From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Fri Nov 26 2004 - 16:18:48 GMT
Platt,
> You speak of thinking "in new ways" and a "new level of thinking" that
> uses the "logic of contradictory identity" that can answer the question
> "what am I."
>
> I'm curious. Can you give us a couple of concrete examples of this "new
> thinking" by writing a paragraph or two in "new thought" to illustrate
it?
It is not so much writing a paragraph or two in "new thought", but having a
different intellectual attitude to the old paradoxes. For example, DMB has
quoted Sri Ramana Maharshi a couple of times:
The world is illusory;
Brahman alone is real;
Brahman is the world.
In ordinary logic, this is simply self-contradictory. In the logic of
contradictory identity, it is accepted as "the way it is". Buddhism is
known as the Middle Way. Originally, this referred to avoiding the
lifestyle extremes of hedonism (pursuit of the transitory things of the
world) and ascetism (rejection of those things). With Nagarjuna, it also
became applied to avoiding either pole of an apparent paradox, but to learn
to see the two poles as necessarily in mutual contradiction, while being
mutually constituting. So, in considering the self, when one thinks of the
self as being a continuous, existing thing, to offset this with the
realization that I am not the same person today that I was yesterday, while
when one thinks that I am not the same person today that I was yesterday,
to point out that I am *aware* of the change, so there is a continuity
between yesterday's self and today's. Hence, the continuity points to
saying "the self exists", while the change points to saying "the self does
not exist", and so one says neither. Furthermore, the awareness of change
presupposes the continuity, while if there were nochange to be aware of,
there would be no awareness of continuity. This implies that awareness *is*
this interplay of continuity and change, and that the interplay of
continuity and change *is* what makes awareness happen. Thus, the step
toward thinking in terms of contradictory identity is that of going from
just treating the self as paradox to treating the self as a locus of
contradictory identity. Or, contradictory identity is not just a way to
think about the self, rather, contradictory identity is what makes the self
happen.
One can apply the same logic to DQ and SQ, but if one does, one gets
something different from the treatment of these as given in the MOQ. The
MOQ tends to idolize DQ at the expense of SQ, for example by assuming that
the mystical goal is to experience pure DQ by putting all SQ to sleep. But
the logic of contradictory identity will see that as going off the Middle
Way. DQ and SQ are contradictory identities, so it makes no sense to speak
of "pure [DQ] experience" which is then SQ-ized by intellect. Rather, DQ/SQ
interaction is what makes experience happen.
- Scott
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