Email Conversation [Editing and Renovating]
“The only way to defile reality is to try and give it meaning”
My favorite example of that is when the pilgrims approached the shore of america, the indians didn’t see them. It wasn’t until they were only a day away from shore that the indians saw the shadow of the ship, but that they simply could not comprehend what they saw, so they blocked it out. Finally a shaman noticed what it was, after some divination he went out to the rock and called for the others too see the truth. He finally convinced them of what they saw. Another philosophical side bar on that one, if 100 colorblind people got together, and were showed an apple, but said it was blue (there are several layers of colorblindness, some people can’t see color at all, but some see colors incorrectly. For instance, I’m shade blind, I can’t tell the difference between mauve and periwinkle it’s just a light purple.), does that make the apple blue? We would say no, because we see it is red, but now we have a fundamental conflict of perception. There is very little difference between the apple and a god. Really, reality is a set of lies agreed upon. Just like history. And wouldn’t a rose by any other name smell just as sweet?
I agree with you on the randomness of life. That is why I have to believe in life on other planets. We may be statistical anomoly, but odds are we’re just an outlier.
And when I say love, I mean a romantic feeling at the base of our being. It may start off as affection, but it evolves. That’s the thing though, everything is learned. We only think the way we think because of our background. If I grew up in northeast texas I’d probably hate jews and black people, but I was born in western washington, so I don’t. It is all filtered.
When I said the apple and a god, I was referring to every god essentially being the same thing. That thing is a tool humans feel the need to use in order to fill the hungry sense of the validation of their existance, along with a set of moral evolution.
hmm, the fear of death, eh? ya i agree, we dont actually fear death, but i also think that we dont fear fading memories itself. the root of all fear is in the uncertain and the unknown and this is caused by ignorance and the unconscious…this is where i agree with buddhism and freud, these buddhism says that we have suffering because of selfish desires, and we have selfish desires because we are ignorant and deluded, and we are ignorant and deluded because we have an ego, the false ‘I’ concept. and freud, if you know about psychoanalysis, talks about the unconscious running all the irrational things, like fear, in our psyche…and not surprisingly, the id, which is the pleasure principle/the thing that drives our desires, is part of the unconscious…and buddhists would call this unconscious, i can’t remember the indian name for it, but it would be refered to as the store house, aka i think they mean some form of memory that is even storing the memories of past lives (but obviously we cant access these memories because they are from so long ago, and it is being blocked by the experiences of this life)… so, it is actually because of memories, we fear, instead of not having one. and i know, i know, what you mean…it is a scary thought to think that your consciousness and memory will be faded after death, but really, if it ends, then you wont be conscious of it and you wont fear it…but me on the other hand, i do believe in an afterlife, but i still am a littled worried about death, not scared, just worried, because, like i said before, it is the uncertain and unknown we fear, and so i wont know what to expect and cannot prepare for it…and again interestingly enough, the uncertain and unknown is also the factor that makes everything a surprise and makes thing exciting, which drives desire…so can you see how fear and desire are two sides of the same coin? oh and if you look at fear and desire from another perspective, biologically, both emotions elicit the same response in the body, high adrenaline and all adrenaline’s effect, such as increased heart beat, sweating, etc…and whats even more is that evolutionarily speaking, these two emotions are the most primitive emotions/drives/motivations of animal species…and if you look at it, these two emotions are the main things we are driven and motivated by everyday…entertainment and advertisements targets desires, the news targets fear…so anyways, thats my take on the whole fear of death issue, what do you think? do you agree?
Hehe, “right on head”, Ive never heard that expression before. Lets see, well, in the attachment i have attached one of my earliest works and it was quite extensive, 3 parts to be exact, and an epic to be exact–maybe a little hard to understand b/c you didnt know the situation i was in, but o well enjoy anyways. well anyways, can you explain to me what you mean by “human” reality is a set of lies agreed upon. i think i get the gist of what you are saying like english or any other language is a set of sounds that are connected to certain meanings that are agreed on by the people who speak it (lol, although there are disagreements sometimes due to human nature). but if that’s what you are trying to say, i think it’s not a set of lies agreed upon, but a set of just plain agreements, like we will call this “blah, blah, blah”.
And by this phrase: “When I said the apple and a god, I was referring to every god essentially being the same thing. That thing is a tool humans feel the need to use in order to fill the hungry sense of the validation of their existance, along with a set of moral evolution.” What god are you refering too? And did you basically mean that since humans are chronological/logic orientated, that they feel a need to say that they were created by god to validate their existence? That humans need to have a origin?
Also, why do you think that the universe started an immeasurable amount of time? Is it because you think that this universe is just another product of the one before it that had collapsed, aka had undergone the “Big Crunch”, and had ressurected, like the phoenix from its ashes, from its remnants? A cyclic universe, that’s what physicists call it. Well, let me tell you something, again, refering back to buddhism, and theoretical physics is starting to theorize on this. Time and space are just imaginary concepts, made up, illusions. Our human brain or mind is just built in such away (aka with memory) that we have to organize/classify things, when in truth/true reality, time and space are just another set of agreements about the phenomenal world. As hard as this is to understand and accept, I think it is the truth. There is no such thing as the beginning, middle or end. And no far or near, no left or right (you can even see this when you’re in space). It’s like the buddhist say things are relative. As long as we are humans, we can not see what the beings beyond (buddhas, jesus, etc.) are trying to convey to us, because we grew up and lived inside of it. it’s like this story:
There is a town. One guy leaves the town for whatever reason. During the guy’s abscence, all the townspeople drink from a well that had water which makes them insane. So, when the guy comes back to the town he realizes everyone is insane. But, the townspeople say, “no, you’re the one who is insane.” This is actually like what it was like for Winston Smith from “1984″, we read this in English this year.
So, what I’m trying to say is we do live in a world of illusions, or as they say in The Matrix, we live in a dream world. This dream world combined with the human mind = delusion. We cannot understand the world or even ourselves because, we aren’t even looking at it the right way. We’ve got to free our minds (not through drugs, lol), in order to understand and realize the answers to all the philosophical, scientific, and religious issues/problems we have had since the dawn of man. So, ya, ever since i was a kid, and it increased after i started reading theoretical physics, i would wonder about all sorts of things, all sorts of philosophical, scientific, and religious shit, and it all intrigued me very much. and i think i have some answers now, and i hope i can continue to find out about the answers. but the thing about the what and where the universe is encroaching into or collapsing by, well i know its collapsing on itself like a blackhole by gravity, and i think they mean the there is already an infinite amount of vacuum/space and the stars and planets are just moving away from each other or if you want to say “the center of the universe” or the “point of the big bang” but i think both those phrases are inaccurate because there is no such thing if the universe if infinitely large and relative. but i do like your thought process about the universe. i thought of the same things after i saw “Men in Black” because of the last scene in the “Men in Black”. but really i believe in the parallel universe in the sense that they are all independently different, but not in the other theorized one where all parallel universes are just the same ones but with different choices made, like for example, in this universe a person commits robbery, but in the other universe, the same person decides not to commit robbery–basically the Butterfly Effect (lol, i havent seen the movie, ive only heard of the concept). Anyways, this is why i don’t believe in travelling backwards in time, not just for the fact that there is such thing as the past, but also it will make no sense even in the illusions we live in. the physical laws (thermodynamics) just dont allow it.
as for God, i do believe in God, but not in the sense that he/she/it is a being or person, but as a force or entity. i believe that God is everything and nothing and one thing, like in the poem i wrote, “Allness is Oneness is Nothingness”. God is the universe, the elementary particles, and myself. God is omnipresent. He made us in the image of himself, which should not be taking literally or i mean physically, because we all look different, but i believe means that our souls were made from him. this is how i see it, everything that he created was made from his entity, so essentially we are all a part of him, and God is the whole of all of us. all these physical and natural laws, nature, matter, material, immaterial, ethereal–everything is God. God is like a circle. A circle can be defined as a shape with either a shape with an infinite amount of sides (Allness), or as having one side (Oneness), or as having no side (Nothingness), but all three definitions are true. So i guess when Christians, Jews, Muslims, describe God as one being or montheistically they are right (Oneness). but the Hindus, Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Japanese, etc…all other polytheistic religions are right as well (Allness), they just talk about the many aspects that God manifests. and finally, the buddhists, which actually mentions God in their texts, although not really known publicly so are considered atheist (Nothingness) are also in their sense, right. But all religions are actually referring to the same thing. Star Wars calls it the Force, the Greeks called it Chaos, Lao Tze and Taoism called it Tao, it is all the same goddamn thing. They are all referring to the absolute, immutable entity. As you can see, from this concept, that that is why buddhism preaches about everything being interdependent, and that is why everything and everyone should be compassionate towards each other, because we are all essentially one being. And that is also why buddhism preaches about how the concept/illusion of self/ego is imaginary/false. In buddhism there is this thing called the five aggregates (the five skandhas). And in dictionary definition: they are the component elements of form (matter), feeling (sensation), perception (conception, apperception, cognition, recognition), conditioning factors (volition, mental formations, e.g. habits, thoughts, ideas, opinions, compulsions, decisions), and consciousness. They are the elements into which the person may be analyzed without residue. When they appear together, the illusion of “self” is produced in the ignorant mind. And this is why the buddha, jesus, etc. preach of becoming enlightened with the truth and become selfless.
o and i havent forgotten about the concept of the emptiness of the phenomenal reality. Here is the dictionary definition: Emptiness, mistook by most people as nihilism, is the ultimate nature of phenomena, namely lack of inherent existence. The ultimate understanding of emptiness goes together with the spontaneous arising of boundless compassion for sentient beings.
And usually talked about with emptiness and phenomena is illusion, which is all ordinary perceptions, deformed by ignorance.
the other thing that is also talked about is The Middle Way. Buddhism’s most elevated form of philosophy, so called because it avoids the two extremes of nihilism and eternalism (belief in the reality of phenomena, materialism). and actually i found (thanks to wikipedia) it avoids more than just those two it avoids amoralism, fatalism (determinism), materialism, restraint (asceticism), and agnosticism as well. although i think they misdefined eternalism in the chart below from wikipedia, it shouldn’t have said that the soul is not eternal.
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The Views of Six Samana in the Pali Canon |
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Question: “Is it possible to point out the fruit of the |
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view (diṭṭhi) |
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Amoralism: denies any reward or |
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Fatalism: we are powerless; |
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Materialism: |
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Eternalism: Matter, pleasure, pain and |
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Restraint: be endowed with, cleansed by |
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Agnosticism: “I don’t think so. I don’t think in |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upadana.
anyways, two things i want to leave you with is that the world is ever-changing and it is uncertain. quotes i have for them are not well-recalled but ill tell you anyways:
-The only thing that is eternal is change.
-The only things that are certain about life is your birth and death.
The “I” Complex
The Most Dangerous Things
The Balance between Security and Freedom
- Collective Consciousness: (Big Brother, The Machine, The Organism: One who controls, sees and monitors all)
- Assimilation (Unity, Becoming One with the Whole):
- Unifying and Destruction of Individuality: Communism, becoming more collective, including individuals, all will eventually become one race, one gender, one class, one affiliation
- Conformity and Destruction of Diversity: same clothing
- Annihilation (The Apocalypse and Hell for those who are fallen):
- Purging: Nazi mysticism of wanting of one pure race, killing all who deviate
- Punishment: police, Totalitarianism
- Manipulation (Re-education with Doctrines)
- Obedience and Destruction of Freedom (Faith, Piety): Fascism, listening to authority, dehumanization
- Controlling information/thoughts/feelings and Destruction of Independence (Heaven/Better Life or Hell/Bad Life Complex): reducing or manipulating language, knowledge, information, history, using or suppressing primal emotions, fear/aversion and desire/temptation, dehumanization, control of media, propaganda, commercial, censorship
