Why are we afraid to die if it's inevitable?

[Karl]

Then this is your logic based on your definitions. I suspected that you had a static view of an absolute. So this is how you have created your false reality.

 

Step back a bit.

 

Self is the mind which perceives reality.

Reality is an absolute.

Change presupposes that something changes from one thing to another. This presupposes the law of identity.

Everything in reality has an identity and acts according to its nature.

Causality is the law of identity applied to action.

Causality is change.

 

It is you premise which is wrong. You have assumed an absolute is static and unchanging, but this is not the case in a dynamic universe. The self is an absolute, but it is changing. This is reality. It does not deny identity because it changes, it presupposes it.

[Tatsumaru]

Then this is your logic based on your definitions. I suspected that you had a static view of an absolute. So this is how you have created your false reality.

 

Step back a bit.

 

Self is the mind which perceives reality.

Reality is an absolute.

Change presupposes that something changes from one thing to another. This presupposes the law of identity.

Everything in reality has an identity and acts according to its nature.

Causality is the law of identity applied to action.

Causality is change.

 

It is you premise which is wrong. You have assumed an absolute is static and unchanging, but this is not the case in a dynamic universe. The self is an absolute, but it is changing. This is reality. It does not deny identity because it changes, it presupposes it.

 

Some of your deductions were incorrect:

"Change presupposes that something changes from one thing to another. This presupposes the law of identity."

 

Things do not change.

I explained this in a previous reply, but you are disregarding it.

"A lot of people think that if nothing really exists, how can anything function? However, Nagarjuna said that it is precisely because everything does not really exist that everything functions. If everything were truly existent, existing in and of itself and thus being unchanging, things would not depend on anything. But then they could not interact with each other either because that entails change. Therefore, it is only due to everything changing all the time that interaction and functioning are possible."

 

Thus whatever exists doesn't change, whatever changes doesn't exist.

 

The rest of your deductions based on identity were also incorrect because they were based on the error explained above.

 

Who is talking about the universe? The universe is not real... Again whatever exists doesn't change, whatever changes doesn't exist.

 

Stop looking for the absolute within the dream. It's futile. This world, this life, this universe... It's a dream, time to wake up...

 

[Karl]

Proof presupposes existence. You just blew yourself up.

[Tatsumaru]

Proof presupposes existence. You just blew yourself up.

What?

[Karl]

What?

It should be obvious. Life is movement. Things that don't change are dead. Death is the end of life and you can be certain that it is irreversible and therefore no change is possible for the non existent self.

[Marblehead]

If you believe that there is no self, then you won't be able to die, because you weren't born.

If you believe that there is a self, then you won't be able to die, because you weren't born.

Better find out.

 

 

I hold to a different option.  There is a self.  It came into existence when I was born.  It will die when my body dies.  End of story.

[WisteriaWinds]

I hold to a different option. There is a self. It came into existence when I was born. It will die when my body dies. End of story.

Yeah, things don't exist in the sense they aren't permanent. If you misunderstand that you get hit with a stick or kicked.

 

Do roshis still do that?

[Marblehead]

No idea about roshis but I sure had a hard time coming to peace with my Buddhist friends many years ago when some what to insist that nothing exists.  They forgot the word "permanently".

[Gerard]

Have you seen them?

 

Indeed, three of them, otherwise I wouldn't have said that. And a very interesting conversation with this one But let's move on and focus on perfecting the MIND, the most important task of all.

Edited July 4, 2016 by Gerard

[9th]

It should be obvious. Life is movement. Things that don't change are dead. Death is the end of life and you can be certain that it is irreversible and therefore no change is possible for the non existent self.

 

Dead things change, they decompose, they rot, they continue to fall apart.  This is pretty obvious as well.  You fellows both win, how about that?  Can you be happy with that?  Or is the fact that you are both right all too close to the fact you are both wrong?

[Jim D.]

Spend your life fearing death and you will stop living in the moment you decide to do that.

[Tatsumaru]

It should be obvious. Life is movement. Things that don't change are dead. Death is the end of life and you can be certain that it is irreversible and therefore no change is possible for the non existent self.

Dead things change, they decompose, they rot, they continue to fall apart.  This is pretty obvious as well.  You fellows both win, how about that?  Can you be happy with that?  Or is the fact that you are both right all too close to the fact you are both wrong?

 

Well 9th, you are actually right. Movement certainly doesn't stop with perceived death. That's why there is no such thing as life or death. It's just a process.

 

Karl, you are not even making sense anymore. At which point does the dead body stop moving. Energy never stops.

Dead things do change, thus things that do not change cannot be called dead.

Energy is a function of work/movement, thus if there's no change, there's no energy. This is beyond your idea of life/death.

Stop trying to find an example for the absolute reality in the dream.

 

 

I hold to a different option.  There is a self.  It came into existence when I was born.  It will die when my body dies.  End of story.

 

Yeah, things don't exist in the sense they aren't permanent. If you misunderstand that you get hit with a stick or kicked.

 

Do roshis still do that?

 

Are you saying that you are the body or the mind? 

The body is just accumulation of data. You see a banana on the table - if you say this is me, you are crazy, but if you eat the banana, 2 hours later it adds to the body. Now do you think it's you? Weren't you there before? 

What about the mind? You go to school, you study, you get a diploma. Now you say I am x the biologist with a perfect diploma. Are you the words in the text book  or the diploma, weren't you there before the diploma?

So, do you believe that you are what you accumulate? Then who accumulates it?

Say you are the body, but the body is a dissipative system without a single absolute particle. Where is 'you' in that process?

If you cut one finger off , will you be lost? If you cut off all your limbs, will you be lost? Plenty of people without limbs - same personality. So are you the brain then? People tend to insist that they are the brain even though there is no trace of self there either. Why would one prefer to believe that they are the brain is beyond me. Just another organ in the body, just a piece of meat that gets too much attention.

 

The rest is a bourgeois low-level zen joke: That things somehow only temporary exist, so don't get attached to them and that's the greatest liberation...

 

If you are true to that tradition just kill yourself for complete liberation. Why wait?

Edited July 4, 2016 by Tatsumaru

[Karl]

Dead things change, they decompose, they rot, they continue to fall apart.  This is pretty obvious as well.  You fellows both win, how about that?  Can you be happy with that?  Or is the fact that you are both right all too close to the fact you are both wrong?

No, that is material change. Living things are living until they aren't, it's a binary transition like on/off. A body without life is just flesh and bone.

[Karl]

Well 9th, you are actually right. Movement certainly doesn't stop with perceived death. That's why there is no such thing as life or death. It's just a process.

Karl, you are not even making sense anymore. At which point does the dead body stop moving. Energy never stops.

Dead things do change, thus things that do not change cannot be called dead.

Energy is a function of work/movement, thus if there's no change, there's no energy. This is beyond your idea of life/death.

Stop trying to find an example for the absolute reality in the dream.

 

 

 

 

 

Are you saying that you are the body or the mind?

The body is just accumulation of data. You see a banana on the table - if you say this is me, you are crazy, but if you eat the banana, 2 hours later it adds to the body. Now do you think it's you? Weren't you there before?

What about the mind? You go to school, you study, you get a diploma. Now you say I am x the biologist with a perfect diploma. Are you the words in the text book or the diploma, weren't you there before the diploma?

So, do you believe that you are what you accumulate? Then who accumulates it?

Say you are the body, but the body is a dissipative system without a single absolute particle. Where is 'you' in that process?

If you cut one finger off , will you be lost? If you cut off all your limbs, will you be lost? Plenty of people without limbs - same personality. So are you the brain then? People tend to insist that they are the brain even though there is no trace of self there either. Why would one prefer to believe that they are the brain is beyond me. Just another organ in the body, just a piece of meat that gets too much attention.

 

The rest is a bourgeois low-level zen joke: That things somehow only temporary exist, so don't get attached to them and that's the greatest liberation...

 

If you are true to that tradition just kill yourself for complete liberation. Why wait?

Life is a binary state, it does not 'decompose'. You are alive and then you are dead. The second state is unchanging, it is permanent. Existence exists, but without consciousness of existence what is there ? So Buddah is quite correct to state it in those terms. It makes it clear that the only true permanence for an individual conscious being is death. A state which is unalterable. Self ceases to exist.

 

Your second point is simple reductionism. Consciousness is something and it has identity. You are you mind. Note I did not say brain. I mean the whole of you that exists sufficiently for the mind to continue to function. Take away the means for the mind to function and conscious awareness ceases.

Edited July 4, 2016 by Karl

[Tatsumaru]

No, that is material change. Living things are living until they aren't, it's a binary transition like on/off. A body without life is just flesh and bone.

 

So what is life then? And what is "just flesh and bone". You seem to be stuck at the "Cogito ergo sum" level.

The philosophical proposition of René Descartes (Je pense donc je suis) more widely known as Cogito ergo sum, is often considered the foundation for all knowledge. This Cartesian premise, “I think, therefore I am [or I exist],” which is to say, the “i think” or ego comes before the I am (as if awareness arises from matter), presupposes that the mental sense organ (the sixth sense) is separate from the other senses.

Ironically, concerning the other five senses (hearing, touching, seeing, smelling, and tasting), Descartes articulated, “All that I have tried to understand to the present time has been affected by my senses; now I know these senses are deceivers, and it is prudent to be distrustful after one has been deceived once.”

In Buddhist and Taoist traditions, six physical sense organs (the five that Descartes considered deceivers, plus the “i think”) are called the Sadāyatana’s, each having their own way of perceiving the world, and are all recognized as deceivers.

 

Life is a binary state, it does not 'decompose'. You are alive and then you are dead. The second state is unchanging, it is permanent. Existence exists, but without consciousness of existence what is there ? So Buddah is quite correct to state it in those terms. It makes it clear that the only true permanence for an individual conscious being is death. A state which is unalterable. Self ceases to exist.

 

Buddha never stated anything like that. In fact he stated the exact opposite - that the only true consciousness is permanent.

[Karl]

So what is life then? And what is "just flesh and bone". You seem to be stuck at the "Cogito ergo sum" level.

The philosophical proposition of René Descartes (Je pense donc je suis) more widely known as Cogito ergo sum, is often considered the foundation for all knowledge. This Cartesian premise, “I think, therefore I am [or I exist],” which is to say, the “i think” or ego comes before the I am (as if awareness arises from matter), presupposes that the mental sense organ (the sixth sense) is separate from the other senses.

Ironically, concerning the other five senses (hearing, touching, seeing, smelling, and tasting), Descartes articulated, “All that I have tried to understand to the present time has been affected by my senses; now I know these senses are deceivers, and it is prudent to be distrustful after one has been deceived once.”

In Buddhist and Taoist traditions, six physical sense organs (the five that Descartes considered deceivers, plus the “i think”) are called the Sadāyatana’s, each having their own way of perceiving the world, and are all recognized as deceivers.

 

 

 

Buddha never stated anything like that. In fact he stated the exact opposite - that the only true consciousness is permanent.

Right, as you are versed in philosophy that makes it much easier.

 

'I think therefore I am' is bull shit. Let's change it around 'I am therefore I think'.

 

Descartes was looking to do the same thing as all modern philosophers. What sticks in their craw is that consciousness has identity. Descartes, Kant and Hegel are responsible for the greatest lie mankind has been saddled with.

 

So, now we change it all around. We dump the mind body dichotomy because it never existed. We move existence into primacy in the same way we move the sun to the centre of the solar system and the earth into orbit around it. Existence has primacy over consciousness.

 

Consciousness is permanent as long as the entity is alive and conscious. Consciousness does not exist in a vaccum, it does not create existence. Consciousness must be conscious of some-thing.

 

Existence is identity; consciousness is identification.

 

Now with objectivism we have integrated man. Body and soul if you like. Objectivism neither denies spirit nor matter. Instead it denies the separation within a living entity and mysticism which surrounds it.

 

On one side there are the spiritual Mystics that believe knowledge is only possible by some form of divine revelation, or transference. Then the muscle Mystics that do not believe knowledge is possible at all. Mystics flip flop from one to the other in order to keep the game going on. They are in both camps at one time or another.

 

The spirit exists in the total as semblance of the parts. You can't go looking for it in the atom or a toe nail. Existence is axiomatic as is consciousness and identity.

 

Test it out. I know you won't take my word for it and you definitely should not. It's easy to see this is true by simple intro and extrospection. Cast 'feeling' out and look at what you can objectively prove. Once you start down the path of being unable to prove anything its pointless to continue any kind of conversation. You disqualify yourself from any argument because every argument requires proof. All proof must ultimately rest of something metaphysical and perceived.

 

The senses are not deceivers, they are infallible perceivers. We do the perception automatically, but the conceptual we must do consciously. The wool is a given, but the garment we knit is not. We need rules, a pattern to knit the garment correctly or we end up with a big ball of knotted, nothingness.

 

No one knew what Buddah actually stated because he never wrote anything down.

Edited July 4, 2016 by Karl

[WisteriaWinds]

There's your problem.

 

Are you saying that you are the body or the mind?

 

[Marblehead]

 

Are you saying that you are the body or the mind? 

 

Both and so much more.

 

The body is just accumulation of data. You see a banana on the table - if you say this is me, you are crazy, but if you eat the banana, 2 hours later it adds to the body. Now do you think it's you? Weren't you there before? 

 

Yes, the banana has become a part of me.  Note:  a part of me, not me.  I was prior to eating the banana and I still am after eating the banana.  But I changed a little bit because the banana is now a part of me.

What about the mind? You go to school, you study, you get a diploma. Now you say I am x the biologist with a perfect diploma. Are you the words in the text book  or the diploma, weren't you there before the diploma?

 

That's about labels.  The labels are not the person.

 

So, do you believe that you are what you accumulate? Then who accumulates it?

 

Trick question.  Not fair.  "I" was born.  What I was at birth is an accumulation of what my mother's body provided for me.  I have been gaining and losing every since that first day.  Constant change.  No permanence.  But it is still "me" in all my various and wonderful forms.

Say you are the body, but the body is a dissipative system without a single absolute particle. Where is 'you' in that process?

 

As I said, not just the body but so much more.  Difficult to define because it is constantly changing. 

If you cut one finger off , will you be lost? If you cut off all your limbs, will you be lost? Plenty of people without limbs - same personality. So are you the brain then? People tend to insist that they are the brain even though there is no trace of self there either. Why would one prefer to believe that they are the brain is beyond me. Just another organ in the body, just a piece of meat that gets too much attention.

 

Again, constantly changing.  One day a man with ten fingers and the next day a man with nine fingers.  But complete both before and after.

 

The rest is a bourgeois low-level zen joke: That things somehow only temporary exist, so don't get attached to them and that's the greatest liberation...

 

But if you buy a vacuum cleaner with no attachments you have bought something useless.

 

PS  I don't need to be liberated.  I'm not imprisoned.

 

If you are true to that tradition just kill yourself for complete liberation. Why wait?

 

Ha!  We Taoists are not allowed to kill our self.  We leave that in the hands of Tao.

[Marblehead]

'I think therefore I am' is bull shit. Let's change it around 'I am therefore I think'.

 

 

I already had to do that a while back.

[C T]

I think, therefore I am suggests that there are consequences to choices we make in life, and in that realisation some would become more open and responsible, or at least, be vulnerable to the possibility of seeking to adapt to changes.

 

I am, therefore i think seems but a mental stance subsumed within a belief of total independence, in control, and therefore all will be well. Its often a tricky assumption that could breed arrogance and denial. Such a view and its offshoots are based off Stoicism and related ideologies which are no better or worse than other ideologies. From a contemporary perspective, it has been noted that this is an archaic view which is often clung to determinedly by those who seek to negate the role of emotional responses, or even to ignore emotions as anything but sissified obstacles, and that only weaklings demonstrate them uncontrollably. 

 

Imo, its useless to argue that one is more appropriate than the other since individuals are conditioned from a young age to which direction they will likely bend. There is nothing challenging in keeping to either view. It seems the cause for spiritual quests to arise, therefore, is the longing in a person to go beyond philosophies and views that are merely operating within the bounds of intellect and logic. If one so choose adamantly that life should remain solely within these bounds, then the debates for transcendence and conversion of mundane attitudes to their spiritual equivalent becomes moot. 

[Karl]

I think, therefore I am suggests that there are consequences to choices we make in life, and in that realisation some would become more open and responsible, or at least, be vulnerable to the possibility of seeking to adapt to changes.

 

I am, therefore i think seems but a mental stance subsumed within a belief of total independence, in control, and therefore all will be well. Its often a tricky assumption that could breed arrogance and denial. Such a view and its offshoots are based off Stoicism and related ideologies which are no better or worse than other ideologies. From a contemporary perspective, it has been noted that this is an archaic view which is often clung to determinedly by those who seek to negate the role of emotional responses, or even to ignore emotions as anything but sissified obstacles, and that only weaklings demonstrate them uncontrollably. 

 

Imo, its useless to argue that one is more appropriate than the other since individuals are conditioned from a young age to which direction they will likely bend. There is nothing challenging in keeping to either view. It seems the cause for spiritual quests to arise, therefore, is the longing in a person to go beyond philosophies and views that are merely operating within the bounds of intellect and logic. If one so choose adamantly that life should remain solely within these bounds, then the debates for transcendence and conversion of mundane attitudes to their spiritual equivalent becomes moot.

 

It boils down to the primacy of existence or consciousness and that's all. I am therefore I think is not a stoic view, it's not infact an objectivist claim either, but how I look at it. I stand to be corrected by other objectivists.

 

There is no claim to emotions being a weakness or anything else you claim except for independence of thought. Man has the nature which might be thought of as a kind of prime mover within the envelope of 'first obey nature, then adapt nature'. Man is a creative force in the universe unlike, for instance, a comet that obeys only the nature of physics and cannot change its course by will. We cannot create out of nothing, but we can change arrangements of things into new arrangements and that is creativity in action.

 

There is nothing beyond these bounds. Neither is it true that one is permanently conditioned. I was very much in the primacy of consciousness camp before I grasped the logical problem with that view. Spirituality is within us and our actions are without. This leads to a tremendous expansion of consciousness-we can evolve by our own efforts to evolve and our only tool for doing so is our minds.

[Marblehead]

It boils down to the primacy of existence or consciousness and that's all. I am therefore I think is not a stoic view, it's not infact an objectivist claim either, but how I look at it. I stand to be corrected by other objectivists.

 

 

Actually, the reason I have adopted it and have used it a couple times is that, although not to negate the original as I do still hold to it, but rather it assumes that there must be existence before there can be thinking.  For me this negates the concept of universal consciousness and all the other silly concepts of ghosts, demons etc.

[C T]

Actually, the reason I have adopted it and have used it a couple times is that, although not to negate the original as I do still hold to it, but rather it assumes that there must be existence before there can be thinking.  For me this negates the concept of universal consciousness and all the other silly concepts of ghosts, demons etc.

Maybe this explains why the same people who laugh at gypsy fortune tellers continue to put their trust and hopes in economists. 

[Karl]

Actually, the reason I have adopted it and have used it a couple times is that, although not to negate the original as I do still hold to it, but rather it assumes that there must be existence before there can be thinking.  For me this negates the concept of universal consciousness and all the other silly concepts of ghosts, demons etc.

Precisely. Existence holds primacy over consciousness.

 

Descartes didn't quite mean it to mean the opposite, but his philosophy created the idea that a demon was present which led to our view and thence only God-of abiding purity could .... yada yada.

 

I've said before that you are a switcher, or rather you have mentally cobbled together both philosophic statements like a person who wants his cake and eat it. :-) you want the Dao and your materialist stance, both, but not integrated. It's the equivalent of being an agnostic atheist. You are like one of those Yoghurts that have the flavouring in a seperate carton. Instead of mixing them in the pot, you keep them seperate as you eat. ;-)

[Karl]

Maybe this explains why the same people who laugh at gypsy fortune tellers continue to put their trust and hopes in economists. 

Depends what you mean by 'hopes' but I concur with the sentiment.