There is no self

[effilang]

I have considered the very same thing for many "years".

 

None of these things occur in a way that proves that time exists.

 

Ah. But you missed the point entirely.

 

"Time" is the label we create in order to identify a continuously repetitive event.

We call time the duration between the Rise of the Sun and its Setting...

 

But whether we label it, or name it or claim it, the existence of the duration between the setting and the rise exist regardless.

 

Just as we are born and live and die. We call that "life" so we can identify it and communicate it, but OUR acknowledgement or desire to identify it and give it a name is not IT's creation. It exists without our knowledge and with it.

 

And thus when it comes to the ego and the self; Everything exists and happens without our "self" needing to acknowledge it. The "i" statements we make during conversation and interaction are simply to communicate our state of experience; The ego exists only in a world where others exists.

 

The point however is, that whether we label it "time" or pick you word of choice, it is simply a lingual description of something which we did not create and which has existed before us.

 

By sitting on the grass and counting your heart beats in a rested state and compare it to something else you "acknowledge" duration and you may call that "time" if you wish or leave it nameless.

Our acknowledgement however is not what motivates the sun to rise or set or the earth to spin.

 

Without having time, or clocks, or sundials, the cycles that exist in the universe will continue to exist regardless of our knowing it. But if we choose to notice them, and perhaps even give it a name or call it "time", then we simply identify it so that we may communicate it, we do not create it.

 

Because of this sometimes i wonder could the self or ego exist if there were only 1 living thing in the world? - Is the ego born at the point of first interaction, first communication? - With the need to interact with others comes the need for language and description. We describe things that already exist and things that we imagine can or may exist.

 

I've boiled it down to... Need for Expression >> Identification >> Ego

 

So to dull the ego... you must stop identifying... to stop identifying you must stop communicating. O_O

 

Or at least, stop communicating with others that are controlled by their ego.

Perhaps this is why seclusion is so important in the Taoist arts and others. Or maybe just noticing the difference is enough?

 

Anyway... to round this off...

If you want to prove that time exists you simply need to look around.

We observed something that existed before we existed and we gave the duration of its movement a name; "time".

 

Simply based on that to US who accept time as the duration between the sunrise and the sunset; Time EXISTS, such as it is.

 

We could as well have calculated "time" based on the sight of the moon each night, or anything else; take your pick. And then that would have been time.

 

It's an identity we created. Which is why it exists.

Just as we can create a car and we call the Iron and Oil and Rubber and Skin; "Car". But we only created the name and not the fact that the earth takes so long to rotate per day or the moon has so and so days in a cycle. No these things exists regardless. Only the identities we create to relate them and communicate them are of our own creation.

 

We simply identify. Thats all it is.

 

But EXISTENCE precedes IDENTIFICATION, whether existence is an idea, or a measurable fact.

Edited April 10, 2010 by effilang

[Marblehead]

So if I cut off your leg, I cut your I?

 

Really??

 

No, but you cut off a part of me. And shortly thereafter you will die. Hehehe.

 

Remember that I said there there are countless components that make up the "I" that I currently am. If I loose my leg, the part we call a leg, I will still be "I" with only one leg. Not normal but still capable of living a productive life.

 

Now, if you cut off my head that would be a totally different story. "I" could no longer exist.

 

Peace & Love!

[RongzomFan]

No....

 

 

Ok we agree!

[TzuJanLi]

Greetings..

 

Even though you called me an idiot, I will take the time to dumb it down for you.

 

Things are ALWAYS MOVING in the NOW, even time pieces. Get it yet?

LOL, are just discovering this delightful little word game.. don't bother 'dumbing it down', this is old news.. let it go. I 'got it' a long 'time' ago.. Now, your little word-game is precisely correct, AND completely useless.. please show me the benefit of this 'insight'..

 

Be well..

[RongzomFan]

Once you understand time is an illusion, the self becomes an illusion. They are tied together.

 

This is not just poetic. This is experiential.

 

How can one accomplish anything except as a thoughtform of the "past" held in the present?

 

This is the ego...."I climbed Mount Everest in 1998"

Edited April 11, 2010 by alwayson

[Sunya]

How can you say 'my brain' ? or 'my leg' ? or 'my thoughts' and actually believe those statements outside of their obvious error in language? This is directed toward Marble but everyone can join in. I'm curious in the rationale. I know we casually say these things, we use the possessive, but is it possible for you to fly out of your body and say MY BRAIN THERE IT IS! Is it? Well maybe if you do that out of body stuff, but my point is whatever you're aware of is not you, because you are who is aware. If you keep going back and back and back, you'll see that even the sense of 'I AM' can be taken as an object in awareness, which means that even the I is 'Not-I', when you get to that point, the whole idea of I completely vanishes.. well no it doesn't, but believing in it does. The brain still functions and things still happen, but there is realization that there has never been a doer to begin with.

 

Nope. Look back in history. Events are always linked with the individual doer. Hitler caused the death of millions of innocent Jews. If there were no doers nature would just roll right along and do what it does.

 

Ah but Marble here's the crux of the matter.. individuals are not separate from nature. Human history is just as much nature's doing as a tree growing or a star exploding. Does a star choose to explode? Did Hitler choose to do anything? No. Like a diseased tree that grows rotten apples, Hitler grew up into a psychotic being. 'He' didn't 'do' anything because there never was an agent named Hitler. That is a name we have for a collection of body parts. We attribute actions to his name but those actions arose because of interaction and conditioning. The belief in free will assumes that there is a causeless causing agent.

 

You claim that you are your body parts, you are your thoughts, how can that be? Where are you? If you are simply a collection of parts then you are just an idea, much like a chair is a collection of wood but there is no chair outside of those parts. If you are more than your parts then please give me insight into the nature of this self?

 

From your man Nietzsche himself

 

For, in just the same way as people separate lightning from its flash and take the latter as an action, as the effect of a subject which is called lightning, so popular morality separates strength from the manifestations of strength, as if behind the strong person there were an indifferent substrate, which is free to express strength or not. But there is no such substrate; there is no "being" behind the doing, acting, becoming. "The doer" is merely made up and added into the action – the act is everything. People basically duplicate the action: when they see a lightning flash, that is an action of an action: they set up the same event first as the cause and then yet again as its effect. (...) "We weak people are merely weak. It's good if we do nothing; we are not strong enough for that" – but this bitter state, this shrewdness of the lowest ranks, which even insects possess (when in great danger they stand as if they were dead in order not to do "too much"), has, thanks to that counterfeiting and self-deception of powerlessness, dressed itself in the splendour of a self-denying, still, patient virtue, just as if the weakness of the weak man himself – that means his essence, his actions, his entire single, inevitable, and irredeemable reality – is a voluntary achievement, something willed, chosen, an act, something of merit.

 

And another

 

There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are "immediate certainties"; for instance, "I think," or as the superstition of Schopenhauer puts it, "I will"; as though cognition here got hold of its object purely and simply as "the thing in itself," without any falsification taking place either on the part of the subject or the object. I would repeat it, however, a hundred times, that "immediate certainty," as well as "absolute knowledge" and the "thing in itself," involve a CONTRADICTIO IN ADJECTO; we really ought to free ourselves from the misleading significance of words! The people on their part may think that cognition is knowing all about things, but the philosopher must say to himself: "When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, 'I think,' I find a whole series of daring assertions, the argumentative proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impossible: for instance, that it is _I_ who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego,' and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking--that I KNOW what thinking is. For if I had not already decided within myself what it is, by what standard could I determine whether that which is just happening is not perhaps 'willing' or 'feeling'? In short, the assertion 'I think,' assumes that I COMPARE my state at the present moment with other states of myself which I know, in order to determine what it is; on account of this retrospective connection with further 'knowledge,' it has, at any rate, no immediate certainty for me."--In place of the "immediate certainty" in which the people may believe in the special case, the philosopher thus finds a series of metaphysical questions presented to him, veritable conscience questions of the intellect, to wit: "Whence did I get the notion of 'thinking'? Why do I believe in cause and effect? What gives me the right to speak of an 'ego,' and even of an 'ego' as cause, and finally of an 'ego' as cause of thought?" He who ventures to answer these metaphysical questions at once by an appeal to a sort of INTUITIVE perception, like the person who says, "I think, and know that this, at least, is true, actual, and certain"--will encounter a smile and two notes of interrogation in a philosopher nowadays. "Sir," the philosopher will perhaps give him to understand, "it is improbable that you are not mistaken, but why should it be the truth?"

Edited April 11, 2010 by mikaelz

[Lucky7Strikes]

Once you understand time is an illusion, the self becomes an illusion. They are tied together.

 

This is not just poetic. This is experiential.

 

How can one accomplish anything except as a thoughtform of the "past" held in the present?

 

This is the ego...."I climbed Mount Everest in 1998"

The self is just relative. It doesn't mean there is a self and it doesn't mean there isn't a self. But I don't think you should say that there is no self, that's a bit extreme.

 

People who say that there is an "I" act from that presumption, so you can say that for that person, there is an I.

 

Since you seem so adamant that there is no "I," well then for you there is no "I" but just phenomena I guess.

 

Or for Dwai who like the Self, not the ego self, but the clear, ever present, immortal, Clarity, Beingness or whatever, then that is his I.

 

It's just how each person wants to experience reality.

[Lucky7Strikes]

oops.

Edited April 11, 2010 by Lucky7Strikes

[Lucky7Strikes]

How can you say 'my brain' ? or 'my leg' ? or 'my thoughts' and actually believe those statements outside of their obvious error in language? This is directed toward Marble but everyone can join in. I'm curious in the rationale. I know we casually say these things, we use the possessive, but is it possible for you to fly out of your body and say MY BRAIN THERE IT IS! Is it? Well maybe if you do that out of body stuff, but my point is whatever you're aware of is not you, because you are who is aware. If you keep going back and back and back, you'll see that even the sense of 'I AM' can be taken as an object in awareness, which means that even the I is 'Not-I', when you get to that point, the whole idea of I completely vanishes.. well no it doesn't, but believing in it does. The brain still functions and things still happen, but there is realization that there has never been a doer to begin with.

 

 

 

Ah but Marble here's the crux of the matter.. individuals are not separate from nature. Human history is just as much nature's doing as a tree growing or a star exploding. Does a star choose to explode? Did Hitler choose to do anything? No. Like a diseased tree that grows rotten apples, Hitler grew up into a psychotic being. 'He' didn't 'do' anything because there never was a Hitler. That is a name we give to a collection of body parts, memories, thoughts, perceptions, etc. You claim that you are your body parts, you are your thoughts, how can that be? Where are you? If you are simply a collection of parts then you are just an idea, much like a chair is a collection of wood but there is no chair outside of those parts. If you are more than your parts then please give me insight into the nature of this self?

I hope Xabir doesn't post a 50 page quote anytime soon. But anyways...

 

I hate the idea just as Marble does that Hitler is no different than a pice of rotting tree (ok, now if you are one of those people who believe in tree spirits, let's just assume trees are insentient for a second here), because then all this journey towards enlightenment and what not is no different than that either. Like one can say, oh the Buddha just grew up as a prince, got dissatisfied, and became a Buddha like Hitler did. Which is...kind of sad.

 

The primordial I AM, the Pure Consciousness of an individual (Not some Universal one, because we can never know what is Universal outside our own experience), is like the sun, and the things we experience, the material things, are like the earth. See the sun simply shines, it doesn't really purposefully "do" anything but shines and gives life. Consciousness is like that, it just simply IS. Now what comes about from the union of the two? Life! Existence! One became two, then became three, then 10,000 things!

 

But one must understand that this creation is not separate from Heaven and Earth, it is a composite form, an overlapping element of the two. This is the Heart/Mind.

 

Cultivators who keep barking out that there is no I without seeing the Consciousness, identify themselves with the ever-changing aspect of phenomena (to Mikaelz, this is Kunlun 1 IMO). But then cultivators who identify with the Sun aspect, the pure Being aspect, see themselves as the Sun, the Witness (I think this is Kunlun 2), and detach themselves from Earth. IMO, both are incomplete.

 

But the final goal is to unify the trinity, and all the things we do here is to merge to that unspeakable state of unity of these elements, and that comes by understanding that all these elements are (Kunlun III?).

 

ahem, *puts on sunglasses

 

EMPTY AND DEPENDENT ON ONE ANOTHER.

 

This can be said to be an I, but a wholly different I, so perhaps we can't even call it that. But the I just doesn't "disappear," it liberates into everything (Heavens) and nothing (Earth).

 

But before that, one must learn to see both elements and play around with it. To be free "of" comes from seeing the every changing aspect of phenomena and the free "to" comes from the infinite possibility of creation. So one can play around freely! YAY!

Edited April 11, 2010 by Lucky7Strikes

[ralis]

How can you say 'my brain' ? or 'my leg' ? or 'my thoughts' and actually believe those statements outside of their obvious error in language? This is directed toward Marble but everyone can join in. I'm curious in the rationale. I know we casually say these things, we use the possessive, but is it possible for you to fly out of your body and say MY BRAIN THERE IT IS! Is it? Well maybe if you do that out of body stuff, but my point is whatever you're aware of is not you, because you are who is aware. If you keep going back and back and back, you'll see that even the sense of 'I AM' can be taken as an object in awareness, which means that even the I is 'Not-I', when you get to that point, the whole idea of I completely vanishes.. well no it doesn't, but believing in it does. The brain still functions and things still happen, but there is realization that there has never been a doer to begin with.

 

 

 

Ah but Marble here's the crux of the matter.. individuals are not separate from nature. Human history is just as much nature's doing as a tree growing or a star exploding. Does a star choose to explode? Did Hitler choose to do anything? No. Like a diseased tree that grows rotten apples, Hitler grew up into a psychotic being. 'He' didn't 'do' anything because there never was a Hitler. That is a name we give to a collection of body parts, memories, thoughts, perceptions, etc. You claim that you are your body parts, you are your thoughts, how can that be? Where are you? If you are simply a collection of parts then you are just an idea, much like a chair is a collection of wood but there is no chair outside of those parts. If you are more than your parts then please give me insight into the nature of this self?

 

I agree that individuals are not separate from the universe. However, you argue from a reductionist mechanistic point of view that posits the individual as nothing more than a machine with no free choice.

 

Your statement about Hitler is absurd! Tell that to the victims of the Holocaust! 20M died in Germany alone. Plus other European, American and British casualties. More than 60M lost their lives in that war.

 

I suppose Stalin didn't really kill 20M of his own people, since you would claim Stalin didn't exist. The Japanese certainly didn't massacre anyone in Nanking, which according to your point of view no one was really there.

 

Your views are escapist to the extreme!

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

 

 

ralis

Edited April 11, 2010 by ralis

[Scarlet Wampus]

I suppose its no use accepting the notion that Hitler was a monster and also from another perspective no different than a piece of rotting tree.

[Lucky7Strikes]

It is venn diagram not van. You must be living in the dark ages when you refer to "Man".

 

In regards to the link I posted, you would blame the young woman for having an incorrect view and therefor her being forced by stone age religious fanatics into an arranged marriage that caused her death was her fault?

 

 

ralis

Sorry, I can't spell too well. Thanks for the correction.

 

Most other times though, your comments and thoughts are pretty worthless. Like the one above. It's crap.

[Lucky7Strikes]

I suppose its no use accepting the notion that Hitler was a monster and also from another perspective no different than a piece of rotting tree.

YES!!!

 

This comment is awesome!

[ralis]

Sorry, I can't spell too well. Thanks for the correction.

 

Most other times though, your comments and thoughts are pretty worthless. Like the one above. It's crap.

 

Your problem is that your thinking is skewed toward one aspect and if I try to make a valid point, your narrow world view rejects it. Your use of the term "man" is sexist and outdated. What generation are you from?

 

 

 

 

ralis

Edited April 11, 2010 by ralis

[ralis]

I suppose its no use accepting the notion that Hitler was a monster and also from another perspective no different than a piece of rotting tree.

 

Of course there is a difference. Rotting trees don't kill millions of people.

 

 

ralis

[Scarlet Wampus]

Of course there is a difference. Rotting trees don't kill millions of people.

 

They do when they're Hitler!

[Lucky7Strikes]

Your problem is that your thinking is skewed toward one aspect and if I try to make a valid point, your narrow world view rejects it. Your use of the term "man" is sexist and outdated. What generation are you from?

 

 

 

 

ralis

I think your comments are worthless because they rarely have anything to do with the conversation itself.

 

It's like in the middle of a debate about the chemical make up of an apple, you go "NO, APPLE HAS TWO P's IN IT!" and continue arguing about using two P's and how the other person is wrong because two P's are unnecessary in spelling apple.

 

Then you say "YOU ARE SO NARROW MINDED!"

 

You don't even understand what people here mean when they mention "no self" but you keep arguing from your misunderstanding. Now, if you are new to these ideas, I wouldn't mind at all, but you've been doing this for quite a while. And I don't think you are stupid, so I'm not sure what the hell is wrong with you. But all in all, you have had absolutely no positive influence what so ever, especially to yourself (which is really what matters most), because your mind seems to be frozen into bits and pieces (it's just a guess).

 

So if you don't understand, kindly question. If you are going toss in random comments for your ego's sake...shhhhhhh....( we know you studied philosophy and like to play poker, but so what?).

Edited April 11, 2010 by Lucky7Strikes

[Marblehead]

Ok we agree!

 

Hehehe. I am happy for that.Every now and then I get to have agreement with another member here. Nice feeling. Have a great day.

 

Peace & Love!

[Marblehead]

How can you say 'my brain' ? or 'my leg' ? or 'my thoughts' and actually believe those statements outside of their obvious error in language? This is directed toward Marble but everyone can join in. I'm curious in the rationale. I know we casually say these things, we use the possessive, but is it possible for you to fly out of your body and say MY BRAIN THERE IT IS! Is it? Well maybe if you do that out of body stuff, but my point is whatever you're aware of is not you, because you are who is aware. If you keep going back and back and back, you'll see that even the sense of 'I AM' can be taken as an object in awareness, which means that even the I is 'Not-I', when you get to that point, the whole idea of I completely vanishes.. well no it doesn't, but believing in it does. The brain still functions and things still happen, but there is realization that there has never been a doer to begin with.

 

Hi Michael,

 

We've been through all this before, haven't we?

 

As long as we both continue to hold to our current perspective we will never agree on these concepts currently being discussed.

 

I have run out of words.

 

Please remember when quoting Nietzsche for my reading that I read his work 'before' I read anything on Taoism. I did continue my search after reading him because even his writings did not fill all the holes and I did not always accept things he said.

 

About the only thing I have left to say is that I am a Taoist and Taoist philosophy is based on living one's life in the manifest realm - the 'real' physical world. So I will always face the problems of life from this prespective.

 

We all exist individually, you, I, Ralis, Lucky and everyone else. Individually but eternally linked. And even sometimes we each somehow effect the other in one way or another.

 

I am a doer. Always have been as far back as I can remember. After I matured I always took responsibility for my actions. And I think that this is one of the most important parts of living - to take responsibility for our actions and not try to blame our errors and flaws on other influences.

 

And so life will go on regardless of the outcome of this discussion. We all will be making decisions. Some will be to act and others will be to not act. Whatever our choices we must take responsibility for those choices. We must, in my opinion, understand taht we have free will and that we have no one else to blame for our bad choices.

 

I still believe that our most important goal in life is to be at peace with our SELF. We live in the physical realm while we are in this physical manifestation. When it is our time to die we will die a peaceful death if we are at peace with our SELF.

 

I cannot speak to anything prior to my birth and I doubt that I will be able to speak to anything after my death. NOW is the only 'time' that is of importance.

 

And I ask myself only one question: Was my life positive and productive?

 

Peace & Love!

[TzuJanLi]

Greetings..

 

Once you understand time is an illusion, the self becomes an illusion. They are tied together.

'Time' is a measurement.. it measures intervals between events based on an arbitrary standard. This measurement we call 'Time' is used by everyone in one way or another.. To deny that people use this 'measurement' we call 'Time', is... you betcha, ignorant!

 

There is no 'substance' called 'Time', you can't go to the supermarket and buy a 'loaf of Time', and everybody already knows that.. so, what's the point?

 

Time and self are tied together.. "I" just checked to see what 'Time' it is.. and, it's 'Time' for alwayson to deal with reality.. 'Self' is very real, it's a functional concept you refer to frequently.. it identifies the awareness one has of its own existence.. if it were not so, you would not be able to pretend your imagination is superior to reality..

 

Be well..

[dwai]

You existed before you were born?

 

How can something changeless and permanent be combined with a reality that is not? It is not possible.

 

You could benefit from reading Nagarjuna who the guy in your signature ripped off.

 

 

You'll be surprised at what I have read. You see, Madhyamika never claims that one perspective or another is correct. It is dialectic in it's core and says that either position, or neither position in itself will provide a seeker spiritual growth, so what is the point of such discussions?

 

I would, on the other hand, recommend you read the guy in my signature, because he clears up the mess that Buddhists made after they ripped off Vedanta.

:-P

[3bob]

there is no illusion... as if illusion was really real;

but there is samsara correctly understood,

 

there is no separate self, as if a separate self was really real;

but there is unchanging Buddha Nature that correctly understands samsara.

 

Om

[RongzomFan]

You'll be surprised at what I have read. You see, Madhyamika never claims that one perspective or another is correct. It is dialectic in it's core and says that either position, or neither position in itself will provide a seeker spiritual growth, so what is the point of such discussions?

 

I would, on the other hand, recommend you read the guy in my signature, because he clears up the mess that Buddhists made after they ripped off Vedanta.

:-P

 

That is true about Madhyamika. Madhyamika simply is a nonimplicative negation of a claim.

 

P.S. Are you one of those who mistakenly think Hindusim is older than Buddhism?

Edited April 11, 2010 by alwayson

[3bob]

That is true about Madhyamika. Madhyamika simply is a nonimplicative negation of a claim.

 

P.S. Are you one of those who mistakenly think Hindusim is older than Buddhism?

 

Is that a trick question? If one takes the historic person of Buddha as the founder of Buddhism then the question answers itself, if not then we enter into vast speculation...

 

Om is extremely old, far older than the universes of form, and it also very young, much less than a nanosecond in age.

 

Om

Edited April 11, 2010 by 3bob

[Sunya]

I agree that individuals are not separate from the universe. However, you argue from a reductionist mechanistic point of view that posits the individual as nothing more than a machine with no free choice.

 

Your statement about Hitler is absurd! Tell that to the victims of the Holocaust! 20M died in Germany alone. Plus other European, American and British casualties. More than 60M lost their lives in that war.

 

I suppose Stalin didn't really kill 20M of his own people, since you would claim Stalin didn't exist. The Japanese certainly didn't massacre anyone in Nanking, which according to your point of view no one was really there.

 

Your views are escapist to the extreme!

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

 

 

ralis

 

My family is Jewish and I have relatives that were in the Holocaust. I also lived in Nanjing so I know quite well about the massacre that took place there; that doesn't change anything. There is no such thing as an independent self/soul/being, but suffering still occurs. Do qualities of experience require an essence or substance of some sort? Do actions require a doer separate from those actions, separate from the environment, which can then be blamed for a negative action (or pitied if on the receiving end)?

 

 

I think your comments are worthless because they rarely have anything to do with the conversation itself.

 

It's like in the middle of a debate about the chemical make up of an apple, you go "NO, APPLE HAS TWO P's IN IT!" and continue arguing about using two P's and how the other person is wrong because two P's are unnecessary in spelling apple.

 

Then you say "YOU ARE SO NARROW MINDED!"

 

You don't even understand what people here mean when they mention "no self" but you keep arguing from your misunderstanding. Now, if you are new to these ideas, I wouldn't mind at all, but you've been doing this for quite a while. And I don't think you are stupid, so I'm not sure what the hell is wrong with you. But all in all, you have had absolutely no positive influence what so ever, especially to yourself (which is really what matters most), because your mind seems to be frozen into bits and pieces (it's just a guess).

 

So if you don't understand, kindly question. If you are going toss in random comments for your ego's sake...shhhhhhh....( we know you studied philosophy and like to play poker, but so what?).

 

I agree, but he doesn't care. He's like this annoying kid in one of my classes; he just randomly starts arguments with people about the most minuscule things and its obvious he doesn't truly care about the topic or the class, just the negative feelings that come with that sort of engagement. Everyone usually ignores him or entertains him once in a while for fun.

 

Sorry Ralis, I don't enjoy being mean to you but you sure come off that way. I've wondered for a while now why you're such an argumentative person but we are as we are.

Edited April 11, 2010 by mikaelz