I only become a stooge myself when others insist on making me the issue. They become a stooge so, sure, I’ll go down in the mud with them. For whatever reason, I am basically a “natural born polemicist”.
Still, over and again, I let it be known that if others want an exchange that is both respectful and civil, I’m more than willing to go there as well.
I simply want the focus to be on morality here and now and immortality there and then. How the two are intertwined in regard to God and religion. Given particular contexts.
There are hundreds and hundreds of threads I don’t participate in at all. And there are my quotes and my music threads. And my threads relating specifically to determinism and language and morality and identity.
If my posts don’t thrill you or expand your mind, don’t read them.
You clearly don’t grasp the points I am trying to convey here. And that’s fine. Move on to others. After all, no one at ILP is required to read or to respond to my posts. Nor me to theirs.
A person posts something that he/she thinks is important.
And it gets dismissed as a “general description”, “intellectual contraption”, “spiritual contraption”, etc.
Then he/she is told what he/she is really supposed to be doing … “bringing it down to earth”, discussing a context, demonstrating things for everyone and talking about morality, salvation and an afterlife.
You misunderstood, as Phyllo has now clarified… I am referring to the threads that you do participate in, not each and every thread on here.
On the contrary, I do enjoy your posts, but enough of your preconceived context of parameters already. Samsara much? A discussion is being had, you reset it with your terms, it starts again, you reset it with your terms again… the cycle never ends… how mean of you Iam.
You keep inviting people to have a respectful and civilized discussion with you … KT, Felix, Zinnat …
Then as soon as those people post something, you blow it off as a “general description” or “contraption”.
And you only want talk about your interests and it has to discussed in your particular way.
It’s not hard to explain why people don’t want to talk to you any more.
And the only reason that I’m talking to you now is because when Felix posted something about “the Way” that was on topic, you jumped in dismissively. I thought that I would try to get you to see what you are doing once again.
This seems to be the last post about Buddhism. I’m assuming that the Buddhist quote is related to thinking a lot about Buddhism - treating it as an academic issue - as being less effective than observing the way. Presumably the less common use of ‘observe’ - 3 : to celebrate or solemnize (something, such as a ceremony or festival) in a customary or accepted way. More to participate in the proper (according to practice) way.
If Jesus is talking about the same dichotomy is hard to know.
is more like Kantian analysis then the kinds of assertions and posited entities asserted in either the OT or the NT. Deduced abstract principles vs. directly posited deity.
My point is not that they can’t possibly mean the same thing as each other, but I see little reason to believe it. Different practices that engage different parts of the brain, personification vs. non-personification, quite different relations between masters and disciples (especially in Zen), different descriptions, different metaphors and in my experience master practitioner groups with rather different priorities around emotions, interpersonal relations, the role or morality, conceptions of the afterlife (if any) and more.
