Google “theology forums” and you get lots of hits including:
theologydegreesonline.com/the-t … educators/
Google “buddhist forums” and you get lots of hits including:
Same for you. You’ve got the path you are on now. But there may well be a more rational and virtuous path still. And, again, with so much at stake on both sides of the grave, shouldn’t you really be making an effort to set aside time to try them all?
Starting with, say, the major ones first: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_religious_groups
And then moving on to all the rest: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r … traditions
Or is this part only relevant to me?
Am I the only one confused by this?
Biggus repeatedly expresses an interest having discussions about his concerns … most recently discussions with Buddhists, philosophers and theologians.
I link him to sites where he could have these discussions. He ought to grateful … right? But he’s not.
I don’t express any particular interest in having these discussions personally. I don’t care about oblivion, the afterlife or salvation. I have a little interest in general and practical philosophy and no interest in “serious” or academic philosophy.
So yeah, those links are relevant to him and not to me.
You’re not responding to the point I am making about you either more or less than I’m not responding to the point you are making about me.
We’re stuck. Again.
Therefore, others can decide for themselves which of us is making the most sense.
It actually has nothing to do with me.
He says that he wants something. I offer him a means of getting it. He is resentful.
I don’t know why. I don’t get it.
Okay, I don’t get Buddhism in regard to that which most interest me in discussing religion, and you don’t get me in regard to that which most interest you in discussing me.
We are clearly stuck. Not only that but going absolutely nowhere fast
Right? 
Who the fuck knows what’s going on?
Certainly not me. But now only in regard to three things:
1] before I was born
2] the life I live
3] after I die
Well, unless I become a Buddhist of course. 
I cannot possibly see how such a specific discussion, how Buddhists would discuss abortion, is not served vastly better by its own thread. And since there are, so far, no practicing Buddhists, here, how this discussion would not work better in a forum made up of Buddhists.
If this, is really, what, you, want.
But it’s not what you want. I mean, notice how you keep deciding not to go where Buddhists are.
Rather, you spend time trying to wrap Gib’s get - which is about getting things like how Buddhism would help him and what is enlightenment and Nirvana and why for selfish reasons (not judging by saying selfish, just noting it has nothing to do with morals) he should participate.
You however want to see Buddhists discuss a specific moral issue, even though you made it clear nothing attracts you about Buddhism AND there are no practicing Buddhists present AND there are easy options now given you by Phyllo, but allways within your skill set to find.
This is why we don’t take you at face value. What you say you want, and what you do, do not match.
But no one could possibly be irritated that you hijack threads and do not respond with candor, perhaps not with yourself either.
So, what do you do here…spend energy trying to place your offtopic agenda into the word ‘get’ rather than simply going ‘Yeah, you’re right, even if lightning might strike here, if I want to see Buddhists discuss and issue, I would likely be better off going where there are large numbers of Buddhists.’
No, that would take a minimal adult maturity.
If this absurd obsession you have for exposing me has not gone beyond embarrassing for you by now what can I possibly say
that might make you aware of it?
Perhaps we should start a new thread and grapple with it there.
I’ve been practicing the way of meditation I learned from the books of Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh since 1997 beginning with “Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life”. I’ve found it beneficial as have many other whom I know personally. His is the simplest most effective method of meditation I know of. It didn’t take me years of practice to get into it.
Yes, I noted above that Buddhist exercises and practices can be/have been very, very beneficial for any number of individuals. Including more than a handful of folks that I have known. That part of Buddhism I do get. And I think I get why many go beyond that and accept its teachings in regard to karma, enlightenment, reincarnation and Nirvana. It’s one of many religious/spiritual paths that allow for millions and millions to ground “I” in a meaningful and purposeful life.
But that’s not the same as actually demonstrating that what they believe is in fact true. Nor does it focus in on the extent to which this sort of thing is not merely the embodiment of how I construe the meaning of dasein.
Yeah it’s all about getting unstuck from that kind of shit in the present moment.
But that’s not the same as actually demonstrating that what they believe is in fact true. Nor does it focus in on the extent to which this sort of thing is not merely the embodiment of how I construe the meaning of dasein.
[/quote]
Meditating with Descartes
Karen Parham asks how close Western philosophy gets to Buddhism.
This is clearly the part where those among us who do not have any in-depth experience with disciplines of this sort, are more or less completely in the dark.
But my point of view revolves more around the part where Buddhists who do achieve this level of discipline either are or are not out in the world like all the rest of us.
In other words, you make it to the realms of the infinite, but, in your interactions with others in any particular community, your behaviors either come into conflict with others or their behaviors come into conflict with you. One or the other of you is than able to create a situation [legal or political] in which someone’s behaviors are going to have to change or they will be punished.
And then the part [for me] where one is able to demonstrate how these higher, more enlightened forms of consciousness insure the continued existence of “I” beyond the grave. Aside from merely insisting that this is what they believe in their head.
That’s important to me because there are dozens and dozens and dozens of additional religious practitioners out there all insisting that, no, only if you become one of them, is this possible. Folks who insist that God is anything but a “distraction” to them.
How could God be thought of as a distraction to Descartes? Isn’t he but one more philosopher down through the ages who recognized how truly fundamental this “transcending font” was in sustaining a teleological component in human existence. Not to mention immortality and salvation? No God, no “I” to think at all.
So then it comes down to how deep in a No God world the realizations of mere mortals can go. In fact, I’d like to believe that my own existential narrative here is enough to keep most philosophers busy all the way to the grave.
So much mental masturbation so little time.
Unless of course we are reincarnated as serious philosophers. 
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Oops… I was supposed to click ‘save draft’, not ‘submit’… will post my intended comment on this, later.
Mindfulness is its own reward regardless of metaphysical speculation.
We’ll need an actual context of course. God or No God.