Oz and Viggen, thank you for your well thought out responses.
Viggen, I disagree that the mind has not itself become objectified by the western project. Science - ratio-empiric method applied with assumption that all truth derives from matter - first reduced matter to smaller and smaller pieces (Descartes reductionist method aplied to Galileo's idea of universe as machine of matter), then, that reductionist ideology was turned upon the mind itself. The entire history of so-called post modernism is a history of deconstruction on the mind; the existentialists looked beneath thought and saw a Nothingness, the Deconstructionists broke up sentences, saw nothing between, and assumed a Nothingness. Interestingly, the assumption of a Nothingness prior to thought is itself a bias of the thought attached mind; a space-of-mind absent thought is a Nothingness because only meaning derives from thought, so it assumes. The Existentialists and Deconstructionists rejoined the assumptions of scientific method they originally sought to see beyond by seeing silence of mind and, then, adopting this assumption. No evidence to do so, just re-adopted scientific materialism's assumption that outside of thoughts about matter nothing else, effectively, exists. Ironic, eh? The result is thought structures without a ground of meaning, the collective mind in recoil from that assumed Nothingness turning back to the power of the thinking mind to give it things to accumulate and cycle into pleasure, so on, and, hence, what you see - if you see - around us. The cycling of "Captitalism", as we practice it, is merely a reflection of this deeper cycling. Surface eddies, so to speak.
Which brings me to Oz, always asking good questions. You ask, "Do all people limit themselves by their assumptions?" This is subtle. No, not by the assumption itself, but by the attachment to that assumption. Now, you could say that the word "assumption" inherently implies an adherence to a set of thought-rules, and I would agree, so let me modify this to, an attachment to thought is a limitation in and of itself. This does not mean that you don't use thoughts - you don't go mute, Jesus could yap with the best of them - but that you do not derive your identity from your thought. This means, impliedly, that identity in this instance is grounded in "something" else. The grounding is not in thought, although thought still arises, but in the ground of thought, or the silence between, beneath and infusing thought.
So, if you still think, but are grounded in the ground of thought - and, thereby, through that grounding, not attached to thought - then what is it in thought that one becomes attached to? I mean, if all thought-rules are assumptions, then what is it that is attached to? Answer: thought arisement, if observed by the silent mind, has momentum, or orientation to that which it is responding to; thought is tied to the object of thought and the orientation to that object and/or mind determines whether there are limits or not, or how dirty the lens is as a metaphor. The lens becomes clearer by a reduction in recoil from the object/other mind, or a reduction of attachment. This recoil/attachmnet is reflective of the prey/predator remnants of the mind. So, what I am saying is that an attachment to thought, and the recoil to other thoughts that you see, IS that "attachment" I refer to. Its not thought per se that's "bad", but the prey/predator momentum that separates the silence in your mind - your true face of grounding - from that Silence which is also the ground of all that you see outside.
Yes, Viggen, I am presupposed to move towards this Silence (and, you will note, it is not coincidental that music is experienced deeply when the mind is silent...). On all of us being presupposed to being drawn to this beauty, yes, all minds are drawn to this flame, even the ones who deny it exists. The Silence, like a mother who never turns away, is quite nice to us on that point.
On "Storms": we are not drawn to the Light of Silence/Beauty/Truth because of our escape from storms; the storms are a result of our recoil from the Silence in the first instance. Pleasure may result from grounding in the Silence of Beauty, but pleasure should always be your aftertaste. But I think you know this Oz...
