Oh yeah...you again.
The "I'm not a human" silly-game-player.
Have a nice day.
self-denial
Re: self-denial
What do you mean "silly-game-player"?Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Aug 30, 2020 2:02 amOh yeah...you again.
The "I'm not a human" silly-game-player.
Do you ALREADY KNOW what the answer is to the question; 'Who am 'I', is?
If yes, then what is it?
But if no, then why make the claim "silly-game-player"? If you do NOT know what the answer is, then you have NO idea what the actual game being played here is, and who the actual 'players' are.
Have a nicer life. Yours, after all, has not got much left to 'play out'.
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Immanuel Can
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Immanuel Can
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Re: The True Self
So it's not true that the atman is good. The atman is also evil, at least in its lowercase self?
Because the evil that men do has to come from somewhere. And unless you insist that things like rape, pedophelia, slavery, embezzling, lies, brutality, genocide or infanticide are not actually evil, then there needs to be some explanation of why such things happen...as they so often do.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: self-denial
Agree, evil/error is not real, but neither is good/right behaviour.
As I see it, the "real world" is a non-conceptual "place" - it is only our judgements and beliefs that define some actions as good and others as bad.
Its actually perfectly impossible to have a one sided coin - you cannot have good without the bad .. good looses its goodness if there is no badness to compare it against (there is no left without a right, no up without a down...).
Reality is as such neither good nor bad, it is beyond/before all these conceptual limitations.
Re: self-denial
Hi Luxin,Luxin wrote: ↑Wed Sep 02, 2020 4:59 am If I remove 'is a non-conceptual "place" - it' from your full unedited sentence, which is:
As I see it, the "real world" is a non-conceptual "place" - it is only our judgements and beliefs that define some actions as good and others as bad.
The edited sentence is:
As I see it, the "real world" is only our judgements and beliefs that define some actions as good and others as bad.
Please confirm if the edited sentence is consistent with your concept.
Assuming it is consistent, and you conceive that your "real world" is just our judgments and beliefs etcetera, are you saying, in the unedited sentence including the "real world" is a non-conceptual "place", that our judgments and beliefs are non-conceptual; i.e. that they are not ideas or concepts?
No, it is not consistent with what I was trying to express.
I was implying that the "real world" or "reality" is not touched by concepts. it is what is directly experienced - the colors seen, the sounds heard, the smells smelled, the tastes tasted and the physical sensations felt (and even these terms are just concepts, but it is as close as one can get pointing at directly experienced reality)
The "conceptual world" is constructed from conceptual interpretations of direct experience - eg: "I like the taste of this apple" - while in reality, in the "real world" there is simply taste, color, sensations ... when combining these basic sensations we arrive at the concept of the objecte "apple" - when connecting it with more concepts (which have been acquired since early childhood) we might find that we either like or dislike this taste of apple...
All these concept are not part of the "real world" - they are a conceptual layer wrapped over reality - not reality itself.
Everything has (or rather is) potential power. It is made of "power" as it is made of "reality" and it is activated by awarding it conscious attention.
It is therefore necessary to be alert and present to see when your attention is moving into a direction that is harmful - eg: you might believe that whatever thought might tell you is actually true and get completely caught up in thought world. By removing attention from thought (or harmful thoughts) one drains these thoughts of power ... thoughts are like plants: the more you water them the better they will grow, refuse water and light and they will shrivel and die.
Re: self-denial
Well... I think we have to have a look at what things actually are before we go any further.
"This is a world made of things" - most people would agree with this statement, and it also works for conventional communication.
But what exactly is a "thing"?
As I see it, a thing is a limited, separate entity existing in its own right - it exists independently from other things.
For such things to actually exist - and in their multiplicity making up the "world/universe of things" - every (and really EVERY) part of this universe/existence has to be strictly limited - as soon as one thing or part violates this law, as soon as something is not a thing, all other things automatically lose their independence - they lose their thing-ness as well (as the one no-thing automatically encompasses them all).
This has to be the case as something that is not a thing is without borders, it is what we would call "infinite" and "eternal" and would as such "swallow the whole universe in one quick gulp"
Look at a TV screen. When it is turned on and a movie is playing there are many things visible on the screen - people, cars, birds, trees... all separate things. But in reality they are not separate, they are unified by the screen - they are, in essence, only screen/color.
All we actually perceive is color, not people or cars, but only color - the separation between the colors is a mental construct, it is not "real". But, as we don't watch the screen, but are mesmerised by the colourful things moving on it, we believe that they are what the world is actually made of, while (on the level of the screen) the separation between them is not real, it is only conceptual.
Now replace the word "screen" with "consciousness". Consciousness is not a thing, yet all that is seen, heard, smelled, tasted, touched and thought appears in (or rather: as) it. When seen on the level of consciousness there is only consciousness, there is no separation whatsoever.
A thought appears "Car" another thought "Don't cross the street" - on the level of mind/thought they seem to be two separate, well defined "things", yet, on the level of consciousness they are not separate. Just like the colors red and green are apparently separate, but are in essence only color, which is nothing but "seeing" itself (which again is nothing but consciousness).
Thus, while there are no things on the level of consciousness (what I call: reality) within the world of concepts/mind (on the level of limited things moving on the TV screen) - thing-ness is very much alive and kicking.
Are "things" real?
Yes and no - depends on your perspective. If you inhabit the perspective of the character on the screen then things are very real indeed. If you take on the perspective of the screen then things disappear in your own infinity.