[Buddha-l] Fsat Mnifdlunses?

[Jayarava]

--- On Wed, 12/8/09, Mike Austin <mike at lamrim.org.uk> wrote:

> It shows how much we add from our own side and how much we ignore. 

You've shown us an example of the lower order process of pattern recognition. It's about seeing gestalts, not adding or subtracting.

> There is interpretation without retention of the errors, although
> we know they are there. 

Are they really 'errors' if you have done them on purpose? It just shows that presented with a noisy signal, ie a jumble with some clues, we can see what was intended. I could read what you wanted me to read, though not as fast, and I don't think it would be possible to completely misunderstand what words were intended (though clearly what the phenomena itself means is more ambiguous).

You could also scramble the word order, or leave out the vowels and we'd still be able to read it because words form discernible patterns that stand out from the background noise - if they did not then there would be no hope of communication.

> We could read it quite fast and understand, or so we thought. 

I certainly thought so. Was I wrong?

> But what if it had been some code that had to be remembered exact to the 
> character? And what of the font, the number of pixels and so on? 

Or if you removed the first/last character limit... Then the experiment would show that a random jumble of characters doesn't communicate anything, but also that our pattern recognition works in noisy environments - which surely has a huge evolutionary advantage!

> Some of what we see has to be discarded. So what is it that we are
> being mindful of anyway? 

Well that's one way of looking at it. I suggest that it simply means that patterns are more significant than individuals data points, and that we possess a remarkable ability to integrate inputs and find meaningful patterns. 

Insight is attained when the patterns of dhammas arising and ceasing are understood. This is the point of the tevijja story - the mythic version of the Buddha's liberation when he sees *all* of his previous lives and how his actions affected them, and how *all* people are reborn according to their deeds etc. 

If not for our pattern recognition ability (a function of the Freudian 'das Ich' (ego) I might add) we would be entirely stuck in an overwhelming flow of sensory information - like a jumble of letters making no sense. There is a school of thought on autism which describes it just like that.

> Are we not constantly absorbed in our own interpretations?

The trick is not to not interpret, (ie become autistic or Catholic), but to interpret correctly. To test our interpretations. As you have shown we can make sense of out a jumble as long as there are some clues. It is one of the few things about life that gives me cause for optimism.

The fact that we perceive in gestalts rather than individual dhammas is part of what makes Insight so difficult, and meditation so vital.

We seem to have strayed even further from the topic of pace... I'm still interested in that.

Best wishes
Jayarava

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