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Enneagram Type 5 Board Archive For Gigi...Posted by Robin on September 28, 2000 at 18:14:11: Gigi - Regarding your statement in a thread down below: "BTW the Eastern philosophy maintains: "We are not our body, we are not our mind." What does this mean? We *are* our body and mind. We are our feelings and emotions. Conversely, the superposed body and mind creates us." I haven't really had a chance to address your question until now. Been doing quite a bit of traveling lately. A Hindu might dissect the expressions "my body" and "my mind" and ask: "Who is this 'I' that is separate from the body and mind, and yet claims ownership of the body and the mind?" The Buddhists perform an "emptiness of self" meditation in which they mentally "amputate" themselves. For example, if you lost a leg, would you be any less yourself? Is there any reduction of the 'I'? If you can answer no, then repeat the same procedure with every other part of your body until you are a disembodied intellect. The tricky part for a lot of folks is when they contemplate the words "my thoughts." Who is the 'I' that is the witness of these thoughts? Is there an essential 'I' that is separate from the thoughts witnessed by the 'I'? What happens to the 'I' during dreamless sleep? Or when one is under general anesthesia? Or in a state of meditation called samadhi? The answer to those questions will ultimately have bearing on whether or not the 'I' exists after the death of the physical body and mind. There are Eastern mystics who claim to have found an eternal and deathless 'I' unaffected by the passing away of transitory things like our bodies and ephemeral phenomena like our thoughts and feelings.
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