I have to write this somewhere...
So in my Major Religious Texts class, we're talking about Buddhism, and about duality and dichotomies...
Let's start out with the word "is." When you say something IS something, that means it is a definite truth. That the thing has the essence of itself and will always have it. 1 IS 1. Yes.. it is. But 1 cannot be 2. Also.. if we say that someone is good, that means they are wholly good and will always be good, but as soon as they do something bad, it completely negates that they are good, thus it not being true, and we can not say that they are good. But! We has humans even go a little further as to say that a table IS a table. But, a table is really just a collection of parts, legs, a table-top... and we say it IS a table.. but it isn't really a table.. because the table lacks "tableness." There is no essence of the table to exist. To say the table IS a table.. is to mean that it was always a table, and will continue to always be a table... which is not true, because it started out as wood from a tree... and will end up rotting in a dump somewhere. Therefore, the table IS not anything..
Got that so far?
The only thing that DOES exist is our perceptions and experiences. We perceive the table as a table, thus we experience it as such.
Continuing on this path.. let's talk about opposites.
Hot and cold, tall and short, fat and thin. Neither exist without the other. You cannot understand the concept of hot without the concept of cold. What is hot? Hot is not cold, and vice versa. Tall is not short, and fat is not thin. So.. since all we know about hot is that it is not cold, and all we know about cold is that it is not hot... we only know what is not. We can't know what they are. We can't know what hot IS. (there's that word again) Not to mention what is hot to me, could be cold to someone else. It's all perception and experience. We can not describe what hot is... you need to experience it. My religions professor's favorite example is pornography. You can not be explained to about what pornography is.. you just know it when you see it. Looking at the statue of David, knowing it's art.. and then looking at a playgirl, and knowing it's pornography... but there isn't much difference between the two... they're both naked men. But we KNOW one is porn and the other is art.
I think this is all I can write on this subject for now... i had to write it all down to get it out of my head, so I can sort it out. It makes sense on the surface level but since we've been raised that things do exist for what they are, it's hard to swallow.
Thus concludes Jenny Moo's Rant. :D
Let's start out with the word "is." When you say something IS something, that means it is a definite truth. That the thing has the essence of itself and will always have it. 1 IS 1. Yes.. it is. But 1 cannot be 2. Also.. if we say that someone is good, that means they are wholly good and will always be good, but as soon as they do something bad, it completely negates that they are good, thus it not being true, and we can not say that they are good. But! We has humans even go a little further as to say that a table IS a table. But, a table is really just a collection of parts, legs, a table-top... and we say it IS a table.. but it isn't really a table.. because the table lacks "tableness." There is no essence of the table to exist. To say the table IS a table.. is to mean that it was always a table, and will continue to always be a table... which is not true, because it started out as wood from a tree... and will end up rotting in a dump somewhere. Therefore, the table IS not anything..
Got that so far?
The only thing that DOES exist is our perceptions and experiences. We perceive the table as a table, thus we experience it as such.
Continuing on this path.. let's talk about opposites.
Hot and cold, tall and short, fat and thin. Neither exist without the other. You cannot understand the concept of hot without the concept of cold. What is hot? Hot is not cold, and vice versa. Tall is not short, and fat is not thin. So.. since all we know about hot is that it is not cold, and all we know about cold is that it is not hot... we only know what is not. We can't know what they are. We can't know what hot IS. (there's that word again) Not to mention what is hot to me, could be cold to someone else. It's all perception and experience. We can not describe what hot is... you need to experience it. My religions professor's favorite example is pornography. You can not be explained to about what pornography is.. you just know it when you see it. Looking at the statue of David, knowing it's art.. and then looking at a playgirl, and knowing it's pornography... but there isn't much difference between the two... they're both naked men. But we KNOW one is porn and the other is art.
I think this is all I can write on this subject for now... i had to write it all down to get it out of my head, so I can sort it out. It makes sense on the surface level but since we've been raised that things do exist for what they are, it's hard to swallow.
Thus concludes Jenny Moo's Rant. :D