[Buddha-l] What is direct experience?

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Op 3-12-2010 13:54, lemmett at talk21.com schreef:
>>> see alfred korzybski (general semantics) the
>> structural
>>> differential.
>>> if you're serious.
> I am serious, though distractible :-) I assume that the idea most generally is that our verbal knowledge obscures a sort of direct awareness that cannot be verbalized... but before I hunt the book down may I ask what you think the relation between the two understandings are: e.g. do they have the same content, do they have the same object, or what exactly?
Well you see, every knowledge is a representation, and therefore 
conceptual. A thing is a combination of name and form in Buddhist terms, 
so it is a representation, a product of the imagination. Name and form 
are totally different entities that cannot come together by themselves. 
The only knowledge that could be direct is being. I see characters on a 
screen and I know what they mean, I can explain it in words. They are a 
product of my imagination, but I experience them as being here in front 
of me. This is something direct, not *what* they are, but *that *they 
are. Now all other experience is mediated. I see something black for 
instance, but the knowledge of black entails not white, not red and not 
a sound or a smell. In the Buddhist theory of apoha knowledge of what 
something is, is secondary to knowing what something is not. Sartre says 
the same in Being and Nothingness, he calls it 'anéantir' I suppose the 
English translation would be something like 'nullify'.
Perhaps there is more we can know directly, but I suppose it all has to 
be ontological knowledge. So  we might become aware of different kinds 
of being: virtual, illusionary, true, conceptual. I suppose that bodhi 
is also an ontological experience.


erik