I don't get Buddhism

Isn’t it all we have? Or are you aware of someone who has been able to demonstrate that in fact immortality and salvation are real things and not just something some believe are real in their heads?

Again, I often note the gap between what I believe is true or think I know about these things here and now and all that can be known about them.

My certainty here is more your rendition of it than mine.

Please. My focus here is always less on what others think and more on their capacity to demonstrate to me that all rational men and women are obligated to think the same. And I would never argue that others are obligated to think about these things as I do.

I would not even argue that I am.

Oh. It hasn’t been demonstrated to someone’s satisfaction, therefore it does not exist.

In spite of references to a gap, the posts are peppered with certainty.

The threads dealing with the “psychology of objectivism” are all about what objectivists think.

The threads dealing with religion are all about what religious people think.

This is called shifting the onus. You have made the claim that it is only in their heads, period. But now he suddenly, when he points out your claim, must demonstrate the opposite,w hen in fact you bear the onus for you own claims.

[/quote]
What he quoted would be taken as certainty by anyone. No qualitification, it address when ‘we all’ share in common. If you didn’t mean it, then take responsibility for your poor communication. Don’t blame him for reading statements of certainty and noticing it.

So, anyway, Buddhism…
I thought this article had a few interesting points…
theatlantic.com/internation … ce/548120/

I liked the question about why Buddhism needs to improve on nature.

I think it also extends one of the points Felix made from a practitioner of one the strands of Buddhism.

It is also well known that constant rumination is one of the main symptoms of depression. What we need is to gain freedom from the mental chain reactions that rumination endlessly perpetuates. One should learn to let thoughts arise and be freed to go as soon as they arise, instead of letting them invade one’s mind. In the freshness of the present moment, the past is gone, the future is not yet born, and if one remains in pure mindfulness and freedom, potentially disturbing thoughts arise and go without leaving a trace.

My experience confirms this. Mindful meditation can free one from depressing obsession. I think iambiguous is stuck in such an obsessive pattern. It wouldn’t surprise me if many here on ILP suffer from unhappy obsessive thinking and could benefit from the practice of mindfulness.

I have a different approach which is more expressive, getting underneath the ruminations to the emotions that are being avoided by the ruminations and/or driving them. If I express these emotions - in sound as much as possible with few or no words except for the occasional outburst (sometimes a realization of something with a lot of emotional charge) - this also ends the rumination. More to my taste as a process, though I also meditate, but even there not quite in the mindfulness way. And I agree that rumination can be a real problem. I noticed that part of the interview also and thought it applied as you mention below. It can certainly be part of feeling fractured and fragmented.

Huh?

If someone is not satisfied that Gautama Buddha aka Siddhattha Gotama aka Siddhārtha Gautama did really exist, then he did not exist?

If someone is not satisfied that Buddhists believe in reincarnation and Nirvana, then Buddhists do not believe in these things?

Or: if someone is not satisfied that Buddhists have demonstrated the actual existence of reincarnation and Nirvana…?

That is the distinction that I make. In the either/or world [relating to Buddhism or Christianity or any other religious faith], there are any number of facts that can be established. Established such that those not satisfied with them don’t make them go away.

Again, choose a context and a set of behaviors in which religious or moral or political values are likely to come into conflict. We can discuss our own moral philosophies and you can note all of these certainties of mine that seem to suggest something to you about the gap between things I either deem certain or uncertain.

Think about what?

I gave you some feedback about your posts and posting style.

Do whatever you want with it.

So, do you ‘go to mindfullness’ also when you are under stress, or is in primarily a regular practice with sessions, like an hour in the morning. And then you notice this practice seeps into your daily being mindful. Or some other possibility?

I practice mindfulness daily. And a lose it daily. Stressors can be cues to return to it.

Not entirely sure what your point is.

But, as always, I am noting the clear distinction between anything that anyone believes to be true in their head and their capacity to demonstrate that all rational people are obligated to believe it in turn.

The difference between believing in your head that Donald Trump is president of the United States and believing in your head that he is doing a fantastic job in leading the nation against the coronavirus outbreak.

What both liberals and conservatives believe in their head about him being the president would seem to be within our capacity to demonstrate objectively. But what of the job he is doing in rallying the country around beating back the virus?

Unless, again, this is some “technical” point you are making relating to epistemology or a “category error”.

Don’t I always? :wink:

So now you shift from “immortality and salvation”, which are potentially real things, to a judgement of a job being done by Trump.

Apparently you don’t see any difference there.

We are clearly in two different discussions here.

From my frame of mind, it can either be “immortality and salvation” or “Trump doing a fantastic job against the coronavirus”. What counts is the extent to which what you believe about them “in your head” is able to be demonstrated by you as that which all rational men and women are obligated to believe in turn. And here it doesn’t make any difference if you are a Buddhist, a Christian, a Scientologists or an atheist.

Note to others:

I’ll be the first to admit the problem here may well be my own inability to understand the point that he is making.

If you believe that to be the case please attempt to reconfigure it into something that might be clearer to me.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

IOW, absence of demonstration says nothing about the absence of a thing.

Come on, what else is there but our capacity to at least make an attempt to demonstrate that immortality and salvation exist; and that Trump is doing a bang up job in the Oval Office?

Or are you really willing to go about the business of living your life interacting with others such that the only thing that counts is what someone believes about these things [and everything else] in their head?

Again, note to others:

What really, really important point is he making here that I keep missing? Or, perhaps, what really, really important point am I making here that he keeps missing?

I guess that I’m not as binary, black and white, as you are.

Reducing stuff to either :

… demonstrated such that all rational people have an obligation to think and act one way

or

… it’s just in their heads.

That doesn’t adequately account for people’s thoughts and actions. It’s just too simplistic for me.

I am not sure if this is his point, but this is mine. Your thinking in binary. [i] If it is rational to believe something then you can demonstrate it to others. So, if you cannot demonstrate it you are wrong or irrational

]But that isn’t true. There are situations where it is rational to believe things that cannot be demonstrated to others.

So, perhaps you have no reason to believe certain things, because they have not been demonstrated to you, nevertheless others may still have good grounds to believe it.

An indigenous person sees giant ‘canoes’ and pale skinned men get off them hunt and get water then get back on the ships and disappear. He tells his village this story and some have trouble believing him. He cannot demonstrate it, but it is true and rational of him to believe it himself. In the 60s it was not possible to demonstrate that animals were conscious experiencing creatures and it was taboo to assume they were. Yet many people, like animals trainers, pet owners and more knew that animals were conscious experiencing being. Later, science accepted this - though in truth no one has demonstrated this, it’s just that the old bias slipped away.

So, you make a statement dismissing salvation etc.
Phyllo points this out.
You then demand he demonstrate it is the case. (not noticing that you bear the onus for somehow demonstrating salvation does not exist.) If he asserts it exists then both of you have the onus for demonstrating
each
of
your assertions
of
knowledge.

But you had an onus, one you NEVER take responsibility for while demanding it of others.

In your mind, you have for years assumed that if someone cannot demonstrate something to you it must be ‘just in their minds’.

That general rule is clearly and demonstrably false.

Sometimes we can have excellent grounds for believing things we cannot demonstrate to others. Ask rape victims.

But you are such a fucking asshole

that you cannot listen, so after years you make the same mistakes, even after they have been pointed out to you.

You make your snide little plays to the gallery and the gallery has answered such questions before. But because you do not want to give up your petty little game

you will forget again

that you get the onus for your assertions
regardless of any onus others get.

And your simpleton moronic binary thinking and inablity to learn, because you are utterly unable to learn, because you are not interested in learning

means that this same shit will appear again soon and years later you will be asking the gallery in your coquettish faux sincerity to help you.

Moron or asshole, you take your pick.

It’s hard to tell from the outside which it is. I suppose you might be insane. But whatever it is we might as well be dealing with a bot. And one that does not pass the Turing test.

Oh, look. I tried to post my post and ILP informed me another post had been posted. Phyllo…and lo, the word binary comes up.

Perhaps my post was compatible with Phyllo’s thinking. Though he was way too polite about it.