Originally posted by PalynkaWow! Thank you!
I love it that you actually manage to be precise (and argue for preciseness) in your explanations of Buddhist terminology and concepts. It's a feat in itself!
I confess that I usually I felt that most people use such vague concepts to mask the cognitive dissonance in their own thinking. I think I am now more tolerant (even if not completely 😛) of the use ...[text shortened]... ords just to say your efforts are much, much appreciated. Maybe I'm losing my cutting edge. 🙂
In my understanding, such things as Zen koans—and other paradoxical/symbolic/metaphorical language—is (or ought to be) intended only as an attempt to elicit (to use bbarr’s word) the experience of awareness-before-thought/conceptualization. That is not, as I think I noted earlier, “empty mind,” but simply present mind—before any “painting wings on the river.” That, and the realization that the “I-thought-complex” is derivative (albeit a natural process), is the point of meditation.
The bottom-ground self (and whatever “content” that entails) is prior to whatever mental content it itself makes. The danger in such statements is that they will be construed to imply an artificial separation: between mind and body, “I” and environment, the grammar of our consciousness from the syntax of the cosmos, awareness from being-aware of something, etc., etc.
I don’t have any problem with conceptualization or philosophical/religious speculation, per se. I do have a problem with confusing the thoughts about the thing (including thoughts about I) for the thing-itself. I am a Zennist; I am also a Camusian absurdist (strictly defined*)—among other things. My four-fold philosophical/spiritual philosophy has to do with—
(1) Absurdity (as described below).
(2) Transience.
(3) Non-separability (as indicated above; which includes problems of self-reference).
(4) Ineffability/mystery—which does not imply supernaturalism, but only that we are not (likely) the singular species for which no aspects of the natural cosmos transcend our cognitive capabilities.
* The absurd situation arises because we are beings who seek meaning, in a world that discloses—not meaning—but facts and patterns; from which we construct meaning, for which construction we are responsible.
Originally posted by jaywillI was not asking whether it was a problem for God. I was pointing out that it is a problem for you, a very very big problem. You clearly do not really want to think about it as you realize that your whole belief system will crumble if you cant actually get to heaven.
If you read the whole Bible perhaps you would surmise that these are not really obstacles for God.