It was “harmony within oneself”, not “with oneself” as though there were “you” and separately “yourself”. “Harmony within” refers to the inner processes being in “accord” or agreement.
Inner harmony primarily means that you do not think in a different direction than you desire/want. It isn’t as easy to achieve as most people imagine, especially in modern America, but is doable. Buddhism is really big on inner harmony and a specific way to achieving it. With inner harmony, “harmony within”, you get the famous bliss package for free and if you act quickly, you gain momentum vantage points that go toward an all payed vacation in harmonious surroundings as well.
Again, thank you. That’s an important clarification. But to return, then, to my earlier point, if there is a “ring” to this harmony, or what I previously suggested as the melody, is its essence pre-exsistent, or it still to be determined as to what the harmony is? Is this a predetermined static ideal, or a creative process? Is it musical or atonal? (FYI: I’m a flabby buddhist, or flabbuddhist, already. I get the basic sales pitch)
If it is creative, and only in the process of determination, then is there not legitimate space for cacophony, or discord, as in the thought that the distructive urge is creative, etc.?
Are we already not perfectly harmonized to what we presently are? Is heavy metal an illegitimate art form? Just askin’…
Does beauty lie in the eye of the beholder? Does it lie in the object? Where does it lie? Beauty is thought-induced. You stop, there’s recognition of it as beauty and you write poems about the mountain in front of you. Consciousness is always moving; it does not linger on something which thought has decided is beautiful. Acquired taste is at helm of directing thought as to what’s harmonious and what isn’t.
We have an idea of harmony. How to live at peace with yourself – that’s an idea. There is an extraordinary peace that is there already. What makes it difficult for you to live at peace with yourself is the creation of the idea of what you call “peace,” which is totally unrelated to the harmonious functioning of this body. When you free yourself from the burden of reaching out there to grasp, to experience, and to be in that reality, then you will find that it is difficult to understand the reality of anything. You will find that you have no way of experiencing the reality of anything, but at least you will not be living in a world of illusions. You will accept that there is nothing, nothing that you can do to experience the reality of anything, except the reality that is imposed on us by the society. We have to accept the reality as it is imposed on us by the society because it is very essential for us to function in this world intelligently and sanely. If we don’t accept that reality, we are lost. We will end up in the loony bin. So we have to accept the reality as it is imposed on us by the culture, by society or whatever you want to call it, and at the same time understand that there is nothing that we can do to experience the reality of anything. Then you will not be in conflict with the society, and the demand to be something other than what you are will also come to an end.
The goal that you have placed before yourself, the goal which you have accepted as the ideal goal to be reached, and the demand to be something other than what you are, are no longer there. It is not a question of accepting something, but the pursuit of those goals which the culture has placed before us, and which we have accepted as desirable, is not there any more. The demand to reach that goal also is not there any more. So, you are what you are.
When the movement in the direction of becoming something other than what you are isn’t there any more, you are not in conflict with yourself. If you are not in conflict with yourself, you cannot be in conflict with the society around you. As long as you are not at peace with yourself, it is not possible for you to be at peace with others. Even then there is no guarantee that your neighbors will be peaceful. But, you see, you will not be concerned with that. When you are at peace with yourself, then you are a threat to the society as it functions today. You will be a threat to your neighbors because they have accepted the reality of the world as real, and because they are also pursuing some funny thing called “peace”. You will become a threat to their existence as they know it and as they experience it. So you are all alone – not the aloneness that people want to avoid – you are all alone.
Which is to say, we’re allone? I think the thing that natters with me about you, fm, is the possibility you’re discounting discord. I’m thinking discord is "L"ife. That obfuscation is the state of truth. Otherwise I pretty much think I like what you’re saying.
I think Buddhism and its rapid adaptation in the West is simply a facet of what Habbermas rather nicely terms the privatization of religion - i e that its all about some state of inner bliss or me and my personal relationship with God or Nirvana or salvation - all the interesting collective ceremonial/moral positions of religion are relentlessly stripped out. All religions both Eastern and Western are now being cored out to the whinney “needs” of the in duh vi dual of late Capitalism - consumer packages you get with your manicure and your personal trainer - why not a “personal Jesus” too.
Of course Nietzsche might have had some useful things to say about the rise of “Western Buddhism”.
Yupe
Or what any body calls truth is whatever collection of lies makes it (life) believable or livable for us misfortunates that got thrown into it (see daybreaks belief = truth thread) at any particular moment in any particular day. Whats really nice is that this rococo, this dis-equilibrium; the rough magic and chaos that is life (counter point or tension rather then classically understood harmony?) may well repeat right down to molecular level
Whilst true that some distorted version of Buddhism probably seems hip to be a part of in our consumer culture, many people simply would not have the inner strength to be able to actually take part in proper Buddhist practices. It takes commitment, discipline, effort, introspection, and patience; something that instant gratification via consumer capitalism has absolutely no time for.
Hi Fent - I was probably a bit unfair to single out Buddhism in that way - I guess I’m
more speaking to a certain consumerist attitude towards religion which has moved it into a private and individualized zone. For celebrities beliefs seem to change with style trends or who ever they’re pumpin’ - religion as a fashion accessory.
As a hard core atheist I have to concede its a little hilarious me some how saying religion just ain’t what it used to be - I appreciate the massive commitment people often make in their beliefs and i have to apologize as it did look like I was particularly singling out Buddhism.
Any system is a set of harmonies. (reciprocally enhancing-sustaining motions)
Life is of course an interplay between chaos and harmony - but more accurately, between the given harmony of a system and the chaotic attributes of and challenges to it. There is always the tendency to expand the harmony, for which immersion in local scale chaos is a means. One tries to incorporate those elements that, relative to ones self-harmony, are chaotic, into ones self harmony - in order for which the chaos has to be understood, and by that effort, harmonized.
Harmony surely implies multiple (2+) disparate elements which remain individual but harmonize - surely some sort of chaosmos is previous to harmony.
Look at Jame’s example of throwing argon and hydrogen together - they are first a high entropy/random mixture and then through application of an organising force (gravity) we get a reduction of entropy and an increase in organisation
(not necessarily harmony per sae but organisation - more information) and simultaneously the output of heat or an increase in disorganization of the world outside our little example container.
Organization (what ever about harmony) is “bought” at a price of increasing chaos some where else.
No harmony without conflict!
If the interplay of the two is in the driving seat - in which case why the privileging of either one?
(is harmony even a good opposite to chaos or should we be looking at entropy or decay v information or organisation)
If the universe’s uninterrupted course was towards heath death - a random soup of luke-warm molecules in random motion - from whence comes this thermodynamic defiance called life?
Strangely enough this just turned up in me twitter “feed” good old Bergson
Life does not proceed by the association and addition of elements, but by dissociation and division.
But entropy is not the same as chaos - entropy the lack of order within a system, chaos is simply lack of order. And this, chaos, can not be observed. It does not actually exist, it is rather the lack of existing things (orders, harmonies, relations). Entropy does exist, because it is a function of a derivative of things, harmonies, orders, relations.
As in the example of James, the two elements are both highly ordered (electrons around a nucleus).
Oh I agree with that. But conflict is something that occurs as a result of harmony (different harmonies coming into contact with each other, threatening to compromise each other), not with entropy or chaos. In chaos, there is no relation, so no conflict. Likewise, in entropy, as a the lack of order, or structure, there is no conflict.
That there is an interplay does not mean that the two elements are equal in order.
Any thing that exists is a harmonic system. In a sense, existence (order, thing-ness) is in interplay with non-existence, (chaos, no-thingness), but only because there is an order can we say that there is also a lack of order.
If there were no order, there would be no perceiver, so there would not even be ‘nothing’. It’s ultimately meaningless to have chaos, lack of order, as a premise. This gets into an annoying epistemological domain, but I do think it’s valid.
Organization is a good term.
Again, I stress the geometrical necessities by which things naturally form, organize and fall apart into predictable orders. (Circle, line, triangle, block, golden ratio (from pentagram), bee-hive structure/hexagon, breakdown into 7 components, - to get a better picture of this I recommend the book by Michael Schneider on the purist, Pythagorean methods called ‘constructing the universe’ if I rememember correctly.)
Yes but that surely applies to the biggest system we know – the universe – finite but unbounded – actually maybe because its unbounded you can’t apply results from considering bounded systems – you might have a point my science grows hazy here!
Good and fair point there!
I’ve got to hand it to you here – maybe instead of chaos i should have been talking about dissonance, a battle between elements or what ever.
– chaos as in absolute randomness is pretty a full stop I guess…
However as with any metaphysical system even a random one - there has to be an arrangement of elements - so things, units, ones are in there somewhere - even a pure chaotic dance of molecules is an arrangement of things - but a chaotic one - so to the extent that there are (by definition) somethings in some arrangement in any system you may have a point!
Don’t know if gravity and necessity are enough to do the job
There’s also the fact that the universe might not be a system at all.
We know it’s a collection of systems, we assume it’s a system itself.
I think it stands at the threshold of our knowledge. We have to realize that there is this primordial projection, oninwhich our entire cognitive structure is embedded.
I always think of chaos within a system as dance. And perhaps breaking free, disassociating from, as laughter.
I realize, the necessities are specific and have to be explained.
They are basically learned as an assumption. One learns to believe in them as they flow forth from the method. The method was devised by the Pythaoreans, who practiced geometry with a stick and a rope. Plato derived his whole Form as a Big Philosophical Deal simply from the momentum of his exitement, of totally misapprehending a magic ritual. The potential of the fact of fundamental Form was so enthralling, that it inspired the multitudes of multitudes into aspiring toward a definition, a forluation of all values. But that is all, with the utmost respect, meaningless gibberish and tartufferies. There was an original meaning which Plato overlooked, - the stick and the rope.
A basic glance at evolution indicates anatomical, physiological, and biochemical linkage. At the molecular level we see a common chemical thread of life: DNA. The coding linkage is similar in all life systems. Thus all living systems are similar in their basic structure, language and function. That is to say that all life is related to other life, whether it is animal, human or plant. Unity in diversity is the essential feature of nature.
The remarkable thing about life is not that it exists in such a variety of forms but that so many forms maintain the basic shape and integrity for so long, despite the multitudinous environmental forces tending to disrupt them.
Apart from order and disorder in the universe, we have order and disorder manifesting on our planet. The second law of thermodynamics states that everything tends to become more and more disorderly until the final and natural state of things is a completely random distribution of matter. Thus, any kind of order, even the arrangement of atoms in a molecule, is unnatural and happens only by chance, and it eventually encounters the reverse trend. These events are statistically unlikely, and the further combination of molecules into anything as highly organized as living organisms is improbable. Thus life is a rare and unreasonable thing. Its continuation depends upon the maintenance of an unstable situation.
To give a description you need knowledge. Knowledge is what often causes an awkward situation among people especially when one takes his as the true reality of the whole. Conflicts and chaos start this way when varying perspectives, assumptions and beliefs are compared and contested.
Perhaps dialogue is only helpful when we come to a point and realize that no dialogue is possible, that no dialogue is necessary. It could be that understanding is different than what we think it is. To me, understanding is a state of being where the question isn’t there any more; there is nothing there that says “now I understand!” – that in itself could be a basic difficulty for people who want to flaunt their precious knowledge. Yet even by understanding all that, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get anywhere or gain anything.
With due respect, as I know this is in accordance with the the widely accepted scientific view, I think that there is a lack of knowledge speaking here.
The necessities I mentioned above are sort of the ‘glue’ provided by the very nature of substance, time/space, that make it actually likely for structures to emerge.
There is, in this view, no randomness. Possibilities for formation are not unexpected, out of line with the general trend, but apexes of probability.
