Living in paradox

[asha176]

Can someone explain in detail what it means to live in paradox ?

-embrace both sides : light and darkness,body and soul,success and failure,life nd death. 

[Mason Riggle]

Paradox-

A paradox, also known as an antinomy, is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically unacceptable conclusion.

"This statement is false" is a paradoxical statement.  If it's true, it's false. If it's false, it's true. 

One real life example is the paradox of 'self'.  We might for example, say something like, 'there is no self'.  When we look for the "I" that we feel like we are, we can reliably not find one.  There is no 'self' that resides inside you somewhere.  But when we ask, 'who is it that knows there is no self', or 'who is it that can look for a self and not find one?', we are entered into a paradox. This paradox is often turned on it's face, to become 'I am everything' or 'I am God', usually with the realization that there is a 'self', it's just not a separate 'self', and the paradox goes away. 

In your examples, I would refer to those as 'dualities', rather than paradoxes. What can be noticed about dualities, is that they are typically defined relative to each other. Light is just 'not dark', success is just 'not failure', life is just 'not death'.  Recognizing that these 'dualities' are not actually 'two different things', but rather, a way to describe '1 thing' using relative (and often dual) terms, is a path towards transcending the dualities.  I like the example of thinking about reality as a coffee cup, but imagine that all there is, is the coffee cup (there is nothing else). Now imagine trying to explain the coffee cup to someone without anything to compare it to. There is nothing that is 'not the coffee cup' which we can reference to describe it.  But, through 'duality', we can describe it.. it has an inside and an outside. It's light in color, rather than dark. It's hard, rather than soft.  Notice here that we could not describe the coffee cup just in terms of 'the inside of the cup' without any notion of what 'the outside of a coffee cup' is.  

Reality, which is 'infinite', can only 'seem like something' (it can't be described, even to itself), through 'duality'.  Reality has to 'pretend' some arbitrary 'limits' or 'descriptions' or 'dualities', to 'know' itself.   

For Reality to 'seem like some finite something' (this vs that), it has to pretend it's not an infinite everything (1 thing). 

Edited March 2, 2021 by Mason Riggle

[commie]

2 hours ago, Mason Riggle said:

In your examples, I would refer to those as 'dualities', rather than paradoxes.

Right on.

2 hours ago, Mason Riggle said:

This paradox is often turned on it's face, to become 'I am everything' or 'I am God', usually with the realization that there is a 'self', it's just not a separate 'self', and the paradox goes away.

That is avoiding the paradox, not living in it. Intellectual god-bothers are often merely clinging to bad logic.

[Nahm]

21 hours ago, asha176 said:

Can someone explain in detail what it means to live in paradox ?

-embrace both sides : light and darkness,body and soul,success and failure,life nd death. 

To live in paradox is already a misnomer of the duality (thoughts) of life & death, similarly, the dualities of light & dark, body & soul, success & failure are beliefs. The overarching belief is that thoughts have meaning, but it’s smoke & mirrors. Meaning is contingent on belief. To believe ‘north’ has meaning, is to miss it’s a pointing, to ‘not south’. Likewise, ‘south’ points to ‘not north’. Without duality, there is no meaning. In recognition of this, one creates freely, unbound. When believing dualistic thoughts, awareness be-leaving awareness, love be-leaving love, creator be-leaving creatorship. 

[snowyowl]

On 02/03/2021 at 5:05 PM, Mason Riggle said:

One real life example is the paradox of 'self'.  We might for example, say something like, 'there is no self'.  When we look for the "I" that we feel like we are, we can reliably not find one.  There is no 'self' that resides inside you somewhere.  But when we ask, 'who is it that knows there is no self', or 'who is it that can look for a self and not find one?', we are entered into a paradox. This paradox is often turned on it's face, to become 'I am everything' or 'I am God', usually with the realization that there is a 'self', it's just not a separate 'self', and the paradox goes away. 

I've been contemplating this recently. The notion of 'me' is a self-reference from the outset, so we're on slippery ground. I try to find myself as an object of knowledge, but I am also the subject looking, within a subject-object paradigm. 

"There is no 'self' that resides inside you somewhere."   'Looking inside me' is like dissecting myself up to find myself, when I was here already. It's the reductionist mode of looking which hides the very soul I want to find. I'm wanting to re-integrate by cutting apart, no wonder it appears there's no-one there.

Edited March 3, 2021 by snowyowl

[asha176]

On 2/3/2021 at 9:48 PM, asha176 said:

Can someone explain in detail what it means to live in paradox ?

-embrace both sides : light and darkness,body and soul,success and failure,life nd death. 

On 2/3/2021 at 10:35 PM, Mason Riggle said:

Paradox-

A paradox, also known as an antinomy, is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically unacceptable conclusion.

"This statement is false" is a paradoxical statement.  If it's true, it's false. If it's false, it's true. 

One real life example is the paradox of 'self'.  We might for example, say something like, 'there is no self'.  When we look for the "I" that we feel like we are, we can reliably not find one.  There is no 'self' that resides inside you somewhere.  But when we ask, 'who is it that knows there is no self', or 'who is it that can look for a self and not find one?', we are entered into a paradox. This paradox is often turned on it's face, to become 'I am everything' or 'I am God', usually with the realization that there is a 'self', it's just not a separate 'self', and the paradox goes away. 

In your examples, I would refer to those as 'dualities', rather than paradoxes. What can be noticed about dualities, is that they are typically defined relative to each other. Light is just 'not dark', success is just 'not failure', life is just 'not death'.  Recognizing that these 'dualities' are not actually 'two different things', but rather, a way to describe '1 thing' using relative (and often dual) terms, is a path towards transcending the dualities.  I like the example of thinking about reality as a coffee cup, but imagine that all there is, is the coffee cup (there is nothing else). Now imagine trying to explain the coffee cup to someone without anything to compare it to. There is nothing that is 'not the coffee cup' which we can reference to describe it.  But, through 'duality', we can describe it.. it has an inside and an outside. It's light in color, rather than dark. It's hard, rather than soft.  Notice here that we could not describe the coffee cup just in terms of 'the inside of the cup' without any notion of what 'the outside of a coffee cup' is.  

Reality, which is 'infinite', can only 'seem like something' (it can't be described, even to itself), through 'duality'.  Reality has to 'pretend' some arbitrary 'limits' or 'descriptions' or 'dualities', to 'know' itself.   

For Reality to 'seem like some finite something' (this vs that), it has to pretend it's not an infinite everything (1 thing). 

How do we transcend duality . Example with respect to success and failure in our lives ?

[Mason Riggle]

6 hours ago, asha176 said:

How do we transcend duality . Example with respect to success and failure in our lives ?

The first problem here lies in the question 'how do we transcend duality?', because 'we' implies 'separateness' from 'something other than we', which is another duality.  'we' (or 'I' or 'you') can't transcend duality, so long as there is a 'we'.  'non-dual' means 1.  No separation. 

Success and Failure are just stories (imaginary dualities).  How can you know what a cup is in 'non-dual' terms? You can't. The 'cup' only exists as duality (something that is separate and 'described')- that which is the cup, and that which is 'not the cup'. 

Reality is 'non-dual'... but you can not experience 'non-dual' reality, because for there to be a 'you' separate from 'that which is not you', there is duality.  Reality can only be 'known' or 'experienced' or 'described' or 'created' or 'seem like something, rather than nothing/everything' as duality.