“I'd love to hear your views about how we should understand the admonition to "be a child of illusion".” – Bill
Bill,
Bill, Bill. You are no newbie here and must surely know it’s best not
to go encouraging John. You have gone and done it now! If Ning starts
charging for server space, I am sorry everyone, but Bill asked and must
share some responsibility here.
One very important proviso, also,
Bill. When someone lobs a softball over home plate like that, John has
been known to throw down the old bat and just break into song. If that
were to happen, be sure to remember that words like “YOU” are no longer
addressing Bill, but more likely someone trying to get someone else’s
attention.
Next, I want to acknowledge that I too am only a wannabe philosopher, but I have been one long enough to have gleaned that much greater ones than I have acknowledged themselves as wannabes. At least in the sense that none whose works are worth taking to a desert island ever claimed to have captured the mysteries of existence in their words. Their methods were ramps and their conclusions jumping off points. One, Great Diotima’s great pupil, punned, “I know that/what I do not know.” Some doubted themselves off the edge; some constructed elaborate scaffolds of conviction and leaped, some, like Nietzsche, danced into the Dionysian oblivion of Diotima’s party--endlessly repeating patterns--with joy, though it may have been feigned. Anyway, she made him pay. Nobody really ever got out alive. (Fabulous party. Do spare your servant yet a little while, Gracious Mistress.)
Still, this question of whether I am a real or wannabe philosopher does raise the question of my own credentials and I must be honest with myself. From your point of view, I arrive in your world in approximately the same way as the guy who sits down at your table at 3am in the donut shop to show you his very important notes on The Urantia Book. Unfortunately my credentials are not going to help me. Though I eventually managed to scam some kind of degree, deep inside where it counts, I will always be a college dropout. All I have is what is on this napkin, but first I would like to ask, what are YOU doing in this donut shop, Bill?
That is to say, what are WE doing here trying to make statements about reality and our place in it?
You will be relieved to find that what is on my napkin is simply a method by which we can investigate this question for ourselves, so you needn’t accept anything in my manifesto on authority. As usual the real question is whether this napkin and its bearer are worth your time while you eat donuts.
Even greater relief: What is on this napkin is not John’s grand but dubious manifesto alone, but basic shamata instruction, together with one hypothesis I suggest you explore: I submit that a person who has developed a rudimentary capacity to attend to the flow of thoughts in the mind is now credentialed to speak on this question in at least one important way that Mr. Chalmers seems not quite to be. (Though I get the definite impression that Mr. C himself might have some credentials he is not willing to divulge to the faculty committee.) Whether we are Buddhists or not, by this simple meditation we can develop the capacity to experience the relationship between thought and the substrate within which it occurs.
So, I am sitting and the thought, “pastries,” occurs, followed by, “I am hungry,” or “I want to talk to Diotima.” Whatever our thoughts, as we slow our minds down and attend to them, we notice that there are tiny gaps there in the stream of thought and as we pay attention to the gaps and the thoughts as conjoined phenomena rather than as dead silence vs. signal for action (not yet, My Love!) we come to a very important conclusion which I challenge you to test for yourself: All thoughts arise and subside in that same stream of gap and thought.
“True” thoughts are there. Factually true thoughts like, “the Empire State Building is in NY,” and emotionally true like, “Diotima is beautiful.” (In the eyes of the beholder, but blessed are those eyes, Radiant Consort of the Wise!) And also false thoughts are there. Factually false, like, “Sunlight is reflected Moonlight,” or emotionally unreliable, like, “Diotima loves only me.” (It hurts, but I still love YOU, O Unattainable Queen!) We could get into the feeling tones behind thoughts, but I want to keep it simple and we are going to use “thoughts” here for a whole variety of reactive experiences below the level of overt bodily response. Investigating these is a great deal of what we call “meditation.”
Some of these thoughts are declaratives that can be tested in the stream of gap/thought by seeing whether we can use them to make relatively accurate predictions about future experiences and thoughts. These types of thoughts range from the prediction that if I put sugar in my coffee today, it will be sweet just like it was when I put sugar in it yesterday, to the prediction that 50+ kilos of Enriched Uranium will take out a city.
Others thoughts are delightful jabberwocky or self-evident axioms and deductive proofs or angry swear words or internal “mental” movements just before they become overt “physical” ones. (Maybe that describes all of them in some subtle way? Check it out.) But all thoughts are there in that stream. Thoughts about science, probability and experimental predictions. Thoughts about where did you leave your cell phone. Thoughts so weak they hardly register. Thoughts so powerful they make you want to fight or throw up. And then there is the class of thoughts about the whole EXPERIENCE of the stream of gaps and thoughts and all the other experiences we have. Thoughts like the word “experience” itself.
Mr. Chalmers’ thoughts are in that latter class mostly, with the possible exception of his attempt at a “thought experiment,” which could be in the class of predictive thoughts mentioned above, though I am skeptical. Now, this response would have been much easier had you chosen a worse paper, Bill. I want to thank you for that. I happen to know this paper pretty well (in a wannabe kind of way) and it has some marvelous things in it. In fact, I will suggest before we are through that Mr. Chalmers has given us something we can investigate to great advantage in our practice and our life. Chalmers work is rightly highly regarded, but, of course, my job being a philosopher, even a wannabe, is to eviscerate it as neatly as possible.
Let’s get back to that EXPERIENCE thing and remember how we got to this particular table at the donut shop. It all happened in our experience. Your blog post, my response, our experience of reading Chalmers’ paper, mine of remembering the last time I read it, it all happened “intertwined” with that same “stream” of experience which “contains” (metaphors, metaphors, but try talking about this stuff without them) that “stream” of gap and thought. Let’s let some of Chalmers thoughts waft through our minds, and as good meditators should, lets give ourselves some space in which to react to them (or not) more slowly and deliberately.
Here’s one: “The problem of consciousness…”
That’s interesting. I don’t know about you, but I am sitting minding my breath and there doesn’t seem to be much of a problem about consciousness or experience. If Diotima lands another blow to my ego, that might be a problem. A bill I can’t pay is a problem. Things INSIDE experience are problems. But experience? Why is it a problem for Chalmers? The rest of the paper makes clear that the reason it is a problem is that Chalmers (though to his credit he gives up) wants to explain/reduce experience by/to some material cause.
If Chalmers did not think this was a problem, would he have a job? If Chalmers announced, “Experience is what it is, let’s just hang with that…” Would he get a promotion? That’s one avenue of exploration here. But let’s call that trivial and let our mind riff on this whole matter/mind problem for just a second before we move on.
As meditators the word “experience” is a pointing out instruction. The most basic one. It points us back to that mysterious act of being alive and aware, what we explore in meditation. It is not an “object” in a class of objects, but the very capacity to apprehend any objects at all. Chalmers seems to want it to be an object among objects. Even when he finally admits it as “fundamental,” that is, not an object to be explained, he still thinks of it as an object. But can experience contain experience as an object? Have you ever seen experience itself? You can say, “let’s stop drinking and go experience dinner” but you can never say, “let’s quit experiencing and go get a drink.” Experience is not a problem or an object. That is why in mediation we do not define it or theorize about its cause. We open it and rest in it. We can only find its “explanation” in contemplation, not analysis.
But here is another direction we could take before we rest. We could psychologically investigate whether we, like Chalmers, may feel some need to “explain” experience. (I myself don’t know what the word “explain” means in this context. I used to think I did, and apparently Chalmers still does, so I’ll use it. I am going to cheat here and condense many years of working with this issue.)
I was for many years one of those people who did “worry” about the mind/matter relationship. I would not advise holing up in a tenement somewhere with espresso and a bunch of books to come up with the “right” answer to these questions. I tried that, and ended up in this donut shop. But I did, in meditation over the years, notice that the primary feeling that accompanied this fixation was a low grade, but deep anxiety that made me excited when I thought that I might be close to “explaining” experience in terms of matter, or vice versa. (An anxiety that I recognize when Diotima snubs me.)
I noticed that the word “matter” tends all over the world to be related to “mother,” the first material sensation we encounter as we differentiate from her, and a great source of anxiety when she first leaves us. I noticed how when I thought I had an “explanation” my anxiety decreased. I began to work with the different “explanations” and work with the type of answer I was being given. Here are some of my results:
Materialism = I never left Mom. I never will. I’m just a weird bubble in her and I pop. Nothing is my fault. Everything is cool.
Idealism = Mom is an illusion. No more birth-death trauma! I’m free! Why can’t I control everything and stop all this suffering?
Matriarchal Theism = see materialism.
Patriarchal Theism = Dad is really in charge. Mom can’t kill me now, but He is a scary dude in his own right.
Atheistic Existentialism = Dad’s dead. Mom’s a bitch. I’m me. Deal with it, cuz I can’t.
Well, John gets carried away, perhaps, but over time I saw that the “problem” is constructed out of anxieties along those lines combined with the mistaken inclusion of “experience” in the contents of experience (see above) as an object (a confusion of language). The “solution” is one that began to sink in to my head from many sources, but the best one I remember is Herbert Guenther’s: “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.” That to my mind is the Buddhist “solution.” Check it out:
Buddhism = Mom and Dad and I are all just aspects of experience itself. I will just accept that as what is, worry as little as possible, keep experiencing till I don’t, and see if it ever happens that I stop experiencing, since I don’t even know what that would mean. (Try imagining not having an experience sometime in meditation.)
Now, I have overstayed my welcome, Bill, but may yet bleed keystrokes all over your blog comments, as this will be one of my last posts for a long time, and I feel a song coming over me. I do want to comment on the best part of Chalmers’ paper, though. It is when he gives up on trying to explain mind in terms of matter and just starts to relate and coordinate the intricacies of physicality with experience. He manages thereby to sneak the possibility of an old attitude behind the unfriendly halls of Academe:
The World is Alive!
Now Chalmers seems to see “metaphysical speculation” and no doubt more papers, as the next step in this investigation. I am going to suggest that as meditators and practitioners, we have a better way to investigate. Since we are not concerned with convincing others or ourselves of “the truth,” but with exploring how it is to live different ways, instead of theorizing we can just start to live as if the World around us is alive. (What the experiences are surrounding us may be unimaginable to us, but what you or a flea experience may be unimaginable to me.) We just talk to our gardens and the birds and the ocean and the sky and the freeway and the buildings and the crowds from the heart and see what happens in our lives. Try it, with good intentions from the heart, for a good long while (you may feel ridiculous at first) and just see. That’s all I’ll say. No theories, just try it, and rest in the experience.
Not that I don’t still have separation anxieties sometimes, Bill. Speaking of which, where’s Wisdom Herself in all this? Where’s Diotima?
I turn to see the Perfect Woman’s Face
and there instead is Lord Kalu, King of Dharma.
He holds a Jewel and smiles at me at last:
“Philosophers and Scientists may seek,
but ever seeking Mind is only Mind—
Let Mind rest in Mind. This Stone cannot be cut.
Stale Bread and Fine Pastry are one to the Yogi’s Tongue.
Pray to the Mother of the Perfect Lineage.”
I cry, “Kind Master, touch me a second time!”
But He is gone—No Vision lasts forever.
No Pure Thing holds in an Impure Mind.
But She in Whom it’s visioned? My Pure Love?
How can She leave, Who’s never come to be?
Unseen Her Gaze. Unending Her Vast Gesture.
I am led into an Evening Room.
What’s this? I see My Friends of Old,
My Rug, the Sun and Moon, a Book!
Behold! The Signs and Symbols of the Ages,
The Rage of a Prisoner in a Cell,
Two Lovers in a Twilit Chamber,
The Play of Mind in the Yogi’s Cave.
You who gaze into the Wine Glass at the Party, all alone,
You Fervid Caffeine Seeker, Bong Hit Blower, Carrier of Tobacco’s Secret Case,
You in the Elevator Incubation, You in the Cyber Drone,
You Criminal, You Liar, You Lover in Your Own Embrace,
You with the Acid and the Thizz
And You with the Lonely TV on
You who know where the Party is,
And You in the Pornographic Dawn.
You Digger in the Pit of Greediness,
You Sucker at the Tit of Neediness,
You Killer with the Blade of Hate
You Fucker of Your Weaker Mate
You Weak Seducer of the Strong
You Quick Excuser of Your Wrong
You Harsh Definer of the Real,
You Cutter of the Wicked Deal
You Gambler with Reality
You Loser of Carnality
You Bower to the Idol “Brain”
You Liver in the Body’s Pain,
You Stirrer of the Pot of Shit,
You Lover of the Smell of It,
You Warrior in the Secret Wars,
You Whore and Monger of the Whores,
You Shunner of the Little Child,
And You, Shunned Baby, Running Wild:
Come to Insight’s Crazy Carnival!
Kill Your Parents! (Knife both Induction and Deduction.)
Mind wakes to Mind at Indecent Intervals.
Seek a Wise Teacher. Ask for Instruction.
Walk the Whole Path for Others’ Sake.
Send Joy and gather Sorrow with Each Breath.
Call on your Teacher’s Heart. Let your Heart break.
Meditate past the Point of Death.
Radiant, my True Love’s face. How sad, I will never see Her.
My Heart breaks and I call to the Daughters of the Sky,
“How Kind you are to let me sing in the Evening!
May you be a Refuge in every Lifetime!”
“Demons and Ghosts! Look here! I’m Crowned with Ivy!
And Your Meal is Rapt in Finest Linen White.
Come to the Great Feast of the Witches for the Son of the King!”
Confused and Tortured, those who grasp at Phantoms
Happy, the Yogi touched even once by the Master.
Use this Gem for Selfish Ends,
Build a Fire to fry in your own Fat.
Not even the Lord of Love can help you then.
[A poem inspired by KM and Diotima before I knew who she was. It was published on the old Unfettered Mind Ning site, but can no longer be found there.]
Love to All,
John O.
