I don't get Buddhism

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.

We’re done not done yet.

Let me get this straight…

My attempt on this thread to understand how Buddhism might be an important component in my quest to grasp the most enlightened understanding of human morality on this side of the grave and the fate of “I” on the other side of the grave, may well be facilitated by ingesting magic mushrooms?

Hmm…

On the other hand, I still have members of my family who insist it was precisely the psychedelic drugs that I did ingest all those years ago that explain the way I am today. That, for example, all the arguments I raise in my signature threads are completely moot. It’s just run-of-the-mill brain damage.

Of course their own drug of choice is still a God, the God, our God. And, like me, Buddhists will be “left behind”.

Pardon me. When you said

I thought you were terrified of death. So I cited evidence that demonstrates that psilocybin effectively treats death anxiety. Turns out you just want to argue against religion as you perceive it. Carry on.

He takes no responsibility for what he writes and especially what he implies. So, he implies a lot. Here he is implying a ‘been there, done that’ in relation to mushrooms, though he has not done what has been done in those studies in relation to mushrooms. So, he implies things through his family’s views and what he has experienced. He implies that your suggestion is silly, despite the science. He implies that it is obvious that people are simply making stuff up, though he cannot know this. He implies that religious people do not face death with any comfort from their religions and fear it in precisely the same way that non-believers do. But he doesn’t quite say it. cake and eat it too stuff. There are so many implcit positions and arguments which he need not take responsibility for and if any reacts to any of these it is as if they are being silly rather than simply responding to him. His implicit positions are contradicted, often, by his formal ones. It’s all at the level of PR and politics. And for what. To get to mock and play to the gallery. A bit of bitter pleasure before he dies.

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

Basically, this revolves around the extent to which, given any particular aspect of any particular set of circumstances, human language is or is not able to capture it more or less wholly.

Noumenon: “In Kantian philosophy a thing as it is in itself, as distinct from a thing as it is knowable by the senses through phenomenal attributes.”

Thus, using our reaction to a particular context involving the coronavirus, what actual components of human interactions can be encompassed as “things as they are” as opposed to things as “[they are] knowable by the senses through phenomenal attributes.”

Now, from my frame of mind, philosophers/ethicists will either take their premises and conclusions there or they will not. And, to the extent that they don’t, their “technical” assessments have little or no use value or little or not exchange value at all.

The same with Buddhists who speak of karma, enlightenment, reincarnation and Nirvana. At what point does language fail them? At what point do they take that existential leap to sets of assumptions that “for all practical purposes” are “ineffable”?

And that’s before the part where language itself gives way to actual demonstrable proof regarding the existential parameters of karma, enlightenment, reincarnation and Nirvana.

Well, for one thing I don’t have access now to the drugs I once had access to back then. And, besides, they are still included in that list of substances cited in “Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act”. In fact, existentially, my imploded world is very, very different from what it once was.

What do you suggest?

And how many times do I have to note that in a thread devoted to “getting” Buddhism, my interest revolves almost entirely around morality here and now and immortality there and then.

And, from my frame of mind, you won’t go there. At least not pertaining to a particular set of conflicting behaviors in a particular context. In either a God or a No God world. As you understand it.

We’ll need a context of course.

We don’t need any more spam, of course.

Look, I didn’t drag you down to retort mode so much as you allowed me to drag you down to retort mode.

Next up:

Fish: Like shooting objectivists in a barrel.

He said in jest. :wink: