Hey Robert...how's it hanging? Hope things are going well for you and yours...
Bullseye with the post again...a really succinct distillation.
For me, who found your work some years ago as a development of my twin interests in zen and neuroscience, the way you express your current take on what is resonates perfectly both with the zen idea of "not knowing" and my observations of how my own responses evolve and change.
So beautiful, Robert. Thank you for writing this. The last portion of the final sentence is quite encapsulating, and stunning in its simplicity: "I treat the mirrors themselves as the thing worth studying, rather than straining to see them as the windows they were never going to be."
I find another question/comment surfacing. I'll do my best to say it succinctly, though I doubt I can. I've been reading your work for a few years, watching your articulations evolve. Something I notice is this. It's easy to take an essay as a final word. It's easy to take a person we think has an answer we're searching for as "having a thing I want/need." I notice too that the way comments can get written around determinism and free will seem really to be inquiry around how much openness and how much closure is actually afforded by reality. I watch myself vacillate from the desire for final answers and staying open, inquiring further. I notice comments that pushback at you for being "too certain." I think all I'm trying to say/ask is this: your writing/observations can either be taken as final or as living formulations. And, in a way, both are true and present. If what I am is a closed, yet permeable loop, then determinacy and indeterminacy both have their place. I find myself reading for, feeling for the hard boundaries, the rules. But boundaries offer a kind of freedom too. Is the "freedom" you might point to, after the reality of closure is seen for what it is, the remainder that's left: there isn't a fixed me/you that must do life? So, instead, a life simply unfolds as its current living formulation?
Take these as living formulations, not final words.
They can be taken as final, but then they're mistaken—made into the very fixed thing the writing is pointing past. The evolving you've watched over the years is that living form, not a stage on the way to a last version that settles it.
Regarding your closing question: yes, a life unfolds in its current form, and there isn't a fixed me or you who must do it. But I'd add one thing. That unfolding doesn't depend on seeing it, or on arriving at any final understanding. Life is unfolding now, whether noticed or not. What noticing changes is only whether one is also braced against it, gripping for the fixed self who's supposedly steering. The unfolding was never waiting for that.
As I see it, freedom isn't a state you reach by understanding anything. It's being with what is already the case—this life, unfolding, with no fixed self who has to run it.
It seems the "noticing" can be claimed as well, and also qualifies as not something unfolding is waiting for. When this happens, noticing being claimed, a new form of gripping can happen. It's that gripping I'm curious about. It doesn't stop unfolding from unfolding, but something happens.
I don't want to make whatever this gripping is wrong either. But it does seem to impact quality of life and quality of unfolding. Thus, why it can be easy to want to "go after" or "figure out" as a thing. But that's often just more gripping. I think that describes the vacillation I was pointing to in my above comment.
I've noticed that gripping has loosened dramatically. But it isn't because I have some new place to stand: "don't grip." It's more like a process that seems to unfold around staying open, inquiring. But even that feels like ground to stand on, and that's not fully what I mean.
I suppose the more openness and inquiring occur, the more it also becomes obvious "acting as if it's me doing any of it" seems futile, or just not quite right.
Yes, you're seeing it clearly. Each time something loosens, the loosening becomes a new place to stand, a new "me" who has it now—noticing, staying open, inquiring.
There's nothing wrong with open inquiry, but understanding can quietly become an identity of its own: the one who sees clearly.
So the question is always the same, turned back: who inquires? who stays open? Look for that one, and you find what you found before—no fixed self, just the inquiring happening.
The gripping is that self trying to re-form around each new clearing. You don't have to make it wrong, and you don't have to go after it, since going after it is the same move again. It loosens, as you've seen—not because you've found a better place to stand, but because, looked for, the one who would stand isn't there.
The futility you notice in "acting as if it's me doing any of it" is that recognition arriving on its own.
Robert, I can't help but notice a striking resemblance to Ramana Maharshi's promotion of self-inquiry here. Perhaps the only difference is Ramana promised that the Self is found at the ultimate end of inquiry, but, to your mind, perhaps the inquiry never really ends?
That makes sense, thank you. I'm reading a book written by a well-known teacher of Zen. I read the book the first time, maybe ten years ago. I notice something stands out this time through. First, there are very helpful, very thoughtful things being said. I do not mean to dismiss. But I don't see much emphasis placed on "no doer." I saw it once, but then it was seemingly moved on from without much emphasis on its importance.
Not right or wrong, but I notice that's what has most strongly drawn me to the articulations you state. As it's unfolded, over time, there's growing understanding as to why. Perhaps this is only me, but the thing it seems hides in the plainest sight is this claim: I am the doer. Sometimes thought, sometimes only felt to be true, always quick, and so often stood on as ground no differently than a fish swims about water. I appreciate how you continuously come back to it. Or, just thanks, this loop resonates. :)
After a long journey spent seeking the things that seekers seek, a new purpose is becoming clearer to me every day: that if I ever reach Robert Saltzman’s age, I’ll have a tenth of his mental clarity. Even a twentieth would be fine.
Unfortunately, a quick look at the world of spiritual authors suggests to me that achieving total enlightenment is a much, much easier goal. 😁
Morality as it actually works among us, day to day, is not some thinned-out substitute for a real morality that would need a metaphysical foundation underneath it. “IT” is what the word honestly points to. And it is enough (emphasis “IT”)
Can you clarify what “IT” is?
Are you saying: “IT” (morality?) is what the word points to. Meaning Morality points to a metaphysical foundation?
Day to day Morality within the Loop is subjective & variable I would have thought. Morality is not universally agreed.
Hi, John. Perhaps that was not clearly stated. I mean that morality points to itself, not to some metaphysical force that underlies it. In short, we do not need God or free will to behave cooperatively.
For some, myself included, it can take a while to accept there is no metaphysical ground of certainty underpinning the hall of mirrors (to borrow your term.) When it happened for me, I came to realize that although there was no absolute value upon which my causally-produced self could rest, I could 'choose' a mental-emotional resting 'place' that made the most sense to me. For me, compassion fits the bill nicely. I am still surprised at how reflecting on compassion helps me accept the human condition in its totality, even the parts traditionally considered negative or evil. Having said this, I accept that not everyone needs a groundless-ground to help make sense of the human condition.
Wow, that is so clear and beautiful. And so beautifully expressed. A perfect example of beautiful expression is your last paragraph. My loop resonates!
Thank you very much Robert! I found this a very enjoyable and illuminating article - I suppose in part because you clearly state where you bump into limitations and acknowledge “tendencies”, and what you find yourself “drawn to”.
These words - “Kant threads between them: the everyday world is real and knowable, but its form—space, time, and cause—is supplied by mind, and behind appearances stands the thing-in-itself, which we cannot know.” I hope you are not frustrated by my saying this, but this feels very like what many say is a basic definition of “illusion”: absolutely real, but not what it appears to be”. And I completely accept that in trying to move into knowing what the illusion represents is metaphysics. Can’t be known.
I have taken an interest in how some scientists, including Iain McGilchrist, define and describe the functioning of our body/mind systems…the brain essentially. It is all “representational” and metaphorical to what truly is, and we cannot know.
And with utmost respect: “Push back” no. 1. The only way to truly “know” would depend on our ability to stand “outside”. Something inside me believes that is too declarative. My argument? Don’t have one, just don’t want to accept it as absolute…makes an assumption that is not supported.
“Push back” no. 2: seeing no chooser, implications about our loop/system, etc., inevitably draws us to act in a particular way…which in my opinion is movement toward justice, compassion, and a reduction in wanting to cause harm. Sorry, that just seems self evident in reading too many varied pieces, opinions, etc. This is of course an assumption on my part, since of course I cannot possibly know all interactions in the human condition.
Again, thank you very much for this clarifying and illuminating piece!
Something struck me this morning Robert, and though it is not related to this thread I would still like to bring it up. It centers on the concept of the body/mind system being a ‘closed loop’ in the sense that we cannot step out of it. Isn’t ‘seeing’ the loop, finding no chooser or doing, a kind of stepping out…a “looking at” from a different perspective. These words don’t quite capture what I’m pointing to, and I’m not saying it is a complete ‘stepping out’, but there is an element of viewing differently. Nonsense?
Not nonsense at all, Dean. It's the right question. It can feel like stepping back to a vantage outside the loop, a place to look at it from. But notice what's actually happening: you aren't seeing the loop from outside. You're finding that you can't locate an edge—a place where the loop stops and you could stand apart to watch it. Seeing no chooser isn't a view from above. It's the loop discovering, from within, that the chooser it looked for isn't there, and that discovery is one more event inside the loop, not a step out of it.
So yes, something looks different, but it's a change in the view from inside, not a window opening to outside. I'd resist calling it a stepping out even partially, because "partial stepping out" quietly smuggles back the very vantage the whole picture says we don't have.
I see “interbeing” as an active thing, not a position to necessarily defend or declare. And I greatly appreciate the reminder, “hold it lightly”. To awe, mystery, wonder. I am, by nature, a “grasper”!
Don’t know why, but your words produced another ‘perspective’, or revealed something I don’t think I have seen or formulated before regarding our back and forth’s: I “can’t locate an edge” as you say, which draws me into thinking I am not a discreet “loop”. The word interbeing plays in here I believe…relational.
Yes—no edge means no clean boundary where you stop and the rest begins. But hold it lightly. "Interbeing" can become its own metaphysical claim, a positive assertion about how everything connects in some ultimate sense. Not finding an edge doesn't establish that. It's a report of the view from here, not a window onto how things ultimately are. The relational reading is apt as long as it stays a description of not finding a boundary, rather than a new thing asserted about the whole.
Thank you, Dean. No frustration at all, and your point about illusion is well taken. "Real but not what it appears to be" does track the Kantian picture closely, and I'd only add that I keep "illusion" at arm's length because the word tends to smuggle in a claim about what lies behind the appearance, and that is the part I say can't be known. The appearances are not false. They're just not the thing-in-itself. So I'd rather say "appearance" than "illusion," to avoid implying I know anything about things-in-themselves.
On push-back no. 1, you've actually caught me agreeing with you. I don't say the outside is absolutely unreachable. I say I cannot find the step that reaches it, and I add, in the piece, that I can't rule out that something might. That's the opposite of declaring it impossible. "Not ruled out" is exactly the refusal to be too declarative. So your instinct and my position are the same instinct.
On push-back no. 2, I'd be cautious about "inevitably." Seeing no chooser does seem to soften the urge to blame and to harden into something like compassion. Another reader's comment (Pamela Seeback) addresses that. But I can't claim it must, because I can't, as you say, survey every case, and people have drawn cold conclusions from determinism too. So I'd say it tends that way, often, rather than inevitably.
What you mean by ‘hardening into compassion?’ Are you referring to the need to form a temporary naming ground to help integrate the contrasting aspects of the human condition?
I didn't mean a naming ground at all, Pamela. I may have been unclear. I meant something looser: the softening of blame that tends to follow from seeing no chooser. What I'd resist is exactly the move into the normative, where compassion becomes a rule a "good person" must obey. That fixes "person" into an identity and "goodness" into a prescribed behavior, and that hardening isn't necessary to ordinary living. The softening can happen without anyone legislating it or even naming it.
Yes. I wasn't pointing at you, but at the way that word in particular has acquired a spiritual gloss, so that it almost functions as a litmus test for goodness. Once that happens, unintended consequences seem often to follow.
This is evidence to me of the uniqueness of subjective interpretations. I interpret compassion as a way to create a state of mental-emotional equilibrium or acceptance when awareness of sentient suffering overwhelms. For example, the human experiences of rape or pedophilia: to me, these experiences are not examples of ordinary living and therefore require an extra-ordinary mental-emotional reaction that prevents the blame game (belief-in-self-as-independent-doer) from happening. There is no litmus test in this line of thinking, only a way to process trauma. I find the differences in interpretation of human experiences fascinating; our exchange on compassion is just such an example.
And I confess that there is some metaphysics behind my statement. My gut tells me that people who see no doer, no chooser, become more compassionate to themselves and others. Can’t prove it, but in my particular day-to-day experience (echo chamber, perhaps) it is what I generally see.
Do I want to then move into “why is that?” Yes, because of an experience of unicity I had (I’ve mentioned before). I am becoming much more comfortable, however, and I believe it is much more beneficial to me personally, to let this stay in mystery and the unknowable.
My understanding of the Buddha's teaching approach is that it was blunter: "this question should not be asked." :-)
There is something nagging at me about the psycho-spiritual effect of "insisting on seeing" an aspect of one's loop as outside one's loop. This feels different to the phenomenon of spiritual bypassing that I referred to in my first comment with you, but maybe not.
Thanks, Simon. Yes, the Buddha's avyākata fits. Some questions are set aside not because the answer is hidden but because the asking already reaches past where true and false have any grip.
Bypassing sidesteps the complexity of such questions, meeting them with the naive certainty I called the sleepwalking state.
But this is complicated. If I see the loop and say, "here is its edge," that could be the very move I am warning against, one more insistence on an outside, just subtler than bypassing. I tried to head that off in the essay: I do not exempt the description from the hall, because saying I find no exit is a report from inside, not a verdict from a vantage that really could rule out an escape hatch.
Thanks, Robert. Yes, and there's a subtle boundary between epistemology and ontology: e.g. the non-dual formula "there is neither no exit nor not no exit" seems to me to work as (humble) epistemology but not as (less humble) ontology. Does that seem sensible?
That seems sensible as far as it goes, but for me, the formula doesn't hold even as epistemology. To say "neither no exit nor not no exit" still claims to have looked at each position and set it aside, and I am asking from what vantage that assessment is made. Refusing four options is not humbler than refusing two. "Not ruled out" is as far as I can go: not an adjudication, but declining to enter into such assessments at all.
Yes, OK. We're in to Katagiri's territory here, I think: "not ruled out" --- and yet it is essential to understand that I'm unable to talk from or about outside "the loop".
Katagiri: "You have to say something." And I always give him a Mel Brooks accent in my mind.
Within the words of “you have to say something”, is this similar to “If I speak it is a lie, if I stay silent I am a coward.” Curious - I’m unfamiliar with Katagiri.
Hey Robert...how's it hanging? Hope things are going well for you and yours...
Bullseye with the post again...a really succinct distillation.
For me, who found your work some years ago as a development of my twin interests in zen and neuroscience, the way you express your current take on what is resonates perfectly both with the zen idea of "not knowing" and my observations of how my own responses evolve and change.
Thanks for yet another "aha" moment.🫶🈚️
Once, in an altered state of mind I came across a box of spilled rubber bands, but I didn’t see a box of spilled rubber bands. I saw circles. Hmmm.
So beautiful, Robert. Thank you for writing this. The last portion of the final sentence is quite encapsulating, and stunning in its simplicity: "I treat the mirrors themselves as the thing worth studying, rather than straining to see them as the windows they were never going to be."
Thank you, Kate. It seems simple, and it is.
I find another question/comment surfacing. I'll do my best to say it succinctly, though I doubt I can. I've been reading your work for a few years, watching your articulations evolve. Something I notice is this. It's easy to take an essay as a final word. It's easy to take a person we think has an answer we're searching for as "having a thing I want/need." I notice too that the way comments can get written around determinism and free will seem really to be inquiry around how much openness and how much closure is actually afforded by reality. I watch myself vacillate from the desire for final answers and staying open, inquiring further. I notice comments that pushback at you for being "too certain." I think all I'm trying to say/ask is this: your writing/observations can either be taken as final or as living formulations. And, in a way, both are true and present. If what I am is a closed, yet permeable loop, then determinacy and indeterminacy both have their place. I find myself reading for, feeling for the hard boundaries, the rules. But boundaries offer a kind of freedom too. Is the "freedom" you might point to, after the reality of closure is seen for what it is, the remainder that's left: there isn't a fixed me/you that must do life? So, instead, a life simply unfolds as its current living formulation?
You've said it well, Kate.
Take these as living formulations, not final words.
They can be taken as final, but then they're mistaken—made into the very fixed thing the writing is pointing past. The evolving you've watched over the years is that living form, not a stage on the way to a last version that settles it.
Regarding your closing question: yes, a life unfolds in its current form, and there isn't a fixed me or you who must do it. But I'd add one thing. That unfolding doesn't depend on seeing it, or on arriving at any final understanding. Life is unfolding now, whether noticed or not. What noticing changes is only whether one is also braced against it, gripping for the fixed self who's supposedly steering. The unfolding was never waiting for that.
As I see it, freedom isn't a state you reach by understanding anything. It's being with what is already the case—this life, unfolding, with no fixed self who has to run it.
It seems the "noticing" can be claimed as well, and also qualifies as not something unfolding is waiting for. When this happens, noticing being claimed, a new form of gripping can happen. It's that gripping I'm curious about. It doesn't stop unfolding from unfolding, but something happens.
I don't want to make whatever this gripping is wrong either. But it does seem to impact quality of life and quality of unfolding. Thus, why it can be easy to want to "go after" or "figure out" as a thing. But that's often just more gripping. I think that describes the vacillation I was pointing to in my above comment.
I've noticed that gripping has loosened dramatically. But it isn't because I have some new place to stand: "don't grip." It's more like a process that seems to unfold around staying open, inquiring. But even that feels like ground to stand on, and that's not fully what I mean.
I suppose the more openness and inquiring occur, the more it also becomes obvious "acting as if it's me doing any of it" seems futile, or just not quite right.
Can you comment?
Yes, you're seeing it clearly. Each time something loosens, the loosening becomes a new place to stand, a new "me" who has it now—noticing, staying open, inquiring.
There's nothing wrong with open inquiry, but understanding can quietly become an identity of its own: the one who sees clearly.
So the question is always the same, turned back: who inquires? who stays open? Look for that one, and you find what you found before—no fixed self, just the inquiring happening.
The gripping is that self trying to re-form around each new clearing. You don't have to make it wrong, and you don't have to go after it, since going after it is the same move again. It loosens, as you've seen—not because you've found a better place to stand, but because, looked for, the one who would stand isn't there.
The futility you notice in "acting as if it's me doing any of it" is that recognition arriving on its own.
Robert, I can't help but notice a striking resemblance to Ramana Maharshi's promotion of self-inquiry here. Perhaps the only difference is Ramana promised that the Self is found at the ultimate end of inquiry, but, to your mind, perhaps the inquiry never really ends?
That makes sense, thank you. I'm reading a book written by a well-known teacher of Zen. I read the book the first time, maybe ten years ago. I notice something stands out this time through. First, there are very helpful, very thoughtful things being said. I do not mean to dismiss. But I don't see much emphasis placed on "no doer." I saw it once, but then it was seemingly moved on from without much emphasis on its importance.
Not right or wrong, but I notice that's what has most strongly drawn me to the articulations you state. As it's unfolded, over time, there's growing understanding as to why. Perhaps this is only me, but the thing it seems hides in the plainest sight is this claim: I am the doer. Sometimes thought, sometimes only felt to be true, always quick, and so often stood on as ground no differently than a fish swims about water. I appreciate how you continuously come back to it. Or, just thanks, this loop resonates. :)
After a long journey spent seeking the things that seekers seek, a new purpose is becoming clearer to me every day: that if I ever reach Robert Saltzman’s age, I’ll have a tenth of his mental clarity. Even a twentieth would be fine.
Unfortunately, a quick look at the world of spiritual authors suggests to me that achieving total enlightenment is a much, much easier goal. 😁
Thanks, Vincente.
With a sense of irony that sharp, I'd say you have a good start on that project.
This clarifies "the loop" beautifully Robert. Thank you.
And I love the photograph.
Hello Robert extract from your article
Morality as it actually works among us, day to day, is not some thinned-out substitute for a real morality that would need a metaphysical foundation underneath it. “IT” is what the word honestly points to. And it is enough (emphasis “IT”)
Can you clarify what “IT” is?
Are you saying: “IT” (morality?) is what the word points to. Meaning Morality points to a metaphysical foundation?
Day to day Morality within the Loop is subjective & variable I would have thought. Morality is not universally agreed.
Hi, John. Perhaps that was not clearly stated. I mean that morality points to itself, not to some metaphysical force that underlies it. In short, we do not need God or free will to behave cooperatively.
For some, myself included, it can take a while to accept there is no metaphysical ground of certainty underpinning the hall of mirrors (to borrow your term.) When it happened for me, I came to realize that although there was no absolute value upon which my causally-produced self could rest, I could 'choose' a mental-emotional resting 'place' that made the most sense to me. For me, compassion fits the bill nicely. I am still surprised at how reflecting on compassion helps me accept the human condition in its totality, even the parts traditionally considered negative or evil. Having said this, I accept that not everyone needs a groundless-ground to help make sense of the human condition.
Wow, that is so clear and beautiful. And so beautifully expressed. A perfect example of beautiful expression is your last paragraph. My loop resonates!
Thank you very much Robert! I found this a very enjoyable and illuminating article - I suppose in part because you clearly state where you bump into limitations and acknowledge “tendencies”, and what you find yourself “drawn to”.
These words - “Kant threads between them: the everyday world is real and knowable, but its form—space, time, and cause—is supplied by mind, and behind appearances stands the thing-in-itself, which we cannot know.” I hope you are not frustrated by my saying this, but this feels very like what many say is a basic definition of “illusion”: absolutely real, but not what it appears to be”. And I completely accept that in trying to move into knowing what the illusion represents is metaphysics. Can’t be known.
I have taken an interest in how some scientists, including Iain McGilchrist, define and describe the functioning of our body/mind systems…the brain essentially. It is all “representational” and metaphorical to what truly is, and we cannot know.
And with utmost respect: “Push back” no. 1. The only way to truly “know” would depend on our ability to stand “outside”. Something inside me believes that is too declarative. My argument? Don’t have one, just don’t want to accept it as absolute…makes an assumption that is not supported.
“Push back” no. 2: seeing no chooser, implications about our loop/system, etc., inevitably draws us to act in a particular way…which in my opinion is movement toward justice, compassion, and a reduction in wanting to cause harm. Sorry, that just seems self evident in reading too many varied pieces, opinions, etc. This is of course an assumption on my part, since of course I cannot possibly know all interactions in the human condition.
Again, thank you very much for this clarifying and illuminating piece!
Something struck me this morning Robert, and though it is not related to this thread I would still like to bring it up. It centers on the concept of the body/mind system being a ‘closed loop’ in the sense that we cannot step out of it. Isn’t ‘seeing’ the loop, finding no chooser or doing, a kind of stepping out…a “looking at” from a different perspective. These words don’t quite capture what I’m pointing to, and I’m not saying it is a complete ‘stepping out’, but there is an element of viewing differently. Nonsense?
Not nonsense at all, Dean. It's the right question. It can feel like stepping back to a vantage outside the loop, a place to look at it from. But notice what's actually happening: you aren't seeing the loop from outside. You're finding that you can't locate an edge—a place where the loop stops and you could stand apart to watch it. Seeing no chooser isn't a view from above. It's the loop discovering, from within, that the chooser it looked for isn't there, and that discovery is one more event inside the loop, not a step out of it.
So yes, something looks different, but it's a change in the view from inside, not a window opening to outside. I'd resist calling it a stepping out even partially, because "partial stepping out" quietly smuggles back the very vantage the whole picture says we don't have.
I see “interbeing” as an active thing, not a position to necessarily defend or declare. And I greatly appreciate the reminder, “hold it lightly”. To awe, mystery, wonder. I am, by nature, a “grasper”!
Thank you Robert!
Thank you Robert!
Don’t know why, but your words produced another ‘perspective’, or revealed something I don’t think I have seen or formulated before regarding our back and forth’s: I “can’t locate an edge” as you say, which draws me into thinking I am not a discreet “loop”. The word interbeing plays in here I believe…relational.
Yes—no edge means no clean boundary where you stop and the rest begins. But hold it lightly. "Interbeing" can become its own metaphysical claim, a positive assertion about how everything connects in some ultimate sense. Not finding an edge doesn't establish that. It's a report of the view from here, not a window onto how things ultimately are. The relational reading is apt as long as it stays a description of not finding a boundary, rather than a new thing asserted about the whole.
Thank you, Dean. No frustration at all, and your point about illusion is well taken. "Real but not what it appears to be" does track the Kantian picture closely, and I'd only add that I keep "illusion" at arm's length because the word tends to smuggle in a claim about what lies behind the appearance, and that is the part I say can't be known. The appearances are not false. They're just not the thing-in-itself. So I'd rather say "appearance" than "illusion," to avoid implying I know anything about things-in-themselves.
On push-back no. 1, you've actually caught me agreeing with you. I don't say the outside is absolutely unreachable. I say I cannot find the step that reaches it, and I add, in the piece, that I can't rule out that something might. That's the opposite of declaring it impossible. "Not ruled out" is exactly the refusal to be too declarative. So your instinct and my position are the same instinct.
On push-back no. 2, I'd be cautious about "inevitably." Seeing no chooser does seem to soften the urge to blame and to harden into something like compassion. Another reader's comment (Pamela Seeback) addresses that. But I can't claim it must, because I can't, as you say, survey every case, and people have drawn cold conclusions from determinism too. So I'd say it tends that way, often, rather than inevitably.
Thanks again for reading so closely.
What you mean by ‘hardening into compassion?’ Are you referring to the need to form a temporary naming ground to help integrate the contrasting aspects of the human condition?
I didn't mean a naming ground at all, Pamela. I may have been unclear. I meant something looser: the softening of blame that tends to follow from seeing no chooser. What I'd resist is exactly the move into the normative, where compassion becomes a rule a "good person" must obey. That fixes "person" into an identity and "goodness" into a prescribed behavior, and that hardening isn't necessary to ordinary living. The softening can happen without anyone legislating it or even naming it.
The notion og 'good' never entered my mind, but I do see your point.
Yes. I wasn't pointing at you, but at the way that word in particular has acquired a spiritual gloss, so that it almost functions as a litmus test for goodness. Once that happens, unintended consequences seem often to follow.
This is evidence to me of the uniqueness of subjective interpretations. I interpret compassion as a way to create a state of mental-emotional equilibrium or acceptance when awareness of sentient suffering overwhelms. For example, the human experiences of rape or pedophilia: to me, these experiences are not examples of ordinary living and therefore require an extra-ordinary mental-emotional reaction that prevents the blame game (belief-in-self-as-independent-doer) from happening. There is no litmus test in this line of thinking, only a way to process trauma. I find the differences in interpretation of human experiences fascinating; our exchange on compassion is just such an example.
Thank you Robert!
And I confess that there is some metaphysics behind my statement. My gut tells me that people who see no doer, no chooser, become more compassionate to themselves and others. Can’t prove it, but in my particular day-to-day experience (echo chamber, perhaps) it is what I generally see.
Do I want to then move into “why is that?” Yes, because of an experience of unicity I had (I’ve mentioned before). I am becoming much more comfortable, however, and I believe it is much more beneficial to me personally, to let this stay in mystery and the unknowable.
Beautifully said, Robert. Thank you.
My understanding of the Buddha's teaching approach is that it was blunter: "this question should not be asked." :-)
There is something nagging at me about the psycho-spiritual effect of "insisting on seeing" an aspect of one's loop as outside one's loop. This feels different to the phenomenon of spiritual bypassing that I referred to in my first comment with you, but maybe not.
Thanks, Simon. Yes, the Buddha's avyākata fits. Some questions are set aside not because the answer is hidden but because the asking already reaches past where true and false have any grip.
Bypassing sidesteps the complexity of such questions, meeting them with the naive certainty I called the sleepwalking state.
But this is complicated. If I see the loop and say, "here is its edge," that could be the very move I am warning against, one more insistence on an outside, just subtler than bypassing. I tried to head that off in the essay: I do not exempt the description from the hall, because saying I find no exit is a report from inside, not a verdict from a vantage that really could rule out an escape hatch.
Thanks, Robert. Yes, and there's a subtle boundary between epistemology and ontology: e.g. the non-dual formula "there is neither no exit nor not no exit" seems to me to work as (humble) epistemology but not as (less humble) ontology. Does that seem sensible?
Yes, Simon.
That seems sensible as far as it goes, but for me, the formula doesn't hold even as epistemology. To say "neither no exit nor not no exit" still claims to have looked at each position and set it aside, and I am asking from what vantage that assessment is made. Refusing four options is not humbler than refusing two. "Not ruled out" is as far as I can go: not an adjudication, but declining to enter into such assessments at all.
Yes, OK. We're in to Katagiri's territory here, I think: "not ruled out" --- and yet it is essential to understand that I'm unable to talk from or about outside "the loop".
Katagiri: "You have to say something." And I always give him a Mel Brooks accent in my mind.
Within the words of “you have to say something”, is this similar to “If I speak it is a lie, if I stay silent I am a coward.” Curious - I’m unfamiliar with Katagiri.
Yes, but without the normative angst. 😉 It's just the way... of it.
I love this, Robert. Beautifully expressed. 🙏❤️
Thank you, Joan. Always lovely to hear from you. <3