1. Again whose consciousness are we talking about? Whose
mindstreams? And you mean you do not see design in living things?
That the eyes are designed for sight? The heart designed to pump
blood etc etc? How much intelligent design is needed to even give a
person an artificial limb that can barely do what a normal arm can
do? To deny design in the face of the evidence is IMO a irrational
thing.
2. It's not that I don't get it, I just find it illogical.
You have yet to demonstrate how one can experience something
without an experiencer. It is logically absurd to say that
there is no writer writing what is being written for the purpose of
letting a non-existent reader do some reading. I think it is
contingent things taken to absurdity, a reductio ad absurdum
situation. Of course you can take all these as mere mental
exercises to be performed, like a thought experiment to see the
car-ness apart from the parts, or where is the "I" when you take a
human apart. But that's all there is to it, thought experiments. In
a sense, almost anything can "happen" when it is mere thought
experiments. But then it comes to reality. If I walk into a door,
it hurts. Not just conventionally saying it hurts as a parlance of
communication but literally! And if anyone think it does
not then perhaps he should try walking into a door. Of course one
can do more thought experiment and say the door does not have
inherent existence. But then when the thought is banished the door
is really there, and the blood is flowing.
1. There is no 'whose' mindstream, just many unique mindstreams.
Mindstreams are empty of self.
There is no designer. There is just a conglomerate of body parts
that form a function. Evidence shows evolution, not design.
2. What does getting hurt have anything to do with a self? There is
pain, no feeler.
http://nonduality.com/goode6.htm
The
Sevenfold Reasoning on the Selflessness of
Phenomena:
1.
The car is not inherently the same
as its parts.
2.
The car is not inherently
different from its parts.
3.
The car is not inherently
dependent upon its parts.
4.
The car is not inherently the
substratum upon which its parts depend.
5.
The car is not inherently the
possessor of its parts.
6.
The car is not inherently the mere
collection of its parts.
7.
The car is not inherently the
shape of its parts.
The
Sevenfold Reasoning on the Selflessness of
Persons:
The reasonings
on the selflessness of persons try to find the true
person. They search by trying to
isolate the inherent existence of the person in relation to the
parts the body/mind. For purposes of
one's meditation, the parts of the body/mind include everything
related to what one thinks of as one's self. It can be any physical, mental, moral or
psychological phenomenon whatsoever. We
might think of ourselves as a body, a mind, set of memories, or a
collection of character values, or something that essentially
includes all of these. The reasonings
go like this. With a firm sense of this
inherent existence in mind, we try to isolate it – is the inherent
existence of the self exactly the same as the parts of the
body/mind? Is it different from the
parts? These first two steps of the Sevenfold Reasoning logically
cover all the bases. The self is either
inherently the same as, or different from, the parts. The other steps of the reasonings are valuable to
go into because they keep the meditation from being purely an
intellectual exercise. We might, for
example, truly feel that the self owns the
body/mind. This is the conception to
get at, even though it is logically entailed by the self being
different from the body/mind. Once all
the reasonings are gone through in depth and the inherent existence
of the self is not found anywhere, this can upset one's conception
of the way things are. At first it is
disorienting and perhaps scary. Later,
it can be the source of great joy.
1.
The self is not inherently the
same as the parts of the body/mind.
2.
The self is not different from the
parts of the body/mind.
3.
The self is not dependent upon the
parts of the body/mind.
4.
The self is not inherently the
substratum upon which the parts of the body/mind
depend.
5.
The self is not inherently the
possessor of the parts of the body/mind.
6.
The self is not inherently the
mere collection of the parts of the body/mind.
7.
The self is not inherently the
shape of the parts of the body/mind.
(continued in the link)
