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Everything will rot, this should make you laugh. Beautiful women will rot. Your muscles will rot. Your children will rot. Your possessions will rot. Everyone will die and no one will remember you. There is no posterity. There is nothing on this earth worth striving for
Everything people worry about, this or that failing, corruption, etc. will all rot. The prize people spend their lives striving for, this or that position of prestige, this or that achievement, this nation, that people, rots and is forgotten. The face of the Earth changes
Beyond this, no knowledge is certain. We cannot know what bearing what we don't know has on what we do. We cannot know what we are wrong about. We cannot know what there is to know. We cannot even say the earth will rot. We cannot say one thing will follow the next
Your awareness changes nothing, whatever is is as it was before you knew about it. If you cannot affect something, there is no point knowing about it. There is so much you can't affect, and even if you could, the consequences of your actions spiral out of your control so rapidly
So the only thing to concern yourself with would be finding out what the greatest good possible would be - in the absence of knowledge of what to do, working to discern the greatest good is the best thing. You have to examine what you find good and why
One can't even say his actions are pointless, we're helpless to say what their consequences are, we cannot even say they're inconsequential. We don't know how we could say that or any other thing. One's every action could be entirely and perfectly consequential
We don't know what our knowing has to do with what we know. We can't say there are causes, or objects. We can't discern things' relations enough to rule anything in or out. There's an infinity of potentially unknowable media through which things could affect one another
An infinity of invisible connections whose effects are so subtle we couldn't even know we didn't know about them. We are all so boundlessly ignorant of our own ignorance that we can't even say there's anything we're ignorant of. We could be wrong about anything at any time
Anything we discern as a distinct object or cause could be so perfectly transient or insubstantial as to have no bearing on anything. Anything could turn out to be anything else and we wouldn't know until it did. We never do.
Our ignorance is so boundless we can hardly even say what "things" are. We can observe the fact of things being apparent to us in each moment - but if we truly do this, there are no facts nor things nor moments. Nothing is describable and language falls apart
One cannot even show language is an adequate medium for truth. One can't even say how it works, how things mean. We can't use language to prove language is capable of making meaningful statements. We can't prove our means of proving, and if we could we'd have to prove them too
Any means of proving something must itself be proven, shown to be capable of proving anything - and over what term, and in what sense, all of which claims must themselves be proven - there must be an ultimate source of value from which these things derive their, and there isn't
One cannot even explain how things became distinguished from other things, by what means, for what purpose. There is no explanation possible. For things to occur there must have been time in which they could, moments separate, causes separate from effects
And then one asks: If these moments, causes and effects were separate, what is the ground on which they occurred, which must have pre-existed them? And how did it become distinguished from itself in order for change to occur? The question regresses infinitely
The moment you separate two moments, objects, points in space, a ground on which they can come together to relate is implied, and there's no explanation of how that ground came about. If there is, show it to me. I am perfectly open to changing my mind
You might compare this to elements of Zen but if you accept the premise of Zen you realise nothing of Zen is essential and there is no point calling it Zen and nothing you can call it, but also nothing you can't. Just realise all the trapping, particular robes, etc. are useless
There is no reason to speak and no cause to refrain from speaking
Knowing all this I'm confronted with certain practical problems and interesting things and complex attachments I can't just argue my way out of and working through them is not a matter of acknowledging these arguments, as far as I know
Psychic woman told me I was a Buddhist scholar/monk in a past life and I'd never mentioned my interest in Buddhism to her. I can give you her number if you ask. Also I think questions of the afterlife are figured into practical questions of eg. How not to burn my mouth
Point being there's a distinction between the Truth which is not even silence, un-non-being, Absencelessness, and the day-to-day truth which enables us not to eat hot food straight from the pan. This has been described under the name "Two Truths Doctrine" but this adds nothing
So I am taking questions of reincarnation, suffering or joy in the afterlife etc. as being on the same level as how to avoid stubbing my toe - practical problems, things to overcome. Humility, for instance, is practical
