I don't get Buddhism

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.

Your so-called “real world” is nothing more than an image in your mind. The real “real world” encompasses you, and is infinite and unbounded. You cannot know it although you are a part of it and it is a part of you. You are a drop of water in an infinite ocean. Glub. Glub.

Note to others…

Make of this what you will. You know, as it relates to the actual life you go about living from day to day to day. =D> #-o =D>

The so-called " others" that you appeal to for validation “again and again” are also nothing more than an image in your mind. You know like the “They” of Heidegger’s Being and Time from which you lifted your impoverished conception of Dasein.

Let’s just hope for your sake we really do live in a wholly determined world. :sunglasses:

Well Spinoza thought so and he was no dummy. There are different modes of being according to him. And on one level of perception it seems like we’re making choices. But that could well just be because of our limited perception of causes including unconscious ones which by definition we’re unaware of. Like you, when your typing one of your arguments, you can’t be typing it and thinking about the content of it and aware of the process that is producing these thoughts in your mind at the same time. Most of what we are is unconscious. Consciousness rests upon and is determined by unconscious biological processes. What you’re explicitly conscious of are a limited repertoire of stale fragmented concepts and words which you seem to think are reality. If anything doesn’t fit in your narrow little accretion of tropes it isn’t real to you. You think you’ve got the Buddha beat, when he’s not even playing your game. And, like the song asks, if it makes you happy, why are you so sad?

Yet another gigantic general description intellectual contraption.

Consciousness about what?

When you ever decide to focus in on that which you are conscious of as it relates to your understanding of karma and enlightenment as that relates to the behaviors you choose on this side of the grave as that relates to what you “get” about Buddhism in regard to reincarnation and Nirvana on the other side of it, please get in touch.

Until then: youtu.be/V2f-MZ2HRHQ

See above. I already specified consciousness of your argument on the page. According to Bodhidharma, Zen is a special transmission outside the scriptures not based on words or letters, a direct pointing to the heart of reality so that we might see into our own nature and wake up.