I don't get Buddhism

Yes, it is nt anti-science to think the future and the past do not exist. Some scientists (physicists) think they do exist (for example those who believe in a Block Universe) but this is one theory amongst others. Further if the past exists, what is it made of?

And then, ironically. If the past exists, then there is no death.

I would agree with this–the existence of the past or future is more of a philosophical question than a scientific one (or worse, a question of language)–but I would expect the vast majority of scientists to believe in the existence of past and future given current theories of spacetime relativity (i.e. Minkowski spacetime has time as just another dimension akin to space and therefore is just as real as space). But strictly speaking, it isn’t unscientific to not believe in the existence of past and future.

The same stuff as now?

Because we’re always alive at some point in the past? But then we’re also always dead at some point in the past (or we will be).

Biggy, I will reply to your last post later.

Okay, let’s sustain a discussion that revolves around whether Communism or Capitalism best reflects human nature. And attempt to pin progress down.

My facts. Your facts. Their facts. What can in fact be established historically? How did these facts come about instead of other facts? How far is the gap between the historical facts and the writings of Karl Marx and Adam Smith?

And how might a Buddhist react to this discussion insofar as it involves his or her understanding of enlightenment, karma, reincarnation and Nirvana.

For instance, has Marx come back back as the coronavirus? Or is that more likely to be Smith? :sunglasses:

You can hold on to your football, Lucy.

Maybe.

But, please, both of you, cite what you construe to be the best example of this. The discussion between us on this thread revolves around Buddhism. I note that which is of particular interest to me – morality here and now, immortality there and then. I wonder how this is understood by Buddhists in the absence of God.

You then move the discussion outside that domain but I can’t/don’t/won’t go there. You note a particular context involving human interactions precipitating reactions that revolve around something other than God, but I yank it back to God.

What particular contexts?

As for the meaning of “progress”, the distinction I make is between the either/or world and the is/ought world. I often cite as an example an issue that provoked any number of arguments between folks some years ago. The space program. Going to the Moon.

In regard to the task itself measuring progress was easy. We either make it to the Moon or we don’t. Well, assuming the whole thing wasn’t filmed on a back lot in Hollywood.

But what of the arguments that revolved around whether we ought to be doing it? Whether, instead, those billions of dollars should be used to solve problems right here on Earth. Like ending poverty or making sure literally thousands of children didn’t starve to death each and every day.

Is there an argument here that would enable us to progress to a final solution?

Sure, we could set the task to be both. But should the space program be scrapped until the other thing is accomplished first? Is that the more enlightened choice?

Let’s discuss that here and note where progress is made.

Yo, Gib!

About you becoming the 4th “stooge”…

That’s when I reduce you down to responding retorting like Curly above.

You’ve been warned! :laughing:

She wrote how morality and immortality work for Buddhists right here:

Which got dismissed as a “world of words”.

FFS

Actually, my reaction was a bit more substantive:

Given my points here, how is her assessment not basically encompassed in a general description intellectual contraption “world of words”?

No it wasn’t. You asked a bunch of questions which effectively dumps the burden of demonstration/proof on to the other person and lets you to sit there and pass judgment on their responses.

You do this often.

Yo, Lucy! :banana-dance:

Yup.

You can’t accept feedback.

healthline.com/nutrition/12 … n#section1

The profit of meditations is a real thing.
Most people don’t do it because they don’t do it.
There is no experience to encourage activity.
I know meditation has changed my life.
And I do not do it a lot either.
I want to do more.

Oh! that’s good… which perimeters were they, exactly? for referential purposes, you understand.

…in relation to… what?

You seem to have described an environment of conflicting goods occurring, and to reconcile the disparities between self and environment… so-as to achieve a dharmic point in time and continuum, would mean to appease those conflicts through gaining much more mindful thoughts on the impact those conflicts are causing… so some hindsight and forward-thinking would be helpful at this point, in achieving that state, and thus the required reconciliation.

“The possibility of death is something that is my own, and at any time before the power of today, I can reveal that the possibility of “I” is of death, particularly “I”.” -Heidegger.

What do you see your fate as? what would you wish it to be beyond the grave? isn’t that nothing but a legacy?

…a case of ontic versus ontological, in finding the mean that suits you?

Heidegger would say -“the notion of existential identity and that of world are completely wedded.“

So you see, living morally, as a ‘presumed religious narrative’ that brings ‘comfort and consolation’ no matter what the situation? Angst and despair know not of conceptualised boundaries of comfort and joy… if that’s what you’re getting at, and wondering about.

I have always been well aware of my true self and nature, in relation to the artificial instilled-values of my politico/religious upbringing… it wasn’t as harsh a process as to diminish or eradicate one’s inner ‘I’ as you think… it wasn’t Christianity. And so… the politico-religious aspect, ran parallel to the innate ‘I’, so making for an intertwined socio/moral experienentiality of an existence… as I was growing up.

…good post, btw.

I think it’s more controversial. At least if I google the subject I find physicists on both side of the issue, and also those advocating that the past and future exist have this position framed as a new position - though Einstein had it, I believe.

The stuff that we have now can be measured. Science is all about measuring. Some things can sort of be measured in the past, like say a star by its light NOW. But other things we cannot measure since we cannot measure them. In science if you cannot demonstrate the effects/measurements in experiments you can’t really say it exists. And if it exists, where is it? It can’t be in the same place as things now. And yes, I do understand block universe type ways of viewing this, but it needs to be pointed out that we are now making an exception in science. X exists but we cannot test it, measure it, and cannot interact with it.

Iamb is afraid of death. If the past exists and this now that he is afraid of death is going to be a part of the past, he will always exist. There will be places in the block where he does not exist - though that’s not dead, dead is the quality of something. But he will always exist (in the past).

IOW in the block universe model, it is only a matter of WHERE you exist in the block. The block and all that is in it exists always. Sure, he won’t be everywhere in the block, he’ll be in those parts where he is.

I doubt he can actually be openly vulnerable and look at any POSITIVE consequences of his beliefs, but that is one. He will always exist, if the past exists because he existed in the past.

You decide. Choose a context, a set of behaviors that is important to you. My aim here is to explore Buddhism [as another religious denomination] in terms of how Buddhists understand enlightenment, karma, reincarnation, and Nirvana in a manner such that I might be able to translate that given the manner in which I have come to understand human interactions in the is/ought world given the arguments I make in my signature threads. Morality here and now/immortality there and then. As that pertains “for all practical purposes” to the lives we live from day to day.

In other words, to reconfigure an assessment of this sort…

…into a discussion involving actual behaviors that Buddhists choose, insofar as “general description intellectual contraptions” of this sort are made clearer in descriptions of “sets of circumstances” such that the words you choose above can be linked to the lives that we interact in socially, politically and economically. As that is then linked to the fate of “I” there and then on the other side of the grave.

I don’t know how to make it any clearer.

More to the point, what does Heidegger himself think about this “here and now”? Is he still sympathetic to the Nazis?

What “I” believe is that my own death will result in the disintegration of my body back to “star stuff”. I also believe that I have no soul to carry on with in Heaven or Hell. Or in one or another reincarnated state. Why? Because I have no demonstrable arguments or evidence from those who believe the opposite.

But, as well, “I” have no more capacity to demonstrate this than do the Buddhists of Nirvana.

Unless, of course, there are Buddhists here among us actually able to explain how exactly reincarnation and Nirvana work in their No God religion. That in fact their beliefs are not just a psychological device to comfort and console them all the way to the grave.

Finally, to those who do embrace a religious denomination as a foundation they are able to anchor “I” to:

Again, to the extent that you still believe in the “true self” in sync with the “right thing to do” [re things like conservatives/liberals, Trump, vaccines etc], we are on opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum…one that runs from moral objectivism to moral nihilism.

But what I would still be most interested in is your own rendition of this:

In other words, you exploring your own value judgments as the existential intertwining of personal experiences and philosophy.

In regard to a “conflicting good” that is of most importance to you. And likely to be be familiar to most of us.

I define religion as this:

“The belief that the highest state of consciousness sees everything as perfect.”

Bullshit!

My consent is violated when any being in existence is having their consent violated (including me)

Religion is a fairy tale people tell themselves as apologetics for consent violation. To make meaning from meaningless lives. But this ‘meaning’ is hollow and shallow.

Nobody has yet in existence had a meaningful life.

So why would you define it that way?

I don’t pretend to understand what Ecmandu means by “consent violation”. All I know is that no one asked me for my consent to be born. And until someone can provide me with a demonstrable argument able to explain more fully how and why I exist going back to a complete understanding of why and how anything exist at all, I can only assume that there will always be those like him who “think things up” in their head about all of this and are somehow able to convince themselves that what they think is true makes it true.

Ecmandu just thinks things that are [to me] a lot more wacky than what “I” and others think here.

In fact, to the best of my knowledge, he doesn’t even make an attempt to demonstrate how his own ideas/ideals work “for all practical purposes” given our day to day interactions.

I ascribe it to a mental “condition” that he will either explore further himself or he won’t. We all have them. It’s just that some take us further away from whatever “reality” may or may not be than others.

And of course “defining” things into existence will always be first choice of some. For example, this thread: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=195793

Come on, does any of this intellectual/spiritual masturbation get us any closer to an actual extant God? Or, here, to reincarnation and Nirvana?

How many times do I have to say this on this fucking board?!

Just like someone can argue that the leading cause of death is birth, and that all people having babies are necessarily committing homicide…

Consent is not a concept of a fetus. It emerges later in life. Birth itself is not consent violation, and even if it was, it’s the rudimentary idea of consent that develops.

Iambiguous, I know you are full of shit. I know that you know exactly what consent violation is. Say chopping your pinky finger off, especially if you’re the best piano player on earth.

I not only think, I know you’re full of shit.