I don't get Buddhism

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.

Over and over again, I note the staggering gap between what any of us think the answer is and all that we simply do not know about the nature of existence itself. Thus [given that] the distinction I make revolves around another gap: the one between what we believe is true and what we able to demonstrate is true in regard to our value judgments on this side of the grave and what our fate is to be on the other side.

As [on this thread] that revolves around our thoughts and feelings about Buddhism.

Instead, over and again from folks like Phyllo and Karpel Tunnel, we get truly pathetic psycho-babble crap like this:

You decide how seriously to take him.

“Model” of religion? Back in the day when I was truly a devout Christian, the thing I remember most revolved around the Ten Commandments and Heaven. There was a way to know how to live. Righteously. And, if you behaved in sync with the will of God, you would be judged worthy of immortality and salvation. That was above all else what Reverend Deerdorf always focused in on. And that has stuck with me to this day. Call it a manifestation of dasein.

After all, what could possibly be more important in regard to one’s belief in God? Or, here, on the enlightened path to Nirvana.

Again, as though a psychologism of this sort can’t be thought up to encompass any number of additional “types” of God/No God folks.

Yes, I am no longer able to think myself into believing there are inherently good and bad behaviors. I am no longer able to believe that all of the things I love in life won’t be swallowed up in the obliteration of “I” for all of eternity.

Like it is strange that thinking this way might be disturbing.

But what of your own religious beliefs? What “type” are you? Are you still able to think yourself into believing there is an objective right and an objective wrong way to live? Are you still able to believe that death is merely a passage to bigger and better things?

If so, then what do you really know about my “type”?

Of course, we may never know the extent to which his own point is tongue-in-cheek.

On the other hand, there is no fucking way in hell in which exploring these relationships here is just a game to me. Unless that’s what some call “waiting for godot”.

:-k [-o< :-k

:-k

Why on earth would I talk about myself here? Why would I talk about my behaviors?

What would be the point?

Above all else, it is that I am able to reduce otherwise intelligent and articulate posters like KT down to truly hapless attempts like this at being “clever”!

That still boggles my mind. Though, admittedly, less and less.

Huh?

No, seriously: HUH?!

As a mere mortal, you interact with others who may well come into conflict with you over value judgments. For many, these conflicts go beyond the existential and encompass one or another equivalent of Heaven and Hell.

For me that revolves around moral nihilism here and now, oblivion there and then.

What about you? In a philosophy forum, you have no earthly reasons to discuss how these relationships impact on your day to day existence?

If not, we are put together differently.

If I go to a history forum, then I talk about history.

If I go to a science forum, then I talk about science.

I don’t talk about myself.

If I go to a religion forum, I want to discuss the relationship between the behaviors that religionists choose here and now as this is related to what they anticipate will result from this there and then on the other side.

And, in that regard, as someone not able to believe in God or Enlightenment, I am not able to not think as a moral nihilist who is just around the corner from oblivion.

Not to talk about how these relationships are crucial to an understanding of the life I live is [to me] ridiculous.

If, on the other hand, thinking like I do seems ridiculous to you, then steer clear of me on threads such as this. Just accept that we think about these things differently.

That’s very general.

What on earth does it mean?

We need a context. For example:

A Christian volunteers at a soup kitchen every year at Thanksgiving. He is inspired by what Jesus said about helping the poor.(Cite NT passages if necessary.) He “earns points” towards entering heaven.

I suppose that another Christian may be inspired to volunteer as well, when he reads the story.

What does an atheist get out of the Christian’s story? He might, or might not, volunteer at a soup kitchen but for reasons other than Jesus and heaven.

Where is the philosophy?

What am I missing?

Nice perception!

Nice to see you, again.

Well, when I am exchanging insulting retorts with objectivists of your ilk, what’s the point of specificity?

My point revolves around how, given a particular trajectory of personal experiences, the volunteers and the folks being fed came to be in this soup kitchen in the first place. “I” here as an existential fabrication rooted in dasein.

And then the extent to which the Christian volunteer is able to demonstrate that his role model actually did in fact exist; and was both God and the Son of God; then died for our sins; then was resurrected.

And how, say, even though Jesus was a Jew, any number of Christians today reject the Jewish faith. As do Muslims who rally around Muhammad instead. Even though they all claim to worship and adore the God of Moses and Abraham.

And that’s before we get to the reaction of all this from the Buddhists here.

And what of the Marxists who claim that soup kitchens are an inherent manifestation of capitalism? That those in them should choose instead to struggle politically against a ruling class that creates such disparity between the wealthy and the poor? And that Christianity is just one more example of religion being the opiate of the masses? And how politicians like Trump use evangelicals as chumps in order to sustain their own class interests.

Again: what particular atheist, in what particular set of circumstances, viewing the world around her from what particular set of assumptions? Philosophical or otherwise.

Sure, she might be in the soup kitchen for her own reasons. But what are those reasons? How did she come to embody them?

Indeed, how is the “I” of any of these characters here not a profoundly problematic manifestation of the manner in which “I” construe the meaning of dasein?

That doesn’t sound like philosophy. It’s more like an interest in personal history - biography or autobiography.

Like I said:

Let’s leave it at that, shall we?

You know, after you discuss it with Karpel Tunnel.

Pick one:

:wink: :laughing: :wink:
:laughing: :wink: :laughing:

It could explain why the discussions don’t go anywhere. One person is interested in personal histories and the other person is interested in something else.

The overlap could be small.

Then there comes the time when we start talking about the person. And suddenly that’s off limits for some reason.

It’s quite confusing.

Okay, let’s leave it at that then.

Yo, KT, does that work for you too?

If my attempt at humor was a hapless attempt at being funny or clever, (both certainly possible failures on my part)…

it wasn’t you who did this, it was prometheus who did it - if such control is possible - with his street talk, calling people whose posts he must have skimmed at best…niggas, etc. lol. His post led to my response, not yours.

His style of posting.
And then…his explanation of what you are doing here, not your explanation of what you are doing here.
I was obviously mocking his style of posting and his claims about you - which, again, it bears repeating, do not match what you say you are doing, so my humor in my post doesn’t relate to your posts or claims, but his.

Yet here you are taking credit for controlling the behavior of other people, again.

With a dash of mind reading powers as well.

I couldn’t just be someone who sometimes thinks he’s being funny or clever when he’s not.

No, Iambiguous ‘reduced me’.

Talk about comforting contraptions.

And you still haven’t driven me away as you claimed you had already managed to do, now quite a while ago. Being a psychic doesn’t become you. You might want to make claims consistent with your philosophy.

To put this in a Buddhist context, here is a Zen story about hubris…

Have my posts made you believe in immortal life or the resolution of conflicting goods? No. Of course, they have not attempted that.

But will you manage to learn about some more humble, smaller things, about yourself and life…? or from others?

About how you view yourself and your project, about what you are doing or claim to be doing?

And notice that the guy in the story, at least, he tried to find actual practitioners of religions, actual experts, where they might be. I know, you are limited in mobility. If only the internet existed…and one could actually find the email addresses of experts…if only…

But what you lack in certain options you make up for in your ability to reduce people.