as Rorty would put it, there is no truth "out there" because there really is no out there, for such an idea is a foolish metaphysics, this "original Unity". I am inclined to agree, except for one very important issue, which is metaphysics and the revelatory, non discursive, radical, affective apprehension of the world Buddhists talk about. This is not a religious fiction. — Constance

Can you say some more on this? What is a 'revelatory, non discursive, radical, affective apprehension of the world'? Do you see this as a possibility elsewhere - Christian/Sufi mysticism for instance?

Heidegger and most others would disagree, simply because the being there of the cup and the coffee cannot be parted from the "cups and coffee". — Constance

I think its a problematically human-centric perspective. And it should not be forgotten that all we are talking about here are different perspectives, different seeings, not some absolute reality The problem is that cannot explain how the food and bowl, for example, is there for the dog; it is not there for her as "food" and "bowl", even if she learns to associate those sounds with the food and bowl, she cannot conceptualize them as items within a greater conceptual context. Absent language the cup and the coffee are not there as "cup" and "coffee" of course, and sometimes they may even be there for us absent language. (That said, they would not have existed in the first place absent language (culture), but that is a separate issue, it seems to me).

Have you ever tried hallucinogens or meditated?

Nicely put and intriguing. 'Journey back to life' is particularly juicy stuff.

Those metaphors, by the way, are not how I generally see the world. They were chosen for their brutalist effect (a la Weber to which you probably allude) in contrast to all this lofty talk about metaphysics.

Can you say more about the journey back to life? It sounds a little like a 'paradise lost' narrative. Does it relate to Buddhist metaphysics? Are you suggesting that Buddhism might be a kind of antidote to the present era of capitalism, scientism and managerialism? — Tom Storm

Right, I think those metaphors are apt though, in that it seems as if that is just how life is for many people; a great supermarket created for our consumptive pleasure. Now we have the consumption of the consumer. It is "brutalist" indeed, in it's most banal dimension. I see metaphysics as very ordinary, but of course it would appear "lofty" compared to that all-consuming banality.

So the "journey back to life" as I see it it is just the journey away from the deathly banal to the merely ordinary. The ordinary is no paradise, it has its rigours, which are seen all the more as our gaze becomes less hypnotically fixed on the banal "life" of consumption. But at least then we can say we are alive in more than merely the "technical" sense, right?

But at least then we can say we are alive in more than merely the "technical" sense, right? — Janus

Yep.

I see metaphysics as very ordinary, but of course it would appear "lofty" compared to that all-consuming banality. — Janus

Yes, that's how I intended it. It's lofty by comparison with most current dominant worldviews.

When you wrote "journey back to life" it sounded like a metaphor for a revival/recovery/regeneration or reinvention - possibly even in a Nietzschean sense.

I am mildly obsessed with the ordinary which I insist of calling the quotidian.

When you wrote "journey back to life" it sounded like a metaphor for a revival/recovery/regeneration or reinvention - possibly even in a Nietzschean sense. — Tom Storm

I do have a lot of sympathy for the Nietzschean sense of "becoming who you are".

I am mildly obsessed with the ordinary which I insist of calling the quotidian.

:up: :lol: @Wayfarer used to call himself Quotidian.

Can you say some more on this? What is a 'revelatory, non discursive, radical, affective apprehension of the world'? Do you see this as a possibility elsewhere - Christian/Sufi mysticism for instance? — Tom Storm

Sorry for all the writing. I got a little carried away.

Revelatory: Existentialist philosophers take the "distance" between what is said and what is actual very seriously. You read it in Kierkegaard, Sartre "radical contingency, Heidegger's metaphysics and nothing; Husserl is interesting: He thought one could see what is actually there such that the actuality witnessed is absolute, unqualified and non composite. Heidegger thought he was walking on water with this, for it is such an extravagant claim to say there is in one's worldly perceptual witnessing, a "presence" that is a pure, a kind of, "it is there" that can't be second guessed, is like encountering God herself.
And this gets to the point: Husserl famously defended his phenomenological reduction, or epoche. Keep in mind I am no Husserl scholar, but I have read him and about him, and these days there is a so called French theological turn I am reading which plays significantly through this reduction. The idea is, I think, very Buddhist, and Husserl does call it a "method" rather than just a theory. He holds that the object before your gaze is generally thick with the "naturalistic attitude" which refers to our everydayness affairs, but it is grasped with such spontaneity, it seems direct and natural. The epoche is a method of reducing this perceptual encounter to its bare presence, such that the object itself (back to the things themselves! is his rallying cry) in its intuitive purity is revealed. This purity has been hidden beneath experience all along, but we have been so busy, we never noticed it, and have never really been living in the "real" world, but in a kind of fiction of narratives with our established and habitual culture and language (Kierkegaard called this our hereditary sin, as an existential analysis of Christianity's original sin, which he derided).
Does Husserl's epoche bring one, with practice, to a revelation of pure phenomena? Are we not here very close to what the Abhidhamma calls, in translation, ultimate reality? Isn't the epoche what the Hindus called jnana yoga, a form of what we call apophatic theology, or neti, neti? Keeping in mind that one does not become the Buddha, as one is always already the Buddha, but needs to awakened to this. My thinking is, beneath the skin of experience, there is something deeply profound.

Non discursive: this is tough, for the argument goes that even when we are in our most spontaneous encounters with the world's objects, we never can observe actuality itself, because the understanding is essentially conceptual. Rorty was no rationalist, but he emphatically denied non propositional knowledge. Even in the most intimate moments of realization that I exist, one has to see that this is not being, but becoming I am witnessing, and becoming is time's past making an anticipatory future in the crucible of the present.

Indeed, this "actuality itself" is just vacuous metaphysics, they say. this seems like a strong argument, and it is, by my thinking, if it wasn't for that intuitive dimension of affectivity, like pain: take a lighted match and apply it to your finger and leave it there for a few seconds. Now, am I NOT in a Real actuality? Just because I live in an interpretative world of temporal dynamics, doesn't mean at all that I do not experience non discursively, events, like a burn, or a broken limb, or being in love or lasagna, or the direct apprehension of my existence. Implicit discursive processes, that only seem like immediacy, do nothing to deny non discursive intimations.

I agree with Husserl on the essential epoche as a way to self realization. His epoche is a less radical version of meditation.

Affective apprehension: what is nirvana? And what is liberation/enlightenment? The epoche is a method, so what happens when thought encounters the world, and is reduced to the bare perceptual away from the apperceptual (sp?)? The self becomes free. It is not just an intellectual movement, but an experience. Enlightenment is the wonderful feeling of experiencing the world free of implicit "knowledge claims, keeping in mind that knowledge never was just a conceptual tag hung on a thing; it is a conditioned response to the world established since the time of infancy, and it is settled deep into experience as a default acceptance of things. Release from this is not just a nullity, though there is much that is nullified. It is an uncanny experience of extraordinary dimensions.

That would be the nutshell version. Don't know about Sufi, Christianity has many mystics, like Eckhart, Pseudo Dionysus.

That's great, appreciated. I'll mull this over.

Have you ever tried hallucinogens or meditated? — Janus

Yes, which accounts in part for my philosophical eccentricities. I would add, music is the voice of god. Music, mescaline and meditation: a very powerful antidote for mundanity.

:up: I agree power-ful music is the voice of God;along with psychedelics (psilocybin),and practice, a powerful prescription for profundity. Profundity being the other face of mundanity; (they are so close).

It sounds to me as if you agree with Schopenhauer over Hegel. Is the world pure will, irrational and free. Or is the world pure reason wherein new truths build on old one in a structure. In medieval times, they had this same debate between Thomists and Scotians and I'm assuming Buddhism tends more towards will — Gregory

I think the world is "set up" / evolves in such a way that the irrational and the rational both cohabitate. They depend on one another. I'm dragging the geometry as an analogy

A circle/ cycle is a phenomenon where a linear, discrete and rational thing - a line - is distorted by the irrational (pi) into a perfect loop. No start, no end. Pi as a number runs along infinitely never repeating itself (completely nonsensical) while a linear line is objective, reasonable and finite.

How many cycles can you name in nature that operate in harmony to establish dynamic but stable ecosystems? Planetary orbits? Seasons, tides, reproduction, the water cycle, carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle, predator and prey populations, the clock of time, frequencies, vibrations, the pendular back and forth swing of Liberal and Conservative governments, war and peace time, circadian rhythm, music, patterns, hormonal regulation in the human body, learning and teaching, the list of cycles of opposites goes on and on. Wherever two of nature's cycles oscillate or overlap with one another a new emergent property appears.

Buddhism is even founded on a cycle - samsara. Perhaps that is the truth of things.

The idea is, I think, very Buddhist, and Husserl does call it a "method" rather than just a theory. He holds that the object before your gaze is generally thick with the "naturalistic attitude" which refers to our everydayness affairs, but it is grasped with such spontaneity, it seems direct and natural. The epoche is a method of reducing this perceptual encounter to its bare presence, such that the object itself (back to the things themselves! is his rallying cry) in its intuitive purity is revealed. — Constance

I've been interested in epoche for some time. Since I was a child I have often found myself regarding the world around me as unfamiliar and strange and wonder at this. It leave me feeling light and unshackled. In the quotidian life we inherit/develop a way of seeing that seems to be primed by conceptual schemes. You seem to agree.

we never can observe actuality itself, because the understanding is essentially conceptual. — Constance

I agree with Husserl on the essential epoche as a way to self realization. His epoche is a less radical version of meditation. — Constance

That is an interesting idea. Self-realization seems to involve a type of self-shedding, no?

Enlightenment is the wonderful feeling of experiencing the world free of implicit "knowledge claims, keeping in mind that knowledge never was just a conceptual tag hung on a thing; it is a conditioned response to the world established since the time of infancy, and it is settled deep into experience as a default acceptance of things. — Constance

That's a striking description and resonates with me.

Affective apprehension: what is nirvana? And what is liberation/enlightenment? The epoche is a method, so what happens when thought encounters the world, and is reduced to the bare perceptual away from the apperceptual (sp?)? The self becomes free. It is not just an intellectual movement, but an experience. Enlightenment is the wonderful feeling of experiencing the world free of implicit "knowledge claims, keeping in mind that knowledge never was just a conceptual tag hung on a thing; it is a conditioned response to the world established since the time of infancy, and it is settled deep into experience as a default acceptance of things. Release from this is not just a nullity, though there is much that is nullified. It is an uncanny experience of extraordinary dimensions. — Constance

You believe that nirvana is merely an uncanny experience? Like seeing a ghost or something?

You believe that nirvana is merely an uncanny experience? Like seeing a ghost or something? — praxis

Not purporting to answer for @Constance but I'd say it's an altered state of consciousness, not a matter of seeing something uncanny (like a ghost) but seeing ordinary things uncannily.

Note the definitions of 'canny' given here:

Definition of canny

(Entry 1 of 2)
1 : clever, shrewd a canny lawyer also : prudent canny investments
2 chiefly Scotland a : careful, steady also : restrained
b : quiet, snug then canny, in some cozy place, they close the day— Robert Burns

I've been interested in epoche for some time. Since I was a child I have often found myself regarding the world around me as unfamiliar and strange and wonder at this. It leave me feeling light and unshackled. In the quotidian life we inherit/develop a way of seeing that seems to be primed by conceptual schemes. You seem to agree. — Tom Storm

If you since childhood had this feeling that something was simply out of sync between you and the world, then I most certainly do agree here, and this is a major theme, if not THE major theme, of existential philosophers, that impossible distance that defines and undercuts all relations, as it is a "suspicion" at the base of all things, preventing one from being part of the world's affairs. As I've read, what this is about entirely rests with what kind of person you are. Putting it very plainly, either you are inclined toward a "spiritualist interpretation", or you are not. Look, I am not a great mathematician or visual artist, though certainly some are. We are all very different kinds of people, and some are possessed by this impossible intuition about the world, others are not.

The objection would be that here, in religio-philosophical inquiry, one cannot make extravagant claims about something only some can see. This undermines philosophical objectivity. I respond, there is nothing I can do about this difference among people. It is simply there. Even those who provide me with the basic vocabulary to talk about such things often seem unable to affirm this in experience. Those who can they call mystics.

My own thinking is that the jumping off place for philosophy is where a person encounters the "saturation" of existence by indeterminacy. This is rather an involved discussion.

That is an interesting idea. Self-realization seems to involve a type of self-shedding, no? — Tom Storm

But then, what is a self? It is here, in the way we think about basic ideas that all of this unravels. It is not so much a shedding but a realization that this self is something else. Many ways to approach this. One is to consider time to be foundational. you know, ask me what the past is and all I can give you the "present". Past and future cannot be observed and are in a very important way, just fictions of process that is just transcendental, for one would have to be outside time to say what it is, this temporal unity. The self, it has been written is not in time. It IS time (Kant, Heidegger, in different ways). Buddhist enlightenment is to stand timeless before the world, and the only way to explain this is to actually stand thusly, and acknowledge it.

That's a striking description and resonates with me. — Tom Storm

Me, too! this experience is utterly fascinating, poor as I am in understanding it. Christians say God is love. I say, love is being in love, listening to Maurice Ravel's Mother Goose (Ma Mère l'Oye, esp. the second movement. You may not be into this; it matters not), autumnal affective indulgence (whatever that is), the standing there and simply having the world transfigured into pure phenomenological bliss that fills the horizon of experience. Now there here is a discussion the likes of Meister Eckart could only talk about. Not exactly philosophy, is it. but this is where philosophy goes, ineluctably.

See Wittgenstein on value in his Tractatus, Culture and Value, Lecture on Ethics--this god of analytic philosophy, he knew human affectivity was off the far off radar of our "states of affairs".

You believe that nirvana is merely an uncanny experience? Like seeing a ghost or something? — praxis

I did say "experience of extraordinary dimensions" which doesn't sound like something is "merely" anything. Quite the opposite, wouldn't you say?

But this uncanniness does need to be looked at, for it is not the kind that applies in familiar contexts, that is, it is not like a ingenious move in a game of chess or a knack to catch on to things (an uncanny ability). It is of all things in a sweeping impossibility, impossible because there is no assumption lying in the background that it couls make any sense of it. Making sense is fitting into a body of "facts" and their logical construction. The only way explaining could work is in a shared experience with a language index, as when one sees a thing and reports to another the thing seen, and the other "knows" this because it is familiar. It is shared familiarity that makes language possible, not qualitative content, and ours is not a society of mystics!

I think this uncanniness goes to subjectivity and the apprehension of the self: what is existence? there is, in this question, something impossible, yet there on the intuitive radar. This is me, and one can discuss this in a qualified Cartesian model of existence: the closer inquiry moves to an affirmation of existence, to more uncanny the world gets, and this movement is toward subjectivity. Buddhists affirm just this, and the uncanniness here is the kind of affirmation of a qualitatively different content from our everydayness.

:up: Yes I like Ravel - I'm very fond of Daphnis Et Chloé, Pavane Pour Une Infante Défunte, and the G Major piano concerto.

As I've read, what this is about entirely rests with what kind of person you are. Putting it very plainly, either you are inclined toward a "spiritualist interpretation", or you are not. — Constance

Yes, I agree with this too.

You believe that nirvana is merely an uncanny experience? Like seeing a ghost or something?
— praxis

Not purporting to answer for Constance but I'd say it's an altered state of consciousness, not a matter of seeing something uncanny (like a ghost) but seeing ordinary things uncannily. — Janus

A brain state, yes. A suppressed DMN, to be precise. I don't think that uncanny is a good descriptor though because it means something strange, particularly in an unsettling way. That's why I mentioned a ghost sighting. Seeing a ghost would be both strange and unsettling. Nirvana, on the other hand, means liberation from the cycle of life and death and perfect happiness. Quite unlike a ghost sighting.

Also, if Constance is talking about a transient experience then they are not talking about Buddhist nirvana and the liberation from karma and the cycle of life and death.

Nirvana - liberation and not 'unsettling'

Constance's uncanny experience - unsettling and of unknown duration

A brain state, yes. A suppressed DMN, to be precise. I don't think that uncanny is a good descriptor though because it means something strange, particularly in an unsettling way. — praxis

You can think of it as a suppression of the default mode network, and what does that mean? It means the suppression, or better, suspension, of our usual "canny" ways of dealing with the world. This may happen with ingestion of hallucinogens, and can that experience not be uncanny? It may be deeply unsettling to the discursive mind.

Nirvana, on the other hand, means liberation from the cycle of life and death and perfect happiness. — praxis

That's one, perhaps simplistic, interpretation of the meaning of nirvana. Buddhists have also said that nirvana just is samsara. Do we know what that experience is for adepts? Must it be the same for all, in any case?

That's one, perhaps simplistic, interpretation of the meaning of nirvana. Buddhists have also said that nirvana just is samsara. Do we know what that experience is for adepts? Must it be the same for all, in any case? — Janus

Indeed. I'm not someone who has reason to believe in the existence of Nirvana/enlightenment (except perhaps as metaphor), but what can we meaningfully say about such a nebulous conceptual artifact if we are not actually there? I had read and heard that the experience of attaining (if that's the verb) enlightenment can arrive as a great shock.

Indeed. I'm not someone who has reason to believe in the existence of Nirvana/enlightenment (except perhaps as metaphor), but what can we meaningfully say about such a nebulous conceptual artifact if we are not actually there? I had read and heard that the experience of attaining (if that's the verb) enlightenment can arrive as a great shock. — Tom Storm

I'm with you; I don't believe in Nirvana as some eternal, in the sense of endless, or of infinitely great duration, existence; I see it as being eternal, in the sense of stepping out of the temporal round of "birth and death" (birth and death understood as being the mechanically automatic fluctuating states of the discursive self) and entering into a dimension of experience which is as Blake expresses it:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

That's one, perhaps simplistic, interpretation of the meaning of nirvana. Buddhists have also said that nirvana just is samsara. — Janus

Well, I've never heard of a Buddhist heaven, high up in the clouds or whatever, so nirvana must be right here, neck deep in the midst of all the shit. Where else would it be?

Must it be the same for all, in any case?

If we're talking about Buddhist Nirvana, it must only be what they claim it is. If we're not talking about Buddhist Nirvana, then we are completely free to confer whatever grand and nuanced meanings we wish to our uncanny experiences.

nirvana must be right here, neck deep in the midst of all the shit. — praxis

I like this line. :up:

Well, I've never heard of a Buddhist heaven, high up in the clouds or whatever, so nirvana must be right here, neck deep in the midst of all the shit. Where else would it be? — praxis

So where is the adept who has reached nirvana when her body dies, and "all the shit" along with it?

If we're talking about Buddhist Nirvana, it must only be what they claim it is. If we're not talking about Buddhist Nirvana, then we are completely free to confer whatever grand and nuanced meanings we wish to our uncanny experiences. — praxis

The only consistent claim seems to be that it is liberation from suffering, perfect peace and happiness. Perhaps you are thinking of different associations of the word "uncanny", but for me that experience would be uncanny indeed.

If you want to say it is necessarily thought of as permanent, then how would you answer the question above about the whereabouts of the enlightened adept. The other thing to consider is how it would be if you found yourself permanently is such a state, and become used to it such that it is your native state, as opposed to being thrown into it from time to time, via hallucinogens or whatever. I tend to think it would seem more uncanny in the latter case.

Buddhists do not consider liberation a temporary mental state. That's pretty clear, isn't it? If a person is 'reborn' in any sense, then according to a Buddhist it is because of their karma, which means that they are not liberated.

Buddhists do not consider liberation a temporary mental state. — praxis

That's a strong generalization. I think if you perform an internet search "Is nirvana a permanent state" you'll find that it is not uncontroversial. Secular Buddhists in particular might not agree that it is. Studying the brain chemistry involved in states of consciousness might lead to thinking it would be impossible for it to be so.

The existence of God is controversial also, nevertheless belief in God is kind of a prerequisite in many religions. Maybe there are secular theist too though. Wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

The existence of God is controversial also — praxis

:up: Especially among Buddhists.

The existence of God is controversial also, nevertheless belief in God is kind of a prerequisite in many religions. — praxis

Yes, and it has often struck me that theists are not conceptualizing the same thing when they allegedly share this belief. The notion of god seems incoherent or 'diverse' enough to embrace everything from the 'ground of being' to a throne dwelling elder, with a flowing grey beard.

Yes, and it has often struck me that theists are not conceptualizing the same thing when they allegedly share this belief. The notion of god seems incoherent or 'diverse' enough to embrace everything from the 'ground of being' to a throne dwelling elder, with a flowing grey beard. — Tom Storm

It seems as though the mere consideration of "what god is/could be" is, in itself, the most omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient thought possible - it contains all imagination, logic/reason and ethics to be so, standing the test of time, ever present in human consideration, impossible to prove (reduce to a singular thing) yet impossible to disprove by proxy. Argued infinitely. Something that could be anything... Perhaps then is everything.

The existence of God is controversial also, nevertheless belief in God is kind of a prerequisite in many religions. Maybe there are secular theist too though. Wouldn’t surprise me in the least. — praxis

Is it so far fetched, though? After all, God is more than just an anthropomorphic image constructed out of the imaginations of a people. It has this solid basis in the world upon which fictional thinking rests. Keeping in mind that, speaking of the anthropomorphisms of religions, all we ever see is anthropomorphic, meaning what we call perceptually "out there" cannot be removed from "in here". To do so just yields an abstraction.
God is all about our ethics and the great question that haunts our world: why are we born to suffer and die? The what-to-do questions presuppose this ethical primordiality of our existence. Buddhism, in it analysis, I think addresses both.