I don't get Buddhism

It includes the person writing the article. It is there in what you quoted.

Well, again, the one you quoted already did. The information can be found in pretty much any expert work on Buddhism. And to why I wouldn’t invite people I’ve long been out of contact with to come here and have a discussion with you…first it is your interest and you have the means to politely create private discussions with Buddhists via the internet. Second, I guess I thought I was fairly clear about what I thought it was like to have a discussion with you. Perhaps I am wrong about that, but it amazes me you might have forgotten that. Your interest, your work, and if you initiate the discussion, no one can blame me for asking them to converse with you. You’re an adult, you have the internet.

Right, but who said that it was the same? Not me in any case. It is, however, relevent to a discussion with Buddhists. IOW if you want, as you said, a demonstration that reincarnation is the case, asking Buddhists for is confused, as the article you quoted from itself mentions. Telling me what my reponse did not do is odd. It never tried to do that. I did however point out that asking Buddhists to demonstrate something they do not believe in is confused. And I did it in response to a post where you quoted someone saynig that it is not something they believe. That they have other beliefs that they do in fact belief in is beside THAT point, a point you raised in your post. Further in a context where you have said you would like to find a belief that would give you some hope for continued existence. Again, it seems relevent to me to point out that Buddhist DOES NOT offer that. In fact it undermines a belief that your soul or self will be around next week, let alone after death. Your seemed to present one of your motives being in relation to the fear of death. Well, Buddhism is the wrong tree then to bark up. As the article you quoted also states.

I believe you said above you would really like to find out that there was reincarnation. That that would be a relief to you. I was pointing out that they do not believe in reincarnation and this is supported by your own choice of article above. That seems ‘to the point’ since it is a direct reaction to what you wrote. I am sorry it does not count as ‘more to the point’ but to the point seems like an ok response. But that might just be ‘to me.’

I regretted the post, but not fast enough. Still some part of me driven by the idea that you might actually be interested in what you claim you want.

To me pointing out that they do not believe in reincarnation, as the article quoted also asserts, is ‘to the point’ since ‘they’ won’t be interested in demonstrating something they don’t believe in. They don’t believe in souls.

I respond on point, give my assessment of what Buddists believe, point out that the article you quote says the same thing, but really I need to be

MORE on point.

Being on point is not enough.

Yes, there is the OTHER issue of Buddhists demonstrating things they do believe in. For some odd reason I still think going where Buddhists are might be a good idea also. But that’s likely just an intellectual contraption on my part.

I now understand that if you want group X to demonstrate belief Y and they do not hold that belief, it is not on the point enough to point this out. I now know that even if you say that part of why you are interested is because you would be happy to find death is not the end, pointing out that they have no belief to help you there and further the article you quote agrees on that point, it is not ‘to the point’ enough. They seemed like important points, given what you said about their importance and that you focused on them, but I now know I was confused on this point, even if it was by you.

That’s not how I interpreted it. To me you seemed to be arguing as though you were speaking for the Buddhists in regard to reincarnation and the soul. As though you were summing up their position in order to note how far my own understanding is from it.

Others can decide for themselves. Though sure I might have misunderstood you. And there’s still the part where they demonstrate whatever they do believe is in fact the way it is.

The rest is just you accusing me yet again of posting in the the manner in which I do. The part that is far, far removed from my own interest in religion in general and Buddhism in particular. Others will either come to share your point of view or they won’t. And that interest me least of all.

Though again I invite you to join me in a new thread in the philosophy forum. A civil exchange. One in which we focus the beam on our respective moral philosophies given a particular set of circumstances.

Again, if nothing else you can note in particular the manner in which your accusations are pertinent as the exchange unfolds.

In any case…

Sums it up well…there is no comfort to be found about an afterlife in Buddhism, and someone seeking a demonstration of reincarnation should look elsewhere. Buddhism not only does not offer comfort about eternal life, it undermines the sense that one will exist next Tuesday. There is no soul to continue even such a short distance in time.

Not my cup of tea, but hardly a contraption intended to soothe, quite the opposite. And the practices are hardly soothing…until a great deal of time has passed, with discipline.

The East has had certain mental technologies. The West has its psychotropics. For those who value equanimity over the primate social mammal expression of their limbic systems, these options are out there. Expression as in vocal, postural, facial changes which in turn are part of the experiencing of these emotions. In fact mindfullness (torn out of its Vispassana roots) is now actually competing in the West with psychotropics in many contexts.

And it being ‘not my cup of tea’ is not just a wry colloquialism. It’s a taste thing. I am not under any illusion that my taste is universal. If someone wants, desires, the outcomes these technologies offer, well go for it.

Okay, but none of this pertains to what I don’t “get” about Buddhism: how individual Buddhists connect the dots in their interactions with others from day to day such that they choose one set of behaviors rather than another intertwined in how they have come to understand enlightenment and karma intertwined in how that is applicable to the part where “I” dies and is then face to face with eternity.

What do they believe about the soul here and how do they demonstrate to those who are not Buddhists why they should believe the same? Why not Western religion or one of other spiritual paths out there [b]with[/b] so much at stake.

And again you appear [to me] to be speaking for the Buddhists here as though I and others need go no further if we want to pin down once and for all what Buddhists think about all of this.

And then [for me] the part where the illusory self is in possession of a soul. What soul? How is it demonstrated to exist? What in fact becomes of it after we die? How in a No God religion does the universe function to bring it all about?

As for the “illusion of self”, yes, there are facets of Buddhism that overlap with my own assumption that “I” in the is/ought world is more an “existential contraption rooted in dasein” than a “real me”. But there are aspects of my self rooted in the either/or world as well. And they appear to be anything but an illusion. But: what of the soul can be demonstrated to exist in the either/or world?

Well, I’ll just note that compared to the seeming brute facticity of a fractured and fragmented self anchored to an essentially meaningless existence en route to oblivion, it seems mighty soothing to me.

Okay, but only to the extent that Buddhists are willing to describe to me how “intellectual contraptions” of this sort become embodied in their social, political and economic interaction with others from the cradle to the grave [and beyond] am I likely to be interested. And, in particular, insofar as they choose the behaviors that they do given the main components of their spiritual narrative. And how they might react to the components of my own philosophical assumptions here.

I thought I’d go back to the begining.Why would Gib or someone else in the West find Christianity more intelligle?

1. the most obvious is that he likely grew up with Christianity around him, and also constant references in everyday speech, movies, books, poetry, television, psychology (the Jesus complex) and on and on.
2. the second reason would be that the Bible and Xianity in general also affected Western culture in many ways, and these effects make concepts and symbols from Christianity reinforced by other concepts in society. It fits a lot of other ideas. It sits within a context that connects to the religion.
3. it only seems more intelligible. A Westerner, in general, is going to have a very different experience of Christianity. If their parents are Christian then they grow up with the rituals and recurring experiences of the religion without having to wrestle with, for exmaple, what the hell the Trinity is. When connnecting with Buddhism, they are deciding to, generally, focus on some kind of spiritual/religious journey. The metaphysics, the long term goals are part of the more immediate experience consciously by that person. A Buddhist in Asia may not sit around mulling over what enlightenment is or what anatta really means. They have learned to bow to the Buddha, hold their hands certain ways, to respect monks and offer alms to them and then they go to school and worry about their zits and the opposite sex and grades. It is part of the furniture of their lives. They may, yes, even as kids, have some vague notion of Karma - do bad stuff and bad stuff will happen to you sometime, but they are not getting into the nitty gritty of this as a metaphysical assertion. What I am trying to say is that when we think of Buddhism, as adults considering it, say, as a possible path, we bring a much more organized, concept focus, outside of the culture approach. It is a very different kind of thinking. Some guy who went to church with his parents a few times a year, who beliefs in God/Jesus, but doesn’t think much about it, is going to see Christianity and be cognitively challenged by it much more if he decides at 25 to become a priest or kills a kid while drunk driving and dives heavily into the religion. What is grace? What is original sin? And y eah, what the hell is the Trinity? And then there would be all this work reconciling the OT with the NT perhaps. I think the way we come to these religons affect how obvious some of the concept are. If we get them scattershot through our culture and upbringing and haven’t consciously chosen it as a some kind of spiritual path, it will seem obviouser than it is. A Buddhist not born a Christian but converting would likely have to wrestle with odd concepts.
4. Eastern culture is different and individuality and the separate self is more foreign. Something like anatta is not the same degree of metaphysical threat that it is to a Westerner (in general). Identity, subject object splits, the relationship with desire are quite different in the East and this makes it fit better with the rest of the culture.
5. Christianity focuses a lot on beliefs and morals. Buddhism focuses more or states of consciousness and practical morals. And the latter because of its affects on the former. Buddhism is less concerned with beliefs, in fact to a great degree wanting us to ignore them. I think when we compare the religions we often compare the average Christian believer with what a Buddhist monk is doing. Because when Westerners move towards Buddhism, they are thinking of a level of expertise that the average Christian and the average Buddhist is not focused on at all. And that focus is much more radical, because you are aiming to change the way one experiences, not just a particular thought one has - yes, God exists - when you happen to be thinking of it. But to change your relationsship to thought, emotions, perception. To change your breathing. To change the way you connect or don’t your thoguhts and feelings with the body (or the rest of the body for monists physicalists).

I think that’s called indecisiveness…

It also sounds like your thoughts are possessing you, rather than you possessing them and taking control of their ebb and flow… thoughts could then be thought of as tide-like, but what is it that causes them to be so? internal and external factors perhaps.

I don’t think that matters now.

…and what is it that they are obligated to think about death, exactly? Such thoughts come and go… why force them or give them such importance in your life, at the detriment of the more conducive ones?

Surrep’s post in the Reincarnation thread, is identical to my thoughts on this matter… star stuff, and all that.

You’d make a good Life Insurance salesman, I’ll give you that…

Why do you think they should?

Just because it was written in a Canonical book somewhere, doesn’t mean it needs to be adopted and replicated ad infinitum, and wasn’t the concept used to foster wrong-doing via the vehicle of terrorism. I’d say that that concept has lost its utility… however much it actually ever had in the first place, for most… it is an unhelpful hindrance of a mental contraption, that impedes and stunts mental and personal growth.

That may be you’re equation for life/existence, but it certainly isn’t mine… mine is a much more freer/less structured existential modality than that, and is different than even that of my siblings and parents and everyone else.

Do you not get bored? of thinking and re-repeating your mantra for life… may I ask how it came to be?

I don’t currently have a mantra, and the ones I did have are far too moderne for this joint. My ancestors wrote Mantras and designed Mandalas… their surname even signifies that they did, as they were seers during the ancient Indic period in the time of Dravida.

I think that’s in desperation, gained from fear, but of what… the unknown?

Some things are not that simple, and so do not fit within the confines of your mantra… my decisions in life are not bound up and made in the same way as yours… and so my mantra, and therefore my path, are very different to yours and others and very unique to me.

Individualism… the new (ir)religion.

I, and others, have read those OPs in your signature threads, and yet here we still are…

Why don’t I find you a new mantra, and you can try it on for size… after-all, it’s what We did. ; )

Again, from my frame of mind, we are in two very different discussions.

Being decisive or indecisive about what particular behaviors in what particular context? Same with being “possessed” by thoughts. In rergard to what?

What are those “internal and external” factors – existential variables – that go into creating a particular “I” when confronted with conflicting goods such that one’s religious values kick in in order to make distinctions between moral/enlightened behavior here and now as that then becomes translated into a frame of mind revolving around that which these “spiritual” paths are said to bring into fruition on the other side of the grave.

You and the Buddhists will either bring this down to Earth in terms of your own behaviors in particular sets of circumstances or you will continue to make me the problem for insisting that this is where it makes the most sense for these discussions to go.

So, in a discussion in which we are exchanging views on a particularly contentious set of conflicting goods, you can note how I am indecisive and possessed by my thoughts. And I can note how “I” [both yours and mine] seem more embedded subjectively/existentially in dasein than in some definitive conclusions that religion or philosophy or science might provide us.

Choose the context yourself. Otherwise how are we not just wasting each other’s time?

You want to find me a new mantra and I want to explore how moral and political mantras themselves are derived existentially from the arguments I make in my signature treads. As opposed to one of hundreds and hundreds of spiritual paths out there, the adherents of which basically argue “repeat after me and you will choose the right things to do here and now in order to attain immortality and salvation there and then.”

And you also claim to have read my signature threads.

Okay, let’s start with the OP on this one: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 1&t=176529

Note behaviors that you have chosen of late given your moral and political value judgments here and now and note how the argument I make here is not applicable to you.

Then I will note my own reaction to these behaviors given the points I make in the OP.

Could you guys possibly take that discussion, if Mags is interested in a discussion of her political positions in that way, to another thread, since it seems like it will not have anything to do with Buddhism?

Our discussion has everything to do with Buddhism, but if Iam wants to take our discussion towards a more political one, then that would be a separate discussion to be had, in a separate thread… as well as us continuing in this one, as I am not the one interested in taking this down the political route, in here.

Thank you for your suggestion.

…a suggestion for Gib! start with a mandala and mantra, and see how that goes/where it takes you. Buddhism 101, if you will.

Great. It seemed he was requesting you move in the political direction, glad to hear it will continue to be Buddhism.

Sure.

Buddhism/Conduct… thought over fought, so when man stopped being beast.

Politics… fought over thought, when a disagreement turns into tribal warfare, and becomes an Us v Them situation… as seen throughout history.

This from the guy who, over and over and over again, attempts to hijack the thread and reconfigure it from what we don’t get about Buddhism into what he does get about iambiguous. And, therefore, perforce, what all rational men and women are obligated to get too.

You know, in my own personal opinion.

Besides, my post above makes a number of references to spiritual paths and religion, of which Buddhism is certainly one of them.

Unless, of course, his post is just tongue in cheek.

First, of course, my interest in religion focuses in part on how those who practice one or another denomination almost always include a moral narrative said to be linked to immortality and salvation. And that moral narrative can then come into conflict with the moral narratives of other religious denominations. As well as any number of secular No God ideologies. And what does that precipitate in a particular human community but politics. Embodied in, among others things, the law.

With Buddhism however it gets trickier [for me] because there is no God and thus no Judgment Day as most Western denominations adhere to.

To separate a discussion of religion from a discussion of morality from a discussion of politics is utterly alien to me. Why? Because my understanding of human identity itself here necessarily intertwines all three in dasein.

As for a discussion of MagsJ’s politics, I would very much like to commence a new thread with her. She can focus in on her own political values, and I can focus in on mine. And then in regard to one or another pressing political issue that has been in the news of late, we can compare and contrast our own political philosophies. Just say the word and I will start it. An entirely civil exchange in which we explore the components of our own thinking here.

…only as long as you don’t use the phrase “…interactions that revolve around conflicting goods in which we connect the dots between morality here and now and immortality there and then”, or any variation or derivative there-of… otherwise, sure. ; )

Sound familiar?

Oh, yeah. From the Feckin Bots thread:

So, this should sound familiar to you.

Just say the word and we can get this thing going.

On the other hand, back at the bots thread:

Haha! …but analysing people (in a healthy/inquisitive way) can be fun, is probably why in a rude, brash, and unhealthy hostile way… not so much. coz it ain’t an inquisition, nor a competition, or an interrogation.

Postby MagsJ » Wed 23 Sep, 2020 13:03

Conduct… thought over fought, so when man stopped being beast.

Politics… fought over thought, when a disagreement turns into tribal warfare, and becomes an Us v Them situation… as seen throughout history.

Yes… but Buddhism stems from the pre-religious, pre-political world, of the beginnings of humanity, until a disagreement turned into tribal warfare and became an Us v Them situation, ergo… politics, founded on disagreement.

Iam said: “As for a discussion of MagsJ’s politics, I would very much like to commence a new thread with her. She can focus in on her own political values, and I can focus in on mine. And then in regard to one or another pressing political issue that has been in the news of late, we can compare and contrast our own political philosophies. Just say the word and I will start it. An entirely civil exchange in which we explore the components of our own thinking here.“

I say: Ok.

What did you mean here? Buddhism stems from the pre-religious? Is this different from other religsions?

Reincarnation: What do modern research and traditional Buddhist teachings say?
BY SAM LITTLEFAIR
MAY 11, 2018
at Lion’s Roar website
Lion’s Roar describes itself as “BUDDHIST WISDOM for OUR TIME”

Sure, but in the spirit of “good fun”, the sky becomes the limit. Anything you can “think up” that makes sense to you need be as far as it goes. Bottom line: you believe it just enough that the belief in and of itself comforts and consoles you. And there are hundreds of “spiritual” paths to choose from here. As long as the bottom line remains not what you can demonstrate to be true but what, in believing it is true, anchors and reassures you psychologically, there will never be a shortage of alternatives.

Which prompts me to once again note that if any of this is encompassed in a particular internet link which provides us with an accumulation of evidence that skeptics would find very, very difficult to refute, it would be circling the globe. What could possibly be more astonishing to the human species than substantive and substantial evidence that past lives and/or future lives are in fact not only possible but clearly demonstrable?

So, for those here inclined to believe it, take us to the link that you are convinced best confirms it.

Next up: Christians examine the story of Jesus.

What does it matter what Buddha claimed to remember when it is by far more important to note what he was actually able to account for in regard to past lives as in fact true?

I don’t have a million dollars to give to someone able to convince me that he did do this, but I am more than willing to grovel here by way of begging the forgiveness of all Buddhists for ever doubting them.

lionsroar.com/do-you-only-live-once/

Okay, but then this part:

Whether the source be science or religion, it seems that any efforts here able to produce truly substantive and substantial evidence for past lives or future lives would be really, really, [b]really[/b] big news.