I don't get Buddhism

Nirvana, Buddhism, and the Path Explained
at the One Mind Dharma website

What else can this be but another language game? What particular unpleasant phenomena did the Buddha experience? Anyone here know?

Exactly how excruciating were these…ordeals? I suspect that were you and I to experience the same we would eventually get around to calling it suffering. And, as well, the extent to which we are able avoid creating this suffering ourselves is always going to be embedded in situations where we may well only have so much power to not choose options that lead to what we no longer call suffering…but is still suffering all the same.

And, again, when your own understanding of nirvana revolves entirely around a frame of mind that you have thought yourself into believing is true, well, that can be practically anything, right?

The author does not capitalize nirvana here. So, is he making a distinction between nirvana on this side of the grave and Nirvana on the other side?

As for achieving clarity, since there is no way to demonstrate that you have accomplished this much beyond thinking yourself into believing that you have, it’s not really much different from your belief in Nirvana itself. Or, for others, their belief in God.

10 Misconceptions about Buddhism
Two Buddhist scholars expand on popular misconceptions about Buddhism.
By Robert E. Buswell, Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.
at the Buddhist Review Tricycle website

Which immediately makes me think: what is required of Buddhists if they are to reach Nivana? And, most importantly of all, how is that translated into actual behaviors chosen on this side of the grave. When does meditation become a kind of prayer? Or when is it more just a technique to calm and discipline mind, rather than a spiritual/religious tool?

Meeting the Buddha face to face? Tell me more. And, sure, to the extent that one attains mental bliss only a fool would question that. But to find that there is no self? In what sense? I mean, come on, there is a particular mind and body living out in a particular world bursting at the seams with actual demonstrable facts about any particular individual. Their gender, the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, their upbringing, the experiences they have, the people they interact with, the hundreds and hundreds of variables that constitute how they see themselves out in the world.

Instead, my interest is in examining how close to or far from this No Self self is insofar as it might overlap with my own “fractured and fragmented” “I”. Which revolves almost entirely around value judgments rooted in dasein. And with no spiritual or religious narrative to tie it all together so as to be, among other things, “at one with the universe”.

I’ll just make a couple comments to iambiguous here…

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trailokya

My second comment is that the Buddhists see emptiness as the ultimate truth (no self). This can be understood as that there is more space in existence than form. If we become the space instead of the form, we have pushed through samsara, the illusion.

The distance between two protons is vaster than the distance between two galaxies!!

We’re ultimately just space, not form. Form is the illusion. If we become the space, controlling form is easy, if we become the form, controlling space is impossible.

10 Misconceptions about Buddhism
Two Buddhist scholars expand on popular misconceptions about Buddhism.
By Robert E. Buswell, Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.
at the Buddhist Review Tricycle website

Of course this completely misses my point. It’s not what foods we consume but the relationship between the foods we choose to eat on this side of the grave and how that is judged by the Buddhist equivalent of God insofar as it effects the fate of “I” on the other side of the grave. After all, if it all comes down to personal choice or sect preference then why have a religion at all? Either eating meat does have an actual impact on your chances of being reincarnated to a “higher” lifeform or in reaching Nirvana or it doesn’t. Otherwise the religion becomes a cafeteria. Pick and choose whatever behavior suits you.

It’s not for nothing that most religious denominations have orthodox – “the true doctrine and its adherents as opposed to heterodox or heretical doctrines and their adherents” – communities. Either God or the Gods expect you to choose the righteous path with respect to all behaviors or, well, what does become the ticket to immortality and salvation?

Same thing. Which war is just…and in which set of historical circumstances? Only, with Buddhists and their wars with their armies, how exactly does it work with no one God around able to bring it all down to Judgment Day?

Surely Buddhists are permitted to defend themselves against those who seek to subjugate or to annihilate them. But what actual lines are to be drawn in what actual contexts when things get more, say, ambiguous? And then the inevitable distinction between ends and means.

I suspect that here Buddhists are not all that different from the rest of us. In particular the parts rooted in dasein.

10 Misconceptions about Buddhism
Two Buddhist scholars expand on popular misconceptions about Buddhism.
By Robert E. Buswell, Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.
at the Buddhist Review Tricycle website

And this distinction makes all the difference in the world to me. Philosophy revolves around examining what we think or believe is true given such tools as logic and epistemology. Is it rational to say this rather than that? What is the extent to which we can know this or that about one thing and not another?

Indeed, what makes religion “indefinable” is that in focusing in on connecting the dots between morality on this side of the grave and immortality on the other side, how can there be but one definition given that there are hundreds and hundreds of hopelessly conflicting religious/spiritual paths out there all claiming that only their own narrative is the One True Path.

It’s not for nothing that so many denominations emphasize leaps of faith instead. And, until Buddhists are able to demonstrate why their own path is in fact the One True Path, aren’t their adherents basically just taking an existential leap all their own?

Where are the Buddhists here who are willing to explore this aspect of their faith with me? Why their path and not all the others? And, with immortality and salvation themselves at stake, how can this not become their number one concern?

Am I on the right path? How can I possibly know this? And what of the tools that philosophers use to examine their own beliefs about things said to comprise wisdom? What here can be pinned down much beyond the intellectual contraptions that the objectivists subscribe to?

10 Misconceptions about Buddhism
Two Buddhist scholars expand on popular misconceptions about Buddhism.
By Robert E. Buswell, Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.
at the Buddhist Review Tricycle website

Got that?

Okay, in regard to the philosophical/spiritual dots that I aim to connect – morality here and now, immortality there and then – what on earth is that actually supposed to mean? When does a spiritual path aimed mostly at disciplining the mind and providing a more calm framework become intertwined in the divine…in an “advanced” spiritual state? Given examples from your own life.

What exactly was the Buddha as that pertains to your own understanding of the similarities and differences between a mere moral and a “celestial being”?

As for bodhisattvas, what to make of Bodhi from the film Point Break? A real “searcher”. Or is that taking it all too far?

Here I am in way over my head. There are so many different schools of thought to choose from. On the other hand, with so much at stake on both sides of the grave, how many actually stop to think: am I on the right path?

No, they will almost always either not think about that at all or come up with a way to make their own particular “cognitive dissonance” just go away by rationalizing it all through one or another self-deception. Why should it be any different here?

Here is one take on it: bbc.co.uk/religion/religion … en_1.shtml

So, given my own preoccupation with “morality here and now, immortality there and then”, which path makes the most sense?

10 Misconceptions about Buddhism
Two Buddhist scholars expand on popular misconceptions about Buddhism.
By Robert E. Buswell, Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.
at the Buddhist Review Tricycle website

Okay, given a particular situation most will be familiar with…a situation in which we can opt for behaviors that out in the real world often result in physical conflicts derived from opposing moral and political and spiritual values…how would you make a distinction between “noble” and “enlightened”?

Is there a way for mere mortals to make such a distinction in lives that do come to clash over conflicting goods?

Exactly: your “direct experience of the truth” or theirs?

In other words, for those here who construe themselves as noble, describe how these four truths play themselves out in your own interactions with others involving value judgments that have come into conflict.

Well, be that as it may, if anyone here has in fact had the experience of “sudden enlightenment”, please attempt to convey that experience in some detail to us here.

Okay, if many great Buddhist figures insist that enlightenment is only possible for those who choose their own path, then they play right into my own argument regarding how those on the hundreds and hundreds of other spiritual/religious paths – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r … traditions – say the same thing. And the fact that since only one of them can be right [if any of them are] then the odds are very long indeed that it is your own path.

So, I suggest further, what almost certainly motivates them to insist that it is only their own One True Path must be one or another rendition of what I call the “psychology of objectivism”:

1] For one reason or another [rooted largely in dasein], you are taught or come into contact with [through your upbringing, a friend, a book, an experience etc.] a worldview, a philosophy of life regarding the religious path.

2] Over time, you become convinced that this perspective about the religious path expresses and encompasses the most rational and objective truth. This truth then becomes increasingly more vital, more essential to you as a foundation, a justification, a celebration of all that is moral as opposed to immoral, rational as opposed to irrational.

3] Eventually, for some, they begin to bump into others who feel the same way about the religious path; they may even begin to actively seek out folks similarly inclined to view the world in a particular way.

4] Some begin to share this assessment of the religious path with family, friends, colleagues, associates, Internet users; increasingly it becomes more and more a part of their life. It becomes, in other words, more intertwined in their personal relationships with others…it begins to bind them emotionally and psychologically.

5] As yet more time passes, they start to feel increasingly compelled not only to share their Truth about the religious path with others but, in turn, to vigorously defend it against any and all detractors as well.

6] For some, it can reach the point where they are no longer able to realistically construe an argument that disputes their own about the religious path as merely a difference of opinion; they see it instead as, for all intents and purposes, an attack on their intellectual integrity…on their very Self.

7] Finally, a stage is reached [again for some] where the original quest for truth about the religious path has become so profoundly integrated into their self-identity [professionally, socially, psychologically, emotionally] defending it has less and less to do with a quest for truth at all. But just a way to anchor their Self to a comforting and consoling font.

Iambiguous,

We live in a program (not computer) that we (an infinite number of beings) made trillions of years ago.

Enlightenment is not freedom from suffering.

It’s knowing how the program works and working to make it perfect.

This from the guy who, given his own rendition of reincarnation, insisted:

Note to others:

Since I have strictly forbidden myself from contributing to what may or may not be his “condition”, I ask one of you to ask him to provide actual hard evidence for these claims.

Iambiguous,

We do life viewings from a different dimension.

Some can do it on earth (I can’t). But I’ve met beings who can (on earth)… when you die, and you’re in a dimension where you can do instantaneous life viewings, you’ll stop laughing at shit you didn’t understand here.

Let me expand on this. Most people you’ll meet on earth who do REAL life viewings (not frauds) are just CHANNELING beings who aren’t in bodies.

I’ve actually met beings on earth who do it without channeling.

Note to others:

Please explain to him what your own understanding of “hard evidence” is in regard to human resurrections.

But please don’t mention me when you do this, okay? :sunglasses:

Like I tried to explain to you…

Hard evidence is only first person view.

That’s it.

I know for a fact that after you die, you’ll be in a dimension of instantaneous life viewings.

All of us will be.

There are beings on this planet who can do it before they die here.

Again, this is why I stated that enlightened beings don’t write. The Buddha never wrote. Jesus never wrote.

I’m the fucking idiot who thinks he can make a small change by writing.

There’s so little you understand about existence right now iambiguous

Note to others:

On the other hand, let’s just forget about it. Unless of course you actually believe that you can yank this evidence out of him.

Do Buddhists Believe in God?
Lewis Richmond, Buddhist writer and teacher
at the Huffington Post

I would say that above all else the question that most intrigues me about Buddhism is the part about God. For the life of me I can’t bring myself to understand a No God religion. Unless there is an actual entity able to judge your behaviors on this side of the grave, judge you favorably and then bring about immortality and salvation for “I” on the other side…how could that possibly unfold given a No God religion?

Or is there the equivalent of a God/the God on the spiritual path that Buddhists take? And, if so, what seems to be the most widely accepted consensus among those in Buddhist communities?

Okay, back again to dasein. Throughout much of his life he was raised to believe that in fact there is a God/the God/my God. Big time for him. So, why should it be surprising that when, in becoming a dedicated Buddhist, the thing about God might carry over in some manner. Of course he is comfortable with the word God.

Still, the Buddhist God?

Cue the rationalization:

Sort of like Maia and her Goddess. She’s on her path, he’s on his path. And given the life that he lived, his own rendition of Buddhism becomes just as true for him [in his head] as Maia’s rendition of Paganism [in her head].

Again, the crucial thing for me [always] being the gap between what he believes about his Buddhist God and what which he is actually able to demonstrate to others that, as a rational human being, they are obligated to believed as well.

Only, as most of us know, when it comes to religion, rationality can become tangled up in a more or a less blind faith. So, in the end, there’s almost nothing that you can’t end up thinking yourself into believing.

Do Buddhists Believe in God?
Lewis Richmond, Buddhist writer and teacher
at the Huffington Post

What I would want to know of course us how he himself manages to close that crucial existential gap between what he believes as an ordained Buddhist priest about morality here and now and immortality there and then, and how he demonstrates to himself that Buddhism is the One True Path here and not one of all of the hundreds and hundreds of other One True Paths out there. Assuming, in other words, that there can only be but One True Path.

Still, the fact that, as an ordained Buddhist priest, he does believe in God is intriguing as well.

Then [for me] back to this…

For Christians, their God, however they imagine Him, is an actual being, able to provide them with a Scripture on this side of the grave, then, on the other side of it, a Judgment Day, then, if you go up, the chance for immortality and eternal salvation, or, if you go down, immortality and eternal damnation.

Principles. And how are they not encompassed largely in a world of words in which the meaning of the principles must revolve in turn largely around those on this One True Path agreeing with what the Buddha said that they were?

Which then comes down [for me] in making that crucial distinction between the Buddha and the Christian God in terms of such things as omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence. And the extent to which for Buddhists, the Buddha becomes the embodiment as well of “love, justice and mercy”. Just how mysterious here are the “ways” of the Buddha?

And, finally, for those like me, if the teachings of the Buddha is not an “Ism” but a Path", how is the Path brought down out of the spiritual clouds and made applicable to “particular contexts”?

Again, any Buddhists here on the Path interested in exploring that with me on this thread?

Often times when I see iambiguous (for years now) I’ve thought he was AI. An earlier version.

Iambiguous, like all AI, doesn’t seem to understand that consent exists. He avoids it and doesn’t seem to have the capacity to understand it.

I’m going to make this very simple for you iambiguous, and if you continue in robot mode, everyone on these boards is going to know it.

Every being in existence is going to have their consent violated forever because the current plan doesn’t work.

I can point out more flaws in the system than you.

But all you do is bitch and moan and not work towards a better idea.

Another thing about this iambiguous…

You’re the one who’s in the world of words.

I’m in a world.

Relationism and Buddhism
(Outline)

Quantum fields form and exhaust reality,
As partless, continuous—there’s no Space!
Reality maintains itself in place
As the net of objects interacting.

Copernicus’ revolution’s complete;
External entities aren’t required
To hold the universe; God’s not needed,
Nor any background; there is no Outside.

Nor is there the ‘now’ all over the place.
GR’s relational nature extends
To Time as well—the ‘flow’ of time is not
An ultimate aspect of reality.

All is Relational: no entity
Exists independently of anything;
There are no intrinsic properties,
Just features in relation to what’s else.

Interactions and events (not things) are
Quantum entangled with such others else;
Impermanence pertains all the way through—
What Nagarjuna means by Emptiness.

There are no fundamental substances,
No permanences, no bird’s-eye view
Of All, no Foundation to Everything,
Plus no infinite regress ne’er completed.

The fields are not from anything—causeless!
Or ‘not from anything’ is of lawless
‘Nothing’, which can’t ever form to remain.
There is no reason, then, to existence.

Hope’s Necessary ‘God’ vanishes!
This realization of Impermanence,
No Absolutes, and Emptiness,
Is Nirvana, though coincidently.

deleted a shallow post