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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 16, 2015 - 12:09am PT
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'Ed went on to say that his point in much of this is that we seem to have no firm basis for evaluating sentience in ourselves or anyone else, opening the door for the possibility that all the "experts" might well be totally wrong about all of this.'
didn't say that, I said you cannot experience what I am experiencing...
the "teachers" know anything at all because they communicate with the "students"
"Does Ed imply that all the experts are simply guessing about the progress and process of their students?"
no I didn't imply this...
"I highly suspect that what Ed really wants is to boil the entire process down to a discursive exercise"
please define "discursive exercise," it is a phrase that makes little sense given the meaning of the words...
but that is my point, actually, that the "teachers" use a relational language to assess the students, and they teach the students that language so that they can communicate...
when you use a phrase like "discursive exercise" you are not using the words in a common manner, but you have defined this phrase to have some meaning related to the topic of the thread.
My point regarding the "teacher" "student" interaction is that the interaction takes place through communication using that relational language.
If the student is studying meditation with an expert teacher, the lessons start with learning the language to describe the various "exercises," a whole vocabulary is built up, but also a grammar and the purpose of the language is not just so that the teacher can evaluate the student, but also that the student can use the language to progress.
This is exactly the same thing that happens if the student is studying physics from an expert teacher.
Perhaps you do not accept that there is a special language used to describe meditation? You (and others) certainly use a very specific language when writing about it.
That is my point.
It can't be so subtle that you failed to understand it.
Apropos of the OP, I ask: why is the use of one language preferred over any other?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 16, 2015 - 10:30am PT
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feeding Largo's infatuation with quantum mechanics...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/science/bernard-despagnat-french-physicist-dies-at-93.html
...
Few physicists would go along with this, however, Dr. Albert said. There are many interpretations of quantum theory; in all of them, he said, the world is real, but so in most of them is spooky action at a distance, now enshrined in technology as “entanglement.”
Calling the choice between Dr. d’Espagnat’s mysticism and conventional quantum mechanics one between an incoherent world and a crazy world, Dr. Albert said, physicists will take crazy every time.
“We like crazy,” he said.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 16, 2015 - 11:33am PT
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Ed said:
"but that is my point, actually, that the "teachers" use a relational language to assess the students, and they teach the students that language so that they can communicate...
when you use a phrase like "discursive exercise" you are not using the words in a common manner, but you have defined this phrase to have some meaning related to the topic of the thread.
My point regarding the "teacher" "student" interaction is that the interaction takes place through communication using that relational language."
I have no idea where you got that idea but it certainly wasn't from being around any formal meditation outfits I have ever been in. I believe that Ed is saying that whatever learning and/or communication ones reaps from meditation and teachers is the product of a relational language. This is not remotely so. In fact most of my original Zen teachers didn't even speak English, and our interviews, sometimes six a day during a retreat, were all non-verbal. No magic involved at all. No voodoo. No trickery.
But more later. I'm going on a big ride now.
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 16, 2015 - 11:38am PT
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very interesting... I'll have to try that in my next seminar...
just have everyone sit there without any language at all
but in accepting Largo's characterization of his experience, I don't think there is much more to discuss...
unless he will answer the questions I asked above:
how do you learn to meditate?
what is the role of your "expert"?
and by what means does the "expert" assess the progress of your learning?
he apparently doesn't think the answers are relevant.
...which is fine... (I'm starting to channel MikeL).
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Aug 16, 2015 - 02:20pm PT
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In answer to Ed's question, there are many forms of communication and teaching not involving verbal language.
My meditation master did not speak English and I did not speak Japanese so he communicated by gestures and energy transfers (my method was tantra, not Zen). In a crisis, we looked up words in a Japanese-English dictionary (where I discovered that the Japanese have many more words for subtle emotions than English does).
We established our rapport and that we were on the same track when I mentioned the Dalai Lama and "Chibeti" Buddhism, and the words mandala and mantra. I meditated, using methods I learned from reading. When I was off track, he would say in English (with pantomine), "change the antenna". He knew I was off track because he could read auras and I knew the Japanese words for colors and how they related to the chakras, or he would just point at the chakra and make a face. He would them lay hands on that chakra's position on my back, and the negative emotion would go away, although sometimes with startling effects like breaking out into a sweat and becoming burning hot. Often I saw colors and heard sounds during this process.
Sometimes after meditating, he would show me a picture of a particular Buddhist deity that I had seen while meditating, then tell me the name in Japanese and I would look in my dictionary of Buddhist terms and tell him the Tibetan name. Then he would tell me which chakra or mental obstacle it was associated with.
Once it seemed he was doing temple paperwork while three of us meditated. Someone came to the door and called to him so he went to meet them on the balcony. As he walked closer to the door I felt like I had a huge rubber band attached to my back where my heart chakra is, which got more and more taut. When he stepped over the threshold of the temple, his end of it released and came flying back, snapping my back so hard my body went forward until my forehead touched the tatami mat. Then I knew he was joining his energy to mine to help me in meditation, especially the heart chakra, even when it looked like he was doing paperwork. The connection evidently did not extend beyond the temple threshold however.
Once when my kundalini was prematurely aroused, he cooled it down by laying hands on the top of my head. One moment I had an overpowering nauseating electric current pulsing up my spine, the next minute I was in normal consciousness again.Later, when it rose as it should, he knew as soon as I walked up the temple steps and ran out smiling, commenting on that in Japanese with hand gestures.
I saw him communicate with other Americans in what sounded to me like Chinese on occasion, yet they spoke no Chinese. On another occasion he spoke with a woman who was a Chinese linguist in what she said was fluent Mandarin yet I heard him speaking only Japanese. In all cases, the person for whom the message was intended could later explain what he said in English. I believe we did not hear it in English however, as his words were meant for them alone even though they were in a group.
I could go on and on for pages about these sorts of experiences which I witnessed over a period of 25 years and which I have also seen and heard in regard to Tibetan and Indian masters. I have of course read of many more. If I had to characterize my experience of meditation, I would not use the word emptiness but instead, talk of a process of mental purification and healing (physical on occasion as well).
Whatever consciousness is, the western world for the most part, including science, knows very little about its many dimensions though occasionally I have run into charismatics both Catholic and Protestant, as well as Hassidic Jews who had similar experiences and have read of Sufi Muslims who do also. These dimensions are available to all humankind, not just the practitioners of any one religion. I feel confident they are open to scientists also, if they could learn to turn off their discursive minds long enough to experience some of them.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Aug 16, 2015 - 04:15pm PT
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. . . that whatever learning andor communication ones reaps from meditation and teachers is the product of a relational language
Perhaps facilitated by a form of communication? Could be non-verbal.
I wonder if the Christian mystics of the middle-ages reached a state of emptiness similar to Zen, but quickly filled it with feelings of closeness to God or Jesus.
Admitting the existence of a state of object-less perception, I'm curious where one goes from there. Simply contemplating sentience or possible distinctions between subjective and objective doesn't get one very far along a path of understanding, since philosophers have been at it for many non-productive years, discussing and arguing from a structure of ill-defined linguistical axioms.
Maybe the experts at ST can refine this structure and allow progress to ensue.
;>)
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Aug 16, 2015 - 08:02pm PT
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Aug 16, 2015 - 09:10pm PT
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^^^ A picture is worth a thousand (ill-defined) words.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 17, 2015 - 07:52am PT
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Me: Categorizing or attempting to describe or “represent” consciousness seems to be the most real impossibility there is.
Ed: . . . except the fact that you did it... in your post.
I don’t think I did. That you did probably says something, but I’m not sure what. Could you say?
Good lord, just how odd is my question? I don’t think I said anything about what I’m considering to be a non-category, but YOU do, so I’m asking you to say what I don’t think I said at all. (Haha.) It’s dizzying, but that’s what most intellectual discursiveness is to me these days.
Ok, so here’s my “category” about consciousness: Whatever could be described (you think), I’ll put the prefix “non-“ or “not . . .“ preceding it. Does that work for you? Do you think you (or I) am defining or describing some object called “consciousness?”
This heuristic to say something to you might seem a perversity, but it’s not in my mind. It simply recognizes the infinite limitations of conceptualization and articulation, and the infinite expanse of consciousness presented to me.
Be well.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 17, 2015 - 09:28am PT
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categorization by saying what something is not is as effective as saying what something is...
frequently one can reduce the ground considerably, and sometimes eliminate it all together.
If in the end we can conclude that "mind/sentience/consciousness" is nothing, we can move onto other topics. Saying that it is everything has a similar conclusion.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 17, 2015 - 09:40am PT
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Yes, perhaps asking what is mind is biting off more than we can chew. Like walking on ice, maybe some baby steps are necessary. Like a consensus of definition of terms. Isn't that how the "experts" do it, or have they already done it?
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 17, 2015 - 09:58am PT
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Ed: categorization by saying what something is not is as effective as saying what something is...
But, . . . of EVERYTHING that could be said and not-said?
(Now I'm beginning to think that YOU'RE perverse.)
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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Aug 17, 2015 - 10:44am PT
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The empty set is still a set.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 17, 2015 - 10:48am PT
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If it is a set, then please offer a description. What is consciousness?
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Aug 17, 2015 - 11:10am PT
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I had a funny discussion with a buddy of mine recently. We were talking about how many times he should have been dead. I've come close myself a few times, but he takes the cake. It would blow your mind. Dude should have been whacked many times.
Imagine an infinite number of universes. In some of those other universes he is dead. In this one he is still alive.
It was fun to talk about in those terms, based on nothing other than an idea. We have no idea if there are infinite universes. We aren't cosmologists.
I will say that humans owe a lot to homo erectus. With his arrival, brain size increased greatly.
Human evolution is a long story. I'm too busy today to go into it. Did you know that we've sequenced the Neanderthal genome? In some areas there are people who still carry their genes.
Odd that they didn't make it. Their brains were slightly larger than ours.
Go spend an hour on wiki reading about human evolution and the evolution of technology, from simple stone tools to the first expression of art. It is a good read. There certainly are no missing links to the story anymore.
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Norton
Social climber
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Aug 17, 2015 - 11:25am PT
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Odd that they didn't make it. Their brains were slightly larger than ours.
yes it IS odd that they did not make
I believe their intelligence was thought to be around a human's age five, and stopped there?
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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Aug 17, 2015 - 11:40am PT
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If it is a set, then please offer a description. What is consciousness?
Well, what is?
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Norton
Social climber
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Aug 17, 2015 - 11:44am PT
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self awareness?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Aug 17, 2015 - 04:32pm PT
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There certainly are no missing links to the story anymore.
That's a Big farse:(
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Aug 17, 2015 - 06:48pm PT
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What is consciousness? (MikeL)
This is the point that has been reached after 7481 posts.
Try removing the word mind from your dictionary, and go from there. All those mental states then become "functions of the brain."
I don't mind, do you?
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