retrofuturist wrote: ↑Sun Jul 11, 2021 2:15 am
Only because "concepts, reckonings, designations or linguistic conventions characterised by the prolific conceptualising tendency of the mind" is the perfect definition of you and your relationship to the Abhidhamma.
I'm reducing things to direct experience. You on the other hand are engaging in metaphysical speculation. Have you ever actually experienced substance? I would imagine that just like the self, when you examine experience all you really have known are qualities. Please feel free to share if you have experienced this "substance"?
I deal with criticisms, I just don't think much of what you say has much credence because you cannot trace it back to the Suttas. When you do, I respond.
Talking of tracing back to the suttas, where in the suttas did the Buddha use the concept of "noumena" or when did he define rūpa as simply being rūpasañña. Can you quote that for us please?
More papanca, really. There's no correlation to reality in anything said but you're so lost in Abhidhamma and decrepit sectarianism that the papanca is now just rooted in delusion. You think in terms of sects when communicating to one who does not ascribe to sects.
Here comes the hail of buzzwords again. It doesn't matter what you identify as. What matters is if you end up thinking like and so arguing the same way as the outsider ascetics did.
And in response to this simple question you posted literally 1069 words and did not once address the materiality of Phobos... instead you got lost in your head rambling about your perceptions of it, mental dhammas and concepts you hold about it. You made it all about you. You are literally lost in papañcasaññāsaṅkhā.
It's actually the reverse Retro. I offered an analysis of the direct experience. It is no different to when people argue for the substance of self. This is the Buddha's method. That of analysis. In my post I demonstrated that in the direct experience no substance called "matter" or "Phobos" could be found. To get to that conclusion you require speculative Reason. If you want to follow the likes of the ascetics of DN 1 down that rabbit hole there isn't much I can do, but I prefer to stay with the Buddha outside of Wonderland.
Ceisiwr wrote: ↑Sat Jul 10, 2021 3:17 pm
You earlier said that the mahābhūtas are not subject to the 3 marks.
Retro: Actually, what I said is that you shouldn't take a scheme which applies to sankhata-dhammas and think you can transfer it and use it on that which isn't sankhata-dhammas. It's like when some people apply paticcasamuppada to an arahant, thinking that paticcasamuppada somehow applies to them, even though fabrications have been stilled. It's an over-reach and you're going beyond range.
You specifically said the mahābhūtas are not subject to the 3 marks. To try to dislodge this erroneous view from you I quoted 2 suttas which demonstrated that they are subject to the 3 marks, and so are also classed as conditioned dhammas. You replied with:
No, it doesn't. That's talking about the experience of those things (phenomena), not those things themselves (noumena), because it talks about disillusion, disenchantment etc. This is especially obvious given that it's talking here about "elements" omitted from the mahabhuta classification such as "space element" that are omitted because they have no noumena...Experience of them (phenomena) does. As above, a classification scheme for sankharas (phenomena) does not automatically apply to noumena...I just did. You are conflating the mahabhuta with experience of them. Experience of them is not them.
I must say this is rather striking due to a number of points. Earlier you argued that only that which is the direct voice of the Buddha is Buddhavacana, which you identified with the words and phrases in the suttas. To you if something is not traceable in the suttas then it should be discarded as sectarian rubbish. Now you are arguing that when the Buddha said the earth element arises, persists and then ceases he didn't actually mean the earth element itself but merely the experience of the earth element because the earth element is "noumena". Can you direct us to where in the actual Pāli the Buddha said that it is the experience of the earth element that is impermanent rather than the earth element itself, and where he states that the earth element is a noumenon? If you can't, then by your own logic you should dismiss your argument as being sectarian and should accept the sutta for what it says. Namely, that the earth element has the 3 marks (and so is also a conditioned dhamma). The other striking thing about this is that your argument seems to be rather circular. You seem to be assuming the conclusion in the premise.
P1) The earth element is a noumenon.
P3) The experience of the earth element is impermanent.
c) Therefore, the earth element is a noumenon.
This is a logical fallacy. If I am wrong please put this argument of yours in logical form and show me. Finally, regarding your other point SN 14.39 does not mention the space element etc. It merely says:
“Mendicants, there are ascetics and brahmins who don’t understand the earth element, its origin, its cessation, and the practice that leads to its cessation. They don’t understand the water element … fire element … air element … Those venerables don’t realize the goal of life as an ascetic or brahmin, and don’t live having realized it with their own insight.
There are ascetics and brahmins who do understand the earth element, its origin, its cessation, and the practice that leads to its cessation. They do understand the water element … the fire element … the air element … Those venerables realize the goal of life as an ascetic or brahmin, and live having realized it with their own insight.”
Where in this are you getting that it is only the experience of them that is impermanent, because they are noumena? Once again, by your own logic, if you can't trace it then you should dismiss it. Now, saying that SN 18.9 does discuss the other elements. As you say, the space element is not a noumenon. I would agree. I would agree because as I have shown before dhātus are not substances out of which things are made. Rather they are fundamental properties of experience. This is why we see the beauty dhātu, or pain dhātu. Now, a Rationalist could very well turn them into substances. That isn't impossible, but is this how the Buddha understood them? Is pain a permanent substance, the modalities of which we experience as the property or quality of "pain"? I don't think so. The same for the mahābhūta, which belong to the same category. Being in the same category as the beauty dhātu or pain dhātu means they share something in common, namely they are all different qualities of experience.
What "category". I know this is hard for one like you to believe, but not everyone is obsessed with category.
I'm not obsessed with categories anymore than the Buddha was when he taught the categories of the 5 aggregates, the dhātus and so on. Categories are useful for organising information and so useful for learning. For you the mahābhūta do not have the 3 marks yet are not unconditioned but are real. This is a strange category which the Buddha did not teach. There are either conditioned dhammas, the 1 unconditioned dhamma or that which is unreal. Which category does your fall under Retro? So far you seem to have this special category for them that apparently only you recognise.
Ironically, that's precisely what you're doing when you insist that we must regard substance in a certain way in Abhidhamma - i.e. to freak out and deny that it's reality. According to science, there is substance - mass, atoms, weight, atomic weight etc... but when you put your Abhidhamma hat on you freak out about it and call that the view of some weird Indian sect. Can you not see how ridiculous that has become?
I'm doing the exact opposite. I'm not conflating the matter of science with what the Buddha taught. Science assumes matter and bases models and theories upon that assumption. Said models and theories are never knowledge however. The Buddha on the other hand makes no such assumption. He only deals in knowledge. In what can be directly known. Substance cannot be directly known. It is never directly experienced, only ever assumed or reasoned into real existence.
I've said what is true and obvious about matter, for anyone with eyes to see, not lost up themselves in oceans of papañcasaññāsaṅkhā. Your insistence on framing something straightforward and obvious, as the views of some archaic Indian sect is telling.
I don't think the Dhamma is straightforward and obvious. I don't think any man off the street, relying on common sense, can get it.
Ceisiwr wrote:
Scientific matter is substance.
Retro: Yes. Yet you freak out when this is said to you that this is reality.
It's not a reality since it is not directly known. It is an assumption of science. Assumption isn't knowledge. The Buddha did not teach science.
Again, this is talking of experience, not substance. The substance itself is "parked to the side", to paraphrase me, so the phenomena can be understood.
The mahābhūta are not to be "parked to the side". In order to awaken we must fully understand the dhammas:
"Mendicants, there are ascetics and brahmins who don’t understand the earth element, its origin, its cessation, and the practice that leads to its cessation. They don’t understand the water element … fire element … air element … Those venerables don’t realize the goal of life as an ascetic or brahmin, and don’t live having realized it with their own insight."
This isn't "parking them to the side".
Right, so why are you freaking out about the fact there's substance to Phobos, and that it's not just a mirage. It's the very mass of Phobos that allows it to orbit and be a satellite of Mars. So why after 1,069 words worth of proliferation and self-absorbtion about Phobos are you still unable to acknowledge that?
You seemed to have missed that I thought your question was a bit of a tautology. If I don't experience it then it isn't part of my sense experience. If it is then all I actually experience are the qualities of hardness etc. No one said it's a mirage, but our mind certainly superimposes a conceptual reality onto experience.
No, it just means that the Buddha taught about "phenomena" (dhamma) not noumena. He did not freak out and deny it, like you. He didn't squeal that Phobos having atomic weight is somehow an "anathema to his empiricist outlook". Get a grip.
No one is "freaking out" Retro, which is about the 3rd time you have said this. I'm perfectly calm. The Buddha never used the word "noumena" but he did use "substance", which is the practical equivalent. To him all form, wherever or whatever it is, is without substance.
One can focus on phenomenology without denying substance, without freaking out about substance, without having a paranoid aversion to substance, without trying at all costs to avoid acknowledging the atomic weight of matter. That one, alas, is not you.
More of this back handed trick of trying to smear your opponent via labelling them with certain negative mental traits. I would have thought spending most of one's times listening to gormless idiots on twitter spout their weird conspiracy theories would be the nimitta of a paranoid mind, but such things are not relevant to the conversation. I'm not paranoid about substance. I'm not hating substance. I'm arguing that your ideas are alien to the Dhamma, and that even taken on their own they have epistemological flaws. I have also not ignored the utility of atomic weight etc. As I said sometime ago in this thread, scientific theories can be very useful. Newton's laws are very useful, even though they aren't strictly true. Regarding Phenomenology, it's whole outlook is to not assume an outside reality. Instead it restricts itself to studying direct experience and it's structure.
You have "grasped the snake" wrongly. The point is not to deny or freak out about substance... it is to not mistake phenomena for noumena/substance. Alas, you have gone to extremes, as you have historically done when grasping views (e.g. communism), and become so lost in them that you cannot see or acknowledge anything beyond the limited scope of your clung-to views.
Or, another way to look at it would be that I'm more sensitive to extreme views by having immunity from prior exposure. This however is simply another one of these pathetic attempts to undermine my argument by attacking me directly, rather than the argument at hand. The snake grasped wrongly would be to follow Rationalism down into Wonderland, and to start assuming that there is something permanent in conditioned sense experience.
It has become so absurd that when you wear one hat (i.e. the scientist) you say Yes, but when you wear another hat (i.e. the Abhidhammika) you say No. Talk about contorted thinking and cognitive-dissonance...
As has been repeatedly explained to you ad nauseam it is no different to viewing the world as being empty yet still talking about a conventional self. Is that "cognitive-dissonance" too Retro? Please, do tell us.
Yet you dwell in teachings not taught by the Buddha, omitted per the Simsapa Sutta.
The Abhidhamma is there to demolish these views in toto. So far those who reject it have shown themselves to fall for these things hook, line & sinker.
Eel-wriggling. Go let me start up my 18-wheeler truck so I can run you over with it and you can learn a thing or two about substance. To paraphrase the Suttas, your form will be deformed.
Eel-wriggling seems to be this sites form of "Fascist", in that it get's chucked around when it does not apply. An eel-wriggler wouldn't offer any kind of reply other than outright avoidance of making any definitive statement. That is not what I have done here. Regarding substance, please do counter the Empiricist critique that "substance" is never actually experienced?
