Bill Wiltrack wrote:
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I am you. In this moment.
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Ok. since I am you, you must be granting me the occasion to pontificate upon this proposal.
The absolute totality of what I can say to you of me, the ulimate minimum of verbal exchange that can be made in the spirit of your clause, here, is: "I am". If I say "I", then I am nothing which acts. "I", as a verbal exchange, conveys one of two existing human beings: I am a wonderer, alone, isolated, existing as, for lack of a better term, a single unattached animal, who gathers food and eats sleeps, never one who encounters another human being. This is fine; i am not to judge what oone may do. OR, the individual is the same as this former but is supported by a community of people who see him as "enlightened", as some sort of embodiment of spiritual fullness. This latter individual cannot exist in the "only I" without a necessary counter part that is the human community which supports him, both in the physical and ideological sence. He cannot exist without the corresponding belief and activities of the community.
When this basic 'enlightened' reality is refuted by the overhwelming consistency of our daily lives, we have the minimum real assertion: "I am". Now I have acted. Now I "AM". And this is why we have the probelm of the predicate. Everything and anything that is placed after "I" in the place of "am" is an assertion of truth and the individual. In the attempt to gain something more out of the "I (am)" you place the next minimal object that can indicate existance yet withhold a furthering of the predicated object: "you".
This is fact because an individual cannot exist in the sense you (bill) attempt to convey in your statement "I am you" without the counterpunctual object; you Bill, cannot exist in the true meaning of your phrase in the same way you cannot walk through walls. Maybe, in some alternate world of meaning where "walk through walls" may convey a type of metaphor, such that one can say "i walk through walls" and have a 'sensible' meaning. But we cannot speak in metaphor and get anywhere; one might as well assert anything they like as a sort of method to indicate to another a "way to live" - but then I argue my same point: one cannot have such an attitude without the corresponding attitude of those "who do not get it". Your phrase, then, indicates only a religious dogma, not anything real except as your reality corresponds with some opposite of what you are addressing. Thus is saying "I am you", you are avoiding the 'gap' that is yourself in justification through the other-object.
You are asserting youself by supposedly not asserting youself in a guise of 'teacher' against the 'unlearned' and avoid the very spirit that you hope to convey, thus missing the essential elment of youself that is offended by the fact that you may be wrong in such a belief. You attempt to assert some truth through an enigmatic saying that at its base allows you to live in denial of what could be reality. the grand total of which is an 'idea' that this world-of otherness-and things is an illusion, that there is really a "oneness" that somehow you have been priviledged to have come upon.
What it amounts to, speaking of that I am you, is that I am involved with an ideology of sorts. This ideology has been equated with enlightenment, but is held back in such a way by the individual-in-denial, such that he shows to others such enigmas so that they see him as enlightened, but the true effect of my being enlightened is that I have detached from what is otherwiese reality of human interaction. I have come upon a "nothing really matters" attitude; I have come upon a method of living, a
philsophy of living, where I hide the true statement, and propose to teach people the way toward enlightenment. The true statement is admitting that my idea of truth is nothing more than anyone else's. The experience of enlightenment is such that I come upon the rest of the world as ignorant, as if I have come upon a more encomassing and larger meaning of reality, again, a "oneness", that in my justification I feel compassion for the other ignorant people, since I am unwilling, and indeed am incapable of seeing that my truth is not really true in the sence I feel it is, and that really everyone has this same experience of truth. Only some of those who do not have a 'solution' to thier being find it in my idea, but there are many other ideas where people find the truth for themselves. I am detached from human interaction and reality so that I can be 'happy' and 'content'. To the extent that I am I have become enlightened; to the extent that I am not, I reside in an ideology - and this is the ideological maxim of what can be said of "I am you".
This is patent. What you are really indicating -- but you have given up the seach in you justification and so do not find this --is what more brave and searching individuals have termed "ironic". I cannot have an idea of truth-in-myself without all that there is around me. This is the "I am You" maxim. In that I search in my self, in my being, for some truth, I find it somewhere there, but inevitably I find that this 'space of peace' in myself is unidentifyable: I cannot put it into words.
And here is the irony: As i attempt to put it into words, for, dont you know I have come upon the truth of the matter, I find that people do not understand what I am really saying. Yet for me this truth is coming out of the 'pure essence' of my being that has somehow communed with some 'higher' principle and is complelling me to 'give' it to others, since it is the truth.
In this effort I have just described I 'miss' the fact of the object I am attempting to reveal. As I continue to reflect upon my failures, I cannot but inevitably find that there is no self; I have to admit to my self that there is not self to admit to, since what I am attempting to convey of the truth cannot be conveyed. So, if I stay vehement in my denial, unwilling to see what is self-evident, then I begin to speak in riddles, in enigmatic statements, as I have describe above. Thus Buddism comes about as a religion or philsophy or ideology or whatever you want to call it.
and ironically, if i continue to delve into that which I may be denying, I come upon the inevitable conclusion that everything that is around me, everything that I am attempting to address, that is, overcome, the obstacles to my enlightenment, is exactly "me". As you bill have said, everything around me is exactly that which I come upon as myself within myself which cannot be spoken. I attempt to speak of this truth I have found in myself, but I cannot because when i do I cannot but address a particular item of the world. It is a vicious cycle of knowledge.
Thus we have Typists 'aphilsophy' puch line. Somehow to escape thius cycle. But the problem is that even as i attempt to escape it, I reify it in denial, and end up where I was at the beginning. Such a paradox reveals then the effort to get people to 'see' that there is some 'better way' to approach the probelm. The result is what you and Typist exemplify: you speak of nothing but repeat the same things. In denial of the problem you can have a sort of "blissful ignorance" diguised as "wisdom".
I reject this kind of platitudinal and lackidasical attitude. Defeat is not an end to itself, but is the gathering of strength to continue. And it is here that we find the true irony of my situation.
Thank you for your occasion.
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