07-02-2010, 12:02 AM
Picking up from last post...
So this is what is meant when its said "things are not as they appear".
I was thinking of a good example yesterday. Cartoons. We watched them as kids (and sometimes as adults ) And we sensed a "being" inside the cartoon. The characters became real. The same with movies and actors who portray characters, unless we consciously focus on the thought of actor acting, we sense the character has an exisitence, even though its fictional.
Its the same with the mere I really. Besides all the dependent aggregates, where does "a person" truly exist outside of this dependency? If there is no independent standing person, we must say there is no person at all, only the mental formation that labels aggregates "a person" "a car" "a table".
There is no person without mind, there is no person without body, so there is no person without mind and body and they a interdependent equally so there is no single independent factor that would be an "essence". Some imagine a soul, well, that soul must have thought, otherwise it would just be unconscious, so again we need some kind of container and then the awareness within it, so already that's two dependent factors. Where is the one single essence that stands alone?
But what is perceived is an essence, even if its not inherently there, just like when we watch a cartoon, we perceive something independent. We do this with everything. Its functional, but it has become more than functional, its become misconstrued, mistaken. Then we feel jealousy for "another person" because we feel independent from them and they seem permanent and the happiness we attribute to their "life" also seems permanent, or we feel pride because we feel separate and competitive and that what we achieved was our own doing. Again, these are just born of erroneous mental formations of mere I taken to be more than it is.
We have heard the phrase "everything is one" and many people will accept that statement. But tell the same people there is no person and they feel that cannot be so. But if they could accept everything was one, they should know that no one thing can stand apart from everything else, it only appears to. I personally don't like the term oneness because it implies perimeters. A contained beingness. There could be no containment really, and definitions are limited sometimes. Also the term oneness doesn't get people to think. Its just accepted. And the mental formation of oneness is like a round luminous sphere or similar. So its appears as an independent thing. But let say its limitless, then it cannot be a sphere at all. And then lets add that its realizes itself only by interdependent components (form, thought, sensing, perception, consciousness) no one greater or more truly it then the others. So then we see there is no one independent thing to this oneness. So its not really oneness either, but at least oneness acknowledges interdependence of all parts rather then the other extreme of everything being independent from everything else. So, its a step in the right direction. But warrants more examination, otherwise we'd be back at absolutism.
And people who lose hold of their mental faculties, and their mental formations get out of hand. They start to "mislabel" in ways that catch our attention. Such as they may look at the toaster and claim their dead uncle Harry is in that toaster. And we think, "wow, they are crazy". And we don't see what they are doing is not different really then what we have been doing: imputing essence via mental formations when in fact reality is dependently arising
So this is what is meant when its said "things are not as they appear".
I was thinking of a good example yesterday. Cartoons. We watched them as kids (and sometimes as adults ) And we sensed a "being" inside the cartoon. The characters became real. The same with movies and actors who portray characters, unless we consciously focus on the thought of actor acting, we sense the character has an exisitence, even though its fictional.
Its the same with the mere I really. Besides all the dependent aggregates, where does "a person" truly exist outside of this dependency? If there is no independent standing person, we must say there is no person at all, only the mental formation that labels aggregates "a person" "a car" "a table".
There is no person without mind, there is no person without body, so there is no person without mind and body and they a interdependent equally so there is no single independent factor that would be an "essence". Some imagine a soul, well, that soul must have thought, otherwise it would just be unconscious, so again we need some kind of container and then the awareness within it, so already that's two dependent factors. Where is the one single essence that stands alone?
But what is perceived is an essence, even if its not inherently there, just like when we watch a cartoon, we perceive something independent. We do this with everything. Its functional, but it has become more than functional, its become misconstrued, mistaken. Then we feel jealousy for "another person" because we feel independent from them and they seem permanent and the happiness we attribute to their "life" also seems permanent, or we feel pride because we feel separate and competitive and that what we achieved was our own doing. Again, these are just born of erroneous mental formations of mere I taken to be more than it is.
We have heard the phrase "everything is one" and many people will accept that statement. But tell the same people there is no person and they feel that cannot be so. But if they could accept everything was one, they should know that no one thing can stand apart from everything else, it only appears to. I personally don't like the term oneness because it implies perimeters. A contained beingness. There could be no containment really, and definitions are limited sometimes. Also the term oneness doesn't get people to think. Its just accepted. And the mental formation of oneness is like a round luminous sphere or similar. So its appears as an independent thing. But let say its limitless, then it cannot be a sphere at all. And then lets add that its realizes itself only by interdependent components (form, thought, sensing, perception, consciousness) no one greater or more truly it then the others. So then we see there is no one independent thing to this oneness. So its not really oneness either, but at least oneness acknowledges interdependence of all parts rather then the other extreme of everything being independent from everything else. So, its a step in the right direction. But warrants more examination, otherwise we'd be back at absolutism.
And people who lose hold of their mental faculties, and their mental formations get out of hand. They start to "mislabel" in ways that catch our attention. Such as they may look at the toaster and claim their dead uncle Harry is in that toaster. And we think, "wow, they are crazy". And we don't see what they are doing is not different really then what we have been doing: imputing essence via mental formations when in fact reality is dependently arising