/lit/ - Literature

>>16484988
>>16485025
>if there is no Self, then why do I feel that there is?
That's part of the "ignorance". From simple empiricism, we can see that this sense-of-Self is only yet another process dependent upon other things. Certain meditative states can produce an altered sense-of-Self, as can drugs or mental disorders. If you take psychedelic drugs and suddenly feel that your chair is part of you, that doesn't mean that the chair is part of you, it just means that a certain feeling is arising. But if we can say "oh, well, under THESE conditions we can distrust the senses" then why can't we distrust them in others? If the sense-of-Self can be removed, or altered AT ALL, then we've just demonstrated that it is impermanent, and can be changed, and as such, is only conventionally-real. The fact that you can take DMT and experience the machine elves or whatever as if they were real, but stop interacting with you when the drugs have left your system, is a demonstration of consciousness's malleable nature. To posit otherwise raises the question of how this unchanging permanent thing can interact with the world AT ALL. The fact that you can actually sit down, meditate, and observe your own thoughts as they arise and break them apart and observe the pieces is a demonstration that yes, your consciousness can be broken apart, and analyzed. If that is the case, then it is only conventionally-real, as it can change, and be broken apart.

Which, as a whole, is the point of Nagarjuna's entire work: to demonstrate that all things are only conventionally-real. The MMK is, as a whole, a demonstration that the idea of the word "cat" having some special existence such that it is more real than actual cats that hunt mice is ultimately faulty. This isn't to say that language is worthless, only that we must remember its limitations. Of course, a Western Philosopher can find a gaping hole in this in that he never turns around and says what the ultimate-reality REALLY is, because he's not trying to. He doesn't need to. The work is therapeutic, aiming to dissolve ignorance by demonstrating the impermanence of phenomena.

A Western Philosopher could retort that ah, perhaps Nagarjuna is right, there are no "nouns", but we can better describe reality with something akin to David Bohm's process language, wherein we view things as functions and streams and the like rather than discrete objects, but that's a different goal from what Nagarjuna is getting at.

By realizing that there is no ego to die.

>>16071134
>I don't think ego death is a sustainable human experience
As far as I'm aware there are precisely zero Buddhist traditions or schools that believe that a state of sustained egolessness is possible. The ego is real in as much as you are indeed feeling a sense of "I", but just because you're feeling that "I-ness" doesn't mean it's not composite, caused, made of other stuff, etc. Small brains see mountains, midwits don't see mountains, bigbrains see mountains.

>>15948504
Exactly.