The "Truth" has been understood in the East. The West has misunderstood for several hundred years longer, but is slowly coming around to the "Truth" (eg. via Stirner, Wittgenstein).
The history of Western philosophy is a history of misunderstanding and misusing language (thought).
Words (concepts) are inventions of the human mind. They have no meaning apart from the meaning we choose to ascribe to them. Debating the meaning of concepts we invented is to forget our own creation, described by Stirner as "schizophrenia." To believe an idea has an objective reality independent of Mind is to believe in a "spook," a ghost of thought.
Most propositions and questions that have been written about philosophical matters are not false but senseless. We cannot, therefore, answer questions of this kind at all, but only state their senselessness. Most questions and propositions of the philosophers result from the fact that we do not understand the logic of our language. They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good is more or less identical than the Beautiful.
-Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The purpose of philosophy is to make clear the propositions within language (thought). The history of Western philosophy has been an error precisely because it magnified rather than clarified the confusions within our language (conceptualization).
The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. The result of philosophy is not a number of ‘philosophical propositions’, but to make propositions clear. Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.
-Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The "truth" or "reality" is fundamentally unspeakable. Trying to explain this truth in words is absurd, and results in inevitable confusion.
What Stirner says is a word, a thought, a concept; what he means is no word, no thought, no concept. What he says is not what is meant, and what he means is unsayable.
-Max Stirner, Stirner's Critics
All that we are is what we have thought.
Experiences are preceded by mind, led by mind, and produced by mind.
Those who take the unreal for the real, and who in the real see the unreal, they, wandering in the sphere of wrong thought, will not attain the real.
-The Buddha, Dhammapada
And to misuse language is to misuse conceptualization. Concepts are tools, which bear no resemblance to "reality" (which is: a word, concept). The "Truth, Reality" (Self) is independent of distinctions, conceptualizations, language.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the origin of heaven and earth.
While naming is the origin of the myriad things.
Therefore, always desireless, you see the mystery
Ever desiring, you see the manifestations.
These two are the same -
When they appear they are named differently.
This sameness is the mystery,
Mystery within mystery;
The door to all marvels.
-Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
When using these tools of language, we are not communicating a shared truth, but expressing a subjective thought/idea which is ultimately incapable of being shared (objectively).
Stirner speaks of the Unique and says immediately: Names name you not. He articulates the word, so long as he calls it the Unique, but adds nonetheless that the Unique is only a name. He thus means something different from what he says, as perhaps someone who calls you Ludwig does not mean a Ludwig in general, but means You, for which he has no word. (...) It is the end point of our phrase world, of this world in whose "beginning was the Word."
— Max Stirner, Stirner's Critics
Thus, all philosophical questions dissolve. What is left is pure, nameless, subjective experience (Self).
What is this experience which cannot be expressed in words, or, more precisely, concepts?
Void. Emptiness. The space in which existence manifests itself (its Self).
The essence of the world, so attractive and splendid, is for him who looks to the bottom of it — emptiness; emptiness is — world's essence (world's doings)."
-Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own
Once free of false conceptualizations and distinctions, "Truth, Reality" (Self) is thus manifested.
It is no-tranquilization (ting-Samadhi), no-disturbance, no-sitting (tso), no-meditation (ch'an) - this is the Tathagata's Dhyana. The five Skandhas are not realities; the six objects of sense are by nature empty. It is neither quiet nor illuminating; it is neither real nor empty; it does not abide in the middle way; it is not-doing, it is no-effect-producing, and yet it functions with the utmost freedom: the Buddha-nature is all-inclusive.
-Huineng
This is best exemplified by the Eastern phrases of wu-wei (unattached action, non-doing) and wu-nien (no-thought).
Chang-yen King asked [Shen-hui]: "You discourse ordinarily on the subject of Wu-nien ('no-thought' or 'no-consciousness'), and make people discipline themselves in it. I wonder if there is a reality corresponding to the notion of Wu-nien, or not?"
Shen-hui answered, "I would not say that Wu-nien is a reality, nor that it is not."
"Why?"
"Because if I say it is a reality, it is not in the sense in which people generally speak of reality; if I say it is a non-reality, it is not in the sense in which people generally speak of non-reality. Hence Wu-nien is neither real nor unreal."
"What would you call it then?"
"I would not call it anything."
"If so, what could it be?"
"No designation whatever is possible. Therefore I say that Wu-nien is beyond the range of wordy discourse. The reason we talk about it at all is because questions are raised concerning it. If no questions are raised about it, there would be no discourse. It is like a bright mirror. If no objects appear before it, nothing is to be seen in it. When you say that you see something in it, it is because something stands against it."
"When the mirror has nothing to illuminate it, the illumination itself loses its meaning, does it not?"
"When I talk about objects presented and their illumination, the fact is that this illumination is something eternal belonging to the nature of the mirror, and has no reference to the presence or absence of objects before it."
"You say that it has no form, it is beyond the range of wordy discourse, the notion of reality or non-reality is not applicable to it; why then do you talk of illumination? What illumination is it?"
"We talk of illumination because the mirror is bright and its self-nature is illumination. The mind which is present in all things being pure, there is in it the light of Prajna, which illuminates the entire world-system to its furthest end."
"This being so, when is it attained?"
"Just see into nothingness (tan chien wu)."
"Even if it is nothingness, it is seeing something."
"Though it is seeing, it is not to be called something."
"If it is not to be called something, how can there be the seeing?"
"Seeing into nothingness - this is true seeing and eternal seeing."
-Shen-hui
The Sage is occupied with the unspoken
and acts without effort.
Teaching without verbosity,
producing without possessing,
creating without regard to result,
claiming nothing,
the Sage has nothing to lose.
-Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Existentialism (existential despair), as the rest of philosophy, is an error in language/conceptualization. The concept of "death" is manifested through the emotion of fear in the mind, yet has no basis in reality (subjective experience).
Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.
-Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
To conclude:
The truth (dharma) is not to be mastered by mere seeing, hearing, and thinking. If it is, it is no more than the seeing, hearing, and thinking; it is not at all seeking after the truth itself. For the truth is not in what you hear from others or learn through the understanding. Now keep yourself away from what you have seen, heard, and thought, and see what you have within yourself. Emptiness only, nothingness, which eludes your grasp and to which you cannot fix your thought. Why? Because this is the abode where the senses can never reach. If this abode were within the reach of your sense it would be something you could think of, something you could have a glimpse of; it would then be something subject to the law of birth and death.
-Tai-hui
Submitted August 06, 2016 at 09:58AM by MortalSisyphus http://ift.tt/2aFrjgc
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