I don't get Buddhism

For a fractured and fragmented guy, you sure have no trouble making ridiculous generalizations about things you know little about without qualifying your speculation. Here you batch religions around a very narrow idea of what religion does and one that doesn’t fit some religions well at all - many versions of Hinduism and even objective forms of Buddhism do not fit this. Or that there is anything remotely like heaven in other traditions or immortality in any sense that wouldn’t scare the shit out of most Westerners since you don’t continue to exist. Your obsession with morality as a way to earn something - a very Western and really rather immoral attitude in most systems of morality - is being projected onto areas of life you are ignorant about. Your summation here also assumes you beliefs not only about the religions themselves, what they are for, but the motives of people lot dead. It’s just an amazing bunch of implicit claims from someone who expects others to demonstrate stuff so every rational person on earth must agree.

Why do you allow yourself to spread a bunch of bullshit, when you expect others to create arguments with magical universal force?

This is generally called hypocrisy. And with good reason-

If you actually believed so much was at stake you’d try some stuff.

And where’s the beef that your approach is a good one?

One is always faced with choosing between approaches and choosing not to try/add on other approaches.

You, however, want to be convinced, through the work of others, how you should behavior to earn immortality. Even many Christian moralities would consider this an unlikely way to get into Heaven.

In any case:You are whining here as if others are responsible for your trying things. They’re not. You’re not interested.

youtu.be/heSq98tNTlM

A dialogue between Robert Wright who wrote “Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment” and Evan Thompson who wrote “Why I Am Not A Buddhist”. Wright advocates a secular, Westernized form of Buddhism focusing on the practice of mindfulness meditation and stripped of supernatural beliefs such as reincarnation. Thompson argues against what he calls Buddhist exceptionalism, "the belief that Buddhism is superior to other religions…or that Buddhism isn’t really a religion but rather is a kind of “mind science,” therapy, philosophy, or a way of life based on meditation. Insofar as I practice Buddhist meditation, I am more aligned with Robert Wright’s way of thinking on this. Neither he nor I call ourselves Buddhists.

Is Karma a Law of Nature?
It seems Matthew Gindin is destined to ask, and answer, this question.

Did the Buddha actually provide us with any specific examples of how “action and result” manifested themselves as karma given concrete actions that he took precipitating concrete results.

My problem with karma revolves around the extent to which it either is or is not another manifestation of determinism.

Consider:

Karma: (in Hinduism and Buddhism) the sum of a person’s actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences.

The key word being “fate”. Fate as in fatalism? Or does “what goes around comes around” in regard to the relationship between our past, present and future experiences involve some measure of autonomy? If some, how much?

Intention [to me] implies autonomy. Unless what we perceive to be our intention is really just a manifestation instead of the psychological illusion of intending freely. But let those here who believe in karma explain in more detail how this actually all works for them in terms of their own experiences involving actions that they have choosen and results that followed. Does what follows follow only because it must follow or does what follows follow because you freely chose this action instead of that.

To me, it is analoguous to those you claim that the heavenly bodies are instrumental in determining our future…but that somehow “I” is in there apart from all that. How with any specificity is a distinction made here?

The part that the author does not touch on at all:

What qualities in what minds revolving around what characteristics? In what set of circumstances?

Is character literally destiny? If so what role does “I” play in creating and then sustaining it?

And, on the contrary, in some situations, for some people, greed and hatred do not lead to confusion and suffering. And greed and hatred in regard to what particular situation viewed from what vantage point? Again, it’s this “one size fits all” mentality that religious leaders often try to foist on the flocks that concerns me.

And the gap between “common sense” and a “principle worth elevating to the status of a law”, has always varied profoundly across the course of human interactions historically, culturally and experientially.

But the whole point for any number of religious denominations is to not go there at all. Why? Because, in my view, the further you go down that path the closer you get to mine.

Our problem here is in how each of us make a distinction between “I” in the either/or world and “I” in the is/ought world. I don’t feel at all fractured and fragmented in observing that down through the ages, God and religion have in fact been used re one manifestation or another [culturally] to connect the dots between how one is expected/obligated to behave on this side of the grave in order to be judged favorably by God on the other side.

How is that not basically religion in a nutshell?

Now, with Buddhism, no God. But with Buddhism you still have reincarnation and Nirvana. And somehow their understanding of “enlightenment” and “karma” are connected to them.

Well, how?

As with Western religions, I am most interested in why particular behaviors are chosen by Buddhists “here and now” as this portends the fate of “I” there and then.

Out in a particular context where karma is examined given the existential relationship between enlightenment and conflicting goods. And where karma is examined given the existential relationship between “I” before and after death.

Again: For the Buddhist, in what context? How would this “general description intellectual contraption” of yours be applicable for the Buddhist faced with choosing an enlightened behavior here and now in this or that set of circumstances so that his or her understanding of karma is in sync with his or her understanding of “beyond the grave”?

Let the Buddhists here take us into their heads when, like the rest of us, they are confronted with situations in which value judgments are clearly in conflict depending on one’s moral, political or religious beliefs.

Just as one would imagine that all Kantians would agree on those behaviors all rational and virtuous men and women are categorically and imperatively obligated to pursue, should one imagine in turn that all Buddhists are in agreement as to which behaviors are enlightened? Or are there degrees of enlightenment corresponding with levels of reincarnation. Behave over all in a less enlightened way and you come back as insects?

Again, how exactly does that work out in the world of human interactions? And how do the Buddhists go about convincing me – demonstrating to me – that it does in fact work that way?

Here on this thread what can they provide me with that might motivate me to go further in exploring their sense of reality?

But now on to your main point:

It’s all about me. I’m the problem. And yet over and again I ask you to focus in on a context, on a set of behaviors. We exchange our philosophical and experiential reactions and you are there to point out more specifically when I am spreading a bunch of bullshit hypocritically.

You pick the context and the conflicting goods. I’ll react to them given the components of my moral philosophy and you’ll react to them given yours.

Instead, around and around you go:

I’ve addressed this point over and again above. And turned it around and asked you what you are doing to pin down your own conviction that morality is not objective and that death appears to = oblivion.

I also noted how the very different lives we live might prompt us to view all of this differently. You know, the part embodied in dasein.

It’s contained in my assessment of my own moral perspective on this thread: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382

And this is the part where – again! – I ask you to in turn note the manner in which your own moral/religious views are intertwined in both your life experiences and your attempt to grapple with it all philosophically.

And I would never argue that my approach is a good one. At least not in the sense that this implies that those who do not share my own assessment here are engaging bad ones.

Instead, my arguments here are no less existential contraptions than your own. We just react to that very, very differently.

How do we know that your problem with karma isn’t really that you’ve done some horrible shit in your life for which you don’t want to be held accountable?

You tell me: How could we know?

One of us actually does know.

Okay, how can we determine who that is?

Objectively for example.

If the person is you, then potentially you are conscious of this. That’s generally something one can take as objective even if one cannot demonstrate it to others. IOW if you feel guilty about horrible things you done, you don’t really need to question if you really feel guilty about horrible things you’ve done. One could bring in a radical skepticism and doubt your own sense of your own feeling of guilt. But then, once you get to that level of skepticism, you could also doubt all of science, since you might be reading it in a dream. So you could know, if the one person is you.

Ha ha. You’re feigning ignorance. It seems I struck a nerve. Actually, you proved my point. You evade subjecting your own behavior to evaluation. There is the motivation for your nihilism. Better to deny all objective standards then to apply any of them to yourself. Hence your obsession with undermining religion as you understand it.

You forgot this: :wink:

More evasion. Seems to be all that’s left to you bro.

Me evading you? On this thread :laughing:

Unless of course I am. :wink:

How about this: we leave it up to others here to decide for themselves?

Or, there is always this: [-o<

Do Buddhists pray? :sunglasses:

Thanks for helping me feel less fragmented bro.

I have nothing to do with that. And, believe it or not, I never have.

Haha. From what I’ve seen, you deny all things personal and most especially personal responsibility. Hey that could be a kind of Buddhism. He denied the existence of a self. You could start your own sect.

Note to others:

Can you believe this? No, seriously. He actually believes that I deny all things personal! That I deny personal responsibility!

He has not a glimmer of understanding of how, in regard to “I” in the is/ought world, I root all of this in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy in my signature threads. Then reconfigured into the points I make on this thread.

Uh, just like you, right? :wink:

Bullshit. Nothing but mental contraptions there bro.

Since you are asking, sure. In a few ways.

In the abstract, in the clouds, you certainly focus on the personal, as in personal history, dasein…

That is, in your philosophy you focus on the personal. Your philosophy focuses on how individual/personal history, culture, experiences (etc) affect what one believes. Peachy. You’re right you are centered on the personal…in your philosophy, in the abstract or in the clouds as you like to put it.

Above, Felix is, I would guess, focusing on your not having any community sense at all. You have nothing to do with his coming to feel less fragmented. Though your posts are often presented as you trying to get help with your F & F, people sharing their approaches and justifying them, for your sake.

And then in the context of Buddhism, this thread, there is the Buddhist idea that one’s own suffering is intertwined with the suffering of others and compassion for and helping others helps one’s own pain and fragmentation reduce. But since you know next to nothing about Buddhism and as a participant in ILP show very little interest in such things, what Felix might mean would be missed by you. So, he gets told, yet again, what you have written before countless times as if it is a relevent response.

You certainly elict quite a bit of angry, critical responses. But even when people share their approaches without criticism, approaches that might help what you present as the negative, searching state you are in, they get told what they are saying is all in their heads, or a contraption, even if their approach has more science behind it than yours. The main point here however is your responses are anti-communal, anti-Buddhist, anti-compassionate. The second being relevant in this thread.

And then there is you inability to take responsibility, here, for your actions! In your philosophy sure…in any particular interpersonal interaction here, no.

You simply cannot, as far as I have seen, take any responsibility for what you do. You were never wrong about things. If someone critiques a behavior, it was was not what they say happened. Always.

Hence, you cannot take personal responsibility, here, in any case.

Up in the clouds you would readily admit that you might be wrong. But in any specific interaction, nah, you never notice that you were. Humility in the clouds, but here on the ground in concrete interactions, never.

Last, another way you get rid of the personal is that you present your goal, often, as finding that which every rational person should do. Rather than, for example, what you would want to do as a single person. And you will not try anything, other than your habits, unless it can be demonstrated that every single human should do X. That is also an elimination of the personal, presuming there is the one best path for every human, as if we were ciphers.

That last point I don’t think is what Felix is getting at.

In any case, up in the clouds you talk about the powerful affects of the personal on what people believe.

Unfortunately we interact with you here on the ground where you do not take responsibility for your individual actions and choices.

which is…
Uh, just like you, right? :wink:

You literally could not see what he was writing about. You saw it in a way that 1) allowed you to repeat your philosophy and 2) removed any need to look at yourself as someone interacting with others in certain specific ways.

When you read the posts of someone you have had a number of interactions with and you find yourself thinking

this is a good moment to repeat my philosophy, that’s what they need to hear…

consider that you are most likely utterly wrong. They don’t need to hear it (yet again). You are literally not seeing them and merely habitually repeating yourself.

You haven’t read what they wrote well.

And if you think there is no context here because we are not talking about my or Felix’s ideas about, say, abortion, you are not seeing the very specific, concrete context of your response to Felix above. These are contexts, your interactions here with individual posters here at ILP. That was one moment, one act on your part. Where you utterly failed to understand or even show the least interest in trying to understand another mind. Where you interpreted out of a kind of functional narcissism.

How ought you live?

i dunno, when you find your scientifically demonstrated rules someday, it won’t matter because you won’t be able to even notice other people. At least, so it seems, from your behavior here.

Now you’re catching on!!! =D>