Re: Joy of this, Joy of that

On 08/12/2024 22:31, rbowman wrote:

I can't reliably
remember the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the Twelve
Links of Dependent Origination let alone the subgroupings like the Five
Skahndas.
 

I think you have never been exposed to the Indian art of story telling. Read Salman Rushdies 'Haroun and the Sea of Stories'...
The 'shah of blah'.  King of Bullshit. I always thought that there was a wonderful amount of utter crap in those texts, and they were originally spoken with a twinkle in the eye...

That's probably why I like Nietzsche; sprawling, self-contradictory, spur
of the moment aphorisms with no attempt to build a system. That's better
than Schopenhauer's 'On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient
Reason' which he claims is the key to understanding The World as Will.

That's the only bit of Schopenhauer I didn't like. Otherwise he is a very clear exponent of Transcendental Idealism.
He arrived at an Eastern view of the world from first principles Quite a feat.
I would say its more the 'threefold principle of necessary dimension', myself.
That an observable world will always contain the paradox of self reference unless it is viewed from a dimension orthogonal to the reality of perception. What used to be called 'the detached observer' or prior to that 'the soul'. Pure awareness, as it were without interference..
I.e  it is necessary to have not only that which is observed, and what the observation is - the abstraction of our model of the world -  but some agency that *does the abstraction*, that is in neither the observed entity nor the model it produces.
Or to put it another way, if we try to understand experience in terms of two terms we run into paradox. Douglas Hofstadter's writings are an exploration of this problem of recursion.
Only if you introduce a third element that is orthogonal to the two others, do you get a model without paradox.
The world as 'will and representation' is Schopenhauer's view that the world is something with a structure and direction and a sort  of force - 'Will' and then the pictures we draw in our heads to enable us to get to grips with it. Representation.
What he left out was 'who  or what is drawing the picture?'
My conclusion was that you cant do it without it becoming an equation of hree terms
E=f(C,R)
Experience is a function of Consciousness, and Reality - whatever that may be.
Realism holds that E =f(R) and there is no independent C
Idealism says that E  =f(C) and there is no independent R
In the end you can believe what you like, and you will select the one that works for you.
And your experiences.
--
"It is an established fact to 97% confidence limits that left wing conspirators see right wing conspiracies everywhere"