Re: I guess this is where I end up............

brian mitchell wrote:

There's a dubious reductionism in saying that all the qualities and
ideals of mind are nothing but erroneous projection.

Prove me wrong. :-)

The proof is in our absolute reliance on the notion of truth and our
ability to be aware of it. Without such a fundamentally ineradicable
concept nothing in our existence would make sense, and certainly not
this spiritual seeking/practice. We may argue to the death about *what*
is true, but there seems to be pretty solid agreement that *something*
is true. If the ideal of truth is necessary, others may be too.

Something is true, why not all is true? If everything is true, is everything meaningful? That is another question, the answer to which depends on our projects.

That being said, I also think it is impossible (note the reductionism) to live a satisfying human life without indulging in projections. Satisfaction being itself erroneous, it needs some erroneous ingredients.

You know, don't you, that if you hadn't decided to be a Lama you'd have
made an excellent Jesuit?

Who needs Jesuit ruses if they have indulgences that can make the karmic effect of the worse things disappear by the power of mantras etc. ?

My favourite instance of Jesuitical
path-smoothing concerns the problem of smoking during prayer retreats.
The advice was that though of course one should never smoke while
praying, it is quite acceptable --even laudable-- to pray while smoking.

Nice :-) You can bring bits of the sacred in the secular, but don't dare to bring bits of the secular into the sacred.

Yesterday I read about one monk asking the other who just explained to him that the entire world is a pure plane, the sphere of ultimate reality: "if that is the case, where can I ***?".

Human culture is
based on the sense that we have capabilities and aspirations beyond the
instinctive necessities of nature. Notions of justice and fairness seem
to be so basic to our minds that children latch onto them very early.

Jonathan explained why. Children copy and learn what they see.

I respect Jonathan because he seems to have been prepared to explore his
own mentality directly without just following given maps, but I find I
don't always agree with his conclusions, so to say "Jonathan has
explained..." is not for me the 'Truth which stops the mouth of
thought.'

You are free to err :-)

Children do, indeed, absorb a great deal through empathic observation,
but one can only absorb into a framework, into some pre-existing
capacity, as with the learning of language. Notions of truth, honour,
and fairness exist in every culture and are exhibited early in children
and this suggests to me that they are a part of the evolution of mind,
not late plug-ins.

Notions of truth, honour, and fairness exist in every culture and are learned early by children. The capacity to learn is perhaps pre-existing (although it can't exist before it exists).

Expecting the whole universe to be organised on the principle of justice
may be a magical displacement for something in our own mind, but that
doesn't mean justice is a worthless concept that should be thrown away,
surely?

It can't be thrown away so the question about should it be thrown away doesn't even apply. Justice is ultimately about keeping the peace in a society. Justice doesn't care for individuals as individuals. Fairness only interests it in sofar the peace in a society claims it.

Reductionist again. You're speaking about the judicial arm of the state.
Justice as a basic felt concept is about truth, its discovery and
establishment.

Then who is just if he can get away with anything? Why should we weigh and balance everything? Because if you forget the smallest thing (who knows the proper value of things) the whole concept of justice collapses. It's not a useful concept and especially if you are looking for peace of mind.

The desire embedded in notions of karma and sowers
reaping is that the universe be intrinsically ordered, not random. Are
you arguing for a totally random universe?

I don't argue for or against. I acknowledge my insignificance, my lack of power, and even of commitment (were I to believe I did have power). We wanted freedom and free will so bad and what has it done to/for us? Are we any happier because of it? No, it gave us more responsibility than we can carry and that is good for any man.

I also find that this issue in general suffers from a conflation between
natural and human events, and your monkey analogy does this. Natural
disasters are truly accidental, without motive or intent, but the great
proportion of "bad" things that happen to people can be traced back to
other people, which complicates things.

Yes but those who sow don't reap. That's wishful thinking. That's where the common notion of karma goes terribly wrong in my opinion.

It is wishful thinking, but a wish that comes from so deep a place that
we've based not just our judicial ordering of society on it, but even
our religions.

I would say religion came first and then the judicial system has been inspired from that, even in the whole theatrical setup of justice.

I'm not sure we can meaningfully talk about things,
truths, which have no relation at all to our own minds. We couldn't
experience them, just the way our ears aren't built to hear above a
certain frequency. So it may be that our universe, the only one we're
constituted to be able to encounter, does self-correct in a way that we
dimly grasp at in our theories of karma.

I don't exclude that possibility. And that thought will keep my thought of the deep need for justice/symmetry occupied.

That last bit sounded fanciful to me even as I wrote it, but then I
pondered it some more. James Lovelock's Gaia theory, proposing that the
earth is a self-correcting bio-system is now the accepted model, I
understand.

On a material level.

And really it is logical that any system, in order to remain
coherent, must self-correct.

A system is order is symmetry. Is reality symmetric or balance? Could anything ex-ist if it doesn't stick out, in other words if it isn't in some way dissymmetrical.

The question then remains: is there a moral
component to how the universe is ordered (if it is)?

The answer often is that if God doesn't exist, we need (the deep need you mentioned) him to exist as a moral counterweight. But that deep need is felt because of the way we function. Could we function differently?

All I'm saying here
is that we shouldn't dismiss possibilities merely because they offend a
latterday rationality, which is what I think I see a lot of modern
Buddhists doing.

But between what people do, say and "believe" and deeply believe there can be a lot of differences. How many of us talk in order to convince ourselves? Anything we say is a corrective. It isn't meant to replace what is, but it is meant to change our experience of what is by changing the distribution of values around.

. . . Then there's the question of whether one is
oneself an excrement-flinging monkey to any degree.

Undeniably. Every step I make, every breath I take can be and probably is the cause of flinging excrement onto someone. I can't stop it and I can't help it.

Why are you so helpless?

Shouldn't I be helpless?

Is it intentional, a conscious path? "Touch
nothing, leave everything as you found it," makes you free?

If one does enter the game of symmetry, one can only play the game or rather the game plays one. If one accepts one's helplessness, and doesn't feel need to "be free", then I guess one is as near to freedom as possible. The concept of freedom is a huge trap.

I experience dissatisfaction with all my objections to what's put
forward on this subject, which should (and does) tell me something. But
I experience equal dissatisfaction at everything that's put forward.

:-) It's put forward, that's all. It isn't mine, it isn't yours (i.e. I don't you lock up in what you put forward) and it is dissatisfying. We fling excrements in response to excrements that are flung onto us. Most dissatisfying.

I would so much like something better.

Change the image of what is happening. We could throw flowers and express our mutual love. :-)
.