Heidegger

allen scult wrote:

>>Bernx@aol.com wrote:

>>> Since whatness is impossible to know because it subsumes I-ness
>>> the more viable ontological statement would be “I know that I am but not
>>> who I am.”

>>it is interesting that you should mention ‘who am I?’ as an alternative
>>to ‘what am I?’. my interest in philosophy was (re)awakened when I took
>>up meditation to relieve stress. one of the exercises I found (in _How
>>to Meditate_ by LeShan) was the ‘who am I?’ meditation. the meditator
>>asks himself or herself ‘who am I?’; rejects whatever answer pops up;
>>and, asks the question again.
>>
>>I changed the exercise to ask ‘what am I?’ because I got bored dealing
>>with the accidental features of life and personality. Q: who am I? A: I
>>am a star trek fan. okay, but does that tell me what I am — as in what
>>is the structure of a human being?
>>

> Joe,
>
> I think I meditated on the same saying. It was from a text by Ramana
> Maharshi. The “who am I?” was not a question of identity the way I
> remember it, but rather a way of seeing more and more deeply down
> into and through the windows of the self and discovering there was
> nothing there. i am not a self, but rather a no-self, a no- thing
> floating in the spaciously empty space of das Nichts.

Allen,

Ramana did indeed teach the method of self-inquiry using the ‘who am I?’
meditation instead of the ‘what am I? version.

saying either ‘I am a self’ or ‘I am a no-self’ would demonstrate
self-awareness (I know that I am the referent of ‘I’ when I say “I am
[not] a self” — hence I am self-aware).

now consider what I call the first law of reality: nothing unreal is
self-aware.

do you not have to be a reality of some sort?

Joe

–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda

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 http://what-am-i.net
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Posted on Thursday, November 8th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
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