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Disneyland As Sacred Space


Burl

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I can't buy that all the journeys of all pilgrims (think the Crusades) establish 'physical evidence' supporting a nonmaterial reality. First, I question the motives and second, "God" is not an entity and only an entity and its existence can be supported by physical evidence.

You are misreading. I am not saying all pilgrimages are the same. God is not part of the discussion.

 

It is possible to evidence nonmaterial realities. Philosophically, the argument from beauty is a logical proof of the existence of beauty, a non-material reality.

 

Psychologically, Burton White demonstrated effectance motivation in humans. This is a drive to have an effect on the environment.

 

I don't have a complete argument yet, but we might be able to demonstrate the reality of "Oneness" and of "Mindfulness". Maybe not, but it beats the mental echo chamber.

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I will be off later on my own little pilgrimage to the Oxfam Charity Shop, doing my stint amid the vinyl discs and the random folk who pop in to browse and sometimes chat - and on the odd ocassion actually buy something. To be honest, logic has never been my strongpoint, which is possibly why I seek to dress up the mechanics of my mind with words such as "holistic", which can cover a whole package of errors, if not sins. But nevermind, or nevermatter perhaps.

 

I was just reading through the thread here so far and I am unable to follow what logic there is. So if we are near to a "complete argument" and if it is ever "demonstrated", no doubt it will fly over - or through - my own head unnoticed.

 

Myself, I was thinking of "In the beginning God created..............." and so on into the "real" world. And again, the opening of the Dammapada, that "All things are mind made......." and so into the echo chamber? Do we have an irrevocable contrast here, two paths that can never be reconciled? It is here that I say the nembutsu. "Thank you". I have reached the end of my capacity to understand. Truly.

 

Another thing that popped into my memory banks were the words of Layman Hsiang, apparently a zen master of some distinction, monastic or not. He said that "Shadows arise from forms, echoes come from sounds". He mused that to seek Buddhahood apart from living beings is like seeking echoes by silencing sounds. He also said that "illusion and enlightenment are one road". If so, then there is hope for us all.

 

Regarding "mental echo chambers", maybe we have to leave the chamber to get the full effect? Once again, Buddhist dualism is not that "all is one", rather that reality is "not two". I listen to "she who must be obeyed" simply because she is THERE as real as myself. Or as unreal as myself. And I love her.

 

I really never knew where my musings were taking me. So I will leave it there, with love.

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Tariki, you may not be following but you and others are definitely influencing me. I simply think it is incumbent upon us to rationally question everything.

 

Before I started posting here oneness and mindfulness were not even in my vocabulary, so don't think your posting is without influence.

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You are misreading. I am not saying all pilgrimages are the same. God is not part of the discussion.

 

It is possible to evidence nonmaterial realities. Philosophically, the argument from beauty is a logical proof of the existence of beauty, a non-material reality.

 

Psychologically, Burton White demonstrated effectance motivation in humans. This is a drive to have an effect on the environment.

 

I don't have a complete argument yet, but we might be able to demonstrate the reality of "Oneness" and of "Mindfulness". Maybe not, but it beats the mental echo chamber.

 

Sorry, it seemed logical to combine religious, pilgrimage and non-material reality and 'assume' the reality was God??

 

I will wait for the complete argument.

 

Anyway,

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Sorry, it seemed logical to combine religious, pilgrimage and non-material reality and 'assume' the reality was God??

 

I will wait for the complete argument.

 

Anyway,

 

Don't wait! I need help here. I'm thinking out loud here and have no great wisdom or agenda. I'm just struggling to make all this talk meditational woo less self-referential.

 

WWAD (What would Aquinas do?)

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Okay, but I must be missing something here and might have to go back and reread this thread.

 

Not sure what the logical proof is or what you mean by the possibility of evidencing nonmaterial realities, like beauty.

 

Also not sure one could or how one would ever be able to demonstrate the reality of "Oneness."

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Okay, but I must be missing something here and might have to go back and reread this thread.

 

Not sure what the logical proof is or what you mean by the possibility of evidencing nonmaterial realities, like beauty.

 

Also not sure one could or how one would ever be able to demonstrate the reality of "Oneness."

The argument from beauty is that two or more persons view an object which causes a similar emotional response, i.e. Milky Way, and then experience a different stimulus, i.e. hear a symphony, and share a similar joint response there exists a non-material entity we call beauty. Beauty is not unique to the individual or a reaction to a specific entity. Other proposed non-material entities include love and justice.

 

Burton White's effectance motivation is psychology not philosophy. He experimented with infants in cribs fitted with motion sensors and mobiles. He wired half of the motion sensors so the children could animate the mobiles by squirming. The control group recieved random mobile activity.

 

The experimental group went wild. Rocking, smiling and vocalizing much more than the controls. The became upset when the connection between the sensor and the mobile was disconnected. Simply making a difference in the world seems to be an inherent human motivation.

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Burl,

It seems to me you would have a most difficult time proving that beauty is not unique to the individual. Sure you can find agreement between some individuals on what is beautiful but you can also find much disagreement especially when considering different times and customs and societal and other conditioning. All Philosophers are not in current agreement looking at beauty as proof as a reality. The theory that beauty is in the eye of the beholder holds more weight in my experience in spite of any agreement we might both have on a particular sensory perception.

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It seems to me you would have a most difficult time proving that beauty is not unique to the individual.

 

Just relating this to the words/question of Thormas regarding "revelation" as the "disclosure of the self", and thought that our sense of "beauty", and what is beautiful to us, could well involve self disclosure - i.e. "judgement". William Blake's "to the eye of a miser an old bag worn with the use of money has far more divine proportions than grapes hanging on a vine", and of the tree that "brings tears of joy to one man" but is just a "green thing that stands in the way of another". This all in a letter to a Cleric who had rubbed him up the wrong way...... :D Maybe when we try to think of "beauty" as a THING apart it can confuse. Like all things, it relates to so much else. "Truth is beauty, beauty is Truth" (Keats, from memory) "What is truth"?

 

Well, I'm rambling as usual. But I am emboldened to post here a poem that I wrote (now over 35 years ago) which I had cause to remember when I read Joseph's post and his words on beauty. My poem was called "Before Bacon - An Ode to Despair", the Bacon referred to not having anything to do with pigs but with the Francis Bacon who was one of the precursors of so called "modern" thought.

 

Oh! I wish I'd been born before Bacon

When the sun still moved in the sky,

When hope was in more than a daydream

And beauty in more than the eye.

 

When the Great Chain of Being had God at the top

And Old Nic down below in his lair,

When people were burnt for love of their souls

And not just because they were there.

 

Back in those days before Auschwitz

When there was till trust to betray,

Before Symbol and Myth became Number

And the Cross became DNA.

 

Oh! I wish I'd been born before Bacon

When Saints trod the Pilgrim's Path,

When people still jumped at a bump in the night

And not at a bump in a graph.

 

When Crusades were fought for Truths believed

And Faith was the Devils hammer,

Nothingness only the clay God used,

The Absurd a Bishop's stammer!

 

When Man was seen as something more

Than atoms swirling in air,

Before the face of the Risen Christ

Became the face of despair.

 

Yes, I wish I'd been born before Bacon

Though there's not much to choose in the end;

But I might have had serfs and a castle

And I might have had Christ as a friend.

 

​Well, obviously a bit tongue in cheek.

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Burl,

It seems to me you would have a most difficult time proving that beauty is not unique to the individual. Sure you can find agreement between some individuals on what is beautiful but you can also find much disagreement especially when considering different times and customs and societal and other conditioning. All Philosophers are not in current agreement looking at beauty as proof as a reality. The theory that beauty is in the eye of the beholder holds more weight in my experience in spite of any agreement we might both have on a particular sensory perception.

That's why it is called the argument from beauty and not the proof of beauty.
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That's why it is called the argument from beauty and not the proof of beauty.

Oh... I read your quote as "Philosophically, the argument from beauty is a logical proof of the existence of beauty, a non-material reality." my emphasis on the word "is".

 

I assume now you didn't mean to imply the argument was proof. If so we are on same page.

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Oh... I read your quote as "Philosophically, the argument from beauty is a logical proof of the existence of beauty, a non-material reality." my emphasis on the word "is".

 

I assume now you didn't mean to imply the argument was proof. If so we are on same page.

Good catch. Sometimes I get a bit sloppy in my posts.
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To be clear, I don't accept that either Beauty or Reality are 'things' separate from us. However I do allow that Reality is 'more than' any and all things and persons and 'discloses' itself to us in the first (and all) moments of our existence when we wake to being.

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