A debate on suffering & enlightenment, micro & macro and transience & permanence...

Here is a transcript I wrote of a discussion I recently had with a friend. I think it is worthy food for thought.

It is a general discussion regarding the following quotation, but it ends up going pretty deeply into buddhist philosophy, so I posted it here:

quote:
"2. The origin of suffering is attachment.

The origin of suffering is attachment to transient things and the ignorance thereof. Transient things do not only include the physical objects that surround us, but also ideas, and -in a greater sense- all objects of our perception. Ignorance is the lack of understanding of how our mind is attached to impermanent things. The reasons for suffering are desire, passion, ardour, pursuit of wealth and prestige, striving for fame and popularity, or in short: craving and clinging. Because the objects of our attachment are transient, their loss is inevitable, thus suffering will necessarily follow. Objects of attachment also include the idea of a "self" which is a delusion, because there is no abiding self. What we call "self" is just an imagined entity, and we are merely a part of the ceaseless becoming of the universe."

response a:
so ideas, physical objects and pretty much all of our perception is transient? What is left after that? I mean you can't really kill an idea -- ideas, at least, must have some permanence. This is saying that one should avoid attachment in order to avoid suffering, but humans can't really live without attachment. Not just attachment to each other, but especially attachment to these things that the quote says are transient; the components of physical reality.
Attachment to physical reality is necessary in order to function within it, which kind of implies that the quote is saying "become insane or suffer." But then again, one certainly has to maintain the ability to disconnect himself from his physical reality when necessary.
And then, when you think about it this way the quote seems to be about our attachment to physical reality, while it is supposed to be about our attachment to transience, but doesn't that imply that we should seek not to disconnect from that which is transient, but to attach ourselves to something of permanence? And at that point we have to define for ourselves what we think of as permanent -- will we think of permanence within the bounds of this 'transient' physical reality or will we think of it within the bounds of our own minds (wherein nothing can be more permanent than ones own life and everything is, ultimately, transient)? The quote goes on to say that the origin of suffering is attachment to transient things and the ignorance thereof, but how can one liberate himself from this ignorance without some form of permanence through which to guide himself between the worlds of the not sane enough and the world of the far-too-sane? Where will we find this permanence so that we may transfer freely between attachment and unattachment to the world of transience?
Identifying the origin of a problem does little to solve it when its solution is permanence and one goes off saying that 'ideas and.. all objects of our perception' are transient.
Some component of our perception must have some constancy. I believe that ideas are immutable. And so are patterns.

person b:
the ideas will end as the mind will end, there is nothing that is permanent as it will all end, even if an idea persists through many minds, it will come to an end when there are no minds left - the quote was only the 2nd of the 4 Noble Truths, I'll post the rest
The Four Noble Truths
"1. This is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering."

2. This is the noble truth of the origin of suffering: it is this craving which leads to renewed existence, accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there, that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for existence, craving for extermination.

3. This is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering: it is the remainderless fading away and cessation of that same craving, the giving up and relinquishing of it, freedom from it, nonreliance on it.

4. This is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering: it is the Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration."

person a:
"will we think of permanence within the bounds of this 'transient' physical reality or will we think of it within the bounds of our own minds (wherein nothing can be more permanent than ones own life and everything is, ultimately, transient)? "

"the ideas will end as the mind will end, there is nothing that is permanent as it will all end, even if an idea persists through many minds, it will come to an end when there are no minds left - the quote was only the 2nd of the 4 Noble Truths, I'll post the rest"

-- so you answered my question. You believe that permanence is bound to the physical reality of one's own mind?

person b:
Eightfold path

1. Right view : Viewing reality as it is, not just as it appears to be
2. Right intention : Intention of renunciation, freedom and harmlessness
3. Right speech : Speaking in a truthful and non-hurtful way
4. Right action : Acting in a non-harmful way
5. Right livelihood : A non-harmful livelihood
6. Right effort : Making an effort to improve
7. Right mindfulness : Awareness to see things for what they are with clear consciousness;
being aware of the present reality within oneself, without any craving or aversion
8. Right concentration : Correct meditation or concentration

Ajahn Sucitto describes the path as "a mandala of interconnected factors that support and moderate each other. The eight factors of the path are not to be understood as stages, in which each stage is completed before moving on to the next. Rather, they are understood as eight significant dimensions of one's behaviour—mental, spoken, and bodily—that operate in dependence on one another; taken together, they define a complete path, or way of living.

I believe that there is no such thing as permanence, therefore it is not bound to anything, as it is not so -

person a:
But if patterns and ideas are immutable -- and I personally believe that they are -- could I not argue that one could think up an idea -- a specific chain of thought , a literal pattern of connections in the brain -- and then transfer that idea and then he could die and that same pattern would exist within the mind of another living human? Wouldn't it follow that ideas can have permanence transcending the physical reality contained by one transient human's mind?

- the quote just raises so many questions!

person b:
what will happen when there are no minds left?
Ultimately, we can assume there will be none at a point, thusly ideas are impermanent despite transmission

person a:
The pattern still exists, whether it lies within the neurological sequences that give life to an idea within a human mind or within the expansion and contraction of the universe, itself, the pattern is immutable.

person b:
and when the universe ends? where will the pattern be

person a:
Go up one macrocosm. And start again.

person b:
in any case, the Buddha was more about addressing an individual's psychological relationship to impermanence, and not the metaphysical applications of impermanence, because it involved a lot of conjecture, there was no way for them in 500 B.C to determine the ultimate mechanism of the universe (how do you know it operates in "go up one macrocosm and start again" assuredly)

person a:
An end to this form of suffering lies in permanence and permanence lies in immutable patterns and on the human scale (a microcosm in comparison to the terms we're now talking in), an idea is a permanent pattern. It at least transcends the boundaries of your own life, if not those of our scale and dimension. But it is not impossible to find patterns that transcend the macrocosm.

On a human scale, though, I believe that the answer lies within the ideas and the patterns that take place in our brains for which they are responsible. Hell, Om is as big an idea as any. If you want me to adress permanence beyond human mortality, I'll tell you to look to math, but we don't really need to do that if the only problem we're trying to address is our own suffering.

It seems as if many people, these days, have the postmodernist notion that life and especially humanity lacks an essential nature; that if you keep peeling the onion, you'll just keep finding more and more layers, but I think that this is a flawed way of thinking.

person :
you mean, let's say, scientifically valid laws of how the universe operates? water boiling at 100c, carbon being 6 electrons, protons, neutrons?
I suppose one could be psychologically dependent on the permanence of science, but even then, there are scientific revolutions that render past understandings absolete, another example of impermanence

person a:
No, I think that if science has taught us anything so far, it's that things are relative. Even some of the most concrete things in the universe are subject to change if you expand your scale of time to great enough a level -- or, better yet, throw it away entirely.

I just mean to say that there must be some patterns that will live on whether or not water boils at 100c, Ryan Orphan and joseph are alive or the universe exists within this dimension

I mean all of our little human realities exist in parallel with each other and, yet, somehow we are able to interact, so there must be something permanent -- at least on our scale -- that ties us all together.

person b:
and when we are dead? -- this is not to say that our existence isn't an existence, it is, but with existing comes the end of existing -- we're able to interact thanks to intelligence, memory, language, but those things are dependent on the mind and the mind has an end

person a:
I'm sure the same pattern that ties us together ties everything else together too. I think that when you do what the buddhists would argue is necessary to live a human life without suffering, when you disconnect yourself from that which is transient, you are doing no more than connecting yourself with something that is permanent instead (when you want to go running around with no ego, you at least need to tie your self to something, otherwise it would just blow away like an empty bag in the wind, and you would have no ego to comeback to. You gotta tie your ego to something, whether it be permanent or transient). And what you are doing when you are connecting your self to something permanent, is you are connecting it with that essential pattern. When the self is attached to something immutable, the perception is free to roam the world outside the short-lived world of Maya and the self is, ultimately, freed from its human curse of suffering.

person b:
it's not about running around with no ego, it's about recognizing the nature of self as the sum of I, Not-I, I/Not-I all at once. can you define the "something permanent" or "that essential pattern"? additionally, which self? the illusory one? what is the immutable? an individual's link to brahman(the totality of existence, forever incarnating and ever pervading)?

[...]
person b:
recognizing transience as the nature of things is the ideal here

Noble Truths 3 and 4

"3. This is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering: it is the remainderless fading away and cessation of that same craving, the giving up and relinquishing of it, freedom from it, nonreliance on it.

4. This is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering: it is the Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration."

8fold path

1. Right view : Viewing reality as it is, not just as it appears to be
2. Right intention : Intention of renunciation, freedom and harmlessness
3. Right speech : Speaking in a truthful and non-hurtful way
4. Right action : Acting in a non-harmful way
5. Right livelihood : A non-harmful livelihood
6. Right effort : Making an effort to improve
7. Right mindfulness : Awareness to see things for what they are with clear consciousness;
being aware of the present reality within oneself, without any craving or aversion
8. Right concentration : Correct meditation or concentration

what is the microcosm? what is the marocosm? the physical quantum scales? I never understood that above and below thing, aren't we just here?

person a:
No, we're really, really not just here. We exist in many states at once. We are in the middle, but we exist above and below equally, just as everything else does. I mean the human body really is its own macrocosm.

I think that we're arguing the same point here. I was mostly just saying that I didn't think of ideas as being remainderless. Also, I think when they call those truths "Noble truths," they are using the word noble in the same sense as the noble gasses and whatnot -- as in "inert." Inert, immutable, permanent are all pretty much the same thing -- they are things that transcend the barriers of mind, scale and microcosm -- they are ideas. The "noble truths" are inert ideas; ideas of permanence

person b:
damned Thelemites, what is your above and below?

person a:
You don't have to be a thelemite to see value in the microcosm and the macrocosm. You could also be muslim, or into math and physics, or a number of things.

And all this thelema stuff came from something called the abbot de Theleme (e accent grave on the second last e) that rabelais wrote about -- you should check that out.

person b:
you still haven't defined it regardless of my discriminatory quip

person a:
The easiest way I have to visualize the microcosm and the macrocosm are as iterations of a function.

person b:
oh. That's really nice actually.

person a:
and rumi said: "In form you are the microcosm; in reality you are the macrocosm"

http://books.google.ca/books?id=xfO...#v=onepage&q=rumi microcosm macrocosm&f=false

check page 49

person b:
was erroneously thinking it represented the various scales of physical matter, but iterations of a function does it pretty well

person a:
well, in a way it is the various scales of physical nature, but those cannot be seen simply as above and so below because there is no quantized transfer from one to the next, the scales of reality just flow from one to the next eternally with no break in between, while the microcosm and the macrocosm -- like the nature of our reality, as we understand it -- are quantized: one is not the same as the next. They also all affect each other and infinitely repeat cycles and patterns while allowing for infinite variation, something which certain iterated functions seem to be able to do.

In the physical sense, I visualize microcosm and macrocosm in terms of scales of physical matter, but I try to understand that this is not exactly true and its truth lies more fundamentally in the connection that lies between these scales.

This is just one of those concepts that is easier to talk about in a philosophical sense thana physical one -- but it works in both.

person b:
yeah, in Buddhism that is considered the Dharma, the sourcecode microcosm which supplies the laws of existence of the macrocosm, I suppose

reliance on the Dharma is actually one of the Three Jewels which buddhists depend on to live (the other two being the Buddha himself, and the Sangha, the collective of monks), so indeed, you did negotiate your way out of the absoluteness of impermanence, but again, the impermanence law applies mostly to the psychological behavior of an individual and not metaphysics

funny how all esoteric traditions will end up with the same points, neh?

although, even then, is the microcosm permanent? just because it's notoriously pervasive doesn't necessarily imply it's eternal

person a:
I didn't negotiate my way out of anything. I still believe that permanence can be found in ideas. If the implications of all of this are "rely upon Dharma and transcend the transient world" than that's great.

and, no, the microcosm and macrocosm's present states are not permanent, but the existence of the two and the relationship between them is something that transcends the bounds of time, that's why people like to put their faith in it. Its a lot easier to put faith in something that objectively exists in all states of time and space -- a rule or a pattern (or in human terms, an idea) -- than in some improbable entity.
This is why I don't

person b:
how about..

microcosm -> phenomena -> teach -> truth -> microcosm

from the Dharma/Microcosm, comes the appearance of Phenomena in the universe, interaction with these phenomena teach beings about the nature of the truth or reality of the universe, shedding light on the Dharma/Microcosm/Source, seems to be a nice pattern

person a:
we can't call it truth. I don't think that ultimate truth exists. The microcosmic kernel is not ultimate truth, it is just a rule.

person b:
eh truth is a rigged word, there's a meaning there

person a:
Just as is love. I wonder who rigged these words...

person b:
how else could the microcosm be if it weren't a fixed series of truths? a rule that is set

you don't think that ultimate truth exists but you'll still put faith in an objective pattern or rule? then isn't that rule true? what else is it?
"so" would be a less rigged word I suppose, as in "it is so"

person a:
It probably isn't a fixed series of truths. It is probably more like an everchanging series of truths that follows a pattern, yet has infinite variation, like in iterated system of functions, where each iteration resembles the last but some form of change always occurs. These functions are represented by a function that is dependant on a variable, which changes depending on how the function changes (another function), so they're more like two patterns infinitely affecting each other in tandem.

I figure That's why its a double helix and the dichotomy exists.

person b:
hmmm, I'm not sure if they're that mutable.. I'll have to think about it

person a:
They're permanently mutable. Their mutability is infinite, but their existence is immutable.

[...]
person b:
how about DNA and genes as an expression of the microcosm sourcecode? muaha, okay, sleep, ha

person a:
"...These functions are represented by a function that is dependant on a variable, which changes depending on how the function changes (another function), so they're more like two patterns infinitely affecting each other in tandem.

That's why its a double helix and dichotomy exists." I like of this kind of relationship.

person b:
something that is infinitely mutable is not permanent(buddhist permanence being defined as something that is unchanging, if it's mutable then it is changing thusly impermanent) because it is mutable, despite its existence being immutable - there's a strange and beautiful allegory here, our selves are the infinitely mutable and our Not-self is the immutable.. perhaps --- impermanence is part of the dharma and to what end I'll have to study more

person a:
I guess my definition of permanence isn't Buddhist then. Or it is, in the sense that it could be Dharmic, but it doesn't align with their definition. I'm not sure.

"rely upon Dharma and transcend the transient world"

What do you think? Are ideas impermanent or infinite? How do you visualize the nature of micro and macrocosm? What do you think we should conclude from this debate?

Just food for thought...

 

I am not about to read that whole thing. However the notion that ideas are permanent is false. An idea only lasts as long as the receptacle that holds it. If my computer is the last place where an idea resides, because everyone else has forgotten it, and I destroy the computer, the idea is gone.

 

we do not individually create our own suffering, other then statistically. but we can choose to study and learn, how to avoid statistically contributing, to the suffering each of us individually experiences.

one can learn this is true, without having to study any belief to do so, but instead by observing life itself, in a rigorously detached and honest manor.

regardless of belief, this then becomes, the one moral obligation.
relying on the cookbook formulae of any belief, can never completely nor automatically, fulfill it.

why is it an obligation? it is an obligation to the self, who must live and experience it.

 

Both person 'a' and person 'b' were making the exact same point, but through different perspectives.

Everything is impermanence, from patterned thoughts to the very idea of impermanence.

The noble truths and eight-fold path are patterns of thought and behavior which, like all thoughts and patterns, will go back to the source after the store-houses of the information and observers have gone.

Non-attachment does not mean non-caring. I don't want to run away from suffering, rather I want to understand it, and not get swept away by it.