Karl

Questioning can only take place when there is one who can think in order to ask the question. If one does not exist then no question can be asked. The poem lacks a definition for the word God. Part of the argument-and it is an argument-is based on the rules of Aristotelian logic-that of the fallacy of composition.

If you have no conflicted thoughts there won't arise destructive thoughts. You can meditate and over time the number of thoughts/dark quality of thoughts may diminish. However you must then plug in cause and effect. The mere fact that you have developed the will to confront the situation is a big chunk of the difference made. The meditation reinforces the commitment to seek a way out. Practice is really nothing more than the commitment made into an action. Then, most people are practicing over a period of time. I'm in a completely different place now I'm 8 + years older than I was. As we grow older our strong ego slips away. The reality is that we can't afford a strong ego because the body is ageing, there is consolidation of finance, less interest in running after pretty girls, less need for the trapping of a hedonistic lifestyle. We are older and less competitive. This means we have less trouble trying to keep up with peer groups. Our tide is ebbing and what was once important is less so. Thoughts run at a gentler pace. I'm generalising here, but that seems true of myself and most people I know. Letting go of thoughts is easier if there is no precedence for the thought. It's like John Cleese said in clockwise "it's not the failure, but the possibility that makes for pain". There is a point that hope is gone and therefore the thought is not strong. Younger people struggle to let go of thoughts, they don't even know they are having thoughts, mostly it's just emotional reaction and competition that drives them. It's only when you begin to realise the world doesn't conform to the way you would like it that there arises sufficient introspection to begin to discriminate thoughts from emotional reaction.

What thoughts are arising and why ? If you have a lot of conflicting concepts and which are often quite raw, emotional triggers, then these conflicts will continually boil to the surface. In artists these thoughts are channeled into creative, physical expressions in order to realise the conflict in a material form. Get rid of the conflicts and wrong headed ideas and the war is over. The only thing which comes to the surface is pure active expressions derived from cohesive integration instead of discord. An orchestra without a conductor in which all the music is an organic evolution of each musician, will be a discordant cacophony. It seems to be the case that people believe that by expressing themselves in this way, then eventually it will magically turn into a harmonious whole. It would be fine to believe that we could allow thoughts to evaporate, or fly away, but that's fantasy. It's actually a refutation of those thoughts which causes yet more thoughts to arise.

Nope. I was perceived and perceiver prior to the logic course. It resolved to unity after the first month of doing that work. In your words-as far as I can conclude the experience you are alluding to-I remain permanently seated in unity/bliss/samadhi. I don't believe this is anything particularly amazing, just natural. It's our current society and education that is preventing this happening on a much wider scale, it has created 'Peter pan's'-adults with childlike frontal brain development. This partially explains the constant need for entertainment and emotional highs-iPhone texts, games, toys etc amongst supposedly mature adults. These things are the equivalent of pacifiers. It is the state and its corporations that have taken the place as parents-which explains the culture of expectation and socialistic thinking. It shows in people's dress, art and general behaviour. It might also explain the egotists that have taken control of governments and the general lack of political statesmen from 1900 onward. Things seems to coincide with the education system that was reformed in the second half of the 19th century. We only need go back a bare couple of centuries from that point in time where people barely lived beyond 40 years of age and who's entire life was spent in hard labour. It's only theory, but it closely correlates with the state of our modern world. We live longer, but many are not reaching full maturity. The worst of them are strong intellectuals and egotists that have fought and schemed there way into every top position. The result has been a constant stream of wars, materialism, financial fraud on an unprecedented scale. We should be top heavy with the old and wise, but it is ever more the foolish and younger that are dominating the governing classes.

I'm not sure Christianity suggests that morality is from an external source. It seems to me that it has become perverted into a form of control very much like the modern state where responsibility is deliberately abdicated in return for obedience and heaven.

Yet thoughts exist and someone is consciously aware of those thoughts. If it's not you, then who is it.

You were right the first time. I don't get it. Why not just act according to your own values and then everything else follows. Unless you are getting into a karmic sinfulness, wherein you will be punished for being bad in the next life. Though how anyone can determine morals from that perspective is a big mystery. I can't see how it results in less or more selfishness, as selfishness is, in effect, the action of obtaining the greatest positive feeling whatever that might be. Selfishness would in fact be self preservation for many and so there is a natural tendency to preserve scare resources. Buddhism appears to be pointless. At least Christianity has basic rules which make sense.

That's just crazy. It's like saying I'm a brain surgeon but never going near a brain to operate on. The machinations of anyone having to think that way must be awful. I can understand that a chair is just a collection of resonant energy, but I see it is a chair and I use it as a chair and call it a chair. Knowing it isn't a chair in its component material is all well and good, but it makes absolutely no difference to anything if you continue to treat it as an independently existing form which you refer to as a chair.

How does that work out for them ? It's a catch all isn't it. If you are dead then you don't know if things exist or don't exist. However, if you are stuck with life then real things happen. It's like a dream state. Not dissimilar from the matrix film idea - if you get killed in the matrix then you die because the body cannot live without the brain. In other words it's a real dream. As Morpheus said "what is real, it is your mind that makes it so". For all intents and purposes, somebody believing in dependent origination just has to do what the rest of us do until they expire. Kind of pointless.

You are asking if you exist ? but if you are asking then you must exist. "I think therefore I am". No one can prove to you that you exist if you are determined to believe you do not. If you cannot accept the first premise then there is little point in discussing morality and free will as they are both predicated on your existence. How do you react when you put your hands in a fire, or are threatened with violence ? If your instinct is to withdraw your hand or avoid the violence then you are exhibiting self preservation. That would indicate that there is a self to preserve.

First you need to accept that you exist, if you don't believe you exist, then why ask?

Buddhist takes ball and runs home ? ;-) I suppose it's hardly worth pointing out that you had to use reasoning in order to make that hypocritical statement as you have metaphorically stuck your fingers in your ears.

Not for long though :-)

Because you have the thought 'there is space between the thought'. How would you have noticed the space if you were not aware there was a space ? It would just seem like a continuation of thought. I agree it's an experience, but it isn't a non-experience, if it were then there would be nothing to reason with. Reason has to have something on which to reason. Awareness must be aware of something. Consciousness must be conscious of something. You are aware of a space between thoughts. Awareness is functioning and noticing that no thoughts are present and registering the lack of thought into memory. To describe emptiness is to describe something and not nothing. What is the concept of emptiness. Define it. An empty bucket is still a bucket but lacking water. We don't go through life expecting all buckets to remain permanently full, and we must have an empty bucket in order to register the lack of water. In music there are numerous apparent silences, yet they are entirely necessary in order for music to be music. Just because there is a silence does not mean there is no music being played. It does not suggest all music is emptiness. The spaces are integral to the creation. By all means refine your thoughts and notice the spaces, but know that something is still aware in order to register the spaces. There is no absence unless there is a total abscence of awareness or consciousness as it would be in death.

You cannot be objective about a subjective experience. You are aware of the space between thoughts, but this is a thought in itself. You cannot remember nothing, so you must have remembered something. When I was using AYP meditation this was one of the first revelations. The instruction is to place attention on the mantra and anytime you are off the mantra to gently place attention back on the Mantra. The questions were always around his simple instruction. People were always asking about internal distractions preventing them staying on the mantra. Yet it took time to realise the internal distractions WERE being off the mantra and as soon as this was realised to put the attention back on the mantra. This meant a gradual refinement of the thoughts and moods percolating in the mind. This can seem like awareness being aware of awareness. It confirms that it is thoughts that are masquerading as false image. In fact this isn't true, it's yet another illusion, but now at least the paradox becomes a concrete reality. It should be understood that this is, or should be a natural process of age. When young we are indiscriminate consumers of experience. We pack ourselves with all sorts of conflicting ideas, but, at first it doesn't register as an issue because our reasoning capacity is so immature there is no conflict. We can happily sit opposing ideas together because we haven't yet needed to begin to integrate concepts. It's like we need to build a house at some point, but have no idea what a house is composed of and so we indiscriminately collect all sorts of things that don't work together such as dynamite and bricks, or a wrecking ball and a builders plan. At some point we have to develop reasoning as we once developed our ability to collect experiences and store them by repetition. I believe that Buddhists have never factored in the process of maturation. It's a combination of natural changes occurring in the body and conscious application of these changes in our environment. We became so used to our early repetitive gathering practices that we didn't get that the rules had changed and that this no longer worked. We seem always mentally behind these bodily changes which makes things confusing and results in mental anguish as we attempt to make sense of those changes. The old saying is that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks probably has some veracity. Old dogs become wise dogs. They are no longer puppies that bite, run, fight and learn in a scattergun way.

It's a great mental exercise, better than falling apples because it implies a continuous flow in the manner of a wave and not a particle :-)

Tool-lateralus with the Fibonacci sequence over the video which is pretty good if you haven't seen it before. Some classical composers use the same idea.

You are like someone's dad :-) Funnily enough he doesn't have any hair. Maynard is as bald as a coot and can be seen with everything from 'metal hair' to a Mohican in the various bands he sings for. APC is currently in hiatus-but it's the best band I have ever seen live-and I've seen an awful lot of bands.

Well let's consider, because I see more than one thing at work. Many people on the spiritual path are looking to get rid of suffering, some are looking for a greater truth-their reason for being. I didn't start out with those intentions. All I knew was that it appeared I wasn't fitting in where I was supposed to fit -I titled my book 'square peg in a round hole' for that reasonthen-I realised I was unhappy, indeed I was alternatively ecstatic and miserable, on which I imposed a kind of average weighting system to make it all acceptable. So, I wasn't thinking to get rid of suffering, or to find the greater truth. I had pushed off from the shore of day to day living in search of something, but without a clue what it was, or the direction I should head. I just had to do what, to some extent I suspect most of us do, and wing it. This felt as if it were a dual life. One life was in a hobby world of spiritual discovery and the other was just everyday life. Over time the appeal of the spiritual life became more important than its counterpart. I even quit my job to concentrate more fully on it. Anyway, roll forward several years and I discovered that there was never any duality. There wasn't an everyday life and a spiritual life, there was just one life and it was mine. The duality had lay in the way I percieved a seperate 'me' as the doer of each kind of life in a way that created segregated identities. I was 'me' the spiritual explorer and 'me' the everyday working husband. Then I noted multiple 'me' identities which would arise in different settings. By creating the space for inner perception I could watch these individual 'me' identities wax and wane around a fixed point. Yet, there in lay the ultimate duality. How could I be percieved and perceiver ? It is the duality of the percieved and the perceiver that has to be resolved, it's a paradox. I cannot tell if you have resolved it, but I can tell you that I resolved it. I can tell you I did so by taking a course in basic logic. Everything simplified like an difficult equation resolving itself. Then I knew what I had always known, but now it is all arranged differently. It's like I had a massive amount of information piled up in one big heap that was clogging up understanding. Logic cross correlated everything. I didn't have to go looking at each individual piece of information, my new organised brain did it at lightning speed...."oh you want it all tidied up" said my brain "about bloody time, this place is a absolute mess, I don't know how I get anything done". Once the paradox is resolved there is peace. I wasn't looking for peace, it came along as a by product. I hadn't known I didn't have peace, until I stopped having war. Then I saw how I was connected to the universe in ways I had veiled or misunderstood. None of this is in any books. All books contain recipes, but they don't tell you how to be a chef. It was John Taylor Gatto who has given the best parallel. "The meaning of education is to teach you how to educate yourself". In other words you must become both master and student. I had been stuck in student waiting for a master without understanding that I must be master. It's an awesome responsibility, but as my fate is entirely in my own hands, then there is only me. There was only ever me, I just thought there wasn't. That's the step that ends suffering. How each of us do it might be entirely different. For me, I wish to understand one last thing and that was how some arbitrary study of logic had done this. It seemed too incredible somehow, like turning the last page in an entire library of books and trying to figure out in which book I had read the answer and why I had to continue to the end before realising it. Maybe it was the very first letter of the very first book, perhaps it was walking into the library. Where was it that I discovered what I had always known ? How can you find what was never lost when you don't know what the thing you thought you had lost looks like ? :-) I think Buddah got it. "Question everything" because that's all that you can do. That's the best you can do. Ask what, where, when and who before starting to ask why or how. Be like Sherlock Holmes and crack the case by questioning the details before drawing a conclusion. The conclusion draws itself when the facts are revealed. It's no good trying to get rid of suffering because there never was any suffering, so indulging in why and how doesn't work. We are all just bumping along the best we can. You cannot be my master and I cannot be yours. This is where peace arises. I neither wish to command or be commanded. If I can help then it is by happenstance and not design. I'm simply another featureless book on somebody's reading list. I'm not an active participant, only a passive operator.

That is precisely it. Awareness has to be aware of something, just as consciousness must be conscious of something. Your post reminded of me of an exercise in mindfulness that I haven't yet been able to grasp the cognitive significance. In some respects it was an Isaac Newton moment, but I haven't derived any answer. It was watching rain fall. Initially it looks like a long streak cutting through the air and splashing to the ground. Yet, move awareness in time with the falling drop and it becomes visible as a droplet. It got me thinking if I was seeing the droplets and holding them in a kind of time aligned buffer in order to create the streak, or do I see the streak as a whole streak along with the others ? Then it got me thinking did I actually see the droplet, or had i made an inductive leap to imply a droplet that wasn't really visible. I know that during times of intense stress it appears we can alter our perception speed. We can push ( I describe it as frame rate capture) to higher rates and appear to slow how we normally see time. So, an accident-at least in memory-appears to be slowed down. Also, when I'm waiting for something then time seems to crawl, but when I'm busy it appears to advance at a faster rate. This function is entirely automatic. Yet it appears to be possible to move awareness by volition and capture something moving at a faster rate than normal - like the falling raindrop.

I was looking at going that way using a DSLR on a servo mount. The best I got with a simple point and shoot into the Dob-which I managed to get some colour into ...enlarged beyond good sense, terrible I know :

I was reading your post as asking for proof of reasoning which is what I was alluding to. We can define reasoning. Another definition could be : Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses.

Reason cannot define itself. It is an inherent and inextricable faculty of a human being. You are using the fallacy of the stolen concept. You are using reason, so, now you must ask yourself the self same questions. It is you that is arguing the case against reason, by using reason. Therefore you must find another way.

Unlikely.