UnbornTao

@Breakingthewall OK, contemplate.

It is possible to realize the absolute. What you say sounds like a state and I'd question your conclusions.

Who? We are, maybe it's by design. In any case, I appreciate the chat.

Again, my contention isn't that the absolute isn't absolute. It can't be experienced as it isn't an experience, it's the word we use. Relative phenomenon appear to us in distinct forms, depending on what we're talking about. An experience of an emotion isn't the same as an experience of an object, for example. A hug isn't a hunch, etc. Absolute doesn't imply insight into the relative. That's why, if other things such as skill or transformation are desired, there's more work to do besides enlightenment. Gautama might have not been a masterful cook. Then grasp how it's being imagined, to what degree, and how it's done and lived. Acknowledge and master it as it is experienced. This is an answer about what's true. It's the same principle: self-survival. What drive is pushing you? What is surviving? Distinction isn't limited to language, though. It is that you experience what you do. Uniqueness may occur conceptually as self does. Given that, the self dynamic can also be said to operate similarly as any other distinction. Uniqueness is a subset of a perceived "self", entity or object. Is distinction conceptual, and viceversa, though? Have to look into it. Everything might be nothing, yet our experience of life is unlike that. Completely transcending self, suffering, life and death is unlikely and rare. Ultimately, we don't know anything and therefore must remain open. Enlightenment is a good first step. Tried to come up with an analogy: Electricity is foundational to a computer's operation. It sources and is present throughout all of the computer processes, hardware and software. The experience of using a PC (managing apps, writing, editing videos, playing games, customizing the GUI) are forms of electricity while at the same time they show up in particular ways which are experienced as different from each other. In this analogy, for example: What are hardware and software? What's writing a book? This would be the equivalent of investigating the relative. Something like that.

@Majed Fair.

Posting AI-generate content like text, images, or video without disclosing that it was sourced from AI@Majed

@Majed Could be but those are the guidelines.

You mean the desire to know what's true, and I'm not sure.

AI content goes against forum guidelines.

Regardless of lifestyle or what you did at some point, choosing to relate a certain way towards circumstances is still your responsibility.

@Inliytened1 I didn't want to give leeway to speculation, but chat away.

Moved to Entertainment section.

@Osaid Uniqueness as a distinction may be equally conceptual as self. Without non-uniqueness, there's no being unique. However, why concede to one and not the other? If enlightened, you realize the nature of the absolute, not necessarily that of experience, which is a relative phenomenon. Again, not everything is known after awakening. What is every relative phenomenon that we experience? What is object, another, life, pain, happiness? Enlightenment facilitates investigation and learning but the work to grasp emotions, mind, etc. has to be done regardless of that. A conceptual explanation isn't enough; insight can be had into the nature of mind, etc. It goes beyond concept, everyone has concepts about mind, etc. Insight is an experiential encounter with the reality or nature of something. After that, it might degrade into intellect, but it's about the experience, not the memery. I'm saying that self-survival is an incredibly powerful force and isn't completely transcended with a few enlightenment experiences.

@StarStruck "Reinventing the wheel" as in understanding its nature, from scratch. This demands experiential investigation, not adopting hearsay as true. Otherwise, reading books would suffice.

Coincidentally, I heard about him a few days ago. May be interesting.

Nice, thank you.

– John Searle

We could consider that we don't really know what's being said by that to begin with.

"I'm less enlightened than you!"

Locked for low-quality. No speculating.

Is happiness circumstantially-derived?

Entertainment. Now go after what's true.

Sure. Seems to be the case, too. For example, you're rarely valued by who you are but by what you do. Not only communicate, but also think, emote and behave. We can consider new possibilities, but generally there's an interesting phenomenon in which we take culture to be real, but it's not. It's agreed upon and made up. Another example: in our culture, when another culture practices cannibalism, we relegate that to the domain of sickness, which is quite arrogant. The implicit assumption is that whatever we consider culture to be is real and the right way to go about survival, with room for some variations (while we eat pork and goat, not dogs, say, the Chinese do, etc.) Cultures are ways we've come up with to survive as a collective; it doesn't have to be a certain way except by mutual agreement. It can be more or less functional and intelligent, but as itself it is not real or true. There's some rambling.