Once upon a time I, SchrodingersDog, dreamed that I was a butterfly, a butterfly flying about, enjoying itself. I did not know that I was SchrodingersDog. Suddenly I awoke, and veritably was SchrodingersDog again. But I do not know whether it was I dreaming that I was a butterfly, or whether I am a butterfly dreaming that I am SchrodingersDog.
SchrodingersDog the butterfly
- Thread starter SchrodingersDog
- Start date
The one true idea is an anti idea, the end of all other ideas and all desires. The final idea to overcome is the idea of the self. By overcoming this, true compassion and true morality arises. Annihilation of the ego is where it's at. To desire this is absurd.
Now, that's just dead-on wrong. To become moral means to desire to act in a moral way. Without a notion of self, one cannot conceive of an action of the body. Without this conception, it doesn't matter if an action actually takes place-- it cannot be moral. Note that realizing this truth doesn't even require an argument about possible moral qualities of any action or inaction.
The term ?morality? can be used either
1. descriptively to refer to a code of conduct put forward by a society or,
a. some other group, such as a religion, or
b. accepted by an individual for her own behavior or
2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons
Destruction of "self" refers to a subjective experience, while morality is in existance only because we're sharing our experience with others. Having no notion of self is not the same as having no notion of others.
1. descriptively to refer to a code of conduct put forward by a society or,
a. some other group, such as a religion, or
b. accepted by an individual for her own behavior or
2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons
Destruction of "self" refers to a subjective experience, while morality is in existance only because we're sharing our experience with others. Having no notion of self is not the same as having no notion of others.
All of your points require selfhood, even number 2. To consider how a person would or could act, especially concerning motivation, is to imagine a template-person, always fashioned after the self, acting in that way. You have no way of conceiving of the inner state of anyone but yourself... You can conceive of motivations other than your own, but only in relation to what you've experienced in the past (and perhaps are experiencing at that self-same moment).
To be a person who had achieved destruction of the self, and remembering what it was to have a self (which would be necessary to understand morality), would mean that one would have to resurrect the self for that time. One could switch back afterwards, but I can't allow that one could have self and no-self at once in the same single consciousness.
Destruction of self would have to be only partially a subjective experience; without a subject, it can't be subjective, can it? So the moment of approach would be the last possible moment to have a subjective experience. What type of experience is not subjective?
TheLonelyPhoenix
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Toastedlightly
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It seems to me jvarszegi that you should think of the state of "selfless" as taking place in a vacuum without regard to the rest of the selfs out there. Most people feel that without other people there's little use for morality. To take ?morality? to refer to an actually existing code of conduct is quite likely to lead to some form of relativism. The process that leads to ego destruction may be impossible if at that time you're thinking of how the process is impacting your morals with regards to others. Morality exists in society whether we follow it or not, and that's the main reason for the cliche of the solitary monk in the cave seeking enlightenment. By escaping society he seeks to leave behind the expected morals of his peers but if the process is truly enlightening he will in the end achieve a state described in #1b, and probably but not necessarily #2. The idea is that a perfect moral life for you may be lived without striving to be moral or even knowing what the moral ideal would be, and most importantly that you will not see your "self" as living this life, it will just be lived. Among those who use ?morality? normatively, different specifications of the conditions under which all rational persons would put forward a code of conduct result in different kinds of moral theories, so when describing loss of ego, morality fits here best. When considering the motivations of others, compassion fits better.
I do think there are a few "event horizons" on the path to enlightenment, so you're right in thinking that there literally is a last possible moment to consider yourself subjective before taking this particular step.
I do think there are a few "event horizons" on the path to enlightenment, so you're right in thinking that there literally is a last possible moment to consider yourself subjective before taking this particular step.
They like giving the white man dreams and headaches, like the Asian Montezuma's Revenge. Thank Buddha no asians hang out on AT, what with their disdain of technology.
What are these principles of moral conduct? I imagine that your scheme would perfectly well encompass a moral computer, or a home appliance such as a toaster that lived a perfectly selfless life according to the dictates that all rational home appliances would be expected (by some) to live under.
I see the main problem, now that you mention it, as this: you cannot stipulate any set of rules for living a perfect moral life that will be agreed to by all rational people. Not all ancient Chinese philosophers agreed on even fundamental concepts, as I'm sure you know. You're stuck by your dependence on "rational people", or else you have to say that the perfect principles exist whether or not anyone chooses to follow them. Without being able to state these moral precepts, they achieve a mystical, Platonic quality, except with the additional fault that they cannot even be imagined (except by very, um, egotistical people). Like it or not, morality is a normative phenomenon, although it is often rooted more in basic human needs than is ethics; it is human. It smells of bread and babies, not karma.
The scientific method has conquered all religion because it is the only way ever found by the human mind for something to be proven; of course, sometimes theories are "proven" and later cast down, but these exceptions only underscore the usefulness of science in general. Science has very deep philosophical underpinnings, and the scientific method represents an acknowledgement by the best deep thinkers of the past several thousand years: a realization that we must operate by consensus because there's nothing better.
I have met several people in the past who claimed to have achieved selflessness during meditation. The stories they tell have the feel of a drug newbie's tales of acid highs; the people that tell them always seem on the make. They don't seem to me to bear the mark of a deeply changing experience. If selflessness is achieved, how often do you reckon it happens?
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