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


"brian mitchell" <brainmill@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
"Mayura" wrote:

. . . The Buddha equated craving (the will to exist, to re-exist, to
become more and more etc.), volition, mental volition and kamma. In
effect,
that was near enough the 'will of mind' when 'turned' by and 'aligned
with'
the 'will of the body'. (Patanjali has "the strong desire for life which
dominates even the learned/wise")...

OK so far. I confess to being dominated by a strong desire for life.

The Buddha has it that hatred, greed and
delusion 'trickle' from pain, pleasure and neither to the extent that
the
mind 'links on' to them or somesuch.

So mental qualities arise from- or in response to- physical ones. Mens
sana in corpore sana, and at my boarding school on the Eastern plains of
Yorkshire we had to wear short trousers and open-necked shirts until the
temperature got down to freezing, no allowance made for windchill
factor.

Sounds "character-building".

However, the corollary of that would be that you could purify the mind
by purifying the body, which the Buddha was into for a while, I'm told,
but then specifically rejected. So are you sure you've got the equation
quite right?

Yes. (I got it partly from MN.44, although a different translation from the
acesstoinsight one). The thing is that you can't (in his model) "purify the
mind
by purifying the body" because every physical sensation is going to be
accompanied by either pleasure, pain or neither. So you'd only be shuffling
around between the proportions of those. He adopted the "middle way" between
self-indulgence (upping the pleasure-accompanied proportion) and
self-mortification (upping the pain-accompanied proportion) and saw the main
'problem' as with the 'neither'-accompanied proportion. I don't know if you
are familiar with the glyph of the Kabbalah but if so, it would come in
handy in adapting to a visual model of this. With sensory pain on one side
and sensory pleasure on the other and 'neither' (just 'information') up the
middle and then what 'trickles from' them or what the mind attaches to as
higher 'mental' corresponders of those - one side, other side and middle.

Patanjali's model is essentially the same. He has five 'kilesas' in an order
which have to be 'resolved' back to the 'master-problem' - 'ignorance'. They
go 'ignorance' > 'identification' or 'I-am-ness' > attraction accompanying
pleasure > repulsion accompanying pain > strong desire for life. These can
all be slotted in to the same parts of the model as the Buddha's.

In his representation of dark kamma leading to dark result (e.g. as per
the
Kalamas Sutta) hatred, greed and delusion give rise to a bunch of 'dark'
deeds which give rise to long term pain and suffering. With bright kamma
leading to bright result, the absence of hatred greed and delusion gives
rise to the deeds characterized by the absence of the previous-listed
'darkness' which give rise to long-term welfare and benefit or somesuch.

I have a problem here with an absence of something being causal, and
also with seeing the distinction between the absence of 'darkness' and
the neutral qualities. Seems to me the bright kamma would have to depend
on positive values as much as the dark ('positive' meaning not
absences), such as love, generosity and clarity of discernment. I could
see no-kamma arising from absences.

The Buddha equated 'kamma' with the fourth aggregate including 'mental
volition' (returning - 'fruit' / 'result' via the second aggregate
'feeling'). In the Kalama Sutta (AN.365) it is put in terms of absences
causing absences i.e. "And this ungreedy... unaversive... undeluded
person... does not kill living beings, take what is not given... all of
which is for long-term welfare and happiness." In this, 'dark' and 'bright'
are not both equal 'positives' because there is also a 'dropping' scheme
i.e. with the dropping of 'dark' there is 'bright' and with the abandonment
of both (and mixed) there is 'no result'.

What it comes down to is that with the eradication of the the effect of the
'body's will' 'turning' the mind's will, there is the mind's own 'default'
will i.e. as characterised by compassion, equanimity, loving-kindness and
symapathetic joy. These have simply ceased to be 'occluded' by the previous
(although they can also be further 'developed'). These are the
(mental/volitional) 'positives'.

With "the volition to abandon both dark and bright (and mixed) kamma"
(volition and deeds in accordance with the eightfold path, I think) this
leads to "no result".

So *in effect*, the 'will of the body' (as actualized via 'turning' the
mind) is equated with dark kamma, pain and suffering. and is 'the
enemy'.
The 'will of the mind' (un-'turned' by the 'will of the body') is
equated
with bright kamma and welfare and benefit or similar and is OK although
still impermanent, conditioned, unsatisfactory etc. And 'the will
aligned to
nibbana' is equated with leading to no result, which is ideal.

I can't go for all this, for any number of reasons. One is that it
accords
the mind negligible "will of its own" and makes it pretty much
"clean-up-able". Even subtler problems like 'self' and 'ignorance' are
represented in terms of the mind being inadvertently 'turned' by what
comes
at it via the sense-bases - 'misinterpreting' it.

I accord the mind way more weight in the mix than this and a 'will of
its
own' to defend its 'self' and reproduce itself and analogous painful and
pleasurable emotions in relation to the thwarting and satisfaction of
those.

Well, you seem not to be consistent in this. In the thread about Jon
Ayres' malady you suggested that his mind --as expressed in his posts
about buggies and fluids-- could well be the direct result of bodily
malfunction, prostatitis, and that if this were treated his mind would
then be "cleaned up." And in your own case you seem to have a
preferential wish for psychotic thought to arise from the physical cause
of porphyria rather than any solely mental dysfunction. Excuse me if
I've read you completely wrong on this last bit.

My default assumption is that all forms of psychosis are physically
(biochemically) triggered. E.g. psychosis associated with porphyria, mania,
psychotic depression, the schizophrenia family, psychadelics-induced, acute
delirium possibly (?) and arguably dreaming also etc. I would still see my
own as "arising from a physical cause" whatever the correct diagnosis was.
E.g. with manic-depression, the incidence is about 1% of the general
population, about 15% in first degree relatives and more like 75-80% in
identical twins (whether seperated at birth and reared differently or not).
So I think the 'potential' for classic mania is biochemically determined.

I'm dubious about any of them being due to "solely mental dysfunction"
although it's permissable to have that in parallel. The split wasn't quite
as clear-cut as this but I used to vastly prefer the locked ward people (who
were mostly psychotics) to the open ward people who mostly, in my opinion,
had "solely mental dysfunction". To me, on average, the psychotics tended to
be more or less normal - like me ;) under a sort of 'overlay' whereas the
open ward lot, on average, tended to be 'vampires'. And the staff on the
locked ward tended to be more normal, like me, also. Whereas the staff on
the open ward tended to be more like their vampire patients (with all sorts
of individual exceptions to all of the above).

With Jon Ayres, first, assuming he is experiencing psychosis (which I don't
have enough information to in the first place. He could be faking it or
having a laugh or anything. I could write a screed like that while sane for
all sorts of reasons). It is important to get the right diagnosis because
treatments made according to the wrong diagnosis can be hideously physically
and/or emotionally painful including inducing death (including via inducing
suicide).

The only 'problems' I care about are physical and emotional pain. (Not to be
confused with the Buddha's 'dukkha'). In itself, psychosis is not
intrinsically either pleasurable or painful or neither. E.g. people
willingly use psychadelics and enjoy dreams etc. The difference between a
'good' trip and a 'bad' trip / dream or nightmare is just 'pain'. There are
potentially painful knock-on effects from being psychotic (with or without
pain) e.g. impacts on driving, earning, savings, public perception, knowing
too much too soon to be able to process it, etc. All these things are like
'seperate variables' to me.

Furthermore, I've just realised, you're busily ascribing all the
supposedly mystical experiences of various folk in the past to the
ingestation of ergot; mental experience directly arising from physical
condition. What you don't suggest, and Jesus (for one) agrees with you,
is that by taking thought you can add one inch to your stature.

I don't classify the experiences of the people I ascribed
psychadelics-induced experiences to as "mystical". E.g. the Vikings,
Indo-Aryans, Hebrews of the Moses era, Mayans etc. My idea of "mystical"
involves all of that non-duality 'union' with the void or the one or the
self or whatever malarkey. All of the referred-to lot produced the same kind
of 3D virtual reality earth/skyscapes with Gods and monsters acting out big
'dramas'.

This makes much more sense of all sorts of phenomena. E.g. 'self-harm'
and
suicide. Where the mind's 'will' predominates over the body's 'will' as
per
"(bodily) Death Before (mental) Dishonour" etc. It is 'as if' the
(inferrable) mind's and body's 'wills' compete with each other for use
of
the same experiential 'screens'...

<I'm familiar with the illustration and agree>

Likewise, Freud had it something like that the arts were 'sublimated'
sex.
Which is like saying that bodily reproduction and mental reproduction
are
competitors and the more one is, the less the other is...

Not just Freud but many artists, occultists and blue-kneed moralists.

Likewise, you can
stimulate anger and/or fear by threatening either the bodily 'self' or
the
mind's 'self'...

This I'm not sure of. I have the sense that when the bodily self is
threatened it goes immediately into instinctive reflex action. Anger and
fear are mental states arising from mental images, I would have thought.

OK. Supposing the threatening is not so immediate e.g. we're going to
execute your body next Tuesday?

With 'self-harm', people attempt to 'control' a potentially
'uncontrollable' emotional pain via application of an apparently
'controllable' sensory pain (blocking the potential emotional pain from
using the same pain 'screen')...

Yes, I can see that.

Euthenasia and suicide are extensions of
that.

Although I've heard that some euthanasia is to bring a halt to
unbearable physical pain that palliative care can't deal with.

Yes. That's the reverse in one way, but the same in a couple of others e.g.
it shows that the 'mind's will' is prepared to overcome the 'body's will' to
'live at any price' and the mind is prepared to acheive peace for itself via
manipulating the body (even to the point of killing it if necessary).

'Thoughts' can be easily suppressed by rapt attention on sensory
'sounds'.
(See under - the Buddha in the 'scary place' prior to his awakening). Or
by
rapt attention on sensory 'pictures' if they are of a pictorial type. Or
both. There are all manner of suchlike 'correspondences' pointing to the
sense of according the mind a much greater 'weight' in the mix...

But this illustration works against your thesis. Thoughts (mind) are
easily suppressed by rapt attention to sounds (bodily sensation). If the
rapt attention is the mind, you're still saying that the only way the
mind can control itself is by tying itself to sensation. Body trumps
mind again.

Well.... no. As an example, suppose you're reading a book and want to go to
the toilet. There's a conflict between the mind's will to continue reading
and the mind's will (via the body's will 'turning it') to go to the toilet.
You might be able to set aside the body's will for another three hours
before the body wet itself despite your mind's will. And you might be able
to set aside the book for two minutes. (I mean, it's not as if I've written
any ;) So, experientially, there's not that much sense of 'force' or
'urgency' from either side (as there would be in a sudden crisis). You're
aware that you could do either and that the desire to go to the toilet will
increasingly impinge on your involvement with the book so you take an
'executive decision'.

Likewise with using concentration on relevant (competing) sensory
sounds/pictures to suppress 'thoughts'. It's just an (experientially)
'unpressured' 'executive decision' to preference the absence of thoughts
over their presence and therefore do what is required to not have them for a
period. Clearly there could be instances on both sides where it was a lot
more 'immediately pressing' than that. E.g. with an old geezer accidentally
stumbling into a clothes 'boutique' cum disco and saying "I couldn't hear
myself 'think' in that place" or e.g. the other way with the unwanted
intrusion of obsessional thoughts.

rather than
accepting the Buddha's easily 'clean-up-able' mind and his supra-mental
'nibbana'. But, looking at it my way, all the potential 'virtues' and
'vices' and 'problems' and 'solutions' would look very different.

I see; you're serialising your posts and have to end on a cliff-hanger.

:) Partly, I thought that was 'enough to be going along with'. Because what
tends to happen is that people work backwards from the unwanted conclusion
to the unwantedness of the theory leading up to it.

What I've got from this is that you seem to be saying that the Buddha
seemed to be saying that mind is an emergent quality of matter --or
maybe even a secondary quality, just a systemic apparency. Do you
actually disagree with that?

I don't think he was saying that and I'm certainly not.

The alternative is to say that mind can and
does exist independently of- and maybe prior to- matter. Then you'd have
to say how they got mixed up with each other.

I think he was saying the latter and so am I. I think he treated both as
beginingless (or the 'beginning' as being undiscerible or somesuch). I don't
know if he bothered with 'ontological' questions about how they got mixed up
in that his primary concern is with the improvement of experience (cessation
of dukkha) and only enough inferred stuff as to be relevant to his version
of that. He also wants to abandon both in favour of the im-im-permanent
'parinibbana'.

In my case, I'm just using my terms as 'placeholders'. I.e. physicalists
could just make experience some emergent property of the brain and the
conflict between the mind's will vs. the body's will as like a conflict
between the brain 'doing its own thing' vs. dealing with 'incoming' or
somesuch. If I don't survive death, that's how it will have been. If they do
survive bodily death, they'll have to retrospectively infer how the two got
mixed up e.g. 'electrically' or whatever.

As to kamma, until I get the next episode I don't know how you're
accounting for what happens, if you are. Is your money on randomicity?
On the theory that there are no events, only the mind seeing a
projection of itself in matter? Or...?

I don't know about "kamma" because it's not really my thing. I.e. it comes
from the Buddha's (and similar's) 'models' which I'm very sceptical about.
Among other things, I think that people whose primary focus is
'against-pain' can't do much right (for themselves or anyone else) except
incidentally whether with the Buddha's 'dark' body's-will-driven kamma or
with his 'bright' mind's will (cleaned of body's will)-driven compassionate,
equanimous etc. kamma. And people who live 'for'-ishly can't do much wrong
(for themselves or anyone else) except incidentally.

Jonathan






.

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