If I feel love for someone, do I need to be attached to that love in order to act lovingly towards them? — Janus

In non-attachment, why would you love any particular person?

From what I have read of people being in sensory deprivation chambers, I doubt anyone would last that long. Instead they might become psychotic, but then that would be to lose one's mind, only in one sense; the psychotic still has a mind, however unbalanced it might be. As to the existence of consciousness postmortem, I don't think it is possible to know. That said I think we, or I at least, have little reason to think that consciousness does survive the death of the body.

In non-attachment, why would you love any particular person? — praxis

Why could you not? You might, although non-attached, find one tree more beautiful than another, no? Surely a saintly person would be more loveable than the misogynist, the serial killer, or the pedophile, even to the non-attached person, wouldn't you think?

the psychotic still has a mind, however unbalanced it might be. — Janus

A mind that would not exists without sensory input in its development. Minds don’t just pop into existence.

Love and beauty are not the same thing. I guess we now have to decide what love means.

A mind that would not exists without sensory input in its development. Minds don’t just pop into existence. — praxis

I don't know. Imagine if there could be a person who was blind, had no feeling in their body, no senses whatever; could they have a mind? I really don't know; I'd say probably they wouldn't have anything we would recognize as a mind, but they would have a brain with at least some function, if they were alive at all, I imagine. But in any case, is it the senses that tell you that or do you reach that conclusion from something you've read or is it just an intuition you have?

Love and beauty are not the same thing. I guess we have to decide what love means. — praxis

For me there are different kinds of beauty. There is moral beauty for example. A saint would be morally beautiful. To admire something would be to love it in some sense it seems to me.

But in any case, is it the senses that tell you that or do you reach that conclusion from something you've read or is it just an intuition you have? — Janus

Even if it were something that I experienced with my senses, I couldn’t know what I was experiencing without all the previous sense experience that built my internal representation of the world.

That seems true, although I would say the cultural stuff is most important, and although it is obviously absorbed via the senses, it is not mere sense data.

For me there are different kinds of beauty. There is moral beauty for example. A saint would be morally beautiful. To admire something would be to love it in some sense it seems to me. — Janus

Even a saint isn’t perfect and given sufficient time would surely eventually disappoint. How could someone experience disappointed if they weren’t attached to this moral beauty?

I don't know; I'm not sure a non-attached person would experience disappointment.

Tom Storm I think Jung is a great guide to understanding the possibilities of the human psyche. His term of 'Individuation' has something in common with 'enlightenment'. Individuation is about assimilating unconscious content with the ego to form the Self. — I like sushi

Yes, I am somewhat familiar with Jung and studied him in college. One of my parent's close friends was involved with the Gnostic Gospel find in Nag Hammadi and a close confidant of Jung's from the 1940's. I can see CJ's process of individuation as leading there - if one every becomes fully individuated.

None of these things are easy to understand or practice. But it doesn't mean they're unreal. — Wayfarer

Understand. But perhaps they are ideas I can't use or have no use for. That renders them almost unreal.

I think the idea is that it should be a living non-attachment. — Janus

Yes, but why waste time on eating and breathing... I'm only half joking BTW.

I'm interested in what might be a Western equivalent of enlightenment - outside from Jung's somewhat syncretistic ideas.

Does anyone have comments on Nietzsche's ideas of self-overcoming? The will to power implies significant attachment however, but perhaps I am wrong.

The secular version of enlightenment seems to be a kind of emotional and aspirational minimalism.

Does anyone have comments on Nietzsche's ideas of self-overcoming? — Tom Storm

That he never accomplished it?

Do as I say not as I do...

What does it mean to say I am attached to a feeling as opposed to simply being aware of the feeling? If I feel love for someone, do I need to be attached to that love in order to act lovingly towards them? — Janus

You tell us it is your point.

I'm interested in hearing what people's views are on the notion of the enlightened individua — Tom Storm

Because the thread title capitalizes the e in Enlightenment, I infer from “what is it to be Enlightened?” to indicate adherence to the conditions given from the particular historical human development represented by that name. Thus.....

“....Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage**. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of mankind gladly remain minors all their lives, long after nature has freed them from external guidance. They are the reasons why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor. If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on--then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable business for me. Those guardians who have kindly taken supervision upon themselves see to it that the overwhelming majority of mankind (...) should consider the step to maturity, not only as hard, but as extremely dangerous. First, these guardians make their domestic cattle stupid and carefully prevent the docile creatures from taking a single step without the leading-strings to which they have fastened them. Then they show them the danger that would threaten them if they should try to walk by themselves. Now this danger is really not very great; after stumbling a few times they would, at last, learn to walk. However, examples of such failures intimidate and generally discourage all further attempts....”
(Kant, 1784, in Mary C. Smith, 2000;
** “immaturity” in Friedrich 1949, Humphrey 1983, Schmidt 1996)

With the freedoms today, it is hard to imagine a time when people in general not only seldom thought for themselves, they didn’t even realize they could. I find it quite ironic, that two empirical revolutions, in science with the telescope and in culture with a beheading, became launchpads for a revolution of a purely rational nature.

But....like most revolutions.....the predications for which are too soon forgot.

Enlightenment is a tangent on a circle! One might wanna look at it as a slingshot maneuver!

Anytime anyone digresses (goes off on a tangent), that person is, one could say, enlightened!

Decycling! I wonder why Aristotle thought the heavens were full of circles? They are not, they're ellipses. I suppose it's easier to attain escape velocity in an elliptical orbit - ellipses are straighter in certain sectors. :grin:

I imagine it's a state of equanimity in which thoughts and feelings arise and are clearly seen and felt but are not indulged in. Think about pain; as long as you are embodied pain cannot definitely be avoided. But as, I think it was, Tom Storm told us in another thread recently, his father was able to switch pain off, undergo dental procedures without anaesthetic and said "It only hurts of you let it". — Janus

I suppose that I find this subject particularly interesting now because I just finished a book called Dopamine Nation. As the title indicates, the book delves into the underlying physiology of pleasure and pain. On the most basic level, studies show that without reward (pleasure) and punishment (pain) we really wouldn’t be motivated to do much of anything. So there’s that. On another level, we are a social species, and that being the case, the opinions of other and out relationships to others matter to us. We are dependent on others to maintain our homeostasis. In our development we cannot thrive, or even survive, without the support of others. Laughably, it comes to mind that purpose of religion (including Buddhism) is to bind (form strong attachment) communities.

Isn’t it ironic that this so called “raft” strengthens what it claims to dismantle?

On the most basic level, studies show that without reward (pleasure) and punishment (pain) we really wouldn’t be motivated to do much of anything. — praxis

In recent years, psychology has moved away from hedonic models of human motivation, in favor of anticipation-prediction based theories.

How is affect somehow not hedonic?

How is affect somehow not hedonic? — praxis

It depends on how you define hedonic. Hedonism in S-R and classic cognitivism makes reinforcement a value property attributed to an event( a stimulus is associated with pleasure or pain), whereas in prediction-based approaches affectivity is bound up with the relationship one senses between anticipation and realization. The same event can be reinforcing or aversive depending on our success or failure at anticipating it and thus making sense of it within our system of anticipations.

The same event can be reinforcing or aversive depending on our success or failure at anticipating it and thus making sense of it within our system of anticipations. — Joshs

A bell may or may not make a dog salivate depending on its conditioning or, as you say, ‘system of anticipations’.

in prediction-based approaches affectivity is bound up with the relationship one senses between anticipation and realization. — Joshs

In this case isn’t affect hedonic (relating to or considered in terms of pleasant or unpleasant interoception)?

If I feel love for someone, do I need to be attached to that love in order to act lovingly towards them?
— Janus

In non-attachment, why would you love any particular person? — praxis

1. This 'union of knower and known' is frequently encountered in non-dualist philosophies. — Wayfarer

I prefer the term "identification" to "attachment". As in "I identify (as half of a couple) with my wife." So I see enlightenment as the 'seeing through' the whole process of identification.

Curiously perhaps, the scientific viewpoint is a depersonalised one, so that for example, my feelings and desires are no more significant than anyone else's; they are phenomena on an equal basis. Perhaps that is why the beginnings of the scientific project are known as 'The enlightenment'. Materialism is the foremost non-dualist philosophy.

The main function of identification is that it is a process of time binding, and of the creation of the idea of a continuous self. But supposing one did not make any identifications so as to project the idea of oneself into the future, still I imagine one would eat. Why one food rather than another? I guess it's a matter of convenience. One still would like food, though it would have little importance, and I think one would still have affection for one's wife. One might have equal affection for others too, and that too is not important.

Time-binding is what gives desire its bite. People get confused about this, and suppose that it is the sweetness of sugar that makes one desire it, but of course this cannot be, because the cause has to precede the effect. Rather it is the idea and memory of previous sweetness that is projected into the future and identified with that forms the desire. Fear is the negative of desire, and suffering is the negative of pleasure. These are all aspects of the time-binding of identification: - "I" will have pleasure/ will suffer.

Curiously perhaps, the scientific viewpoint is a depersonalised one, so that for example, my feelings and desires are no more significant than anyone else's; they are phenomena on an equal basis. Perhaps that is why the beginnings of the scientific project are known as 'The enlightenment'. Materialism is the foremost non-dualist philosophy. — unenlightened

Incorrect. Scientific materialism is dualist through and through, based on the fundamental distinction between mind and matter, primary and secondary attributes, and the observer from the observed. The only respect in which it is not dualist is the belief that matter is the only existent. Scientific detachment excludes consideration of the qualitative aspects of existence, whereas they are essential to non-dualism proper. There is now more of a convergence between science and non-dualism, as explored by the Science and Non-Duality Conference, but it is a counter-cultural movement and hardly accepted by the mainstream.

I'm interested in what might be a Western equivalent of enlightenment - outside from Jung's somewhat syncretistic ideas.

Does anyone have comments on Nietzsche's ideas of self-overcoming? The will to power implies significant attachment however, but perhaps I am wrong.

The secular version of enlightenment seems to be a kind of emotional and aspirational minimalism. — Tom Storm

I think you can find similar ideas to enlightenment-as-non-attachment in Spinoza, the Epicureans, the Skeptics, the Stoics and the Existentialists.

Nietzsche, as I read him, advocated a radical independence of spirit; he was a great inspiration to Heidegger and Camus if not Sartre.

I think you are right that some secular notions of enlightenment are as you say; a disposition that is motivated by the desire for comfort, an easy life and wants to avoid being disturbed or any kind of inconvenience.

Ideas generally seem to be malleable, though; so unless they are antithetical they can often to be massaged until they begin to resemble one another.

in prediction-based approaches affectivity is bound up with the relationship one senses between anticipation and realization.
— Joshs

In this case isn’t affect hedonic (relating to or considered in terms of pleasant or unpleasant interoception)? — praxis

The way embodied models work, influenced by Damasio and other neuropsychologists, affective aspects are so complexly interwoven with cognitive that what one ends up with is a more nuanced motivational picture than that evoked by pleasure vs pain.
For instance , a dog may salivate , recalling the memory of pleasurable food , or it may direct its attention toward something in its environment without necessarily feeling overt pleasure. Rather, it may be drawn to something that arouses its curiosity or interest.
Matthew Ratcliffe studies disorders of affect such as depression and schizophrenia, focusing on the ways that affect makes objects salient, enticing and alluring. We don’t feel such enticements as overt pleasure, but as a basic background level of interest that we barely notice. At its core, affectivity serves more of an orienting or alerting function than as hedonic. What we think of as emotional pain and pleasure may have much more to do with cognitive appraisal than with bodily sensation.

So much of our affective comportment toward the world has the nuanced character of mattering to us in myriad ways. We can be bored, enthused, reflective, intrigued, apathetic, confused , etc.

In severe depression , such significance is missing from our world , and as a result , we feel not so much negative affect, but the lack of affect. The world ceases to matter to us at all , whether as unpleasant or pleasant.

But additionally there's a flavor of being initiated into cosmic secrets. — Tom Storm

I've always thought of that as something tacked on, not something that is intrinsic to the way of knowing. All religions and philosophies tend to draw in people who take it and fill it full of fantasy and delusion. Wish fulfillment. I've said this before - to me, self-awareness, and enlightenment I guess, is as everyday as corn flakes. Wait, no... Cheerios. No mystery except what we hide from ourselves.

I haven't read the dopamine book; I am prejudicially suspicious of any attempt to explain complex human motivations and behavior in terms of the effects a neurotransmitter.

I agree that we are, by and large, social beings. Maybe we would do best in small. close communities composed of like-minded individuals. This would seem to characterize Buddhist monastic life. Although non-attachment is the goal, practitioners are advised to "take refuge" in the sangha (the community of aspirants).

I seem to remember a Leonard Cohen song with the lyric line something like "Do we have the strength to be alone together?"

You tell us it is your point. — I like sushi

Que?

In non-attachment, why would you love any particular person? — praxis

As I've gotten older I find myself backing out of life. Becoming less attached to things. A lot of that has to do with retirement - the loss of my "purpose," use, in life. I still love my children, wife, family, friends, but the emotion is less intense. I no longer want or expect things out of these relationships, at least not to the extent I did. I take them as they are.

I like being with people, but I don't miss them when they're gone. When I'm needed, I'm there, but they all have lives of their own. It's a more peaceful life, but it's more than that. I'm able to be a better father, brother, husband, friend now. If I could have found this 50 years ago, I would have had a happier, better life and I would have been better to people.