I’ve had a moment of satori; a little one to be sure, but still satori. I need to collect my thoughts some more, and make them a little more clear to myself even, but I also wanted to put something out there while it’s still fresh. Sartre has about four pages on the view of psychology as it relates to the self, and he calls it the root of all excuses for ignoring the existential anguish. He even uses some of the same Zen language about ridding the idea of Self. God it was amazing. The same thing that I was searching for only twenty pages earlier just popped up.
Just a quick sketch then. To Zen I understand that the arising of the Self is a denial of our true nature which is free. Sartre speaks of how this Self is pushed into a translucent other within ourselves, and we give up our freedom to it, viewing it as an object, and treating it like it has inertia. Then it becomes us, this Self. So that we have this series of actions both past and future that are done for us because it is who we are, our Self, our personality. There it is right there, the Zen no mind, the passing of the Self into the nothingness from which we brought it. I can’t really go any further tonight, but I needed to announce my little piece of enlightenment. I feels like I should call for a celebration. I’m going to start a seperate page where I am going to develop a new understanding of psychology and consciousness from that perspective. It just might be my dissertation.
Cheers!
