Mair 2:3

[Shidifen]

Mair 2:3

 

"If there were no 'other', there would be no 'I'. If there were no 'I', there would be nothing to apprehend the `other: "This is near the mark, but I do not know what causes it to be so. It seems as though there is a True Ruler, but there is no particular evidence for Her. We may have faith in Her ability to function, but cannot see Her form. She has attributes but is without form. The hundred bones, the nine orifices, and the six viscera are all complete within my body. With which am I most closely identified? Do you favor all of them equally? Or are there those to which you are partial? Assuming that you treat them equally, do you take them all to be your servants? If so, are your servants incapable of controlling each other? Or do they take turns being lord and subject among themselves? If not, do they have a True Lord over them all? Whether or not we succeed in specifying His attributes has neither positive nor negative effect upon the truth of the Lord.

Once we have received our complete physical form, we remain conscious of it while we await extinction. In our strife and friction with other things, we gallop forward on our course unable to stop. Is this not sad? We toil our whole life without seeing any results. We deplete ourselves with wearisome labor, but don't know what it all adds up to. Isn't this lamentable? There are those who say that at least we are not dead, but what's the good of it? Our physical form decays and with it the mind likewise. May we not say that this is the most lamentable of all? Is human life really so deluded as this? Am I the only one who is so deluded? Are there some individuals who are not deluded?

NOTES -

 

5. Her. The Chinese pronoun lacks gender.
 

[Shidifen]

The last part makes me wish it were still possible to live a simple hunter/gatherer lifestyle, without any need at all for money or any of its equivalents.

[Marblehead]

The last part makes me wish it were still possible to live a simple hunter/gatherer lifestyle, without any need at all for money or any of its equivalents.

 

There still are some places where one can live like that but these are tribal societies and it would be difficult to get accepted.  I think there are still a few in Australia?

[Shidifen]

Yes, in Australia the aboriginal groups have land they fully control and they also have the legal right to access Government owned land under lease to mining companies, etc. Some of them are working toward self-sufficiency since some State Governments have decided they can no longer continue paying for water, power or phone-line access for the communities. Of course the politicians can find the money for their oversized salaries, superannuation and pensions.

I have a dream of buying a few hundred acres of cheap land and randomly planting it with fruit trees and other edible plants and letting chickens run wild on it, as well as a big dam for ducks and yabbies. Then I'd build some small sheds around the place and then retire on it. Then I could just wander about, picking whatever was in season, scatter a few seeds, pick up a few eggs, catch the occasional chicken and yabby and sleep by a fire in good weather or the nearest shed in rain or cold weather. But I'd have to put a heap of money in a trust to pay for the annual rates and other Government expenses. I'd open it up to like-minded groups that want to do the same and hopefully start a new movement of people giving up a life of working for other people just to buy rubbish they don't need but everybody says they do; a life like Laozi and Zhuangzi describe.

I live in a town where drug abuse and stupid violence are on the increase and I reckon a simpler lifestyle with less consumerism, and hence less money and more self-reliance, might just be the panacea.

I also have a house on a few acres in a valley beside a creek, but unfortunately it gets two or three black frosts every July. It kills off the leaves of every plant and even the canetoads are snap frozen. That's not conducive to anything like self-sufficiency...

Off topic, I know, but now that it's in writing my dream might come true, LOL!

[Taoist Texts]

 

Once we have received our complete physical form, we remain conscious of it while we await extinction. In our strife and friction with other things, we gallop forward on our course unable to stop. Is this not sad? We toil our whole life without seeing any results. We deplete ourselves with wearisome labor, but don't know what it all adds up to. Isn't this lamentable? There are those who say that at least we are not dead, but what's the good of it? Our physical form decays and with it the mind likewise. May we not say that this is the most lamentable of all? Is human life really so deluded as this? Am I the only one who is so deluded? Are there some individuals who are not deluded?

 

This bit is not about the futility of life in this world. Its a lament about not knowing what happens in the hereafter. Mair garbled it up.

Edited July 5, 2016 by Taoist Texts

[Marblehead]

I have a dream ...

 

 

Yes, off topic thread wise but not off topic concept wise.

 

And yes, the dream is realistic and doable.  Such things have been done in the USA but most have failed for one reason or another.  Mostly by getting government's attention.

 

And having single ownership would be the ideal with minimum standards for all who wish to live such a life style.  Most places in Aussieland get plenty of sun so solar would be a very efficient way to get energy.  Water might be a problem for you depending on where you establish yourself.

 

I'm fortunate that I live in a very conservative county here in Florida where drugs and violence are kept to a minimum.

 

Well, If you own the house that is an asset you could use for your new place.  And too, if you set it up as a corporation you could sell stock in the place as long as you remember to keep at least 51% ownership of the place.

 

Our dreams sometimes do come true if we work hard enough for them to materialize.

Edited July 5, 2016 by Marblehead

[Daeluin]

 

 

Joy and anger, sorrow and happiness, plans and regrets, transformations and stagnations, unguarded abandonment and deliberate posturing - music flowing out of hollows mushrooms of billowing steam! Day and night they alternate before us, but no one knows whence they sprout. That is enough! That is enough! Is it from all of this, presented ceaselessly day and night, that we come to exist? Without that there would be no me, to be sure, but then again without me there would be nothing selected out from it all. This is certainly something close to hand, and yet we do not know what makes it so. If there is some controller behind it all, it is peculiarly devoid of any manifest sign. Its ability to flow and to stop makes its presence plausible, but even then it shows no definite form. That would make it a reality with no definite form.

 

The hundred bones, the nine openings, the six internal organs are all present here as my body. Which one is most dear to me? Do you delight in all equally, or do you have some favorite among them? Or are they all mere servants and concubines? Are these servants and concubines unable to govern each other? Or do they take turns as master and servant? If there exists a genuine ruler among them, then whether we could find out the facts about him or not would neither add to nor subtract from that genuineness.

 

If you regard what you have received as fully formed one and for all, unable to forget it, all the time it survives is just a vigil spent waiting for its end. In the process, you grind and lacerate yourself against all the things around you. Its activities will be over as quickly as a horse galloping by, unstoppable - is it not sad? All your life you labor, and nothing is achieved. Worn and exhausted to the point of collapse, never knowing what it all amounts to - how can you not lament this? What good does it do if others say, "To us he is not dead"? The body has decayed and the mind went with it. Can this be called anything but an enormous sorrow? Is human life always this bewildering, or am I the only bewildered one? Is there actually any man, or anything in a man, that is not bewildered?

 

 

 

Continuing with Ziporyn's exploration for comparison.

 

Why do we pick and choose? In asking this we are led to the answer of how the constriction of scope occurs. We continue to explore this, and are shown the imbalance this leads to. Even though we know our friends will eventually die, we cling to them after they are dead in our suffering. Why do we attach to such self-made constrictions? Is this not bewildering?

 

When exploring the pipings of heaven, earth, and man, we see the pipes of man shown as pitch-pipes. The key here is that those pitch pipes have been structured just so, each making a chosen pitch rather than a random one. Rather than being formed through having life breathed into them by the natural blowings of the winds of heaven and earth, man has enough control over heaven and earth to precisely shape things. Many animals exhibit the abilities to make choices, but cannot change their ways as well as can man. Many spirits exist flowing and nurturing harmony, without being able to both connect to heavenly flow and influence matter like man can.

 

"Man" has the ability to set things in certain ways, and along with this process continues to obsess over controlling the shapings which the winds blow through.

[Taoist Texts]

Thanks Daeliun for quoting Zyporin. I see that he did not recognise this sentence 

 

 Without that there would be no me, to be sure, but then again without me there would be nothing selected out from it all.

 

As being a paraphrase of a well known 

• 2.2 Hard and White

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/school-names/#2.2

 

paradox from the school of names. Not recognizing that Zy and the rest of them veered as far away from what ZZ says as humanly possible, while he says 5 fairly simple things.

 

1. What am I, where is the core of my personality? I can not find it in my body. None of my functions or body parts are central to me.

2.  If there is no core then a human being certainly disintegrates after death.

3 There are some people who talk about immortality arts but they are useless.

4. So whole human life is one big tragedy.

5. But although my personality dies, still in a human being there is something that does not die.

[Rara]

The last part makes me wish it were still possible to live a simple hunter/gatherer lifestyle, without any need at all for money or any of its equivalents.

Your profile pic, The Vinegar Tasters...has the moral that life and all in it can be appreciated, even if perceived as bitter by others. From Lao Tzu's perspective that is.

 

As for Chuang Tzu here (me making yet another comparison) he seems sad with the state of life we have, the life we feel obliged to live as humans. For me, again, Chuang Tzu appears more "understanding" or realistic about humans and emotions, as I mentioned in the previous thread too. Do you agree?

[Rara]

1. What am I, where is the core of my personality? I can not find it in my body. None of my functions or body parts are central to me.

2. If there is no core then a human being certainly disintegrates after death.

3 There are some people who talk about immortality arts but they are useless.

4. So whole human life is one big tragedy.

5. But although my personality dies, still in a human being there is something that does not die.

Is this close to the Buddhist concept of "no I"?

[Marblehead]

As for Chuang Tzu here (me making yet another comparison) he seems sad with the state of life we have, the life we feel obliged to live as humans. For me, again, Chuang Tzu appears more "understanding" or realistic about humans and emotions, as I mentioned in the previous thread too. Do you agree?

 

Yes, I would agree with that.  We work hard for "the man" all our life and when it is time to retire we have nothing.  Why not do nothing for "the man" and just live spontaneously and when it is time to retire we still have nothing but we have lived our own life - dragging our tail in the mud.

[Taoist Texts]

Is this close to the Buddhist concept of "no I"?

Exactly. The seeds of buddhism fell on well ploughed ground in China.

[Rara]

Yes, I would agree with that. We work hard for "the man" all our life and when it is time to retire we have nothing. Why not do nothing for "the man" and just live spontaneously and when it is time to retire we still have nothing but we have lived our own life - dragging our tail in the mud.

And if you can vouch for that, I may still end up quitting "professional" life haha.

[Marblehead]

And if you can vouch for that, I may still end up quitting "professional" life haha.

 

Hehehe.  I can't.  I was one of those who worked hard all my life for "the man".

 

But I did make sure I had something when I retired.

[Marblehead]

Did we lose our copy of the Chuang Tzu?

[Jim D.]

I didn't!! Go ahead MH run the class.

[Marblehead]

I didn't!! Go ahead MH run the class.

 

I can't.  I don't have that translation in my collection.

[Jim D.]

[Stosh]

Im thinking this is lamenting the lack of a god to point to , a reason to exist , some larger cause to be aligned with. 

Angst regarding the failure of these concepts. 

Wouldn't it be nice is we could point to an ultimate cause, or ultimate mover? That we knew why we were here and what we had to do? That we could rightly judge ourselves as good , important ,valuable? 

 

That's what its lamenting,

people seem to die without import , that all we are trying to do ultimately fails to make a lasting difference , that our pains appear  pointless. Its seems easier to handle these things, death ,pain , misfortune , if we can at least attribute some good to it. To believe that it wasn't all for nothing. In the face of this balm, its normal to maintain the standard attitudes on identity, gods , and social good.

 

Its like sighing how it would be nice if life itself came with a handbook. 

Edited September 19, 2016 by Stosh

[Marblehead]

True, there are no operating instructions for us when we are born.  Why did the oak seed germinate and put forth a tree?  Perhaps only to be useful.  Has my life been useful?

[Stosh]

True, there are no operating instructions for us when we are born.  Why did the oak seed germinate and put forth a tree?  Perhaps only to be useful.  Has my life been useful?

IMO, theres just no such thing as an objective assessment of that. Subjectively though, Id like to think that we have served our own standard of that well. The big oak did its thing, as does the seed and hopefully they each felt satisfied, left it all on the table, so to speak. It could be argued that the oak is just a manifestation of the greater whole and dividing that whole into different trees isnt actually valid. I think its not, but I still understand how this perception seems untrue from the traditional perspective. The other standard view conceives purpose and therefore failure,. Usefulness and uselessness. etc.

[Marblehead]

Yes, but remember, usefulness and uselessness apply only to our self.  The rest of the universe is on its own.

[Stosh]

Are you asking me if your life has been useful? or ,,if anyones life has been, to them? 

I'm thinking that the question is odd , theres no way to ask that correctly, or answer it correctly ...was ones life of use to them , or did it do them no good ,, did they use their life to some other purpose ... since Im coming from the angle that such an idea really isnt ummm legit when youre talking about ones life in its entirety including our desires goals etc. 

I suppose you could say I use my life but that it has no purpose to any greater thing so you could say its useless. On the other view , you could say its been useful to itself. And that's the stand I was taking. 

 

If I had a purpose or use ,  and I could fail it.. my own usefulness to me wouldn't be the point of me , in the larger view.  So my useless life is useful to me because of  its uselessness to the greater thing. 

 

Someone else cant literally use my life to do their own living, so to them my living could be considered useless. Therefore the useless is or is not useful depending on perspective, , defining it as subjective valuation. 

 

Obviously in normal conversation though  the two states are in opposition to one another. Right?...

But perhaps it could be said that if a life has a use to anyone its not having no use to anyone, and therefore its always has use. Which doesnt really work the other way around.

Edited September 20, 2016 by Stosh

[Marblehead]

Yes, the concept of useful/useless is both objective and subjective; self and other directed.

 

Is life allowing us to have enjoyable experiences?  Those kinds of questions regarding self.

 

Is "my" life beneficial to others?  Have we helped others to have better experiences in their life?  Those kinds of questions regarding others.

 

On a duality line we would have useful on one side, harmful on the other and useless in the middle.

[Stosh]

Ok , thats fine for you. Thing for me is that, already being familiar with the dualistic- mind- set- based approach to life .. I think its got some serious drawbacks. When I or someone else ends up banging their head against some intractable philosophical issue , Im thinking its usually because one hasn't actually opened up to these other ideas. The price of new thinking is ,, the old thinking. Which,, many certainly prefer to hold on to, because they have a whole value set incorporating dualism. 

Frankly I think the term dualism isnt great ,but the language is what it is. 

Edited September 20, 2016 by Stosh