Any Buddhists out there?

[Hereandnow]

Belindi wrote
I think of the phenomenon not as a shrunken vision but as a whole or relatively whole gestalt. The more whole the vision the more it corresponds to beauty or/and truth.
Let's take a scenario in which there is a) Michelangelo's David: b) n persons who we presume are all well accustomed to the medium: c) i standing for phenomena of which David-perception is an example. I submit that the n persons share the same or much the same vision of perfection, wholeness, and beauty. Wholeness also implies necessity as in every event is a necessary event.The cognoscenti n, in the art gallery, know without reasoning in language there is nothing about the sculpture that is unnecessary or wrong.

For that scenario and others like it there is no need for language as a medium extended in time, as the visions of the n persons in the scenario have become absolute.

But you treat the gestalt driven standard as an absolute. How is it that something that receives its structure from a community gestalt, a collective agreement on how to interpret and experience David, can be an absolute? (It is an interesting question for the philosophy of art.)

[Belindi]

Belindi wrote
I think of the phenomenon not as a shrunken vision but as a whole or relatively whole gestalt. The more whole the vision the more it corresponds to beauty or/and truth.
Let's take a scenario in which there is a) Michelangelo's David: b) n persons who we presume are all well accustomed to the medium: c) i standing for phenomena of which David-perception is an example. I submit that the n persons share the same or much the same vision of perfection, wholeness, and beauty. Wholeness also implies necessity as in every event is a necessary event.The cognoscenti n, in the art gallery, know without reasoning in language there is nothing about the sculpture that is unnecessary or wrong.

For that scenario and others like it there is no need for language as a medium extended in time, as the visions of the n persons in the scenario have become absolute.

But you treat the gestalt driven standard as an absolute. How is it that something that receives its structure from a community gestalt, a collective agreement on how to interpret and experience David, can be an absolute? (It is an interesting question for the philosophy of art.)

I think wholeness is better than parts of the whole rather like Augustine
thinks evil is absence of good. I must be a sort of theist after all!

You say "collective agreement". But the art lovers who I envisage are more than an intellectual collective. The medium is learned intellectually via the culture but the subjects' affect owes its existence to nature/sensibility/biology.

[Hereandnow]

Belindi wrote
I think wholeness is better than parts of the whole rather like Augustine
thinks evil is absence of good. I must be a sort of theist after all!

You say "collective agreement". But the art lovers who I envisage are more than an intellectual collective. The medium is learned intellectually via the culture but the subjects' affect owes its existence to nature/sensibility/biology.

Suggesting that a gestalt experience, notwithstanding that it is an interpretative construct, possesses something that exceeds the formal derivative qualities. I mean, consider Danto, who, as I recall, said something very similar, and I have always thought right: Look at a cloud arrangement and see a camel, now an angry cat, and so on. The interpretative act of taking the cloud AS a camel is the way the world is made into art. Art is just this: see a piece of driftwood and it has no features beyond the usual; but think of it AS art, and the driftwood is transfigured as its form, color, beauty, and so forth are now what-the-driftwood-is. We live this, of course, that is, the institutions of our world, the concepts so familiar of family, business, country, science and everything, these are all socially agreed upon constructs. Rorty makes this into the very foundation of our existence: science itself is a social phenomenon, and you can see how he thinks like this: concepts are social entities formed out of communicative environments. What was once a grunt and a finger pointing at a stone evolved into a symbolic world of, "hand me that stone, will you?" The concept of a stone and the science of geology that emerged out of it, if you will, is essentially social. Rorty and the language/pragmatists make a lot of sense, I think.

But the issue you raise goes beyond Rorty. This massive gestalt we live in, our collective "taking AS" (and this includes "nature/sensibility/biology) is MORE than the taking-AS. Or, taking something AS in a language interpretation brings forth something that was latent in the possibilities, but this something is what you could call "originary". The theist emerges, as gestalt does not merely create, it discovers. Rorty thought, no way. Check out, for an interesting read, his very accessible Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. He is not on my side but he makes the thinking clear. When you talk about Augustine and the absence of God, this idea of deep, revelatory possibilities takes the matter out of language, and I am reminded of Meister Eckhart, who prayed to God to be rid of god. He saw that language was both a utility and yet, itself, while allowing one to ascend, had to be discarded.

[Belindi]

It's comfortable to live poised between Apollo and Dionysus, but the healthiest people are those who alternate.

I don't see how one may be Apollonian and Dionysian at the same time. I know almost nothing about Buddhist meditation. My uninformed guess is that, during the mediation period, it's Dionysian.

[Stoppelmann]

hereandnow -

I never said what I said was going to be helpful. It is merely truthful. If you search you won't find a damn thing! You are most certainly not going to lock yourself away from social interaction and lie prone contemplating existence for a few months on my say so. You'd be pretty dumb to do so and you are not dumb so you won't do it. AND I am saying even if you did I cannot guarantee you'd like either the process or the possible outcome.

All I know is I got "somewhere" and thing like "happy" and "sad", "good" and "bad" were simply vacuous. I cannot describe it other than by making that rather obscure and disgusting "mystical" statement (meaning it is a meaningless statement).

All the books in the world say the same as the entrails of a dead rat or the pattern of birds in the sky. It is as meaningful as you make it and that is the fascination of life and the annoyance of life ... then we die (I hope!)

Having read through what you have written in various posts here, it is as others have said, that you know nothing of Buddhism, the value of meditation, or the vast wisdom to be gained. I am a universalist, and so I combine lessons from many sources, but Buddhism has proven very valuable to me precisely because it isn't Christianity, but they mutually enhance each other. My experience is that introverted people gain a lot from these traditions, whereas extroverted people struggle.

I think that you should keep the saying in mind: If I have nothing contribute to a discussion, I keep my mouth shut.

[thrasymachus]

Stoppelmann wrote
Having read through what you have written in various posts here, it is as others have said, that you know nothing of Buddhism, the value of meditation, or the vast wisdom to be gained. I am a universalist, and so I combine lessons from many sources, but Buddhism has proven very valuable to me precisely because it isn't Christianity, but they mutually enhance each other. My experience is that introverted people gain a lot from these traditions, whereas extroverted people struggle.

I think that you should keep the saying in mind: If I have nothing contribute to a discussion, I keep my mouth shut.

You think Buddhism lies in the texts? Do you think Siddhartha Gautama read his way into enlightenment? You are being invited to think about Buddhism philosophically and methodologically. Not in terms of Buddhist metaphysics and the bulk of what has been handed down that "Buddhists" call Buddhism. Ask the basic question: what happens when you meditate seriously? This is first a descriptive question, and the one the great man asked himself more than 2500 years ago, no doubt. The whole point, I argue, is to be free entirely of the constraints of predelineated thinking. Indeed: Thought is not a body of labels that sit on the world; rather it is an interpretative dynamic that conditions one's thoughts at the very core of perceptual encounter.

My guess is that you have read about and practice meditation. But before the institutions of this extraordinary method began manufacturing an ideology, there was the primordial encounter with the world. I do not reach into text and say, note here what scholars say! The Buddha himself would turn over in his grave.

Now, argue that this is not the case, and you will have a philosophical experience, even a spiritual one, if you are so inclined. But this much is certain: the goal of meditation and of being a serious Buddhist is NOT to become a Buddhist. Buddhism is an institution, like Platonistic Christianity. The goal is to become the Buddha, and this is something pure and absent of the burden of speaking being anything at all!

[Stoppelmann]

Ask the basic question: what happens when you meditate seriously? …

The whole point, I argue, is to be free entirely of the constraints of pre-delineated thinking.

Indeed: Thought is not a body of labels that sit on the world; rather it is an interpretative dynamic that conditions one's thoughts at the very core of perceptual encounter.

What happens when I meditate? Nothing “happens”, I sit and experience my carnal life in my breathing, in thoughts arising and passing, in the sounds and noises around me, and with time I realise that the watcher, the listener, is the essence of what I am. All physical functions, all thoughts suggest that they are what I am, but the emptiness and the oneness take over “I”.

You use intelligent sounding words to describe thought, but for me it is the self-preservation modus of the body, the desire to categorise, classify, name, excuse, justify, wriggling under the stern gaze of eternity.

My guess is that you have read about and practice meditation. But before the institutions of this extraordinary method began manufacturing an ideology, there was the primordial encounter with the world. I do not reach into text and say, note here what scholars say! The Buddha himself would turn over in his grave.

So you have this primordial encounter, like the Buddha himself?

Now, argue that this is not the case, and you will have a philosophical experience, even a spiritual one, if you are so inclined. But this much is certain: the goal of meditation and of being a serious Buddhist is NOT to become a Buddhist. Buddhism is an institution, like Platonistic Christianity. The goal is to become the Buddha, and this is something pure and absent of the burden of speaking being anything at all!

I am not a Buddhist, but Buddhist teaching serves as a pointer, an indicator. It is like poetry points to its subject, but love poetry isn’t love, it only points to love, and sometimes allows you to feel as though you were in love. But I am not the Buddha, nor will I be - at best I will be awake.

[thrasymachus]

Stoppelmann wrote
What happens when I meditate? Nothing “happens”, I sit and experience my carnal life in my breathing, in thoughts arising and passing, in the sounds and noises around me, and with time I realise that the watcher, the listener, is the essence of what I am. All physical functions, all thoughts suggest that they are what I am, but the emptiness and the oneness take over “I”.

You use intelligent sounding words to describe thought, but for me it is the self-preservation modus of the body, the desire to categorise, classify, name, excuse, justify, wriggling under the stern gaze of eternity.

But consider: all of the terms above in your "self-preservation modus of the body" are conceived within precisely that which is eliminated in meditation. The theoretical thinkin and the wriggling under the stern gaze of eternity, this is all gathered in a particular interpretative regard for things, and it issues from an interpretative body called language, and language is an historical phenomenon: self-preservation? Really? This is Darwin. Categorizing, as a foundational term? It is first a term, a particle of language, and in order for this to have the status you want to give it, you have to understanding what language is. Look: there is no "eternity" nor is there a finitude and anything else IN the attempt to give a determinate grounding for Buddhism. Buddhism is a liberation in the most radical form FROM the language structures that condition experience. You have to see that to call yourself ANYTHING is a movement away from Buddhism. I am not a watcher, listener, nor are there thoughts arising--- that is, unless you are in the interpretative disposition that is taking up language as a pragmatic tool (a notion defended compellingly by Dewey and the pragmatic school, Heidegger and his ready to hand, Rorty, the postmodern pragmaticst, and others). Obviously language is essential to witness and address the issues up front, control the processes of engagement, and so forth. But these are understood as utility to liberation and enlightenment.

So you have this primordial encounter, like the Buddha himself?

So you question there is such a thing? Talk about ultimate reality and nirvana are just constructs out of, what, an overzealous imagination? And Siddhartha Gautama was just a fool on a hill? But I see your point: This kind of talk is way beyond the mentality of ordinary thinking. I am saying this: in philosophy we have a mission, which is to inquire about our existence at the level of the most basic questions. I read Kant through Derrida and into post modern post Heideggerian thinking, and the result has been an acknowledgement, one that is very well argued and clear as a bell to me, that our existence is wholly indeterminate. You find this thematically presented in Kierkegaard "qualitative movement, in Husserl's epoche, in Heidegger's "nothing", in Derrida's claim about the metaphysics of presence, and finally, in the so-called French theological turn with the like of Michel Henry and others. This tradition tears the "truth bearing" possibilities of language to shreds. When we speak (recall Wittgenstein's Tractatus on speaking and the "thereof should be passed over in silence") we do not speak the world. The world is transcendental. Presence qua presence is transcendental, and this pervades all that we see and are. This is the foundational indeterminacy of our existence. And yes, I see this with genuine clarity. I have a cat who sits on the couch, and in a normal perceptual gaze, it is just this. But inquiry, the question (Heidegger calls the question that "piety of thought") that inserts itself undoes this familiarity. This familiarity is implicitly conceptual: just ask yourself what something IS and you will find yourself dealing in concepts, NOT the world.

Of course, all that I say here is embedded in arguments, and, as Derrida pointed out, one can go on arguing ad infinitum; but then, such is the way of apophatic thinking! One comes to te point where words lose their grip, their knowledge claims, on the world. Meditation THEN becomes a radical affair. Liberation is a difficult thing to achieve, but the most subtle part of this practice is to see that "attachment" occurs at the perceptual/conceptual level: just opening one's eyes in the morning, one is always already in the grip of thought and interpretation.

I am not a Buddhist, but Buddhist teaching serves as a pointer, an indicator. It is like poetry points to its subject, but love poetry isn’t love, it only points to love, and sometimes allows you to feel as though you were in love. But I am not the Buddha, nor will I be - at best I will be awake.

But being awake, what is this? Consider the above.

[Stoppelmann]

Stoppelmann wrote
What happens when I meditate? Nothing “happens”, I sit and experience my carnal life in my breathing, in thoughts arising and passing, in the sounds and noises around me, and with time I realise that the watcher, the listener, is the essence of what I am. All physical functions, all thoughts suggest that they are what I am, but the emptiness and the oneness take over “I”.

You use intelligent sounding words to describe thought, but for me it is the self-preservation modus of the body, the desire to categorise, classify, name, excuse, justify, wriggling under the stern gaze of eternity.

But consider: all of the terms above in your "self-preservation modus of the body" are conceived within precisely that which is eliminated in meditation. The theoretical thinkin and the wriggling under the stern gaze of eternity, this is all gathered in a particular interpretative regard for things, and it issues from an interpretative body called language, and language is an historical phenomenon: self-preservation? Really? This is Darwin. Categorizing, as a foundational term? It is first a term, a particle of language, and in order for this to have the status you want to give it, you have to understanding what language is. Look: there is no "eternity" nor is there a finitude and anything else IN the attempt to give a determinate grounding for Buddhism. Buddhism is a liberation in the most radical form FROM the language structures that condition experience. You have to see that to call yourself ANYTHING is a movement away from Buddhism. I am not a watcher, listener, nor are there thoughts arising--- that is, unless you are in the interpretative disposition that is taking up language as a pragmatic tool (a notion defended compellingly by Dewey and the pragmatic school, Heidegger and his ready to hand, Rorty, the postmodern pragmaticst, and others). Obviously language is essential to witness and address the issues up front, control the processes of engagement, and so forth. But these are understood as utility to liberation and enlightenment.

So you have this primordial encounter, like the Buddha himself?

So you question there is such a thing? Talk about ultimate reality and nirvana are just constructs out of, what, an overzealous imagination? And Siddhartha Gautama was just a fool on a hill? But I see your point: This kind of talk is way beyond the mentality of ordinary thinking. I am saying this: in philosophy we have a mission, which is to inquire about our existence at the level of the most basic questions. I read Kant through Derrida and into post modern post Heideggerian thinking, and the result has been an acknowledgement, one that is very well argued and clear as a bell to me, that our existence is wholly indeterminate. You find this thematically presented in Kierkegaard "qualitative movement, in Husserl's epoche, in Heidegger's "nothing", in Derrida's claim about the metaphysics of presence, and finally, in the so-called French theological turn with the like of Michel Henry and others. This tradition tears the "truth bearing" possibilities of language to shreds. When we speak (recall Wittgenstein's Tractatus on speaking and the "thereof should be passed over in silence") we do not speak the world. The world is transcendental. Presence qua presence is transcendental, and this pervades all that we see and are. This is the foundational indeterminacy of our existence. And yes, I see this with genuine clarity. I have a cat who sits on the couch, and in a normal perceptual gaze, it is just this. But inquiry, the question (Heidegger calls the question that "piety of thought") that inserts itself undoes this familiarity. This familiarity is implicitly conceptual: just ask yourself what something IS and you will find yourself dealing in concepts, NOT the world.

Of course, all that I say here is embedded in arguments, and, as Derrida pointed out, one can go on arguing ad infinitum; but then, such is the way of apophatic thinking! One comes to te point where words lose their grip, their knowledge claims, on the world. Meditation THEN becomes a radical affair. Liberation is a difficult thing to achieve, but the most subtle part of this practice is to see that "attachment" occurs at the perceptual/conceptual level: just opening one's eyes in the morning, one is always already in the grip of thought and interpretation.

I am not a Buddhist, but Buddhist teaching serves as a pointer, an indicator. It is like poetry points to its subject, but love poetry isn’t love, it only points to love, and sometimes allows you to feel as though you were in love. But I am not the Buddha, nor will I be - at best I will be awake.

But being awake, what is this? Consider the above.

Many words, little meaning, just sit.

[Stoppelmann]

Stoppelmann wrote
What happens when I meditate? Nothing “happens”, I sit and experience my carnal life in my breathing, in thoughts arising and passing, in the sounds and noises around me, and with time I realise that the watcher, the listener, is the essence of what I am. All physical functions, all thoughts suggest that they are what I am, but the emptiness and the oneness take over “I”.

You use intelligent sounding words to describe thought, but for me it is the self-preservation modus of the body, the desire to categorise, classify, name, excuse, justify, wriggling under the stern gaze of eternity.

But consider: all of the terms above in your "self-preservation modus of the body" are conceived within precisely that which is eliminated in meditation. The theoretical thinkin and the wriggling under the stern gaze of eternity, this is all gathered in a particular interpretative regard for things, and it issues from an interpretative body called language, and language is an historical phenomenon: self-preservation? Really? This is Darwin. Categorizing, as a foundational term? It is first a term, a particle of language, and in order for this to have the status you want to give it, you have to understanding what language is. Look: there is no "eternity" nor is there a finitude and anything else IN the attempt to give a determinate grounding for Buddhism. Buddhism is a liberation in the most radical form FROM the language structures that condition experience. You have to see that to call yourself ANYTHING is a movement away from Buddhism. I am not a watcher, listener, nor are there thoughts arising--- that is, unless you are in the interpretative disposition that is taking up language as a pragmatic tool (a notion defended compellingly by Dewey and the pragmatic school, Heidegger and his ready to hand, Rorty, the postmodern pragmaticst, and others). Obviously language is essential to witness and address the issues up front, control the processes of engagement, and so forth. But these are understood as utility to liberation and enlightenment.

So you have this primordial encounter, like the Buddha himself?

So you question there is such a thing? Talk about ultimate reality and nirvana are just constructs out of, what, an overzealous imagination? And Siddhartha Gautama was just a fool on a hill? But I see your point: This kind of talk is way beyond the mentality of ordinary thinking. I am saying this: in philosophy we have a mission, which is to inquire about our existence at the level of the most basic questions. I read Kant through Derrida and into post modern post Heideggerian thinking, and the result has been an acknowledgement, one that is very well argued and clear as a bell to me, that our existence is wholly indeterminate. You find this thematically presented in Kierkegaard "qualitative movement, in Husserl's epoche, in Heidegger's "nothing", in Derrida's claim about the metaphysics of presence, and finally, in the so-called French theological turn with the like of Michel Henry and others. This tradition tears the "truth bearing" possibilities of language to shreds. When we speak (recall Wittgenstein's Tractatus on speaking and the "thereof should be passed over in silence") we do not speak the world. The world is transcendental. Presence qua presence is transcendental, and this pervades all that we see and are. This is the foundational indeterminacy of our existence. And yes, I see this with genuine clarity. I have a cat who sits on the couch, and in a normal perceptual gaze, it is just this. But inquiry, the question (Heidegger calls the question that "piety of thought") that inserts itself undoes this familiarity. This familiarity is implicitly conceptual: just ask yourself what something IS and you will find yourself dealing in concepts, NOT the world.

Of course, all that I say here is embedded in arguments, and, as Derrida pointed out, one can go on arguing ad infinitum; but then, such is the way of apophatic thinking! One comes to te point where words lose their grip, their knowledge claims, on the world. Meditation THEN becomes a radical affair. Liberation is a difficult thing to achieve, but the most subtle part of this practice is to see that "attachment" occurs at the perceptual/conceptual level: just opening one's eyes in the morning, one is always already in the grip of thought and interpretation.

I am not a Buddhist, but Buddhist teaching serves as a pointer, an indicator. It is like poetry points to its subject, but love poetry isn’t love, it only points to love, and sometimes allows you to feel as though you were in love. But I am not the Buddha, nor will I be - at best I will be awake.

But being awake, what is this? Consider the above.

Many words, little meaning, just sit.

[thrasymachus]

Stoppelmann wrote
Many words, little meaning, just sit.

Errrr, philosophy IS many words. This IS a philosophy forum.

[Belindi]

Thrasymachus wrote:

----- our existence is wholly indeterminate.

But how may this be so and inanimate things be nothing other than determinate? If we have thought (reason) then we are more able to determine our futures than are engines or bridges which are nothing other than their histories.

[thrasymachus]

But how may this be so and inanimate things be nothing other than determinate? If have thought that we are more able to determine our futures than are engines or bridges which are nothing other than their histories.

Indeterminacy as an epistemological concept: something is indeterminate in that our understanding cannot speak what it is: ask what a thing is, and you will find yourself in more language that is equally in need of explanation. It cannot be shown where language actually presents the world that is not language, and so this existence is never possessed by what we say it is. It remains entirely transcendental, this actuality I call objects.

As to existential indeterminacy, you take our ability to determine our own future and ask, what future do you have in mind? This is indeterminate: One's ability to freely determine a future (and keep in mind that this is notion of freedom is not about the trivial argument of defying the principle of causality, after all, ask what causality IS, and you will find yourself deep in indeterminacy), a "nothing," or a blank slate of unrealized possibilities, is exactly what is indeterminate. It is not like a stone or a bank teller which have definitional assignments that are fairly fixed. It is not, as Kierkegaard was saying in his Repetition, a mere recollection that asserts itself in the construction of a mimesis of the past, such that when you ask me what a bank teller is, I can proceed with something a dictionary says. Ask me what I will do in the next moment, and I can produce "possibilities" out of which a future can be constructed. This is not true of a stone, or a stellar mass, or anything else. Human being s are not in time; they ARE time in their freedom to become.

[Stoppelmann]

But consider: all of the terms above in your "self-preservation modus of the body" are conceived within precisely that which is eliminated in meditation. The theoretical thinkin and the wriggling under the stern gaze of eternity, this is all gathered in a particular interpretative regard for things, and it issues from an interpretative body called language, and language is an historical phenomenon: self-preservation? Really? This is Darwin.

I wouldn’t say that anything is “eliminated” by meditation, but it is certainly contained after a while, and not so invasive, which is helpful.

Nothing anyone can say is not metaphorical in nature, because language is metaphorical, and interprets experience with known concepts. As we come to experience different things our use of language adapts.

Categorizing, as a foundational term? It is first a term, a particle of language, and in order for this to have the status you want to give it, you have to understanding what language is.

Who said it was foundational? Very speculative of you. It is just the way I observe my thoughts circling and repeating, attempting to compartmentalize experiences.

Look: there is no "eternity" nor is there a finitude and anything else IN the attempt to give a determinate grounding for Buddhism. Buddhism is a liberation in the most radical form FROM the language structures that condition experience. You have to see that to call yourself ANYTHING is a movement away from Buddhism.

It is strange how your criticism confirms what you are criticising: “Many words, little meaning, just sit.” Your verbal output is an attempt to overbear, to manipulate and dominate, probably an attempt to be rigorous (and imitate your namesake), but you are judgemental about another’s experience, which you cannot judge. If this were an attempt to learn to think better, to act more wisely, and thereby help to improve the quality of all our lives, which to me is the aim of philosophy, we would be more explorative, rather than judgemental, and although we may challenge to ideas of others, there would also be a collaborative attempt to understand.

I am not a watcher, listener, nor are there thoughts arising--- that is, unless you are in the interpretative disposition that is taking up language as a pragmatic tool (a notion defended compellingly by Dewey and the pragmatic school, Heidegger and his ready to hand, Rorty, the postmodern pragmaticst, and others). Obviously language is essential to witness and address the issues up front, control the processes of engagement, and so forth. But these are understood as utility to liberation and enlightenment.

You use my descriptive language against me and pile on numerous witnesses, although I answered the question of what happens when I meditate. You then show how well-read you are, which seems to be the point, and are in the realms of speculative ideas, rather than experience. I don’t see how this helps us understand that experience, other than saying that my descriptive language is not appropriate. Therefore, your method is to destroy your opposite by rendering anything they say as inferior to your command of words.

So you have this primordial encounter, like the Buddha himself?

So you question there is such a thing? Talk about ultimate reality and nirvana are just constructs out of, what, an overzealous imagination? And Siddhartha Gautama was just a fool on a hill? But I see your point: This kind of talk is way beyond the mentality of ordinary thinking. I am saying this: in philosophy we have a mission, which is to inquire about our existence at the level of the most basic questions.

You deflect. I didn’t question the primordial experience, but your ability to speak about it. If the comparative studies (you know I am not a Buddhist) I engage in do anything, it is to inquire about our existence at the level of the most basic questions. Meditation, as I experience it, brings me to a place of the most basic questions. Buddhism, as I read the sources, points to the most basic questions, but so do other traditions each in their own way.

I read Kant through Derrida and into post modern post Heideggerian thinking, and the result has been an acknowledgement, one that is very well argued and clear as a bell to me, that our existence is wholly indeterminate. You find this thematically presented in Kierkegaard "qualitative movement, in Husserl's epoche, in Heidegger's "nothing", in Derrida's claim about the metaphysics of presence, and finally, in the so-called French theological turn with the like of Michel Henry and others. This tradition tears the "truth bearing" possibilities of language to shreds. When we speak (recall Wittgenstein's Tractatus on speaking and the "thereof should be passed over in silence") we do not speak the world.

But that is the point. Meditation brings us with time to that silence, to that emptiness, and teaches us that language is always interpreting using half-baked concepts, that our very self-conception is an illusion. The truth of the matter is that we are inside this whirlwind of experience, and must seek the eye of the storm if we are to find equanimity. The examples you give are people on that mission, but they too are attempting to use words for silence, for it is all we have, except in the silence of meditation, when words are superfluous.

The world is transcendental. Presence qua presence is transcendental, and this pervades all that we see and are. This is the foundational indeterminacy of our existence. And yes, I see this with genuine clarity. I have a cat who sits on the couch, and in a normal perceptual gaze, it is just this. But inquiry, the question (Heidegger calls the question that "piety of thought") that inserts itself undoes this familiarity. This familiarity is implicitly conceptual: just ask yourself what something IS and you will find yourself dealing in concepts, NOT the world.

Concepts which begin in the mind, fed by the input of our senses, and translated into concepts that help us survive. In effect, we are flying by instruments through a storm in the dark.

Of course, all that I say here is embedded in arguments, and, as Derrida pointed out, one can go on arguing ad infinitum; but then, such is the way of apophatic thinking! One comes to te point where words lose their grip, their knowledge claims, on the world. Meditation THEN becomes a radical affair. Liberation is a difficult thing to achieve, but the most subtle part of this practice is to see that "attachment" occurs at the perceptual/conceptual level: just opening one's eyes in the morning, one is always already in the grip of thought and interpretation.

Yes, but what has driven you to bombard me with this? As I said, these are many thoughts, but they come down to just sitting, resting from thought and interpretations, allowing them to pass by without engaging.

But being awake, what is this? Consider the above.

Bodhi, Satori, insight, an opening, liberation, arriving … what words could do a service, after we have discovered that apophatic negation rather than positive assertions are helpful?

[thrasymachus]

Belindi wrote
But how may this be so and inanimate things be nothing other than determinate? If we have thought (reason) then we are more able to determine our futures than are engines or bridges which are nothing other than their histories.

I wrote this above but forgot to address it. I would add that when one thinks about indeterminacy, the matter goes to one own existence. It is not an abstract piece of speculation, but rather, the text needs to put down, suspended, and one has to face the world and ask basic questions as Kierkegaard did, as an existence that finds in every inquiry about one's nature, a failure in discovery. This is not the indifference one finds when reading, say, Willard Quine or Bertrand Russell. This is an inherently religious question, and needs to be taken personally. Keep in mind, there is only one ground for the Real, and that is one's own subjectivity.

But how may this be so and inanimate things be nothing other than determinate? If have thought that we are more able to determine our futures than are engines or bridges which are nothing other than their histories.

Indeterminacy as an epistemological concept: something is indeterminate in that our understanding cannot speak what it is: ask what a thing is, and you will find yourself in more language that is equally in need of explanation. It cannot be shown where language actually presents the world that is not language, and so this existence is never possessed by what we say it is. It remains entirely transcendental, this actuality I call objects.

As to existential indeterminacy, you take our ability to determine our own future and ask, what future do you have in mind? This is indeterminate: One's ability to freely determine a future (and keep in mind that this is notion of freedom is not about the trivial argument of defying the principle of causality, after all, ask what causality IS, and you will find yourself deep in indeterminacy), a "nothing," or a blank slate of unrealized possibilities, is exactly what is indeterminate. It is not like a stone or a bank teller which have definitional assignments that are fairly fixed. It is not, as Kierkegaard was saying in his Repetition, a mere recollection that asserts itself in the construction of a mimesis of the past, such that when you ask me what a bank teller is, I can proceed with something a dictionary says. Ask me what I will do in the next moment, and I can produce "possibilities" out of which a future can be constructed. This is not true of a stone, or a stellar mass, or anything else. Human being s are not in time; they ARE time in their freedom to become.