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Inuzuka Skysword · 08-15-2010, 06:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cardboard adolescent

I am a monist, so I believe that ultimately everything is One, and that this One-ness is best described as Love or Being, but because we live under the illusion of maya, we tend to understand these terms as they relate to their opposites, Hate or Non-Being. However, I think this is an imperfect understanding. But insofar as we have to operate under maya until we reach our final awakening, I think we have a responsibility to choose Love over Hate and Being over Non-Being. Under the illusion of maya, we see Love and Hate as locked in an eternal struggle that doesn't promise a resolution, and we see Being and Non-Being as trapped in an eternal cycle which we might call Becoming. When we are enlightened, we realize that Hate destroys itself, and therefore doesn't exist, and Non-Being... well... is Non-Being. Hate and Non-Being are the same in this sense because neither really exist... they're like feedback rolling off the pure power fifth that is Being, an ornament or decoration, but not something that exists in itself, and something that is always disappearing.

I really have nothing to say to this because this whole paragraph is claims. I really don't see how you start off accepting monism. My question would be how one can believe in such a thing.

I don't think everything can be called existence. Existence is a property and not an actual thing. We do refer to "the universe" as existence, but "existence" takes on the meaning of "everything that is."

Quote:

I'll try to tie these beliefs back in to what I was trying to get at with causality. I still hold that from the perspective of maya, which is characterized by discursive reasoning, which is based on duality (as computer science shows, all you need is 0 and 1 and some logic gates), causality seems to entail a contradiction. The reason for this is because causality both implies a first cause and precludes the possibility of a first cause. The reason it is impossible for there to be a first cause is because a cause only ever imparts the movement that has been imparted on it--billiard ball A makes billiard ball B move in a particular direction only because billiard ball A has been made to move in a certain direction by billiard ball C... and so on. Derrida talks about this a lot, but in annoyingly complicated terms. If you think about the Big Bang, and the idea that everything emerged from a singularity, you realize that that implies that the Universe began with One thing moving in Two directions... which is impossible. So you're stuck, I claim, with a tricky situation: causality seems to imply a contradiction, but this contradiction is only meaningful within the system of causality. Hence, I do not believe that discursive reasoning, which is dualistic, is inherently self-contradictory. Rather, I believe, in parallel with the previous paragraph, that within discursive reasoning we see, at its foundation, the constant cycling of identity and contradiction, the ultimate yin-yang, that of reasoning as such. But when we transcend discursive reasoning, identity and contradiction unify into paradox, which gives rise to Thought but is also beyond it.

How do contradiction and identity give rise to thought? What are you defining as thought? Thought only exists if there is an object to think about. If there is no object to think about, then there can be no thought. I take it that since "identity" does not exist, then you reject the idea that things exist. Existence is only possible as long as identity is possible. You cannot exist without existing as something.