Do you believe in souls?

No, Frank has NEVER been adament that no one can "know" anything. In fact, if you stay away from word games and sophistry...I am pretty sure one can indeed "know" many things.




I wish the words "belief" or "believe" would disappear from our language.

Nearly as I can tell...whenever someone uses those words...they are expressing a guess (sometimes an estimate) but almost always a fairly blind guess. And the more they insist on their beliefs...the more certain it appears the are guesses.




As Twyvel pointed out...if something is truly based on experience...it is not a guess....and it is not a belief.

Asherman, I have often stated that people's belief in religion is an accident of birth, because most children end up believing the religion of their parents. We were once buddhists until our mother changed to christianity. All my siblings, their spouses, and their children are christians except me; an atheist married to a buddhist. Our children profess no religion.

Frank,

I'm sorry if I've misunderstood the tenor of your many posts. What is that you know? If many things can be known, then what are they? Can you provide evidence of a high-order sufficient to totally replace belief with certainty?

"As Twyvel pointed out...if something is truly based on experience...it is not a guess....and it is not a belief."

Now this really puzzles me. It seemed to me that you have been very critical of the confidence with which I, and others, have talked about the Awakening Experience. Haven't you said many times that the experience we've described is only a "guess", a belief? Even after we've said that we have personally had the experience described, you've denied that it is any thing more than a belief, a guess. Now, in the quote above, you seem to be saying that if a person holds an opinion based on personal experience it is neither a guess, nor a belief. If one's opinion is neither a guess, belief, or knowing, then what is it?

Are you saying that my reported experience is not "truly based on experience"? That would seem to be an uncalled for personal affront, so I must be missing something here. What?

C.I.,

I was raised in a nest of Christians of one stripe or another. I tried being an atheist, and an agnositic, but kept right on looking for something more satisfactory on which to base my life. I found Buddhism, and had the good fortune to serve under one of the outstanding Soto "Bishops". From there, I studied Oriental Philosophy and Religion at the graduate level to improve my knowledge and understanding of comparative theology, and the fundations of my religion. All together I've been a Buddhist now for around 40 years. I didn't "inherit" my religious beliefs from the older generation. It would have been much easier to have simply remained an agnostic, or to have become a social-Christian.

Your mother's inherited Buddhist religion didn't keep her from converting to Christianity. You went further and renounced religion entirely ... why didn't you remain a Christian, or a Buddhist?

People are not bound to the family religion, or the dominent religion of their culture. Its rather common for people change religions, sometimes several times during their lives. Only the thoughtless never question where their beliefs come from, or whether they might be wrong in their beliefs.

No, I never made the assumption that people were bound to their religion; but many followed the religion of their parents and remained so for their entire life. I don't have any statistic on how many change from their primary religious teachings.

Interesting discussion. I do not consider my "understanding" of Buddhism to be knowledge in the sense of theoretical understanding. Indeed, it is a "perspective" based on personal experience, the nature of which I cannot fanthom.
Ash says that "ultimately everything is BELIEF" (I don't think he would include his awakening experience as a belief).
Frank says that most of what he sees people saying here is GUESSWORK.
I prefer a term that is not much more than a slant on their usage. I "believe" that almost all of what we do, or even Science does, is INTERPRETATION.
Now interpretations are always OF something, facts or experiences. It seems to me that the scientific method consists mainly of people not just holding beliefs (except for their most basic, and usually tacit, presuppositions) or making guesses. They interpret experiences or data to form hypotheses (or speculations if they are philosophers), and then devise ways to test (to verify or falsify) their hypotheses.
Mystical insights are neither hypotheses (they surely aren't testable or falsifiable), guesses, nor beliefs. As opposed to theoretical knowledge, they are closer to what we mean by carnal knowledge: intimate and first hand realizations of Reality.

I know 2 + 2 = 4....I know the serial number I used when I was in military service...I know the name that is printed on the Birth Certificate the state sent me....I know the name used by the woman with whom I share my life...I know....but no need to go on.

Now I mentioned that I was eliminating "word games" and "sophistry" from this discussion.

I can...and I assume you can...do a sophist argument that one cannot truly say they "know" the things I mentioned. But for the sake of this discussion, I think we can agree that we do know certain conventional things.

That does not mean we have to extend the definition of "to know" to such things as speculations. And it most assuredly does not mean that we have to extend it to guesses about the nature of the Ultimate REALITY. (I'll get into this more as the discussion develops.)




See above.




No. And I suspect no one else can either. I just don't think it can be done.

But one certainly has the option of simply acknowledging that one does not know the answers to questions about the Ultimate REALITY...and that there does not appear to be enough evidence to sustain some of the guesswork being peddled as knowledge.

(Supposed personal experience and personal revelation will be handled separately.)




I prefer to express that slightly differently, Asherman.

I prefer to characterize my feelings about any so-called personal experience and/or personal revelations that deal with Ultimate REALITY questions, thusly: I am skeptical about them. And for good reason.

I have had people from several different disciplines tell me they have had awakenings (re-births; personal revelations; divine revelations; etc)...and I can tell you that the revelations they have supposedly had are so different one from the other...that all of them SHOULD logically be held in extreme skepticism.

Your supposed Awakening Experience is no different...at least, in my opinion.

I have asked you several times.

HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU ARE NOT DELUDING YOURSELF?

I really haven't gotten a very satisfactory answer to that question.

And unless you are able to say definitively that you DO KNOW you are not deluding yourself...we are back to guesswork.




I don't think so.

I try to be very careful about that kind of thing.

I may have said things like: I THINK it is only a guess...or IT GIVES EVERY APPEARANCE of being a guess...or something like that.

But I am willing to deal with any specific quote you can offer of my saying it the way you suggested (and probably will retract it if I have screwed up.)

There is absolutely no way I can KNOW anything about your personal experience except what you tell me...although, based on damn near a lifetime of dealing with this issue, I can remain very skeptical that you are different from the others who have personal awakenings that lead in directions 180 degrees out of phase with your direction.




Huh????

If someone tells me they "experienced" having a cup of coffee in the morning...it is not a guess nor is it a belief. It is the experience of having a cup of coffee.




In other words, in order NOT to affront your personally...I must accept without question or skepticism everything you tell me?????

That makes no sense at all.

I most assuredly do not mean to insult you in any way. But we are engaged in a discussion of some moment...and I certainly can share my feelings about the information with which I am dealing.

Frank, you say that we make assertions about the nature of Ultimate Reality. The only thing I've ever said is that it (I'm not talking about the observable universe), is unitary and it includes you and me--all things. That is something that one can see (intuit) directly once they set aside--even for a moment--their dualistic predisposition.
By the way, why can't you take Ash's comment about his awakening experience in the same way you would take his statement that he had the wonderful experience of a cup of delicious coffee this morning?

For the reasons I've already explained.

Are you suggesting that his memory of a delicious cup of coffee is epistemologically problematical, that it may be a delusion? That might be considered a step toward Buddhism. Horrors!

I'm leaning with Frank on this one. Drinking a cup of coffee, and experiencing "enlightenment" are quite different experiences. One is a physical action that others can observe. Enlightenment is a personal experience outside the realm of observation by others.

"I know 2 + 2 = 4....I know the serial number I used when I was in military service...I know the name that is printed on the Birth Certificate the state sent me....I know the name used by the woman with whom I share my life...I know....but no need to go on.

Now I mentioned that I was eliminating "word games" and "sophistry" from this discussion.

I can...and I assume you can...do a sophist argument that one cannot truly say they "know" the things I mentioned. But for the sake of this discussion, I think we can agree that we do know certain conventional things.

That does not mean we have to extend the definition of "to know" to such things as speculations. And it most assuredly does not mean that we have to extend it to guesses about the nature of the Ultimate REALITY. (I'll get into this more as the discussion develops.) "

and

"HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU ARE NOT DELUDING YOURSELF?" Shucks, you can't even establish your own existence any more than the rest of us. You can be as wrong as anyone else.

I "know" the transcendental Awakning Experience", but at least acknowledge that I may be mistaken. You have certainly argued repeatedly that is only a "guess". Not a guess, but a strong belief that the personal experience was a valid insight into the nature of reality. To me the "knowing" that resulted from the experience was every bit as vivid as my military serial number, my name and the names of my family. It is true I can not share the experience with you in the same way that I can produce documents supposedly giving my serial number, name and etc. After all those can all be as false as any personal experience. It is just a matter of how strong the evidence is for what we believe we know.

You won't have been the first to accuse me of sophistry. Law school sort of trains one for that, and I don't take any offense. I can argue, if necessary all sides of a question, and have done.

yeah i dont think all buddhism thinks everything as nothing, i think only zen does, if the true meaning of buddhism is that there are no future lives and past lives then whats with all the rebirth/reincarnation stuff? why is rebirth one of the most important points in buddhism?

Experience is a great basis for knowledge.A luminous experience isa chance to feel the all knowing...what more can we be than that of our dreams....

cicerone imposter qwrote:

Twyvel,

C.I., THAT would have been my answer to you IF I could have thought it up.

Algis, you said "....what more can we be than that of our dreams." I would phrase that as "What more can we be than that of our experiences?". But Asherman might rightly add that all our experiences are dreams of a sort. When we go to sleep and dream those are dreams within a larger personal/Cosmic dream. I have difficulty with that notion, but I don't dispute it. I just don't have a grasp on it yet. I fall back on other metaphors.

JLNobody



And of course there are no others (nondually speaking). And as such your experiences can (ultimately) be observed by me and vise a versa, as there is no me or you,…. just impersonal consciousness.

Gee, are we ignorant (sorry for being inclusive, :wink: )


But then, what we?

Ah, there is no ignorance......

twyvel and JLN, Whether you speak of nonduallity or duality, my world is a simple one that doesn't consider the nonexistence of me or you. As far as I'm concerned, my ability to see and register what is happening in my immediate environment happens whether others recognize it or not. As long as my senses work as they have for the past 69 years, my world exists in this world of senses, and I can feel, taste, see, hear, and smell. Whether my senses are the same as yours doesn't really matter - to me.

C.I., don't get us wrong (well me at least). Our sense experiences may be exactly like yours (can't really tell, of course). Remember the saying, zen mind is ordinary mind. The point of zen to develop a very simple world. Congratulations.

Yes cicerone, I agree, though if our reports of sensorial experiences were radically different we might go insane(? or whatever), i.e. we continually confirm what our sensual experiences tells by (apparent) comparison to what others report. i.e. if You say the apple is red, JLNobody says it's black, I say it's orange, and Frank says it's blue, Asherman says it's white, Gold Barz says it's pink, Algis.Kemezys says it's green ……….there goes our common reality (so called)….Now if we are building a house together……or driving in traffic........no can do.....



Hence we(?) assume (some might say we know, if we know anything) we have common experiences, based on observation of other peoples actions and responses which appears to be similar to our own etc. (assuming there are others for a moment) And fresco might say, common experiences (language) is evidence/indications of nondualism, im-personality, oneness, and that dualism is a lie etc.