what if, there is no *i*

I am not sure i will be able to recreate the essence of the conversation i had yesternight, but i will try.

I suppose it was an extremely logical direct conversation. But there is the end of it which i cant think is true even if it is logical. That being i am not I.

that appearance has no form; i am not seeing.
my Brain flips over and i think in terms of if that then this...... and this is borne of the implication of that and that and that.... see things are...

But he would then drone on in what really appears to be a circular kind of logic that ends again with there fore i am not.

baffling.

so i exist in my end of not-ness, wondering if there is a flaw in logic.

because no matter how true a thing is... it's implications don't seem to be my experience... it seems i cannot effect my reality according to my will if i am the seeing and the seen. Yet i sometimes see how my reality is completely the one i made. baffling.

hummm

well i know i am off some but... i hope the person wont mind if i quote him and poke at his effigy for all my two readers to see.

*was side tracked... it seems that i accidentally killed my praying mantis female. see i have them roaming freely in the kitchen to help with the roach problem. I am really hurt....

But i pondered as i was taking her nearly lifeless body outside...... was it nerves twitching or was it life?.... and recalling how firmly a human can hold on to the bear is-ness of life, sometimes by shear will when all means are exhausted.
I thought...

this bugs life force. it's conscious.. its will to exist as it is............ is it not the same as my own?

That superiority of race and morality infest themselves as an after thought... This creature's impulse and images of staying conscious are the same as mine. This critter might not be able to think to itself and imagine great poetry's about the winds and the yummy grasshoppers of its youth............ but then one cannot say..... i don't recall being a praying mantis.

unless.... in that whole written experience of what a mantis might be. i have made the appearance of a thing experienced as mantis......... and in the time that i physically experienced the mantis it was and i was it.

now i am not mantis...yet she... the mantis..... continues in her experience of either dieing or recovering in the grass.

i assume.

see that person i was talking with kept marking a place called.."belief"

i guess i am still very tripped up on apparent duality.

brb.....


Quothe.
" insanezenmistress : Wouldn't the world have to give up personal freedom to have the same logic.
RaaN : knowledge is a living thing as vital as humanity itself.. it grows and changes and self corrects... plenty of room for freedom.
insanezenmistress : individuality is akin to personal mythology. Is a personal belief system disdain-able? ( here observe the word disdain-able is to due with the author's not disdaining belief in the way as the Opponent.)
RaaN : true.. you'd have to believe you really exist
insanezenmistress : i think ; i believe i am part of an existence; and it is my perosnal mythology to fancy a war with my bugs.
RaaN: remember no-self.... phenomenology.. how seeing is not found in the eye or the object or the light between.

RaaN : you can alter your way of understanding things to suit a given problem and just as easily discard it in another case.. that's freedom.... however to abandon your senses and lose your integrity would be irrational if not insane.

.......................

Well.... so lets think.......

seeing is not seen in the eye.

at first glance we say to ourselves...it is obvious that i see what it there... right?

then he goes.....

RaaN : association by similarity is primitive infantile thinking btw.
As a child i though the clouds made the wind.. and the trees, cos i'd see them wave.and when i waved a branch it made wind.
insanezenmistress : and Do you think i am engaged an association by similarity in another way?

RaaN : well thinking that having a rational mind would prevent people from having individuality and freedom, that's kind of a nonsequitor. Critical thinking is a learned skill eh.
insanezenmistress : oh hush

........

yes i got stomped ...
well as time would have it i shall have to copy and edit this conversation later on.


Leaving you a Cliff hanger.... in the mean time read the Surangama sutra.....TWICE!

THEN

Ponder this segway quote from possibly the same Person toward another person that touches on the same ideas here expounded.....

""Not-self" does not mean that the personality does not exist, and it does not mean that people are unintelligent and can't talk. It means that there is no being or entity in the midst of those mechanisms and experiences.

Any time I've asked you to demonstrate that there is a being present or necessary for you to have experiences or to talk about them or to feel that you exist, you either ignore the question or give a self-referential answer, meaning that you use the question as the answer.

For instance, if I ask you "how do you know there's a self responsible for you talking" you will say "well if there were no self I wouldn't be talking." That's not a proof, just a belief. I've asked you to tell me where the self is and what it looks like.

Use famous methods for either showing that there is nothing there behind the concept of self, or forcing the person who sincerely answers the question to give a detailed explanation of what constitutes self. You do neither.

You either give a vague answer like "the whole universe" or "the universe looking back at itself in the mirror," or else go back to stating that the fact that we can do, think and feel proves there is a self, which it does not.

Your mystical experiences are valid in their own right, but there is no rigor in how you connect those experiences with the concept of self and not-self as used by Buddhists."

*groans... wait till next blog....*