Potboiler

I will not be online much for the next 2 weeks, no internet in our house; so just to say I am still around ...

The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao. 


                                                                        Lao Tzu



Remember that always.

Who am I? Do I control my thoughts?

Reading Tom's latest post on The Heron Clan blog today, I fell to thinking , as Tom has been, on my identity.

For me the most interesting part is his understanding that what one does, achieves, fails in, looks like, thinks about etc does not constitute "me."

I have recently been trying on various ideas, tasting various points of view.  This is my latest  :

I am aware.  What I am aware of cannot be 'me' (something like an eye cannot see itself, but that analogy is inexact.) I am this awareness, as far as I can understand.  This awareness has absolutely no substance; if it had substance, it would be something of which I could perhaps be aware, so it would not be me.  So we are at the point that I have absolutely no substance.  

I am aware of a world apparently outside, but perhaps inside me and possibly not anywhere in particular; I am aware of thoughts, a body, sensations, emotions.

Whatever I am aware of cannot be me. So exactly what is this 'I'?  Just the awareness, it seems.

Now, this awareness does not seem to be very personal.  It certainly exists, but does not have any obvious location, nor does it really seem to belong to me. I just seem to be using it.

So is there any "I"?

At this point, my analysis comes to an ignominious end and I have not discovered how to continue it. I have not discovered any "person", but simply a world apparently containing this body through which the physical world and other bodies seem to be perceived , along with a collection of evanescent thoughts, sensations  and feelings mysteriously seeming to be "mine" but not much  under "my" control; all of which is subject to change.

Thoughts arise, but I do not seem to have much control over them.  Are they "mine"?  I'm aware of them so they are mine to that extent and by contrast with not being aware of thoughts in other minds.  Descarts famously said, "Cogito ergo sum"  I think therefore I am.  I don't find this accurate, though the translation from Latin may have something to do with that.  "I am aware, therefore I am" is my experience.  Perhaps Descartes actually meant that?  I'm no Latin scholar.
.

Getting a Man

Actually, this post will not give any explicit useful hints about finding a man, if that is what you are looking for; but it might give you some encouragement.  I just want to say that my last wife, whom I met in 1963 when I  had two children and she was 19, and who lived with me from 1964 till we were divorced in 1989, has never been short of a man for periods longer than a month or two.  She is not strikingly attractive to look at, though certainly not plain;  not particularly sexy in fact a little conservative in that field (her more kinky sister called her "my straight sister"), somewhat more than averagely intelligent, the daughter of a university art professor and the granddaughter of a Baron, has a good singing voice and some ability to sight-read a line of music; is sociable, a good housekeeper, an industrious worker, a loyal friend, absolutely trustworthy with money and a loving mother to her two children and two step-children.

I don't know her secret for attracting men, except that she immediately becomes interested in any man who seems attractive to her, and makes herself pleasant to him.  She doesn't play hard-to-get or other silly games.  She doesn't string men along  but is very open about her feelings.  She has nothing to hide.

Since she and I parted she has had one or two temporary liaisons, one permanent one with an older man who died and left her his very good house, another temporary  relationship and finally what looks like a permanent one as she tells me she is getting married to him in March this year, has sold her house and bought a bungalow near her fiance's house.  Things do fall into place in her life.  She is 69 this year.

So there is obviously no call for older single or widowed women to feel there's no chance of getting another man.

Tolerance for my shortcomings

I commented on Dana's blog where she wrote that her husband has ADD and struggles with organising anything, and I felt that comment needed a post of its own, so here it is.

 I have never thought of myself as having ADD, but I do just the kind of thing Dana's husband did. I have several times reached the cash desk in the supermarket and found I had no money with me (they don't accept credit cards.)  It's embarrassing, but the girls there know me well and are very nice about it.  I  can just leave my purchases there and come back with the money later.

I'm hopeless at organising anything. I once found myself on a committee running an organisation for gifted children, and my job was to organise monthly trips. I wondered how I had managed to have a gifted child as I was so inept. I hated the job anyway, and found it very difficult. It's not the first time I have found myself in a job that needs organising skills and failed hopelessly - I just don't have the ability or even the inclination. You know the saying, "couldn't organise a Sunday School picnic"?  That's me. I forget essential things. The details just leave my mind when I'm not thinking about them.

Are these the symptoms of ADD? If so, it's lucky I don't believe in this obsessive and misleading classification of common characteristics!

Fortunately, my wife is a Filipina and one of the most tolerant of that tolerant people. No matter how many times I forget (or omit) to shut the screen door after me (keeps out the mosquitoes) she just gets up and quietly shuts it.  She doesn't get mad at me. I think for her it's just something she finds she has to do, if she wants it done - like opening an umbrella when it rains.  Though she will tell me how many mosquitoes she has caught inside the house, later in the evening, as though it's just a matter of interest to everyone.

Guns in America

I am impressed by Sam Harris's cogent arguments with respect to gun ownership in USA.  Much ill-thought-out talk has been published since the murders at Sandy Hook School, and not all of it came from the National Rifle Association and its backers.  This article does greatly help to clarify the issues.

Here is the link to his blog article: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-riddle-of-the-gun

Everyone who is interested in the pros and cons of gun control laws should read this.

Incidentally, Sam Harris is the author of two books I possess: "Lying"; and  "Freewill", both entertaining reads.

Getting Older

Found this in Kitty's blog, it really applies here!  I love this kind of humour.

Behave or be punished: choose, please

Mankind is under many illusions: you have only to consider the state of society throughout the world to see that. If we all saw truly, would the world not seem a better place? That is why I think it is good for us to consider what actually are we doing and thinking wrong. 

Mouse, for whom I have great respect, devoted half of a blog post to her careful response to my question/comment about free will. She clings to the idea that we have free will, as do the vast majority of humans I believe. I made that comment on her blog post because she, along with many other submissive women, is having the experience of forgoing her “right to choose” to a considerable extent, and that practice seems to me to be a kind of preparation for a much more radical abandonment of the power of choice. Actually no one is abandoning anything, since it is not something anyone has in the first place. 

 It’s certainly true that the vast majority can be wrong, and I think that is the case here. The problem of free will has been debated by philosophers for a very long time. I cannot see any way to prove that we have any power of choice over what we do. We can assert that we could have done otherwise than what we actually did, but assertion does not amount to proof. If you go out for dinner, there is no way you can show convincingly that you could have chosen not to go out for dinner at the time you thought you were making the choice. Free will, I believe, is simply an erroneous habit of thought. 

Not only do Zen Buddhists say “Events happen; deeds are done; but there is no doer thereof”; now neuroscientists are coming up with evidence to support this. Here is a link to some interesting and relevant research.  Our brains apparently show indications of what we are about to "choose" some measurable time before we are aware of choosing.

In addition, many who have had the experience of realising that what they had thought was their personality is simply an illusion say that life “just happens”, the “person” does nothing, because, in fact, the “person” does not exist. There is no person there to be a doer. There’s just a body-mind organism. If we do not even do stuff, much less can we decide what to do! 

However:  

     It does seem that thoughts have some effect.  Kant thought that reason could not be completely trusted, and I feel that he was right.  I think it is worth considering the scenario sketched out by Vadim Zeland in "Reality Transurfing".  He postulates a region where everything is possible and suggests that we are running on a track in that region determined by our thoughts, and by our thoughts we can change that track gradually towards a future we think we would prefer. 

The situation now becomes murky.  If there is no person, then who is thinking?  Where do these thoughts belong?  How do they appear?  And in the phrase "we would prefer", who is this "we"?  Do thoughts, like the rest of life, "simply happen?"  The universe is very mysterious.  

Time is running short for writing this post and I am going to stop there.