I beg to offer a counterexample:
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
— Albert Einstein
I believe this is written in the third person. Am I wrong? — Banno
But, though I don't believe that we're all the same "I", I still don't want to harm other living things, and so the only change, if I were convinced of what you're saying would be that I'd have a stronger argument for vegetarianism...an argument easier to justify to everyone.
...assuming that I could convince others to it as well. It wouldn't help if I couldn't.
And of course that would apply to human-affairs too, all the depredations that are in the news.
But, in those human-affairs matters, and in every matter other than our household's lack of all-the-time vegetarianism, it wouldn't change me one bit, because I already don' t want anyone or anything harmed. — Michael Ossipoff
What if the contents and the container are one consciousness together?One can then ask, what is the difference between your consciousness and mine or a mouse's? And the answer would always be in the contents, not the container. — unenlightened
What if the contents and the container are one consciousness together? — Agustino
But what if we are not our consciousness to begin with? That is really my entire point, that consciousness too is impermanent, and thus, as Buddhists would say, anicca - impermanent, and anatta - empty of self. That's why in Buddhism consciousness is taken to be one of the Five Skandhas - which cease to exist in Nirvana.So to answer your question directly, if the contents and the container are one consciousness, then I am not the same person who started writing this reply, and the person who reads it will not be the Agustino of yore. And that is just as unbelievable as that we are one. — unenlightened
But would you not say that your consciousness is as fleeting as those things with which it is filled?My consciousness is filled with any number of fleeting things from moment to moment — unenlightened
I can agree with this. To me it seems that you are that which is conscious of X or Y (or perhaps better said, that which HAS consciousness of X). But consciousness isn't the self.Rather, I identify as some sort of thread (to use another image from container for a moment), on which these fleeting impressions and pearls of speculative wisdom are strung. And, as I mentioned, I see this thread projecting into the future, and make an identification with tomorrow's unenlightened wanting his breakfast that is strong enough to propel me to the shop for eggs and coffee. — unenlightened
Buddhists would say the Five Skandhas reincarnate — Agustino
There are two ways in which someone can take rebirth after death: rebirth under the sway of karma and destructive emotions and rebirth through the power of compassion and prayer. Regarding the first, due to ignorance negative and positive karma are created and their imprints remain on the consciousness. These are reactivated through craving and grasping, propelling us into the next life. We then take rebirth involuntarily in higher or lower realms. This is the way ordinary beings circle incessantly through existence like the turning of a wheel. Even under such circumstances ordinary beings can engage diligently with a positive aspiration in virtuous practices in their day-to-day lives. They familiarise themselves with virtue that at the time of death can be reactivated providing the means for them to take rebirth in a higher realm of existence.
On the other hand, superior Bodhisattvas, who have attained the path of seeing, are not reborn through the force of their karma and destructive emotions, but due to the power of their compassion for sentient beings and based on their prayers to benefit others. They are able to choose their place and time of birth as well as their future parents. Such a rebirth, which is solely for the benefit of others, is rebirth through the force of compassion and prayer. — H H The Dalai Lama, 'Reincarnation'
Well if you could point to it, it would no longer be the self, but rather an object or property in the world, wouldn't you think so? In Kantian terms, the self would be a condition for the very possibility of the world. One reason why it leads into antinomy - the self can never be captured, for who would be there to capture the self? Whatsoever you can "see" cannot be the self, for then who is the one seeing it?I'm not sure what you are pointing to here. Not body, not consciousness, not memory, but...? — unenlightened
So that's as far as Buddhism goes. This real self, which is light compared to the world, but darkness compared to God - for it is solely an image of God, His Breath - but not the essence of God.Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
So to answer your question directly, if the contents and the container are one consciousness, then I am not the same person who started writing this reply, and the person who reads it will not be the Agustino of yore. And that is just as unbelievable as that we are one. — unenlightened
And we've already established that when we're looking for the self, we're looking for something permanent. — Agustino
the self cannot be reborn, because the self is never born, for whatsoever is born must die. — Agustino
I think it gets confusing when consciousness is thought of as some object that can be made mobile. — Rich
There appears to be a wave-like, cyclical nature moving of processes that move from rest-from-learning-and-creating (sleep/death) and creating/learning (awake/alive) of this process. — Rich
That's fine; if that's who you imagine yourself to be, I won't argue. How does this identity manifest itself in your life? — unenlightened
Yes, your atoms, thoughts, desires, etc. re-incarnate - they "survive" your death. But not you (you are beyond the need to "survive").Have we? I don't remember establishing that. If reincarnation, then something survives death. — unenlightened
Yes, in a common sense of speaking, since that's what people mis-identify the self to be.Then It seems to have no connection to me, because I was born, Mummy told me. — unenlightened
So philosophy cannot involve revealed religion? What if philosophy itself points towards, or rather necessitates, revelation? Plato certainly thought so for society cannot be governed without the philosopher king, nor can there be a philosopher king who did not have the mystical vision of Agathon - to whom Agathon hasn't revealed itself.It's philosophy, not revealed religion. It's a question of identity, a matter of examining one's life, and the answers from books are just theories about someone else's notion of their identity. — unenlightened
Then It seems to have no connection to me, because I was born, Mummy told me.
— unenlightened
Yes, in a common sense of speaking, since that's what people mis-identify the self to be. — Agustino
I think all rebirth, in Buddhist terms, is ultimately illusory, for the real self never reincarnates - only the Five Skandhas do — Agustino
"There is, monks, an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated. If there were not that unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, there would not be the case that emancipation from the born — become — made — fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, emancipation from the born — become — made — fabricated is discerned."
Gregory of Nyssa's anthropology is founded on the ontological distinction between the created and uncreated. Man is a material creation, and thus limited, but infinite in that his immortal soul has an indefinite capacity to grow closer to the divine. Gregory believed that the soul is created simultaneous to the creation of the body (in opposition to Origen, who believed in preexistence).
you can have a look at this book. — Agustino
Fr. Seraphim Rose may have gotten his monastic name from a famously gentle Russian saint, but he had a warrior's spirit. His goal in life was to prove, by his own example, that a contemporary Orthodox Christian can still live exactly like a 3rd-century Desert Father, if only the will and the zeal were there. While doing this, he still found the time to write a number of passionate polemics (of which this book is the best-known) attacking what he saw as various forms of indulgence and temptation masquerading as "spirituality." — Amazon Reader Review
This is what we do; we identify ourselves with the limits of our sensations. Whatever I can feel the hurt of or the pleasure of is me, and if there are hurts and pleasures that I don't feel, that is another. It's strongly intuitive, and it's the way we go on. So I'm not surprised that there is resistance to my questioning this intuition. But I am trying to show, with a closer look, that it is a bit arbitrary. — unenlightened
Well I hope I am doing something more than just playing with words. Suppose, imagine, that I have convinced you, that quite literally, another's pain is your pain even though you don't feel it; that another's harm is your harm. Do you not think it would change your prioities, change your life, if your identity was actually 'everyman'? — unenlightened
So to answer your question directly, if the contents and the container are one consciousness, then I am not the same person who started writing this reply, and the person who reads it will not be the Agustino of yore. And that is just as unbelievable as that we are one. — unenlightened
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