In what way do you believe concepts exist? There are many different ways to splice of concept space and your post sounds like there a certain way in which a concept like Kenshō is objectively sliced.
“What does it mean for a concept to exist” is a deep philosophical question I’m not sure of the answer right now. For the purpose of this article I pretty much just mean an idea is invented and isn’t fraudulent or pointless.
It seems strange to me to use it that way in the article as it means that invention is a requirement for the existence of the concept. It seems strange to say that because Japanese invented Kensho Westerners invisibly decide not to experience Kensho. It seems to me like the article has confused ontological assumptions.
Japanese people didn’t invent kenshō. People around the word (including Westerners) will experience kenshō randomly. The Japanese merely refined a system for identifying kenshō and fostering kenshō states. I can see how if the Western world discovered kenshō independently or if you don’t believe in kenshō then we’d be getting into ontological territory. But it doesn’t seem like you’re coming from this direction.
So I guess “an idea is invented” is the wrong definition for “a concept to exist”. I don’t know how to define “existence” in the case of kenshō. I don’t even know how to define kenshō itself without tautologies.
There’s a group of numbers between 0.38976 and 1.1. A given culture might decide to call those numbers A*-numbers. Another group might call the numbers between 0.35 and 1.2 B*-numbers.
I would say that both A* and B* were invented by the groups that use them. It’s unlikely that another group of people would come up with the same conceptualization even if they would investigate the same problem domain.
It seems to me likely that Kensho is similar. It’s a conceptual cluster that the Japanese use, but other traditions of meditations don’t use the same conceptual cluster.
Your conceptualization assumes that it would be good for a person who wants to learn something about meditative states to learn about how the Japanese conceptualize kensho and then try to work their way to the state. That approach conflicts with meditation paradigms that value “beginners mind”.
When I originally wrote kenshō I meant to ambiguously refer to both to the Japan-specific conceptual cluster itself and the underlying sector of the meditative map because both of them are orthogonal to the Western philosophical tradition.
I would be surprised if it wasn’t possible to experience a kenshō state (under a different name, marked off with different conceptual clusters) in the West using a non-Japanese meditative tradition recently adopted from someone else like India.
The difference between the Western tradition and Eastern traditions are often a bit exaggerated.
Within Western monasteries people engage in meditative practices. Historically, meditation wasn’t central in Buddhism either.
Most older spiritual tradition put a lot of value on secrecy and modern Buddhism and later New Agey thinking is more open to selling meditation courses to a wide public (both for money and for external recognition).
It’s quite different to work on learning an existing concept and to work on drawing conceptual boundaries yourself in a way that works for your context.
In what way do you believe concepts exist? There are many different ways to splice of concept space and your post sounds like there a certain way in which a concept like Kenshō is objectively sliced.
“What does it mean for a concept to exist” is a deep philosophical question I’m not sure of the answer right now. For the purpose of this article I pretty much just mean an idea is invented and isn’t fraudulent or pointless.
It seems strange to me to use it that way in the article as it means that invention is a requirement for the existence of the concept. It seems strange to say that because Japanese invented Kensho Westerners invisibly decide not to experience Kensho. It seems to me like the article has confused ontological assumptions.
Japanese people didn’t invent kenshō. People around the word (including Westerners) will experience kenshō randomly. The Japanese merely refined a system for identifying kenshō and fostering kenshō states. I can see how if the Western world discovered kenshō independently or if you don’t believe in kenshō then we’d be getting into ontological territory. But it doesn’t seem like you’re coming from this direction.
So I guess “an idea is invented” is the wrong definition for “a concept to exist”. I don’t know how to define “existence” in the case of kenshō. I don’t even know how to define kenshō itself without tautologies.
There’s a group of numbers between 0.38976 and 1.1. A given culture might decide to call those numbers A*-numbers. Another group might call the numbers between 0.35 and 1.2 B*-numbers.
I would say that both A* and B* were invented by the groups that use them. It’s unlikely that another group of people would come up with the same conceptualization even if they would investigate the same problem domain.
It seems to me likely that Kensho is similar. It’s a conceptual cluster that the Japanese use, but other traditions of meditations don’t use the same conceptual cluster.
Your conceptualization assumes that it would be good for a person who wants to learn something about meditative states to learn about how the Japanese conceptualize kensho and then try to work their way to the state. That approach conflicts with meditation paradigms that value “beginners mind”.
I understand better now what you mean.
When I originally wrote kenshō I meant to ambiguously refer to both to the Japan-specific conceptual cluster itself and the underlying sector of the meditative map because both of them are orthogonal to the Western philosophical tradition.
I would be surprised if it wasn’t possible to experience a kenshō state (under a different name, marked off with different conceptual clusters) in the West using a non-Japanese meditative tradition recently adopted from someone else like India.
The difference between the Western tradition and Eastern traditions are often a bit exaggerated.
Within Western monasteries people engage in meditative practices. Historically, meditation wasn’t central in Buddhism either.
Most older spiritual tradition put a lot of value on secrecy and modern Buddhism and later New Agey thinking is more open to selling meditation courses to a wide public (both for money and for external recognition).
It’s quite different to work on learning an existing concept and to work on drawing conceptual boundaries yourself in a way that works for your context.
If you have not chosen to live in Japan, not knowing about Kenshō may be one of the consequences, though you might not be aware of it.
I don’t think this answer addresses the point of in what sense Kensho exists for you in that case.
Oops. I’m not sure what I was responding to, but it wasn’t the question you asked.