I don't get Buddhism

Yes, if you are outside the law or outside the local moral codes, to protect yourself you have to pay more attention. Be on the lookout.

I think that mindfulness can relate to a plethora of situations. As you guys say, being a criminal, I think would predispose someone to being naturally more mindful. But generally, there are situations where everyone is more mindful. In circumstances where there is immediate danger, or even when engaged in tasks that require us to concentrate more I believe that our general awareness (or mindfulness) increases and perhaps our reaction times too.

Beyond true and false
Buddhist philosophy is full of contradictions. Now modern logic is learning why that might be a good thing
Graham Priest

Does that clear things up for you?

Because I’m still really confused.

The language that we use is derived from the biological evolution of life on Earth. It has [so far] culminated in brains able to invent language in order to communicate what individual minds have become conscious of to other thinking and feeling minds. Now, communicating “conventional reality” is more or less objective depending on the extent to which what is being discussed combines elements from both the either/or world and the is/ought world.

Some things are crystal clear to all of us. Other things are open to dispute. Language is just one more factor that allows us to make this crucial distinction between what we think or believe is true and what we are able to demonstrate that all other rational men and women are obligated to think and believe is true as well.

This combines both genetic and memetic components of human interaction, as well as the manner in which the conscious mind is intertwined in the subconscious and the unconscious components of the human brain intertwined in turn in ever more primitive components of the brain – the id, the libido, the instincts that drive us going all the way back to the evolution of life on earth.

Now, with death of course we are calling upon language to communicate something that, to the best of my current knowledge, no component of the brain has had any actual substantive contact with. We can only extrapolate regarding our own demise based on the experiences that we have had with respect to the death of others.

So, to speak of immortality or salvation or Heaven or Hell or reincarnation or Nirvana is to merely assume that what others have told us about them or what we have thought up about them. Isn’t this basically the extent to which our beliefs are demonstrable?

Of course there have been any number of articles and books and films from those who profess to have been on the other side. But have any of them provided evidence that goes beyond the language they use to describe this?

And, in regard to the writings of Nagarjuna in the Mulamadhyamakakarika, what on earth does modern logic make of it all such that this particular “world of words” reflects a “good thing”?

Then, in particular, this part:

What language relating to what assessment of conventional reality? And what “ultimate reality” relating to the condition of the “enlightened dead person” one claims to have experienced in “meditative states”? A reality that one is not able even to describe with words, let alone demonstrate as an actual “thing”.

How is the fact that this is all “ineffable” not basically a clue that the belief itself is more a psychological component of “I”?

The “I” you speak of seems to stand for ego consciousness. You assume that consciousness is the whole of the psychological individual. But knowledge of the phenomena that can only be explained on the hypothesis of unconscious psychic processes makes it doubtful whether the ego and it’s contents are in fact identical to the whole. Neuroscience has confirmed the existence of unconscious processes. They must really belong to the totality of the individual even though they are not components of the conscious ego. If these processes were part of the ego they would necessarily be conscious because everything that is directly related to the ego is conscious. Consciousness can be equated with the relation between the ego and a psychic contents. But unconscious phenomena are so little related to the ego that people like yourself do not hesitate to deny their existence outright. Nevertheless, unconscious processes manifest themselves in an individual’s behavior. This has been demonstrated numerous times in controlled psychological experiments. See Subliminal by Leonard Mlodinow, where he cites numerous studies. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. To understand Buddhism would take a profound comprehension of the wisdom tradition’s relation to the unconscious psyche. Or you could just keep treading around the ninth circle of hell. :wink:

Great, just what we need, another “general description intellectual contraption” from you. :wink:

Again, let’s bring this down to earth. For those here who do understand Buddhism because they have in fact taken the time to secure a “profound comprehension of the wisdom tradition’s relation to the unconscious psyche”, how is that translated into your conscious reaction to the coronavirus pandemic [as I pointed to above]? And how is that related to what you believe in your head about enlightenment, karma, reincarnation and Nirvana? And, finally, how have you [thus far] been able to demonstrate that what you do believe about it in your head is that which all other rational men and women are obligated to believe in turn.

FELIX:
notice what he does below. First he dismisses your entire response as an intellectual contraption. Rather than, for example, respecting what you communicated with and asking for clarification or concrete examples OF WHAT YOU WROTE already. IOW what you chose to respond to in his post
he
doesn’t
give a
shit about.

Now, I think his questions are potentially reasonable. IOW he isn’t just rude. He’s rude and dismissive, then asks for you to write about something else. I don’t think asking someone with some experience those latter questions is rude. The context, however, gives the lie. It is rude in the frame of dismissing how you want to communicate. Presumably your knowledge of Buddhism informed how you responded to his post. You chose to focus on consciousness and what it seemed like he was assuming. Your knowledge informed your response. Instead of treating your response as potentially useful, he dismisses it.

Now he is acting as if you can now respond as an expert on the entire system of Buddhism regarding some very tough issues,

directly after

treating your response as worthless.

Why would someone dismiss what a person actually chooses to focus on as worthless and not let whatever expertise they have guide the discussion? It doesn’t make any sense. He obviously doesn’t think you know how to introduce some of the relevent ideas. And any confusions he has are not subject to discussion. He has nothing to learn from you…then he throws huge questions at you as if the context was that he could learn from you.

And he gives you a big assignment. He simply cannot be expecting to get any answers he respects since he cannot show minimal respect for what your expertise led you to focus on in relation to him and his issues.

So, he is trolling, not that I think he knows it.

That’s because, in these matters, he sees expertise and non-expertise as just different contraptions. Expertise is no better than lack of expertise.

Buddha himself would be dismissed as having contraptions.

Then he should NOT be then asking them for answers as experts. He dismisses the line the Felix choses in reaction to his post - bringing up what Felix sees, from Felix’s background which includes Buddhism - related to consciousness. Oh, that’s all worthless, tell me about something else.

The person I am treating as an expert - OK, so you have knowledge about X - I am rude to and dismiss how they want to and decide to approach the issue as worthless, but
directly afterward as for answers to incredibly complicated and to some degree very abstract questions.

It makes no sense. If he thinks Felix might have knowledge, then he should be interested in why the consciousness issue arose. If he has trouble with Felix’s answer because it is too abstract, then he can ask for concrete examples related to consciousness and/or further clarification. But he does not.

It’s a bit like negging…

You make an offhand slightly negative comment, and the woman is placed on lower status while sending the message that you aren’t out after her. The aim is to get her to move toward you and unfortunately this is often successful.

And all this is in relation to a tradition that prioritizes practices over intellectual conversation. It is core component to try to calm the mind, meditate and not get wrapped up in questions and ideas one is not in a position to understand being a beginner, and also in general part of tradition that believes this is all a lot of mental wanking that adds to suffering and confusion.

He asks for answers in order to show that the answers are the product of dasein. Therefore, there are no good, bad, better, worse answers … there are only different answers.

Undermining self-confidence is part of the point. It’s at the heart of his struggle against objectivists.

What’s wrong with objectivists? They are confident that they know and understand something. They need to be taken down a notch.

How Does a Buddhist Monk Face Death?
An e-mail interview in the New York Times between George Yancy and Geshe Dadul Namgyal, a Tibetan Buddhist monk

Again, how is this not just another “general description intellectual/spiritual contraption”? One in which the relationship between life and death is broadly explored only as a factor embedded in the “human condition” as a whole.

In fact, each of us as individuals may well have very different reactions to these words insofar as they seem applicable to our own lives. After all, what does it mean to speak of loving life, “a little too much”? Of looking at “just the preferred side of it”? Of “cling[ing] to a fantasized life, seeing it with colors brighter than it has”?

Will it mean the same thing to you as it does to me?

Instead, each of us as individuals are ensconced in a particular set of circumstances, with more or less to lose in tumbling over into the abyss. And with a greater or lesser capacity to convince ourselves that immortality and salvation await us on the other side.

Sure, if a particular Buddhist is able to think herself into confronting death from a more serene perspective, only a fool would just shrug that off. But, from my frame of mind, they are able to do this only to the extent that “in their head” they have accepted certain assumptions about the existence of karma, enlightenment, reincarnation and Nirvana.

And, in my view, it is not unreasonable for those who are not Buddhists to ask those who are to demonstrate why these things are believable beyond just being thoughts and feeling in their head. Again, with so much at stake.

Exactly. So, obviously, to the extent that one is able to think oneself [or are indoctrinated] into embracing one or another religious antidote, how could they/would they not have come to embody a greater sense of comfort and consolation than those who cannot?

That’s not the point. The point is how each of us as individuals come to make that distinction given an intertwining of their circumstances and their philosophy of life.

And then the extent to which this is derived more or less from dasein than from an attempt to actually “think it through” to the most rational point of view.

Assuming of course that human autonomy here is an actual factor.

Hey man, the clock is ticking, Go for your best happy, however you construe it.

Okay, I’ll go for that if you’ll go for this:

I’m not claiming that I have a profound understanding of Buddhism’s relation to the unconscious psyche. I have some insights into it based on my experience. What we know about our own unconsciousness comes to us internally in the form of images and externally through the observations of others.

To me, and to many others, Buddhism is a matter of practice not objective beliefs. So, regarding the coronavirus, mindfulness meditation is relevant as way of coping with panic, hysteria and fear by getting into a peaceful mindset from which to act calmly, and rationally toward myself and others around me as the situation demands.

Enlightenment, karma, reincarnation and Nirvana are images “in [my] head” like images in a dream. I am agnostic at best about their objective reality. Completely rational men and women don’t exist. Buddhism promotes the values of empathy and compassion. In so far as people are rational, they should seek to live empathically and compassionately.

Yes, and in two ways. First, that it is a set of practices that lead to understandings and attitudes which may not be intelligible without long term practice. This is true about many disciplines: that you cannot possibly understand certain things without having engaged in long term practice. This is true in math and physics and dance and acting and psychology…and then Second: Buddhism is concerned about papancha - the proliferation of thought - and considers this part of what causes suffering. The combination of the two is a very strong criticism of trying to figure out stuff one has very little knowledge of, both because it is cart before the horse and more or less impossible, but also because it leads to repetitive thinking with an underlying anxeity that is nto simply not resolved but exacerbated by this looping thinking.

Enlightenment must be an objectively real state of being - a better state of being with identifiable characteristics.

If not, then what are the monks striving for? And what did the masters attain?

What does the Zen master tell you? You are the Buddha.

You’re a sleeping Buddha.

The master helps you wake up.

Buddha either way.

Okay, by practice, this still seems to suggest that in regard to the behaviors Buddhists choose either alone or in interacting with others, they must draw on what they have come to believe about karma and enlightenment on this side of the grave and how they connect these dots to reincarnation and Nirvana on the other side of it.

I merely suggest that in regard to either coming into contact with Buddhism, or in how one comes to interpret it as a spiritual or religious path, “I” is no less the embodiment of dasein out in a particular world historically, culturally and experientially.

Think of the millions upon millions of human beings going all the back to the caves that existed before Buddhism was even around. Or the millions more today who have had no contact with it at all. How did/does karma and enlightenment become a factor in their lives? And how, given whatever is “behind” the part embedded in reincarnation and Nirvana, will their souls fare?

And however much “mindfulness” is sustained in the face of the coronavirus pandemic [or any other calamitous context], each and every individual is still faced with connecting the dots between “doing the right thing” here and now and achieving the fate they are shooting for there and then.

Instead, from my frame of mind, your frame of mind…

Okay, this works for you up to a point and that’s a good thing.

But if the coronavirus were to mutate into a particular vicious strain and stampede around the globe, empathy and compassion could very well be stretched to the limits. One or another rendition of survival of the fittest may prevail instead.

And in regard to issues like abortion or animal rights or social, political and economic justice or gun ownership, compassion and empathy tend to be reflected far more in being either “one of us” or “one of them”. Compassion and empathy for the woman with the unwanted pregnancy or compassion and empathy for the unborn baby inside her?

A philosopher said to the Buddha, “ I have heard that Buddhism is a doctrine of enlightenment. What is your method? What do you practice everyday?

The Buddha answered, "We walk, we eat, we wash ourselves, we sit down…”

The Philosopher replied, "what is so special about that? Everyone walks, eats washes, sits down…”

The Buddha answered, "Sir, when we walk, we are aware that we are walking; when we eat we are aware that we are eating…. When others walk, eat, wash, or sit down, they are generally not aware of what they are doing.”

In Buddhism mindfulness is the key.