I guess. But the no self aspect bugs me:
The above is just a point. But it seems to okay off of real fears. Like if there is no me then what on earth do I build my life on.
I try to be logical and clear. But to be honest it’s how they claim to be beyond mind that hooks me in. I don’t know why I fall for that mysticism.
Well what I meant by solipsism is that I “believed” it to be true and my brain made it appear to be so. I.e everything around me felt unreal and illusory.
As far as the Hume lady is concerned, she is incorrect. Mostly in regard to the self for if there is no “one” then there is no compassion, love, empathy. I know I lost those things when I briefly believed that. If you throw out the idea of the self then you lose a lot with it. I’m guessing she didn’t think too much on it.
I mean, aren’t you troubled by the statement that meditation reveals that you are not alive.
No, because it’s a stupid statement
But why is it stupid?
Also how can I (or you) be sure it isn’t true?
Come on. You are alive. Again I urge you to see a doctor to deal with your obsessions. This is my last post about this. Good luck.
Well, *I *can be sure because Descartes did the work for me long ago. Seriously, I used to mess around with this sort of thing when I was in college. (I minored in philosophy.) The difference between what I did and what you’re talking about is that I had a sure sense of self to start with. You don’t seem to have that. Furthermore, as others have also said, you’re not just exploring this stuff: you have intrusive thoughts about it to the extent that you’re incessantly doubting your own reality, and it’s not doing anything for you.
Seriously, find yourself a wise therapist and let THAT guru be your guide. tay off youtube, etc. and don’t go back until you get your mind straight via a good shrink.
But there are other philosophies that cast doubt on that very claim about a strong sense of self saying that it is an illusion and a source of suffering.
I don’t believe for one second that mediation could reveal that I’m not alive. For one thing, who would it be revealing that to?
Philosophies that suggest that one’s perceptions are false are specious and unproductive, but philosophies that include seriously thinking that the person doing the thinking doesn’t exist are stupid. The thoughts themselves are a signpost saying “There is a thinking entity behind these thoughts.”
And any philosophy that says otherwise is, quite obviously, wrong.
Every time I ask that they say “who is doing the thinking”, etc. The claim is that there is no solid and unchanging you carried moment to moment, that the idea of you is an illusion. They say thoughts are present but not really a thinker.
Needless to say I don’t know how to respond to that.
The idea that things have to be static and unchanging to have continuous identity is a false statement. Consider a car - the engine runs, the wheels turn, it’s not solid and unchanging. However it still has continuity of existence, obviously. And even more obviously it doesn’t cease to exist the moment you turn the key.
So no, the fact that you are not an unmoving statue doesn’t mean you doesn’t exist. To claim otherwise requires one to be using a silly approach to defining identity which is utterly and completely incompatible with how the concept is used in reality.
You could respond to this first: Who the hell are “they”? No more "they"s, for fuck’s sake-quote real people. It is extremely unfair to ask us to respond to the whims of the unnamed "they"s you keep bringing up, so tell us who said what, and in what context(this is where cites would come in handy, btw).
I say they because it’s usually some variation of Eastern Mysticism.
With stuff like:
"Historically, one of the biggest obstacles in overcoming problems in life and reaching enlightenment was the fact that the mind could not be precisely defined. This prevented people from discovering who they are and how to become Truth. This meditation defines the human mind as an accumulation of pictures, stored within one’s body and mind. These pictures are an accumulation of past experiences which are taken through the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and body. …
You will discover all the answers to these questions as true wisdom enters into your mind by cleansing the false mind. Through the method of this meditation, you can cleanse your mind. This involves a guided simple step-by-step method that anyone can easily follow. There are seven levels in this meditation. Even after completing just the first level you will get to know that the true mind has come in, and that is the enlightenment."
Which is pretty much on a poster in front of the meditation center. From the first part it seems like they are saying that subjectivity is false. That reality and the things in it are not what we think they are or what they mean to us, they are “empty”. It’s kind of like nihilism saying there is no inherent meaning, thereby extending it to mean that things, people, etc are really empty of anything. That our opinions and beliefs about reality are false because the truth is that they aren’t inherently those things, these judgments are just what we place on them as a result of experience, and they aren’t true.
I guess it boils down to subjectivity being a lie. I find it hard to argue against that since reality is essentially empty of everything we judge it to be. But they go on to say that through their “subtraction meditation” that you find happiness, compassion, positive mind, love, etc. I don’t know about you but if I had to throw out all the judgments and opinions I have about reality I would essentially be a rock. Compassion is a judgment call, happiness wouldn’t be there since that is usually founded on our opinions of things, forget love and positivity too. Especially since labeling something positive is a judgment call as well.
I don’t know how they resolve such blatant contradictions.
But I guess the main thing is that I want to be right. I want to live the truth, even if it would make me unhappy. On some level I guess what they are saying is true, that reality is empty of all the things we judge it to be, same with people. But living that way isn’t living though, that sounds like withdrawing from life (even if it is true in a sense).
So in my mind it appears as either “living a lie” and being happy, or living according to reality and being “miserable” (I say that because I tried it once and it didn’t result in happiness just feeling empty and not moving). And in my mind the first option is unacceptable.
It is NOT a contradiction when one person says one thing and another person says another thing. You are creating a false contradiction by lumping them all together as a nameless “they”, and until you stop this bad habit there is no possible way to converse with you meaningfully.
Bye.
In logic, contradictions disprove the argument that leads to the contradictions - either some premise is false, or some of the logic following from the premises is false.
Just saying.
…
Okay, I won’t just leave it at that - though seriously, it’s not your job to figure out how to swallow this pill. If they want you to buy into this, they have to sell it - and that includes getting you to understand it. They’re failing at this because it doesn’t make sense - it only works on the credulous who don’t require things to make sense. I get the vibe that you used to be more credulous but are gradually becoming less so, and thus you’re less of a target for these kind of lines. (Good for you!)
All that said, if a person utterly discarded all memories, I’m pretty sure they would still have a personality. The thing is though that forced amnesia doesn’t actually help anything because when you open you’re eyes you’re still living in the real world, where it gets seriously inconvenient if you’ve forgotten how to talk or where you live. Which raises the question of what the end goal is.
My briefest of Googles suggests that the end goal of enlightenment (in Buddhism, anyway) is annihilation - they’re literally seeking to end an existence which they extrafactually have decided is indefinitely perpetuated by reincarnation. In which case, good news! In actual fact everybody gets one annihilation, free of charge, at the end of their life, whether they spend their time seeking enlightenment or eating corn chips and watching Netflix. So all this enlightenment business is essentially the same as trying to pay somebody for something you already own - it is, at best, a complete waste of time.
Observable reality is the truth. Woo is the lie.
It is. It was essentially the Buddhist concept of emptiness and detachment.
That doesn’t really get at the point about subjectivity that I was making. Why it’s hard for me to shake is that on some level it is true.