Someone could also say that seeing is false, in that physically, biologically, the organism is processing the world, so everything is an interpretation of the brain and nervous system.
True and false is not the point, if you don't mind me trying to clarify the problem with concepts.
The problem of concepts is different than the "problem" with seeing, hearing, touching, etc.
Concepts are thought based in a way that seeing, hearing, touching are not necessarily so.
Concepts have an added layer, including memory, including reason, even including prior belief, or recursive elements of analysis and computation, such that they comprise bits of a world view, an interpretation, a paradigm, a model of reality that humans use to process any new ideals, thoughts, even sensory impressions. Maybe other animals do this as well, but it’s obviously altered by brain damage, anesthesia, etc. to where it requires to be maintained by each of us as a system separate from basic sensation.
That is why in the zen cases it has been called "a head on a head", because it’s an added layer, an optional one.
The implication of "ending thought" is to have some sort of lobotomy but obviously this is not necessary.
But what is necessary for zen is that we catch ourselves in the act of referencing this added layer, that we look at what is going on there, notice it, and not go on consulting it indiscriminately. Also to realize that this layer has its own definition of false and true.
For example, something simple like washing your bowl, who does that? Without thought, what does it feel like, what is noticed. Its not true, it’s not false. It’s original. It’s unborn. It’s ordinary. It’s alive. Its mystery. With no concepts, the old lines that have been placed like a matrix over the world disappear. With no concepts, the world is not a separate function from the organism. With no concepts, the line between the senses and their objects no longer exists. With no concepts, feeling is not prompted to contain emotional elements that are socially conditioned. Feeling is not felt as inside of us or outside of us.
Someone usually complains at this point that there is no proof that seeing is any more objective than the modelling system of concepts. That the modelling system of concepts at least can have some tests applied to it, the scientific method
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/field_guide_to_critical_thinking/
such that society can work towards agreements that are less and less ridiculous, and approach objectivity, at least at a high degree of probability.
And who could disagree with that, where would we be without modern dentistry, and thousands, millions of tools and systems that have given humans so much.
It makes us feel that we are mastering the world, that we have real truth.
And so, there is a category that can be called truth, indeed, by agreement.
So, it’s probably a little trickier to appreciate for some, that the subjective element is impossible to eliminate.
When you wash your bowl, there is no way to have objective control over every molecule or even observe the whole thing from a scientific point of view. But it’s still worth doing. That it can even happen at all. Why even? What names are going to hold that? Me, it, existence, just stabbing, naming. No one has a leg up on that. Concepts let us think we do, or concepts also show we don't to the point where the only "sane" thing to do at the moment might be to commit suicide, because we have a complaint, conceptually, about suffering, existence, futility, or some such other ideal that has been conceptually massaged into our view of things.
Well, I didn't mean for it to get this long. Time to stand up, maybe do the dishes. Feet, hands, all in motion, not still. No better way to get out of the head on a head, no better way to feel what it is to not be in the head, not be in thought. Or contrast that with the head on the head if the head on the head insists on babbling on. You can ignore it where there is more interesting stuff to look at. Zen references clouds, trees, shoots of bamboo, flowing water, mountains, rocks. Form is not a problem for zen. It can give traction to seeing, in motion. Time and space are not what we think. They are empty. How do they arise? From where?
Is all experience an interpretation of the brain and nervous system? Its obvious that the brain and nervous system have evolved as "tools", they moderate what would otherwise have remained much simpler forms. Which is an example of reverse entropy, technically speaking. But its also obvious that something else was already going on and being experienced before any brain or nervous system. The myth of biological determinism imposes a line between the organism and the environment that is shown to not be there. When we intend to hold an image based on our attachments and beliefs, is that also determined? Whose tree would you visit if you were on the edge of a rabbit hole like that?
Submitted March 18, 2018 at 11:18PM by rockytimber http://ift.tt/2IyXZXh
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