[MD] Quantum Physics

[PhaedrusWolff at carolina.rr.com]

SA)  Do you see knowledge as something to be emptied,
and as doing so, you become full?  Quality is not
systematic understanding, wouldn't that be sq, but
from what your saying quality, not just sq,
necessitates dq as well, therefore the static traps
won't get one stuck.  Empty sq and become more full is
the same as saying sq is here, but sq can easily
become that gets one stuck, so empty sq is emptying
ego, thereby one becomes full by including dq, and we
experience, thus, quality through and through without
the distractions.  Help me out on understanding this
one a bit more.  This is interesting.  Even the
knowledge versus experience aspect of what is quality?
 Could you clarify.

Chin) I think we are thinking along the same lines, except you are 
thinking in terms of Zen traditions, the old Zen traditions or what I 
am more familiar with, Hinayanna Buddhism which doesn’t accept Buddha 
taking on divine being attributes. 

Though what I am saying about suspending the ego would mean stripping 
away the false identities, the false ‘self’ of Zen, it would not 
necessarily mean stripping away sq per se. Sq would still be Quality 
in that much of sq would have come from DQ, and built into our way of 
viewing or participating in the world. What would hold back DQ would 
not be the sq that has built up over the years from DQ, but just 
simply holding a dogmatic belief system in sq, or commonly accepted 
knowledge. Sq will empty out naturally as long as you are open to DQ. 

Where this would fit in with Zen and Buddhism as I understand it, 
would be you become a new person every day. Your self is temporary. In 
the same thinking, sq is temporary; it is always open to DQ. 

SA)     Control is necessary then?  The focus (control)
keeps one on the clear path of suspending ego, maybe?
 
Chin) Not necessary for self-observation, or Quality. Only prior to 
taking peyote with the Injuns, or expanding the mind with LSD, 
preparing for what you are going to experience is important, and not 
trying to take on to much at one time, which fits in with the 
disciplines of Zen you are speaking of. Suspending the ego would not 
be as dangerous, or complicated. Suspending the ego, at least in my 
view, does not require any efforts other than recognizing where your 
ego comes from. If you pay attention to yourself on a daily basis as 
you go through life in your business adventures and relationships with 
friends and family (and strangers), you will recognize your low 
quality nature, which could very well just simply allows you to build 
the Quality of this “I” made up of much we don’t even recognize. 
Quality, or DQ in terms of DQ/sq, would simply just work its way into 
your nature by recognizing the false self, by becoming real.  

SA)     It is all for society this way of being
successful you describe above.  It is forgetting
and/or not realizing the experience one's no-self is
involved.  Soon it is what 'they' think, not what 'I'
or 'family', think.  No-self is ultimately not just
'I', 'family', 'nation-state', etc...

Chin) In this way of thinking, I would see “no-self” as not 
politically labeled, not religiously labeled, not family labeled and 
not culturally labeled. Prejudice to one’s color or ethnicity, a 
feeling of superiority over other people of our own culture, other 
cultures, children or even superiority of our own intellect is like a 
cancer eating through society. When a part of society denies any 
validity of the ideas of another part of society, even down to 
Democrat/Republican, it holds back the opportunity for new ideas, DQ. 
This is not the democratic society our forefathers envisioned, whether 
they were disciplined enough to practice it or not. (my view)

SA)
--------
     So, so, true.  Some hold human consciousness to
such high regard, which is fine, sure, appreciation of
human intellect is to be, and to downplay human
enlightenment is to not give recognition where it is
deserved.  Yet, to somehow think that our
enlightenment is to boost our ego, and downplay
everything else in the universe to a meager position,
and to go on and on about human this, human intellect
that, human consciousness this, does what other than
boost the ego that misses out on consciousness itself.
 To boast human intellect and awareness is to actually
dim awareness, to do the opposite of what awareness
is.  Separation is the outcome, not consciousness.  

Chin) This is something I was trying to get to when I stepped back 
into MD. Ham had mentioned consciousness, and to me, the meaning of 
consciousness itself needs to be looked at. 

As you put it here, I would not think in terms of “not consciousness,” 
but in terms of conscious or not conscious to what? I understand you 
are thinking in terms of Nothingness, and understand where this is 
coming from, and agree to a certain extent, but also must recognize 
the consciousness of everything around us, including nature. It 
doesn’t require belief in God, Essence, Aether, Buddha, The One, or 
even Nothingness to recognize there is a connectedness in everything 
from the quant to the universe, or the quant in relation to the 
universe. Even if there is nothing behind the connectedness, there is 
still the connectedness. Consciousness to me is just simply allowing 
yourself to become connected, and it doesn’t matter what it is that is 
connecting; it just is. It could be the universe, or it could be in 
the confines of our own mind, or it could be Nothingness, which comes 
closest to what I am saying, as we deny our egoistic nature of trying 
to define where consciousness i
s coming from. 

There’s a little something in ZMM I would like you to read;

“Phædrus wrote a letter from India about a pilgrimage to holy Mount 
Kailas, the source of the Ganges and the abode of Shiva, high in the 
Himalayas, in the company of a holy man and his adherents.

He never reached the mountain. After the third day he gave up, 
exhausted, and the pilgrimage went on without him. He said he had the 
physical strength but that physical strength wasn’t enough. He had the 
intellectual motivation but that wasn’t enough either. He didn’t think 
he had been arrogant but thought that he was undertaking the 
pilgrimage to broaden his experience, to gain understanding for 
himself. He was trying to use the mountain for his own purposes and 
the pilgrimage too. He regarded himself as the fixed entity, not the 
pilgrimage or the mountain, and thus wasn’t ready for it. He 
speculated that the other pilgrims, the ones who reached the mountain, 
probably sensed the holiness of the mountain so intensely that each 
footstep was an act of devotion, an act of submission to this 
holiness. The holiness of the mountain infused into their own spirits 
enabled them to endure far more than anything he, with his greater 
physical strength, could take.

To the untrained eye ego-climbing and selfless climbing may appear 
identical. Both kinds of climbers place one foot in front of the 
other. Both breathe in and out at the same rate. Both stop when tired. 
Both go forward when rested. But what a difference! The ego-climber is 
like an instrument that’s out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an 
instant too soon or too late. He’s likely to miss a beautiful passage 
of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his 
step shows he’s tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail 
trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he 
just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the 
conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, 
something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, is 
unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets 
there will be just as unhappy because then it will be "here." What 
he’s looking for, what he wa
nts, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that because it is all 
around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, 
because he imagines his goal to be external and distant.”

Later on, he says of Chris lagging behind, and faking an ankle injury;

“When an ego-climber has an image of himself to protect he naturally 
lies to protect this image.”

As per your question in the chaos thread, the image of permanence 
would be our ego telling us something is as it is, our a priori of not 
only permanence, but causation, time/space, and knowledge itself. It 
would be an impermanence being the same as chaos only if you looked 
for permanence in knowledge or scientific fact. 

I couldn’t possibly know, but I feel like the modern physicists have 
advanced past this thinking, and are using quantum chaology much as we 
use the letter x or y in a mathematical equation. Chaos may be an 
unknown, but to them, an unknown in quantum mechanics is no big deal, 
as they do not expect to reach any permanence of fact or knowledge in 
quantum mechanics.