I don't get Buddhism

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.

No, I want them to spend their time and energy noting how they managed to convince themselves. Given the experiences in their lives and given the manner in which they then explored philosophy and various religious narratives in order to ascertain the optimal perspective in which to intertwine their moral values and their fate on the other side.

You, for example. Or Felix.

Again, that’s why I am here. This is the religon and spirituality board in a philosophy venue. I would expect to bump into other intelligent and articulate folks who, in turn, dive down deep below the surface in examining these relationships. What might I learn from them? What might I impart in turn.

That’s my problem, right? Only it’s not really much of a problem at all. After all, it’s not like these discussions we have here are fateful much beyond ILP itself. Right? I spend a few hours a day looking for new ways to stop myself from being the man I have thought myself into believing that, here and now, “I” am.

Lots to gain with plenty to lose.

So, you let me worry about that part, okay?

I’ll take that for a “no” then. :wink:

Since I and others are asked not to “derail” the second “I don’t get Buddhism” thread, I will spare them my attempt to explore the relationship between 1] what others do get about Buddhism and 2] my own interest in religion: the existential relationship between morality on this side of the grave and immortality on the other side.

The two components which, in terms of the lives that we actually live, encompass what I construe to be the heart and the soul of religion.

So, with respect to karma, enlightened behavior, reincarnation and Nirvana, forget – ultimately – about being rational?

That’s the advice we are being offered in a philosophy venue?

Now, true, with respect to the tools of philosophy in the is/ought world, I often note there seem to be clear limitations in regard to both reason’s use value and exchange value. But I point this out in order to suggest further that, with regard to the existential relationship between morality [value judgments] and immortality, philosophers/theologians to date have not yet succeeded in pinning this down. Instead, I suggest this relationship is rooted more in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

So what I’ll do on this thread is to ask those who adhere to the thinking of the OP on the second thread, to explore with me how this “experiential” approach to Buddhism allows them to “go further” when it actually comes down to choosing enlightened behaviors here and now in order to attain that which they are then able to demonstrate is the path that will allow them to avoid being reincarnated as, say, a dung beetle, and eventually attain that which they are able to demonstrate in turn as Nirvana.

On the other hand, here in a philosophy venue, we are being told that all of that isn’t necessary at all. “Experientially” one can eventually just come to “know” all of this “in their head”.

Now that part I “get”.

Okay, given your own interactions with others in which the behaviors you choose are thought to be more or less enlightened, precipitating an incarnation of karma that you’d prefer leading eventually to a reincarnation that you’d hope for leading or not leading to whatever you construe Nirvana to be, what on earth is the above actually in relationship to.

How, from day to day, given the life you that actually live, might you explain this particular “general description intellectual contraption”?

Or, instead, is this world of words meant solely to create a “psychological state” that comforts and consoles you “spiritually” in, for example, a world being ravished by the coronavirus.

Speaking of which how exactly would Buddhists go about conveying something analogous to an explanation of how and why their own equivalent of God – the universe? – allows something like this to exist at all? Let alone the occasional “extinction event” that profoundly cripples the evolution of life on planet Earth.

And, let’s face it, in the next one, our own species is likely to be included when that Big One hits.

Let’s face it, you’re a lonely life negating asshole who wants company in a personal hell of his own creation.

Note to others:

See what I sometimes drive the objectivists too? My guess is that increasingly there is a part of him that is beginning to recognize the reason that he is really this perturbed by the points I raise.

That’s why KT is of interest to me. In some respects, he would seem to be in the same boat that I am in. Living in an essentially meaningless No God world, sans objective morality, that ends in the obliteration of “I” for all time to come.

And yet he reacts to me all the more furiously.

What on earth could possibly be more practical [and crucial] then in exploring Enlightenment through the behaviors that we choose in our interactions with others? After all, what is clearly not the “same for all” are those behaviors deemed to be either right or wrong, good or evil, enlightened or unenlightened. Particularly as it relates to the other side of the religious coin: the part where we are dead and gone from this side of the grave.

What “practical” aspects are others more intent on exploring here?

And surely the one thing that “theories, definitions, historic developments or creeds” share in common is the extent to which one’s assessment of them get’s one closer to being reincarnated into a more preferable form. Or closer to Nirvana.

Only, sans God, how exactly does that work? What “entity” is behind it?

To refer to me as an objectivist shows you have no understanding of me whatsoever.

Okay, explain to me what you think I mean by an objectivist.

Then, in a particular context, regarding disagreements over what it means to get Buddhism, explain more specifically why you are not what you construe that I construe an objectivist to be.

Finally, in regard to whatever it is that you do think your are instead, explain how you connect the dots between the behaviors you choose on this side of the grave as that relates to what you imagine the fate of your own particular “I” to be on the other side of the grave.

How would you describe substantively why you are definitely not like “I” am here?

Same for Phyllo and Karpel Tunnel.