This problem is seemingly to be expected because the other-worldly ‘truth’ is unspeakable. Languages as they exist today just cannot cope. Taoism reckons that “the reality that can be described is not the real reality.” And it follows that “those who know do not speak; and those who speak do not know.”
For example the Dalai Lama speaks of calm abiding and special insight giving rise to an omniscient state. But this is after you develop the ability to counter disturbing emotions and to discipline the mind. That seems like a fairly digestible couple of sentences but almost every word is a Pandora’s box. The following bullets show the problem. In digesting the first batch of words and phrases a new set emerges to chew over.
- Calm abiding: a term which theoretically includes all types of ‘meditative stabilization’ and refers to ‘a single pointed state of concentration’.
- Special insight: a ‘special wisdom’ which sees ‘the ultimate nature of phenomena’.
- Omniscient state: a condition of knowing everything.
- Disturbing emotions: feelings and moods that spontaneously ‘capture attention’.
- Discipline the mind: stop the chit chat of the monkey mind and hold attention on the topic of choice.
I have taken to inventing acronyms so as to avoid using words and phrases that have many different meanings. Recent ones include:
- KFM = knowledge, feelings, moods. Thinking. The mental stuff that comes from the unconscious and goes to the attention centre for a short while.
- EOT = extra ordinary thinking. Uncommon sense. Counterintuitive. Metacognitive. Non-egoic. Transcendent.
- EOTER = extra ordinary thinker. Cool Dude. Flexible world view. Capable of functioning in non-egoic flow.
My present units of KFM link to EOT focused on ‘changing minds’. I aspire to being an EOTER who changes his own mind such that he can help others to change theirs.
I feel the need to avoid eastern jargon in my spoken and written outputs. To this end I have taken an eclectic, multidisciplinary approach. I am thus developing a highly individualized vocabulary and language. I might at some stage put together a glossary of main ideas. In the meantime, here is an impromptu list of words and phrases that happened to ‘come to mind’.
- Attention centre
- Beyond space and time
- Big History
- Causes and conditions
- CBB = can’t be bothered
- Changing minds
- Chit chat
- Churn
- Consilience
- Cool dude
- Counterintuition
- Emancipation
- Enculturatioin
- Enlightenment (3)
- Evolutionary psychology
- Flourishing
- Flow
- Foraging, farming, finance
- Grace or grudge
- Know yourself
- Language
- Liberation
- Metacognition
- Mindbrain
- Monkey mind
- Muse
- NCC = neural correlates of consciousness
- Neural plasticity
- Neurology
- Non egoic state of mind
- Paradigm
- Perception
- Post-modernism
- Renunciation
- Retreat
- Spiritual journey
- Uncommon sense
- Weltanschaung
- Witness - imaginary
- World view
For example Walter Truett Anderson(1996) (Ref http://www.srds.co.uk/begin/third_light.htm) reckons that “we have not one Enlightenment project but three: a Western one based on rational thought, an Eastern one based on seeing through the illusion of the Self, and a Postmodern one based on the concept of socially constructed reality. And despite their many differences, they share the common goal of liberation.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau made the famous revolutionary pronouncement that: "Men are born free, and everywhere are in chains." A couple of centuries later that still holds truth for us, but now we see that the strongest chains are symbolic ones, mind forged manacles."
SO – methinks we are not yet at the stage of EOT conveyed in plain speaking for ordinary folk. My blog unpacks the words and phrases listed above and the number of page views is rising. (There are presently about 50/day)
AND I am still motivated to manage the KFM so as to become an EOTER.
Know yourself!
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