I don't get Buddhism

Ierrellus isn’t even on that page. And I’m not talking about that thread.

I was directing him to my own thread in order to note the manner in which I responded to his own accusations regarding my reactions to felix/Moe.

You’re not talking about that thread but I needed to note it in order respond to your own accusations.

It’s remarkable that so many people tell you exactly what is bothering them about having a discussion with you.

And yet, you never acknowledge their feelings or admit any wrongdoing on your part.

No, what’s remarkable is that they keep coming back to tell me this again and again. Instead of just ignoring my posts and moving on to others.

Note to Gib:
I didn’t hurt your feelings did I? :sunglasses:

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.

It could mean ‘observation’ in the conventional sense. Look at how “the Way” is at work all around you.

In that case, Jesus seems to mean something similar… look with a pure heart and you will see God.

It could. Buddhism certainly focuses on observing as opposed to doing more than other religions.

Maybe. But there is no God (generally) in Buddhism.

In Tibetan tradition, death is a police officer who only lets you go if you are worthy of infinite freedom and infinite power.

Death controls the six realms of birth and rebirth (effectively, death IS god)

Otherwise known as Mara, the devil, Mazda etc…

Buddhism is the path of release. Death tests, tests and tests you again. Death is fierce. You either win or lose.

You’re not given this kind of power without earning it meritously and with zero doubt that you won’t EVER abuse it.

And we will never “know” in the rational intellectual sense. These two scriptures point to another way of knowing–that of the heart.

This is totally consistent with my view.

The biggest question about Buddhism is “what is nirvana?”

Nirvana is a carrot that nobody knows until they get there. And even if they get there, they might think that’s not nirvana!!!

It reminds me of the carrot of the Mormons …

LDS - Church of Latter Day Saints

How do you know if the latter days ever come?

Nobody has a way of knowing this. It’s a perpetual Ponzi scheme !

I see nirvana the same way.

I know what being awake in the cosmos is…

It’s knowing that in zero sum realities, when you win you lose, and when you lose, you definitely lose.

Did I have a transfiguration where I became a being of pure light (sun worship)? No!! None of that shit happened to me. Do I know everything? Fuck no!

You have to put all this in the context of ancient philosophy and ideals.

I don’t know what your view is.

‘in some measure’ and ‘may be considered’ leave a great deal of swingroom.

One of the quotes was from Jesus.
Soyen Shaku seems to have been more OT than NT and Jesus.

When I read the quote by him that you included, I see a kind of monism that I do not see in Christianity. It’s more of a pantheism possibly panentheism.
https://www.google.com/search?q=panentheism+vs+pantheism&client=firefox-b-d&sxsrf=ALeKk02H1hX7hSddM5PwnzIExEuwzInVcw:1603920727698&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=-CJEKgSN9P1NeM%252C_Q3UzShXdJR0AM%252C%252Fm%252F05wg1&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kRT9kxmsGtr5ZR5Cmlbn9Iz5kkLJQ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiBn-OpntjsAhVCi8MKHdtvAIMQ_B16BAglEAM#imgrc=Ci2QHjXjViv4-M
That Buddhism and Gnostic Christianity have some affinity, that I can see. But otherwise God is way too personified and active in C. Plus the practices are very different and the attitude between a Zen Master and his students is also quite different from that of Jesus to his disciples. Let alone Samuri culture which Soyen seems to have approved of.

EVen something like this…

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.

I look for the esoteric unity in the perennial wisdom found in traditional cultures.

“Swingroom” is wise when dealing with a metaphor for Ultimate Reality which isn’t strictly reducible to human concepts.

Shaku apparently didn’t share Tolstoy’s pacifism. Neither do most Christians. Does that rule out the possibility of a divine spark within them? Not for me.

The center of the anti-ontological bias of biblical religion is its personalism. The religions out of which mysticism arose in India, China, Persia and Europe are personalistic. They have personal gods who are worshiped even if it is recognized that beyond them there is a transpersonal one the ground and abyss of everything personal. Likewise esoteric Christianity.

Shaku, who I don’t doubt was a fallible human (like me) and one of a very different cultural milieu than mine, also said “if God exists he must be felt. If he is love, it must be experienced and become the fact of one’s inmost life.” I affirm that.

But this is heart knowledge not head knowledge. Pascal: “The heart has its reasons which reason does not know.” Which takes us back to the quotations of Buddha and Jesus regarding simplicity and pureness of heart.

In keeping with Taoism and Jungian psychology I seek to balance head and heart knowledge.

Well, given the abstract nature of many religious quotes you will find it.

Though there’s no reason to hedge your bets. Metaphors state that X is Y. If you want to be cautious you could pick a similie.

I don’t know where this came from. I never said anything like his non-pacifism meant he or others don’t have divine sparks. Not that it matters but I’m not a pacifist myself, so I don’t think of not being one negatively. It just ain’t so Jesuslike. Which, again, does not necessarily at all mean it is negative. Shaku certainly could find justification in the OT as many Christians do. The OT in not very mystical. You got a God calling for war. But this was Jesus being compared with.

Its personalism is part of its ontology.

Some esoteric Christianity

Though Shaku was engaging in extremely head language. Extremely, hence my comparison wth Kant. And the hedging bets swingroom of what he said was not hearty either. That was an intellectual being cautious and extremely logical, though at an extreme level of abstraction.

Sure, and then there’s the gut, which from a scientific viewpoint has a mass of neurons as the heart does, from various traditions carries other ways of knowing/being/doing/perceiving from both the heart and mind.

My sense of the disconnnection between the various spiritual traditions is not based mainly on head, it first comes from the brute obvious felt differences between the practices, adherents and masters. Then one can go to the texts and find more differences to settle the mind or upper chakras down since there is so much guilt and fear around the idea that they might not all be the same path with the same ends. But I’ll leave this here since that gut facet is something underneath words.

It’s possible that none, or only some, of these practices get you to “The Real”.

So which ones, if any do it? And how would one know?

I don’t know if you are asking me or everyone. I am not saying that religious practices x get you to the real and the others do not. That’s not my focus or point, in case that’s how you are taking what I am saying. My point has nothing to do with ‘the right path’ and others being wrong. I am black boxing that if anything, though more not focusing on that at all. I am saying that different practices lead to different skills/foci/states of mind.

It’s more like if you practice identifying plants, seeing the details on the leaves, the bark, the way the plant parts move if they do, the textures, the nuances of the colors, then after years you will one set of experiences
and
if you practice communicating with, say, elephants, moving amongst them, making sounds, touching, changing your body posture to communicate, noting their postures, movements sounds, all the while focusing on relating and being their friend.

each of these long term practices will engage different parts of the brain, lead to different skills/foci/experiences. It’s not that one is more real. It is what you end up being good at, the skills you have and the kind of experience you have. There may well be overlaps, but one is going to engage parts of the brain self mind used for communication, the other will emphasize perception without communication - more receiving alone. In this analogy neither is closer to the real, as far as I can tell, but they are quite different.

The foci could be even more different. Chess and psychotherapy training. Chess and Buddhist meditation. Kasparov certainly can concentrate, but his training does not lead to the same skills/experiences/foci. Many long term meditators can change their heartrates, skin resistance to electricity, consciously lower or raise their skin temperature, reduce radically the oxygen needs of their bodies. Most chess players have not gotten these skills, at least not through chess training. Nor do they tend to experience non-duality, etc.

What you work on affects how you experience things and your skills.

Now with something like religion or any other long set of practices, sure one might send you off to staring at phosphenes and you really connect with nothing profound. Perhaps some paths don’t work very well or deepen your sense of reality. I think, for example, Scientology has facets that seem very disconnected to me. Heavy on the random ideas of the maker. I can’t prove that let along comparatively. But it’s my gut reaction and I am not ruling out such a thing.

But it is not my focus at all.

If you have a religion that detaches you from your emotions and not express them, compared to one that has practices that engage you in your emotions and their expression, you will experience and be good at very different things. For example.

I’m asking anyone who wants to share an opinion, insight or experience.

Go for it.

One never knows with objective certainty. For that matter, like Christianity’s portrayals of Jesus, there are conflicting portrayals of Buddha within Buddhism. If we don’t know which portrayal of a religion’s founder is correct, if any, how could we possibly know which religious experience is authentic in terms of what the founder taught? There are many Buddhas and many Christs, many Buddhisms and many Christianities. Which if any are the real ones? If you participate in a religious institution the authorities can confirm whether you outwardly conform to their criteria of behavior knowledge. But they can’t know your inward experience directly or with certainty.
For me it’s a matter of spiritual intuition and pragmatism. I can’t know if my experience is ultimately grounded. But I can know within the horizon of my total conscious experience. I can answer to myself.

For me it has approached certainty within a modicum of negligable error indistince between alpha and omega

The sartorial is naturally anticlimactic, an insurance against the karmic overindulgence, but the effects certainly correspond to an extra sensory cause. The karmic law dictates from that point on, and things take on a new transcendence, of course the price owe has to be annulled of debt.

It is not a hypnotic regression toward the mist possible archaic, while it dies not of necessity cancels that.

At this point, everything begot a reason, even with the widest missed convective spatial infinities, rebound transmuting those spaces as eckenkar flights over long lost illusive magic carpet ridden terrains.

…recognizing of course that “my total conscious experience” is never more than what I am aware of in the stream of consciousness in time.