I didn’t like Los Angeles when I first arrived here.
The circumstances were less than ideal. I’d been working for Tsuburaya Productions, makers of the Ultraman TV shows and movies, in Japan for ten years and the company was in a state of turmoil. A family business since 1963, by 2004 the family was a bickering, back-biting mess. Noboru Tsuburaya, the man who hired me, had died suddenly in 1996 leaving a power gap that the rest of the family kept trying to fill. In the midst of all this, Akira Tsuburaya, who was then jockeying to oust his nephew Kazuo from the presidency, hatched a plan to open an office in Los Angeles and install me as the head of that office.
There were tremendous opportunities for us in the USA at the time. Everyone in Hollywood wanted to remake a Japanese property and Ultraman, being that nation’s longest-running and most popular superhero character, was high on lots of people’s lists. Will Smith had gone on TV saying Ultraman was one of his favorite shows. The comany coulda made a ton of money and I coulda been the executive producer of a mega-hit movie with an A-List star in its lead role.
But that’s not what happened. Although I brought the company a series of attractive offers from major studios, nobody back in Tokyo could take a break from fighting each other long enough to come to LA for a meeting. Meanwhile, my marriage was breaking up, which did nothing to help my already sour mood. The sunshine, the beaches, the palm trees and even Amoeba Records were not enough to make me like Los Angeles.
I had a little Zen group here that met on Saturdays, but it never seemed to do very well. Every week, between five and ten of us would gather in Santa Monica to sit for half an hour and then chat and drink tea. The donations I took in at those meetings never covered the rent I was paying for the space we used. At the same time, whenever I led retreats or gave talks in other cities around the world I could attract ten times that many on a bad day. Not only did I not like Los Angeles, Los Angeles did not seem to like me either.
So I left. I lived in Brooklyn for a while. I went back to Akron, Ohio for a year and a half. I lived in Philadelphia. Yet, much to my astonishment that little group I’d started in LA kept on going. I really didn’t expect that at all. I thought they’d pack it in a few weeks or months after I left. But they didn’t.
Last year I ordained three of the long-time members of the LA group as priests as a first step in making the group a more solid and stable entity. Whereas initially the group was just a thing I did on Saturdays, it has now evolved into a true sangha.
Los Angeles has a whole lot of Buddhist organizations. In fact, someone once told me there are more meditation centers in LA than in any other city in the world, including cities in Asia. I don’t know if that’s true. I kind of doubt it. But there are plenty already. So why start another one?
For one thing, at the moment there really isn’t a straight-up Soto style Zen meditation center in LA. Yeah, I know the Zen Center of Los Angeles calls itself a Soto center, but their practice is far closer to the Rinzai style. And I know there’s Zenshuji downtown, but they function more as a social gathering place for Japanese-Americans than as a meditation center. How come San Francisco gets a giant Soto style center but we have to make do with renting out rooms at yoga studios?
Plus, I have come to love Los Angeles. For years I felt sort of guilty to be a Zen practitioner who liked living in big cities. It’s just not “Zen” to dig the noise and the crowds and all that, but I do. And I like all the movie industry weirdness. I like living down the street from where Laurel and Hardy filmed The Music Box and in the same neighborhood where The Three Stooges tried to haul ice up a set of stairs similar to those that appear in the Laurel and Hardy picture. I like seeing famous people at the grocery store. It’s fun.
I wonder if the kind of Zen center I want to start can survive here. Much of what’s on offer in terms of meditation in LA is pretty full of woo-woo. People here love their magic crystals. Folks with more money than I’ll ever see in my lifetime chant for abundance and prosperity. Of course this is not restricted to LA. But it is very popular here.
Yet I am optimistic. I really feel there is a place for a real, down-to-earth meditation center in the Soto tradition here in this City of Sin with its Scientology churches on every corner, and its back-stabbing executives looking for someone to spiritually justify greed and ambition. I’ve met a lot of good people who are not like that at all, who are ready to take a hard look at their real lives and discover the beauty that already exists right in front of them.
We shall see. Stay tuned…
* * *
This Sunday February 15, 2015 at 11 am I will lead meditation at Against The Stream 4300 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90029
Every Monday at 8pm I lead zazen at Silverlake Yoga Studio 2 located at 2810 Glendale Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90039. All are welcome!
Every Saturday at 9:30 am I lead zazen at the Veteran’s Memorial Complex located at 4117 Overland Blvd., Culver City, CA 90230. All are welcome!
Plenty more info is available on the Dogen Sangha Los Angeles website, dsla.info
* * *
Your kind donations help me keep doing this blog by helping pay some of my rent. Every little bit helps. Thank you!
“Mind objects can not be held on to.”
Where is the separation?
SH, thanks, but I am in no rush.
And I do not think placing my e-mail address on a blog is a good idea.
SH, and just so you know… on that site there already is someone using David S apparently. So that is not me. I will be using D SS.
Sh, I will post any responses to your paper on the other thread, Space, Time and Who Gives a Flying Fig?
…so check back there every now and then.
* it looks like a conversation that doesn’t involve me at all *
Seeing my list of short posts leaves with the opposite impression.
That’s cool.
I enjoy talking with you david s. This question is very very important to me.
I know you may not agree, but my whole Buddhist practice hinges on this question. Reading that topic fully will help you understand why. I am going to post something new on the topic too.
david s, be sure to focus on sunyavadi’s post. Without One Mind, there can be no Zen/Ch’an.
You can us all the riddles you want, Fred, but it always have that IMPLICIT metaphysical claim behind it. That’s why I recommend you read that topic and quit with the anti-intellectualizing attitude.
Even Andr3w came to realize the nihilistic dread of how relinquishing One Mind would upend his entire contemplative-religious approach.
Thanks for the links, minkfoot; enjoyed reading the exchange in full, and the context.
“One Mind”, only as good as it has to be, I reckon (to paraphrase something Charles McCabe once wrote).
I wrote this, and then I burned my fingers:
‘On a match box: “Strike Anywhere”.
Kobun’s literal translation of the elements in the word shikantaza strings together as: “pure hit sit”.
Here’s one from “Zen Letters, Teachings of Yuanwu”:
“If you want to pass through easily and directly right now, just let your body and mind become thoroughly empty, so it is vacant and silent yet aware and luminous. Inwardly, forget all your conceptions of self, and outwardly, cut off all sensory defilements. When inside and outside are clear all the way through, there is just one true reality. Then eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and conceptual mind, form, sound, smell, flavor, touch, and conceptualized phenomena–all of these are established based on that one reality.” (trans. Thomas Cleary and J. C. Cleary, pg 86).
Similarly, here’s one from the Pali Canon, attributed to Gautama the Buddha:
“…making self-surrender (one’s) object of thought, (one) lays hold of concentration, lays hold of one-pointedness of mind.” (SN V 200, Pali Text Society V 176)
What is “one-pointedness of mind”?- here’s Yuanwu again:
“Once you have been directed by a teacher or else discovered on your own the originally inherently complete real mind, then no matter what situations or circumstances you encounter, you know for yourself where it’s really at.” (Zen Letters pg 48)
“…where it’s really at”, as in:
“Be aware of where you really are twenty-four hours a day. You must be most attentive.” (Ibid, pg 53)
When the impact of consciousness opens the ability to feel, and what is felt enters into the place of occurrence of consciousness, then the mind remains waking up or falling asleep even as the place of occurrence of consciousness shifts. Single-pointedness of mind is just consciousness where it occurs, as it occurs.
On a matchbox, “Strike Anywhere”.’
(from here)
Mark, Dogen said triple-world is Mind only:
http://tinyurl.com/p2x536d
There is no reason to practice is Mind is an emergent phenomena from brain activity. Absolutely no reason.
Earlier Ch’an Buddhists were panpsychists. The undifferentiated consciousness prior to conceptual thought is referred to as the One Mind “when inside and outside are clear all the way through, there is just one true reality.” It has PANPSYCHIST aspect, meaning it is the fundamental ground of reality that cannot be grasped. Even though it is the fundamental ground of reality is groundless because it has no form (i.e., non-abiding awareness).
Ch’an/Zen are not compatible with materialist/physicalist revisionist agendas.
I’m not asking to be taken seriously MYSELF. I am serious about taking this metaphysics seriously.
I hate to say it, but Brad is not familiar with his own religion’s religion beyond Dogen and MMK. Stuff like Bodhidharma, Han Shan, Shiwu, Lankavatara Sutra, Diamond SUtra, etc. these all presupposed One Mind which is fundamentally panpsychist.
Right now less sitting is needed and more intellectual study because the Dharma is being bastardized. There was a particular Ch’an/Zen teacher, I think who was Korean, that encouraged rigorous study of sutras as an aspect of practice. We cannot ignore the metaphysical implications of our religion in this day and age.
I repeat: there is no reason to practice when your religion is fundamentally wrong. Right now I’m reading some stuff on the collapse of the wave function and the possible role mind can have in it.
if Mind is an*
it is groundless*
ignore typos
“There is no reason to practice if Mind is an emergent phenomena from brain activity. Absolutely no reason.”
That is probably the truest thing that you have ever written or will ever write but I do not think that you understand what it means. There is no reason to practice. Absolutely no reason. Zazen is useless.
Grand Canyon, I don’t want to talk to someone who doesn’t understand what I’m getting at. I got my degree in Neuroscience and read so much on this question.
There is an intersection between Dharmic religions and the Hard Problem of Consciousness. It’s obvious you don’t understand your religion enough to give serious consideration to my question, and instead, you attack me. Read the Zenforum topic I gave. Focus on sunyavadi’s posts.
“Although this happened to me, Brad, in a city called Tokyo on a certain day of the week in a specific year, the incident did not occur on a specific day in a specific location to anyone in particular. It occurred throughout time and everywhere in the universe. It did not happen only to me. It happened just as much to you.
To even say that it was an “incident” that “happened” does not do it justice. It was not an isolated event. It was and is the true condition of all things all the time. It was as much a living, breathing entity as you or I, maybe more so. It wasn’t merely an incident that happened. It was also a presence that was, is, and always will be there. It underlies everything. It is the very basis of all experience. It was more me than I could ever be. But it was not me at all.”
“It was as much a living, breathing entity as you or I, maybe more so. It wasn’t merely an incident that happened. It was also a presence that was, is, and always will be there. It underlies everything.”
It happened to me in 81 or 82. It can’t be taken back. Words cannot touch it. Words aren’t it.
It happened also to me, but if awareness is a product of the brain, then it is an aberration of perceptual mechanisms.
Read this:
http
://www.zen
foruminternational.org//
viewtopic.php?f=38&t=8837
Focus on sunyavadi’s post.
Zen/Ch’an is not compatible with physicalism or emergentist views of mind. Gregory Wonderwheel understands this too.
Do you think I want to talk about this stuff? Do you think I enjoy it? I am existential as fuck and breaking down from obsessing over this question. I stayed up late at night thinking of this question. Our entire religion hinges on it. Stop calling me autistic and sick for simply conveying my well-thought out views.
It’s not like I haven’t sat at retreats for long periods. I have gone to several Zazenkais and what I talk about is important.
The fact is, Ch’an Buddhism was founded on the implicit metaphysical belief that non-abiding awareness was not a product of the brain:
http://www.dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=9510
There is absolutely no reason to practice if non-abiding awareness is an emergent property of brain activity. You are deluding yourself in arguing there is still reason to practice. Brad Warner should respond too because I did read excerpts There is No God and He is Always with You, and Brad Warner hinted (in a sly manner) more towards an interpretation of mind being an emergent phonenomena of brain activity. It is not compatible with Ch’an/Zen. Even Dogen argued triple body is of mind… as I linked…
Also read the Zenforum topic I linked too
You are destroying the foundations of your religion by trying to make it more compatible with reductive/physicalist/emergent theories of reality
“There is absolutely no reason to practice if non-abiding awareness is an emergent property of brain activity. You are deluding yourself in arguing there is still reason to practice.”
Yes. Precisely. You are 100% correct. There is no reason to practice. Absolutely no reason. Zazen is useless.
Nobody says that you are sick.
The reason kids rejected you wasn’t because you were hairy, or whatever other reason you come up with. It’s the way you engaged them, which couldn’t be helped.
There is no question that the religion hinges on. It’s the nature of your brain. It’s OK that your brain does that, but non Buddhist normals probably crack in the face of your unrelenting perseveration.
What the hell are you talking about?
Just give substantial consideration to my question before throwing ad hominems. I honestly don’t care about your ad hominems.
Dogen said triple-world is mind only. Likewise, older Chan Buddhists said everything is a projection of the mind, and that there is an nondifferentiated awareness prior to to projecting attributes. Such as an awareness without duality was taken as fundamental and universal to reality. If awareness is more of an emergent phenomena from brain activity, there is NO reason to even sit or take any of this religion seriously.
If mind is just an emergent aspect of brain activity, Brad Warner’s kensho experience may have just been an aberration of perceptual mechanisms. I’ve had a similar experiences as Brad, but I don’t know whether I can conclude it as pointing to an underlying reality or the unifying aspect of reality.
I ask you again, to read this before throwing ad hominems:
http://tinyurl.com/
(CONNECT)
mup3vjk
Also, note, on my first post, I meant to say for #2 as possible answers ” our awareness is not aware until there is differentiation that reflects it into self-concousness. ” The use of the word ‘impinge’ is wrong word usage.
Stop throwing your ad hominems towards me.
Focus on Mr. sunyavadi’s answers.
OK, I figured out how to explain it:
Essentialism is true and dependent origination is wrong if and only if mind is an emergent property of brain activity. If ” our awareness is not aware until there is differentiation that reflects it into self-concousness” then Nagarjuna and most of Buddhism is correct.
I already know mind is irreducible to its dependent material components, but to say it is “generated” by the dynamics of the brain activity refutes everything in Zen/Ch’an and Madhyamaka’s argument.
Just read this and focus on Sunyavadi’s posts:
http://tinyurl.com/
(CONNECT)
mup3vjk
We can discuss metaphysics when words are viewed as “pointing” and the meaning is taken as more important than the words:
“”In this they are ignorant of the nature of words, which are subject to birth and death, whereas meaning
is not; words are dependent upon letters and meaning is not; meaning is apart from existence and non-existence, it has no
substratum, it is un-born” – Lankavatara Sutra
also, it’s important to note mind-only is different from yogacaran idealism.
Mind-only Ch’an, such as Dogen, posits “opposition or polarization arises mutually dependent on each other from the undifferentiated awareness, that is they arise by the discrimination of false thinking of our own mind. This undifferentiated awareness is difficult to grasp conceptually, so it is called inconceivable. When we approach it based on polarized conceptions, we place it in time or space, large or small.”
In short, the Original Face is undifferentiated awareness in early Chinese Ch’an and even Dogen.
Yogacaran is different and less panpsychist.
Does the mind emerge from brain activity or is there an undifferentiated awareness (i.e., non-abiding awareness or One Mind) that our brains differentiate and reflect it into self-consciousness?
Stop giving me your fucking ad hominems and stupid bullshit riddles, and anwer the fucking question. Your whole religion hinges on this question, and you can’t escape it by either deconstructing or whisking the question away.
“…my whole Buddhist practice hinges on this question.”
SH, what you said here, and how much you seem obsessed with your questions, appears to me to be coming from anxiety and creating no relief for you. When will you believe in your own answers? Can any answer satisfy the intellectual urge to question? How does this urge arise? Is it just a function of anxiety to trigger one into such a search? Is there truly an end to this? Is there a suffering in anxiety? How can it be handled?
I experience anxiety in just this way. I have a base of anxiety that is deeply ingrained, ringing in the background of my sensations, at times seemingly part of sensation itself. So I think I recognize this in you as well. Maybe I am wrong, but I sense the same tone to your posts, a search to have the definite answer, a search to end that tone of anxiety that pushes one into racing thoughts, creating a jungle of screaming monkeys. Just when one finally calms them down some new question triggers one and all the rest come screaming for answers.
“Reading that topic fully will help you understand why.”
I already understand that what you talk of such as non-grasping awareness, and One Mind, is referenced in Buddhist thought. I really do. It is no secret that this is a topic of discussion.
But consider, even if how you have been talking about it has been spoken appropriately (highly debatable), for anyone to disagree with your (traditional) conclusion would not ultimately change it right? If it is an absolute ‘truth’ it will just be. One doesn’t need to support its existence with belief. When one enters into a practice one doesn’t need to believe any particular thing to practice. One just needs to do the act of the practice, even the act of taking none. What comes of it will come. Right?
“There is no reason to practice is Mind is an emergent phenomena from brain activity. Absolutely no reason.”
Yes, you are correct. One cannot practice* any such concept.
Understand what form experience takes and let go of it. Concepts are just concepts. They are mental objects. Holding onto them is impossible. Using them as tools is helpful in life. Trying to make them into a place to live not so much. Remembering that they are just a tool, one can set them down and let go of them.
Now back to the notion of absolute ‘truth’. A central feature in Buddhism is impermanence, and dependent arising. These two features result in an understanding of the relative nature of everything. The extremes being avoided in Buddhism is solidity, represented by Absolutism, and nothing at all, represented by Nihilism. The middle understanding is of relativity. So even such notions of One Mind become too well formed as existing eternally. Here it comes much speculation as to how to address emptiness when any act of conceiving it contradicts its intended basis.
For me Buddhist concepts are like conceptual tools, and open to interpretation, because of the quality of concepts being empty, not ultimately going to satisfy everyone intellectually.
SH, you do not have to convince others that your ideas are right*. Your practice doesn’t need you to be right. If it does then you are making trouble for only yourself.
david s, I did not ask for your psychoanalytic, straw man bullshit. I do not care whether you perceive me as anxious or suffering. I want to deal with the topic at hand because Brad Warner’s “There is No God and He is With You” contradicts the One Mind teaching from Huang Po, early Ch’an, Dogen, and so forth. You cannot contradict the basic metaphysical elements of your religion and still call yourself a practitioners.
I do not KNOW if I am right or wrong having panpscyhist inclinations. I just want to discuss it without immature deconstructive riddles or materialist biases. Sunyavadi’s posts also indicate how a reductive physicalist or emergentist approach towards Buddhist metaphysics undermines everything it points at. Why else would I ask?
Why don’t you read this topic before responding?:
http://tinyurl.com/nlqpzen
You cannot separate metaphysics/ontology from the praxis of a religion. I don’t know the answer, but I can tell you if #3 is the case (that is, mind being an emergent property of brain activity), then I will no longer practice. I need the answer to the Hard Problem of Consciousness before putting my whole body and mind into this practice. It’s that simple. There is no reason to practice if emergentism or reductive physicalism were the cases because the Dharma is then fundamentally fallacious.
“I need the answer to the Hard Problem of Consciousness before putting my whole body and mind into this practice.”
You NEED*
grasp away
it is stressful needing, grasping onto concepts
stress is suffering
BEFORE*
you will wait forever
stuck in your own trap.
I’m sick and tired of your stupid riddles. If mind is emergent from brain activity, then the Dharma/Zen/Buddhism is a trap.
Do you think I am discussing this because I like to?
HS, your assumptions bring you to false conclusions.
“If mind is emergent from brain activity, then the Dharma/Zen/Buddhism is a trap.”
You made the trap yourself and it only serves your conclusion.
HS, I do not speak in riddles.
“I’m sick and tired of your stupid riddles.”
I speak from the basic tenant of Buddhism that of suffering. In your quest for a complete explanation of One Mind, on only your terms and assumptions, you completely left out any mention of what the Buddha taught.
“”What I teach now as before, O monks, is suffering and the cessation of suffering.”
david s…
if mind is emergent, I will commit suicide by doing sallekhana.
There is no rebirth, no more suffering, complete cessation.
Only thing stopping me from suicide is the inkling that rebirth from the influence of storehouse consciousness.
Take my views seriously.
HS, you are going in circles. You do not need anyone’s agreement. My advice is to actually take your own views seriously. If you really want to escape the cycle of samsara that you say you believe-in, then you must rid yourself of your hindrances. Your desire for an answer BEFORE you set to work is a hindrance itself. You must learn how to balance your mind. You must understand this through your own experience. No belief is necessary to learn what hindrances there are in maintaining balance.
If you seek answers ask your teacher. Listen to their answers. Stop this endless cycle of preaching here. Ask your personal teacher.
Besides you already clearly know what the answer is for you. Now figure out how to overcome this self-centered conflict you are making. You are not seeking answers from anyone here.
You are very unstable mentally, I do not mean crazy, I mean you swing from preaching how you view metaphysics, ignoring anyone else’s view, then you inexplicably reverse it all when no one agrees with you and threaten to kill yourself. You are obviously filled filled doubt about your own views to make such a threat. But are you? Post after post you say how much more you understand what is true Zen. Which is it? Yo-yoing around such talk is really annoying me. You seem the most unaware person on this site. Do you even know what you FEEL? You say you are not anxious. So what are you feeling? Don’t tell me any answer. I do not need to know. I can not help you. Read more on the 4 Noble Truths and examine your own experience. It is written all over your posts that you are suffering and struggling with questions you seem incapable of answering to your own satisfaction. Your feelings do not lie. Focus on your body and emotions. Get out of your head. You are in so deep that you are stuck.
david s, this question is extremely complicated and deep. I can’t really convey it easily. There is a loop here because I am serious when I say if emergentism is the case, I will become a Carvakan or kind pseudo-libertine.
I’ve already thought out this.
“david s, this question is extremely complicated and deep. I can’t really convey it easily. There is a loop here because I am serious when I say if emergentism is the case, I will become a Carvakan or kind pseudo-libertine.”
So why are you asking people who cannot answer your question in the way you want to hear it?
Are you so wrapped up in your confusion that you can’t see this?
Get your head around that.
And please stop being a shallow drama queen with all your all-or-nothing statements. Are you 3 years old? If I don’t get my candy then I’ll kill myself. If I don’t get my candy I’ll scream and pout. You really think people are interested in such crap?
Grow up and get serious. Take your questions to your teacher and harass them with your great theories. You really do need help. How’s it going for you here?
Since I cannot solve it, I am planning to become a Carvakan in the vein of JayarÄÅ›i Bhaá¹á¹a:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayar%C4%81%C5%9Bi_Bha%E1%B9%AD%E1%B9%ADa
” You cannot contradict the basic metaphysical elements of your religion and still call yourself a practitioners.”
Why not?
“Why not?”
Finally, you ask something that is not based off riddles.
Because dependent co-arisal is false then.
You can discuss things in terms of their essential links if and only if consciousness is an emergent phenomena because then it is spurious/cut off from the world.
For example, look at this claim:
” it’s essential to water that it be liquid at fifty degrees Fahrenheit (given sea-level atmosphere and pressure, etc)?”
NOW, look at this claim:
” it’s essential to mind that the brain has the sufficient activity for its emergence (e.g., massive interconnectivity and recursiveness in corticothalamic complex, gamma-range oscillations in the superior colliculus, and widespreading synchronous firing of neuronal ensembles all over the brain)?”
You cannot argue dependent co-arisal (i.e., depends on causes & conditions, conceptual imputation, or reciprocal of parts on their wholes) given the existence of essential links that is OUTSIDE of logical or conceptual necessity. Essential linking can be description of things then.
Why the fuck don’t you read this instead of assuming you’ve got it?:
http://tinyurl.com/nlqpzen
“There is no reason to practice if emergentism or reductive physicalism were the cases because the Dharma is then fundamentally fallacious.”
See you around. Have a good life.
“I am existential as fuck and breaking down from obsessing over this question. I stayed up late at night thinking of this question. ”
Anxiety. Obsessive anxiety.
HS, good luck and peace.
“given the existence of essential links that is OUTSIDE of logical or conceptual necessity”
There is no logical or conceptual necessity.
That is the need of your brain, the way your brain is structured.
You are an Aspie with a high I.Q. The structure of your brain requires these concepts.
Uh, non-dualism couldn’t exist with emergentism, dude. Don’t bring me into the picture. I’m just trying to discuss metaphysics. I’m saying a bit of panpsychism is necessary for non-dualism.
Zen has its own metaphysics whether you accept it or not. Read Dogen’s Shobogenzo chapter Sangai Yuishin [The triple world is just your mind]. For example
NO, LISTEN. Read my last post. If mind is emergent from brain activity then Nagarjuna is wrong. It destroys dependent co-arisal arguments as being the nature of things. That is empirical things can be contingent but their nature is not contingent itself.
“Why not?”
Finally, you ask something that is not based off riddles.
Because dependent co-arisal is false then.
You can discuss things in terms of their essential links if and only if consciousness is an emergent phenomena because then it is spurious/cut off from the world.
For example, look at this claim:
” it’s essential to water that it be liquid at fifty degrees Fahrenheit (given sea-level atmosphere and pressure, etc)?”
NOW, look at this claim:
” it’s essential to mind that the brain has the sufficient activity for its emergence (e.g., massive interconnectivity and recursiveness in corticothalamic complex, gamma-range oscillations in the superior colliculus, and widespreading synchronous firing of neuronal ensembles all over the brain)?”
You cannot argue dependent co-arisal (i.e., depends on causes & conditions, conceptual imputation, or reciprocal of parts on their wholes) given the existence of essential links that is OUTSIDE of logical or conceptual necessity. Essential linking can be description of things then.
Why the fuck don’t you read this instead of assuming you’ve got it?:
http://tinyurl.com/nlqpzen
Essentialism is thus correct and necessitated by an emergentist understanding of mind. It refutes all of the Dharma.
But LISTEN, nothing in Neuroscience points to emergentism as being correct and panpsychism as being wrong. This is a metaphysical question, but there is no doubt Zen is panpsychist as the quotes from Dogen, Huang Po, Lankavatara Sutra, Blue Cliff Record, and so much more point out. Mahayana Buddhism is typically a kind of type-f monism.
“given the existence of essential links that is OUTSIDE of logical or conceptual necessity”
There is no logical or conceptual necessity.
That is the need of your brain, the way your brain is structured.
You are an Aspie with a high I.Q. The structure of your brain requires these concepts.
Zen has its own metaphysics whether you accept it or not. Read Dogen’s Shobogenzo chapter Sangai Yuishin [The triple world is just your mind]. For example
Non-dualism is not compatible with emergentism. Read the Zenforum topic I linked.
Don’t bring me into the picture. It doesn’t matter whether I have a high IQ or not, or am an Aspie or not… this particular point has no bearing on that.
“But LISTEN, nothing in Neuroscience points to emergentism as being correct and panpsychism as being wrong. This is a metaphysical question, but there is no doubt Zen is panpsychist as the quotes from Dogen, Huang Po, Lankavatara Sutra, Blue Cliff Record, and so much more point out. Mahayana Buddhism is typically a kind of type-f monism.”
That’s your intellectual pigeon-holing, pounding square pegs into round holes.
“Don’t bring me into the picture. It doesn’t matter whether I have a high IQ or not, or am an Aspie or not… this particular point has no bearing on that.”
Sure it does. Your brain is manufacturing the point. Tomorrow it will manufacture some other point.
Read Dogen’s Shobogenzo chapter Sangai Yuishin [The triple world is just your mind]. For example
I have been asking this question for 6 yrs. I’ve been practicing Zen for 4 yrs.
Could you quit with your ad hominems and deal with the question at hand? You can’t deconstruct these points because these points depend on the undifferentiated consciousness to conceptual thought is “when inside and outside are clear all the way through, there is just one true reality” (i.e., One Mind). The One Mind is argument as fundamental and universal, hence why you can deconstruct all of my arguments because it is inherently without form, beginning or end, big or small, and so forth. It is the Original Face.
However, emergentism means there is no Original Face for all the reasons specified and gone into.
I might as well become a Carvakan.
typos:
“prior to conceptual thought”*
etc. ignore typos
I wonder if loosing his shit is part of SH’s temporary recovery process. I also wonder if the stimulants he was planning to take to get through his classes are a current issue. There is so much to wonder, but with an unreliable narrator it’s impossible to tell. With a degree in neuroscience, however, he is the man to figure what’s what.
I never took hard stimulants like my colleagues (e.g., adderall or ritalin). I did, however, take healthy nootropic stacks such as Lion’s Mane, some aniracetam, Fish Oil (Carlson liquid brand), CDP-choline or lecithin, ginkgo, ginseng, protein pills, occasional brain toniq lite or regular, etc. I also took Perfect food supplement, etc and ate a lot of vegetables to keep my brain healthy…
HOWEVER, this question is important on many levels: scientific to religious. You cannot ignore the Hard Problem of Consciousness by just flicking your wrists and saying, “Most likely emergentism!” Your whole religion is founded on fucking non-dualist panpsychism, OMG!
Wiffff…
That is the sound of one wrist flicking…Oh My Gonzago!
Alright, I may make a Youtube video explaining myself more clearly.
I mean, I can understand how what I say is confusing.
I mean, I don’t think you guys get I’m not trying to size up on anyone. I’m just trying to defend our… uh… implicit metaphysical claims… You know? Otherwise… our whole religion is fallacious. I mean, unless you want to abandon all the metaphysical claims and just practice Zazen for positive health benefits… but I don’t see the point of that, considering this is a religion based on a panpsychist non-dualism…
Do you have a YouTube channel?
*crickets*
If mind is a emergent property, those crickets have no buddha nature
If you stop feeding those brain crickets maybe they will just go away.
*ribbit*
Well, I guess I am quitting Zen. You guys are not very collaborative.
“When I was young (6-7 yrs old), I became aware how central the brain was to our existence. I would lie down in bed shaking and asking, “Am I nothing but this brain?”
It doesn’t sound like you have made much progress in the years that have passed. It also sounds like you have adopted the technique of a fanatic ie if you fail, the only recourse is to redouble your efforts.
As far as quitting zen, I seem to remember at least one earlier post where you proposed doing just that. Quitting zen is great. Fantastic even. Zen isn’t going to answer any of your very, very deep questions. Zen is not a practice where students and teacher are there hold your hand and try to sooth all your philosophical fears.
Finally if you are truly considering suicide, you need to find some help locally. I don’t believe that Brad’s comments section is the best place to look for help.
SH,
“our whole religion is fallacious”
I want to go on record that I don’t care if you manage to conclusively prove to your complete satisfaction that zen is lacks any philosophic, religious, moral or physical use. Whether I practice or not does not hinge on some obscure philosophical problem you are wrestling with.
Your implication that your questions should be important to anyone’s practice (but your own) are amazingly arrogant. Your continued insistence that they are is completely tone deaf and at this point, obnoxious.
I really, really, really hope you mange to see this (oh hope, that thing with feathers) and just drop the subject.
” your complete satisfaction ”
How the fact is this to my satisfaction?
I even said I’m going to commit suicide, dumbass.
how the fuck*
When I was young (6-7 yrs old), I became aware how central the brain was to our existence. I would lie down in bed shaking and asking, “Am I nothing but this brain?” I would shake back and forth while questioning it. I got into Neuroscience with this interest…
Emergentism fucks up non-dualistic panpsychism in Zen.
Do you think this is to my satisfaction? Fuck you, dude. I practice Zen for ~4-5 yrs.
I wouldn’t mind if something like Adi Shankara or Huang Po’s One Mind was the nature of reality. It’d give me more hope, not fill me with this nihilistic dread.
Do you think you want me to consider my religion fallacious?
I’m just being honest with myself, man…
I admit, it is painful for me to deconstruct my own religion, but this is where my honesty leads me.
*twang*
“When I was young (6-7 yrs old), I became aware how central the brain was to our existence. I would lie down in bed shaking and asking, “Am I nothing but this brain?” I would shake back and forth while questioning it.”
Twang
“At its simplest, the stimming allows you to concentrate on sensitivity and relax the thinking parts of the brain. In an Aspie, being able to stop thinking, even for a short while, is bliss.”
“I admit, it is painful for me to deconstruct my own religion, but this is where my honesty leads me.”
Why don’t you deconstruct your self and keep the religion.
I have deconstructed my self…
but get this…
It is equally possible that Ray Brassier or Thomas Metzinger are correct. Deconstruction of self to them does not lead to the source of reality (i.e.,a non-abiding awareness) but rather a kind of vacuum where there is a pure gulf:
“At the forefront of current studies in selfish and egology, the field of neuroscience made unmistakable headway. In Being No one (2004), for example, the German neurophilosophy Thomas Metzinger provides a theory of how the brain manufactures the subjective sense of our existence as discrete “selves,” even though, as Metzinger explains, we would be more rigorously categorized as information-processing systems for which it is expedient in an existential sense to create the illusion of ‘being someone.’ In Metzinger’s schema, a human being is not a ‘person’ but a mechanistically functioning ‘phenomenal self model’ that simulates a person. The reason we cannot detect these models that we see through them, and so cannot see the processes of the models themselves. If we could, we would know there is nothing to us but these models. This might be called ‘Metzinger’s Paradox’: You cannot know what you really are because then you would know there is nothing to know and nothing to know it. (What now?) So rather than be know-nothings, we exist in a condition of what Metzinger describes as “naive realism,” with things not being knowledgeable as they really are in themselves, something every scientist and philosopher.”
– Thomas Ligotti from The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
http://www.amazon.com/The-Conspiracy-against-Human-Race/dp/0984480277
There may be a possibility Peter Wessel Zapffe is correct if mind is emergent from brain activity. This is painful to consider it, but we must be honest here. Zen is not compatible with materialism.
NO FRED, You don’t understand.
I have done Zazenakis and had deep samadhis and even a couple of kenshos (like 2)…
but I don’t see how it points to a deeper reality unless there is a non-abiding awareness as the substratum of reality.
I made some typos when typing the quote about Metzinger from Thomas Ligotti.
http://selfdefinition.org/nisargadatta/Nisargadatta_I_Am_That.pdf
Mumbles, I have read some of I am That. Pure awareness is similar to One Mind of Ch’an.
Awareness of no-thought is considered to be the true nature of reality in Advaita and Chinese Ch’an. Likewise, Dogen’s Shobogenzo chapter Sangai Yuishin argues “The triple world is just your mind”.
Thus, how can emergentist theories of awareness be compatible with Ch’an, Mumbles?
This awareness is inherently nondifferentiated prior to conceptual thinking, correct? In Shikantaza we sit without clinging to anything, doing away with anything, wanting anything, and want not wanting. We simply sit maintaining an intentless, alert awareness that does not grasp at appearances or block anything out.
Therefore, we have a tacit apprehension of how opposition or polarization arise mutually dependent on each other from the undifferentiated awareness; that is they arise by the discrimination of false thinking of our own mind. This undifferentiated awareness is difficult to grasp conceptually, so it is called inconceivable. When we approach it based on polarized conceptions, we place it in time or space, large or small.
Our awareness is not aware until there is differentiation that reflects it into self-consciousness. Therefore, it cannot be grasped through discursive thinking.
However, this non-abiding awareness is the fundamental ground of reality, meaning Zen and Advaita hinge on a kind of type-f monism. Emergentism and reductive physicalism are not compatible with Zen:
“Type-F Monism is the view that consciousness is constituted by the intrinsic properties of fundamental physical entities … phenomenal or protophenomenal properties are located at the fundamental level of physical reality and in a certain sense underlie physical reality itself … If so, then consciousness and physical reality are deeply intertwined … the view can be seen as a sort of [panpsychism]”
Don’t take BEING for granted. The physical is the miracle. The brain is the most complex physical thing on the planet,dude. Therefore the mind arises out of a miracle, a mystery, out of emptiness itself. And thus there is no contradiction between zen and emergentism. Happy now, douchebag?
NO. The mind cannot arise out of the brain, you imbecile.
This practice and my experiences don’t teach that.
You’re the douchebag… The mind cannot arise from the brain…
This universe would be horrific beyond all belief…
There is no emptiness if the material precedes the mind because then the MATERIAL HAS PRIMACY. This means even though everything empirical is contingent, then their nature is not necessarily contingent.
NO MIND CANNOT ARISE FROM BRAIN. FUCK YOU, YOU PIECE OF SHIT. I can’t accept it! This pain, this torment, Mind cannot arise from brain! I will not practice or delve into any sort of mysticism anymore if this is the case, you simple-minded buffoon.
What is the brain, dude? Tell me what it is? What makes it work all by itself without you having to think about it? What is that, that force that keeps everything running? Not mind, not matter, dude, it’s unnameable. Enter there homeboy
non-abiding awareness makes the brain work… the non-abiding awareness then evolves into the five skandhas, the first one being psychophysical (i.e., form = matter) and the fifth one being a self-reflexive awareness (i.e., consciousness = self-awareness).
“in a certain sense” ………… “If so”…………… “be seen as a sort of”
All these assumptive jumps to manufacture a hypothetical reality while pounding square pegs into round holes.
You should get a job writing propaganda for a fascist regime.
I was quoting David Chalmer’s Character of Consciousness.
I’ve thought about this deeply, man… Why do you act like I’m getting a thrill from this doing this. I’m just saying I hope One Mind is right because our practice is kind of based off of it…
One Mind teaches this:
This awareness is inherently nondifferentiated prior to conceptual thinking. In Shikantaza (or other types of meditation) we sit without clinging to anything, doing away with anything, wanting anything, and want not wanting. We simply sit maintaining an intentless, alert awareness that does not grasp at appearances, dwell on anything, or block anything out.
Therefore, we have a tacit apprehension of how opposition or polarization arise mutually dependent on each other from the undifferentiated awareness; that is they arise by the discrimination of false thinking of our own mind. This undifferentiated awareness is difficult to grasp conceptually, so it is called inconceivable. When we approach it based on polarized conceptions, we place it in time or space, large or small.
Similarly, our awareness is not aware until there is differentiation that reflects it into self-consciousness (5th skandha). Therefore, it cannot be grasped through discursive thinking.
HOWEVER SUCH A VIEW IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH EMERGENT THEORIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS which David S. argued for.
“Why do you act like I’m getting a thrill from this doing this.”
You are getting an amazing thrill out of this. Poor persecuted SamarsicHelicoid, the bringer of truth to the zen world, hounded by all the non-believers who don’t understand the depths of his anguish at not being able to solve this problem that is central to all Buddhist practice.
I’m getting a thrill out of also. Hopefully I’ll figure out a way to disengage from your little drama and move on to my real life.
Until then…..
I’m just asking my Sensei then.
“I have done Zazenakis and had deep samadhis and even a couple of kenshos (like 2)…”
Then everything you say must be true. Such spiritual achievements cannot be argued with.
Plus you have degree in…neuroscience.
Bleeh.
It amazes me that anyone still takes you as sincere. The only things that stay constant with you are your love of attention, and strategies of manipulation.
Why does no one believe me…? I don’t like physicalism…
I mean, this is mainly for existential purposes. I mean, Zen/Ch’an’s One Mind make me feel better than emergentist theories of consciosness/awareness.
Why do you guys have to keep bringing me into the picture?
i even said I don’t know the answer, dammit. I’m just saying one them contradicts the teachings of Zen and repudiates it.
You *are* the picture. We don’t believe you because you’ve ceased to be credible long ago.
Remembered how you fulminated against the lotus posture, saying it ruined your knees? A lot of people felt sorry about that. Your knees seemed to have healed miraculously, no doubt due to their prayers.
Remember how you ranted against Zen’s embrace of the “Blobject”? My, how quickly the weather changes, eh?
So, you are going to commit suicide by starvation if your preferred metaphysical truths are not true? I hope you keep us posted on your progress daily.
Zen is not about any particular metaphysics, though some are more likely than others. Zen is about losing attachment to anything. Like a need to resolve a philosophical problem. But that’s just another ploy to manipulate the conversation, isn’t it?
This question is a bit more complicated, minkfoot.
A lot of things have happened to me since then…
I had a vision of Han Shan that made me want to practice again. I no longer care about my knee.
Instead, I want this ONE particular question answered.
Dogen said said triple-world is Mind only in Shobogenzo chapter Sangai Yuishin.
core teachings*
“I’m just asking my Sensei then.”
I’m surprised with all the kenshos, samadhis and zazenakis you’ve experienced that you aren’t answering your sensei’s questions.
Something tells me he doesn’t know either. I think it goes back to the fundamental disagreement between Prasangika Madhymakan non-dualist and Yogacaran non-dualist. However, Zen began from a Mind Only interpretation, which even Dogen adopted.
This is, sadly, something not even Buddhists knew with certainty. I think Noam Chomsky may have been right:
Chomsky argued the Hard Problem of Consciousness “doesn’t make sense, since there is no cogent way to frame the physical at all – physics, he says, has no definition of ‘the physical’ since it abandoned contact mechanics with Newton – so he says the question ‘is the brain, or this table, physical’ doesn’t make sense, since nothing is physical, there are just different parts of the world that we try and make sense of. His essay ‘Naturalism and Dualism in the Study of Language and the Mind’ makes his position clear” (Brain Science Podcast, 2011).
Question makes me kind of suicidal. There is no refuge… not even in the Dharma.
Go pound sand up your ass. It might help.
Painful reality has a way of dragging us out of our heads.
If awareness is emergent from brain activity then we are stuck in an internal model in our heads forever. The senses are the limitations of the world.
“Go pound sand up your ass’
Hahaha. Trollboy got to you.
True fact.
With my complete consent.
Cheers.
I have no experience with people who are as screwed up as his type. In my day to day life I deal with intelligent people who don’t spend time consciously trying to manipulate others.
I remember years ago when I met up with another type of person I had never run up against.
He was an ignorant person who thought that he was really smart. I found him hard to ignore because I had no “antibodies” against his type. In that case it took me the better part of a year to get over him.
Samarsic Helicoid will be a lot easier.
Cheers.
I don’t get it… What’s the problem, man?
All I’m doing is talking about metaphysics.
How can someone be a practitioner of a religion whose underlying metaphysics has been refuted?
I hope you realize I WANT panpsychist non-dualism to be true…
Man, Shinchan Ohara is friendlier than you are. ALl you’ve done is abuse me. Fuck you, man…
I’m like a dog being beat up now. Why does any of this matter. Maybe I’ll just do sepukku tonight and write a suicide letter like Heisman. I don’t care anymore. I’ve read my fair share of suicide letters.
I cannot dance like Emil Cioran to this pathetic, insignificant universe that is nothing but suffering and pain.
Perhaps, neural systems are some kind of antennae for tuning in the Absolute as some kind of broadcast consciousness?
I have been polite until people insulted me. I don’t get it.
I’m just being honest. I don’t see how what I’m saying is wrong. I’m asking my sensei in an erudite letter.
I don’t see the point of living anymore if brain generates mind entirely. I’m going to find some cyanide.
OK.
I WILL TELL EVERYONE WHY I AM PARTLY FILLED WITH HORROR OVER THIS QUESTION.
I will be honest…
I read a bit of this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Neuropath-R-Scott-Bakker/dp/0765361574
It’s about a serial killer who believes people are nothing but their brain activity. If mind is emergent entirely from brain, he’s right: people are nothing but brain activity and have no Buddha nature.
This is why Zen/Ch’an, including Dogen, was a panpsychist. Panspcyshism cannot be separated from Zen/Ch’an.
Save it. You are transparent.
but if mind is cut off from the world that is a delusion.
To quote It Mitchell Heisman’s suicide note: ” Suffering is (and should be) reducible to material, chemical reactions in the brains and bodies of animals” then.
Such a view is not compatible with the panpsychism presented in Dogen or early Ch’an…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1_ZEL0ehkE
It Mitchell Heisman’s suicide note he laments ” Suffering is (and should be) reducible to material, chemical reactions in the brains and bodies of animals”
“For some, the meaninglessness gleaned from a scientific
view of life leads to nausea, angst, and nihilistic despair. I
reject this attitude on the grounds that nausea, angst, and
nihilistic despair also originate in material reactions in the
brain. What does despair mean to someone who interprets
that emotion as a chemical reaction in the brain? The process
of disillusionment can also be disillusioned and deaestheticized.
If science is to continue its purposeless advance, then
curiosity, wonder, and happiness must be disenchanted and
vivisected. Science and philosophy might be motivated by a
sense of poetic wonder, but what happens when wonder,
curiosity, and the joy of understanding have been reduced
and explained in terms of chemical reactions of the brain. Is
it possible to synthesize this knowledge with the experience
of it? How far is one willing to lie to one’s self in the belief of
the goodness of the truth when science has conquered the
non-scientific behaviors that motivate science? ”
Perhaps… he is right. With no brain, no suffering. This whole world is like a dream. I want to go out Takeshi Miike style by bashing my brains in, haha.
If there is no future rebirth at all… the best way to escape this world of suffering is by killing myself… I’ll wait for my sensei’s answer. Haha…
And you call yourself a practitioner? You know lots of words that almost fit together. If you really had some insight, you would know how to find out for yourself what you say you need to resolve.
Instead, you troll to replace the sympathy you blew off with your raving. No one here has any sympathy for someone who prefers their ego stroked over the surrender of it to practice.
I don’t get it. What the hell are you talking about?
Even when I practice and let go of the ego, I don’t know.
You can’t separate the metaphysics from the praxis of practice. I mean, I don’t even know what it is I’m practicing anymore.
I’m not trying to strike my ego. You’re misinterpreting me. If you want, we can talk on Skype…
Ok, I’m sorry if I was rude. A lot of people were rude to me too…
but I’m serious when I say this question is important to me. It is very important to Buddhist practice.
Give it up. Surrender to the practice.
That kind of attitude will just make me leave the practice…
Yes, Minkfoot, let’s do that immediately. Shall we?
I don’t get it either. I am just trying to understand.
But honestly, I believe pounding sand up your ass will help clarify things for you.
However, I am serious, don’t use crappy East Coast beach sand. Only good coarse Iranian sand will work. Like a good cup of coffee it clears out the mental cobwebs and helps you to solve those difficult, deep problems that make you roll back and forth in your bed at night.
I got my degree in physics so I know…
Wait… if you got your degree in physics maybe we can work together to figure out the Hard Problem of Consciousness?
Also, why are you being racist by saying stuff like “Only good coarse Iranian sand will work”?
I don’t understand. All this is so confusing to me. I try only to help my bed rolling friend who has the Dharma blues and you suspicion the racism?
Are you not the Iran, the world leader in stem cell research? And do they not have sand in Iran?
I thought all countries have sand. I do know that the rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain. And the sand from Iran is the finest in the land.
I want nothing but the best for you, my friend. So I recommend the sand from Iran.
Northern Iran around areas of Rasht is very green. So is Shiraz, Iran which is considered the Paris of the Middle East.
Why do you mock my country? You do realize Iran (pronounced Eiran) was called Iran since Sassanian times, and the country was always referred to as Iran? Persia is just the Greco-Roman word for it.
Why do you think Zen center have so little ethnic diversity? Don’t you think your kind of racist, mocking, and condescending attitude will make me run away from the Sangha?
I anticipate with great happiness your run from the Sangha.
If you do keep your solemn promise to run from the sangha, please disregard the sand up the ass trick since it will keep you from running away very fast.
If in my clumsy attempt to mock you I have upset the great country of Iran, then I apologize to them all. Iran is a great country who have done many great things in the past.
They also have sand in the South and green stuff in the North.
Alan Sailer, do you have a problem with me? I hold no grudge towards ANYONE here. I may be a bit inane in how I communicate, but it’s just because I take these questions seriously… I apologize if I annoyed anyone by being too repetitious.
But I am serious when I say this particular question is important. I hold no ill resent towards you, Minkfoot, Fred, or anyone else. To tell you the truth, I practically forgot all about you guys when I came back talking about the Hard Problem of Consciousness. I mean, as Dogen argued, everything simultaneously arises and perishes each moment. “Each moment is all being, each moment is the entire world.” You guys do not have enduring selves and neither do I, both from a materialist or non-material perspective(s).
I realize you may hold a grudge towards me, but I hold a grudge towards no one. I realize you are nothing but projecting of my mind when I villify any of you. You all have Buddha nature and are equal to me, I guess (I am a bit of an egalitarian, I suppose).
But this question is still important. While you may not be able to understand the full complexity of it right now, I believe in due time you will understand how Zen/Ch’an is dependent on a non-dualist panpsychist framework in order to be a viable form of self-cultivation. You may disagree, but this is what I feel from the studying and practice.
So sorry that I cannot continue to have this great philosophical conversation about the Hard Problem of Samarsic Helicoid. I know that with your degree in neuroscience (and possibly the sand) you will probably solve it tonight.
I know you will want to tell me the solution tomorrow but since I am too dumb to understand the problem the solution will go in one mind and out the other.
Good night my good TypeF-modal friend.
أطيب التمنيات
Iranians don’t speak Arabic. Ferdowsi’s Zoroastrian epic Shahnameh saved Iran from being Arabicized… Iranians were able to retain many Zoroastrian traditions such as Yalda and Nowruz.
First off, I never called you dumb. I actually think you are immensely intelligent. You knew about Guttari for crying out loud. I was going to respond to your Guttari reference with, “Damn you’re intelligent, dude.”
Second off, I do not think I will solve it…