yeah what you probably have is an indian guy who was a bit more skeptical than the typical hindus, and so defaulted to a kind of make-shift atheistic version of the same nonsense.
“in life you gotta pick a nonsense, and just roll with it.”
- Buddha
They’re rather contradictory I would say - Hinduism is a war-religion, counting many Gods commanding obedience and social order among humans.
Don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking western yoga teachers have anything to do with Hinduism.
Hinduism is very violent and preaches violence as a means to keep social order and basically to give meaning and prove ones salt before oneself.
In order to enforce the caste-system, people were forced to drink their own piss and it was forbidden for them to wash themselves -the chandala class had to be created.
I suspect Siddhartha was a Hindu prince who was fed up with all and said fuck it, life sucks (“life is suffering”), Im gonna spend the rest of it here under a tree practicing the art of not giving a fuck.
Again: What particular instructions regarding what particular behaviors along what particular path given what particular context? In that respect, from my point of view, Buddhism is no different from Hinduism or Christianity or fascism or Communism. The words they use are either embedded in the world of actual human interactions or they are used more to attain and then to sustain some measure of psychological comfort and consolation on that existential sojourn from dust to dust.
To ground “I” in something…anything.
On the other hand, there are Buddhist practices and exercises that are in fact clearly able to bring about states of mind that “here and now” [for many} allow for the attainment of mental and emotional and physical equanimity not available to most of us.
On the other other hand, however, my own personal interest in it revolves around the three things that most preoccupy me here:
1] the existential nature of “self” rooted in dasein
2] conflicting goods relating to moral and political values
3] the fate of “I” after falling over into the abyss perceived by people like me as falling over into nothingness.
Well, sure, to the extent that particular Buddhists are able to largely cloister themselves off from the rest of us, that may seem like best path of all. But for the overwhelming preponderance of us, just interacting with others in order to subsist from day to day, brings into focus all manner of contexts in which “I” is challenged.
Of course my reaction to “general descriptions” like this is to insist on a context. Attachment to/detachment from what, whom? To/from one’s self? to/from one’s family, friends and loved ones? to/from ones community? to/from one’s race or gender or ethnic origins? to/from one’s nation? to/from one’s moral and political values? to/from one’s religion?
How is this not profoundly rooted instead in dasein, out in a particular world, understood from a particular point of view?
I think there’s some truth to this, despite Fixed Crosses answer. Of course Hinduism is 100s if not thousands of religions, sects, cults and approaches, but Buddhism is definitely an outcropping of Hinduism, and while I have challenged what you said about the lack of ontology, it does not focus on its ontology and its ontology is stripped down, but it comes from Hinduism. It just depersonalizes the ontology - except in all those versions of Buddhism that personalize the Buddha and even demons and other deities and us.
There’s a kind of trend from HInduism to Buddhism to Mindfulness. (not in any particular historical or intentional process, just that I see minfulness as a bit like the next step in paring things down on a mass level. TM was kind of a HInduism direct to Mindfulness hop.)
From essentialism to pragmatism to a single heuristic.
The next step is Anti-natalism. ( I mean this both as a joke and a serious statement with some ire in it) Want to get rid of suffering, get rid of people.
Then you don’t even need the heuristic.
There’s an anti-life element in all these religions/practices, and the historical paring down process draws this out and makes it clearer.
Another kind of final solution is Prismatics spirituality which has the simple measure of holding your breath as long as you can. But the anti-natalists have a cleaner more perfect solution.
Buddhism is to Hinduism what Judaism is to Hellenism.
Buddhism’s
Religions be like that. You pick one, or none, and roll with it.
Or I guess get stuck in a loop of wondering which is the right one, forever, I guess. Whatever floats your boat, homie.
Religions are grounded on belief.
Sounds like buddhism isn’t for you, dude. It’s not so much that you are preoccupied with these things, it’s that you get off on it.
You don’t want an answer, you want to feel like you’ve stumped people.
Sure there are monks who practice Buddhism strictly and live in seclusion, but also remember that Buddhism is the religion of millions of normal people living their lives, having families, etc. That is because there is no hell, if you are attached to things it is not as though you are sinning. You’re still on a path, just not ready to detach from those things. It is not a process of a single lifetime. They understand that as long as you are living a righteous life, you are evolving toward the goal of eventually gaining the maturity needed to give up all things.
There is no question of “I”, I don’t think. I’m right here talking to you. The question is of self, and who the fuck knows what that is.
Literally everything.
[/quote]
Who says it ain’t?
Karpel - of course one could easily find arguments to convince people that all religions have their ground in the very same spirit, as late-late-late-late-late period Hindu Sri Yukteshwar does in this work,
yoganandaharmony.com/blog/wp-con … dition.pdf
but reading this will still clarify that hinduism has an extremely dense and elaborate ontology.
I do understand why such notions as Hinduism as aimed at a release of suffering could arise in ignorance of the works of which its ground consists - it is the new age sprit to try to reduce all great things to fearful ideas.
I am in this thread on behalf of the honour of the great gods of that religion – but I do not imagine any study will be undertaken on my or even their account - so I will be wise to stay clear of this fantasy-land here from hereon,
I hope you are well Phoneutria. Our meeting was downright weird, all your and your familys graces notwithstanding, I was out of place -the ayahuasca told me to go home at once, that value ontology is the truth and that I need to teach it. No bullshit, thats what it said.
You were a very good host, I wished I could have made a better guest.
I actually don’t think this is the case. I think the different religions are doing different things, have different goals, utilize or emphasize different altered states. But Buddhism does come out of Hinduism, and the Buddha took practices out of Hinduism.
I know it does. Or really, the various Hinduisms have dense ontologies.
I don’t think I said that HInduism is aimed at the release of suffering, But the practices, if you get past the rituals and parades and so on, are very similar to Buddhism, having had Buddhism as its offspring. There is a similar process of disidentification, though often via a guru or a deity. But having actually participated in both traditions, and in the East, I know that the more mystical hardcore versions of Hindu practice and ontology have empty deities and empty gurus. IOW it all breaks down to Shiva or Vishnu or…etc, even the guru who is based on earlier gurus. And it ends up being very similar to coceptions of the Buddha in Buddhism.
Yes, the Buddha focused on suffering, and this is not the main focus in discourse in Hinduism. However people are going there to minimize suffering. And Siddheartha streamlined a religion using tools he got from what was around him. And Buddhism happily works with war, though, yes, it is less of a focus. The Japanese managed that merger directly.
Oh, Jeez, don’t get all, I am the representative of real Hinduism, kid. You actually been there and participated in Hinduism in India? and not just on some vacation. I have. I know this shit down to its bones.
I’ve always had a fondness for Ganesh, though it was a Shaivite form of Hinduism I participated in. Lord of obstacles, and then how wonderfully his story counters Freud’s child blaming Oedipus supposedly univeral myth and pattern.
Population pressures necessitate spiritual dogmas that preach denial of self, and integration into the ideological identifier.
Buddhism emerged when populations had grown to a level that required a dogma that would repress natural human impulses.
This population pressure occurred much later in the west, and fi not for the contact with Afro-Asiatic spirituality Europeans would not have developed a nihilistic spirituality until much later, due to their Faustian spirit of exploration and open spaces - their open-ended world view.
But Rome was already experiencing urbanization, with whatever this entails, and so Abrahamism found fertile ground among the slaves and the urban environments where population pressures were already being experienced.
It found fertile ground and willing minds, among the ‘wronged’ - by natural selection - the impoverished, the ill, and the desperate - nihilistic spirituality preaching anti-life, anti-reality dogmas - the esoteric to sooth or to escape from the exoteric.
Yes, that’s my point. But why Buddhism’s path and not Christianity or Hinduism or Communism or fascism or nihilism etc.? And how [existentially] do individuals come to acquire one rather than another set of values? That’s my interest here.
Yes, here, that works fine. But out in the world of actual human interactions these boats are often on a collision course. I merely nudge the exchange into a consideration of what these conflicting goods are predicated on – how we come to acquire one point of view rather than another, and the extent to which the tools of philosophy are able to either reconcile or resolve these conflicts.
Though, sure, if exploring your own particular “I” given the components of my own moral philosophy is of little or no interest, fine, one can move on to those who have more appealing narratives.
Yes, but we don’t just go out and pluck beliefs down out of trees. Instead, they are predicated by and large in the actual historical and cultural contexts in which as children we are indoctrinated; and then as adults on the specific trajectory of experiences, relationships and ideas that we come across in the course of living our lives.
So, the problem here [once again] is me. The components of my argument above would all but dissolve if only I was not “getting off” on having thought myself into believing that we live in an essentially meaningless world that ends in oblivion. And in trying to “stump” people who have found themselves a psychologically comforting and consoling foundation in which to embed “I” on this side of the grave; and in being reincarnated into another life form on the other side. If not actually reaching Nirvana itself. Though demonstrating why and how their “path” and their “afterlife” is the optimal one is never really the point at all. Not even in a philosophy forum. It all basically comes down to a leap of faith.
Well, it’s the Buddhists who interact with those who believe in hundreds of conflicting things about “I” out in a particular world, that most interest me. Attached to what things and in what contexts? And how did they arrive at those attachments given the manner in which I construe the self here as the embodiment of dasein. And their reaction to those who challenge their own path in regard to any number of conflicting goods that have rent the species down through the ages.
I agree. So, when I bump into folks who claim to be on a particular path to “no self”, I am most curious as to how that plays out in their interactions with others from day to day. In particular when others challenge them with different paths. And the extent to which they can actually demonstrate that what they believe about the afterlife is in fact true.
“Is The Buddhist ‘No-Self’ Doctrine Compatible With Pursuing Nirvana?”
Katie Javanaud asks whether there is a contradiction at the heart of Buddhism.
Perhaps because at the time he hadn’t actually experienced death himself. Instead he just surmised certain assumptions about it based on what he believed about it “in his head”.
Sound familiar?
So, what, in fact, is the case?
This?
“Part of the logico-epistemological tradition of India”
Logical in what sense? In a tautological sense perhaps?
In other words…
Thus if you define Nirvana and all of the words used in the assessment of the relationship between Enlightenment and death and the afterlife in certain specific ways, then a certain specific conclusion can be reach. The classic “definitional logic” of those like James S. Saint and his disciples here. What hasn’t been actualized is an accumulation of hard evidence to support the definitions empirically.
Thus ones “ignorance” here revolves solely around the extent to which one is aware of and accepts the definitions concocted by the Buddha himself. In regard to death, the afterlife, Enlightenment and Nirvana.
The icing of the cake then being the assertion that, in the end, all of this is beyond the rational discourse of mere mortals. As, for example, the “will of God” is for Christians, Muslims and Jews.
I’m interested in the idea of Buddha taking flight, of ignoring all restrictions, being able to cast off his chains that, even if yet modestly, makes his mind and his perspectives outrageously beyond the rest of us.
Any number of objectivists [religious or otherwise] are able to accomplish that. After all, how hard has it ever been for folks to convince themselves that their own mind’s perspectives reflect the most enlightened understanding of the world around them. There must have been hundreds and thousands and millions of them down through the ages. And, sure, to the extent that they are able to convince themselves that in being “beyond” the rest of us, this makes their own thoughts the optimal frame of mind, well, the more comfort and consolation they are able to accumulate “in their head” in turn. That’s part of being human, it seems, no doubt about it.
Me, I’m still hung up on actually closing the gap between what you believe is true in your head, and that which you are able to demonstrate is in fact true to others.
Call it a philosophical prejudice.
Of the vast multitude of opinions everywhere, most of pretty differing natures, it’s realistically unlikely that the opinions that we ourselves entertain are the right 1s. Buddha may have been very ahead of his time with some of his teachings, and my favorite 1 is, “You are the result of everything that you have thought.” Mind is the mover, the prime source, and its from mind that the focus of the Force is shaped, and that vision is conquered and emblazoned into reality. Imagination, and all of its limitless, outpouring potential splashes greenery and life at every world creating footstep across the superholographic grid.
Again, to me this is all just another “general description” “intellectual contraption” in which the argument is true only if someone agrees with you regarding the definition and the meaning of the words used in the argument itself. Words put in this particular order.
What interest me instead is taking Buddhism out into the world and examining its assumption about human interactions on this side of the grave; and regarding any substantive evidence pertaining to the existence of “I” on the other side of it. The parts beyond these “worlds of words”.
You choose the context. You choose the behaviors opted for. You choose a reaction to a context in which a conflict occurs regarding which behaviors are said to be more rational or more virtuous. As this relates to, say, karma on this side of the grave and Nirvana on the other side of it.
Or, rather, as with many/most others interested in their “spiritual” self, is it enough to just accept that what you believe about it in your head need be as far as it goes?
We have a reality code, and it becomes easier to imprint the right stamp on ourselves when we choose motives, not necessarily actions, but motives (our heart) of a pure nature. The dark side of karma, the negative, imprisoning energies are easier to choose at 1st, but they lead to destruction. If we fight a hard and long battle, then we can bless ourselves with the fruits of the holy and sacred gifts. And we shine more as the entity that we really are, simply because our choices were blessed.
Too much focus on what’s true in the external (not even reality, but the external) may limit the reality of dreams and fantasies. It’s not good to put a cap on what’s possible.
Like, 1 thing that may be possible is the Star Forge. There could be an extreme power somewhere in the universe that can shatter laws, create a new alpha, and so forth.
There’s nothing to get… ergo, Buddhism.
So Buddhism is a whole lotta nothing?
No. Well sorta. I mean it’s nothing but it served a purpose in the same way Christianity did in the west. Oppressed peasants in the east needed a way to cope with their struggling, and lacking the power to organize, they latched onto a religion that gave them solace. The next best thing to over-powering your oppressor is to purposely ignore it. Buddhism provided a meaning for suffering, and at least then one could make of ascetic resignation an act of will. That is, tell oneself they’ve decided to accept it, and therefore pretend to have some degree of control. If one must suffer, better to convince oneself that one doesn’t mind. That one almost wants it if doing so puts one in control of at least something. Buddhism is an instance of ‘i meant to do that’, more or less. Ascetic denial of the will is still an act of will, see, and one wants to take credit for that.
In the west, Buddhism is just another designer fad that people get into to be unique. You can buy some incense and get one of those little Buddha statues to put on your coffee table for a conversation piece. When friends come over you can talk about oneness and the not-i over chips and salsa in front of the big screen TV.