16 Aug '07 04:24>
There is a bedrock in terms of our experience of reality. And this bedrock is just—experiencing, without thoughts or mental representations of any kind—this, now, including ourselves in and of it. (The conceptual boundaries separating us from it disappear.)
I could put lots of “scare quotes” around those words. But perhaps that just adds to the conceptual clutter.
A very few people on here have convinced me that they knew, intimately, this bedrock before all their other talk. Some of them are theists, some not. Some refuse to talk about it at all, because all talk (and writing) is in the domain of conceptualization—and the bedrock is absolutely non-conceptual. The problem with conceptual talk is that we may begin to think that it is a concept too. Like conceptualizations of God, or—hell, even “experience” perhaps (itself a dangerous word).
Concepts are manageable: we can manipulate them and combine them into systems of philosophy and religion. Sometimes those conceptual systems seem so compelling that we can become lost in them—and forget about it altogether. What do you do with no-concept? What can you say about no-concept? How can you moralize about it? Philosophize about it?
Easier to keep on thinking and talking “about and about.”
Isn’t that terrible? I can just hear the “arguments from terribleness” now!
Get to the bedrock. Spend sufficient time there, without thoughts or concepts. Realize how your thoughts and concepts spring from it, how it defines them, and not the other way around. Realize that you are of it, and not the other way around. Regardless of talk and texts.
Then you will realize the paltriness and paradox of the texts, on the one hand, and the profundity of what they point to (with myth and metaphor and symbol), on the other. And you will realize how inadequate they are—all attempts at conceptualization and definition are—in the face of that non-conceptual suchness of which you are. And you will hesitate to give it even a name, let alone a doctrine. Reality is prior to all names and doctrines. And all our attempts can only point to that, which is in itself ineffable.
We are, however, thinking, self-reflective beings. That is the nature of our consciousness. Nothing wrong with that, per se. It is part of our part of it. But that is all it is. Just don’t confuse what is prior and ineffable with our attempts to “eff” it.
_____________________________________________
The Tao that can be spoken of is not the real Tao.
Names cannot define or circumscribe it.
I don’t know what to call it—I call it Tao.
(Paraphrased from Lao Tzu.)
I could put lots of “scare quotes” around those words. But perhaps that just adds to the conceptual clutter.
A very few people on here have convinced me that they knew, intimately, this bedrock before all their other talk. Some of them are theists, some not. Some refuse to talk about it at all, because all talk (and writing) is in the domain of conceptualization—and the bedrock is absolutely non-conceptual. The problem with conceptual talk is that we may begin to think that it is a concept too. Like conceptualizations of God, or—hell, even “experience” perhaps (itself a dangerous word).
Concepts are manageable: we can manipulate them and combine them into systems of philosophy and religion. Sometimes those conceptual systems seem so compelling that we can become lost in them—and forget about it altogether. What do you do with no-concept? What can you say about no-concept? How can you moralize about it? Philosophize about it?
Easier to keep on thinking and talking “about and about.”
Isn’t that terrible? I can just hear the “arguments from terribleness” now!
Get to the bedrock. Spend sufficient time there, without thoughts or concepts. Realize how your thoughts and concepts spring from it, how it defines them, and not the other way around. Realize that you are of it, and not the other way around. Regardless of talk and texts.
Then you will realize the paltriness and paradox of the texts, on the one hand, and the profundity of what they point to (with myth and metaphor and symbol), on the other. And you will realize how inadequate they are—all attempts at conceptualization and definition are—in the face of that non-conceptual suchness of which you are. And you will hesitate to give it even a name, let alone a doctrine. Reality is prior to all names and doctrines. And all our attempts can only point to that, which is in itself ineffable.
We are, however, thinking, self-reflective beings. That is the nature of our consciousness. Nothing wrong with that, per se. It is part of our part of it. But that is all it is. Just don’t confuse what is prior and ineffable with our attempts to “eff” it.
_____________________________________________
The Tao that can be spoken of is not the real Tao.
Names cannot define or circumscribe it.
I don’t know what to call it—I call it Tao.
(Paraphrased from Lao Tzu.)