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!
“Since I cannot solve it, I am planning to become a Carvakan in the vein of JayarÄÅ›i Bhaá¹á¹a”
Another idle notion. You really are a shallow drama queen.
A moment ago you were going to be the one true zen, knower of all.
Yes, Hinduism is going to solve all your issues.
Get ready for the world’s most complicated religion with layers and layers.
You will encounter not one view, no single answer there either, but hundreds.
Sounds like a great fit for you.
I’m just asking my sensei.
I appreciate the fact you didn’t bully me unlike Alan Sailer, david s.
Carvaka is not Hinduism. It’s a totally different religion.
Wiki Carvaka
“CÄrvÄka (Sanskrit: चारà¥à¤µà¤¾à¤•), originally known as LokÄyata and Bá¹›haspatya, is one of the heterodox schools of Hinduism…”
Carvaka really isn’t like other schools of Hinduism… to the point you can consider it separate… Read the Wiki a bit.
“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 on this site who cannot answer your question?
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?
I emailed my sensei. If you want, I can send you the email too. I’m pretty sure emergentism is not compatible with Zen/Ch’an. I also mentioned how Brad alluded to emergentism in his last book.
I have a feeling my sensei will confront brad since such a view contradicts the Dharma and all possibility of a monistic sort of apprehension
Oh boy.
You sound like a little child. My Dad is going to beat up your Dad! Actually maybe Brad could sell tickets and HBO rights to make an easy buck.
“And in this corner we have SamsaricHelicoid’s sensei!”
Do you have any knowledge at all?
Carvaka is not Hinduism. It’s a totally different religion.
Wiki Carvaka
Also, stop talking down to me.
“CÄrvÄka (Sanskrit: चारà¥à¤µà¤¾à¤•), originally known as LokÄyata and Bá¹›haspatya, is one of the heterodox schools of Hinduism…”
Carvaka really isn’t anything like other schools of Hinduism… Read the Wiki a bit.
SH, what part of “Give it up. Surrender to the practice.” do you object to? The only way to successfully practice is to commit whole-heartedly to it.
If you do, you may find you’ve lost your need for resolving a transverbal problem with words. Or is that unacceptable due to purposes other than finding truth within your own being?
minkfoot, I asked my Sensei. I await his response.
There is a point to practice… It is to purify the storehouse consciousness and transform it into the tathagarbha, so we are not reborn in the next life. My sensei alluded to this several times during Dharma discourse.Besides being still in Zazen to the point wherein no thought arises, (realizing the pre undifferentiated unity with the background of stillness), there is more to the practice besides living in the present.
I practice because I view life as fundamentally about suffering. However, I also practice because I view a liberation from said suffering. If mind is emergent from brain activity, then there is no freedom from suffering because our mind is then reducible to brain activity. Mind is cut off from the word then. There is no non-local storehouse consciousness then.
“I practice because I view life as fundamentally about suffering. ”
You seem to not look into how your own suffering arises, nor how it ceases.
Come out of your head and look into your experience and learn from that. This is also part of practice. Not just sitting without having thoughts. Transformation happens in this life, especially if you wish, in your words, to transform consciousness into the “tathagarbha.” Where is this life? It is in the present.
David s, none of that is possible with awareness emerges from brain activity. It totally goes against the Dharma, man…
that’s not entirely how things work…
I’m not going to distill what a religion was originally about to make it fit “more modern times”.
if awareness*
You are a very confused person SH.
OK, SH. You sure are stuck. Here it is, AGAIN.
Knowing an intellectual ‘answer’ changes nothing.
When one looks at how suffering arises and how it ceases in their own experience, nothing about one’s beliefs has any effect what-so-ever on how this occurs! Which is why it is called a Dharma. It will happen because this is how things work. One’s beliefs do not change the Dharma.
The arising of suffering is dependent on the deluded act of grasping onto one’s experience and thinking I am this, I need this, I don’t want this….
…sound familiar? Ever felt like ‘I need this’?
You can go back to reading Stephen Batchelor, david s.
He tries to “articulate a view of Buddhism that honors the Asian traditions while interpreting their insights in the light of secular modernity.”
I do not think “secular modernity” points to stuff like emergentism as being a given. We need to approach such questions seriously, and not by just nonchalantly dismissing such questions as non-important.
SH, you are ignoring a basic teaching.
It is THE CENTRAL issue.
It is the means for attaining release from the cycle of samsara.
The 4 Noble Truths.
You are very shallow. How do you expect to attain anything in Buddhism?
The 4 Noble Truths presuppose the inseparability of mind from world.
Look at the The Twelve Nidanas for example
“With Ignorance as condition, Mental Formations arise
With Mental Formations as condition, Consciousness arises
With Consciousness as condition, Mind and Matter arise
With Mind and Matter as condition, Sense Gates arise”
Mental formations and consciousness arise prior to mind and matter. In other words, the matrix of reality is non-abiding awareness.
Buddha never intended to completely sever ties with Hinduism. He just wanted to make the path to Nirvana more clear.
Budhism is fundamentally about not being reborn. Storehouse consciousness influences our rebirth in the next life.
“Here and now” is just a provisional teaching for the real practice of disentangling oneself from worldly dust.
So with what you say how does suffering arise SH?
How does it cease?
Have you understood this in your own experience?
You have work to do.
Look at how you speak, “I need the answer to the Hard Problem of Consciousness before putting my whole body and mind into this practice.”
I need…
This is called grasping and clinging to views.
It is a hindrance.
Better study yourself a bit more.
You show signs of stress of clinging and grasping.
I’ll kill myself…
“I need the answer to the Hard Problem of Consciousness before putting my whole body and mind into this practice.”
Face it you have no practice.
I sense you are starting to feel the same anxiety and doubt in your practice as I am.
There is something Lovecraftian in life.
I have seen it. Zen doesn’t go there. Only art does because the imagination, the unreal, is no different from the real. Everything is a discordant song ushering us into oblivion. Open your heart to Azathoth.
lol, last post was jk.
Face yourself SH, what are you doing to make progress in this goal of yours? Where is your suffering?
You’re not as serious as you claim to be.
Well if you’re only purpose is to gauge my level of seriousness or judge my capability, then quit talking to me.
Not once have I ascertained your level of capability or whatever.
I was just saying some metaphysical views contradict the Buddha Dharma whereas others do not.
*your*
Since you have not talked about how you see the Four Noble Truths in your life, you express tendencies towards grasping, clinging, and aversion, and you continue say you are going to dump Buddhism you do seem less serious about it than you claim to be.
A better question is, have either you or I ever followed the true Buddhism? How can you say Buddhism was originally about? How can you even say what Buddhism was about during Bodhidharma or Dogen’s time?
You seem fixated on the notion that the 4 Noble Truths are what is fundamental to Buddhism. What about the Heart Sutra that upends it?
How can you tell me what Buddhism is about when you, yourself, seem to be following a revisionist form of it? You openly acknowledge you’re fine modifying some key points of Buddhism for your agenda, yet you still act as if you’re following the “true” Buddhism? Check out some Derrida’s deconstructionism or something.
What Buddhism is about is not found in the zafu, zabuton, natural scenery, within, or anywhere. It’s found in the transparency of life and death and awakening and falling asleep; nothing but Mind.
SH, the Heart Sutra the context is Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara speaking of the experience of Prajnaparamita when saying “in the void” “there is no truth of suffering”. But how does one attain Prajnaparamita if one is grasping, clinging, or reacting with aversion in one’s life?
You have your biases too, smart guy. You’re the emergentist here.
Prajnaparamita cannot be attained if emergentist theories of non-abiding awareness is the case. In that situation, all feelings of serenity and feelings of inseparability of self and other are just induced delusions. They are neural conjobs.
A emergentist theory of awareness does not permit for non-duality.
You are lost in arguing how ideas relate in your thinking, but this has nothing to do with practice itself.
Nope, I’m just trying to put context onto my recent kensho experience….
Dharmakaya is panpsychist.
http://dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=2041&view=next&sid=2460dcfcaa94d7441a5b4ac05fa8d37c
“It is not difficult to show how matter is aware. Whatever matter there is there is an awareness perceiving it — in terms of common language. In other words all there are are nothing but perceptions without anything being beyond (independent matter) or before (independent mind) perceptions. This is actually saying that matter is aware since there’s nothing that could be without awareness. But panpsychism is not like this as it conceives the world in dualistic ways which is contrary to the Buddhist understanding.”
Oh right a story to attach to your recent kensho experience.
I had a vision of Han Shan. I am to unify acts of creativity with Samadhi practices.
I will encourage people to read poetry in solitude within natural scenery. We will then discuss the Dharmic literature.
Underneath a beautiful tree with flowing water, I will read Han Shan or Shiwu’s poetry, taking pauses in between, my mind will open to infinity, to see how all is mind… and how those poetic words that flow from the background of stillness… are one and the same with it.
I will revitalize the Dharma and bring back a truer form of it. Not one about sitting… but one about that transcends the unreal and real.
Check out the heart Sutra.
I’ve chanted the Heart Sutra. It’s not compatible with emergent theories of mind, I’m sorry.
It’s like a Catholic being a Satanist. Not compatible.
Check out the Heart Sutra and you may discover your vision was a delusion.
I do not understand what you are saying. So I went to bed to roll around with it and solve the problem using my physics degree. Then, suddenly, I understand.
Enlightenment. SamarsicHelicoid is afraid that innocent Iranian sand is racist.
So I go online and find good old non-denominational black volcanic sand from Punaluu Black Sand Beach. Very coarse, very sharp, good wake-up like strong cup of espresso, double caffeine type. I can forward this sand to SamarsicHelicoid if it will help him solve the very, very difficult problem of hard concrete.
Physics+neuroscience=solution. I await your response, SH.
Honestly, I tell you, my bedtime is 9PM-PDT so I cannot help you anymore tonight.
ç¥å¥½é‹
I repeat myself Alan Sailer,
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…
Third off, 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.
“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 meant to say for #2 as possible answers ” our awareness is not aware until there is differentiation that reflects it into self-concousness. ”
“If mind is emergent from brain activity, then there is no freedom from suffering because our mind is then reducible to brain activity. Mind is cut off from the word then. There is no non-local storehouse consciousness then.”
Sometimes we are the fool, and sometimes the king, here on Brad’s comment thread.
I was deeply unsettled, until the day zazen got up and walked around. Then I was simply ruined. I say this because of the first quote above; for me, it’s not about anything to do with what I think, but about a physical experience.
I devote a lot of my thought to reassuring myself that it’s alright to experience depth in senses other than the eyes and the mind, particularly in the proprioceptive and vestibular senses, even when it makes me feel like a bat on a city street in the daylight. Action can happen when I feel like a bat, appropriately, even when I am conscious that something unconscious is pulling the strings. So I am actively encouraging myself to accept awareness that is not aware, as the source of my actions.
For me, the notion of a “nonlocal storehouse consciousness” was useful in thinking about where actions were coming from, that weren’t coming from an exercise of volition on my part; I am now more inclined to think that the senses pick up a great deal more than enters my consciousness, even things that might be considered to be outside their range by any scientific measure, and that the extension of the mind of friendliness, the mind of compassion, the mind of sympathetic joy, and the mind of equanimity in the four quarters throughout the world is connected with my action, sometimes.
It’s about action, even the ones that are just habit speaking, to me.
Is such an action within the *panpsychist* interpenetrative, interdependent network of action?
Look at the The Twelve Nidanas for example
“With Ignorance as condition, Mental Formations arise
With Mental Formations as condition, Consciousness arises
With Consciousness as condition, Mind and Matter arise
With Mind and Matter as condition, Sense Gates arise”
Mental formations and consciousness arise prior to mind and matter. In other words, the matrix of reality is non-abiding awareness.
Buddha never intended to completely sever ties with Hinduism. He just wanted to make the path to Nirvana more clear.
Budhism is fundamentally about not being reborn. Storehouse consciousness influences our rebirth in the next life.
“Here and now” is just a provisional teaching for the real practice of disentangling oneself from worldly dust.
” “Here and now” is just a provisional teaching for the real practice of disentangling oneself from worldly dust. ”
So what is your “real practice” and when exactly does it occur?
I am considering Sallekhana in the near future because we are living in the Kali Yuga.
The Buddha said Jainism is one path towards enlightenment too.
“I am considering Sallekhana in the near future…”
More of your childish rants.
You really are not as serious as you claim to be.
What is your “real practice” SH?
I was a far more serious in the past, but I still tilted more towards panpsychism (One Mind) more than anything.
That is not a practice. That is a concept.
I told you I’ve practiced in Sangha for 4-6 Zazenkais.
Concepts and practice cannot be separated because form is emptiness, emptiness is form.
Dharmakaya is panpsychist.
http://dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=2041&view=next&sid=2460dcfcaa94d7441a5b4ac05fa8d37c
“It is not difficult to show how matter is aware. Whatever matter there is there is an awareness perceiving it – in terms of common language. In other words all there are are nothing but perceptions without anything being beyond (independent matter) or before (independent mind) perceptions. This is actually saying that matter is aware since there’s nothing that could be without awareness. But panpsychism is not like this as it conceives the world in dualistic ways which is contrary to the Buddhist understanding.”
Yes, that’s why I said non-dualist panpsychism.
There is no reason to practice Buddhism if you’re an emergentist, david s.
“There is no reason to practice Buddhism if you’re an emergentist, david s.”
Ignorant statement SH. Deep deep ignorance. Nighty night little dreamer.
You’re just modifying Buddhism to fit your biases. Emergentism is considered equivalent to essentialism, david s. Nagarjuna would talk against it.
The answer does not lead to release.
You are stuck here.
“It is not difficult to show how matter is aware. Whatever matter there is there is an awareness perceiving it – in terms of common language. In other words all there are are nothing but perceptions without anything being beyond (independent matter) or before (independent mind) perceptions. This is actually saying that matter is aware since there’s nothing that could be without awareness.”
“If matter is simply the rupaskandha, as in the Buddhist view, there’s an easy way to establish aware matter. See Robert Sharf’s essay:
On the Buddha-nature of Insentient Things
http://kr.buddhism.org/zen/koan/Robert_Sharf-e.htm“
SH, if your mind is only an emergent phenomenon then it wouldn’t be you who’d be committing the suicide, it would be your brain directing affairs, playing out the drama, conjuring up the thoughts. All your intelligent thoughts and profound experiences, including all the suffering and misery that lead you to kill yourself would be akin to the output that was some AI character on your computer, programmed to act out all that, producing everything, including the script to itself: “I’m just an emergent phenomenon, I don’t like that, so I’ll kill myself,” and finally the death throes, before uninstalling itself the moment it reached level 101 and defeated the Boss, “Mind Is Not An Emergent Phenomenon.”
If “you” were able to break your physical apparatus then that defunct apparatus would be in a state which was the emergent phenomena of emergent phenomena. So the act, based off your being right, would prove you wrong. You’d have proved you and your intelligence to be a profound dumbass and you’ll have added to the misery and suffering of anyone who cared or depended on you. Shucks you might even have convinced some other clever dumbasses to kill themselves before the next bit of info came out that might’ve changed their outlook.
Sounds to me like intelligence and stupidity have a profound stake in each other and the stupid bit needs to be realized a bit more, for a little wisdom and contentment to arise. Sounds a good deal to me: you’re a stupid cry-baby like the rest of us, and who enjoys working that out?
Thousands of years of human insight and endeavor only to realise that the third noble truth was Mass Suicide. Hasn’t that happened before? Tell that to your cats and your fiance! Or are you a narcissistic mass murderer in the making, like a so many other true believers, and you’ll helping them out of this shitty, unfair life too?
It’s up to you to make a real boy, Pinocchio. But look on the bright side – at least you’ve passed the Turin Test, and he was a bright boy. Well, not the best example…
“Well if you’re only purpose is to gauge my level of seriousness or judge my capability, then quit talking to me.” – Samurai Hercules
“…quit talking to me.”
“…quit talking to me!”
“…QUIT TALKING TO ME!!!”
That is the best advice that Sumerian Hitleroid has ever given.
Yet he keeps sucking people in to talk to him. I think, in a relatively stable society, our default is to take a person at their word. Even when a person says they have lied, we assume that now they are telling the truth. So it is possible for SH to endlessly discredit himself and yet get people to argue with him.
I’d give the odds at much better than 50% that he is a persona constructed to deliver the pleasure of making others jump through hoops at his command. Such a person deserves derision rather than our best advice.
Yet there is always the possibility that he is a true lost soul. It can’t be absolutely known, but he is constantly giving evidence more toward trollishness than real angst.
Were he sincere, he might discover that he is not alone in his views as to the insufficiency of physicalism as a complete metaphysical stance. But it takes humility, whether scientific or metaphysical, to proceed layer by layer in learning the game of where we find ourselves. We are stuck, painted into a corner, without the principle of not-knowing. Fortunately, wet paint dries in time.
So, in my arrogant opinion, mockery is called for. Argue at your peril. But who knows? Maybe something will shift?
“…mockery is called for.”
Silence would probably be more effective, and possibly even helpful, regardless of what his true intentions are.
Please, do not feed the trolls.
Well, something has appeared to shift, Minkfoot, or things would have exploded once the sand-ni**er jibe was thrown in. If we’re going to take up the mockery, then where was anything but slight, thin-on-the-ground, ineffectual mockery when the hate-speech came out and when it justified itself in zen master terms? One lesson for SH to induct seems to be: get your alibis polished – the ones that others have a toe in too.
“Hate-speech”? Whose nickname when searched on Google leads to posts by a “forum member” on Stormfront, the most popular White Supremacist website? I will give you a hint: his initials are SH and over there he also calls himself a neuroscientist.
That makes two of you, then.
Let’s hope there aren’t any other ‘sand-ni**gers’ in the room when you wade in with your secret justifications for shouting it out. It was wrong, say sorry (sincerely), and move on.
Ah ha ha ha ha! Found a Social Justice Warrior. ^^^
I regret NOTHING!
GC, wow! Thanks for finding that link.
Now the link ends with nothing there. Seems like Samsaric Helicoid closed his account there.
I found his posting again and it looks like SamsaricHelicoid was arguing against someone named King262 and someone named The Right Club who was posting on Iranians being white, and SH said race was a social construction.
So it looks like he may have been trolling that site.
“…you have reached a conclusion. You have defined life. You have boxed it in. And now that you have your box of life, you can swing it around at other people’s boxes of life and see if your box can break theirs.” -Brad one post back (apparently swinging his version of Soto Zen around)
That’s pretty much all there is to be seen here in response to this kid’s constant questioning of a sincere “I don’t know” (-Brad one post back as well).
The “problem” or whatever it is, probably just loneliness, that arises comes with his attempts to answer this “I don’t know” by displaying his “box of life” -his understanding based on accumulated knowledge that of course will never break the sincere “I don’t know.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99Zo2PxPXx4
None of us are innocent, though it’s hard to tell what’s on another’s mind.
~~~~~0~~~~~
So, a man is sitting in the park eating his lunch and checking out the local talent, when this old man appears, coming down the path towards the bench where he’s sitting.
Now this old guy is old money, you can tell. The kind of money that bought a dozen very good suits on Savile Row in 1956 and is going to get every damn cent’s worth out of them. He’s a little old gent, well into his seventies, but wiry and strong, all decked out in a tweed suit, a smart green waistcoat, matched silk tie and pocket square, fob chain, and a spotless green homburg – the whole production — and he’s striding down the road like he’s being charged by the foot.
In his left hand, he’s brandishing a stout silver-tipped walking stick, and as he gets closer, the man can see that his other hand is cradling the end of a smallish house-brick which he has tucked into the crook of his elbow. It’s a perfectly nice brick — red, quite new, but with a couple of chips out of the near end. The brick has a piece of bright red string tied around it with a careful knot. The string loops down toward the old man’s knees and then back up, the end clutched in the same hand as the walking stick. The string dances and jiggles as the old man waves his stick at young people and rapscallions.
So he harrumphs up to the bench, stops with a crunch of gravel and an excuse me, young man, dreadfully sorry, do you mind? so the man says, yes, of course.
The old man rests his walking stick up against the bench, takes the square out of his pocket and brushes a speck of dust off the bench, leans over, still cradling the brick carefully with his arm, flicks a few leaves off of a patch of grass in front of the bench, replaces the pocket square and plops the brick down right in the middle of the patch of grass. He looks at the brick, moves it a bit to the right, loops the string around his shoe and tucks the end into his pants pocket, then settles back with a sigh of contentment to survey the view.
Now, the man has just about finished his sandwich, all except the dried up crust at the end, so he looks at the brick and thinks, why not? so he goes would your dog like a bit of my sandwich?
The old man looks round at him and says, I beg your pardon?
Your dog. Would it like the last bit of my sandwich?
I don’t have a dog, young man, says the old gent, his eyes boggling out a little.
Sorry, says the man, I just thought, and he points at the brick.
The old man looks down at the brick in front of him like he’s never seen it before in his life. He says, that, young man, that is a brick. You can tell from the fact that it is a damn brick. Does it look like a dog to you?
Well, says the man, it’s got a string tied around it.
The old guy is up out of his seat now. I hope, he says, that you are not suggesting I don’t know the difference between a brick and a dog? He grabs his walking stick and he’s waving it in the air, big random swings.
It’s all too much for the other man, and he bolts for it, shedding crusts and papers as he goes.
The old guy reaches down and picks up the brick.
“That fooled the little fucker, Fido. Good boy.”
[]
Shouldna put angle braces around the source ascription:
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2015/02/13/his-masters-voice/
Matched tie and pocket square is for amateurs. Old money would never do that. -Gin & Tonic
People. There is someone who’s been showing up off and on in Brad’s little corner of cyberspace for – I don’t know, awhile now. You know when he’s made an entrance because the count in the comments section instantly triples. This person is sick in the head. This should be obvious by now but I guess it’s not. Personally I don’t generally fault people for being a little crazy, the world being what it is – but this person is a lot crazy. And crazy in a way that’s toxic and exhausting. Right?
If you don’t want to get sucked into this person’s tar pit trap of insanity, don’t contend with him. It’s pointless. (Of course there are those of you who seem to enjoy baiting the mentally ill, which is pretty ugly in it’s own right.) I’m no one’s mother, and this particular forum seems to be completely unregulated which has it’s pluses and minuses – so obviously everyone can do what they want. I just think it’s a shame so many of Brad’s uh, followers, waste their time with this person, because the conversation inevitably becomes absurd and tedious (and I don’t mean Wacky Zen Fun absurd either)
Rule #1 of internet communication – if you ignore the trolls and haters and psychotics they generally take their business elsewhere. I get the sense that almost everyone who hangs out hear regular is over the age of 18 – some of us way over – so we all should have that lesson by heart by now. Maybe if we all made an effort to practice it we might find something interesting to talk about (or not. Silence has it’s merits too).
Peace out kids.
Yes, but have you guys really thought about the hard problem of consciousness?
“None of us are innocent, though it’s hard to tell what’s on another’s mind.”
No, this is true, when he was going by catsareinfinite I believe it was I who said something to the effect that my dog would eat his cat but not before it ripped off its head and shit down its neck, or something to that lovely effect.
It’s an old con man trick, the old bait-and-switch. Once everyone takes the bait, 300 comments later the perpetrator laughs his ass off and takes a well deserved nap.
Way up there where I posted the link I was hoping he’d take a long break and read I Am That, but he claimed he’d “read some of it” so moved on rather quickly.
Obviously my con man skills are rusty…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyxDobxSQeY
(Hmmmnnn….did the bait work? Time will tell…)
” I just think it’s a shame so many of Brad’s uh, followers, waste their time with this person”
I never met an Asperger’s-Schizotypal before. It’s an interesting phenomena.
I didn’t say that Fred, and I would NEVER say that because I am primarily here for the lulz, the sheer entertainment, of which there was a-plenty with this post thanks to you, Sam Hel, and so many many other players. Bravo!
So, you identify as a “follower” of Brad’s?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH_l-Ev6M0Y
Here’s the other link I can’t post below the one above but would’ve:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrQZORhBNt8
John, Shade said it. Of course you didn’t say that.
I could never be a follower of Brad if he disapproved of my doing zazaen while sitting in a chair.
Or doing zazen while having an out-of-body experience while standing on a bridge over a river.
“And while Brad’s a sincere practitioner and serious student of the dharma, the public persona he’s developed, and which his almost cult-like following has propped up, easily comes off as superficial and rebellious in a boyish, teenaged sort of manner. ”
That’s from
http://dangerousharvests.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-continued-exoticization-of-asians.html
I don’t know of any other internet-public arena where someone could gauge Brad’s “following.” Having been on the periphery of some real cults (Lyman Family, The Process, Holy Order of Mans, etc.), I can say Brad’s a real slacker when it comes to being a tyrannical holy man. But how what happens here can be described as “cult-like” makes me think the writer doesn’t get out much.
Sorry Fred, of course, now I see that. I can’t be bothered to read Shade’s comments, so missed that, and you replied to my comment with yours, hence the confusion.
& it’s true, Brad’s most comfortable sitting in his box.
Wiki:
“In popular use, samsara [a westernized spelling] may refer to the world (in the sense of the various worldly activities which occupy ordinary, ignorant human beings), the various sufferings thereof; or (mistakenly) the unsettled and agitated mind through which reality is perceived”
And an helicoid is a spiralling shape.
So, an unsettled and agitated mind through which reality is perceived is spiralling along planes.
David S, stop stalking me you asshole. I was arguing against racism on Stormfront, saying how it is a social construct. You did admit this, but I wanted to post it again so people know I’m not racist.
You guys don’t understand how some people don’t practice Zen to feel good. It is more for religious purposes. I mean, if mind is a emergent phenomena from brain activity, then non-dualism is an illusion. I explained emergentism leads to essentialism which Nagarjuna tried to argue against.
I think you guys are pretty pathetic in how you want to mock me. Not everyone will always agree with your religion. I practiced the religion sincerely and now I’m leaving to study a bit more and figure stuff on my own. I’m not going to practice a contradictory religion. Bastardizing and distilling a religion to fit into your modern “secular biases” will destroy it. It’s better not even to practice then.
I don’t see how this makes me crazy person. I just take the Hard Problem of Consciousness very very seriously.
Anyways, I emailed my Sensei last night. If people want to read the email, then I can send it to them also.
What’s worse, an illusion or a delusion?
Lankavatara Sutra said delusions are eternal. I think it meant it in the sense we will always see cyclical aspect to delusions that reiterate throughout the ages.
What’s worse? Those who think they can fight illusion with more illusion, or those who shut the fuck up?
” I mean, if mind is a emergent phenomena from brain activity, then non-dualism is an illusion”
In your black and white world, mind can only emerge from brain activity. That is the first error. The second is the if…then.
The structure of your brain doesn’t allow other possibilities, which is OK. But don’t assume that there are other possibilities in the universe that don’t exist because your black-and-white brain says that they can’t exist.
Illusion is eternal, delusion is a function of circumstances like too much mercury in your environment.
I’m the one arguing against emergentism you brain damaged, dumbass.
Andr3w said you took a lot drugs. I can tell based off how fucking slow you are.
I don’t have time for your shit. Shut the fuck up and let the big boys talk, you incompetent shit eater.
Also, I don’t have aspergers or schizoid or anything. I’m just a pessimist who walks in the shadows from time to time laughing at the moon, murmuring to myself about life is intrinsically worthless.
And if you guys couldn’t tell, I came to Zen from reading stuff like Peter Wessel Zapffe, Philipp Mainländer, Lovecraft, Ligotti, Cioran, depressive manga, and etc.
There’s no point to practice if mind is emergent property. I was dabbling in this idea 6 years ago. I’m not saying this to get my thrills off. I’m saying this because I’m really gonna leave and go back to being a pessimist, antinatalist, and recluse.
I’m the kind of man that needs at least A LITTLE faith as a expedient purpose. Non-dualistic experiences cannot exist with emergentism. They can’t. It’s just basic philosophy people.
” I’m not saying this to get my thrills off. I’m saying this because I’m really gonna leave and go back to being a pessimist, antinatalist, and recluse.”
Good, can you give me the exact time when you will commence that action.
Will it be soon, or are you stalling.
“I’m the one arguing against emergentism you brain damaged, dumbass.
Andr3w said you took a lot drugs. I can tell based off how fucking slow you are.
I don’t have time for your shit. Shut the fuck up and let the big boys talk, you incompetent shit eater.”
Ah, bipolar with megalomania as well
Fred, you’re not a fucking therapist. Stop acting like one.
You’d flunk out of basic high school exams for basic biology, I’d bet.
You’re just a sullen jobless loser.
Otherwise, why would you spend your time on here all the frickin’ time? Do you want to suck Brad’s schlong or something?
I wasn’t the one that bullied people. I just responded impersonally about why I think the Hard Problem of Consciousness is relevant to the underlying metaphysics of Buddhist practice. I then pointed out how you can’t avoid acknowledging the underlying metaphysics through deconstructive riddles.
There are no underlying metaphysics. That’s a concept in your brain that you are clinging to.
Fred, this is why I say you are slow.
There are underlying metaphysics you nimwit. Nondualism is one.
Non-dualism is not possible if mind is an emergent property of brain activity. Attack, david s, not me. I was just making him aware of until people got personal and attacked me because they complained about how much sources I was citing. I was doing this to show emergentism is not compatible with non-dualistic sorts of understand. It’s fucking common sense.
Anyways, Hua Tou practice worked better for me than Shikantaza.
I had my vision of Han Shan when I gave a Hua Tou (Hwadu) and OBE into an undifferentiated light.
It may have just been an illusion if mind is emergent product of brain activity, though. An aberration of perceptual mechanisms.
Brad’s experiences near the shore and mine in the forest may have been illusory too if mind is a product of brain activity… Sigh, there is no point in any of this. Most of you are too dense to get it, so you’ll attack me instead of talking about the nitty-gritty metaphysical stuff. You should all be attacking david s, not me, cause he’s the one who pretty much contradicted your entire teachings. I’m only responding with hostility because I got beat up.
“I’m only responding with hostility because I got beat up.”
Delusion
I thought that you said you were going to become a recluse. Were you lieing about that, or did you change your mind in the span of 5 minutes?
Here’s a thought: why don’t you shut the fuck up and go sit in Shikantaza rather than harassing people and trying to diagnose them like a fake online, armchair therapist?
If Shikantaza really is the all be and end all practice, then shut the fuck up and go sit instead of belittling me and not put serious thought into my criticisms. I’m sorry if ontological/metaphysical is something you’re not interested in, so why don’t you ignore it and just go sit down rather than talk incessantly with me. Do you work? Do you even practice? Because all it ever seems you do is post here, fucking faggot.
Yep, you were lieing. Some Aspies develop the capacity in order to fit in with the neural typicals. Good job, man.
I asked some people about who can train me in self-sustainable techniques. I will become a recluse gradually.
Persia is the Greek word for Iran because it specifically refers to Fars. And I need not remind you that the main language of Iran is, still today, fârsi.
Eireann is also another country a bit (quite a bit) west of the European continent. And I’ve got a village nearby Montpellier which is called Teyran, pronounced exactly like Teheran.
Where does it bring us? Nowhere.
The terms seems to have first arisen in Sassanian Persia, where it was used as “Eransahr,” with “Eran” being used to mean “Aryan,” consistent with its derivation. There is a long and detailed scholarly article about this issue in the Enyclopaedica Iranica online. As the article puts it, “[t]hus the term Ä’rÄnÅ¡ahr was evidently an invention of the Sasanians.” Over time following the Sassanian collapse, as the article explains, the previously adjectival “Eran” came to have a geographical and then national meaning which obtained in the New Persian era. “The general designation for the land of the Iranians was, however, by this time Ä“rÄn (also Ä“rÄn zamÄ«n, Å¡ahr-e Ä“rÄn), and Ä“rÄnÄ« for its inhabitants.”
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/eran-eransah
And I forgot about the Norouze Pass between Carcassonne and Toulouse, where the Atlantic-Mediterranean divide lays…
Are you Irish? There are some hypotheses about how you guys may have origin from Scythians, who were Iranian nomads.
Pre-Celtic place names.
There are some essays about the parallels between the Celts and Zoroastrian cultures. It could be the Pre-Celtics were of Scythian stock or something.
By “follower” I don’t mean acolyte, I just mean someone who, you know, follows Brad’s work. Which I think implies an appreciation of some aspect of that work. Though there do seem to be some people who frequent the comments section of HZ for the sole purpose of giving Brad shit. Which I don’t get. I think that would get old really fast.
And then there are those who frequent the comments section of HZ for the purposes of fucking with the more unstable elements of Brad’s “following” (okay I’m starting to see why that isn’t the best choice of words. Makes it sound like Brad’s running a Satanic cult). Mental illness is an “interesting phenomena”? Well, okay, so are natural disasters and the bubonic plague, if you want to adopt the sort of academic mindset – or maybe I should say “detached”? Hm.
I’ll just say it… threatening violence, threatening suicide, encouraging others to commit suicide, insulting people in the most offensive way possible in response to mild criticism – yeah, I know it’s only the internet, but it’s still seriously fucked up behavior, and not entirely justified by whatever psychological problems that person might have. In my opinion we are all responsible in some degree for our words and actions, even the mentally ill. But in the same vein – baiting someone who behaves in such wise for the purposes of personal entertainment is just low (Btw, I also think it pointless to try to reason with such a person, for those who’ve taken that tack)
I’ve stuck my foot in the hornet’s nest here and I think I’m gonna regret it… but I guess it’s too late now.
Well… to people’s credit I did bring my worries to the wrong place. I should have just emailed by Sensei and asked a different crowd.
It doesn’t make sense for me to bring a convoluted problem especially at a place I cause mischief in the past. It’s mostly my fault because fixating on the question makes me a little irrational.
It’s kind of like a Catholic coming to terms his religion can never give him utmost certainty, and he is overwhelmed by massive doubt to the point he considered leaving the religion. It just so happens, this is the Buddhist situation but more with a philosophy of mind or cognitive twist. I’ve read a lot on this particular question…
“Mentally ill” ? Is there a right way and a wrong way for someone to think? If a person doesn’t think in culturally approved ways, are they “mentally ill?”
How about ” thinking non-thinking “. Is that “mental illness”?
When all the mindfulness people begin loosening their grasp on correct ways of thinking, will the term mental illness have a different meaning?
Line A
“I’ll just say it… threatening violence, threatening suicide, encouraging others to commit suicide, insulting people in the most offensive way possible in response to mild criticism — yeah, I know it’s only the internet, but it’s still seriously fucked up behavior, and not entirely justified by whatever psychological problems that person might have”
Line B
“It’s mostly my fault because fixating on the question makes me a little irrational.”
Hahaha
Fred, it’s obvious you are not “thinking of not thinking” (i.e., nonthinking):
“Think of not thinking. Not thinking-what kind of thinking is that? Nonthinking. This is the essential art of zazen.”
(Dogen: Fukan Zazengi)
Otherwise you wouldn’t completely insult me and so forth constantly. Such a stateless state of mind is a non-judgmental one.
Fred, I apologize if I said mean things. I was in the wrong, and I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want us to be on bad terms.
However, I am serious when I say emergentism does threaten the foundations of Buddhist practice (i.e., Nagarjuna’s MMK). Emergentism invariably leads to essentialist conclusions, what Nagarjuna tries to avoid (i.e., he goes the middle between essentialism and nihilism). Non-dualist forms of experience are not possible if mind is an emergent product of brain activity. One needs to accept something like double aspect theory or panpsychism in order for non-dualism to still have metaphysica validity.
However, it was wrong for me to bring something this complex to a comments section. I sincerely apologize to everyone on this comments section.
Nagarjuna was a philosopher. Philosophy is pure bullshit. A helicoid of pure bullshit that spirals into infinity.
I think it’s important to view Zen as a kind of Lebensphilosophie:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensphilosophie
A Lebensphilosophie still has an underlying framework for the praxis of practice. This one being the possibility of non-dualistic experiences. However, this does not exist if emergentism is the case, making the barrier of self and other always there and not possible to break down.
Get laid my friend or if that’s not possible start a bar fight. Get the energy out of your head and back into your body because you’re drowning in a big way.
I find watching cartoons, art-house films, and so forth a good way to refocus energy away from negative outlets, toward positive ones, and being a nonchalant pessimist like Peter Wessel is the best way for me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Wessel_Zapffe#Contentions
He was a cool pessimist that argued life was meaningless but still did stuff like mountain climbing and writing children’s cartoons.
I’m not so much into the evolutionary puppet show of getting laid and scoring points. I prefer being Bukowski-like bum that doesn’t give a shit while smoking a cig underneath the melancholic moonlight of despair.
Shade, how much have you been around? You make it sound like a cadre of sadists just wait in their lair for a victim to provide their jollies.
I don’t buy that “mentally ill” bit.
Been around where? Planet earth? Thirty-five years. The comments section of this blog? I don’t know, two and half years maybe. I’ve been reading Brad’s stuff for maybe ten.
I get that a forum dedicated to Zen Buddhism is gonna encourage some pretty unorthodox cognition that can come off as “crazy” to those not hip to the lingo. I get that there’s a fine line between mental illness and eccentricity. I have my own issues with the psychiatric industry and their tendency to regard everything under the sun as pathological. I’m not a shrink or therapist or mental health professional or anything like that. I’m just some random person who posts stuff hear now and then under an assumed name. So obviously what I say should be taken with a fistful of salt.
But I do think mental illness exists. And yeah, I think there’s someone who posts here frequently – very very frequently sometimes – who’s way beyond the pale. And while messing with this person or any such person is not sadistic per se, it is irresponsible. And just depressing, that this is the best thing you all can find to do with your time. I’ve seen some really great, brilliant conversation go down hear which is why I stick around even though I’m a not a Buddhist – but lately, jeez, it’s just devolving at light speed.
Oh, I believe mental illness, as an intolerable degree of imbalance and impairment, exists. We’re all somewhere on the graph. I disagree with your diagnosis that that is the main problem.
I always think back to this guy’s argument when I have doubt:
“Zapffe’s theory is that humans are born with an overdeveloped skill (understanding, self-knowledge) which does not fit into nature’s design. The human craving for justification on matters such as life and death cannot be satisfied, hence humanity has a need that nature cannot satisfy. The tragedy, following this theory, is that humans spend all their time trying not to be human. The human being, therefore, is a paradox.
In The Last Messiah Zapffe described four principal defense mechanisms that humankind uses to avoid facing this paradox:
Isolation is “a fully arbitrary dismissal from consciousness of all disturbing and destructive thought and feeling”.[3]
Anchoring is the “fixation of points within, or construction of walls around, the liquid fray of consciousness”.[3] The anchoring mechanism provides individuals a value or an ideal that allows them to focus their attentions in a consistent manner. Zapffe also applied the anchoring principle to society, and stated “God, the Church, the State, morality, fate, the laws of life, the people, the future”[3] are all examples of collective primary anchoring firmaments.
Distraction is when “one limits attention to the critical bounds by constantly enthralling it with impressions”.[3] Distraction focuses all of one’s energy on a task or idea to prevent the mind from turning in on itself.
Sublimation is the refocusing of energy away from negative outlets, toward positive ones. The individuals distance themselves and look at their existence from an aesthetic point of view (e.g., writers, poets, painters). Zapffe himself pointed out that his produced works were the product of sublimation.
Zapffe was a prolific mountaineer and took a very early interest in environmentalism. This form of nature conservationism sprung from the intent, not of protecting nature, but to avoid human culturalization of nature. He is the author of many humorous short stories about climbing and other adventures in nature.”
Maybe in a way, we all don’t know shit? Maybe the best thing is to just give up. “I don’t care,” as Dr. Steve Brule says. “It’s all just a bunch of hunks.”
No God, no Buddha nature, nothing intrinsically special in life… just a cold depressive universe with low production quality black metal playing in the background.
Here is a poem I wrote:
“We are all babbling to ourselves.”
Who we say we are,
is equally as far and distant,
as what they say they are.
It cannot be grasped or connected to.
Are we a nobody that asserts of being a somebody?
When we sleep alone,
After losing friend or relative,
It is like the indifferent womb which sustains us.
The true interpenetrating force
is one of loss and aloneness,
those who don’t succumb to loneliness understand –
but cannot share it
Solitude is superior to the country
and the dilapidated buildings and artifacts
speak of this,
sharing with me a nothing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5AgLsDICVM
Fuck that shit. Listen to this instead, Fred:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhqofz6xPCc
I would listen to such music while drinking tea at night sometimes… haha.
It’s in Swedish. Here are the lyrics:
“Lifelover – Mental Central Dialog”
I can’t find any answers
Are there any answers?
I can’t find any answers
Are there any answers?
I can’t find any answers
There are no answers!
The universe is cold and black, or warm and alive.
The brain is depressed and tapelooping on shit.
Sharing a nothing
Is not sharing nothingness.
There are no answers.
Minkfoot looks like one of the singers from my favorite band, Woods of Ypres:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_guZ7ZS9cl8
When my cat son didn’t come home one night, I got very worried. I felt all of my experience was rupturing and everything felt like it was breaking apart. Time was starting to reveal the true nature of things, for time is the primal matter. I couldn’t hold onto my Hua Tou ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua_Tou ) anymore and even told myself, “I don’t care if I’m deluded. I just want to know he is safe. I would give up anything to know he is safe.” Luckily he came back the next morning and I burst into tears, hugging him. I understood when my cat son dies in the future, I will die with him too. Creation is destruction in this world of pain.
“For life is the sacrifice, before you die”
Thanks, Shade, for making Fred writhe. Writhe, Fred, writhe! 🙂
“Is such an action within the *panpsychist* interpenetrative, interdependent network of action?”
Such an action is the function of right where you are, SH. I don’t know if you glanced at this or not, I would think it’s right up your alley being both the work of neuroscientists and the results of their study of OBE:
http://lnco.epfl.ch/webdav/site/lnco/shared/publications/lnco/2005_Blanke_BRR_obe%20heautoscopy%20and%20autoscopic%20hallucination%20of%20neurological%20origin.pdf
Their hypothesis is that the sense of self is a function of the vestibular, ocular, and proprioceptive/tactile/kinesthetic senses.
I confess, just as I am not interested in Cantor’s work because of his acceptance of completed infinities (the paradoxes that result are well-documented), I am not interested in the scriptures that followed the Pali Canon, because they similarly embrace completed infinities.
When I talk about heart-mind, I’m talking about where you are as a function of the vestibular, ocular, and proprioceptive/tactile/kinesthetic senses. I’m saying that relaxation and relinquishment of activity that allows the heart-mind to shift and move, however slightly, realizes action of posture and even carriage from the distinct elements that make up the self, without embracing a self.
See your face before you were born, only a nickel!
Thanks, Shade, for making Fred writhe. Writhe, Fred, writhe! 🙂
My pleasure. Beat me sister. I’m writhing in ecstasy
“make me write bad checks…”
I’ve read about Olaf Blanke’s stuff in Thomas Metzinger’s Ego Tunnel. I think it’s interesting, but I tend to think enactivist approaches tend to be better than indirect realist approaches (i.e., they view inner representations as some kind of spurious mental representations). In such a sense, it’s not hard to view matter as being dual-faceted and ‘seeing’ projected image on the matter’s internal mental life. There’s nothing about Olaf Blanke’s theories that point to computational theories of mind or emergentism as being true necessarily.
None of this answers what informational content (i.e., qualia) is or how it magically arises from physical systems. This is a metaphysical question. Older Ch’an Buddhists and even Dogen argued all matter is aware to extent (i.e., Dogen said the triple-body is just your mind). There is no reason to practice beyond wanting to better yourself when your religion’s metaphysics is flawed to begin with.
as some spurious mental items*
So don’t practice
If matter is aware then that means there is a mirror like quality to it. It fits with Hui Neng’s poem perfectly.
Ch’an was based off a panpsychist form of non-dualism. Not even Dogen left that…
Here’s a poem by An3drew.
Beat
me
sister.
I’m
writhing
in
ecstasy.
<(
).
Alright, Fred, why don’t you go sit in Shikantaza a bit besides harassing people on a forum?
Said the Iranian Harasser
Fred, what do you want me to say? I’ve apologized and such.
I mean, what is it you want from me, really? Do you want me to stop posting here?
Also, is it okay if you quit mentioning my nationality? Do you understand this could possibly be one reason why there’s not much ethnic diversity in the Sanghas?
Just go sit in Shikantaza and quit prolonging this. I’m really tired of this. If you don’t agree with me, that’s fine. I’m still going to leave this practice and become a irreligious and an ironist, in the Richard Rorty sense.
“I’m still going to leave this practice and become a irreligious and an ironist, in the Richard Rorty sense.”
What time and when? Give us a hint so we can have a countdown.
When you sit in Shikantaza, come back, and apologize to me.
Unlike you, I can apologize. I apologize Fred for being rude to you.
Now let’s see if you can do the same thing.
http://www.guavaleaf.com/video/6170/Prince%20-%20Erotic%20City#sthash.1psQ1YHH.dpbs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbGbB9Ivzmg&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyyS0FSztKc
“It doesn’t get any better.” amen
Be well adjusted, neither too tight nor too loose; in the looseness there should be tightness, and in the tightness there should be looseness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U7lfbada-Y
A song inspired by Beatrix Potter’s artwork. If you are a fan of Beatrix Potter’s artwork such as Peter Rabbit, I recommend watching the new movie Miss Potter with your family, and also check out the older animated television series “World of Peter Rabbit and Friends.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pM7Xwx6TiE
“I enjoy talking with you david s.”
“David S, stop stalking me you asshole.”
SH, so you liked talking with me, or AT ME, because you really didn’t what I said, right? It is nothing personal, right? They are just ideas.
You need to read other’s posts more carefully, because you seem to have missed that many others did agree, or where agnostic, with the possibility of your ideas. Most seem to be. Even Brad’s previous post didn’t rule this out. Look again at what his teacher said. Consciousness being an illusion doesn’t say anything about the point you have been making all along of there being something else. In fact, it leaves that unaddressed.
I found on another site something you posted which is the same point I had been making to you.
“Belief systems are never complete in themselves. People that assume their belief systems reflect reality in a coherent manner are delusional. They may be useful tools (e.g., using an architecture to help build a house), but the map is never the same thing as the territory. Reality is too dynamic, multifaceted, holistic, and complex to be confined to human constructs. People who cannot awaken to this fact are lost in fantasy.”
Doesn’t this address your current state?
Your ideas about emergent phenomena are quite limited in how you consider the issue. We will never agree. I do not understand why you have to argue with others when you have decided what makes sense to you. Why all the spinning in circles? Take aim of your goal and focus on that. No need to debate issues you have already made a decision on. You are correct that tradition says much about it. So what is the trouble you are having in constructing concepts to explain it? Isn’t the urge to know making you unsettled? Isn’t there something to be said about the Unknown? I hope your agitation brings you to a point where the question drops away and find the answer.
Link to your quoted posting…
[http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=674553]
David s, I don’t want to talk to you because you and your posse insinuated me as being involved in White Supremacy. However, on further inspecting, you assumptive morons came to see how I was arguing race is a social construct. However, I doubt your entire posse came to realize.
David S, that post was from 3 fucking years, imbecile. Stop Googling my name, you fucking jackass. That’s what I mean by not stalking me.
After 3 years, I came to read more of Hsu Yun and Nan Huai-Chin and even Dogen. All of those guys accept the Mind-Only teaching. They are panpsychist non-dualists. You cannot be an emergentist and a DEEP practitioner. Just like you cannot be an atheistic Catholic or so.
Let’s look at the 12 Nidanas again:
“With Ignorance as condition, Mental Formations arise
With Mental Formations as condition, Consciousness arises
With Consciousness as condition, Mind and Matter arise
With Mind and Matter as condition, Sense Gates arise”
With emergentism, you claim matter is what gives rise to mental formations, consciousness, and mind. Without mind having a non-local aspect (just a tiny bit), then non-dualism is an impossibility. This talk about the inseparability of subject and object is not possible with emergentist schema of consciousness.
The Dharmakaya is panpsychist, or the Buddha nature is panpsychist. The panpsychist element is in how the “non-abiding awareness” is the common interpenetrative, interdependent link among all those beings and even insentient things, as the article I linked pointed out.
David s, I was trying to be your friend, but the fact you morons want to make this persona by insinuating me as being a racist… well fuck you guys.
*inspection*
To Whom it May Concern,
I sent a quick note to the site moderator to see if he feels that there is a situation going on here that might require correction.
Stay tuned and keep up hope.
Cheers.
“David s, I was trying to be your friend, but the fact you morons want to make this persona by insinuating me as being a racist… well fuck you guys.”
I didn’t understand what I had seen, so I did go back and look to make sure what you were saying. I corrected my misunderstanding of what I had seen and posted that I you were arguing against racism. I backed you up. I’m sorry I didn’t figure it out immediately.
So now it becomes an excuse for your anger, probably having more with the fact that I do not agree with your understanding of consciousness.
Alright, I read it over again. You have to understand the comment section is crazy. Grand Canyon is the one that insinuated me as a White Supremacist. You back me up. I appreciate it…
I would delete my other posts about it if I could!
Sorry again.
I have shamelessly culled material from my comments here for the following post on my blog, thanks everybody:
‘The neuroscientists Olaf Blanke and Christine Mohr hypothesize that the sense of self is a function of the vestibular, ocular, and proprioceptive/tactile/kinesthetic senses.
I devote a lot of my thought to reassuring myself that it’s alright to experience depth in senses other than the eyes and the mind, particularly in the proprioceptive and vestibular senses, even when it makes me feel like a bat on a city street in the daylight. Action can happen when I feel like a bat; in fact for me, appropriate action is more a function of where I am than of what I think.
When I talk about Bodhidharma’s use of the word “mind” or “heart-mind”, I am talking about where I am as a function of the vestibular, ocular, and proprioceptive/tactile/kinesthetic senses. Relaxation and relinquishment that frees the heart-mind to move, however slightly, also realizes action from the distinct elements that make up the self, without embracing the notion of a self.
See your face before you were born!- only a nickel.’
(similar fun down the page here)
“Got my puer workin’…” (thanks, John!)
Grand Canyon insinuated I’m a White Supremacist, and on further inspection, it was shown I was arguing race is a social construct.
I was told to shove sand ***** up my ass by, Alan Sailer also.
I was diagnosed by Fred as being mentally ill multiple times as I explained my views rationally.
I honestly didn’t do anything wrong. You all asked for this. I just gave my views in a repetitious fashion, and I apologize for that. I got in the defensive because you all kept pushing me.
Fuck you all.
Making my entrance again with my usual flair
Sure of my lines…
No one is there.
Don’t bother, they’re here on Brad’s blog, a-plenty!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5os4NFeKFFs
uh- present company excepted, of course.
Don’t forget the preaching! If it’s one thing a bunch of Buddh-symps hate, it’s being preached at.
“With emergentism, you claim matter is what gives rise to mental formations, consciousness, and mind. Without mind having a non-local aspect (just a tiny bit), then non-dualism is an impossibility.”
If the experience of consciousness arising is an emergent property then it is not separate. In the brain we are beginning to understand aspects of the processes which contribute to consciousness. With damage to some areas one’s consciousness changes. Experiences which are considered non-dual, could entail areas of functions related to the sense of self going into abeyance.
Alright, I want to ignore other people and deal with what you’re describing.
I argue mental formations (i.e. psychophysical forms) are already in place in the external. Our mind which depends on brain activity, is more about forming a kind of reciprocal “immaterial” beam with the external world. Such an immaterial beam does not always correspond with the actual objects in the world.
There is no way to explain HOW mind emerges from brain activity. Brain activity is physical, you can’t look into the skull and find mind. Rather brain activity helps ANCHOR the Mind to specific qualia in the crystal of life. In one of Dogen’s poems, he argues life is like a Prism, and given how the triple-body is just One Mind, this is the case.
In the Buddhist 12 Nidanas:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Nid%C4%81nas)
I would rephrase the first few Nidanas in more modern Mahayana terms:
“With Ignorance as condition, psychophysical form (1st skandha) arise
With physchophysical form (1st skandha) as condition, Non-abiding awareness (One Mind) arises
With non-abiding as condition, perception and matter arise
With perception and natter as condition, senses arise”
To quote Lieberman again:
I am a neuroscientist and so 99% of the time I behave like a materialist, acknowledging that the mind is real but fully dependent on the brain. But we don’t actually know this. We really don’t. We assume our sense of will is a causal result of the neurochemical processes in our brain, but this is a leap of faith. Perhaps the brain is something like a complex radio receiver that integrates consciousness signals that float around in some form. Perhaps one part of visual cortex is important for decoding the bandwidth that contains motion consciousness and another part of the brain is critical to decoding the bandwith that contains our will. So damage to brain regions may alter our ability to express certain kinds of conscious experience rather than being the causal source of consciousness itself. ” “I don’t actually believe the radio metaphor of the brain, but I think something like it could account for all of our findings. Its unfalsifiable which is a big no-no in science. But so is the materialist view- it’s also unfalsifiable (Lieberman, 2012).
The 12 Nidanas go perfectly with the Heart Sutra.
On the left is the Pali terms. On the right I make it equivalent to Mahayana:
mental formation = 1st skandha, psychophysical form
consciousness = non-abiding awareness
In Mahayana literature, non-abiding awareness is considered equivalent to emptiness. Red Pine says this too.
phsychophysical form is non-abiding awareness, non-abiding awareness is psyhophysical form
Dogen and practically all Chinese Ch’an Buddhists agree with this. Matter, perception, and the senses come in later. The Mind simply attunes itself to different facets of the Infinite Prism.
The Dharmakaya (form and non-abiding awareness dual relationship) IS an Infinite Prism.
This is what my experiences teach me.
Materialism and emergentism will destroy Buddhism.
“The Mind simply attunes itself to different facets of the Infinite Prism.”
I meant the brain attunes itself to various projected facets of the Dharmakaya (i.e., dual relationship between form and emptiness).
This is why the brain is made quiet during Zazen. We are experiencing the formless of the prism prior to thought.
We are experiencing the timelessness… This points to a deeper metaphysical reality and the primacy of Mind.
I got the Primacy of Mind
and a lust for life
the prism is formless
an infinite prism
there’s consciousness
and a lust for life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iQonNrfzzY
“Materialism and emergentism will destroy Buddhism.”
You are so dramatic! Throughout the development of Buddhism’s expansion other belief systems have been combined.
You more importantly, make it appear that what Buddhism represents is based upon belief and can be destroyed. But the dharmas are intended to represent fundamental laws, and thus cannot be destroyed.
How I come to Buddhism is no threat to how you do. I’m no threat to anyone here on this site either.
For example, here’s a koan-like question:
Let’s say you had a brain stroke and you forgot everything. You get severe retrograde amnesia and you have to be rehabilitated to learn your motor skills and everything else again. Dr. Jill Bolte had a similar situation.
Now, here is my question: that moment between the previous narrative and the next narrative… isn’t that like death? Also, is it correct to say the previous version of Jill Bolte affected her new incarnation? What difference is there in dying then?
Is a caterpillar that turns into a butterfly in a sense dying in order to “transform”. In its perishing, it simultaneously arises, correct? Doesn’t the caterpillar’s state influence the next state of the butterfly even if the butterfly has no remembrance of it? This is why rebirth occurs even after we die. Buddhism is fundamentally about the end of Becoming.
Now, here is what I say: the brain’s function is to maintain the consistency of the narratives and project the illusion of inherent existences onto the empirical world, that is non-abiding awareness.
It’s not the fact mind arises from brain… It is the fact mind is a suturing process in the world and the organisms that reciprocally reflect it, like a boundless bright mirror.
The broken mirror can never be whole again, as Dogen said, UNLESS the brain is extremely silent to tacitly apprehend the triple-world as One Mind, as Dogen said too! In J. Krishnamurti’s Notebook there are tons of references of the brain going silent… then the realization of the unity of non-abiding awareness can be recognized where there is no “I”. The brain is transcended in deeper Zazen and Buddhist practice. There is somewhat of a non-local aspect, to what extent is difficult to say except if you’ve awakened Buddha hood.
It is more accurate to say illusion of “me” emerges from the brain… A “me” that experiences feelings and sensations. But awareness, itself, transcends the brain, like a still mirror, like a still hologram or something we don’t even know yet.
This is a fundamental teaching in Buddhism, and if you don’t accept it, then what the hell are you doing with this practice?
Best not be, brother, or Sheriff Alan will turn your ass in to Stone (Mirror).
Actually, if Sheriff Alan disagrees with you, or takes offense to how often you repeat yourself, or Buddha-forbid you decline to pound sand up your ass (isn’t that kind of talk more offensive, eh?), he will, you guessed it, turn you in to the moderator.
So, threats or no threats, step lightly, especially around Alan. (Sorry Alan!)
Thank you, thank you very much
This has been a Brad Warner production
Brad Warner thanks you all
For participating and
Contributing
And wishes you all prosperity
in 2015 and
Brad Warner for Mayor
of Los Angelas in the near future.
Dogen ALSO said the One Bring pearl is Mind in its totality.
“Therefore, the reality and beginninglessness of one bright pearl are beyond grasp. All the universe is one bright pearl–we do not speak of two pearls or three pearls. The whole body is one right Dharma eye. The whole body is the Real body. The whole body is One Expression. The whole body is light. The whole body is Mind in its totality. When it is the whole body, the whole body knows no hindrance. Everywhere is perfectly round, turning over, rolling smoothly. Since one bright pearl’s quality is thus manifested, there is, here and now, Kannon and Miroku seeing forms and hearing sounds; there are old buddhas and new buddhas bodily appearing and expounding the Dharma.”
Mind is NOT an emergent phenomenon of the brain.
Dogen also said the triple-world is just your Mind.
The Mind is non-abiding awareness. It is not generated by the brain, even though it requires a brain for higher tiers of complexity (i.e., more skandhas). Empirical science does not refute this.
As a Neuroscientist, I say materialism or reductive theories or emergentist theories of consciousness are not necessarily entailed by research.
One *Bright* Pearl*
“How can something as immaterial as consciousness ever arise from something as unconscious as matter? ”
“One alternative that is gaining increasing attention is the view that the capacity for experience is not itself a product of the brain. This is not to say that the brain is not responsible for what we experience — there is ample evidence for a strong correlation between what goes on in the brain and what goes on in the mind — only that the brain is not responsible for experience itself. Instead, the capacity for consciousness is an inherent quality of life itself. ”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-russell/brain-consciousness_b_873595.html
I am talking about real substantial stuff here and people will just dismiss it.
Dogen and all other Zen Buddhists are panpsychists NOT emergentists. Emergentism is heresy in Buddhism. It leads to more suffering in the form of delusional views. You cannot be an emergentist and call yourself a Zen buddhist.
Mumbles,
Differences exist on what is entertainment (lulz) and what is just tiresome. I don’t visit 4Chan for this reason.
And since I really have no control over the situation (ie I’m not the moderator, thank god) all I can do is point out the situation to Mr. Stone Mirror and see what he thinks.
So Sheriff doesn’t quite fit. Another title perhaps…disgruntled demigod?
Cheers.
“Dogen and all other Zen Buddhists are panpsychists NOT emergentists.”
Not true. After they emerged from their caves, they merged with the void,
and were true Zen Buddhist Emergentia.
There is always a bit of light in the cave, so they never enter or emerge from it.
Nobody’s forcing you to read his comments or respond to them Alan, so what exactly is tiring you out? And isn’t Mr. Stone Mirror Sir, yes officer, Sir, capable of viewing the comment section on his own? Isn’t that his “job?”
As for 4Chan, you must not be checking out the Adult gifs. Never tiresome…
Cheers.