On Fri, 15 Sep 2000 16:21:16 -0400, Philip Thrift <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

I wrote:
>>I would go so far as to say that models (pictures abstactions)
>>are the only kind of reality available.
>>
>>Every "thing", object, reality or "truth" you can talk about
>>is necessarily a object in your mind.
>

Philip:
>...
> While they were building the fire, Hogen heard them arguing
> about subjectivity and objectivity.  He joined them and said:
> "There is a big stone.  Do you consider it to be inside or
> outside your mind?"
>
> One of the monks replied: "From the Buddhist viewpoint
> everything is an objectification of mind, so I would say that
> the stone is inside my mind."
>
> "Your head must feel very heavy," observed Hogen,
> "if you are carrying around a stone like that in your mind."

I think, this is exactely the strength of Zen (as far as I got to know
about
it) that it challenges the usual ways we employ to thinking.
Almost any way to think of or regard something.
By koans and somehow puzzling or "funny" stories.
Always beeing a bit "meta".

For me, the above text "treats" (in this way) the habit to employ a
too
simplified way of thinking about "subjectivity and objectivity".
"objectification takes place in the mind".
It's too simple to see "in my mind" and "outside my mind" in some kind
of
external view (where again, mind is seen in an external picture ,
located in
the head of one).
Time to realize, that this again generates the next paradoxicity, from
the
view of an external observer viewing the monks working (how the text
has
arranged it first).
...

I think, most people use to employ the picture, that there exists one
kind
or 3-dimensional world with objects and persons beeing or moveing in.
Time is flowing, and nice predictions can be made about how objects
interact
with each other (apple will fall down from the tree and so on).
"the" "reality".

And then, the brains of the persons therein have their vision of the
whole
thing, matching more or less and trying to make assumptions and models
about
the "world". Beeing more or less "realistic".

Fine.
And works as far as the views of the persons tend to have matching
properties. And as far the results to expect deal with objects (and
relations) well defined in that model (like 3-dimensinal movements,
distances, velocity and so on).
What not matches well is "weird".

But i think that you also can see clearly that this whole vision I
just
described, how the world (and objects therein relate...) was, is *too*
just a kind of view, a model of one (or more) humans.
And always happening inside a brain. Now in in mine, then in yours
(now!).
:-)

There are varying visions of the "world". Even every profession has a
different view (a salesman sees business opportunities, a surveyor
sees
landscapes, a medical sees bodies, a computer engineer sees
information
coherences...).
Women for example tend to see a "world" which consists much more of
feelings
and social relationships as many men can understand.

...
Well, the stone inside or outside the brain is the Zen-typical
movement from
one frame into annother meta-frame.
Literally. The Stone moves into the mind.
But where is *this*- the mind. That's the trick.

Lovely Zen paradoxes.

cheers

Amadeus