Nothingness

[Rum]

If you have a few minutes I can think of no better thing to do with them than click on this link (and watch if full screen)..

http://wimp.com/discussesnothing/

[Feck]

That was nice Rum

[tattuchu]

No idea what he was on about. But he's got a pleasant voice whoever he is, and his voice set to music like that made it all, though it sounded like gibberish to me, rather poetic and beautiful.

[tattuchu]

Here are some more beautiful words of wisdom set to music.

[charlou]

If you have a few minutes I can think of no better thing to do with them than click on this link (and watch if full screen)..

http://wimp.com/discussesnothing/

Whimsical ... kinda reminds me of the philosophy of AA Milne, a la Pooh.

I'd like to hear more from him ... *googles*

[Hermit]

If there is any sense in it, FBM might be able to point it out. I don't get it at all. The style and delivery reminds me of renditions of Desiderata that were fashionable in the 1970s.

[charlou]

Your response is interesting, Seraph, given your penchant for using that symbol in your avatar ...

[Hermit]

Your response is interesting, Seraph, given your penchant for using that symbol in your avatar ...

The yin and yang symbol is a doozy, isn't it? The ultimate brain breaker. It burns. Besides, or perhaps because of what it represents, it is of most exquisitely elegant design, the piquancy of which is heightened, or perhaps created, by its simplicity.

[Rum]

One of the central concepts of Buddhism is that the world (the universe) is 'empty', that its prevailing nature is 'nothingness'. After all there was nothingness to begin with and all things return to nothingness it argues. Every state between is temporary and transient.

And yet human beings live and act as if there is not the case very often. We get attached to things that cannot last, including emotions, feelings and even what we think of as ourselves. THis, according to Buddhist precepts is the cause of most human suffering.

Alan Watts was trying, very elegantly I thought, to remind people of this.

[mistermack]

One of the central concepts of Buddhism is that the world (the universe) is 'empty', that its prevailing nature is 'nothingness'. After all there was nothingness to begin with and all things return to nothingness it argues. Every state between is temporary and transient.

And yet human beings live and act as if there is not the case very often. We get attached to things that cannot last, including emotions, feelings and even what we think of as ourselves. THis, according to Buddhist precepts is the cause of most human suffering.

Alan Watts was trying, very elegantly I thought, to remind people of this.

Nice video, but I'm not convinced. He didn't say anything that hasn't occurred to me already, and in the video and the music he clearly uses SOMETHING to augment his recommendation of nothingness.
I've had 13.7 billion years of nothingness. It has nothing to recommend it. In fact it happened in a flash, it was just as if it didn't happen. I missed the formation of the Solar System, the two planets smashing together to form the Earth and Moon, the start of life, the Fishes, the Amphibians, Dinosaurs, Early Mammals. I even missed my own conception.

So I'm going to enjoy what tiny bit of existence I do get, before it all carries on without me again. I know it can't last, but it's all I'm going to get.

I don't dread being nothing, but it has nothing to recommend it.

[Hermit]

One of the central concepts of Buddhism is that the world (the universe) is 'empty', that its prevailing nature is 'nothingness'. After all there was nothingness to begin with and all things return to nothingness it argues. Every state between is temporary and transient.

And yet human beings live and act as if there is not the case very often. We get attached to things that cannot last, including emotions, feelings and even what we think of as ourselves. THis, according to Buddhist precepts is the cause of most human suffering.

Alan Watts was trying, very elegantly I thought, to remind people of this.

Thanks for trying to clarify what Watts is going on about, but I can't see how it can be established that "the real state is the state of nothing", that "basic reality is nothingness". It's utter gobbledegook to me, probably because I can only understand knowledge derived by the empirical means (with all the limitations that method entails). Metaphysics is not knowledge. It is entirely made up of speculation, bereft of testability, and will do no better than create cloud-castles.

[hiyymer]

One of the central concepts of Buddhism is that the world (the universe) is 'empty', that its prevailing nature is 'nothingness'. After all there was nothingness to begin with and all things return to nothingness it argues. Every state between is temporary and transient.

And yet human beings live and act as if there is not the case very often. We get attached to things that cannot last, including emotions, feelings and even what we think of as ourselves. THis, according to Buddhist precepts is the cause of most human suffering.

Alan Watts was trying, very elegantly I thought, to remind people of this.

Thanks for trying to clarify what Watts is going on about, but I can't see how it can be established that "the real state is the state of nothing", that "basic reality is nothingness". It's utter gobbledegook to me, probably because I can only understand knowledge derived by the empirical means (with all the limitations that method entails). Metaphysics is not knowledge. It is entirely made up of speculation, bereft of testability, and will do no better than create cloud-castles.

I will always be thankful for Alan Watts little book "The Way of Zen" (1957), which I read when I was about 13 and have no remembrance of what was in it or why I happened upon it. But it was always a little guidepost for me; a reminder that life is a weird irrational journey; the image of the Zen master trying to convey the intellectually unknowable contradictions of our experience by other means. I've never read another thing that Alan Watts wrote. But here I am meeting him again. He must be a really old geezer by now.

The way the video struck me, the important point was that our consciousness is already "pure". No need to fix it. The brain is always going on about finding fixes, but none of that is anything.

To me life from within our experience is unknowable intellectually and empirically because we can never know the real reasons for anything we do or want, and that is a fact which is born out by rationality and science. If you limit yourself to the empirically verifiable and have to have reasons for everything, you are basically dead. You are like the losing contestant who is busy polishing the mirror while life happens over there. Enjoy the cloud-castles. It's not intellectual. It's not metaphysics. It's just learning to let go.