Hi everybody!
In a previous post (click here to go) I posted some critical appreciations of a paper Bonnitta Roy presented in the current ITC 2010, and after invited her to collaborate in the discussion. (to read her paper online click here)
She was amazingly kind and generous to open herself an account in I-Life, to read my critique (and other members comments as well) and to get back with a detailed, thoughtful answer to all of my points and some of other people comments. (click here to download her original response in PDF).
The following is my answer to her response. I decided to post it here (instead of in the original thread) because I think that thread became too long and full of sub-comments that makes it kind of difficult to navigate and to know what came before and what came after.
However, I seriously recommend that before you read this post, follow those links and read her thoughtful answer; and, if possible that you read her complete paper as well, which is in my humble opinion very interesting and moving.
I will be quoting from her response, and sometimes writing freely, still referring to her paper or her response.
I apologize for the immense lenght of this response, that I know will render it difficult to read to most members.
At this time I simply don't have the time to do thoughtful edition and formatting of it; so it may be plenty of repetitions as well. In those cases, I encourage the reader to simply jump to the next paragraph until he/she finds something that finds useful.
I will be contacting Bonnitta again to update her of this response.
Blessings to all.
Federico
PD: everything in Italics is from Bonnitta response.
Bonnitta said: I would caution against reading Gebser “with AQAL eyes” to understand Gebser’s
work.
Bonnitta, I would like to point you to this post http://integrallife.com/member/federico-parra/blog/wilber-understanding-gebser
This is from a defense of Ken’s work he wrote himself to Combs in 1999, in which he quotes Georg Feuerstein, a renowned Gebser American interpreter.
According to Feuerstein, Ken’s representation, understanding and further integration of Gebser’s work in the LL quadrant of the AQAL model is perfectly correct; and “seeing Gebser trough AQAL eyes” apparently is completing his vision, without deforming his work in any way.
Bonnitta said: So, for example, Gebser is not talking about personal or developmental stages or states, but trying to identify “structures” of consciousness that emerge in different eras.
Structures of individual consciousness (UL) and structures of collective consciousness (LL) are co emergent; a culture at the Pluralistic stage (LL) is made up of many individuals at a Pluralistic Stage (UL) right?
In my understanding, the « discovery » of Combs and Wilber, of the separateness and relative independence of Stages and States changes everything in the understanding of Development in both interior quadrants; UL and LL.
A simple example -presented in Core Integral, which I recommend strongly as the last update in Wilber’s work-:
The Pluralistic Stage of Consciousness (LL) is composed of individuals at the Green vMeme (SD, UL).
This green vMeme attracts very different worldviews (memes) that share however a same deep structure (vertical altitude). For example, it attracts the “New Age” meme, and the “Postmodern deconstructive atheist philosopher” meme. How do we account for such a difference and for the fact that, even if they are so different that probably could not have a good relationship between them, they are nonetheless both “living inside” the same vMeme vertical structure and composing the same Pluralistic Stage of Consiousness (LL)?
Well, the last version of AQAL (Core Integral) accounts for this, complementing the understanding of vertical development with horizontal development, using the Horizontal axis of growing trough permanent State-Stages.
So, to follow my example, the first group (New Age) could be people flying at a Green altitude, but with the acquisition of a permanent Subtle state-stage of horizontal development. While the second group (Postmodern deconstructive atheist philosophers) could be flying at the same vertical altitude, but with their horizontal center of of gravity located in the Gross State-Stage.
So both share the same contents (green, vMeme structuralized contents) but New Agers inhabit a bigger container (the Subtle container) than the smaller container of the Gross state-stage.
This « discovery » of Combs and Wilber change, as I understand it, everything we knew about vertical development in both individuals (ie. SD) and collectives (ie. Gebser).
Because now we have to start to separating bananas from apples, and see where in the developmental investigations, researchers were blind to this distinction and therefore collapsed horizontal growing with vertical growing. This happened, in my opinion, in both the study of collective development (LL) and individuals development (UL); both had been a bit flawed by being blind to this distinction (which is, by the way, the distinction between absolute and relative domains, which are experienced as not 2, but also not 1 (therefore, the Paradox - more below).
Core Integral makes the case (that Wilber stated back in Integral Spirituality) of the five uses of the word “Spiritual”. While in Core Integral they give equal value to the 5, I still find there are quite more reasons to use the word Spiritual in the sense of Horizontal growing through State-Stages ; because it is in horizontal development (at any altitude) that Ego finally is transcended (Vertical development, before third tier, is only about making Ego more complex and to hold more perspectives; but it doesn’t necessarily make the person drop Ego exclusive identification, so being free of all perspectives – trough Causal realization-).
Wilber and Combs make their case a strong one; presenting examples of many of these combinations of Horizontal and Vertical altitudes match; I suggest, nonetheless, that it is only necessary to look around in our daily life to find examples of these combinations.
How many people you know that processes every trait of what SD calls an Integral (Yellow vMeme) consciousness and still doesn’t even cares about Spirituality (in the sense of letting go Ego identification, in the sense of absolute freedom, in the sense most traditions mean it anyway).
And how many people we know that are at fairly lower levels of vertical development (ie. SD Blue vMeme) and even though they are clearly at a Non Dual permanent or quasi-permanent State-Stage, presenting all the Spiritual qualities like infinite compassion and wisdom (while still limited in their action and understanding of the post-post-modern world of form by their vertical developmental constraints).
Then, if every (or most) vertical development studies (like SD, Kohlberg, Cook-Greuter) were looking at only one dimension (axis) of development while missing that development is the result of the combination of two axis and not one (this, by the way, pointed out by the traditions since long time ago, by the Sheaths and States, akin to Stages and State-Stages); then this have to necessarily affect/transform also every research made about the developmental sequences in Collectives (LL).
Because Collectives are composed of individuals, then if our understanding of Individual development has gone through a major change with Combs and Wilber’s discovery of the two axis of development, then the LL studies should also be affected.
I’m arguing that the separation of development in two axis affects Gebser’s work rendering it at least outdated , and at minimum lacking of detail. For example, it cannot make the distinctions necessary to explain why different memes under a same vMeme are actually different (like the example I quoted above of New Age vs. Posmo thinkers). Only with the correct understanding of State-Stages and Horizontal development, which is nothing less than half of the equation of the evolution of consciousness, we can account for the full bulk of phenomena we are studying (the evolution of consciousness).
So, as I was saying in my first critique of your paper, I think Gebser's studies of the evolution of consciousness should be updated and reframed with the current understanding of these two axis of growing up and waking up (vertical and horizontal). At the very least, we should take his descriptions, and separate from them what looks like horizontal attainment from that which looks like vertical attainment, and put them in different axis, and recognize that, contrary to his version, those different characteristics are independent, so many of the traits he propose we should expect from the Integral stage actually can appear at Archaic or Pluralistic or at any level (because they are really not stages but State-Stages) ; while others of the traits he describes are certainly of a Stage kind and therefore doesn’t need any clarification or update.
One point: in the story of the Gas tanks you gave in your response, you transmit the image of a map that is used in a fixed way to the extent it avoids new knowledge from manifest (we are with our new hammer –the map- and then everything we see looks like a nail, so to speak).
I think though, that there are at least two kinds of maps:
One is the type of map that is fixed, static, and kind of nail you down to some fixed pattern, avoiding new wisdom from emerging. However, there are other types of maps that are kind of “psycho-magical potions”, that when you drink them, new universes and wisdoms are uncovered.
The mapping of “absolute and relative as not 2, but not 1", is, I believe, one of these “liberating” maps.
It should be said that "the 2 truths doctrine" should not be interpreted as a dualistic doctrine. In fact it comes from the realization of Non Duality. And to say it is a dual doctrine, one have to misunderstand it as positing 2 realities (absolute – relative) absolutely separated and independent from each other; but that is to stay with only half of the 2 truths doctrine equation (the “not 1” part).
Following carefully the dialectic of Nagarjuna, you get that he is not speaking of either two separate things, nor about one thing; he is speaking of paradox.
Of something that is beyond words that can only be experienced. When you try to put it into words, it sounds dual. But it is not.
So, the “2 truths doctrine” kind of “mapping” reality as it is experienced by an enlighten non-dual being (like Ken or Nagarjuna or Trungpa or whoever) is not a fixed map that ties you, but a dynamic psycho-magic potion that liberates you from confusions; like the confusion of proyecting Absolute qualities –ie. freedom from time- in the incorrect domain -where time indeed rules- and from the confusion of projecting Relative qualities –ie. time- there where only atemporal, ever-present is.
There are many of this kind of “liberating maps”, like AQAL or Madhyamika, that unlike the maps exemplified by your Gas tank tale, work as a dynamic, psycho-magic potion that, when drunk, liberates you from ignorance and opens, instead of closing, yourself to the Truth.
Bonnitta said: This makes I would caution against identifying spirituality with
state experiences, since there is a ton of Buddhist literature making this specific distinction –
that all state experiences are phenomenological arisings and as such can be witnessed
(sometimes requiring rigorous training).
Before discussing this we should make a distinction on the use of language and the word “states”.
Many times when discussing meditation outcomes, we use the word « States » for referring to two very different things:
1) 1)To refer to phenomenological arisings, ie. experiences that can be witnessed, as you say ;
2) 2)To refer to changes in the “point of view” or “Vantage Point”. As Daniel P. Brown calls this, « changing the placement of the Control Tower »
Then, some meditation (or Spiritual practice) outcomes are of the 1st type and then you are right, these are not to be identified with « Spirituality » in the ultimate sense; for example, most of the outcomes of Concentration practice in the Mahamudra tradition are of this first group; experiences (states) of Bliss, or great Peace, are phenomenological arisings that can be witnessed. Spirituality in its ultimate sense should not be identified with those, because those are temporal and sometimes even situated in space; they arise, stay, and pass, as everything else does.
But then you have the Natural states, the always-already states, called in Vedanta the 4th (Turiya) and the 5th (Turiyatita), and in Mahamudra The Emptiness of Self (the 4th) and One Taste yoga (the 5th). The 4th, by any name, is the Witness of everything that’s arising (including the states of the first group, ie. being witness of a great bliss) and the 5th is the suchness or thatness of everything that’s arising (ie. I AM that bliss).
These 2nd types of meditation outcomes we call equally « States », I think, for lack of any other better term.
But these have not to be confused with the first type of outcomes (ie. Bliss experiences) cause while the first group, as you said, are phenomenological arisings, the second are not. But instead, is the change or switch of the very Vantage Point from which phenomena “seems” to arise. It is a switch in the perspective of the seer or the seer itself, and not a change in the content of what is seen.
In your example of the Knife, the first group of meditation outcomes (ie. bliss or peace) is about what the knife is cutting (cheese, bread) while the second group of meditation outcomes (ie. change of vantage point from Ego to the Witness) are akin to stop being the knife cutting and instead being the seer looking at the knife while it cuts.
And actualizing these (group 2) « states », contrary to what you said, is what indeed most traditions call the ultimate goal (ie. Buddhism Ultimate Bodhichitta or Ultimate Enlightenment, Mahamudra’s One Taste realization, contemplative Christianity Godhead realization, or Rigpa realization in Dzogchen, and so on).
And in my opinion, of the 5 different uses of the word Spirituality proposed by AQAL, the State-Stage one is at least a very important one, and maybe the most significant one.
Bonnitta said: My ITC presentation offers this definition: that state
experiences are examples of the dropping of one or more perspectival constraints.
I understand that you apparently not value the (paradoxal) division between Ultimate and Relative that Mahayana (and all nondual schools, including Dzogchen: ie. Emptyness and Clear Light) does.
But I find your presentation lacking of the understanding that comes not only from nondual philosophies (like Mahamudra or Dzogchen) but also lacking of an understanding of the inner work of Non duality; when you experience non duality for example during One taste, things don’t look as you are describing them.
And I can base my case in my own confirmed experience, but also (and mostly) in hundreds of accounts of One Taste and Rigpa, from Ken’s to Trunpa’s to Milarepa’s.
Perspectival constraints are not dropped in One Taste. They are included as a part of the manifest Kosmos that you are. You are the suchness of constraints, so to speak, you are the suchness of limits, you are the suchness of perspectives; you are the suchness of everything that’s arising.
There is nothing that changes in the relative domain when you realize the Absolute as immanent suchness.
In non duality, the relative continues to be exactly the same, including all its limitations. You still have a name and not any other; you still have a physical position in space and continues to be affected by the passing of time; you have a personal history and though psychological limitations; you have an specific body and then specific reflexes and biological propensities; everything in the everyday perception of the world of form continues to work and doesn’t drop out ; and even then, paradoxically, you are all that and everything else; nothing is alien to you, all is happening (so to speak) inside of you, including limits, constraints, 6 sense systems, the Kosmos at large.
But, within all that, you are also the limits. You are also the constraints.
You are also this body, and you are that others things out of it; you are both, including the limits that separates both!
It’s a marvelous paradox that has to be experienced to be understood.
Limits affect you, and not affect you, at the same time! Cause limits arise inside of you, you being timeless and infinite, limited less; perspectives arise inside the aperspectival True Self that you are (Unique Self plus the rest of the world arise in the True self that you are) and at the same time that you are temporal and limited, you are also completely liberated from time and space… as wondrous as it sounds!
Like when you are in a dream and you wake up inside of it (lucid dreaming). At that point you can easily realize you are the character (akin Unique self) limited, separated from other dream objects; and at the same time you are the Dreamer (akin True Self), so everything in the dream (objects, character, other characters and their limits) is happening inside the dreamer’s mind (akin True Self) that you are. But, paradoxically and at the same time, you are that one character with one limited point of view, one limited color of emotions going on, and –to some extent- temporal constraints.
This magnificent Paradox is the heart of non dual realization!
In Christian terms, I think this is to say that you are the Father but you are also the son. You never become only the unlimited, infinite Father. You are always also the limited son. How beautiful!
So the limits never disappear. In that sense, I think Non Duality cannot be explained properly without the notion of Relative and Absolute (it cannot be explained in any conceptual form, anyway! But because “you have to say something!”, "the 2 truth doctrine" seems to me the better way to go in explaining "how things are" to people that didn’t yet have the experience for themselves).
I repeat that Zen definition of Non Duality is « not 1, Not 2 ».
It’s of crucial importance to get the “Not 1” part. The “many” never melt down into “only oneness” (that would be indeed a Causal Nirvikalpa Samadhi; but that melt down of the many into the causal oneness is consider by all traditions to be previous to an even greater realization: non-duality, where the many is to be left as many, which never opposes to the One nor never did).
There is always a paradox ; a paradox that never is fully overcome, between the Divine part of the human individual (which is timeless, ever-present, and formless) and the Human part of the human individual with is formal, and is constrained by perspectives.
Nonduality is the realization of those 2 realities as not being mutually exclusive (not 2), but does not imply (nor should it!) the melt of the two (that’s what it is implied by « Not 1 »).
Bonnitta said: To this extent, there are relative degrees of freedom from perspectivity (and so, toward aperspectivity).
Here is Wilber writing about an experience where the subject-object boundary
(a constraint of conventional cognition) drops out:
You don’t look at the sky, you are the sky… Awareness is no longer split into a seeing
subject in here and a seen object out there.
Yes ! but you are boldly omitting what Wilber say always about his One Taste descriptions, and which is crucial to him for differentiating Psychotic experiences from real spiritual realizations!
Which is that while he experience that, at the very same time and in the most beautiful paradox, he still IS KEN WILBER, he still is having his (and not other persons) thoughts, and he is still seeing the world trough a perceptual apparatus that is limited, if nothing else, by geographical location, physical abilities, biological structure, subtle energies configuration, linear time events, and so on. That is the very fundament of his thesis about the Unique Self, a unique perspective that cannot be jumped even when 100% enlighten!
So you are using Ken to prove a case that he would dismiss without doubting in a flash!
He has, in fact, dismissed those kind of interpretations of Spiritual enlightenment (melting between Absolute and Relative) and from his own non dual experience, which is the complete realization of Dzogchen -including its stabilization trough waking, dreaming and deep sleep for even 14 days and then even in comma for 3 days- he still insist that perspectives are primordial, and that we cannot escape perspective even if we are 100% enlighten.
In any event, In my own experience I also validate that what is experienced in that occasion has nothing to do with a transformation of reality (of phenomena) or it organization, but with a switch in the Vantage Point within which phenomena arise; in other words, the world of form is left untouched by Non Duality; what is changing there is your identification, in Brown’s words the “Command Center” from within all phenomena manifests.
While in gross you are this body, in non dual you are everything, including the Causal base of it all and including the world of form and its limits and constraints. Nothing is transformed, and at the same time nothing is the same anymore.
But (and this is my strongest point in my critique of your view) I caution every spiritual practitioner that there is a simple test to see if “the view” (in the Buddhist sense) is correct: The world, at the beginning of the path, and at the ultimate end, should be equal. That’s the meaning of Zen tale “in the beginning, mountains are mountains. Then, mountains are no longer mountains. But in the end, mountains are mountains again”.
So, the beginning is perspectival. The realization of the Causal absolute, because of its very nature (timelessness, ever-present, non-spatial) is aperspectival. And then, the returning to the market, the non-dual realization, is a returning to the world of perspectives.”
I would ask if your aperspectival “desire” (or hope) doesn't have an underlying attachment to the Causal experience of aperspectiveness. And if it is the case, it could lead to an even stronger desire of “finishing with the prison of perspectives” which is none less than what guided thousands of monks to get out of the world of form for thousands of years. I hope we go exactly the opposite direction in the future!
Bonnitta said: These kind of experiences – which I remind you are phenomenological arisings – are typically labeled as “spiritual”. An OOBE (out of body experience) where for example, I can see my
body-mind driving along a country road from a vanishing point taken by a disembodied witness,
where all of time and space appear to be “in me” … that is an experience where the
perspectival boundary constraints of external world (time-space)/internal subject drop away.
This kind of experience is typically labeled as pathological (hallucination, dissociative) – but my
paper makes the suggestion that this is an experience with more degrees of freedom from
perpsectival realm, in other words, toward the a-perspectival.
That “out of the body experience”, if real, is only being free from some of the perspectival constraints of the Gross realm; but still, you are prisoner of the perspectival constraints of the Subtle (soul) level! (which is what is seeing from the outside the body in the route - the soul).
Those constraints are for example your history (to some degree), your energetic type configurations, your karmic impressions, and so many others (which, in Buddhist accounts, are carried with you even after death into the bardos and into future rebirths in other bodies).
So, for example, even if body drops you still could never take my perspective. You could never see exactly as Federico sees the world (even if, supposing, you put your disembodied soul in exactly the same world-space my soul is occupying behind this set of eyes; still, “how I look” is not only shaped by my gross-physical position but instead by many particular, unique Soul traits of my own soul, so to speak).
In other words; when body drops, soul have more freedom but still is constrained by soul-level perspectives. In the end, Only Causal Spirit, or emptiness is free of all perspectival constraints.
But even if you go up (down?) to spirit itself (for example, entering Nirvikalpa Samadhi), you are warned by all nondual spiritual traditions alike (and by me!) to not stay there. You should, further in your meditation training rehabilitate the soul and the body.
And then…you turn on perspectives again.
The problem (our difference) goes even further, I think. While your idea of the future of the world of form (of evolution, of God’s will), as I understand it, is aperspectival (or more precisely, “view”, as you call it), my idea of the future (or of God’s will) is that God is going to bifurcate even more and more (more perspectives). You think the future of the world of form is to become One. I think it is to become Many.
And that’s, I think, at least more in line with what’s happening (more people, more species, more cultures...). More perspectives.
I think the only way of grasping the evolution of consciousness is to go back to the notions that you dislike: Absolute and Relative. Horizontal and Vertical. So that while in Horizontal Waking up you aim certainly to become aperspectival (and then you become free of all perspectives), in Vertical growing up you embrace more and more perspectives, more and more divisions, more and more limits and categories.
Both movements are to be made together; that’s the Non Dual realization and that’s by the way what Combs and Wilber are showing with the division of Development into two axis; one represents the absolute (Horizontal) while the other represents the relative (Vertical).
This is for me the inescapable Paradox of Human Spirituality.
Bonnitta says: Recently, here at Integral Life, Wilber comments that nothing in his books seems to be a mistake.
Curiously, he re-visits his one major re-visiting of placing the states on top of the
cognitive lines. Wilber I put the states (which are thought of as spiritual) on top of the
cognitive lines; this was revised into the Wilber-Coombs lattice, where the states were loosely
correlated with the stages. Now Wilber comments that he was right all along (or wrong to think
we was wrong) and likes to see the states at the highest end of the cognitive lines.
Ken has written in the past that he doesn’t recommend his students read phase I (Wilber I).
He starts that very audio (https://www.coreintegral.com/node/151#eight) by stating the opposite of what you are saying; namely that he wanted to go back and alter the charts of Integral Psychology precisely because he put (wrongly) spiritual realizations over the vertical lines instead of collapsing them into the 4 state-stages (as it is now done) in all the charts.
He is not saying that he sees the states now at being in top of stages! Not by any means. In fact he just released Core Integral which stands very precisely his view which is the opposite, namely that Stages and Stages are mostly independent, at least before arriving to Third Tier.
What he says in the audio, in the other hand, is that in "Brief History of all things", even not-knowing about the division of Stages and State-Stages, he somehow intuited it, and expressed that intuition in the form of proposing two different levels into every human historical age; one Average and one Advanced one.
The former (Average) is what most people attained at that human age; where the second is what the most salient developmental pioneers achieved at that very age.
Amazingly, under this analysis he discovers and shares with us that, because horizontal states, while disclosing absolute truth, were still “discovered” by men in the relative time (ie. History), then the different state-stages appeared trough history at different moments: Causal at the Axial Period, Non Dual at Mahayana’s period, and so on.
So, he concludes, that what he named Average development in that book was the highest altitude level attained by the community at large, while what he named Advanced development was a mixture of the average level of consciousness (vertical) of that particular age PLUS the last discovered State-Stage (horizontal). And therefore, his model was far less wrong than what we may think of (still, I would say that it is not sincere of him to say that he would not change much of that book if he was to rewriting it; cause the Wilber Comb lattice is, at the very least, a more detailed-granular framework to describe developmental realities).
Bonnitta said: What is the faculty that creates boundaries? I’ll leave this up to you to work out in your own way.
My take? Boundaries are intrinsic characteristics of the world of form. Boundaries are what makes plurals (separating the one into many) and, going further, boundaries are created “in the beginning” by the desire of the one to become many (ie. Lila tale). Why the one would want to become many, separating him/herself? I’ll leave this up to you to work out in your own way! :-)
Bonnitta said: Well, yes of course, by definition, any experience with perspectival elements has perspectives. The point I am making, is to be aware of the process, or faculty, through which perspectival elements arise, how they are fluid and flexible, not fixed and absolute. It makes no sense to create “absolute” fixtures in the “relative” realm!
Relative elements are both fluid and fixed, both flexible and concrete.
I see you commiting some typical misunderstandings of Nagarjuna and Madhyamika. I recommend you deeply to read this long footnote from SES about Nagarjuna and usual misunderstandings of his points: http://integrallife.com/member/federico-parra/blog/final-word-no-self-confusion
Bonnitta said: When you understand that, then you understand how not to map out those two realms as it they really existed “Absolute” and “Relative”.
As long as you’re seated inside that boundary condition of relative/absolute – well
then, yes, you are constrained to se only that one cannot be free from the relative world.
You’ve caught yourself into a prison and locked the door with your fundamental conceptual
apparatus. I don’t want to convince anyone otherwise. Live there – you can spend lifetimes
exploring and creating there, adding lines, levels, streams, dialogue, 10,000 books. It’s just
that, I don’t live there. And it would be nice to invite a few people over.
Ok... :-)
So who achieved this so far? This realization you are describing?
Name one person that in his daily life doesn’t use maps and doesn’t live trough and only trough perspectives. All the Bon and Dzogchen teachers (at least the ones that are alive like Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche or Khandro Rinpoche, who I know personally) use maps and are limited by perspectives; and in fact, many of them (again, Tenzin Wangyal) are not even aware of the limits of perspectival understanding that is imposed by altitude (ie. they are not aware of how development reduce or enlarge availability of perspectives) and some are not even aware of the fact that there are many perspectives still over their head (ie. Blue level non-dual teachers).
When you say “when you understand that…”
Have I to believe that:
1) you realized this and
2) that you are the only one who realized this?
I don’t know of any spiritual teacher that claims to be living outside of perspectives nor that is not using a map (I know, in the other hand, a lot of people that think they are not using a map –and then use a map unconsciously- and lot of individuals who think they are not seeing trough the limits of any perspective – and then they are caught in the same constraints but they are unconscious of it).
I will love to hear about your examples of people who attained this realization you describe.
Or it is only something supposed to occur in the future?
Bonnitta said: The discipline of logic as taught in Tibetan Buddhism rests on the principle of two truths; the one ultimate, the other conventional.
But the Dzog Chen logic explicated in Unbounded Wholeness takes one single
principle as its defining characteristic. This is, of course, the principle of wholeness. The
greatest of the traditional Buddhist logicians, primarily Dignaga and Dharmakirti, take logic as
a form of measure whereby a subject examines an object and constitutes a valid cognition
regarding that object. Conceptual reasoning is grounded in the subject-object relationship.
Open awareness is direct perception from the point of view of the subjectless object and the
objectless subject. Here the subject and object are both reflexively perceived as dynamic
displays of unbounded wholeness. In non-conceptual logic a subject focused on an object, even
if that object is its own perception, is not experiencing open awareness.
Please, imagine I am a fool (which probably, I am) and that therefore this simply sounds too abstract for me. So please give me some examples, like:
With this open awareness, how you speak with a friend about how your boyfriend left you?
I currently know pretty well how that would look like if both persons are taking their own perspectives (ie. 2 unique selves talking to each other) but I would love to know: how that situation would look like if one of them is experiencing or actualizing that open awareness and then not using perspectives?
Please, tell me more examples. Cause, as I stated before, no one appears to be working in that way.
Thank you so much Bonnitta for your amazingly open disposition of discussing with me even without knowing anything about me.
I applaud you for that and hope you find this long text a source of insight or at least of reflection and reaffirmation of what you already thought.
Peace and love for you and all the others reading.
Federico
