I don't get Buddhism

First of all, I don’t believe that a Muslim child is any different from a Christian child at birth. It is through the way they are brought up and taught that differences occur. Having worked with Muslims, I found that the malignant aspects of Islam have come about when they feel threatened. I’m not sure a militant Christian, feeling threatened in a similar way, would be much different. The language of the OT is that of a people under duress, that is why it also has militant views. Christianity should have overcome that but that’s not what I am seeing.

I’m also not comfortable with your portrayal of Christianity, although I will grant you that Jesus was not a warrior like Mohammed. For the reason above I see a pacifist maxim only in very few Christians. I agree though, that the teaching of Christ leaves no room for militancy, but it is a difficult path to take – as he himself said.

Of course, that is the point I’m making. They’re human and therefore they will have these faults, like all of us do. That is why dedication is the key word here and also the reason why I pointed out that both are monastic traditions – even the parishes that Paul “planted” were mixed monasteries if all be known. Dedication brings one back to the teachings over and over again, whether by meditation, contemplation or devotional reading.

They’re human beings …

Today the monastic traditions are only a fringe movement, that is true. However, reading the NT, I can’t overcome my feeling that this movement needed the tightly knitted companionship of a monastery. The second influence is the one you mentioned: The Mystics. They are much better represented in Christian Orthodoxy, since the Catholic church struggled with them. They are being read more today I think, but as you say, it is only a % of believers who follow their teaching. Orthodox Christianity prefers the small congregations and integrate much mysticism into their services.

Buddhists have always been friendly and I have had long talks with some of them but they rarely speak of a “mystical” Buddhism. Is there such a thing?

If you were really interested in Buddhism you could try it. It’s not like there’s a high risk that it will kill you. So your method of approaching the subject seems to merely be a debunking strategy. Your interest seems fundamentally insincere and untrustworthy in terms of dialogue with you. That, I think, is why intelligent persons like Philo and Karpal Tunnel have become so frustrated with you. And you haven’t modified your approach or thinking at all based on feedback that seems sound to me.

You have demonstrated that you know how to think to a degree. But, like the rest of us your POV is biased, you have confirmation bias, blind spots, and areas of ignorance. If you were open when people show you where you’re wrong, you could learn, and your life could get better. But I haven’t seen that happening so I feel like I’m probably wasting my time talking to you.

Yes, and there are hundreds and hundreds of other religious denominations that connect the dots between morality and immortality. And they would convey the same advice. Try us first. It won’t kill you.

How about you? With so much at stake on both sides of the grave shouldn’t you try all of these denominations as well? Just to be absolutely certain that your current “leap of faith” gives you the best chance for enlightenment here and now and salvation there and then?

No, my “method” is to join threads like this one and to note the extent to which any particular advocate of an particular religious denomination seems able to describe how, existentially, their religious beliefs enable them to choose enlightened and virtuous behaviors “here and now” so as to best assure them that, “there and then”, “I” is not obliterated for all time to come.

And then to link me to actual demonstrations of their beliefs.

As for intelligent persons like yourself, Phyllo and Karpel Tunnel, it’s not for nothing that I have referred to you here as my own equivalent of Tom Wolfe’s “my three stooges”.

Let’s just that, just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so to is intelligence in the mind of the beholder.

Right, and none of this is applicable to, say, you?

And I am definitely wasting my time here.

But I have my reasons. :evilfun:

No doubt rooted in dasein I suspect.

I rest my case.

On the contrary, I rest mine! :banana-linedance:
[size=50]
come on, he earned that![/size]

You have missed my point.

In general, anatomically and physically there is no difference between all children at birth.
But there is a difference in their mental potentials, where some are unfortunately born with an active evil tendencies [neural connectivity and make-up] -the evil prones, while the rest are endowed with average good tendencies.
Generally, - a most conservative guess - those unfortunately born with an inherent active evil tendencies represent about 20%.

In one comparative perspective, in terms of evil the Quran is worst than the Mein Kampf. I am sure you are aware how evil the Mein Kampf is [as evident] but the Quran as demonstrated is worst.

If appx 20% are born naturally with evil tendencies, then there is a pool of 300 millions [from 1.5b] of evil prone Muslims floating around the world.

Muslims are always being threatened at all times, i.e. threatened with Hell and the relief is to obey the commands of Allah literally as in the Quran which as demonstrated has evil elements and is worst than the Mein Kampf.

Thus for the 20% Muslims who want to ensure of avoiding Hell and ensure of a place in Paradise, they will have to comply with the commands of Allah. Since they have natural inborn active evil tendencies, their proclivities will drive them to obey Allah’s commands which are evil laden.
This is what actually happened with this stats;
thereligionofpeace.com

Therefore as long as Islam exists, there will be potentially 20% of evil prone Muslims complying with the evil laden elements in the Quran to ensure of their place in Paradise and inevitably non-Muslims will be killed in the name of the Religion.

It is likely the Muslims you happened to mix with are from the 80% of naturally good Muslims thus they avoided the evil commands of Allah.
But you can never know because there are loads of evidence where some supposedly very goody-two-shoes Muslims out of the blue appeared in the News being identified or caught as evil jihadist which surprised their family and friends.

My focus is on the doctrines of Christianity and not on Christians [naturally comprising the good, the bad and the ugly].

I wrote in another thread, a Christian or Muslim is one who had entered in a covenant [divine contract] with God to obey the contractual terms as in God’s command in the respective holy texts.

So the difference is a Muslim is in a way a contracted killer in accordance to the terms of his covenant with Allah as stipulated in the Quran. Of course the majority of Muslim will not carry out the evil command, but there is potential 300 million Muslim who would do so.

On the other hand, a Christian is a contracted pacifist. If one is do not comply with such a pacifist maxim, s/he will have to work towards it else, s/he will be punished by God on Judgment Day.

The difference is there are no direct and targeted practices to improve the neural competence within Christianity. There is only praying, faith, belief, contemplation or devotional reading or meditation in some cases.
In Buddhist practices within the Noble 8 Fold Paths, there are room and provision for sophisticate spiritual practices to rewire the brain for higher spirituality.
I wonder if you are familiar with the full range of mental exercise and practices within the 3 Schools of Buddhism and their sophistication.

There is no “mystical” Buddhism per se.
The 3 main Schools of Buddhism [more with Mahayana] indulge in a lot of fantasies to communicate the Dharma but they are always grounded to the objective core principles of Buddhism.
Example if you read the Mahayana scriptures, they seem to speak of god[s] but the core principles of Buddhism, i.e. impermanence, anatta, co-dependent origin, and others override and provide no room for a personal monotheistic creator God like the Abrahamic and other theistic beliefs.

There are some Buddhists who chose the ascetic and mystic way due to their personal inclinations and psychological states, but that is not condoned by the Buddha who tried asceticism and failed badly thus had discouraged it.

I’d call this a low blow, since I dislike those three writers, but I don’t like Tom Wolfe either, so I can only tip my hat to a kamakaze analogy. Those pilots were nothing if not committed. Though I’d be happy to have any of their yearly incomes. Those that are still alive that is. Or the one who is still alive,which seems to be Irving. Ugh.

Tom is with the other two underground. Time will tell if he is actually the not yet granted genius-status guy.

So try whatever you want or don’t try anything. It’s your life. It’s your decision.

People have misinterpreted your posts as requests for help and advice. They offered you help and advice. You spat on it all. Naturally they were confused and frustrated by your responses.

It takes time to get over it but they have or they will.

Sincerely,
Curly

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

On the contrary, consider the fate of these children: who.int/news-room/fact-shee … -mortality

If life is a gift, how, from any religious perspective here on Earth, does one account for this? And, just out of curiosity, given that Buddhism has no God to count on for the final explanation, how does karma, enlightenment, reincarnation and Nirvana play a part in these ghastly statistics?

A gift is usually thought of as being given to someone by someone or something else. Given to us by God can at least be imagined in someone’s head. But what might the Buddha himself have provided as an explanation for life being a gift? From who? From what?

Here, again, I can only imagine death being a gift that I or others give to myself…if and when the “gift of life” has become little more than a seething cauldron of unbearable pain.

And, sure, like Jesus on the cross, Buddhists have these beliefs firmly entrenched in their minds about the afterlife. At the very least “I” is reincarnated into another lifeform.

And then the extent to which Nivana is or is not the equivalent of Heaven. Here is how “Catholic Answers” responds: catholic.com/qa/how-does-ni … -of-heaven

So, again, with everything at stake here, given that the alternative may well be oblivion, which one is it? And that’s before we get to all of the other denominations. Shouldn’t Buddhists and atheists here be examining each and everyone of them in order to pin down with more certainty that their own here and now really is the way to go?

It’s just easier to call death a natural part of life when you have thought yourself into believing that it is not natural that “I” be obliterated for all time yet to come upon dying.

Or, rather, so it seems to me.

There you go again, insisting that your own understanding of my motivation and intention here supersedes, well, mine. Though I am the first to admit that given the extraordinary complexity built into all of the genetic and memetic variables intertwined in any particular human psychology, the closest I come to it myself is this…

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Why? Well, okay, I admit it: Your guess is as good as mine.

No, you’re Larry. Felix is Curly. Moe is Karpel.

I go by what you have written : you seemed to be asking for help and advice … about your fractured “I”, about understanding Buddhism, etc.

And I’m not the only one who has interpreted your posts in this way.

If you were not asking for help and advice, then people have been wrong about interpreting it that way and in offering you advice. At least your replies were consistent.

If you were asking for help and advice, then your replies and attitude towards their advice is just plain strange.
You: I want help.
Poster: Why don’t you try Buddhism?
You: Why don’t you try Buddhism and a hundred other religions?

Bizarre.

You have to be in control of everything. Right?

I’m not even allowed to be the stooge that I want to be.

What’s bizarre [from my end] is how many times I have tried to explained [to the best of my ability given what I noted above] what brings me around to discussions of God and religion in philosophy forums.

I do not believe in God. And, given that assumption, I do not believe that mere mortals in a No God world can [philosophically, ideologically, deontologically etc.] come up with the equivalent of objective morality. Not sans both omniscience and omnipotence. Or whatever the equivalent of that is for the Buddhists.

I also believe that in a No God world “I” tumbles over into the abyss that is oblivion upon dying.

Not at all what most religious adherents believe, right?

Well, okay, if they don’t believe that, let’s take the discussion out into the world of actual human interactions. There they can note how they choose particular behaviors in particular contexts here and now in order to attain what they imagine their fate to be there and then — if they do choose one set of behaviors rather than another.

Then, in my view, around and around you three stooges go explaining to others why, instead, the problem here really revolves around what I either do or do not do – or what I should or should not do – if I was in fact truly and genuinely interested in what I claim to be.

Though, from my point of view, you don’t make this applicable to yourself in regard to your own value judgments re the value judgments of all the other denominations who insist that yours are wrong.

Well, to quote the führer, “it is what it is”. :wink:

If you don’t want advice then just say so.

"Thanks. I don’t want help with my fractured “I”.

“Thanks. I’m not interested in practicing Buddhism.”

“I understand your point that to understand Buddhism, I would have to practice it to some degree. But I’m going to try to understand it purely intellectually for the time being.”

I don’t know what you hope to achieve.

You have decided that God and religion are pure inventions. These people would then be describing an imagined fate in an imagined afterlife … their behaviors producing an imagined cause and effect.

What’s the point of that?

What are you going to get out of it?

What’s the best case result from reading that stuff?

You don’t seem to understand that how you present your views is as important as the substance of your views.

What ought I be doing?

Okay, I am not after personal advice from others here. I am instead interested in discussing the behaviors that others choose here and now [in regard to conflicting goods] given their moral philosophy as that relates to their views on God and religion. In that way, someone may impart to me a way of thinking about these actual existential relationships such that I am able myself to feel less fractured and fragmented, less glum regarding the assumptions I make about the “human condition” in a No God world.

But only insofar as the discussion revolves around a set of circumstance in which there are conflicting religious, moral and political agendas.

So, if others have “practiced Buddhism to some degree”, connect these dots for me

Nope, not for you? Then by all means move on to others.

And, once again, all those religious narratives apart from your own…how can you know for certain that their narrative/agenda isn’t more in sync with reality than yours? Unless you too “practice them to some degree”.

But that part only applies to me, right?

I can only determine that by engaging in discussions of this sort. Also, what might they learn from me regarding my own assessment of the existential relationship between identity, value judgments and political power? Or, perhaps, what comforting and consoling thoughts and feelings might they lose?

Right, and in the past I had decided that the Protestant Christian God was anything but an invention. Just as I came to think the ecumenical God embraced by the Unitarian Church was my font of choice. Just as I then came to believe that Marxism then Trotskyism then Democratic Socialism then Social Democracy were the objectivist foundation into which I could anchor my moral and political values.

The point of it all revolves precisely around intertwining my actual lived experiences with what I encounter through, among other things, philosophy in order to assess the ongoing relationship between “in my head” and “out in the world”.

Just like you, right? Only you simply refuse to go there. At least with me. I still have no real concrete sense regarding how you connect the dots between what you construe to be objective morality and what you construe to be God and religion.

Again, with so much at stake in intertwining morality here and now and immortality there and then – the nuts and the bolts of religion in my view – why not assume that perhaps other denominations may in fact be more in sync with the right path to be on. Meet with them, interact with them, live their faith. Measure it against your own. Then, if yours seems more reasonable and virtuous, move on to the next one.

I have limited amounts of time and energy. I decide how and where I use them.

Sure, some other narratives are probably better than mine. Some are probably worse.

I could be richer, happier, more fulfilled, more famous, stronger, faster, healthier … if I had made other choices, pursued other paths. I could also be poorer, unhappier, less fulfilled, weaker, slower, less healthy. (Okay, not less famous. LOL)

I made the decisions that I made. I’m still making decisions.

Engaging in these discussions is not without a cost. You’re investing your time and energy into it.

You want them to learn from you? You want them to lose their comfort and consolation?

So you think that they will say something and that you will suddenly be convinced that it is not an invention? Is that it?

And what good would it do you if you did have a concrete sense regarding how I connect the dots?

And it’s not like I didn’t go there at times. When I did, you either didn’t understand me or you couldn’t believe that I had such ideas.

As I said … time, energy … decisions.

Each path taken is a hundred paths abandoned.

So, you are not interested in Buddhism, for example, as something that might help you. Fine.
What is you goal when you try to get Buddhists to explain their morality, how they deal with conflicting goods and what they mean by various terms like Karma?
Since you are not interested in getting help, a suggestion would be not to mention all the sans God, fractured and fragementation, imminent oblivion stuff. This adds nothing to your finding out information about Buddhism. And you might, instead of callling us stooges, notice what a likely conclusion it is that you are seeking help. We have, of course, presented other motives based on your behavior. And when you explain WHY you are investigating things like Buddhism, you actually only explain WHAT you want to know.

You do seem to be seeking information about belief system. Alright, it is not to help yourself. But you are trying to get information and understanding about Buddhism. A number of people with more experience than you have pointed out that practice within Buddhism is necessary for understanding. When they tell you this your objection is not ‘I can get the information I need through online discussion’, but rather that you cannot do this (lack of mobility) or you do not have time to do this since there are so many religions and approaches. The first objection is false. You could get instruction in the practices. The second also makes no sense because you could investigate Buddhism say, via practices, in an hour or even less a day and continue your online approach also.

Note we are telling you that in terms of gaining knowledge - regardless - participation is a better way to learn. This is common in all sorts of fields. Here we have a radically cross-cultural field of knowledge that is practice based and has terms that are even tricky for Asians raised in Buddhist concepts to understand. So, even people who do not have the ethnic and cultural gap to cross are still facing a cultural divide where practice is considered KEY by all experts. This is of absolutely no interest to you. Which raises the issue of what you are doing asking for information from people with more knowledge than you about something, if their answers are of absolutely no interest to you. You want to understand X. Well, here’s a way to start understanding X. No interest. Makes any rational person wonder what you are doing.

But the core issue to me is: OK, we were wrong, despite bemoaning your upcoming death and your fracturedness and fragmentation, you are not seeking help when investigating Buddhism Fine.

But then why are you interested in getting information about Buddhism?

Note telling me WHAT you want to know how Buddhists resolve conflicting goods or know their path is the best one or a valid one is not an answer to the question. That is an answer related to WHAT you want to learn.

Now why is the WHY important to me and perhaps the other two?

Because we have noticed things like:
a) someone in good faith answers your questions and you then tell them it’s all in their head or they have contraptions to soothe themselves and the like
b)someone (both Phyllo and I have gone through this) do relate what you ask for and 1) you forget that we have done this 2) later say that we have not done this and ask us to do it 3) in my case confuse me with an objectivist, like the fact that I have a preference means I am an ethicist and somehow need to demonstrate that everyone SHOULD have my preferences.
c) Act as if points made, even in threads that are not yours, are somehow wrong or offtopic since the right topic has to do with what you want people to do.

It ends up looking very passive-aggressive. Come and get mindread and get dismissed. Come answer my question and then the answers are so unimportant to you that you don’t even remember it happened. Come answer my question and then I will respond by repeating things that do not apply to the individual responding in good faith to your question. cut and paste, almost bot-like behavior. But perhaps you have some other WHY where this all makes sense. If so, you are keeping your cards close to your chest. It’s not for help, despite all the bemoaning your situation. It’s not to have a chance to mindread and frustrate people who you used to openly say were causing a lot of the world’s problems (objectivists).

Right now it looks like you dish out something, but seem to think we should be aghast that we are talking about you personally, when you do this readily enough to anyone who actually does what you ask. And rather in a rather facile way.

Sure, that kind of thing can be and often is healthy behavior in a group or project or community. Hey, you’re being false and wasting people’s time. You are claiming X, but you are acting hypocritically if this is the case. Hey, you are making it seem like your interest should be the group interest so you hijack activities as if they should (objectively) be what you are interested in. Hey, you’re being manipulative. Of course groups and communities can abuse this kind of thing, but your reaction presumes that it is per se wrong to do this.

Nope, dear objectivist. I’m sure you are aware of the idea of a signal to noise ratio. Right now you seem like passive-aggressive noise. But who knows. Maybe you have a WHY where your behavior makes sense and it is not that.

Do let us know.

Here you say to Phyllo…

It sounds like you believe there is a lot at stake. Since Phyllo can join groups and has suggested it, he should engage directly in the religions. OK, you don’t do this. You have your method. You method is via the screen. But you still have all that ‘at stake’. What do you think your process here will do to deal with all that so much that is at stake?

Exactly. And, believe it or not, me too!! So, here, given all that is on the line, let those who do believe in both objective morality and immortality provide me with an argument – and then a demonstration of that argument – such that I would be willing to go further with them.

Okay, but look at all I have to gain. Those who do embrace objective morality here and now, and then immortality there and then, certainly don’t have to endure a grim and glum assessment of the “human condition” as revolving around an essentially meaningless existence that ends for all eternity in oblivion.

Well, that’s the chance they take. But it’s less my intention to take these things away from them and more my attempt to yank myself up out of those thoughts that preclude me being able to experience them.

What I think is that I don’t really know what to think. In fact, in regard to relationships of this sort I don’t think that anyone really can know what to think. That’s embedded in the astounding complexity of any particular human psychological perspective rooted in dasein. All I know is that, given my own set of circumstances, I don’t have access to the new experiences I once swirled about in. So here I am. Acting out the few options that I have left.

How could I possibly know that unless the exchange actually unfolded? All I know is that given my own experiences coupled with my own attempt to understand them through, among other things, philosophy and science, I have come to the conclusions I lay out in my signature threads.

All I can then do in places like this is to hear out others. Given their own existential trajectory and attempts to understand it beyond what most folks on this planet who eschew science and philosophy for Gods and religions, or for pop culture and mass consumption, or are embedded in a life that revolves literally around bare subsistence from day to day, what have they come up with.

Let’s just agree to disagree regarding those exchanges.

Instead, let’s start up a new one. Not communism or abortion. Something else. An exchange in which you can point out more specifically all the criticisms you have of me.

So you want people to spend their time and energy trying to convince you. You want them to do all the work.

If you want to feel better, less fractured, “saved” then it’s up to you to do it for yourself.

It’s been pointed out to you that your “method” doesn’t seem to be producing any results.

The exchange has been unfolding for years. You could have earned two university degrees in that time.

But every day it sounds like you just read my first post.

Starting a new exchange and expecting different results … that’s the definition of insanity.

That was very clear. Thank you. I have made references to cut and paste. To it being like communicating with a bot. And, yes, forgets rather obvious things that have happened or about the people he is communicating with.
But this was concise, clear and put it in simple human terms.

Again, and again and again: note a particular context in which you and I can explore our respective reactions to behaviors in conflict over moral narratives and political agendas at the existential juncture of identity, value judgments and political economy. As the discussion unfolds you can point in particular to things that confirm your assessment of me and the accusations you make about me above.

Then we can relate that to Buddhism and religion and pragmatism. More or less fractured and fragmented as the case may be.