At 02:01 PM 24/12/2002, Jim Cogswell wrote:
?That in the world through which
one, perceiving the world, arrives at his conception of the world, that,
in the order of the Blessed One, is called the world.?
I guess I am one of those who would say it is obvious. That does not mean
that it is not profound.
There are several things that I find worth noting, offhand, and without
reflection:
1) that mentioned in the first phrase is not identified, except as what
"is called the world". In particular, it is not the conception
of the world mentioned in the third phrase -- or at the very least it is
not necessarily the same -- perhaps for some people it really is what
they call the world (and not just what they think they call the world).
As you say, Jim, there are many levels of possible
interpretation.
2) I am not sure of the translation of "perceiving the
world".
3) the first phrase talks of that _through_ which one, not of the object
of perception itself (at least not necessarily). This suggests that we
call the world that which through which we arrive at our conception of
it, and not the object of our perception itself, but again the two might
be the same.
4) our information about the world is coloured by that through which we
conceive it while perceiving the world. To call this coloured vision
"the world" is wrong, given that it is impossible to parse the
previous sentence without an equivocation on "the world" if we
assume this. If we call the that the world, then it cannot be the same
that that is our coloured conception. Nonetheless, the information is
there in the conception, albeit coloured, so it is really a perception of
the world. "The world" must, therefore, be other than our
conception of it.
5) if this Bhuddist statement is true, then radical constructivism is
false.
I might add that the constructed world is maya, and is usually thought to
be illusory. The quoted statement, I think, shows why in a very nice,
concise way. I am not a Bhuddist, but more of a Taoist, and I believe
that that the world that can be conceived is not the true world. This
does not mean that our conceptions of the world do not contain
information about the world.
John
Received on Tue Dec 24 20:33:24 2002
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