The Way of Being

One begins with appetite. The process leads to further thoughts for reading etc. Reflection on what one is doing is crucial. I frequently step back and think “what do I need to read or experience”, “how shall I synthesize and write my thoughts”, “what have I learned that may be useful in the process”. One is asking meta-questions—if there is a question, one is asking “what is the meaning of this question”, “how may I answer it”, “how do others approach such matters”, “are there general principles” and so on.

2. Learn from but deeply question our culture—so as to overcome its limitations.

I have learned much from our culture. It is important to understand its main paradigms, learn from its sources (texts, universities) but also to question what it presents as most obvious and rational. I hold that science is aesthetically and intellectually wonderful, useful, and applicable within the empirical domain. Yet, by questioning, I realized that that domain is infinitesimal

3. Learn from the realms of nature, psyche, society-civilization-culture, and the universal-unknown.

My learning is also from experience in culture but also in nature, the nature of mind, and reflecting the unknown. I have had occupations from university professor, to mental health, to the restaurant business. I have traveled widely in different cultures and in nature. My travels are not for simple pleasure alone—but I have looked for what I can learn about the world.

4. The process may be without end. The way is always at a new beginning. I have thought many times “I have found it”, only to find that there is more.

5. Here are some thinkers and sources I have found particularly useful (for extensive lists see the next item and subsequent sections).

Some thinkers on metaphysics and Being that stand out are Plato (Sophist—“the definition of being is power”), Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus—on logic as metaphysics), Heidegger (Being and Time—on the fundamental nature of being), and Adi Samkara (the Indian philosopher of Advaita Vedanta—in A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy, Charles Moore, editors—for the identity of Atman and Brahman or the individual and ultimate selves and, interestingly—for he was writing in the eighth century CE, what is essentially the Cartesian cogito argument).

I have learned much from John Searle on consciousness; John Hick on religion (especially his book—The Fifth Dimension, 1999); Pema Chödrön’s How to Meditate, 2013; Chagdud Tulku’s Gates to Buddhist Practice, 2001, for practice of ‘Being’ and vipasana meditation; and, finally, Ian Baker’s Heart of the World, 2004, for Beyul—regarding nature travel, identity, and spirit.

6. My reading has been extensive. It has been in popular, scholarly, and original literature. If you are interested in my reading and experience here are some sources.

Bibliographies. General bibliography.

Journey (a directory devoted to travel, mostly in nature). Travel journals (not organized).

The following sections.

Related web resources

The Way of Being Website*

▪ essays.html—current and past editions; and for archive, history of western philosophy, bibliographies and more

▪ design.html

For the path templates*

▪ document and database design: current plans

▪ Beyul

▪ shared immersion—search for the term ‘immersion’ in the browser

▪ politics and cultural economics.html

▪ artifactual being—search for the terms ‘artifact’ and ‘artifactual being’

▪ catalytic transformation

▪ ways

For The Way*

▪ system of human knowledge and action.html—for knowledge: human cultural traditions, modified in view of the perfect metaphysics

▪ main influences.html—influences and sources

▪ document and database design.html—resources and plans

▪ priorities for the way.html

The concepts

▪ concepts.html—for The Way

▪ canonical dilemmas.html—a systematic approach to methodological skepticism

▪ doubt and reason.html

▪ argument.html

▪ possibility.html—on logic and possibility

Some topics amplified in the resources

These are important in themselves though not central to this essay where they are skimmed or not touched.

▪ Abstract objects

▪ Possibility, necessity, logic, and reason

▪ The canonical dilemmas attempt to found a worldview that begins with doubt and what is beyond doubt. Imagination is essential but also subject to doubt. Some essential aspects of the dilemmas follow—from methodological skepticism through the issue of projection from the empirical. A skeptical approach to Being and experience may well begin with Descartes’ cogito argument from which the conclusion is, essentially, there is Being. To build as much metaphysics (knowledge) as we can from skepticism and imagination, skepticism then becomes methodological—i.e., (1) we cover the range of Being as best we can, dealing with emergent issues, e.g. self, body, world, other minds, their relationships – destinies and necessities (or otherwise), (2) one issue is that of skepticism itself—what do and can we learn of both Being and method from skepticism applied to our ‘normal’ experience and view of the world? For example while there is experience and Being are these necessary (a source of the fundamental principle)? Is there a self, a world, and other minds? These can of course be simply used as labels for regions in the field of experience. But are they real and what is their destiny? We might say—reality of the self is the sense of self which distinguishes one’s experience, one’s body, and the world. One might then argue that symmetry arguments reasonably imply that the apparent beings in our worlds have minds. However that is not a necessary argument—the symmetry argument is not conclusive because perfect symmetry does not obtain and even apparent perfect symmetry does not imply actual perfect symmetry and even perfect symmetry would not imply other minds. Thus there seems to be no necessary argument that there are other minds. So there are some options over and above the existence of other minds—(1) even if the ‘other minds’ interpretation has purchase, perhaps there are none; (2) even if the other minds interpretation has purchase, perhaps we are really part of a FOE which may be seen as one mind which at the present and here and now has bright centers and dim to zero value ones called the inert environment, and (3) in destiny in our cosmos and beyond, these minds and environments that may be interpreted as one become dynamically as one. Now of course that imaginative and not proof. However, it is careful methodological skepticism that leads to the imaginative though not inconsistent interpretation—and the perfect metaphysics shows that it must have purchase.

Now for a brief catalog of applications of methodological skepticism.

▪ Metaphysical skepticism; kinds of argument from skepticism—self reference (solipsism), necessary (general vs our world) – from nothing and from symmetry, probable – from adaptation and from symmetry and stability (general vs our world).

▪ Substance vs Being (and related concepts—sameness, difference, absence, experience, beings, universe, possibility, necessity, logic, science, and Logic).

▪ The cogito argument—doubt exists.

▪ Solipsism vs SSV, ESSV, FOE. What is necessary, what is necessary in our world, what is stable and probable.

▪ The empirical, inference – projection (law, cause, Russell’s teapot, the possibility that the world was created five minutes ago and similar alternate ‘realities’); necessity (general, our world), the stable and the probable.

▪ Free will.

▪ World as experience.

▪ How the intension (nature) and extension (extent) of human knowledge is modified and rewritten by the metaphysics of the essay.

▪ Metaphysics as Logic.

▪ Original cause and necessity rather than ‘material’ cause. Necessity vs contingency or accident.

▪ Conventional dimensions of out world—psyche, nature (material and living), society and civilization, and universal – unknown, or PNSU.

Current versions of the essay

▪ the way-pocket manual.html—main and portable version

▪ the way-template.html—document template

▪ for other current and older versions see the site

Planning the essay

General

▪ document and database design.html—document and site plan

The outline version

▪ An outline can be derived from the versions above.

▪ However, the purpose of this outline is to get at the essence.

Remaining work for this version

“In the world.”

Continue to

▪ Review plans for the document in view of emerging insight and realization.

▪ Enter ideas and comments; especially Some topics amplified in the resources.

▪ Edit, chisel content, and format. Editing priorities are The Way, p.Error! Bookmark not defined. > Worldview, p.Error! Bookmark not defined. > Introduction, p.Error! Bookmark not defined. > remaining material. It is a priority to have a brief version of the introduction. Levels of editing are:

▪ The main material in the narrative, style Central.

▪ Academic and Main content.

▪ Secondary material—Indigo font.

▪ Test links, rectify faulty ones.

And

▪ Give visual relief to the main ideas from the point of view of realization (the metaphysics is already given prominence)—make an outline for The Way (a) emphasizes only essentials and (b) differentiates ideas-discovery from action-realization.

▪ Arrange for the following, as far as possible by associating styles with current content and making tables of contents that include links to those styles.

A particular point

▪ Introduce essential reflections on Heidegger’s Being and Time.

▪ Heidegger asserts with Aristotle the importance of Being over substance. This means that the foundation of Being is not to be sought in some other ‘thing’. That is, Being has already been singled out as that which is so immediate as to require no foundation; but is self founding (one might argue that experience as consciousness-in-its-‘pure’-attitudinal-and-active-modes is fundamental or perhaps that essentially Being and experience are identical or at least equivalent at some degree of abstraction that loses nothing essential.

▪ He argues that over 2000 years of substance thought (the metaphysic of presence), the question of Being has forgotten and therefore philosophy has lost its way (being a / the foundational discipline while substance is a high level concept and definitionally incapable of founding the universe of all Being).

▪ That the question of the meaning of Being is paramount. Here his thought diverges from mind, though not substantially. Whereas he sees the essence of Being as what fundamental about those to whom the world is intelligible, I see Being as the primitive simple of the world. But I would not minimize the object of Heidegger’s meaning—and I place it as a kind of Being to be discovered and explored. Thus in this regard I do not differ much from Heidegger.

▪ The means of enquiring into the meaning of Being is analysis of that which can enquire into the meaning of Being—which is nothing other than human being in the aspect of its being-in-the-world, i.e. Dasein whose Being includes that it finds itself in the world but not as founded in the world (or not) but whose character is pre-reflective (here I depart for it the pre-reflective is significant but not to be fundamentally distinguished from the reflective).

▪ So the essential questions for this work are

▪ Can Heidegger’s thought contribute to the foundations of the metaphysics and its clarification? Would that contribution lie in the relation of Being and experience?

▪ How can Heidegger’s thought contribute to the quality and authenticity of our Being while we engage in the path described in the work?

Previews—pathways

The paragraphs in styles Central, Main, and Academic constitute a general outline or overview. Other overviews to consider are—

1. General—for general readers, style Central.

2. Academic—styles Central and Academic; style Main may be of interest.

3. For realization—styles Central and Main; style Academic will enhance realization and its efficiency.

The foregoing is currently realized with one overview—a table of contents with style TOC 3 linked to style Central and TOC 4 linked to Academic and Main. The general reader is directed to TOC 3 content (larger black font). The other readers are directed to TOC 3 and TOC 4 content (smaller indigo font). Academic readers would omit division The Way. Those interested primarily in realization would omit division Worldview.

Plan for print and published versions

A print version can be derived from this web essay. Further needs include:

▪ An index with page number references.

Especially for published print versions.

▪ Eliminate the resources section (except perhaps to summarize general reading and experience).

▪ So as to eliminate the need for external links provide the address to resources.html—‘for resources enter the following to your browser address bar http://www.horizons-2000.org/resources.html. Future external links to the main text may be dealt with in the same way.