Re: 'Role of the senses.' - a buddhist perspective.

A response to Iralon.
After a look at the basics of buddhism in terms of narrated of embodied self - emptiness of self, I speculate how the idea of 6 sense doors fits in with oru typicl westerns dualisms.
By considering the mind as one of the senses and of similar status as the 5 physical senses the problems that arise from dualism, its over-emphasis and our living "in the mind" is highlighted.
McLuhans idea of the sensorium, an interplay, & re-balancing of the senses is more radical in buddhism as mind is not distinct from the other 5 senses, but is another sense.

Iralon's video : Role of the senses
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HF6GlXwGLY

MY video closely related: Narrated and Embodied Selves
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArzHdCWgYpo

Category:

Education

Tags:

• buddhism
• phenomenology
• six
• senses
• McLuhan
• self
• soul
• emptiness
• narrated
• embodied
• dukkha

[Haengma]

I think we reflexively appropriate our internal narrative as ours the way we appropriate our bodies as ours - they're attached to us and follow us around and form part of our model of ourselves.

[soulfetcher]

yes - it creates us, just as we create it.

[lralon]

(continued) The movie is available for free on google videos. I also found your idea of a reduction of thought very interesting, which is consistent with Postman's general philosophy, as well as Ihde. Thanks for your response!

[soulfetcher]

Good stuff. We fear the present moment that we're thrown into and struggle to escape to the past or present. This we do by identifying with our mental narrated life neglecting our physical experience. It's the illusion of subjective time (which gains its credibility by being correlated to objective time)

Id emphasis though that this is not either/or. Life in the strict now would be as impossible as it is in the scattered temporal. But we must shift the balance from mental sense to avoid dukkha.

[soulfetcher]

I wonder if mind/s overemphasis in the west is why it's taken so long to be seen as just another sense door, rather than the distinct Master in Charge?

Regarding the buddhist project, I think they risk overstating the 'solution' especially by more aesthetic practioners, and this can lead to a life of the detachment from existence you talked about rather than the detachment from mentalising existence.

Its what happens AFTER meditation that matters.

And thanks for the Zeitgeist headsup :)

[nefhead]

Buddhist philospophy what Bollocks.

[dewinthemorning]

This was a very interesting analysis of the narrated self and the enbodied self again and of budism.

"The habit of narrating ourselves is the default." How interesting.

[alteringenting]

cool topic!

[lralon]

This video really challenged me. Thank very much for posting it! As a follower of Heidegger, who has taught us that the future - which calls us to project our possibilities once we become resolute in our projects after dealing with our death - is in a way more important that the present. Thus, I'm skeptical toward the present as a series of now, following Aristotle. But your take on the now seems interesting. Please check the opening of the movie Zeitgeist and tell me what you think.

[zarkoff45]

Thanks, that was interesting.