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Bryan Kam

@bryankam.com

Thinking about origins of truth, selfhood, suffering, philosophy of science, literature, film. Interintellect fellow. @bryankam@writing.exchange

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Bryan Kam @bryankam.com · 13/02/2025

From Zhuangzi’s Outer Chapters, written sometime in the 4th to 2nd century BC China, making a very similar argument to what I’m saying about love in Plato's Phaedrus: www.bryankam.com/p/love-abstr...

“What this age values and takes as its guide, its course, is written text. But written texts are no more than words. Words do have something valuable about them: their meanings and ideas. But those meanings and ideas come from some thing else, and what they come from cannot be transmitted in words. And yet the people of this age, due to the high value they put on words, transmit only the writings. Though this age so esteems them, I do not regard them as worthy of esteem. What these people value about them is not what is really valuable about them. For whatever we can see by looking is only shapes and forms. Whatever we can hear by listening is only names and sounds. Alas! This age takes shapes, forms, names, and sounds as sufficient to attain the reality of that something else. But shapes, forms, names and sounds are ultimately not sufficient to get at what is real there. Thus "those who know do not speak, and those who speak do not know/7 But how could the present age understand this!”

000

Bryan Kam @bryankam.com · 07/01/2025

No particular plans today...

38 (8) Volition (1)
At S›vatthı. “Bhikkhus, what one intends, and what one plans,
and whatever one has a tendency towards: this becomes a basis
for the maintenance of consciousness. When there is a basis there
is a support for the establishing of consciousness. When con-
sciousness is established and has come to growth, there is the
production of future renewed existence. When there is the pro-
duction of future renewed existence, future birth, aging-and-
death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure, and despair come
to be. Such is the origin of this whole mass of suffering.112
“If, bhikkhus, one does not intend, and one does not plan, but
one still has a tendency towards something, this becomes a basis
for the maintenance of consciousness. When there is a basis, there
is a support for the establishing of consciousness…. Such is the
origin of this whole mass of suffering.113
“But, bhikkhus, when one does not intend, and one does not
plan, and one does not have a tendency towards anything, no
basis exists for the maintenance of consciousness. [66] When
there is no basis, there is no support for the establishing of con-
sciousness. When consciousness is unestablished and does not
come to growth, there is no production of future renewed exis-
tence. When there is no production of future renewed existence,
future birth, aging-and-death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, dis-
pleasure, and despair cease. Such is the cessation of this whole
mass of suffering.”114

010

Bryan Kam @bryankam.com · 10/02/2024

They seem to have removed this list of Western philosophers who put processes over objects on wikipedia but I appreciated the list while it lasted en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process...