Originally posted by Bosse de NageThe terms I have used - essence, form - were used in their classical metaphysical senses. For one thing, they're extremely difficult to define - different philosophical schools have often had slightly different definitions for these. For another thing, even if well-defined, they're hard to conceptualise (something like the cardinality of the set of real numbers).
I'm asking you to define a soul in the same way that you might define Chartres cathedral--in concrete recognisable terms...none of this nebulous talk of "essences" (alchemy?)--unless you can describe the "essence" of anything whatsover, which, according to Pope Benedict's beloved old Kant, you cannot.
I didn't know BXVI was a fan of Kant - I always thought of him as an old-school Augustinian/Platonist.
I don't know if he's a fan, but he quotes Kant in Ivanhoe's post.
I do hope he's not too Augustinian. That old closet Manichean.
I know you used them in their classical, metaphysical senses. The thing is, those classic definitions don't really mean anything. "What is the essence of a rock? It is the whatness of the thing. What does that mean? I can't explain".
Forget about the soul for the moment. Can you describe the essence of a river? (Just giving you some practice 🙂 )
Edit: for some reason I couldn't "reply & quote" you.
Originally posted by Bosse de NageOriginally posted by Bosse de Nage
I don't know if he's a fan, but he quotes Kant in Ivanhoe's post.
I do hope he's not too Augustinian. That old closet Manichean.
I know you used them in their classical, metaphysical senses. The thing is, those classic definitions don't really mean anything. "What is the essence of a rock? It is the whatness of the thing. What does t ...[text shortened]... (Just giving you some practice 🙂 )
Edit: for some reason I couldn't "reply & quote" you.
I know you used them in their classical, metaphysical senses. The thing is, those classic definitions don't really mean anything. "What is the essence of a rock? It is the whatness of the thing. What does that mean? I can't explain".
It is what makes X a rock. Its shape. Its texture. Its material composition. Its inactivity.
Of course, this is not an exhaustive list. The more we know about rocks in general, the more we know about what makes this rock a rock.
Let me ask a counter-question: can you explain the set of Natural numbers?
You can only list a finite number of the infinite Natural numbers. But that doesn't mean a definition of the set of Natural numbers is meaningless.
We need to differentiate here between conceptualisation and imagination. We can conceptualise the set of Natural numbers, but we cannot imagine it.
You spoke earlier about "truth that surpasses understanding". This is analogical to the set of Natural numbers above. It surpasses our imagination (and hence, some might contend, our understanding) - but not our conceptualisation.
In a similar fashion, that I cannot completely define what the essence of a rock (or man) is does not make the idea of essence meaningless. Can you define "love" completely? Or "courage"? Does that make these ideas meaningless?
Forget about the soul for the moment. Can you describe the essence of a river? (Just giving you some practice 🙂 )
Won't the rock do? 😉
Originally posted by vistesdI can't really say much more than "I agree completely"! 😀
[b]Just because your map to St. Paul's looks different from mine does not mean we are not both using maps.
And—as your St. Paul’s, Chartres, Eiffel tower analogies all point up (as well as your wonderfully homely “taste-of-chicken example)—the map is not the territory. The map may be helpful for (a) helping you to find the territory (and perhaps fin ...[text shortened]... lso offering a warning about clinging to our maps, and assigning them more value than they have.[/b]
No religion/ spiritual school/ wisdom tradition I can think of leaves an adherent completely blank about what he should expect to find. There is always some indication (however imperfect) about what he will see when he gets to his final destination. It could be the Hall of Warriors (with the Norse religion), communion with God (Christianity) or unity with all Being/Nothingness (can't really decide which one in the case of Vedanta). But no tradition simply says, "Do this and see what happens".
The example of Aquinas is a great one - you need a map (and a good one!) to get to your destination, but once you can see it on the horizon, you do not need a map any more.
Originally posted by MetamorphosisI think we're pretty much in agreement about the first half of your post.
Lucifer wrote...
[b]One, ATY's question is like asking "What does St. Paul's Cathedral look like". My answer is "St. Paul's is a large, 18th century cathedral, shaped like a cross, with a huge dome etc.". Your answer seems to be "I can't relate to you the full sensory and emotional experience of being in St. Paul's, so I'm not going to te ...[text shortened]... ing of experiential spiritual knowledge -- beyond thought, beyond description, beyond lable.[/b]
Because our basic philosophical assumptions are so different, we're not even talking about the same "soul".
Okay, but you are still in the realm of cartography here. You are trying to contrast your map to mine. But in the realm of "soul", I have no map.
And this is where my point about a priori knowledge comes in. If I'm talking about St. Paul's Cathedral and you're talking about St. Paul's Press, then not only are our descriptions of what a seeker should expect to find different, but also our directions about how to get there.
I could use many words to describe "soul" -- awareness of oneness with God, felt tacit connectedness with All, direct experience of the perfection of one's self as an individualized expression of the Infinite, pure silence, bliss, love, and so forth -- but these remain but symbols of what is. And yes, your symbols will be different. But that doesn't matter. What matters is penetrating the veil between the conceptualizing of mind, and the direct knowing of experiential spiritual knowledge -- beyond thought, beyond description, beyond lable.
The problem is that not all these need be one and the same thing; nor experience of these be achieved in the same manner.
The seeker must still have as clear an idea as possible of what he is seeking.
Originally posted by lucifershammerYou admit that you can't completely define the essence of a rock. Excellent. I won't ask you to define the essence of the moon, then. (It's just a big rock right?).
Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
In a similar fashion, that I cannot completely define what the essence of a rock (or man) is does not make the idea of essence meaningless. Can you define "love" completely? Or "courage"? Does that make these ideas meaningless?
No, I can't define love completely, even though I've experienced it. The concept is completely meaningless to someone who has not had the experience. Ask any psychopath about the meaning of love.
you are Spirit, you have a Soul, and you live in a Body. The soul belongs to God, and you are made in the image of the living God "Jahweh". You being a Spirit also have a free-will, and can at your own discretion swear at the living God. It just means that you are eternally seperated from him until you believe that He has a Son, who came in the flesh, who died on the cross and was raised from the dead by the Holy Spirit, and that you are a sinner, who can only be re-united with the living through the Son.
Originally posted by Bosse de NageBuddha did not know exactly what he was seeking, but he had a vague idea (if he did not think that the solution might have something to do with detachment, why did he leave his family and palace in the first place?)
If you see Buddha on the road, chop him into little pieces.
Indeed, he "prepared" himself for his "enlightenment" (or insight).
EDIT: Actually, Buddha knew exactly what the question was (Why is there suffering in the world), but not what the exact answer was.
Originally posted by lucifershammerPerhaps the idea that there must be something out there was enough to get him looking.
Buddha did not know exactly what he was seeking, but he had a vague idea (if he did not think that the solution might have something to do with detachment, why did he leave his family and palace in the first place?)
Indeed, he "prepared" himself for his "enlightenment" (or insight).
Anyway Buddha isn't important.
Lucifershammer: The seeker must still have as clear an idea as possible of what he is seeking.
Bosse de Nage: If you see Buddha on the road, chop him into little pieces.
This seems to me to be a crucial matter, and one I have long pondered. The “danger” is that one will find things in such a way that they fit the “clear idea” that one has been holding to begin with. The mind, it seems, has a tendency, when confronted with anything sufficiently different as to be disorienting to its ordinary way of perceiving/thinking/categorizing, to immediately—and subconsciously—begin to “translate” things into images/thoughts/ideas it can understand. Ergo, if one who was seeking the Christ (ho Christos)—or if the seeker simply happens to be steeped in that tradition, or was studying it recently—has an experience of the “divine ground of being” (just using that as a catch-all term; could be Brahman, God, Tao, etc.), the mind is likely to translate that overwhelming experience into Christian images and terms. For a Hindu, it might be Krishna, etc. The same divine ground of being could be pre-consciously translated by different people into different terms, none of them more than a “translation.” Then, of course, they might all begin arguing about which one is right!
This “translation” process may be a safety mechanism. One thinks of the near-hallucinogenic description of Krishna in the Gita—which terrifies Arjuna.
This also may be how the mind operates in dreams: “What was George doing in my dream? Why would I be dreaming about George?” Whereas, in reality, in image of “George” (doing whatever “George” was doing in the dream) is simply the way some thought/idea from the unconscious got “translated.”
The Zen response is generally to dismiss all such images as illusory, not be held onto. Hence BdN’s quote (although that also applies to looking for a Buddha separate from oneself). But even Zen has its grounding in Buddhism and Taoism, and its “vast emptiness” (Bodhidharma) concept—even if that is meant to transcend concepts.
I think it is important to realize that all such “fingers pointing at the moon” originate in “mystical” (for terrible want of a better term) experience, though they may become concepts for theological and philosophical speculation by others.
Lucifershammer: But no tradition simply says, "Do this and see what happens".
Zen masters sometimes come close to this. I think maybe the most the traditions can (should) do is to provide a framework that allows the journey to be undertaken safely (“Here’s the map; here’s your seatbelt; you can throw them both away later” ).
Nevertheless, I think in the end all one can really do (if one chooses to embark on this journey at all; noting that sometimes it just happens, whether one has chosen or not) is really to “do this and see what happens.” And then to treat any images, visions, revelations, etc. as at least as provisional or open-ended as dream images, subject to multiple interpretations (or none); and taking any meaning that one finds as meaning that one is at least partly responsible for creating, and then testing it to see if it is personally helpful or not. Or (closer to where I’m at) just allowing the experience of ____________ (just tathata? just the thusness/suchness of it all, in full bloom, so to speak?) to inform how I go about the rest of my life.
At least I have found no other solution. I even do not speculate on the “source”—God, Brahman, Tao, the divine ground, my own unconscious, some combination thereof. I see no way out of the same existential dilemmas that are inescapable in our “ordinary” daily lives, the “inescapable freedom” to choose and to create as we go along.
***************************************************
BTW, LH—it sounds as if your understanding of “soul” is getting close to something like “the suchness that I call myself, as it is manifest in (and from) the suchness of the ‘all of all of it,’ with whatever inseparable elements that make up that suchness.” Now, BdN may be right that such a “definition” is necessarily incoherent—but it does seem to get at something that I can have a “sense” of, that “sense of suchness” that I have of myself. And that “sense of suchness” is inextricably “entangled with” the suchness of “all of all of it.”
That phrase entangled-with is just my attempt to capture the idea that, to see just the ground (e.g., Brahman) and not the figures/forms that stand out (ex-ist) from the ground, is as much illusion (maya) as to think that the figures/forms are somehow separate from the ground, and not connected with each other through the ground. It is perhaps an attampt at a dialectical “synthesis” between the one-versus-many question.
Originally posted by lucifershammerThat would be so if the soul were a "thing". But I'm pointing toward the formless. By definition, there can be only one "kind" of formlessness -- that which is without form. Just as there can be only one "kind" of Totality. By definition, the Totality is all that is.
The problem is that not all these need be one and the same thing; nor experience of these be achieved in the same manner.
And -- these remain but definitions.
The seeker must still have as clear an idea as possible of what he is seeking.
An analogy...
A seeker on a jungle path in Peru is asking about something -- a lost city. Along the way, he meets two people. He asks what this "lost city" is.
The first person proceeds to tell him his description of the lost city, what he knows of it. From his description, it is unclear whether or not he has been there.
The second one says, "go that way, and you will find it."
It is pointless arguing which is the more appropriate response. Each will have his reasons for responding in that way. But one thing is sure -- with the first response, there is the greater possibility that the seeker may rest satisfied that now he "knows" the lost city and will turn back and go home. Or, that now he has heard of the lost city, he has "lost" his interest in it. This is especially possible of the "guide" telling about the lost city has not himself ever been there, or even glimpsed it. His description of the lost city will lack immediacy and passion, in all likelihood.
The second person's answer -- simply pointing the way -- leaves it over entirely to the seeker to assume responsibility for his own quest. The seeker then gets to see, more fully, how much he really wants to go there -- or if at all. He may realize that he was really only looking for someone's else's description of it.
Which in itself, is fine.
Concerning the Buddha, his process of awakening ultimately boiled down to ruthlessly eliminating all that was false in his mind. In the end, he was left with the direct realization that his very self was false, unreal. The Sanskrit term for this is "anatman", "no-self".
Once he discarded that which was false, what was left over was truth, unqualified reality.
In Buddhist legends, this has sometime been poetically depicted by the imagery of the disappearing morningstar. Buddha had been meditating all night, relinquishing illusion after illusion. At dawnbreak, the last star (Venus) disappeared in the sky, and so did Buddha's last illusion -- the illusion of the separate, isolated ego-self.
What was left was his natural, enlightened condition. He was then "awake" ( the name "Buddha" means "awakened one" ).
The book "A Course in Miracles" has a wonderful parallel saying for this -- "You are at home in God, dreaming of exile."
Originally posted by MetamorphosisTheir can be different infinities, so there can obviously be different totalities. I dont believe in souls or god, but just wanted to point out your logical flaw there.
That would be so if the soul were a "thing". But I'm pointing toward the [b]formless. By definition, there can be only one "kind" of formlessness -- that which is without form. Just as there can be only one "kind" of Totality. By definition, the Totality is all that is.
And -- these remain but definitions.
The seeker must s ...[text shortened]... was really only looking for someone's else's description of it.
Which in itself, is fine.