Re: Bahiya


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

. . . I consider that I have a 'mental life', e.g. working on mental
questions, that frequently seems to have barely any relation to my
contemporaneous physical life.

I always wanted to achieve that state, be an Artiste for whom the
physical world was an utter mystery as to how and why it worked and so
on. Unfortunately, I have this damned practical streak.

Erm... I'm not sure how I came to be an 'Artiste'...

No, I really was talking about myself. You don't read everything as a
veiled reference to yourself do you? :-)

Well, when people want to acheive 'that state' I just described, I get
easily confused :)

. . . although I'm enjoying
the sensation for as long I can sustain it... I might have to get a pipe
and
start getting onto the train in my carpet slippers etc....

Oh please! They wouldn't go with your #2 haircut. No, I'm seeing combat
trousers and boots. Bit passé of course, but we could refresh the look
with something really retro like a sleeveless Afghan over a collarless
Mao shirt. You'll have to get some piercings.

:) If it wasn't for the fact that I'd get inconvenienced by too many, "Who
does he think he is?"-es, I'd let my clothing reflect my Inner 'Dandy'.

...figure out the best way to attack a maths problem, when it comes to
you and
you go on to work out the answer, the body's physical environment is
practically irrelevant.

What a swot! I happen to know from bitter experience that maths-exam
chairs are the hardest and least comfortable in the world, the desks the
most cramped, the room decor the most soul-defeating, the acoustics the
most psychopathic, and the other examinees the most
seriously-dandruffed, fourest-eyed sneak-farts ever to assemble. How
come you didn't see all this?

:) We were The Young Gods who played Guitars and loved Rock.

Do you suspect the server of your experience to have its own distortions
and agendas, then?

Yes.

That would leave you on somewhat shifting ground,
wouldn't it?

Yes.

Is there anything trustable?

I don't know. Does 'trustability' depend on an absence of distortion,
agendas and shiftingness?

The name 'experience' is fine, I'm just (still) trying to find out more
precisely what you mean by it, is all.

As a noun, something like the sum of the present content of consciousness.
Patanjali had a term 'pratyaya' which stood for something like that. As does
the Buddha's "The seen, heard, sensed and cognized" which is a shorthand
version of his five aggregates over six sense bases.

Would you agree that "I
experience my thoughts" means exactly the same as "I am aware of my
thoughts"?

As a verb, pretty much.

...for you there are no
objects over there, there is only the experience of (an inferred) them
as served to you.

Yes. I mean, if someone said, "You see that tree/rainbow over there?...", it
would be less trouble to just say, "Yes." and let them continue. But if you
were being 'strict' or 'philosophical' about it the answer would be, "No."

Is experience served to (your) awareness?

Kind of sort of. The thing is that here in whacky world, suppose I try to
remember someone's name and can't. Then it occurs to me half an hour later.
The half an hour apart parts are 'experiences' but what happens in the
middle in the only inferrable server aren't 'experiences'. So it's not as if
an 'experience' is being brought on a silver salver before it 'turns into
one' in my 'experiential world' if you see what I mean. That would be like
'pictures' travelling up your optic nerves. They'd never fit. Even sideways.

If so, and
you say you distrust the idea of an impartial, choiceless and
unmotivated awareness, there's yet another layer of uncertainty and
possible delusion. The server has its biases and awareness has *its*.

Sort of kind of. Certainly the server. But with this 'awareness' thing. I
know that it feels as though (or somesuch) we are some kind of eye or
viewpoint 'aware of' the changing contents on the experiential 'screen', it
still feels to me like a too muchness in that all I can ever really 'find'
is the changing contents on the screen.

I
think I'm justified in automatically translating your 'experience'
into
my 'awareness', particularly if no inferred self or subject is
involved
in either.

OK. (As long as there's no surreptitious sneaking in of such).

No sneaking. But I have to say that with no self, no subjective
viewpoint, and a multiply aggregating machinery of perception, it's
getting very difficult to distinguish you from the Buddhist standing
beside you.

:) I don't know about 'self'. Partly because the historical Indian
Philosophical categories were all a bit bonkers. E.g. permanent vs.
impermanent. Independent vs. dependent. Born vs. unborn. Etc. I can't find
referents for those and related philosophical concepts. I can find a
'subjective viewpoint' more at some times than others. E.g. if my main focus
was on sensory pictures and sounds, it would be (within the 3D virtual
reality) behind my eyes and halfway between my ears. But when you go to the
rest of sensation e.g. touch, smell, taste, proprioception, geothingummy,
pleasure, pain etc. it's not so clear. And when you start adding thoughts,
moods, emotions, volitions, meanings etc. it gets even less clear where to
put the "Your awareness is here" arrow on the 3D experiential map.

...Perhaps more like when you go for your walk you have a
clipboard and pen and you only relate to those things you can tick off
from the list, the things you already know. If something unfamiliar
forces itself forward you say, "well, you're quite like a bat, and a bit
like a tulip, so we'll call you a bap and we'll know you the next time."

:) (Like an aard-vark-ground-hog or earth-pig-earth-pig.)

But perhaps that, if it happens at all, happens at the level of the
server for you, and you would never know. If you feel no
counterfeitness, or like a bird trapped behind glass which can see the
sky but not get to it, then there probably is none.

I think I get your general drift. (I told Tang that his reaction to me was
like that of the apocryphal German officer at the zoo who stares at the
giraffe for ten minutes and then wanders off shaking his head muttering,
"That cannot exist."). I never cease to be impressed by this optical
illusion artwork in the foyer of B'ham museum where they've somehow
contrived a picture of an art gallery on three pyramidal structures poking
out from a flat surface which appear to move in a freakish way as you walk
past it. And they had a Bridget Riley picture in there briefly which I kept
returning to to beboggle myself with. But overall, I find the singular
reality very singular realityish, as it should be.

It's still an alien barrier to me. To my chagrin, I remain a naive
realist. I can see it in this weird medium, which is inherently cellular
and atomist, but not between me and my apple trees.

:) How about my theory that if you can see that you're a naive realist, then
you can't really be one? (I'll be needing a scorecard holding up with marks
out of ten for 'gnomic-ity' ;)

Well, in many way we're clearly not identical, different genders,
bodies, likes, dislikes, memories, et al. In what *are* we identical?

Well, as a non-'physicalist' (like many of them) I like to get away with
blue murder in that department. Having dispensed with atmen and
buddha-natures etc. the basic shape or machinery or potential or somesuch of
the server and/or the subjective world can do the job till I think of
something better.

Part of it comes down to 'convergence theory'. E.g. my model of increasing
'empathetic range' - increasingly turning 'them' into 'us' - used to be
based, by default, on increase by 'accretion' or 'addition'. But eventually,
it came to seem to me that it was more likely that there was some kind of
increasing 'submission' to a pre-existent more Nelson Mandela or Martin
Luther King sized 'bigness'. But I see this 'convergence' elsewhere e.g in
people who can no longer be bothered to argue against 2+2 equalling 4 just
for the sake of being 'distinctive' or 'unique' or whatever. To me, when I
read tracts which to me, "Tell it like it is", 'who' it was becomes less and
less relevant. There's less trace of a 'distinctive personality', less in
there that is 'copyrightable' or 'that was my idea, that was'.

- but in case something 'emerges' from the
following. I inadvertently blocked Cameron's posts when I bulk-blocked
some
of the recent cross-posters and I'll unblock him some time but I saw a
number of his interractions with Ch'an Fu. Bless his cotton socks and
all
that but e.g. in relation to his current problems with his parents, the
way
I see it, part of the 'problem' comes down to 'identity' - what am I?
vs.
what am I not? Hypothetically, he is 'free' to situate himself anywhere
the
following spectrum: I am a pictures, sounds, thoughts, emotions kind of
pleasure/pain and 'the human experience' kind of person 99% similar to
my
parents > through to > I am a Buddhist whereas they are Christians...
very
different. I regard the former as truer and the latter as much more
dubious.

OK, identical in general structure and functioning, both physical and
mental. Like sheep, only the shepherd can tell them apart. Is that it?

Yes. To me, a lot of religious people have a disproportionate investment in
inconsequential beliefs because the focus is primarily on the apparent
'invulnerability' of them. E.g. 'creationism'. It looks like a belief one
could hold indefinitely without fear of disproof (or proof come to that). I
would put 'free will' in the same class. I.e. there's no experience you
could have which would either prove or disprove its putative existence. (I
know that in their own subtitles, Buddhists don't have 'beliefs' but...)...
there are any number of them in Buddhism, especially at the start e.g.
nibbana... then there's solipsism, scepticism-related ones etc. etc. If one
defines oneself and what one is like vs. unlike in terms of those, there is
no cure until you decide not to bother any more.

Is there also a difference in type between the sound output of the
loudspeakers and the experience triggered?

Yes. Only inferrable atomic vibration patterns vs. experience.

I kind of get your drift but there seems something 'unsymmetrical' about
it
[...] All the loveliness is 'out there' in the friends and your attention
moves 'outward' toward it whereas all of the slightedness and outrage is
'in
here' and your attention is drawn 'inward' toward it. Couldn't you at
least
even up the deal such that e.g. either the love is also within or the
irksomeness is also out there in the shop assistant?

It's the terrible fear of shop assistants which creates the 'in here'
and the love of the friend which dissolves it.

:) That sounds a bit better.

Well, my use of language does border on the criminal. I didn't realise
quite
how criminal until yesterday when I saw Ch'an Fu's exquisite placement
of an
apostrophe before 'round' in "...go 'round..."

Exquisite indeed. And correct.

:)

This bewilders me as much as
it seems to bewilder other people in that people - often the same
people -
seem to find what I say alternately clear, insightful etc. and
extravagant,
bizarre, incomprehensible etc. Since I'm just doing my thing throughout,
I
can't see what it is that I'm doing differently during the times when it
comes across the latter way.

Little Lamb, who made thee?

(I assume that's the innocence partner to the Tyger one).

If you're trying to persuade me that you never write for effect I'm
simply not going to believe you. Tell that to your Inner Gorgeousity.

It depends what you mean by 'for effect'. I once wrote a letter to a
hospital staff member mentioning that my shrink was a "constipated owl".
They knew what I meant and so did all the staff it got passed round. I
rarely do 'devil's advocacy'. I get a bit 'picturesque' but usually in line
with what I am advancing.

Jonathan



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