I have started a blog which I am calling Mastering the Skill of Consciousness ~ Reflexions on Evolution and Consciousness, Pragmatic Dharma, and Recovery from Absent-Mindedness.

The coordinating theme is explicating, popularizing, and making practical use of the work of philosopher Leslie Dewart, who wrote Evolution and Consciousness: The Role of Speech in the Origin and Development of Human Nature (University of Toronto Press, 1989). The first order of business has been to post summaries of the book including two read aloud in MP3 audio.

Among other topics, I am discussing noting, vipassana, content vs. insight, the three characteristics, and the mechanics of enlightenment.

Perhaps this will be of interest to denizens of the DhO.

Please be warned, however: paradigm shift ahead!

HI Tarver,



Are you interested in discussing the paper Conspectus? I have questions for you, in your desire to popularize his opinions (as he calls them) and in relation to your contemplative and/or meditative studies and its motivations.

It is worth noting that the author himself, Leslie Sutherland Dewart (1922-2009), explicitly states in the first paragraph of his paper which he provided to you in the early 1990s that he will "[make no effort to allege evidence in support of his views or to try to meet objections to them.]"

If you are comfortably in the same camp of believing his views without evidence or discussions which are neither objections nor adoptions, then it may be best to decline this invitation to discuss his "Conspectus".

Indeed: Gotama was adamant that persons question for themselves [1].

Again, if acceptance of his views is the volition that is welcome in your thread, then I wish you well and will exit. Otherwise, "Conspectus" could be looked at (conspicere) in relation to the notion of skhandas, especially the effect of samskāra (Pāli saṅkhāra) as transforming unknowing (open awareness, observation, study, conspicere) into willed ignorance/delusion.


[1]Kalama Sutta: To the Kalamas
[indent]Etha tumhe, Kālāmā, mā anussavena, mā paramparāya, mā itikirāya, mā pitakasampadānena, mā takkahetu, mā nayahetu, mā ākāraparivitakkena, mā ditthinijjhānakkhantiyā, mā bhabbarūpatāya, mā samano no garū’ti. Yadā tumhe, Kālāmā, attanāva jāneyyātha: “Ime dhammā akusalā, ime dhammā sāvajjā, ime dhammā viññugarahitā, ime dhammā samattā samādinnā ahitāya dukkhāya samvattantī”ti, atha tumhe, Kālāmā, pajaheyyātha.

Mā anussavena: Do not believe something just because it has been passed along and retold for many generations.

Mā paramparāya: Do not believe something merely because it has become a traditional practice.

Mā itikirāya: Do not believe something simply because it is well-known everywhere.

Mā pitakasampadānena: Do not believe something just because it is cited in a text.

Mā takkahetu: Do not believe something solely on the grounds of logical reasoning.

Mā nayahetu: Do not believe something merely because it accords with your philosophy.

Mā ākāraparivitakkena: Do not believe something because it appeals to "common sense."

Mā ditthinijjhanakkhantiya: Do not believe something just because you like the idea.

Mā bhabbarūpatāya: Do not believe something because the speaker seems trustworthy.

Mā samano no garūti: Do not believe something thinking, “This is what our teacher says.”

When you yourselves know, “This is unwholesome, this is blameworthy, this is censured by the wise, these things when accepted and practised lead to harm and suffering, then you should give them up.”[/indent]

edit: hyperlink added

Hi Katy.

Thank you for your comments, and the links.

In the two summary papers, Dewart focuses his effort on explaining, as clearly as he could, simply what his theory states because all of the reasoning that led to it (the why & how, etc.) is available in the book. If you find it intriguing, please do read the book for the fine-grained 399 pages of the nitty-gritty.

Alternatively, as most people just aren't going to do that, you could follow my blog as I attempt to lay it out in bite-sized portions, one post at a time. Also, right from the get-go, I am working on tying this back into practice. I am quite convinced that Dewart's insights can lead to improved practice techniques (or other interventions) that could lead to the attainment of classical enlightenment by a much larger proportion of the human population than the best practices of today are facilitating.

The best-case outcome would be to make classical enlightenment the norm rather than the exception throughout the entire human population.

The Conspectus (and for that matter also the Synopsis) is meant to promote exactly conspicere, to catch sight of, to notice that something of interest may be available. It is a place to start, not by any means the last word on the subject. I have put it up on the Web (and even read it out loud in MP3 format) simply because I am starting with what I have -- hoping to kindle a broader discussion which is two decades overdue, but which is now possible with the Internet in a way that was not possible when the book was first published.

In order to discuss anything intelligently, it is necessary to have adequate knowledge of it. Dewart's theory is especially difficult in this respect because it challenges certain deeply held (but I say, erroneous) assumptions, endemic in our culture, head-on. Those who meditate enough may have already worked through some or even most of these, without quite realizing what they have attained.

In my experience, Dewart's theory passes every test that the Buddha suggested to the Kalamas. My practice log documents how I have, however falteringly, explored the theory through direct practice. My experience, my direct personal experience, is that the more skilled I become at meditation, the better Dewart's theory checks out. In fact, it has gotten to the point where I feel motivated to share this amazing and liberating and profoundly hopeful point of view with anyone who will listen, fully expecting -- exactly as in the case of classical enlightenment -- that at first most people simply won't get it, will misunderstand, will trip (tragically) over trivial complications, will never see the big picture.

But a few will. And then a few more, and so on.

My blog is an exercise in me learning how to present this idea in less than 399 densely argued pages -- frankly unreadable by the average person -- and also in less than 16 pages of exposition penned by a brilliant man who, for better or worse, may have been too close to his own work to express it any more concisely.

I flag the idea of "paradigm shift" because that is an apt way of describing the situation. Pick any example you like. The Buddha's own insights have led to the liberation of many people, but not yet enough for us to alter the course of our civilization sufficiently to prevent our immanent collision with environmental catastrophe. Moving through time from then to the present, every major innovation in religion, science, philosophy, and every other field has started somewhere and propagated at various rates, picked up first by certain early adopters and then in time by others. Not everyone initially believed or understood that the sun is still and the earth moves -- and then it turned out that the sun moves after all, but not in the way initially imagined! Most people still don't fully grasp the implications of Darwin's non-reductionistic yet nevertheless perfectly causal explanation of species variation. And if you want to get a really blank stare out of people, I can assure you that a great way to do that in most (but I hope not all) cases is attempting to convey that speech is in fact prior to consciousness, and that this knowledge may help them meditate better, understand the three characteristics faster, and get enlightened sooner than they otherwise would have.

Early adopters, please step forward. The rest of you, if you are here on DhO you are already doing great: carry on!

I would like to suggest that this thread be constrained to the fact that something of potential interest to DhO folk is available (which has now been established) and to why it may be of interest.

I propose that any discussion of the specifics of the theory -- the content -- be done in other threads in the appropriate sections of DhO (if anyone is so inclined, especially as concerns practice) or at my blog. The following comments skate on the edge of this proposal, but in any case, here are two more points apropos why this may be of interest to pragmatic dharma practitioners:

1) I can see potential for significant improvements in the practice of noting once the implications of noting as an act of speech, and therefore consciousness-generating, come to be appreciated and consciously exploited as such.

2) In my experience, the view from Dewart's theory (plus a certain dose of meditation) makes the whole problem of duality/non-duality basically go away, both conceptually and experientially. I don't find duality unpleasant. As best I can tell, and I see myself as a reasonably perceptive fellow, I simply don't have that problem.

The results I have obtained from the moderate amount of meditation I have done (by DhO standards) appear to have been disproportionately good. I am chalking this up to a kind of "Right View", but not the traditional one; rather, the syntactic conception of the relation between speech, thought, and reality.

It strikes me that I am probably the worst promoter of Dewart's theory, ever. I take some consolation in the fact that I appear, so far, to be the only promoter of Dewart's theory, ever. It took a while for people to catch on to Gregor Mendel's work, too. It happens.

HI Tarver -






I know you've alerted the DhO that your Dewart model is a paradigm shift. I think one area which may obscure clear conversation is your/Dewart's use of the word "consciousness". For example, the above excerpt could be said to be expressing more prominently the khandha of saṅkhāra: volition. Further, in a Buddhist framework, I am not aware of volitional acts like noting also being "consciousness-generating". ***

For the sake of other readers who may be new to this it may be worth saying here that buddhism is a tradition that identifies five aspects (aggregates of) of the "mental faculty".

Because Dewart did not work in a system of khandhas he might not make such distinctions and, therefore, in some of his concepts in Conspectus - from a "dharma practice" perspective - there are both viññāṇa (consciousness) and saṅkhāra (mental formations, volitions) blended under his use of the word "consciousness". Without clarifying this, conversations may stall.

edits: grammar, punctuation
edit 2: ***SN 12.15: Kaccānagottasuttam

Excellent point, yes, thank you. One of the stubs on the blog is an outline of a glossary of key terms. I have many years of work ahead of me here.

Tarver - I posted a reply in a different thread about some content. Also, I'd suggest that you don't jump so wholeheartedly into accepting these views and perhaps forming a duality (identity) around them (which of course is just as "real" as a rock or a tree) because it might cause a lack of objectivity, as there are some people way more experienced than you or I who seemed to have rejected these ideas, though they did so in reference to different language and different frameworks in the understanding of the ideas in question. (talking about those who have gone beyond 4th path here)

Adam - thank you for your concern. I will attempt to answer your questions in the other thread presently. I will say here, though, that I find it curious that others have rejected "these ideas" since up to this point Dewart's particular take is so comprehensively unknown that he doesn't even have a Wikipedia page yet.* I suspect that upon investigation we will discover that "these ideas" resolve into a cluster of well-worn ontic dead ends on the one hand, and a novel, not previously considered synthesis on the other.

* Bonus points on the Kalama tests, perhaps?

only the mental faculty ? One of the khandas is the physical aspect - "rupa"

Hi Shashank - If it derails Traver's thread thesis, would you mind taking this line of query into a new thread if consideration of it would continue?

Yes. Form is experienced by mental contact with it, thus there are sense-objects and corresponding sense-bases.

Because my larynx (and probably yours too) is not connected to the tempanic bones by the stylohyal bone so-called ultrasonic objects did not exist for us until maybe 1938. Ultrasonic objects may also not exist as such to bats since they do not need a receiver to render higher frequencies into lower frequencies. The nature of ultrasonic objects will change with our curiosity and study of them. Yet, lacking awareness of ultrasonism did not prevent our measurable object "ultrasonism" from existing. (Though this still means that the object "ultasonism" is actually entirely new as of 1937-18ish and that we cannot know what bats have, we can only know that we've managed to convert a high frequency into a human-audible frequency and thus we cannot know the full scope of what is "echolocation" nor the full, batty uses of it. We lack the sense-base for whatever they have. This can be endless, wondrous "don't know").

There is still mental contact when form is known via another sense-base. Take congenital insensitivity with anhidrosis (CIPA): there is perhaps no touch-contact (or insufficient tactility to detect unpleasant sensation), but there is still eye-consciousness, the sight of touch-contact (without touch-consciousness) and eye-contact informs a discerning aspect of the mental faculty, and the discerning aspect makes a decision to continue touch-contact or remove it. Persons affected by CIPA learn to identify hazards with discernment if not with unpleasant sensation.

And there is still mental contact without form: take phantom limb feeling resolved by mirror therapy.

If you can confirm rupa without mental contact, without the mental faculty, (and inference is capacity of the mental faculty), then how?

[edits for clarity]

Hi Katy

I think we are talking about slightly different things. The khanda of "rupa" is only used to talk about the physical aspect of existence - internal and external to the body.

Sure , the form cannot be recognized without the mental faculty , but that awareness of form is already accounted under the mental faculty/khanda of consciousness(vinnana). So there are two different khandas - 1). the physical form itself (rupa) and 2). the mental faculty recognizing it (vinnana)

I'm sorry but I'm not sure how to , so please take this thread elsewhere if its derailing the OP's topic !

Shashank

Hi Tarver,

I've bought the book, so I'll get back to you when I've been able to, like you, compare it with practice further. It's usefulness so far is simply the idea that 'mental talk' is 'self definition'.

Andrew:
That's awesome, I hope you enjoy the book! Don't be put off by it's length and density; E&C is no worse that Darwin's Origin of the Species and millions have worked their way through that just fine. In fact, one of Dewart's colleagues, a certain Bruce Alton, once compared E&C to Darwin's Origin, and said the structure of the former resembles the latter, comprising a long series of individual arguments that are so arranged that they cumulatively drive the final conclusion, however unconventional it may have appeared at the outset. You also have the summaries to orient you.

Shashank:
Thanks for reminding us about rupa, and don't worry about taking over this thread.You can't move individual posts easily. Maybe an Admin can, but there is no need to. If it makes sense, you can start another thread elsewhere, and continue the conversation there, optionally leaving a link. For example, Adam asked about some content and I answered here. (Just be sure to use the link button if you do that, as the current version of DhO doesn't make URL's into links automatically.)

Katy:
Thank you for all the excellent points you made, above and offline, especially calling attention to the use of apophatic versus cataphatic argumentation. I have been very aware lately of figure-and-ground-reversal type perceptions, which I have been calling "penetration of negation", but your point is very well taken about the rhetorical effect. Duly noted.

5/24/12 9:41 AM after many fussy edits...

Hi Shashank -



I think I understand your basis for making the above statement. Here is Bhikkhu Anālayo in his Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, pages 202-204, Chapter X "Dhammas: the Aggregates"
[indent]The first of the aggregates, material form (rūpa), is usually defined in the discourses in terms of the four elementary qualities of matter. A discourse in Khandha Samyutta explains that material form (rūpa) refers to whatever is affected (ruppati) by external conditions such as cold and heat, hunger and thirst, mosquitos and snakes, emphasizing the subjective experience of rūpa as a central aspect of the aggregate.[/indent]

It is critically important to understand that rūpa (material matter) is defined through the subjective aspects of the internal sense-organs (ajjhattikāni āyatanāni) -- nose (components by which smell happens), ear (components by which hearing happens), eye (components by which seeing happens), etc -- and through the external sense-objects (bāhirāni āyatanāni): odours, sounds, visible objects,etc. The internal sense-organs include the mind (the sixth of the sense organs), and its sense-objects are mental objects, aka "whatever becomes an object of the mind or of any other sense door during contemplation."[1]

Even when one wants to know, like Kevatta, where the forms of elements end ("where do these four great elements — the earth property, the liquid property, the fire property, and the wind property — cease without remainder?") the answer given by Gotama is that the question "should not be phrased this way"; the proper question makes the elements subjective to the one's own "footings" (the bases), the means by which to experience or to cease experience of the four elements (so, the proper question does not involve elements as they may be in their own right or absolutely):
[indent]"it should be phrased like this:

Where do water, earth, fire, & wind
have no footing?
Where are long & short,
coarse & fine,
fair & foul,
name & form
brought to an end?
"'And the answer to that is:


Consciousness without feature,[1]
without end,
luminous all around:
Here water, earth, fire, & wind
have no footing.
Here long & short
coarse & fine
fair & foul
name & form
are all brought to an end.
With the cessation of [the activity of] consciousness
each is here brought to an end.'"[/indent]

So, to reiterate: external form - to consider it both practically and honestly - is matter which is apprehended by one's senses (āyatana), and thus external form may also just be the audible, tastable, tactile, smellable, visible, and/or conceptual components of that which is bigger and unknown to our senses, unknown to us. This is the basis for our constant "new" discoveries, such as echolocation in the 1930s; prior to this bat-ologists assumed a sixth sense, or maybe papers stating "We don't know" didn't publish well or cause tenure track.

At a practical level, it is common to take inferences and make them facts and it is common to revisit those "facts" at the inference level to gain new insight. Consider that there are movements in physics to remove time from equations, respecting that the time-space grid is an inference we use to great practical effect, but is still an inference and is false as an absolute (as was its precedent the luminiferous ether and the inference of there being an absolute location in space (a finite universe)). A non-tenure, scholar-farmer-translator physicist, Julian Barbour, is known for removing the assumption of time from physical equations (and he does the legwork with other colleges to further this development).

There is a story from the late 1880s of a "Flatland" 2-d square apperceiving - through his own 2-d sense - what is 'Sphere' (a 3-d circle visiting from Spaceland) as well as learning his own 2-d limits to teach Pointland (a 1-d area of a single Point resident) what is two dimensionality:
[indent]Let us leave this God of Pointland to the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or I can do can rescue him from his self-satisfaction.[/indent]

Inferences can be wonderful, practical developments made from the sense-bases, and where inferences are always known as inferences (not absolute), the benefits of honesty remains - chiefly, we might avoid willful ignorance and the pain of willful ignorance. To say, "only 2-D exists", then Square (the hero of Flatland) would have been false and ignorant, self-limiting (self-satisfying) to what his senses were perceiving (changing diameter circles arriving and disappearing in regular sequence) and adding also "the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience" - applying conclusive, self-satisfying opinions to his sensory apperceptions ("for what purpose?" one might ask Mr. Dewart if he were able to answer his work or willing (see first page, first para of Conspectus)).

If you know "the physical aspect of existence" outside of the rūpakkhandha (sense-objects), then how? Gotama does not address finitude and the four elements (meaning, not addressing "rūpa" as fully formed or locatable matter), rather rūpa as intercepted by the six sense-organs (and dynamically intercepted, anicca); what is taught are the foundational bases for the elements.

This is the study of the foundations of mindfulness (satipaṭṭhāna). This is the study of ceasing to build stories and false absolutes upon inferences and assumptions, and this cessation avails a mind to relief of stress, development of wonder and wisdom (to name some developments among an unknown expanse of other developments that may arise in a vast openness and which are not known and are not falsely assumed to exist either) in seeing things as they dynamically are and to the extent of how one actually may dynamically experience such sense-objects. The hardware store sells "red" and "green" paint, but it is agreed that "red" and"green" do not exist as such for many, many people.


Why does this understanding of form have any significance (the knowledge that form actually exists to us as sensately apprehended by the āyatana)? Bhikkhu Yuttadhamma has a useful 37 minute video which addresses cravings, specifically an extremely pronounced form of craving known as addiction: "Ask A Monk: Pornography and Masturbation (and Addiction in General)" Cravings are stressful, and addictions and compulsions are even more stressful and binding.


To Dewart's special humanness, he defined baselessly by opining on what non-human animals are not (see Conspectus page one, para three); specifically, his writing presumes to know that non-human animals lack consciousness by a) correlating human speech with consciousness and b) by deeming there to be no animal speech, if I understand Tarver correctly, merely some form of lesser communication. This reminds me of the joke some have to correlate gun shooting deaths with in-hospital deaths, stating that doctors cause more deaths than gun owners; it is a joke, else gun owners would go to one another for healing and treatment, clearly they do not, and do contribute tens of thousands of statistical deaths to doctors' care in taking their injured arses to the hospital...:glare What can be said here is that human speech may be comprehended by humans (and other animals now as well) and that human knowledge of bat speech (versuscommunication) is seemingly non-existant. One cannot honestly say that it does not exist unless one wants to bear "the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience", a personal willful ignorance. (Apophatic language has the strength of honestly speaking in non-absolutes and unknowns and infinite inclusion, "I am not non-theist, I am not non-buddhist, I am not non-bat, etc" as opposed to cataphatic structures (based on cataphatic thinking).) There are accurate uses of cataphatic speech ("I have two ears") and yet it gets used much more than is is accurate, outside of Right Speech or honest speech. So a meditative practice on the four foundations removes this. It is no wonder that religions of the world apply contemplative and meditation, reclusive practices in addition to preliminary morally-founded restraints.

My point with echolocation, Flatland, and emphasizing form-as-known-through-āyatana is to point out how ignorance arises and how their study (mindfulness of the foundations) begins to dispel ignorance and create an open, humble mind and attitude, not a different mentality perhaps than that of Mr. Dewart's 500-year predecessor Roman Catholic anonymously and faithfully abiding in his/her dynamic position of limited knowledge, in the Cloud of Unknowing.

Back to bats: again, I (and probably you, too) lack the sense-object to whatever bats are (partially?) doing, because we also lack the sense-base (see above stylohyal-larynx-tempanic connection), but we have created the sense-object "echolocation" by converting human inaudible-frequencies into human-audible frequencies. We cannot rightfully assume that our sense-object "echolocation" contains all of whatever bats are doing: that is a wondrous thrill of humble, partial knowledge, where the expanse of the other part, what is not known, is unknown absolutely to me.

Simply, empirical self-study discovers with Bahiya "in reference to the seen, there will be only the seen. In reference to the heard, only the heard...", unanswerables and wondrous, non-"apprehended"s (unknown-ness).

Ahoy! perhaps it may be called "not non-open awareness"


__________
[1] Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, Anālayo, Windhorse Publications, pages 182-183: "Most translators take the term dhammas in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta to mean "mental objects"...in contradistinction to the five other senses. (...) [T]he dhammas mentioned in this satipaṭṭhāna are not "mental objects", but are applied to whatever becomes an object of the mind or of any other sense door during contemplation".

edit: apprehendable apprehended
edit: and grammar
edit: and punctuation
edit: and clarity
edit: gonna' have to put the pencil down soon...
edit: phffffft.

edit: 22:50 pm One. More. Hyperlink. Kotthita.

Saw a description of this book:

Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind by Sellars, Wilfred (1912-1989).

This is a short but densely packed book on how "all awareness ... is a linguistic affair." That to have concepts apart from language makes no sense. To deny this, to think we can have knowledge of color or sound, for example, without language, is to fall for the "myth of the given". Sellars's book can be seen as a way to de-mystify and naturalize our ability to form concepts.


Thought you might be interested.

Thanks for the reference. It sounds distantly familiar, but I have never read it. This is where my regrets over never having done that PhD in philosophy start to percolate back up. I know a bit, but I certainly don't have comprehensive knowledge of the field. What I do have is some knowledge and experience of several fields which are cross-illuminating in interesting and I hope helpful ways.

Funny you should bring this up, though, because I was just reading E&C in the chapter "Self-defining consciousness in variant forms", p. 273, footnote 15, where Dewart points to:


Even in the fragment you offered, that "all awareness ... is a linguistic affair," there are terminological difficulties of distinguishing awareness from experience, consciousness, etc. Likewise in saying that concepts have to do with language (rather than, say, speech) reveals the semantic orientation which is so deeply ingrained in our very culture & tradition, in all of our Western religions, philosophy, and science. Once I see the pattern, though, it is both exhilarating and flabbergastingly frustrating to see even the most brilliant people running in loops, often touching one or another part of the question, and yet returning to the point of departure, over and over.

Just as in order to get to the moon, it was necessary first to give up the idea that the Earth is the fixed centre of the cosmos; in order to attain widespread peace and harmony within and amongst ourselves, to say nothing of equilibrium with the environment, it will be necessary for Western civilization to give up the idea that language (or any reality for that matter) is inherently meaningful, yet without collapsing into the opposite extreme of supposing that it is inherently meaningless. What's left in the middle is people speaking to themselves and each other, constrained not by the "forces of fate" but by the cascading implications of our collective absent-minded failure to grok that we are speaking. The necessary shift is strongly analogous to that which moves from Content to Insight, the experience of which is common in this community, but not so common and clearly designated elsewhere.

I am still pondering how to respond to the other posts, to sum up "the view" in a few sentences. Wonderful, difficult, challenging question! I am at that stage of learning where one is poised between a "passive vocabulary" and an "active vocabulary," i.e., between where one is able to point to reality and inarticulately assert "this!", and the later stage of normal development where one can articulately make original thematic assertions. This little project has got to be the most reflexive thing I have ever done in my life... I responded to this right away because it offered an opening to point out Dewart's pointing out the "semantic complex," an interlocking and self-perpetuating set of half-truths that institutionalize absent-mindedness in our culture.

Well, I would say that he never actually looked at a sensation long enough to realise that there are no words that can actually describe them!

If I say 'Itch' there is nothing in the word, save it's vague onomatopoeia (yes I had to look it up, but I did know about it, my mother is an amateur linguist, I had a youth of hearing about this stuff), that actually transmits the experience of the sensation.


It is not a substitue for the real thing. It doesn't even simulate the real thing, it is at best a simulacra that completely depends on you previously have been taught to call a sensation you scratch an 'itch' to mean anything at all. The word itself derives meaning parasitically from the sensation.

If words transmitted what they are understood to mean by those conditioned to understand them, then I could, without ever learning a particular language, understand the meaning of 'maninca' without a search engine at my finger tips.

I'm itching typing this now...

You guys are great, all of you. Here are a couple more points, as they occur to me:

How could you have known that I was reading E&C around p. 299 where Dewart discusses the differences between phonetic and ideographic writing? Of course, you didn't know that, but your point gives me the perfect lead in to discuss this...

As it turns out, phonetic writing like we use and ideographic writing (like Chinese) have a very interesting reciprocal property as concerns who can understand it and exactly how. With the "oriental" systems (i.e., other than ours), speakers of mutually unintelligible languages can literally read the same newspaper in certain cases, but if the newspaper were read out loud by, say, a speaker of Mandarin it would not be understood by a speaker of Cantonese. On the other hand, if I, a speaker of English, were to read out loud a passage in German, I would not understand what I was "saying" but a speaker of German would hear me (notwithstanding subtleties of pronunciation) adequately to understand the text. What's with that?

It has to do with the assertiveness of the speaker and the very "ideas" of speech that are "built-in" as it were to the two systems. By comparing and contrasting both, we can start to get a handle on certain presuppositions that would have been opaque to us had we only one way to do it. The Chinese approach is actually more accurate from a certain point of view, in that it allows writers to express what they mean, independent of how they might happen to vocalize their meanings, should they choose to assert their experiences in that modality. The Western approach is more efficient in certain key respects, but depends for its conception on failing to take into account that the writer is actually saying anything, keeping the focus of the exercise myopically locked onto the content of what is being said -- presupposing that the meaning is not proper to the communicative activity of the author, but somehow, indeed magically, inherent in the semantics of the words.

I quickly Googled this, by the way, and the site I found to verify the content of my example innocently committed an egregious ethnocentricity which would doubtless appall them if they were aware of it, even though it is not uncommon. They referred to the system of ideographic writing as an "alphabet" which implies phonetic transcription, which reduces all written communication to the type we are familiar with in the West. Dewart calls attention to a pervasive ethnocentricity on the part of our culture which, once you know where to look, makes many otherwise sensitive and intelligent people around us look and sound like so many Victorians referring to other cultures as so many savages. I don't exclude myself from these habits of speech and thought, but I am now working to root them out. The recent history of the world is largely the tragic account of the phenomenal peoples getting paved by the ontic.

Those of you who have done a 10-day Goenka may recall the example in the Discourses of the guy who took a course but had tremendous difficulty realizing that heat and sweat were in fact sensations. Once that point was conveyed, Vipassana became possible because sensations could be observed as such, rather than merely experienced. This is the move from content to insight. Dewart calls it very clearly, on a global scale, with a full account of the evolutionary appearance of the entire system: consciousness happens when the object and the act of experience are simultaneously present to the experiencer. Absent-mindedness is a culturally perpetuated inability to grok the assertive act, a predisposition to be dazzled by the object, a pan-cultural getting-stuck-in-content. Once you know where to look, this becomes obvious everywhere right down to the way we think about what we are doing when we communicate in words and in writing. It leads to staggering ethnocentricity. It leads to violence, confusion, and misery. It leads to the conclusion that life is essentially characterized by suffering, and that human existence is a problem that needs to be solved, transcended somehow. It also leads to science and philosophy as we know it today, the perpetual quest for that elusive solution.

It leads (sorry, Andrew -- just riffing off your post here...) to being inclined to think of the world as structured in "real things" and "simulacra" with an ordered hierarchy of reality, transcendent/ultimate something-or-other out there somewhere or at the top, and human beings somewhere in the middle, with our job being to access the ultimate, to plug into the transcendent, by catching the wave of some kind of primordial consciousness energy and surfing it skillfully through the fissures of the facade. The contemporary dharma crowd here has dropped many of the overt philosophical perturbations (with a "a plague on both your houses" tone) and followed the most excellent suspicion that the truth can be found very close to hand, somehow right in the sensations that comprise experience. But true to type, even here, so many of us are getting caught up in the complexity of experience and missing the simplicity of consciousness -- in other words, making great progress in dealing with the problem, but even well into the solution still getting tripped up by the problem when it comes to discussing what has been solved.

It is even more dazzling and humbling to clue into the fact that most cultures that have ever appeared on the face of the Earth did not even have this problem. They had other problems, they were no Garden of Eden, but they did not have this problem. The reason that complex philosophies and esoteric practices preoccupied with and designed to deal with issues of ontology, salvation, transcendence, fate, omnipotence and ultimate power -- the works -- do not arise autochthonously in any cultures except Indo-European and Sumerian ones (excepting cases where they picked it up from us by acculturation) is that those issues are not a universal human reaction to the way the world somehow "is", but a local peculiarity that can be traced back, essentially, to a speech defect.

Talk about the snake that turns out to be a rope!

Finally, it occurs to me that all I am advocating (so far) is simply reading a certain book. I am not even saying, as others more or less say, "do this strange-sounding practice for months or years, and you too can have these wonderful results which are a bit hard to explain clearly, but look at me, I seem to be enjoying it and I want you to have the same benefits." I am saying that the practices are definitely on the right track, but the sign hanging over the track (rail metaphor) is wrong.

Hmmm.... the writing went well this morning. I was able to assert my experience more clearly on a few key points than previously. I am going to touch this up slightly and re-post to my blog.