God is???

[The Undecided]

Thanks TU. I speculate more on how the whole of existence come into being, whether through a creative agent ie. a first cause or through an impersonal mechanism without the need to postulate a creative agent.

In that case have a look at the Chaos Theory, particularly the Mandelbrot Set. They show that through a feedback system, where the result of an equation becomes the beginning the the equation again and again, beautiful patterns emerge with the same identical pattern shown on every level. This simple feedback system is evident in the Gaia theory and in evolution where organisms must replicate, with some random mutations, and the environment favours those mutations best suited to it. One could say that this is evidence for design without a designer, or one could say that the universe is a self sustaining system and that is the way God designed it.

TU

 

[The Undecided]

To me, free will is an illusion.


I have problem with such monistic concept. How is it that I am part of the ocean of consciousness and yet does not have the consciousness of the ocean? In other words, I should be part of everyone else's consciousness, but yet the fact that each of us is only aware of our own consciousness and not others seemed to contradict such monistic idea.

Hi OAT,

Thank you for your response. This is how I see it. We have a body, we have a mind (or self), but we also have a cosmic self that is connected to all the underlying consciousness of the universe. This is what is referred to as the soul, and it is part of what is referred to as God. It is all one consciousness. Most of us cannot hear or feel this deeper level of cosmic self because there is too much 'noise' on the surface. The mind is too preoccupied with day to day life. In order to connect with this deeper level one needs to do things like meditation or yoga where the mind allows the thoughts that we constantly have about our past and our future, to move to the background leaving us able be in the present and connect with the underlying consciousness. This ability is evident in things like Reiki, Prayer, Medicine Men, Voodoo, Meditation, etc.

When Buddhists go on three year retreats, were there is only ten or twenty people around for miles and no one speaks, there is a sensitivity that develops were each person can sense the emotions of the others, even if they are in seperate huts twenty feet from each other. I also watched an interview with such people who said that when the planes were crashed into the Twin Towers they felt the pain and misery, not knowing where it came from or what had happened, as they do not allow information from the world outside of the retreat to come in.

In answer to your question most of us do "not have the consciousness of the ocean" because we don't know how to connect with it. This does not mean that it is not there.

TU

 

[The Undecided]

If someone wants to postulate a "one" consciousness, then he should also postulate a mechanism by which a partial consciousness of the "one" consciousness is disconnected with the "one" consciousness. This will help to explain why each of us is an individual.

However, when the partial consciousness connects with the "one" consciousness, does the individual loses its individuality? If one holds to the concept of a "one" consciousness,then the answer must be a yes. So eventually, there will be left only this "one" consciousness and no individuals. If so, all the sages that manages to merge with the one consciousness will no longer exist as individual sages and we should not have the existence of individual sages in our midst. This does not seem to accord with the reality that there are many individual sages in the past and at present.

I once heard an explanation of reincarnation that might help here. Imagine a bucket of water with the sun shining down on it. The sun represents God. The reflection of the sun on the surface of the water represents the soul, a reflection of God. The water represents the mind, its contents representing the purity of the mind, eg: dirt, algea, etc, represent memories, thoughts, addictions an so on. The bucket represents the body. It is the interaction of all of these things which make up the individual. When we die the water is simply tipped into a new bucket. The purity of the water has changed, the bucket is different and the individual person is different, but the reflection is still the same. The body, the mind and the cosmic consciousness, or soul, are different part of who we are, but together they make us individuals. Our cosmic consciousness makes us one.

TU

 

[The Undecided]

Are you saying that the Buddhist view is that there are only "pre-meditated", but never spontaneous or reflexive, acts of free will? I think I can agree with that.

Still, it sounds a bit paradoxical to suggest that there is no free will in the present, for how could one consult one's understanding and decide anything freely if one's karma could dictate the pattern of one's thoughts?

But maybe the Buddha's point is that such mental freedom exists, but there is a time delay before it becomes useful for controlling one's actions. It is only one's plans that are freely made, never one's actions.

I wonder how this contrasts with Daoist views on spontaneity?


eudaimonia,

Mark

Thanks Mark, the reason, according to my understanding of Buddhist teaching, that we have no free will in the present is that what happens to us in the present, and our perception of it, are the result of karmic seeds that we have 'planted' in the past because of our actions.

To put it another way, everything we do leaves an imprint on our mind, a karmic imprint, and this then causes us to make the decisions we make. What happens to us and how we percieve what happens to us come from the same karmic seed. This is because everything we experience is due to our perception of it. For example, we often meet irritating people in our day to day lives. But they are only irritating because we perceive them as such. If we decide that they are not irritating then poof we has disappeared an irritating person and made them into a different kind of person. And we only perceive them as irritating because we have irritated others in the past and this has left an imprint on our mind. This process has a controlling influence on how we perceive things and therefore the decisions we make.

Further to this we can not decide what we are going to do in the present because by the time we have made a decision some time has past. So really we are living our lives perpetually focused on the future. We can not control what happens to us in this moment, we can only make decisions about the moments to come. Our ability to make these decisions is based on our understanding of the above process and whether we can rise above our selfish drives and see perception as an illusion formed by our karma. Only then can we make free choices.

TU

 

[Eudaimonist]

Thanks Mark, the reason, according to my understanding of Buddhist teaching, that we have no free will in the present is that what happens to us in the present, and our perception of it, are the result of karmic seeds that we have 'planted' in the past because of our actions.

To put it another way, everything we do leaves an imprint on our mind, a karmic imprint, and this then causes us to make the decisions we make. What happens to us and how we percieve what happens to us come from the same karmic seed. This is because everything we experience is due to our perception of it. For example, we often meet irritating people in our day to day lives. But they are only irritating because we perceive them as such. If we decide that they are not irritating then poof we has disappeared an irritating person and made them into a different kind of person. And we only perceive them as irritating because we have irritated others in the past and this has left an imprint on our mind. This process has a controlling influence on how we perceive things and therefore the decisions we make.

Further to this we can not decide what we are going to do in the present because by the time we have made a decision some time has past. So really we are living our lives perpetually focused on the future. We can not control what happens to us in this moment, we can only make decisions about the moments to come. Our ability to make these decisions is based on our understanding of the above process and whether we can rise above our selfish drives and see perception as an illusion formed by our karma. Only then can we make free choices.

TU

Now I am disagreeing again, at least in part. We aren't "controlled" by misperceptions. We are mislead by them. There is a difference.

IOWs, we make a decision -- a freewilled choice -- based on false information. Garbage in, garbage out. Misperceptions cannot take away free will, but only mislead.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[OAT]

In that case have a look at the Chaos Theory, particularly the Mandelbrot Set. They show that through a feedback system, where the result of an equation becomes the beginning the the equation again and again, beautiful patterns emerge with the same identical pattern shown on every level. This simple feedback system is evident in the Gaia theory and in evolution where organisms must replicate, with some random mutations, and the environment favours those mutations best suited to it. One could say that this is evidence for design without a designer, or one could say that the universe is a self sustaining system and that is the way God designed it.

TU

Thanks, but they don't go beyond the physical. Besides, while chaotic, the process is in effect still rather deterministic.

If this is evidence for design without designer, I would prefer the simpler explanation of no designer. Introducing a designer creates far more questions and subsequent internal contradictions.

 

[OAT]

I once heard an explanation of reincarnation that might help here. Imagine a bucket of water with the sun shining down on it. The sun represents God. The reflection of the sun on the surface of the water represents the soul, a reflection of God. The water represents the mind, its contents representing the purity of the mind, eg: dirt, algea, etc, represent memories, thoughts, addictions an so on. The bucket represents the body. It is the interaction of all of these things which make up the individual. When we die the water is simply tipped into a new bucket. The purity of the water has changed, the bucket is different and the individual person is different, but the reflection is still the same. The body, the mind and the cosmic consciousness, or soul, are different part of who we are, but together they make us individuals. Our cosmic consciousness makes us one.

TU

If you define God as something that actively cause all these things to happen, then I have a problem. If you define God as something impersonal, then it is fine with me.

 

[Bhaktajan II]

If you define OAT as something impersonal,
and everyone knew it,
does his poo exist in the forest?

then it is fine with whomever . . . except prehaps for 'nowhere-man' . . . thank God for forest dwellers' contentment.