Notes on bygone days: On Philosophizing as a Centipede.

24.05.2017.

From confusion on to the new level of fusion. I’m caught up in this seemingly endless stream of ups and downs, mood swings between befuddlement and clarity. All metaphysical theories aside: “Simply think of this instability if inner life, affective and cognitive discombobulation, angry frustration at things that do not go your way as saṃsāra.” Not that there is another existence, but that re-birth, again-becoming simply is this roller-coaster of affective and cognitive confusion of the everyday existence. Compare this to Sue Hamilton’s “The need to clarify one’s mind so that one can get rid of ignorance and ‘see things as they really are’ high-lights what in my view is perhaps the most central feature of what Buddhist teachings are about.” (The “I” of the Beholder, p. 59).

25.05.17.

The Buddha was not a speculative philosopher in the sense the Abhidharmikas were. If one reads the early canon perceptively, one gets the impression that Buddha would have been quite critical of the overall project of Abhidharma. Therefore, one could say that philosophizing in the Buddhist tradition begins with Abhidharma. Therefore, we must look at the Abhidharma as a speculative project, evolving through centuries. Though the Abhidharmikas might have thought otherwise, their project is just a series of intellectual attempts at carrying on the speculative enterprise of Abhidharma itself.

Abhidharmakośa-Bhāṣya of Vasubandhu is like the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Ideally its contents keep evolving, though the main idea of comprehensive and exhaustive knowledge remains the same.

26.05.2017.

On Choosing the Wisdom for Life: Avoiding Extremes

I’ve been suffering not only from an unbalanced diet, but also from the imbalance of affective and cognitive extremes. One of them, among the welter of other major or minor cognitive dissonances, is the inability to balance appropriate sources of wisdom to guide my life. Hitherto it has been either 1) Everything Ancient is to be preferred to everything modern; the Ancients (be they the Greeks, the Romans, the Indians or the Chinese) have always been better guides, therefore one needs always to look upon them for consolation and admonition; the age we live in now, contrary to what the majority thinks, is the Age of Degradation. Or 2) We live in the best possible age, since we have evolved and progressed beyond the childhood of the Ancients; the modern forms of life, preferably scientific, are far superior to the Ancient wisdom. Now, isn’t the time ripe for abandoning these extremes ans acknowledging that both the Ancients, the Moderns, and the Contemporaries all have something to contribute towards the strategy of amelioration of human condition, in reducing anxiety, suffering and violence caused by the elements not only of the natural world but by the crooked timber of humanity?

28.05.2017.

On the Anti-Metaphysical Attitude.

The end of metaphysics? Which metaphysics exactly? You can’t take a shit without certain amount of metaphysics!

29.05.2017.

On the Metaphor of ‘Mind as a Computer’.

Take the metaphor of the mind as a computer, for example. Of course, minds are not computers, although some of their aspects resemble processing of information. Nevertheless, it is simply a metaphor. What does it achieve? What is its usefulness? What does it leave out? (It leaves out embodiment).

So when one approaches citta-caitta and Abhidharma model of mind in general, doctrinal disagreements notwithstanding, what does it achieve? What does it leave out? It achieves the reduction of all psycho-physical states to the atomic existents dharma. It leaves out life as we experience it.

This morning, during bhāvanā:

What does it feel like to? Not only it feels like to be me, or a bat, or else, but it also feels like to do something at a particular moment. It also feels like remembering something at a particular moment. This feeling (vedanā 受) is important. The contents of this feeling vary from person to person, but the function is universal.

On Philosophizing as a Centipede.

Doing philosophy oftentimes is like a centipede stopping and asking itself how can it move those legs in unison and not trip. It stops, askes, starts to walk again, and trips.

* The Centipede Dilemma/effect/syndrome. The effect is also known as hyper-reflection of Humphrey’s law (named after the English psychologist George Humphrey; 1889-1966).

If only this stopping and hyper-reflection brought any results. I would happily be a centipede. For now I just trip over the chunks of the ideas of others.