Yes, feelings are something that exist only with a feeler, feeling simply are what they are though - they are themselves, and not another thing.Ardha wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 12:05 amBut you're saying experience can't exist outside your mind and if our reality is only an experience of everything then that more or less is saying there is nothing outside your head happening. Every "thing" is an experience of that thing, which you claim doesn't exist outside of my head. So then nothing exists outside my head, by your logic.PadmaVonSamba wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 11:55 pmThis has nothing to do with solipsism. I’m not saying that nothing exists outside of your mind.Ardha wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 9:47 pm
That I get, that feelings come and go. That's easy.
Why I mean by lying to yourself though is feeling happy or sad over what is inherently neutral.
And if an experience can't happen outside of thoughts, outside of mind, and it's all just mental phenomenon then that is solipsism, which is worse.
I’m saying that feelings do not exist outside of your mind.
Why do you keep jumping to these kinds of conclusions about things?
Feelings aren’t inherently anything. They are just feelings. They are like shadows.
Your position seems to be that if feelings have no inherent reality, then having feelings equals lying to yourself. Do I have that right?
You are lying to yourself, by feeling something over something inherently neutral. You are lying to yourself by ascribing qualities to the ocean or whatever that it does not possess.But the ocean is, as you say, “neutral”. By itself, it is neither good or bad. And it’s not the intention of the ocean waves to make me feel happy or sad. Still, I feel happy when I am there. Am I lying? Lying about what? My feelings are definitely occurring. If I tried to deny that feeling, I would be lying to myself.
Things do not need to have intrinsic reality in order to occur or be experienced. Everything we experience lacks intrinsic reality, yet our experiences are perfectly valid. We are not “lying” to ourselves when we feel things.
That is why I asked you whether you had ever experienced moments of feelings which have since passed. The emotions arose as a valid experience, you felt them, then they faded away and you experienced other feelings.
This is why in an earlier thread I quoted her saying "the "proper" way of being in the world is the acceptance of "good and bad" without feeling inherently joyful or bad about it".
Or how:
So feeling happy or sad over such things isn't living in reality, because in reality stuff just "is". If you feel a certain type of way over the ocean you're not seeing the ocean for what it is. It's not making you happy, that's you. Same with something "making you sad". When you break down all these experiences there is no reason to feel anything about any of them and once that happens you just sort of stop. But other people don't know that, so the one with true understanding plays along with the game as though there is something to feel about such things.after that first level, it is appropriate to feel a variety of ways to share in social experiences
if people around you are depressed over loss, the compassionate thing is often to commiserate with them, rather than tell them their loss is false and not worth crying over
if people around you want to give you gifts and celebrate their promotion at work, the compassionate thing is to thank them for the gifts and share in their celebration to maximize their feelings of joy
in both situations, the individual with "true understanding" knows there is no reason to feel anything with regards to either situation as they are just random things that occur through particle and waves in reality colliding
but the conventionally appropriate way of being in the world may include feeling depressed over things to empathetically connect with other people
It would be inaccurate to say a quality of happinesses exists within an object, it’s equally absurd to claim feelings don’t exist at all, since it is self evident we experience them.