I don't get Buddhism

Ah, a real context. The objectivism just continues, lol.

What I pointed out was ‘not’ a real context.

It’s not that you want a specific thing, right now. It’s not that you have preferences, about what we talk about now. It’s that what you demand is real and what I point out and notice is not even real.

As if the context I was pointing out did not address specific arguments and points you’ve made in the thread and not just in recent posts here either.

All you are doing here is saying…

hey, I don’t want to talk about that. (perhaps because you don’t want someone to point out the implications of arguments you’ve made or points you made, perhaps for some other reason)

But you couch it in objectivist terms. Your interests now (though not at other times in the thread) are the real contexts.

You one silly boy, I thought you were a nihilist.

There is evidence that Buddhist practice benefits many people, as you have acknowledged. So far you have never produced any evidence that your choice has helped you or anyone else. And yet, you demand proof that all rational people should engage in Buddhism before you would. Proof is for math and symbolic logic. But we have evidence that it is a better path than yours since there is no evidence yours benefits anyone. And, of course, while engaging in Buddhism, you could continue asking people for proofs of their moral positions.

This is real, human life. This is real. We make choices without having all the answers. Without knowing for sure.

That is the general context as far as I can see. And the specific context, in this thread, is that your criterion for not choosing buddhism (yet) makes no sense.

Real contexts. It’s not like you have an answer to anything, certainly not immortality and morals. And you have no evidence your choice does anything good.

Yet you cling to it in the face of others that at least have some evidence backing them.

And via incredulity and writing in the second person plural and using words like ‘must’ you present your choice as if it was not only objective, but the only rational one.

Note to others:

A little help here in closing the gap between my rendition of a context and whatever the fuck he seems to be so perturbed about above.

It all seems rather obvious to me. People believe in religions – either on their own or through indoctrination – because this seems crucial to them in choosing the good things, the right things, the moral things to do on this side of the grave. And this is important to them because [existentially] a connection is made between doing the right thing here and now and gaining access to immortality and salvation there and then.

Religion in a nutshell!!

Only Buddhism embodies a narrative that in many important respects is different from the major religious denomination in the West.

Now, as I see it, there are Buddhist here who are willing to at least make the attempt to convince me their take on both morality and mortality is demonstrable.

Though, sure, if they feel the onus rest on me to go out and interact with them for days or weeks and months and pin this down for myself, then we can agree to disagree regarding the more reasonable approach to deciding things like this.

We can have another take on this. We can do what we want. There is no must. That is for the objectivists. It’s scary, I get that. What if there is some good out there and what I want is bad. But here we are. You can’t mock the objectivists on the one hand, look down on them.

and then say that we MUST wait for one of them to produce the proof. We must…must…wait for one of these people that you gloat over being able to defeat…

we must wait for one of them to prove something before we can start following our own personal preferences and doing things that fit what we value?

That’s an objectivist stance and a weird one.

Your path is to not try anything else until people you mock not only as fish but fish ina barrell prove something to you. You are hinging your life on the argumentative skills of people you mock as easy to defeat.

And this is a must. And this is the real context.

Nope, it’s still all about me and nothing about the behaviors one chooses here and now in any specific context as that relates to what they want their fate to be there and then after they die.

Really, I don’t know how to make this fundamental aspect of religion any clearer!!

i’ll check in again in a couple of years, or not Iambiguous.

This describes a Sufi story that is also used in the social sciences as a concept, The Streetlight Effect…

Buddhism and Sufism have a number of similarities. I often think of this story when I think of you Iambiguous. When one reads your posts one finds enough information to show you more or less know the Streetlight Effect is in action in you.

Or we can use a Zen Koan that is more complimentary…

Good luck.

I know, none of that solved all your problems or proved which path all rational people should realize is THE right one for everyone.

Perhaps humbleness, a realistic version, cuts down on some of the pain and fracturedness.

Any Sufists here?

If so, let me ask you to explore with me the behaviors you choose on this side of the grave as that relates to what you imagine is in store for you after you die.

As for the streetlight, isn’t that basically what religion is all about? You go to the light because it will seem considerably more comforting and consoling then stumbling about in the dark.

And, believe me, it doesn’t get much darker than the manner in which I construe “I” here as basically a fractured and fragmented existential contraption living in an essentially meaningless world about to be obliterated once and for all in tumbling over into the abyss that is oblivion.

Unless, of course, someone here is able to convince me otherwise.

You know, before I succeed in in convincing them instead. :open_mouth: :astonished: :open_mouth:

Biggus ain’t looking for anything.

It just seems that he is by the roundabout way that he presents his points.

“We need a demonstration …”

No. He wants to show that there is no demonstration. He makes sure that there isn’t one.

I think that you misunderstand what he is doing.

He is not waiting for an answer. He knows that there is no answer.

The fish try to convince him by they can’t because he controls whether he is convinced or not. He holds all the cards. Therefore, he is always going to win.

Getting the fish to jump around is part of the entertainment. :animals-fishblue: :animals-fishgreen:

Sure, I’ve said similar things. Sometimes take it at face value. Sometimes not. Nothing’s gonna shift this.

The only model of religion that seems to interest iambiguous is the objective one that he once held with an imaginable omni-god and a literal heaven and hell. That’s the religion which seems to fuel his obsessive, perseverative ambivalence. The only version of Buddhism he is willing to engage on amounts to the same thing. His preoccupation seems to hold him in a perpetual recapitulation of the crisis of his loss of faith and the resulting overwhelming terror of oblivion. Perhaps his mindset can be best understood in the context of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory

ya’ll niggas is gettin played by biggs. this dude ain’t scared of oblivion or fractured or any of that shit he pretends to be. that’s part of his game, man. it’s all tongue-in-cheek. what he’s doin is subliminally suggesting that all ya’ll are scared and fractured and shit, or else you wouldn’t be hanging on so dearly to the crap you want to believe/hope is true. the irony is, he’s saying that what ya’ll niggas is doing is terror management theory because you ain’t got the cajones to be nihilists.

when will the day come when philosophy is no longer terror management theory?

you folks need to face your mortality squarely and find your inner tyler durdens.

If so, he’s lying because he has described how fear of oblivion for himself and people he cares about is chewing him up.

no he’s bullshitting again. he won’t admit it publicly, but he’s starting with the affirmation of man, and he works his way backwards using cyyn-nicism. the time monitor. the space maasurer.

Are you like 12? niggas?

Well, duh, of course he’s been saying that. You haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about when you talk about what we know, or believe, for that matter. You’re just skimming in and defending him without much info. He’s has said what you are saying he is really, underneath doing. He has said that people are afraid of his ideas. Not much of a game if he comes out and says it, it’s just a straight accusation.

I mean, did you miss existentialism, nihilism, or what about all the physicalists - and they are all over philosophy forums. They have no beliefs different from nihilists as far as ontology. And yet they do not share his pathological repetition.

yo

If you weren’t on his team he’d call you one of the youngsters for this infantile post. If only he could admit to having an innner Tyler Durdan. And it’s not facing your own mortality being jealous of people who don’t wallow in shit they are at least as aware of as he is and his passive aggressive approach.

But your pom poms and cheer are noted as always.

Yo, chill, dog. He be messing wit our minds, feel me? Prometheus, he like Flava Fav to Iamb’s Chuck D, Tony Yayo to 50 cent. He just splainin’ Iambs banging shit, like, transcends our craniums. Lying? nah, it be freedom, word, yo.

We got’s to suss Iamb’s fly posts full time, bro, or we be just dissing his bluh.

Iambiguous, man, he’s, like, the shit. We been bumrushing a Boddhisatva. His posts be pointing at the moon, not describing it.

Gots to grow up, you and me.

Well, I see nothing has changed around here: 30 pages of the same group of guys perpetually peddling perceptions like some sort of philosopher purgatory :smiley:

I must say that it is good to see everyone is still around.

“Are you like 12?”

vocaroo.com/5hER1seEX2M

On the contrary, I am always looking for an argument able to be demonstrated that morality on this side of the grave relating to any particular behaviors revolving around conflicting goods of note is objective; and that death is not falling over into the abyss that is oblivion. The obliteration of “I” on the sojourn back to star stuff.

Here the arguments of Buddhists.

And, given what is at stake here, including moral obligations here and now, immortality, salvation, reincarnation, Nirvana etc., there and then, how on earth is it inappropriate to ask for a demonstration.

You have made arguments in favor of objective morality, and you seem to have something in the way of a belief in God that may or may not include an afterlife. But: I still have no clear sense of how you connect the dots here in the course of living your life from day to day. Not even “in your head”.

And, please, why in the world would I not want to be persuaded that the objective moral views I once embodied as a Christian and the objective political values I once embodied as a Marxist – views and values that gave me considerable comfort and consolation – may well still be within my reach.

So, go ahead, name a moral conflagration we are all likely to be familiar with here, cite an argument that expresses your views embodied in objective morality, note the behaviors this view propels you to choose here and now, and, given your own religious values, attempt to encompass what you imagine sustaining these behaviors all the way to the grave will result in on the other side.

Or, sure, skip that part altogether [again] and make it all about me.