Nibbana tangent part 1 (Agnosticism)

by David Turell , Wednesday, May 29, 2024, 18:15 (101 days ago) @ dhw

MATT (to dhw): You in particular define a 'self' that is sometimes conscious of itself, and sometimes isn't, my interpretation is that the only time that you ARE "yourself" is precisely when you're conscious of it. The rest of the time, you're mentally some amorphous thing. I am puzzled by the insistence.

DAVID: The way I view your description, is you lose consciousness of 'self' but always return to it. So even if discontinuous, it is always available to return to it. It is never lost.

Matt: If you take your 'self' to be that bare aware "in the now" consciousness, you are correct, but dhw is taking a definition that includes more than just that. See my comment re: Phineas Gage again.
And:
MATT: You overidentify that a "sense of self" means you as an entity. You already spend a good chunk of your day doing things where the sense of self is repressed or at least on snooze, unless every waking second of every day you repeat to yourself "I am dhw, I am dhw."

dhw: I will expand a little on my original reply to this, which was that the self is the total of all our attributes at any given time. The fact that we don’t consciously think of each one all the time does not mean they are not there. (I used the analogy of my flat feet, which you misinterpreted as meaning that all attributes were permanent.) No, the attributes may change at any time through illness, accident, or new experiences. But that does not mean they are not present or are not real. A bigot one day may have an experience that changes his rigid opinions. Psychotherapy may perform the same function. The bigotry was real, not illusory. Now the open mind is real. Phineas Gage is another illustration.

MATT (to DAVID:) I developed at a young age an intense worry that I was being too selfish when dealing with other people. So a message that targets the ego/self as a source of pain in the world has a strong resonance for me. I've been that guy.

dhw: You are an excellent illustration of the point that I am making. You disliked your selfish attributes of the past, and so you took steps to change them. Your previous self was real, and so is your current self. You have not removed any sense of self; you have changed the excessively egotistical attributes of your previous self.

MATT (to dhw:): I guess from my perspective, it seems like you're taking aim at the Buddhist ideal from the perspective where it's ineffable (like God.) I've tried to demonstrate with the compass analogy, that whatever it is that YOU think Nibbana is, I think your conception is mistaken. See my comment above where I talk about how meditation naturally suppresses the sense of self and just do what I do and take that to the logical conclusion where Nibbana is a state of mind where you're not caught in the wind anymore.

DAVID: As in the other thread, I understand you lose a sense of self in meditation but can always return to it.

MATT: And if you die in your sleep? There's a bigger picture that I'm aiming at here. If I take my love of philosophy as a concrete part of my 'self,' and I lose half my memories due to some trauma, then I'm lying.

dhw: Why lying? A trauma will change your attributes, as above. But your quote above was directed towards me, and the relevant part of my reply was this:

dhw: clearly, if we reach the point where something is ineffable, it can’t be discussed with words, and so you can say that any verbalized conception is mistaken! All I have done is examine the words you have used, and extrapolate conclusions: if you tell me that Nibbana means that all concept of self disappears and there is no such thing as an eternal self, my conclusion is that you might as well be dead.

MATT: Okay, explain to me how it can mean death, when the Buddha (and many of his other followers who achieved Nibbana) could be alive for 40+ yrs?
And:
MATT: …..you're talking about someone who spent the better part of those 40yrs after his enlightenment, regularly maintaining that state of consciousness. If Nibbana means "Not having any more experiences," then how do we explain the thousands of people that came to him for teaching, and even one of my favorite stories where he wept with a mother over her dead child?

See Part Two for my answer

Note I am editing the dialog to identify persons.