[MD] Marsha's (s)OL

[MarshaV]

John,

I hope that even if you was the Jill Bolte-Taylor TED video before, you
reviewed it again.

You are a talented writer and story-teller.  I am not.  So I would like to
share something found on the Web about Buddhism that explains the
self/object dilemma. I think you'll enjoy the story.

-------------   

I'll review the principle of emptiness within the Middle Way Consequence
School (Prasangika Madhyamika, which I abbreviate by Middle Way) through a
little story. Nearly thirty years ago a very holy man gave me some fresh
carrot juice to drink. What a tasty elixir! I returned home determined to
grow some fresh carrots of my own on our little farm. (Actually, I was
determined to get my wife to grow them.) However, the soil in my part of the
world is heavy and stony, and the carrots that first year were stubby and
misshapen. I thought, "If only I had a garden tiller, I could whip that
heavy soil into the most beautiful carrot bed." I could not afford one of
those fancy tillers that a delicate ten-year-old girl can operate with one
hand. My rototiller is a test of my manhood, a bucking bronco requiring
strength and stamina. Of course, time destroys both people and equipment,
and my tiller soon suffered from a long list of woes. It requires the
patience of an advanced Bodhisattva to start, it only works at the deepest
setting, it no longer has a reverse, and it cannot run in place and so bolts
ahead . . . when you can manage to start it. However, I only use it a few
hours a year, so I suffer with it and consider it a perverse sort of
challenge. 

One beautiful spring day a few years ago the rototiller was taking me for my
annual ride while it bathed me in the blue smoke of burning oil. I was
musing on carrots and rototillers and suddenly had a tiny enlightenment. The
second of Buddha's Four Noble Truths tells us that suffering is caused by
desire. My desire for that delicious carrot juice had chained me to this
rototiller for a quarter of a century! A desire for fresh, sweet carrot
juice initially seemed innocent and "spiritually correct," in that good
health is an aid to practicing dharma, but look where it led. Desire does
generate suffering. However, those blue clouds bellowing from the burned out
muffler along with that shattering noise and vibration urged me to deeper
reflection. Upon what is that carrot-desire based? 

The Middle Way clearly answers that desires and aversions are based upon the
false belief in independent existence, the idea that beyond my personal
associations, relationship, and names for carrots, there is a real,
substantial, inherently existent entity. This substantially existent object,
that entity that "exists from its own side," is the basis upon which we
project all our desires and aversions, all our craving for and fleeing from
objects. 

This innate and unreflective belief in inherent existence divides into two
pieces. First, that phenomena exist independent of mind or knowing. That
"underneath" or "behind" the psychological associations, names, and
linguistic conventions we apply to objects like carrot or rototiller,
something objective and substantial exists fully and independently from its
own side. Such independent objects appear to provide the objective basis for
our shared world. Second, we falsely believe these objects to be
self-contained and independent of each other.[2] Each object being
fundamentally nonrelational, it exists on its own right without essential
dependence upon other objects or phenomena. In other words, the essential
nature of these objects is their nonrelational unity and completeness in
themselves. 

Since it is so critical to identify inherent existence carefully, let me say
it in other words. Consider the carrot stripped of its sense qualities,
history, location, and relation to its surroundings. All but an advanced
practitioner of the Middle Way believes that this denuded carrot has some
unique essence, some concrete existence that provides the foundation for all
its other qualities. This core of its being, this independent or inherent
existence, is what the Middle Way denies. The carrot surely has conventional
existence; it attracts rodents and makes great juice. It functions as a
food. However, it totally lacks independent or inherent existence, what we
falsely believe is the core of its being. In other words, the object or
subject we falsely believe independently exists is not actually "finable
upon analysis." When we search diligently for that entity we believe
inherently exists, we cannot actually find it. It's independent being does
not become clearer and more definite upon searching. Instead, phenomena
exist in the middle way because they lack inherent existence, but do have
conventional existence. 

While reifying carrots, I simultaneously reify the one who desires carrots
and consider him as inherently existent too. Out of the seamless flux of
experience, I falsely impute or attribute inherent existence to both the
subject and its object of desire and thereby spin the wheel of samsara. In
this way, perception is a double act that simultaneously generates a false
belief in inherently existent subjects and objects, gentleman farmers and
their carrots. Then our time is occupied with cherishing our personal ego,
putting its desires before all else, pushing others aside to satisfy those
desires, and running after objects we falsely believe inherently exist. We
think those objects will make us happy, but in fact they can never satisfy
us. Perhaps time "is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire." Was not
this the point of the Buddha's fire sermon? 

According to the Middle Way, we can put out the fire by deeply appreciating
the doctrine of emptiness, the lack of inherent existence in all subjects
and objects, in all phenomena. This requires not only an intellectual
formulation as given here, but a profound transformation of our whole being
at many levels-a process that usually takes many life times. 

Just so that you will have the whole story, I recently bought a new tractor
to replace my 1934 hand-cranking model (also the source of many deep
lessons). With the new tractor, I bought a huge rototiller that attaches to
it and makes garden preparation a breeze. However, I have given the old
rototiller, now called the dharma-tiller, to my son hoping that he will grow
good vegetables and a deeper understanding of emptiness. 

The description of emptiness given so far is negative, a thoroughgoing
denial of what we wrongly believe is the core of existence. Next, let me
turn to a more positive description of phenomena, including carrots. If
phenomena don't independently exist than how do they exist? The Middle Way
tells us that they dependently exist in three fundamental ways. First,
phenomena exist dependent upon causes and conditions. For example, carrots
depend upon soil, sunlight, moisture, freedom from rodents, and so forth.
Second, phenomena depend upon the whole and its parts. Carrots depend upon
its greens, stem, root hairs, and so on and the totality of all these parts.
Third, and most profoundly, phenomena depend upon mental imputation,
attribution, or designation. From the rich panoply of experience, I collect
the sense qualities, personal associations, and psychological reactions to
carrots together, and name them or designate them as "carrot." The mind's
proper functioning is to construct its world, the only world we can know.
The error enters because along with naming comes the false attribution of
inherent existence, that foundation for desire and aversion. 

For the Middle Way, dependent arising is a complementary way of describing
emptiness. We can understand them as two different views of the same truth.
Therefore, contrary to our untutored beliefs, the ultimate nature of
phenomena is its dependency and relatedness, not isolated existence and
independence. 

One of the difficulties in understanding emptiness is that we can easily
assent to the importance of relatedness, while falling prey to the
unconscious assumption that relations are superimposed upon independently
existent terms in the relation. In fact, it is the relationships, the
interdependencies that are the reality, since objects or subjects are
nothing but their connections to other objects and subjects. 

We might ask what would phenomena be like if they did in fact inherently or
independently exist. The Middle Way explains that inherently existent
objects would be immutable, since in their essence they are independent of
other phenomena and so uninfluenced by any interactions. Conversely,
independently existent objects would also be unable to influence other
phenomena, since they are complete and self-contained. In short,
independently existent objects would be immutable and impotent. Of course,
experience denies this since our world is of continuously interacting
phenomena, from the growth of carrots nourished by sun, rain, and soil, to
their destruction by rodents. From the subjective side, that we do not
independently exist implies that it is possible to transform ourselves into
Buddhas, exemplars of infinite wisdom and compassion. 

Critics of the Middle Way often say that if objects did not inherently
exist, they could not function to produce help and harm. Carrots lacking
independent existence could not give sweet juice or make soup. The Middle
Way turns this around 180 degrees, and answers that it is precisely because
objects and subjects lack independent existence that they are capable of
functioning. So the very attribute that we falsely believe is at the core of
phenomena would, if present, actually prevent them from functioning. 

Now how does all this relate to the Middle Way notion of time? As I
mentioned above, if phenomena inherently existed then they would of
necessity be immutable and impotent, unable to act on us or we on them.
Since, in truth, phenomena are fundamentally a shifting set of dependency
relations, impermanence and change are built into them at the most
fundamental level. That the carrot exists in dependence upon causes and
conditions, its whole and parts, and on our attribution or naming is what
makes it edible, allows me to experience it and be nourished by it. More
important for impermanence, these defining relations and co-dependencies and
their continuously shifting connections with each other guarantee that all
objects and subjects are impermanent, ceaselessly evolving, maturing, and
decaying. In short, emptiness and impermanence are two sides of the coin of
existence and therefore transformation and change are built into the core of
all entities, both subjective and objective. In this way, the doctrine of
impermanence is a direct expression of emptiness/dependent arising. Because
I lack inherent existence and am most fundamentally a kinetic set of
shifting experiences, with no eternal soul, as we normally understand it,
then "Time is the substance I am made of." Borges' compact sentence seems
like a Middle Way aphorism. Being substantially of time guarantees my
continuous transformation and death. Indeed, time "is a fire that consumes
me, but I am the fire." These philosophic truths of emptiness and
impermanence are central to Buddhist practice, and I return to them later.
Now let us turn to physics and its view of time.

-------------  
 

Marsha









-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of MarshaV
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 1:53 PM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] Marsha's (s)OL

John,

There is unpatterned experience.  It doesn't have to be as extreme as Ms.
Bolte-Taylor's experience, but one can have experience without patterned
projections.  At this point, I am only trying to explain that there is
unpatterned experience.  I'm quite sure meditation can get you to a much,
much gentler version of such an experience.  

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_ins
ight.html 


Let's see how we do with going this far.  Don't freak out...      


Marsha 



-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of John Carl
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 1:13 PM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] Marsha's (s)OL

Ok, I'm not speedy and quick, but slowly I get there.  It's head-snappingly
complicated to wrap one's brain around  objectification vs.
conceptualization...

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 10:00 AM, MarshaV <valkyr at att.net> wrote:

> Steve,
>
> I am not extending the idea of "object" to include all sorts of patterns.
> Objectification is a process: "Objectification is the process by which an
> abstract concept is treated as if it is a concrete thing or physical
> object.
>


Ok, so if I was treating an abstract concept AS an abstract concept and NOT
as a concrete thing or a physical object, then I'm not guilty of
objectifying or reifying, right?   Abstract concepts are intellectually
created and manipulated and "wrong" only when given false physicality.


In this sense the term is synonym to reification." (Wikipedia)  There are no
> independent objects, things-in-themselves, in the MoQ.  I have never said
I
> supported Bo's SOL, I do agree with Bo that the Intellectual Level is the
> subject/object level.  I agree with Bo that there should be a Quality
Level
> above the Intellectual Level that represents unpatterned experience (DQ)
> and
> patterned experience (sq (static patterns of value)).
>


And in my quest for knowledge, I ask, What does unpatterned experience look
like?  How do you define it?

It almost seems to me a phlogoston-like entity created for the logical
necessity of "patterned experience"... So you've got some "thing" to pattern
things out of.

I've come to think of DQ as a "patterning force" which puts the necessary
positive spin on the world which makes it go 'round.  Love makes the world
go 'round.  If Quality generates "all of it, every single bit", then none of
reality is unpatterned.  You just haven't gotten 'round to patterning it
yet.

See how I am?  It's why for me its simpler just to say, Reality is
Experience.
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