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Bluelight Crew
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That's what I was saying (but your posts seem to favor the verbose restatement of this).
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I'm more enlightened than you!
- Thread starter sheepie
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That's what I was saying (but your posts seem to favor the verbose restatement of this).
Nagelfar
Bluelight Crew
I disagree: you were saying pain is illusory, I am saying pain is not illusory, it's real because it is not temporally permanent & enmeshes itself in the distinctions which alone can make it reality.
I suppose to make this argument I must restate, contrary to the verbage of my initial position, that illusion is indeed a meaningful concept; just not temporally. If it can be rendered unsubstantial in the moment without regard to the circumstance that ground it, something can be said to be meaningfully illusory and "temporarily" but not temporally existing.
Illusion claims that there is something more real beyond (of the same type), you are claiming there is nothing more real beyond (of the same type), therefore the term is misapplied.
I suppose to make this argument I must restate, contrary to the verbage of my initial position, that illusion is indeed a meaningful concept; just not temporally. If it can be rendered unsubstantial in the moment without regard to the circumstance that ground it, something can be said to be meaningfully illusory and "temporarily" but not temporally existing.
Illusion claims that there is something more real beyond (of the same type), you are claiming there is nothing more real beyond (of the same type), therefore the term is misapplied.
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modern buddha
Bluelighter
Suffering is an illusion created by the mind. Pain is very real, but it's what we make of the pain that counts.
Granted, if you were run over by a bus and your leg got amputated from the tire, I would sure hope you wouldn't say "hot dog! I sure am having fun!"
Nagelfar
Bluelight Crew
Suffering is something which is compelled as much as any kind of pain, there are just more immediately accessible variables to it (being rooted in our concepts & the interplay of our thinking about it); but based on world-view they are compelling variables; from which we derive our whole meaning. Making it truer than transitory physicality to us. One can even endure physical pain in the face of escaping a crisis of *meaning*, that would otherwise lead us to fall into suffering. Suffering is only illusion if there is a 'cognitive dissonance', in regard to it relating to our actual sense of meaning, by which said meaning is transgressed to make it ("it" being the suffering). So if we discover logically that our sense of meaning is not really being transgressed, our suffering is found to have been an illusion, if not, it is not.
modern buddha
Bluelighter
^ Which is my point. If you are suffering, then you're leading an illusion of your reality. If you are not suffering (have moved beyond suffering), then you're leading a reality of life in and of itself. This point holds true whether someone has reached enlightenment or not.
A person who has not reached enlightenment and who is not suffering is leading the reality instead of creating illusions. The only difference is this person has shortly lived temporary relief. An enlightened individual has largely a relief from suffering.
A person who has not reached enlightenment and who is not suffering is leading the reality instead of creating illusions. The only difference is this person has shortly lived temporary relief. An enlightened individual has largely a relief from suffering.
Nagelfar
Bluelight Crew
This is that you consider 'enlightenment' to remove suffering, and I do not see the possibility of the logical consequence of that. Someone's reality is there own postulate of that reality and as a postulate it must be true so long as you entertain it as such; so if someone postulates something where suffering has a contingency for them therein; that suffering is true.
Someones conception of reality can be true, the way they make it, and still endure suffering. What is true does not by definition remove suffering if known. Dialectially arguing: one would not even know of suffering without its opposite; nor its opposite of lack of suffering, and to forget one (if that is what 'enlightenment' does) is to fall back into it because it lacks its dialectical nature to ground it. Such a concept of enlightenment leading away from suffering would so lead to suffering if it negated it, if that were the case, by destroying the difference which anchors it in our own understanding, we'd be subject to it *without* enlightenment or *with* anyway. There's no causal connexion between knowing your real nature & life and whether there is suffering.
I do not in-fact believe 'if you're suffering you're leading an illusion of your reality', your reality is what you make it as true (a postulate is always true within that postulate); and if you put stock and value into something that is deprived of you to the real degree that it can be in accord to that world-view; real suffering results. Otherwise all possibilities are not true, and therefore there is not an infinite nature to the then universe of your own making. If something *you haven't considered* is in conflict with that particular world-view, and it is that lack of consideration relative to that subjective (but true) world view making for you that suffering, then that suffering is an illusion. However if the Ariadne's thread binding your subjective world-view, which you choose to have, is flawless; and there is still something contingent to that world view set against you; then that suffering is not an illusion but true. Remember, the word "illusion" means/implies that there must be something truer of that very same nature (in this case, suffering) to be had in that variety/category.
To endure suffering is to endure something true in some cases regardless of your insight. A condition of mystical enlightenment, I would argue, can in no wise cure 'suffering'
Someones conception of reality can be true, the way they make it, and still endure suffering. What is true does not by definition remove suffering if known. Dialectially arguing: one would not even know of suffering without its opposite; nor its opposite of lack of suffering, and to forget one (if that is what 'enlightenment' does) is to fall back into it because it lacks its dialectical nature to ground it. Such a concept of enlightenment leading away from suffering would so lead to suffering if it negated it, if that were the case, by destroying the difference which anchors it in our own understanding, we'd be subject to it *without* enlightenment or *with* anyway. There's no causal connexion between knowing your real nature & life and whether there is suffering.
I do not in-fact believe 'if you're suffering you're leading an illusion of your reality', your reality is what you make it as true (a postulate is always true within that postulate); and if you put stock and value into something that is deprived of you to the real degree that it can be in accord to that world-view; real suffering results. Otherwise all possibilities are not true, and therefore there is not an infinite nature to the then universe of your own making. If something *you haven't considered* is in conflict with that particular world-view, and it is that lack of consideration relative to that subjective (but true) world view making for you that suffering, then that suffering is an illusion. However if the Ariadne's thread binding your subjective world-view, which you choose to have, is flawless; and there is still something contingent to that world view set against you; then that suffering is not an illusion but true. Remember, the word "illusion" means/implies that there must be something truer of that very same nature (in this case, suffering) to be had in that variety/category.
To endure suffering is to endure something true in some cases regardless of your insight. A condition of mystical enlightenment, I would argue, can in no wise cure 'suffering'
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SideOrderOfOpiates
Bluelighter
I understand that I did not click on material from The Lounge.
ebola?
Bluelight Crew
You understood mistakenly. 
cire113
Bluelighter
the original post reminds me of this forum lol
CoffeeDrinker
Bluelighter
I thought he was mocking someone or something, or just saying something provocative to get people talking. Smart idea, but what is anyone talking about?
CoffeeDrinker
Bluelighter
Its neither illusory or not illusory.
Nagelfar
Bluelight Crew
So this is your meta-referencial microprosopus of its local macroprosopus?
That would be saying illusion is generalizable or universalized (e.g. contains its own opposite), which it is not, for it always implies a more distinct definition of another kind with which it is related but is itself not (and opposites are not related except insofar as opposition; illusion instead is related as by emulation but not contrast; rather, an approximation that falls short not due to its contrast but due to its innate qualia.)
If existentialism is taken as implying that existence precedes essence; its own existence is never an illusion but its essence as in relation to itself is. However the "existence" of an essence to another existence never is *in itself* an illusion for that reason. One must note, existentialism: -existence preceding essence-, is only true for the dichotomy of concrete object and abstract subject. When it's inverted as abstract object and concrete subject; then essence precedes existence; but the same argument about illusion stands that there is always a truer not itself, just in inverse proportion.
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CoffeeDrinker
Bluelighter
^Yes but "reality" is full of things which are both one thing, and also the things of which they are supposed to be opposite from.
Light, being both a particle and a wave, is an example. Matter, being both a particle and a wave, is another.
Particle is, by definition, categorically distinct from a wave, yet it can be proven, experimentally, that light, matter, and most everything in the universe, is one andor the other. The two words "particle" and "wave" were invented and defined as they were just to exclude one from the other. Yet these supposedly unrelated opposites, with nothing in common except their opposition, are found to coexist within most everything in the universe.
And when I was saying reality is neither an illusion nor a non-illusion I wasn't just talking about particles and waves. Nothing "is" as it seems, yet everything should be taken at face value to a certain extent. There's the difference between conventional or crude truths, and ultimate truths, that is talked about in Tibetan Buddhism. Where conventional truth is what we see around us and live in most of the time, but the ultimate truth is nothing is really permanent or even the same from the next moment to the next, and has no fixed reality in and of itself, yet that everything is one, and, in a way, permanent, everlasting, yet still ever-changing.
When you say essence, does that refer to the matter which makes up existence? The crude "stuff" that just happens to populate existence?
What are some good existentialist readings you enjoy? I'd like to go through some of them.
Who is the juiciest philosopher of existentialism, to you? Meaning, who says the most with the least amount of words?
I'm not in a retirement home, so I can't sit around reading all day, though I do love to gain new ideas.
As for your response to cire113's quote, you're just using fancy words man. Lol "fancy words." But it can't be said that you don't have a sense of humor.
Light, being both a particle and a wave, is an example. Matter, being both a particle and a wave, is another.
Particle is, by definition, categorically distinct from a wave, yet it can be proven, experimentally, that light, matter, and most everything in the universe, is one andor the other. The two words "particle" and "wave" were invented and defined as they were just to exclude one from the other. Yet these supposedly unrelated opposites, with nothing in common except their opposition, are found to coexist within most everything in the universe.
And when I was saying reality is neither an illusion nor a non-illusion I wasn't just talking about particles and waves. Nothing "is" as it seems, yet everything should be taken at face value to a certain extent. There's the difference between conventional or crude truths, and ultimate truths, that is talked about in Tibetan Buddhism. Where conventional truth is what we see around us and live in most of the time, but the ultimate truth is nothing is really permanent or even the same from the next moment to the next, and has no fixed reality in and of itself, yet that everything is one, and, in a way, permanent, everlasting, yet still ever-changing.
When you say essence, does that refer to the matter which makes up existence? The crude "stuff" that just happens to populate existence?
What are some good existentialist readings you enjoy? I'd like to go through some of them.
Who is the juiciest philosopher of existentialism, to you? Meaning, who says the most with the least amount of words?
I'm not in a retirement home, so I can't sit around reading all day, though I do love to gain new ideas.
As for your response to cire113's quote, you're just using fancy words man. Lol "fancy words." But it can't be said that you don't have a sense of humor.
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B9
Bluelight Crew
If there's ever a movement to rename the thought & awareness forum I think "fancy words" ought to be a serious contender
Nagelfar
Bluelight Crew
I contest this. It very well can be said. ;-p
No, essence is the true archetypal nature of something that has an 'instance of existence' which is itself inessential. e.g. does one particular idea of a specific giraffe fit our ideal of 'giraffe' as a genus or type of animal, or vice versa? (In European languages besides English, does the masculine tense of the definite article suppose the feminine, or the other way about?) The former being existence, a giraffe we so categorize from itself to the general of what it belongs to, and the latter being essence, that 'generalness' it takes for the parameters of us to call a specific existing subject one or another kind.
What I am meaning is the degree in which something should be taken at face value is an illusion if how it is taken at face value proves to be false in its face value. If it does not prove to be false in its face value it is not an illusion by those pretenses, and so cannot be both illusory and non-illusory in that context.
About works on existential philosophy: I would not be the one to ask, I like Kierkegaard but he is pre-'existential' as a term, and never so called himself. I do not believe that 'existence precedes essence' at all times in every case, therefore wouldn't term myself an existentialist. I believe that one nature can be extended from another in either direction, and where essence & existence meet as identical is the absolute; in this manner I am a scholastic, after my own fashion.
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CoffeeDrinker
Bluelighter
Ah I see, it's existence which is meant by the things actually living among us, and essence is their ideal form. A platonic idea, what's so different about that than Plato?
I can see why you'd be against "existence precedes essence," but why would anyone limit themselves to just that one doctrine? I took a logic class and there was a way of diagramming an argument, and we basically learned that you can prove any opposite true, if you did it correctly, or at least get the argument to the point where it's technically sound.
I don't know what you'd call my personal philosophy, but I'm never too impressed with words and words alone, even the most finely honed. I mean I can appreciate great writings, to be sure, and I can learn a lot through them, and I do spend a good amount of time reading, but I like creating, the process of creating, and honing your creation, and it's not just writing songs I'm talking about, though that is my first passion.
I'd love to read Kierkegaard, and all the rest of em.
I can see why you'd be against "existence precedes essence," but why would anyone limit themselves to just that one doctrine? I took a logic class and there was a way of diagramming an argument, and we basically learned that you can prove any opposite true, if you did it correctly, or at least get the argument to the point where it's technically sound.
I don't know what you'd call my personal philosophy, but I'm never too impressed with words and words alone, even the most finely honed. I mean I can appreciate great writings, to be sure, and I can learn a lot through them, and I do spend a good amount of time reading, but I like creating, the process of creating, and honing your creation, and it's not just writing songs I'm talking about, though that is my first passion.
I'd love to read Kierkegaard, and all the rest of em.
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Nagelfar
Bluelight Crew
People limit themselves to existentialism basically on a ground of ethics or positivism; something is not 'good' instrinically (its essence) unless its specific (existence) makes it so; and we then categorize it's essence from that.
People use it to argue that man creates the 'ideal' of things and that there is nothing tangible or 'ground level' about those ideals save for the existences from which we made them.
It's an a posteriori line of reasoning on the empirical. The opposite, which you maybe could call 'essentialism' with essence coming first, is a posteriori reasoning as rational (as opposed to empirical).
Platonism applied to newer concepts has been a process all throughout modern western philosophy.
Lost Ego
Bluelighter
not any pain. extreme pain. and enduring it.