Maybe it's not the sort of question an enlightened being might have pondered in his or her lifetime, but for down-to-earth western metaphysics ( ) it looks pretty crucial.PadmaVonSamba wrote:But any "we" is conditional.
So, any question that resembles something like,
"Why am I me and not somebody else?"
overlooks the conditional arising of the experience,
the conditions in fact defining what that experience is.
I'm not clear, though, what you're trying to say, beyond "the experience of 'me' arose conditionally", which sounds like pretty fundamental dharma. Are you claiming that the nature of the awareness we experience before it becomes aware of anything is completely conditioned? Since many people (it seems to me) struggle to understand the "why are we we" question (pardon me ) to begin with, you can probably understand any confusion.
If, in the final analysis / realization , every feature of reality is fully defined by conditions, then there can be no going beyond the 'self' defined by those conditions -even if 'self' (in this case) is a conditioned arising rather than a substrate- and I will have to drop my online moniker
If, on the other hand, our awareness as it is is untainted by the characteristics or 'shape' that conditions produce, then we may as well all define ourselves as undefinable (no spelling mistake this time ) and consequently grow egos the size of everyone else's put together.
Both scenarios seem to defeat the point of 'not-self'.
After I thought to post this as a new topic, I thought better of it, as it looks like an open-and-shut case of "middle path", but then who knows _ _