Dr. Kumar wrote:
There is no opposite to any thing that is truly real ....
What is the opposite of love, many will say is hate. But that is at mind level.
But at the no-mind level, say heart level, there is no opposite to love.
LOVE IS JUST LOVE.
LIFE IS JUST LIFE.
BEAUTY IS JUST BEAUTY.
GOODNESS IS JUST GOODNESS.
No opposite unless we start using our all very 'useful utilitarian' MIND.
I responded:
Please leave this dead horse alone! Emotions, like tastes, why, even genders, are not in binary opposite relationships. Assuming first that they are, and then flogging the very same assumption was a pastime for the Sophists. It is a verbal labyrinth, a trap. No one will dispute that 'life is life', and if one wants to stay put at that level, quite fine for her or him. But, why grudge somebody who thinks life has various attributes and tries to understand and explain them? Further, how will one ever use a word without knowing what it means. Definitions, explanations, synonyms and antonyms - knowing what a word means or does not mean - are integral to understanding anything. Dismissing all that as the delusion of the mind is a pointless denial. There is one character in the VKN novel, 'One Week', one Electric Thoma, whose vocabulary in English was limited to less than a hundred words. For anything he did not know the proper word for, he would use 'that corner'! Think of a physician who tells all and every patient of his with running temperature - 'a fever is only a fever, take aspirin'! Such thinking is usually called 'reductio ad absurdum'. Indian philosophy for ages, starting with Upanishads, also has held this 'funnel' vision of the world. In human affairs, there are no perfect antonyms or synonyms. So, let us stop flogging a dead horse!
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Monday, September 09, 2013
Dr. Kumar quoted Jiddu:
Life and death?
Why do we regard death as something apart from life? Why are we afraid of death? And why have so many books been written about death? Why is there this line of demarcation between life and death? And that separation real, or merely arbitrary, a thing of the mind? When we talk about life, we mean living as a process of continuity in which there is identification. Me and my house, me and my wife, me and my bank account, me and my past experiences—that is what we mean by life, is it not? Living is a process of continuity in memory, conscious as well as unconscious, with its various struggles, quarrels, incidents, experiences and so on. All that is what we call life; in opposition to that there is death, which is putting an end to all that. Having created the opposite, which is death, and being afraid of it, we proceed to look for the relationship between life and death; if we can bridge the gap with some explanation, with belief in continuity, in the hereafter, we are satisfied. We believe in reincarnation or in some other form of continuity of thought and then we try to establish a relationship between the known and the unknown. We try to bridge the known and the unknown and thereby try to find the relationship between the past and the future. That is what we are doing, is it not?, when we inquire if there is any relationship between life and death. We want to know how to bridge the living and the ending—that is our fundamental desire. Now, can the end, which is death, be known while living? If we can know what death is while we are living, then we shall have no problem. It is because we cannot experience the unknown while we are living that we are afraid of it. Our struggle is to establish a relationship between ourselves, which is the result of the known, and the unknown which we call death. Can there be a relationship between the past and something which the mind cannot conceive, which we call death? Why do we separate the two? Is it not because our mind can function only within the field of the known, within the field of the continuous? One only knows oneself as a thinker, as an actor with certain memories of misery, of pleasure, of love, affection, of various kinds of experience; one only knows oneself as being continuous—otherwise one would have no recollection of oneself as being something. Now when that something comes to the end, which we call death, there is fear of the unknown; so we want to draw the unknown into the known and our whole effort is to give continuity to the unknown. That is, we do not want to know life, which includes death, but we want to know how to continue and not come to an end. We do not want to know life and death, we only want to know how to continue without ending. That which continues has no renewal. There can be nothing new, there can be nothing creative, in that which has continuance—which is fairly obvious. It is only when continuity ends that there is a possibility of that which is ever new. But it is this ending that we dread and we don’t see that only in ending can there be renewal, the creative, the unknown—not in carrying over from day to day our experiences, our memories and misfortunes. It is only when we die each day to all that is old that there can be the new. The new cannot be where there is continuity—the new being the creative, the unknown, the eternal, God or what you will. The person, the continuous entity, who seeks the unknown, the real, the eternal, will never find it, because he can find only that which he projects out of himself and that which he projects is not the real. Only in ending, in dying, can the new be known; and the man who seeks to find a relationship between life and death, to bridge the continuous with that which he thinks is beyond, is living in a fictitious, unreal world, which is a projection of himself. Now is it possible, while living, to die—which means coming to an end, being as nothing? Is it possible, while living in this world where everything is becoming more and... •
I responded:
Answering presumptive questions may fill time in an invited discourse or pages of a book commissioned by a publisher. Jiddu was good at both. Try to think out of the box he has set up. If one does not regard death as apart from life or fear death, which no one can say one should not, the whole argument will collapse. It will also prove the superfluity of Jiddu's assumptions. To counter him, one need only liken life and death to two stages of a continuous process, or metamorphosis, or change and continuity as is seen in history. It is not difficult, for, metamorphosis is a natural phenomenon. The egg, the maggot, the pupa, the fly, and again the egg - are they different stages in a continuous process, or separate episodes of sets of life and death? Answer will depend on what one wants to believe. Semitic religions believe that birth, death and after-life of each human being is a complete set. The Indian religions believe that they repeat. Both are, again, assumptions. You are free to believe the way you want to and fret the way you want to. I will leave the unknown as unknown and shut my mind on it. Further, that every one is not afraid of death is evident from the large number of suicides happening around us. Suicides prove fear of life and not fear of death. Instead of fretting over things unknown, I would rather leave such things to Jiddus, Alan Watts and the like who will make profit out of our anxieties. I prefer to leave the black cat in the dark room to mend for itself. I have better things to anticipate in life and prepare for. Cheer you!
Life and death?
Why do we regard death as something apart from life? Why are we afraid of death? And why have so many books been written about death? Why is there this line of demarcation between life and death? And that separation real, or merely arbitrary, a thing of the mind? When we talk about life, we mean living as a process of continuity in which there is identification. Me and my house, me and my wife, me and my bank account, me and my past experiences—that is what we mean by life, is it not? Living is a process of continuity in memory, conscious as well as unconscious, with its various struggles, quarrels, incidents, experiences and so on. All that is what we call life; in opposition to that there is death, which is putting an end to all that. Having created the opposite, which is death, and being afraid of it, we proceed to look for the relationship between life and death; if we can bridge the gap with some explanation, with belief in continuity, in the hereafter, we are satisfied. We believe in reincarnation or in some other form of continuity of thought and then we try to establish a relationship between the known and the unknown. We try to bridge the known and the unknown and thereby try to find the relationship between the past and the future. That is what we are doing, is it not?, when we inquire if there is any relationship between life and death. We want to know how to bridge the living and the ending—that is our fundamental desire. Now, can the end, which is death, be known while living? If we can know what death is while we are living, then we shall have no problem. It is because we cannot experience the unknown while we are living that we are afraid of it. Our struggle is to establish a relationship between ourselves, which is the result of the known, and the unknown which we call death. Can there be a relationship between the past and something which the mind cannot conceive, which we call death? Why do we separate the two? Is it not because our mind can function only within the field of the known, within the field of the continuous? One only knows oneself as a thinker, as an actor with certain memories of misery, of pleasure, of love, affection, of various kinds of experience; one only knows oneself as being continuous—otherwise one would have no recollection of oneself as being something. Now when that something comes to the end, which we call death, there is fear of the unknown; so we want to draw the unknown into the known and our whole effort is to give continuity to the unknown. That is, we do not want to know life, which includes death, but we want to know how to continue and not come to an end. We do not want to know life and death, we only want to know how to continue without ending. That which continues has no renewal. There can be nothing new, there can be nothing creative, in that which has continuance—which is fairly obvious. It is only when continuity ends that there is a possibility of that which is ever new. But it is this ending that we dread and we don’t see that only in ending can there be renewal, the creative, the unknown—not in carrying over from day to day our experiences, our memories and misfortunes. It is only when we die each day to all that is old that there can be the new. The new cannot be where there is continuity—the new being the creative, the unknown, the eternal, God or what you will. The person, the continuous entity, who seeks the unknown, the real, the eternal, will never find it, because he can find only that which he projects out of himself and that which he projects is not the real. Only in ending, in dying, can the new be known; and the man who seeks to find a relationship between life and death, to bridge the continuous with that which he thinks is beyond, is living in a fictitious, unreal world, which is a projection of himself. Now is it possible, while living, to die—which means coming to an end, being as nothing? Is it possible, while living in this world where everything is becoming more and... •
I responded:
Answering presumptive questions may fill time in an invited discourse or pages of a book commissioned by a publisher. Jiddu was good at both. Try to think out of the box he has set up. If one does not regard death as apart from life or fear death, which no one can say one should not, the whole argument will collapse. It will also prove the superfluity of Jiddu's assumptions. To counter him, one need only liken life and death to two stages of a continuous process, or metamorphosis, or change and continuity as is seen in history. It is not difficult, for, metamorphosis is a natural phenomenon. The egg, the maggot, the pupa, the fly, and again the egg - are they different stages in a continuous process, or separate episodes of sets of life and death? Answer will depend on what one wants to believe. Semitic religions believe that birth, death and after-life of each human being is a complete set. The Indian religions believe that they repeat. Both are, again, assumptions. You are free to believe the way you want to and fret the way you want to. I will leave the unknown as unknown and shut my mind on it. Further, that every one is not afraid of death is evident from the large number of suicides happening around us. Suicides prove fear of life and not fear of death. Instead of fretting over things unknown, I would rather leave such things to Jiddus, Alan Watts and the like who will make profit out of our anxieties. I prefer to leave the black cat in the dark room to mend for itself. I have better things to anticipate in life and prepare for. Cheer you!
Wednesday, September 04, 2013
Meditation, spiritualism and I, a dude. Some random responses
Dr. Kumar Maruthur wrote:
Reality;
Years ago I used to go a church in my neighborhood. A person died and he was a mason. They had a funeral service at a local funeral home. They showed photos and videos i think of his life. Then some give eulogy. There were a few masons there, all dressed in black business suits. Then one of them got up and eulogized. I think he spoke in tongues. Nobody understood anything. Later I heard people saying that that is a super secret mason language. They were very impressed. I knew they spoke in tongues. The best part of it, I didn't know what they said, but that was the best eulogy I ever heard.
I responded:
Free Masons speak to create and communicate experiences that vary from person to person, and not to create or communicate a shared idea based on conventional meanings of words. They are what we call mystic. This is what a voodoo or mantra is also expected to do. Pentecostal sermons also follow the same route. But that does not, need not and should not preclude communication through formal language. Just like saying abstract painting that leaves the viewer to see into it anything he/she can imagine is the only way to paint, saying one should speak only by producing sounds that have no formal meaning - 'incoherently' - is the only way to speak is an extreme 'black if not white' position. There are 'infinite' shades between the two 'colours'. You found the Mason utterance to be a eulogy because of the context, the funeral service in honour of the deceased. If you hear the same sound bite from a patient, you might imagine it is an account of his disease. Decease and disease! See how close they are! But, I would rather wish that a doctor and his patient should communicate with each other on a mutually understood system of sounds. Why not give a break to this stream of thought?
Dr. Kumar Maruthur Wrote:
MEDITATION:
"IT HAS NO MEANING OR PURPOSE!"
It always good to normal weight, health and physical strength. That is where YOGA comes in handy.
In India they sit in a easy position with legs crossed on the floor or in padmasana.. You can sit in a chair with straight,back. The position is just uncomfortable enough, you won't fall asleep.
Breathing: take a deep breath and expire as slow as possible all through meditation. Expire fully and completely and inspiration will happen spontaneously.
If you are in the NOW where there is no division of TIME into past, present and future, you can sit in thIs position for a long time as observed by the clock time.
Then you begin chanting. It is not the meaning of the word that is important but the repetition of the chant for a long time.
While chanting keep the slow rhythms of breathing, very important,
You might have heard the chant OHM, OHM, OHM or Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare or Rama Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare or Hare Rama Hare Rama Hare Hare or just Ram Ram, or Krishna Krishna. it is not the meaning of the word that is important , but the repetition for a long period of time like 20-40 minutes which is important. This might stop the THINKING and might give you peace of mind. Muslims do Allah Allah Allah continuously for a long period of time. Sufis do LLA LLA LLA LLA for many minutes and to hours at a time, some whirl around at the same time.
Transcendental meditation group will sell you a chant specifically designed for you for a certain amount of money. It has no meaning and are nonsensical words.
Chinese and Japanese Buddhists use MOO MOO MOO and so on. Zen Buddhists give you koans. Some ask you to laugh loudly for a long time. Some speak in tongues for a long time. Some sing kirtans and some dance at the same time.
The purpose is to still the continuous mind chatter ir still the mind.
You can just sit and watch the colors that fall on your eyes, sound on your ears, your feelings on the skin, the smell and the taste as it were just an happenings. You may consider them as many senses or one sense, you may listen to the mind' thoughts as just noise like water fall or chirps of bugs, or tv or music or car horns or telephone rings and so on, as it were mere happenings without INTERPRETING them.
You can sit for a long time in the NOW. MAY BE!
Past does not propel the present. The past and futures just MOVES away from the NOW like water from the wake of a boat or ship.
Gradually your mind chatter may go away and you may be in the expansive eternal NOW.
You may forget your SELF.
Don't pay attention to your thoughts and senses. Just ignore them.
Gradually you may achieve a meditation state; all according to your own temperament.
OR NO THING AT ALL.
I responded:
I am weary of spiritualism as I understand it; and of all its vendors, whichever the brand be. It claims to know everything through intuition. I would rather give a go by to such claims. Intuition does not blossom in a vacuum. It springs from thought, which needs experience as its springboard. Thought is therefore empirical. It is a function of the sensory organs and the brain. I do not want to numb my thoughts and get inside a cocoon, even if it is made of the finest silk. I am aware of natural sensory illusions our neural system brooks and am ready to live with them, but I do not want to amplify them thorough self-induced hypnotism. Meditation as concentration of thought is welcome. But as auto-suggested delusion, is not. To be aware of a state of mind that is unaware of itself is, to me, a delusion. At least, it is a confusion. I will not knowingly fly anywhere near that cuckoo's nest, let alone into it!
Dr. Kumar Maruthur wrote:
My friend B is as much argumentative as you are. But nowadays he found an outlet for mental peace.
He found this NAM yoga place . He joins in their group singing chants and dancing. He gets very relaxed and happy. He says he goes into a trance. He takes a 40 minute bus trip to Santa Monica to do that, once or twice a week,
May be good thing for you too.
I responded:
I wish B all the peace he can draw from his engagements. And I wish all others too the same for their respective minds. Period. I am not against anyone's peace of mind so long as they do not prescribe it for others. To treat a malaise, there may be different systems of medicine. Choice is personal. I would rather avoid a witch doctor. And an astrologer. And a god-man. And a yogi. And, certainly the god himself!
We might follow this
Reality;
Years ago I used to go a church in my neighborhood. A person died and he was a mason. They had a funeral service at a local funeral home. They showed photos and videos i think of his life. Then some give eulogy. There were a few masons there, all dressed in black business suits. Then one of them got up and eulogized. I think he spoke in tongues. Nobody understood anything. Later I heard people saying that that is a super secret mason language. They were very impressed. I knew they spoke in tongues. The best part of it, I didn't know what they said, but that was the best eulogy I ever heard.
I responded:
Free Masons speak to create and communicate experiences that vary from person to person, and not to create or communicate a shared idea based on conventional meanings of words. They are what we call mystic. This is what a voodoo or mantra is also expected to do. Pentecostal sermons also follow the same route. But that does not, need not and should not preclude communication through formal language. Just like saying abstract painting that leaves the viewer to see into it anything he/she can imagine is the only way to paint, saying one should speak only by producing sounds that have no formal meaning - 'incoherently' - is the only way to speak is an extreme 'black if not white' position. There are 'infinite' shades between the two 'colours'. You found the Mason utterance to be a eulogy because of the context, the funeral service in honour of the deceased. If you hear the same sound bite from a patient, you might imagine it is an account of his disease. Decease and disease! See how close they are! But, I would rather wish that a doctor and his patient should communicate with each other on a mutually understood system of sounds. Why not give a break to this stream of thought?
Dr. Kumar Maruthur Wrote:
MEDITATION:
"IT HAS NO MEANING OR PURPOSE!"
It always good to normal weight, health and physical strength. That is where YOGA comes in handy.
In India they sit in a easy position with legs crossed on the floor or in padmasana.. You can sit in a chair with straight,back. The position is just uncomfortable enough, you won't fall asleep.
Breathing: take a deep breath and expire as slow as possible all through meditation. Expire fully and completely and inspiration will happen spontaneously.
If you are in the NOW where there is no division of TIME into past, present and future, you can sit in thIs position for a long time as observed by the clock time.
Then you begin chanting. It is not the meaning of the word that is important but the repetition of the chant for a long time.
While chanting keep the slow rhythms of breathing, very important,
You might have heard the chant OHM, OHM, OHM or Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare or Rama Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare or Hare Rama Hare Rama Hare Hare or just Ram Ram, or Krishna Krishna. it is not the meaning of the word that is important , but the repetition for a long period of time like 20-40 minutes which is important. This might stop the THINKING and might give you peace of mind. Muslims do Allah Allah Allah continuously for a long period of time. Sufis do LLA LLA LLA LLA for many minutes and to hours at a time, some whirl around at the same time.
Transcendental meditation group will sell you a chant specifically designed for you for a certain amount of money. It has no meaning and are nonsensical words.
Chinese and Japanese Buddhists use MOO MOO MOO and so on. Zen Buddhists give you koans. Some ask you to laugh loudly for a long time. Some speak in tongues for a long time. Some sing kirtans and some dance at the same time.
The purpose is to still the continuous mind chatter ir still the mind.
You can just sit and watch the colors that fall on your eyes, sound on your ears, your feelings on the skin, the smell and the taste as it were just an happenings. You may consider them as many senses or one sense, you may listen to the mind' thoughts as just noise like water fall or chirps of bugs, or tv or music or car horns or telephone rings and so on, as it were mere happenings without INTERPRETING them.
You can sit for a long time in the NOW. MAY BE!
Past does not propel the present. The past and futures just MOVES away from the NOW like water from the wake of a boat or ship.
Gradually your mind chatter may go away and you may be in the expansive eternal NOW.
You may forget your SELF.
Don't pay attention to your thoughts and senses. Just ignore them.
Gradually you may achieve a meditation state; all according to your own temperament.
OR NO THING AT ALL.
The difference between ALL and VOID is just NAMES.
What happens then is everybody's PRIVATE MATTER..
BEST OF LUCK
P.S: Pardon my English, Sanskrit, Hindi or Malayalam or Chinese and spellings. I don't care about languages words or spellings other than just an utilitarian device.
What happens then is everybody's PRIVATE MATTER..
BEST OF LUCK
P.S: Pardon my English, Sanskrit, Hindi or Malayalam or Chinese and spellings. I don't care about languages words or spellings other than just an utilitarian device.
20 hours ago via mobile
I responded:
I am weary of spiritualism as I understand it; and of all its vendors, whichever the brand be. It claims to know everything through intuition. I would rather give a go by to such claims. Intuition does not blossom in a vacuum. It springs from thought, which needs experience as its springboard. Thought is therefore empirical. It is a function of the sensory organs and the brain. I do not want to numb my thoughts and get inside a cocoon, even if it is made of the finest silk. I am aware of natural sensory illusions our neural system brooks and am ready to live with them, but I do not want to amplify them thorough self-induced hypnotism. Meditation as concentration of thought is welcome. But as auto-suggested delusion, is not. To be aware of a state of mind that is unaware of itself is, to me, a delusion. At least, it is a confusion. I will not knowingly fly anywhere near that cuckoo's nest, let alone into it!
Dr. Kumar Maruthur wrote:
My friend B is as much argumentative as you are. But nowadays he found an outlet for mental peace.
He found this NAM yoga place . He joins in their group singing chants and dancing. He gets very relaxed and happy. He says he goes into a trance. He takes a 40 minute bus trip to Santa Monica to do that, once or twice a week,
May be good thing for you too.
I responded:
I wish B all the peace he can draw from his engagements. And I wish all others too the same for their respective minds. Period. I am not against anyone's peace of mind so long as they do not prescribe it for others. To treat a malaise, there may be different systems of medicine. Choice is personal. I would rather avoid a witch doctor. And an astrologer. And a god-man. And a yogi. And, certainly the god himself!
We might follow this
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