Essences and Dependent Origination

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  • #17822
    Socrates
    Participant

      East and West have two different ways of explaining the attributes of ‘things’. The West has historically viewed essences in terms of a priori forms, but more recent philosophers in the existentialism movement, famously Jean Paul Sartre, declare existence precedes essence, which is not saying essences don’t exist, or are not real; it declares there is no fixed intrinsic value to things.

      The East prefers to speak of an empty universe, one that has infinite possibilities in regards to what the attributes of a thing are to be, this depends on what the thing is relational to and this is called dependent origination. ‘This is this because of that and if that does not exist, then this does not exist’.

      It is this dependent origination where East meets West through structuralism and existentialism.

      The question regards intrinsic properties. Can ‘raw’ exist without ‘cooked’? Male without female? These terms do not have meaning if they were in isolation from each other. Why would we say day and night if the Sun never set? We would have a totally different term altogether, or if ‘day’ existed, it would not have the relation to ‘night’.

      #18765
      kFoyauextlH
      Participant

        I don’t believe in either view really as the actual dependency can not be established as indeed necessary since our amazing minds can even imagine or simulate a variety of interesting things which while not materially existing for us can be understood in a mathematical sort of way.

        You can indeed have experiences or events occur and they may occur based on only one contingent relation and that being the generating force it power or ability which brings about or is credited for the appearance of the dream-like facts which we accept or experience in a moment.

        Between East and West there sat the movement I mentioned earlier in my name that philosophy thread.

        With utter skepticism, one can not admit anything except a few things. Namely, there is stuff, and the stuff appears to be changing even if only with the inclusion of thoughts as stuff, there can be no identification of true borders or distinctions of any sort. That which appears to transform the appearances or creates that impression is all we can credit as powerful, as powerful really only means transformative any way.

        One can not be certain that the stuff existing just before with whatever accessed that moment did not indicate something entirely different, for example the sight of supposedly looking through a Japanese man in 1950.

        With a sudden and complete replacement of stuff, including the interpretations of the stuff which are just part of the indistinguishable stuff that apparent moment, there can be the acceptance and even the historical defense and supposed evidence of this being a dependent series or chain while being duped as to the possibility that the whole experience was a single generation not made up of distinct components but as one frame or shape or form generated then apparently eliminated “as is”.

        This leaves the thinker with no other recourse than immediacy and knowing or unknowing helpless surrender.

        #18762
        atreestump
        Keymaster

          Force is united with meaning and the meaning is not fixed, it just appears to be solid through repeated performance (congealed over time), but the stuff is not wholly dependent, it is both independent and dependent.

          #18766
          kFoyauextlH
          Participant

            Very cool!

            #18763
            Socrates
            Participant

              Great video about non duality by Darryl Sloane.

              #18764
              Whisper
              Participant

                @”SuperTroll1234″

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