I remain perplexed as to why someone would find “get[ting] to a state where I experience no sense of self” a desirable goal. “Experiencing no sense of self” sounds like a state indistinguishable from dreamless sleep, or the consciousness of a jellyfish, or death. For all that some say “but ‘no self’ doesn’t really mean no self”, the quotes here seem to mean exactly that.
Of course, in Buddha’s day, they did not have cognitive science and a theory of neural networks
Better off for it. I don’t take the neuroscience stories as anything more than modern myths. Stories, models, are not evidence.
ETA: I decided to move the rest of this into a separate comment, as it goes in a completely different direction.
I remain perplexed as to why someone would find “get[ting] to a state where I experience no sense of self” a desirable goal.
As I noted in the previous post, my intent is to talk about the relevant mechanisms, rather than to convince anybody to meditate. That said, later posts should hopefully help make the answer to this question more clear.
Also, one aspect that I think this post already suggested, was that seeing the nature of the self as constructed is seeing reality more clearly, so many people may be interested in pursuing it just out of curiosity and wanting to get a better experimental connection to how their mind actually works. (Assuming that the model that I have outlined is correct, of course.)
And to again emphasize: the goal (in most approaches) is not to get rid of the sense of self entirely. That would make you dysfunctional and capable of acting, as you point out. The goal is to see it for what it is.
“Sounds like indistuingashble from death” seems like a proper extenson of the “there is a self” view, which is capable of being wrong.
I would guess that the claim is that if you experimentally try it out it turns not to be the case and the difference to what is expected is easy when you have direct experience to compare to. However imagining before hand doesn’t really help that comparison. it might be related to how the colorscientist Alice seeing red at the first sight “that is red”. The theorethical confusion or clarity migth not be strongly correlated to be able to experience “that” even if one thinks its impossible and even if it from outside hard to theorethically agree what “that” is.
I have meditated, and have not experienced any of this no-self stuff. Quite the opposite. To me, “there is a self” is capable of being wrong to about the same extent and in the same ways as “there is a Sun”. That is, even when it turns out not to be what you thought it was, it still adds up to normality. I still get warmed by the Sun.
As to what it does turn out to be, I find Gurdjieff’s account more convincing than neo-Buddhism, and the exercise of self-remembering more fruitful than what I might unkindly call self-forgetting.
Verification here is difficult as one can always use a “you didn’t do it right ” type of argument. I think an analogous claim would be “it would be totally dark if there were no sun” which does not hold true as there would still be starlight if the local system didn’t have fusion reactions.
Also heat in the sense of caloric theory doesn’t really exist and there is nothing mystical about that but the “common notion” of heat as ontological basic doesn’t hold. Yes your hand gets a tingly feeling and that still happens. I would also think that if I said that Ra exists even if it added to the same picture as the sun the differences would be appriciable enough that it is not mere technical details. Some very naive conceptions of sun might say that sun raises into the sky from east and sets to the west. That is pointing to a real goins on but there are grounds to say that the sun doesn’t move (sun moves earth still vs earth moves sun still). So from a certain point of view it is true that the sun never sets despite there being sunsets.
I think there is also not much claims of supranormal things, so adding up to normality doesn’t do much anything. Nobody is claiming that seeing doesn’t happen even if it is disputed whether there is a self that sees. A fusion reaction thoery of sun says that nuclear weapons should be possible while a earth stationary sun mobile theory might not agree, but that is a disagreement in a place that is less observed outside of “normality”.
I remain perplexed as to why someone would find “get[ting] to a state where I experience no sense of self” a desirable goal. “Experiencing no sense of self” sounds like a state indistinguishable from dreamless sleep, or the consciousness of a jellyfish, or death. For all that some say “but ‘no self’ doesn’t really mean no self”, the quotes here seem to mean exactly that.
Better off for it. I don’t take the neuroscience stories as anything more than modern myths. Stories, models, are not evidence.
ETA: I decided to move the rest of this into a separate comment, as it goes in a completely different direction.
As I noted in the previous post, my intent is to talk about the relevant mechanisms, rather than to convince anybody to meditate. That said, later posts should hopefully help make the answer to this question more clear.
Also, one aspect that I think this post already suggested, was that seeing the nature of the self as constructed is seeing reality more clearly, so many people may be interested in pursuing it just out of curiosity and wanting to get a better experimental connection to how their mind actually works. (Assuming that the model that I have outlined is correct, of course.)
And to again emphasize: the goal (in most approaches) is not to get rid of the sense of self entirely. That would make you dysfunctional and capable of acting, as you point out. The goal is to see it for what it is.
“Sounds like indistuingashble from death” seems like a proper extenson of the “there is a self” view, which is capable of being wrong.
I would guess that the claim is that if you experimentally try it out it turns not to be the case and the difference to what is expected is easy when you have direct experience to compare to. However imagining before hand doesn’t really help that comparison. it might be related to how the colorscientist Alice seeing red at the first sight “that is red”. The theorethical confusion or clarity migth not be strongly correlated to be able to experience “that” even if one thinks its impossible and even if it from outside hard to theorethically agree what “that” is.
I have meditated, and have not experienced any of this no-self stuff. Quite the opposite. To me, “there is a self” is capable of being wrong to about the same extent and in the same ways as “there is a Sun”. That is, even when it turns out not to be what you thought it was, it still adds up to normality. I still get warmed by the Sun.
As to what it does turn out to be, I find Gurdjieff’s account more convincing than neo-Buddhism, and the exercise of self-remembering more fruitful than what I might unkindly call self-forgetting.
Lots of (neo-?)Buddhists would agree with this, FWIW. “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”
Verification here is difficult as one can always use a “you didn’t do it right ” type of argument. I think an analogous claim would be “it would be totally dark if there were no sun” which does not hold true as there would still be starlight if the local system didn’t have fusion reactions.
Also heat in the sense of caloric theory doesn’t really exist and there is nothing mystical about that but the “common notion” of heat as ontological basic doesn’t hold. Yes your hand gets a tingly feeling and that still happens. I would also think that if I said that Ra exists even if it added to the same picture as the sun the differences would be appriciable enough that it is not mere technical details. Some very naive conceptions of sun might say that sun raises into the sky from east and sets to the west. That is pointing to a real goins on but there are grounds to say that the sun doesn’t move (sun moves earth still vs earth moves sun still). So from a certain point of view it is true that the sun never sets despite there being sunsets.
I think there is also not much claims of supranormal things, so adding up to normality doesn’t do much anything. Nobody is claiming that seeing doesn’t happen even if it is disputed whether there is a self that sees. A fusion reaction thoery of sun says that nuclear weapons should be possible while a earth stationary sun mobile theory might not agree, but that is a disagreement in a place that is less observed outside of “normality”.