It is not the same form of familiarity with all objects that we encounter. Familiarity can take the form of dread, confusion , hatred or enlightenment. If we gave up living on the world we would have to give up any and all forms of familiarity , since familiarity implies world. So it’s not a question of giving up living in the world , but of how we live in it. Attaining a richly enlightened state requires utilizing all that the experience of world can provide in order to transcend the experiences of confusion, despair, chaos and hostility. — Joshs
Being nonreactive sounds even less alive than being non-attached. — praxis
Thanks for potentially diagnosing my situation, C. You may be right but your use of language is somewhat indirect and jargonistic to me - are you a denizen of academe perhaps?
What do you mean by - "too fixated on a propositional conclusion that requires no foundational alterations in the act of perception itself." Can you provide an example of a foundational alteration in the act of perception. And yes, I see how you referred to Wittgenstein earlier.
You are adding the word revelatory to enlightenment - can you spell out an example of such a phenomenon? Are you referring to the sudden attainment of higher consciousness?
You say 'forget about Jung' do you have reasons for dismissing him or is it just personal taste? — Tom Storm
This is not a contrivance, but the way the world really is, and the "is" of it cannot exceed the epistemology, putting ontology IN the observable conditions of the world. Thus, the world is, in this illustration, nothing but arrows, if you will, at the level of basic questions (obviously, prior to basic questions, there is nothing but answers everywhere). — Constance
There is, monks, an unborn –unbecome–unmade–unfabricated. If there were not that unborn–unbecome–unmade–unfabricated, there would not be the case that escape from the born–become–made–fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn–unbecome–unmade–unfabricated, escape from the born–become–made–fabricated is discerned. — The Nibbāna Sutta
:up: (Premodern) 'Logos transposes Mythos', then (Modern) 'freethought critiques fact-free dogmas'To western philosophy, "enlightenment" generally means applying reason to answer questions and solve problems. In eastern philosophy, it means something different. There has been a lot of back and forth about what exactly that something different is. — T Clark
In [western] philosophy 'immanence and ecstatic habits' (i.e. reflective exercises) are more reliably(?) enlightening. — 180 Proof
Do you know anything that isn't somehow "tied to various narratives people hold"? — baker
The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. — George Eliot
Enlightenment is no different to other things people believe. It isn't something outside of people to be found in some particular way. It's just a story, like so many others we tell. — Tom Storm
I said in my thesis that what is being criticized as 'eternalism' is the belief that the aim of the religious life is to secure an unending series of lives - to live 'forever after' in propitious circumstances (which is somewhat similar to some popular ideas of heaven). That is not what Nirvāṇa means - it means the complete cessation of the process of rebirth. — Wayfarer
What a Tathagata sees is this: 'Such is form, such its origin, such its disappearance; such is feeling, such its origin, such its disappearance; such is perception... such are mental fabrications... such is consciousness, such its origin, such its disappearance' (15)
Monks, in the world with its devas, Mara and Brahma, in this generation with its ascetics and brahmins, devas and humans, whatever is seen, heard, sensed and cognized, attained, searched into, pondered over by the mind—all that is fully understood by the Tathagata. That is why he is called the Tathagata (4:23)
This is where the Buddha eschews theories. Theories are dṛṣṭi, 'dogmatic viewpoints' - about consciousness or an eternal self or anything of the kind. The word 'consciousness' was only coined in the 17th century, and besides it's something you can loose. If you start to qualify it, 'ah, that's not what I mean by "consciousness"' then you're already 'tangled in thickets of views', to quote the Aggi-Vaccha sutta again.
Of course, there's a lot more that could be said, but this is a very long post already. Suffice to say that this criticism of 'objectifying' is fundamental to Buddhist philosophy, and really understanding it is to understand a 'stance' or way-of-being which is unique to Buddhism. Few do. — Wayfarer
My own view is that this notion of enlightenment is simply tied to various narratives people hold. I am unsure whether anything meaningful can be said about the subject, except from a historical perspective - that is, locating the idea in the context of this or that worldview. — Tom Storm
Begs a question, doesn't it?" What "good" is a narrative? — Constance
My own view is that this notion of enlightenment is simply tied to various narratives people hold. — Tom Storm
Do you know anything that isn't somehow "tied to various narratives people hold"? — baker
Perhaps we could say that enlightenment is our directing ourselves toward the development of more and more useful narratives. — Joshs
Well, you should know that enlightenment isn't JUST a narrative. Even narratives are not just narratives. When we understand a narrative, we can ask questions, basic questions that are no different from anything else, since everything is given to us in a narrative; — Constance
That saying 'show me your original face' is a Zen koan, I believe. As others have commented, it's easy to repeat popular Zen sayings, but it's another matter to walk the talk. Harold Stewart wrote that 'Those few who took the trouble to visit Japan and begin the practice of Zen under a recognized Zen master or who joined the monastic Order soon discovered that it was a very different matter from what the popularizing literature had led them to believe. They found that in the traditional Zen monastery zazen is never divorced from the daily routine of accessory disciplines. To attenuate and finally dissolve the illusion of the individual ego, it is always supplemented by manual work to clean the temple, maintain the garden, and grow food in the grounds; by strenuous study with attendance at discourses on the sutras and commentaries; and by periodical interviews with the roshi, to test spiritual progress. Acolytes are expected to develop indifference to the discomforts of heat and cold on a most frugal vegetarian diet and to abstain from self-indulgence in sleep and sex, intoxicating drinks and addictive drugs.' — Wayfarer
'The unborn' is a reference to what is not contingent and/or conditioned; it could equally be expressed as the 'unconditioned'. A natural question would be 'what is that?' or 'What is this referring to?' And my response would be that there is nothing against which to map or translate such expression in the modern philosophical lexicon. (Perhaps if you admitted the domain of philosophical theology, then there might be comparisons to be made with the 'wisdom uncreated' of the Biblical tradition, even if in other respects there are dissimilarities between the Buddhist and Christian understanding.) — Wayfarer
Good is whatever aids sense making , and sense making is anticipative. So what is good is whatever helps us anticipate events. And what’s the purpose of anticipating events? So that we will avoid being plunged into the chaos and confusion of a world which doesn’t make sense, where we do not know how to go on. — Joshs
Chaos and confusion are, well, bad. Why? — Constance
Becuase it is not the content of events which dictates value, but the the organizational relationship between events and a construct of events. If we could see that events are nearly content-free, then all that determines value, sense and meaning is how effectively we assimilate events along dimensions of similarity and likeness with respect our our previous experience.
When we assume ‘fat’ qualitative content to the world, the. suddenly it seems that anticipatory sense making must be tied to some originating valuative content ( the goodness of God). — Joshs
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