Christian fundamentalists say that science confirms the bible. Islamic fundamentalists say that science confirms the Quran. Hindu fundamentalist say that science confirms their ancient beliefs. True Believers say all sorts of stupid shit.
You guys realize Machinaforce’s problems have nothing to do with Buddhism or anything Buddhists say. He has some sort of mental health issue, probably involving anxiety and Depression and obsessive thoughts. Buddhism is simply where his obsession went. That’s why he doesn’t respond seriously to your posts. When you argue with him as though he posted a serious philosophical inquiry you are making a category mistake.
Machinaforce I believe you are sincere, and are suffering. I wish you well and encourage you to seek out qualified help.
Not really, it’s just that people assume the problem is something other that what is being said when it isn’t. I haven’t heard a response to the “teachings” I have (badly) paraphrased.
OK, man. I know better than to beat my head against this wall.
My response was, and is, that: if you’re right about those “teachings” — and that’s a big if — being ‘a’ way, I still don’t see that it says it’s the only way.
It’s like I’d said before: near as I can tell, there sure do seem to be folks who drink responsibly, who drink in moderation; they don’t drive drunk, or show up for work drunk, or get a hangover so bad they fail to show up for work; and they never get so drunk that they vomit on someone’s shoes; but they’ve budgeted a reasonable amount of money for good spirits, and they enjoy indulging with alcohol…
…and let’s say there’s a guy who did drink to excess, who was spending more money than he should on the stuff even before he lost his job due to drunken excess, and he vomits on shoes before driving drunk and so on. And if that guy heard a teetotaler explain the benefits of swearing off alcohol entirely? Well, then, shucks, I don’t think I’d say the teetotaler is actually wrong…
…I’d just say, hey, maybe he’s right; but, even so, it sure does also seem that some folks manage to have a good time without going all-or-nothing. Like, they manage it by just being — sensible? Something about wisdom and experience? They seem happy and worldly, as if genuinely enjoying good wine at a fine banquet in the convivial manner of people who, uh, don’t overdo it?
What am I, chopped liver?
You’ve (badly) paraphrased Buddhism as saying, basically “reality ain’t real (and that’s a good thing for some reason!)”.
Here is my response, so you will have heard a response:
“So what if it isn’t real? It’s tangible and lasting and not even the Buddhists think it’s going to end any time soon. So why should I give a crap if it’s not given the label ‘real’?”
I mean, seriously. I don’t believe in spiritualist bullshit, but I do believe that all of reality deep down is just a bunch of little particles just pulling on and bumping up against one another. It’s not too hard to come up with a way of viewing the universe in which people don’t exist at all! And yet despite that we experience existence, and that’s good enough for me!
I don’t believe in particles–it is force fields all the way down.
You can’t talk about buddhism without reading about it first. The idea of not doing the reading and then batting around abstract concepts with anonymous people on the internet about it…it doesn’t work.
Buddhist wisdom has been subjected to reality testing for 3 thousand years. You are not going to challenge it in this forum.
Here are two western zen buddhist psychotherapist authors:
Albert Low - The Iron Cow of Zen
Hubert Benoit - The Supreme Doctrine etc.
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche, 1992
I wouldn’t call it reality testing. It’s more like a cause and effect thing. Also the people I knew in the past who were Buddhist and successful kind of smacked of crazy to me and not too helpful.
I mean reality testing as in trying to see reality as clearly as possible, among hundreds of thousands of practitioners, masters, monks, and scholars, going back 2000 years. I put the cited literature against your anecdotes.
You are very attracted to it it seems to me. I think it has potential for you.
You couldn’t be more wrong, it’s more like a parasite that feeds off me that for some reason I can’t just dismiss and let go.
Also I still wouldn’t call that reality testing, like I said it is really just do A an B happens. I don’t think they realized their “insights” were just the result of their actions but not proof of them. They believed what they did gave them a clearer picture, but all it does is give a different one. I mean if you have no idea what IT really is then how do you know when you encounter IT? It doesn’t matter how many did it, they didn’t realize their actions were just products of rewiring the brain. It’s old, I’ll give it that, but that’s about it. Shamanism is older than that still, and that did nothing for me. “Spiritual teachings” are about as good as fairy tales in a sense.
And yet for some reason I give deference to them simply because they are Buddhist and not because of what they say. It’s kind of like how I can ignore anything else but not this.
I lived almost 25 years immersed in the Buddhist society of Thailand and probably will live there again some day. And I found many Buddhists in Thailand and elsewhere in Asia to be much like Christians in the US in that while they are nominally Buddhists and go through the superficial trappings of the religion, they often don’t know anything about it. Just do what the monks tell them to do. The deep, mystical aspects are the stuff of Hollywood movies.
As for loneliness, it’s a real problem among Thais. They do equate being alone with being lonely and avoid it at all costs. Often enjoying my own company myself, when I lived in the North as a Peace Corps Volunteer, many Thais were astonished I wanted to live alone. I was constantly asked by worried friends and colleagues if I was lonely, and I assured them I was not. I could tell some did not believe me, while others took it as proof of what strange people foreigners were.
This isn’t unique to Thais or Buddhism. It’s simply cultural. You see the same thing among both Hindus and Muslims in India - they are used to communal living, and they don’t like living alone. Even a group staying in single hotel rooms can be an issue. They would rather share.
What you are doing is described very well in the literature you aren’t reading. It’s literally a cliche. Your mind is squirming around it, but you are being drawn in (By your own admission). The explanation in the second paragraph is incoherent beyond any possible response.
IANABuddhist, so I may have this wrong, but. . .
As I understand it, in the practice of Buddhism one is meant to achieve a complete release of the “Self.” If you are using Buddhist quotes and teachings piecemeal in order to make your “self” feel better in various circumstances, then you are missing the point entirely. Rather, it should become progressively less important to you whether your particular “self” is suffering or not.
As a kid I read an old Buddhist-inspired re-telling of the Hansel and Gretel story. At the end, Hansel tells Gretel that they have not sinned in killing the witch, because it was in self-defense. And Gretel responds that the sin is in having so much “self” sticking out all over you, that you might have to kill to defend it.
It’s actually not if you take the time to read it. These monks and students are just following a process but that process doesn’t necessary reveal truth but rather create a state that they believe is the true reality.
Kind of a warped version of the story in which the moral is to just die. But Buddhism doesn’t say there is no “self”, which is the error. They just say there is no permanent self or “soul”. At least that’s what the Tibetans say. But even if they did say that they don’t have proof for it outside of the results of meditation.
PLus if I buy into that “no self” literally then it would render anything I like or want to do pointless.
You don’t know what they are doing. You need to take time to read any of many many books about it. It’s as if you had an opinion about the way the universe formed, but you feel like you’ve got a handle on stuff, intuitively, and don’t need to read anything. You do.