Not sure what you are referring to, likely something in Iamb, but you’re right, Buddhists are real cause and effect guys. It is more or less mechanistic. X leads to Y. All things with component parts must perish. Patterns of X in the mind lead necessarily to Z. There’s a bit of a paradox as to how these kinds of mechanistic processes can unravel and get to enlightenment, but consciousness can choose to disengage - via meditation or sometimes suddenly spontaneously.
But yeah there is no deity, unless you are one of those syncetistic Buddhists who also has deities. This happens much more in the East, where older religions are integrated into Buddhism
Yes, again. Karma is taken in extremely moral terms by Westerners, but actually in Buddhism it means more or less action and what it leads to. Actually in Hinduism as well. (and even in Hinduism, when you find out the attributes of deities, they need not be taken as personified characters, though that’s another can of fish that actually holds for Christianity, amazingly enough and Judaism as well.) Siddheartha may have been wrong about what he saw as inevitable processes, but he is not positing a cosmic judge at all. And in fact the whole system is not saying be a good person, be nice to people, don’t wrong them. Compassion helps you disengage from the mechanisms that lead to suffering is the idea. If anything it is an extremely selfish religion, except it doesn’t believe in a self.
It depends on the extent to which any individual Buddhist intertwines her understanding of karma into her understanding enlightenment. Then intertwining this into the behaviors she chooses in her interactions with others precipitating both positive and negative reactions. This then intertwined in how she connects these dots to the “spiritual” assumptions she makes about “I” beyond the grave.
The stuff that most interest me about religion.
With religion, the “rewards” go way, way beyond getting a better grade in chemistry or improving your skills at the chessboard. Instead, religious denominations are all about morality/enlightenment here and now and immortality/salvation there and then. How these two aspects of human interaction are fused in the mind of any particular individual.
Okay, but others insist that, when push comes to shove, not to focus in on one or another denomination’s “scriptured” spiritual path is basically to argue that anything you are able to convince yourself is true about morality here and now and immortality there and then need be as far as anyone goes. However wide the gap between what they believe is true and what they are able to demonstrate.
Though, sure, if this sounds reasonable to you, more power to you. Whatever works. Again, look at all of the truly “thought out” religious narratives we have been bombarded with over the hears here at ILP alone.
Nothing [to my knowledge] has ever been demonstrated, but that’s not the point for those who subsume God and religion in one or another “worlds of words”.
Is your life better as a Nazi than when you were not a Nazi?
Is your life better as a Communist than when you were not a Communist?
Is your life better as a serial killer than when you were not a serial killer?
Is your life better as a pedophile than when you were not a pedophile?
I was referring to the quote by John Horgan which Iamb posted and commented on :
He had tried Buddhism and come to this conclusion about karma.
I found it strange that he introduces a cosmic judge. If we were discussing evolution, for example, he probable would have no problem attributing the ‘survival of the fittest’ to unspecified mechanistic forces. But change the subject to karma and Buddhism and the thinking changes entirely.
And it’s as you describe it … no deity behind karma.
He didn’t try Buddhism very hard, it seems to me. Yeah, that’s an odd quote. And yes, some Buddhists believe something like that as far as tallies of niceness and nautiness - but I don’t think I have ever encountered a Santa type entity or other cosmic judge in a Buddhist’s beliefs.
My main point is that nobody actually goes looking only for the “most authentic”, the “most in sync”, the optimal, religion or path. Nobody adopts it only after it has been demonstrated to be the best. (Maybe you are the only exception.)
People adopt what they feel is better than what they have. And they try it to see if they like it.
Neither the Nazi nor the Communist had to be convinced that it was the optimal political or economic system. Neither the serial killer nor the pedophile are looking for an optimal behavior.
I think the problem is that people are trying to fit it into the framework of fundie Christianity. Maybe they are not even conscious that they are doing it.
Being cruel will lead to attachment. It’s not a coincidence that the Buddhists don’t talk about love (as in the Judao-C tradition and also, say, t he Bhakti Hindu traditions). The compassion is not about yourself or another’s self. It is about reducing suffering, in general. You have compassion because suffering sucks and nothing is someone else. There’s no other to get pissed off at for their shortcomings. There is no self that is being gipped or mistreated. And in fact the Sanskrit word refers to what would be phenomenologically self-compassion and compassion for ‘others’.
It is not moral, it is not interpersonal, it is not being a good guy.
Buddhism argues, in my terms, that it is teaching not to keep grabbing hammers and hitting any head with them. It doesn’t matter if it is ‘your’ head or ‘someone else’s’ head, since that is a distinction based on illusions.
Compassion, in Buddhism, also entails and is entailed by there being no selves.
He’s shifting focus. I don’t think it is conscious. We are discussing religions/spiritualities perhaps psychological therapeutic modalities would fit the category.
People do not take up Naziism with the central goal of feeling better, changing things over just what one is in direct contact with. Nor Communism. These are political belief systems which fit in another category. One does not choose pedophilia to see if it improves one’s sense of well being. It is a built in tendency and also is not in the same kind of category.
The reasons one would or would not engage in these political opinions and practices (with the political ones) or the behaviors are not the same categorically as the reasons for choosing Buddhism. Different types of goals, not just goals. Different categories of processes not just different processes.
So it is no surprise that other criteria than the single one you mentioned (and you did not preclude others which he took as assumed) is incomplete/not applicable.
And also the reset in Buddhism often comes when the pattern (and not the soul) is reborn. It’s not like all Karmic mechanisms are supposed to be immediate. It’s not instant, whatever John Lennon may have said. And yes, then also what you are saying. It may seem to that person and others that their cruel actions are working, but according to Buddhism there is still a great deal of suffering, often more than their victims experience.
Personally, I don’t believe this. I don’t think Buddhism is right on this issue - not that I think cruelty is either ok or a good strategy. But in Buddhism it’s not as if you got out and push an old lady down on the street and then 5 minutes later you get violently mugged. If that were the case, everyone would notice instantly and the actual problems of the pattern would never be experienced. The bully would very quickly learn not to be a bully, not because of the dukkha caused by illusory beliefs that make his bullying seem like a bad strategy, but because he would like getting hit in the face. So the pattern would need, mechanistically, more time to allow greater learning. And the ‘being fooled by the seeming success of the pattern’ you could call taking pain killers for a broken arm. It might work for a while.
And the main point of any particular religious denomination is to suggest that your search is over. Become “one of us” and you are on the most authentic path. Now, yeah, some here are willing to acknowledge this as a “leap of faith”. But others are more fierce in insisting that if you don’t swallow their own Scripture hook, line and sinker you will endure one or another rendition of eternal damnation.
Go ahead, ask them.
And that’s before we get to the millions and millions of folks around the globe who never go looking in the first place. Instead, from the day they are born into some family/community/nation they are indoctrinated to ever and always embody a God/the God/our God.
Right?
In other words, the way religion actually works in the day to day lives of the true believers out in the world that we live in.
And how is my own point above not a reasonable way in which to react to your point? If you make the distinction thinking or feeling that your life is better after becoming something than before it, any and all religious and secular behaviors/communities can be used as an example.
Same thing. This encompasses any one of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of sacred and secular communities that have existed down through the ages.
How on earth can you possibly know what went through/goes through the minds of all the millions of Nazis, Communists, serial killers, pedophiles there ever were, are now or ever will be?
Like you, me and all the rest of us here, they are “thrown” out into a particular world at birth. They are indoctrinated as children to see this world as others see it. They then have vast and varied experiences growing up that can take them into untold number of “sets of circumstances” that nudge or propel them into embodying all manner of conflicting moral and political value judgments. Then the rest is history.
Right?
But my point revolves precisely around the fact that with so much at stake – enlightenment/morality on this side of the grave, immortality/salvation on the other side of it – we mere mortals are confronted with literally hundreds of different “paths” to take: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_religious_groups
And these are just the purported “major” denominations.
Right?
Again, given what is at stake on both sides of the grave, how close do you yourself have to be in sync with what is “in fact true”?
You wish to live your life in a more enlightened manner. As this relates to, among other things, your interactions with others from day to day. And, then, in whatever manner, these behaviors are linked to that which you would like the fate of “I” to be after you die.
So, first it is suggested that you actually make contact with a spiritual/religious community and explore the manner in which they have come to embody this relationship in their denomination.
You do this. But it doesn’t persuade you.
So, then it is argued that it didn’t persuade you because you didn’t try hard enough to be persuaded.
And, indeed, this outcome can be ascribed to contact with any one of hundreds of different religious communities out there.
It’s always your fault if you don’t latch onto one or another spiritual path. And not the fault of the denominations in being unable to actually demonstrate that what they believe about human existence before and after we die is in fact true.
You make general statements about what goes through the minds of objectivists and religious people all the time. Yet, when I make the same sort of general statement ,then there is problem with it.
That’s the kind of hypocritical bullshit that really pisses me off in these interactions with you.
You have one set of rules for yourself and another set for everyone else.
Yes, but such statements come from the thoughts and the feelings of particular minds out in a particular world historically, culturally and circumstantially. A world awash in contingency, chance and change. A world in which new experiences, new relationships and access to new information, knowledge and ideas can reconfigure the thoughts and the feelings of those minds. And not just in regard to you and I and karpel tunnel and felix dakat and the Buddhists here.
And, come on, please:
Over and over and over again on this thread, I request that our exchanges take those general statements out into the world of flesh and blood human interactions relating to sets of circumstance in which enlightenment, karma, reincarnation and Nirvana are explored more substantively.
But then you come back with another “general statement” about that.
So maybe it might be better if you stopped interacting with me. No hard feelings from my end if you do.
Okay, let’s focus in on a context of your choice relating to the main components of Buddhism. Then as the exchange unfolds you can note specific instances of me doing this.
Or, if something other than Buddhism suits you more, you can start a new thread.
Who argued that? not me, the perso quoted
He made up stuff. He added a Santa Claus deity to a system that does not have it. my criticism had bithing to do with his not participating in a religion I don’t participate in and am critical of. I never said anything about him ‘not being persuaded,’ not that you even realize how much you twist things to make yourself comfortable.
And then, how could you possibly have missed that I was not persuaded by Buddhism? I have mentioned this many times in the thread, including recently.
The opening quote there is from my post. Yet, here is more that I never said. I never said you should latch onto a spiritual path. I made suggestions about how to learn about it, if you were interested.
You have made lots of claims about why people attacks you or get irritated.
But the simple truth is, you don’t read well. You are disingenous. You can never admit you are wrong about anything. You accuse people, regularly, of things you do regularly, you hijack threads.
It’s your ugly behavior that leads to many people’s reactions to you. Sure, some people may be devastated by their inability to convince you to do something or believe something. That’s possible. But most people here have pointed out precisely what bothers them and there is a wealth of evidence to back up what they are claiming you do.