From Newsgroup: alt.philosophy.taoism
Dude posted:
Good point. Thanks. I'm feeling better now, knowing there's someone out there to talk to
Lots of times I'm Way far out there.
The question is, is there a soul, a monad, in each individual person?
A wave may pass through its own self at a point.
It might expand and contract, passing through
its self and its selves at many points.
For me, a paradigm is able to be constructed
such that the Universe is a wave form.
Using a modern scientific type of theory,
once upon a time before time in a space
where there was no space, everything was
prior to being every thing naturally.
All the Mass-energy (Me), was at a point.
Suddenly and for no reason, that is to say
without a cause, being ontologically prior
to effects having bins introduced, it, went
Bang. And it was Big almost as suddenly.
The rest is cosmology.
If so, there must be billions and billions of them of them. Where do
they go when we die? Is the soul like a spirit?
When a wave returns to an ocean, a notion
can be like a returning to what once was.
On the surface, the face of things, prior
to being born as a form as a wave all was
calm, so to speak, metaphorically.
My position, and the position of most idealists, is that consciousness
is the ultimate reality. It makes sense when you think about it, and profound when you think it over for a long time.
A problem for me can be with nouns.
Consciousness tends to be reified,
cemented as if it were a thing
in a pattern of thought flowing.
Even to think a thing called, reality,
exists may be problematic at times.
Lots of premises are taken for granted.
Then, a chain of statements is made.
A conclusion might be valid. That is
until a premise is challenged and then,
a logical argument might not be sound.
Because without consciousness, you don't exist!
Presumably, a compelling idea may be rocks and
the moon called the Moon exist, even when no eyes
are looking at them. Without being conscious
of them, they could be said to be thought.
Thought to exist.
Things exist as thoughts. Nouns.
Actions tend to be verbs naturally.
Without consciousness, a rock might break away
from a mountain and is then, not the mountain.
Like when a leaf leaves a tree and suddenly
it is not the tree naturally.
It is very difficult to argue against this logical notion.
Once upon a time a rock rolled down the side
of the mountain and was in a stream which then
carried it to a river and eventually an ocean.
Grain by grain the rock was worn away until
one day a wave broke it down to being two
grains and then, after that, again.
Suddenly, after quite a long time, the two
began to ask each other as they othered
what was a single self, which one is
the rock, or are they both.
First you would have to defeat the arguments of the Buddhist logicians
that invented the Mahayana Buddhism. Then, one by one, you could debate
with Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche.
I'm not very familiar with any of those.
To win an argument might be fun. To converse
for the sake of having a conversation as well
may be simply for its own self, tzu-jan, zi-ran.
With Taoism and Neo-Taoism an idea of everything
and every thing being for its own self may occur.
No ulterior stuff. Simply things as they are.
Nouns, verbs, maps and territories.
My sect, the Zen sect, is very simple. All you have to do is sit.
Sitting is enlightenment. You only need one single word in the zen philosophy: "no".
That's it!
Sometimes, when there's nothing to do,
simply sitting, a thought occurs to me
how I've accomplished Nothing! Wu! Mu!
Emptiness, the void, an expansive oceanic
feeling could be felt in terms of contrast.
The only thing we really know, absolutely for sure, is the simple
feeling of Being. YMMV.
When asleep, dreaming, Zhuangzi,
aka Chuang Tzu, was a butterfly.
Awakening, he wasn't sure if he was
the butterfly dreaming of being Zz.
Transformations occur, I think he wrote
or was said to have written about it.
Epistemology, ontology, ways. Fun stuff.
- thanks! aye. Cheers!
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