[MD] Marsha's (s)OL

[MarshaV]

Consider this explanation from the Prasangika Madhyamika branch of Buddhism:


"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.

...         

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?"

http://www.buddhanet.net/timeimpe.htm


It is my understanding that what Bo is suggesting is that in the Social
Level this subject/object bifurcation takes place unconsciously (habits,
ritual, etc.), but that in the Intellectual Level this split comes into
awareness and is part of the manipulation of objects abstracted from an
external world, and includes a distancing from their subjective/self
influence.   



Marsha