3 Matching Annotations
  1. Sep 2023
    1. the Bodhisattva cognitive system is no longer constrained by the perception that one single self—i.e., its own self—requires special and sustained attention. Instead, Bodhisattva cognitive processes are now said to engage with spontaneous care for all apparent individuals. Thus, an immediate takeaway from non-dual insight is said to be the perception that oneself and all others are ultimately of the same identity.
      • for: bodhisattva's compassion, nondual compassion, non-dual compassion, compassion
      • insightful: bodhisattva's compassion
      • unpacking: bodhisattva's compassion
        • to understand what it is to experience the world free of (object, agent, action) triplet, it is necessary to understand what it means to experience the world from the (object, agent, action) perspective.
        • Buddhism's starting assumption is that experience from the (object, agent, action) perspective is the pathological but normative one.
        • It cannot be simply intellectual understanding, that is not enough for deep transformation. It must be quite deep, to the core of how we experience the world - as a seeming subject moving through a field of seeming objects.
        • This is accompanied by a feeling of alienation. The subject is separated from the field of objects.
        • David Loy has good insights on this subject of the mundane feeling of emptiness that accompanies our meaning crisis: https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=david+loy
        • Of course if you are able to penetrate the illusory nature of your own self construct in a meaningful way, it also gives you insight into the other perceived selves outside of you. Even this sentence is paradoxical to say, since there is no inside / outside in a nondual realization that penetrates the self.
        • So then, it does make sense to value all aspects of reality, not just yourself and others, but treating it as one unbroken gestalt
        • The concept of poverty mentality is useful here, David Loy refers to this as the "Lack project": https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=poverty+mentality
  2. Jul 2022
    1. For what purpose? So that the process of what Becker calls “self-transcendence” may begin. And he describes the process of self-transcendence this way: Man breaks through the bounds of merely cultural heroism; he destroys the character lie that had him perform as a hero in the everyday social scheme of things; and by doing so he opens himself up to infinity, to the possibility of cosmic heroism …. He links his secret inner self, his authentic talent, his deepest feelings of uniqueness … to the very ground of creation. Out of the ruins of the broken cultural self there remains the mystery of the private, invisible, inner self which yearned for ultimate significance. …This invisible mystery at the heart of [the] creature now attains cosmic significance by affirming its connection with the invisible mystery at the heart of creation. “This,” he concludes, “is the meaning of faith.” Faith is the belief that despite one’s “insignificance, weakness, death, one’s existence has meaning in some ultimate sense because it exists within an eternal and infinite scheme of things brought about and maintained to some kind of design by some creative force (90, 9 1).” This, then, is what we might call good faith, not a flight into some immortality system. And clearly, some Christians, some Buddhists–at least the Zen Buddhists Becker himself mentions!–have faith in this sense, a faith that Becker characterizes as growing out of tasting one’s own death, embracing one’s own nothingness, and affirming–not a known ultimate meaningful–but an “invisible mystery” of ultimate meaning.

      Embrace the mystery, the sacred - accepting that one will be gone forevermore is a mighty task as our culture teaches us to seek recognition. The last thing we want to be is unrecognized, a nobody. And yet, when we are dead and dissipated back into the rest of the world, that is exactly what we will become.

      But we have to accept that reality before we can build and think beyond it to a deeper possibility of meaning. Reality brought us forth to begin with. Every moment is already sacred.

  3. Oct 2021