Paco Dennis
SF VIP
- Location
- Mid-Missouri
"A person, place or thing is just an idea invented to freeze the fluid flow of the world into objects that can be labeled and manipulated by adroit but shallow modes of mind. Beyond and behind these snapshots we take for ourselves is a vast and unnamable process.
Of all the words we use to disguise the hollowness of the human condition, none is more influential than “myself.” It consists of a collage of still images—name, gender, nationality, profession, enthusiasms, relationships—that are renovated from time to time, but otherwise are each a relic from one particular experience or another.
It’s not that the self does not exist, but that it is as cobbled-together and transient as everything else.
To be aware is to be aware of something. Yet as everyone knows—everyone who has lost themselves for a few precious moments in music or dance or sport, or even sex—one can be fully aware of objects without the corresponding creation of the subject. Selfing is optional.
When an object is known by means of an organ, a moment of contact is born. This is the elemental unit of experience upon which our world of experience is constructed, and is an event that occurs rather than an entity that exists. Perception and feeling also arise in conjunction with this moment of contact, and the whole arisen bundle is further conditioned by a particular intentional stance or attitude. All this amounts to an elegant, but selfless, interdependent arising of physical and mental phenomena, in response to the presentation of information at a sense door."
This is from an article on a popular Buddhist web site. I excluded references to Buddhist religious method, and wanted to emphasize the importance of being aware that all things are temporary...constantly changing...never the same....not a noun. Noun's can often be pictures frozen in time.
https://tricycle.org/magazine/self-verb/
Of all the words we use to disguise the hollowness of the human condition, none is more influential than “myself.” It consists of a collage of still images—name, gender, nationality, profession, enthusiasms, relationships—that are renovated from time to time, but otherwise are each a relic from one particular experience or another.
It’s not that the self does not exist, but that it is as cobbled-together and transient as everything else.
To be aware is to be aware of something. Yet as everyone knows—everyone who has lost themselves for a few precious moments in music or dance or sport, or even sex—one can be fully aware of objects without the corresponding creation of the subject. Selfing is optional.
When an object is known by means of an organ, a moment of contact is born. This is the elemental unit of experience upon which our world of experience is constructed, and is an event that occurs rather than an entity that exists. Perception and feeling also arise in conjunction with this moment of contact, and the whole arisen bundle is further conditioned by a particular intentional stance or attitude. All this amounts to an elegant, but selfless, interdependent arising of physical and mental phenomena, in response to the presentation of information at a sense door."
This is from an article on a popular Buddhist web site. I excluded references to Buddhist religious method, and wanted to emphasize the importance of being aware that all things are temporary...constantly changing...never the same....not a noun. Noun's can often be pictures frozen in time.
https://tricycle.org/magazine/self-verb/
