Joseph Maynor

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Posts posted by Joseph Maynor

  2. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    It's not just a compliment.  I don't know you personally, but it is like calling a spade a spade.  That's not a compliment, it is a fact.  You can take it as a compliment if you wish.  I am very genuine too.  Or at least I try to be.  I can be ornery too from time to time though.  Especially when my ego gets rubbed the wrong way.  I'm very sensitive to criticism and get very competitive very fast.  If I don't watch myself I will turn into a crazy person, a mad-man.  But I don't do that as much anymore.  I've burned enough bridges in my life.  

  5. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    @Prabhaker Maybe he should work on the log in his own eye before he worries about the speck in others.  

    "Do Not Judge!
    …For with the same judgment you pronounce, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.  Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to notice the beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while there is still a beam in your own eye?…"  Matthew 7-3

    Damn that's wise eh!  Jesus didn't suffer no fools.  Oh lordy lord.

    Here's the King James version, a little more blunt -- 

    Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

  8. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    @Nichols Harvey Do you guys all know each other in real life?  Seems like a small squabbling family around here sometimes.  I never thought Buddhists could be so argumentative.  The Buddha must be spinning in his grave!   Rub the Buddha's big fat belly for some luck and peace folks.  Life's not this hard.  I thought I was an arguer.  Man, I'm chill in comparison.  You ever seen one of those tiny zen gardens?  Maybe get one of those.  With that little rake. Rake away your sins!  Life is chill.  Eat it up.

  10. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    @Nichols Harvey Not enlightenment per-se, but non-dualism.  I got a big problem with non-dualism as a theory.  And that doesn't mean that dualism is correct either.  That would commit the false-choice fallacy.  It's possible that both dualism and non-dualism are false.  Enlightenment is real.  I practice it.  Not the concept of enlightenment that Leo has per se, but something with a family-resemblance to that.  Enlightenment is life-changing.  You don't need to accept the theory of non-dualism to be enlightened in some sense.  They're totally independent from one another.  Separate and distinct.  Although, non-dualists would likely disagree with me about that.  If they do, I would encourage them to argue with me about that so we can hash it out and take a look under the hood on that issue!   Otherwise we're just clinging to theories rather unconsciously.  Like dogmatists.  

  11. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    @Annetta This is more like extreme annoyance (or anger) than hatred to me.  Hatred implies a flavor of a feeling of superiority.  Like, I despise you kinda thought/feeling.  When you despise somebody, it's hard to treat them well at all.  You don't want to have anything to do with them really.  I think you have anger as opposed to hatred.  Correct me if you think my intuitions are off here.

  15. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    Like.  Let's say you are procrastinating doing your work because you are spending time on here.  Well, there are two ways of looking at that.  One way of looking at it is I have a fear of doing my work and that's what is contributing to my motivation to procrastinate doing it.  The other way of looking at it is I'm on here instead of working because doing this is more important for me right now than working, and working can wait.  Alright!  Now, that's a totally different lens of looking at things, no?  Well, why are we privileging the "fear explanation" as a kind of default-position when we self-explain why we are not doing some task which we had scheduled?  Isn't that kind of fear-based thinking a paradigm, a choice we are making?  Isn't it non-positive thinking too?  Why are we doing that so much then?  Think about it. We're beating ourselves up with our theory of fears and how fears and motivation relate.  Are we a fly in that bottle too much?  What if you have a radically different theory of fear?  Like if you had never learned this stuff in the first place.  Would you be better off?  Would you self-sabotage less?

    The Positive Psychologists amongst us are not gonna like this idea!  The fear theory is so entrenched, it is not?  We run that theory all the time when we think about motivation, don't we?  Like a computer executing a bit of code, we're programmed with it.  It's a default-position that almost everybody has assumed is reasonable to accept.

    I just noticed this too.  It popped into my head because I'm doing positive thinking work right now.  I got Leo's Zen story ingrained in my mind lol.  Watch Leo's "Positive Thinking" video to find out what I'm talking about there.  It's unsettling some of my default-positions.  Or at least putting some in high-relief that I've never noticed before.  

    What is fear anyway?  Maybe we have so many fears because we're looking for them all the time!  It's a self-fulfilling prophesy effect!  The law of attraction in action.  That's just a hypothesis.  Food for thought.  

    I know you guys are probably like -- Get to work already Joe!  I am working.  Very much.  I'm synergizing with you guys on here.  I'm always working at something, it just might not be what is top priority for other reasons.  That's a different issue.  That's not laziness, and that's not fear.  It's more like a conflict of priorities, a conflict between the internal priorities and the external priorities.  A lack of synchronicity there.

    I'm starting to wonder whether I "have" any fears at all now.  Damn!  What does it mean to have a fear anyway?  That seems kind of vague to me now, and I'm not sure what the hell it even refers to.  With the exception of actual primal fears, what does the proposition "I have a fear" even refer to?  Some suppressed entity in the murky "subconscious mind" (another fictional entity we made up)?  These made-up fears are not out in the open though.  Not like primal fears are.  They're always hiding somewhere, notice that!  It seems as though we took primal fears and then extrapolated-out a theory that added new types of fears to that set.  Like fears in complex-space for all you Math nerds out there!  (I was once one too :o.)  Imaginary fears.  I think we got imaginary fears folks!  Am I right?

     

  16. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    @Telepresent

    Hi Telepresent:

    I'll deal with the issue of what judgment is in this post.  Then later on I'll treat and defend my argument that the proposition "a judger exists" is reasonable to accept.  That will be kind of a Moorean argument, just to foreshadow it.  Are you familiar with G.E. Moore?  He wrote a famous essay called "A Defense of Common Sense".  You should read it.  Moore was very influential to me epistemologically.  That's mandatory reading for everyone by the way!  I posted a link to the essay below!  Moore had a huge influence on the later Wittgenstein.  They were friends and collaborated on each others ideas.  Moore basically attacked Kantian, Humean, and Cartesian epistemology.  You're not a grown-up epistemologically until you study Moore.  Kant's legacy in epistemology is disastrous, and similar to what a lot of non-dualists assume.  You got before Moore and after Moore in epistemology.  He's that important.  One dude.   Western Philosophy is important too, not just Eastern Philosophy.  Non-dual epistemology is very Kantian.  German philosophers were very cosmopolitan and worldy and had a long history of studying Indian Philosophy, because they had access to the books.  So, the question of whether Kant was influenced by Indian Philosophy is an open question.  Will Durant believed perhaps so.  There's a stark similarity between Kantian epistemology and non-dual epistemologies, or epistemologies that you see expressed in Indian Philosophy in general.  The idea that concept underlies everything and therefore produces maya and uncertain non-empirical judgments.  I wanted to give you a little bit of this background first.  Eastern Philosophy and Western Philosophy basically need to have a baby.  That's the future of Philosophy.  Integration between those two traditions, which have focused on different but complementary issues.  Like 2 sides of a coin.  Philosophy needs a synthesizer now more than ever.  A new Kant in a sense.  Kant synthesized the Empiricists and the Rationalists of his day.  But without the erroneous Kantian epistemological notions which have polluted good minds for way too long!  But I disgress.

    http://selfpace.uconn.edu/class/ana/MooreDefense.pdf

    So.  Ok.  Let's get started . . . 

    Here are 3 of your points:

    (1) "I would suggest that this idea -- judgment is happening, therefore there must be a judger -- can be debated."

    (2) "To begin with, I have to wonder what judgment is."

    (3) "[D]oes this process require a judger?  Well, maybe, but then whatever thing we point at and say "that's the judger" is just an object that is capable of going through this mechanism, right?"

    I Propose Kind of a Meta Argument to You

    • Let's get very practical and observational.  What is judging the above three quotes?  Now, whatever that judger is is judging right now.  This is not an abstraction.  This is right now.  You can simply take a look right now, you don't need to deduce the judger through analysis.  Just look!  I realize looking is gonna be kinda metaphorical because it's a mental looking I'm after.  
    • I take the position that judgments are mental actions.  You're accepting (an act) or rejecting (an act) some proposition.  The meaning of the proposition is a separate and distinct issue from judgment.  (This is not the only kind of judgment we do, it's just a very important kind of judgment we do.)
    • My contention is that judgment sits independently from any conceptual map or set of theories considered or accepted.  
    • Now, observe how you judged the prior sentence!  Just look.  What is that?  You can determine judgment empirically by just looking inside.  You can observe it.  (We need to practice mindfulness of what judgment is by actually observing it in action. )
    • I don't hold the Kantian view that there is a built in conceptual map that filters at some fundamental level.  
    • Now, observe how you judged the prior sentence!  In your mind, what's happening?  Did you see an act of rejection there?  An act of pushing this claim away?  Like a full baby rejecting the feeding spoon by turning away?
    • Not to belabor this point.  But I propose that instead of trying to discover what judgment is by doing analysis, we simply just look!  (Wittgenstein would often say this in teaching his anti-analytical theory of meaning.  He would say, Just look how the words are used!)
    • I propose that we gotta get really common-sensical and empirical to discover the nature of judgment, looking rather than analyzing.  
    • Now, observe how you judged the prior sentence!  In your mind, what's happening?  Did you see an act of rejection?  An act of pushing this claim away?  Or maybe you saw an act of acceptance, I doubt it though.

    Pick apart what I'm saying here and give me a more reasonable view than what I've proposed here.  That would be a constructive thing that I would appreciate from you now.

  17. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    I'm not talking about 1 way, I'm talking 2 way communications.  What is the communication like?  Can you describe it for us?  Do you hear a voice in your awareness, like an inner sound?  What does God say to you?  What does his voice sound like?  Is it a male or a female voice?  Or a neuter voice?  Again, what does God say to you?  Can you provide some examples?

  18. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    All is one, right?  That's a pretty lofty claim to my ears.  So, let's look at one potential problem with this theory.  Other minds.

    Are all other people part of you?  Or is reality the complete set of individual non-dual realities? 

    How are other people's consciousnesses a part of your skandhas though?  Don't you either have to assume that other people's consciousnesses do not exist, or that the same are illusory?  Don't both of those conclusions lead to a kind of absurd result?  It's pretty clear that other people do exist and we have reason to believe that they are conscious like we are, although we can't climb inside their minds to find out for certain.  So, what do we make of this?  Is reality the set of individual one-nesses?  That seems sort of *wacky* to me.  Non-dualism seems kind of implausible to me on this basis.  Please enlighten me on this issue.

  19. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    @Prabhaker  I don't accept any definition or theory of God.  I have a personal relationship with God.  Theory is just theory.  God is God.  In the same way that you are you, versus somebody's description of you.  You are not somebody's description of you, although that description may be useful in locating you, or knowing something about you.  And God is not a person.  And you are not God.  I know Leo says the latter and it bugs me.  It's very ignorant.  Non-religious people should not talk about God.  They are blind to it.  It's like a blind person talking about viewing a Rembrandt painting.  Ridiculous right?  We are not God.  God is God.  And we can't know God fully, only what God reveals to us.  We are always gonna be partly blind to knowledge about God.  The Quran is the best fairy-tale, as it were, for us to kind of get an idea, some kind of human analogy, of what God is.  Scriptures are analogies when they pertain to God.  But they're useful.  They're vehicles to God basically.  Roadmaps.

  22. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    @Annetta Ok.  So, what my first sentence means is that I'm talking more about a person who has hatred as a stable characteristic of their personality.  Like a personality disorder, if you want to draw that analogy.  Somebody who has a post-traumatic hatred based off a single event would fall outside of that because their hatred would be based on that event only. 

    I'm talking about people that are racist.  People that are narcissistic.  People that are mean.  People that are chauvinistic.  People that are manipulative.  But specifically with a flavor of hatred added in there.  As a stable quality.  Probably always been that way.  That's what I'm talking about.  

    And I know nothing about social psychology, so my knowledge only extends to humans, because that's all I've come into contact with.  I don't like to speculate outside of my knowledge comfort-zone.  I like to keep it real with my opinions.  If I don't know, I say I don't know.  And I don't know anything above and beyond people.  Telescoping into abstractions is above and beyond my experience in this area.