I want to say language sits comfortably along side of anything at all, like my cat does when I am not thinking about it and it is just there. SUre, there is language attending implicitly in the comfortable absence of explicit thought, but my cat could suddenly reveal herself as an avatar of God, and language could still be there attending to the spectacle.

On the other hand: In my best meditations, when things settle into an odd intimation of something just there, beneath the skin of the familiar, and there is something there, in the givenness of things, that appears just on the horizon of things, and I give this its breadth and depth as I can, I do feel the world receding and the revelatory event issues from within, as if to fill all things. It is a very strange business, I have to admit, which is why I feel the need to step into this discussion. Language does yield in that identities of things weaken, and something steps forward. And it is like going home, but this is revealed as within subjectivity, as if, as the Buddhists' say, one already is the Buddha, and it is a matter of discovering this — Constance

Wow. That is very poetic Constance. Beautiful painting with words. Language indeed has the power to be used figuratively, as a metaphor, in a non-literal/sense to describe multiple meanings at once. To have many levels of depth accessible to the audience through interpretation.

Is that not the true foundation of any good poets work? To be most thought provoking without committing to any specific defined line of thinking, in other words to express the most by permitting the expression to echo out into the audience in multiple forms, multiple understandings?

I look forward to your future musings.

I look forward to your future musings. — Benj96

As I do your insightful thoughts.

I suppose you could call it "simply re-patterning", but I think that trivializes and fails to capture the quality of what is a significant struggle to, as Nietzsche puts it. "become who you are".

And it is like going home, but this is revealed as within subjectivity, as if, as the Buddhists' say, one already is the Buddha, and it is a matter of discovering this. — Constance

Yes, I think there is something to be said for the idea of anamnesis; the process seems to consist more in unlearning that it does in learning. The drive to knowledge can become more acquisitive than inquisitive. I don't think of anamnesis as knowledge remembered that was previously known in another realm of the soul, but as reconnecting with the forgotten inherent wisdom of the body.

Language itself is just this: a body of tools, "scientifically acquired" meaning we, as infants and children were faced with models of language behavior and internalized these to the delight of others, and therefore, to our delight as well. We "tested" our knowledge with primitive utterances, and found successes in the way these became useful, and this was all imprinted in our young psyches. Now that is a fundamental attachment. — Constance

Language is certainly more fundamental than culture. Knowledge does not require language, however, so the fundamental attachment must go deeper than culture or language.

It would probably be helpful to discuss the nature of this 'fundamental attachment'.

Buddhism can tend to gloss over, in a way different from distracting thoughts, what is really going on also. — Bylaw

Worse, I think there's a strong tendency in Buddhism to devalue rationality in their promotion of intuition and it has led to all sorts of problems for them.

Worse, I think there's a strong tendency in Buddhism to devalue rationality in their promotion of intuition and it has led to all sorts of problems for them. — praxis

Can you give some examples.

Nothing out of the ordinary. The same kind of problems that exist in all religions.

Reason is essential for moral development. Faith, or intuition without reason, is moral stagnation.

When I mentioned absurdism I was referring to Camus. Buddhist accept the paradox of life and so in a sense do have faith that things will make sense in the end. Christians are like this too. Vicarious redemption is of course a ridiculous doctrine, but Christians have said they believe *because* it is absurd. To them its worthy of faith and this opens an important question about reason.

Reason is essential for moral development. Faith, or intuition without reason, is moral stagnation. — praxis

All faith has its reasons, which are wrapped up in what motivates the faith in the first place. One could use a concept of reason to refer to the elaborative articulation of the framework of a faith ( in the form of theory) , but I wouldnt claim that neglecting this articulative reasoning process prevents development. All one needs in order to be able to overthrow a faith is the minimum level of articulation to recognize that ones belief has been invalidated.

and reason without intuition is nearly useless.

On the contrary, it can win you a foot race with a faster opponent.

I would need intuition to get the meaning of this quasi Zeno image and draw a conclusion. Though my point was more that to reason requires all sorts of intuitive supportive processes.

It was a rare setup, you could not expect me to resist a Zeno paradox joke.

I am not sure what part of the context made it something that would have to be resisted, but I do believe all philosophy humor impulses should be given in to.

Nirvana is not heaven! Or so they tell me!
— Agent Smith
They told you right. :up: — 180 Proof

I was suspended, hence the late reply.

Postmortem, does the tathāgata ...

1. Exist?

2. Not exist?

3. Both exist and not exist?

4. Neither exist nor not exist?

Yes, I think there is something to be said for the idea of anamnesis; the process seems to consist more in unlearning that it does in learning. The drive to knowledge can become more acquisitive than inquisitive. I don't think of anamnesis as knowledge remembered that was previously known in another realm of the soul, but as reconnecting with the forgotten inherent wisdom of the body. — Janus

Perhaps unlearning and learning are one and the same? In that maybe if there is a fundamental truth it is both that which we depart from (unlearn) as well as that which we return to (learn).

Such is the magic of constancy - the permanence of truth.

↪praxis and reason without intuition is nearly useless. — Bylaw

Quite right Bylaw! Intuition is the great instinct that propagates the life it imbues. Intuition ought never be ignored but rather, enriched with reason, to amalgamate the "whole".

Yes, I think there is something to be said for the idea of anamnesis; the process seems to consist more in unlearning that it does in learning. The drive to knowledge can become more acquisitive than inquisitive. I don't think of anamnesis as knowledge remembered that was previously known in another realm of the soul, but as reconnecting with the forgotten inherent wisdom of the body. — Janus

Well put, I think. And, in the nostalgia, it is no longer recollection, for the experience itself is occurrent. As I remember, as Wordsworth put it, childhood's "clouds of glory" what was intimated then is intimated now, and the recollective way of summoning it is incidental. But in those years prior to reflection, we had no knowledge of what was happening, no contexts for discussion, so was there an agency at all, there to experience? Yes, I would say, but agency then was vague: who was it that was so content if the matter of "who" is something augmentative, constructed out of historical acquisition? An infantile affectivity lacks identity.
Forgotten inherent wisdom of the body?

Language is certainly more fundamental than culture. Knowledge does not require language, however, so the fundamental attachment must go deeper than culture or language. — praxis

I don't think language is historically more fundamental than culture, but is it even analytically more fundamental? For the analysis of a particle of language has to refer back to the contexts in which meanings are generated, and these are the historical institutions that were early on in play in the generation of symbolic thinking. This is one fundamental difference between Heidegger and Kant, that latter dealing with logical abstractions of language, the former dealings with all of these as of-a-piece. Dewey idea of a "consummatory event" is similar: the aesthetic and the cognitive and the meanings in solving problems issue from "an experience", a foundational original.

Quite right Bylaw! Intuition is the great instinct that propagates the life it imbues. Intuition ought never be ignored but rather, enriched with reason, to amalgamate the "whole". — Benj96

I knew a philosopher once whose least favorite word was 'intuition', because people take this to mean some kind of non propositional knowledge, a yielding of something quasi magical from the world itself, like writing on stones tablets from a mountain top. The way this goes is, take any given intuition, and tell me what it is. The meaning of the intuition is now understood, but only when it is set in a context of spoken possibilities. Outside of this context, that is, any context of what language can say, there is, you know, nothing to say. So all intuitions are propositional in their nature, and not mysterious emanations with some stand alone meaning.
Consider a very strong intuition like causality: It is impossible to imagine an object moving by itself. We don't give this much thought, but it is about as close as one can get to an absolute (putting ethics and value aside) and it is a very curious thing to me because it is about actual things and not abstract logic (I think Wittgenstein claimed that the intuition was essentially logical, but I'd have to find that). But what IS causality? Say what you will, but it is the language doing the saying. Apart from this, there is nothing to say.

So all intuitions are propositional in their nature, and not mysterious emanations with some stand alone meaning. — Constance

Spot on Constance.

But what IS causality — Constance

Well for me "causality" must (as all things must) be put in context.
Causality is temporal is it not? It relies on the passage of time: A becomes B becomes C. That is causality.

But what about in the case where time doesn't exist? For example in a case where "change" is impossible?

For me the only instance in which change is not possible is offered by physics - the speed of light.

At the speed of light, no energy can interact with/change itself/impart information. Because to do so would demand that somehow that information travel faster than the cosmic speed limit "C". (the speed of light).

If two photons are hurtling along at the speed of light side by side, how does change occur between them when the information in both photons cannot reach eachother without exceeding the speed their currently travelling at?

Photons travelling at that maximum speed therefore cannot influence one another, time for a photon is dilated so much that all moments are instantaneous (past, present and future). In essence time does not pass (no change) at the speed of light nor distance.

It is only us (as objects) experiencing time (rate, because we are not travelling at C) that can observe the distance and time (speed) travelled by light.

That's relativity.

Because we are under the influence of change while light (energy at C) has no rate/is not, what does that mean for causality?

It means that light is not under the influence of causality because it is the source of causality. Change/ability to do Work/energy exerts change on the system around it (matter) but doesn't exert change on itself. Because when it does it is matter (E=mc2).

Energy can only cause change of itself when it decelerates from the speed light (ie. When it condenses into matter (as energy and matter are two form of the same thing, distinguished by the whether the passage of time, and thus causality, occurs).

In summary energy causes matter and time, but matter and time cannot cause energy, they can only propagate it at slower speeds than the speed of light.

Language is certainly more fundamental than culture. Knowledge does not require language, however, so the fundamental attachment must go deeper than culture or language.
— praxis

I don't think language is historically more fundamental than culture — Constance

I think you're right, now that I put more thought into it, and not just historically.

I still don't think the nature of this 'attachment' is explored enough.

I suppose it depends on how tathāgata is interpreted.

Perhaps unlearning and learning are one and the same? In that maybe if there is a fundamental truth it is both that which we depart from (unlearn) as well as that which we return to (learn).

Such is the magic of constancy - the permanence of truth. — Benj96

Sure, that's another way to put it. Buddhists believe that we all have inherent wisdom (prana) which becomes obscured by the kleshas (defilements) brought about by attachment to ideas of substance.

So, the original prana wisdom would be the understanding of annatta or the non-selfness of all things. If there is no abiding identity in self or world, then there is no one to be attached and no-thing to be attached to.

Unlearning our attachment is infinitely easier said than done.

This all seems to resonate.

Forgotten inherent wisdom of the body? — Constance

I should have written "body/mind" to make it clear that I'm neither proposing any kind of physicalism nor idealism.

the original prana wisdom would be the understanding realization of annatta or the non-selfness emptiness of all things. — Janus

Is there a distinction between "understanding" and "realization" and "non-selfness" and "emptiness" that you would like to elaborate upon?

Sure. No distinction between non-self and emptiness but a biggy big difference between understanding and realization. For instance, I understand a lot about life daununnda but I've never experienced it. It has never been made real for me, unfortunately.

:up: That makes sense; a different usage. I was thinking of understanding as being the same as realization, as it might be said that you don't really understand Buddhism until you have become enlightened.

No one understands Buddhism, just like no one understands any religion. If it were understandable then it would not require faith, particularly faith in authority, and that would be antithetical to the entire point.

I do so :heart: generalizing.

I suppose it depends on how tathāgata is interpreted. — 180 Proof

That would be one way of looking at it! :up: