Whenever I ask the zebras I know, they deflect.
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They can be like that.
Huh?..
I wouldn’t put it in such dramatic terms, but yes. Our hubris, our arrogant sense of being the most intelligent animals blocks us from communing with intelligence.
Because we mistakenly assume that intelligence is intellect, we never consider the possibility that it is not; that if intelligence is not an illusion, a fantasy, the only way to find out is for thought to cease and desist from its activity. If intelligence is real, actual, only an intellect humbled by its limitation can find out.
The stories we hold onto are so compelling! Without them we’re no-thing, the world is no-thing.
The ‘story ‘that “you are the world” implies something different?
“I am the world” is a story that points to no-story? It depends what you see: the finger or the moon.
I mostly see the finger, but sometimes the moon gets through.
Usually you’re giving the moon the finger?
A reasonable assumption, but is it true for you? Every thing is some-thing, be it fact or fiction. But what exactly separates one from the other?
Go fingure!
67% intellectually, 34% experientially. Which puts me slightly above 50%, I’ll take it.
I can’t imagine no-thing…can you?
I would say I can imagine absence: object-free empty space, for example. And I can imagine Buddhist emptiness. But I doubt it’s possible to imagine no-object, seems like an oxymoron.
So would you say that because you can imagine “object-free empty space” and “Buddhist emptiness”, that you know what they are, or that you have an idea of what they actually are…assuming they are actual?
But I doubt it’s possible to imagine no-object, seems like an oxymoron.
Yes, like, Don’t imagine an elephant.
I’d say my map is of fair to middling accuracy, i.e. reasonably good for a human. And yet there’s something fundamental I have never really gotten, a kind of essential blindspot.
But you can’t know how good your map is without the actual territory, so why be content with what may be a crappy map?
The map is untrustworthy and the territory is unknowable. Guess there’s nothin’ to do!
Right you are, but can you do nothin’?
Doing nothing for me usually means taking the path of least resistance, which usually means being driven by my conditioning. For a while I did (my version of) shikantaza, a stark Zen meditation style where the goal is to just sit, which is kinda sorta nothing-ish. I was reasonably good just sitting, it came quite naturally (after a while), but it wasn’t interesting or edifying enough for me. You?