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What is a table?
Well? Let's take a wooden table, held together by glue. What is this thing which you call "table?" You may say "it's that thing i'm looking at." Ok, so let's cut off an inch off the corner. Is it still a table? The consensus would be, i'm sure, yes. so obviously what "the table" is is more complex than simply what you see that you call a table. What if you remove simply the glue? Then it's just a heap of parts on the ground. I'm sure the consensus is that that's not a table. Doesn't that imply that the glue is the table, since with glue it's a table without it's not? But it seems silly to say that the glue is the table. What if you cut off one of the legs, while the rest is held together? Is that a table? What if you cut it in half? What if you removed all the legs? What if you cut all of it off except for an inch by an inch square which sits on the floor? Where is the line between "table" and "not table?" What is this thing which you call "table" that separates between "table" and "not table?" You can find no such thing. As it is with all things. So you can see that "self" is just an idea, regardless of what you're talking about. We can talk about it only on a relative level. Ultimately there is no self to be found, for it is impossible to find such a thing with anything.
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Take the Kinect for example. It's a device which allows you to use your body as a controller... that's was it's purpose. However, people have modified it's purpose for a variety of things. Now it's not simply something that enables you to use your body as a controller, but a 3d environment mapper. A guy managed to use a Wii, a Kinect and a 3D TV to make 3D models right in front of him as if it was in real space. Then, to that guy, the Kinect became yet another completely different thing.
So, as long as the concept of "self" serves a purpose, it's not going away.
It's that wooden thing there, held together by glue.
>>>>Ok, so let's cut off an inch off the corner. Is it still a table? The consensus would be, i'm sure, yes.
Yes, but the inch you ahve cut off is not a table, it was once part of a table. It was once part of a tree.
>>so obviously what "the table" is is more complex than simply what you see that you call a table.
Hmmmm, I don't see why it cant be simple?
>>>What if you remove simply the glue? Then it's just a heap of parts on the ground.
Part's of a table yes. And parts of trees.
>>>Doesn't that imply that the glue is the table, since with glue it's a table without it's not?
No, in this case it implies to me that the glue can be part of a table. It is necessary but not sufficient for "this tablenes". if you decided to use nails rather than glue, but the same pile of wood, would it be the same table?
>>>But it seems silly to say that the glue is the table.
Not silly, it makes sense to say that by extrapolation. But a mistake is made somewhere.
>>>What if you cut off one of the legs, while the rest is held together? Is that a table?
Yes.
>>>What if you cut it in half?
Half a table.
>>>What if you removed all the legs?
Table top
>>>>What if you cut all of it off except for an inch by an inch square which sits on the floor? Where is the line between "table" and "not table?"
What is the line between pile of sand and one grain of sand? Bald and Not bald?
These are interesting and anchient puzzles you ponder.
>>>>What is this thing which you call "table" that separates between "table" and "not table?"
Plato would say there is an ideal form of table. Buddha would say, there is no table, only parts.
>>>You can find no such thing. As it is with all things.
All contingent things, yes. This is anataman.
>>>>So you can see that "self" is just an idea, regardless of what you're talking about.
Yes, but unlike tables and heaps "self", as the Buddha realised and taught us, is peculiar because in its very realization it creates a seemingly indivisible perspective, a me, an ego, a self. This perspective is an illusion of perceptive, and a damaging one at that.
namase!:)
The table is impermanent, composed of parts, and mentally labled. At the boundaries of 'a table' you will suffer tension because you don't know what it is. Maybe you don't like red table cloth. Only green? Maybe you can't accept a triangular table. Or a card table is too cheap. Or stained wooden fine table is suffering because it is not what is wanted. When you give it to good will you suffer because it is someone else table. Like goldilocks.
Its probably imponderable all the causes? But I can follow this back a bit and reason.
All tables have four legs.
My dog has four legs.
My dog is a table.