[MD] "knowing that" versus "knowing how"

[MarshaV]

Hi Adrie,

     "Daoism and Buddhism are unique among the great religions in denying the ontological self. Anatma non-self is one of the three basic "facts" taught by Sakyamuni Buddha, along with anitya impermanence and duhkha dissatisfaction. Two of his basic teachings deconstruct the self synchronically into skandha "heaps" and diachronically into pratitya-samutpada "dependent-origination". These doctrines explain how the illusion of self is constituted and maintained. All experiences associated with the illusory sense-of-self can be analyzed into one of five impersonal skandhas (form, sensation, perception, volitional tendencies and conditioned consciousness), with no remainder: there is no transcendental soul or persisting self to be found over and above their functioning."

http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-MISC/101801.htm  

Six to nine inches of snow are expected, starting tomorrow morning through Monday; I too love to see the countryside covered with white.



Marsha









On Dec 25, 2010, at 8:22 AM, ADRIE KINTZIGER wrote:

> Hi Marsh.
> Liked your posting about Patricia Monahan,nicely written.
> Is she a paintress?/writer?
> 
> We are having the first Belgium covering white christmas since 1964,
> i was 5 yrs old then.
> And now its snowing and freezing for 22 days without stopping, what a
> traffic
> jam.
> I don't celebrate it , but nice to see it, the country covered in white.
> Adrie
> 
> 2010/12/25 MarshaV <valkyr at att.net>
> 
>> 
>> http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-MISC/101801.htm
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Greetings,
>> 
>> This is a very interesting article addressing both the Daoist point-of-view
>> (represented by Zhuangzi) and the Buddhist point-of-view (represented by
>> Nagarjuna) on the subject of truth versus no-truth.  Here is a few
>> paragraphs:
>> 
>>   "To realize that there are no things is not to float in a porridge where
>> each spoonful is indistinguishable from the next; it is to store away in the
>> Gate of Heaven which remains no-thing even as all things arise from it and
>> transform into each other... If we replace "things" in the previous sentence
>> with "words", what would that imply about language?
>> 
>>   According to Graham, grasping the Dao is a matter not of "knowing that"
>> but of "knowing how," as shown by the many craftsmen Zhuangzi is fond of
>> citing. This distinction is not as useful as one would hope, but it is
>> useful to consider: what would "knowing how" with words be like? It is no
>> coincidence that Zhuangzi himself provides one of the greatest examples, and
>> not only for Chinese literature. Clearly there is a special art to this as
>> well, which is not completely indifferent to logic and reasoning as we have
>> come to understand them in the West, yet which is not to be completely
>> identified with them. One of the delights of the Zhuangzi for Western
>> readers is the way its polyvocal text disrupts our distinction between form
>> and content, rhetoric and logic -- a bifurcation which may be not "natural"
>> but an unfortunate legacy of the Western intellectual tradition."
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Marsha
>> 
>> ___


 
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