Dionysus the Bodhisattva.

You cannot force Nietzsche’s teaching as European form of Buddhism when their core principles are not the same [i.e. conflicting] re Atman and Brahman.

Nietzsche himself called his teaching the European form of Buddhism. The only kind of absolute Atman he teaches is the ring of recurrence. And I’m not even sure the recurrence is necessary for Buddhism to turn into Nietzscheanism. Thus Nietzsche writes:

“Indian Buddhism is not the culmination of a thoroughly moralistic development; its nihilism is therefore full of morality that is not overcome[.]” (Will to Power 1, Kaufmann trans.)

Contrast:

“Nihilism as a symptom that the underprivileged have no comfort left; that they destroy in order to be destroyed; that without morality they no longer have any reason to ‘resign themselves’–that they place themselves on the plane of the opposite principle and also will power by compelling the powerful to be their hangmen. This is the European form of Buddhism–doing No after all existence has lost its ‘meaning’.” (Will to Power 55.)

To be sure, a little further on in the same section, Nietzsche writes:

“What does ‘underprivileged’ mean? Above all, physiologically–no longer politically. The unhealthiest kind of man in Europe (in all classes) furnishes the soil for this nihilism: they will experience the belief in the eternal recurrence as a curse, struck by which one no longer shrinks from any action; not to be extinguished passively but to extinguish everything that is so aim- and meaningless, although this is a mere convulsion, a blind rage at the insight that everything has been for eternities–even this moment of nihilism and lust for destruction.” (Kaufmann trans.)

Is the belief in the eternal recurrence necessary for this active nihilism, or will the belief in “the nothing (the ‘meaningless’), eternally” (ibid.) do, even if time be understood as an infinite straight line? In any case, note the word “extinguish”: nirvana literally means “extinction”. “To extinguish everything” can be understood physically/materially, to destroy as much as possible of the physical structures (people, buildings, etc.) around one; but it can also be understood spiritually, as in “the most spiritual will to power” (Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil 9), as imposing on people the view that everything is empty, that all there is is “dynamic quanta” of will to power (again Will to Power 635), only self-valuings…


scanned foam, from the English Wikipedia article on śūnyatā

I believe if you want to make room to reconcile Nietzsche and Buddhism you need to avoid the concepts of ‘atman’ and ‘Brahman’.

Here is on pathway of reconciliation between Nietzsche and Buddhism except for the problem of Nihilism.

If you can understand the concept relating to the image below, you will note ‘nihilism’ has no relevance for Buddhism.
As such one can reconcile the main points between Nietzsche and Buddhism without the need to bring in Atman and Brahman.

Haha. Well, let me tell you then that my neighbour once said that the Buddha was only peeling Potatoes.
I might, following in your footsteps here, say: well, it looks like Buddha did not practice what he was talking about.
It is unwise to believe people when they talk about other people. It is wise to seek direct access to what you are contemplating.

S -
The self-valuing logic of being disclosed to me the opposite: the world is entirely composed of the highest significances and of True Beings. As such, there is no ground to fear or despair, as whatever is lost will re-emerge many-fold.

But this is because I use the Will to Power that I embody and directly experience as myself as a standard for what exists, rather than an Idea.
I argue purely from experience, never from models - I rather arrive at models.

I could only begin to argue from the WtP when I had fully penetrated into its inner logics, which is to say when I had disclosed its heart to be the self-valuing logic of being.

I do not suggest that all should follow me here, on the contrary - I enjoy my exceptional position tremendously. It is a privilege in the truest sense.

Once we reduce our being to nothing, or no-thing, it comes to follow that the universe of which we are part and in which we partake is also nothing.
When we exalt our being to embody the very standard of being, the world of which we are part becomes perplexingly meaningful and promising, not to mention fulfilling* - the idea that meaning is subservient to scarcity disappears, it is shown that ever single quiver of a blade of grass is the dance of a trillion eternal meanings.

It is our notion of meaning; i.e. our meaning of the term meaning, that has depleted man in the west and that reduced him to nothing.
In fact there is nothing besides meaning. To try to state otherwise will logically only result in self-contradicting statements.

E.g. “there is no meaning” is a phrase that is uses different meanings (there, is, no, meaning) in a meaningful structure (grammar) to make the claim that none of these meanings exist. The statement is identical in truth-value to “this sentence is a lie”.

*the caveat here is that in order to exalt our being to embody such a standard, it must already be deeply fulfilled.
Thus, the self valuing logic go being as the WtP is a selecting principle as Nietzsche saw it: it simply doesn’t hold for all humans. Only for those humans that are true beings; only those that are “animals and gods”, and not “persons”. Persons don’t exist, they are masks, and they dance around a black flame waiting to be consumed.

That is how I see the black and purple Avatar, as the devourer of persons, and the manifestation of self-valuing logic of being, which demands a degree of wildness and rage. Integrity is violence upon violence. And the act of consciousness that reveals Being as a Void is itself the end product of a very violent, forceful process of will to power. I know this from experience, as I would practice 4 hours of martial arts and yoga each day before I would allow myself into my two hours of meditation. Meditation that was always standing.

So of course I look down smilingly on anyone that claims to know what meditation is without having subjected themselves to utterly rigorous physical disciplines. And in the East, this is the commonly held view - one needs tp purify the body in order to know how one is connected to it; one must build this connection; only the consciously developed body truly exists (why the Greeks held Athletics in such high esteem) and only such a body can uphold a truly sound mind.

This doesn’t mean one needs to be muscular to think, it means that one must be entirely aware of ones physical form. As such a Chironically afflicted man like Nietzsche can still hold an exceptionally sound mind. He was deeply and acutely aware of the processes that constituted his body and in great part derived his penetrating powers of mind from the conflicts he had to resolve physically. He was as far from lazy as a human being can get - and laziness is truly the great un-earther.

In Buddhism, the central core is the Middle Way.

To the typical person, reality is always something and the natural clinging to a thing bring forth inevitable dukkha* [problems to the psyche]. The usual translation of ‘suffering’ is too limiting.

Without ignoring “things” in reality, Buddhism introduced the concept of ‘nothingness’ as a counterweight to ‘somethingness’.

It is wrong to interpret Buddhism as claiming reality is ultimately and only ‘nothingness’.
Reality is both ‘somethingness’ and ‘nothingness’ but in a difference senses, thus not contradictory.

The Buddha advocated the Middle Way between ‘somethingness’ and ‘nothingness.’
In this case there is no question of nihilism nor solipsism in Buddhism.

From what I read of Nietzsche as influenced by Schoppenhauer’s 'Will", Nietzsche just cannot let go to accept a sense of complete ‘nothingness’ as a counter to complete ‘somethingness.’

Note the following [note sure if it is Fitzgerald’s], the gist of this quote reflects Buddhism’s Middle Way with the following qualification- in different perspectives.

Re the above it should be first-rate wisdom rather than intelligence.

On the one side it inflates the notion of nothingness to become the primal quality or essence of life which after all really does exist so does command a quality in a description of it and so the void becomes charged with super-meaning that aspires to godhood.
On the other hand this is a good thing and it makes yogis and kung fu masters.

Right before I first read this post of yours, I happened to be reminded of the “three marks of existence”:

"1. sabbe saṅkhārā aniccā–‘all saṅkhāras (conditioned things) are impermanent’
2. sabbe saṅkhārā dukkhā–‘all saṅkhāras are unsatisfactory’
3. sabbe dhammā anattā–‘all dharmas (conditioned or unconditioned things) are not self’ "
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_marks_of_existence#Description)

According to this, then, sunyata is nitya and aduhkha, but not atma. I suppose this makes sense, considering the temptation inherent in the notion of a self or god. Thus in Hinduism, Shiva dances on the dwarf of ignorance and on Death, but in Vajrayana Buddhism, it’s the wrathful manifestations of Buddhas who dance on the most important Hindu gods, including Shiva. I still think that, originally, Tantric Hinduism–i.e., identification with Shiva and Shakti–served the same purpose as identification with the yidam in Tantric Buddhism, but perhaps the dancing deities need forever be replaced and danced on by new ones. (Note by the way that such wrathful deities go back to before the Rig Veda even, all the way to shamanism: see the book Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas. In fact, Brahmanism can be understood as institutionalised shamanism: see http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2655258#p2655258.)

Before I respond to Fixed Cross, here’s another post that seems to have been rejected from the “Dharma Wheel” forum:

::

I propose Friedrich Nietzsche as the tenth and “last” mahavatar of Vishnu, the Buddha of the West–the ninth being the Buddha (of the East).

I’ve specialized in Nietzsche for 20 years, but only start to be an expert by becoming an expert in Buddhism, which essentially I’ve only recently begun.

The crucial Buddhist insight, in my understanding, is anitya or, more acutely, anatman. Now Nietzsche may paradoxically be understood as the Nitya avatar.

His teaching, of eternal return or recurrence, of time as a circle or ring–an indestructible, diamond ring–may seem to contradict anitya, anatman, even duhkha.

Yet it only teaches the nitya of anitya, the atman of anatman, the aduhkha of duhkha–and the duhkha of aduhkha. The suffering of satcitananda.

This is the passion of the Buddha, who goes down like lightning, inlightning, the way down that seems so crooked, the impassioning, rajasic path.

To incarnate as a Sun like being. Becoming a Shiva, a seemin’ demon, a Tantric transgressor of “the Path”. A swellfoot, wisefoot, wise guy. An Indra (King).

Oedipus the Tyrant, Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Dark Lord Sauron. The Lord of the Rings.

I invoke thee within me, o great Nitya, o Übermensch! There’s no escaping Karma, anyway! There is nothing worse than self-torment.

Know thyself means know thine own no-thingness, the anitya of your self, your soul. What forces this knowledge on you is the Other, the others, who define your self.

They may seem a destroyer, yet they destroy nothing; they only annihilate in the sense of reducing, inducing, seducing to no-thingness. No-thingness always has been.

The Other is the Tempter-God, Dionysus the Bodhisattva. Or Dionysa. Dionysx.

The End

Well, the highest significances and True Beings, or the lowest significances and false beings… Does it really matter if there is no contrast?

Do you mean the same type of thing will re-emerge? (If it re-emerges manifold where it was formerly onefold, it cannot logically be the same thing.) But does it really matter to me whether someone or something like me will emerge, even manifold? I think every self-valuing has a ground for fear or despair, and that that ground only falls away, only turns out not to exist, if–not when–the self-valuing realizes it is groundless in itself, is an indirect self-valuing, an other-valuing. This realization is frightening and desperating from the perspective of the non-self-realized self-valuing. And I think getting accustomed to the realization defeats its own purpose–or would defeat it, if it could ever be achieved absolutely. Custom or habit is precisely the great pacifier against the horror of the Real, that is, the empty, the groundless, the fleeting. Killing oneself or lasting mystical union is no solution, for the solution can only be experienced as such–and thereby be such–in the contrast with the problem, the experience of life or consciousness as problematic.

Do you mean “rather than using an Idea” or “rather than as an Idea”? I think I initially took you to mean the former, but now I’m not sure.

Ideas and models exist as direct experiences–unless by that you mean sensory as distinct from mental experiences (note that Buddhism considers mind to be the sixth sense (not the “sextessence” of the other five)). I supposed I reified the will to power until my recent “Understanding” of the self-valuing logic. Now I truly see that there are “no things […] but only dynamic quanta, [… whose] essence lies in their relation to all other quanta, in their ‘effect’ upon the same.” (yet again Will to Power 635.) The self-valuing called, among other names, Mitra-Sauwelios now values itself mostly, or ultimately only, as something that makes that understanding or insight possible for itself; likewise all its “others”, its “world”. For this however it needs some kind of dehin, an “alteration of the personality” (for this term see Will to Power 135-36), a higher self or blessed not-self to sustain it(self) the needs and desires it needs to fulfill in order to “keep up the good work”. I’m currently reading Chögyam Trungpa’s Cutting through Spiritual Materialism in a Dutch translation Johannes gave to me, via you, some fifteen years ago, and which I repeatedly almost didn’t keep (I guess I’m finally ready for it). The word mededogen as used in that translation, which is probably just its translation of “compassion”, I’ve only been able to accept or understand in the sense of gedogen, “tolerance”, at least with respect to myself (he speaks of “compassion on oneself”). This tolerance is a kind of patience, of pain or suffering–the duhkha of Binah (the Master of the Temple being the Master of the Law of Sorrow according to “One Star in Sight”); compassion with the passions of all sankharas.

I find the above presentation very messy.

I propose Friedrich Nietzsche as the tenth and “last” mahavatar of Vishnu, the Buddha of the West–the ninth being the Buddha (of the East).
The above claim is a put-off, especially when you have not provided any sound basis with details.

Note this clear-cut presentation;

The above is simple, i.e.

  1. Nietzsche criticized Buddhism [forget about the Buddha of Europe bit]
  2. The similarities between Buddhism and Nietzsche [ compare the critical elements]
  3. The difference between Buddhism and Nietzsche [ highlight the critical elements]
  4. Proposed reconciliations between difference between Buddhism and Nietzsche.
  5. Conclusion.

A better way would be for you to read the book and summarize the points rather than presenting your fanciful and Hindu terms.

I have not read the above book, but generally, I don’t see the differences between Buddhism and Nietzsche can be easily reconcilable.

I am optimistic the major elements of Kant’s philosophy are reconciliable to Buddhism’s and with greater intellectual rigor.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmEJNnMZhao[/youtube]

The contrast is rather between true beings. A false being is no distinct thing. It is gooey, vague blob in a goo, not contrasting as I would use the word, though I get how from a linguistic base you may hold that point, that goo contrast marble. From where I stand this is an insult to both contrast and marble. Marble contrasts marble, this is how one builds order.

To form a contrast the artist needs two strong qualities.

I will await your response to this. Lets take this step by step.

Lets call it instinct. I don’t fear the void or the empty room, as all Ive ever experienced is fullness. I know too well that equally as energy is never lost, so structural integrity of the self-valuig logics of being never deplete, as that is what is behind energy. And I know that at my most meaningful moments I am entirely embodying in experience my structural integrity as a self-valuing. So I know that whatever is truly me, will always exist as the most powerful thing in the universe. I am Ipsissimus, at least in bad weather (wink) - I don’t mind all the mortal coil drama, I like it, as it adds depth to the dharmic reality of the cosmic wheel, which is sheer awesomeness in which I will always partake as goes for more Dragons and those with strong Aries; they identify with the impulse itself rather than with its consequences. I don’t mind who carries the fruits of my work. Its my work that blessed man carries forth. And I have no shortage of it. This is existence, this is the bestowing virtue. I am only a part of nature. I am a rose, thorns and all. I don’t need things to shatter, Ill put up poems on vases for giants to ram to smithereens, and some of these smithereens will be found by archaeologists and interpreted by philologists and I will be understood in ten thousand years once again - ! Oh the universe is full, over full, the horn of plenty is only a thin tangent. And scarcity of meaning is only another layer to meaning - a means to make it refine itself.

Lets say I never move toward the idea but from it and with its direction, its upward cascading dance of elements. I use it as an idea though, and yes I do also use Idea. Idea is of course not separate of the word as we discussed it.

You seek that which is worthy of being called Power. That which is clean and pure and balanced, that which clears up the air for you to steer your ship to where you need it to be. Your task is unclear, but your course is not. Power sets aims.

Your Dhenims and your Castes are your wheels and the thunder is your sibling.

Lightning never strikes twice at the same place, because each strike represent a ring of eternity.

these are some Buddhist thoughts, basically ideas as they form as structural integrity (taste, intellectual conscience, loyalty, etc) is bounced off of the void to become some form that contradicts its origins and thus exists.

I am the Fountainhead. How could I endure for the fish in my waters or the waters themselves to be be eternal? How could I fill the void over and over again with my own unconditioned plenty? I must pour forth, thus nature must destroy.

Not if the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Then all the parts may be zeroes, and yet the whole may still be more than zero.

It seems to me that no parts have being in the Parmenidean sense, but becoming itself has. Change never stops (being (change)).

That sounds amazing, at least on first hearing, but doesn’t that deeply devalue eternal meaning?

I can appreciate what you say about exalting our being as follows, though: when we transcend the self-valuing that we are into mindful awareness of the infinite whole, we embody that whole, because we are our embodied mind.

I’m not sure what you mean by “the idea that meaning is subservient to scarcity”.

Yeah, I don’t find this very convincing… I mean, I think you’re confounding different senses of the word “meaning” here.

Also, like above with the term “being”, I don’t think changing the meaning of “meaning” solves the problem of meaning.

What is sensible is to ask what we mean by “meaning” in this sense. I think the answer is something like “intention”. Then we do bring the two meanings of “meaning” somewhat together, yet there’s still a significant difference between the meaning of words and the meaning of the things those words refer to. For example, the word “you” refers to you, yet the meaning of “you” is not the same as the meaning of you… The meaning of “you” is what’s intended to call to mind by the word “you”, whereas the meaning of you would be the intention behind you. Thus if we replace you by Jesus in this example, we can indeed see him as Word with an intention behind it. What did God intend with Jesus? If the answer is “For him to die for our sins”, then that’s the meaning of Jesus. Likewise, classical philosophy considers the end of a thing the meaning of that thing–and it considers attaining to the complete logos the end of man. This similarity gains even greater poignancy when we consider that authentic dasein for Heidegger meant being-toward-death… “Know thyself” means “know that thou art mortal”; in Buddhist terms, it means “know that all selves are fleeting, that only fleetingness itself is not fleeting”.

θάνατός ἐστιν ὁκόσα ἐγερθέντες ὁρέομεν, ὁκόσα δὲ εὕδοντες ὕπνος
“Death is all we see while awake, all we see while asleep is sleep.”

(Heraclitus, fragment DK B21. More literally than “Enlightened one”, Buddha means “Awakened one”.)

This reminds me of the second of the “three marks of existence”, though: “all saṅkhāras are unsatisfactory”. Of course, “deeply” is a relative term, so it may be that, when our being is relatively fulfilled, we can exalt it to absolute fulfillment. I’m afraid this reminds me again of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, though, where the fulfillment of the highest need, self-actualization, rests on an adequate fulfillment of the lower needs. All I can offer for the sake of reconciliation at this point is that, when the need for self-actualization is adequately fulfilled, the “lower” needs turn out to be even higher than that (one goes back down, in a way), perhaps as needs for fuller self-actualization.

That makes sense. But then being a “true being” means being aware that there are no beings in the Parmenidean sense (a person being the latter kind of being).

Right. The will to truth. The lust (eros) for truth, or even moral indignation/vengefulness (thumos) against truth.

Right again. My jogging, for instance, tends to be quite meditative. I wonder what physical exercise our academic interlocutor gets.

The real contrast is the downside. This one is far worse than nothingness or meaninglessness.

It is the Sheol. The pit. Not hell, but just the antithesis of self-valuing, and the process of undoing that antithesis into nothingness. here are many unpleasant names for this but I don’t like mentioning them except to those who are on their way and asking directions.

I see you posted - lolkek well my point was actually that it are the nihilists who are juggling different meanings of meaning and letting the balls drop which is the cause of their sorrow. They’re just bad thinkers, thats whats causing the pain, like bad lumberjacks and bad pilots.

Bad philosophers are truly masochistic. HAHAHAHA it made me think of someone.

Anyway more later. I see you quoted Greek and I look forward to finding out what thats about. Glimmering of the sun on the crest of the tsunami.

Yeah, I don’t find this very convincing… I mean, I think you’re confounding different senses of the word “meaning” here.

I honestly think you need to think this through some more.
Meaning wasn’t originally a word.
Or if it was, it does not refer to anything that has ever existed outside of the word.

You see? Languague confounds. Period.
Meaning is… that what life is, when you’re not sick of the soul. )e.g. sadistic for no reason other than watching cartoons(