Some say that “life is pain”; the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus suggested the idea that “life is pleasure”; the late Spanish poet Calderón de la Barca wrote “Life is a Dream”, in this written work Segismundo claims that life is a frenzy, an illusion, a shadow, a fiction, a dream; S. Kierkegaard has been quoted as saying “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced”; and for JK “Religion is not separate from life; on the contrary it is life itself.” But for this conditioned and insignificant poster, these phrases are no more than fragmentary points of view of life put into words, surely there are many more, and points of view are not absolute conclusions, they are more like beliefs based on experience. To have a point of view of life is something like coming up with an idea about life after having looked at life through a colored lens – what you see is what you get. But if I say that life is pain, I wonder, who taught me what pain is?
When thought says or writes that “thought is illusion”, it is lying, stating a falsehood.
Thought is conceptuality, using words and images that represent actuality for the purpose of communication. This process is not illusion and is not practiced to mislead or deceive, though it can be used for that purpose, as you have demonstrated here.
Awareness may be truth, but the conditioned brain is less interested in truth than in what it chooses to believe is true. You believe that thought is illusion because you’re less interested in inquiring into what thought actually is than in what you choose to believe about truth.
By adopting a view of life, any view, trivializes it by ‘enclosing’ it in thought? In a conclusion?
When awareness is too much to actively respond to and one can do no more than behold what it can do nothing about, one feels hopelessly useless and desires to be reactive, decisive, effectual. But this is a betrayal of awareness and sensitivity for the sake of being “normal”, respectable, acceptable to others instead of being what one actually is.
If self-betrayal is a colored lens that distorts awareness to suit one’s purpose, and after years of serving this purpose this lens is seen as a cursed thing to be disposed of, dissolved, can innocence lost be recovered by being reactive, decisive, effectual?
Yes, thought is illusion. Technology in the hands of a narsistic is as destructive as psychological thought to the mind.
So thought is of the dead past. But it is a great tool to fix physical problems…for example if I have a problem with my roof thought helps me to fix it .
Yes, it’s called “confusion”.
You’re saying that thought is an illusion because it is mistaken for a thinker, but the thinker is the illusion, and the mistake is made by the brain’s ignorance of what it is doing.
Thank you, danmcderm, for this response; please allow me to add to this idea of trivializing. If I look at “what is”, which is constantly changing, and stay with it in complete silence, then I remain present not to life but to expressions or manifestations of life – sheer movement everywhere – without the interference of thought. As much as I would like to capture the wholeness of this experience I cannot because it is too immense, I can capture only a fragment of it, and after doing so I give that fragment a name and by naming it I commit it to thought, memory, knowledge, and now I have something on which to build a point of view that trivializes life. For me, the error in this process of “inventing” a point of view of life is, namely, to confuse what has been seen – movement, either total or partial – with an idea of something that cannot be either perceived or thought.
Yes fully agree with you. Thought whether practical or psychological, it a process in the brain and not an illusion. What may be illusory is the entity as ‘I’ created by thought. But which contributes more to sustain this illusory ‘I’ - psychological thought? Has practical thought no part to play ?
It isn’t practical to have illusions, so I would say that practical thought has “no part to play” in sustaining the illusion of the thinker of thoughts.
The deliberate thought the brain uses to solve problems, communicate, etc. is practical thought. When there is no problem to solve and no need to communicate, practical thought is quiet, on stand-by, so to speak.
But psychological thought serves only to sustain the illusion of I, the thinker, so it goes on constantly in the background when practical thought operates, and in the foreground when practical thought is quiet. This constancy of psychological thought prevents the silence and emptiness that reveals the illusory nature of the self, the thinker, I, me, mine.
So thought is illusion. Thought is false. Thought has no relationship with truth only with other illusions.
Therefore thought is useless.
Your post is confusing perhaps because you don’t differentiate between ‘practical’ and ‘psychological’ thinking?
(@Inquiry gives a good description of both above in post #30, I think.)
mind is a tricky thing;;IF there is suffering, there must be “un-suffering”.
what is suffer, if there is no opposite …?
Thought is response of memory. Can you respond to the challenge of life with practical knowledge? You see a tree and the practical knowledge prevents seeing actual thing. One has a lot of technical knowledge but it is useless in solving human problems because it is outdated.
Life is movement. Thought having ‘named’ everything cannot ‘move’ with it. Only ,as you say, the brain when silent can partake.
Also the ‘movement of life’ seems to hold little interest for thought?
Thank you, Inquiry, for this response, I can truly relate to much of what you have written here. The one question I have regarding your response is, does awareness really demand a response to it of any kind? JK has said, “To be aware is to see, in the very moment, this whole process of judging, evaluating, the conclusions, the conformity, the acceptances, the denials.” Thus, a mind in awareness should neither react nor expect a reaction. If awareness does not demand a reaction, then any demand for a reaction, while in awareness, would have to be an interference of thought – i.e., fear – and would be a betrayal of awareness and sensitivity.
All the knowledge I have accumulated over time – memories of experiences, ideas, opinions, beliefs, etc. – is the colored lens through which I look, is what distorts my seeing, is the criteria or “measure” I use to judge and condemn, all this is what makes me guilty. Is it possible to restore lost innocence? Transformation moves one forward, not backward. Can a butterfly go back to being a caterpillar? No; through transformation one is raised to a higher quality of being human, from which there is no going back, and to a higher quality of innocence. JK has said, “Innocence is freedom from the burden of experience”, “It is not experiences that corrupt the mind but what they leave behind, the residue, the scars, the memories.”
I am not here to proove or show someone’s stupidity in here at all. I am here to swim along the teachings as far as I can…
You ask if awareness needs to respond to anything, then you talk about reaction.
The conditioned brain reacts. Presumably, the brain that is free, unlimited, is choicelessly aware and perceives directly does not react - it responds, whether its response is to do or say nothing or to act responsibly.
Is it possible to restore lost innocence? Transformation moves one forward, not backward.
Innocence is innocence. Don’t confuse the matter with going forward or backward or having anything to do with returning to “being a caterpillar”.
The conditioned brain is not innocent because it is self-absorbed, enclosed and limited, and the innocent brain is not enclosed and limited. It’s that simple. Don’t complicate it.
Pain makes one to act and do something to eliminate it. Like tooth pain makes one to keep the mouth clean and brush. If there was no toothache one would have lost all teeth and the organism would die from infection. So pain is important for the survival of the organism. But psychological pain is not necessary for survival. When one is hurt one hurts others .
Psychological hurt is really the root of evil.
We get hurt as children as we try to ‘fit in’, to be accepted by those we admire…a ‘self-image’ forms and it gets ‘hurt’. It continues into adulthood and still gets hurt. And as you say, it hurts back…the self-image (“me and mine”) is made up of thought, feelings, experiences of the past. It rules one’s life. How does it come to an end? Not be ‘improved’, but end? So the brain is free of its ‘occupancy’?