8524c568   
   XPost: talk.religion.buddhism, alt.zen, alt.philosophy.zen   
   XPost: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy   
   From: hollywoodlee@gmail.com   
      
   On 8/16/2010 9:29 AM, Jigme Dorje wrote:   
   > On Aug 14, 10:00 pm, brian mitchell  wrote:   
   >> Jigme Dorje wrote:   
   >>> You have indicated that you do not accept explanations of my own   
   >>> experience...   
   >>   
   >> No (and I think this matters), I fully accept your explanations of your own   
   experience. How could I   
   >> do otherwise? It's your experience, your transition, and I'm eager and   
   delighted to hear everything   
   >> about it. The psyche fascinates me; people's experience of existence   
   enthralls me; and the terms in   
   >> which they relate these are of endless interest to me.   
   >>   
   >> What I do object to is the tendency to universalise one's individual   
   experience, insights,   
   >> perceptions or what-have-you and make them the Rule, the Truth. When this   
   is done, everyone else   
   >> becomes invisible except to the extent that their confessions conform and   
   agree. That which is   
   >> really true in them, which is their unique responsivity, is disregarded.   
   This is the destructiveness   
   >> of the supposed teacher-student relationship; the One Who Knows and the one   
   who doesn't; the   
   >> authority.   
   >   
   > I just wanted to address this point.  When you "universalise one's   
   > individual experience, insights, perceptions or what-have-you and make   
   > them the Rule, the Truth" this is the mind at work, interpeting and   
   > making an experience conform to an opinion.  This was not my purpose   
   > at all; in fact, just the opposite. Rather than universalizing the   
   > individual, the idea is to individualize the universal - to attempt to   
   > capture it in words that are evocative, not definative.   
      
   That assumes that there is a universal to individualize - another bit of   
   boxing up and categorizing, perhaps?  Compare this to how Tang nicely   
   describes the internal nature of awakening:   
      
   "Mental culture is purely internal knowledge, and it is about   
   how to handle yourself, so it is like repairing a ship in plain   
   sea, to borrow from Neurath. You have to be intimately   
   familiar with yourself, and you have to be swift in the   
   handling of your own state (mood, feeling, etc.). This is   
   where mindfulness comes in. When you realise that you are   
   angry and upset, you grab yourself, calm yourself, and move   
   yourself to serenity."   
      
   No universals in sight.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)