Bufo Bufo

Thought this picture of common toads mating on 24th March really captured that medaeval netherworld image they used to have.

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.

Clarity

Just watching a doco with Mum on her favourite actor Paul Scofield... 



Watching this it awakens me to something I have lost, what was taken by "My Muse", a crystals clear communion with other consciousness... we had that, it was lost, I lost it, we? lost it. Since then I have been unable to look into anyone's eyes in peace, I have been unable to look into my own eyes in peace, the crystal pool of the world has been disturbed, the waters paled, The Winter has come; but between the driving clouds that blow into this valley there are breaks and on that wind I have tasted the hint of fragrance again.

Paul Scofield writes in answer to a request to speak at a seminar on acting:

I have found that an actor's work has interest only in its execution; it seems to whither away in discussion and becomes emptily theoretical and insubstantial. It has no rules except perhaps audibility. With every play and every playwrite, the actor starts from scratch as if he or she knows nothing and proceeds to learn afresh every time, growing with the relationships of the characters and the insights of the writer. When the play has finished its run the actor is empty until the next time, and it is the emtpiness which is, i find, apparent in any discussion of theatre work.

Aren't we all merely actors and all the world a stage? When each thing is done, we are empty really to be filled with the next. We take nothing. Isn't it that emptiness that many are afraid of, for in that emptiness we think we see Death and we grasp out to secure some solidity and proof that "I Am". Alas it is vain. We are a vessel into which the world is poured, and to hold all we must forgo being held ourselves. To know God, to see YaHWeH, to know "I AM" is to know "I AM NOT". Thus those who wish to find "I AM" within must turn from the "I AM" outside and this way the jug tips out its contents in a futile struggle to pour itself into itself. The dog begins to chase its tail and in the vortex comes the Devil  and whispers "You Are", you deserve to Be, It all belongs to you and you can have it all I assue you.

By way of juxtapose have just checked out the new Lily Allen album that been looking forward to for ages: its not just me that has had the waters perturbed, God no longer moves here. I don't know what's right and what's real, any more. And, I don't know how I'm meant to feel, any more. When do you think it will all become clear? I thought they said The Enlightenment was here?

Culture and Niche

This must have been blogged before but rehashing...

A common mistake when thinking about Evolution is to think that Mankind is the "most" evolved and the "best" evolved.

We need only cite his impressive domination of the planet with technology and wizardry to place him at the top of teh evolutionary tree - the pinnacle of Lifes work.

This can be recognised from the Genesis story where God makes Man to be special in his creation.

Yet as Darwin himself noted - remove the earthworms and very quickly there would be no Man. The soil is cultivated not so much by Man as by Earthworms.

Even more dramatic is the contribution of bacteria. In number and mass bacteria dominate all other lifeforms. They evolve the fastest. The are the most evolved, adapted to every condition on earth. If any major catastrophy hits Earth while man is banging out financial agreements to fund research to solve the problem, bacteria will be ahead of the game evolving a solution immediately. Bacteria are so important and integral to life that even our own bodies are filled with bacteria handing everything from defence to digestion in the gut. The mitochondria that create energy in our cells are ancient bacteria that have have symbiotic to our cells. Without bacteria there is no Man.

So how well evolved are we then? We we occupy a niche. Stick us next to a deep sea thermal vent and we are suddenly hopelessly ill evolved. We are adapted to life in water, trees and savannah. Our cities and our environments are modelled around our adaptations. Put a whale in a city and it dies.

This mistake has another head. The idea that Western Society is the most advanced. It is exactly the idea of most evolved. The idea that progress takes a line. Bacteria were the first organisms and remain the first organisms. Life has tried other solutions, man being just one.

Likewise many cultures exist. Hunter-gatherer was the first and arguably still the best. But many other cultures have evolved. Exactly the same arguments apply. Place a Brazilian jungleman in the modern city and he will die. Place a well educated Harvard graduate in the jungle and he will die. Their two cultures and knowledge base are inappropriate to each niche. Thus we need to consider "relevance" when we think about "best"...

And this draws out the key point again taht everything is interconnected. To understand something it is no good looking at its "essence". Essence is empty and is created by what lies around both substantially and conceptually. To see what a bushman is you must put him in teh bush. To see what a American graduate is you must put him in university or the city. Swap them around and you see that a fish dies on the beach and a rabbit dies in the sea. Which is best? without environment it is an impotent question.

So it raises another point. What is a fish? We like to list its physical characterists. But actually this is not an answer. Because to see what a fin is we must see it swimming. Maybe the fin is used for walking. We are long familiar with animals so we have a deep repetoire of physical forms and what they "do" so it is hard to go back and examine this. See a "leg", even in an ancient dinosaur and we think w know what it "is". It is only a leg when we see the dinosaur walking with it. Organisms in the famous Burgess Shales raise many questions about what things "are".

So when we say that a fish is evolved for the sea its a profound issue. Because a "fish" is also that which we find in the sea. Evolution theory goes far behind the normal conceptions of "what is". It operates in a world where to know what the sea is, we need to know what a fish is as well... and vice versa.

Nothing in this universe can be plucked into empty space and time and examined on the slab. Just as there is no nail to hammer into the space-time continuum to call "stationery" there is place to take a thing to call it "pure thing" or "pure essence". All things are relative. The fish in the pickling jar is what it is because we know the fish in the sea. Were there just a "fish" in a pickling jar and no fish in the sea it would stop being a "fish".

The DNA records people need to recognise this. And the idea of preserving "species" by preserving habitat is slightly amiss. The preseving of habitation is the same as preserving "species" - they are equally important - they are the same thing.

This then applies to world cultures. Preserving the rainforest people, is preserving the rainforest, it is preserving Humanity. How dangerous and ignorant this idea of "best" and "progress" now looks! How bad and unprogressive!

The Universe

Great quote on radio last night from Carl Sagan "To make an apple pie from scratch, one first needs to make the universe."

This taps straight into the awareness of the total interconnectness of "things" and the awareness that things are not bounded by "self" or "what they are" but rather "everything else" and "what they are not". An apple pie is both a substantial thing made from an essence which is "apple pie" (the stuff we get out teeth into) and also at the same time the hole made in everything else by the same apple pie (we get our teeth into the hole just the same) i.e. To make an apple pie you can either make the substance or you can make the hole in everything else - both are apple pie shaped and both taste like apple pie! Substance is emptiness!

Carl Sagan misses something though maybe. To make an apple pie from scratch we need the universe. To make the solar system from scratch we need the universe. To make the galaxy we need the universe first. To make the galaxy cluster we need the universe first... where do we stop? Actually to make the universe we first need to make the universe!

This points at something else I've ment to say. A lot of arguments stem from this idea of "universe" or "ultimate" such as ultimate cause (which currently sits at the big bang). And a lot of puzzles exist like what caused the big bang, or time, or what lies outside space-time. Are there other universes? etc etc

At the same time scientists are tantalised by the "ultimate" answer - the understanding from which all other understandings can be derived (except itself?). Unified Field Theory the tantalising plateau that explorers currently seek. Of course from this plateau new high grounds will come into sight...

Compare all this energetic exploration with the attitude of Siddhartha Gotama (aka Buddha) which was to ignore such questions as fruitless. What had he seen?

When asked what caused the universe, or what was the first cause etc Buddha simply remained silent. Such probing he assured everyone would attain nothing but confusion and deeper ignorance.

I heard recently that Montesquieu the french thinker - who was an extremely learned man - realised once watching a goat that actually the goat seemed happy and he wondered what all his learning had achieved which the goat hadn't achieved.

Lao Zi would smile.

The universe came into existence long before Men came to contemplate the event (unless you are an Monist - the sound? of trees falling in the Carboniferous to make the oil today) long before any Man had ever built anything. The Universe seems to work itself.

The "Universe" - what do we mean? Normally we can refer to entities with a boundary. I gave a list already: solarsystem, galaxy, galaxy cluster. But when we come to Universe it is the other way around: everything and anything else you may say. Universe is not an entity like other things just an procedure which means exclude nothing. As such it is an ongoing process, not a discrete enclosed entity. As such - like infinity in maths - we should treat thoughts including it with caution - they are actually undefinied!

When we ask what caused the universe... we mean what?

Schopenhauer is quoted as saying "Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world".. not that I rate Schopenhauer whose only claim to fame is Nietzsche who is equally flawed... but it makes the relevant point. In this sense we each occupy different universes and the only way to grasp the concept is to accept that we can't grasp it. That humility brings us a lot closer to the infinite: we as mortals are pitifully finite. It could be argued (as I used to argue) that all such actions of humility or arrogance are really just actions of Mind so Mind is the ultimate... but its just another word for infinite!

This also points to another obvious fact. We can understand the world without understanding its foundations. We don't know how the universe came into existence - yet that doesn't stop people getting off to the shops. What makes teh world go around is not understanding of fundamentals: this is what Buddha meant. What does make the world go around? The scientists are clearly looking in the wrong place.

I'd also like to drag up the self-reference argument here: it is a priori that an entity that is supported by the universe cannot derive anything but a symbolic representation of the universe. The idea that we can gain any actual "understanding" of the ultimate is futile and pointless.

Answers to questions such as these are not "understanding". They are beyond understanding. They are enlightenment (small "e" cos the Europeans stole big "E" for the World's greatest folly in the 1700s - the Enlightenment - the effects of which we are trying to remedy today - as if Man could take control of his own destiny - even the "unEnlightened" ancients realised this leads straight to Tragedy and Hell).

Its not about me at all !!!

This has got to be the biggest irony of Life of them all.

The key to Life is about the world not the self.

It remains unproven but the self cannot contruct the self.

A set can be created with a reference to itself as the only member. e.g. A = {A} but this presupposes set theory. Thus if A is a set, but it presupposes set theory, then A is not really constructing itself. To truely construct itself it would need to construct set theory using only itself. It is intuitively obvious, but how is this to be proven?

[It is clear here that what was being examined earlier in the blog didn't distinguish between "type" construction and "token" construction. Given set theory one can construct indefinite sets including self-reference. This is "token" construction. "Type" construction however would be the calculus required to define set theory.]

What remains to be proven is that any system e.g. set theory cannot be the complete foundations of itself.

It means that meditating in a room one will not find the self. It means that living Life one will find the self. This is often confused to mean living "my" life... but that is a contradiction. Life belongs to no-one. It is the foundation of self.

As a child I was fascinated by the thought that I am someone else to other people and I began a project to try and see myself "objectively" like other people see me.

What I was wrong about was that everyone sees everyone differently so there is no objective way of looking at oneself. As a child however one may be forgiven for thinking that there is an objective way because we are judged "absolutely" by the authorities of our parents, schools and law. Surely it is argued "they" must see us the same way and truthfully. Taken a long time to realise but no - we have no single or correct "look" : beauty really is only in the eye of the beholder.

Something of a destabalisation then to find that we are like a reflection in a broken mirror - a million things to a million people. What we grasp for is the true me?

Well that question ends when we realise that we are not "object". Indeed nothing is "object". The essence of respect is to see things as "subject". An apple is a million things to a million people - what is a true apple? There is no true apple.

So we have no choice but to Live, to shine outwards into the world because there is no room in here to hide the lamp.

By way of warning this is not a reissuing of the Nike slogan. The irony of the slogan "Just Do It" is that it is correct, but what they really mean is "Buy Nike products and then do it". Actually we don't need Nike products. The slogan is English and has nothing to do with Nike. Just do it means what it says - just do it and forget Nike and every other distraction that pertains to ourselves. Does it matter what we look like to ourselves? It only matters what we look like to other people - and if making them happy involves us wearing Nike then we can do it, but its easier to educate them not to care.

If anything the self is like a mirror reflecting the world. And it is exactly because a mirror doesn't look like anything that it can take on the appearance of the world around it. The mirror becomes hidden in the very act of reflection! This is how Heideggar, Hui Neng and Lao Zi have talked about the self. When death strikes it is like a mirror shattering and the reflections are broken, but in the mirror world nothing actually breaks! Borrowing from Guilbert Ryle there is a category mistake in thinking that the "self" belongs to the world. It is like the mirror trying to reflect itself. It is like the Self-Reference issue in this blog: something being its own foundation. The world taken one way is self (Atman), taken the other it is the world (Brahman). Tat Tvam Asi: they are the same.

Bloody hell is this a long process of self undiscovery or what!

The defeat of sexuality

An update on a old thread in this blog, that of celebacy. I can link to anyone of a dozen previous posts but this will do:

http://riswey.blogspot.com/2008/05/aretez-ou-allez.html

Since Christmas I've made real progress at last with this issue of arretez. The key has been wisdom and balance.

We will not suddenly be free from sexual desire. But, what we will have is the strength to ignore it.

This takes two forms. The first is the ridding of the multitude of demons who feed on sexual desire: primarily those of 'status' which has been blogged to death recently here. Not having a partner comes with a weight of negativity things like being a failure, being unloved, being forgotten, being sad, being a loser, being lonely etc etc. And the reverse we 'think' must be true. If you have never had a relationship that you can't wait to end then get one just so that you learn that having a relationship and not being a loser can be the worst existence! It would make an interesting statistic but I bet that properly measured relationships account for as much misery as freedom! The data is always biased however because the partnered world has nothing better to do than make it hell for the free world. Social stats on marriage and well-being are as meaningless as stats on employment and well being: in a society which says you should cut your genitals off you
can be sure those people who have conformed will make it hell for those who haven't! Quite what having ones genitals cut off does for your life is a totally different question!

Once we have dealt a killing blow to these demons and freed ourselves from what is just self imposed negativity (it never matters what other people think - they are just our own thoughts) then we can turn to the main point - the addition to sexuality. I can reference this entry:

http://riswey.blogspot.com/2007/03/drugs-n-buddhism.html

Which reminds me as Equinox has just past again on March 20th I'll make a new vow of celebacy March 25th.

When one quits cigarettes or any habit at all one has only 1 thing to do: that is to develop the strength to turn the mind away from the nagging call to do it. At first it is hard, but as time goes on it gets easier. At the same time at first we are strong, but as time goes on we often get lazy and weaker so we relapse. The key is to balance these and be as strong as the demand. It is always good to remember that every failure to keep to a resolution makes the habit stronger, and every time we beat it it gets weaker. If we are getting to weak then it is sensible to agree to a truce while we regain energy, but only with a date set to continue the battle.

So it is odd that against "artificial" addictions like cigarettes I should find that sex is exactly the same. The rush of endorphins, oxytocin, you name it, is actually just drugs which we need to ween ourselves off.

What makes it harder is that while heroine is rejected in most sub-cultures in the UK and cigarettes is becoming rejected, sex is universally accepted.. Worst it is cynically used in advertising so we are kept hooked on sex so we can be controlled.

Some thoughts about sex which I have found very useful in reversing the flow of indoctrination from this sex obsessed culture in UK and America. I'm a man so this is androcentric - but reverse it and its gynocentric.

A woman is made from flesh and blood. She looks beautiful on the surface, but under the bonnet it's a mess. Encourage the mind to see the contents of the body first, and the packaging afterwards. Thus we see faeces and vaginal mucus before we see bright eyes and smooth skin.

A woman has a shelf life. She will age, become immobile, incontinent and will die. Like a car she will be scrapped one day. There is nothing eternal about sex.

A woman is not a free agent. She is driven by very strong animal impulses to breed. For this she requires a lot of resources. She is like a parasite which needs to infect a host so that it can multiply. She will play games and be seductive and lie to secure this outcome. But, this is not 'her' in control but her hormones and drug habit (the very habit we ourselves are trying to kick).

These are not prejudice they are actually true and apply as much to a man as a woman - indeed anyone who remains addicted to sexuality and the body.

It makes people sound disgusting which is exactly what the 'body' is! Yet we must not forget they are only disgusting because we are kicking the habit.. Cigarettes are very desirable when you have the habit. They are disgusting once you have kicked it! So other people when they kick the habit are no longer disgusting - for they see the disgusting and lowly nature of bodily existence.

The self which is no longer is attracted to bodily existence is a very beautiful thing: Light and free, unafraid, unaging and eternal. This is metaphysically called the 'spirit' or 'soul' but this is just another type of bodily attachment - so we need be careful.

So it is not that desire will be eradicated but just that its imperative becomes very weak. we can still have sex, we can still be stimulated by sexual beauty, but the flames are thin and can be put out. I wonder on this road whether it does lead eventually to complete erradication of the flames?