Fooloso4 wrote:Although philosophy has become largely cerebral, ancient philosophy was a way of life that required discipline and practice in addition to thought and contemplation. There are some philosophers today who understand it in that way. They may not describe it as turning thought off but rather of attending to the whole person rather than an disembodied intellect and the Whole. Philosophy as transformative practice.
Ok, cool, perhaps you might introduce us to such philosophers and their works?
If thought emerged I think it occurred further down the evolutionary scale. Mammals think, they just have not developed rational modes of thought, language, imagination, and self-consciousness.
Yes, agreed, it's a continuum, not a hard dividing line. As I see it religion emerged as thought, and thus the perception of division, took on increasing prominence in the human experience. A key problem for religion is that it often (not always) turns to thought as the solution, when it is thought that is the problem.
Some commentators think they were responding to the worship of natural entities such as the sun as a god. Although that itself might already be a reflection imaginative thought.
I like the idea of Sun worship, not a bad plan. The worship of something tangible which can be experienced directly. And it's pretty logical too, given the central role the Sun plays in our existence.
But the idea of nature as a god or gods is already to have conceptualized nature.
Well, calling it nature, a collection of random mechanical forces, is to conceptualize it too.
My sense is that the god concept is a personalization of nature. You know, here we are in this beautiful deadly place. What is our relationship with where we find ourselves? This is the practical question, because this is something we can have some control over. The rational act is to be in love with reality, because what good does shaking our fist at the rain do? If personalizing reality in the form of a human-like character makes it easier to fall in love, if it gets the job done, it can fairly be called a rational act.
Yes, there's fantasy involved. But so when is that new? Here we great philosophers are, typing daily on this tiny forum as if it will accomplish something. As we type we enjoy the fantasy of performing a meaningful act. If that fantasy helps us be at peace with being nerds, so be it.
That we are thinking beings is not an illusion.
The word "being" implies a division between "the being" and "everything else". So let me ask you this. When does that glass of water you just drank become you? Where is the boundary between the water and you? This exercise demonstrates that we can draw those boundaries any number of places, thus the boundaries are convenient inventions of the human mind, and not some fixed property of reality.
Is it possible to experience the “suchness” of things, of things as they are without conceptual constructs?
Yes, it is possible. One just turns off the machine generating the concepts. Or more likely, turns the volume of that machine down. It's not complicated, but just as philosophy takes some patience and diligence, so does "a-philosophy". Philosophy and "a-philosophy" are complementary, because resting the mind helps sharpen it. And sharpening the mind helps us see the value of rest.
There are some who seek to do this and do not succeed.
My sense is that those who don't succeed are typically being greedy and trying to turn the process in to some kind of fantastical glorious esoteric becoming trip leading to profound permanent change etc, ie. just another form of mind stimulation. That is, they have defined success in such an extravagant manner as to torpedo their own project.
There are a few who claim to have done this but not always as a result of their efforts.
I suggest it's not practical to concern ourselves with the few, whatever they may have achieved. It's true that in any field there are rare people way out at the end of the talent bell curve, but um, so what? What's that got to do with us? Yes, Mozart could teach us how to play piano, but he couldn't teach us how to be a Mozart, so as you say, that's not a result of personal effort.
On the other hand, 'unity' is itself a mental construct, a concept that creates its own illusion of separateness.
Yes, all language reinforces the illusion of division, because it's made of thought. This tends to make such discussions highly problematic and self contradictory. As example, the phrase "we all are one" contains the word "we".
It may be that it is not possible to cure what you call the fundamental human predicament at all.
Yes, I agree. We can however seek to manage the human situation more skillfully.
It may be that that predicament is itself something we have created that we attempt to find an answers to. I do not think the solution is to stop thinking, simply because we cannot.
We can't stop thinking in a permanent way, agreed. But we can better manage thinking.
We can, however, become more aware of our thoughts and conceptual constructs. We can become more aware of the imposition of our pictures and frameworks on what we see. We can become aware of our mental chatter and mental traps and quiet them. We can learn to open ourselves to listen and look and experience, but to do so in an attempt to overcome the perception of separateness creates separateness.
These seem like wise words well put.
I would add only that the perception of separateness is not a fixed permanent part of the human condition. It's a by-product of thought. Thus, we can to some degree manage that perception by gaining better control of the on/off button for thought.
Is it not remarkable that as philosophers we invest so much energy in to sharpening the blade of thought, and yet we typically don't even know where the on/off button of this machine is? We're like gardeners who cut impressive complex patterns in the grass with our lawnmower, but we don't know how to turn the lawnmower off.
