Second part of my reply to Balder:
Hilston previously wrote:
Do you realize the fact that if your logical faculties were flawed, you would have no way of knowing, since you would have to use your logical faculties in order to make such an assessment? I like to blurt out, in non sequitur fashion: "Look at that! The Law of Induction just stopped working!" Most people don't get it and they just look at me funny. The joke, of course, is that induction would have to be used in order to come to such a conclusion, but if induction doesn't work anymore, how could such a conclusion ever be drawn? This is the epistemological dilemma that is (often unwittingly) posed when one says "Logic hasn't failed me, for the most part."
Balder writes:
That’s a nice point. What I was referring to, however, was human systems of logic, which indeed sometimes prove fallible.
"Human systems of logic", as compared or opposed to what?
Balder writes:
One more thing. You have asked me on several occasions if I believe there are any universal laws. My answer is that I believe there are certain universals, which might be called laws (a metaphor taken from human social experience), depending on how one uses the term.
OK, let's just say "law-like" so we don't have to get hung up on the term. What are the "law-like" universals you believe in?
Balder writes:
But I would add that I believe that many of the things we call laws are more likely universal habits. Certainly, this is the contention of Buddhism, and a number of modern physicists and biologists agree: things manifest and behave in a certain way, along certain "grooves" or lines of development, not because abstract laws compel them to, but because a momentum has built up which makes one sort of happening more likely than another, given certain prevailing conditions.
It would really really really REALLY help if you could put some skin and bones on what you're talking about.
Puh-LEEEEZE offer an example so we can discuss it.
Balder writes:
If immutable laws were actually in effect in all areas of the development of systems and organisms, then how would mutations and variations occur ... whence would come novelty?
That's exactly what I am going to ask you. Since you anticipated this question, I'm still interested in getting your alternate accounting for this reality.
Balder writes:
Quantum physicists says that absolute determinism is out; ...
And they're absolutely wrong about that.
Balder writes:
... there is an openness at the heart of reality which allows for the new, even though the "old" carries a lot of weight and makes movement in one direction much more likely than in other ways ...
Why do you believe this?
Balder writes:
So, when you speak of laws, what exactly are you thinking of? Are you talking about lawfulness and order in general, or about specific laws that are observable in the universe?
Yes. Both.
Balder writes:
Do you think gravity, entropy, and the speed of light are all specifically derive from similar laws that exist in the nature of God?
There are no laws "in the nature of God." Laws legislate; God is under no legislation and is responsible to no one and to nothing.
Balder writes:
As I said in earlier posts, two Buddhist tenets -- the primordiality of experience or "mind" and the radical interdependence and co-determination of phenomena -- are quite capable of accounting for the order of cosmos.
Did order always exist? Or did it arise phenomenologically out of chaos?
Balder writes:
The primordiality of "mind" is not something many physicists readily accept, though some (like David Bohm) speak about the primordiality of meaning (soma-significance and signa-somatics), ...
Don't forget about sogma-somnificance and simni-sigmatics. Can you define for me what you mean by "primordial/primordiality"? And what is "meaning" according to your view? Günther isn't very helpful. For all he has to say
around the word "meaning," he gives no clarity to the word whatever.
Balder writes:
... but the idea that the universe is holistically interrelated, somehow seamless or "entangled," in which the whole is implicate in every part, is more strongly supported by current evidence and is not viewed as far-fetched by many quantum physicists, as I'm sure you're aware.
I'm quite familiar with the giddy enthusiasm QPs exhibit as they skip along, hand-in-hand like little girls, on their way to conduct their self-fulfilling experiments. They still can't account for the very method they presume to employ in reaching their conclusions, nor can they justify the criteria by which they discard so-called outlying data.
Balder writes:
Since you just love translator Herbert Guenther's way with words, especially when he's trying to explicate a Dzogchen text and whippin' out the hyphens, I will quote some passages from him that are relevant:
"The quest for life’s meaning reaches its completion in the realization and enactment of meaningful existence, which implies, as inseparable from it, a sensitivity to and discovery of meanings in lived-through experience."
What's that mean, and why do you believe it?
Balder writes:
"... Rather it points to the open texture and dimension which in its very openness is already pregnant with possible meaning."
Why do you believe this?
Balder writes [quoting Günther]:
'Meaning' also is not something fixed once for all, but is an emerging, developing, and projective movement of the open dimension of existence, and acquires its full scope in lived-through experience.
How does Dzogchen know this? And why do you believe it?
Balder writes [quoting Günther]:
Since meaning is always meaning for someone, who yet never stands outside the configuration of lived experience, this circumstance points to the human being (or existent) who, in the search for ‘meaningful existence’ – for the meaning of (his) existence – cannot but start from the 'experience' of existence as the being he himself is. Such a starting point precludes any attempt to resort to such notions as 'substance' (which means different things to different persons, be they philosophers or lesser mortals), or 'particular existent,' which is always meant to be a particular ‘this’ in contrast with some other particular 'that,' and about which propositions are entertained as to the ‘what’ this particular existent is, be this 'what' then declared to be a substance or an essence.
Why can't he just say that everything is relative and subjective, including everything he said in the above paragraph?
Balder writes [quoting Günther]:
The configuration 'existence-meaning-experience' is therefore not a category in the traditional sense. Its presentational and, at the same time, developing character directs attention to the 'how' rather than to the 'what,' and it is this 'how' that introduces the dynamic character into what otherwise might be conceived of as something static and lifeless.
Do you believe in the permanence of the soul, Balder? Or do you hold to the doctrine of anatta? Is a yes or no answer possible? Or is that going require another prolix treatise, complete with Tibetan transliterations and hyphenated character strings?
Balder writes [quoting Günther]:
Moreover, this 'how' is presented in immediacy and is present as a kind of invitation to a response. The response is never mechanical, but always interpretive by virtue of lived-through experience. Presentational immediacy is already a situation open to interpretation. In its openness it is bound to the open texture of Being, and in its dynamic unfolding it is self-presenting, self-projective, and linked to interpretation which can take two different directions: the one, preserving cohesion, leads to 'meaningful existence'; the other, losing its anchorage, leads to 'fictitious being.' However, the important point to note is that 'existence-meaning-experience' is both configuration and process, and as such the constituents are throughout dialectically interpenetrating ontological features at work in every lived-through experience.
So is Dzogchen assertationally espousifying an unmediationally intuitivicty for the existent? It appears that he is saying that the discernation of any particularized invitationing event is cognizationed by the existent in a manneredness foundationally subjectioned and accordanced upon the basicicity of non-uniform interpretationing parameters, fluxing variationally in panna fashion from one existent to the next. Did I get that right? In other words, can panna be trusted to say anything meaningful at all? If so, on what grounds? If not, where do you draw the line and what's the point?
Balder writes [quoting Günther]:
This configuration-process character of Being – an idea characteristic of Dzogchen thought and a distinct contribution to Buddhist philosophy – is in terms of facticity described as 'unchanging' and 'indestructible,' for which latter term the symbol of the diamond (vajra) is used. In terms of presentational presence it is described as a 'thrust towards and invitation by limpid clearness and consummate perspicacity'; and in terms of experience, as 'calmness,' which is meaning-orientedness and meaning-saturatedness in the experiencer’s concrete existence. Each of these three 'layers' acts as a 'founding stratum' and they all are related to each other by 'mutual foundedness.'
I'm really trying Balder. But this is ridiculous. It's a huge waste of time that I don't have. Here's the thing: I can go through and replace each of Günther's non-normative words with English words that make perfect sense. I know, cuz I've tried. It's the only way to understand this stuff. After I do this, the sentences become incoherent. Maybe
to you there is actual meaning in these words. But if ask for it, I get more word inventions that strain at the boundaries of normative semantics. Maybe that, to you, is impressive and gives you good feelings and you find it personally fulfilling to meditate on these things. But that doesn't make it rational. The English language comprises 500,000 to 600,000 words, closer to a million if you include scientific terms (which I will not complain about). The English syntax is also sufficiently robust that you should be able to communicate clearly without resorting to word-inventions and word-groupings that make the eyes glaze over (what the heck is "presentational immediacy of existence"??? -- I know what each of those words mean; so why do I still not know what is meant by it?). I'm not averse to the occasional rendering of words in the original form, as my own posts indicate, but to totally re-jigger words and syntactical conventions that have a long-standing, well-established, patently successful history is unwarranted. I've debated Buddhists before that haven't had to resort to this. Maybe you attribute this to the higher and more intellectual tradition of Dzogchen. Maybe it's a lot of smoke-blowing. How could anyone tell the difference, especially given the fact that I could write have written this stuff myself and started my own religion?
Balder writes [quoting Günther]:
The first set of terms is used to make it clear that throughout experience an element of facticity is already in force which, negatively stated, implies that existence as existence can do nothing about its ‘existing’ and hence can neither be subject to change (qualitatively) nor destroyed (substantially).
Does it impress you that Dzogchen understood the first law of thermodynamics? Did the middle way lead him to that understanding? Were Joule and Helmholtz relying on Buddhist thought when they codified the conservation of mass and energy?
Balder writes [quoting Günther]:
As facticity the open texture and open dimension of Being is in no way prejudged, contradicted, or restricted.[ 'Thrust towards and invitation by limpid clearness and consummate perspicacity’ points to the projective character which is inseparable from open texture in facticity, and in its presentational immediacy it preserves elements of this open dimension and facticity and solicits a response to its presence. 'Calmness' illustrates the response to the presentational immediacy of existence in experience which gives it its specific 'meaning,' that is 'calmness.' In the same way as the projective feature of existence retains its open-dimensional character, so also 'meaning' is not merely a passive resultant of the stimulus-response interaction. It, too, retains the projective texture by opening up ways towards understanding. It is therefore obvious that this configuration-process complex, first of all, is not an object alongside other objects (which in order to gain meaning would necessitate a subject). Objectification is made possible by virtue of the projective character of this configuration-process complex. Second, it follows that this configuration-process complex also is not a subject in the manner of transcendental ego, be this of the Kantian or Husserlian variety, the one synthesizing the operation of perception, imagination, and conception, the other functioning as the ultimate source of intentional consciousness. The constitution of a subject emerges late and in conjunction with the process of objectification. Moreover, the subject-object structure which belongs to and underlies all representational thinking, as one possible direction, but certainly not the only possible one, into which interpretation can move, simply does not apply here.
Why do you believe this? Do you even understand it? Have you found that meditating on these words gives you a good feeling? It does to me, too. Here's where the good feeling comes from: Figuring out what the heck he is saying. Since you're already impressed by Dzogchen, anything you can figure out is going to give you the warm-and-fuzzies. But since you can't communicate the ineffable "truth" in your own words, you resort to excerpting huge tracts of Dzogchenian real estate, hoping either to scare off your challengers, or to confuse them into a catatonic fog. Or so it seems.
Balder writes [quoting Günther]:
‘Buddha’ cannot and must not be equated with an ‘object’ or a ‘subject.’ Rather as this configuration-process complex, ‘Buddha’ points to experience which makes the emergence and constitution of a subject-object determined world-horizon possible.
Good grief, Balder. Couldn't you (or Günther) just say, "Budda is indescribable and utterly subjective"?
Balder writes [quoting Günther]:
In this primary sense ‘Buddha’ is a term that sums up what we would call the ontology and ontogenesis of experience, which from the outset is configurative, open-dimensional, dynamical, meaning-oriented and meaning-saturated, and includes the experiencer in whom it is concretely present and who in this phrase is ‘Buddha.’ When in the interpretive analysis of experience the latter’s existentially significant, embodying and embodied character is singled out and referred to as ‘founding stratum of meaning’ (chos-sku) where founding stratum is understood as the absoluteness of Being concretely experienced, knowing as a process of disclosure (ye-shes, wisdom or knowledge of Truth) is already at work…”
Now I get it. You've taken it upon yourself to afflict me with as my own personal samsara. Is that it?
Balder writes [quoting Günther]:
... In the above lengthy quotation [of which I have only posted two verses, to spare your eyes and your mind!], which epitomizes the multifaceted nature of experience, two themes stand out. One is that of indivisibility (dbyer-med, nonduality), the other that of configuration (dkyil-‘khor, mandala or world-horizon). Both, however are intimately related.
Yes, unity and diversity exist in our experience. The Triune God accounts for that phenomenon. I'm becoming convinced that your Dzogchenian solution is to
not actually solve the long-standing impenetrable problem, but to talk around it in equally impenetrable jargon that short circuits the synapses into a karmic quagmire.
Balder writes [quoting Günther]:
As we have seen in a previous chapter, indivisibility, also referred to as nonduality, names the functional operation of complementarity.
Functional operation of WHAT? What in the fallujah are you talking about? Complementarity? For crying out loud.
Balder writes [quoting Günther]:
It does not indicate the obliteration of differentiations, nor does it imply a fusion of disparate entities. Rather, it emphasizes the presence of a continuum from which, negatively speaking, dichotomies such as exterior and interior, subject and object, are suspended. More positively stated, these dichotomies are seen and felt to interpenetrate 'like the reflection of the moon in water.'
Do you understand that paragraph, Balder? Explain it to me.
Balder writes [quoting Günther]:
The indivisibility of Being and Existenz can be illustrated by analogies taken from the realm of science, which speaks of the indivisibility of energy and its radiation and of the vacuum and its fluctuations. But in Dzogchen thought there is the additional factor of intelligence which inheres in the very dynamics of the unfolding universe itself, ...
Define intelligence and then explain its nature. Is it personal? Is it active or passive? Does it function or exist according to set parameters and universal constraints? And have you personally experienced this?
Balder writes [quoting Günther]:
... and which makes primordiality of experience of paramount importance. The atemporal onset of this unfoldment occasions the emergence of various intentional structures, thereby allowing felt meanings to occur. Since this onset is structurally 'prior' to any functional splitting, one speaks of the indivisibility of openness ...
You mean, like "emptiness"?
Balder writes [quoting Günther]:
... (emptiness) ...
Oh -- so you CAN use words we all understand!
Balder writes [quoting Günther]:
... and its presencing ...
You mean, like its "form"?
Balder writes [quoting Günther]:
... (form), ...
Yes, I see. Instead of just saying "form," there's has to be the "inventioning" of a word by the "unfoldment "of a noun into gerund and call it "presencing". That's sure to impress people and to make Günther sound very holy and Dzogchen sound profoundly intimidating.
Balder writes [quoting Günther]:
... which involves the gauging of what will become the 'world' (as the specific horizon-form of lived-through experience)…"
If you survived the above read ...
Barely. It makes me want to punch someone in the head, just for fun. But that wouldn't bode well for me in the karmic realm. Is "right communication" a part of the 8-fold path? It should be. But then again, perspicuity would probably do more to undermine Dzogchen tradition than promote it.
Balder writes:
... (only a German could do that to the English language), I'll tie it in closer to this discussion with a few questions:
Balder writes:
Do you believe existence has an origin?
God's existence? No. The existence of everything that is non-God or not God? Yes.
Balder writes:
How about sentience or intelligence? Does it have an origin?
God's? No. Man's? Yes.
Balder writes:
Must these things neccessarily have an origin?
God's? No. Man's? Yes.
Balder writes:
Is there a relationship between them?
Yes. Eternal existence is the source of sempiternal existence. Same with intelligence and sentience. Is the Buddhistic primordial Existent personal?
Balder writes:
Does God exist? Is He sentient or intelligent? Does He have an origin?
You already know the answers to these questions. Yes. Yes. And no.
Balder writes:
P.S. Concerning the modus ponens, the fact that it works, that we take it to be "intuitive," is an argument for the truth of the Buddhist doctrines of pratitya-samutpada (dependent co-origination or interdependence), as well as karma.
How do you know it works?
