I see, good and evil are relative. You don't have to "leave the world of language" entirely, just break it's spell and see the world as it really is. I bet you if you look around you, you see "a desk", "a chair", "a table". That is not reality.
Good and evil to some degree match the pleasure and pain we feel. This must always be, of course, from the perspective of the animal that feels the pain or pleasure. However, we overlay onto the terms "good" and "evil" man made moral principles that may or may not match our feelings. E.G., "Turn the other cheek". This is counterintuitive and not in harmony with our natural insticts. You cannot see a "desk", "chair" or "table" as it really is - regardless of whether you can think in a language. To see a chair is to see a chair. The seemlessness between the chair and the rest of the universe can never be apparent to the senses, as the senses define shapes symbolically and there is no way for you to prevent it. Wake up Buddha boy! You are just substituting simplistic thinking for the better reality language creates.
I'm listening to Buddy Guy on the Mountain Stage channel right now, but it's a recording that's years old. So why can I imagine, when the camera gets close, or the music or the beat changes, that it's 'live', I can almost picture myself near the stage at the place it happened. What kinds of symbols are there in this experience I'm having as I type this on the keyboard while simultaneously imagining the concert this recording is of? This, I think looks a bit like the idea of an experience which is "beyond", all 'knowing', or understanding. So there is such a thing? Something that we can experience, but not symbolise, is that something like the, er, idea of it? So just, cause we can't, like, put it into words, doesn't mean it isn't there, type of thing?
Sure, humans create the idea of moral behavior, that's not what I'm talking about. There is no absolute quality of morality, it's a film we overlay on the world. Secondly, your senses don't see a chair. Your senses see areas of pattern and color, it's position in space. Your brain then interprets the vision in the context of culture, which teaches us that some patterns represent something called a chair. The senses don't do any defining. The symbol-application function of our brain can indeed be disconnected. You may continue to live in a virtual reality, I am certainly not insisting you change whatsoever. You are imagining a concert because of our abilities to fill-in when complete information is not there. It's a form of pattern recognition. If your cat was listening at the same time, did she hear the same thing, a concert? I wager she only heard a collection of sounds with no apparent order or meaning. Of course the words we use to describe things should never be mistaken for an accurate picture of reality. We tend to live in a world of conscious symbolism. This is reflected in the art of children. When my little brother was about 4, he drew things extremely accurately, albeit within the limitations of his motor skills. At some point, he learned about symbols and started to draw people differently, there was the circle of the head, a standard eye symbol, nose, mouth and hand symbols. It is the destruction of this conditioning that must happen if you ever want to draw realistically, which I can do. Artists learn to see the world of visual perception as it is, without secondary interpretation. Here is a great summary of the limits of language by Alan Watts. MP3 files. http://www.alanwatts.com/raudio_index.html
There is an absolute quality of morality for some things, such as those things that feel good and those things that feel bad. Such feelings are absolute and they do sometimes evoke morals. It feels bad to be cut on your knee. That's an absolute. Therefore, it's wrong to cut somebody else's knee. Our senses do arrange order - albeit in a less limited way than the mind interpreting those signals. Our senses are geometrical arangements of detectors that by the very nature of their arrangement and the filter they do create a sense of order out of the natural world.
I would suggest morals are relative to the situation, the culture, and one's personal experience, but Buddhism at it's center is not a moral code like Christianity. I think you are mistaken about the senses. Although there is a degree of order in their arrangement, they do little interpretation on their own, apart from some evolved characteristics, like those that contribute to optical illusions.
How come you think this follows? Based on what assumptions do you think this follows? If something is bad for person A, it is bad for person B - how come?
Empathy. You know person B will feel bad because you would feel bad, therefore it is wrong to inflict said bad feeling on B. Indeed, empathy will even make us feel bad for doing something we know will hurt another to that other. Empathy tells us it is morally wrong. Empathy is an instictual emotion. It is not a man made moral. Empathy is a natural moral.
I would say that from the Buddhist perspective, there is no differentiation between "natural" morals and "man-made" morals. Personally, I don't see the difference either.
Surely, you see the connection between pain and pleasure, and good and evil? Our senses have created some morality, which must be natural as our senses are from nature.
Not exactly, but I do think humans and apes have evolved an innate sense of fairness. If someone makes you feel pain for no reason, that is generally considered immoral. If it's extreme, we call it evil. If we do it to an animal, it's called BBQ.
What about conscience? That gut feeling that something feels good and therefore must be good, or vica versa. Isn't this the essence of our morality, which is genetic based.
I agree, that's what I was getting at. That does not mean that there is any absolute morality. There is what humans consider moral relative to their own perspective.
No, the gut feeling is genetic based. It is not based on our perspective. It is based on what our bodies have been designed to tell us. It is morality in our genes, not our heads. Of course, the feeling is different for different species. Genetic based morality is absolute for the particular species.
It's not even abolute for our own species, but relative to personal needs, wishes, and experience. Some people think it's moral to spank their children, which causes pain.
Why? - How do you distinguish between "genetic" or "natural" morality and "man-made" morality? In actual examples, how do you know the difference which is which?