Why matter holds its form.

[manitou]

This is from a very metaphysical point of view, not scientific in the least. Just the Power of mind stuff.

 

Linear time is an illusion - it's really all happening here and now. The past, the present, the future.....all happening Here and Now. But we can't see the fullness of it because our brains have only one-dimensional time perception in its normal state.

 

But ideas are living things. It is the idea that remains, that continues. Take a chair. The person who built that chair had an idea in his mind for that chair. The idea has life in it, not the matter that he uses to build it. In fact, the chair can outlive the man because it is the idea that remains.

 

When you put these two thoughts together, the fact that all is Here and Now with the fact that the idea is the thing that actually has life, perhaps this explains the fact that non-organic items can hold their shape. As to humans? I think we manifest our life as we go along. The idea of a human being is what we really are - the cells we're made out of are not our life - they die and shed themselves regularly, daily.

 

Matter has no intelligence. Ideas do. The Dao does.

[Birch]

I've wondered about this too. But I'm still at the stage of wondering about it. Certainly it doesn't feel to me to be something 'I' do. I do however subscribe to the 'no separation' idea, so 'matter' is just the 'same' as everything else, whatever that might be. So there's no 'inert' anything either. There might be (I'm leaning this way from personal contemplation) a change of state which by comparison leads to differentiation.

[三江源]

So weird last week when I had a few days opportunity to look at an ocean horizon. No matter how much I looked I could NOT see the scene as a spatial distance scene.

 

It was Truman Show, all the way.

[joeblast]

hum, matter holds its form because the ideas need the yang substrate to...manifest?

 

 

So weird last week when I had a few days opportunity to look at an ocean horizon. No matter how much I looked I could NOT see the scene as a spatial distance scene.

 

It was Truman Show, all the way.

I watched an ocean ship disappear over the horizon once, it took a little while to unfold. It was an interesting perspective

[Seeker of Wisdom]

Does matter hold a form, or does your mind hold the perception of forms?

 

Don't think of an answer, treat it like a koan.

[三江源]

hum, matter holds its form because the ideas need the yang substrate to...manifest?

 

 

I watched an ocean ship disappear over the horizon once, it took a little while to unfold. It was an interesting perspective

 

 

Yes! I'd love to have seen that, am imagining it.

 

I have seen the dissolving like when you see walls breathe and pulsate instead of seeing them as 'fixed'.. what would be happening here that would allow the vision to exist?

[manitou]

Does matter hold a form, or does your mind hold the perception of forms?

 

Don't think of an answer, treat it like a koan.

 

 

My feeling exactly. Mind is the thing that's living.

[joeblast]

Yes! I'd love to have seen that, am imagining it.

 

I have seen the dissolving like when you see walls breathe and pulsate instead of seeing them as 'fixed'.. what would be happening here that would allow the vision to exist?

in neither case are you seeing a surface

[Seeker of Wisdom]

Have you considered this? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_monism#section_1 Consciousness is meaningless without things for it to perceive, things are meaningless if not perceived. They both come from Tao.

 

 

We all know materialism (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism) makes no sense. Dualism (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_dualism) doesn't explain how the brain and mind can affect each other.

Idealism (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism#section_5) - which you seem to be proposing - doesn't make sense to me. What prompted the first thought? Why are we not omnipotent? Things are meaningless without perception, but doesn't perception need an object?

 

Edited April 5, 2013 by Seeker of the Self

[Birch]

Does matter hold a form, or does your mind hold the perception of forms?

Don't think of an answer, treat it like a koan.

 

I read that very fast and read 'treat it like bacon':-)

 

 

[Seeker of Wisdom]

I read that very fast and read 'treat it like bacon':-)

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EAK6KpsLh1M/Tn-2pFmNBvI/AAAAAAAAAtk/P5YmnG9RQno/s1600/bacon-love.jpg

[3bob]

If time (and space) is an illusion then so are the "One" to the "10,000" and the mind in which they exist, (which is not my take)

[Birch]

 

Yes! I'd love to have seen that, am imagining it.

 

I have seen the dissolving like when you see walls breathe and pulsate instead of seeing them as 'fixed'.. what would be happening here that would allow the vision to exist?

 

I just figured 'I'm getting tired' when that happens. It happens less nowadays than it did before however. The one I found the most unsettling was concrete. When it starts moving around like liquid-ish.

[Taomeow]

I remember the first time in my life I saw the sea. I just turned five, we were going on vacation. I had the "idea" of what the sea is explained to me in advance. I knew rivers and lakes, they explained how the sea is different, I expected to see something that is like a lake but way bigger, "so big you can't see the other shore," but what I actually saw did not compute at all.

There were no points of correspondence between the idea of the sea I had and what I was actually looking at. Infinity struck me hard. I think it was my first cognitive crisis -- I couldn't conceptualize the absence of limits, boundaries, the "no end to it all," the unbroken immensity that had nothing but itself within itself and no "within" either because "within" means a boundary and there wasn't any such thing, the horizon couldn't fool me, I knew -- felt rather than saw -- that it doesn't end there. I remember getting very upset -- took me a long time to figure out what I was upset about, but I did, it was exactly this, the mismatch between human ideas, concepts, words describing reality and reality itself. They had absolutely nothing in common. Reality was inexplicable, the Black Sea as seen through the eyes of a five-year-old for the first time was mystery of mysteries, and I had no idea what to do with its glaring, shining, flat out presence.

To put it in Castaneda's terms, the idea of the sea was on the island of the tonal. The sea itself, however, was the nagual. On the island of the tonal, there's no room for the nagual. In the nagual, the island of the tonal is a little bubble of foam on the surface, and it doesn't matter how many ideas you can stuff into this bubble, the only way it touches the nagual is by floating as a tiny speck on its surface, easily bustable by a chance splash.

Later that day, when we settled in, we went to the beach and I went swimming. I loved it, I had fun playing with other kids, explored the pebbles and met a little crab and a sea horse, got the beginning of a suntan going... The sea was becoming seemingly accessible, something I "know what to do with," another "thing" to appropriate and experience and call my own, but deep down I knew it was an illusion, a cop-out. I knew I mustn't look at the horizon so as to maintain this illusion -- if I did, for any stretch of time longer than a brief glance, all my gained territory in domesticating the sea disappeared and I was face to face with mystery as before, as ever. It haunted me in my dreams, formless, tantalizing, dangerous, dangerous to all I knew and could do and was yet to master.

As Laozi almost said,

When a five-year-old meets the tao, she is stunned.
If she wasn't stunned, it wouldn't be the tao.

[suninmyeyes]

All this ocean talk reminded me that at the Buddhist monestary set by the ocean shore , I have visited recently the Guru /Teacher gave a contemplation on horizon -- a point where ocean meeting the sky as a one of the main meditations/ teachings for people to practise .

Edited April 5, 2013 by suninmyeyes

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

I think therefore I am?



Idealist, imagineer, creator, deity, source; Idea.

Mind and matter are not dualistic never the less.

[3bob]

"First there is a mountain then there is no mountain, then there is..."

 

And the Ocean never lies.

Edited April 5, 2013 by 3bob

[3bob]

"...The one I found the most unsettling was concrete..." by K

 

yes, and when totality of memory sees itself dissolving that to is unsettling, for what is mind without memory?

[Birch]

"...The one I found the most unsettling was concrete..." by K

 

yes, and when totality of memory sees itself dissolving that to is unsettling, for what is mind without memory?

 

Are you suggesting the perception of liquifying concrete has anything to do with totality of memory seeing itself?

Yeah, I dunno, I kind of get what you're talking about but figured it was just a 'kundalini' thing and 'forgot' about it. But now I remember, yeah I guess part of what I was seeing could have been memory and part could have been more 'direct' than that.

 

I didn't forget the astrologer who told me I was on my last karmic cycle. Why bother if there isn't actually a coherent 'me' to pull together into some kind of liquified-ish form? I coudn't figure that one out for example. My Bazi reading doesn't suggest anything (as far as I can see, but that is not very far) about whether 'this life' (and I can understand that 'this life' by itself has a cutesy ring to it :-)) is one of the last, of several, it seems i 'one of several' and at the same time 'only this one' might be what is being said without saying it straight up.

 

 

-2cts-random

[3bob]

I'm suggesting all memory as we (seem) to know and define ourselves dissolving, for memory is much to slow to hold that which is moving so fast that it standing still and already together everywhere at once. (or in both "only in this one" and in the "several")

 

I'd add that a predicator in and of time and space is limited by same and may hit a mark located there, but such a mark does not satisfy in the end.

 

Good fortune to you

Edited April 6, 2013 by 3bob

[oildrops]

The past and the future comprise the present and vice versa. Anything I fight away comes back stronger, such as the past (depression) and the future (anxiety).

 

They have already happened and this is when they will happen.

Edited April 6, 2013 by oildrops

[manitou]

I wonder what an appropriate shock might be for a child who grows up on/in the ocean...

 

To move to Ohio.

[Seeker of Wisdom]

I wonder what an appropriate shock might be for a child who grows up on/in the ocean...

 

IN the ocean? Ask Aquaman.

[joeblast]

I wonder what an appropriate shock might be for a child who grows up on/in the ocean...

perhaps the first time ee's taken to a great height, I recall hiking in alaska when I was young and we went up to the top of one of the mountains...and it seemed like you could see foreeeeeeeeeever, just mountains, and more mountains, and more mountains, it was as if they went on endlessly - whereas the ocean you look out there and distance is relatively undefined (and that was probably what was so cool about watching that ocean liner disappear over the horizon, it actually gave representation to both distance and curvature) the mountains...well that and a couple hours ago we were in swim trunks, now we're throwing snowballs

 

Edited April 6, 2013 by joeblast

[Vmarco]

Linear time is an illusion - it's really all happening here and now. The past, the present, the future.....all happening Here and Now. But we can't see the fullness of it because our brains have only one-dimensional time perception in its normal state.

 

Matter has no intelligence. Ideas do. The Dao does.

 

There is no "here and now"...to have a "here" there must be a "there"....both are of duality, and thus thus cannot be "Now." From a past or future (hope) mentality, all appears as if in a Now,...yet from the Now's point of view, their is no past or future.

 

"When here becomes

Everywhere and

Now becomes

Always, then

One has succeeded." Wu Hsin

 

The language of Heart Consciousness is very, very specific. Relatively speaking, matter does have intelligence,...for example, water has a molecular intelligence to attract to itself, minerals that sustain life. Thus, if one were to live off of purified or distilled water, that is, water in which minerals were removed, then when that water is drunk, it immediately attacts to itself, life sustaining minerals from your body, which are subsequently urinated away, manifesting a slow, negative transition or death of your form. Whereas, if one was to drink artisian water, the opposite effect would occur.

 

As for the question "Why matter holds its form"....IMO, every Daoist should consider that,...for within that question is the understanding of the Dao itself.

 

Although not a Daoist book,...one of the best books on Daoism is "A New Concept of the Universe"....which thoroughly explains "Why matter holds its form."