Johan Ågren skrev:Mina mest filosofiska tillstånd är helt ordlösa och handlar mer om en integrering av mina sinnen till en nivå där sambanden klargörs.
Här håller jag verkligen med. Problemet blir att försöka förmedla dessa insikter. Det kan lätt bli lite flummigt
Jag kom att tänka på en text som jag finner passande för disskutionen.
"You will have to understand these five categories. First, the contented pig. It has nothing to do with pigs, remember: all these categories are of human beings. The contented pig is that man or woman who lives in an unconscious way; who simply vegetates, who has no awareness - hence there is no discontent. Discontent presupposes a little awareness.
If you are unconscious and somebody is doing surgery on you, you will not feel any pain. How can you feel pain?
To feel pain, conscious is needed. That´s why in surgery we have to give anaesthesia, so the man falls completely asleep in a coma. Then you can cut, remove parts of the body without any pain. Otherwise the pain is going to be unbearable.
A contented pig is that kind of man who lives in life absolutely like a robot, a zombie. Who eats, walks, goes to work, comes home, make love, reproduces children, and dies, never becomming aware of twhat really was happening. Just moves from one thing to another in a kind of daze.
The second is the discontented pig. He is still unconsious, ninety-nine percent unconscius, but one percent of consciousness is arising. The first ray of consciossness has penetrated; one is becomming aware of the pain and the anguish and the anxiiety of life. People avoid the second state; they want to live in the first.
The first state is that of the materialist. Don´t think, don´t contemplate, don´t meditate upon anything. Don´t become conscious - consciousness is dangerous. Remain unconscious. And if sometimes in spite of you some conscioussness happens - becouse life has so much pain that sometimes it can happen that just the pain can give you a little consciousness - then go take drugs, tranquillize yourself. Or alcohol is there and other intoxicants are there. Just dull yourself again, back into your anaesthetic life, into your unconsciousness. Fall again into that anaestesia.
The discontented pig is one who is comming out of this anaesthesia. Have you ever been into anaesthesia? Slowly slowly, when you start coming out of it, you start gearing a few noises around - the traffic noise, the doctors walking, the nurses talking. Slowly slowly, you start feeling some pain in those parts of the body where the operation has been done. Slowly slowly, you come back.
The discontented pig is one who is comming out of the anaesthesia of life, who is becoming a man. It is painful - to be a man is painful, to remain a pig is very painless. Millions have decided to remain pigs.
When the discontent arises, you are becoming religious: the first approach towards God.
And the third state is discontented Socrates. You are fully alert about the pain, and you are divided. You are two now; the pain is there and you are there. And life becomes almost unlivable, the pain of it is so much. Something has to be done - either you fall back and become again a pig, or you start moving and become a Buddha.
The discontented Socrates is just the midpoint. Below, at the lowest is the pig. Above, at the highest, is the Buddha, the real, natural man of Zen. Discontented Socrates is just in the middle, in the middle of the bridge. And there is every possibility that you will fall back - becouse the old is known, ad the future is unknown. Who knows? If you go ahead, pain may increase even more - who knows? You have never known that state ahead. But you know one thing - that at the back there was a moment where there was no pain.
Why not fall back into it?
That´s where people start becoming interested in drugs. That is falling back, that is regression. Man cannot be freed from alcohol and such intoxicants unless man is but on the way towards Buddhahood. No goverment can prevent people from alcohol; they will find ways. Becouse life becomes so unbearable, one has to forget it. Either one has to become a Buddha or one has to be to become a pig. One cannot remain in the middle - the middle is such a torture.
The forth state is contented Socrates. You start moving ahead, you don´t go back. You move more and more inte awareness, you move more and more into meditation. Your thinking is transformed more into a kind of meditativeness. So the forth stage is contented Socrates; consciousness and unconscioussness are being bridged.
And the fifth state is: no contentment, no discontentment; no pig, no Socrates. All is gone, all those dream have dissapeared. Neither conscious nor unconscious, but a new thing, transcendence, has arisen.
This is Buddhahood. This is what Zen people call the natural state of man. Purified of all junk, cleaned of all dust. Purified of all poisons and the past and the memories, sanskaras, conditionings. You have come home.
The pig is completely unconscious. The natural man if Zen is completely conscious. Between these two are those other three states. These five states have to be pondered over. Find out where you are, and start moving from there.
The goal is not far away. Sometimes it can be reached in a single step, in a single leap. All that is needed is courage. It is out of fear that people fall back into the old rut.
If I can teach you courage, I have thought you all. If I can help you to be courageous, then I have made you religious. To me, courage is the most important religious quality. More important than thruth, more important than honesty, more important than anything else. Becouse without courage, nothing becomes possible - neither thruth nor love nor God."
The decisions of bureaucracy are frequently reduced to Yes or No answers to drafts submitted to it; the bureaucratic way of thinking has become the secret model for a thought allegedly still free. But the responsibility of philosophical thought in its essential situations is not to play this game. A given alternative is already a piece of heteronomy. - Theodor W. Adorno
