Or to shorten the bit about the self:
" You must realize through meditation that there is no substantial self; rather, you are a composition of different elements that shares no essence."
I don’t follow.
You say I’m a composition of elements; and I have memories you lack, just as you have memories I lack; and I make decisions you wouldn’t, and vice versa. You’re a self, to take one example, who just now posted that as if you find it to be profound; and I’m a self who looks at it and says, “seems less interesting than Sartre’s line about how existence precedes essence; what’s all this, then?”
There are a number of differences between us: we can tell each other apart, and other people — er, sorry; other selves — can tell us apart likewise. When one of us gets thirsty, that remains the case if the other one knocks back a drink. If one of us learns something new, the other one might never find out. Maybe one of us will die tomorrow, and the other live on. That all strikes me as relevant; but why mention that you’re a composition of elements over there and I’m a composition of elements over here? How does that add anything to the discussion?
Really this whole thread (s) is disturbing.
I’ve mentioned in your threads before, Dude, get a hobby, buy a stack of comics, watch cartoons, do crossword puzzles. Seriously.
You need to get out of your own head. You are not the Universe. Neither am I.
We are just people. So much flotsam and jetsam floating around in this universe. (Dang, that’s deep)
Once and for all. You are real, the universe is real, people are real, thoughts are real. No one is perfect. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Always wash your hands after you use the restroom.
All that mumbo-jumbo you read is junk. Throw it away, recycle responsibly, we must keep the universe tidy.
Good luck on your journey through life. It might suck but it’s all we got.
(ETA: Burpo you are a genius, I think.)
Hobbies don’t work because this stuff tends to bleed into them quite easily.
As for the universe bit it keep thinking about some Zen koan that goes “what was your face before your mother and father were born”. This reminds me of that long chain of ancestors, to apes, to animals before that and then particles and then to the beginning of the universe. So by that logic you are the universe because of that long chain that led to here.
Why would you say one is the other just because one appears in some long, uh, chain that leads to the other? As far as I know, Thing A isn’t necessarily Thing B just because one is in a long chain that leads to the other.
I didn’t get to the bit about death before the constent errors and stupidity drove me to stop bothering to read their bullshit.
And there is definitely an independently existing self called me. The fact that that me has grown and changed based on interaction with external reality doesn’t mean that I don’t exist; that’s stupid and the people saying it are stupid. So that’s a statement that’s factually incorrect right there, and I detailed several other specific instances of factual incorrectness in my boredom-shortened dismantling of the cite itself. You ignoring that I pointed them out doesn’t make them go away.
I don’t have to realize stupid and demonstrably false things.
Well there does seem to be science to back up the illusion but about use being separate as well as our bodies: Sex And The Illusion Of Physical Form | HuffPost Life
The guy who wrote that has no understanding of the concept of maya at all. It’s a clickbait article with an irrelevant emphasis on sex.
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How does that link show there’s “science to back up the illusion”? He mentions facts (what percent of an adult’s body is water; what different percent of a baby’s body is water; and what’s the composition of dust; and so on) as if they’re merely knowable: as if they’re known to him, in particular; and as if his readers can know them, too. How is any of that an illusion? That sounds like mere reality is at hand, such that you can simply learn truths about the screaming baby or pile of dust that you’re looking at: of either, you can note, “that, over there, which seems to be separate from me, has a different chemical composition than I do.”
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You then say: “but about use being separate as well as our bodies”. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Did an entire phrase get dropped? Like, if you wrote ‘about use being separate From Our Minds as well as our bodies’, I could maybe start mulling it; but, as it is: “use being separate” from — what, exactly? And then you move on to “as well as our bodies”, like it’s the second item on a list of two; but I honestly can’t tell what the first item on that list would be.
What I meant was that he said it is evidence against us being separate entities and that it’s just forms or the illusion of forms. I asked him about it but his response told me nothing.
Like in regards to no self, how you aren’t a separate and atomized individual existing in the world but the result of everything else in existence. The way I can phrase it is that you aren’t a video game character that was made and then thrust into some universe. Rather it’s as though reality is like clay and your “form” is just a molding of the clay, but you mistake that for being an entity when really it’s just a different form of what is already there.
A thing can still be an individual entity even if they have been influenced by other things.
Yes, I know these folks say otherwise. They’re wrong.
I cannot believe I’m posting in this thread again.
Seriously, you’ve spent way too much of your life(my life, as well) trying to answer the unanswerable.
All these words you’ve written, all this time researching and reading. All the hours you’ve stared at your belly button and you’ll never figure it out. The best you can hope for is a constructive, happyish life. There’s no perfect. There’s no pure happiness. Things go wrong. Shit happens.
I could tell you a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. Maybe even get a YouTube following of my crappy woo beliefs. Sell you a bill of goods, so to speak. I’m no more correct than what you’re reading. Dude there’s no magic. It’s just a life you have. I have my life. You have yours. That’s all you get. You are not the universe. Nobody is. You’re a human being. That’s all. Choose to waste it looking for the answers. Fine. Go ahead. You be you. I’m gonna eat a burrito now. No magic needed. Just a microwave. And it makes me happy. You, too, can achieve this happiness. Look in the freezer section of your grocery store. For a buck 39 you will be happy, for awhile. I promise. Baby steps. Tomorrow, maybe frozen pizza.
Carl Sagan said it much better. You’re no Carl Sagan.
It’s essentially the same thing.
How so?
How is he mistaken on Maya?
As I had, how is he misunderstanding it?
Dude, don’t shout into the void. An answer will come or it won’t.
And don’t look at me. As far as I’m concerned, maya is 3d-rendering software.
I took some 3D modeling classes a while back, starting around 2010. Google was a huge help - I’d Google “Maya 2010” and the issue I had, and get lots of great information. Worked great for two years, until Maya 2012 came out, and all my search results were suddenly about bullshit end-of-the-world woo.
