Existence, Life.

[Prasanna]

We normally use the terms Existence and Life very casually. What do they mean actually? What factors determine existence or life. I would like your ideas on this. I would also like to have an in depth analysis into this topic of discussion.

 

[rex]

Existence is the container and life is the contents.

[3bob]

[dwai]

Existence is the phenomenon of being witnessed by a sentience. Life is the existence of sentience.

[Andrei]

Edited September 1, 2016 by Andrei

[Papayapple]

To me these are just words.

[silent thunder]

Breathe in...

Breathe out

 

repeat as required

[Daeluin]

Liu Yiming has some things to say on the subject.

 

In daoist internal work these concepts are known as xing (nature/life) and ming (existence/essence). When we see them together in a translation in these pairs we know that they are talking about this classic division of polarity.

 

Damo Mitchel says: Xing is an expression largely of the mind, although it is rooted in the health of the physical body, while Ming is a manifestation of the physical which is intertwined with the mental self.

[Jadespear]

Existence most typically refers to fact of the perception of a " physical reality ".... no matter what it is... essence, spirits, rocks, bears, trees, heavens, hells etc.    They are all said to "exist".  The universe we inhabit " exists". 

 

Life also exists.  But life is a bit more demanding of definition.  Without energy there is not life... a human body exists and is alive as long as it is full of energy.  Without energy life ceases to exist in one form and transforms into another...or ceases to exist altogether.

 

First there is " existence" then there is "life"..... then there is consciousness, then there is awareness, then there is everything else that is spawned through action, thought, observation, imagination, perception and propagation.

[Karl]

Existence is an axiom. Existence is identity; consciousness is identification.

 

It depends what is meant by 'life'. Living organism ? Human life ?

 

The existence of innanimate matter is unconditional. The existence of life is not. It depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its form, but it cannot cease to exist. Only a living organism faces a constant alternative: life, or death. Life is a process of self sustaining and self generated action. If an organism fails in that action it dies ; its chemical element continue to exist , but it's life ceases to exist.

[Karl]

Existence most typically refers to fact of the perception of a " physical reality ".... no matter what it is... essence, spirits, rocks, bears, trees, heavens, hells etc.    They are all said to "exist".  The universe we inhabit " exists". 

 

Life also exists.  But life is a bit more demanding of definition.  Without energy there is not life... a human body exists and is alive as long as it is full of energy.  Without energy life ceases to exist in one form and transforms into another...or ceases to exist altogether.

 

First there is " existence" then there is "life"..... then there is consciousness, then there is awareness, then there is everything else that is spawned through action, thought, observation, imagination, perception and propagation.

That's a bloody good attempt. There are a lot of holes in your premesis, such as life amounting to 'energy' which is abundant throughout the universe in innanimate matter.

 

A perception of physical reality implies a consciousness capable of recognising it. Plants are alive, but they are not conscious, they are goal directed, but are without purpose-something only applicable to conscious entities.

 

The best part for me is 'first there is existence' 'then life' then 'consciousness'. That there can be life that is not conscious of existence is rarely considered. However consciousness is an axiomatic corollary of the identification of existence. We cannot get further than 'existence exists' and consciousness grasps it.

 

Many here take the opposite view, that consciousness generates the illusion of existence. That nothing really exists as a concrete reality. Some are materialist subjectivists that use 'modern' physics to illustrate that matter is just empty space. That we can't know reality at all in any sense.

[silent thunder]

Existence is an axiom. Existence is identity; consciousness is identification.

 

It depends what is meant by 'life'. Living organism ? Human life ?

 

The existence of innanimate matter is unconditional. The existence of life is not. It depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its form, but it cannot cease to exist. Only a living organism faces a constant alternative: life, or death. Life is a process of self sustaining and self generated action. If an organism fails in that action it dies ; its chemical element continue to exist , but it's life ceases to exist.

 

While we are often diametrically opposed in our views, it's seldom more clear than in this instance mate.

 

Your perception that organisms are individuals striving alone with self generated action, while not surprising or new to me, is still strikingly strange compared to my experience of reality.  But such is the limitless nature of perception and expression of tao.  There is room for everything.

 

To me... Life is an implicitly and utterly interconnected web of nigh on indistinguishable co-arising conditions which constantly and fluidly combine in the persistent co-creation of what we reduce with language into the word reality.  Life and existence, indeed all phenomena are inexorably linked to me via the foundation from which they arise... awareness. 

 

Life and death is one fluid process and expression, not opposites, but varied extremes of one unified field of energy which is constantly arising from the foundation of awareness.  The lower condensation of vibration is our experience of physical reality, yet it is a mere pinprick of experience when viewed within its woven place among all manner of subsequent variations, vibrations and frequencies on the overall scale.

 

Further, even within our next small sphere of perception, our consciousness is divided into myriad frequencies in a web of interconnected experience on the subtle.  The problem solving waking state, appears to dominate, yet is always floating softly on the top of the ocean of our underlying consciousness and awareness.  The many states of dream, the variety of meditative states, the trance states and all of those varied again within the context of fluid motion and/or stillness.  The shear engine of the unconscious which fuels all the biological processes, oh which many derive the majority of our underlying emotional and hence subsequent types of conscious thought forms.  All interconnected.  Patterns within patterns, fractal re-expression... as within, without.

 

We are fluid expressions.  All of us, including the stones now standing at the beach which will someday be sand and another day be 'living beings'.  And while I can point to the spot just beyond the tip of my finger and say 'this is where my body ends' there is no escape from the awareness that the elemental expression of my body, is a flow of constant food, oxygen, sunlight and water from my body to every continent on our planet, my breath is recycled from the dawn of our atmosphere... as are all of my conscious states... there is an unending flow into and out of every aspect of our minds and bodies in the present moment and while our perception seems to compel some to identify as somehow independent, I cannot escape the awareness that while I am composed of many small things, I am one small aspect of that which seems infinitely greater...

[Karl]

I don't really have time to try and reduce your reply into something I would consider coherent. Where I see a problem is your assertion that we 'reduce with language' which has the quality of nominalism.

 

The other parts appear to be a poetic kind of description familiar to me as skepticism.

 

If you we are reducing things to language as word reality, then this is precisely what you are doing. This is inescapable to those who would deny direct perception of reality. No matter how you approach your philosophy you are forced to accept the same rules that I am. You can conceive things as you do, but that is also a conception.

 

There is an interconnected web of causality, but life is unique in that it is not indestructible. Dead is dead, but our material parts will certainly be recycled. New life will emerge out of the very same material building blocks. We don't know what life is, only that it is temporary, finite and cannot be sustained without effort on the part of the living organism.

 

Is that not how you live your life, do you imagine indestructability ? Are you indestructable, can you survive without any food or water. Can you survive by doing nothing at all. I'm afraid that this is concrete reality, you aren't indestructible and any experimentation will prove that reality wins over your conceptualisation. It makes your philosophy false, no matter what you say, it is just as effective as the gravity which will smash your body if you jump off a high cliff. You might imagine you can fly, or that you won't die, but this is not how life is.

[3bob]

when death dies then there is no dying...

[Karl]

when death dies then there is no dying...

When life dies there is no living. Death can't die, it's a terminal state. You cannot have a bluer blue, or a chaireer chair.

[3bob]

when death dies then there is no dying... (see "eater of death")

Edited September 9, 2016 by 3bob

[Marblehead]

Life is great!  My old body is having a hard time keeping up with it.

 

Yes, there is the concept of being beyond death.  That is when you feel you have done everything in life that you needed to do and it no longer matters when the body dies.

 

In my understanding of the Taoist concept of this is basically not dying before our natural time.  The Taoist Sage fears neither tiger nor rhino, not because these animals are harmless but because (s)he is aware of what those animals are doing and (s)he avoids them.

 

Existence is the time between birth and death.  Beyond these two events we really know nothing of what we are to become or what we were.

[3bob]

no-thing knows no death, 

 

"...how is this? Because there is no room for death in him"  TTC,chap 50

[Marblehead]

no-thing knows no death, 

 

"...how is this? Because there is no room for death in him"  TTC,chap 50

 

Yes, but be careful with this.  Paraphrased:  Why do I worry?  Because I have a body.  If I had no body I would have no worries.

 

But then, you would not exist.  Hang around, please.  I enjoy talking with you.

[Karl]

when death dies then there is no dying... (see "eater of death")

You are just fiddling with words. If there is no death there is no life. Life is not the absence of death, death it is the meaning of life.

The dead neither fear death, nor crave life. The living must fear death in order to live.

 

To be indestructible would not be life, it would be to act as a rock. Dying is integral to living life, to know that you cannot die, to be eternal would be as a rock. A rock does not require senses for it does not fear danger, need to seek food, nor recreate. A rock has no stomach or blood flow because it has no need for substance and oxygen. A rock has no muscles because it has need of doing nothing. Why would you need eyes or ears ? there would be no purpose so none of those things that make us living entities would exist, just as they don't on the indestructible rock.

[blackstar212]

You are just fiddling with words. If there is no death there is no life. Life is not the absence of death, death it is the meaning of life.

The dead neither fear death, nor crave life. The living must fear death in order to live.

 

To be indestructible would not be life, it would be to act as a rock. Dying is integral to living life, to know that you cannot die, to be eternal would be as a rock. A rock does not require senses for it does not fear danger, need to seek food, nor recreate. A rock has no stomach or blood flow because it has no need for substance and oxygen. A rock has no muscles because it has need of doing nothing. Why would you need eyes or ears ? there would be no purpose so none of those things that make us living entities would exist, just as they don't on the indestructible rock.

E=MC2. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. We are indestructible. Change is all.

Edited September 9, 2016 by blackstar212

[Karl]

E=MC2. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. We are indestructible. Change is all.

Our bodies constituent elements remain, as our life/ consciousness is entirely dependent on the precise nature of the body composition- IE consciousness though axiomatic is a result of that delicate balance as a holistic whole. Once the body dies so does consciousness. That specific holistic whole becomes seperate constituent parts. There is no permanent consciousness nor memory. It's like the components of a computer, but instead of a specific and recoverable program there is an holistic collective of parts which ignites the faculties. Once the parts are broken up and scattered there is no sense in which they can reform into the exact original. It is true that those parts may one day become part of another human being, but only as elements and not even all of them ending up in the same body can restore the original. DNA makes sure that the new person is not identical except in general faculties and constitution. Even a clone from the same DNA can't do it, the clone can look and even act in a similar manner, but it won't perceive and integrate concepts in exactly the same way -we are volitional creatures so this cannot be replicated.

[blackstar212]

Our bodies constituent elements remain, as our life/ consciousness is entirely dependent on the precise nature of the body composition- IE consciousness though axiomatic is a result of that delicate balance as a holistic whole. Once the body dies so does consciousness. That specific holistic whole becomes seperate constituent parts. There is no permanent consciousness nor memory. It's like the components of a computer, but instead of a specific and recoverable program there is an holistic collective of parts which ignites the faculties. Once the parts are broken up and scattered there is no sense in which they can reform into the exact original. It is true that those parts may one day become part of another human being, but only as elements and not even all of them ending up in the same body can restore the original. DNA makes sure that the new person is not identical except in general faculties and constitution. Even a clone from the same DNA can't do it, the clone can look and even act in a similar manner, but it won't perceive and integrate concepts in exactly the same way -we are volitional creatures so this cannot be replicated.

You may be correct. You seem very confident almost as if you have empirical evidence to prove your claim. I remain agnostic as I do not know what happens to consciousness after the body ceases to function.

[Karl]

You may be correct. You seem very confident almost as if you have empirical evidence to prove your claim. I remain agnostic as I do not know what happens to consciousness after the body ceases to function.

There is no empirical evidence to the contrary. That should be sufficient in itself. A dead body stays dead and no one has ever witnessed scientific, evidential proof of any kind of after-life.

 

Of course that's all pretty obvious but the inductive philosophical argument is very strong. Objectivism asserts the primacy of existence over consciousness. That consciousness is something, it exists and has a specific identity. As existence exists and consciousness is the faculty that grasps existence it follows that consciousness would not exist, if it had primacy. Therefore any after life consciousness is non-existent in all senses of the term.

 

Consciousness must be conscious of some-thing and so, if you wish to take this to an extreme position, this non-existent consciousness would not be conscious of anything anyway. On all fronts the argument for the primacy of consciousness is weak and hopeless.

 

There are several categories of life:

 

There is the most basic form that reacts to stimuli. A plant grows when it gets nutrients, light and air. it is entirely automatic.

The next form of life is driven by sensation- pain pleasure. It is not conscious, but it has a basic form of perceptual awareness. Molluscs are a good example. They are devoid of eyes and ears but they have a rudimentary nervous system and the shell provides protection

The next life form is conscious but only on a perceptual level.

Finally there is man who is conscious, perceiving and conceptual.

 

The more automatic the life form, the less consciousness and the fewer advanced sense organs. Plants have no advanced sense organs in the context of our understanding. Nature sees to it that the more advanced species are outfitted with more advanced sensory apparatus to suit the expansion of consciousness. Man loses some of those powers of sense towards conceptual consciousness.

 

Anyway, what I'm attempting to show is that as consciousness diminishes so does the perceptual activity. Even in conscious creatures like animals there is no conceptual consciousness. So, now, imagine how unlikely it could be that something living could ever be immortal. It would need no senses, perception, conception, sensations or anything that is required by all living things to maintain their lives. Then apply this to the idea of some kind of disembodied consciousness, a ghost if you will, an indestructible floating consciousness devoid of the need for senses and sense organs. Consciousness must be conscious of some-thing, but this ghost would be consciousness, conscious of no-thing. To say it existed, or that it knew it existed would be impossible. It would not even have the basic functions of a plant, never mind a mollusc. It would be a floating abstraction tied to no reality. It would be an floating abstract conception, an idea in someone's living brain tied to no kind of reality and it would have all the solidity of an erroneous thought.

[3bob]

Note to moderators and members:

Lets remember this is the Hindu sub-forum, and not the general anything goes or blows general forum, thus I'd say that those of you who want to express your p.o.v. divorced of and or counter to major Hindu teachings and beliefs (which consist of thousands of years of detailed and divine dharma background) need to make their own posts in the general forum...

Edited September 9, 2016 by 3bob