|
Nondualism (pg. 8)
|
View this Thread in Original format
| nefardec |
| quote: | Originally posted by Domesticated
No, my post was a rhetorical question. If your metaphor was better you would be able to come up with an answer for the 1s and 0s. I'm not the one making assertions about non-dualism, so I'm not required to come up with the ideas.
|
I didn't answer precisely because it was a rhetorical question... No one is 'required' to come up with ideas, wtf? It would be a fruitless exercise to come up the application of a metaphor for a single case - that isn't the point of metaphors. Metaphors aren't proofs, they are creative ways of thinking about something in a new way - I would think you would understand that. Seriously, lose the snark.
| quote: | Originally posted by Domesticated
An observer is part of the act of observing, which is a completely different thing to there being 'no' observer. Observing would not exist without there being both an observer and the subject of his attention.
|
You have it backwards - observer and observed would not exist without there being observing.
| quote: | Originally posted by Domesticated
I agree on the first three counts. However, interesting as the concept may be, it's not 'truth'; it's a concept expressed in words and doesn't exist in the real world. Refuting this leads to the logic that reality doesn't exist the way humans perceive it, which may well be true but is essentially useless to us since we have no way of changing it.
Also, if monism exists, shouldn't non-monism also exist? Why does non-dualism reduce everything to two elements, anyway? The world is a wonderfully varied place.
I think what pkc was trying to say, in a very non-eloquent way, is that suppositions such as this have no practical use to us, besides intellectual stimulation (or, more crudely, masturbation). One may well suppose that the world consists of just one thing, but if we know that for sure, where does it lead us? How could our lives, our reality or our destinies be improved by this knowledge? |
Well not everyone agrees that the 'world' is any more 'real' than concepts. There are different concepts of 'reality' that need to be clarified. One idea of reality is something that can be physically experienced. I will call this lowercase 'reality'. In the view of advaita, this is actually the great illusion, it is the projection, but not the film.
The other idea of reality is uppercase 'Reality' and contains the experiencing itself, the experiencer and the experienced. It was there before the universe, before god, before self, before any universal consciousness, but it is also simultaneously all of these things.
The world is certainly lowercase 'real'. If you hit me in the head with a hammer, it will hurt and possibly kill me, and I may lose consciousness. However, there is really no way to prove, for example, that anything 'real' is any more 'real' than a dream, and that science itself, the language needed to make the proof are part of the same elaborate illusion that the universe itself is part of, until one wakes up, so to speak - but wakes up into what? The set that contains all possible waking states and all possible dreams is uppercase 'Reality', and what I mean when I say 'truth'.
I cannot prove my view with physical evidence, because my view denies the reality of the physical. I cannot even prove my view with philosophical concepts, since words and ideas are chained to the physical body. However, even thinking about the origin of the physical universe for a second leads one to the cusp of this conclusion, that before anything physical was manifest, (and 'god' is merely a concept and wishful thinking of the physical body) there is some set that contains all possibilities from which time and space themselves unfold.
This to me is self evident, there can be no other conclusion - for instance, if science were to try to prove where the universe came from, one would have to know where the thing that made the universe came from, one would have to know where 'knowing' itself comes from! If religion were to try to prove that the universe came from god, one would have to know where god comes from...
So then it comes down to practicality, like you rightly point out. The trouble is, practicality comes with ethical and sociocultural attachments. 'Practical' is going to be completely relative to your beliefs and positions. So while we all know and appreciate the practical benefits of the scientific method, allow me to question it for its disadvantages and also propose some practical benefits of advaita:
Science appears to have benefited mankind. Take the example of the development of farming. Humans were able to settle down and feed themselves, extending their lives, to begin building civilizations, etc. However, the negative side of this was that with civilization and technology also comes increased ability to cause human suffering - out of this movement and advancement of science emerged things like nationalism, organized religion, industrial cultivation - which may eventually even lead to the destruction of the planet itself.
With all of our scientific advances, our instant communications, life-prolonging medicines, fast travel, sophisticated languages and governments - are we really better off than mankind of 10,000 years ago? Isn't it relative to what one believes as being 'better'? In other words, 10,000 years ago, mankind had its own pains and its own pleasures. There were broken heart, hungry babies, rivalries, and cold nights. These days we have our own pains and pleasures, internet egos inflamed, children who don't get ipods for christmas, fundamentalist religious hate, etc etc. As long as we give our attention to this lowercase 'reality' in the name of practicality, there will be this pleasure/pain action/reaction complex.
Now, advaita does away with the pleasure/pain complex by recognizing that pleasure/pain are relative to one's perspective and identification with a concept/body/consciousness, which one is not. (again, neti-neti, neither this, nor that)
This does have practical benefits (though advaita doesn't give them any more worth beyond what they are), namely:
- no sadness, hate, jealousy, etc (what is left is the ground, bliss)
- no fear! (what is left is the ground, love)
these things dissolve like clouds in the sky.
now those are practical benefits. basically superpowers. imagine what a world we would live in without fear, hate, jealousy, etc. in its most ideal application, there is no need for science, no need for anything at all. compared to this, your idea of 'practicality' is as important as the practicality of doing something in Mafia Wars. In advaita philosophy there is no pleasure, and no pain. and what remains is neither pleasure, nor pain, which are temporary - it is everlasting beingness, it is total freedom, total acquiescence, complete silence in a word - love.
love is realizing that you are the same as something else,
fear is maintaining that you are different. |
|
|
| Halcyon+On+On |
| Haha, love and fear. This thread needs more Patrick Swayze. |
|
|
| nefardec |
| quote: | Originally posted by Halcyon+On+On
Haha, love and fear. This thread needs more Patrick Swayze. |
all obvious jokes/movie references aside, it's one of the most important discussions we could have.
i don't really find it funny... |
|
|
| Halcyon+On+On |
| You don't get to tell people what's important. Least of all when you're merely espousing some metaphysical horse that claims our lives are merely projections and that pain and pleasure are any more temporary than our existence. Let me know when you've achieved this "everlasting beingness", because until then you are just another dumb ape echoing the same desire to make sense of our absurd and inexplicable presence. |
|
|
| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by nefardec
You have it backwards - observer and observed would not exist without there being observing. |
None of them would exist without the others. This is what I was saying earlier in the thread: nondualism cannot exist without dualism, which is reflected in its etymology. It must recognise oppositions before it can deny them.
In terms of structuralism, recognising oppositions is not so much about difference, but similarity. Nondualism is not a way of thinking without oppositions, but rather a dialectic struggle with them. To go back to the coin metaphor, it isn't really a way of seeing a coin as a whole rather than two sides, but rather as seeing those two sides as part of a whole. Rather less liberating than it initially seems. |
|
|
| nefardec |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
To go back to the coin metaphor, it isn't really a way of seeing a coin as a whole rather than two sides, but rather as seeing those two sides as part of a whole. Rather less liberating than it initially seems. |
Yeah that's exactly what I said - it is both the whole and the sides at the same time.
I guess you're fixating too literally on the coin rather than on the metaphor - recognize that the uppercase 'Reality' contains both the lowercase 'reality' of the whole and the sides (and the concept of the coin itself). It's really a never-ending process of infinite unifications, sets that contain other sets. The absolute set is just a symbol for the sum of these sets basically. |
|
|
| nefardec |
| quote: | Originally posted by Halcyon+On+On
You don't get to tell people what's important. Least of all when you're merely espousing some metaphysical horse that claims our lives are merely projections and that pain and pleasure are any more temporary than our existence. Let me know when you've achieved this "everlasting beingness", because until then you are just another dumb ape echoing the same desire to make sense of our absurd and inexplicable presence. |
You're completely right, but we can all have goals, right?
PS you don't get to tell people what's not important. |
|
|
| Halcyon+On+On |
:mad: !
But what if my position is that nothing is important, and I am in fact not making a positive claim, but a reductive one? Only the uninitiated would dare oppose me! |
|
|
| Ania_xox |
It is difficult to isolate the basics of what we know, in order to achieve this nondualistic frame of mind. Fruitless, in my opinion. What purpose does it serve? To justify your existence? What are we if we don't feel, if we don't search, if we don't try to understand? For what purpose are we able to see, touch, hear, smell, if not to indulge in these senses?
I am of the belief that examining the grey area is as important, if not more important, than examining the black and white, the light and dark, the physical and the metaphysical.
For it is equally difficult to situate yourself among what you know of the world and to create meaning of it. Yet unless you try, the sheer beauty of what you can know and understand is left uncommunicable. |
|
|
| nefardec |
| quote: | Originally posted by Halcyon+On+On
:mad: !
But what if my position is that nothing is important, and I am in fact not making a positive claim, but a reductive one? Only the uninitiated would dare oppose me! |
Then I agree with you and I'll clarify that what I meant by 'important' was 'important for a messageboard discussion on nondualism' and not 'important in the grand scheme of everything' :p |
|
|
| nefardec |
| quote: | Originally posted by Ania_xox
It is cowardly and lazy not to isolate the basics of what we know, in order to at least consider this nondualistic frame of mind. |
fixed |
|
|
| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by nefardec
Yeah that's exactly what I said - it is both the whole and the sides at the same time.
I guess you're fixating too literally on the coin rather than on the metaphor - recognize that the uppercase 'Reality' contains both the lowercase 'reality' of the whole and the sides (and the concept of the coin itself). It's really a never-ending process of infinite unifications, sets that contain other sets. The absolute set is just a symbol for the sum of these sets basically. |
No, I'm explaining what Domesticated hinted at when he said "An observer is part of the act of observing, which is a completely different thing to there being 'no' observer."
When you say "there is no 'observer' and 'observed', there is only 'observing'" it's not true. The observer and observed still exist, and without them the "observing" is nothing. There is a big difference with claiming to do away with dualism and opposition and merely organising oppositions into wholes.
When you consider that, nondualism doesn't seem very profound or liberating to me. |
|
|
|
|
