What is GOD?

Hangdawg,It's one of Douglas Adams' funniest quotes but the guy was a genius. You have read The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy haven't you?lfen

Hangdawg, You seem to be still working on a Platonic approach to the "supernatural"? Perhaps because I've never seen The Matrix I'm not following your analogy. Your statement doesn't make sense to me. What are you asserting?lfen

"real things" hmmmm. Is a wave a thing? There are these complex interactions of processes some of which take place in micro seconds and others which take thousands of years or more.The sun, or any star, is a complex process. But is it a thing?lfen

I'd say that there are no things and thus when we think we are dealing with a thing we are creating an illusion for ourselves. If there are no things in the sense of separate self existing entities then what is real?Buddhism goes into this in depth, but Buckminister Fuller also understood hence his saying, "I seem to be a verb" i.e. a process. Korzybski's General Semantics goes into this also.If I understood this correctly the Hopi language is the only language which gets this right. Years ago I read that the Hopi's don't say "there is a man in the room." rather they say, "there is a manning in the rooming". A process taking place in another process, or interacting with another process, or two parts of the same process.lfenABE: From the Riddle Song, "A cherry when it's blooming hath no stone." Cherrying is the part of the process that a birding, or humaning process can process the energy by eating. But when is a cherry a cherry? When it's a cherry blossom? When it's in the mouthing, or stomaching, or digesting of the birding or personing?Things are time segments of processes. If matter and energy can't be destroyed how do we decide when a particular arrangement of matter and energy becomes a cherry and then ceases to be a cherry and the matter and the energy become part of other processes?So is form real? What is form? Is substance real? What is matter and energy?This message has been edited by lfen, 06-10-2005 06:36 AM

My point is that some of the things you believe only make sense within a certain semantic set of assumptions. I'm trying to get you to spend sometime thinking in a nondual way to see if you have different insights.The Buddha introduced among others things a radically different way of experiencing and viewing the universe. What if no thing is real? That is another way of saying what if nothing is real? That is what if the most real thing is emptiness, the void. What if this void is the fertile creative source from which all appearances emerge? from which all "things" appear to be created or sourced?If no sentient beings have ever existed then how are they to be saved?lfenABE: This is a succinct statement of one school of Mahayana (Northern) Buddhism, Chan or in Japan called Zen Buddhism. It's along the lines of some of the things I've read you thinking about except that it is from a Buddhist rather the Christian tradition. lfenThis message has been edited by lfen, 06-12-2005 09:21 PM

Yes, it does. Sankara's Advaita Vedanta would say that explicitly, that the ultimate reality is Brahman the source. Sankara was very influenced by Buddhism.The Buddha did not call this God and I think with good reason and results. I think he didn't want people bringing their, lets call them concepts from childhood, to this experience of the primordial ground of pure being. Buddhism then allows people to provisionally believe in deities along their path of developement but isn't held to verbal or semantic concepts. When they progress they let go of their concepts and it's accepted.Sankara will discuss Brahman in ways you would understand as discussing God but not God in the sense of being a person, rather in the most beyond concept mystery of that from which everything is sourced.Though Buddha and Sankara have very different language, the Buddha non deistic and Sankara deistic language they agree in essential viewpoints about, let's call it, ultimate reality.Some of your thinking that I've read here on EvC is in the territory that both Buddhist and Vedantist have spent a good deal of time thinking and writing, but of course from a different nondual perspective.lfen

It's not obliterated. Remember we are speaking from a nondual perspective so form and emptiness are not oppossed to one another, that would be a dualistic formulation.The Advaitist formulation (I switch to Advaitist because it being a deistic formulation I think it's easier for you to grasp) being is sentience and that is all there is. Form is something sentience entertains, like a shape that water takes.The notion of a individual being is like the notion of a wave on the ocean. The wave has no independent existence. It's simply a form water takes. In this analogy one imagines a waves being aware it's about to hit the beach and be destroyed. Another wave, a guru wave points out to it that it's not really a wave, it's just water and the water is part of the ocean and won't be destroyed at all, not only that the water was always water prior to being a wave the water existed, it never was born and thus will never die.Buddha means "awake". The Buddha as Siddhartha can be likened to an actor so deeply into his character in a play he thinks he is, say, Romeo and experiences as real the feelings and situations. Imagine after the play he sits bemoaning his own death, the tragedies that befell him until someone comes along and whacks him on the head (in Zen stories Masters sometimes do this for just this reason) and reminds him that he isn't dead and not even Romeo. The sentience that thought is was Siddhartha woke up and realized it wasn't. The sentience was awake, was Buddha. That same sentience at this moment is thinking it is me, and is thinking that it is you, Hangdawg. Please understand that I am not at this time anyway trying to get you to accept this. I am trying to get you to understand some of how these traditions think and express these matters.This is a way oversimplified analogy for nothingness. You know that puzzle with like 24 squares that slide around in a 5 by 5 square frame, I don't know what it's called, that you can spell out words with? The empty space is the most important part of the puzzle. Without emptiness nothing can move. The function of nothingness, no thingness is the most essential function. It is what allows all the permutations, the creations. In the East this emptiness is viewed not as annihilation but as the essential source of creation, the fertile void, the luminious void.Recall the discussion of what is a thing? It's a period of time in a process. What is an apple, is really better asked as when is appling?
When the blossoming? When the dropping from the treeing? When the eating either by peopling, or birding, or worming? So what is a thing? And when?I'm proposing that things are notational abstractions that our brains use as we operate in the world. There are no things, an apple is no thing, it's nothing, if a form permuting constantly from blooming, to ripening, to rotting, to seeding, to new tree growing. Where is the thing? It's an illusion to say there is an apple, but it's obviously a functional illusion, not crazyness, just not accurate.lfenABE: This message has been edited by lfen, 06-12-2005 10:54 PM

Well, there are vast Buddhist and Hindu philosophies so there are a lot of places to go with it, however, it's purpose is functional to get the process of illusioning stopped long enough to see one's true nature which is beyond words and can't be accurately modeled with words.The analogy of the puzzle that depends on the empty space to spell out words points at another way to view the true nature of a personing. The letters that can be moved around to spell words are usually taken to be the individual. That is to say the contents, the body, the feelings, the thoughts, the skills are taken to be the person. These all depend on other factors like the language you speak may depend on where you were born, and your body will depend on genetics plus accidents, etc. In this view those things are in a sense arbitary or dependent and always changing. The real self is the emptiness that those things are being shifted in. I, or You, or Buddha, or sentience, consciousness is the emptiness that allows all this stuff to happen.The illusion that we are an entity arises when the emptiness mistakes itself for it's contents. I think I am a male human body of a certain age that has a certain jobs, family, etc. The awakening is when the emptiness realizes it is none of these things, is literally no thing, or nothing, but rather is the space that all this stuff is movin in, the space the changes are taking place in.The stuff still happens. The universe still happens. What is annilated is the illusion that these processes are things, that I am these processes that I thought were things. What is annilated is my illusion that I am Romeo, or Hamlet, or lfen. "I Am" is still there only without an illusion. Nothing changes accept the way I see things. I rest in my nature and the changes happen only now I know they aren't me. They don't constitute a being, an entity, a self. They are a character, a persona, a collection of behaviours arising and undergoing change with in a changless space. I am the awareness of these things but I am not the things. I am aware of a personing, but I am the awareness not the personing. This is the space metaphor of Buddhism. The clouds move through the sky, it rains but the sky is not made wet by the rain, nor bright by the sun, nor dark when it sets. The space is unaffected by it's contents. It's just space.lfen

Why should being vs doing? Especially noting I'm looking at this from the nondual perspective then being and doing are not separate. Didn't some Christian theologian, perhaps Aquinas, say that of his concept of God that God's being was identical with God's doing? Something along those lines anyway? Just a dim fragment of memory surfacing briefly there. Your question is quite broad I'm wondering if you've something more specific in mind? I still experience myself as a separate person. This is not simply an intellectual path for me though. It's something I feel very deeply about but I'm not as dedicated to it as it's possible to be. Ordinary life takes up a lot of my time and attention. It's a process, or a path and some days I'm more deeply aware than others. But I'm not sure if those were the questions that prompted you to ask.lfen

This is why I've been recommending Bernadette Roberts book The Experience of No-Self.The experience of no-self : a contemplative journey
Author: Roberts, Bernadette, 1931-
Publisher, Date: Albany, N.Y. : State University of New York, c1993. - Edition: Rev. ed.
ISBN: 0791416941 (pbk. : alk. paper) - Description: 211 p. ; 21 cm.When I read her book I was very excited because I saw that she had a very profound awakening. She herself finally found in words attributed to the Buddha an affirmation that he had experienced what she had experienced. She did not convert to Buddhism but remained Christian. She is Catholic and had spent some years as a contemplative nun and she was raised in the Los Angeles area and is of this contemporary era
So I believe her writing of her experience is more accessible than trying to understand the language of a different culture and time. It's still very difficult because the core of this lies beyond language and ordinary experience so language is used to point at something that when talked about can only sound paradoxical.Her book is short and she writes well though what she is writing about can be difficult to understand. I've reread her book several times. I know you aren't Catholic but still her faith is that of a Christian and that should make her writing more understandable to you. I really recommend her book. I check it out of the libraries here, it's in both the public library and the university library. I'd think you could get it on an inter library loan if it wasn't in your local collections.Also, from our correspondence here I really think you would dig her. Her writing is both personal, spiritual and very intelligent. I am almost positive you would find her book a very useful contribution to the kinds of thoughts and directions I see you exploring. She isn't trying to convert people to Catholicism. She is a Christian contemplative leaving a record of her path that she hopes would be helpful to other contemplatives as they seek union with God. I respect her profoundly.lfen

dsv,Just something to consider. I don't think Mike is a troll or a flamer. He seems to crave attention and has devised several annoying techniques to get it. Basically if you argue with him you get more of what you've just seen. He'll go on and on happy that people are paying attention to him. If you enjoy engaging someone who specializes in childish debate tactics by all means enjoy yourself. I personally recommend ignoring him. Although I've said he isn't a troll he does like a troll feed on the attention his childish behaviour elicts.lfen

Yeah, you got it and that's it; the same circle over and over.I checked your thread out. I'm ignorant on those issues so will simply follow it. Thank you for the positive feedback on my posts.lfenThis message has been edited by lfen, 06-14-2005 09:22 PM

Hangdawg,Is your blog by invitation only? Sounds like something I would enjoy reading.Sounds to me like you are, as I have been perceiving, really ripe for this viewpoint and I look forward to hearing where you go with this. But don't push the river your flowing is in perfect time.lfen