GARY MOORE and ERIC PAROISSIEN - MONISM. Sat, 15 Apr 2006.

I would like to add some amorphous thoughts, merely neonatal, about non-dual monism I acquired reading Shakara, Abhinavagupta, and Karl Marx w/o Engles as well as the so-called 'Existentialists and especially David Hume after I creased to think of him as merely a 'popular', 'average reader' philosopher, something Heidegger pretended to dismiss him as.

Exactly as in the dualism of talking abstractly and factically back and forth to suit usually semi or unconscious purposes, to escape being pinned down to a truly realistic point - a point itself hard to define - but it is there - or here - or somewhere - so also morality and religion exercises the same kind of dualistic speech. The problem I have always had with authentic Zen/Ch'an Buddhism [snickering in the background] is that it truly strives to avoid this dualistic language which, as language, makes it a worldview, and as a worldview pretends to be philosophy and/or theology. Ch'an concentrates on experiencing the perfect individuality of this wooden bowl or the perfect individuality of having your leg broken by the Master slamming the gate of the compound on your leg. It attempts to achieve that moment perfectly free of not only explicit but all implicit, all subconscious abstractions from language.

In a true non-dual monism, a word is a thing just like the bowl. In such thinking, perfectly bound by strict factical Wittgensteinian logic, a simplistic logic that makes you understand each word and phrase by itself, an equality of value reigns that reflects the Zen Buddhist indifference to moral acts perform around him or even that utilize his indifference to their own purposes. A good act is just an act. A evil act is just an act. In the factical Zen Buddhist 'world' good and evil are not considered as sensations like smell and touch as we in the Christian West have subverted those words from abstractions into something everybody 'should just know' when it is perfectly obvious nobody 'just knows' what good and evil are, much less any difference between them.

It is very much like Shankara's Jivanmukta while still alive. One is one with the Atman while still performing daily affairs, and yet one is truly no longer bound by the rules of good and evil, even though we are most readily assured a Jivanmukta would NEVER commit an evil act. Who does the assuring? Shankara slightly, or maybe not at all. After all, he is the one that hates, no, loathes reincarnation and the ladder of merit and all of its utter stupidity. Shankara - the absolute opposite of Nietzsche and his Eternal Recurrence of the Same? Except, maybe, the eternal recurrence of the same was the most terrible, painful thought that, nonetheless, one was stuck with, could never get rid of, therefore the only way to triumph over it was to accept it joyously? Would Shankara have agreed with that?

Eric Paroissien:
This whole thread assumes there is authority in someone to tell someone else's (non-)realization, but before practicing that 'right to judge' we need to ask: who among the honorable audience would accept to be told that s/he is
(not) realized if s/he thinks otherwise ... no one!? (me neither) exactly as i thought, "authentification of realization" is a useless function of the judging mind... it is just like advices, everyone has excellent ones, but if we find no takers, better change trade. next topic pleaaaaaaase

Gary.C. Moore:
Aristotle took hold and formed Christianity almost right from the beginning of Christianity, that is, the actual written form of it that has any reasonable grounds of being dated, for an extremely good reason, to avoid discussions such as this. Nagarjuna, Shankara, and Abhinavagupta learned their logic, their skepticism, and their dialectics of actual experience before they 'learned' their self-realization. Do you think, then, such skills may very well have been a large part of self-realization? Could it be there can be no self-realization at all without an intense and long experience of using these skills? Does not the thought of all three of these thinkers hang together so well because they refined their thought down to a few rock hard premises unassailable because, in a sense, they had been thoroughly tested in a way by scientific experimentation of human action and experience as well as thought? Thomas Aquinas, the author of the total triumph of Aristotleanism over guru devotion and inspiration, stated that argument from authority is the weakest of all arguments. ...

Eric Paroissien:
On the other hand eagerness to see authenticity and value about that very thin line between who is and who is not is a mighty interesting topic to me. because whether i am or am not a match to Krishna or Jesus, does not matter to them (they are dead), and to me it made only an interesting line in a thread months ago, but has lost it's flavor ... all certainties about states and achievement have a "definite mileage", once the engine is worn out one looks silly hand-pushing the old pick up with a fresh horse in the back .. take the horse down, ride it and abandon the pick up to the ravens. the name of the ultimate game is neti-neti, in plain american neti-neti means you can keep resting on an ultimate rock, there is nothing underneath the rock to support it anyway.

Gary.C. Moore:
In my once great interested and study of Martin Heidegger, certainly THE 'authority' on 'authenticity', in modern times, I found he had an undeniable and rational argument, as well as existential, that 'authenticity HAD TO BE DERIVED FROM inauthenticity. AND! There could be authenticities that were, in their basis, inauthentic.

On the first, once again all and every process of human education is simply growing up from being an infant. Everyone goes through the same form of utter dependence upon one's guru parents. But for various reasons there comes a time when . . . Surely you can fill in your individual blank because each education process is ABSOLUTELY individual.

On the second count, the very point of existentialism in all of its forms is that any choice of what is 'authentic' for one is A] arbitrary, that is, 'free', depending upon B] your PERSONAL history/education. Heidegger chose to be a German nationalist, Nazi, and devotee of his guru Ernst Rohm, one of the most vicious people who ever lived until Hitler and Sepp Detrich killed him in 'the night of the long knives'. Sartre choose to be a Communist but purely one of his own rebellious design. Gabriel Marcel and Karl Rahner choose to be Catholics. Karth Barth and Fyodor Dostoyevsky choose to be conservative, even fundamentalist Christians. Jacques Derrida choose to be a Maoist and then a Jew.

It is defining and clarifying that point of pure fundamental choice I find utterly fascinating. It is facing the no-face of absolute NOTHING

To whomever, Consequent of my last letter, I would like to add some amorphous thoughts, merely neonatal, about non-dual monism I acquired reading Shakara, Abhinavagupta, and Karl Marx w/o Engles as well as the so-called 'Existentialists and especially David Hume after I creased to think of him as merely a 'popular', 'average reader' philosopher, something Heidegger pretended to dismiss him as.

     Exactly as in the dualism of talking abstractly and factically back and forth to suit usually semi or unconscious purposes, to escape being pinned down to a truly realistic point - a point itself hard to define - but it is there - or here - or somewhere - so also morality and religion exercises the same kind of dualistic speech. The problem I have always had with authentic Zen/Ch'an Buddhism [snickering in the background] is that it truly strives to avoid this dualistic language which, as language, makes it a worldview, and as a worldview pretends to be philosophy and/or theology. Ch'an concentrates on experiencing the perfect individuality of this wooden bowl or the perfect individuality of having your leg broken by the Master slamming the gate of the compound on your leg. It attempts to achieve that moment perfectly free of not only explicit but all implicit, all subconscious abstractions from language.

     In a true non-dual monism, a word is a thing just like the bowl. In such thinking, perfectly bound by strict factical Wittgensteinian logic, a simplistic logic that makes you understand each word and phrase by itself, an equality of value reigns that reflects the Zen Buddhist indifference to moral acts perform around him or even that utilize his indifference to their own purposes. A good act is just an act. A evil act is just an act. In the factical Zen Buddhist 'world' good and evil are not considered as sensations like smell and touch as we in the Christian West have subverted those words from abstractions into something everybody 'should just know' when it is perfectly obvious nobody 'just knows' what good and evil are, much less any difference between them.