Wondering what you think about this thought

It appears to be liberating, but is based on a false premise.

That there is a polarity between an individual living separately in a bubble mysteriously isolated from everything else and the “impersonal” and hence real.

The premise of taoist thinking is that the individual and the impersonal is a continuum, they are not separate. The terms used are ren and fei ren, the human and the non-human, and the boundary between them is considered very thin. The individual is an expression of the collective, but doesn’t separate from it. Rather the individual holds the process of the collective/impersonal within its nature. That is how they communicate with each other, and influence each other.

Cohen’s thinking is fuzzy – he posits that everything is an impersonal process
and that this somehow destroys the uniqueness of our personal experience.

But this position contradicts his basic premise, that everything is evolving, i.e. the impersonal is also in the continuous process of making itself unique.

So our human individual experience of uniqueness is a reflection of this impersonal process, NOT the antithesis of it, or an illusion. You cannot escape the “personall” viewpoint as long as you have a body,, even if you focus on the concept of the impersonal. You can only integrate the two concepts.

Ultimately, Cohen is underming the importance of human individual free will in the process of evolution, typical of certain absolutist schools of eastern thought. I don’t buy it. Its ultimately a word game that creates separation between humans and nature for the sake of getting to some higher controlling space of spiritual authority.

it shows the influence of the indian guru popaji on cohen. Popaji, who claims to be a disciple of Ramana Maharshi (although Ramana’s ashram record keeper denies it), was essentially an advocate of “shen only” or “Spirit is perfect and absolute”, there is nothing to be done to achieve enlightenment but accept some level of perfect, objective, spirit.

It is a philosophy that denies the necessity of transformation – in taoist terms, denies the incomplete nature of the jing which is holding the essence of all form, and that is always in process, both indivudally and collectively as nature.

I recently read the writings of Ramana Maharshi to see if there was any useful insight into the primordial level of consciousness that he laid claim to live in. While he was undoubtedly subjected to a some powerful spiritual experience (involuntarily over taken by it as a teenager), his interpretations of that experience are all driven by classical hindu texts, many of which are absolutist and deny human uniqueness, i.e. jing/essence, or ming, personal destiny. Ramana resolutely refused to answer any questions about why humans are unique, evading it repeatedly with counter questions like “Who is asking that question?”. In short, he didn’t have an answer, other than to claim that transcendence is true, and human reality is illusion. But mere assertion is no proof, nor even an intelligent argument.

It is useful to contemplate Nature as the impersonal flow of the Tao process, – that is the very essence of many taoist meditations on the primordial – but why make human experience separate from that? It is not necessary to sacrifice one for the other. They unfold simultaneously; the primordial is the ground of the personal.

Tao gives birth to Heaven and Earth, which give birth to Humanity.
That is Lao Tzu’s view: where is the illusion in it? Human reality is a grandchild of the Tao.

Michael

The Tibetant buddhist mahamudra approach (as I understand it) is that a view somewhat like this but with much technical tweaking (for anyone interested see The Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness by Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamptso) can be used to overcome problematic tendencies–i.e., it can be used as an alchemical device to purify kleshas (dualistic, me versus the world, emotionally tinted hang-ups), but in conjunction with the stable ability to ‘rest in the nature of mind’ (from a mahamudra practice perspective) as a living, intelligent, creative, inner sun (the yogically experienced Tao), which experience one can return to, as the true ‘refuge’, between purification forays, or klesha hunting sessions, or just sipping tea. See Mahamudra: The Quintessence of Mind and Meditation for a quantum physics-like textbook on the topic (the second meatier half contains a summary of the first half’s painfully detailed shamata insructions).

But that’s all; from a buddhist tantric perspective it (using a view somewhat but importantly different from this to effect purifying change) is a meditational device, not an endpoint (which defies true process thinking in fact) or a ‘final’ realisation. It might constitute part of what may be crossing a threshold of ‘liberation’ from certain problematic aspects of living in the world, but is still just part of the opera of ongoing evolution. Uniqueness is only illusion-LIKE, in the that it is a process with no fixed points, but it is still, nevertheless, uniqueness, but perhaps a less hemmed in uniqueness (making it more likely to be even more dynamically unique : ) ).

In Tibetan buddhist tradition there is warning of a possibility of becoming a kind of false or disadvantageous ‘arhat’ or enlightened being if one goes too far using certain kinds of philosophical views in intense meditation–one can flatten out the deep ancestral and reincarnational memory, otherwise known as throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and become a kind of zen experiment gone wrong. I’m afraid I think that someone known as U.G. Krishnamurti (not J. Krishnamurti) is such an arhat (people falling into such yogic cul de sacs were more common in the past, when such experimentation was more common, and so it got recorded). I’m not saying Cohen is one such person or on his way to becoming one even–I don’t know much about him–just mentioning it as part of the depth of the topic.

It would be interesting to know the full context of the quote; it might appear different in that light.

Simon

Excellent, very succinct. I vote you to replace Cohen.
m

Here’s a gem for you:

Nagarjuna’s Philosophy (or The Maha-prajnaparamita-sastra) by K. Venkata Ramanan. It is the little known Nagarjuna’s commentary on the Prajnaparamita. I should say, as the translator points out, that the case for the author being Nagarjuna himself is not airtight, just very good. The only surviving version was in Chinese, which Ramanan translated (having received his education in India, England, and China). Much better than the Karika; he discusses the whole path very organically, very brilliantly, from a human perspective, rather than just being logical judo throws performed against his opponents.

Interesting for me was his ardent insistence that ‘sunyata’ is a conceptual system (‘prapanca’), one which he of course expounds with tremendous virtuosity; he never lets the reader lose track of this, of the fact of the living inner sun–so, very like dzogchen, or shentong.

He also places great emphasis on a certain theme involving the idea of ‘non-exclusiveness’ or ‘non-exclusivity’, which theme he brings out or uses in various ways, kind of like ‘the thread of continuity’: tantra.

A quote to illustrate:

“The absolute is that which transcends all determinations and yet does not exclude anyting determinate, and therefore is itself undeniable”.

This is a typical buddhist flourish, but for him it flows into dynamic intelligent action, into not accumulating dogma, into allowing space for variation, for different views, to be there, it being the conceptual finger pointing at the moon, helping the mind uncover and stay in tune with the intelligence of the inner sun–i.e., it is a meditation instruction, wei wu wei.

Simon