Anatta (clarification)

So the argument goes that for each "thing" different people hold different ideas.

A common belief is that people hold the same ideas. And an equally common rebuttal is the evidence that police reports differ enormously. Not only do people mis-perceive or mis-remember (or both) events but they prioritise the narrative differently threading different parts of the parallel events together into a single story which can bear no similarity to other narratives of the same event!

So it is fairly clear that at least peoples stories and mental representation of events ar widely variant. But at least there are objective events upon which to hang these stories on...

Or are there?

We have the reliable opinion of Buddha that actually the stories are all there are.

Last night I was thinking back over my own half baked philosophies and saw that in the maelstrom of confusions certain truths had started to form... more evidently the question what difference is there between a story about something and the thing itself?

To put that more specifically if we form a theory of the brain, then don't we use the brain to form that theory. The thinking is done by the brain we think, so actually there is no "brain" only thoughts and thoughts of a brain.

This is the proto self reference realisiation.

Or, we can turn that around and say that there are no thoughts only brain chemistry and charge.

Or we can have a hibrid position where there is brain and thoughts but they either do, or don't over lap. i.e. Brain IS Thoughts (which is nonsense since brain is a lot more than thoughts) or there are some thoughts without the brain (which is also nonsense because stone's can't think).

Its a jolly mess anyway and it all stems from this belief that in addition to the story there are also "real" "entities" upon which to hang the clothing and learn the lines.

But of course we don't learn the lines - we write the lines and that is the difference. Why does there need to be something behind the thoughts, behind the things to make them "real". Aren't they just what they seem?

Maybe the idea is supported by the policeman doing a thorough enquiry and getting "to" the truth. That behind the mess of appearances there is a solid immutable truth upon which people have hung their stories.

But then we enter Plato territory. What is the relationship between the stories and the truth? Why do people see the Truth in so many ways if it is only Truth? What causes all the variance and confusion in a world that is True? When something corresponds with the "truth" and is true, and something else doesn't correspond with the truth and is "false" how do we know they correspond? And what is the substance of "correspondence"? Does that exist to? Or is a etheral ghostly ether that links the true idea to the true thing? Shurangama Sutra also goes into this a lot.

Yup its a nightmare of confusion all stemming from this idea of there being real things to support that notion that some ideas are true, and to stand against the idea that other ideas are false.

So is a policemans work ever done then? At what point does he realise he has the truth? Can he ever be sure that he has his man? Can he ever be sure that his "certainty" is not just another round of bad evidence and faulty witnessing?

This is why we once knew God. Niestzche take note that the Ubermench could never be his own father, could never be his own judge, could never tell his own story. He needed you, and you needed God.

God is the judge not Man. God may have become a solid "truth", a mythical polytheistic entity comprising the innumerable forms of the universe, simply awaiting discovery by Man like some languid woman asleep in her bed chamber. But this myth is the lowest of the myths, the delusion of a Man at the height of his folly, there is no woman awaiting his tender kiss, the search is in vain for it is not she that is sleeping but Him.

Yet as the Greeks well noted; the process that Man undertakes in his desperate searching for Her, His anguished trials to earn him the prize of unity with His unknown; this itself is Truth - the dialectic - with no end and no object to claim for bounty - the journey is the prize.

So they say in Religion that we walk path and have a destiny and heed the call. This is not the way "to" God but the way "of" God - a simple difference in tense in most languages. Jesus says I Am the Way for there is no Jesus to seek or find or possess or stand near but simply the Dao of Jesus, The Way of Jesus the Christian Way. And, here thank God, my own struggles bring me through the darkest night of delusion - truely the Valley of Death - where around me spoke people who claimed that theirs was the True Way To God - and some turned dark when it was suggested that there are other way to God, and still others have killed in the name of Their Way To God obliterating the infidels who were godless in their eyes, turning the flesh to dust (for some reason). But a great laugh then rose from god who peeled away the mask to show his hideous mocking grin : the Way To God is also called the Devil. The Maya. The greatest illusion, mother of all conflict and evil and suffering, the downfall of all men - for the True God lay by the roadside and the Destination was simply a story told amongst travellers to bring encouragement for the weary.