Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.
What's interesting is that here in southern Aus, it's mid summer, but the mood is the same, because with our summer comes incredible heat, fire, drought, death and desiccation. The horizon bends and warps in a Blood Meridian style heat haze of doom and despair, something huge and deadly lurks, brooding, ancient, demonic. It laughs at the attempt of civilisation here and I gather will one day gleefully consume it. Its why the natural rural Australian character is incredibly fatalistic and cyclical.
It seems that the time of Capricorn always brings this feeling whether hot or cold.
Speculation on metaphysics is mostly worthless because its unverifiable as you say, not only this, but the thicket of views is so dense that not even an infinite amount of lifetimes could lead to discursive victory in such matters.
However there are arbitrary certainties such as causality that come into play with these kinds of questions. That can be inferred and perhaps even intuited without much systematic entrenchment.
It’s not that there are any new composite elements being generated by incarnation, as all particulars have potential existence “before” they’re actualized in consciousness. This means that from the perspective of the ultimate, there is no such thing as “novel” phenomena, even if we make note of the vast diversity of beings and differences in the qualities of various lives. Existence and its categories are without any particular beginning and are ultimately generated “infinitely”, what we consider gain or loss is wholly provisional in respect to eternity.
That being said, fate or karma(causality) just continues in the direction or path that preceding causes have ordained. It matures in respect to “causes” and their subsequent conditions. It’s often why vocabulary surrounding these topics generally have agricultural nuances.
“Seeds”, “fruit”, “fructification”, etc. They are cognitive metaphors describing time and its internal mechanisms, that would be relatable to sedentary iron age peoples. Basically, a person, being, its life quality, and the details of their consciousness, etc, all “erupt” from the soil(potential). They are all nurtured and conditioned by the quality or even location of their planting. Instead of an idea of a particular soul that garners ethereal or metaphysical material in time, we see it that conditions themselves are all that there is. Conditioned existence is nothing but reactive and reflexive results of causes, which is their maturity. This is why the Dharmic positions tend to not suggest the notion of a “personal” or individuated soul or soul(s). In that way, a “soul” would just be the totality of psycho-physical properties(the five aggregates).
So what originally existed was causes and conditions, and what will persist, is more causes and conditions. This causality is without discernible beginning and in truth, is entirely “virtual” metaphysically speaking, as all phenomena is accounted for in registry by the three marks; emptiness, impermanence and suffering.
A being with right discernment and perfected wisdom, experiencing innumerable instances of their past lives or the past lives of others, knows that this process has gone on primordially with the potential to endure eternally.
Beings become gods, descend to hellish realms, are born as animals, humans, etc, in accordance to their intentions and deeds via body, mind and speech.
I don’t think that any conditioned existence is a possessive or something garnered. At least not as a kind of owner and owned metaphor/system. It’s more like instances of consciousness perpetuating conditions that ensnare it further and further into coarser complexity.
Maybe inversely, reversing or otherwise shedding various kinds of conditioning in the event of true spiritual cultivation. As we can somewhat depict “salvation” or liberation as consciousnesses perpetual self-awareness or enfranchisement, hence it being described as “awakening”.
Metaphysics works when there is some sort of symbolic anchor, be it a piece of scripture or a mythic and ritual tradition, to use as a reference point for definitions. Otherwise, it falls flat on its face, and the question of a self or "selves" is a perfect example of that.
I think there is right understanding and skillful means in the usage of these kinds of “anchors” or polemical objects. Buddha nature, Buddha self, the empty self, or even the reification of nonself as self is inevitable discursively. For all intents and purposes, everyone has to use theistic language in theology and philosophy just as a given. Even more abstract pantheistic systems don’t escape it. In that capacity one could understand what one means when they say “soul” despite spirit being completely indeterminate by its nature. I think this has to do with the fact that idealistic vocabulary tends to be the perfect metaphor for divinity just in general because it refers to something entirely unqualified yet absolutely real.
However, I don’t think the models are isomorphic directly with reality, and that an antiessentialist understanding affords this talk on provision, “for the time being”.
Odysseus is aided by the north wind to reach “Cimmeria” from Aeaea, which is traditionally identified as being off the coast of Italy. It makes no sense for him to go back into the Aegean (passing by his home), through the Bosporus, and across the Black Sea. Plus, Cimmeria is sunny.
This is interesting. I forget which scholar it was, but someone studying Irish texts found that the Christian monks often replaced the Otherworld with Spain as a convenient replacement, and I wonder what the connection there might be? It's not Iberia that Homer was referring to, was it?
I thought ancients saw the heart as the seat for the soul. Hence why we have idioms and metaphors about integrity and life wrapped up in “having a heart” and so on.
Much of Abrahamism has its origin in Plato and Christian notions of heaven and hell in particular are a perfect match to Isle of the Blessed and Tartarus which Socrates described in Critias.
Catholicism teaches that the soul is eternal (or at least begins before the body since "before you were in the womb, I knew you" -Jeremiah 1:5). The bodily resurrection will see the same soul return to a restored body, which doesn't fit well with that block quote comparing it to water and dyes. Definitely an interesting line of thought though
What's interesting is that here in southern Aus, it's mid summer, but the mood is the same, because with our summer comes incredible heat, fire, drought, death and desiccation. The horizon bends and warps in a Blood Meridian style heat haze of doom and despair, something huge and deadly lurks, brooding, ancient, demonic. It laughs at the attempt of civilisation here and I gather will one day gleefully consume it. Its why the natural rural Australian character is incredibly fatalistic and cyclical.
It seems that the time of Capricorn always brings this feeling whether hot or cold.
Speculation on metaphysics is mostly worthless because its unverifiable as you say, not only this, but the thicket of views is so dense that not even an infinite amount of lifetimes could lead to discursive victory in such matters.
However there are arbitrary certainties such as causality that come into play with these kinds of questions. That can be inferred and perhaps even intuited without much systematic entrenchment.
It’s not that there are any new composite elements being generated by incarnation, as all particulars have potential existence “before” they’re actualized in consciousness. This means that from the perspective of the ultimate, there is no such thing as “novel” phenomena, even if we make note of the vast diversity of beings and differences in the qualities of various lives. Existence and its categories are without any particular beginning and are ultimately generated “infinitely”, what we consider gain or loss is wholly provisional in respect to eternity.
That being said, fate or karma(causality) just continues in the direction or path that preceding causes have ordained. It matures in respect to “causes” and their subsequent conditions. It’s often why vocabulary surrounding these topics generally have agricultural nuances.
“Seeds”, “fruit”, “fructification”, etc. They are cognitive metaphors describing time and its internal mechanisms, that would be relatable to sedentary iron age peoples. Basically, a person, being, its life quality, and the details of their consciousness, etc, all “erupt” from the soil(potential). They are all nurtured and conditioned by the quality or even location of their planting. Instead of an idea of a particular soul that garners ethereal or metaphysical material in time, we see it that conditions themselves are all that there is. Conditioned existence is nothing but reactive and reflexive results of causes, which is their maturity. This is why the Dharmic positions tend to not suggest the notion of a “personal” or individuated soul or soul(s). In that way, a “soul” would just be the totality of psycho-physical properties(the five aggregates).
So what originally existed was causes and conditions, and what will persist, is more causes and conditions. This causality is without discernible beginning and in truth, is entirely “virtual” metaphysically speaking, as all phenomena is accounted for in registry by the three marks; emptiness, impermanence and suffering.
A being with right discernment and perfected wisdom, experiencing innumerable instances of their past lives or the past lives of others, knows that this process has gone on primordially with the potential to endure eternally.
Beings become gods, descend to hellish realms, are born as animals, humans, etc, in accordance to their intentions and deeds via body, mind and speech.
I don’t think that any conditioned existence is a possessive or something garnered. At least not as a kind of owner and owned metaphor/system. It’s more like instances of consciousness perpetuating conditions that ensnare it further and further into coarser complexity.
Maybe inversely, reversing or otherwise shedding various kinds of conditioning in the event of true spiritual cultivation. As we can somewhat depict “salvation” or liberation as consciousnesses perpetual self-awareness or enfranchisement, hence it being described as “awakening”.
Metaphysics works when there is some sort of symbolic anchor, be it a piece of scripture or a mythic and ritual tradition, to use as a reference point for definitions. Otherwise, it falls flat on its face, and the question of a self or "selves" is a perfect example of that.
I think there is right understanding and skillful means in the usage of these kinds of “anchors” or polemical objects. Buddha nature, Buddha self, the empty self, or even the reification of nonself as self is inevitable discursively. For all intents and purposes, everyone has to use theistic language in theology and philosophy just as a given. Even more abstract pantheistic systems don’t escape it. In that capacity one could understand what one means when they say “soul” despite spirit being completely indeterminate by its nature. I think this has to do with the fact that idealistic vocabulary tends to be the perfect metaphor for divinity just in general because it refers to something entirely unqualified yet absolutely real.
However, I don’t think the models are isomorphic directly with reality, and that an antiessentialist understanding affords this talk on provision, “for the time being”.
Flint and steel
chicken jockey
"Homer was possibly referring to some non-Cimmerian, completely different people living in Southern France."
You can't just drop this and not explain!
Odysseus is aided by the north wind to reach “Cimmeria” from Aeaea, which is traditionally identified as being off the coast of Italy. It makes no sense for him to go back into the Aegean (passing by his home), through the Bosporus, and across the Black Sea. Plus, Cimmeria is sunny.
This is interesting. I forget which scholar it was, but someone studying Irish texts found that the Christian monks often replaced the Otherworld with Spain as a convenient replacement, and I wonder what the connection there might be? It's not Iberia that Homer was referring to, was it?
It could have been northern Iberia I suppose
Beautiful paragraph about winter at the start and very interesting article in general
I thought ancients saw the heart as the seat for the soul. Hence why we have idioms and metaphors about integrity and life wrapped up in “having a heart” and so on.
I think a lot saw it as the nose, as that's where you intake breath
Celts saw the head as being the seat of the soul.
Chandra Hardy collab post for 2k
She never even mentions me. She is scared of even invoking my name
xey called me a diddy blud 💔
Much of Abrahamism has its origin in Plato and Christian notions of heaven and hell in particular are a perfect match to Isle of the Blessed and Tartarus which Socrates described in Critias.
Ehhh, idk. Tartarus was not the natural end-destination of the mortal soul, while hell is (without the intervention of Jesus)
Catholicism teaches that the soul is eternal (or at least begins before the body since "before you were in the womb, I knew you" -Jeremiah 1:5). The bodily resurrection will see the same soul return to a restored body, which doesn't fit well with that block quote comparing it to water and dyes. Definitely an interesting line of thought though
In Scholastic terminology, aeviternal. Something having a beginning which will never have an end.