I don't get Buddhism

Indeed, there is only so far that words can go in describing enlightenment, karma, reincarnation and Nirvana.

On the other hand, once they have served their inherently circumscribed purpose, what then is left by way of demonstrating they are in fact ultimately real things.

Especially when, in acting out what you think they mean by the behaviors you choose, those behaviors themselves come into conflict with the idealized choices of others.

Let alone going beyond words to make the stuff after we die more tangible.

Mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.

Seriously, do you actually imagine this is a substantive response to the points I raised?

Question: One could say… how do you differentiate Knowing from Non-doubt, to reach that state of unlimitedness?

Answer: It’s all in the Practise?

Why? because there are no short-cuts… your path, becoming a life-long objective to stay on, once that point of inquisitive-no-return has been reached.

A path is formed by walking on it.

…every step forming the path behind, making way for what lays ahead… the now, future journey, soon to unfold and become a known… the way forward.

Living in the present moment, I know it is a wonderful moment.

All phenomena of being are independent of concepts and words. Concepts and words cannot transform them or separate them from their true nature.

Felix and magsj: before you understand the wisdom of the pathmaker, you must answer this question.

What is the sound of one leg walking?

When a foolish man hears of the Path, he laughs out loud. If he didn’t laugh, it wouldn’t be the Path.

Pearls before swine. But then, I think shifting over to non-discursive is peachy. people were certainly not ‘getting Buddhism’ by hallucinating in long sentences about things they have no experience of.

Maybe we should become familiarized with the fundamentals before we attempt to discuss it responsibly.

Love JP Sears.

Once you are on your path, your path will start leading you to where you need to go.

Well that was fun, while it lasted,

@Prom: as opposed to one hand clapping? and what a ridiculous rumination that one was. 8-[ Regardless of that, I’ll go with option b).

There’s actually some nice critique in there not only of the bizzarre ways people use a belief system to further their old habits, but also a nice critiques of Buddhism itself.

Okay, now connect the dots between this observation, Buddhism [as you “get” it] and, say, the coronavirus pandemic. As this relates to your understanding of karma and enlightenment on this side of the grave. As that relates to your understanding of reincarnation and Nirvana on the other side of it.

Criticize me for ever and always going in this direction, but that reflects my own actual interest in both religion and philosophy.

Morality here and now, immortality there and then.

Ah, this must explain why we get no actual response from you regarding my two most recent posts above in which, in some detail, I took the time to respond to your points.

All phenomena of being are independent from the dots, Buddhism, the coronavirus pandemic, karma, enlightenment, this side of the grave, reincarnation, Nirvana and the other side of the grave which are all words and/or concepts.

Now we’re talking :slight_smile:

Note to others:

What on earth does this have to do with the real world? The one we live in socially, politically and economically.

Yes, what we exchange here are words and concepts. But physicists, chemists, biologists, engineers, geologists, meteorologists etc., exchange words and concepts in their venues too.

Only they are able to connect the dots between words and worlds.

Now, sure, if philosophers and ethicists and theologians here wish to sustain exchanges in which their words make little or no contact at all with the world we live in, fine, let them do their thing.

It’s just not my thing. I am more interested in exploring how the words we convey here in regard to Buddhism are “for all practical purposes” relevant to the lives that we live. And, in particular, when, in living those lives as Buddhists, one comes into conflict with other Buddhists or other religious denominations or the No God folks in regard to what it means to embody karma and enlightenment here and now when behaviors come into conflict out in a particular context as a result of conflicting goods.

Then how that is connected to what one thinks about the part after we die.

Then the extent to which one can actually go about demonstrating that what they do think here is in fact true.

I merely focus in turn on the manner in which identity and political power might come into play as well. Re my own understanding of dasein as an existential component and political economy as a component of Marxism.