Solipsism and Nondualism

The Wikipedia entry (which seems expanded since I last read it) reads:

"Nondualism superficially resembles solipsism, but from a nondual perspective solipsism mistakenly fails to consider subjectivity itself. Upon careful examination of the referent of "I," i.e. one's status as a separate observer of the perceptual field, one finds that one must be in as much doubt about it, too, as solipsists are about the existence of other minds and the rest of "the external world." (One way to see this is to consider that, due to the conundrum posed by one's own subjectivity becoming a perceptual object to itself, there is no way to validate one's "self-existence" except through the eyes of others'”the independent existence of which is already solipsistically suspect!)"

Isn't that interesting? I recently had an insight into this that I wanted to share, but first I want to hear peoples reactions to the above.

D

Where is Jake and why isn't he on this yet?

For starters, this paragraph homogenizes two disparate things-- a philosophical stance (or character fault, depends on how the word is used) and the expression of an insight borne of practice. So, the 'superficial resemblance' is the one posited by the statement itself, as opposed to something actual. It's quite a stretch to to conflate the stance that 'I' is all that's real, with 'I' is not separate from anything and therefore nonexistent as a fixed boundary.

Guys, chime in here so we can hear what Haquan has to say.
Kate

Brilliant, Kate. I must add, though, that a couple of years ago a friend of mine accused me of solipsism while I was trying to express my experience of not-self. So, it is possible to confuse the two because of a communication breakdown.

Kenneth

This will be a riff on Kate's post:

I drafted and almost posted a long reply but decided against posting it. I think solipsism is a sort of philosopher's trick, useful maybe when debunking other philosophical musings but not for much else. It's a kind of tautology that leads nowhere and has no practical value. It cannot be proven or disproven. Practice oriented insights about not-self, on the other hand, are quite useful and real and describe the nature of things as they really are. It's very different to say "everything that exists is a product of my mind" as opposed to "everything that exists is ultimately one thing." The first is philosophical, the second epistemological.

We are not, in my observation, alone in the sense that we all represent solipsisitic unconnected universes 'cause that would mean there are billions of those... or just one, which begs a bunch of other existential questions. We are, in my obervation, unique entities comprised of two unique aspects; a view from our personal sense organs and the mind activity that those sense perceptions generate.

I can invite another human being to experience not-self as a practical matter based on their own observation. That's what the Buddha has challenged us all to do. I can't invite another human being to experience solipsism in that same way. The latter is a belief, and only and forever that.

Interesting topic David!

With reference to your quote, I would first say that self-existence is self-evident. I cannot deny my existence rationally, because I must exist in order to doubt my own existence (Descartes' cogito ergo sum).

Then, that others can only see our phenomenal appearance, never our noumenal self. From the point of view of Advaita or Zen, the Self itself can never be seen, since pure subjectivity is not an object. As pure knowingness, it can only be. To know itself as an object, it must reflect its light on its own manifestation. As an analogy, the sun that can only know its light through its reflection against objects.

Finally, what solipsism calls the self (Max Stirner), is what non-dual traditions call the ego, the ahamkara or the 7th consciousness. The Self of non-dual traditions is the only reality. It contains everything and everything is its manfestation.

The main difference between non-duality and solipsism is therefore that non-dual traditions do not deny the existence of a world outside the Self (or Buddha-nature), but see it as its dreamlike (empty) manifestation. The waves do not have a separate existence apart from the ocean, but the ocean contains (and does not deny the phenomenal appearance of) the waves.

This is going to be a difficult insight to translate.

First, let me describe the problem. The foundational issue, in some respects, is the difficulty of translating intuitive insight - a mostly "massively parallel" process into language and rational terms. So part of what one does is that when one has an insight is attempt to describe it to themselves. This is the basic function of philosophy carried out at an individual level (as opposed to a cultural level which is much less useful). One of the inherent problems as well is that the conceptual formulations are formed after the fact - when not directly experiencing the truth of the insight, for lack of better words.

Now I can say that personally, some of my earlier nondual experiences resemble or could suggest a kind of solipsistic world-view. This is sometimes suggested in statements about suchness, such as "*This* is all there is, and all you will ever know." (Brad Warner). It also recollects Daniel's reaction to the movie analogy - "Not only do you realize it's just a movie, but that there is nothing but the movie."

Given that it is quite apparent that the "movie" is experienced from an embodied perspective (at least fairly consistently and most of the time, providing a kind of continuity and context to experience) - if there is "nothing but the movie" then doesn't it make sense in some respects to conclude that "*you* are all there is"?

I've always intellectually rejected this view - feeling it was morally problematic, yet have had trouble reconciling it with the gut intuition that "Everything has the same inside." To break it down with less subtlety, If I am Everything, why is my experience of this limited? Why do I not have other people's memories, see through their eyes? If it is all a dream, why then can I not change it completely at whim?

Continued

Continued from #5.

Do other people exist, if I do not?

My basic solution to this was to "take reality on it's own terms" and trust my intuition to handle situations as appropriate. That is, not to worry about it. But the fact that I never fully resolved the paradox bugged me. Certainly, there are many aspects of reality that are evidently intersubjective - but there are also clear limits to it.

When you turn your attention to "awareness itself," certainly that seems transcendent of all particular experiences, stories, contexts, or points of view. There is a kind of Universal Perspective that is intuited. Yet on the other hand, there is one particular embodied point of view or perspective (my life) that seems to dominate my experience.

The process of self-enquiry reveals a hall of mirrors, where no self can be found. I guess my insight was that somehow the Universal Perspective was of the same nature as the Self. That in a sense, there is no God in the same way that annatta is true. That Reality is the hall of mirrors that composes God's mind.

Hmmmm... yeah, that's very interesting. A couple of comments:

Experience of non-dual awareness tells me that there is, very clearly, stuff outside the movie most people take to be "my life and experience." There's more going on than meets the superficial eye, so to speak. "I" am definitely a part of that but "I" am not by any means the entirety of that. It is simply not all available to me (akin to what you described, David, in that you don't have awareness of the thoughts of others). Therefore, it's not solipsistic.

I don't believe in God but if we substitute for that the word "universe" I think I might agree with what you're saying -- but I need to ponder it a little more.

One little argument about language - this "hall of mirrors" people describe in regard to not-self has never sat well with me. I can't bring myself to describe things that way because it implies an infinity of depth to the self, self, self, self.... illusions. I don't perceive it that way. When I look at "me" and try to see the layers of "me" I can't find any more than two. I can observe me observing me. I cannot observe me observing me observing me. Make sense?

hmmm...

[not to be a brat about this, but] Which one observes the me observing me?

I think the dizzying effect of this inquiry is what the 'hall of mirrors' language is getting at. My weird personal reference for this includes '50's era packaging of Tom Sawyer carrying a bag of 'Tom Sawyer Potato Chips' with its picture of Tom Sawyer carrying a bag of...

And a wonderful children's story called "The Mouse and His Child" where at some point the dilemma facing the protagonists is to be solved by finding 'the last visible dog' on a can of similarly labelled dog food.

It occurs to me as I write that maybe labelling something 'solipcism' is sometimes a refusal to see self-inquiry as at all useful, a refusal to engage the practice. There was a time when meditation was considered selfish navel-gazing-- probably there are some quarters where it still is.

Under the Bodhi tree, Shakyamuni Buddha realized perfect enlightenment on seeing that morning star and thought "I and all beings on earth together attain enlightenment at the same time".

The Buddha didn't say, I have attained enlightenment and I alone exist.

I love Dogen's take on this:

"As all things are buddha-dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, and birth and death, and there are buddhas and sentient beings.

As the myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death.

The buddha way is, basically, leaping clear of the many and the one; thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas.

Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread."

(Eihei Dogen, Genjokoan)

Synchronicities as always.

This subject or some variant has been going on in me for a couple of days now. I wrote down my understanding this morning in my journal, and after reading it recognized that it was 'non-dualistic'. Now, I see this post from David.

I think I'll just copy and paste my journal entry here. This is just talk of course. My actual practice right now consists in raising my right hand and lowering it over a period of 30 to 60 minutes. Not much philosophizing in there. But anyway.

Every experience is mentally generated--every sensation, every feeling, every perception, coming together to form rich and complex patterns of experience--these are all mentally generated.

(This is not to say 'self-generated'. Self-or the experiences commonly referred to as self-is also mentally generated. It is a just a small subset of all that is being generated--an effective and convenient set of organizational algorithms that works well at certain stages of development.)

As such, every experience is actually an invitation; an invitation to greater intimacy with the level or aspect of mind that is generating that experience. This perspective is known as the path of wisdom.

We can approach the circumstances and experiences in our lives as completely external. This is a perfectly valid and workable way to live life. It works fine. Not necessarily to make one happy, but as far as living long enough to reproduce, it's fine.

Someone is rude to me. I'm in an argument. Someone criticizes me. I get a wonderful gift. It rains. It snows. It's sunny. And in connection with these: I'm happy. I'm threatened. I'm sad. I'm pleased. I'm defensive. I'm enraged. I'm cold. I'm comfortable. I'm too hot.

If I don't follow Mind beneath a certain depth then I can understand all of these things as a set of interactions between a self and a set of external circumstances. 'THAT over there happened to ME and now I'm feeling THIS'.

That view leads, logically enough, to a strong desire for favorable external circumstances that will lead to good experiences. Nothing could be more normal.

But what if, when you have the experience of 'THAT over there happened to ME and now I'm feeling THIS', you realize that 'THAT', 'ME', and 'THIS' are all aspects of the same thing called 'MIND'?

That could change things quite a bit.

Another metaphor:

I love eyes. Whenever I see a pair of eyes and I smile at them, I find that good things come to me. So I smile whenever I see eyes, and in this way many wonderful things have come to me: gifts, affection, support, touch, and so on.

I hate fists. Whenever I see a balled-up fists, pain is coming. I grimace, tense up, and prepare to defend myself as best I can.

One day I see two fists, but this time I decide to look at them more closely. I follow them up and see that they are connected to arms. I go further and find that those arms are attached to a trunk. Looking up further, I see a neck, and then I go even further and discover a pair of eyes! I smile at the eyes, and the fighting does not come.

The eyes here represent intimacy with mind. The fists represent circumstances (in this case challenging circumstances) that we encounter. Not knowing that they are connected, we can react to the fists as an isolated negative phenomenon unconnected to anything else. With luck and wisdom however we can approach those fists as invitations to make contact with another set of eyes.

This view recontextualizes the act of experiencing.

One key point to remember here is that MIND is much more than self. It is more intimate, comprehensive, and inclusive than self. It just doesn't feel that way because of some idiosyncrasies of how we are set up/configured in the early stages of life. Just a trick of perspective. Like the sun's appearing to rise and set, and the earth's seeming to be standing still. That illusion of movement and perception gave rise to the geocentric view of the Cosmos. Similarly, the way that mind organizes perception around convenient mental locuses or trellaceworks gives rise to a 'self-centered' view of experience. As greater intimacy with mind develops, that view naturally falls away. Not the locus itself, it was and still is real and useful; but just the view that a single locus (or even many locuses) is the center of things rather than a convenient organizing device.

---

Anyway, that was the journal entry from this morning. I wanted to share it because it seemed serendipitously related to the topic.

"Which one observes the me observing me?"

Who's askin'?

"
When I look at "me" and try to see the layers of "me" I can't find any more than two. I can observe me observing me. I cannot observe me observing me observing me. Make sense?

"

To go ahead and be a brat for just a moment, didn't you just do that ("observe me observing me observing me") in writing this?

To be fair, it usually does boil down to two perspectives, but certainly multiple, and multiplying perspectives are possible. My own explorations of self-enquiry have certainly contained themes of infinite regress in the past. Far from implying an "infinity of depth to the self" it's made me feel that it's pointless to keep asking - that one can never arrive at a final answer.

I'm loving everyone's contributions to this post! I'll have more to say later today.

By the way, the original quote from Wikipedia was from the article on Nondualism.
D

About self-inquiry, from what I can tell from my own humble experience as well as from the teachings of Ramana Maharishi and Poonjaji, the point is not to reach an altered state of consciousness, nor to have a me observing a me observing a me, observing a me until something great happens.

It is much simpler than that. The trick is just what they call hunting the "I". When we say I do, I feel or I experience, we inquire into "what is this I ?". So we look for this "I" in our body, outside the body and cannot find it. We look for it in our thoughts and see that this "I" is just a thought. The thought "I" rises from empty awareness, abides in it and returns to it. This empty awareness observing the thought "I" is neither the body, nor the mind. Nothing can be added without adding thoughts to what is already pure and empty. So we just abide as empty non-local awareness and observe the show (movie) taking place within awareness. The purpose is just that. Getting back to the natural state, naked awareness prior to all experiences.

The method is to keep doing it as much as possible throughout the day, until the habit of identifying awareness with its content (thoughts, body feelings, perceptions). Eventually, the vasanas or grasping habits should dry out and leave us in the natural state 24/7.

Then one can observe the rising of the "I" between deep sleep and the waking state. Deep sleep, dreaming and the waking state are all states of consciousness. The Self (or no-self) is pure cognizing emptiness prior to consciousness. Everything takes place within consciousness, but consciousness comes and goes within this pure cognizing emptiness or primordial awareness.

That's more or less how they see it (if my understanding is correct).

"To be fair, it usually does boil down to two perspectives, but certainly multiple, and multiplying perspectives are possible."

I do brat on a regular basis, David

And not to belabor this point but I'm worried that I might be observationally challenged. So.... while I can certainly conceive of an almost infinite series (hall of mirrors) of versions of me watching me watching me watching me watching me, I cannot actually observe that in practice. I can only observe me watching me. After the second "me" (tips hat to Kate by using quotation marks) the next one, and the one after that, and so on, are purely conceptual, like those pictures Kate mentioned.

I think I may be taking issue this way too far down the road for most folks but I also have a nagging intuition that this is actually an important point, though maybe only to .... me.

Here is a good example of self-inquiry by Mooji (Ramana Maharishi lineage) illustrating the process:

"
Here is a good example of self-inquiry by Mooji (Ramana Maharishi lineage) illustrating the process:



"

Well, It's possible that I haven't practiced self-enquiry in a technically correct fashion, or that that is the best way to express what I'm getting at.

What happens when the mind takes itself as object? Try that one, and you may have a better glimpse of the meaning.
D

Same thing, yes. When I take the mind as an object, everything is included within awareness without a subject or an object. Full stop. Going further adds new thoughts or intentions bringing back a subject and an object.

What is contained in this awareness is my subjective movie. I cannot live your life. But this "me" and this "you" is also just a thought. No one can find a thing that is "me" standing outside awareness. Yet, that which cannot be seen but that is witnessing everything coming and going within itself is no-thing.

Since it cannot be found or delimited, is it limited by time and space?.
Since it is impersonal, could we all share the same primordial awareness?

The same primordial awareness might be watching many films at the same time.
Those fingers typing on this MacBook right now is one film, one wave particular on the ocean of awareness.

In this sense, all is one from the perspective of the absolute, yet the relative take innumerable forms.

To put is as a Zen koan:
If all things return to the one, where does the one return? The computer, my wife's cloths on the table...

Alex, you seem to have written some very nice poetry there

"

The same primordial awareness might be watching many films at the same time.
Those fingers typing on this MacBook right now is one film, one wave particular on the ocean of awareness.

In this sense, all is one from the perspective of the absolute, yet the relative take innumerable forms.

To put is as a Zen koan:
If all things return to the one, where does the one return? The computer, my wife's cloths on the table...
"

Yes.

Now we're getting close.
My own experience is a constant slipping of perspectives - I think the analogy of "hall of mirrors" is pretty good. The Taoist always compared the Mind to a mirror. (Another related question is "What becomes aware of awareness?")

The question is, of course, why do we not always experience watching many movies? Sometimes, it seems as though we do - intersubjective experiences like making love or embracing. Much of the time (observing or trying to find the mind) it is slipping perspective/reflections of the mind feeling itself, spontaneously producing content.

The Universal Mind is the same, and it is not separate from our mind ultimately.

And the Universal Mind (and the statement above) is also, like "me" or "you," only a thought.

I really liked the quote from Dogen earlier, by the way. It seems that the crux of the biscuit is the relationship between Each and All.

Yes, that's the mirror analogy. In Mahayana Buddhism they call it Universal Mirror Prajna.
It is expressed poetically in Tozan's Second Rank (for Chris ):

An old crone, having just awakened, comes upon an ancient mirror:
That which is clearly reflected in front of her face is none other than her old likeness.
Don't lose sight of your face again and go chasing your shadow.

As to the question "why do we not always experience watching many movies?", Buddhism explains it with karma. Alyavijnana contains individual karma and plays one movie at a time (to the same person). I don't have an answer to this question. Advaita adepts would say that while dreaming at night, we are also stuck in one body. Is it convincing? I don't know. I therefore leave it to philosophers.

Now as to "what becomes aware of awareness?", it is clear that a no-thing cognizes the coming and going of consciousness. It is also clear that we cannot see it directly, like the eye cannot see itself. What is fun is to meditate when one is very tired and take consciousness as an object of investigation. We can then witness being aware of falling asleep. Consciousness dies, yet awareness witnesses its fading away. Same when it comes back, there is a sense of discontinuity, but a form of presence remains, even during a momentary cessation of consciousness. That empty no-thing that cognizes the coming and going of consciousness is our true nature for Vedanta (The Kia?). Nisargadatta calls it the absolute state prior to consciousness. If he is right, this would allow us to understand why some Theravada schools consider that Cessation is Nirvana (in this case emptiness cognizing nothingness). Exploring this might help solve "the controversy".