Very unpopular opinions

[Sherman Krebbs]

13 hours ago, Apech said:

I suppose another way of asking my question is why do we see this world and not another?

 

(It may be a different question)

 

I have this vague memory of being a child, sitting in my parents living room in a one piece pair of pajamas.  Everything was new.  I had no conceptions of what anything should look like, or any conceptions about myself or society.  It was just me, coexisting and being with my loving family.  For me, that is what reality is.  Over time, that childhood presence has since been clouded by a complex web of conceptions and mental patterns that have built up my mind.  Yet, when the clouds break, the same child emerges.  The reality of this world is you sitting in your backyard like a child, admiring the energy of a magnificent tree with no reflection on what it means or entails. 

 

In other words, this life is very real (and wonderful), its our conceptions of it that are empty.  

[Apech]

14 hours ago, steve said:

 

My view is that you make it real.

Yes, you Apech

🥴

 

 

Our finely tuned perceptive faculties evoke reality from unbounded potential. Void relates to unbounded and undefined, the base, wu ji. We provide the boundary and definitions in relationship with our environment and give birth to each moment of reality. It is yours alone, we only agree on so many fronts because our faculties are similarly tuned.

 

This I don’t accept.   I may in some sense participate in the making of the real - as in the concept of co- creation but even this is not a conscious thing.

 

I think it more accurate to say that the Dao makes things real.  From heaven they gain their image and from Earth their substance.  
 

To translate that into medieval European metaphysics it is the will of God which makes things real.

 

(suck that up you Buddhists 😂).

[thelerner]

6 hours ago, Brad M said:

 

I have this vague memory of being a child, sitting in my parents living room in a one piece pair of pajamas.  Everything was new.  I had no conceptions of what anything should look like, or any conceptions about myself or society.  It was just me, coexisting and being with my loving family.  For me, that is what reality is.  Over time, that childhood presence has since been clouded by a complex web of conceptions and mental patterns that have built up my mind.  Yet, when the clouds break, the same child emerges.  The reality of this world is you sitting in your backyard like a child, admiring the energy of a magnificent tree with no reflection on what it means or entails. 

 

In other words, this life is very real (and wonderful), its our conceptions of it that are empty.  

This points to the joy of having kids and grandkids.  It allows another chance to re-experience childhood awareness.  Going to parks, rolling the ball, playing tag.. enjoying the world through the newness of their eyes.  

[snowymountains]

@Apech is this (tree) an open ended question or you are looking for something in specific?

 

There are multiple ways to frame this but perhaps a suitable one is the below.

 

(Very crudely) the process of bringing an experience ( ie the image of a tree) to our awareness is called symbolisation in psychodynamics - nothing to do with Jung's symbols.

 

Symbolisation is not 100% "objective", in fact there is always a subjective component to it.

 

Eg if we were twin brothers, looking identical and having identical upbringing, standing side by side and looking at the same tree, we would still symbolise it differently as e.g. one may be hungry while the other is not hungry.

 

So our realities won't be identical, still they would share a lot of the common observables of the tree.

 

Symbolisation may also be partial or even not happen at all. Going into details on that bit would drive the discussion towards therapy.

However to see the importance of no symbolisation, someone who suffers from psychosis, old school psychoanalysis terminology, cannot fully symbolise experiences. *For them* their symbolisation is the *only reality* they know.

 

To steer the discussion outside the realm of psychopathology, you can look the bicameral mind hypothesis, which more or less claims that in the distant past every single human was seeing visions like e.g. Moses and was experiencing a sort of Shamanic reality.

 

If that hypothesis is true, then symbolisation used to work very differently for our species and "real" back then had a completely different context.

 

Everyone's reality is about how and to what extent they have symbolised their experiences.

 

But even if eg the bicameral hypothesis is true, back then humans still couldn't step through a tree and at "collision point" the tree would at a minimum be partially symbolised.

 

So perhaps a decent definition of real is along the lines of, a tree is objectively real if its symbolisation will happen for everyone who tries to walk through it.

Edited May 27 by snowymountains

[Apech]

2 hours ago, snowymountains said:

@Apech is this (tree) an open ended question or you are looking for something in specific?

 

I'm looking for a solution to a problem posed by the 'unreal' position in Buddhism, where we are often encouraged to view the world as like a dream or a magic display etc.  I find this unsatisfactory although I understand the basis for it.  In my view the tree is a real tree as distinct to an imaginary tree - this distinction is perhaps magnified by the modern tendency towards 'fantasy' and the the like and the preference for the imaginary digital world over the substantial 'real' existence - even though the latter may at time be dull and uninspirational.

 

2 hours ago, snowymountains said:

There are multiple ways to frame this but perhaps a suitable one is the below.

 

(Very crudely) the process of bringing an experience ( ie the image of a tree) to our awareness is called symbolisation in psychodynamics - nothing to do with Jung's symbols.

 

Symbolisation is not 100% "objective", in fact there is always a subjective component to it.

 

Eg if we were twin brothers, looking identical and having identical upbringing, standing side by side and looking at the same tree, we would still symbolise it differently as e.g. one may be hungry while the other is not hungry.

 

So our realities won't be identical, still they would share a lot of the common observables of the tree.

 

Symbolisation may also be partial or even not happen at all. Going into details on that bit would drive the discussion towards therapy.

However to see the importance of no symbolisation, someone who suffers from psychosis, old school psychoanalysis terminology, cannot fully symbolise experiences. *For them* their symbolisation is the *only reality* they know.

 

I appreciate that perception is far from the simple camera lens analogy which we sometimes use.  Much of what we call perception is interpretation by our brains using a world model built from both our indivaidual experience and encoded experience from millions of years of evolution.  In that sense we carry a world in our heads which forms the basis for each actual incidence of seeing.  But that doesn't remove the question of whether the observed is real - is the tree real and what distinguishes from an unreal tree.

 

2 hours ago, snowymountains said:

To steer the discussion outside the realm of psychopathology, you can look the bicameral mind hypothesis, which more or less claims that in the distant past every single human was seeing visions like e.g. Moses and was experiencing a sort of Shamanic reality.

 

If that hypothesis is true, then symbolisation used to work very differently for our species and "real" back then had a completely different context.

 

I am not sure about the 'bicameral mind' which I believe has received some criticism in recent years.  But I am sure that early man was much more open to what Blake would call imaginative vision.  Angels in trees and wotnot.  We used to have an access to reality which surpassed what our narrow minds will now let us see.  I am sure of this.

 

2 hours ago, snowymountains said:

Everyone's reality is about how and to what extent they have symbolised their experiences.

 

But even if eg the bicameral hypothesis is true, back then humans still couldn't step through a tree and at "collision point" the tree would at a minimum be partially symbolised.

 

So perhaps a decent definition of real is along the lines of, a tree is objectively real if its symbolisation will happen for everyone who tries to walk through it.

 

Well there are plenty of stories of people doing exactly that kind of thing.  Miracles as they are called in the Bible or, for example yogis putting their foot and hand prints in solid rock.  If a great mystic came and wolked through my tree I don't think this would make it any less real.  I just think that this would tell us something about the fundamental nature of the real - something we previously did not understand.

 

 

[snowymountains]

32 minutes ago, Apech said:

 

I'm looking for a solution to a problem posed by the 'unreal' position in Buddhism, where we are often encouraged to view the world as like a dream or a magic display etc.  I find this unsatisfactory although I understand the basis for it.  In my view the tree is a real tree as distinct to an imaginary tree - this distinction is perhaps magnified by the modern tendency towards 'fantasy' and the the like and the preference for the imaginary digital world over the substantial 'real' existence - even though the latter may at time be dull and uninspirational.

 

 

I appreciate that perception is far from the simple camera lens analogy which we sometimes use.  Much of what we call perception is interpretation by our brains using a world model built from both our indivaidual experience and encoded experience from millions of years of evolution.  In that sense we carry a world in our heads which forms the basis for each actual incidence of seeing.  But that doesn't remove the question of whether the observed is real - is the tree real and what distinguishes from an unreal tree.

 

 

I am not sure about the 'bicameral mind' which I believe has received some criticism in recent years.  But I am sure that early man was much more open to what Blake would call imaginative vision.  Angels in trees and wotnot.  We used to have an access to reality which surpassed what our narrow minds will now let us see.  I am sure of this.

 

 

Well there are plenty of stories of people doing exactly that kind of thing.  Miracles as they are called in the Bible or, for example yogis putting their foot and hand prints in solid rock.  If a great mystic came and wolked through my tree I don't think this would make it any less real.  I just think that this would tell us something about the fundamental nature of the real - something we previously did not understand.

 

 

 

I see, I remember the reality as a dream being part of teachings in yogas of dream and sleep. I never took it seriously, I'm sure the teachers too would be well aware of the difference of a lion eating a leg in a dream vs reality.

It's a useful suggestion during the day for the purposes of having lucid dreams at night though.

 

A suggestion can cause an outcome even if based on false premises, even if someone knows the premises to be false. Eg it's been measured that if a doctor gives a sugar pill to their patients and openly says it may work because of placebo, then , even though the patient knows, placebo still may kick in.

If someone believes the statement, suggestion is even more powerful ( even if the statement itself is false )

 

Bicameral mind is a hypothesis, likely untestable and unverifiable.

We probably will never know if it's true or not, unless we find a well preserved brain from that era and also test the hypothesis on it.

I wanted to use a non-clinical example to examine how everyone's subjective reality at some point intersects with physical reality even assuming a completely different state of consciousness.

 

I don't believe in miracles of that flavour, ie walking on water.

I choose to accept synchronicities as true/believe in them even though they're not subject to scientific testing , so neither probable nor falsifiable.

But if something is falsifiable then I won't believe in it.

 

Biblic visions on the other hand could be eg daydreaming+synchronicities.

 

For me spirituality is about something entirely different to miracles, it's about integration beyond parts of self, ie about experiencing interconnectedness.

[Apech]

18 minutes ago, snowymountains said:

 

I see, I remember the reality as a dream being part of teachings in yogas of dream and sleep. I never took it seriously, I'm sure the teachers too would be well aware of the difference of a lion eating a leg in a dream vs reality.

It's a useful suggestion during the day for the purposes of having lucid dreams at night though.

 

A suggestion can cause an outcome even if based on false premises, even if someone knows the premises to be false. Eg it's been measured that if a doctor gives a sugar pill to their patients and openly says it may work because of placebo, then , even though the patient knows, placebo still may kick in.

If someone believes the statement, suggestion is even more powerful ( even if the statement itself is false )

 

Bicameral mind is a hypothesis, likely untestable and unverifiable.

We probably will never know if it's true or not, unless we find a well preserved brain from that era and also test the hypothesis on it.

I wanted to use a non-clinical example to examine how everyone's subjective reality at some point intersects with physical reality even assuming a completely different state of consciousness.

 

I don't believe in miracles of that flavour, ie walking on water.

I choose to accept synchronicities as true/believe in them even though they're not subject to scientific testing , so neither probable nor falsifiable.

But if something is falsifiable then I won't believe in it.

 

Biblic visions on the other hand could be eg daydreaming+synchronicities.

 

For me spirituality is about something entirely different to miracles, it's about integration beyond parts of self, ie about experiencing interconnectedness.

i actually agree about miracles and I wasn’t trying to use them as a basis for anything.  In fact my point was that even if one were to accept them as real it makes no difference to the real / unreal question.

 

I agree that integration is key - although I am not quite clear what ‘beyond parts of self’ means.  Although I do view a human being as a collection of entities- but I doubt if this is what you meant.

[snowymountains]

6 hours ago, Apech said:

i actually agree about miracles and I wasn’t trying to use them as a basis for anything.  In fact my point was that even if one were to accept them as real it makes no difference to the real / unreal question.

 

I agree that integration is key - although I am not quite clear what ‘beyond parts of self’ means.  Although I do view a human being as a collection of entities- but I doubt if this is what you meant.

 

Imo it does make a difference, eg if miracles were true, and all humans could do them aka step through the tree, which means physical laws wouldn't need to be obeyed by humans, then there's no need to symbolise the tree.

 

Impossibility of miracles is what makes the tree in your yard real as opposed to a tree seen in a dream. Otherwise reality would be like a lucid dream where we can do all sorts of stuff.

 

We all are a collection of parts, all modern forms of therapy reflect that in one way or another in their personality structure models.

These parts were created as we grew up and developed.

 

Integrating these parts is key and a lifelong process, at its core, this is what (longer term) therapy does.

 

Here though what I was referring to is beyond these parts.

 

Perhaps a better way of putting it is, realisation of and integration of ( or to ) a part of us that transcends self.

For me that's what spirituality is about, experiencing interconnectedness.

[Apech]

2 hours ago, snowymountains said:

 

Imo it does make a difference, eg if miracles were true, and all humans could do them aka step through the tree, which means physical laws wouldn't need to be obeyed by humans, then there's no need to symbolise the tree.

 

Impossibility of miracles is what makes the tree in your yard real as opposed to a tree seen in a dream. Otherwise reality would be like a lucid dream where we can do all sorts of stuff.

 

We all are a collection of parts, all modern forms of therapy reflect that in one way or another in their personality structure models.

These parts were created as we grew up and developed.

 

Integrating these parts is key and a lifelong process, at its core, this is what (longer term) therapy does.

 

Here though what I was referring to is beyond these parts.

 

Perhaps a better way of putting it is, realisation of and integration of ( or to ) a part of us that transcends self.

For me that's what spirituality is about, experiencing interconnectedness.

I do believe in miracles.  Which may be a very unpopular opinion.  Only if the tree is real does it make it a miracle to walk through it.

 

 

[Taoist Texts]

you guys are so funny with this 'walk through the tree a reality test' business.;) i can walk through air - is air unreal? a radio-wave goes right through the tree - is the tree unreal? i cannot walk through a wall in my dream - is the wall real? hehe;)

[snowymountains]

17 minutes ago, Taoist Texts said:

you guys are so funny with this 'walk through the tree a reality test' business.;) i can walk through air - is air unreal? a radio-wave goes right through the tree - is the tree unreal? i cannot walk through a wall in my dream - is the wall real? hehe;)

 

Air and electromagnetic waves are not a solid.

The tree is, hence the reality check here is for solids.

[Apech]

1 hour ago, Taoist Texts said:

you guys are so funny with this 'walk through the tree a reality test' business.;) i can walk through air - is air unreal? a radio-wave goes right through the tree - is the tree unreal? i cannot walk through a wall in my dream - is the wall real? hehe;)

why can’t you walk through the wall in your dream- do you have repressed wall traumas?

[Taoist Texts]

1 hour ago, snowymountains said:

Air and electromagnetic waves are not a solid.

The tree is, hence the reality check here is for solids.

oh so there are at least two different reality tests, hope they do not clash or anything. hey if i never ever have a chance to try walking through that tree for myself - is it real for me?

23 minutes ago, Apech said:

why can’t you walk through the wall in your dream- do you have repressed wall traumas?

hell yeah! i blame not enough padding in my kindergarten.  on the positive side  naked in public dreams stopped. almost.

On 5/26/2024 at 2:12 AM, Nungali said:

The disco up the end of the river    ^ 

from the river to the sea...

[doc benway]

18 hours ago, Apech said:

This I don’t accept.

 

That’s the thing about reality, acceptance doesn’t matter.

PS - I’m not a Buddhist

 

[liminal_luke]

Unpopular opinion: These kind of discussions about the nature of reality are best quickly skimmed through while slurping up one´s morning fruit loops. (Just my uneducated, unspiritual opinion.  Please don´t throw unreal tomatoes.)

Edited May 28 by liminal_luke

[forestofclarity]

2 hours ago, steve said:

That’s the thing about reality, acceptance doesn’t matter.

 

This is one of the things I like least about reality. Terribly inconvenient. 

 

55 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

nature of reality

 

I'm not really sure what people mean about reality since it hasn't been defined. In some circles, it tends to mean permanence and independent. Many of the observations here support the illusory nature of reality in this sense, although this appears to be the unpopular opinion in this forum. 

[Apech]

1 hour ago, liminal_luke said:

Unpopular opinion: These kind of discussions about the nature of reality are best quickly skimmed through while slurping up one´s morning fruit loops. (Just my uneducated, unspiritual opinion.  Please don´t throw unreal tomatoes.)

I think that fruit loops may be the most unreal food in existence.

[liminal_luke]

2 minutes ago, Apech said:

I think that fruit loops may be the most unreal food in existence.

 

Agreed.  In "reality" I don´t eat fruit loops but, of the available breakfast options, I thought fruit loops worked well in my sentence so I scooted it in.  Loops, loopy -- just think it works.

[Apech]

1 hour ago, liminal_luke said:

 

Agreed.  In "reality" I don´t eat fruit loops but, of the available breakfast options, I thought fruit loops worked well in my sentence so I scooted it in.  Loops, loopy -- just think it works.

 

 

Deep in the caverns of mount Doom, Sauron toiled over his anvil, clang, clang clang echoed the sound of his hammer.

"What doest thou, master?" asked the slave orc, his humble attendant.

"I am forging rings, o miserable and unimportant mutant life form", answered the evil one.

"Rings?" replied the orc.

"Yes, three for the Elven kings, Seven for the Dwarf Lords under the mountain and nine for the kings of men."

"What about the rest of us, do we get rings too?"

"Oh yes, you can have fruit loops, help yourself they're in the bowl on the table."

"Oh thank you, thank you master ...."

 

 

[doc benway]

3 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

Unpopular opinion: These kind of discussions about the nature of reality are best quickly skimmed through while slurping up one´s morning fruit loops. (Just my uneducated, unspiritual opinion.  Please don´t throw unreal tomatoes.)

 

I strongly disagree, far better to quickly skim over a healthier breakfast than fruit loops!

 

edit - sorry but I skimmed over Apech’s response regarding fruit loops…

 

[stirling]

19 hours ago, Apech said:

I'm looking for a solution to a problem posed by the 'unreal' position in Buddhism, where we are often encouraged to view the world as like a dream or a magic display etc.  I find this unsatisfactory although I understand the basis for it.  In my view the tree is a real tree as distinct to an imaginary tree - this distinction is perhaps magnified by the modern tendency towards 'fantasy' and the the like and the preference for the imaginary digital world over the substantial 'real' existence - even though the latter may at time be dull and uninspirational.

 

The "unreal" position is really a Mahamudra/Vajrayana proposition, just to acknowledge our Theravada friends who would talk about this in a different way. The relative and absolute proposition is that both are "real", but not in the same way or at the same level. While the relative has its own internal consistency and makes sense self-referentially, it is not how reality absolutely is.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_truths_doctrine

 

I have read Ken Wilber pose it as something like: "Absolute reality includes but supercedes relative reality". So the always changing relative is, in a sense, dreamlike because it isn't truly comprised of objects that have any permanent reality, whereas the "emptiness" (or maybe awareness might be a more useable term) is omnipresent. What "we" actually ARE is this "emptiness"/awareness, so "we" also are omnipresent. This is of course a conceptual description lacking massive amounts of nuance and depth of understanding. 

 

My observation is that, as insight deepens, reality DOES become less real. "Self" is silent and centerless and mostly no longer internally or externally a referential construct. Time and space continue to lose solidity as an experience. There is a frequent flow of synchronicity (using THIS definition), increases in deeper intuition that are nearly mind-reading, increasing sleeping and waking visionary experiences and more. Having done a little reading on Magick (mostly Chaos Magick), I see how most "spells" only work where there is at least some internal logic for how they might manifest. This is a fundamental recognition of how reality is, in my opinion. My sense of reality is softened in a number of aspects, so there are venues for how certain things might be manifested now. The more these boundaries are stretched, the more some things become possible. I can't walk through a tree, but maybe it is possible to soften things to that degree at some point? I don't know. The more possible walking through a tree seems, the more likely it is to happen? 

 

Having said all of that, this doesn't mean that anyone else will be able to see or experience what is experienced by the yogi. The idea of there being a single causal relative reality just isn't real, in my opinion. My experience is that it IS a dream-like and ephemeral as the Diamond Sutra suggests:

 

Quote

"So you should view this fleeting world: A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, A flash of lightening in a summer cloud, A flickering lamp, a phantom and a dream." - Buddha, Diamond Sutra

 

 

19 hours ago, Apech said:

I appreciate that perception is far from the simple camera lens analogy which we sometimes use.  Much of what we call perception is interpretation by our brains using a world model built from both our indivaidual experience and encoded experience from millions of years of evolution.  In that sense we carry a world in our heads which forms the basis for each actual incidence of seeing.  But that doesn't remove the question of whether the observed is real - is the tree real and what distinguishes from an unreal tree.

 

I think the tree appears as a tree because your "story" of the world (karma) is arising at the moment you view the tree, along with your story about where you live, who you are, how the world is and all of the other sensate phenomena. It is a construction of this moment, lasting as it appears, just for this moment. The trees reality depends on your internally consistent experience of it, whether you can hang from it, climb it, gather olives from it, or walk through it. 

 

 

[forestofclarity]

1 hour ago, stirling said:

What "we" actually ARE is this "emptiness"/awareness, so "we" also are omnipresent. This is of course a conceptual description lacking massive amounts of nuance and depth of understanding. 

 

While I agree with much of this post, I think this is a common misunderstanding from a typical Kagyu/Nyingma Buddhist perspective in my experience. This is a common question or suggestion I've seen posed to many teachers and every one of them rejected it. 

 

Everything is empty, i.e. it lacks a unitary, independent, permanent self or essence, but not everything is aware. Classic examples are pots and pillars. A pot is empty of a unitary, independent, permanent "pot nature," but we would not say that it is therefore aware. Further, specific to Nyingma based Dzogchen teachings, emptiness is generally considered a non-affirming negation, a minus without a plus. So when we say X is empty, it doesn't not mean that we are asserting anything positive about X. 

 

Of course, one is free to disagree with this perspective. 

 

 

 

 

[Apech]

14 minutes ago, forestofemptiness said:

 

While I agree with much of this post, I think this is a common misunderstanding from a typical Kagyu/Nyingma Buddhist perspective in my experience. This is a common question or suggestion I've seen posed to many teachers and every one of them rejected it. 

 

Everything is empty, i.e. it lacks a unitary, independent, permanent self or essence, but not everything is aware. Classic examples are pots and pillars. A pot is empty of a unitary, independent, permanent "pot nature," but we would not say that it is therefore aware. Further, specific to Nyingma based Dzogchen teachings, emptiness is generally considered a non-affirming negation, a minus without a plus. So when we say X is empty, it doesn't not mean that we are asserting anything positive about X. 

 

Of course, one is free to disagree with this perspective. 

 

 

 

 

With the greatest respect because I’ve been there - but I feel madyamika just leads to this kind of formulation which is ultimately meaningless.  

[dwai]

On 5/25/2024 at 5:59 PM, Mark Foote said:

No argument there, although he was the first to give a cogent explanation of concentration and the result of concentration.

I highly doubt that claim

But, he certainly made it more accessible to the masses. 

[EFreethought]

8 hours ago, Taoist Texts said:

on the positive side  naked in public dreams stopped. almost.

 

 

I once had a dream where I went to work naked, and in the dream everybody was annoyed with me. Not because I was naked at the office, but I was naked at the office on the wrong day. Apparently if someone came in naked on the wrong day, it could jeopardize the chances of an office vacation to Cancun.

 

My real life is far less interesting.

 

Edited May 28 by EFreethought
typo