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Swimming in the Notion
Where do preconceived notions come from? Why do people constantly create opinions beforehand when there isn't any evidence to support them?
Does it come from insecurity? Do we assume that we are unable to deal with situations that arise? Does it come from a lack of trust?
When I take away my assumptions and preconceived notions, there is literally nothing there. Nothing left. Where do assumptions come from?
Does it come from insecurity? Do we assume that we are unable to deal with situations that arise? Does it come from a lack of trust?
When I take away my assumptions and preconceived notions, there is literally nothing there. Nothing left. Where do assumptions come from?
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Comments
allow us to progress and learn. To form concepts in our mind.
if you did not assume that the chair you are sitting on would be able to support your weight, you would have to figure it out first every time you want to sit down.
preconceived ideas about other peoples or things like that are just more sophisticated version of this simple function.
Exactly, but how do I know that the chair that I've sat in 1000 times won't break when I sit it in it the 1001 time? Why is assuming more beneficial then figuring it out first every time it occurs? Isn't it better to have a blank canvas in your mind when you meet someone and see things as they are than to assume that they're like every other person you've met?
im just explaining why i think human have assumptions.
if you have no assumptions at all, you would not be able to learn to speak or read.
Great question. I am not yet close to an answer. I guess culture and experience, media, family, neurology, psycology...
Our minds must assume, generalise, model, project, predict and generally they do it very well for the "survival purpose" but, as you note, it kinda breaks down...
I'm no farther along in finding an answer than you are.
Why do we assume we have to survive?
Why do we assume we have to do anything?
That is a very very deep rooted biological imperative, shared with us by all life to varying degrees of abstraction.
To my mind this is where human dukka starts, deep biological attachment to the idea of survival and intellectual awareness of the fact we wont.
This tension is the start of our problems.
dna conditioning
Just like we have the urge to mate, like any other animals.
Life would not exist without these basic DNA programs.
because nobody told us how the computer (brain) work, and how to use it properly.
so we just assumed.
because they didn't know either.
They told us how to fill up the computer tho, and how important it is to fill it up with more information...
Until the day someone made you realize that there is another way.
One of our biological urges/instincts is to eat. If you want to experience first hand why we assume our urges are "right" and that they "must" be fulfilled ... try not eating. Let me know how this works.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sartre/
The dhamma gives a synthesis for these questions...
I don't understand how this would make me understand why we trust our instincts. I would still be under the assumption that hunger is bad, pain must be avoided, and survival is necessary. Those are some pretty big things to just take someone else's word for. In this case, 'someone else' would be our own bodies or our DNA. Isn't DNA just inherited traits and habits? I'm sure you'll agree that just because my father, grandfather, etc, have done things a certain way doesn't necessarily make it the right way.
If all we can be sure of is what's happening right now, then all other 'knowledge' is just an assumption. Even then, by the time we are conscious of an event, it has already happened, even if only by nanoseconds.
Is consciousness even necessary? Anything outside of the spontaneity that occurs before someone is even conscious of it is wasted effort; effort to be something you're not or know something you don't. Even dharma. Conscious effort is always an aversion to what is, or a struggle against it.
Lucifer's problem wasn't that he sinned, it was that he wanted to be something other than what he was, God.
I don't want to sound like I'm forcing my views on anyone, but it helps me clarify my thoughts if I write them down.
@mettafou, very nice links, I've never heard of SEP before, but now I've got it bookmarked
its a conditioned response. Instead of opening to the situation and seeing the relationships we assume we know it already, or we are too stupid to understand, or knowing is not worthwhile (this is often in spiritual matters)...
All conditioned ways to shut down.
We might even decide we need a drink a bath a piece of brownie.
We might decide we need to tease our emotions out and tell stories to get a strong emotional sense of ground. When opening is opening to no particular ground its just opening to the situation as it is.
Imho this is what I see.
Palzang
Sorry, how do habits survive death??
Also: control. We can't stand anything having power or control over us. The unknown is out of our control, or our sense of control anyways. So we label and draw conclusions so that we feel empowered, we feel we have "figured it out." We can't stand to NOT know something. It's true that we truthfully have no concrete knowledge of anything, but labelling or assuming gives us the feeling that we KNOW.
I'm loving finding out how to be okay with NOT knowing things.
Marmalade,
I find this passage in your writing to be especially potent and true. A zen teacher said once (can't remember who) that experience and perceptions trail off behind us like a comet tail. Many are only interacting with their past constantly, never getting out of their perceptions enough to "be" in the present. I think this is a great idea to contemplate, with much fruit on the tree.
As far as your OP goes, I think Palzang got things headed in the right direction looking at habituated tenancies. I think you were asking what makes the ruts in the first place? The answer can be varied, but I find most habits arise from the fearful craving for continuity. For instance, we want the chair to hold us, so expect it not to be broken or not to break. If it does break we experience anger and suffering.
Many seem to fear discontinuity and try to project continuity where it doesn't exist. Ever wonder why people insist their thoughts are true? That their perceptions are accurate? I feel they just want their subjective reality to be continuous across multiple minds, which of course is impossible and gives rise to much ill.
With warmth,
Matt
Not quite. DNA is more like a library of books. Just like every library possesses a unique collection of books, and the patrons determine what information is accessed most often, each individual has a unique repository of information encoded in his/her DNA, and many factors influence what information is accessed and expressed. Our DNA is unique and its expression is dynamic and interactive.
Why are we sure of what's happening right now? I'm not "sure" of anything until my brain has had time to process the event and makes its best guess of what is happening right now. I agree, knowledge is based on assumptions, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Consciousness seems effortless. We spontaneously cognize our experiences. We experience the world through creative interpretations of the information coming from our senses. Human experience is a beautiful interplay between the world and our creative intelligence.
cheers,
p
thickpaper, I understand why my statement about habits "surviving" death might be a difficult one to swallow. After all, aren't habits just thoughts, and don't thoughts cease when our brain dies? So it would seem, if we just use our senses to understand the world. Of course, the problem with that is that our senses are the product of the fundamental delusion of "self" and "other", i.e., dualism, so they can't really be trusted.
Life, death, self, other, suffering, happiness, thoughts, feelings, they're all external phenomena. When Karmapa XVI was dying in a hospital in Zion, Illinois, one of his Western students stood by his bed sobbing. Finally he called the student over and said, "Nothing is happening!" We think that death has some solidity because we think that I = my body. I would venture to suggest that this is not true, that it is an artificial construct based on the delusion of "I" and "other". In reality "I" is a relative mental construct. As the Buddha taught, there is no fixed, permanent "I". It is an always changing, impermanent mental illusion. So what dies? What lives? When the body dies, i.e., when the elements that came together to form this thing we call "body" dissolve, what happens to consciousness? The Buddha taught that consciousness continues. It is not dependent on a functioning brain. Not a soul, mind you, because by definition a soul is something that is unchanging and permanent, and the Buddha taught that nothing is unchanging and permanent. However, after living for countless eons with the fundamental delusion of "self" and "other", we don't have any experience of non-self, of our true nature, so we can't imagine what it is like.
(deep breath)
Anyway, that is the basis that I (as well as my teacher) have for saying that habit is one thing that survives death. Consciousness goes on, ever changing but still ever clinging to the illusion of "self". The clinging to self is itself, then, a habit, nothing more. We're in the habit of being attached to the idea of a "self" that exists separate from everything else. Other habits become part of that same constellation of habits, all based on the basic delusion of dualism. They perservere until we actually are able to see the habit and act to break it somehow. Following the path taught by the Buddha is a very effective way to do this because you start taking responsibility for your life rather than blaming gods, parents, Republicans/Democrats, your ex, DNA, Ronald McDonald, the weather... Once you take that critically important step, then the ball is truly in your court and you can begin to loosen the solid framework of "self".
I don't know if that makes any sense (probably not), but that's where I was coming from.
Palzang
I think yes of course they cease, they are after all just the processes that form concious life.
I think the biological process that leads to experience and illusion etc, that stops.. we call it death but there is no thing that dies.
I think it stops. The body is all there is, conciousness is a product of the body just like bloodpressure and pain.
I don't think he did, but its best we don't go down that rout else it becomes another "my view is better than your view" and nether view can "win":)
I get you now. So you mean habbits continues in the same way that Buddhists who think something exists after death continues, they are entwined in this view.
We share opposing views on this, but please, let us not ever stop blaming that clown!:)
Yes it does, thank's for the clarification:)
namaste
The only answer I'm starting to come up with is "I don't know".
This hit me like a ton of bricks. I guess it had never occurred to me that I could be unsure of what's happening right now. If I'm completely honest with myself, I'm not sure of anything at all. Trying to hold onto knowledge or certainty is only grasping at continuity that does not exist.
Exactly. I think my greatest fear has always been not knowing.
When I realize that certainty doesn't exist outside of the "certainty" we create, the self loosens its grip.
How ironic, that the search for truth is the search for giving up the truth. This whole time I was looking for the 'unknowable' that I hadn't known from the start. Couldn't I have just skipped to this point?
Thanks for this
Well, I don't see the search for truth as even really about the truth. I think the search for truth is an unskillful seeking of peaceful compassion. At the time we start looking, we think perhaps knowing the truth will bring us peace.
It makes truth a good carrot to get the ass moving, but ultimately something we give up when we see its silliness and experience the compassion that is available in the absence of delusion. I wonder if we first think this means "knowing the truth" then see it as "not clinging to our subjective truth" then perhaps "not clinging to anything"?
With warmth,
Matt