Proof the universe doesn't exist?

@mark noble,

It is what it is, nothing more, nothing less. Wow! that's an example of speaking "the truth" but saying virtually nothing.

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@JLNobody,

Huh?
My point is - your view is different to mine and everyone else's. So how else can it possibly be explained? You think it to be defineable? By who?
It's like guessing the weight of the Himalayas.............but not even knowing what they are.
I just visit here once in a while - you live here jl. And, having done so, fully understand your arrogant frustration with such trivial input.

Philo is an outlet, not an inlet. No issue will ever be concluded or agreed upon by any 2 such inhabitants.

Still, can be fun though. Smile

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@JLNobody,

(JLN...just to draw your attention to Derrida's rejection of "the metaphysics of presence" in case you have not come across it yet. But be advised... he also rejected Buddhist "mindfulness" Sad

)

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

(JLN...just to draw your attention to Derrida's rejection of "the metaphysics of presence" in case you have not come across it yet. But be advised... he also rejected Buddhist "mindfulness" )

Not sure how you can reject something that is obviously present. All mindfullness is is awareness of present moment without allowing the usual attachment to phenomena to occur. Such as reacting to sounds or smells or sensations of the body like pain or discomfort from sitting in a certain position.

It is not a perfect condition that everyone experiences, it is something that can be refined and honed or trained. A person who is less trained will hear noises and consider them distractions where as a person who has some training will not be bothered by any sounds at all, not even loud explosions. (if such an example were made)

It also goes beyond just this focusing of the mind on awareness. Mindfulness also is a method of "watching" or "observing" the states of the mind itself. If you are happy, being able to recognize it and not attach yourself to it. If you are sad or angry or depressed. Being able to be aware of these states and not become immersed within them.

Also it is attention to all activities of the body and thoughts as well. If you are thinking about something or day dreaming, you are so focused you can be aware that you are day dreaming where as an unpracticed person would be so caught up in the day dream they wouldn't even be aware that they were doing so.

Developing this skill of mindfulness actually empowers the individual because you can solve problems before they even occur or before they become more complex. They refer this to uprooting unwholesome thoughts before they become negative actions or speech phenomena. A method of preventing saying or thinking something that would result in karmas that would much rather have been avoided.

So even thought this explanation is long, mindfulness is common and practice and to denounce it's existence is only done by those who don't even understand the concept or how it is used as a tool.

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@Krumple,

Quote:

Not sure how you can reject something that is obviously present

Derrida and Heidegger are perhaps communally laughing in their graves at what they would consider to be your "Greek Philosophical conditioning". For them what "is", is as nebulous as trying identify the exact stroke of noon.

Note also that your "mindfulness ...as a tool" is antithetical to the essence of transcendentalism.

However, discussion at that level might only serve to relegate most contributions to the current thread to what Wittgenstein called "Geschwatz" (idle chatter), and that is why I bracketed my remarks to JLN.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Quote:
Not sure how you can reject something that is obviously present

Derrida and Heidegger are perhaps communally laughing in their graves at what they would consider to be your "Greek Philosophical conditioning". For them what "is", is as nebulous as trying identify the exact stroke of noon.

Note also that your "mindfulness ...as a tool" is antithetical to the essence of transcendentalism.

However, discussion at that level might only serve to relegate most contributions to the current thread to what Wittgenstein called "Geschwatz" (idle chatter), and that is why I bracketed my remarks to JLN.

Not surprising when a person takes a superficial perspective on a concept that they would be misguided by it and come to a false conclusion. You can talk all you want or explain all you want to someone about "how to ride a bike" but all the talk is meaningless until the experience occurs. They would never "know" what it means to "ride a bike" until they do it. The same is true for this situation. They have no clue what they are talking about because they have never actually experienced the process or it's results.

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@fresco,

Fresco, I believe Krumple is right so long as he is not--and I think he is not--reifying "things" like "presence," (i.e., IS-ness) or mindfulness qua consciousness (i.e., some kind of "essence") which Derrida would certainly dissolve (deconstruct). But I think Krumple was referring to mindfuflness as an activity, an activity I practice every morning. Experience is empty in the sense that all its content of (culturally and psychologically contrived) "forms" have no essential substance, no more so than do the passing notes of a tune. The Buddhist Mindfulness-activity helps to obviate the reification of all (empty) forms*. Mindfulness is consistent with the presocratic philosophy of Hericlitus but not the "grasping" of the Athenian Plato. Moreoever, I suspect that the transcendental "posture" is also arrived at/or realized by means of the non-grasping attitude of "methodological"** mindfulness (virtually a synonymn of Krishnamurti's choiceless awareness). Perhaps we should use the zen term of no-mind/fulness (mu-shin).

* I would be committing the error of essentialism/reification if I did not acknowledge, as in the Heart Sutra, that emptiness is form and form is emptiness, that emptiness is exactly form and form is exactly emptiness.

**ironically intended.

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@JLNobody,

There is an iconoclastic aspect to Derrida as well as instructive ones. The aspect of "mindfulness" he rejects is the what he believes is the myth of "unatachment" since for him (like Heidegger) the essence of "being" is to be irrevocably immersed in a temporal flux. This temporality makes it futile to attempt to specify what "is", and attempts to "step out of the river" so to speak merely fall into what he calls "ethics" or "the philosophy of hesitation". That "hesitation" can be therapeutic in that it can reveal the arbitrary nature of "choice" and thereby release "the self" from its "responsibility to act",
or its "duty to others". That theme might be called iconoclastic of "mindfulness" with respect to ethics. On the other hand, it also implies a deflation of both "self" and "consciousness" which as temporal epiphenomena of "languaging" are merely ephemeral eddies constantly dissolving and reforming within the flux of "being". That aspect might be termed "instructive" with respect to the "ineffability of mindfulness".

From what you have written I think you can concur with much of the above, but Krumple's posts imply to me that he cannot, irrespective of his correct highlighting of "the experiential" nature of mindfulness.

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

There is an iconoclastic aspect to Derrida as well as instructive ones. The aspect of "mindfulness" he rejects is the what he believes is the myth of "unatachment" since for him (like Heidegger) the essence of "being" is to be irrevocably immersed in a temporal flux. This temporality makes it futile to attempt to specify what "is", and attempts to "step out of the river" so to speak merely fall into what he calls "ethics" or "the philosophy of hesitation". That "hesitation" can be therapeutic in that it can reveal the arbitrary nature of "choice" and thereby release "the self" from its "responsibility to act",
or its "duty to others". That theme might be called iconoclastic of "mindfulness" with respect to ethics. On the other hand, it also implies a deflation of both "self" and "consciousness" which as temporal epiphenomena of "languaging" are merely ephemeral eddies constantly dissolving and reforming within the flux of "being". That aspect might be termed "instructive" with respect to the "ineffability of mindfulness".

From what you have written I think you can concur with much of the above, but Krumple's posts imply to me that he cannot.

I still suggest that your understanding of the buddhist term "mindfulness" is misunderstood and being misused here.

It is a state before "labeling" occurs. Therefore you can't even bring ethics into it. Because the state of mindfulness resides prior to clinging. It is raw awareness and merging with it so as to prevent the mind from attaching or reacting to the sense stimuli. No names occur at this moment but the human condition is quick to process and develop a response to the stimuli where name and form arise and followed by attachment or aversion then arise.

The state that buddhist try to strengthen and familiarize themselves with is that moment prior to attachment or aversion. The process involved is called "mindfulness". It is a real state and it can be achieved by anyone. To say it doesn't exist or it is an empty concept can only be said by those who have never experienced the state.

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rumple, why are you wasting cyberspace with your crap? You make statements without any ability to answer questions asked.

Why don't you just go away. You're a waste of time.

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@Krumple,

See my later edit about "experience", which I also claim for "myself".

The crux of the matter lies in whether that "experience" is another "epiphenomenon", or whether it is "transcendent" with omniscient implications. Derrida dismisses the latter after a lengthy analysis of semiotics which he detaches from the concept of anthropocentric "awareness".

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@JLNobody,

JLN, why are you engaging with rumple? He doesn't provide answers when asked to answer some of his claims.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

See my later edit about "experience", which I also claim for "myself".

The crux of the matter lies in whether that "experience" is another "epiphenomenon", or whether it is "transcendent" with omniscient implications. Derrida dismisses the latter after a lengthy analysis of semiotics which he detaches from the concept of anthropocentric "awareness".

Well there are a couple ways to look at it of course. As far as it being an "epiphenomenon", sure of course it could be. But then it comes down to the concept of impermanence. That all concepts are just that, empty concepts. Nothing is substantiated because all phenomena is in a constant state of flux. At this point you wouldn't even be able to point out anything at all. Name and form wouldn't exist. If you want to start from this position then I would have to go back and say yes there is no such thing as mindfulness. It doesn't help to confuse the issue though, especially for someone who could utilize mindfulness.

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@cicerone imposter,

Did krumple say anything intelligent?

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@cicerone imposter,

C.I., yes, I'm afraid he did. Smile

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@JLNobody,

Glad you think so. He's a right wing extremist who doesn't believe the holocaust numbers based on his reading of right wing articles.

He's being challenged by many a2kers, and seems incapable of consistency and honesty.

You're a good buddhist.

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@cicerone imposter,

I hope his meditation practice will eventually free him from the "hardening of the categories" characteristic of all forms of extremism. That may result from the "prereflective" (seeing without categorizing) aspect of the practice of mindfulness. Nobody's all wrong or all bad.
The holocaust deniers ARE, I do acknowledge, a form of crazies. I hope that's not the case for Krumple.

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@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

I hope his meditation practice will eventually free him from the "hardening of the categories" characteristic of all forms of extremism. That may result from the "prereflective" (seeing without categorizing) aspect of the practice of mindfulness. Nobody's all wrong or all bad.
The holocaust deniers ARE, I do acknowledge, a form of crazies. I hope that's not the case for Krumple.

cicerone likes to set up traits about me that don't actually exist. He thinks I got my information from someone else. No the only place I got information from were those sites who promote the actual events. I took the claims from them and worked my numbers.

He knows that I am not a denier but the only thing he can say in response is that I am a liar or antisemitic.

The whole point was to prove that people don't care about numbers or if something is factual. They only care about what others think or feel about something. In other words a societal imposed belief that if challenged deems you a liar or anything else they want to use to get you to stop digging for answers.

This aspect of humanity is not something that is old. It is a recent creation. To use positions of attack to prevent people from revealing reality to them. What would motivate people to become so harsh towards people if the truth were searched for? Unless these people actually feel they have something to lose by the truth coming to the surface.

The board is riddled with posters who don't care about the data and only respond emotionally. When provided with answers to questions they pretend as if no answers are given or provided when clearly they are there. This just shows they don't really care about what is said at all.

I honestly don't care if anyone here thinks I am a liar or racist or have hatred for any group. People invent positions all the time because people are tribal in nature. This is how they rationalize information they can't process themselves.

I don't have any hatred for anyone, because we all have the same problem. We all strive for that endless source of happiness yet the method to obtain it is elusive. They hate because reality doesn't go their way. When you let reality go it's own way, hatred can't arise.

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@Krumple,

Krumple wrote:

This aspect of humanity is not something that is old. It is a recent creation.

I think that the meaning of terms changes over the years, develops.
That what Plinius, Cicero, Scipio et. al. already wrote nearly 2000 years ago, experienced a revival (combined with the Greek concept of paedeia) in the 18th century ... and meant something totally different then. (For instance, a "humanistic gymnasium" is/was a grammar school in German speaking countries, specialised in classical eduction.)

But actually the idea idea of "humanity" certainly can be sourced back quite a couple of centuries ...

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@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Krumple wrote:

This aspect of humanity is not something that is old. It is a recent creation.

I think that the meaning of terms changes over the years, develops.
That what Plinius, Cicero, Scipio et. al. already wrote nearly 2000 years ago, experienced a revival (combined with the Greek concept of paedeia) in the 18th century ... and meant something totally different then. (For instance, a "humanistic gymnasium" is/was a grammar school in German speaking countries, specialised in classical eduction.)

But actually the idea idea of "humanity" certainly can be sourced back quite a couple of centuries ...

I wasn't speaking specifically about humanity. I was only addressing a specific trait within humanity. I understand that language evolves and so does humanity itself. But not every branch or road that humanity evolves into is good for humanity. Yet others are good and beneficial. We should promote those positive and beneficial ones and not promote the one's that block or hinder humanities growth toward positive results.

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