[MD] humpty dumpty

[118]

Hmmm...

On 8/1/12, X Acto <xacto at rocketmail.com> wrote:
>
> [Ron interjects:]
> If I understood Peirce correctly, he suggests aligning beliefs with natural order along with inquiry, aligning with natural order is alignment with direct experience. The question of HOW is an interesting one, what I have noticed and I think why others have a problem with associating Pragmatism and Buddhism is that Pragmatism lacks the inducement of an "aporia" effect that has the same sort of impact as a Buddhist aporia or the same mystique it holds in popular culture.

Mark:
Yes, nothing wrong with aporia since that is the base from which
enlightenment occurs.  It comes through releasing oneself from the
static quality one is clinging to.  It is clear that Buddhism is very
pragmatic, and that enlightenment can be achieved using practical
reason.  The Eightfold Path demonstrates this.  There is nothing
special about Buddhist aporia, and any riddle provides the same thing.
 It is simply a questioning of the Static Quality we have grown to
become complacent with.

However, in order to get to Quality through standard Western reasoning
one cannot travel the path which Ron provides at the beginning of the
paragraph above.  He provides a false separation of “beliefs” and “the
natural order”.  There is also a false separation between “the self”
and “beliefs” for there is not a separate body which then aligns its
beliefs.  Finally the creation of a separate body of “direct
experience” may be pragmatic, but is not necessary.  Every thought
that pops into our heads is direct experience.  Direct experience is
created in the present, even if it is a memory.  We like to consider
ourselves within a timescale that indicates a continuity within a
stretch of time, but that is simply the result of memory traces and
conjecture.  All of our lives happen in the present.

What I am getting at, is perhaps a better way in which to grasp
Quality and become aware through its prism.  Direct experience is
everything that is happening at this very moment, even if it seems one
is looking back in time or going over the same old static creation
time and again.  This is just the persistence of memory which are like
the tracers that fireworks make.  One cannot help but be in contact
with direct experience, and any notion of the opposite is simply a
pragmatic illusion.  Revealing direct experience has nothing to do
with looking for it, but rather recognizing it.

>Ron:
 What it seems to boil down to is what James had pointed to the
rationalistic temperament vs an empirical temperament toward HOW
beliefs are aligned with direct experience and the certain brand of
rationalistic temperament which rests on unity and arrests
intellectual development.

Mark:
This “boiling down” which you speak of can be described in another
way.  To use the analogy of DQ and SQ, we can say that the two are in
shifting balances within our human existence.  Using this dynamic
interplay (for the purposes of illustration) we could propose that a
rationalist temperament is more heavy on the SQ side (less DQ), while
an empirical temperament is less heavy (more DQ).  By this model, one
could say that the empiricist is more able to create new experience
than the rationalist.  In this way, the empiricist is more dynamic.
As one tends towards the mystical, the DQ side predominates.  To
continue the DQ/SQ metaphor, it can be considered as a question of
“movement”.  Rationalism would be more sedentary than empiricism.  Of
course there is a broad spectrum of both, and they do meet.

Ron:
> My experience with Buddhism was via the martial arts and it was a guide to action not inaction or, the martial arts would not be associated with it nor employ it or be as deeply intertwined and rooted with it.

Mark:
Yes, I like that.

Ron:
> Taisen Deshimaru was a great influence on the Pragmatic aspect of Zen being both a master swordsman and master Soto Zen Buddhist.
>
> "Making the most of our abilities is identifying ourselves with Buddha or
> God. I would say that we must first of all know ourselves completely, then
> put the best of ourselves to use by cutting through the passions that lead
> us to use ourselves badly. This way, we raise ourselves up on our own
> summit, a peak dazzling with a light that contains the whole universe, and
> we brandish the sharp blade of wisdom. In other words, seizing the sword of
> wisdom is carrying human abilities to their optimum worth."
>
> -Taiesen Deshimaru

Mark:
I like that too.  One of the ways of ‘knowing ourselves”, is to throw
away everything that is “not us”.  There is an awful lot of baggage
there, and the more one throws away, the more one finds.  We live in
an age where most of what we are is what we have been told we are.
That is all baggage, for the most part.  Even if we end up with many
of the same attributes following “knowing oneself”,  it makes a big
difference if we discover these things for ourselves.  Personally, I
like Tai Chi as a physical method for discovering these things.  There
is so much power in the self, and it is intricately bound up with
everything else.  It is very easy to imagine “force fields” emanating
from the body if one looks for them.  We each create our own existence
determining ripples.  That is what it means to identify with God, or
whatever is your word for such a concept.

Cheers,
Mark

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