[MD] Marsha's (s)OL

[John Carl]

Marsha,


That was beautiful and moving.  I wasn't freaked out at all.


"My spirit soared free like a great whale gliding free through a  sea of
silent euphoria... nirvana... I found Nirvana."


Why is it that when scientific types express matters of great emotional
depth they are often so much more profound  than artists, poets and
romantics?


 While we're on the subject, I heard about this on the radio the other day,
looked it up and thought it interesting:


http://digitalseance.wordpress.com/2007/07/13/lsd-and-dying/


snippet:


Among the most interesting work has been their use with the terminally ill
in the work of Grof and Halifax. During the 1970s, with the FDA’s research
approval, they were using LSD in therapy sessions to treat alcoholics when a
woman named Gloria, who was a part of their research team, found she had
advanced breast cancer. She was so anxious and depressed about her poor
prognosis that she asked whether she could try therapy sessions using LSD.
The team agreed. …

In their book The Human Encounter with Death, Grof and Halifax wrote about
how Gloria described her experience. “Mainly I remember two experiences,”
Gloria said. “I was alone in a timeless world with no boundaries. There was
no atmosphere; there was no color, no imagery, but there may have been
light.

“Life reduced itself over and over and over to the least common denominator.
I cannot remember the logic of the experiences, but I became poignantly
aware that the core of life is love. At this moment I felt that I was
reaching out to the world-to all people-but especially to those closest to
me.” As she came out of the experience, Gloria said she never felt such joy
and incredible love for her co-researchers, her parents, her husband, and
her family. Her depression and fatigue lifted. She felt at peace, and she
died that way five weeks later.



On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 1:15 PM, MarshaV <valkyr at att.net> wrote:

> 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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