Intellectual Pickles

In this Dharma talk, Bob points out how we pursue absolute truths. He elaborates on the origin of the Indo-European language and its ability to influence our perception of reality. Diving into a natural tendency of separating self from others and living organisms from the environment. He questions what makes a mistake and expands on our search for puzzles. Bob closes off the talk with how we may continue to grow.

Audio quality may not be optimal. Headphones are recommended.

Transcript

I'd kind of like to look at how do we find ourselves in some of the pickles that we find ourselves in.

And part of it is because you guys have brains.

Otherwise,

They would be a non-issue.

But because you have brains,

We get caught up and trapped in an intellectual understanding of things when these things are not always understandable from an intellectual point of view.

In other words,

We wind up with the inability to reconcile some of these things intellectually.

We can find ourselves in a pickle.

So,

From the Taoist point of view,

Taoism illustrates absolutes.

But in our brains,

We think that absolute this completely knocks that out.

It doesn't.

Georg Cantor's set theory demonstrated that there are many infinities.

We just have to live with that.

By the same token,

The Tao gives us absolute truths.

When I'm trying to reconcile these absolute truths,

I think a set of absolute truths is knocking out something else.

It isn't.

Just as there are lots of infinities,

Just as there are a number of things that can be called reality,

There are a number of absolute truths that are absolute.

They cannot be any other way.

One of my favorite illustrations of this,

Maybe the fundamental illustration of this,

Involves the early 20th century,

What's called the Saper-Wart hypothesis.

The Saper-Wart hypothesis was kind of hot at the beginning of the 20th century,

Kind of lost some of its influence during the 20th century.

But in the late 20th century,

It's been re-examined and found to be not as great an effect as Saper-Wart thought,

But it absolutely is a major effect.

The Saper-Wart hypothesis was basically that our language partly determines our reality and our ability to perceive certain things.

Now,

In the 19th century,

There were a number of linguists that were looking at Sanskrit,

Including the two brothers Grimm,

Yes,

Those of Grimm's fairy tales,

They were excellent linguistic scholars.

And it turns out that basically all Western languages are derived from Sanskrit.

They are now called Indo-European languages.

What's the main issue with Indo-European languages and Sanskrit?

Sanskrit has a tripartite function of language.

It has a subject,

An object,

And a predicate.

Part of what gets us in trouble intellectually is when we're faced with some great fucking mystery,

Like how can you have a single God,

Like say in Christianity,

A monotheistic God,

But in three fucking parts.

Why is that a mystery and how does it come about?

Primarily because of our linguistic foundation.

In other words,

We've internalized this linguistic foundation and we never ever ever question it because,

Well,

Why would I unless somebody like me is pointing it out.

So I get into these little intellectual pickles or conundrums because I'm,

And it has been a conundrum for several thousand years,

Of course.

How does it come to be that you got a single God?

Are you a monotheist or not?

Yes,

I am.

Well,

If you're a fucking monotheist,

How can you have three Gods?

Oh,

Great mystery.

Simplest,

Most comprehensive version is you've internalized Indo-European languages.

They're fundamentally a part of how you see the world.

And when you run up against something like a supposed monotheistic God with three parts,

This is irreconcilable.

So if it's irreconcilable,

What am I to do?

Well,

I got to go on faith.

The fuck you do?

It's not a faith issue.

This is a fucking linguistic issue.

Once you understand that your internalized Indo-European linguistic base is telling you that there's something missing.

So what is it?

There's nothing missing.

The only thing that's going on is that my internalization of Indo-European language is causing me to say I can't reconcile a monotheistic Christian God with three Gods,

The Father,

The Son,

And the Holy Spirit.

The church has never been able to reconcile this,

Or if they have,

It's secret.

They may know fully well what I'm talking about,

But it's secret.

One of the consequences partly of this linguistic issue is that I have a tendency to separate stuff,

Things,

Entities from everything else.

So let's look at self and other.

One of those absolutes we have to deal with is if I have a self,

I have to have an other.

Just like if I'm going to have an up,

I have to have a down.

If I'm going to have a right,

I have to have a left.

If I'm going to have a fast,

I have to have a slow.

If I'm going to have an ugly,

I have to have an aesthetically beautiful.

If I'm going to have wides,

I have to have foolish.

So if I'm going to have an inside,

I have to have an outside.

Where does my inside usually end?

Usually at my skin.

I say I'm a bag of shit with stuff inside.

But if I cannot have an inside without an outside,

This is inside,

This is outside.

Where really is my outside?

It's everything that I don't consider my inside.

I mean everything.

You cannot find a place to start or stop your outside.

Therefore,

Your outside extends all the way to the end of the visible universe.

You cannot find a place to start and stop it.

Go ahead and give it a go.

Now what does this look like from a biological point of view?

It's that I am a solo entity called self and my delusion is what I observe,

What I feel very strongly is that I'm an object in the environment.

That's a very powerful feeling I have.

It's a very powerful delusion.

There is no such thing as an organism without an environment.

There is no such thing as an environment without an organism.

I can't go to some fucking vacant planet in some other system and say,

Oh,

That's a perfect environment.

If there's nothing living there,

It is not an environment.

No.

I'm not a biologist.

I can only tell you what the biologist is telling me.

It's not an environment.

It's only an environment once an organism,

A living organism enters it.

Since there cannot be a living organism without an environment nor an environment without a living organism,

Why do I separate them?

Why do I see myself as an entity in an environment?

Because this is not how this is working.

This is how I might feel about it or get little pieces of insight into this where I'm thinking,

Oh,

Yeah,

I see.

Now I understand.

If you think you're an entity in an environment,

You don't understand.

The minute you are in an environment of some sort,

You and the environment are automatically changing each other.

Your mere presence in an environment can have radical consequences on that environment.

And then the changed environment now has radical consequences or consequences on you.

It's not a one way trip where you're observing the environment.

You are the environment.

In other words,

It's your outside.

I don't think this is too big a leap.

Your outside is your outside and it's every bit as much as you if you have a you in there,

Basically from Indo-European linguistic convention.

An organism and environment are automatically interacting and changing each other the minute the organism enters that environment.

And nobody knows what the consequences or outcome of that interaction is going to be.

In other words,

All evolution is driven by mistakes,

Copying mistakes.

Well,

Were they mistakes if they resulted in us?

Possibly.

There are enzymes in the DNA whose only job is to go in there and cut up that DNA.

Then there are enzymes in the DNA which have nothing to do but go in there and repair what was cut out.

They try to put back what was cut out.

Often they make mistakes.

There's copying mistakes going from DNA to RNA in case of a multi-celled organism.

So are they mistakes?

From our point of view,

Of course they're not mistakes because they resulted in us.

How might you determine what is a mistake and what is not?

Now this evolved situation ended up with my brain,

My evolved brain.

And my evolved brain perceives certain things.

But what my evolved brain perceives is a function of all sorts of different variables,

Including language.

I would say especially language,

But including language.

So if I'm fucking creating this insoluble puzzle,

Does that sound at all familiar?

Creating koans?

Who's creating the koans?

Who's creating these insoluble puzzles?

Oh,

Great mystery.

You can't be too intellectual solving these puzzles and so on.

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah.

That's all true.

But it's also me setting it up,

Me generating it because of what I've internalized partly is language and interpreting what I observe as,

Oh yeah,

That's really going on.

The Zen master is going to reject all that stuff.

I'm setting up the puzzle and then saying,

What the fuck?

Where'd that puzzle come from?

How can I resolve that sucker?

Looks irresolvable.

Well,

Many of these issues are irresolvable.

That's why the Catholic church or something says,

Oh,

It's a great mystery.

Isn't it a great mystery,

You fucking dunderheads?

Did I say that out loud?

Many times.

Huh?

Many times.

What'd she say?

Many times.

Oh,

Many times?

Pointy hats.

If I always keep in mind that I am the one setting up these mysteries and where these mysteries are coming from,

They're not mysteries at all.

Except I'm a mystery-loving animal.

I'm a puzzle-solving animal.

I love setting up the puzzles and the mysteries and trying to get answers.

If that wasn't an issue,

There wouldn't be such a thing as a New York Times crossword puzzle,

For example.

It'd all be a 10-word children's crossword thing.

If I was only out to solve crossword puzzles,

Hey,

There's a whole book for eight-year-olds.

I could solve them instantly.

Really?

Yeah.

Would that satisfy my brain?

Absolutely not.

You put the London Times or the New York Times on there or whatever,

Now I got a challenge.

That's what I want,

A challenge.

I always have to keep in mind that I'm the one creating the challenge.

There's obviously millions and millions of people who ever touch a crossword puzzle.

Why am I working on crossword puzzles?

As I've said,

Ad nauseam,

The funniest part of all is the fucking answers are on page 12.

All they have to do is turn to page 12 and I can fill it all in.

Big score.

Really?

Of course,

I wouldn't go to page 12 and get the answers.

No matter what I think or believe,

Satisfaction is not in being able to get the answers.

The satisfaction I'm deriving is being able to work on these mysteries because they are mysteries.

I get enthralled by them.

Oh,

That's a crossword.

Enthralled.

Ethné.

Surf.

Slave.

There is not one goddamn thing wrong with deciding you're going to do something like a London Times crossword puzzle.

I'm not wrong with that.

Separating self from environment is similar to trying to come up with the answers to the London Times crossword puzzle.

The answer is there.

My problem is,

If I have been told about the Tao of absolutes,

I think,

Well,

If that's absolutely true,

That's it.

Because there can be one only absolute truth.

This is false.

Hopefully,

With Zazun practice,

I begin to look at these things as what they are.

Something to wonder at.

Not something to grab me by the balls and not turn me loose and make me go get drunk and shoot heroin.

So,

As long as you're not being an adolescent fuck and you're using adult decisions,

I have no qualms of any kind with whatever you decide as an adult.

As I've said it over and over,

Developmental psychologists come to the conclusion a long time ago that most of us do not behave as fully grown-up adults.

We're behaving at adolescent level,

Which means we can have abstract thought and so on.

According to the developmental psychologists,

The vast majority of humans do not actually grow up to be adults.

They get stuck in this adolescent part,

Stage of development and most do not get past that.

Here,

You have an opportunity to get past it.

You have an opportunity to finish growing up.

Or at least,

You actually don't finish,

But go further along the path of developmental psychology in which you have an opportunity to begin thinking like an adult,

Not like a fucking adolescent.

I believe the federal drug website which said that MDMA,

Ecstasy was causing major brain damage in people that were using ecstasy regular,

Which was all fucking horse shit.

Now it's on the official federal drug information site and for ten years that information was on that drug site and the federal government knew it was false because the entire,

All of the research that suggested that had to be retracted from the journals.

It was caught real quickly because the researcher got the wrong drugs.

Researchers thought he was working with MDMA and was actually working with methamphetamine.

So every bit of his research had to be retracted,

Which is how science works,

But the fact that the federal drug site left photos of brains that were supposed to have been trashed by MDMA,

But were in fact trashed by methamphetamine use,

What does that say about the federal government in there giving me correct information?

You have to make the decision as an adult what to do and whatever that decision is,

I am absolutely good with.

So,

I'm very happy to see everyone.

I hope to see you again.