Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id FAA13251 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 13 Sep 2000 05:32:38 +0100 Message-Id: <200009130430.AAA28974@mail4.lig.bellsouth.net> From: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 23:34:52 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: solipsistic view on memetics In-reply-to: <f04310100b5e4a0574651@[194.154.110.185]> References: <200009122140.RAA24133@mail5.lig.bellsouth.net> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01b) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Date sent: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 05:01:36 +0100
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: Chris Lees <chrislees@easynet.co.uk>
Subject: Re: solipsistic view on memetics
Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Joe wrote :
>
> >No, it was "Wu!",
>
> I don't think it matters very much, but I think it was/is Mu in Japanese,
> Wu in Chinese, yes ?...meaning, I believe, literally 'nothing', but with
> a more technical or special meaning in this particular context. (As in
> Joshu's 'Has a dog a buddhanature ?' )
>
That makes sense. I was indeed using the Chinese appelation.
>
> > which is more than a negative answer, it is a
> >rejection of the question. That's like invoking God or different
> >dimensions to foreclose further questioning; a mystical and anti-
> >intellectual response, indeed.
>
> Hmm. This is a bit tricky. I agree on "more than a negative answer",
> but not that it is "a rejection of the question". It's more like saying
> 'neither positive or negative', in the sense that to progress insight
> it is nescessary to move from that simple binary opposed pair.
> I see Mu! is an injunction, a clue, a pointer to look elsewhere.
>
> I see what you mean (I hope) by saying it is "like invoking God or
> different dimensions" or a some other non-empirical principle.
> That's true, but only at the level of this verbal intellectual debate. I wrote
> because stimulated by your "if selves didn't exist, what could possibly
> be there to be deluded ?" which is a magnificent, powerful and
> fundamental question.
>
I t is a "horns of a dilemma" point. If selfs exist, then there is no
delusion, and if they don't, then nothing exists to be deluded. In
either case there is no delusion, and there is no wiggle room
between the horns of such a dilemma. But there IS a way
between, once a fundamentalist literalist presupposition is
removed, and I lay it out below.
>
> In my view, Mu! or similar koans are not
> nescessarily 'anti-intellectual' (in the sense of being against rational
> thought or scholarship ) rather that there is recognition by a questing
> intellect that when we hit such tough questions on the ultimate nature of
> our reality or being, the intellect, as a tool, can go no further, whilst
> direct experience in meditation can go further, and it is from such
> a position, a position outside or beyond conventional verbal speculation
> or rational analysis that the Mu! answer can be found, as a practical
> project. I don't think this is at all 'anti-intellectual', nescessarily.
> It's just an approach which has been found to provide an answer to
> those who are insistent upon pursuit of that question, ' what is there
> to be deluded ? ' Or what is there to be Enlightened ? for that matter.
>
> C.L.
>
The answer to my question is found by taking a look at the word
"nothing" to describe the purportedly nonexistent self. If we take it
literally, then the statement is simply false due to self-contradiction
(gored by the dilemma horns). However, if we take "nothing" to
mean "no-thing", that is, not a thing, we can understand that the
self is NOT a thing, in the sense of being simple, static, fixed and
defineable (the existentialists and phenomenologists have this
understanding, too). Selfhood is, instead, an evolving, complex,
recursive emergent interrelating system that is beneath (or beyond)
the categories of unity and multiplicity, and is "in each case mine"
(Heidegger), so that each selfhood is irretrieveably individual, and
the six billion selves present on this planet cannot be reduces to
any frozen common denominator. This is why Gautama
Shakyamuni's polyfurcation of the self into different components
and his subsequent failure to find the self in any of them is an
illegitimate exercise; it is akin to tearing down a wall, then claiming
that there never was a wall because no wall can be found in any
single brick. Selfhood emerges from the recursively complex
interrelationship between the components of the system. The self
that can be spoken of is not the eternal (generic or epistemic) self.
"Neti, neti", the sage said (not this, not that), and that is the case
with consciousness and the world. Consciousness is neither
seamlessly integrated within the world nor absolutely bifurcated
from it, but maintains a perceptual and conceptual perspective
upon it; they coexist in dynamic interrelation to each other, with
threshhold and exchange. Selves are both not and not-not the
world, simultaneously. The self/world system is not one, yet not
two.
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
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> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
>
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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