In what sense are human interactions meaningful for a Buddhist?
Or a Christian for that matter?
If a Buddhist thinks that there is no self, then what does “obliteration of ‘I’” mean to him/her?
How does one proceed if the existence of realms, heavens or supernatural beings cannot be demonstrated to everyone?
I’d say it’s simply about being the best human-being you can be, and not enjoying life at the expense of others… my Bangladeshi Buddhism-practising uncle taught me that, passed down from his (family) generations, so taught as it’s meant to be traditionally taught, and not as a religious concept.
It’s simply a method of tweaking one’s thinking, to live a more fulfilling life.
Clearly here we need a context.
And all human beings have to establish some sense of meaning in regard to sustaining those things we need merely to survive from day to day. And then beyond that each of us as individuals have all manner of wants and desires. It’s just that some take this and attach it to religious narratives which instill in adherents the importance of making distinctions between things you ought to want and things you ought to eschew. As that relates to rewards and punishments on this side of the grave and immortality and salvation on the other side.
How on earth in this regard are Buddhists any different from the rest of us?
And, given a particular context, let the Buddhists explain to us what he or she does mean by “no self”.
Sure. You could say that.
But you could also say that human interactions are means to attaining nirvana and the end of your own personal suffering. Just as a capitalist could see human interactions as a means to acquire wealth. For a hedonist … to get pleasure. A nihilist … to get whatever he decides that he wants.
There are various ways to look at it … some beautiful and some ugly. (“Beautiful” and “ugly” also being different ways of looking at the “various ways to look at it”. )
You could say a Christian is just clawing his way into heaven, one “loving” act at a time.
What does ‘meaningful’ and ‘meaningless’ come down to?
Do Buddhists have meaning that others lack? That others can’t get?
Where does meaning come from? Inside? Outside? Both? Neither?
How much of it is attitude?
Let them???
They offer ways to find out worldwide. And as long as you don’t live too far out in the countryside, there would be Buddhists who would come to you, should you be housebound, and help you learn, both experientially ( the central process) and through dialogue (a process that supports the practices in Buddhist tradition). It’s all out there, and Phyllo does not need to let them do this. All you’d need to do is ask. It might take a while, but in the end someone would come and do their best to show you.
Wait, you wanted to know what the experience of swimming underwater was like?
Yeah. I googled it, but it’s all just abstractions.
uh, huh. OK. Good luck.
The real problem is that anything that the Buddhist says will be an existential contraption. And therefore, essentially useless. Or at least no different from what he has now.
It’s interesting that he thinks of contraptions as the content of thoughts, or thoughts where the content functions as a contraption.
IOW a contraption is some belief in X, that cannot be verified by science and serves a role like soothing the person about death or a lack of meaning.
Content. Beliefs.
But the metaphor contraption means a machine of device, and these are things that carry out a process. One does not need such a belief to carry out a process.
The way people interact with other people can be a contraption in precisely the negative sense he judges with the word.
You don’t have to assert a single thing that is not verified by science to nevertheless be using a contraption.
And the habitual WAYS he interacts with others…are contraptions.
The habitual never trying anything out - Buddhist meditation, for example, that is practices, whether from psychology or Buddhism or anywhere else - is a defensive contraption.
The getting people to convince him pattern where he doesn’t actually quite read what they are saying is a contraption.
The hijacking of threads is a contraption.
The trolling, now, for example, with his thread on astrology, is a contraption. Let me get you in a position where you try to convince me contraption.
The use of the criterion that whatever you believe should be something you can convince every rational person is true contraption,
Buddhism, despite much I do not like about it, very much tries to get people to sidestep BOTH their content based contraptions (the only kind he recognizes) AND their process ones. In fact meditation is all about that.
Introspection is not the best tool to actually notice one’s habits. Meditation is not the only one, but the Buddhists do recognize process based contraptions and seek to remedy it in line with their heuristics.
But this is all taboo. Of course here I have discussed it abstractly or generally. But if you or I point out a very concrete specific contraption he has, where he refuses to try somethign or dismisses someothing out of hand or any of the other types of contraptions i listed above in a specific interaction,
this is us making him the issue.
Which is fascinating, since his posts are always talking about him and his fractured mind and his belly of the working class and how he can’t know if he has free will…the whole hopeless, probably never can be resolvedness of his, specific life, come and solve it. But if one responds
precisely
to
what
he
makes
the
topic
we are off topic and wrong for having focused on him.
And really we are upset at him not for things like that hypocritical and confused insult, but because we are too afraid of something he bravely faces.
And it’s funny. I always think I won’t realize something new, but I think that actually made it clearer to me, writing this post, some of what is going on, and a little part of me thinks, also, on the side of this, oh, this time he will at least catch a glimspse of himself.
How naive can I be, after all this time?
Though on second thought i think the medium has effects. Without facial expressions and body language and tone of voice, a lot of what is happening between people and the more full experience of the other person is missing. These disembodied minds could do anything, but a concrete person often makes it very clear what they are up to.
people drawn to buddhism are usually either experiencing some kind of economic hardship or they’re just interested in it because it’s a designer religion that gives them a feeling of culture and depth (that isn’t there). and, so long as it still exists, it will serve only as a distraction… away from things which, ironically, are part of the very circumstances that cause their attention to be drawn to it (in the case that they aren’t just religious tourists).
That’s the idea that the problems are outside of you and so are the solutions to those problems. Political action is the way to proceed.
Religions are the opium of the people. They keep people distracted, busy, wasting their time and energy.
I recall that Biggus also expressed that sentiment.
Is that a part of nihilism?
Sorry to break the news to you, but none of that is relevant or applies to a practitioner born into a practising environment… so a way of every day life, for such families and communities.
I would then say, that you are looking at it from an externalised viewpoint, as opposed to allowing the self to become entrenched in the concept… as the only thing the practitioner seeks is stillness of mind.
You are thinking about it in Western terms and analogies. Religions are belief systems, that you gotta buy into to believe in… with meditation and mindfulness, there is nothing to buy into.
I would say that it’s not about meaning, but about having control and direction of one’s own thoughts, as opposed to being ruled by them, and nurturing the ones that have utility. I would say that that is what non-practitioners can’t get, in not letting one’s problems cloud one’s judgment and interactions. Too many have been guilty of that.
…from within, which then manifests outwardly, with every interaction we have.
Attitude? Practice erases unnecessary thoughts and habits, so call it a detox for the mind… if you will. A seasoned practitioner can automatically reset their thinking habits at will, so as to be constantly operating from a place of mindfulness… and so the practice has become second nature, hardwired into the mind.
which part? calling bollocks for what it is, or criticizing the reasons why people believe in the bollocks? this is more along the lines of skepticism than nihilism, though. if there is any nihilism happening here, it’s probably from biggs (and myself to a degree) standing aghast at the sight of all this. it’s enough to make you lose all hope. i mean look at poor biggs. he’s been asking for a particular context for what, three years now? and all he keeps getting are the same redundant generalizations… or statements so obscure they make hegel and heidegger look like third grade english teachers.
really though there’s no such thing as ‘nihilism’. nihilism is kinda like skeptical existentialism with an attitude, you might say. it doesn’t ‘deny all values’ because that’s impossible. think of it as hume on adderall, instead.
Do they? What, when, where, how, why? Under what set of circumstances?
Okay, you and others come to a conclusion about that. Me, what I am then interested in [in regard to religion] is how that conclusion “in your head” is intertwined in your interactions with others. In particular as this relates to a context in which value judgments [derived from religion] come into conflict with the value judgments of others [derived from religion or not] such that you find yourself having to choose a behavior that you are able to reconcile with what you believe God or your religious faith demands of you in order to sustain “I” beyond the grave.
But: that’s just me here. That’s what I am interested in. Why? Because from my frame of mind “here and now”, in regard to all of this, my “I” is fractured and fragmented. My “I” thinks that in a No God/No Nirvana world, my interactions with others are embedded existentially in subjective/subjunctive fabrications/constructions rooted historically, culturally and experientially in dasein rooted in an essentially meaningless world. And that, in the end, “I” will topple over into oblivion.
So, sure, I come here and ask those who don’t think like I do, to explain why perhaps I should think like they do instead. It’s just that, based on my many, many experiences with many, many objectivists over the years, it is my frame of mind that starts to upend theirs.
Then comes the huffing and puffing, the retorts, the name calling, the making me the issue. Some – like phoneutria and tab of late – not only “foe” me, but encourage others to foe me too.
After all, look what is at stake for them here in regard to their own “real me” in sync with “the right thing to do”. All the comfort and consolation that they sustain in believing this. Either through God or one or another secular font.
And I know this because I was once one of them myself. First as a fierce Christian, then as a fierce Socialist.
I know what is at stake here. But, who knows, given my own philosophical assumptions, maybe someone will actually be able to bring some of it back.
Yep, that’s how it works for me. As a moral nihilist [here and now], I don’t believe there is a God or a religious narrative or an enlightened point of view that would enable me to distinguish between right and wrong behavior on this side of the grave so as to sustain “I” on the other side of the grave.
That’s it. That’s my own personal proclivity at the intersection of philosophy and theology and science.
And either someone is able to demonstrate to me why I should think and feel and say and do the things that they do in regard to this utterly fundamental aspect of the human condition, or I am not likely to be impressed.
Now, here, you and I are both “pragmatists”. But: my own rendition of pragmatism seems to leave me a considerably more “fractured and fragmented” “I” than yours does. That’s the part with you that interest me. But only out in the world relating to a particular context in which you and I both react to conflicting goods at the existential juncture of identity, value judgments and political power.
Right, back to this again. But I can then point out that you should invite all those who share a relgious or a philosophical or a political or moral narrative different from your own into your life as well. After all, they might be a hell of a lot closer to the whole truth than you are.
But, really, you’ll never know until one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by
one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one you cross them off the list.
And then it’s back to la la land:
As though the experience of swimming is on par with the experience of behaving as one ought to here and now in order to attain the experience of immortality and salvation there and then.
This is so far removed from what I am trying to communicate here that it serves only to remind me of what [no doubt] many of us come to feel here in regard to the reactions of others to our posts: huh?!!
We just can’t figure out how they could possibly have gotten it [u]that[/u] wrong after all of our exchanges!
Me in regard to your reactions, you in regard to mine.
And this in and of itself is [to me] truly fascinating.
We’ll need a context of course.
What’s bollocks? Buddhism or something else? Internal focus versus external focus? Personal change versus political change?
All of what?
All Biggus really needed to say was “I glanced at Buddhism and I did not find it appealing” and it ends there. Nobody is forcing him to be a Buddhist.
Instead he formulates this response based on some bizarre obligation that KT has to explore every narrative in turn.
And who the hell brings up “the whole truth” aside from Biggus? Or “optimal”? Or the obligations of all rational people?
He’s in a thread on Buddhism and it has been pointed out that 1) plucking quotes online from random texts from various Buddhisms is not only facile but disingenous 2) Buddhism is an experiential tradition, one that specifically encourages silent participation 3) that there are similarities between Buddhism and Iambs descriptions of himself
And, then 3 years??? lol. It’s been a lot longer than that. And he has gotten concrete examples which he promptly forgets.
And here you are calling him poor biggs, falling for this adult man’s victim positioning.
People have responding to him in a variety of ways and you know little about it. He hijacks threads, like this one. And it should be noted that despite that he has gotten excellent feedback in relation to his justified skepticism about Buddhism. I say it is justified because one should question things like this. As it happens, there is a great deal of scientific evidence, that is evidence about the ‘is’ world that Buddhist meditation is beneficial or considered to be by practitioners of many different backgrounds and goals and values.
He accuses others of abstraction, in a philosophy forum no less, but his posts are in the main some of the most abstract posts available and he never wants to discuss the most possible concrete events we actually share which is what is happening here in the dialogue with him. He wants, generally, to have discussions of symbolic people who are considering abortions and the like, and what every rational person should be convinced of, and never what he might do, despite whining aobut his fractured self, his not knowing if his actions are determined or not, his seeming not to have an I and so on.
And perfect, while rushing to his defense you confirm the obvious. He is taking the position of the victim, perhaps sometimes ‘for all of us’ unless we are objectivists, not that he can listen to people who are not or read their posts and respond to actual points made.
Poor Iamg indeed that his supporter cannot treat him like an adult fully capable of making choices here, and even, God forbid, learning something.