Originally posted by moementum7
I guess I was wrong about buddism being in the religous category.
But I always thought that in the majority of what one might call Mysticism, they pronounce truth as being beyond words,that it is not describable, something like"you can say ,water, water ,water," but just saying the word will not quench your thirst .You have to experience it for yourself. Like the mystics say about truth,, you must experience it for yourself.
Something like that.
Could be wrong.
P.S. Could you please define mysticism for us.
Thanks again
I wouldn't be so bold as to define mystical any differently to a dictionary. However it usually suggests something like 'beyond human understanding'. That was why I objected to the idea that Buddhist ideas were mystical.
Buddhism is as coldly rational a study of existence as science ('enlightened common sense' is the best description of it I've heard). However it does seem on the surface to be a form of mysticism.
This is because it is a consistent finding of Buddhist philosophers (and others) that what underlies physical existence is not describable in 'rational' (i.e. dualistic) terms. It is asserted that there is something that exists that lies not just beyond science, but beyond all our ways of thinking and conceiving.
This is odd, but it is not mystical. Buddhism does not assert that this underlying substrate cannot be known or (more or less) understood, just that it cannot be rationally proved, objectively observed or conceptually modelled.
This is because it is a non-dual substance, it does not have properties that are true or false. Any assertion we may make about it must be based on its aspects (hypothesised attributes). The problem is that it has wholly contradictory aspects depending on your viewpoint. This is a consequence of the fact that all our thinking is necessarily dual, whereas in this case the object of our thoughts is non-dual. There is therefore an inevitable mismatch between any thought we may have of this thing and the thing itself.
This may seem a bit nonsensical at first glance. However if you know Goedel's theorems you will know that (very loosely) for any system of rational thought (any system based on truth and falsity) there is always one truth that can be known but not proved, a theorem that cannot be true and cannot be false according to the system, but which can nevertheless be known to be true to the thinker. The thinker is able to create a meta-system of thought (to think outside the system) within which the truth or falsity of the theorem can be decided.
This is true ad infinitum, in other words however vast or complex the system of thinking the above is always true (although very simple systems escape this problem).
From this we know that at all times and places for all eternity there will be one truth that cannot be proved true. (Mathematicians do not conclude that this is always the same truth, but I do and I think Roger Penrose does also).
The best explanation for WHY Goedel's theorems are provably true is that all ways of thinking (all formal and axiomatic systems of proof above a certain level of complexity) are dual in nature (truth/falsity etc) but that there is something that exists which lies beyond dualism, and thus beyond thoughts of truth and falsity.
This can only be a non-dual substance, a thing of which nothing at all can be proved true or false. This thing is mystical in the sense that it lies beyond what Roger McGinn calls our 'epistemic limits' and what I would call the limits of dualism. But from Goedel we know that this does NOT mean that it is unknowable or not understandable. It is simply unprovable, it lies outside any possible system of proof.
As consciousness is the only non-dual substance of which we know (it can exist as no more that a fundamental and singular experience with no subject/object, inside/outside, true/false divisions), it seems reasonable to suppose that the monist substrate of existence is consciousness. This conclusion is supported by the fact that as yet there is no other explanation for the existence of consiousness that makes sense, as one would expect for soemthing that is truly and ultimately fundamental and therefore physically uncaused.
Goedel's theorems arise from the fact that for any proof to be completed consciousness must exist, yet consciousness lies always outside of any system of proofs of which we can be conscious. Thus Buddhism correctly asserts that to understand consciousness fully we must discard the notion of proof at some point and continue our research based on subjective experience alone. It advocates spending at least some of ones time attempting to experience what underlies our thinking, which involves not thinking at all and focussing on experience and knowing.
The problem with saying all this is that it is ex hypothesis unprovable and, beyond a certain point, undiscussable.
All this accords with philosopher Max Velman's assertion (as far as I know undisputed) that existence is epistemelogically dual yet ontologically monist, since this is structurally the only type of explanation that can logically work. It suggests that there is one more thing in existence than we can think about.
If that is confusing I apologise. It's difficult to talk about something that in principle one can't directly talk about. This is the reason Buddhists generally give self-contradictory or silly answers to deep questions.
