A strange loop occurs when you move through the levels of a hierarchical system and arrive back where you started.

Douglas Hofstadter uses the concept of self-referential strange loops to explain the emergent property of consciousness in the books – Gödel, Escher, Bach and I Am a Strange Loop.

And yet when I say “strange loop”, I have something else in mind — a less concrete, more elusive notion. What I mean by “strange loop” is — here goes a first stab, anyway — not a physical circuit but an abstract loop in which, in the series of stages that constitute the cycling-around, there is a shift from one level of abstraction (or structure) to another, which feels like an upwards movement in a hierarchy, and yet somehow the successive “upward” shifts turn out to give rise to a closed cycle. That is, despite one’s sense of departing ever further from one’s origin, one winds up, to one’s shock, exactly where one had started out. In short, a strange loop is a paradoxical level-crossing feedback loop. When a system evolves to a certain level of complexity, we have the emergence of a new system that cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts…the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

I think therefore I am…more than a neural network.

I see the Tao symbol (Yin Yang symbol) as an example of a strange loop. We see self-reference because there is Yang in the Yin (white in black) and vice versa. A circular motion is suggested by the symbol which represents a never ending loop of transformation.

Strange loops links:

Hyakujo wished to send a monk to open a new monastery. He told his pupils that whoever answered a question most ably would be appointed. Placing a water vase on the ground, he asked: “Who can say what this is without calling its name?” The chief monk said: “No one can call it a wooden shoe.” Isan, the cooking monk, tipped over the vase with his shoe and went out. Hyakujo smiled and said: “The chief monk loses.” And Isan became the master of the new monastery.

What does this mean to you?

I see that the cook used action instead of words.

Also, if the water was scarce then everyone would experience thirst and “know” what water is and “know” what the vase is.

Is a Tibetan word usually translated as “attachment” but described by Pema Chödrön as an ineffable situation where one is “hooked” by an emotional trigger or by an pervasive state such as an addiction. I find this concept of Buddhist psychology very insightful as a way of learning “to roll with the punches” of life.

Meditation can be helpful in learning to “free” oneself from Shenpa.