I’ve been, independently, trying to level up my Original Seeing (my, and probably most rationalist’s, weakest link in OODA looping). I don’t think I have any insights worth sharing here, you seem to be far ahead of me.
But you’ve brought up shikantaza (“just sitting”), which still gets a chuckle out of me: My head canon is that Original Seeing, Naturalism, Unseeing, but also Buddhism and Stoicism, all point at roughly the same thing in concept space. That is, I suspect Buddhism did, before people made a religion out of it. I suspect the same happened to Stoicism. I haven’t bothered to analyze Christianity and other religions, they might not fit in that well.
I’ve come to that head canon because the implications of a high level of Original Seeing all point towards practices seen in both Buddhism and Stoicism. Not that I have attained high level, but I have enough to see where it’s going. Shikantaza itself is hilarious, because with all the sports-team like traditions in Buddhism, I imagine that one guy going “guys, you can figure all this out on your own just by sitting”, which is also how the Buddha did it originally, supposedly. If you figure things out for yourself, you probably don’t need any traditions to guide your exercises. If you don’t figure things out for yourself, you won’t get a lot out of going through the traditions.
To bring it back: I suspect both Buddhism and Stoicism to be “fake” versions of Original Seeing, “fake” as described above.
I’ve been, independently, trying to level up my Original Seeing (my, and probably most rationalist’s, weakest link in OODA looping). I don’t think I have any insights worth sharing here, you seem to be far ahead of me.
But you’ve brought up shikantaza (“just sitting”), which still gets a chuckle out of me: My head canon is that Original Seeing, Naturalism, Unseeing, but also Buddhism and Stoicism, all point at roughly the same thing in concept space. That is, I suspect Buddhism did, before people made a religion out of it. I suspect the same happened to Stoicism. I haven’t bothered to analyze Christianity and other religions, they might not fit in that well.
I’ve come to that head canon because the implications of a high level of Original Seeing all point towards practices seen in both Buddhism and Stoicism. Not that I have attained high level, but I have enough to see where it’s going. Shikantaza itself is hilarious, because with all the sports-team like traditions in Buddhism, I imagine that one guy going “guys, you can figure all this out on your own just by sitting”, which is also how the Buddha did it originally, supposedly. If you figure things out for yourself, you probably don’t need any traditions to guide your exercises. If you don’t figure things out for yourself, you won’t get a lot out of going through the traditions.
To bring it back: I suspect both Buddhism and Stoicism to be “fake” versions of Original Seeing, “fake” as described above.
It’s funny to me. That’s all I wanted to share.