UnbornTao

@Sucuk Ekmek @Anton RogachevskiLet's keep going in that direction--toward deeper presence--as it seems appropriate. Insight is the goal.

"You're a good man, Arthur Morgan."

Regardless of all that, actually observe and notice. You are being intellectual. This kind of looking is experiential. For example, whether feeling like it or not, there's a reason behind our every action. The first step is to acknowledge your experience as it is, not as you think it is. So be as honest with yourself about that as you can.

@Natasha Tori Maru What if manipulation is more fundamental? Originally, it meant to handle skillfully. So, as you implied, the work of a teacher (steering people in the direction of learning and growth), for example, could be considered a form of manipulation. Yet with that definition, it doesn’t carry a negative connotation--it might even be beneficial to the student. It could be framed as generating an effect on another or on something, such as inspiring someone or moving a chair in order to sit on it. The kind of manipulation that’s typically seen as bad is the social, sneaky kind--deceptive and selfish in nature. Sorry, just a half-baked consideration.

The first sentence could be said of everything. Yet we can imagine, for example, that when the body dies, perception for that entity ends--so in that sense, it could be said to be limited. We “know” this as fact. We already make these distinctions; otherwise, we’d find no use for different terms. This means that each thing exists as that thing--not as everything else. A word represents a distinct experience. You don’t call your feet your hands, and yet this act doesn’t imply that they are separate. You seem to think that something being distinct implies that it’s separate (i.e., awareness isn’t perception). Hence my point above. I think you might be wrong here: what is not perception defines it just as much as what it is. That's what creates the distinctiveness in the first place. You can say what it is--or define it--even though that assertion isn’t itself coming from perception nor is it something perceived. Therefore, you establish the distinction “perception" while being outside of it, so to speak. Okay, we’re bringing a lot to the table now: perception, difference, awareness, language, experience. I’m overwhelmed.

@Aaron p Can't see your pictures.

@Xonas Pitfall Take a look at a simple object. You can begin to see things that are applied to it--its name, what it is used for, etc. Without this activity, what is a direct experience of what's there? What is there? Is your perception of it the same as what is there?

Okay, that sounds reasonable. Will take some time to look into it. In the meantime, you could share what you have in mind. --- What is your experience of that? For example, unless it is done as a mere intellectual exercise, it is likely that we live within a solid world and experience, that is, our current experience is in fact "we are here, perceiving objects out there."

What, in our encounter with something, isn't a conceptual or mental activity of ours? For example, when you speak of 'experience', we can distinguish between activities like interpretation, sense-making, and perhaps others. These wouldn't qualify as "direct experience." Say you dislike seafood--so whenever you think about or encounter any kind of seafood, your dislike, your emotional disposition, tends to arise as a single, vague experience, that is, we fail to make a distinction between our relationship with it and our activities and what could be said to be there for itself. What's actually there/here? And these distinctions have to be made experientially, not just intellectually, which makes it all the more challenging.

We really are starting to contemplate everything. Let's keep the focus on experience.

This is a story. The question is: What is experience? For example, in your experience right now, can you see that you encounter things? You see an object. And within this experience, you can, as if, subtract its name, value, use, which are activities done by you, and so might be called conceptual and are different in nature from a direct experience of the object itself.

I didn't include someone who perceives, by the way, but the act of perceiving. That relates to self which is not the topic at hand. "Perceives what?" Good question. In our experience we perceive things, so that's hard to deny. Whatever the senses provide is perceived -- what that is, I don't know. Seem to be more primal or primary than sensation. For example, sensing your body might be slightly different than perceiving it. That's the dilemma. We're asking what experience is, and from that, whether it precedes perception. We could question what the experience of Helen Keller would be like, who lost her sight and her hearing. That might point us in the right direction regarding experience. Perhaps that's the case, and we can have insight into its nature. Besides that, this is a tricky subject -- experience, perception, concept. Again, the point with this thread is mostly to promote contemplation. We could start by refining "perception", which is a mere sensory encounter through the senses. We need to work out this distinction in our experience. By taking a simple object and setting aside all our knowledge about it, we might have a more present and unvarnished encounter with it -- that might be called "perceiving the object."

Can you make a dent in the idea that something external - like achieving a significant goal, having circumstances go your way, or getting what you want - must happen in order to cause or justify happiness?

Manipulation deserves its own thread.

Nice, congratulations 👏

That's fine too, but I'd say eliminating everything we have about it builds a more real and present relationship to the matter.

I suggest you really pay attention to what you do with your mind--not in a mechanical, self-conscious or intellectual way, but in a present, aware, and sensitive manner. This is more of a general point.

As with enlightenment.

Jesus Christ, we sure hold a lot of BS about enlightenment.

That sounds like perception. Not sure whether to include that in the category of perception. It depends on what we're talking about and what kind of sensations we are referring to. Hey, another thing to investigate in a new thread. Feeling is more about the conceptually-produced activities we engage in, so we wouldn't find feeling within perception itself -- maybe not even in the "perception" of a feeling. So, we see we don't really know what experience is, experientially. Progress! To be clear, I'm not presuming that through this discussion we'll necessarily reach, at some point, 'the answer,' or a satisfying conclusion that will do the job for us. It's more like an invitation to open up and see where that leads us, hopefully to an insight.

Those are the questions to contemplate. What is there when our various mental activities (interpretation, association, memory, knowledge, and so on) are set aside? That might point at experiencing something for itself.

You point at interpretation, so setting that activity aside for the moment, we may be getting closer at a "mere" encounter of what's there, or perceived to be there.

@Anton Rogachevski When looking at your hand, extraneous activities to the mere encounter might start to become apparent, so we can see that within an apparently obvious experience, there's more going on with it than we initially thought.

What is experience? Not experience as skill or knowledge but the fact of experiencing. Not sure what you mean by your last sentence.

? So easy.