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Brain rocks
lobster
Crusty Veteran
Small part of another thread
. . . 'sentience is a function of brain complexity'
Part of that thread was potentially leading towards mind independent of object. In other words asking if a rock has sentience. What about the absence of rock or body?
:buck: .
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today, before i offered Buddha Puja (food and water) to the Buddha statue (a symble of Bddha) i had to keep the glass and the plate in another place because it was a bit early to offer food
where i kept Puja there is a kitchen plant in a pot
at the time, it came into my mind, Buddha's body is in part of 'this' plant too and i really offering Puja to Buddha himself
it gave me a real pleasure
it makes me to think again,
do we have any right to critisise those who deal with offering flowers, incesnse, fruits, oil lamp etc. in front of Buddha statues?
@lobster
I think that asking what is sentient and what is not, is just a question whose answer depends on how widely one casts the parameters to measure it.
Like having a difficulty in finding the sentience of a toenail but by expanding those parameters far enough, you can eventually see that it is all part of a wider sentience called lobster.
The other hubris in searching for sentience is measuring it according to the speed in which humans experience time. Could a mayfly measure the sigh of a mountain?
If I was measuring or discerning such a thing as sentience, I'd probably go with anything that can experience pain and suffering. It doesn't need to be intelligent or self-aware or anything special. Just capable of experiencing suffering. The problem after that would be how to determine whether something can or not!
I listened to a lecture, I think it was Genpo Roshi who said even rocks are considered sentient. Just a primitive version.
Alan Watts also makes a point to that rocks have a potential to change into life also. Therefore are part of it.
I think there is only sentience if the being desires something.
:clap: .
There are ideas that crystal rocks grow and have meaning or medicine for us in the form of sacred ground, mountains and even the interdependence of matter originally star dust that animates within us.
The idea of extending 'sentient being' into the whole matter of existence equates with my experience, even though it seems contrary to our present scientific limitations.
Did we just extend the Bodhisattva vow to not just save every blade of grass but every last atom it is composed of?
A better way to say that is 'sentience can be predicted by brain complexity'. At least on this planet
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Mind independent of object? When I think of sentience, I see it as a continuum, not a specific thing. Some 'objects' have more or less sentience than others. Squirrels have more sentience (aware of itself) than grasshoppers and especially grass.
I just don't want to eat something that suffered becoming my food.
Yes, indeed. Understood. The 'sentience' of a tea cup is quite low but if one day as it inevitably must, the teacup becomes the aggregate components of enlightened beings, we might have more reverence, respect and humility towards this non entity.
Do we reside in the realm of The Maitreyas? Too theistic for those of a secular persuasion maybe? :buck: .
What did he mean?
I think it was based around the basic building blocks of everything on our planet is linked.
He talked about how we are as much a part of the planet as anything else. That we don't see or feel that our environment is a part of us.
The very intelligent energy that created all we see today created the rocks, shells, trees, people. I think he says the energy is expressing itself in different ways. We are one way, rocks are another. They go with each other, without rocks what would we walk on?
Land masses and oceans
Forests and rivers and lakes
The hydro-cycle, the warming and cooling of the earth day/night, the seasons,
Cells working together for the locomotion of monoliths like our bodies..
and yet, no one component does it all alone
The owner of the crystal shop nearby once told me that the crystals we use for healing purposes have evolved over millions of years, and keep evolving, changing as we use them. At the same time, we evolve and change, too, through our interaction with these crystals. Some stones, like emeralds and turquoises, even change colour as reaction to certain changes in our bodies.
As @AldrisTorvalds said above, we usually define a sentient being according to its capacity for suffering.
But since we can't always tell when a certain being is suffering, I prefer to extend the definition to every single particle in the universe that conspires to uphold the interconnection system.
I am a part of everything, and everything is part of me. We are all relevant. We are all pertinent.
The "sentient beings" part of Buddhist teachings actually means different things to different schools of Buddhism and according to different teachers, even. I suppose technically, a sentient being is someone who is subject to rebirth, which for us means the human and animal realm, if you see realms as literal. The other realms are occupied by sentient beings also, but we can't interact with them. Being subject to rebirth, they obviously can suffer, but the defining characteristic is being on the wheel of birth and rebirth.
So you see where that ever-branching connection of beliefs leads people into different directions? Also, since it's said "Don't kill sentient beings" then Buddha is obviously referring to beings that are alive. Killing is something that you can only do to something that is currently alive, after all. You can smash a rock into pebbles, but you have changed it, not killed the rock.
So Buddha is supposed to have taught and the early Buddhists thought in terms of individuals and the world as a realm with purpose of providing a place where sentient beings were reborn again and again. The realms and sentient beings were connected through karma. That doesn't mean we can't broaden and expand on what it means to be a sentient being. Buddhism is wonderful because it is alive, able to adapt and grow and change according to our expanding knowledge of the universe.
Instead of individuals, we can think in terms of entire systems of life. We do talk of killing entire ecosystems. We can kill a lake through pollution. The lake is still there, but the life it once contained is gone. The people who needed the lake for food and drinking water and to water their crops are now gone. The animals who depended on the lake for their survival are now gone. But the owners of the company that polluted the lake might have never even seen or heard of this lake, only made the decision to move the factory there. So we realize that we can't think in terms of individuals but in terms of entire ecosystems, if we are to live up to the Buddhist ideal of "do no harm".
Kill the interconnected ecosystem, and you kill both sentient and non-sentient beings that are part of it. Death is an important part of the ecosystem. There are occasional swarms of animals where the system gets out of whack, and some would argue human beings are in danger of swarming the planet and overwhelming it.
So, do no harm. That's easier said than done. But so is showing metta to everyone. If it was easy, everyone would be a Buddha.
I had some interesting conversations with a new-age priestess type a couple of years ago, she was telling me about how rocks have "earth energy" - though she couldn't really explain what it was. I have a collection of rocks, and on occasion when touching them I do get a sense of history, though of course such impressions are very subjective.
What I do know is that the natural world is a great teacher, and that close contact with it can be very revealing. Of course these days a large chunk of the world's population live in cities, and that close contact might only be very occasional.
Then there's that "touching the earth" thing, it's popular with pagans but has also found it's way into Buddhism:
http://plumvillage.org/mindfulness-practice/touching-the-earth/
His point was that if aliens swung by here a few million years ago they might have said "oh well' nothing here but a bunch of rocks". The same aliens coming back now might say "oops, we were wrong... It seemed like just a bunch of rocks but the darned thing is peopleing".
Personally, I see the universe as more a mental phenomena. Bits of information flying around, bumping into each other and causing effects and changing.
When I think of the Two Truths (conventional and ultimate) I try to include all of us. I don't see the rock as a being but like us, it just might be a state of being.
I think a sentient being has to be able to distinguish between itself and the environment even if it doesn't realise there is no true separation.
I don't think a rock has the ability to distinguish between itself and the rest of the universe any more than the atoms that form it.
This ability for us, seems to be both blessing and curse because we too often forget there is no separation between us and the rocks and that leads us to mis treat them and others.
we don't know how others think until we develop our minds to be able to read others minds
so how could we know how earth, rocks, trees, rivers etc. think?
Thanks @Cinorjer, I feel that wholistic interdependence with our environment is part of the equation and perhaps easiest to unfold from.
Alienation and a sense of being a being apart, is a very harsh sense of individuality for some . . .
In being a connected or karmic resonance, perhaps we try to attune with our environmental setting, without a constant need to live in a preferred heaven, Pureland or god realm.
Describing Buddhism as an evolving Being, with rebirth and change inherent in its nature hopefully also is meaningful for some of us.
Life, death, sentience are words that equate with various degrees of potential . . . that @sova expresses quite poetically . . . :wave: .
I think I will keep a rock as a pet. It seems like a cheap option, but maybe not as interactive as a cat.
Great point,
Considering our eyes have a relationship with light rays. Our ears have a relationship with vibrations in the air.
Who knows what other media is out there we cannot perceive. Doesn't mean it isn't there!
We only have 5 ways of experiencing the universe.
After cutting my toenails , do the trimmings still constitute sentience?
If they move on their own.....
Just remember, a pet rock is a long term relationship. The roadsides are scattered with abandoned pet rocks, left to fend for themselves.
Whenever I find them in my garden borders, I gather them all to one side and make piles of them. They then occasionally grow moss, plants in between, and offer safe haven to garden beasties like spiders, bumble bees and beetles. They keep each other company, and watch me as I tend my borders.... everyone's happy....
Don't take risks with the Higgs Boson:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/09/09/hawking-god-particle-destroy-universe_n_5788808.html?utm_hp_ref=uk
My son would love a sibling, but unfortunately this option has not worked.
We decided to buy him a pet, but as much as hubby loves animals, he abhors pet hair, so cats and dogs are crossed off the list.
We'll go in the direction of turtles or tortoises, instead.
I don't think the rock option would... rock anyone of us.
Some dog breeds have a single coat with a longer growth cycle. Here's another list for you:
http://www.answers.com/Q/Do_Lhasa_Apso_has_fur_or_hair
Among my four rescued dogs are two poodles. Until these wandered into my life, I didn't know their fur keeps growing until they look like little tangled sheepdogs, unless you take them to be cut and groomed every other month at least. That's 40 dollars each, every two months, for privilege of hearing these two yappy dogs bark at everything they hear or see moving. I'd rather have all four dogs with shedding cycles like the other mutts in the house.
I could lend you my beard trimmer.
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single or double, they still do the doo do.
It may seem strange to acknowledge the future potential of the inanimate to become part of animate and sentient being. Overly respectful or worthy only of animism . . .
However some of us have pet rocks shaped into a Buddha form. Is the form empty or the empty rock a potential form?
Just the usual block head thinking . . .
:buck: .
Tortoises do move faster than rocks I suppose.
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It's a close thing.....
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I'm reading Sam Harris' new book "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion" (well listening to the audiobook), and another measure of consciousness or sentience is to ask what it is like to be X (i.e. "what is it like to be a bat?"). If we can say there's something it's like, even if we can't really grasp how it would be, then we're ascribing awareness to that object.
Part of some western occult schools training which I have indulged in, involves visualising, imagining and encompassing the feeling of being simple objects such as a rock or tin of beans. :orange: .
@lobster I'd love to know how that would work, exactly. How can we visualize being a rock without visualizing being an aware rock?
If we did manage to do it, what next? Give it motives and desires? Oh that just ticked my funny bone!
What if we are the figments of a stone's imagination, and It's posing the same question to it's rock buddies?
It is just part of concentration, similar to Shingon focus on kanji . . .
http://www.ghostwoods.com/2010/05/the-tree-in-action-visualisation-1263/
Humans - pah! Here one minute, gone the next.
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I prefer tree-hugging.
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Perhaps the title is supposed to read "Brian Rocks!" and as he's the forum founder, it's hard to argue with that!
Indeed.
Some trees prefer rock hugging
I thought it was a tree laying an egg.
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