I don't get Buddhism

You are in a thread about Buddhism asking about Buddhism. You are showing and interest in that. If you have an interest and given that it is a participatory religion that focuses on practices that makes the most sense. If you were throwing up your arms in a thread about some other thing that one learns about via practices or experiences, I would make the same suggestion.

If you actually were interested, and since you claim that there is nothing more important.

And, in a sense I agree. And, fuck you, I actually have done quite a bit of trial and error. I did try Buddhism and since when I did this I was healthier physically than you are, I went to the temples. I did participate and engage in the practices, not just throw my arms up in the air and pick random quote from various traditions in Buddhism to feel confused by. I did this with other systems out there. Why? Because it mattered to me. I didn’t just pretend it mattered to me, it did matter to me.

I tend to go towards things that for some reason interested me. There were portions of the freedom and spontaneousness in ZEn that appealed to me and also the idea of not going round and round in my head (sound familiar) so

GIVEN

my interest, I participated. In the end I decided it was not what I wanted. I did not wait around for all rational people on earth to be convinced by an argument. I did not demand that as if that is rational. It’s not rational Iamb to make that demand. To pout like a baby and demand that people convince you nto simply you might, note might, get something of value from it, but rather that every single person would.

It is quite a predicament we are in, but as far as I can tell you show no real interest in trying anything, but act as if it is all of critical importance to you.

It did seem like over the course of this thread you acknowledged that there is scientific evidence that people’s stress levels and other generally accepted measures of health in science do improve from Buddhist practices. Not in an ‘ought’ way, but in an ‘is’ way. But still you go on bemoaning new portions of texts that present ideas you can throw your hands up in relation to. When it is pointed out that in many fields, prior to participation, conclusions and ideas in those fields will not be comprehensible to neophytes or people completely ignorant of that field.

Now, should you test out Buddhism? How the fuck should I know?

I don’l like it myself based on my experience of it, my experience of experts, and the understanding my experiences and training gave me about the goals of the system. I have no interest in you becoming a Buddhist.

But you are bullshitting us. The hard part is you are probably bullshtting yourself. You don’t want a solution, you wanna bitch, because despite this being supposedly so important, you never do anything to actually try.

And amazingly…you don’t know if you have an i. You experience yourself as fractured.

But when people give you feedback about how you are interacting here, you never actually take them seriously and actually consdier they might be on to something about you.

You give a little disclaimer, but you are not moved. You never concede a damn thing, ever. Despite your own claim not to know yourself, it is not something that interests you much at all, the possibility that some of the response you are getting might actually be spot on.

You nod to the idea, with no feeling, no interest. No, just back to your repetition.

And notice. You attacked me above for the supposedly silly trial and error path that I should take. And I explained in this post how in fact I did carry something like that out, but not in some silly abstract mathematical way.

But here’s the thing. I’ve explained that before.

But you don’t read. You have no memory. I remember things you’ve said. I respond to how you present yourself. I have taken you seriously. I still do.

You can’t be bothered.

It’s

What can I say?

Buddhism interest me only to the extent that its adherents address that which draws me to discussions of religion: morality here and now, immortality there and then.

How does being a Buddhist impact the behaviors that they choose in particular contexts as that relates to what they imagine their fate to be after they die.

Members here will either go there or they won’t. And I am certainly not insisting that they are obligated to. Let alone forcing them to.

And my request to KT is bizarre only to the extent that we accept your assumption about it. Which was not my assumption at all.

There are hundreds of religious and political and moral and spiritual and enlightened paths to choose from. And, with so much at stake – morality here and now, immortality there and then – how is it not reasonable to suggest that one try as many of them as they possibly can in order to be certain of their own behaviors on this side of the grave and the fate of “I” in the other side?

Apparently, I am obligated to pursue Buddhism with that in mind while they are quite content to just accept what they believe now.

But, in that respect, I don’t get Buddhism either. Only, instead, Phyllo and KT want to reconfigure the thread into “how you ought to get iambiguous”.

My guess: like they do.

I addressed specific points to you in posts above. Today. Please respond to those points rather than focusing the exchange entirely on me.

Exactly. If he is interested, drawn to it. It’s participatory. And one can back out at any time. It’s not the Moonies. He won’t find himself forced into a marriage with a stranger. And jeez, there’s even scientific evidence that the practices increase health in terms considered healthy in medicine. That’s is stuff. Concrete ‘is’ stuff.

And he wanting people to let Buddhists answer. All he has to do is do some local googling, find a center and speak to a Buddhist. I cannot possibly give a more concrete suggestion than that, unless he tells me where he lives and I act like a matchmaker.

That’s why people don’t take him seriously in terms of his supposed goals. He claims it’s important, now he wants to know about Buddhism. Is he in a Buddhist online forum even? No. Though I am not going to give him links to one. That’s not fair to them. But he’s not a moron, and yet he does not take obvious steps.

I end up, via process of elimination, deciding that he likes the process of saying there is no way to know and demanded people come with perfect arguments.

this might not be what’s happening, but it sure looks like it.

I can tell you something about the Buddha …

I am grand central station for the spirit world.

Once the Buddha communed with me for about two hours.

I’ve never seen anything like it my entire life. The understanding, compassion and love for all beings was unprecedented in my life. I never wanted it to end.

But it did.

Trance / Meditation ?

Nah… it doesn’t work like that for me. Just a psychic visit.

I have to say it again. I’ve never seen anything like it.

In saying that, there are all forms of beings like this on earth, I’ve just never “met” one before. I’m an empath, which means that I can feel every being, what they feel. Doesn’t mean I always learn from it, but I can feel them.

When the Buddha came into my heart, it’s the first time in my life that I realized I don’t have the greatest heart in existence.

It was astounding.

And then it left, just like it came.

Dan, additionally, I have to tell you —- despite people’s impressions of me on this board, I’m a very likable guy.

When the Buddha came to me, it was a mind boggling likability … like I said. I’ve never seen anything like it before.

I guess the Buddha decided I only needed a couple hours to move with my life.

I would have loved to stay there forever

Dan,

Doubly additionally …

Probably not forever, because I moved on.

My passion is very simple. Make sure that no beings consent is ever violated again.

But I must say… it was nice while it lasted.

Look, if, on this side of the grave, you have an interest in morality and, on the other side of the grave, immortality, then discussions of religion are likely to appeal to you. But there are hundreds and hundreds of enlightened paths out there to choose from.

And: No one really has the time to explore each of them one by one by one in order to make certain that their agendas are not better than the one they have now.

That’s no less true for you than for me. For anyone.

Yeah, you can cross Buddhism off the list. It’s not for you. Go to the next one: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r … traditions

After all, to the best of my knowledge, you neither believe in God nor objective morality. Well, these folks do. And unless you explore them in the manner in which you insist I explore Buddhism, you’ll never know for sure if one of them might succeed in bringing you the light.

Here though you can explore the extent to which any particular denomination/path might be able to entice you to investigate it further.

Now, for me that revolves around the manner in which, given a set of circumstances that most here are familiar with, their arguments at least address themselves to the components of my own moral philosophy. If I can’t be persuaded by them that the manner in which I construe human identity, value judgments and political power as they pertain to actual existential junctures is something they confront with some really persuasive points, why on earth should I then move on to an even more important concern of mine.

This: the extent to which they are able to demonstrate that what they believe is in fact true for all rational human beings.

They would have gotten me into the temple when I was younger and healthier if their arguments and their evidence had been enticing enough.

After all, in college and given the many years I spent as a political activist, I had bumped into more than just a handful of Buddhists. My best friend Ed at ECC here in Baltimore was a Buddhist. I had endless discussions with him and his friends in the movement. I came to understand clearly how “for all practical purposes” it can be enormously beneficial. But my “thing” philosophically is morality/immortality. And I have not been persuaded by Buddhists [as of yet] to take their beliefs further.

Right, like you asserting this makes it so. As though someone “trying” is the case only when you have determined it. From discussions embedded in virtual reality no less!

I won’t even waste my time explaining yet again the distinctions I make here.

But now you are all worked up, aren’t you? You’ve got me pinned to the mat so out it comes:

“I’ve nailed him! I’ve nailed him! I’ve nailed him!”

edit:

Also, you didn’t respond to this part at all:

I’ll tell the world in this post one of my secrets:

I think reincarnation is bullshit.

I think we have resonant frequencies that access the entire pool of memories that will necessarily never die in existence.

I think people who believe in reincarnation are confused and unsophisticated.

Reincarnation as a teaching is admirable in one very narrow sense, you could have been born as anyone. You should have compassion for those past, you should have activism for moments to come.

Has anybody ever managed to have a discussion about a particular context with Biggus?

I mean a discussion in which he does not characterize your posts as “existential contraptions”, “general descriptions”, “abstract”, “in the clouds”, “words defending other words”.

In which he does not dismiss your posts with “huh?” and “what on earth does it mean?”.

Or maybe his responses are appropriate or adequate and my expectations of what constitutes a discussion are wrong.

Yeah. A while back you and I went round after round about Communism. You seemed to argue that there was the one and the only right way to look at it and that was yours. Based on your own personal experiences with it. You admitted that it would be “great if Communism worked as described in the writings, the slogans and the movies.” But it didn’t. Then I tried to reconfigure it into a historical contraption that people reacted to subjectively based on the manner in which I construe human identity here as the emobidment of dasein confronting conflicting goods – capitalism/communisim – out in a world where ultimately what counts is who has the power politically to enforce a particular existential balance between rewards and punishments. My main focus here revolved around probing [philosophically or otherwise] the extent to which “human wants and needs are more…in sync with Communism than capitalism”. Emphasizing either “I” or “we”; the individual or society as a whole.

Like here there actually is a “real me” able to be seamlessly at one with “the right thing to do”.

Though sure there might be. Run it by me.

Instead, we get you back in “retort” mode. Kidstuff:

From my frame of mind, of course, this sort of dimwitted caricature is particularly pathetic. It approaches some of the really dumb shit I get from folks like Pedro and Ecmandu.

Assumptions 1) if you can’t try them all, there is no point in trying any of them [even though there are no more important issues according to you and you are terrified of the situation you find yourself in.] That makes no sense. My ship goes down and the flotsam all looks pretty flimsy, not big enough to keep me from drowning and I cannot decide which piece all rational humans would try so I will tread water without trying any until I drown. 2) You own interests in something in texts, or something adherents seem to have achieved or in the practices have no role to play in what you choose. You must encounter an argument that all rational people would be convinced by or there is no reason to try something. That makes no sense. 3) Abstract communication with people who are not Buddhists in a non-buddhist forum is a good way to find out about Buddhism. And I am supposed to assume you are really interested. Please.

Last: you mock the idea of going through the whole list of spiritual and religious approaches. But that is what you are doing, anyway. It is the method you use I suggested was not the best. Here you are doing Buddhism. I am suggesting Buddhism is better approached experientially. Get it, that whole one and one and one reductio ad absurdum is not relevant. YOu are spending time on Buddhism. But is it a good way to carry out your investigation?

Note: I have suggested that actual concrete experience is a better way to learn. You the one who uses ‘abstract’ as a pejorative term cannot even for a moment consider that your approach might not be optimal.

I am supposed to think that you are fractured and fragmented, and yet every day for years you take the same approach to learning and express incredulity that another approach might be rational or more rational…

Why on earth…you say.

On the one hand you are supposed to experience yourself as fractured and fragmented.
On the other hand you behave in precisely the same way for many, many years now AND you are so sure your approach is correct that you

1. express incredulity that any suggestion from people with more experience of the subject you are supposedly interested in could possibly be correct.
2. feel no need to even argue against that other approach and instead, as usual simply repeat why you do what you do - which you also might have some doubt about.

If you are so fractured and fragmented, why does it never seem to, for a fucking second, occur to you, even when it is pointed out, that your motivations might not be the ones you think they are.

No, that is impossible.

Here you are working your way through that list. The list you mock me as having ridiculously suggested you go through, when I did not. But you are going through that list, now Buddhism.

It is the manner in which you approach learning I am talking about.

Also, you didn’t respond to this part at all:

[/quote]
I have responded to this dozens of times in many different threads. You say you are more fragmented and fractured, but I can’t see the results of that. You do not change. You do not change approach. You trust yourself enough to know yourself, your approach, your motives, to react with incredulity that any other approach might be useful, for example here communicating with someone who has more experience and abstract knowledge both about Buddhism. You cannot imagine that my suggestion that you participate might actually be a suggestion of a better approach to understanding Buddhism and abstract descriptions of it. Or that following what draws you AS AN INDIVIDUAL might be a better approach to specific options. No you can dismiss them out of hand.

You mock my ‘having nailed you’ but you do not for one moment consider that perhaps there was some truth in any of this.
And yet this is a fractured and fragmented person…
hm…

couldn’t such a person have missed things about himself, about his self-pedagogy.

No, according to you. These things need simply be labels as me nailing you. And dismissed not via argument but through incredulity.

Engaging non-Buddhists in a non-Buddhist forum in abstract discussions of Buddhism…that’s the best way to evaluate Buddhism. Snorts of derision that you might have reasons other than the ones you put forward or are even aware of (despite this oh, so fragmented ‘i’). Snorts of derision that people with more experience and knowledge about how to learn such things might possibly have anything valuable to say about how to learn about Buddhism.

That all does not make sense.

And really, however harshly Phyllo and I can get with you, you seem to have no idea how truly respectful we have been, and how hard we have tried to communicate with you, using a variety of approaches to point out areas where you might learn something.

But, ironically, you know exactly how you should live, fractured I and nihilism and hopelessness repeatedly bemoaned only seeminly to the contradictory. This fractured and fragmented i has nothing to learn about his approach from others.

Well, good for you. Keep at it.

Do you intend to respond Phyllo?

I know a few that have grown up in a Western/Catholic etc. / Eastern/Buddhist/Hindu etc. household, and the two seem to co-exist well together.

I don’t think that I need to respond.

You posted your thoughts. I read them.

I went into a specific context at least once with him. I had avoided it because I make no claim to resolve conflicting goods such that every rational person…etc. I am not an objectivist. But since he kept demanding it of me, I did it. He did not really respond to it. Not too much time later he began demanding it again. He also accused me of having contraptions since I was less fractured and fragmented than him. And he told me what these were. I told him he was incorrect. This did not deter him from his mindreading for months and months. He just kept repeating it. Despite his lack of an ‘i’ and being fragmented and fractured he managed to be utterly confident that he could read my mind and knew what I was thinking. A fractured adn fragmented mind with no ‘i’, it seems to me, would be nervous being certain about his OWN thinking, but here he was sure about my inner motivations. He also predicted he would scare me away from ILP.

Criticisms that might make one believe that an utterly concrete solution like participating in the practices of a process, rather than having an abstract discussion of it would be something he would consider at least potentially a good suggestion. But no. He is incredulous that anything other than his approach is the best one. See my post above to him. Incredulous. No, the best thing for his to do to learn if Buddhism might make him feel better is to have abstract discussions with non-Buddhists online, rather than taking steps to have a live interaction with actual Buddhists and have the concrete experiences of the practices themselves.

If he accuses anyone of being abstract, he should be snorted at.
If he tells us he is fragmented and fractured he should be snorted at. Someone who actually believes that about themselves should wonder if perhaps, possibly, they might be confused about what they need or have more ambiguous opinions about the right way for them to learn something. But after nearly a decade of posting his process is the same. It hasn’t helped him, yet he is incredulous that there could possibly be anything wrong with it, in practical terms, or that any other approach could be better. This is not a fractured and fragmented person. This is a stubborn monad.

Those could be fine responses, but he is not open.

Meditating with Descartes
Karen Parham asks how close Western philosophy gets to Buddhism.

And there we go. Certain Western philosophers can rationalize both God and The Good into existence. Grasping them abstractly sets up the battles to come when confronting other philosophers who “in their head” grasp them differently. Then it becomes an [at times] fierce contest to pin down the most technically correct definitions and deductions. This actually becomes what passes for “serious philosophy” for some. Even regarding discussions of morality and immortality.

The same with those here who want to focus the discussion not on their belief in Buddhism as that impacts the behaviors they choose here and now to effectuate what they would like karma to embody for them there and then, but on whether others understand what the Buddha imparts “properly”.

I think therefore I am. But leaving aside an understanding of how the fact that you think must somehow be connected to an understanding of Existence itself, and that, in thinking, you do so autonomously, what in particular are you thinking? And in what particular context are you thinking it?

Do others think the same thing? Can you pin down those things that all men and women agree do in fact exist? What about the relationship between the things that seem to exist objectively but precipitate human behaviors that different people think differently about. Particular behaviors which generate conflicting moral narratives and political agendas?

And is it not these very conflicts that become an important factor in prompting the minds of men and women to create Gods “in their heads”. You may exist because you think but so do others. And, in regard to those things you can’t agree on in the is/ought world, well, there’s God!

Or, for the Buddhists, whatever it is that they think is “behind” karma, reincarnation and Nirvana.

I’ll take that as a good thing…

I guess I find the scepticism weird, but I know that some don’t like going ‘within/deeper’ for fear of what they may find, but that… my friends, is the best but hardest part.

And around and around we go…

My existential options for trying much of anything these days are…limited. And, given all of the hundreds and hundreds of “paths to enlightenment” there are out there in regard to objective morality on this side of the grave and immortality on the other side, what are your own options for going down that list above? How many have you tried so far? Note a list of them over, say, the past five years. Having already rejected Buddhism.

You and I will just have to agree to disagree that, in regard to that which interest me about religion, I feel the enlightened ones need first to convince me [in places like this] they can first demonstrate that what they believe in their head [re morality and immortality] is the real deal.

And what makes no sense to you is not how I think about all of this but how you think that I think about all of this. That’s what you do here. You analyze me. You “expose” me to everyone. But all you are really doing is taking out of me that which you must of necessity first put into me: yourself. I become your own iambiguous. Just as you and others become my own renditions in turn. There’s just no getting around the implications of that in virtual reality. Instead, in my view, we can only make attempts to bring what we think and feel about human interactions out into the world by focusing in [over and over again] on particular sets of circumstances and probing the existential parameters of “I” there.

Terrified? No, more in the way of feeling disturbed from time to time at being fractured and fragmented out in the is/ought world; and in feeling dread at the prospect of oblivion. But, in the interim, that’s what the distractions are for: all the things I do that bring me enormous satisfaction and fulfillment; and take me away from what I think philosophically about the human condition.

Again, up into the stratosphere of the general description intellectual contraptions you go!!

Instead, choose another context in which, in regard to morality on this side of the grave and the fate of “I” on the other side of it, you yourself reacted to the conflicting goods embodied by individuals as that pertains to the part where the choices impact their fate on the other side.

I will then note the extent to which, in reacting to this same particular set of circumstances, I do feel fractured and fragmented – down in my hole. Then you can note the extent to which you either feel similarly or very much different.

Just make it about a situation in which we do have particular reactions and then make an attempt to explain them.

Then [sigh] this is how you respond:

Okay, pick that time you believe best encompasses a substantive exchange between us in which, given a particular situation, we exchange perspectives on the “fragmented and fractured” “I” down in this hole existentially:

How is this applicable and not applicable to you in this particular situation?

Instead, back up you go:

Like I haven’t already responded to this above. But it’s not the right response. It’s the response that you would expect given the manner in which you think that you have pinned me down above. If I am your iambiguous then that’s what you’d expect.

Then of course the part where you confirm all of this by making me the issue here:

And none of this “makes sense” to you because I refuse to be other than this caricature of me that you “nail” in post after post after post.

Though, you assure me, in a truly “respectful” manner.

What I suggest then is that, in regard to a brand new context we all agree on, we discuss the manner in our own respective “I” reacts to conflicting goods as that relates to our view about objective morality here and now and the fate of “I” there and then.

Given our take [assumptions] regarding either a God or a No God world.

My own favorite context revolves around abortion. But I’m open to any other that we can all agree would best highlight the things we might agree or disagree about.