What Can We Know?

It’s been a little while, and we haven’t squabbled over this lately, so one more go around.

[i]Venture not beyond your doors to know the world;
Peer not outside you window to know the way-making (dao) of
tian.
The farther one goes
The less one knows.

It is for this reason that sages know without going anywhere out of
the ordinary,
Understand clearly without seeing anything out of the ordinary,
And get things done without doing anything out of the ordinary.

Chapter 47 Tao Te Ching[/i]

This time, how does this answer the question: How shall we live?

You basically already have what you need.
With enough wisdom/balance, you can basically understand things without needing first-hand experience [depending on what it is].
So, you can do, understand and know quite a few things whilst still living a simple life in your home.

^
That’s my best guess at the meaning of this verse.
Please correct me if I’m wrong.

tent,

Think of the self as a prism. Our senses take in the light and refract it, but if we put another prism in front of those fractures we see that the light returns to the clear variation we all see and know from the every day.

The light is life. We distort it and perceive it through a temporal grid of sorts, but at the heart of it the passage believes life to be singular, stemming from the Tao.

You don’t have to journey to the other side of the room to see the violet spectrum because it already exists within the clear light entering.

Tentative asks:

Learning how to become"present" to life rather than living in imagination allows one to experience the reality, the ordinary, in front of ones nose. It is new for us since normally we are asleep to the ordinary. This conscious experience leads to far greater understanding than imagining oneself in Tibet…

Dan~, et al,

Dan~, Yes, we do have what we need. We have our senses (affective) and our mind (cognitive). To me, I would reverse your statement about not needing first-hand experience. It seems to me that it is only of first-hand experience that there is any true knowing. This assumes that there is no objective reality “out there” to be known. The subjective constructs symbolizing an external objective reality isn’t knowing. True knowing is the act of participating in interaction within an experience. Knowing, in this sense, means that our being in the experience is a condition of ‘knowing’ as opposed to merely projecting assumed knowing.

O G, I like the visual metaphor. Yes. It is too easy to see the color of one prism externally and say, “violet”. It is a distortion that is only corrected when we become the second prism that restores pure light. We are an essential part of what is ‘knowing’. We cannot stand outside ourselves and know.

Nick, I would emphasize the awareness that there is no external objective reality one may ‘know’ from. We learn to say, “I know”. But what we really are saying is, “I assume”. Knowing, in the Chinese cosmology of the times this chapter was written, means knowing what, how, coming from, going to. To say I know, is to say I have understanding of that experience in all aspects. I know because I have been a part of that experience. The difference between asleep and awake is the difference between assuming from an external objective reality and experiencing directly. It is a subtlety we most often miss.

For me, the impact of this chapter is the statement that one participates in Way from within, that knowing is never to be found externally, but experientially.

Tentative

I’m not trying to be critical but trying to understand you. It would seem to me that a dog can do what you describe very well since it experiences directly. Is the dog awake? What would you say is the difference if any between the essence of the dog and that of man excluding the computer in his head? Does a man have a different potential in life and after death than the dog

Nick,

The difference between a human and a dog is the capacity to project subjectivity. A dog and most animals live in an objective world - from their limited understanding. Only man and perhaps a few other animals have the capacity of sentience, to project themselves ‘outside’ themselves . This is blessing or curse or blessing and curse. In the sense of awake-not awake, I guess I would have to say that the dog is always awake. Without sentience the dog has no choice. And that is the essential difference. Humans have a choice. The dog will never join us in Plato’s cave. Obviously, each animal has different potential in life, although only humans see that potential as higher or lower. Since man is judge and jury, there is no way to determine a hierarchy of potential. We stack the deck. As an experiment in the universe, man could easily be lower on the hierarchy of potential than the dog. As for the after death part, I have no idea. No human or any of my three dogs ever reported back. But of course, since we’re the one’s who get to make up the definitions, the dog is always going to lose…

If you are equating experiencing with knowing, then all knowing is subjective. As each person’s experience of the same event is slightly different depending on mindset, so would their knowledge be.

Would you deny that 1+1=2 is knowledge in a different sense? Or that water is H2O in another sense of knowing? I don’t think that either can be experienced.

Tentative

I see how we define “awakening” differently. A dog sleeps and is awake in the same way we sleep at night and awaken in the morning. But this isn’t what I understand as conscious awakening.

The dog lives its life as a living machine that transforms materiality. Its life processes serve this process. As a living machine its life is a continual reaction to external influences. Choice exists for a dog as a resolution of conflicting desires. There is no conscious action but only unconscious reaction.

I understand awakening as conscious awakening to this same condition in our lives. What we consider our normal lives is also as a reactive machine. This self knowledge is what we awaken to.

However, as you’ve noted, the dog is just reacting: “Only man and perhaps a few other animals have the capacity of sentience, to project themselves ‘outside’ themselves .”

This is where the ego comes in. The experience of life with conscious self awareness allows for the beginning of the mechanical reactive life’s experience being put into a conscious perspective. It is also the natural invitation for higher consciousness to assist man in further developing his consciousness and experiencing choice not as a reaction to conflicting desires but a result of acquired conscious perspective .

Original sin refers to an unfortunate condition that gradually put man out of balance. Where our thinking, emotion, and sensations should function harmoniously and connected consciously with each other. The result of original sin is to leave us out of balance and the connections we have with the external world through our thoughts, emotion, and sensations, cannot be connected consciously as would be normal for evolution but instead, out of balance, They have become connected through imagination resulting in all sorts of preconceptions which motivate our lives referred to as “sleep.”

The dog is often a far better balanced machine than we are and serves its purpose well. We’ve been put into this unfortunate condition that because of our normal capacity for conscious evolution, becoming out of balance, we’ve allowed imagination to replace consciousness and formation of this corrupted ego that lives the life of imagination or “sleep” we’ve come to know. Our lives are primarily run through stubborn habits and fears which in a sense makes us inferior to a dog or the lilies of the field.

Without consciousness, I believe that life will continue for us much like Buddhism describes as the wheel of samsara.

It is only the results of consciousness or its abuse that could warrant either heaven or hell as life continues. That is why a dog exists from dust to dust and perpetuation of the species or machine continues through sexual reproduction. There is no consciousness to warrant becoming more conscious or the difficulties from the abuse of the inclination towards consciousness. Actually the Buddhist conception of Hell is very enlightening since a person can see exactly what “abuse” means. I just put this here for reference if it is of interest to anyone:

khandro.net/doctrine_hells.htm

So as I understand it, the only way we can become aware of how out of balance and under the influence of imagination we are is through becoming consciously aware of it through conscious self awareness. As we are, we are incapable of experiencing how unnatural we’ve become This is real knowledge and requires a gradual awakening to. Only then can we begin to change and develop on an objective, non-illusory psychological foundation that allows consciousness to become a part of our lives and the “good” that comes of it.

Can someone explain why it is so important to prove that we “know”, and to let everyone know what we “know”?

Really, it is such a trivial point of reference. What you “know” now, will be obviated by experience and the processes of change, in short order.

“Knowing” is an impedement to continuum. No destinations in life, simply travels.

But Mas,

There you go bruising my ego again. That no experience can ever be complete and known is just too much for the ego to bear. We have to know dammit! Where do you think all of these words come from, anyway?

JT

Nick,

And I would suggest that this gradual development of “an objective, non-illusory psychological foundation” is reification, just another shadow on the walls of the cave. Awakening is simply realization. One moment there is no understanding, the next moment it all becomes clear. Having become clear, we do not immediately reconstruct what we have just left. Clarity is simplicity and if one understands that, life experience follows the simplicity because there is no longer any need for the constructs of ego.

Tent

Well, I can see how we differ. Are you writing experientially or theoretically? Have you undergone this realization where it all has become clear and now you understand? If so, does your daily life express this realization and clarity of understanding free of egotistic reactions?

Nick,

Yes. No. As in all process, practice lags behind understanding. Or it least it has in this poor practicioner. I make no pretense of perfection. Indeed, far from it. Much of both my understanding and practice is never revealed here because both are not of words. Like everyone else in ILP, I’m a little bit more than a collection of words.

Who doesn’t want to know?

Mastriani,

What is the purpose of traveling (having no destinations in life), if not to know? You’re like Siddartha, before he reached enlightenment. You are trying on many shoes and not finding any of them comfortable. The fact of the matter is, you’re intentionally placing a bead in each of the new shoes, so that you’ll continually have an excuse to continue your journey to nowhere.

The fact is, I know where I’ve been, regardless if I currently am unsure of where I’m going. And, really, if I wanted to know, it wouldn’t take much to figure it out, based upon where I’ve been.

I know I’m comfortable with where I am and who I am though. Trying on new hats and new shoes gets old. Intentionally self sabotaging my chances of stability also gets old.

I know this man.

“All I know is that I don’t know, All I know is that I don’t know nothing…”

So. How much reflection did that take? What do we think of people who always gravitate towards the easy answer as the right answer?

Ucc,

There is nothing easy about releasing ego. In many ways it is terrifying to go to the edge, jump, and have nothing but faith that you’ll come to no harm. We like complexity because it feeds the ego-driven illusion that we can know EVERYTHING. The answer is quite simple, but finding simplicity isn’t easy. It’s much better to read the operator’s manual than to risk discovery of yourself.

Ucc

Read how Socrates came to the conclusion as to why admitting his nothingness was wisdom. It really was by default.

socrates.clarke.edu/aplg0102.htm

He could see that the politicians were BS artists, the poets and such were without understanding of what they channeled, and the artisans falsely assumed that their skill automatically included the understanding of higher matters.

In all these cases it was their egotism that prevented them from what Socrates experienced. It isn’t what someone knows that gets in the way of higher understanding but the tendency of our ego to deny the natural human tendency to put such knowledge into a higher perspective. As it normally is, these skills define our self worth and become the end all our attitudes make them.

Unfortunately, often this famous quote by Socrates is used as an excuse for escapism.

I believe he is right. Laws are the same everywhere and if one really experiences what it means to do one thing well, a lot of universal laws will be revealed. But often a person doing something others consider well praise him causing a swelled head that prevents any sort of inclination to attempt to put such knowledge into a higher perspective in what should be normal for Man. This knowledge, without perspective, only has use in the standards of Plato’s cave.

LOL. Wrong again. There is no similarities betwixt Gautama and I, or our travels. Gautama was concerned with pain, and using enlightenment to alleviate pain. I see pain as fundamental to the process.

Certainty of knowledge is too often a ruse and a subterfuge belieing the fear underneath.

I accept continual process, and the fragmentary and segmented way with which mine eyes perceive such. All else is fallacy of ego.

But wait… How can you know I’m wrong, if knowledge is too often a ruse and a subterfuge?

you’re right. Siddartha knew when to stop looking, you don’t.

Partially, you are right. He was upset at the pain he saw in the world, and sought to find a reason to the madness.

Fundamental to what process.

Do you truly know what you are looking for?

Or are you merely stumbly around blindly in a room full of broken glass, so you may experience pain?

Pain is only ONE PART of the human equation. If you focus on that as your fundamental you are missing love, friendship, sadness and sorrow.

They are all fundamental to the process, that process being our lives.

Fine, believe in nothing. Know nothing.

Stumble around blindly, merely experiencing pain, because you refuse to hold on to anything.

so says the nihilist.

The ego is fundamental part of yourself. The ego is denied by eastern philosophy, and thusly if you were truly an eastern mystic you wouldn’t be involved in half the hubris that you are.

But, alas, we know that you are not a true eastern mystic, and merely wish to denounce anything western. Including the power of one’s self identity.

The ego.

The knowledge.

The light.

The truth.

Love it. Know it.