[Wittrs] Re: When is "brain talk" really dualism?
- From: "swmaerske" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:31:48 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Cayuse" <z.z7@...> wrote:
>
> Stuart wrote:
> > Cayuse wrote:
> >> Stuart wrote:
> >>> If there are physical objects in the world and physical features, there
> >>> are also relations between these and states of affairs and, of course,
> >>> the experiences of seeing, or otherwise "observing", each of these.
> >>
> >> There is no observer of "subjective experience".
> >
> > There is and there isn't. It depends what we mean by "subjective
> > experience" (as we have seen above) and what we mean by "observe".
> > As a Zen student I could sit and observe my own breath (not literally
> > see or look at it of course, but be aware of it as it flowed in and out)
> > and my own thoughts. Of course the aim of the practice was to reach
> > a stage where the feeling of being separate from what I was attending
> > to evaporated, where separate thoughts of self and the world of a self
> > and the recollections of such a world were finally banished and all that
> > was left was the observed, etc.
> >
> > So Zen (and I suppose some other mystical disciplines) start out with
> > an observer and an observed (allowing us to use such terms, of course)
> > and end up with a sense that the two have merged or simply ceased to
> > persist as distinct and separate concepts. This, of course, is a mystical
> > regime, an effort to change the perspective. Whatever value this has,
> > it is not philosophy per se. One cannot argue for it or against it.
> > One either seeks and/or achieves it or not. It is outside the realm of
> > philosophy and disputation. So it really has no place here.
>
>
> Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
> After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
> The ox-herder returns to the market place.
>
>
> > The real practitioner spurns such discussions and just sits.
>
>
> There is no "one and only true path". It is a pathless path.
>
As the Sean Connery character tells Elliot Ness in the film The Untouchables,
"here endeth the lesson."
or as my roshi used to say, "just sit".
But what can this last mean?
Well it cannot mean that "all" paths are correct can it? What if we don't "just
sit"? What if we follow a path of words and dispute about things where we
already agree words have no purchase? Is such a path equal to a path which
gives up that notion? Can we reach enlightenment by doing the very things which
lead us into illusion? Is no path a wrong path even if there is more than one
"right path"?
SWM
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