What if you didn't have a name?

[Catwoman]

Ah Bruce.

My quote above referred primarily to Brianna & Marichiko's little tiff earlier on in this thread. Read the posts leading up to that comment and you should then understand its context.

If you go back and read my posts slowly, thoroughly, you will see that I agree with you. Of course this is all there is. Now. Not illusions of religion or an original self.

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Get off your ass and do something productive. Do something useful. Do something worthwhile and you won't have time for endless circular musing.

Now you're talking. You're absolutely right. Living is not thinking, philosophising, 'musing' (although it would be stupid to ignore our thoughts - we just need to accept them and move on). So get off the internet and go feed some starving children. Go and build a house for the homeless. The thing is, we are living in a life that is dominated by thought/image and is largely cerebral. We have moved away from the essence of survival, reality, and got lost in psychobabble. I am sorry that you cannot differentiate the discussion above from this general 'psychosis' as you quite rightly call it. Without meaning to sound patronising, there is a lot one could learn from truly understanding the message above.

But maybe you already know all of this. Maybe you don't see your personality as all-important, maybe you understand your family is just another evolvement of nature, perhaps you don't buy branded goods or watch pointless TV or concern yourself with anything other than true living - eating, sleeping, sex, stillness.

If you have already put all this into practice I can only admire you.

Originally Posted by ashke

Are you asking what you think the essence of your Self would be if you were stripped of all external influences?

I wasn't really asking. The self is just now. Nothing more nothing less. Coming up with a description of now is most likely impossible and probably irrelevant as long as you're living 'in' it.

Marichiko thanks for the info. I realised some of what I was saying was similar to Buddhism but not to that extent. I don't know about coming back to ease the suffering of every fellow being (although it is a comforting possibility), but I agree:

Originally Posted by marichiko

The power of the Bodisattva Vow for me is what it implies about the manner in which we lead our lives in the here and now.

"Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water; after enlightenment chop wood and carry water" sums it up pretty well.

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

No, YOU have missed the point. What you see is what you get. If you don't like it, tough shit, because that's all there is. The "spirit", "soul", "essence" is the stuff of fairy tales. It's something people make up out of boredom or drugged psychosis.

Have you ever watched a person or an animal die? My ex-husband is a fishermen of the fly-fishing, catch and release type. Once when we were still married I was on a fishing trip with him, and I decided it would be nice to have some rainbow trout for dinner, so I asked him to keep a couple for the skillet. I watched him land a beautiful 12 inch trout. Its colors gleamed in the afternoon light as it flopped around helplessly on the grassy river bank. My ex then quickly dispatched it with a blow with a rock to its head. The glimmer of the fish vanished just like that. The shimmering beuaty was gone, and I've never been able to eat a trout since.

That was just a trout. I watched my father die over the course of 5 days from pneumonia induced by the general anaethestic the surgeons gave him in an attempt to repair a hip he had broken at age 80. Thank God, he was uncouncious the entire time. When he died at last, what remained was no longer my father. There was a body lying in that hospital bed, a body that I had no connection to and felt nothing for. My father's essence was gone, and I grieved that essence terribly.

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Get off your ass and do something productive. Do something useful. Do something worthwhile and you won't have time for endless circular musing.

"Mind is the forerunner of all actions
All deeds are led by mind, created by mind.
If one speaks or acts with a corrupt mind,
suffering follows,
As the wheel follows the hoof of the ox
pulling a cart.

Mind is the forerunner of all actions
All deeds are led by mind, created by mind.
If one speaks or acts with a serene mind,
happiness follows,
As surely as one's shadow." The Dhammapada


And, Cat, the saying, "Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment chop wood, carry water" is about the fact that we continue on with our earthly lives, enlightened or not. The WAY in which we regard chopping wood and carrying water will be very different, but we'll still do it. We will regard the world differently and so be able to act with "boddichitta" or loving-kindness.