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.
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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.
One could even generalize that experience (practice) comes before belief (should it come at all). That’s how science works. That’s also the way we learn in general.
Okay, but in regard to Buddhism as it relates to my own interest in religion – morality here and now, immortality there and then – how are generalizations pertaining to experiences and beliefs approached when they come into conflict with regard to particular behaviors in a particular context?
Being mindful of what actual set of circumstances? It would seem that, depending on what the individual becomes mindful of, there might be rewards and there might be punishments.
There is how science and learning works in the either/or world and how these techniques can get all jumbled up in regard to morality here and now and immortality there and then.
It still must come down to that which we are able to demonstrate to others is the right thing or the wrong thing to learn.
Has it occurred to anyone else that Biggs is actually something of a Zen master here?
Can anyone tell me why? Let’s see if you can identify the characteristics displayed by Biggs that make him a Zen master.
Well like any “zen master”, rational discussion doesn’t exist.
Meditating with Descartes
Karen Parham asks how close Western philosophy gets to Buddhism.
Yep, you know what’s coming: “We’ll need a context of course”.
And yet I still get reactions from those who seem to suggest that in going out into the world and exploring particular aims in order to acquire and then sustain a grasp on that which embodies peace of mind, somehow misses the point of encompassing all this…philosophically.
First we must pin down the precise definition and the meaning of words like “aim” or “peace of mind” or “shift in consciousness”.
Apparently not counting the questions that I raise regarding the existential parameters of enlightenment and karma on this side of the grave, or the manner in which they are able to describe in detail how reincarnation comes about, or what it means to have reached Nirvana. Here they seem no different [to me] than any other religionists I have come upon down through the years.
No, first the philosopher needs to take one or another more rather than less reasoned leap of faith to those questions in which answers are there to be demonstrated to others who either do not understand them or have come up with entirely different answers. In fact, some answers are “the final say on the matter”. It just depends on the context. There are any number of empirical truths that philosophers can accumulate in regard to Buddhism.
For example, facts about the religion that can be easily confirmed. But once the questions are aimed instead at probing the capacity of Buddhists to embody enlightenment in a particular set of circumstances what of those answers?
Both the philosophers and the religionists are tasked with closing the gap between what is believed to be true and what is shown to be true.
And this is pertinent to what exactly? Some questions and answers [and thoughts] are clearly more sound than others. As for the realm beyond thought, certainty is no less shown to be either within reach or not.
Again, unless we go all the way out on the metaphysical limb. Out where reality itself is linked beyond all doubt to an understanding of existence itself.
Universal speak, objective speak and objectivist speak. It must, not ‘I prefer’. And then binary. It is right or wrong, period. And by universal, that everyone wants the same thing, so the solution would be one for all.
The utterly depersonalized abstract approach of our resident serious philosopher.
One should not just live and explore and do the best one can given our in situ fallibility and individual desires and needs and skills and proclivities. No, One should wait, before choosing a path, for that path to be proven to all rational individuals it is the right path for everyone.
And yet the clock is ticking.
It is always a choice between paths. I wonder if the path of posting as you do has been demonstrated to be the path that all rational people should consider the right one. If it has, which is implicit in what I quoted, show the proof.
If the path you are already following has not be demonstrated such that all rational people should agree…
Then the issue is which path that has not been proven will one choose and on what grounds.
Your on a path, with practices: heady, mental, verbal, abstract practices. The issue is: why believe it is better than the other options (and I would add ‘for you’)?
That is, taking all this repetitious blather at face value, believing that you are, indeed, looking to find a path.
Mindful of that you’re doing, feeling, sensing, thinking, what’s happening around you.
We’ll need a context of course.
As if the process you are displaying here “over and over” as described by Karpal Tunnel above is not enough of a context. You refuse to see what you’re doing: what the Buddhists call the chatter of the monkey mind in your case in hyperdrive.