2 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2023
    1. sense of self is a construct a psychological and social construct it's something it's not something that 00:06:42 infants are born with it's actually something that develops as we grow up our caregivers look into our eyes give us a name that we learned to identify with and also basically we learn to see 00:06:59 ourselves as they see us we inte
      • for: self, constructing reality, constructed self, constructed reality, constructing the sense of self, self and other, nonduality, duality, insecurable, comment, question

      • paraphrase

        • sense of self is a construct
        • a psychological and social construct
        • it's not something that infants are born with
          • it's actually something that develops as we grow up
        • our caregivers look into our eyes
          • give us a name that we learned to identify with and
          • also basically we learn to see ourselves as they see us
            • we internalize that which is why we are so preoccupied with what other people think about
          • we learned to use language in certain ways
            • mine
            • you
            • yours
            • his
            • hers and so forth
          • that's all very essential to it
        • so we could say that the sense of self is being a construct
        • it's composed of mostly habitual ways of
          • thinking
          • feeling
          • acting
          • reacting
          • remembering
          • planning and
          • tending
        • it's the way that these mostly habitual processes work together re-enforce each other
        • but does that give us insight into what the fundamental problem is?
      • I think it does and here's what it is as I understand it
        • because the sense of self is a construct
          • because it doesn't refer it
          • doesn't depend on it
          • doesn't point back to a real self that has any self-reality or or self-identity
      • this sense of self by virtue of its lack of essence is inherently uncomfortable

        • we can say it's basically inherently insecure
        • in fact it's not only insecure but it's insecurable
      • comment

      • question
        • I agree with David's analysis but also have a question for him:
          • what about the biological, evolutionary definition of the self of a living organism. Is there a contradiction here?
          • reference
            • Major Evolutionary Transitions occur when a group of individuated living organisms achieve greater fitness by mutualism and begin to reproduce together as a new unit
              • How do we harmonize the claim of a psychologically constructed self with this evolutionary formation of new biological SELF units through MET?
  2. Jan 2023
    1. you have to 00:07:05 make that decision for yourself right and yet somehow we also have to transform society well i i think that that's it that's maybe the most 00:07:18 important the single most important thing that buddhi buddhism has to offer which is the ecosatur path frankly or sorry not not just regards ecology but let's call it the the bodhisattva path 00:07:31 or the new bodhisattva path that that what's what's so wonderful about that path is one has a double or dual practice you know we we continue to work on our own transformation but we know that 00:07:44 that's in itself insufficient it's still at a certain point that can actually reinforce the the root delusion of separation that my well-being is separate from yours and other people 00:07:56 so you know we also are engaged out in the world and and what i think one of the really important things about that i think is the way those two reinforce each other that um 00:08:10 it's not simply that they go well together but that if you are working and transforming yourself by being engaged in the world it's helping to overcome our kind of deeply rooted self-preoccupied habits so 00:08:23 i think that that's really important in fact given the kind of very critical situation we face right now may be the most important thing of all that buddhism has to offer

      !- work on self : entangle with work on others - Loy acknowledges the fact that one cannot truly work on the self in isolation, - lest it actually increase the root separation that is the cause of the problem we have - working on breaking the illusion of the self-concept is also working on clearly seeing our entanglement with the other