Listen to the answer: There is no "other world." I only know what I've experienced. You must be hallucinating.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28225339 - 03/11/23 03:56 PM (10 months, 12 days ago) |
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rumi, op cit
TENDING TWO SHOPS
Don't run around this world looking for a hole to hide in. There are wild beasts in every cave! If you live with mice, the cat claws will find you. The only real rest comes when you're alone with God. Live in the nowhere that you came from, even though you have an address here.
That's why you see things in two ways. Sometimes you look at a person and see a cynical snake. Someone else sees a joyful lover, and you're both right! Everyone is half and half, like the black and white ox.
Joseph looked ugly to his brothers, and most handsome to his father. You have eyes that see from that nowhere, and eyes that judge distances, how high and how low.
You own two shops, and you run back and forth. Try to close the one that's a fearful trap, getting always smaller. Checkmate, this way. Checkmate that.
Keep open the shop where you're not selling fishhooks anymore. You are the free-swimming fish.
Think that you're gliding out from the face of a cliff like an eagle. Think you're walking like a tiger walks by himself in the forest. You're most handsome when you're after food.
Spend less time with nightingales and peacocks. One is just a voice, the other just a color.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: shadowplay]
#28225386 - 03/11/23 04:33 PM (10 months, 12 days ago) |
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The reality is that your view of reality really is your view of it, and it is changing all the time.
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sudly
Darwin's stagger

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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28225430 - 03/11/23 05:16 PM (10 months, 12 days ago) |
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Quote:
no universe is thinkable without the primacy of life and awareness, the presence of consciousness in the underlying stuff of reality.
If you said this was your opinion, then 
Philosophy means love of wisdom, and it is the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. While we may be able to observe a dog being content in life, I still don't think the dog itself is contributing to philosophical thought.
Quote:
There is no me and no universe. You are trapped in subject object thinking. I am trying to break you out.
Yeahh.. I don't really want to be a fugitive or have the police looking for me.
I was asking for an example of an emanation from you, not Elkie Brooks lyrics.
The diversity of life we see in modern times is but a fraction of the diversity that has existed throughout Earth's history, and I would argue we already know how to participate with cooperation, community and sustainability, but that the political will to implement such ideals has been eroded by the legalisation of bribery in political campaigning.
Quote:
Moving to an agrarian lifestyle is well known to have diminished our health, intelligence and especially our individual happiness. The vast majority of humans since the agricultural revolution have been domesticated as slaves. Capitalism impoverishes and forces people to sell labor on the slave market to survive. Our ability to manipulate our environment has led to the colossal egotism and hubris that characterizes our race in its titanic and doomed aspirations.
Our lifespans have been extended dramatically in part due to our agrarian lifestyles and the technological advancements we have come to attain.
Our individual happiness arguably has been negatively impacted by our economic enterprises though, cultures that still have tribal lifestyles seem to be very content with how they are living in some cases.
Honestly, my conversation with an embryo would go somewhere along the lines of, "I've done genetic testing and used modern scanning techniques to see that your life would be one of disability, I will not put you through such suffering and although you would be a beautiful person, I will do what I can to protect you and myself from such a fate, and perhaps your brother or sister will be spared to live a fulfilling life with actual independence and equal opportunity, I hope so atleast."
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28226729 - 03/12/23 06:21 PM (10 months, 11 days ago) |
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Quote:
sudly said:
Quote:
no universe is thinkable without the primacy of life and awareness, the presence of consciousness in the underlying stuff of reality.
If you said this was your opinion, then 
---------------------
It was a quote from william chittick but the point is fundamental to what I am trying to say, at a basic philosophical level.
another quote, from the tempest:
You do look, my son, in a moved sort, As if you were dismay’d: be cheerful, sir. Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.
I was asking for an example of an emanation from you, not Elkie Brooks lyrics.
I could explain the theory of emanations but it is complicated and if you never heard of plotinus or neo-platonism it could be a lengthy process. Perhaps you could spend a few minutes looking it up in wikipedia or the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy on line and then ask a more informed question.
Neo-platonism underlies virtually all mysticism, certainly if associated with the abrahamic religions.
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"The diversity of life we see in modern times is but a fraction of the diversity that has existed throughout Earth's history, and I would argue we already know how to participate with cooperation, community and sustainability, but that the political will to implement such ideals has been eroded by the legalisation of bribery in political campaigning."
If you are saying capitalism is evil I agree. Thumbs up.
As for politics, I think the republican party should be banned like the communist party was and all former republicans disenfranchised until they sign a loyalty oath. Trump should be executed by firing squad on national tv.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28226770 - 03/12/23 07:02 PM (10 months, 11 days ago) |
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"Our lifespans have been extended dramatically in part due to our agrarian lifestyles and the technological advancements we have come to attain."
Agrarian lifestyles led to apocalyptic war pestilence famine and death. The black plague wiped out a third of the population of europe due to their agrarian lifestyle and the attendant zoonoses and pandemics. Medieval cities did not grow through natural increase but only through in-migration by the desperately poor, as they were death traps. A larger over all population does not prima facie make for a healthy, happy human component of a healthy, happy global ecosystem.
The industrial revolution was responsible for technological advances and it was considered anti-agrarian. Technology has led to rapid population increase and an ensuing inevitable crash, independently of destroying the future habitability of the planet through carbon pollution.
If an increasing population is the measure of success, our success is at best short-sighted since it is unsustainable and leads inevitably to massive and catastrophic human misery.
Most ecological awareness and environmentalism focuses on the well being of human beings, and considers the rest of the natural world and sentient being as desirable and even necessary to us but secondary at best, they are our environment, our dress. In reality they are us and we are them. One pearl.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28226777 - 03/12/23 07:10 PM (10 months, 11 days ago) |
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I was asking for an example of an emanation from you, not Elkie Brooks lyrics.
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sudly
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28226793 - 03/12/23 07:28 PM (10 months, 11 days ago) |
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I think my point still stands that you'd appear to have more merit claiming your opinions here.
Yeah nah, thinking for yourself might be nice to see.
You've now copped out multiple times from giving a personal example of an emanation, and if you had any idea what you were talking about, I believe you'd be able to explain or summarise the ideas you espouse to hold.
I believe there are good elements to both capitalism and socialism that can be balanced, but that currently legalised bribery is a hinderence to progress.
Well, there sure are a lot of wacky characters in power.
Quote:
You don't make friends with salad
I think corruption should be treated similarly to murder with sentencing.
Culture and society isn't all bad.
Man, I'm starting to picture you as a vegan that does coke.
I don't think an increasing population is 'the' measure of success, and even medieval swords were a technological advancement, the development of refining and forging processes etc.
I would have thought ecology has a focus on conservation and ecosystems but oh well. I don't believe individual carbon footprints negate any of the impact industrial pollution does either.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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sudly
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28226798 - 03/12/23 07:34 PM (10 months, 11 days ago) |
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Quote:
terence said: I was asking for an example of an emanation from you, not Elkie Brooks lyrics.
'Terence used deflect!'
'It wasn't very effective'

I asked for an example of emanations and all you gave were song lyrics.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly] 2
#28226825 - 03/12/23 07:50 PM (10 months, 11 days ago) |
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maybe eminem nation?
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BrendanFlock
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If doubt exists?
If it doesn't?
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28227260 - 03/13/23 02:33 AM (10 months, 11 days ago) |
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Joy, anger, grief, delight, worry, regret, fickleness, inflexibility, modesty, willfulness, candor, insolence - music from empty holes, mushrooms springing up in dampness, day and night replacing each other before us, and no one knows where they sprout from. Let it be! Let it be! [It is enough that] morning and evening we have them, and they are the means by which we live. Without them we would not exist; without us they would have nothing to take hold of. This comes close to the matter. But I do not know what makes them the way they are. It would seem as though they have some True Master, and yet I find no trace of him. He can act - that is certain. Yet I cannot see his form. He has identity but no form.
~chuang tzu
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28227331 - 03/13/23 05:42 AM (10 months, 11 days ago) |
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chang tzu and aristotle both - quite admirable, but their words relate to common knowledge of their times.
we know many of the things that both back then did not.
Yes, Let it be, but also Let us be comfortable knowing more than they did, and please let our children and theirs be comfortable as the known in their times continues to expand, while our needs remain less than our curiosity.
--------------------
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: chang tzu and aristotle both - quite admirable, but their words relate to common knowledge of their times.
we know many of the things that both back then did not.
Yes, Let it be, but also Let us be comfortable knowing more than they did, and please let our children and theirs be comfortable as the known in their times continues to expand, while our needs remain less than our curiosity.
If you had the slightest idea of what a plotinian emanation was you wouldn't be asking for a personal example. It is as though you had no idea what a platonic form was and asked for a personal example, accusing me of not knowing what I am talking about when I say that is absurd. And I didn't quote aristotle. I'm not even sure you have heard of jimi hendrix.
In any case the theory of emanations is not the essence of what I am talking about. It might come into play at some point. So you might study up.
We know far less than the greek philosophers did. Much was rediscovered during the twentieth century, with the sequence schopenauer, brentano, husserl and heidegger culminating in continental philosophy as an extension of aristotle's work on being. Aristotle was a student of plato in the line of hermes and pythagoras, We know how to destroy, pollute and exploit. We know how to suppress truth and creativity. We don't know moderation or restraint. The greeks at least had an inkling. Socrates knew that the height of wisdom is to know one does not know. We have only backslid since then.
For example, ancient greece had two words for time, chronos for clock time and measurement and kairos for the virtue and spiritual power of knowing the right time to do things. Science and technology understands measurement very well but is hopeless with timing and with the power of virtue in general.
Our children's children will be fortunate to survive the inevitable collapse and if they do it will be dog eat dog.
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terence
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sorry, rgv, I conflated what you said with sudly
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terence
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Quote:
BrendanFlock said: If doubt exists?
If it doesn't?
Pertinent observations.
What is really going on here is a discussion of nonduality, which cannot be discussed directly but only pointed to in a peculiarly circular manner.
Every concept is known in the light of its opposite. If we conjure up beauty we conjure ugliness, with intelligence arises stupidity, and truth is opposed to falsity. Love of flowers makes weeds of their competitors.
With certainty, then arises doubt. If I erect the flag of truth someone will tear it down and erect their own to them equally valid truth which is opposed. And we have conflict and argument.
Without doubt there is only certainty. Without thought there is only the One, undifferentiated, unopposed, pure and true.
This One is inexpressible but every sentient being is a reflection, and every eye sees with the Eye of god, the Knower, the Only Real Agent (rumi).
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28228202 - 03/13/23 05:24 PM (10 months, 10 days ago) |
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Bloating and conflation are common forms of indigestion. We could get you chewing on several bookends, to help alleviate it.
I prefer considering the beginnings - all the time, but all things do have a beginning middle and end. just where you happen to be is the big mystery, to all of us.
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sudly
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28228242 - 03/13/23 05:49 PM (10 months, 10 days ago) |
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I think we bet on probabilities nowadays.
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Sudly said: You'll have to expand on what you mean by neo-platonic emanations if you want to label yourself as believable imo.
You didn't ask about platonic forms so presumably you are familiar with those. Neo-platonism commenced with the work of plotinus, the enneads. Plotinus (2nd cent ce) felt he was expanding on plato's work. He posited an entity slash nonentity that was beyond being and nonbeing he called "the One" or sometimes, "god." Between the One and the material world plotinus posited a number of "emanations" that emanated from the One and progressively unfolded more and more articulated realms until the mortal realm of space and time was reached.
I'm not familiar with entity/non-entity beyond being/non-beings.
And if this is your description of neo-platonic emanations I think it's clear you mean hallucinations.
Again the ol probabilities suffice.
There's no moderation or restraint in society, and science is hopeless with timing?
Dog eat dog doesn't sound so bad if all the dogs are philosophising about it, I'd be interested to hear fidos opinion on the morality of eating members of the same species for survival.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28228285 - 03/13/23 06:22 PM (10 months, 10 days ago) |
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what - the survival of the feces?
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sudly
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Saute of the feces, an in depth analyses of fecal textures, aromas and flavours.
Presented by a group of dogs with monacles and top hats.
Indeed.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence] 1
#28228764 - 03/14/23 01:56 AM (10 months, 10 days ago) |
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Now mark me well! Intellect peeps in and ransacks every corner of the Godhead, and seizes on the Son in the Father's heart and in the ground, and sets him in its own ground. Intellect forces its way in, dissatisfied with goodness or wisdom or truth or God Himself. In very truth, it is as little satisfied with God as with a stone or a tree. It never rests; it bursts into the ground whence goodness and truth proceed, and seizes it in principia, in the beginning where goodness and truth are just coming out, before it has any name, before it burgeons forth, in a much higher ground than goodness and wisdom. But its sister, the will, is well satisfied with God as He is good. But intellect strips all this off and enters in and breaks through to the roots, where the Son wells up and the Holy Ghost blossoms forth.
~meister eckhart
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sudly
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28228797 - 03/14/23 02:17 AM (10 months, 10 days ago) |
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With talk of the godhead, fathers heart, the holy ghost, truth and God himself.. I'm sure I'd see you on the corner of a street somewhere.
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look ma! It's the snow sniffin vegan!

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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28228805 - 03/14/23 02:24 AM (10 months, 10 days ago) |
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Man only escapes from the laws of this world in lightning flashes. Instants when everything stands still, instants of contemplation, of pure intuition, of mental void, of acceptance of the moral void. It is through such instants that he is capable of the supernatural.
Whoever endures a moment of the void either receives the supernatural bread or falls. It is a terrible risk, but one that must be run — even during the instant when hope fails. But we must not throw ourselves into it.
~simone weil
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28228806 - 03/14/23 02:25 AM (10 months, 10 days ago) |
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If fools didn't laugh, it wouldn't be the tao.
~lao tzu
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sudly
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28228811 - 03/14/23 02:33 AM (10 months, 10 days ago) |
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I'm sure a blast of lightning would make anyone flash away
Man the only super power a spider bites going to give you is being able to violently vomit and fall into a coma.
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sudly
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28228815 - 03/14/23 02:35 AM (10 months, 10 days ago) |
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Quote:
terence said: If fools didn't laugh, it wouldn't be the tao.
~lao tzu
Have we got a 40k fan here?
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28228849 - 03/14/23 04:08 AM (10 months, 10 days ago) |
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terence you are guilty of ancient quotation abuse.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28233482 - 03/17/23 09:49 AM (10 months, 7 days ago) |
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from “ibn arabi; heir to the prophets” by willim chittick
As the very stuff of the soul, imagination marks the point where the active vitality of intelligence encounters the signs and sediments perceived by the senses. Invisible realities come down into imagination embodied as notions and dreams, and the objects of sense perception rise up to imagination and become the landscape of the soul. Awareness and unawareness, depth and surface, meaning and words, spirit and clay, inward and outward, non-manifest and manifest – all coalesce and become one.
As two all-comprehensive images of the Real, cosmos and soul reflect each other. The universe is outward, deployed, dispersed, and objectified; the soul inward, concentrated, focused, and subjectified. The soul is aware and conscious, the world unaware and unknowing – relatively speaking, of course, because there can be no absolutes when the stuff of reality is intermediacy and flux. Through its inwardness the soul finds itself and others, and through its outwardness the world deploys what is potentially knowable to the soul.
Given that God taught Adam all the names, everything deployed and dispersed in the universe is already known to primordial human nature. Regaining Adamic perfection means to remember who we are and to recognize what we know. “All the names” means every possibility of being and becoming present in the Real, every word articulated in the All-merciful Breath. The qualities and characteristics of created things are in fact the names of their Creator. Following the path of realization, the soul comes to experience the designations of the names in its own imaginal realm, where being and awareness are one.
(my emphasis)
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28233499 - 03/17/23 10:07 AM (10 months, 7 days ago) |
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Quote:
terence said: from “ibn arabi; heir to the prophets” by willim chittick ... As two all-comprehensive images of the Real, cosmos and soul reflect each other. The universe is outward, deployed, dispersed, and objectified; the soul inward, concentrated, focused, and subjectified. The soul is aware and conscious, the world unaware and unknowing – relatively speaking, of course, because there can be no absolutes when the stuff of reality is intermediacy and flux. Through its inwardness the soul finds itself and others, and through its outwardness the world deploys what is potentially knowable to the soul. ...
the middle paragraph works for what I have found and agree with but the first paragraph is a flimsy floral facade, and the last is goofy grasping at godliness and religious acceptance.
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: terence you are guilty of ancient quotation abuse.
I can quote moderns as well...
“He has two antagonists: The first pushes him from behind, from his origin. The second blocks his road ahead. He struggles with both. Actually the first supports him in his struggle with the second, for the first wants to push him forward; and in the same way the second supports him in his struggle with the first; for the second of course forces him back. But it is only theoretically so. For it is not only the two protagonists who are there, but he himself as well, and who really knows his intentions? However that may be, he has a dream that sometime in an unguarded moment — would require, though, a night as dark as no night has ever been — he will spring out of the fighting line and be promoted, on account of his experience of such warfare, as judge over his struggling antagonists.”
Excerpt From: Franz Kafka. “Aphorisms.”
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sudly
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28238323 - 03/20/23 05:19 PM (10 months, 3 days ago) |
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I think I've interpreted this correctly.
Quote:
A dick in the bum, one in the yum, he warms to the experience and stands sturdy. He gargles effortlessly.
A third man stands naked in the corner. The idea of being handcuffed titillates his senses. The night was long, long of dong. He got the job for his deeds.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28238324 - 03/20/23 05:19 PM (10 months, 3 days ago) |
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I was going to say you write beautifully, but you chose a beautiful quote for me thank you. love Kafka to bits
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: Bloating and conflation are common forms of indigestion. We could get you chewing on several bookends, to help alleviate it.
I prefer considering the beginnings - all the time, but all things do have a beginning middle and end. just where you happen to be is the big mystery, to all of us.
Well, where are we, then. And when, as beginning, middle and end imply time.
The early neo-platonist porphyry devised what became known as 'the tree of porphyry' in which the leaves were individual species, the twigs were genera, the branches families and so forth, until the One Tree is realized to be the essential being. You might say the tree "emanates" branches and leaves but it is a living process and none of the metaphors really grasps the truth of it, as the finger pointing at the moon does not provide a ladder to the moon or indicate one.
For plotinus the One beyond existence and nonexistence emanates the "nous" or Mind in which the Intellect or collective wisdom of humanity (both natured and nurtured) conceives the Ideas of God or platonic forms which then form the basis for what we imagine to be "the" world (actually many worlds).
In ordinary discourse it is taken for granted there is an external material world existing in time and in space. Most people who have taken mushrooms have experienced a reality different from that, in which time and space are rules or guidelines which are arbitrary and exclusive, and which may be "bent or broken" to allow for extraordinary perspectives and abilities.
There is a vertical dimension to the flatland of time and space, in which the soul rises to higher and higher perspectives on what is real. In zen this is conceived of as meditating atop a hundred foot pole, or hanging by ones teeth to a branch suspended over a cliff and then discoursing on the dharma.
This vertical dimension is the imaginal world. Not merely the intellectual world of mathematics and abstractions. Time and location ("space" is misleading, an artifact of location) are themselves abstractions applied "a priori" to the apparent world, but this is not the only way to know.
This is not theoretical and theory does not encompass it. There is no "system" and where a system is proposed it is only an image, an illustration or metaphor or symbol, a stand in for a reality which cannot be netted by thought.
Meditators and psychonauts who have taken psychedelics and experienced the oneness of being have "tasted" the reality of the imaginal world and encountered the nonexistent, like grabbing a live wire and getting shocked, or seeing an entire landscape in a flash of lightning.
Churchill once said that most people are bowled over by the truth at some point in their lives but most just pick themselves up and go on with whatever they were doing before. In the vertical dimension one is "awakened" and then proceeds on a path of "realization." Born again on the path to grace. The truth is a mountain and the wisdom religions provide different ways to the top. There are different views along each path on the way up but the view from the top is the same for all.
The awakening is to whole truth but then living the truth is problematical. No one who has not experienced it understands and in order to communicate and survive we need to accommodate people's short-sighted and egoic views, and these corrupt and diminish the quality of our insight until we give up or develop techniques for realization, such as study, meditation, and prayer.
The sufis say there are three Books we much study, for the intellect only knows Words. They are the book of the cosmos, the book of the soul, and the book of scripture. The cosmos and the soul are reflections of each other: we see externally what we know of in our heart-minds, and what we see when we examine our own selves is a universe of its own. My personal idea is that we see as in a kaleidoscope an infinite variety of angles and glints and reflections and geometric patterns and at root they really only consist of six mirrors and four or five roundish colored pebbles rattling around.
Any of us who have even once tasted nonduality know it is a higher order of reality than the collective hallucination we call the world. In fact each sentient being has its own hallucination which it tailors as closely as possible to a reality conventional for its species, its specific maya.
A study of optical illusions (many on you tube) may dindicate how frequently the mind overrides actual perceptions to shape a more comprehensive reality at the expense of accuracy, to provide quick and dirty bases for action. Reality is interpreted and not what it appears to be. Yet we are deluded by a general acceptance of an external reality naively presumed and based on the lowest common denominator of human needs and desires.
In the platonic and neo-platonic "systems" the One is utterly beyond any possibility of knowledge, completely ineffable. Void of any qualities whatever, including voidness. Various systems have various steps from the initial Godhead or demiurge birthed or emanated out of the void and then the ensuance of duality with the advent of Light until eventually the world of multiplicity or appearance is created.
When we experienced the one as rebirth we experienced what zen calls "beginner's mind" as in the aphorism, "beginner's mind is the way." This knowledge is true and complete but it fades and needs constant renewal. This is the path of realization called the Way. We ascend through the various states and stations until we become One with god, or something. The place that the way traverses is the imaginal world. The realization is that the world you see is actually the imaginal world. This world is not the chaotic out of control mess of our fears, but is perfect as it is.
The true (truer? truish?) world is not the static world of objects and places and ritual behaviors but is dynamic and always seeking equilibrium. As suzuki roshi said, "The world is perfect but there is a lot of room for improvement." Lao tzu said:
Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it? I do not believe it can be done.
The universe is sacred. You cannot improve it. If you try to change it, you will ruin it. If you try to hold it, you will lose it.
The hsinhsinming says, "The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences." The imaginal nature of the world is strengthened by desire and weakened by detachment. The way of realization is to weaken desire. This naturally occurs as the leaf grows old and loses it sap, decays, detaches from its twig and falls to earth where its substance is recycled.
The short view is that life is about death, decay and pain. The long view is that it is about renewal. Death is liberation. Life is change, the wheel.
“108
“And then he went back to his job, as though nothing had happened.” A sentence that strikes one as familiar from any number of old stories—though it might not have appeared in any of them.”
Excerpt From: Franz Kafka. “Aphorisms.”
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sudly
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28239008 - 03/21/23 12:50 AM (10 months, 3 days ago) |
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Woah bruh, you must be the only one who's ever had a psychedelic experience!
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Terence said: Meditators and psychonauts who have taken psychedelics and experienced the oneness of being have "tasted" the reality of the imaginal world and encountered the nonexistent, like grabbing a live wire and getting shocked, or seeing an entire landscape in a flash of lightning.
This is a nice thought though 
Quote:
Terence said: The hsinhsinming says, "The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences." The imaginal nature of the world is strengthened by desire and weakened by detachment. The way of realization is to weaken desire. This naturally occurs as the leaf grows old and loses it sap, decays, detaches from its twig and falls to earth where its substance is recycled.
I don't think death is liberation in a general sense though, maybe we appreciate the apricot becoming a seed and growing into the tree, but we ain't trees and have a more human experience than that.
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BrendanFlock
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28239036 - 03/21/23 01:31 AM (10 months, 3 days ago) |
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Why does entropy cause decay? A natural disintegration?
Is there a difference between entropy and inertia?
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redgreenvines
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Quote:
BrendanFlock said:Is there a difference between entropy and inertia?
people should take more science courses basically they ask dumb questions please get as much free schooling as you can before plopping out into the web
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Quote:
redgreenvines said:
Quote:
BrendanFlock said:Is there a difference between entropy and inertia?
people should take more science courses basically they ask dumb questions please get as much free schooling as you can before plopping out into the web
I'm asking from a metaphysical standpoint..
More like food for thought..
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28239821 - 03/21/23 03:06 PM (10 months, 2 days ago) |
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Quote:
sudly said: I think I've interpreted this correctly.
Quote:
A dick in the bum, one in the yum, he warms to the experience and stands sturdy. He gargles effortlessly.
A third man stands naked in the corner. The idea of being handcuffed titillates his senses. The night was long, long of dong. He got the job for his deeds.
One can only indicate. Some people get the moon, and some get the finger.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28239834 - 03/21/23 03:11 PM (10 months, 2 days ago) |
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"If you know who you are and I know who I am, then right now, at this moment, there is only one of us."
~ram dass
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28239847 - 03/21/23 03:16 PM (10 months, 2 days ago) |
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from the tao te ching, trans feng
Five
Heaven and Earth are impartial; They see the ten thousand things as straw dogs. The wise are impartial; They see the people as straw dogs.
The space between heaven and Earth is like a bellows. The shape changes but not the form; The more it moves, the more it yields. More words count less. Hold fast to the center.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28239981 - 03/21/23 04:42 PM (10 months, 2 days ago) |
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so reality exists and some people just quote anything
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: I was going to say you write beautifully, but you chose a beautiful quote for me thank you. love Kafka to bits
“It isn’t necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you to be unmasked, it can do no other, it will writhe before you in ecstasy.”
Excerpt From: Franz Kafka. “Aphorisms.”
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28240015 - 03/21/23 05:00 PM (10 months, 2 days ago) |
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yes, that is the way
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28242546 - 03/23/23 08:19 AM (10 months, 1 day ago) |
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Excerpt From: Zen Master Seung Sahn. “The Compass of Zen“
Animals’ consciousnesses are not good and not bad. But human beings have many strong ideas and desires, so having some animal consciousness inside is not so good, because they cannot control it. When an animal is hungry, it eats. When it is tired, it sleeps. That is very simple! But human beings eat, and are still not satisfied. Even though their stomach is full, they still go outside and do many bad actions to this world: they kill animals for fun or decoration. Somebody catches fish for sport. Then everybody is clapping: “Ah, wonderful!” They laugh and smile and shake hands. The humans are very happy, patting each other on the back and taking pictures. It is considered to be a very successful day. But look at this fish. He is not happy, you know? The fish is flapping around—he’s suffering! “Where is water? Where is water? Please, I want water!” They are laughing, and the fish is suffering and dying, right in front of them. Most humans cannot connect with the great suffering which is right in their midst. This kind of mind is quite usual nowadays. And that is not wonderful. The mind which lives like this has no compassion for the suffering of this world.
Human beings also kill animals not just for food. They take the animals’ skin to make shoes and hats and clothes. And even that is not enough. They take these animals’ bones to make necklaces or buttons or earrings. In short, they kill many, many animals in order to sell the animal parts for money. Because of these desires and this strong animal consciousness, human beings fight with each other, and destroy nature. They do not value life. So now this whole world has many problems: problems with the water, problems with the air, problems with the earth and food. Many new problems appear every day. These problems do not happen by accident. Human beings make each and every one of these problems. Dogs, or cats, or lions, or snakes—no animal makes as many problems for this world as human beings do. Humans do not understand their true nature, so they use their thinking and desire to create so much suffering for this world. That is why some people say that human beings are the number one bad animal in this world. Some religious traditions call this kind of situation the “end of this world.”
That is only the end of the current human consciousness. Original human nature does not have this problem. In Buddhist teaching, rather than call this the “end of the world,” we say that everything is now completely ripe. It is like a fruit growing on a tree. At first a blossom appears on the branch. As time passes this blossom produces a small bud, and the blossom drops away. The bud gradually matures into a fruit which swells and swells as time passes. The fruit is green at first, but over time the side facing the sun starts to turn a beautiful color. At this point, only one side is colored, while the other is still greenish. More time passes, and the whole fruit is now a very wonderful color. The fruit may have a beautiful form and beautiful color, but there is still no smell, because the fruit is not yet ripe inside. As a little more time passes, however, the fruit becomes completely ripe.
Up until this point, it has taken a long time for this to develop from blossom to bud and fruit. For many months all of the tree’s energy has gone up from the roots and down from the leaves gathering energy from the sun, and has gone into producing the fruit. This process has taken place over a long period, up to a year of change and growth in the tree and blossom and bud and fruit.
But now the energy flowing from the tree into the fruit is cut off. From this point on, once the fruit has become completely ripe, the changes in the fruit start to happen very, very quickly, just in a matter of a few days. Its form is not so good anymore, and its color is also not so good. But inside there is a very, very sweet taste, and the fruit begins to smell very strong. It is beginning to be overripe. Soon a few spots appear on the fruit, tiny black dots indicating that the fruit is “turning.” After a few more days, there are many, many spots on the fruit. Once these spots appear on the fruit, the process of rotting cannot be slowed or stopped. The fruit becomes rotten just a few days after becoming ripe. When it becomes rotten, it cannot be eaten. But inside, this fruit has seeds. When the fruit has become completely rotten the seeds reach maturity.
The current situation in the world is like this fruit. Many, many centuries of human development made this fruit. For a long time, this single blossom was only belief in some God or outside power. Then the fruit appeared and developed. But only one side ripened at first; only one side had a good color and good taste, while the other did not. This was the emergence of capitalism and communism in this world. Then recently the changes in this fruit have started to happen very quickly. Communism disappeared, and now the whole fruit is the same color. The fruit has become ripe, and has just one color and taste now: money. Nowadays, there is no longer any ideology for separate belief. This whole world only wants money, and everyone’s energy is going very strongly in that direction. This world has no true way—there is only the taste of money. Already many rotten spots have have appeared: places like the Middle East, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, North Korea, even now in America, Russia, China, and Japan. Since the communist world broke apart, we see the emergence of many smaller groups and nations, all fighting each other. There is also the spread of many private armies and the routine buying and selling of weapons of mass destruction.
So this fruit has grown over a long period of time. But once it becomes ripe, it rots very, very quickly. When any fruit becomes rotten it cannot be eaten. However, inside this fruit there are seeds. These seeds are now ready: they can do anything.
So human beings must soon wake up and find their original nature.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28242603 - 03/23/23 08:48 AM (10 months, 1 day ago) |
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I wonder if the fact that his parents were Christians made rev. Seung Sahn into such a long winded story teller.
Yes- Wake up and be present. no extra stuff necessary, I find his story of the various distractions without compassion composes a poor basis for teaching:
The student looking for meaning in his words could think that there is something wrong in each of the non-compassionate things people do (shaking hands, laughing, eating) which is not the case. What is wrong only among all the stuff in his story is not being present in the moment.
if you are present, you will be what compassion is necessary, wherever you are.
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Rahz
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The story suggests reason for the absence of such presence.
-------------------- rahz comfort pleasure power love truth awareness peace "You’re not looking close enough if you can only see yourself in people who look like you." —Ayishat Akanbi
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Rahz]
#28242812 - 03/23/23 10:53 AM (10 months, 1 day ago) |
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Quote:
Rahz said: The story suggests reason for the absence of such presence.
but everyone has reason for being distracted, what I don't like about it is that it just never zeros in on the problem it tires the listener and the outfall is that hand shaking becomes part of bad activity as well as laughing etc. (I cannot expand this list as I would not finish reading - instead I spent the same time checking wikipedia on him - meh! - then jumped to the ending) this leads to neophyte confusion and can take years to correct. Not all Zen masters have the same gift.
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Rahz
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That's not what I got. Big picture, it's just the ripe fruit that smells good and then bad.
-------------------- rahz comfort pleasure power love truth awareness peace "You’re not looking close enough if you can only see yourself in people who look like you." —Ayishat Akanbi
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Rahz]
#28242847 - 03/23/23 11:21 AM (10 months, 1 day ago) |
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Quote:
Rahz said: That's not what I got. Big picture, it's just the ripe fruit that smells good and then bad.
you bought too much ripe fruit? like I said I did not read the whole thing, and now you got skinky fruits. oh well
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Rahz
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Skinky! Well
-------------------- rahz comfort pleasure power love truth awareness peace "You’re not looking close enough if you can only see yourself in people who look like you." —Ayishat Akanbi
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said:
Quote:
terence said: from “ibn arabi; heir to the prophets” by willim chittick ... As two all-comprehensive images of the Real, cosmos and soul reflect each other. The universe is outward, deployed, dispersed, and objectified; the soul inward, concentrated, focused, and subjectified. The soul is aware and conscious, the world unaware and unknowing – relatively speaking, of course, because there can be no absolutes when the stuff of reality is intermediacy and flux. Through its inwardness the soul finds itself and others, and through its outwardness the world deploys what is potentially knowable to the soul. ...
the middle paragraph works for what I have found and agree with but the first paragraph is a flimsy floral facade, and the last is goofy grasping at godliness and religious acceptance.
Like opening an oreo cookie and only eating the white filling.
We'll have to feed you those bookends. You get the flower but neither the root nor the fruit.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28243166 - 03/23/23 03:00 PM (10 months, 23 hours ago) |
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Quote:
sudly said: Woah bruh, you must be the only one who's ever had a psychedelic experience!
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Now you're starting to figure it out...
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I don't think death is liberation in a general sense though, maybe we appreciate the apricot becoming a seed and growing into the tree, but we ain't trees and have a more human experience than that.
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I am groot.
"Death must be easy because life is hard; it will leave you mentally, physically and emotionally scarred."
~50 cent
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terence
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Quote:
BrendanFlock said: Why does entropy cause decay? A natural disintegration?
Is there a difference between entropy and inertia?
When an atom decays is this disintegation? A new element is formed.
Entropy is the opposite of inertia. Neither exist.
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said:
Quote:
BrendanFlock said:Is there a difference between entropy and inertia?
people should take more science courses basically they ask dumb questions please get as much free schooling as you can before plopping out into the web
"Dumb" questions, by definition, are the ones you don't ask. It is true one must learn the language before one can ask intelligible questions.
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: so reality exists and some people just quote anything
Reality does not exist. Existence is not reality.
I only quote myself, though I often attribute my words to other of my incarnations. I even quote you/me.
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: I wonder if the fact that his parents were Christians made rev. Seung Sahn into such a long winded story teller.
Yes- Wake up and be present. no extra stuff necessary, I find his story of the various distractions without compassion composes a poor basis for teaching:
The student looking for meaning in his words could think that there is something wrong in each of the non-compassionate things people do (shaking hands, laughing, eating) which is not the case. What is wrong only among all the stuff in his story is not being present in the moment.
if you are present, you will be what compassion is necessary, wherever you are.
Seung sahn is one of my favorites. It is not that he is long-winded, but that people's attention spans have been shortened by twitter feeds and capitalist conditioning. The powers that condition and pervasively advertise and basically own our minds don't want us to grasp anything the least nuanced, or to think too deeply. Just opine and move on. Truths must be passed over quickly, lest they grow and crowd out the easily satisfied and distracting taste for sugary superficials.
There's a sufi story about making ice cream. To make proper fruit ice cream, one must mix one third real fruit with two thirds ice cream. Or, you could put a small amount of artificial flavoring and coloring into the ice cream, and 90 per cent of people won't know the difference or will be happy to pay less for an inferior product which contains no actual nourishment at all. Which will most people choose to do? Which would you do?
If you are born into a slave-holding society you are tarred with the brush of the evil of slavery.
Born into a capitalist society we are tarred with the brush of greed being the fundamental basis of economic life.
Born into an animal slaughtering meat eating exploitative society we are steeped in violence and misery.
Nobody is at fault. Everyone is doing the best they can. Species typically grow to the limits of their resources and their populations then typically crash. The natural world certainly contains its share of violence and misery. I'm not trying to guilt trip you or make you feel you must change your life. Fruits ripen, that is all. What is sown is reaped. The new proceeds from the decay of the old.
Born into an evil society, one awakens to the evil and either has the courage, fortitude and stamina to resist and try to live in accordance with justice and truth, or one tries to enjoy oneself as much as possible and the hell with it.
The Way is to consciously do the best one can, making every effort to be sincere, innocent and spontaneous as a child.
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said:
Quote:
Rahz said: The story suggests reason for the absence of such presence.
but everyone has reason for being distracted, what I don't like about it is that it just never zeros in on the problem it tires the listener and the outfall is that hand shaking becomes part of bad activity as well as laughing etc. (I cannot expand this list as I would not finish reading - instead I spent the same time checking wikipedia on him - meh! - then jumped to the ending) this leads to neophyte confusion and can take years to correct. Not all Zen masters have the same gift.
hand shaking is as conventional and meaningful as wearing a tie. Get a haircut. Get a real job.
Have a nice day.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28243290 - 03/23/23 04:58 PM (10 months, 21 hours ago) |
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but it needs neither a positive or negative handle, it is cast as negative while moralizing about something else.
I have little patience for moralizing.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28243354 - 03/23/23 05:29 PM (10 months, 21 hours ago) |
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“The ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They’re not the Way. The Way is wordless. Words are illusions. They’re no different from things that appear in your dreams at night, be they palaces or carriages, forested parks or lakeside pavilions. Don’t conceive any delight for such things. They’re all cradles of rebirth. Keep this in mind when you approach death. Don’t cling to appearances, and you’ll break through all barriers. A moment’s hesitation and you’ll be under the spell of devils. Your real body is pure and impervious. But because of delusions you’re unaware of it. And because of this you suffer karma in vain. Wherever you find delight, you find bondage. But once you awaken to your original body and mind, you’re no longer bound by attachments.”
Excerpt From: Bodhidharma. “The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma.”
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: but it needs neither a positive or negative handle, it is cast as negative while moralizing about something else.
I have little patience for moralizing.
A little patience is a dangerous thing.
One of the 99 names of god is "the patient one."
I have no respect for authority and never moralize. I don't quote to lend my words authority but to generalize and because those quoted speak more eloquently than I.
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terence
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Quote:
and the outfall is that hand shaking becomes part of bad activity
tail-wagging, on the other hand, is unconditionally good...
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Rahz]
#28243588 - 03/23/23 07:50 PM (10 months, 18 hours ago) |
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ranz says:
A man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe." -Euripides [412 B.C.]
"Everything between 'thus have I heard' and 'this I believe' is mere words."
~layman pang
"It's just a box of rain, I don't know who put it there. Believe it if you need it, and need it if you dare."
~robert hunter
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28243639 - 03/23/23 08:17 PM (10 months, 18 hours ago) |
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Even a Dog Can Shake Hands (warren zevon)
[Intro] Hey! Woo, woo Hey!
[Verse 1] He's tryna survive up on Mulholland Drive He's got the phone in the car in his hand Everbody's tryna be a friend of mine Even a dog can shake hands
[Verse 2] He wants twenty percent because he knew you back when Now they all want a piece of the band Everbody's tryna be a friend of mine Even a dog can shake hands
[Verse 3] All the worms and the gnomes are having lunch at Le Dome They're all living off the fat of the land Everbody's tryna be a friend of mine Even a dog can shake hands Woo-woo, yeah
[Chorus] Sign page forty-two, we'll do the rest for you Find a way to make it pay Don't lose your head, you'll end up dead Or you'll be living in the valley some day Hey!
[Verse 4] I better not hope you don't rock the boat And we'll make a few hundred grand Everbody's tryna be a friend of mine Even a dog can shake hands
[Verse 5] You'll be making the scene 'til they pick your bones clean And they don't leave much for the fans Everbody's tryna be a friend of mine Even a dog can shake hands Woo-woo, yeah
[Chorus] Sign page forty-two, we'll do the rest for you Find a way to make it pay Don't lose your head, you'll end up dead You'll be living in the valley some day Yeah
[Outro] Well, I'm tryna survive up on Mulholland Drive And I get it any way I can And everbody's tryna be a friend of mine Even a dog can shake hands Woo-woo, yeah Woo-woo, ain't that true?
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nooneman


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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: shadowplay]
#28243640 - 03/23/23 08:17 PM (10 months, 18 hours ago) |
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Reality is the thing that stubbornly refuses to become unreal no matter how much we want it to.
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Metoo
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28243658 - 03/23/23 08:27 PM (10 months, 18 hours ago) |
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Quote:
terence said: We do not perceive something and then name it, we perceive the object as an existing thing immediately. We don't conceptualize a perception, we taste it directly already named and by that fact objectified. The illusion is that we live in a world of existing objects. The reality is that there are no existing objects. Existence itself is the world-illusion, maya. A fantasy based on our appetites, our desires, our care and love. Dogen says, because we love flowers, weeds come into existence.
In the abhidharma presentation the process of interacting with sensory perceptions is described as a repetitive self-activation of the five skandhas - usually translated as heaps or mental aggregates. One full run of form, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness takes one "mind-moment" - cittakkhana. Between these moments there is no perception or any mental processes, and the illusion of continuity is created by a constant flow of mind-moments. So not only does the conventional (apparent, conditioned) reality does not really exist - it only consists of the regurgitated karmas from the store-consciousness alaya-vijnana but the one experiencing it does not exist either, other than a flow of discreet mind-moments in which all mental activity happens.
I am not sure if soto and rinzai schools accept this framework but all Tibetan traditions do. One of my biggest regrets is not seeing Seung Sahn (Soen Sa Nim) in person. He gave talks at my hometown a few times but I never went.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Metoo]
#28243960 - 03/24/23 12:05 AM (10 months, 14 hours ago) |
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Quote:
Metoo said:
Quote:
terence said: We do not perceive something and then name it, we perceive the object as an existing thing immediately. We don't conceptualize a perception, we taste it directly already named and by that fact objectified. The illusion is that we live in a world of existing objects. The reality is that there are no existing objects. Existence itself is the world-illusion, maya. A fantasy based on our appetites, our desires, our care and love. Dogen says, because we love flowers, weeds come into existence.
In the abhidharma presentation the process of interacting with sensory perceptions is described as a repetitive self-activation of the five skandhas - usually translated as heaps or mental aggregates. One full run of form, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness takes one "mind-moment" - cittakkhana. Between these moments there is no perception or any mental processes, and the illusion of continuity is created by a constant flow of mind-moments. So not only does the conventional (apparent, conditioned) reality does not really exist - it only consists of the regurgitated karmas from the store-consciousness alaya-vijnana but the one experiencing it does not exist either, other than a flow of discreet mind-moments in which all mental activity happens.
I am not sure if soto and rinzai schools accept this framework but all Tibetan traditions do. One of my biggest regrets is not seeing Seung Sahn (Soen Sa Nim) in person. He gave talks at my hometown a few times but I never went.
Not just the abhidharma, all the schools of buddhism would accept that framework, and it would be acceptable to sufism also. The only question is whether the buddhists got these views from platonists or the reverse.
Seung sahn was one of the truly great zen masters of the twentieth century. Only shunryu suzuki compares in my view. I have similar regrets that I didn't see bob marley when I had the chance.
from zen mind, beginner's mind by shunryu suzuki
Dogen-zenji said, "Even though it is midnight, dawn is here; even though dawn comes, it is nighttime." This kind of statement conveys the understanding transmitted from Buddha to the Patriarchs, and from the Patriarchs to Dogen, and to us. Nighttime and daytime are not different. The same thing is sometimes called nighttime, sometimes called daytime. They are one thing.
Zazen practice and everyday activity are one thing. We call zazen everyday life, and everyday life zazen. But usually we think, "Now zazen is over, and we will go about our everyday activity." But this is not the right understanding. They are the same thing. We have nowhere to escape. So in activity there should be calmness, and in calmness there should be activity. Calmness and activity are not different.
Each existence depends on something else. Strictly speaking, there are no separate individual existences. There are just many names for one existence. Sometimes people put stress on oneness, but this is not our understanding. We do not emphasize any point in particular, even oneness. Oneness is valuable, but variety is also wonderful. Ignoring variety, people emphasize the one absolute existence, but this is a one-sided understanding. In this understanding there is a gap between variety and oneness. But oneness and variety are the same thing, so oneness should be appreciated in each existence. That is why we emphasize everyday life rather than some particular state of mind. We should find the reality in each moment, and in each phenomenon. This is a very important point.
Dogen-zenji said, "Although everything has Buddha nature, we love flowers, and we do not care for weeds." This is true of human nature. But that we are attached to some beauty is itself Buddha's activity. That we do not care for weeds is also Buddha's activity. We should know that. If you know that, it is all right to attach to something. If it is Buddha's attachment, that is non-attachment. So in love there should be hate, or non-attachment. And in hate there should be love, or acceptance. Love and hate are one thing. We should not attach to love alone. We should accept hate. We should accept weeds, despite how we feel about them. If you do not care for them, do not love them; if you love them, then love them.
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Metoo
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28244008 - 03/24/23 01:28 AM (10 months, 13 hours ago) |
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I just remembered that the first Buddhist centre I visited was Seung Sahn's. We wore the grey gowns and did a 40 minutes zazen session.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28244009 - 03/24/23 01:29 AM (10 months, 13 hours ago) |
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shunryu suzuki, op cit
Dogen said, "To learn something is to know yourself; to study Buddhism is to study yourself." To learn something is not to acquire something which you did not know before. You know something before you learn it. There is no gap between the "I" before you know something and the "I" after you know something. There is no gap between the ignorant and the wise. A foolish person is a wise person; a wise person is a foolish person. But usually we think, "He is foolish and i am wise," or "I was foolish, but now I am wise." How can we be wise if we are foolish? But the understanding transmitted from Buddha to us is that there is no difference whatsoever between the foolish man and the wise man. It is so. But if 1 say this people may think that I am emphasizing oneness. This is not so. We do not emphasize anything. All we want to do is to know things just as they are. If we know things as they are, there is nothing to point at; there is no way to grasp anything; there is no thing to grasp. We cannot put emphasis on any point. Nevertheless, as Dogen said, "A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it." Even though it is so, this is our life.
In this way our life should be understood. Then there is no problem. Because we put emphasis on some particular point, we always have trouble. We should accept things just as they are. This is how we understand everything, and how we live in this world. This kind of experience is something beyond our thinking. In the thinking realm there is a difference between oneness and variety; but in actual experience, variety and unity are the same. Because you create some idea of unity or variety, you are caught by the idea. And you have to continue the endless thinking, although actually there is no need to think.
Emotionally we have many problems, but these problems are not actual problems; they are something created; they are problems pointed out by our self-centered ideas or views. Because we point out something, there are problems. But actually it is not possible to point out anything in particular. Happiness is sorrow; sorrow is happiness. There is happiness in difficulty; difficulty in happiness. Even though the ways we feel are different, they are not really different, in essence they are the same. This is the true understanding transmitted from Buddha to us.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28244013 - 03/24/23 01:50 AM (10 months, 12 hours ago) |
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All the time I pray to Buddha I keep on killing mosquitoes.
~issa
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28244080 - 03/24/23 05:27 AM (10 months, 9 hours ago) |
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abhidhamma and mind moments is the original inspiration for my brain theory of operation.
it is described in this thread https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/27446374#27446374 and illustrated.
and a functional version is shown using JavaScript if you click the brain fart in my sig.
In university my friend got his psychology masters degree on Abhidhamma, and my cousin who was a Buddhist monk for 3 years introduced him and me to it after his return to Canada.
The traditional explanations are bogged down in cultural scientific limitations and are largely imperfect, but the essence of mind moments is real. I had the charts up on my wall for years, and read the translations several times.
Consider the Alpha rhythm of ~10 pulses per second as the key to all citta, while waking or dreaming. consider associative perception as the memory reflex to be the root of all attachment good and bad - that is our reality. And the solid reality of physics and chemistry is definitely real as well. Nama Rupa.
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sudly
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28244115 - 03/24/23 06:28 AM (10 months, 8 hours ago) |
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Quote:
Dogen-zenji said, "Although everything has Buddha nature, we love flowers, and we do not care for weeds."
I did plant hairy commelina and purple topped verbadum in my backyard before, with vibrant blue and purple flowers.
They're supposed to be weeds in my country, but ornamentals like lantana complicate that when they adapt for foreign climates and begin to impact their ecology, house development and agriculture.
Mother in law tongues, Yukkas, and succulents alike require S5 chemicals at least so read the SDS!
A lot of plants have vegetative reproduction too where individual pieces can grow into individual plants. Hence why brush cutting tends to dramatically spread some species like mother of millions, butterfly heaven or Singapore daisy.
A wide variety of native and invasive flowering plants in Australia have fantastic colours, and unique looks. I've seen kilometres of fields below a mountain ridge filled with fireweed, a dense sea of yellow flowers. They're toxic to cattle, and only select species of goat can eat them. They spread by hair tufted seeds that become carried by the wind and can travel vast distances, in vast numbers.
It snows side ways sometimes, with groundsel too.
I wrote a field guide on weed identification within a locality and have a lot of field experience as well.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
Edited by sudly (03/24/23 06:34 AM)
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28244121 - 03/24/23 06:34 AM (10 months, 8 hours ago) |
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in the right context weed is fantastic. social conformity creeps into Zen with some groovy masters.
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sudly
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You can't control the seedbank without emergents, and these are often harsh and long lasting chemicals that can heavily stain the ground or equipment, and a lot of weeds become naturalised too. Additionally, some natives like typha, luwdigia and some persecaria species can choke waterways and lead to drainage issues.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly] 1
#28244867 - 03/24/23 03:08 PM (9 months, 30 days ago) |
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Quote:
sudly said:
Quote:
Dogen-zenji said, "Although everything has Buddha nature, we love flowers, and we do not care for weeds."
I did plant hairy commelina and purple topped verbadum in my backyard before, with vibrant blue and purple flowers.
They're supposed to be weeds in my country, but ornamentals like lantana complicate that when they adapt for foreign climates and begin to impact their ecology, house development and agriculture.
Mother in law tongues, Yukkas, and succulents alike require S5 chemicals at least so read the SDS!
A lot of plants have vegetative reproduction too where individual pieces can grow into individual plants. Hence why brush cutting tends to dramatically spread some species like mother of millions, butterfly heaven or Singapore daisy.
A wide variety of native and invasive flowering plants in Australia have fantastic colours, and unique looks. I've seen kilometres of fields below a mountain ridge filled with fireweed, a dense sea of yellow flowers. They're toxic to cattle, and only select species of goat can eat them. They spread by hair tufted seeds that become carried by the wind and can travel vast distances, in vast numbers.
It snows side ways sometimes, with groundsel too.
I wrote a field guide on weed identification within a locality and have a lot of field experience as well.
I love field guides and appreciate your work. I'm sure you are intimately aware that classifying a flowering plant as a "weed" or a "flower" is a matter of where one stands. In hawaii lantana is definitely a weed, something no one would plant and many would eradicate. But the flowers are pretty. In oregon, blackberries are a pest.
Dogen is speaking of "love" and "care." As sentient beings, we seek our good and avoid our bad by the nature of things. We pick berries and swat mosquitos. Berries are not good and mosquitos are not bad in the larger sense, though we need food and mosquitos kill more humans than any other creature. It is naive, delusional and attachment to regard objects as inherently of value. To the buddha, bars of gold and gems are so many bricks and pebbles. Flowering plants are flowering plants and indeed are all one plant, bud-stem-leaf, bud-stem-leaf.
from 101 Zen Stories, compiled by paul reps
101. Buddha's Zen
Buddha said:
'I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasure of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles. I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags. I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and the greatest lake in India as a drop of oil on my foot. I perceive the teachings of the world to be the illusion of magicians. I discern the highest conception of emancipation as golden brocade in a dream, and view the holy path of the illuminated one as flowers appearing in one's eyes. I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain, Nirvana as a nightmare of daytime. I look upon the judgment of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, and the rise and fall of beliefs as but traces left by the four seasons.'
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28244993 - 03/24/23 04:30 PM (9 months, 30 days ago) |
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Quote:
terence said:
from 101 Zen Stories, compiled by paul reps
101. Buddha's Zen
Buddha said:
'I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasure of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles. I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags. I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and the greatest lake in India as a drop of oil on my foot. I perceive the teachings of the world to be the illusion of magicians. I discern the highest conception of emancipation as golden brocade in a dream, and view the holy path of the illuminated one as flowers appearing in one's eyes. I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain, Nirvana as a nightmare of daytime. I look upon the judgment of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, and the rise and fall of beliefs as but traces left by the four seasons.'
OK then, now we are starting to make sense in a few words. one quality quote in 3 days of quoting. or were you giving us some kafka yesterday?
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sudly
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28245513 - 03/25/23 01:05 AM (9 months, 30 days ago) |
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I've been practicing gem sieving for a while now and have recently come across multiple opaque carats of my own, only to learn that the market only values transparency at a minimum of carats.
This puts into perspective a probability for success in profit though, which is fortunate.
Particularly within gemology.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
Edited by sudly (03/25/23 01:11 AM)
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28245589 - 03/25/23 04:09 AM (9 months, 30 days ago) |
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a 2 carat Kafka would do nicely
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence] 1
#28246130 - 03/25/23 02:15 PM (9 months, 30 days ago) |
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from dogen, shobogenzo
Meditation Master Banzan Hōshaku once said, “Among thousands of saintly persons, none have Transmitted the one path to That Which is Above and Beyond.” The phrase ‘the one path to That Which is Above and Beyond’ is the wording of Banzan alone. He did not speak of what is above and beyond, nor did he speak of those who are above and beyond; he spoke of the one path to That Which is Above and Beyond. His main point is that even though thousands of saintly ones may have come forth in great profusion, they have not Transmitted the one path to That Which is Above and Beyond. ‘To not Transmit’ can also mean that the thousands of saintly ones have preserved a part of something that is above and beyond being Transmitted. We can study the Matter in this way too. And there is still something more that needs to be said: thousands of saintly ones and thousands of wise ones do indeed exist, and even so, wise and saintly though they may be, the one path to That Which is Above and Beyond is above and beyond the realm of the wise and saintly.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28246304 - 03/25/23 04:15 PM (9 months, 29 days ago) |
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I do not think that will transmit either, but if you spend time with it you may see the extent of personal delusion.
A good psychological gift from a Zen Master is to remind you that you are not beyond delusion, and what is in your mind is emptiness, while it is also apparently form.
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sudly
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Quote:
He did not speak of what is above and beyond, nor did he speak of those who are above and beyond; he spoke of the one path to That Which is Above and Beyond. His main point is that even though thousands of saintly ones may have come forth in great profusion, they have not Transmitted the one path to That Which is Above and Beyond. ‘To not Transmit’ can also mean that the thousands of saintly ones have preserved a part of something that is above and beyond being Transmitted.
I really like this.
And although I now realise gold panning isn't required for gem sieving, I'm glad I've now had enough practice to be able to say I've learnt how to both gold pan and gem sieve effectively.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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sudly
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: a 2 carat Kafka would do nicely
By Goethe own tongue, he knows what it is to romance, to beckon with joy, and as such he knows it is rife for dangers.
Happiness is found in all manner of relations I say.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28246709 - 03/25/23 08:40 PM (9 months, 29 days ago) |
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not good kafka???
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sudly
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True, but if value has deterministic traits
I've never cheated in all 8 years of being in relationships since my youth. I was happy enough to try and make it work. I recognise red flags and have clearer boundaries now.
Something's holding me together.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28246744 - 03/25/23 09:06 PM (9 months, 29 days ago) |
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no reason to fall apart either, all good
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sudly
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Imo.
Nature doesn't hold inherent meanings, because the value of nature has deterministic traits.
What is a diamond to a fox? It's a hard stone in the gullet for future paleontologists to find is what.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said:
The traditional explanations are bogged down in cultural scientific limitations and are largely imperfect, but the essence of mind moments is real. I had the charts up on my wall for years, and read the translations several times.
Consider the Alpha rhythm of ~10 pulses per second as the key to all citta, while waking or dreaming. consider associative perception as the memory reflex to be the root of all attachment good and bad - that is our reality. And the solid reality of physics and chemistry is definitely real as well. Nama Rupa.
I can't agree with much of this. You mix physics and metaphysics. Neither are real; both are empty.
Citta is mindstuff, the animate substance of existence. For "physics" and "chemistry" substance is inanimate and is thought to exist independently of observation. While both subjects have metaphysical implications, scientists rarely see them clearly.
The very term "mindstuff" implies that "stuff" is both mental and physical. Consider a baseball. It is a spheroid of horsehide, stitching and stuffing, and to science (materialism) that is all it is. But "baseball" is much more than that, and a souvenir baseball could be worth tens of thousands more than a new one. You might say that stuffing, stitching and horsehide at least are real, but they are just more limited notions and nothing else.
What exists is not real; what is real does not exist.
The point of view that measures objects as though they were real and deduces facts and induces generalities naively accepts the subject object distinction along with time and space. Other views are seen as "bogged down in cultural limitations" and "imperfect" but you might as well be saying "primitive" and "inferior" which is the typical western view. The very fact that we are communicating in english is very sad and an index of how fallen are our perceptions of reality. Medieval arabic or sanskrit would be best, or at least persian, latin or hebrew. Interesting that in the west german is the language of philosophy, the ugliest of languages (ich liebe dich!).
Nama rupa are maya.
If I say things that are challenging it is mainly to stimulate dialog. I do have a baccalaureate in biology with a minor in chemistry. In our era of fake news and barefaced lying science is being badly abused so I tend to defend it, especially vaccines. But spiritually science is barren and technology killed the cat.
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said:
Quote:
terence said:
from 101 Zen Stories, compiled by paul reps
101. Buddha's Zen
Buddha said:
'I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasure of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles. I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags. I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and the greatest lake in India as a drop of oil on my foot. I perceive the teachings of the world to be the illusion of magicians. I discern the highest conception of emancipation as golden brocade in a dream, and view the holy path of the illuminated one as flowers appearing in one's eyes. I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain, Nirvana as a nightmare of daytime. I look upon the judgment of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, and the rise and fall of beliefs as but traces left by the four seasons.'
OK then, now we are starting to make sense in a few words. one quality quote in 3 days of quoting. or were you giving us some kafka yesterday?
You must be sadly bored and annoyed that I have wasted your time.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28247908 - 03/26/23 04:15 PM (9 months, 28 days ago) |
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A bit more kafka or some of that old time biology would be good.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly] 1
#28247920 - 03/26/23 04:20 PM (9 months, 28 days ago) |
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Quote:
sudly said: I've been practicing gem sieving for a while now and have recently come across multiple opaque carats of my own, only to learn that the market only values transparency at a minimum of carats.
This puts into perspective a probability for success in profit though, which is fortunate.
Particularly within gemology.
I am a practicing silversmith and lapidary.
Every gem is a stone but not every stone is a gem.
One of my favorite sufi stories is about the egyptian sufi dhun-nun. He was hanging out at the local souk in alexandria when a young man began berating him about the ignorance and bad character of sufis, with extensive insults. Dhun-nun had on a big ring with a rough cut jewel in a cheap setting. He took the ring off and told the young man to take it to the stall holders and see if he could get a dinar for it. None of the merchants would offer a single obol for the gem. Now, said dhun-nun, take it to a jeweller and see what he will give you. The jeweler offered 5000 dinars for the ring. The young man was amazed. Dhun-nun told him, your knowledge of sufis is like that of the stallholders for jewels. If you want to know the true value of a gem, take it to a real jeweler.
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: I do not think that will transmit either, but if you spend time with it you may see the extent of personal delusion.
A good psychological gift from a Zen Master is to remind you that you are not beyond delusion, and what is in your mind is emptiness, while it is also apparently form.
“102
All the sufferings we occasion we must also suffer. We don’t all share one body, but we do share growth, and that leads us through all pain, whether in this form or that. As the child grows through all its phases and becomes old and dies (and every stage seems unattainable to those before, whether from desire or from dread), so we develop (no less connected to others than to ourselves) through all the sufferings of the world. There is in this context no room for justice, and not for fear of suffering either, or for the presentation of suffering as merit.”
Excerpt From: Franz Kafka. “Aphorisms.” Apple Books.
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Jake Le
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I believe that reality, means take least then you share, more so even. Greed is a type of disloyalty even if there are exchanges for a type of demonstration, be it less or condoned. Let's see, plurals mean to speak while others seem to take on resilience. To imagine death is not important, to think weakness is a type of disbelief to prioritize is seemingly reliant,🌐I believe displined marriages are the most important for the reality basis😔
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sudly
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Jake Le]
#28252443 - 03/29/23 04:19 AM (9 months, 26 days ago) |
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Nothing but a doctor's finger goes where the Sun don't shine ey, cus if someone else did that it'd surely impact and change your life for the worst.
But communication sure is important in any kind of relationship.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28252455 - 03/29/23 04:53 AM (9 months, 26 days ago) |
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well at least you are never going to let yourself get constipated, because if you get impacted, they gonna hafto drive a big truck up your butt to pull the crap out.
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sudly
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-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28269472 - 04/09/23 01:47 AM (9 months, 15 days ago) |
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from william chittick, op cit
Ibn ‘Arabi sometimes speaks of the “four pillars” of Divinity, by which he means the four primary names upon which the cosmos is predicated. He typically lists them as Living, Knowing, Desiring, and Powerful. He points out that each of these names designates the exact same Wujud, but they have a logical interrelationship that helps us understand the underlying order of the universe.
God creates the cosmos through power, but he never exercises power without desiring to do so, which is to say that nothing arbitrary or meaningless ever happens in the universe. He cannot desire something without first knowing it, so desire is preceded by omniscience. And knowledge depends upon life.
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This is a neo-platonic view. Life "emanates" sapience, which knows. Through knowledge we come to love and desire, and thence to will and power.
These ideas may be traced from hinduism and buddhism through schopenauer and nietzsche as well.
The real insight of ibn arabi is to see that each emanation is the same wujud, the same Reality, under a different Name.
I've been contemplating whether animals have language and I am sure of it. While we humans know all the Names and use the names of the Names as our "language," animals deal directly with the Names they know.
To remember you need to know, and to know you need a Name, a reference point. My dog is very smart and remembers everything. She knows what things are and knows many objects when I name them. She has the same concerns about food and security as other sentient beings, and feels and expresses a wide variety of recognizable, memorable and nameable emotions. She has neither the interest in nor the capacity for rationalization. It doesn't bother her that she isn't right all the time. The wise dog knows what she doesn't know. In dogs it's a sign of maturity.
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sudly
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28269474 - 04/09/23 01:53 AM (9 months, 15 days ago) |
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Let me know what happens when you eat your own turds, I expect detailed documentation.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28269515 - 04/09/23 04:24 AM (9 months, 15 days ago) |
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Quote:
terence said: ...
To remember you need to know, and to know you need a Name, a reference point. My dog is very smart and remembers everything. She knows what things are and knows many objects when I name them. She has the same concerns about food and security as other sentient beings, and feels and expresses a wide variety of recognizable, memorable and nameable emotions. She has neither the interest in nor the capacity for rationalization. It doesn't bother her that she isn't right all the time. The wise dog knows what she doesn't know. In dogs it's a sign of maturity.
I would say that remembering is the reflex of familiarity, and that you can very much be familiar with situations and things that do not yet have names.
indeed, the basics of memory are more akin to an internal map, than like grammar or a dictionary.
it is the same for a dog, a bee or a person.
This is the way.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28316643 - 05/12/23 01:53 AM (8 months, 13 days ago) |
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from dogen, shobogenzo
Since we human beings are continually arranging the bits and pieces of what we experience in order to fashion ‘a whole universe’, we must take care to look upon this welter of living beings and physical objects as ‘sometime’ things. Things do not go about hindering each other’s existence any more than moments of time get in each other’s way. As a consequence, the intention to train arises at the same time in different beings, and this same intention may also arise at different times. And the same applies to training and practice, as well as to realizing the Way. In a similar manner, we are continually arranging bits and pieces of what we experience in order to fashion them into what we call ‘a self’, which we treat as ‘myself’: this is the same as the principle of ‘we ourselves are just for a time’.
Because of this very principle of the way things are, the earth in its entirety has myriad forms and hundreds of things sprouting up, each sprout and each form being a whole earth - a point which you should incorporate into your study of the Way, for the recognition of the coming and going of things in this manner is a first step in training and practice. When you reach such a fertile field of seeing the way things really are, then the earth in its entirety will be ‘one whole sprouting, one whole form’; it will be comprised of forms that you recognize and forms that you do not, sproutings that you recognize and sproutings that you do not. It is the same as the times we refer to in ‘from time to time’, which contain all forms of existence and all worlds. So take a moment to look around and consider whether there is any form of being, that is, any ‘world’, that does or does not find expression at this very moment of time.
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said:
Quote:
terence said: ...
To remember you need to know, and to know you need a Name, a reference point. My dog is very smart and remembers everything. She knows what things are and knows many objects when I name them. She has the same concerns about food and security as other sentient beings, and feels and expresses a wide variety of recognizable, memorable and nameable emotions. She has neither the interest in nor the capacity for rationalization. It doesn't bother her that she isn't right all the time. The wise dog knows what she doesn't know. In dogs it's a sign of maturity.
I would say that remembering is the reflex of familiarity, and that you can very much be familiar with situations and things that do not yet have names.
indeed, the basics of memory are more akin to an internal map, than like grammar or a dictionary.
it is the same for a dog, a bee or a person.
This is the way.
Your assertions are plausible but wrong. The "basics of memory" are not so well known, but they involve a recall of experience in considerable detail, like remembering a song every note distinct. That is not familiarity, that is recall. An event, not a map.
The essentials are indeed collectively (though an infinite set) a grammar. Patanjali was a grammarian. The grammar is the map.
The dog does not know "names" in your sense but knows them in their essence, in my sense.
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence] 1
#28320029 - 05/14/23 11:41 PM (8 months, 10 days ago) |
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I will agree 100% that when we recall a sequence or occurrence that it is as if we are experiencing it again.
However, I will declare that the function of memory is more a matter of navigation reflex than a matter of reviewing what happened (especially if considered in context of the evolution of conscious faculties in bilaterally symmetrical creatures for the last 1/2 billion years).
Also while navigating through recollections, much of what is experienced is reconstructive and not distinct actual detail though it can have a hyper realistic feel to it - especially if stoned.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28320030 - 05/14/23 11:46 PM (8 months, 10 days ago) |
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Quote:
sudly said: Let me know what happens when you eat your own turds, I expect detailed documentation.
Darwin apparently needs you to be vulgar.
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: I will agree 100% that when we recall a sequence or occurrence that it is as if we are experiencing it again.
However, I will declare that the function of memory is more a matter of navigation reflex than a matter of reviewing what happened (especially if considered in context of the evolution of conscious faculties in bilaterally symmetrical creatures for the last 1/2 billion years).
Also while navigating through recollections, much of what is experienced is reconstructive and not distinct actual detail though it can have a hyper realistic feel to it - especially if stoned.
Edited memories are not memories, they are fantasies.
When my dog was about eight weeks old she was sleeping at the farmer's market when a customer walking by commented on her mouth and paws moving while she slept and said, "what does a puppy have to dream about?'
“I have done that', says my memory. I cannot have done that—says my pride and remains unshakeable. Finally—memory yields.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
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sudly
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28320037 - 05/15/23 12:06 AM (8 months, 10 days ago) |
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Quote:
terence said:
Quote:
sudly said: Let me know what happens when you eat your own turds, I expect detailed documentation.
Darwin apparently needs you to be vulgar.
With the unrefined cyclical crap you're chewing out here, the approach is appropriate imo.
Like for like, I see no detailed documentation of your experience.

I'm fine to suggest practicing a balanced and equanimous approach to life and all the unfoldings of finding a sense of coherence and meaning, but I think you sprinkle in a lot of unrecognisable glitter that distracts from whatever further message you're trying to convey.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
Edited by sudly (05/15/23 12:14 AM)
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28320043 - 05/15/23 12:27 AM (8 months, 10 days ago) |
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Quote:
terence said:
Quote:
redgreenvines said: I will agree 100% that when we recall a sequence or occurrence that it is as if we are experiencing it again.
However, I will declare that the function of memory is more a matter of navigation reflex than a matter of reviewing what happened (especially if considered in context of the evolution of conscious faculties in bilaterally symmetrical creatures for the last 1/2 billion years).
Also while navigating through recollections, much of what is experienced is reconstructive and not distinct actual detail though it can have a hyper realistic feel to it - especially if stoned.
Edited memories are not memories, they are fantasies.
When my dog was about eight weeks old she was sleeping at the farmer's market when a customer walking by commented on her mouth and paws moving while she slept and said, "what does a puppy have to dream about?'
“I have done that', says my memory. I cannot have done that—says my pride and remains unshakeable. Finally—memory yields.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
memories are never completely unaffected by what you experience before or after the event. it is not a digital record nor is it like video tape, it is entirely associative.
this means that bits of memory are inseparably inter-linked with other bits of memory
Editing is not why memory is different than actual history. The appearance of editing is in the perception itself which is only ever somewhat like unto the stimulus in the context.
If the context or stimulus evokes memory (aka perception), what is evoked is what fits the context and recent mental contents. We do not have any ability to discern whether what is recalled is 100% accurate to the history that created the memory.
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terence
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quote from rgv
I will agree 100% that when we recall a sequence or occurrence that it is as if we are experiencing it again.
However, I will declare that the function of memory is more a matter of navigation reflex than a matter of reviewing what happened (especially if considered in context of the evolution of conscious faculties in bilaterally symmetrical creatures for the last 1/2 billion years).
Also while navigating through recollections, much of what is experienced is reconstructive and not distinct actual detail though it can have a hyper realistic feel to it - especially if stoned.
unquote
------------------------
(Had to take a minute to imagine myself as a conscious trilobite. Goodness, the end of the permian is coming! We're all going to die!)
I disagree with above at a primordial level. I’m talking about a paradigmatically different point of view, a copernican revolution. (“Glitter” to the vulgar.)
I need a little bit of sympathy to present this. Of course I am presenting my unique irreplaceable and inimitable point of view. I am a social creature and am willing to dialog with others to mutually share and exchange our views, with a view to detachment from all views.
Reality and existence are a hot topic in philosophy these days. Greg harmon’s object oriented ontology, along with timothy morton’s work on hyper objects extends heidegger’s insight into “tool being” and the phenomenology of experience. The essence of which is the unpacking of non duality.
We know from non duality that “the knower and the known are not two.” We cannot stand back from a “thing” called “consciousness” and see it as a definable object. We call this consciousness a “subject” but that is an assumption, one denied by buddhism, “there is no self-nature.”
So even consciousness is regarded as an object in consciousness. Being social creatures, the concept of “other” in human relations is deep and fraught with contextual implications. But we can see in animals and other sentient beings that each creature has its own world which is at the same time totally related and interconnected with the worlds of all other creatures and also with a “real” world independent of consciousnesses. Objects are not only real to our own conceptions and those of “other” humans, they are real to other sentient beings and to each other. When two billiard balls collide, they carom off by physical laws independent of anyone’s consciousness. The tree which falls in the forest with no one to hear makes no sound but the vibrations it makes could be heard if there were ears.
Similarly, events occur that our consciousness as humans organizes “a priori' into spatial and temporal order. That is, we impose space and time, the cartesian xyz grid, on “experience” and call it “the world,” generally naively thinking of this individual construct as “reality.” This is where I draw the distinction between “reality” and “existence.”
“Reality” is hidden. “Nature loves to hide” said heraclitus. What we experience may collectively be called “existence” but certainly not reality. We "discover" what exists but cannot exhaust its reality.
What we actually experience is only that which comes under the lens of consciousness. Here is why all the above was necessary to speak of memory: because memory only takes place in the immediate moment of consciousness. We do not even experience anything really, let alone re-experience it. The idea of experience involves on the one hand an experiencer and on the other hand experience. This is delusion. In buddhism, there is “no self, experiencer, soul, ego or liver-of-life.” There is only the fact of perception, and the sensations of objects of perception, of which memory and insight are such objects; they are phenomena in themselves, a “heap” of mental contents.
Further, even these objects are conceptual, formal (platonic), non-existent in the real sense. We hear a noise or see something and infer an object on the basis of flawed and partial intelligence, and we create our worlds featuring such objects and their relations. The “objects” (dharmas) are the reflections of the one gem. The idea is like the zen notion of “the One Pearl” being the whole of existence. All apparent objects are in koranic terms “the face of god” and in zen are the face of the universe in which all relations and all objects are implicit. In zen if you really see one thing you see all things; in islam, “wherever you look, there is the face of god.”
Fundamentally, primordially, everything is part of everything else (non dual). All things are dependently coexistent. All existence, all experience, is dependently co-existent.
Reality, on the other hand. is independent, beyond existence and nonexistence, outside of time and space, and includes all real stuff our tiny consciousnesses cannot even begin to imagine.
When you experience reality, all experience vanishes.
=======================
quote:
memories are never completely unaffected by what you experience before or after the event. it is not a digital record nor is it like video tape, it is entirely associative.
this means that bits of memory are inseparably inter-linked with other bits of memory
Editing is not why memory is different than actual history. The appearance of editing is in the perception itself which is only ever somewhat like unto the stimulus in the context.
If the context or stimulus evokes memory (aka perception), what is evoked is what fits the context and recent mental contents. We do not have any ability to discern whether what is recalled is 100% accurate to the history that created the memory.
unquote
“Actual history” has been heavily edited long before it even emerges as such. It is part of the naive view that accepts time and space as real. History, like v=everything else, only happens now.
The past and future, like memory, are just here now.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28394574 - 07/13/23 04:24 PM (6 months, 12 days ago) |
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you mean written history, which may not be actual history, since it is usually heavily redacted by those in charge of the territory.
In the following quote we have some uncommon shared understanding:
Quote:
terence said: ... “Reality” is hidden. “Nature loves to hide” said heraclitus. What we experience may collectively be called “existence” but certainly not reality. We "discover" what exists but cannot exhaust its reality.
What we actually experience is only that which comes under the lens of consciousness. Here is why all the above was necessary to speak of memory: because memory only takes place in the immediate moment of consciousness. We do not even experience anything really, let alone re-experience it. The idea of experience involves on the one hand an experiencer and on the other hand experience. This is delusion. In buddhism, there is “no self, experiencer, soul, ego or liver-of-life.” There is only the fact of perception, and the sensations of objects of perception, of which memory and insight are such objects; they are phenomena in themselves, a “heap” of mental contents. ...
Nature is not a hiding entity, it does not itself like to hide or have any appreciative aspect except for containing and supporting living beings which naturally exist and appreciate and appear to behave volition-ally (wherein there is a likely delusion or at least a gap in understanding as far as "will" or volition (which is actually a reflex) is concerned).
Some creatures and plants seem hidden as part of their safety or developmental reflex behavior, or part of their stalking and hunting reflex behaviors. Nature is not one of those individuals. We can continuously be in touch with nature and never learn all there is to learn, and still this is not about Nature hiding or wanting to be hidden, it is about Vastness or size of what can be learned from any position within Nature and at any single resolution of observation.
As for memory, yes in each moment (between 1/12th and 1/6th of a second depending on the activity state of the brain) new memory is made (inter-linking those cortical neurons that are firing in that same moment) and perceived associations are reflexively reactivated from memory (by the same inter-linkages). Each moment is followed by another, forming an experience stream. I do not say there is an experiencer or perceiver that is separate from this experiencing. the experiencing is the experiencer, it is a process that is present in a body.
I totally agree with this part of your comment:
Quote:
This is delusion. In buddhism, there is “no self, experiencer, soul, ego or liver-of-life.” There is only the fact of perception, and the sensations of objects of perception, of which memory and insight are such objects; they are phenomena in themselves, a “heap” of mental contents.
I would like to have a link to where you got that quote, which uses other word sequences but means exactly what I am describing in my efforts. In particular, I usually read that there is no separate experiencer, and no persistent self. Although I may have edited my memory to this more accurate way of saying the same thing. I kinda look at buddhism as a great effort with lots of sketchy details remaining to have light shed upon them.
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terence
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triple o founder is named graham harman, I spelled his name wrong
from the buddhit mgazine tricycle, quote:
MAGAZINE | COLUMN “There is no self.” “Nope, never said that, either.”—The Buddha By Thanissaro Bhikkhu SPRING 2014
my misquote is typical language from the majjhima nikaya (middle length discourses of the buddha), I can find some quotes from there if you like...
I personally think "no separate self" and no self-nature are hair splitting distinctions...self is separate by nature...what the bhikkhu claims the buddha said is questionable anyhow as the buddha did not speak pali... the bhikkhu would tell us the buddha did not speak of the famous three marks of existence, anatta, anicca and dukkha, but all buddhists accept them...
anatta means "non-self"
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28395401 - 07/14/23 01:04 PM (6 months, 12 days ago) |
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the buddha's weaselly reply to people who questioned him about "the self" went like this:
To be concerned with the issue; soul versus non-soul, is to be in bondage to craving for becoming and non-becoming. Gautama Buddha
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28395425 - 07/14/23 01:32 PM (6 months, 12 days ago) |
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if I google anatta
Quote:
anatta, (Pali: “non-self” or “substanceless”) Sanskrit anatman, in Buddhism, the doctrine that there is in humans no permanent, underlying substance that can be called the soul. Instead, the individual is compounded of five factors (Pali khandha; Sanskrit skandha) that are constantly changing.May 26, 2023
this is more or less as I understand it. it does not deny a self nor does it deny the reality of one's defensive behavior nor does it judge the behavior
it is the observation that the evanescent self is recurrently composed of fleeting factors.
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terence
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namaste
rgv quote:
Nature is not a hiding entity, it does not itself like to hide or have any appreciative aspect except for containing and supporting living beings which naturally exist and appreciate and appear to behave volition-ally (wherein there is a likely delusion or at least a gap in understanding as far as "will" or volition (which is actually a reflex) is concerned).
Some creatures and plants seem hidden as part of their safety or developmental reflex behavior, or part of their stalking and hunting reflex behaviors. Nature is not one of those individuals. We can continuously be in touch with nature and never learn all there is to learn, and still this is not about Nature hiding or wanting to be hidden, it is about Vastness or size of what can be learned from any position within Nature and at any single resolution of observation.
As for memory, yes in each moment (between 1/12th and 1/6th of a second depending on the activity state of the brain) new memory is made (inter-linking those cortical neurons that are firing in that same moment) and perceived associations are reflexively reactivated from memory (by the same inter-linkages). Each moment is followed by another, forming an experience stream. I do not say there is an experiencer or perceiver that is separate from this experiencing. the experiencing is the experiencer, it is a process that is present in a body.
unquote
============================
Again, the thinking paradigm is different. Soteriologically, this is not about understanding more clearly. One moves on to liberation from views. “Right view” is abandoning all/ accepting all views. One brings all things down to one point and then gets the point. Zen says:
Before enlightenment I thought there were mountains and rivers. When enlightened, I realized there were no mountains and no rivers. After enlightenment, I once again see mountains and rivers. But what mountains! What rivers!
Eihei dozen speaks of the perceived experience stream (shobogenzo):
When someone riding in a boat turns his gaze towards the shore, he misjudges the shore to be moving: when he fixes his eye firmly upon the boat, he will recognize that the boat is plowing on. Likewise, should you let your mind and body run riot, going along with what you perceive the world to be, you will make the mistake of thinking that you have a permanently abiding self-nature within your body and mind. If you commit yourself fully to traveling the Way and you then return to that Place within, the reason why there is no personal ‘self’ within the whole universe will become clear.
As for nature hiding, I hoped for more sympathy. If nature didn’t hide we would all be enlightened. There’s a famous story about the man searching for a jewel only to finally find out it was attached to his forehead, and the one about the man riding a donkey searching for his donkey. The knower cannot be known, the sword cannot cut itself, the teeth don't bite themselves. Consciousness cannot be grasped by consciousness, and the attempt to do so is futile but very common.
Delusion is a forest. Lost in the forest, the terrain is hidden from us. We may stumble upon a path, there are many in the forest. We may find a clearing.
One of my favorite zen metaphors is dogen's signature: “the moon in a dewdrop.” Every drop of water, no matter how small, can reflect the full moon in its entirety.
Every drop of water knows in itself of itself the nature of every other drop of water, its wetness. Its tendency to associate, its ability to adapt, its unswerving desire to go downhill until it finds rest.
We don't need to agree, my friend. I'm not seeking validation or offering it. Sharing artifacts from one's waying.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28395458 - 07/14/23 02:06 PM (6 months, 12 days ago) |
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okee dokee
I would say everything you perceive is delusional associative reflexes even when you do perceive perception itself while not getting flustered by it, and In My deluded Experience I do this, The knower cannot be known.
getting flustered may be unavoidable, but you can get back to seeing the it on the way.
since it is all associative, it is always familiar fragments and the new unfamiliar bits, and the familiar fragments hardly ever fit perfectly.
at best we have raggedy anne and andy worldviews.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28395474 - 07/14/23 02:29 PM (6 months, 12 days ago) |
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this you might find interesting...
https://www.wired.com/2010/03/heidegger-tools/
Emerging as heidegger's central insight for postmodern philosophy is the idea of "tool being," that most objects in our world(s)are hidden from us most of the time. We are surrounded by our tools, we use tools all the time. The most obvious way nature is hidden is by our tools. We ride on a road in a car, enter a world such as classroom, library, workshop, mall etc and instantly unconsciously adapt to the tools appropriate to our world of experience with that environment. Walk into a classroom, find your seat, face front, take notes on your ipad. What if you had never been in a classroom before? My son was once on a puddle jumper out of africa to mecca and the old woman beside him had no english and had never seen a seat belt before.
We take our tools - that is, everything for the ordinary human most of the time - for granted and only think of them when they fail. We hammer away at nails and the hammer is a part of ourself, we focus on the nail, the fastening, unless the hammer breaks, and then we think of it. The blind man "sees" with the end of his cane and isn't aware of it until it is knocked aside and he is blind again. Mostly we think of failure and broken tools, which is why everyone is so unhappy. "Simplify your life, keep your accounts on your thumbnail" said thoreau. Diogenes went about naked and slept in a bathtub in the town square in athens. He said, "When I saw a child drinking from the fountain with cupped hands, I threw away my cup."
So "tool-being" has become a metaphor for all the contextual coping knowledge that supports virtually everything we do or say and facilitates our way in the world absent our awareness.
Another metaphor is that of sight, that we focus with one aspect of our visual sense and see peripherally with another, the two working together seamlessly to provide a unified perception. We are not aware of a general world perception until something emerges from its hidden status into consciousness, usually as a broken tool.
Short answer is if you end craving, you end tool being and failure and brokenness.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence] 1
#28395494 - 07/14/23 02:47 PM (6 months, 11 days ago) |
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I think we become aware of things as they change, and tend to allow them to fade into an unchanging background chaos when they are static or unchanging. otherwise we are more attuned to what we have been doing in the last 5 minutes.
As for Tools, no biggie, stuff we are familiar with - i.e. for which we have associative memories that can generate perceptive reflexes. as for craving, meh.
Craving is just a quality of some perceptive reflexes, they are all equally amoral mental contents.
Everything you are familiar with is part of you, this includes tools, and clothing etc.
For you it seems to include lots of quotations. maybe those are your tools, maybe they are your clothing?
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28397120 - 07/16/23 02:57 AM (6 months, 10 days ago) |
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from juliet mitchell’s introduction to jacques lacan’s feminine sexuality
Lacan dedicated himself to reorienting psychoanalysis to its task of deciphering the ways in which the human subject is constructed - how it comes into being - out of the small human animal. It is because of this aim that Lacan offered psychoanalytic theory the new science of linguistics which he developed and altered in relation to the concept of subjectivity. The human animal is born into language and it is within the terms of language that the human subject is constructed. Language does not arise from within the individual, it is always out there in the world outside, lying in wait for the neonate. Language always 'belongs' to another person. The human subject is created from a general law that comes to it from outside itself and through the speech of other people, though this speech in its turn must relate to the general law. Lacan's human subject is the obverse of the humanists'. His subject is not an entity with an identity, but a being created in the fissure of a radical split. The identity that seems to be that of the subject is in fact a mirage arising when the subject forms an image of itself by identifying with others' perception of it. When the human baby learns to say 'me' and 'I' it is only acquiring these designations from someone and somewhere else, from the world which perceives and names it. The terms are not constants in harmony with its own body, they do not come from within itself but from elsewhere. Lacan's human subject is not a 'divided self' (Laing) that in a different society could be made whole, but a self which is only actually and necessarily created within a split - a being that can only conceptualise itself when it is mirrored back to itself from the position of another's desire. The unconscious where the subject is not itself, where the 'I' of a dream can be someone else and the object and subject shift and change places, bears perpetual witness to this primordial splitting.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28397178 - 07/16/23 04:57 AM (6 months, 10 days ago) |
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Quote:
terence said: from juliet mitchell’s introduction to jacques lacan’s feminine sexuality
.... The unconscious where the subject is not itself, where the 'I' of a dream can be someone else and the object and subject shift and change places, bears perpetual witness to this primordial splitting.
I am fairly sensitive to the term "unconscious" and have good reason to think that during dreams we are in fact conscious, but still lying down or immobile in a position of sleep. REM sleep is conscious not unconscious, but what is usually considered UNCONSCIOUS is all of that conscious mental activity which is not disguised or wrapped in words or language, and conventions of logic.
Many people consider thought only to pertain to word based thinking, and this is an absurd thing that people all around the world often fall into - especially philosophers.
Language - like the cultural use of tools - is a matter of social relations as well as a personal experience.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372030901_Tooling_and_Construction_From_Nut-Cracking_and_Stone-Tool_Making_to_Bird_Nests_and_Language
In my opinion, to obtain a greater sense of personal freedom, we need to realize that we, our minds, are operating well beyond the confines of language, and to be free we have to rediscover what we are, moment to moment, in the moment, and that also is faster and amounts to more life than what can be strung together in phrases of words cascading through our minds, across the screen or whatever.
Psychonauts are on the beginning of a journey beyond language, they seem to report energy effects, and phenomena for which there really are no words, not yet shared social recognition, but often this does not lead to personal growth, or better self awareness. Instead people succumb to mystical words and sideshows.
We need to have more respect for the huge part of ourselves that is not wrapped in language. It is not unconscious, but it is very much like the the life of feral animals, and it is not a bad thing at all.
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: you mean written history, which may not be actual history, since it is usually heavily redacted by those in charge of the territory.
=======================
Any sort of history is a projection of selected facticities related to an organism's pursuit of food, sex and security. History is rationalization. Justification. Lies.
Notable historian winston churchill said, "the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history."
The degree of self congratulation and obfuscation in so-called history is illustrated by james lovelock (of gaia fame) who said, "Expecting humanity to be good stewards of the planet is like expecting a goat to be a good gardener." Expecting historians to tell the truth is silly, they wouldn't if they could. The most honest historians will tell you, "we know for certain these stories aren't true, but we will retell them anyway because they are the accepted legend."
from hair, let the sun shine
We starve, look at one another, short of breath Walking proudly in our winter coats Wearing smells from laboratories Facing a dying nation of moving paper fantasy Listening for the new told lies With supreme visions of lonely tunes
Somewhere, inside something there is a rush of Greatness, who knows what stands in front of Our lives, I fashion my future on films in space Silence tells me secretly Everything Everything
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: if I google anatta
Quote:
anatta, (Pali: “non-self” or “substanceless”) Sanskrit anatman, in Buddhism, the doctrine that there is in humans no permanent, underlying substance that can be called the soul. Instead, the individual is compounded of five factors (Pali khandha; Sanskrit skandha) that are constantly changing.May 26, 2023
this is more or less as I understand it. it does not deny a self nor does it deny the reality of one's defensive behavior nor does it judge the behavior
it is the observation that the evanescent self is recurrently composed of fleeting factors.
===================
an = not atta = self
an-atman in sanskrit
"all dharmas are characterized by non-self"
this is closely related to anicca, impermanence
"all dharmas are characterized by non-permanence"
(and according to dhukkha, all dharmas are unsatisfactory, or "not sweet")
these ideas objectify things by stripping away our illusions based on craving..."things" have no stability, all are evanescent, as zen says, "the bridge is moving, the river is staying still," as the river is renewed every season but the bridge erodes and eventually collapses... "things" have no self-nature because they are notional, arbitrary conceptual catchalls for sets of changing phenomena...
language creates delusion bu our naively taking words literally as the things symbolized, the literal meanings concealing the hidden nature of what is really there, interconnected and by our observation emergent...Quantum mechanics begins to understand that we participate in creating reality through observation...
Your definition is the usual tortured hair splitting, designed to let the ego in the back door.
Buddhism was an update or correction to the prevailing brahmanism, whose crown jewel was vedanta, as represented by the upanishads. The upanishads and indeed the vedas emphasized The Supreme Self and it was clear to the buddha that this doctrine led to a lot of grandiose ideas and supported social stratification and egocentric practices.
I think arjuna should have told krishna to go fuck himself, fight your own bloody wars and I'm for equality among genders races and social classes.
The buddha would have silently agreed with me.
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: okee dokee
I would say everything you perceive is delusional associative reflexes even when you do perceive perception itself while not getting flustered by it, and In My deluded Experience I do this, The knower cannot be known.
getting flustered may be unavoidable, but you can get back to seeing the it on the way.
since it is all associative, it is always familiar fragments and the new unfamiliar bits, and the familiar fragments hardly ever fit perfectly.
at best we have raggedy anne and andy worldviews.
In the zen metaphor, you don't get the moon, you only get the finger.
All the talk and thinking about enlightenment have absolutely nothing to do with enlightenment itself.
Zen buddhism is founded on bodhidharma's defintion, "no dependence on words and letters, direct seeing into self nature." Paradoxically, of all the spiritual and religious literature in the world, that on zen is the most voluminous.
Zen says. "The buddha preached the dharma for 49 years and in all that time never said a word."
All I am doing is silently pointing.
The purpose of a fish trap
is to catch fish,
and when the fish are caught
the trap is forgotten.
The purpose of a rabbit snare
is to catch rabbits.
When the rabbits are caught,
the snare is forgotten.
The purpose of the word
is to convey ideas.
When the ideas are grasped,
the words are forgotten.
Where can I find a man who has forgotten words?
He is the one I would like to talk to.
~ Chuang Tzu
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: I think we become aware of things as they change, and tend to allow them to fade into an unchanging background chaos when they are static or unchanging. otherwise we are more attuned to what we have been doing in the last 5 minutes.
As for Tools, no biggie, stuff we are familiar with - i.e. for which we have associative memories that can generate perceptive reflexes. as for craving, meh.
Craving is just a quality of some perceptive reflexes, they are all equally amoral mental contents.
Everything you are familiar with is part of you, this includes tools, and clothing etc.
For you it seems to include lots of quotations. maybe those are your tools, maybe they are your clothing?
=========================
awareness is of change, true...all things characterized by impermanence...we "crave" permanence, and we suffer for it...it is from clinging that liberation sets us free...
you appear to see consciousness as a flashlight with which we peer...the problem is the concept of agency, the ego pointing the flashlight...what actually happens is thoughts occur, events occur, and after the fact we rationalize them into the illusion of ego-directed behavior...
wait for the lightning...look quick at the terrain and remember it...
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said:
Quote:
terence said: from juliet mitchell’s introduction to jacques lacan’s feminine sexuality
.... The unconscious where the subject is not itself, where the 'I' of a dream can be someone else and the object and subject shift and change places, bears perpetual witness to this primordial splitting.
I am fairly sensitive to the term "unconscious" and have good reason to think that during dreams we are in fact conscious, but still lying down or immobile in a position of sleep. REM sleep is conscious not unconscious, but what is usually considered UNCONSCIOUS is all of that conscious mental activity which is not disguised or wrapped in words or language, and conventions of logic.
Many people consider thought only to pertain to word based thinking, and this is an absurd thing that people all around the world often fall into - especially philosophers.
Language - like the cultural use of tools - is a matter of social relations as well as a personal experience.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372030901_Tooling_and_Construction_From_Nut-Cracking_and_Stone-Tool_Making_to_Bird_Nests_and_Language
In my opinion, to obtain a greater sense of personal freedom, we need to realize that we, our minds, are operating well beyond the confines of language, and to be free we have to rediscover what we are, moment to moment, in the moment, and that also is faster and amounts to more life than what can be strung together in phrases of words cascading through our minds, across the screen or whatever.
Psychonauts are on the beginning of a journey beyond language, they seem to report energy effects, and phenomena for which there really are no words, not yet shared social recognition, but often this does not lead to personal growth, or better self awareness. Instead people succumb to mystical words and sideshows.
We need to have more respect for the huge part of ourselves that is not wrapped in language. It is not unconscious, but it is very much like the the life of feral animals, and it is not a bad thing at all.
(bows)
(smiling appreciatievely)
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28397844 - 07/16/23 03:24 PM (6 months, 9 days ago) |
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Quote:
terence said:
Quote:
redgreenvines said: you mean written history, which may not be actual history, since it is usually heavily redacted by those in charge of the territory.
=======================
Any sort of history is a projection of selected facticities related to an organism's pursuit of food, sex and security. History is rationalization. Justification. Lies.
Notable historian winston churchill said, "the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history."
The degree of self congratulation and obfuscation in so-called history is illustrated by james lovelock (of gaia fame) who said, "Expecting humanity to be good stewards of the planet is like expecting a goat to be a good gardener." Expecting historians to tell the truth is silly, they wouldn't if they could. The most honest historians will tell you, "we know for certain these stories aren't true, but we will retell them anyway because they are the accepted legend."
from hair, let the sun shine
We starve, look at one another, short of breath Walking proudly in our winter coats Wearing smells from laboratories Facing a dying nation of moving paper fantasy Listening for the new told lies With supreme visions of lonely tunes
Somewhere, inside something there is a rush of Greatness, who knows what stands in front of Our lives, I fashion my future on films in space Silence tells me secretly Everything Everything
you really should delete this or at least edit it as it is not what I wrote, but what you wrote, accidentally masquerading as you quoting me. my comment ends at the =======================
copycraft plagues written history including the writings about dharma(s). erroneous copycraft. a nastiness to be careful around.
I can summarize the differences between what you and I are doing here: I am writing my own thoughts while you are trying to cobble quotes together to express your best understanding of enlightenment. I am writing that illusions are not based on craving, but are part of the unsatisfactoriness of all dharmas - if dharmas were satisfactory there would be no illusions. I am also writing that craving and clinging is a side effect of our associative mind - and I think buddha might have called it nama rupa - which is vague but true.
You wrote that you think the buddha would be happy with what you have written here - I have no such illusion, but I have plenty of other ones to keep me company.
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spinvis
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Coincidentally this topic is discussed in length in one of the books I'm reading at this moment. Below follows just a small excerpt from one of the chapters.
Wei Wu Wei - Fingers Pointing Towards the Moon: Reflections of a Pilgrim on the Way - 3. Reality and Manifestation - II; "Reality and the Ego, 1
Nine-tenths of the ideas which occupy our thoughts, which are the subjects of our conversations, discussions, discourses, public and private, have no existence in Reality. Political, ethical, and social notions are in this category. They are phantasies, make-believe, comparable with children’s games of “let’s pretend.” (Ouspensky found that he could obtain no answer to such questions, when he was in contact with the noumenal plane, and when he sought the reason he found that it was because the questions referred to something that has no existence.) Dogmas, religious, political, or moral, are ipso facto untrue. Truth itself cannot be expressed in words. Relative truth can not be conveyed dogmatically. Yet we confound dogma with truth!
The unity, and ultimate identity, of what we distinguish as Spirit and Matter, which is a metaphysical concept and a tenet of Zen, would seem to make it inevitable that what we see as “matter” may be regarded as that aspect of “spirit” which our senses are able to perceive. We perceive it as such—a fraction of it at a time—and are simple enough to suppose that what we perceive is the only reality.
We are only aware of that aspect of the universe of which the senses we possess are able to inform us. An insect with antennae may have only one sense: his awareness of the universe must be restricted relatively to ours. A man born blind is aware of less of the universe than a man with sight. An animal has five senses only: he has a psyche and uses it but, having percepts without concepts, is unlikely to be aware of it. A man has six senses—as oriental psychology has always understood—for he is aware of that aspect of the universe which is his mind. If we had further senses we may suppose that we should become aware of further aspects of the universe. To imagine that the universe is restricted to that of which we are aware is probably as ill-founded in our case as in that of the insect. In the scale of colour we are only able to distinguish seven degrees, and that which is darkness to us is not darkness to the cat, while that which is darkness to birds is not so to us. In the scale of smell many animals have a wider range than we have. In the scales of touch and sound the blind bat has a greater sensibility than ours, as is the case with sundry insects. Our senses have a more limited range than those of many other creatures, and a wider range than that of some. To that degree the extent of our knowledge of the universe is less, or greater, than theirs. To that degree we have experimental evidence that the universe is less, or more, restricted than the one we know. “Birth” looks as though it were a materialisation into tridimensionality of energy from dimensions beyond the perceptive capacity of our senses. So regarded, “birth” becomes an arbitrary point in a process of growth. When this process reaches a certain stage of development the energising factor appears to be withdrawn, which results in the dissolution of the tridimensional materialisation into the chemical constituents out of which it was constructed. This incident is known as “death.” But we are only aware of the tridimensional aspect of this phenomenon, known as “life,” presented to us by our senses serially in Time. The tridimensional segments, which are all we can see of our four-dimensional totality (which is composed of everything the “living” being has been since “birth” plus everything he will be until “death”), should exist simultaneously and compose an “entity.” Moreover in the further dimension at right-angles each moment of that “life,” being an intersection of Time and of Eternity, eternally exists. There can, therefore, be no end to “life,” every moment of which should exist simultaneously and forever. If further senses enabled us to become aware of farther aspects of the universe we might expect to perceive individuals, of every genus, associated in a manner reminiscent of the leaves of a tree—all “growing” on one branch, all attached to one trunk, all nourished by the same roots. That, perhaps, is why cats are cats, all and always cats, and why all men have approximately identical perceptions of everything they are able to know of the universe. All awareness is subjective. Similarity in the perceptions of individuals within a genus may be due to basic identity. The objective reality of the universe, if such can be supposed to exist, must forever be unknowable to Man as to Microbe."
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: spinvis]
#28398324 - 07/17/23 05:38 AM (6 months, 9 days ago) |
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what book are you reading from which you posted this excerpt which begins with an unsubstatiated mathematical declaration:
Quote:
Nine-tenths of the ideas which occupy our thoughts, which are the subjects of our conversations, discussions, discourses, public and private, have no existence in Reality.
some of the concepts in the quote are attractive, but with soft claims like that above, harder scrutiny on the content is merited.
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Danetz
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Well, what percentage of our thoughts are the product of our senses? Suppose you had no sight, no hearing, no smell, no ability to taste, and no sense of touch including sense of heat and cold. Reality would still exist but could you know reality? Could you be aware of reality or think thoughts about reality? Could you think thoughts?
What if our senses only provided us with responses of our central nervous system to stimuli? Could we justify a belief that we are perceiving reality?
I’ll say this and I’m fully willing to explain and justify it to anyone: colors exist only in the brain/mind and nowhere else. So what about our remaining senses?
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The Blind Ass
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Danetz]
#28399234 - 07/17/23 08:29 PM (6 months, 8 days ago) |
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Maha Prajna Paramita Hridaya Sutra.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Danetz]
#28399391 - 07/18/23 04:27 AM (6 months, 8 days ago) |
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Quote:
Danetz said: Well, what percentage of our thoughts are the product of our senses? Suppose you had no sight, no hearing, no smell, no ability to taste, and no sense of touch including sense of heat and cold. Reality would still exist but could you know reality? Could you be aware of reality or think thoughts about reality? Could you think thoughts?
What if our senses only provided us with responses of our central nervous system to stimuli? Could we justify a belief that we are perceiving reality?
I’ll say this and I’m fully willing to explain and justify it to anyone: colors exist only in the brain/mind and nowhere else. So what about our remaining senses?
please explain without justification but yes, a locked in person would have thoughts even without language, although the range and variety of thoughts would be limited to an imagination without contact in our shared world. the being would still have heart beats, breath, and some gut sensation, and their dreams would be of that basis, probably in the language of music and geometry.
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The Blind Ass
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and they would still hallucinate regularly.
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redgreenvines
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Quote:
The Blind Ass said: and they would still hallucinate regularly.
as do we with our senses going as per usual
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The Blind Ass
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I concur! 
On the flip side, I woke up just about an hour ago and life has that brand spanking new car smell and everything is as clear & sparkly as the wondrously terrifyingly beautiful present!
A lingering gift of my venturing into the unknown the other day?!
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redgreenvines
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super reality did exist, and now it is in afterglowance.
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Shakedown Street
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Danetz]
#28400923 - 07/19/23 04:07 PM (6 months, 6 days ago) |
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Quote:
Danetz said: Well, what percentage of our thoughts are the product of our senses? Suppose you had no sight, no hearing, no smell, no ability to taste, and no sense of touch including sense of heat and cold. Reality would still exist but could you know reality? Could you be aware of reality or think thoughts about reality? Could you think thoughts?
What if our senses only provided us with responses of our central nervous system to stimuli? Could we justify a belief that we are perceiving reality?
Highly recommend you read Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology by Ayn Rand Some people cannot differentiate between two colors, although I don't remember which two, as I am not color-blind.
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redgreenvines
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I see, Ayn Rand inspired you. OK then
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28402907 - 07/21/23 01:39 PM (6 months, 5 days ago) |
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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372030901_Tooling_and_Construction_From_Nut-Cracking_and_Stone-Tool_Making_to_Bird_Nests_and_Language
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Interesting paper. Obviously informed by both heidegger's work and that of post-modern objectivists. Analytic philosophy trying to integrate continental philosophy into a scientistic framework. Rather pedantic: who knew (or cared) that the proper term for birds manipulating their environment is "becculation" (because they have beaks and not hands). (Spell check doesn't recognize "becculation" - too new or obscure.)
The paper's scientistic orientation leads it to the usual errors of naive assumption of agency. Animals "behave" they don't "act." The assumption for a capacity for action relies on assumptions about will and power that are delusional ego fantasies. It is nice that animals are included in their study as sentient beings but they are anthropomorphized as individual agents motivated by personal agendas. All taken for granted as "the way it is" with beings. It isn't even true in our own milieu let alone that of birds and primates. The usual scientistic reductive process is worked on "motivation" and complexities reduced to inanities. Scientists have to make a living naming and over-simplifying complex behaviors.
Nonetheless an interesting paper and the authors are having fun reformulating biology in light of postmodern philosophy. It generally expresses a growing awareness of human interrelatedness with our animal relatives.
"Don't it always seem to go you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone"
~joni mitchell
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terence
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Quote:
Shakedown Street said:
Quote:
Danetz said: Well, what percentage of our thoughts are the product of our senses? Suppose you had no sight, no hearing, no smell, no ability to taste, and no sense of touch including sense of heat and cold. Reality would still exist but could you know reality? Could you be aware of reality or think thoughts about reality? Could you think thoughts?
What if our senses only provided us with responses of our central nervous system to stimuli? Could we justify a belief that we are perceiving reality?
Highly recommend you read Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology by Ayn Rand Some people cannot differentiate between two colors, although I don't remember which two, as I am not color-blind.
If you were color blind, you couldn't see red and green vines.
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terence
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redgreenvines said:
you mean written history, which may not be actual history, since it is usually heavily redacted by those in charge of the territory.
=======================
(content deleted here)
you really should delete this or at least edit it as it is not what I wrote, but what you wrote, accidentally masquerading as you quoting me. my comment ends at the =======================
that was why I put in the =================== but I'm sorry for the confused format...
I thought it clear enough
=======================
copycraft plagues written history including the writings about dharma(s). erroneous copycraft. a nastiness to be careful around.
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no dependence on words and letters
never copy anyone
you can quote me on that
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I can summarize the differences between what you and I are doing here: I am writing my own thoughts while you are trying to cobble quotes together to express your best understanding of enlightenment.
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you have no idea what I am doing
quotes are the least of it
I use whatever is at hand
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I am writing that illusions are not based on craving, but are part of the unsatisfactoriness of all dharmas - if dharmas were satisfactory there would be no illusions. I am also writing that craving and clinging is a side effect of our associative mind - and I think buddha might have called it nama rupa - which is vague but true.
================================
If there were no craving, dharmas would be satisfactory.
Our associative mind is a side effect of craving, clinging and attachment.
Without craving we would have no thoughts as we currently think of them.
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You wrote that you think the buddha would be happy with what you have written here - I have no such illusion, but I have plenty of other ones to keep me company.
=========================
no argument there
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: spinvis]
#28402941 - 07/21/23 02:11 PM (6 months, 5 days ago) |
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spinvis said:
Coincidentally this topic is discussed in length in one of the books I'm reading at this moment. Below follows just a small excerpt from one of the chapters.
Wei Wu Wei - Fingers Pointing Towards the Moon: Reflections of a Pilgrim on the Way - 3. Reality and Manifestation - II; "Reality and the Ego, 1
snip
our pilgrim is not merely lame, s/he is in error...
quote
A man born blind is aware of less of the universe than a man with sight.
unquote
Glaringly false. Read the autobiography of helen keller, for example. If richness of sense experience equated to knowledge of the universe most animals would exceed us. More of our brain processes data than perceives it; the reverse is true of animals. Neanderthals had bigger brains than h. sapiens due to keener senses, not greater cognition.
The author prattles on with speculations based on this falsity. Probably was paid by the word.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28402954 - 07/21/23 02:25 PM (6 months, 5 days ago) |
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I think it is fairly primitive of you to think that animals do not act, which is equivalent to behavior. you probably think you have will, and animals do not. I would appreciate if you could illustrate any instance of will, aside from what is left as a final testament. We have memory, we have reflexes, we have preferences, where would we have will and how would it work?
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: super reality did exist, and now it is in afterglowance.
Everything is just for the time being.
from the shobogenzo, dogen:
A former Buddha once said in verse:
Standing atop a soaring mountain peak is for the time being And plunging down to the floor of the Ocean’s abyss is for the time being;
Being triple-headed and eight-armed is for the time being And being a figure of a Buddha standing sixteen feet tall or sitting eight feet high is for the time being;
Being a monk’s traveling staff or his ceremonial hossu is for the time being
And being a pillar supporting the temple or a stone lantern before the Meditation Hall is for the time being;
Being a next-door neighbor or a man in the street is for the time being
And being the whole of the great earth and boundless space for the time being.
dogen goes on:
Since we human beings are continually arranging the bits and pieces of what we experience in order to fashion ‘a whole universe’, we must take care to look upon this welter of living beings and physical objects as ‘sometime’ things. Things do not go about hindering each other’s existence any more than moments of time get in each other’s way. As a consequence, the intention to train arises at the same time in different beings, and this same intention may also arise at different times. And the same applies to training and practice, as well as to realizing the Way.
In a similar manner, we are continually arranging bits and pieces of what we experience in order to fashion them into what we call ‘a self’, which we treat as ‘myself’: this is the same as the principle of ‘we ourselves are just for a time’.
Because of this very principle of the way things are, the earth in its entirety has myriad forms and hundreds of things sprouting up, each sprout and each form being a whole earth — a point which you should incorporate into your study of the Way, for the recognition of the coming and going of things in this manner is a first step in training and practice. When you reach such a fertile field of seeing the way things really are, then the earth in its entirety will be ‘one whole sprouting, one whole form’; it will be comprised of forms that you recognize and forms that you do not, sproutings that you recognize and sproutings that you do not. It is the same as the times we refer to in ‘from time to time’, which contain all forms of existence and all worlds. So take a moment to look around and consider whether there is any form of being, that is, any ‘world’, that does or does not find expression at this very moment of time.
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terence
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: I think it is fairly primitive of you to think that animals do not act, which is equivalent to behavior. you probably think you have will, and animals do not. I would appreciate if you could illustrate any instance of will, aside from what is left as a final testament. We have memory, we have reflexes, we have preferences, where would we have will and how would it work?
Primitive me, yes, I'm a feral human.
You might be a bit more cautious in making assumptions about what I probably think.
Will is an illusion with which we rationalize our behavior to ex post facto give it agency. This is required of us by the dominant animals of our species for their purpose of enslaving us.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28402980 - 07/21/23 02:41 PM (6 months, 5 days ago) |
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"Working Class Hero" (john leenon)
As soon as you're born they make you feel small By giving you no time instead of it all 'Til the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
A working class hero is something to be A working class hero is something to be
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool 'Til you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules
A working class hero is something to be A working class hero is something to be
When they've tortured and scared you for 20 odd years Then they expect you to pick a career When you can't really function, you're so full of fear
A working class hero is something to be A working class hero is something to be
Keep you doped with religion, and sex, and T.V. And you think you're so clever and classless and free But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see
A working class hero is something to be A working class hero is something to be
There's room at the top they are telling you still But first you must learn how to smile as you kill If you want to be like the folks on the hill
A working class hero is something to be A working class hero is something to be
If you want to be a hero well just follow me If you want to be a hero well just follow me
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28402997 - 07/21/23 03:01 PM (6 months, 4 days ago) |
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Harvard law of animal behavior:
when stimulations are repeatedly applied under precisely controlled conditions the animal reacts as it damn well pleases
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28403092 - 07/21/23 04:10 PM (6 months, 4 days ago) |
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Yes, an illusion
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Ferdinando


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my teacher said we are not in control over anything this is true so there is no free will life is good thank you redgreenvines and thank you all for being safe and living good lives
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spinvis
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Quote:
Now I am going to make a statement here. I don’t know whether it fits into the category of other people’s statements or not. But whether it fits into their category or whether it doesn’t, it obviously fits into some category. So in that respect it is no different from their statements. However, let me try making my statement. There is a beginning. There is a not yet beginning to be a beginning. There is a not yet beginning to be a not yet beginning to be a beginning. There is being. There is nonbeing. There is a not yet beginning to be nonbeing. There is a not yet beginning to be a not yet beginning to be nonbeing. Suddenly there is nonbeing. But I do not know, when it comes to nonbeing, which is really being and which is nonbeing. Now I have just said something. But I don’t know whether what I have said has really said something or whether it hasn’t said something. There is nothing in the world bigger than the tip of an autumn hair, and Mount T’ai is tiny. No one has lived longer than a dead child, and P’eng-tsu died young. Heaven and earth were born at the same time as I was, and the ten thousand things are one with me. We have already become one, so how can I say anything? But I have just said that we are one, so how can I not be saying something? The one and what I said about it make two, and two and the original one make three. If we go on this way, then even the cleverest mathematician can’t tell where we’ll end, much less an ordinary man. If by moving from nonbeing to being we get to three, how far will we get if we move from being to being? Better not to move, but to let things be! The Way has never known boundaries; speech has no constancy. But because of the recognition of a “this,” there came to be boundaries. Let me tell you what the boundaries are. There is left, there is right, there are theories, there are debates, there are discriminations, there are emulations, and there are contentions. These are called the Eight Virtues. As to what is beyond the Six Realms, the sage admits its existence but does not theorize. As to what is within the Six Realms, he theorizes but does not debate. In the case of the Spring and Autumn, the record of the former kings of past ages, the sage debates but does not discriminate. So I say, those who divide fail to divide; those who discriminate fail to discriminate. What does this mean, you ask? The sage embraces things. Ordinary men discriminate among them and parade their discriminations before others. So I say, those who discriminate fail to see. The Great Way is not named; Great Discriminations are not spoken; Great Benevolence is not benevolent; Great Modesty is not humble; Great Daring does not attack. If the Way is made clear, it is not the Way. If discriminations are put into words, they do not suffice. If benevolence has a constant object, it cannot be universal. If modesty is fastidious, it cannot be trusted. If daring attacks, it cannot be complete. These five are all round, but they tend toward the square. Therefore understanding that rests in what it does not understand is the finest. Who can understand discriminations that are not spoken, the Way that is not a way? If he can understand this, he may be called the Reservoir of Heaven. Pour into it and it is never full, dip from it and it never runs dry, and yet it does not know where the supply comes from. This is called the Shaded Light.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: spinvis]
#28403548 - 07/22/23 05:44 AM (6 months, 4 days ago) |
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great scott, spinvis, that's unreal.
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Rahz
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I saw a video recently, a shark had a turtle in it's mouth, swam up to a boat and let go of it at the boarding pad. The turtle had netting wrapped around it's neck and the humans were able to remove the net and release the turtle.
What can explain the sharks behavior?
The video can be found simply by searching for "shark saves turtle".
-------------------- rahz comfort pleasure power love truth awareness peace "You’re not looking close enough if you can only see yourself in people who look like you." —Ayishat Akanbi
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The Blind Ass
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Is it really that mind blowingly difficult to imagine the world, the energy of it - and or - reality itself, may very well have just always already been around? How about if we posit that there is/was no 'true first place', at least, not beyond right here & now itself as an endlessly transforming web of phenomenon. Then, everything makes perfect sense.
-ie- Truly primordial.
As opposed to the classic yet absurd idea of a 'Prime Mover' being required/responsible for any of it to be at all whatsoever? Despite that the latter idea, at least to me, contains what seems some glaringly obvious holes in it?
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Pinkerton
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I like to think I exist over existence.
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terence
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Pinkerton]
#28403861 - 07/22/23 12:45 PM (6 months, 4 days ago) |
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Excerpt From: David W. Anthony. “The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World.”
LANGUAGE EXTINCTION AND THOUGHT
The people who spoke the Proto-Indo-European language lived at a critical time in a strategic place. They were positioned to benefit from innovations in transport, most important of these the beginning of horseback riding and the invention of wheeled vehicles. They were in no way superior to their neighbors; indeed, the surviving evidence suggests that their economy, domestic technology, and social organization were simpler than those of their western and southern neighbors. The expansion of their language was not a single event, nor did it have only one cause.
Nevertheless, that language did expand and diversify, and its daughters — including English — continue to expand today. Many other language families have become extinct as Indo-European languages spread. It is possible that the resultant loss of linguistic diversity has narrowed and channeled habits of perception in the modern world. For example, all Indo-European languages force the speaker to pay attention to tense and number when talking about an action: you must specify whether the action is past, present, or future; and you must specify whether the actor is singular or plural. It is impossible to use an Indo-European verb without deciding on these categories. Consequently speakers of Indo-European languages habitually frame all events in terms of when they occurred and whether they involved multiple actors. Many other language families do not require the speaker to address these categories when speaking of an action, so tense and number can remain unspecified.
On the other hand, other language families require that other aspects of reality be constantly used and recognized. For example, when describing an event or condition in Hopi you must use grammatical markers that specify whether you witnessed the event yourself, heard about it from someone else, or consider it to be an unchanging truth. Hopi speakers are forced by Hopi grammar to habitually frame all descriptions of reality in terms of the source and reliability of their information. The constant and automatic use of such categories generates habits in the perception and framing of the world that probably differ between people who use fundamentally different grammars. In that sense, the spread of Indo-European grammars has perhaps reduced the diversity of human perceptual habits. It might also have caused this author, as I write this book, to frame my observations in a way that repeats the perceptual habits and categories of a small group of people who lived in the western Eurasian steppes more than five thousand years ago.
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redgreenvines
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Rahz] 2
#28403870 - 07/22/23 12:52 PM (6 months, 4 days ago) |
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who wants to eat a turtle that is wrapped in plastic??? Might as well take it to the people that left the plastic all over the ocean.
22 year friendship between man and shark
this seems just a bit longer than the median duration of marriages in USA
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The Blind Ass
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I want my turtle wrapped in plastic to also be chock full of PFAS and then served to me on a plastic platter on a plastic table while I eat it sitting in a plastic chair with my plastic utensils, muwhahahahaha!!!
-------------------- Give me Liberty caps -or- give me Death caps
Edited by The Blind Ass (07/22/23 05:56 PM)
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LogicaL Chaos
Ascension Energy & Alien UFOs




Registered: 05/12/07
Posts: 69,310
Loc: The Inexpressible...
Last seen: 11 seconds
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Perhaps reality is awakening to its own reality, like the shark is "fed up" with garbage in the ocean containnating its food source.
Humans. Fix this
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Nichrome
I'm a torso!


Registered: 12/17/18
Posts: 6,486
Loc: Zone 5
Last seen: 21 minutes, 2 seconds
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Conceptually, reality by it's own definition, must "exist". Anything that does not exist is not able to be conceptualized, naturally.
Here is one of the definitions:
The totality of all things possessing actuality, existence, or essence.
-------------------- “Better to be deprived of food for three days, than tea for one.”
Freedom is not the right to do as you please, but the liberty to do as you should. ~Emerson
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Rahz
Alive Again



Registered: 11/10/05
Posts: 9,229
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Them cones gotta be upright.
-------------------- rahz comfort pleasure power love truth awareness peace "You’re not looking close enough if you can only see yourself in people who look like you." —Ayishat Akanbi
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redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,530
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Rahz]
#28405991 - 07/24/23 06:15 AM (6 months, 2 days ago) |
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I love that bear!
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epilectric
tea sipping


Registered: 06/28/06
Posts: 1,023
Loc: Vienna
Last seen: 1 hour, 59 minutes
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Rahz]
#28405994 - 07/24/23 06:20 AM (6 months, 2 days ago) |
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cooo
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terence
Stranger
Registered: 03/07/23
Posts: 85
Last seen: 6 months, 21 hours
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28406034 - 07/24/23 07:36 AM (6 months, 2 days ago) |
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from one-handed basket weaving by rumi...
The City of Saba
Once in the city of Saba there was a glut of wealth.
Everyone had more than enough. Even the bath-stokers wore gold belts.
Huge grape clusters hung down on every street and brushed the faces of the citizens. No one had to do anything.
You could balance an empty basket on your head and walk through any orchard, and it would fill by itself with overripe fruit dropping into it.
Stray dogs strayed in lanes full of thrown-out scraps with barelv a notice.
The lean desert wolf got indigestion from the rich food. Everyone was fat and satiated with all the extra. There were no robbers. There was no energy for crime, or for gratitude.
And no one wondered about the unseen world. The people of Saba felt bored with just the mention of prophecy.
They had no desire of any kind. Maybe some idle curiosity about miracles, but that was it. This over-richness is a subtle disease. Those who have it are blind to what's wrong, and deaf to anyone who points it out.
The city of Saba can not be understood from within itself!
But there is a cure, an individual medicine, not a social remedy: Sit quietly, and listen for a voice within that will say,
Be more silent.
As that happens, your soul starts to revive. Give up the excessive money. Turn toward the teachers and the prophets who don't live in Saba.
They can help you grow sweet again and fragrant and wild and fresh and thankful for any small event.
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terence
Stranger
Registered: 03/07/23
Posts: 85
Last seen: 6 months, 21 hours
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28406040 - 07/24/23 07:44 AM (6 months, 2 days ago) |
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pity this busy monster, manunkind (e e cummings)
pity this busy monster, manunkind,
not. Progress is a comfortable disease: your victim (death and life safely beyond)
plays with the bigness of his littleness —- electrons deify one razorblade into a mountainrange; lenses extend unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish returns on its unself. A world of made is not a world of born —- pity poor flesh
and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this fine specimen of hypermagical
ultraomnipotence. We doctors know
a hopeless case if —- listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go
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terence
Stranger
Registered: 03/07/23
Posts: 85
Last seen: 6 months, 21 hours
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: terence]
#28408253 - 07/25/23 05:34 PM (6 months, 21 hours ago) |
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“The seeker of the Court of God’s like this: When God appears, the seeker fades away Yes, this encounter brings eternal life but before undying life effacement comes How could shadows be seekers of the light? When the light shines, the shadows disappear. How could reason live when sacrificed to Him? “All but His face shall perish from the earth” [K28:88] Being and nothing fade before His face; What a miracle, to be in nothingness! In these precincts wisdom and logic fail and at this point, the pen is split in two (M3:4658–63)”
Excerpt From: Franklin D. Lewis. “Rumi--Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings, and Poetry of Jalal Al-Din Rumi.”
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Tropism
ChasingTail


Registered: 09/12/09
Posts: 2,039
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Quote:
The Blind Ass said: Is it really that mind blowingly difficult to imagine the world, the energy of it - and or - reality itself, may very well have just always already been around? How about if we posit that there is/was no 'true first place', at least, not beyond right here & now itself as an endlessly transforming web of phenomenon. Then, everything makes perfect sense.
Hey my guy, it's not difficult. Consider that maybe you are the one who is misunderstanding for a moment, I think you're overthinking it and not reading the language metaphorically enough. They're pretty much describing the singularity, the state before the big bang. Timeless, unknown beyond speculation. This entire universe is just shotgun blasting from that exact point in spacetime and potentially rubber-banding back to do it all over again, at which point the laws of physics are mute as the entirety of the universe is crushed to an inconceivably small point.
So to follow your point, it is a perfectly transfsorming web of a phenomenon, potentially repeating itself. Time and space are one thing, but if they both keep collapsing into a quantum state that is essentially outside time so-to-speak I would imagine they're all just happening "simultaneously", whatever that means. Time begins with the big-bang, goes all the way past us to a big collapse, all of which are human descriptions we made up for a massive energy system bursting into existence, doing energy system things, and then zipping out of existence again. It's all fluid, transforming, etc.
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Tropism
ChasingTail


Registered: 09/12/09
Posts: 2,039
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: Yes, an illusion
Such a sweet beautiful illusion, made all here in this little biocomputer. For better or worse it is the most beautiful thing I will ever know. Whoever that is.
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sudly
Darwin's stagger

Registered: 01/05/15
Posts: 10,797
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Tropism]
#28411089 - 07/28/23 12:07 AM (5 months, 29 days ago) |
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If you want to talk about taking things more as metaphor,
Quote:
I think you're overthinking it and not reading the language metaphorically enough.
Time and space are one thing, but if they both keep collapsing into a quantum state that is essentially outside time so-to-speak I would imagine they're all just happening "simultaneously", whatever that means.
What's the metaphor here?
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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Tropism
ChasingTail


Registered: 09/12/09
Posts: 2,039
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly] 1
#28411096 - 07/28/23 12:20 AM (5 months, 29 days ago) |
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God, I'd assume. That wasn't a metaphor though, talking about the place before is however. Not everything is a metaphor, but somethings are metaphorical. For me if I wanted to be metaphorical I'd say: whatever you want to call the whole of the energy system we are in, God or gana or whatever, the only thing my human brain can akin the big crunch theory is that it's the universe breathing.
Edited by Tropism (07/28/23 12:25 AM)
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sudly
Darwin's stagger

Registered: 01/05/15
Posts: 10,797
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Tropism]
#28411125 - 07/28/23 01:03 AM (5 months, 29 days ago) |
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Ah, so nothing..
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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Tropism
ChasingTail


Registered: 09/12/09
Posts: 2,039
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28411562 - 07/28/23 11:18 AM (5 months, 29 days ago) |
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In the same sense that is is everything, yes.
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sudly
Darwin's stagger

Registered: 01/05/15
Posts: 10,797
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Tropism]
#28411703 - 07/28/23 01:36 PM (5 months, 29 days ago) |
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Are you saying everything is nothing?
Again not very meaningful if that's the case. Perhaps you could look into what Dirac discovered if you want to delve there.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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Tropism
ChasingTail


Registered: 09/12/09
Posts: 2,039
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28411935 - 07/28/23 06:57 PM (5 months, 28 days ago) |
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Quote:
sudly said: Are you saying everything is nothing?
Again not very meaningful if that's the case. Perhaps you could look into what Dirac discovered if you want to delve there.
My dude, this whole interaction has been meaningless. You asked me what the metaphor was there as if it was implied there was one when that wasn't what was stated. Then when I explain that and provide a metaphor, your response is that it is nothing. Bring more to the table please before you use that condescending tone.
Rereading this it may sound harsh, but I think it's fair. I love all of you, but I don't see as the kids say why you are coming at me bro. I assumed what you were saying was literal, that if something is ultimately oscillating between existence and non-existence then it is actually, nothing at all. Which in the same sense in the context of the previous conversation where we were under the premise of the big crunch theory, would be everything as well. The universe being simultaneously (in a state without time) there and not there. I thought we were having a collaborative conversation.
Edited by Tropism (07/28/23 07:01 PM)
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redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,530
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Tropism]
#28411953 - 07/28/23 07:10 PM (5 months, 28 days ago) |
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Picard and Data were having this kind of discussion without any friction.
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sudly
Darwin's stagger

Registered: 01/05/15
Posts: 10,797
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Tropism]
#28412214 - 07/29/23 12:58 AM (5 months, 28 days ago) |
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So big crunch theory is universe breathing.. very astute of you?
I think blindass just kinda said it is what it is. Trying to take some speculation away from 'the before time' of cosmic birth or whatever.
I was referring the discovery that the 'nothing' of a void in space has something going on as described Diracs equation. That what might be referred to as nothing, is in fact something.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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Tropism
ChasingTail


Registered: 09/12/09
Posts: 2,039
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: sudly]
#28412752 - 07/29/23 11:24 AM (5 months, 28 days ago) |
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Well that sounds a lot more interesting and is a good response,even gets one intrigued in what Dirac was on about much more than being smug and telling someone to look something up.
Also I don't think there's anything astute about speculative metaphors about the unknown, but I'll take it and put in my pocket for later.
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Rahz
Alive Again



Registered: 11/10/05
Posts: 9,229
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Tropism]
#28412783 - 07/29/23 11:42 AM (5 months, 28 days ago) |
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What seems to be the case is that the universe is flat, or flat enough a curve hasn't been measured This indicates the universe might just continue growing and expanding forever.
The material of the universe will continue towards entropy though which indicates eventually it will be a soup of particles. I used to think this might cause a "big evaporation" if time and space were dependent on a particular level of energy density, but space seems to have inherent energy and may never become thin enough that the properties that manifest it are absent.
This could still fit in the idea of a breath. The universe just wouldn't be breathing the same "air". More like a fractal where the potential produces new data rather than recycling the old.
-------------------- rahz comfort pleasure power love truth awareness peace "You’re not looking close enough if you can only see yourself in people who look like you." —Ayishat Akanbi
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Tropism
ChasingTail


Registered: 09/12/09
Posts: 2,039
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Rahz]
#28412834 - 07/29/23 12:20 PM (5 months, 28 days ago) |
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I'm fuzzy on it all but if I recall correctly what stops an ever expanding universe is the Hawking radiation dissipating to the point it no longer or prevents the growth of black holes, which would essentially grow and pull the universe back into its initial state with enough time.
The breathing thing is just a fun metaphor to use if we personify the universe as whole or what have you.
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Rahz
Alive Again



Registered: 11/10/05
Posts: 9,229
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Tropism]
#28412885 - 07/29/23 01:03 PM (5 months, 28 days ago) |
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Hmm, well the formation of a black hole doesn't produce more gravity or mass. It's just a different distribution. As well, black holes are predicted to radiate (Hawking radiation) so they too would evaporate. And while the universe seems to be producing more energy/mass the only mass that's dense enough to form black holes is the material that was expressed during the inflationary period. Eventually there will be no more black holes, or anything other than particles becoming less dense in space over an infinite amount of time.
It's all a matter of prediction and appearance, current theory, etc. but how it will actually play out is unknown as I'm sure you know.
-------------------- rahz comfort pleasure power love truth awareness peace "You’re not looking close enough if you can only see yourself in people who look like you." —Ayishat Akanbi
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Tropism
ChasingTail


Registered: 09/12/09
Posts: 2,039
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Rahz]
#28412959 - 07/29/23 02:47 PM (5 months, 28 days ago) |
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Not so sure about that, the universe is filled with many stars that will end up as black holes when they die and collapse, so as long as there are stars there will be black holes forming. It's been a while since I read Hawking so I'm drawing a blank on the specifics.
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Rahz
Alive Again



Registered: 11/10/05
Posts: 9,229
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Tropism]
#28412967 - 07/29/23 02:59 PM (5 months, 27 days ago) |
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Stars are still forming from primordial mass but they only form from primordial mass. There will not always be stars but it's a process that is very long. The time that the universe has existed is a drop in the bucket.
Interestingly in recent news, data from the James Webb space telescope is indicating to some that the universe may be about twice as old as the 13.78 billion years we currently think it has existed.
https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/age-of-universe-research-james-webb/163845/
-------------------- rahz comfort pleasure power love truth awareness peace "You’re not looking close enough if you can only see yourself in people who look like you." —Ayishat Akanbi
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Tropism
ChasingTail


Registered: 09/12/09
Posts: 2,039
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Rahz]
#28413002 - 07/29/23 03:29 PM (5 months, 27 days ago) |
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That's very cool. I'm not sure I can wrap my head around what you mean by the time the universe existing is a drop in the bucket, as the universe encapsulates all of time, as time is relative space. Without the universe there is no spacetime, without spacetime the concept of time is moot. So for it to be a drop in the bucket I'm not sure what you mean, it's the entire bucket as far as I can tell
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Rahz
Alive Again



Registered: 11/10/05
Posts: 9,229
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Tropism] 1
#28413025 - 07/29/23 03:56 PM (5 months, 27 days ago) |
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I understand what you mean but the universe is understood to have an age as a matter of chronological form and event. And a drop in the bucket is a slight exaggeration compared to infinity, or even the amount of time it will take for complete entropy.
-------------------- rahz comfort pleasure power love truth awareness peace "You’re not looking close enough if you can only see yourself in people who look like you." —Ayishat Akanbi
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Tropism
ChasingTail


Registered: 09/12/09
Posts: 2,039
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Rahz]
#28413301 - 07/29/23 09:35 PM (5 months, 27 days ago) |
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That's a very cool video, this all made me need a light refresher on Hawking and I definitely am not remembering the radiation right, but after refreshing I had a laugh. We both are discussing one of his two main theories on the end of the universe, where I was talking about big crunch, this video seems to represent heat death.
Regarding infinity, it seems plausible. It doesn't sit well enough with me though, if it's infinity it is still the entire bucket, the bucket is just infinity in diameter. If there were multiple universe there would be multiple infinities.
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spinvis
Stranger

Registered: 09/15/20
Posts: 587
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Faust; "All theory is gray, my friend. But forever green is the tree of life. . ."
"All perishable is but an allegory. . ."
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The Blind Ass
Bodhi


Registered: 08/16/16
Posts: 26,657
Loc: The Primordial Mind
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Re: Does reality exist? [Re: Rahz]
#28417052 - 08/02/23 05:38 AM (5 months, 24 days ago) |
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Dem kalpas.
-------------------- Give me Liberty caps -or- give me Death caps
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Moses_Davidson
Non-Prophet



Registered: 05/21/20
Posts: 613
Last seen: 3 months, 28 days
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It could be carried by an African swallow.
-------------------- "In finance, everything that is agreeable is unsound and everything that is sound is disagreeable." --Sir Winston Churchill "The world may not only be stranger than we suppose, it may be stranger than we can suppose." J.B.S. Haldane "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't." Mark Twain
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