I don't get Buddhism

It seems like you are missing his point. His point is that Buddhism as a system, and especially his version of it, which you were asking about, is focused on practice - mindfullness, for example - and not centered in the beliefs, especially about things he does not feel he knows the answers to. Chrisitianity is often centered on beliefs - it needn’t be and there are versions and individuals whose focused on practices - but Buddhism is much more about practices. In fact you will find pressues by teachers and masters in many of the versions of Buddhism to get people to stop trying to resolve things they are not in a position to, to stop mulling over everything and/or to disidentify with that portion of themselves. It is an approach to suffering less or, to put it a bit paradoxically, to suffer one’s suffering less. Yes, there may be Karma and reincarnation and enlightenment, but it is considered for the most part problematic to even fuss of this stuff, first of all because one cannot understand it. It’s like a child trying to understand what a loving sex act is like and what the clues are that a sex act might be problematic. They are just not in any position to understand any of that, if they haven’t been abused. It’s bizzarre to ask how a diagnosis of fatal corona is applicable to karman and enlightmentment. It’s more like how might the practices of Buddhism be applicable to finding out one might be dying. Or how might the idea of Karma be helpful in that situation. In Felix’s case much more the former question.

You say ‘this mindfullness’ being factored somehow into an understanding in the context of an abortion. It’s more like even this very charged situation can be aided directly by mindfulness. And truly, it is something that is ridiculous to even talk about since the word mindfullness is not one you understand. You understand it only as an abstraction. For Felix it is presumably a description of something he has experienced for years. You are trying to talk about something you don’t understand and cannot come to understand via words on a screen.

Right, you are centered on beliefs. Buddhism is about relieving suffering and also about experiencing life in a more focused and potentially joyful way. Your questions and demands are a consistant category error. And that’s because you have no interest in Buddhism. You’ve even acknowledge that there is a great deal of evidence people benefit from the practices. You’ve been told by people with much more experience than you that it is about practices. Yet you demand that it’s beliefs be objective and solve things like the abortion issue, and you show no interest in Buddhist practice. Fine, skip to some other religion or path or therapeutic process. This one’s not for you. You have no interest in it and you don’t listen to the people who have more knowledge and experience than you. For example, that you are basically making category errors.

It is objectively true that many people benefit from Buddhist practices. Since people are different not all modalities are going to work for all people. You are not interested in the practices, or seeing if by any chance you are one of the people who benefits. Perhaps if you practiced for a long time then you would find out something about some of the ultimate metaphysical issues you want answers to now. Perhaps not. If you participated and felt better, according to your own evaluation, then there is no loss. Right now you want answers that you can’t possible understand and in fact are considered blocks to what is considered growth away from suffering in Buddhism. A car mechanic is not going to fix you teeth.

Total category error.

Yes, because you have blind faith that you can make evaluations of things you have no experience of via words on a screen from your bedroom. The Buddhists who decided certain kinds of metaphysical conclusions spent vast periods of time doing things you have no experience of. You haven’t the slightly basis for saying it is faith, which is precisely not what Buddhism is about.

You are essentially so far from making any sense when you encounter Buddhism and show no interest in learning about Buddhism in any practical experiential sense that I find myself pointing out things about a system I do not like.

You always talk about bringing the debate down to concrete things. In this the Buddhist is with you. Shut the fuck up and meditate. Get some help with it if you need it. That’s concrete. You’re just throwing words and abstractions at a tradition you know nothing about, and making that clear in the way you talk about it and expect it to work for you on your verbal abstract issues. You’re not interested.

What you present is a lie here. And you were just rude to Felix by not really reading or even trying to understand what he said to you. The guy spent some time to answer your questions. The least you could do is notice his answers, consider it possible that in some way he is representing a Buddhist response. A tiny step, not the final answer to all these metaphysical ideas and to resolving all the problems of the world. That a quasi-Buddhist in good faith offered you something you might be able to use as a step in a direction. You evaluate everything as ‘did it just solve all moral conflicts’ or’ did it prove to me I will never truly die’. That’s the attitude of a child. Fine we all have those child yearnings in us, to understand the ultimate answers without doing anything and right now, thanks Mom. But an adult that turns to the keyboard and the screen, and actually considers that perhaps tiny steps are necessary to get to knowledge and solutions to the world’s problems. Would you want to make that first step? Would you want to try what this person respectfully suggesting suggests? No is a fine answer. It hopefully shows you read and deciding that isn’t a step you want to take. Not even giving a shit about what the person wrote is rude. It’s also a terrible way to use experts ro people with more knowledge and experience than you in a specific area. You call the expert and then ignore them. No, you know how they should teach you and what you need to understand their area of expertise. Not them, you. If you’re real purpose was to learn, then you’re not only being rude to them, but to yourself.

Attachment to his way of thinking and his way of doing philosophy.

What else is there to say?

We can’t make him do something that he doesn’t want to do.

Yeah, and it’s not really the right thread. To get Buddhism is to practice it. I think this is actually much more true in general in all sorts of fields, but it is openly acknowledged and stressed in Buddhism. He doesn’t want to get Buddhism, he wants to test it at such an abstract, disengaged and all or nothing level that it’s really an entirely different topic.

The irony is very strong for those who have experienced Buddhism because it so clearly is not, according to Buddhism, a good way to learn about it, and then further it’s busy mind stuff that Buddhism strives to undermine.

It’s bizarre to you. So, it must be bizarre to others as well?

My interest in Buddhism, as with my interest in religion as a whole, revolves almost entirely around how someone’s beliefs/faith precipitate particular sets of behaviors in their interactions with others from day to day…behaviors thought to be in alignment with that which someone imagines or wishes his or her fate to be on the other side.

Who here, besides new members, doesn’t know that by now?

In regard to the coronavirus, either karma and enlightenment factor into the behaviors chosen here and now by Buddhists or they don’t. As that is factored into their thinking about “I” on the other side.

That is where I wish to take the exchange. If others do not, they should clearly move on to others. No hard feelings.

Huh? He seemed to clearly be making a distinction between going about the business of walking, eating, washing and sitting down more or less mindlessly and, then, as a more enlightened sort, doing these things more “mindfully”.

Okay, how is this distinction made by him in regard to human interactions swirling around coronavirus and abortion? Given his present understanding of Buddhism.

The rest is just you further explaining me – pinning me down – in a manner in which I don’t recognize at all.

And how bizarre is that, right?

Others here can go about the business of doing philosophy as they see fit. As Buddhists or not.

My own interest however revolves around them then bringing their philosophical conclusions out into the world and connecting the dots between these conclusions, the behaviors they choose on this side of the grave and how they imagine these behaviors play a part in what they imagine their fate to be on the other side of the grave.

Now, to me, that is religion in a nutshell. For all practical purposes. Out in a particular world understood in a particular way.

Here’s this guy who, to the best of my knowledge, like me, does not believe in either God, an afterlife or objective morality.

Obviously, in regard to sustaining some measure of comfort and consolation, there are clear advantages to believing in a religion, the religion, my religion. It’s a source of enlightenment on this side of the grave. It’s a way in which to fall back on the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do. It’s a way in which to imagine immortality and salvation as real things.

On the other hand, for those who do not believe in these things, much depends on their actual set of circumstances here and now. It’s always a whole lot easier being an atheist when, for example, you are young and healthy, when your life is bursting at the seams with satisfaction and fulfilment, when all the boundless misery that others might be wallowing in, is, simply, fortuitously not a part of your own life here and now.

So, maybe KT is just not in the market for a way in which to embrace objective morality, immortality and salvation. Maybe his life allows him to push that stuff further back in his mind.

Here, everyone, as an individual, has their own “situation” from which to think about all of this.

But to the extent that objective morality might interest him in a world where conflicted morality precipitates enormous amounts of human pain and suffering, or the promise of immortality and salvation eases the fears embedded in his own close encounter with oblivion, there are any number of folks out there who would welcome him into the fold. He could live as they do for however long it takes to decide if it is right for him. And then move on to the next denomination.

Again, though, it all depends on how his situation is different from mine. The part that, in my view, is profoundly embedded in dasein.

The fundamental idea being that God and objective morality are fabricated to produce comfort and consolation.

Many ideas are fundamental only to the extent that some can convince themselves of that in their head.

Still, common sense would seem to indicate that feeling comforted and consoled is preferable to feeling disheartened and demoralized. And, when it comes to feeling grounded morally in a world that reconfigures into immortality and salvation, what comes closer than God and religion?

But they are fabricated only to the extent that someone is able to establish that in fact God and the afterlife do not exist.

And if you think that’s me, well, that certainly wouldn’t surprise me.

The logic here is bizarre.

For example, this statement clearly states that immortality and salvation are not real:

Yet he feels free to say it because he doesn’t claim to have “established that in fact God and the afterlife do not exist”?

I mean, that’s ass backward. He’s in no position to say that those are not real things.

So why say it with certainty? Why say it and later claim gaps in knowledge and uncertainty?

As I noted to you above…

Now, the thing that all of us share in common here is this: that when it comes to immortality and salvation all we have is our capacity to imagine them as real.

And that if you can think yourself into believing in a God, the God, my God, they become all the more real in your head. And that this need be as far as you go in demonstrating that they are real.

Which then brings me back [once again] to figuring out how exactly God and religion function in your own life in connecting the dots between objective morality here and now and whatever you imagine behaving in accordance with that inclines you to believe about “I” there and then.

Other than that being a Communist is a no-no.

A great way to not even take a stand yourself or to respond to any points made.

IOW we should know that you won’t really respond to what we or anyone writes. Sure, I do at least. I pretty much post to save them time.

This ladies and gentlemen is what proud cluelessness looks like.

It’s par for the course for someone who has never admitted he regretted saying anything here or admitted that his approach in any particular instance was rude or a poor way to go about achieving his claimed goals. In fact your inability to recognize yourself- which is a pretty good summing of the situation up- in what anyone ever says about you fits with never being willing to notice you every did anything problematic. No surprises.

Note to others: a man who is fractured and fragmented, who does not have a clear sense of an i, has never once, here, acknowledged a single contradiction in his posts or that he did in fact misrepresent another person’s point. It’s amazing how cocksure this broken shatter self is about himself.

Sounds like a personal problem to me.

Get help. :laughing:

How is this not an expression of certainty about “all we have”?

And also an expression of certainty about what some people are thinking?
:confusion-scratchheadblue:

Isn’t it all we have? Or are you aware of someone who has been able to demonstrate that in fact immortality and salvation are real things and not just something some believe are real in their heads?

Again, I often note the gap between what I believe is true or think I know about these things here and now and all that can be known about them.

My certainty here is more your rendition of it than mine.

Please. My focus here is always less on what others think and more on their capacity to demonstrate to me that all rational men and women are obligated to think the same. And I would never argue that others are obligated to think about these things as I do.

I would not even argue that I am.

Oh. It hasn’t been demonstrated to someone’s satisfaction, therefore it does not exist.

In spite of references to a gap, the posts are peppered with certainty.

The threads dealing with the “psychology of objectivism” are all about what objectivists think.

The threads dealing with religion are all about what religious people think.

This is called shifting the onus. You have made the claim that it is only in their heads, period. But now he suddenly, when he points out your claim, must demonstrate the opposite,w hen in fact you bear the onus for you own claims.

[/quote]
What he quoted would be taken as certainty by anyone. No qualitification, it address when ‘we all’ share in common. If you didn’t mean it, then take responsibility for your poor communication. Don’t blame him for reading statements of certainty and noticing it.

So, anyway, Buddhism…
I thought this article had a few interesting points…
theatlantic.com/internation … ce/548120/

I liked the question about why Buddhism needs to improve on nature.

I think it also extends one of the points Felix made from a practitioner of one the strands of Buddhism.

It is also well known that constant rumination is one of the main symptoms of depression. What we need is to gain freedom from the mental chain reactions that rumination endlessly perpetuates. One should learn to let thoughts arise and be freed to go as soon as they arise, instead of letting them invade one’s mind. In the freshness of the present moment, the past is gone, the future is not yet born, and if one remains in pure mindfulness and freedom, potentially disturbing thoughts arise and go without leaving a trace.

My experience confirms this. Mindful meditation can free one from depressing obsession. I think iambiguous is stuck in such an obsessive pattern. It wouldn’t surprise me if many here on ILP suffer from unhappy obsessive thinking and could benefit from the practice of mindfulness.

I have a different approach which is more expressive, getting underneath the ruminations to the emotions that are being avoided by the ruminations and/or driving them. If I express these emotions - in sound as much as possible with few or no words except for the occasional outburst (sometimes a realization of something with a lot of emotional charge) - this also ends the rumination. More to my taste as a process, though I also meditate, but even there not quite in the mindfulness way. And I agree that rumination can be a real problem. I noticed that part of the interview also and thought it applied as you mention below. It can certainly be part of feeling fractured and fragmented.