I don't get Buddhism

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.

The Case Against “Buddhism”
Randy Rosenthal talks to scholar Glenn Wallis about his thought-provoking new book A Critique of Western Buddhism: Ruins of the Buddhist Real.
at Lion’s Roar website
Lion’s Roar describes itself as “BUDDHIST WISDOM for OUR TIME”

And yet, with so much at stake – enlightenment here and now, Nirvana there and then – it would seem to become that much more imperative for all the many Buddhist “schools of thought” to insist that their own lives are the template for what it should be. Either that or you’ve got this world where anyone can say or believe anything at all about the original intent of Gautama Buddha…and that becomes as far as it need go for whatever forces in the universe reconfigure this life into whatever it becomes on the other side of the grave. What for most Western religions revolves around a God, the God. And Judgment Day.

Or, sure, I’m still failing to grasp how the “non-Western” Gautama Buddha might react to all this himself.

As for this…

…you tell me.

You tell me here too.

For example, given my own take on a particular individual’s religious beliefs being derived from any number of historical, cultural and circumstantial contexts. The part where “I” is derived in turn from personal experiences, personal relationships and personal access to specific sets of information, knowledge, ideas and ideals.

Or even speculate on the fate of all those men and women who lived before Gautama Buddha was even around. With most Western denominations that’s covered by a God, the God that was never not around.

Do You Only Live Once? The Evidence for Rebirth
What happens after you die? That used to be just a religious question, but science is starting to weigh in. Sam Littlefair looks at the evidence that you lived before.
at Lion’s Roar website
Lion’s Roar describes itself as “BUDDHIST WISDOM for OUR TIME”

First, the “anecdotal” evidence:

The first reaction from skeptics like me is how much of this can be verified as in fact true. Obviously, if there is seemingly no way that James Leninger could have even been aware of the existence of James Huston these events would be extraordinary.

If you Google James Huston James James Leininger you get this: google.com/search?source=hp … QUQ4dUDCAk

Someone would then have to wade through all of the articles and broadcasts and make an informed determination as to just how extraordinary the anecdotal evidence is.

This from wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ARe … inger_case

In other words, it would be interesting [to me] the extent to which this case was reviewed by someone like James Randi.

Google James Randi and reincarnation and you get this: google.com/search?biw=1242& … xUQ4dUDCA0

Or this:

archive.randi.org/site/index.php … ation.html

Do You Only Live Once? The Evidence for Rebirth
What happens after you die? That used to be just a religious question, but science is starting to weigh in. Sam Littlefair looks at the evidence that you lived before.
at Lion’s Roar website
Lion’s Roar describes itself as “BUDDHIST WISDOM for OUR TIME”

Okay, when you Google “reincarnation anecdotal evidence” you get this:
google.com/search?ei=3N2tX6 … ent=psy-ab

So, to what extent can one peruse cases examined here and conclude that there are thousand of cases on par with the one above?

I don’t know. But what would be of particular interest to me are those cases which actually succeeded in convincing the doubters like James Randi and Michael Shermer – skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive … -on-earth/ – to at least hold back on the criticisms we often encounter in the skeptic community.

Michael Shermer on Twitter: “My instant refutation of reincarnation: 6.9 billion people alive today, 100 billion people lived before: where did all those extra souls go?”

Well, it’s big universe, right?

And, again, I have to remind others that I want to believe in something – anything – able to convince me that death is not the equivalent of oblivion.

2,500 cases. That’s a lot. But reporting memories of past lives and providing the sort of evidence that would be very hard to dismiss is something else altogether.

For example, what physical injuries? If there are verified accounts where, say, a young man recalls a past life as a particular individual who had particular scars and tattoos and broken bones and afflictions that left physical marks on or in his body…and it turns out that this young man has the same exact accumulation of them himself [or acquires them], that would sure perk up my interest.

Buddha Travels West
Peter Abbs follows Buddhism’s path towards becoming a Western humanism.

Mindfulness? One word: Nxivm.

Or, sure, two or more. Really, what does it matter what you call it when the whole point is to anchor the mind itself?

Or as Nietzsche [or someone like him] once suggested, “the opposite of a truth is not a lie, the opposite of a truth is a conviction.”

As long as you are convinced that what you are mindful of is something that is inherently, necessarily that which any spiritually enlightened human being is obligated to be mindful, calling it Buddhism is as good a word as any.

Or, sure, it might have little or nothing to do with spirituality at all. It might just be a practical and effective way in which to make the mind more productive, less stressed.

And, here, who could really find fault with it? If it allows you to make the most out of what you choose to be mindful of, the only possible objection might be if what you choose to become mindful involves behaviors that interfere with or even block the paths of those who choose to be mindful of something else.

On the other hand, the “for all practical purposes” path may not be enough for some. Instead they want to connect all the exercises and mental disciplines to something…bigger.

Here, for example, is the author’s trajectory:

Your own trajectory might be different.

" Here is a piece of the superior wisdom of the East. The Yogin realizes that all the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and Devatas with which he has filled the heavens are Maya illusion just as the world itself is Maya. All this plurality is illusion." ~C. G. Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3 Feb1939, Page 74.

We’ll need a context of course.

Lol

No, seriously!

Buddha Travels West
Peter Abbs follows Buddhism’s path towards becoming a Western humanism.

Imagine then Eliot’s reaction to our postmodern world. The “broken rhythms and confused juxtapositions” embedded in pop culture, mindless consumption and the endless pursuit of our own 15 minutes of fame. Even here in a philosophy venue the Waste Land threatens the extinction of all that those like Eliot perhaps imagined the opposite of a Waste Land to be.

Imagine that poem.

Still, my own reaction to “remedies” from either the West or the East merely reconfigures the wasted land into countless personal, subjective reactions to what that even means. Let alone to what can or should be done about it.

And “peace of mind” here is seen by me only to be someone’s capacity to create, ironically enough, a subjective objectivism…an essential reality in their head which subsumes the maelstrom in what they are able to simply believe is true. About a soul, about religion, about God. And for most that is almost never challenged by someone like me. Instead, only in experiencing some truly traumatic calamity in their life might they find themselves questioning that belief. Yet, even here, what is the alternative to religion…East or West. Clearly, very, very few are likely to consider my own frame of mind.

Yes, I devoured Hesse back in “the Sixties”. I had lost my own Christian foundation and many of the arguments he posed about human interactions seemed to take me to some place that made the surface of things so clearly superficial. It was more or less a “spiritual” complement to the materialism I was devouring as a Marxist. And they did complement each other in a way that back then I was never able to quite grasp.

Still, OM?

Right, as though a sound could effectively enable me to counter a philosophy of life that was “sinking” further and further into moral nihilism. Into a feeling of being “fractured and fragmented” in regard to all things moral and political and spiritual.

Buddha Travels West
Peter Abbs follows Buddhism’s path towards becoming a Western humanism.

Okay, Eastern philosophies and spiritual paths being “influential” is one thing, being any more relevant in regard to my own interest in religion another thing altogether. Those from the East present us us with a different way in which to grasp human interactions…given as well a different understanding of the “big picture”.

In the East, everything seems to be grappled with and apprehended more “holistically”, more oriented toward the community in sync with certain universal truths. In the West, things are more fragmented and oriented toward the individual. A world where science and technology is likely to be more instrumental in regard to relationships. And, of course, the role that consumption plays in a marketplace that revolves considerably more around “show me the money”. Even religion becomes just another manifestation of political economy in the West.

All I can do here is ask those who have thought through Schopenhauer’s moral philosophy by way of the Upanishads, to imagine how he might have reacted to the points that I raise in regard to moral nihilism. Also, Upanishads or not, Schopenhauer is still no less known today as the “philosopher of pessimism”. He might have seen compassion as the chief font for morality but that doesn’t make dasein, conflicting goods or political economy go away. Compassion for who in what set of circumstances?

Bring the word “compassion” into a discussion among the liberals and the conservatives here and see how far it gets you.

Unfortunately, an assessment such as this is ever and always up in the clouds of abstraction. Begins from within? And how is that not a manifestation of dasein out in a particular world understood in a particular way? As though “intuition” is not an existential contraption manifested subjunctively in and of itself.

Same with all that is “without”. Whatever we claim that to be we are still either able or not able to demonstrate to others that it is or is not the same for all of us.

Buddha Travels West
Peter Abbs follows Buddhism’s path towards becoming a Western humanism.

In some respects this is true. Just Google “more atheists than ever” and you get this: google.com/search?ei=-8bfX8 … WwQ4dUDCA0

On the other hand, who is kidding whom? Religion is still embraced – sometimes fanatically – by millions and millions around the globe.

And the reason is not difficult to discern. When it comes to acquiring a font on this side of the grave for establishing objective morality and a font on the other side of the grave for assuring immortality and salvation, what’s the alternative?

Are people going to flock to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer for “comfort and consolation” in regard to to that?

Buddhism merely puts a No God spin on the same results.

But: However remarkably close any philosopher gets to any religious denomination doesn’t appear to make my own objections go away. I merely note that any “spiritual” path found is better than having thought yourself into believing that human existence is essentially meaningless, only to topple over “in the end” in the obliteration of “I” for all the rest of eternity.

Gaining access to one’s “primordial being” here is, to me, no less didactic than those on this thread – ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 1&t=195805 – attempting to gain access to an “omnipotent being”

And, sure, to the extent that particular Buddhists seek to “forget the entire world” by huddling together in “sanghas” and focusing on the embodiment of dhamma, they can act out their spiritual quest in a way that, for most of the rest of us, isn’t a practical option.

On the other hand, like all the rest of us, they need access to food, water, clothing, shelter and all that actually sustains their existence from day to day. Bills to be paid to provide that things. Bills paid as with all other religions by the “faithful”.

On the other hand, how could it not be obscure as soon as you make an attempt to reconfigure it from in a “world of words” intellectual contraption to an actual entity to be described given the interactions of those entities we know as “human beings”.

What “inner wisdom” in regard to what concrete situation? And why not be preoccupied – scientifically, phenomenologically, technologically – with what actually is objective knowledge embedded in the either/or world. That’s what has brought about – for better or worse – out modern industrial world.

Note for example instances of “inner wisdom” and “the power of being” in regard to smart phones or personal computers or the internet. What of the 'primordial being" being then?

Instead, it sounds more like the sort of stuff that fixed jacob and his ilk here would focus in on to prop up their own “metaphysical” “theories of everything”.

The thing about sanghas is that they are an investment to society. They are spiritual think tanks.

To be in a spiritual think tank is an extremely difficult job. Sure, just like in every think tank, there are slackers, quacks etc…

But to dismiss spiritual patronage is one of our largest possible mistakes. We need to know this shit.

Buddha Travels West
Peter Abbs follows Buddhism’s path towards becoming a Western humanism.

Too bad they are no longer around to address the points that I raise about religion [East or West] here. Still, if there are any proponents of the ideas these folks embraced please feel free to discuss them with me given the arguments I subscribe to “here and now”.

Theosophy: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosophy

The part where “spirituality” meets the reasoning mind? And the “occult”? And the “cosmos” itself?

As for my main interest in religion…connecting the dots existentially between spiritual values and morality? Not much:

Theosophy does not express any formal ethical teaching, a situation that generated ambiguity. However, it has expressed and promoted certain values, such as brotherhood and social improvement.

Just vague enough to cover everything. Brotherhood in regard to what? Social improvement…when and where and how and why? Theosophy and…vaccinations? Abortion? Human sexuality?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosophy … and_ethics

Or, again, in regard to the points I raise about Buddhism has anything really changed at all? How could we derive our happiness and enlightenment other than through our interactions with others? The alternative would be to isolate yourself from “society” and derive your sense of self solely through interacting with nature or alone on the spiritual path itself.

In other words, how does thinking, like this…“You are all depending for your spirituality on someone else, for your happiness on someone else, for your enlightenment on someone else”…not manage in turn to be just vague enough to encompass everything.

And it certainly would “for all practical purposes” not have much relevance in regard to, say, the covid-19 vaccination wars. More like something someone would embody in a community that consisted solely of other likeminded religious adherents.

Buddha Travels West
Peter Abbs follows Buddhism’s path towards becoming a Western humanism.

There is also the irony built into our increasingly secular post-modern world. Given a world in which Communism has been on the wane since the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. Religion as a whole often has to compete with the new Gods: pop culture, mass consumption and the worship of all things celebrity. The quest for our 15 minutes of fame. And in the sense that there are so many more outlets in which to achieve it. Call this the Youtube Syndrome. So many, many more can become “famous”. Also, 15 minutes because our attention spans shrink year in and year out. Given this where on earth does a serious religious commitment fit in at all.

And yet, paradoxically, for some, the more fractured and fragmented our “lifestyle” world becomes, the greater the longing for one or another “spiritual path” to anchor all the pieces to. And here over the decades the religions of the East wax and wane in our part of the world.

Though clearly to the extent that secular, ideological regimes are still around – brandishing doctrinaire narratives that become for all practical purposes religions in and of themselves – the faithful can be pared down considerably.

As for the “diaspora” engendering a more global spiritual “energy”, we’re still dealing with this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schools_of_Buddhism

And this:

Buddhism given the “Western experience” that has deep roots in, among other things, “show me the money”. And the three new Gods above.

Consider Buddhism in the United States: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_ … ted_States

Is there anything even remotely resembling a common path that all Buddhists agree on in regard to any number issues that religions in general concern themselves with. Like, for instance “morality here and now and immortality there and then”?

Instead there are various ethnic and national traditions which may or not overlap with, say, the 14th Dalai Lama.

It all seems to become a kind of cafeteria smorgasbord, where everyone gets to pick out the practices that cause them the least disruption in their lives.

Buddha Travels West
Peter Abbs follows Buddhism’s path towards becoming a Western humanism.

In other words, had there been no Communist Revolution and no growing internationalism, the original Theravada and not the later Mahayana tradition of Buddhism might have entered the West.

But that doesn’t change my own reaction to Buddhism above. Whatever the “school of thought” on whatever “the spiritual path”, those on it either will or will not take it to the arguments I make in regard to God and religion: how do they connect the dots existentially between morality/enlightenment/karma on this side of the grave and immortality/salvation/nirvana on the other side of of it.

Instead, based on my own experiences with religionists, including many on this thread, that is precisely the direction they refuse to pursue.

And here is yet another “historical” variable:

Same thing:

This “ubiquitous Zen”: given what particular context relating to what particular narrative/discipline bridging human behaviors here and now and the fate of “I” there and then. Go there, I tell them, or merely sustain your comfort and consolation in a “world of words”. In meditation. In all of the earthly benefits of a more disciplined mind.

And I would note my own speculations in regard to all of this with those who embrace the thinking of Gary Synder and John Cage…or Karen Horney and Erich Fromm. In other words, art and/or psychoanalysis given whatever manner one feels “shipwrecked”.

What particular “beacon” in bridging the gap between morality and immortality?