Re: It's just a game. :-) : one last time. Posted by Douglas on January 16, 2000 at 18:50:51:
In Reply to: Re: It's just a game. :-) posted by Jeff on January 14, 2000 at 10:28:37:
The Other Side
One day a young Buddhist on his journey home, came to the banks of a wide river. Staring hopelessly at the great obstacle in front of
him, he pondered for hours on just how to cross such a wide barrier. Just as he was about to give up his pursuit to continue his journey
he saw a great teacher on the other side of the river. The young Buddhist yells over to the teacher:
"Oh wise one, can you tell me how to get to the other side of this river"?
The teacher ponders for a moment, looks up and down the river and yells back:
"My son, you are on the other side".
Hi Jeff and anyone else whom we haven’t bored:
I should like to examine the sentence,
“I could show a diagram of 2 overlapping circles, one spit, one a glass of water.”
in the context of the work of G. Spencer Brown, an author not unknown in my citations, since it trespasses on his territory.
‘We take as given the idea of distinction and the idea of indication, and that we cannot make an indication without drawing a
distinction. We take therefore, the form of distinction for the form.”
Definition:
Distinction is perfect continence.
That is to say, a distinction is drawn by arranging a boundary with separate sides so that a point on one side cannot reach the other
side without crossing a boundary. For example, in a plane space a circle draws a distinction.
Once a distinction is drawn, the spaces, states, or contents on each side of the boundary, being distinct, can be indicated.
There can be no distinction without motive, and there can be no motive unless contents are seen to differ in value.
If a content is of value, a name can be taken to indicate this value.
Thus the calling of the name can be identified with the value of the content.
“Laws of Form”
I should like to suggest here is that one might want to pay attention to what is outside the circle that we have drawn around our
experience. And we have all drawn such a circle for any experience wherein the given is distinguished in any way, is not innocent and not
given, though it may seem to be. Distinctions come to be made, somehow or other, some time or other, and these distinctions did not
exist in the first place. Our experience has been discriminating. A Larger Container would welcome back the excommunicated to the
bosom of the only church there is.
You write:
“It may be that to experience the ultimate container, then one must be the ultimate container.”
I am reminded here of Sally’s citation of Einstein:
“A human being is part of the whole called by us the universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and
feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us,
restricting us to our personal desires and for affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this
prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Now Einstein knew a little about mathematics and geometry, and presumed, no doubt, that so did his readers. Scale aside, let us draw a
very large circle on a page and call it the universe. Let us make a dot with our pencil tip within that circle and call it a human being — “a
part limited in time and space.” The sub-set cannot encompass the set. Where is a real blackboard when you need one!
Do you remember back to the “Where am I?” exercise of last summer. Even if you assigned yourself the value of just one quantum
particle/wave, on the level of an exercise in scale, the scale and with it the metaphor, are untenable. (Sorry to burst your bubble Coach.)
Concepts such as c. 15 billion light years are necessarily abstract.
This is not to say, that because one cannot realize the whole, one cannot realize that one is part of the whole. To pose your own
question in the rhetorical:
“But is it not possible to touch this “ultimate container” . . . ?”
There is still the matter of those pesky boundaries though.
Goodnight
Douglas
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