I don't get Buddhism

I will leave it to the actual Buddhists to answer this.

Did my answer not suffice? I’d give the same answer whether we’re talking about the either/or world or the is/ought world. The self is an illusion because it is not permanent. It is not permanent in the either/or world or the is/ought world. We’re not just talking about molecules or energy transitioning in and out of the body, we’re talking about my inner world–my feelings and thoughts, my values and beliefs, my memories, my character, my experiences–all of which are extremely hard to pin down in the either/or world.

Sure. So let’s take a common Buddhist practice that involves morality. Say the alleviation of suffering. Suffering is a very real part of life for the Buddhist (despite life being an illusion), and it is important to alleviate it for as many souls as we can. Therefore, as one who has been enlightened and has found a path out of suffering, it is incumbent on the Buddhist to bring others out of their suffering by showing them the path to enlightenment. The way out of suffering leads to the disillusionment of the ‘I’. With that, there is no more ‘I’ to suffer, and there is no more ‘I’ to reincarnate. One is therefore not only free from suffering but from the wheel of Samsara itself.

In much the same way as I explained above. The path to salvation according to Buddhist teaching is to become enlightened to the truth about reality–about its illusory nature–for this alleviates one of all earthly suffering. The moral obligation of the Buddhist is to show this path to others so that their suffering may be alleviated too. The practice is by meditating and following the eight-fold path: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path. This is connected to the fate of the ‘I’ in the afterlife by allowing one’s self to let go of the self, to let it dissolve, thereby leaving nothing behind to cling to, nothing to bring one back into this life reincarnated. One essentially “escapes” the wheel.

Is that the note you like to end on? A dismal look at your nihilistic point of view and how glaringly it contrasts with the religion of the spiritualist or the objectivist, with a slant for more grounded realism on your side, and in-the-clouds phantasmagoria on the other? Is this an expression of dissatisfaction with where your inquiry leads or the final jab you ultimately aim to deliver?

Right, now I want to know where you go with this? I’ve answered your question. What is your next move? Is this it? Just to point out that the suffering and injustices of the world go on in spite of the spiritualist’s/objectivist’s views? In spite of how he “connects the dots” between those views and how that plays out in specific moral context here and now? In spite how he re-connects that with the afterlife and the fate of the ‘I’ there and then? Is your goal to show how it’s all in vein no matter how tightly he thinks those connections are forged? Really, I want to know what you’re ultimately trying to accomplish with all this inquiry.

I believe I’ve shed enough light on that with my responses above.

Filling in for that Buddhist, I would ask for a more detailed account of how you construe the ‘I’ you want me to comment on. To hear that you have a fractured and fragmented sense of identity is no shock to a Buddhist given he thinks the ego we all believe in is a false one anyway, and under certain pressures and rude awakenings, the cracks always begin to show. But I’d need a clearer picture of your construel of ‘I’ (particularly what dasein means to you) to make this my formal comment on the matter.

Buddhism is absurd on its face.

1.) I have no attachment to dharma

2.) I have no aversion to anti-dharma

If you follow Buddhism by the letter anyone (including the Buddha) will go insane. That’s suffering raised to the second power!

That’s because you’re thinking in the western binary way … it has to be one or the other … mutually exclusive.

Eastern philosophy does not work that way.

Bullshit. The three poisons are binary. The 8fold path is binary. The 4 noble truths are binary.

Thinking makes it so.

Isn’t that also a load of crap! Jump off a cliff when you think you can fly.

Okay, let’s reconfigure this into a discussion of a particular context involving behaviors that come into conflict over value judgments derived from a particular religious narrative that includes Dharma in its own rendition of a scripture. And, in turn, how this relates to the fate of “I” beyond the grave.

Well, sure, if you don’t question your sense of identity much beyond what a particular religious narrative presumes, then the answers enable you to sustain both the comfort and the consolation that come with them. The arguments I give in regard to the historical, cultural and experiential parameters of “I” as an existential contraption rooted in dasein are just shrugged away.

To what extent have you delved into your religious, moral and political values given the manner in which I myself approach them here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382

This is always my own aim here when it comes to examining “I” in the is/ought world. God or No God. In other words, the extent to which someone is convinced that in regard to their religious, moral and political values, they are in sync with the “real me” in sync with “the right thing to do”.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKqTe8F18sQ[/youtube]

Clever. And exactly how long does this person defy gravity?

He never “defies” gravity.

Longest recorded flight was 9 minutes 6 seconds.

The point is that it’s not just black and white.

Actually it is black and white. You’re trying to play “grey word games” when flying as the term is being used here is the infinite ability to always defy gravity.

I said it was clever. I didn’t say it was true, that beliefs determine reality.

First, of course, we don’t know how to talk about forks and chairs and neighbors definitively because we don’t know how to grapple with and understand them given the very nature of existence itself. And we don’t know if the exchanges we do have about them reflect beyond all doubt the capacity of human beings to exchange posts with some measure of free will in venues such as this.

Therefore, what “I” do then is all that I can do:

1] presume that my assessment of forks and chairs and neighbors bares at least some relevance to the nature of existence itself and…

2] presume that I do have some measure of free will in broaching, assessing and evaluating them in venues such as this

Given that what can we know about forks and chairs and neighbors…information and knowledge able to be communicated to others demonstrably? What empirical, material, phenomenological facts can we exchange confidently about them? And how would these facts be understood differently by different religious denominations? Are forks and chairs and neighbors construed by Western religions different from how they are construed by Eastern religions? As they become pertinent to our day to day interactions?

How are the use of forks and chairs and neighbors intertwined existentially when Buddhists connect the dots between enlightenment and karma here and now and reincarnation and Nirvana there and then?

And what changes when, say, forks and chairs are used as weapons to harm others? And how are enlightened men and women obligated to treat neighbors?

No, suffering itself is still too general.

We need a more specific context. Suppose John is a prison inmate about to be executed for murdering Mary. If the state kills him some of his family and friends and loved ones will suffer. But if he is not executed many who loved Mary will suffer because they believe that he deserves to die.

Same with abortion and animal rights and gun laws and vaccines and the role of government. Same with all conflicting goods. Some construe suffering if this is done while others if that is done instead.

Then with religion the stakes get jacked up all the more. Behaviors on this side of the grave become anchored to things like sin and enlightenment. Which then get anchored “in the head” of the faithful with one’s fate on the other side of the grave. Only with most Western religions that becomes intertwined with God and Judgment Day. And I still don’t really have a solid clue as to how it might work in a No God religion.

Then I’m back to bringing this “general description intellectual/spiritual contraption” out into the world pertaining to particular conflicting goods in a particular set of circumstances. And the part where Buddhists are able to demonstrate that their own spiritual path is preferable to the “hundreds and hundreds” of other denominations out there who might share the conviction that there is but one truly enlightened path.

But it is their own.

Instead.

The note that I end on – encompassed in the arguments I make in my signature threads – merely reflects my own existential contraption here. The manner in which I make a distinction between the Self in the either/or world and the “self” in the is/ought world. And, then, in threads such as this one, in connecting the dots between morality here and now and immortality there and then.

From my perspective, philosophy is not about coming up with something that makes you feel better, but something that seems the most reasonable to you “here and now”. Religion just ups the ante by proposing that if you follow down a certain path [their own] you will feel all the better still. And then for all the rest of eternity.

That’s basically the assumption I make about any number of reactions to me from the moral and political and spiritual objectivists. They recognize what is at stake for them if, perhaps, the assumptions I make are more reasonable. And on both sides of the grave.

On the other hand, since there are so many more of them than there are of me, I would be a fool not to hear them out. At this point in my life, I have little more to lose and a whole heap to gain if they can convince me to go a little further still down their path.

I aim in having a minimal negative impact on others, and steer clear of those that don’t do likewise for me… so keeping my environment as non-toxic as is possible.

Enlightenment is self-awareness of negative behaviours that are harmful to others… that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun and crack a few jokes, but not at the constant expense of others and their feelings.

It’s about having a clean karmic line, unfettered by wrong-doings and negatives… which kin inherit, and hopefully continue to uphold that Dharma.

How can we know how our behaviours will impact our fate after death, except through the interactions and actions of our kin?

Take Brahman?

Is there a choice in the matter, once a significant amount of enlightenment has been achieved in the manifestation of Brahman within one’s psyche? Once we know better, can we stop knowing better?

…in, me not having an agenda, but more a purpose… whatever it is, at any given point in time.

Brahman is to be, then to express that through doing/words and actions, so that the morality/immortality issue is appeased… so being a sacrificial alter unto ourselves, if you will.

But: in regard to the behaviors that you choose here and now as they pertain to what you imagine your fate to be there and then, I have no clear understanding of your point here. And that is always my aim in regard to God and religion and all other spiritual paths.

We are just not in sync in terms of intent and motivation here. Others can share your assessment above but then attach it to conflicting goods. Attaching this assessment further to the part after they die. That’s my “thing” here. Exploring that in regard to actual sets of circumstances.

Thus…

Well, that’s my point. Religious/spiritual folks have, down through the centuries, concocted scriptures and texts and traditions and mores and folkways that may or may not be reconfigured into enforceable laws. The idea being that there is a way to differentiate vice from virtue, sin from transgression, enlightened from benighted behavior. Linked to a God, the God by and large but not always.

Yes. You choose to behave in the way that you do. And if Brahman denotes/connotes “the highest Universal Principle, the Ultimate Reality in the universe” how do you connect the dots between that and this choice. Why not another choice instead? Here of course I link “I” to dasein. But that then precipitates [for me] the feeling of fragmentation.

Instead, you note…

Which I react to as but another “general description intellectual contraption”. Again, people can share this “spiritual” assessment but then come to embody profoundly conflicting moral and political agendas. What then in regard to the fate of “I” on the other side?

I have no clear idea what you mean here. With regard to moral and political prejudices how is an agenda differentiated from a purpose. And how are either one not basically derived subjectively from the manner in which I construe dasein embedded in a particular historical, culturally and interpersonal context?

The latter then I’ll take it.

biggie says:

“have no clear idea what you mean here. With regard to moral and political prejudices how is an agenda differentiated from a purpose. And how are either one not basically derived subjectively from the manner in which I construe dasein embedded in a particular historical, culturally and interpersonal context?”

As per a leap of/to faith , as a represented , necessary irony, per Meno’s paradox: which I will quote summarily:

" he was looking for, this is known as Meno’s paradox. Kierkegaard puts his paradox this way, “what a man knows he cannot seek, since he knows it; and what he does not know he cannot seek, since he does not even know for what to seek.”[10]

In other words , it is undifferentiable, That knowledge is an undivided part of him.

Meno cam not to seek is the inverted primal premise. That is the basis of looking at/for IT, the argument flows reversely , by necessity.

This necessity was pointed out thus:

“Rush argues that this is primarily a social-ontological term and not, as is often supposed, a metaphysical concept.”

This is why a philosophical fragment requires a platonic intuition to foreshadow a Divine fragmentation.

Thereafter this must adhere to a comedy of divine proportions.

That is the basis of the saying, a little bit of Plato is like a little bit of poison, and so Socrates fate foreshadowed a sacrifice, that an invitation of Christ could not then illiterate

And that, gave an appearent right for Faust to take on the bargain…unwittingly taking a required leap, to recapture the Ring.

Many are called , few chosen, and Meno knows not for what, …this is the Absolute requirement for the fragmented, self learned man.

He can never understand himself, and how he was able to learn, against all odds.

Post script:

Wittgenstein’s family of resemblances deluged Christ’s alleged Buddhic journey through the silk road, and so Rush’s argument, supports Shlegel’s and Fischte’s view on the romantic mode, thereby reinforcing Jung’s conflation of a necessary construction, or reaffirmation of values.

Without God, He has to be reinvented by reassemblage.

There has to occur a sliver of hope that an exit be found.

An exit, which serves as a reentry simultaniously.

This necessity prevents singular Crucifiction by Freud’s displacement of economic recovery of the ID, by a social reconstructive rather then an singular ontologically derived responsibility-to attain the entrance to enlightenment.

That should consist of the successful journey from sacrificial -factual modes of realization toward the purposeful, functional signal of an impending objective.

The two then are not really logically reducible, but are substantiated by Christ’s miracles.

Ecmondu I see You on board, if You happen to read the above, this is the proof You may be seeking.

Biggy, I promised a revision with more clarity, .& safely, do try to indulge , even after the fact, with darely as a witness for the defense. Dare You!
all, Karpel & Dan, included.

MagsJ , who made clear the various perimeters that a Meno type personality may actualize.

Post post script

Biggie asks,

“Unless, of course, he’s right”:

What I’d escape from the mundane, through religious myth was simply an avoidance, a possible exit from the box of genetic social determinate, a displacement which tries to overcome an inferiority, apparently of Darwin through god?

Does the phenomenological continuum of metaphysically verified moral prerogatives stand up to the test of identifiable families of resemblances?

Unless, of course, he’s right.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1801007/
Reduced cortisol, reduced stress. Those are pretty clear positive. Interesting about reduced reaction times. Obviously not the best thing to do before a big table tennis tournament. But in general allowing more nuanced responses to what is happening around you, probably better chance of not responding with habitual responses.

sciencedirect.com/science/a … 1?via=ihub
Here reduction in anxiety and depression

So, for any person suffering there is strong evidence that the practices (of a practice focused tradition) have benefits that most modern people want. This means that they could START participating in the practices on solid ground even if they are not sure about the supposed long term effects of the practices or some of the possibly metaphysical aspects of the religion/approach.

I see no findings indicating that the practice of posting online reduces anxiety, cortisol levels, depression.

So if one is looking for rational arguments and one is making a choice based on purely rational/scientific grounds, the choice is really quite obvious.

And it is always a choice (not in the determinism vs free will debate types of metaphysical types of choice with a big C).

So what are the arguments in favor of the practices of posting online and demanding proofs. Why should any rational person do that, given the criteria asked for, let alone all rational people do that?

And, of course, there are now utterly secular versions of meditation practice (the whole mindfulness movement in workplaces and elsewhere) where one does not need to ever think for a second about Karma or REincarnation or Enlightenment. One can simply engage in a simplified version of the practices supported by scientific research.

Posting online vs. mindfulness practice.

Some people choose the former (ONLY since one can, of course, do both) as their primary practice, despite having criteria that should logically and rationally lead them to at least ADD the latter and trust it more.

One can only shake one’s head in confusion over what their own criteria indicate, by their own demands and admissions here, is their avoidance of a rational choice.wide

another option is to admit that people making choices can do this ratioanally for a wide range of reasons, and be rational despite not being able to convince everyone to make the same choices.

This can be very hard for some people to admit, even they also do this themselves.

Sounds like an either or argument.
Participation mystique aside, what about a reduction to the question of an emergent and unviable intelligent resurfacing colonialism, that simply can’t squeeze through any possible loop in the shirt termed time allotted?

The Role of Karma in Buddhist Morality
Barbara O’Brien

Encompassed here perhaps: youtu.be/E548-OkACkc

All of the things that we choose to do rather than not to do. They lead to one set of consequences rather than another. And some are clearly more mundane than others. But what of the truly significant events in which the tiniest of things can set into motion the most horrific of events. What of karma then? Or, rather, karma in a world that is not wholly determined to unfold only as it must.

But: my concern with karma here is the extent to which it can be attributed to the mystical – spiritual – aspects of our interactions. The part where it becomes intertwined in enlightenment intertwined with the fate “I” beyond the grave.

What of karma then?

Then we are back to how Buddhists differentiate the right [enlightened] choice from the wrong [benighted] choice. And if karma is not fate here what exactly is it? In regard to the trajectory of behaviors you choose over the course of your life. Not X this and Y that but considerably more detailed and descriptive accounts that others may be able to relate to their own lives.

Yeah, KT, what about that?!