Except it’s not because Buddhism is quite close to nihilism with what it teaches.
You say that Buddhism isn’t the only thing I would do this with but in my experience it is. If I never heard of it or read it then none of this would be happening.
How am I just supposed to ignore stuff like:
“Freedom is generally thought of as the ability to achieve goals and satisfy desires. But what are the sources of these goals and desires? If they arise from ignorance, habitual patterns, and negative emotions, is the freedom to pursue these goals true freedom—or is it just a myth?
In this book, Chögyam Trungpa explores the meaning of freedom in the profound context of Tibetan Buddhism. He shows how our attitudes, preconceptions, and even our spiritual practices can become chains that bind us to repetitive patterns of frustration and despair. He also explains how meditation can bring into focus the causes of frustration, and how these negative forces can aid us in advancing toward true freedom. ”
Well, the rest of the world has no problem ignoring philosophical conundrums.
You yourself are already doing it. The sayings of LaoTzu? You’re ignoring those just fine. The teachings of the Third Baptist Church of Atlanta? Bet you’re ignoring them. And those Zoroastrians… phew.
But the crap that you’re using to torment yourself? You’d better figure out a way to deal with that. Right now.
Look, if your car started catching fire whenever you used the turn signal you’d take it to a professional. *
Do the same with your brain.*
Don’t drive around while on fire, ignoring everyone’s advice to get to a repair shop. Instead you’d rather just post “This fire is soooo uncomfortable…” and try to get people to feel bad for you because your car’s on fire.
…easily. You ignore it easily. You shrug and grin easily.
That says meditation can bring causes of frustration into focus, after specifying that attitudes and preconceptions and practices can bind one to said frustration, after talk of goals and desires which might have bad origins. Now, maybe that’s all true; maybe it’s not, but, hey, for now, let’s stick to Maybe It Is.
Maybe It Is a way to deal with frustration.
Did it say anything about being The One And Only way to deal with that? Did I miss the bit where — again, if this is all true — there’s not also a second way that can also work just fine, plus a third way that’s been known to work too?
Machinaforce, why do you assume that Buddhists, and only Buddhists, are 100% correct in everything they say?
Could it be possible that different schools of Buddhism have different views? That not all Buddhists think exactly the same? That they disagree with one another and debate fundamental concepts? That they consider different scriptures to be valid or invalid? That there is no single authoritative version of Buddhism?
Could it even be remotely possible that Buddhists are mistaken about something? That they have misunderstood something, or misinterpreted something? That some of their teachings may have become distorted or corrupt over the centuries? Could it be possible that their understanding of the nature of reality is not the only possible understanding?
My understanding of Buddhism is that it warns against attachments to both good and bad.
This is a simplified explanation but a fundamental starting point.
It appears that you are exhibiting the very characteristic that Buddhism strongly cautions against. Your attachment to your perception of Buddhism is keeping you in a never ending loop of suffering.
In any description of reality one has to accept the nature of impermanence. It is inescapable. We are only here for a short time, everything changes and we cannot expect either suffering or happiness to last. That is not specific to Buddhism.
Additionally you seem to have absorbed some of the theoretical aspects of Buddhism but not the application. It can be like going to university for a chosen field of study and then landing a job. Depending on the complexity of the job, it is often not what one expected. You have to actually work at the job for a period of time to become proficient. With time and experience one gains understanding and discernment.
I am just repeating what others have already described. Pardon me if I have misunderstood your problem. I hope you get some relief from this.
The thing is that I haven’t read those teachings, not in really interested in them that much. But Buddhism is pretty much everywhere I look. And some of their questions are ones that I don’t know the answer to. Like why do atheists have such an Abrahamic sense of death.
“You should though, think long and hard, and consider why rebirth is so antithetical to an atheist viewpoint- why do most atheists hold an abrahamic conception of life as ceasing upon the cessation of physical activities? There is no soul, so why the insistence that oblivion is the result of that ego-state passing, and what about when that ego-state passes but the physical form persists? What happens to the matter of that body, etc etc.”
Which to me is more like a series of claims without evidence. Death is getting a little more tricky with medical advancement but it’s still the cessation of biological activities. As of yet I don’t have any reason or evidence to think that rebirth is an actual thing.
It’s possible but their words just seem so put together that it seems true and then you have the personal experience of those who follow it and claim what happened. It’s not like flat earth or anti-vax nonsense that is easy to dismiss as those people just refuse to accept the data.
“However, this is still something important to consider. Buddhism is very much so a religion, rather than a simple philosophy. There are many great secular purposes that can be derived from buddhism- Psychology for example has recently found a ton of copacetic values within much of buddhist practise, or is arriving at what buddhism has been doing for centuries. Still, buddhism requires a good bit of practise and study, and it is more than a philosophy because it fulfills a spiritual role, soteriology and supernatural concepts aside buddhism is a praxis by which we arrive at abnegation of ego-differentiated self. It is a vehicle for mystic experiences as any long-term buddhist practioner will assure you. The great trouble here is what has been the biggest weakness of buddhism- It is a monastic faith at it’s heart. This means that among the laity a sort of “low” religion has emerged- You do things that make a good buddhist just because that’s what you do. You give food to monks and lamas, you say a few prayers, and that’s that. But these trappings and material clingings all have a purpose as a means of engaging the mind in certain activities. Take the tibetan prayer wheel for instance: On the surface you turn it and that gives you good merit, which means a better birth. But deeper than that, the wheel is a praxis by which you engage in the mental experience of having prayed without the activity of prayer, it is useful for not only illustrating the divide between participation and agency, but as well encourages that ego-death state by means of a tacit participation in compassion practise.
The faith is built entirely around the idea that all that we percieve, and experience is mediated, often greatly, by language and learned or assumed concepts that have become a deep part of out intellectual processes: Cognition and Emotion. The mystic attainment in buddhism is that which allows one to enter a psychological state of consciousness capable of affording participation in an unmediated world. The mediated world, it is argued, leads to cognitive and emotive processes that are not ultimately desireable reactions to the stimuli of the world. The question of these religious trappings in relation to attaining this psychological ego-death is that many of means we might use to reach this unmediated state are forms and methods that are themselves mediators of the world. The low religious, or lay, application of this high religious pursuit becomes the application of those means which are ding-fur-sich: sometimes linguistic means like koan, sometimes cognitive ablations like mantra recitation, sometimes tactile methods of conditioning such as mala. It is generally acknowledge that the most efficient vehicle for attaining this kind of ego-death in any permanence is still that of meditation- the conditioning of the mind to guide it towards conditioning ego-death as a default measure to ensure a finality in the assumption of that mental-psychological state. However those means which function as ding-fur-sich do so and are done with the understanding that their practise and encouragement conditions the end-goal of nonmediated participation. Often buddhism avoids this kind of deep analytical discourse because it is not usually itself one of those means which encourages those conditions, being a linguistic and conceptual construction of dialectic that is reliant upon the assumption of those learned concepts that lead to mediated, rather than unmediated, participation. The dialectic becomes that which reifies mediative-mind."
Reading about the way those who follow it speak of it makes it hard to simply dismiss as I don’t have data to the contrary or an argument otherwise. Saying that it’s known what psychology is just getting to doesn’t help either since it makes it harder to refute as just rambling a and makes it more grounded in scientific practice.
In short it’s different, it’s not as faith based as Catholicism which is easy to ignore.
That’s kinda weird. Don’t you live in the US? From my experience, you can go a lifetime here barely even hearing that such a thing as Buddhism even exists.
But you don’t, as far as I can tell, need to “refute” it. Or to “dismiss” it. Or any of that other stuff. You say it offers a way to help deal with suffering and frustration and sadness and so on, and for the sake of argument let’s say that’s true.
It might not be; maybe someone could “refute” that. But let’s leave that aside while we do what I just said for a moment and act as if it happens to be true.
Is it the only thing that can help deal with suffering and frustration and sadness? Are you making that claim? Are they? Because I may have missed it, with all the rapid give and take around here — but if not, then what’s to refute?
Let’s say you’re looking to get really drunk, and let’s say that I offer you a cold beer and tell you it’ll get the job done. Maybe it wouldn’t; but, hey, let’s grant for the sake of argument that it would. So what? Would that mean rum wouldn’t work? Would it mean gin wouldn’t? Would it mean vodka wouldn’t?
Well . . . no. You don’t need to refute the claim about beer; maybe you can, but you don’t have to bother: maybe I’m right about that beer, and maybe I’m wrong, and either way you can just nod politely and drink your bourbon.
I guess that is true. But they way they make it sound is that other options are inferior and don’t last and that this is the only way to be rid of suffering permanently. That if you choose not to do this then you choose to suffer. In a sense you aren’t happy because you don’t want to be.
You seem to be committed to Buddhism, and you say that Buddhism is ‘everywhere you look’ in South Florida.
So it would make sense to go out and speak to actual Buddhists, rather than discussing it here. Go to a Temple, attend some of their events, speak to experts on Buddhist philosophy. I’m sure they will make you very welcome, and perhaps they will be able to give you some answers and insights.
Face to face conversations with real Buddhists will be ten times better than exchanging messages with strangers on the internet, who mostly have only a general and superficial knowledge of Buddhism.
I don’t see where you’ve quoted them as saying that. I do, though, see where you wrote this: “I’m guessing it’s true that plenty of people are just fine without whatever Buddhism posits. I just don’t know how some read and research it and just ignore or don’t bother with it.” Remember that?
So to the best of your knowledge, plenty of folks are just fine without (what you say) Buddhism posits. And, to the best of your knowledge, some folks read and research it and then don’t bother with it — presumably because it doesn’t seem to offer them much, since they can already be “just fine without”.
Again, I don’t see where you cite the They Make It Sound group as actually ruling out other options; I only see where you seem to think plenty of folks are just fine without it. Maybe some people are just fine with it, and, gosh, that’s super, feel free to learn from them if you’d like; but so long as you figure plenty are just fine without, then why not learn from them instead?
Because I don’t know. I just don’t get it. How people can read new information or learn about something new without getting sucked into it. I know some get something out of it and that’s fine, what I don’t know is how people can read and study it but not choose to follow it.
Yes, you do; you said so yourself, when you contrasted it with “Catholicism which is easy to ignore”. And it’s not just Catholicism: “it’s hard for me to ignore the things that they say unlike other religions.” And you noted that it’s not just other religions: “It’s not like flat earth or anti-vax nonsense that is easy to dismiss”.
As far as I can tell, you’re saying you get it right every other time, when you keep routinely choosing not to follow stuff — and then get it wrong this one time, even as folks who don’t bother all that much with the other stuff also don’t bother all that much with this stuff, which they see as significantly similar.
They disregard A and B and C and D and also E. You disregard A and B and C and D, and then say, whoa, E! How can anyone choose not to follow E?!?
Again because they say that psychology supports it or that psychology is arriving at what Buddhism has known this whole time. Which to me just means that it “confirms” it, aka “its nice to get a second opinion”. Then again psychology has had a problem with the reproducibility of some of its experiments soo…