5

In self inquiry meditation one asks himself "who am I?"

Or Instead of “Who am I?” you may prefer asking, “Who is thinking this thought? Who is seeing through these eyes right now?” These questions direct your awareness inward, away from the external world and toward the source from which all experiences arise.

But this whole process seems to be framing questions in terms of absolutes. Who (absolute 1) is thinking this thought (absolute 2)? Who (absolute 1) is seeing through these eyes (absolute 2) right now?

But personally I believe in a relational universe. Where one can formulate everything in terms of interactions and space and time are also relational (close to a Leibniz sense).

Question

Is there any reformulation of the question "who am I?" in a relational sense? (without invoking absolutes)

Improve this question
9
  • 1
    Indeed it's extremely hard to ask the question in a relational manner as most people's logic are classic, you'd better speak the more nihilistic language of predicate functor (PFL) or combinatorial logic (CL), or the likes easily becoming incomplete perhaps...
    – Double Knot
    Commented Jun 14, 2022 at 18:46
  • Within classic language perhaps you won't see many such pure relationalism in the literature, perhaps you can try Spinoza's Ethics and Whitehead's Process Philosophy in Western ones. As for Eastern, you may refer Anatta and Confucianism which claims that social harmony results in part from every individual knowing his or her place in the natural order, and playing his or her part well. Reciprocity or responsibility extends beyond filial piety and involves the entire network of social relation. Particular duties arise from one's particular situation in relation to others...
    – Double Knot
    Commented Jun 15, 2022 at 3:15
  • Neither of your absolute terms is absolute. "Who" is a variable; it doesn't make any commitments to absolute/relative, and "this thought" is introduced by an indexical, which is inherently relational.
    – David Gudeman
    Commented Jun 15, 2022 at 13:59
  • Or you can study Heidegger's Da-Sein existentialism in-depth, ie, the Being of a being who is concerned about its Being or Husserl's transcendental phenomenology. In a sense, the famous maxim existence is prior to essence of existentialism is a relational attempt to answer your question "Who am I"...
    – Double Knot
    Commented Jun 17, 2022 at 2:43
  • This is an interesting question. But before one could try addressing it there is a basic miscommunication: What does the word absolute signify to you? You need to expand on this a bit
    – Rushi
    Commented Apr 16 at 5:08

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
2
+50

But this whole process seems to be framing questions in terms of absolutes.

It is common (western, especially) language that frames questions in terms of "definite things", and it is inevitable that a first approach to eastern notions and practices has to use that language. Indeed, those questions should not be taken as ontologically normative (as in establishing the terms and boundaries of a discussion), rather as invitations to deeper reflection, sometimes even provocations (think e.g. koans), where the goal, hoping I am not spoiling anything, is that the "ego" and the whole question eventually "dissolve"...

Whatever that means: my point just being that these are not even strictly speaking philosophical questions (we are "at best" at the boundary of Socrates to the eastern tradition here), with an answer that is "no question at all" in the metaphysical sense.

Is there any reformulation of the question "who am I?" in a relational sense?

There certainly is: although let me mention that there is a polarity between a purely "relation" conception of reality (the system is everything) and a purely "symbolic" one (the individual is everything), and most probably "the truth is in the middle", for a to be better understood notion of "middle".

Anyway, "who"-ever "I" am in that sense, that is again, at least within the tradition of the usual "relational" enquiry, an issue of ontology (categories of understanding), not one of metaphysics (categories of reality). And even less, to the point, it has anything to do with the "who am I?" in the Yoga question, if not, as said, as its starting point...

Improve this answer
1
  • 1
    +1 for the meta issue on western framing of eastern approachs
    – Rushi
    Commented Apr 21 at 9:37
1

Yes. Indra's Net, and the framing of intersubjectivity or dependent origination. You might look at Liberating Intimacy: Enlightenment and Social Virtuosity in Ch'an Buddhism.

You might ask instead 'What is arising?' I'd look to the self as a strange-loop manifesting itself dynamically, as discussed here & the linked discussion "Why ask why" and its scions

The origin of conceptualising linguistic abstract thought in intersubjectivity is discussed here: According to the major theories of concepts, where do meanings come from?

Improve this answer
3
  • So I haven't read the book you linked but wouldn't the answer to 'What is arising?' be (naively) absolute in some sense and thus less fundamental than the question posed? (since relations are more fundamental than the postulated absolutes)?
    – More Anonymous
    Commented Jun 15, 2022 at 6:37
  • The answer would be, go look
    – CriglCragl
    Commented Jun 15, 2022 at 11:08
  • 1
    it took me forever to realise this but "what is arising?" is relational but in a temporal sense! Interestingly I had this insight today after some meditation. I still think this answer is instructive btw
    – More Anonymous
    Commented Apr 15 at 18:33
0

According to Laing, when their sense of identity is threatened, people are set to split themselves into a true and false self, wherein the true self relates only to itself, which can end in psychosis, because

without being lived in a dialectical relationship with others, the ‘self’, is not able to preserve what precarious identity or aliveness it may already possess.

I don't know if this answers your question, but part of the problem seems to be that division of the self into two, personal and relational. I don't know what the alternative is (i.e. what a unitary self would be, true, false or neither).

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .