While I liked Valentine’s recent post on kensho and its follow-ups a lot, one thing that I was annoyed by were the comments that the whole thing can’t be explained from a reductionist, third-person perspective. I agree that such an explanation can’t produce the necessary mental changes that the explanation is talking about. But it seemed wrong to me to claim that all of this would be somehow intrinsically mysterious and impossible to explain on such a level that would give people at least an intellectual understanding of what Looking and enlightenment and all that are.
Speaking as someone who’s more or less avoided participating in the kensho discussion (and subsequent related discussions) until now, I think the quoted passage pretty much nails the biggest reservation I had with respect to the topic: the language used in those threads tended to switch back and forth between factual and metaphorical with very little indication as to which mode was being used at any particular moment, to the point where I really wanted to just say, “Okay, I sort of see what you’re gesturing at and I’d love to discuss this with you in good faith, but before we get started on that, can we quickly step out of mythic mode/metaphor land/narrative thinking for a moment, just to make sure that we are all still on the same page as far as basic ontology goes, and agree that, for instance, physics and mathematics and logic are still true?”
But when other people in those threads (such as, for example, Said Achmiz) asked essentially the same question, it seemed to me (as in System-1!seemed) that Val and others would simply respond with “It doesn’t matter what basic ontology you’re using unless that ontology actually helps you Look.” Which, okay, fine, but I don’t really want to start trying to Look until I can confirm the absence of some fairly huge epistemic issues that typically plague this region of thought-space.
All of which is to say, I’m glad this post was made. ;-)
(although there is a part of me that can’t help but wonder why this post or something like it wasn’t the opener for this topic, as opposed to something that was only typed up after a couple of huge demon threads spawned)
I am really happy that this post was written, and mildly annoyed by the same things you’re annoyed by.
To explain rather than excuse, there’s a good reason that meditation teachers historically avoid giving clear answers like this. That’s because their goal is not to help you intellectually understand meditation, but rather to help you do meditation.
It’s very easy to mentally slip from “I intellectually understand what sort of thing this is” to “I understand the thing itself”, and so meditation teachers hit this problem with a hammer by just refusing to explain it, so you’re forced to try it instead. This problem is what the “get out of the car” section is talking about.
I have some worry that this post will make it easier for people to make errors like:
“I’m angry, because X is a jerk. Aha, I should try the thing Kaj was talking about, and notice that feeling angry is not helping me with my goal of utterly destroying X.”
(This is exaggerated, but mistakes of this shape are really, really easy to make.)
I think it’s definitely worth the cost, but it is a cost.
In particular, I would also add this warning: it’s (mildly) dangerous to try to convince yourself of this no-self stuff too deeply on a purely intellectual level.
There was one point where I had read intellectual descriptions of the no-self thing, but hadn’t had the experience of it. But I figured that maybe if I really thought it through and used a lot of compelling arguments, I could convince myself of it—after all, the intellectual argument seemed reasonable, but I clearly wasn’t believing it on an emotional level, so maybe if I tried really hard to make the intellectual argument sink in?
This does not work. (At least, it didn’t work for me, and I doubt it works for the average person.) The “no-self” thing was still getting interpreted in terms of my existing ontology, rather than the ontology updating. What I ended up with was some kind of a notion, temporarily and imperfectly believed on an emotional level, that every second of existence involved me dying and a new entity being created, and that every consciousness-moment would be my last.
That was not a healthy state of mind to be in; fortunately, my normal thinking patterns pretty quickly overrode it and I went back to normal. That is also not what the “kensho” experience that I described felt like. That experience felt calming and liberating, with none of the kind of discomfort that you’d get if you tried to force the assumption of no self existing into an ontology which always presupposed the existence of a self.
The “no-self” thing was still getting interpreted in terms of my existing ontology, rather than the ontology updating.
This.
I’ll finish reading the other comments and then, time permitting, I’ll add my own.
I’ll just note for now that there’s a kind of “being clear” that I think is dangerous for rationality, in a way analogous to what you describe here about no-self. The sketch is something like: if an epistemology is built on top of an ontology, then that epistemology is going to have a hard time with a wide swath of ontological updates. Getting around this seems to require Looking at one’s ontologies and somehow integrating Looking into one’s epistemology. Being required to explain that in terms of a very specific ontology seems to give an illusion of understanding that often becomes sticky.
but before we get started on that, can we quickly step out of mythic mode/metaphor land/narrative thinking for a moment, just to make sure that we are all still on the same page as far as basic ontology goes, and agree that, for instance, physics and mathematics and logic are still true?”
Now it seems to me like there was some straight up miscommunication in that thread. My recollection is that everywhere I saw this question explicitly asked, it was explicitly answered “yes” (e.g. JenniferRM asked it at some point). I don’t remember Said asking this question.
Speaking as someone who’s more or less avoided participating in the kensho discussion (and subsequent related discussions) until now, I think the quoted passage pretty much nails the biggest reservation I had with respect to the topic: the language used in those threads tended to switch back and forth between factual and metaphorical with very little indication as to which mode was being used at any particular moment, to the point where I really wanted to just say, “Okay, I sort of see what you’re gesturing at and I’d love to discuss this with you in good faith, but before we get started on that, can we quickly step out of mythic mode/metaphor land/narrative thinking for a moment, just to make sure that we are all still on the same page as far as basic ontology goes, and agree that, for instance, physics and mathematics and logic are still true?”
But when other people in those threads (such as, for example, Said Achmiz) asked essentially the same question, it seemed to me (as in System-1!seemed) that Val and others would simply respond with “It doesn’t matter what basic ontology you’re using unless that ontology actually helps you Look.” Which, okay, fine, but I don’t really want to start trying to Look until I can confirm the absence of some fairly huge epistemic issues that typically plague this region of thought-space.
All of which is to say, I’m glad this post was made. ;-)
(although there is a part of me that can’t help but wonder why this post or something like it wasn’t the opener for this topic, as opposed to something that was only typed up after a couple of huge demon threads spawned)
I am really happy that this post was written, and mildly annoyed by the same things you’re annoyed by.
To explain rather than excuse, there’s a good reason that meditation teachers historically avoid giving clear answers like this. That’s because their goal is not to help you intellectually understand meditation, but rather to help you do meditation.
It’s very easy to mentally slip from “I intellectually understand what sort of thing this is” to “I understand the thing itself”, and so meditation teachers hit this problem with a hammer by just refusing to explain it, so you’re forced to try it instead. This problem is what the “get out of the car” section is talking about.
I have some worry that this post will make it easier for people to make errors like:
“I’m angry, because X is a jerk. Aha, I should try the thing Kaj was talking about, and notice that feeling angry is not helping me with my goal of utterly destroying X.”
(This is exaggerated, but mistakes of this shape are really, really easy to make.)
I think it’s definitely worth the cost, but it is a cost.
In particular, I would also add this warning: it’s (mildly) dangerous to try to convince yourself of this no-self stuff too deeply on a purely intellectual level.
There was one point where I had read intellectual descriptions of the no-self thing, but hadn’t had the experience of it. But I figured that maybe if I really thought it through and used a lot of compelling arguments, I could convince myself of it—after all, the intellectual argument seemed reasonable, but I clearly wasn’t believing it on an emotional level, so maybe if I tried really hard to make the intellectual argument sink in?
This does not work. (At least, it didn’t work for me, and I doubt it works for the average person.) The “no-self” thing was still getting interpreted in terms of my existing ontology, rather than the ontology updating. What I ended up with was some kind of a notion, temporarily and imperfectly believed on an emotional level, that every second of existence involved me dying and a new entity being created, and that every consciousness-moment would be my last.
That was not a healthy state of mind to be in; fortunately, my normal thinking patterns pretty quickly overrode it and I went back to normal. That is also not what the “kensho” experience that I described felt like. That experience felt calming and liberating, with none of the kind of discomfort that you’d get if you tried to force the assumption of no self existing into an ontology which always presupposed the existence of a self.
This.
I’ll finish reading the other comments and then, time permitting, I’ll add my own.
I’ll just note for now that there’s a kind of “being clear” that I think is dangerous for rationality, in a way analogous to what you describe here about no-self. The sketch is something like: if an epistemology is built on top of an ontology, then that epistemology is going to have a hard time with a wide swath of ontological updates. Getting around this seems to require Looking at one’s ontologies and somehow integrating Looking into one’s epistemology. Being required to explain that in terms of a very specific ontology seems to give an illusion of understanding that often becomes sticky.
Now it seems to me like there was some straight up miscommunication in that thread. My recollection is that everywhere I saw this question explicitly asked, it was explicitly answered “yes” (e.g. JenniferRM asked it at some point). I don’t remember Said asking this question.