Assumptions 1) if you can’t try them all, there is no point in trying any of them [even though there are no more important issues according to you and you are terrified of the situation you find yourself in.] That makes no sense. My ship goes down and the flotsam all looks pretty flimsy, not big enough to keep me from drowning and I cannot decide which piece all rational humans would try so I will tread water without trying any until I drown. 2) You own interests in something in texts, or something adherents seem to have achieved or in the practices have no role to play in what you choose. You must encounter an argument that all rational people would be convinced by or there is no reason to try something. That makes no sense. 3) Abstract communication with people who are not Buddhists in a non-buddhist forum is a good way to find out about Buddhism. And I am supposed to assume you are really interested. Please.
Last: you mock the idea of going through the whole list of spiritual and religious approaches. But that is what you are doing, anyway. It is the method you use I suggested was not the best. Here you are doing Buddhism. I am suggesting Buddhism is better approached experientially. Get it, that whole one and one and one reductio ad absurdum is not relevant. YOu are spending time on Buddhism. But is it a good way to carry out your investigation?
Note: I have suggested that actual concrete experience is a better way to learn. You the one who uses ‘abstract’ as a pejorative term cannot even for a moment consider that your approach might not be optimal.
I am supposed to think that you are fractured and fragmented, and yet every day for years you take the same approach to learning and express incredulity that another approach might be rational or more rational…
Why on earth…you say.
On the one hand you are supposed to experience yourself as fractured and fragmented.
On the other hand you behave in precisely the same way for many, many years now AND you are so sure your approach is correct that you
- express incredulity that any suggestion from people with more experience of the subject you are supposedly interested in could possibly be correct.
- feel no need to even argue against that other approach and instead, as usual simply repeat why you do what you do - which you also might have some doubt about.
If you are so fractured and fragmented, why does it never seem to, for a fucking second, occur to you, even when it is pointed out, that your motivations might not be the ones you think they are.
No, that is impossible.
Here you are working your way through that list. The list you mock me as having ridiculously suggested you go through, when I did not. But you are going through that list, now Buddhism.
It is the manner in which you approach learning I am talking about.
Also, you didn’t respond to this part at all:
[/quote]
I have responded to this dozens of times in many different threads. You say you are more fragmented and fractured, but I can’t see the results of that. You do not change. You do not change approach. You trust yourself enough to know yourself, your approach, your motives, to react with incredulity that any other approach might be useful, for example here communicating with someone who has more experience and abstract knowledge both about Buddhism. You cannot imagine that my suggestion that you participate might actually be a suggestion of a better approach to understanding Buddhism and abstract descriptions of it. Or that following what draws you AS AN INDIVIDUAL might be a better approach to specific options. No you can dismiss them out of hand.
You mock my ‘having nailed you’ but you do not for one moment consider that perhaps there was some truth in any of this.
And yet this is a fractured and fragmented person…
hm…
couldn’t such a person have missed things about himself, about his self-pedagogy.
No, according to you. These things need simply be labels as me nailing you. And dismissed not via argument but through incredulity.
Engaging non-Buddhists in a non-Buddhist forum in abstract discussions of Buddhism…that’s the best way to evaluate Buddhism. Snorts of derision that you might have reasons other than the ones you put forward or are even aware of (despite this oh, so fragmented ‘i’). Snorts of derision that people with more experience and knowledge about how to learn such things might possibly have anything valuable to say about how to learn about Buddhism.
That all does not make sense.
And really, however harshly Phyllo and I can get with you, you seem to have no idea how truly respectful we have been, and how hard we have tried to communicate with you, using a variety of approaches to point out areas where you might learn something.
But, ironically, you know exactly how you should live, fractured I and nihilism and hopelessness repeatedly bemoaned only seeminly to the contradictory. This fractured and fragmented i has nothing to learn about his approach from others.
Well, good for you. Keep at it.