Path to enlightenment?

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I'm reading the book 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' and I'm extremely interested in Prisig's view on analytic thought and how in the pursuit of 'truth' you have to view everything under one basic subcategory. combining this with the the third law of thermodynamics which raises the concept of entropy, where life is(and especially humans) is a polar opposite.

Are Humans and advancements in cognitive capacity actually taking us further away from our goal of enlightenment?

forgive my nativity, and probably poor description of what I'm trying to say.

please enlighten me (lol)

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@hemingway,

Who said the goal of humanity was enlightenment?

I did read one book which claimed that every thought we have effects our brain and our DNA, to be passed on down to the next generation. It was an interesting concept that may actually be valid, and would have repurcussions on your line of thought.

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@vikorr,

enlightenment as in the acquisition of greater knowledge, those answers that everyone asks that no one can answer. i think this is one of the goals of humanity collectively and throughout history

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@hemingway,

Well, if you are going to use that definition rather than the more common one, say so Smile

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@vikorr,

well, what do you mean by the more common one?

and i didnt think i explained what i mean to say very well ha

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@hemingway,

The path is critical self analysis and complete personal honesty about oneself. Both the Buddha and Jesus Christ taught it.

The one, great positive message Jesus repeatedly tried to express was the thought that no individual could know himself unless his inner honesty was complete. The peace he talked about was of an inner peace.

The way to it was through truth and through the abandonment of preoccupation with temporal matters, with worldly goods, with trade and gain. While he did not overlook the necessity of objective living, he admonished against considering a life oriented wholly outward to matter as a satisfying life.

The light he to which he so often made reference was the light of truth, inner truth.

Quote:

Thomas II: 20. Saying (3) “Jesus said, ‘ If those who lead you say to you, “See, the kingdom is in the sky, then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea, then the fish will precede you.’ Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father.”

No man, according to him, could know himself unless he knew all the inferior and negative aspects of himself. A man who did not know himself could not in anyway trust what he thought about other men or the world.

This is the first, obviously essential step of self-knowledge (Gnosis). It leads to further developments of wisdom and understanding which could be followed to the outermost capacity of each individual and which in the case of most deeply reasoning, honest and imaginative individuals would lead to a transcendental experience.

His premise was that an individual is able through self-honesty, integrity alone to follow the elements of his subjective nature to their outermost boundaries. There any one would find the boundary infinite and immortal.

Jesus took the very solid position that unless you know who you are you don’t know what you are thinking about and you can only find out who you are by a difficult job of detachment and self appraisal.

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@kuvasz,

Inner self honesty is a really interesting subject, and leads to many rather interesting discoveries about yourself. It also leads down a path of continual growth, and eternal challenges. It may cause discomfort at first, but life is better for it.

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@hemingway,

It's all too beautiful.

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@kuvasz,

i like this response, however i have a few issues with it, which there are most likely counterarguments for, and would welcome a response

firstly, i think that there is always possible to counter anybody's judgment and integrity regardless of their inner peace and the acceptance of personal flaws. as this is the logic of logic, in analytic interpretation of a question there is always two or more ways to go; agree, disagree and the middle way. the same can be said for mans understanding or view on the world. therefore the object of inner peace can always be contested and never be conclusively agreed upon.
using this it would suggest that the idea of 'inner peace/honesty is an impossibility because there is always a different path or opinion to choose.
assuming that god is rational of course

the only way foreseeable way for the above to be irrelevant(at this moment in time for me) is if Jesus refers to God in a Subjective way. For the only way that this conundrum could be overcome is if 'God' is within you, but completely relative to you.
if the idea of complete understanding is based on rational and deductive thought which it must do, and you can only reach conclusions about your pro's and con's through rational thought, otherwise you face being irrational, which in itself is a flaw.
then the idea of inner peace is the confidence in your own rational.

i have literally confused myself so much over this one, if you can understand that then well done to you.

but interestingly this link with rational thought links the ideas of self 'enlightenment' and greater a priori enlightenment

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@hemingway,

Quote:

the only way foreseeable way for the above to be irrelevant(at this moment in time for me) is if Jesus refers to God in a Subjective way. For the only way that this conundrum could be overcome is if 'God' is within you, but completely relative to you.

That last sentence was a pearl, and could be relevant to a description of the Holy Trinity, viz., apart and in essence the same.

As to the rest of your post; I think that one can also be influenced towards self honesty by others who point out one's inconsistencies, as well as the individual being keenly aware of self delusion.

There is a paradoxical defect in cognitive ability of people, referred to as the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

Quote:

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to appreciate their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. As Kruger and Dunning conclude, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

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@kuvasz,

the idea of ability had crossed my mind, and is especially relevant to personal rational.

however, because the ability of ones capacity is still unknown, congnitive evolution has not reached its culmination, so it is impossible to know when you have reached the culmination of thought, and therefore never know if you have polished any imperfections. making the point that relative competance is irrelevant unless you wish to talk about relative personal honesty.

"as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. "
this is the problem of other minds aswell, which really annoys me. but these two points create a situation where competence cannot be measurable or specific, because you cannot experience how other people think, making personal honesty again almost impossible.

im fairly cynical, you can probably tell. which arguably is a flaw, looking at it cynically then it is a flaw, but that is a product of my own flaw, so the conclusion is flawed, so therefore cynicism/ the desire to question everything is a a positive aspect of my personality. contrary to popular belief.... any thoughts?

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@kuvasz,

you've really got me going on this subject, do you know any noteworthy books on the subject that would maybe contest my opinion, or be irrelevant to my opinion.

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@hemingway,

This has been a really interesting thread to read -- what I can understand of it. I'm not familiar with Pirsig, but I'm curious to know more, so I went scurrying to a Metaphysics of Quality site (link below). Thanks for raising this topic.

http://www.moq.org/

rebecca

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@melonkali,

melonkali wrote:

This has been a really interesting thread to read -- what I can understand of it. I'm not familiar with Pirsig, but I'm curious to know more

i would really recommend reading his book, he is a very talented writer and has a way of explaining things that really make sense. its also a subject that relates to everything, and one of the most if not the most significant books in philosophy in recent history( correct me if im wrong).

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@hemingway,

I think that the question would vary with different definitions of "enlightenment." The common denominator, one that seems to cross all cultural and historical boundaries, is described in Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy. It's notion of enlightenment is that of the mystical tradition in most times and places, and meditation of some sort is the means to its attainment.
But in the world of philosophy I rely most on the German romantic, Friedrich Neitzsche. Here is a quote that points to a central aspect of his epistemological position quite well. It's his aphorism #19 in Beyond Good and Evil:
"Human experience is much too fluid and complicated to be reducible to linguistic units. Subject, ego, consciousness, and reason are nothing more than linguistic fictions that cover up the dynamics of experience and that in fact are created to protect us from the precariousness of an ungrounded process.
More than anything it is language that subsidises these mistaken models of selfhood, i.e., human experience and thinking are decentered processes, but the grammatic habit of using subjects and predicates, nouns and verbs, trick us into assigning an "I" as the source of thinking."

(he must have had Decartes in mind)

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@JLNobody,

totally with you on that point, language is the barrier to any kinda of for lack of a better word 'big' answer. but it is language that the answer must be formed of, and language that the question has to be asked in.

there is no way around it, very frustrating!

its a bit of a mind field

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@hemingway,

Yes, by definition, language is necessary when we want to talk about the world. But enlightenment is not conveyed in speech or writing. It is the byproduct of "pure", unbiased, ungrasping immediate prereflective sensory experience; indeed it IS experience, not the terms and categories by which we make intellectual sense of it.

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@JLNobody,

agreed that it is based on experience, but we have to base 'interlectual sense' through language. so by that logic we can know but not know 'enlightenment'... but we still dont know. me being cynical again im sure

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@JLNobody,

Quote:

More than anything it is language that subsidises these mistaken models of selfhood, i.e., human experience and thinking are decentered processes, but the grammatic habit of using subjects and predicates, nouns and verbs, trick us into assigning an "I" as the source of thinking."

I always find such positions fascinating, as they seem inevitably self defeating, because the person writing the concept (that they are thinking) functions as a self...but that individuals language is not even all that entails 'self.

"I" is simply a way of defining 'a specific individual' (me) 'Not you". It is a reference to the 'construct' (if you wish) that produces the events to which other individuals interact with. Self is the 'construct' of a multitude of connections within the 'self' mind. Language is one of those connections. Removing language would remove a multitude of connections, but not all of them. And just as mathematics and logic structures the brain, so to does language.

That these systems creates structures changes what 'self' entails, does not remove or invalidate a 'self'. Even a dog has a personality that differs from other dogs, and it definitely can't speak. The individual dog has a 'self'.

It's quite true that we are often mistaken as to what 'self' is, but that too does not invalidate the existance of a 'self'.

Language is an addendum to self, but not the foundation. it is like a highrise build on a foundation - but that highrise is shared with other buildings set on the same foundation...which buildings include instinct/genetics, logic (I'm differentiating maths and problem solving here from language as both use differing systems to language), and memories.

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@vikorr,

the point you raised about a dog having a self is something i would like to explore. i could argue that the dog does not, only the brain has to assign the dog an identity in order to make sense of the dog. in a grammatical sense it has to be a subject because it is animate, but it cannot be confused with personifying the animal. do you see the link in spelling? anima are common letters. we could not make sense of the world without designating subject and object, they are necissary requirements of understanding but are not sufficient conditions.

as i seem to find with most things, the inter-connectivity of things makes things impossible to define what is the original cause. which, rather conveniently links back to my first post, the analytic origin. there is an answer,

and vikorr, i know you replied to my other post 'meditation' this is what i want to explore.

very intriguing Smile

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