The Living Experience Is??

One? None? Many? Neither?

What are we privileging? Are we able to formulate an unbiased opinion on the nature of sentient existence? Might our being raised in a culture of monotheistic leanings predispose us to a view of 'singleness' and 'essence' that indicates to us that we are a 'one?' And would we see ourselves differently and judge reality according to a different set of criteria if we grew up in a culture that had multiplicity as its existential basis?

How can we know? How can we determine the most factual basis for our existence? That is the real question I am begging to ask here: What is the real basis for our existence?

What view or perspepctive is going to best accord with Reality? How are we to establish that basis? Or, check that... how are we to best realize the perspective on our existence that most accords with what is Real?


Deep Subjects

For many the topic itself is just too deep to bother with. Just 'getting by' and 'making ends meet' is worry enough. There isn't time or inclination to consider such matters--even if such matters bear an ultimate weight and importance upon our lives. Therefore, many people just come to adopt the creeds of their forefathers. Those who, you guessed it, adopted the creed of their forefathers... who... so... on and so forth... on down the line, through the generations.

That seems to me to say much for what has come to be the case for humanity. The fact that we are faced with the bare, and often brute, facts of existence in this-world leaves us in a position where we cannot examine our basis for existence. That is left to others. It is all fine and well to do so if others are to be trusted. But if others have ulteriour motives then it is not fine. We can end up duped. We can end up victims of our own inability or unwillingness to realize 1) who we are, 2) how we came to be here, and 3) what that all means.

So... are we these single substances... these enduring monads? Are we an essence of some sort that is sure and certain, solid and unshakable?

Or... might we be a community that is in constant flux, flow, and exchange? A collective of entities that only seems to have some 'essence' in relation to the organization of the many parts that make us up into an apparent 'I?'

The Living Lab

Where can we go to begin such a study? Where is there a truly open and uncharted field of investigation that does not have its own already established creeds and methods? If we go the contemplative route and adopt the tenets of Zen Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, or any of the Christian Monastic Orders then are we really going to be answering that most vital of questions? Or, will we just be getting an answer that is already implied at the beginning; due to the innate assumptions of each of those systems?

I wonder if it is truly possible to be like the American maverick Henry David Thoreau any longer? Can we live life raw and strip existence down to the bone in order to arrive at what is essential? Or is that just a fool's game?

Was Thoreau--and others like him-naive? Or could have Thoreau been a wayfarer of something totally historic: a prime example of a non-dogmatic, creedless investigation that strives to discover first things through unmediated, direct experience, rather than through the second-hand of approved literature and/or popular opinion?