I don't get Buddhism

If you’re telling the truth, it doesn’t prove that you’re not playing “heads I win tails you lose”. It just shows that you’re not conscious of the game you’re playing.

Duplicate

Once again that gap between the points I make here in response to KT’s accusation…

…and your reaction to it.

What does one have to do with the other?

You don’t even know whose accusation it was. And you don’t understand that it’s a matter of process and not content. Errors which would be understandably human, if not for your hubris.

Yeah, you say that and you always sound resentful … like someone is cheating in a game.

What would be the use of that to someone who is thinking at every step that "this Buddhist is imagining a fantasy world ‘on the other side’?

It seems like a desire for a distraction … an entertaining story while waiting. With a preference for morality and afterlife rather than unicorns and dragons.

To get something more out of it, you have to empty your teacup first.

Nope, same thing.

Note to others:

Does that surprise you? :sunglasses:

Well, sure, a part of me resents the fact that others are able to think themselves into believing in their very own objective morality on this side of the grave and immortality and salvation on the other side, while I’m not.

But that certainly doesn’t make them any less the winners, right?

Again, think of what is at stake here when the bottom line is one’s peace of mind!!

It’s no fucking game, that’s for sure.

There you go again, explaining to others what is really behind my motivation and intention here. Still, the bottom line [mine] stays the same: Where’s the beef?

With regard to that crucial gap between what they claim about Buddhism and what they are able to demonstrate is in fact true about it.

Then the part where different Buddhists embrace value judgments at the opposite end of the political spectrum. Both championing enlightenment, and both thinking their own political prejudices will afford them a better reincarnation.

If only in their heads.

Unless of course they can demonstrate to me that it’s not just in their heads. That there really is something to it all. Something substantive and substantial for example.

Quite the contrary. Unicorns and dragons have nothing to do with the terrible pain and suffering the human race inflicts on itself over conflicting goods. Nor do they count in regard to whether “I” is obliterated for all time to come or goes on to embody immortality and salvation in Heaven or Nirvana.

On the other hand, God and/or the Buddhist equivalent of Him have everything to do with them. But how does someone like me go about making that leap of faith without demonstrable arguments from those who already have?

Unless, of course, God and/or the Buddhist equivalent makes direct contact with me.

I would not call them winners. It’s not a contest with winners and losers.

What did I say that is problematic?

You have said hundreds of times that gods are imagined, the afterlife is imagined and religions are invented.

You said so here : " able to think themselves into believing that enlightenment, karma, reincarnation and Nirvana are actually real things"

And here: “Both championing enlightenment, and both thinking their own political prejudices will afford them a better reincarnation. If only in their heads.

And here : “Unless of course they can demonstrate to me that it’s not just in their heads.

That undercurrent is everywhere in your posts.

You don’t think it’s at the back of your mind when talking to a Buddhist? You manage to suspend your disbelief?

By engaging in practices instead of looking for arguments. That’s what people keep suggesting to you.

You say something like : “I’m going to do this practice for 30 minutes (or X times) each day even though I think it’s complete nonsense. I will reevaluate after 1 month”

Then here we will just have to agree to disagree. If you think your moral and political values reflect the real me in sync with the right thing to do…and that in embodying them you will attain immortality and salvation on the other side…then, from my point of view, you are beyond doubt holding a winning hand next to the hand that someone like me is holding.

At least when the criteria is peace of mind.

Even if it is all only in your head. With things like this it doesn’t matter what is in fact true. That’s the beauty of it.

In fact, from my vantage point, to think otherwise is nothing short of ludicrous.

Anyone else here not see a religious commitment as the equivalent of a winning hand given the stakes involved? Please explain why.

That I would be "thinking at every step that ‘this Buddhist is imagining a fantasy world ‘on the other side’’?

How on earth could I psossibly know that? All I am basically interested in exploring on this thread is how Buddhists connect the dots between morality and immortality. And the extent to which what they believe here, they are able to demonstrate.

That beef.

No, I noted only that I do not believe in religion or in God or in the afterlife. Here and now. And others that do are either able to take what they imagine is true here “in their head” and reconfigure it into an argument able to be tested and verified as demonstrable or they are not.

How does that not make their convictions here any less “in their head”. How does that prevent them from making the attempt to demonstrate that what they do believe is in fact demonstrable?

Where’s the part that demonstrates that what I think they do believe can only be imaginary?

And around and around we go. My “situation” precludes any number of options open to others. And, trust me: If someone here is able to convince me that Buddhism is the real deal in regard to the morality/immortality nexus, well, that’s a whole other level of reality.

And, again, as I point out time and again, given what is on the line here, how can you not be out there yourself trying different religious practices…to be sure that one other than your own isn’t the one true path instead.

You’re clutching so tightly on to certain ideas.

Don’t hang on to the one true path. Don’t hang on to immortality or salvation.

Buddhist practice could help loosen the grip.

It might feel good.

I’m not clutching tightly to any ideas – mine, yours or theirs. Instead, I’m clutching to the possibility [however slim it seems to me now] that one of us will be able to demonstrate something – anything – truly substantive about the relationship between morality here and now and immortality there and then.

And though you may scoff, no one is more committed to the hope that my own ideas will be shown [by anyone] to be wrong. That there is in fact “one true path” able to obviate conflicting goods and deliver us instead to something analogous to the promised land on the other side.

Maybe even the possibility that in a No God world, the arguments of the sociopaths and the “show me the money” nihilists who run the planet, can be subsumed in an actual deontological political agenda rooted not in dasein but in categorical and imperative moral dictums.

Moral mandates actually able to be enforced.

Besides, lots and lots and lots of things are out there for us if the whole point is just to “feel good”.

Nope, for me the search here is basically for a demonstrable assessment able to convince me that those who argue, “in the absence of God, all things are permitted” are full of shit.

That and something – anything – that might reasonably be construed as the antidote to oblivion.

That makes sense.

I think one interesting thing about Iamb’s positions/experiences is how well they fits Buddhism. His sense of self. He puts ‘I’ often in citation marks. He talks about experiencing himself as fractured and fragmented. In some way he has experienced things that people do in fact experience in Buddhist meditation. That the self is a batching of fragmentary conglomerates. He also mentions impermanence a lot - though not using that word. That what he believes today he might not believe tomorrow. This also relates closely to what many Buddhists experience and belief, that the self is not a thing, is not permanent (even within a lifetime) and is very contingent.

In all his reading and slapdab posting he does not seem to notice that he has reached at the very least many of the experiences categorized in Buddhism and shares Buddhism’s sense of their importance.

Now I am not a buddhist, and while I have done the practices and still do things that bear some resemblance to Buddhist practices, there are difference and I am not an advocate for the system. But it seems to me what we have is someone who has found out a layer of experience that Buddhists necessarily experience and have spent thousands of years trying to reduce the suffering of them. One major difference is Iamb is seeking to reform his Self and Buddhists are not. In fact they consider this part of the cause of suffering, though certainly not the only one. It seems odd to me in the extreme that he wouldn’t want to be in the presence of people who have a system addressing the exact pain he is describing and which they note in ways very similarly to how he does and differently from how, say, Abrahamic religions do.

He’d prefer to discussion reincarnation and Karma with non-Buddhists who happen to know more about Buddhism than he does, rather than actually learn by doing with people who have spent decades on process they think have helped them precisely with his pet issues.

Any simple read of an idiot’s guide to Buddhism or a fairly short book on Buddhism would have shown him is kinship with some of the core ideas of Buddhism. But after posting random stuff off the internet for months he still can’t recognize this. And I pointed out some of this earlier in this thread.

But there is nothing wrong with his approach to learning, according to him. It is either the only method (since he has limited mobility) or the best one or he just ignores others.

Well, it’s not working well or he would have noticed a connection between his thought and Buddhism.

And it should be noted that scientists also, like the Abrahamic religions and many other religious and secular approaches, to not have the focus that Buddhism share. Generally speaking they do not focus on such intra-self and temporal self inconsistancies and the suffering this causes.

Followed by a listing of ideas possibilities that you’re clutching. :confused:

Taking a look at one example:

Why do you need this? Why do you want this?

What would happen if you let go of it?

What if it didn’t matter if “moral mandates” are enforced or not?

How would that feel?

Well, he is just another stooge, right? :wink:

On the other hand, I don’t have access to enlightenment and karma here and now culminating in reincarnation and [possibly] Nirvana there and then.

Not unlike you, right?

Ah, but only in regard to moral and political values in the is/ought world. Whereas in my interactions with others in the either/or world, I don’t feel fractured and fragmented at all.

Not unlike you, right?

Okay, let’s look at the world that we actually live in.

Across the globe there are endless clashes between those who insist this is the right thing to do and others who insist that is the right thing to do. Culminating in, say, wars.

Or genocide.

Conflicting goods, let’s call them.

The human suffering down through the ages has been nothing short of ghastly, horrific, agonizing.

Some with God, others without God.

Now, imagine instead a world where we were in fact able to establish an objective morality that all rational people were willing to abide by because somehow this morality was, in fact, both demonstrable and able to be enforced.

Only for the objectivists out in the world that we live in now, this already exists. In their heads. Then, from time to time, some of them gain access to political power in order to make sure that you share their political agenda too.

History, let’s call it.

And that’s before we get to the moral nihilists who own and operate, among other things, the global economy.

Well, that’s not going to happen. So moving on … what can you do in the present for yourself?

Well, that’s your approach to it. My approach is to ponder what some think can be done coming into conflict with what others think can be done. The part embedded in dasein and conflicting goods. Then the part where the objectivists among us move beyond what they think can be done and insist in turn that they know what should be done.

"Then, from time to time, some of them gain access to political power in order to make sure that you share their political agenda too.

History, let’s call it."

Yeah, people who you don’t agree with get power. You gotta live with that. And I don’t mean live with anger.

Well, you have to be realist about what is doable.

Does your pondering achieve anything?