I don't get Buddhism

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.

We’re done. :sunglasses:

Too bad for you. I think Zen could really help you. But it’s antithetical to your linear way of thinking and the objective model of religion that you want to pigeonhole it in.

Congratulations Felix.

It’s rare that he just backs off. Offering experiential learning was both generous of you and timesaving.

Thank you. Softness triumphs over hardness.

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

All I can do is to point out over and again how an exchange of this sort reflects precisely the sort of “general description intellectual contraptions” that, when we situate what we think they mean by their points here into our own actual lives, can “for all practical purposes” mean almost anything. You embed them in your rendition of dasein, I embed them in mine.

What doesn’t change of course is that each of us as individuals fears death in a particular set of circumstances where we are closer to or farther away from the actual reality of death; and where we have either considerably more or considerably less to lose when we do shuffle off this mortal coil.

Then the part where all religious denominations impart that which is understood: immortality and/or salvation…in one or another configuration of the “afterlife”.

Of course there is then the paradox where millions upon millions of the faithful have thought themselves into believing in immortality and salvation, yet they exhibit all the signs of being terrified in the face of death “here and now” that any number of nonbelievers do.

Why are they not able to sink down into the comfort and consolation that comes from knowing that infected or not, dying or not, the “Lord is thy Shepherd”?

Though, sure, to the extent that Buddhists here can in fact calm themselves down by thinking and feeling the sort thing that Namgyal has managed, they are clearly a hell of a lot better off than I am.

He’s back, of course, to plucking bits of ‘information’ about a belief system he knows little about and cannot possibly learn anything about by ‘analysing’ mini-quotes from a primarily experiential system.

[see post above, though really there’s no need]

It strikes me as trolling.

Consider Psilocybin which "can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance”. If it can help patients with terminal cancer as has been experimentally demonstrated [see below], maybe it can help you.

hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_r … taries.pdf

maps.org/other-psychedelic-rese … r_patients

Yes, there’s a way to reduce the fear of death that is now getting current and supportive scientific research backign it up.

If we look at a statement like this…

one might this this a viable option for old iamb.