Posted by pork on January 27, 2002 at 19:35:07:
In Reply to: Answers to all the Greatest Questions by Avatar Adi Da posted by Daniel on January 26, 2002 at 22:14:57:
I read one of his lesser-known small books--"The Four Fundamental Questions," I think--when I was a kid. I particularly remember his argument, "You call it an ashtray, but do you know what it IS?" He says we cannot know what anything IS. We can only know what it looks like, what it's commonly referred to, etc.
My reply to this: The verb "to be" is an etymological concept that was created precisely to *describe* such qualities as visual appearance and nomenclature. The word "IS" has no substantial meaning beyond that. The concept "to be" is an artificial (human-created) abstraction that does not exist independently of human conceptualization, just as the concept of time is unrecognized by some cultures. Thus (again), the concept of being ("IS") means what we created it to mean, nothing more.
The Da Avatar does modify this argument by stating something like, "You do not know what its TRUE NATURE is." To that statement, my argument against the palpability of the "mystery of being" might equally apply--even more so, since the term "true nature," besides being an artificial abstraction like "to be," is considerably more subjective in its meaning than "to be."
I still think his writing is very interesting. He's probably a 2w1, ENFJ. The fact that he his "religion" (for lack of a better term) has survived for 30 years betrays a shrewdness that puts him above most of his ilk.
^(oo)^