Can we think without, thinking?

A more important question concerning the one dimensional component of the human mind, are we incapable of viewing the world or universe as something other than ourselves? :-k

If we don’t we will. not the abyss, since though about thought about thought is a reduction absurdum.Meaning we will realize the absurdity of reaching the Dasein as pure abstraction.

Travel without moving.

We’s all doing that. Kinda a spiral, round dat sun, round dat earth and de hole shabang swinging our little wing of the galaxy. I mean, de sun moving, man, but its gonna rise mainly cause I am moving even when I sleep. You traveling man, even when you try to keep still. Test it. Sure as diarrhea sun gonna rise cause you traveled.

Damn my kid he look at his momses face and locked on. You think he think thought about that? Man, he no spend five minutes looking that the wall and deciding using baby logic, hey dat aint my mom, he no be using no deduction, he sees dat (forgive me honey) fucking face and he knows, right off, never having seen a fucking face (apologies honey) that that thing is interesting. He know he gonna learn and love facing that set of pixels (pardon the crass modern idiocy honey) and not some other. He knows and right off he start learning. No words in his head. Man, he say, without words, I am gonna focus on that lovely thing (see honey) cause dat is where the learning and love is. And he do that until honey and I are alone again in the house and can breathe out 18-21 years later. He knows my face is a face without reading a textbook a couple of minutes later, but the little brat knows he’s gonna stay fixed on mom’s face for a long time, mine coming in second. Not the chair, not the ceiling lamp (he’s not a fucking moth).

He knows stuff, coming out of that dark cave. right off the bat. he learn stuff, right off the bat.

You think our dog be conceptualizing stuff, but man he thinking. He don’t dig in the garbage when we’s home.

YOu think he do syllogisms, drew a map. Fuck, he deep, he knows stuff. He learning.

Wordy wordy thinking neocortex think he got a fucking bill gates monopoly. These rational head cases think they the man.

My friend tried to describe the worst pain he had ever experienced when the doctor pulled that tube with the jagged filer on the end out of his belly after surgery. I have no concept and there’s no way he can relay that information to me. It made me think of this thread. He said he’d rather break his own arm than go through that again. On second thought, I don’t wanna know. :confused:

Then you know.

:-k

Last fall I was riding an atv when I spotted a herd of deer, then I hit a tree which caused the handlebars to snap back as my body went forward and it was like being hit in the leg with a ball bat. Oh man that hurt and I couldn’t do anything as the deer were running around me. I had to struggle just to reach the key to turn the machine off because the vibrations were killing me. The whole time I’m thinking “Damn why does hurt so bad if pain doesn’t exist?”

There was a faith healer of Deal
Who said ‘though I know pain’s not real,
If I sit on a pin,
And it punctures my skin,
I dislike what I fancy I feel.

…or like fighting without fighting. :stuck_out_tongue:

Yes, but not deeply, more akin to instinctual reactions.

Pain is real. It may not be X, but it is certainly Y.

Martin Luther King

If pain is real, then what is it?

If experience is not real, what basis do we have to say anything about anything? From my in situ life, pain is more real than any supposedly real object in the world. I know pain is real. I might be mistaken about things.

Yes, true, experience is real, but why is experience viewed as painful? Is it not just perspective? Some people enjoy pain. Alan studied asceticism and talked a great deal about pain, but I haven’t fully gotten my head around what he is suggesting. Somehow, I figure, pain threatens the self idea, so the less of a self we feel, the less pain we realize. It’s hard to articulate what I do not understand lol. I suppose, obviously, if I’m riding an atv, then I’m enjoying my ‘self’ and therefore pain becomes real. If I were not separate from the atv, the deer, the woods, such that I could enjoy being so, then perhaps both the enjoyment and pain would fade as I cease to identify as a separate entity. Do you see what I’m trying to say?

They enjoy certain kinds of pain, pain in the context of their painfilled psyches which can lead to net gains, despite the unpleasant facets of the pain.

Yes, though there would still be pain, just it would be simply another phenomenon. It seems like in such a state one is not judging, but it is founded on judging the self, the emotions, desires.

Right, it’s a self/other relationship. So if there is no self, there is no pain. I think that is what Alan is trying to bring together.

That’s confused me about buddhism: if there is no one to suffer, why is the remedy for suffering to realize that there is no one to suffer?

What? No! Bruce Lee :smiley:

Sure, especially if he is still fighting.

Depth cuts a bunch of different ways. We couldn’t abstract without what most people call thinking. But sometimes that direct experiencing is very deep and all that mental babbling is much more shallow, even when nicely packaged in an academic paper.