Tell Me: What Is Maya?

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Re: Tell Me: What Is Maya?

Postby tazmic » Thu Feb 18, 2010 7:34 am

tazmic wrote:Perhaps we are in love with our dreaming, rather than our dreams.

Joe wrote:According to some chaos magicians thats actually how you should be. Your dreams are the product of your dreaming, which is a process. To be in love with them instead of the process itself is what is sometimes referred to as being possessed by Choronzon, or the products of your own ego. Thats probably akin to being stuck in rigid "reality tunnels" too. Its probably also maya.

Yeah, Joe I agree. But our positions appear contradictory. So perhaps we are using different perspectives to talk about the same thing? I think we can agree on a shared perspective in which to recast both our positions, and then we will be able to see we are saying the same thing, without contradiction (too many fingers, only one moon ;) ):

If you are blinded by your dreams, you will not be aware of the process, the dreaming, as an active underlying principle, hence muchomaya, lost in dreams, living in the map, disconnected from the territory. The point here is the nature of dreams and dreaming is forgotten without the context of the awareness of the process.

Similarly, if we our blinded by our map making, increasingly disconected from the terrain, we will act as if we are in love with our dreaming, and its products, rather than putting our dreams in context, apperceiving the dreamscape...reconnecting with the terrain, and seeing them AS dreams.

I think we were saying the same thing...but I think I prefer your take on it.
"It ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out." - Heraclitus

"There aren't enough small numbers to meet the many demands made of them." - Strong Law of Small Numbers
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Re: Tell Me: What Is Maya?

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Thu Feb 18, 2010 8:05 am

Cheers

I remember the first time I actually talked about this with my dad. It was such a deep conversation, and it was a contradictory one. Went for hours. He used that example and it stuck with me, cos of the music he listens to. I don't speak Hindi, he does, no one he knows in Australia does, so he listens to the music he listened to when he was young. There was one maudlin old Hindi ballad that pretty much illustrated his point and as these things go it happened to come on while he was talking about the concept.

If you are blinded by your dreams, you will not be aware of the process, the dreaming, as an active underlying principle.


So true.

That example I used before, a mother mourning a child is an extreme one.

There are plenty of others, everyday ones that anyone could think of.

Its an issue with people identifying themselves by their job. Especially in these days of, er, "employment mobility". Or whatever the fuck they call screwing working people now. Its a serious issue for men, especially those in the age group above mine, 45 onwards.
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Re: Tell Me: What Is Maya?

Postby tazmic » Thu Feb 18, 2010 8:37 am

What I like about your mother's grief story is what she says.

'Oh my maya!'

Not only is she full of grief, she's under no illusions about it.
"It ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out." - Heraclitus

"There aren't enough small numbers to meet the many demands made of them." - Strong Law of Small Numbers
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Re: Tell Me: What Is Maya?

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Thu Feb 18, 2010 8:48 am

:lol:
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Re: Tell Me: What Is Maya?

Postby 23 » Thu Feb 18, 2010 10:00 am

Ben D wrote:
23 wrote:So how do you avoid the adhesiveness of maya?

And perhaps also when he conveyed this:

If we clearly apperceive the difference
Between direct apprehension in Whole-mind
And relative comprehension by reasoning
In mind divided into subject-and-object,
All the apparent mysteries will disappear.

For that will be found to be the key
Which unlocks the doors of incomprehension.

From 'Posthumous Pieces':
Wei Wu Wei


Glad to see another fan of Mr. Terence Gray. He's on my top three list of authors.

Lucid dreaming is participating in a dream, but not identifying with the role that you play in it.

You're actively involved in your dream, but you "know" (apperception, versus perception) that it's only a dream.

You can lucidly dream when your eyes are shut and your body is sleeping.

And you can also lucidly dream while your eyes are wide open and your body is not asleep.

The identification with your role, or the absence of that, may be the crux of the matter.

And lucid dreaming may be what another wise man meant when he said, "be in it, but not of it."
Last edited by 23 on Thu Feb 18, 2010 10:36 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Tell Me: What Is Maya?

Postby tazmic » Thu Feb 18, 2010 10:23 am

"Maya therefore does not mean that the world is an illusion, as is often wrongly stated. The illusion merely lies in our point of view, if we think that the shapes and structures, things and events, around us are realities of nature, instead of realizing that they are concepts of our measuring and categorizing minds. Maya is the illusion of taking these concepts for reality, of confusing the map with the territory."--Fritjof Capra

The problem with this clarification is that it can just as easily be reappropriated by the 'mapping mechanism'. As the language is still essentially dualistic it provides no antidote to the fascination of 'maya' and merely reeducates our language, leading to another 'reality tunnel', instead of an apperception about the nature of reality tunnels/dreaming.

"if we think that the shapes and structures, things and events, around us are realities of nature..."

They are realities of nature, just not in the way we think of them as being, or more particularly, when we think of them as being, rather than appearances. To use Joe's dreaming metaphor, this IS the dreaming. Our dreamscape.

"instead of realizing that they are concepts of our measuring and categorizing minds"

But they are not just concepts, they are also referents, and they result from the interplay of a measuring and categorizing mind with the world of 'shapes and structures, things and events, around us' that gave rise to it. Fritjof is beginning to play favourites with his maps here.

Rather than freeing our attention from the dreams, as if they are the only real thing, and making us aware of the dreaming dance which we are, Fritjof runs the risk of throwing the maps away, as if they are unconnected to a territory, which perversly ressurects their dominance within a framework that is still essentialy dualistic.

I wish I could talk about this better. Sorry for running with your chaos magic ball Joe*, it was more effective than my javelin, and I never could throw them very well anyway.

And if I sound like I know what I'm talking about it's just a biproduct of trying to write clearly. Of course, that works the other way too ;)

*According to some chaos magicians thats actually how you should be. Your dreams are the product of your dreaming, which is a process. To be in love with them instead of the process itself is what is sometimes referred to as being possessed by Choronzon, or the products of your own ego. Thats probably akin to being stuck in rigid "reality tunnels" too. Its probably also maya.
"It ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out." - Heraclitus

"There aren't enough small numbers to meet the many demands made of them." - Strong Law of Small Numbers
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