I don't get Buddhism

Buddhism, at least some versions of this, does explain this contradition. That this desire to eliminate contradictions is, once the others are dissolved, also dissolved. It is part of the process to use this heuristic in the earlier stages. And there are many learning and training processes where heuristics in the early states are NOT good ones to use later, but trainers will suggest them early on. So this criticism does not hold.

There is truth as some timeless statement that mirrors reality. And there are instrumental truths, ones that elicit actions and processes and states. Everyone wants to start at the end. To have the end in their hands. Now I don’t like the Buddhist end, but to deal with their ideas from a very specific idea about what a truth is, is to limit the processes we can use to get somewhere. Heuristics are trying to get people to a next stage. And from that stage new things can happen. This is true for learning golf, how to play poker hands, singing techniques…whatever. Once you have reached the next platform, new rules apply and others may not.

People here, online, have so much faith in words on a screen. Or words on a page.

Learning, especially learning things like how to suffer less, are experiential processes. And words and sentences are not used in the same ways. In Zen, sometimes this is called pointing. What do the words do.

But everyone here thinks sentences are supposed to be perfect mirrors. And Buddhism is good in one way in showing that that model of truth has many problems. The map and the territory are not the same.

I dislike Buddhism because of its ideas about what parts of us we must cut out. But it is not an inconsistant system.

Karpel,

It’s totally inconsistent!

You should not be attached to non attachment.

It’s like the mark twain quote, “everything in moderation including moderation”

Pfft. The Buddha did more work in the field of consent violation study than you’ll ever do. In fact his whole thesis was on the problem of consent violation. And he solved the hyperdimensional mirrors, too.

You’re trolling.

If the problem of consent violation through hyperdimensional mirror realities had been solved by the Buddha , none of us would be in the shit show we are.

Hint: grunge band from the 90s.

Well, if you’re going to be an asshole if it, so will I

m.youtube.com/watch?v=FklUAoZ6KxY

that man is brilliant.

How complicated I am is only part of the picture. I also don’t believe in Christianity. I have no stake in the matter. So why do I care whether it’s naively simple or more realistically complicated? If I wanted to believe in Christianity, I may be understandably unsatisfied with the simplistic picture, and I might invest in a more complicated, more demanding picture since those are usually more realistic. But since I don’t believe in Christianity, how realistic the picture seems to me is not a priority. I guess the need for parsimony takes over in that case.

I can’t dismiss Buddhism quite as easily for some reason.

It comes down to faith. Guarantee was a poor choice of words. I require more faith in the methods of Buddhism, which is nurtured quite substantially by understanding how it works, in order to be motivated to follow it. I have a lot more faith in the methods I’m currently working with than I am the methods Buddhism offers. I have doubts in the methods of Buddhism.

You may be right, though I’m not sure how you can know this (the guy lived 2500 years ago). That’s beside the point though. Whether or not he was a megalomaniac self-appointed prophet, all we have of his wisdom and teachings today is the doctrine. This allows us to compare and contrast the doctrine with the words and behavior of those who come across as sages and prophets today. But from what I understand of Buddhism, you’re right to say that the doctrine present Buddhism as something that is accessible to everyone directly (i.e. without a mediator), which suggests this is what the Buddha taught.

^ Yes, of course, isn’t that what everyone expects out of Buddhism? Isn’t this what it’s renowned for?

^ That’s a nice second.

But generally speaking, your phrase “…as if it were some kind of instructional CD set you buy off amazon,” strikes at the heart of my angst over Buddhism. If the eight fold path is not a glorified set of instructions for enlightenment, what is it? (There’s literally 8 steps!) What is Buddhism good for if not this? This is a serious question for me. I want to know.

The vast majority of people gravitate towards religion because they want something deep or meaningful out of it. Relief of suffering, the meaning of life, a purpose, wisdom, salvation… and in an attempt to offer this to people, religion has always sold itself by provided a method to achieve these. Calling this an instructional CD set found on Amazon makes it sound cheap and overly simplistic, but it can work as a crude analogy (the Christians facetiously say that Bible is an acronym for Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth).

I’m not denying that you could be right–that Buddhism is not well understood as a method for achieving enlightenment–that it might only be the imparting of a deep truth discovered by the Buddha without any promise that it works as a “quick fix” for everyone’s plight (though it seems to work for a great many anyway)–but then that just makes it really obscure to me… and quite useless. One thing I’ve always refused to do is to pretend to understand something just because it would make me seem wise. If I don’t understand something, I’m going to say I don’t understand. If you’re saying Buddhism is not a set of instructions for achieving enlightenment (despite the way it’s been presented to me), what would you say it is?

One mght argue that not being able to dismiss an idea does not indicate something negative about that idea.

You say ‘more faith’. YOu need more faith to believe in Buddhism than…?

You did not interact with my argument, you simply repeated yours. You are treating Buddhism as using a correspondance theory of truth. It isn’t. The ‘language is a mirror of reality’ type thinking is questioned by Buddhism, and further…all that I argued above.

That’s not how Christianity promotes salvation.

Yep, that’s how tricky this can all become when we realize that, in any number of contexts, the gap between the words we use to describe the world and the world as it would be understood re an omniscient, ontological understanding of existence itself, is always there.

We can articulate what Buddhism has come to mean to each of us as individuals. The part I root in dasein. But to the extent that we argue that others ought to argue the same is the extent to which we simply shrug off that gap above.

Then the part from Wittgenstein: “whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent”.

But! He has to bring that up in order make the point itself.

Me, I’m sticking with what I construe to be the more fundamental factors about all this above. Knowing however that at any time a new experience, a new source of information might prompt me to change my mind.

Yep, that’s how tricky this can all become when we realize that, in any number of contexts, the gap between the words we use to describe the world and the world as it would be understood re an omniscient, ontological understanding of existence itself, is always there.

We can articulate what Buddhism has come to mean to each of us as individuals. The part I root in dasein. But to the extent that we argue that others ought to argue the same is the extent to which we simply shrug off that gap above.

Then the part from Wittgenstein: “whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent”.

But! He has to bring that up in order make the point itself.

Me, I’m sticking with what I construe to be the more fundamental factors about all this above. Knowing however that at any time a new experience, a new source of information might prompt me to change my mind.

Note this;

Buddha’s 4NT-8FP -A Life Problem Solving Technique
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=187395&p=2516029&hilit=Problem+solving#p2516029

‘To get Buddhism’, one need to cut through its forms to understand its fundamentals, i.e.
Buddha’s 4NT-8FP -A Life Problem Solving Technique

The fundamental of Buddhism is basic like a doctor’s approach in diagnosing a patient’s medical problems.
In the case of Buddhism, it a self-diagnostic technique to deal with one’s existential issues and its related sufferings.

The core existential issues are reflected in the Buddha’s Story [a myth] as the inherent anxieties and Angst by every human being on the issue of sickness, old age and inevitable mortality.

In the Buddha Story, Gautama the prince was prevented by the palace to be exposed to the realities of life. Somehow he got out of the palace and saw sick and old people who were suffering and a corpse signifying inevitable mortality which stirred anxieties and Angst in Gautama. Therefrom he left the palace to seek solutions of all the sufferings arising from the above existential issues.

The essence of the story is every human being is in the same shoe as Gautama the generic human being with the above inherent existential issue and its related existential sufferings.

The Buddhism’s 4NT-8FP -A Life Problem Solving Technique provide a self-analysis of the existential issue and solutions to deal with the inherent existential anxieties and Angst.
It is not easy for the majority to accept Buddhism-proper [not pseudo Buddhism] because it require some mental effort on the part of the believer to help him/herself.

The Buddhism-proper program is like the program to cure alcoholism, addictions, obesity, where the participants need to do the necessary mental and physical exercises in alignment with the principles within the Noble-8-Fold-Paths.
Examples of effort require are consistent meditations [samartha], mindfulness [vispasanna] reading the Sutra, Right Thinking, Right Actions, etc.

For those who are not inclined to put in the spiritual effort it would be more effective for them to accept any of the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam where upon mere declaration of belief in God, viola! one is saved. How this approach has its cons beside the immediate pros.

There are some Buddhist schools that promise some sort of salvation upon acceptance beliefs, but they are pseudo-Buddhism. Such approach also has its pros and cons. There are the usual scandals associated with organizational pseudo-Buddhism.

Buddhism-proper also has its pros and cons, but being self-diagnostic, it will strive to resolve whatever negatives that result via its iterative mechanisms.

The essence of Buddhism-proper is to provide one with a self-managing Life Problem Solving Technique to deal with one’s existential issues.

Let’s get one thing straight though. Before you can attempt this, you must first be able to actually subsist from day to day to day. And that means, among other things, getting all the bills paid. And, for most of us, there is not a whole lot of “spirituality” involved in accomplishing this.

So there is still the part where the religious narrative has to be in sync with one of another political narrative.

After all, there are few things the ruling class and those who own and operate the global economy want to sustain more than folks who are eager to expend considerable chunks of their time in the pursuit of religious enlightenment.

Rather than, say, organizing politically to change things.

My post assumed all the basic needs are of no issue.

Buddhism-proper is not about chasing the typically understood “enlightenment.”
Buddhism is about achieving optimality and progress with equanimity and interacting in all aspects of life.

Regardless of whether one is a politician, professional, businessperson, actor/actress, sportsperson, etc. one is a human being with an inherent unavoidable existential issues. Buddhism-proper address those existential issues specifically.

yup, and that’s code for: be a passive wuss and don’t fight back. and because there are so many people involved in mundane, day-to-day struggles that create for them a sense of existential anomie, there’s a thriving market for designer spiritualities like buddhism. it’s an opium almost as strong as christianity. private biggs has noted this:

“there are few things the ruling class and those who own and operate the global economy want to sustain more than folks who are eager to expend considerable chunks of their time in the pursuit of religious enlightenment. Rather than, say, organizing politically to change things.”

the irony is, organizing politically might very well eliminate the circumstances that have led these people to search for religious enlightenment… an activity which is, as marx once called it, ‘the sigh of the oppressed creature.’

folks need to prioritize their respective struggles, man. you get the material struggle whooped before you go on your spiritual quest for enlightenment. if you don’t, that spiritual quest will amount to nothing more than a temporary anesthetic.

Wait a minute. You are accepting Iambiguous’ criticism of Buddhism as anti-political, but his position is that one can never know what is good. That people on all sides of the debate - whatever the issue is at hand - are objectivists. He is saying we cannot know if we are free, we cannot know if our opinions are just based on dasien, we cannot find an I - which apart from being rather Buddhist is hardly encouraging people to change the world for the better.

And organizing things for the better is one of those things he thinks we cannot know how to do, since we cannot know what is better.

Buddhism actually encourages compassion - as I am sure Iambiguous would also, on a personal level, but his philosophy throws up its hands that even this is not something we can know is good.

Now I agree with him about the part that there are no objective morals. But the two of you cannot attack Buddhism, in the context of his philosophy, without rather ironic self-contradiction. He is even more nihilistic than Buddhism and even more anti-political, even more undermining engagement - Buddhists have in many cases been extremely politically active against oppression - and beyond this is philosophy anti- meaning, anti-drawing conclusions. His is an ‘as far as I know there is no reason to get out of bed in the morning philosophy and I can’t even tell if ‘I’ want to or ‘I’ exist’ or how one could start to make the right choices or draw the right conclusions about this’. There will be no revolution or reform movement televised or otherwise coming from him and his philosophy. It would have to be based on arguments that would convince every rational person. That would be step one. How could any organizing for things to get better - whatever that would be - come from a philosophy that demands that one must first explain why we should do something such that every rational person would be compelled to agree. At least a Buddhist monk might have meditated, perhaps blessed a new patio and shown compassion to a songbird, without having had to convince everyone on earth these were rational things to do. And heck, they might even have protested against Chinese oppression in Tibet.

Okay, fair enough. But sooner or latter all religious movements of any consequence, get around to the part where, as one Major Dude advised, you “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”

In fact, some religious movements are all about making Caesar as inconsequential as they can. But, historically, only to the extent that any particular Caesar permits this.

There’s just no getting around subsistence though. One way or another that’s got to be a top priority. Though, sure, in the First World where most of us reside, millions upon millions just take that for granted. Well, barring, say, the next Wall Street bubble. Or Great Recession.

Or trump’s civil war.

From my own experience, however, that sort of explanation is what we often hear from any religious denomination. But: only insofar as words to that effect are encompassed in a general description of human interactions. However, when the focus shifts to actual contexts in which words like progress and justice and virtue and freedom are thought [optimally] to be very different things, God and religion often become very different things in turn.

In other words, always and ever the relationship between our day to day interactions here and now that, through a particular understanding of spirituality/enlightenment/God etc., segues into a yearning about the there and the then. Stretching into all of eternity.

Then let’s be more specific. If there are any Buddhists here, let’s explore the relationship [in your own lfe] between spiritual enlightenment as that impacts on your interacxtions with others in which moral narratives and political agendas come into conflict. Which of course reflects my own particular interest in all of this.