[Buddha-l] Batchelor

[Joy Vriens]

On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 8:11 PM, Richard Hayes <rhayes at unm.edu> wrote:

> On May 19, 2010, at 10:18 AM, Joy Vriens wrote:
>
> > Allan wrote:
> >
> > So much of human behavior can be seen as a kind of flight from
> > contingency.
>
> > Something bothers me in the choice of the word flight. Perhaps that's
> what I
> > couldn't put my finger on. The word flight in connexion to Buddhism, then
> > again to moving away from Buddhism, moving away from a Unconditioned
> (where
> > who knows what people could hide there), ready even to amputate the
> notions
> > of Unconditioned and anything escaping our control.
>
> As long as people are voicing what makes them uncomfortable, I have a
> terrible allergy to the term "Unconditioned" (spelled with a capital letter.
> What could it possibly mean? How does invoking such a word help?
>
>
I believe it's a positive thing to acknowledge one's feelings of discomfort.
Invoking words like "Unconditioned" already have the advantage to help one
to reveal one's allergies. Terrible allergies reveal a strong reaction. For
me this would be an invitation to look into why I react so strongly.

What does the Unconditioned mean? Everything means something. Our meaning
feature is always active. The Unconditioned is a regime without meaning.
It's a meaning-free zone. Peace.

Everything is conditioned in this world, there is nothing that isn't
conditioned. Hooks and eyes are active everywhere all over the place.
Usually we play the conditioning game. The Unconditioned doesn't mean there
is a bastion, state etc. that escapes condition, it simply means one has the
choice to not be conditioned by conditioning. There is a social me, a
psychological me a physical me that are part of the conditioning network. If
one totally identifies with them, if one adheres to them, then one is
conditioned. But once can also let them play out their roles in the
conditioned clockwork, without too much identification and adherence, some
say it's possible without hardly any adherence (or is it adhesion?) at all.
They call it detachment or disinterested action. Well this detachment or
disinterested action comes very close to what I would consider the
Unconditioned. The capital letter is merely warning one to not step
inadvertently with one's foot into the capitalised word. and to give it
special care and thought. You know like with poetry. In order to read poetry
one needs a special disposition, one doesn't read poetry like one reads a
User's guide.

The Unconditioned is simply a word that invites not to storm in with one's
usual logical materialist armour, where words share the same logical value
and can be replaced by X, Y and Z . I can give you another example that you
will probably don't have a strong allergy towards. Heart, like in "look with
your heart". I could write it with a capital letter Heart in order to warn
more obtuse people no to look with their "muscular organ with a circulatory
system, responsible for pumping blood throughout the blood vessels by
repeated, rhythmic contractions".


> The word "flight" does not trouble me at all. I take it that it simply
> means that one is trying to run away from whatever frightens one, as in
> "fight or flight" as the two basic responses to threats.


There is more than fight or flight. The Unconditioned, Non-duality, Wu Wei
etc. etc. offer at least a third possibility, Arjuna was offered a third
possibility. It is in order to escape the hellish stalemate of "fight" or
"flight", also called samsara, that an Unconditioned, also called nirvana
was presented. Nowhere it has been said that it "exists", the way "fight and
flight" exist. There is a life outside binary reality, that's probably where
the real life is. Sartre wants us to make choices and to identify with those
choices and then he logically lives in a world where "l'enfer c'est les
autres". Oneself being another as well. Existing and conditioned.

>
> How long have you been having these flights into paranoia? Suspecting that
> people are trying to manipulate you is a form of duḥkham that can easily be
> avoided. All you have to do is stop being suspicious. (A good start is to
> stop reading Lusthaus, who is suspicious of everything, but who almost
> always chooses fight over flight.)
>
> Paranoia?  duḥkham? Duh! A good chessplayer is always thinking all possible
> moves in advance. I can't even think the next move properly. But I can
> always flee back to the Unconditioned when the going gets tough. Curiosity
> and intelligence shouldn't be automatically considered paranoia. Hey are you
> interested in buying the Eiffel tower? Your price is mine.
>


> Joy
>
>
>
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