Sceptics and the Buddha, a thread for everyone else :)

[Dancing David]

Dear Dancing David,

How come a chat on a very simple subject becomes a discussion? How come the very essence of buddhism result in two angry individuals? Your efforts are nice, still, they are empty.

Words have limitations. They are trapped in them. Are you?

I don't know are you?

I have aknowleged my lack of patience and explained it.

 

[Dancing David]

"If the problems are due to neuro-chemistry and organism idiosyncrasy, then you should repair to pharmaceutics and surgery, or seek asylum in a mental safehouse." -- #92​

[/indent]

You certainly know about neuro-pharmaceuticals and neuro-surgery, and you should consider the whole message in my post #92 (see Annex), instead of nitpicking, selective reading, and exaggeration, to score an overly argumentative point.

Yrreg

Annex

​

You still havent answered my questions, which of the mental illnesses benefit from surgery, it is your claim and I am asking you to support it. If you dispell my ignorance, then I shall have knowledge. Nowhere in my fiveteen years have I encountered a surgical procedure for treating a mental illness. This could be an obvious deficit of my experience and knowledge.
So again , please explain to me which mental illness is treated with surgery?

 

[Dancing David]

People will forever be trying to find mundane validation for their own inner voice. They fail to realize that while the sublime resides in the mundame, they are opposite qualities of nature, and only by not looking for mundame validation, they'll eventually find it.

As stated by myself to Epepke, I am also trying to draw out yrreg, whose motives are opaque. If I show a loss of patience, that is who I am, I also am often very tired when I post which can cause me to loose balance. (I worked sixteen hours of call from 5pm this friday to 6pm on Staurday after a forty hour week.) So I am often not rational, but then I do not seek to hide my human self behind a venner of false pretense, I make no claim to be a model buddhist.

I often find the divine in the mundane, as existance exits only in the mundane.

Blessings on you Sir Phillip.

 

[yrreg]

Beware of putting words in the horse's mouth.

Dear Dancing David:

I wished we could move on to what I now consider to be what most interests me in Ryokan, you yourself, and Username, in respect of your being Buddhists because of experiences, whereby you have become convinced of the benefit and even the objective efficacy, and above all the factual objectivity of Buddhism, of the kind and degree of Buddhism you each now profess.

But you keep on bringing up my post #92 (reproduced below), to pursue the purpose you set your mind to pursue whatever that be I can imagine but I won't say it here because that will trigger another endless recrimination from you on a nitpick matter.

So, you want to have the last word, that is irresistibly important to you as a Buddhist in defense of Buddhism, and to what end toward guarding the integrity of Buddhism, Buddhists who are secure in their Buddhism are not concerned at all, like Amish secure in their faith.

If you will resolve not to nitpick, not to selectively read, not to exaggerate, and now not to put words in horse's mouth, I will consider the next lines of this message after the dashes not to have been written by yours truly.

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Here is again my message #92 which I had reproduced in my message #168 above:

Originally Posted by Cajela:
Depression & anxiety can involve distorted thought patterns, which are cause/symptoms(?) of distress. Attachment of one's personal worth to achieving some goal is a real problem. I may think that I am nothing & completely worthless & a failure as a human being because I'm overweight, or because I do not have so much as a PhD, let alone a Nobel prize. (Yes, this seriously was one of my personal ones.) Either I've failed to reach some goal or I imagine I will always fail... Now in CBT you sit down and gather evidence to show yourself that your thinking is distorted. Some of that means letting go of some of your desires - realising that they do not define you, and that in fact having them can cause you suffering. Not that there is anything wrong with the specific desire (it's good to be fit, well-educated etc), just with your pathological attachment to it. Desire, attachment, suffering - you see the analogy. –- Cajela #83​

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No need for CBT and Buddhism for the problems above.

If the problems are due to neuro-chemistry and organism idiosyncrasy, then you should repair to pharmaceutics and surgery, or seek asylum in a mental safehouse.

If they are due to or appear in the normal course of growing up and adjusting to the realities of life, then consult your parents who are emotionally stable and have come from well-adjusted folks themselves, if not your parents then parents of people who are well-adjusted in life and in society and who give the credit to their parents.

If you have no parents, then try the school guidance counselors who are successful parents themselves, as evidenced by their children well-adjusted to life and society.

Yrreg

Now, tell me, where do you find that phrase, "mental illness(es)," in the message reproduced above?


Let's all recite:

Om Mani Padme Hum (from Yrreg) -- Owata loo niam (from Dancing David) -- ohm millihenry picofarad ohm (from Epepke)

And hahaha softly.


Yrreg



====== annex ======

Originally Posted by yrreg:
"If the problems are due to neuro-chemistry and organism idiosyncrasy, then you should repair to pharmaceutics and surgery, or seek asylum in a mental safehouse." -- #92​

You certainly know about neuro-pharmaceuticals and neuro-surgery, and you should consider the whole message in my post #92 (see Annex), instead of nitpicking, selective reading, and exaggeration, to score an overly argumentative point.

Yrreg
​

------------

You still havent answered my questions, which of the mental illnesses benefit from surgery, it is your claim and I am asking you to support it. If you dispell my ignorance, then I shall have knowledge. Nowhere in my fiveteen years have I encountered a surgical procedure for treating a mental illness. This could be an obvious deficit of my experience and knowledge.
So again , please explain to me which mental illness is treated with surgery?

 

[yrreg]

Addendum in re neurosurgery

So again , please explain to me which mental illness is treated with surgery? -- Dancing David​

​

Dear Dancing David:

It's always been stock knowledge with me that there are surgeons who do operations to treat what you call mental illnesses.

Please look up several neurosurgeons in a big hospital or go to the yellow pages and call several, to ask them about surgical procedures being used to treat so-called mental illnesses -- your term, not mine.

Don't ask me which mental illnesses are treated or have been treated successfully with surgery. I am not a surgeon. However, I do know from reading and it has become stock knowledge with me, namely, that surgery is also used to deal with so-called mental illnesses.

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I will now concentrate my curiosity in re Buddhism on the lifestyle or conduct changing effect of Buddhism on people, who claim to have experienced beneficial shifts in their life owing to engagement in Buddhism. I will inquire respectfully from Ryokan, Username, you yourself, Dancing David, and others who are or call themselves Buddhists here in this JREF forum.


Yrreg

 

[SirPhilip]

I make no claim to be a model buddhist.

But you'll be a model Buddhist then.

I often find the divine in the mundane, as existance exits only in the mundane.

When you quit that job, this will pass.

Blessings on you Sir Phillip.

Ah thanks. I'll probably need them the way I'm driving that goped around town...

 

[Dancing David]

Dear Dancing David:

I wished we could move on to what I now consider to be what most interests me in Ryokan, you yourself, and Username, in respect of your being Buddhists because of experiences, whereby you have become convinced of the benefit and even the objective efficacy, and above all the factual objectivity of Buddhism, of the kind and degree of Buddhism you each now profess.

But you keep on bringing up my post #92 (reproduced below), to pursue the purpose you set your mind to pursue whatever that be I can imagine but I won't say it here because that will trigger another endless recrimination from you on a nitpick matter.

So, you want to have the last word, that is irresistibly important to you as a Buddhist in defense of Buddhism, and to what end toward guarding the integrity of Buddhism, Buddhists who are secure in their Buddhism are not concerned at all, like Amish secure in their faith.

If you will resolve not to nitpick, not to selectively read, not to exaggerate, and now not to put words in horse's mouth, I will consider the next lines of this message after the dashes not to have been written by yours truly.

-----------

Here is again my message #92 which I had reproduced in my message #168 above:



Now, tell me, where do you find that phrase, "mental illness(es)," in the message reproduced above?


Let's all recite:

Om Mani Padme Hum (from Yrreg) -- Owata loo niam (from Dancing David) -- ohm millihenry picofarad ohm (from Epepke)

And hahaha softly.


Yrreg



====== annex ======

Considering that the discussion concerned CBT and Cajela used the terms depression and anxiety, I considered, perhaps incorrectly, the discussion to concern mental illness.

I speak in this post not as a buddhist but a mental health professional, asking what conditions are you suggesting could benefit from surgery?

 

[Dancing David]

So again , please explain to me which mental illness is treated with surgery? -- Dancing David​

​

Dear Dancing David:

It's always been stock knowledge with me that there are surgeons who do operations to treat what you call mental illnesses.

Please look up several neurosurgeons in a big hospital or go to the yellow pages and call several, to ask them about surgical procedures being used to treat so-called mental illnesses -- your term, not mine.

Don't ask me which mental illnesses are treated or have been treated successfully with surgery. I am not a surgeon. However, I do know from reading and it has become stock knowledge with me, namely, that surgery is also used to deal with so-called mental illnesses.

-----------

I will now concentrate my curiosity in re Buddhism on the lifestyle or conduct changing effect of Buddhism on people, who claim to have experienced beneficial shifts in their life owing to engagement in Buddhism. I will inquire respectfully from Ryokan, Username, you yourself, Dancing David, and others who are or call themselves Buddhists here in this JREF forum.


Yrreg

Well yrreg, that is perhaps the danger of stock knowledge , there are no mental illnesses treated by surgery, which is why I asked. I work with mentaly ill individuals every day, I work with psyciatrists every day, I work with the hospitals and the groups homes. No where do I see those be treated with surgery which is why I asked. Perhaps you are not aware of the difference between epilepsy and mental illness? Epilepsy is a physical illness that effects the brain, and so you may consider it a mental illness, but in my experience that is not the usage of the term.

So again I have asked what surgical treatments are there for depression and anxiety. If there are any, it seems that I and the large treatment community I am involved in are not aware of them.

The truely ironic part Yrreg is that you have spent over two thousand words before answering the question. Perhaps a more direct answer would have provided less entertainment factot to you.

 

[yrreg]

Have you gone to Cochrane?

Originally Posted by yrreg:
I am still waiting for any news of your word [Ryokan's] that you will search for the scientific paper that is peer reviewed on the scientific character of Buddhist meditation, as you gave that word to Epepke back in your thread on Evidence in Buddhism.

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I've updated epeple via PM, as I didn't want to bump the thread before I had something definite on-topic material to report. I've e-mailed some of the scientists involved in the projects, but have gotten no answer so far. When I have something to report, either an answer from the scientists or that I give up, I will say so in that thread.

Excuse me, folks, but I have been absent from questions on Buddhism since when I gave my opinion on acupuncture in a favorable vein, and have to explain my opinion per longum et latum... et ad infinitum.

Has Ryokan brought up any peer-reviewed study on the efficacy of meditation scientific wise?

See my post in the thread Facts and Fictions on Acupuncture, where I bring up the review by Cochrane on meditation as relief to anxiety disorders:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1501469&postcount=169​

Yrreg, aspiring Fat Laughing Buddha

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From Nirvana with love, Bude.

 

[Ryokan]

I've been meaning to update that post for some while. I'll do it now.