Post AZrnrwb6oODUDQBVK4 by bodhidave@mstdn.social
 (DIR) More posts by bodhidave@mstdn.social
 (DIR) Post #AZrnrujtik3gS6HUkC by bodhidave@mstdn.social
       2023-09-17T18:28:56Z
       
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       1/3I've been in a couple conversations lately with persons who hold the view that there are no experiences that aren't pre-shaped by conceptual frameworks (and thus no cross-cultural commonalities in contemplative/ meditative experiences). An attendant view is often that mystical "via negativa" language is highly "abstract."This is sadly wrong. "Negative" contemplative language is about simple, practical, experiential processes. It's about cultivating *honesty* and a simple immediacy.
       
 (DIR) Post #AZrnrvkzw8X5bnnt68 by bodhidave@mstdn.social
       2023-09-17T18:33:16Z
       
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       2/It's a big topic, but a couple quick notes:Language for expressing too-simple-for words experiencing is (1) often metaphoric and conscious of it's inadequacy (not infrequently playfully so) — more a song or poem or celebration than a conceptual claim or proposition; and (2) such language is often *practical* — entailing instructions for how we can go and look for ourself and uncover such experience first-hand.
       
 (DIR) Post #AZrnrwb6oODUDQBVK4 by bodhidave@mstdn.social
       2023-09-17T18:38:14Z
       
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       3/3And it just seems obvious that much of our experience simply isn't in words. Music, art, awe at a sunset. Babies apparently have dreams in utero. What "conceptual set and framework" would obtain there?In my own case, I've awakened a number of times out of dreamless sleep and found myself in the middle of the meditative jhāna sequence — some wordless part of me knows how to do sleep, and knows how to do meditation in sleep ... and knows how to do words within my waking cognitive process.
       
 (DIR) Post #AZrnrxNftp44e2uI1Q by goo@dobbs.town
       2023-09-17T18:44:46Z
       
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       @bodhidave language can be a useful tool in that it abstracts and intends to extend experiences by virtue of its abstraction, but it's also due to this process of abstraction that it reduces, limits experience and thus weakens our experience of the real. People cling to language and mistake the facility of language to be selfPracticing zen while asleep is an interesting idea