• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Critical comments on "Misconceptions about Buddhism -- explained"

yrreg said:
Right now I will just say that when the concepts of Nirvana and the non-self slip in, then we have in them the woo-ish ingredients making up the wannabe spinal backbone of the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path.
Click to expand...

Where and when do nirvana and the concept of no-self enter into the four noble truths, Gerardo?

yrreg said:
One day I will have a thread on this potpourri called the non-self as propounded by Buddhists.

Suppose, good friend, Ryokan, you tell me what purpose it is intended to or role to play in the whole scheme of Buddhist thought system?
Click to expand...

There have been threads like that on this forum before, although they were not about Buddhism. What role I will play? Why, I'll merely be Ryokan, I guess.

I'll advice you to let the thread be about the concept of no-self, and not derail the thread too much with your tirades against Buddhism. I suspect you'll find that most people in here, especially the atheists, subscribe to the concept of there not being a self to point to.

yrreg said:
Before I sign off, I thought when we were in that thread on acupuncture that you should also apply your stringent skepticism to Buddhism, the kind you were doing to acupuncture.
Click to expand...

I do. I wish you'd do the same.
 
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yrreg said:
It is just an exercise in critical thinking on my part, some pastime though I hope that you will continue to join me in this pastime.
Click to expand...
Based on what I have seen in all the threads on Buddhism your criticism is misguided and ill-formed.

Here is a list of some of the errors you have made in your criticism of buddhism in just this thread. Consider them my criticism of your criticism.
  • All people who apply the label "buddhist" must believe the same thing. This is the Package deal fallacy.
  • That because you can criticize the whole package you set up and label "Buddhism", that none of the individual components are true. This is a combination of a Straw man and just plain logical error.
  • You attach some special significance to the fact that the moral principles found in Buddhism can also be found in other belief systems.
  • You present your opinion as fact (my favourite example in this thread is
    yyreg said:
    A Buddhist is a Buddhist is a Buddhist; and a Buddhist of any stripes whatsoever cannot be a skeptic in the understanding of skepticism by the author, James Randi, of this website, the JREF, which hosts the present forum.
    Click to expand...
    ), and assert that anyone who disagrees with your opinion (like, say, all of the people on this forum who profess to be both Buddhist and skeptical) is mistaken. This is a variant of the No True Scotsman fallacy.
 
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Where and when do nirvana and the concept of no-self enter into the four noble truths, Gerardo?
Click to expand...
Sincerely practicing the four noble truths brings about release from inner affliction, which is nirvana. In Buddhism,
all conditional happiness and joy has the seeds of suffering because of interdependency (you must conciously manage
and maintain it) and impermanence (decay) - nirvana is the condition of no affliction, which is either very difficult
to obtain or very easy, depending on retribution from one's past actions. You probably apprehended it when you
were very young, unless you grew up in a malestrom of human conflict like Chechnya or Nerverland Ranch.

In most cases, this is a difficult process, and takes years. Western society is very overstimulated, and the rest of
the world is in conflict or underprivleged. Most people, without objective rules or guidelines, make a lot of mistakes,
set their moral compass way off, and accumulate greater affliction. The Jains call these "karman particles", which
is a cute and apt enough metaphor to not directly woo-ize.
 
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Based on what I have seen in all the threads on Buddhism your criticism is misguided and ill-formed.
Click to expand...
At it's core, Buddhism is about the problem of Gautama Shakyamuni, an ordinary man - though a prince - who renounced his privledged life to understand the suffering and uncertainty around him, and why he was in a more fortunate position. Bodhidharma, another prince, who later brought it to China, in a strangely direct but ambiguous verse (considering it's time period), laid it out in his anthology: because all philosophical positions are fundamentally irrational, true understanding requires practice, sincerity, and faith, as well as rational judgement, to understand who, what, where, and why. It can't be taught, nor can you force the hand of someone else, anymore than you can discuss economics with a sheep.

Developing the will is the path, and the path is self-control, by positively accepting your circumstances and uncertainties (through renunciation), and cultivating your potential (through disciplines) to bring about direct subjective apprehension. A good example is a cat on a narrow fence. The cat spies another fence five feet away, pauses, leaps, and lands perfectly. The cat has no concious understanding of the weights and balances, equations, and probabilities involved, he just instinctively (unconciously) understands how to obtain the result. Humans are endowed with much better concious and unconcious functions though, and unlike a cat, they are balanced. A human can perform the same feat, but can also translate it into language or equations that tell exactly what happened. A human can also imagine building a robot cat to do the same feat, although how to give a robot "unconcious" functions is difficult to imagine. Which is where we arrive at the mystical concept of an insubstantial mind, which, when residing in living matter, moves it, and ceases on death, much like a drop of water falling back into the ocean.
 
Making a list and checking it twice.

I am making a list here, for my own easy and quick reference to participants or even just visitors to this thread, indicating their profile link and the link to their beliefs posts.

So far, you will notice. everyone, that only four entries have beliefs links; the links are to posts respectively from each where they answered to my questions on what they believe or don't believe in Buddhism.

The questions from me about their beliefs and non-beliefs are reproduced here below after the listing.

Note that B or NB coming after each name means Buddhist (B) or non-Buddhist (NB).


Alphabetical Listing of This Thread's Participants and Visitors*
===============================================================​

Dancing David B:
ID = http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/member.php?u=1018
Beliefs = http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1686822&postcount=16

Fowlsound B:
ID = http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/member.php?u=5175
Beliefs =

I Less Than three Logic B:
ID = http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/member.php?u=6886
Beliefs =

KevinM B:
ID = http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/member.php?u=7745
Beliefs:

Madmonk 76 B:
ID = http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/member.php?u=5010
Beliefs =

Nescafe B:
ID = http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/member.php?u=9261
Beliefs = http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1680951&postcount=12

Rustle NB:
ID = http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/member.php?u=9734
Beliefs = http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1690806&postcount=25

Ryokan B:
ID = http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/member.php?u=3755
Beliefs =

SirPhilip B:
ID = http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/member.php?u=7285
Beliefs =

Yrreg NB:
ID = http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/member.php?u=6754
Beliefs = http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1680327&postcount=9

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

*If you notice any mistakes, please let me know.
Click to expand...

I invite everyone to answer to my questions in the quoted box as follows.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1680327&postcount=9

Are you a Buddhist in this forum? then please tell me your answers to the following questions, not in any order of importance:

1. Do you believe that Buddha, errh, the man Gautama, discovered the true and only valid agenda for mankind?

2. Do you believe in endless rebirths until you get liberated and dive into Nirvana?

3. Do you believe in what I read time and again about dependant origination* in connection with karma, by which what you sow in one rebirth you will reap in another succeeding one?

4. Do you believe in sentient beings always having existed and all are destined for Nirvana, it just takes time and endless rebirths and efforts for them to eventually and ultimately pass into Nirvana?

5. What about this one: can you be a genuine skeptic and still believe in the above four lines?

There are still other questions I have for Buddhists in this forum, but the above five should keep them thinking; but they will not respond because they will say that they had already told you what they believe in and what not, and they will not humor your troll-ish attitude to repeat them again.

Okay then, let's see what they will or how they will react to this message.
Click to expand...

Some people complain that I don't answer their questions addressed to me or their objections. I do answer to some of them which I believe to be useful for arriving at definite conclusions on what I am looking for; but on issues where we can argue forever and not come to any consensus, then for me it is enough that I say my piece and you say yours, and we continue to repeat with elaborations or new details to explain and advance our respective views or positions, or just to pursue this literary exercise because it is absorbing and for being absorbing should be fun for us all, including and most importantly the reading audience here.


Yrreg
 
An answer from the Real World Buddhism on illusions.

In my first post here in this thread, I addressed a query to the authors of The Living Dharma website, inquiring about their page, on Real World Buddhism: how they can talk about the real world when as Buddhists they hold that everything is illusions.


yrreg said:
...there is an invitation in this website of The Living Dharma where visitors can address questions to the people in charge. I will ask them how they can talk about the real world and Buddhism in the real world when Buddhists according to their adherence to Buddhism hold life and the world to be all illusions.

I will ask the people in The Living Dharma this question:
Yrreg said:
Sirs:

I understand that the number #1 teaching of Buddha is that life and the world is all illusion. How then can you reconcile your advocacy of Real World Buddhism, if life and the world, that means everything we count real, are all illusions.

Yrreg
Click to expand...

There, I have sent by email my query. Let's now sit back and wait for an answer.
Click to expand...

And the gentlemen of that website most cordially accommodated to my query, here as follow is our correspondence.

On 6/9/06, Mdejess <mdejess@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for the explanation. I have benefited from your exposition.

Yrreg

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Hata" <dharma@livingdharma.org>
To: <mdejess@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2006 10:48 AM
Subject: life and world illusions


Dear Yrreg,

Thanks for visiting our Living Dharma Website, and for your
interesting question. Let me try to clarify a few things. First, you
are right that Buddhism is a teaching that talks about "illusion,"
however the "illusion" referred to in Buddhism is not the world or
the reality of life; rather, it refers to the belief we have that our
ego-self is real, that each of us has an absolute identity separate
from other life. This deluded belief in the ego-self then causes us
to view everything only from our own self-centered perspective and
mistakenly think that our skewed perspective is real. The ego-self
creates all kinds of problems--samsara in Buddhism--for us and for
the lives around us. For example, I believe that the current
political and religious conflicts in the world are a reflection of
this human tendency to believe we are "absolutely right," even to the
extent that we believe we have the right to kill others. That there
is war is not an illusion; the causes of it however ultimately stem
from the illusions created by our ego.

What then does Buddhism teach as being real? The answer is
"impermanence," the reality that the world around us is nothing but
constant change, that nothing stays the same; life is always being
born, living and dying. Anyone who has experienced the death of a
loved one has naturally also had to confront their own inevitable
mortality. But it's crucial to point out that Shakyamuni Buddha, the
founder of Buddhism, went further than simply recognizing the
impermanence in the world around him. He realized the truth that
everything within him--including his mind (thoughts, ego-identity,
opinions, emotions, etc.)--was also impermanent. Thus, what we have
to awaken to in Buddhism is not the illusion outside us--the easy
part--but the illusion within, which is much more difficult.

The Real World Buddhism section of the Living Dharma Website seeks to
offer contemporary examples of people awakening to this kind of
self-understanding. Not surprisingly, the acquisition of such a
powerful insight has been the dramatic focus of a number famous
movies, providing the "ah-ha" moment in films like "It's a Wonderful
Life" (Jimmy Stewart), "Groundhog Day" (Bill Murray), "American
Beauty" (Kevin Spacey), and "Seven Years in Tibet" (Brad Pitt). These
films (and others) are reviewed in the Real World Buddhism section.

As Buddhists, our advocacy then is for the sharing of this teaching
of the impermanence of all things, including the impermanence of what
we consider our "permanent" ego-self. Awakening to this truth is
extremely difficult--the Jimmy Stewart character in "Wonderful Life"
only "awakes" after things get so bad in his life that he tries to
commit suicide. However, once awake, such a person becomes a more
"real" human being...and certainly becomes easier for others to be
around.

Best Wishes,
Peter Hata
The Living Dhama Website
West Covina Buddhist Temple

>On 2006-05-30 at 15:50:05,
>The following information was submitted:
>>From Host: 202.73.177.169
> >From = Yrreg
>E-Mail = mdejess@gmail.com
>Subject = life and world illusions
>Message =
>Sirs:
>
>I understand that the number #1 teaching of Buddha is that life and
>the world is all illusion. How then can you reconcile your advocacy
>of Real World Buddhism, if life and the world, that means everything
>we count real, are all illusions?
>
>Yrreg
Click to expand...

What do I say to that response? See next post, tomorrow.

Yrreg
 
Yrreg,
Sorry this is my primary call week, where I take 24 hour call for seven days, and work my regular hours.

What you ask is an awesome task and I would challenge you to do the same, what advise would you give to a suffering person in terms a child can understand?

It might not be as cut and dried as you think. I work with people who are thinking about killing themselves, and the work is great but there are not cut out answers for suffering, I certainly do not preach the dharma to them. that would be inappropriate as they have not asked for it.

You however had.

There are a number of caveats:
1. These are my personal beliefs and in no way meant to have meaning for anyone other than myself.
2.They are mutable and fluid, if you were to ask me two years ago the answer is likely to be different and changing over time.
3. I do not claim the budh, nor to speak for buddhists other than myself.
4. To each thier own.
5. More words mean less.
6. The buddha is not the only teacher, the more teachers the better.


What I have learned from the alleged historical buddha and a long string of teachers, including but not limited to Thich Naht Hahn and many others.

-all things are impermanent.

-there is no self, in the sense that there is a continuty to our expeience that lives behind the scenes and provides some sort of glue binding our experiences together.

-there are choices to be made, we make choices to care for ourselves and avoid danger. we can also make choices that are not helpful by worrying about attainment or loss.

-mindfullness is a skill that is beneficial, by learning to live moment to moment and acting wholeheartedly benefit can be attained.

-all things are unique and interdependant




What application have I found, only in my own life, the dharma should only be shared with those who ask to have it shared with them. As I said before , results will vary.

Impermanence: has many different applications the first of which is the statement:

The glass is already broken.
When encountering the less pleasant aspects of reality I find it helpful to remeber that the world is a wonderful chaotic mess that only gets the meaning we put upon it. So remembering that life is never perfect but wonderful none the less, helps me. remebering to enjoy the moment and endure the moment is helpful because they are both transitory. I shall be sick, I shall be unhappy, I shall grow old and die. Get healthy, don'y dwell in the unpleasnt but learn from it, accept change and death. these help me to love life and not suffer.

There is no self.

I may feel pain, I may experience unhappiness, i may have trauma, there are many unpleasnat aspects to life. If I make my boss unhappy, it does not mean that my life has ended, is she should reprimands me, i should not take personal offense, but it is an advisement to change the behavior. If some one cuts in front of me in traffic, I must be careful to not wreck, but once safe i should not take personal offense.

There are many things that people take personaly and hurt themselves with, I find it helpful to look at the root of what upsets me, how does it affect my body, my thoughts, my emotions, my memories and habits. Sometimes a change is needed, sometimes action is needed to preserve life but I can help myself by remembering the five essenses of my humanity and examining them. I try not to take personal affront at things, I still do but it doesn't help.

On attachment and suffering, I have said much before. I can worry about loss, I can worry about the loss of pleasure. I can cling to my pain and hurt. Some hurt can not be avoided, in which case action might be possible to improve health.

There are choices I can make that will benefit my well being and the well being of others, there are choices i can make to diminish my well being and the well being of others.

Mindfullness always helps me, by doing one thing at a time and doing one thing well, I can live my life in a healthy fashion. It is klike driving on the highway(which I do a lot and sometimes at odd hours), mindful means watching the road and paying attention. Unmindfull means eating, talking on the cel-phone and not paying attention. One is much safer than the other.

unique and interdependant
each thing is different from every other thing yet attached to every other thing. There are no pat answers, reductionism is useful but can not always lead to solutions. American's tend to look for single cause and solutions, life is musch more complex.
Thing vay from each other, they are comparable but not equivalent, taht may be an oak tree but it is different from every other oak tree. It may be an oak tree but is is also linked to the earth and water, sky and sun.

Things are all different, moments are all different, things are all interwoven, the past leads to the presnt and becomes the future, they are linked and different.


Those are the main things that I have learned, although I am much beloved of nihilism, reality therapy, cognitive therapy and paganism as well.

The single greatest thing I have learned from a non-buddhist source. From an assesment and intervention training.

'Focus on the what. The what is bothering them, the what is hurting them and the what needs to change. Listen to the why and understand how it affects the what, but focus on the what."

Single second most imporatnt thing I have learned; from Beck's Cognitive Therapy of Depression
There is a difference between sympathy and empathy. Allow the person to speak and understand thier pain, do not agree with the causes.(My paraphrase)

The most imporatant question: When is lunch, will there be cookies?

Funniest joke:

Q: How many surealists does it take to change a light bulb?

A. The fish.
 
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The way I see it, the Four Noble Truths contain moralistic insights and norms of conduct, so also the Noble Eightfold Path of right to do and wrong to avoid.
Click to expand...
They are distilled concepts that others followed. They have no intrinsic effiacy - their prime motivaiton, I'd guess, was a commonality.

But there are woo-ish elements interspersed among those moralistic ideas and principles which I am inclined to see as common also with the best of civilization and society among peoples who never heard of Buddha and Buddhism, and these ideas and principles already antedate Gautama by even millennia -- if only we have records of the millennia of man's history prior to Buddha, errh, Gautama. Anyway, they are the moralistic ideas and principles of the world-view Buddha got born into, namely, Hinduism/Brahmanism.
Click to expand...
It should be noted that Gautama attained release himself not from Buddhist practices, but most like those of Jains, who renounce everything except the bare necessities of life. He probably saw that most people weren't that heartfelt motivated and created what he called the "middle path" to act as a stepping stone, afterward..

I am trying to work out a way to show how the idea of the non-self is absolutely alien to anyone who has a working knowledge and skill in critical thinking and adopts the attitude of scientific skepticism.
Click to expand...
Ah, the mother of all negatives. The mind is very hard to see. To attempt a thought-experiment, contemplate events occuring before you were born. You had no self, yet all this drama happened (pirates, jazz, air to air combat, Hitler biting on carpets) all while you were twisting and turning through the never. Like Shrodinger's cat, you were neither alive nor dead. You exist now but whether you exist or not is irrelevant, as the mind is always present, the form the mind inhabits just changes constantly according to retribution. As an aside, the Jains believe all living things move upwards, but I'm skeptical. Buddhism, like Jainism and pretty much every other form of asceticism also, is the opposite of scientific materialism, although it does encourage rationalism on a personal level. All consider the mind fundamental to matter. Materialists consider matter fundamental to mind. Both notions are equally true. To summarize, the form you occupy determines your awareness. Our awareness is made up of the five senses, and a sixth, which is the above. Our circumstances are what we define as ourselves. The less control we have over the five senses, and especially the sixth, the more disordered we are. The objective of all these practices is to conquer the five senses and gain access to the sixth.

Are you going to start again with the analogy that we are composed of parts which together do not constitute a self, just like say the automotive machine we call a car which has no self? I am applying my cerebral matter to this analogy and I tend to think that as a matter of fact, there is a self also in a car, it is a self we call the it, unlike the selves that we call ourselves: he, she, you, we, us, ourselves, etc., or persons. May I bring up the two kinds of selves -- in my construct, then, to wit: personal selves and impersonal selves. More in another thread, much later.
Click to expand...
A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men...

Have I given you a clue?
The bare necessities of life will come to you...
 
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posted by Yrreg
Even Buddha seems to say so, seek for yourself, but the man does not mean it; what he has in his mind is to seek by oneself to come around to accepting his teachings about the one and only kind of wisdom for life and living and purpose, because he has found enlightenment and you will find it also, but in his mind that kind he has.
Click to expand...

How do you know what the buddha means and might or might not have intended, do you use a psychic time machine?

How can you know the meaning of words you haven't studied?

Where did the buddha allegedly say that his was the only path?

These are the straw man arguments you use to build the straw world and demolish it and they display a critical lack of critical thinking.

You assume that you know what the buddha thought and intended and then you attack the straw man you have constructed.

You have not studied the teachings of the buddha yet you presume to understand the thoughts and intent of a mind long turned to dust, You attack your straw presumption.(And like jesus you resurect the dead and then read thier minds, a ghoulish Sylvia Brown)

You have not read the teachinsg of the buddha, and then preseume to say that the alleged historical buddha said that his was the only path to enlightement. You then attack your own presumption.

You may be a writer Yrreg, but critical thinker, I see lacking, you claim the tools of scepticism, but you don't use them, you claim the tools of science yet you don't use them.

What are you doin?


Are you channeling Per Oir Asmus? Or perhaps Lifegazer's Hamster?

At least the hamster made sense,
you gaze in the mirror and battle yourself in the mirror, you don't communicate, you declaim and extemporise, but you care only for what you have to say.

It is every where in what you right, i can cite plenty of examples of each of my statements. The only one you can cite is yourself..


I do hope you like yourself, because you are avoiding communication, you seem to self absorbed like the fish the Betta(once called the Siamese fighting fish) you attack yourself in the mirror.

But you do not connect, you do not share,

Why are you here?

Do you like to just read what you write and ignore others?

Most sincerely and foolishly asking you to drop the mask and pretense and bizzare posturing, meet at the table and share the food why don't you?

With concern and doubt:

David
 
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Once more into the breech.

KevinM said:
B)The cause of suffering is desire(think about that to how much of our problems come back to greed, lust(be it for sex or power), pride, and other desire driven emotions)
Click to expand...

I do not see this as substantially different from the following:

1) Think about how many times you have wondered at the universe and thought that there must be some designer.

2) Think about how many times you had a dream that someone important to you was having a problem, and then you heard from them a few days later, and they did.

3) Think about how many times you heard an unusual word and then heard it again within a day or so.

In all cases, it's a filter on anecdotal evidence to fit a preconceived explanation (gods, precognition, etc.) Plate of shrimp!
 
Buddha never had a job and Thich Nhat Hanh never had a family.

Dear Dancing David:

Thanks for your presentation of lessons you have learned from Buddha and Thich Nhat Hanh; but remember you can and will change as you said so: "They are mutable and fluid, if you were to ask me two years ago the answer is likely to be different and changing over time." Shall I congratulate you that you realize the important lessons you have learned and are learning from Buddha and Thich Nhat Hanh are impermanent? Why not?

That is why I said in the titles of two earlier posts of mine: No one knows nothing definite about Buddhism and Buddha's authentic teachings -- 1 and 2, messages #33 and #34 above in this thread.

Tell me then, unless this is already too tiresome and overly abysmal to you, what then are the permanent unchanging lessons of Buddha, one at least? Nirvana most probably on my assessment, because every life will end up in Nirvana willy-nilly however long through endless rebirths. But something tells me that there are smartaleck Buddhists who prefer endless rebirths and thus are preventing Nirvana from deluging all life and the universe sooner than later.

You tell these smartaleck Buddhists not to rejoice with endless rebirths, because they can never be sure who they are in preceding and succeeding rebirths (so, what's the big deal), besides there is no identical self, that doctrine of the non-self (and it's all an illusion) as one building block in the whole edifice of Buddhist beliefs system.

Anyway, you don't notwithstanding calling yourself Buddhist believe in Nirvana, and also not Nescafe. Didn't you guys make some formal commitment to the common beliefs of Buddhism when you did go through the ritual of inclusion into the worldwide fellowship of Buddhists. No, you didn't take that step?


And no wonder Buddhists eventually discovered and honed into a pretentious subtle non-productive mental exercise, to wit, the Zen school of absurd thinking.



I almost forget, you ask me again what I am doing here. Didn't I said and say now again, that I am having fun, just as Randi is having fun with his JREF skepticism site, but for this difference: Randi is making a good living but with me it's all just fun.


I am thinking of a new thread -- still another thread, so many ideas for thread topics, entitled Famous Religious Converts, where I will try to describe what famous people who converted from one to another religion tell everyone how they have found themselves or the real life or the whole destiny of the universe -- just to have fun, I mean from such studies of these famous converts and their new found religion-toys.


Yrreg


PS See next post for my comments on the important lessons you have learned from Buddha and Thich Nhat Hanh.
 
Together with psycho-motor development.

Here are the succinct lessons Dancing David has learned for the present that is, since he can and will change in time, from Buddha and a string of other teachers like the present confidant, Thich Nhat Hanh.

Dancing David said:
Yrreg,

What I have learned from the alleged historical buddha and a long string of teachers, including but not limited to Thich Naht Hahn and many others.

-all things are impermanent.

-there is no self, in the sense that there is a continuty to our expeience that lives behind the scenes and provides some sort of glue binding our experiences together.

-there are choices to be made, we make choices to care for ourselves and avoid danger. we can also make choices that are not helpful by worrying about attainment or loss.

-mindfullness is a skill that is beneficial, by learning to live moment to moment and acting wholeheartedly benefit can be attained.

-all things are unique and interdependant
Click to expand...

But I am asking Dancing David, aren't those lessons what every baby eventually comes to in the process of psycho-motor development? what I might call coming to terms with life?

Except for that item about there being no self. But that idea is useless because what are the acts and routines of daily life Dancing David translates that idea into, does he know if any? I can't imagine any, for having in his pedagogical coffer that kind of an idea.


Yrreg
 
How the Real World Buddhism is not all illusions, that so?

yrreg said:
In my first post here in this thread, I addressed a query to the authors of The Living Dharma website, inquiring about their page, on Real World Buddhism: how they can talk about the real world when as Buddhists they hold that everything is illusions.

And the gentlemen of that website most cordially accommodated to my query, here as follow is our correspondence.

From: "Peter Hata" <dharma@livingdharma.org>
To: <mdejess@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2006 10:48 AM
Subject: life and world illusions


Dear Yrreg,

Thanks for visiting our Living Dharma Website, and for your
interesting question. Let me try to clarify a few things. First, you
are right that Buddhism is a teaching that talks about "illusion,"
however the "illusion" referred to in Buddhism is not the world or
the reality of life; rather, it refers to the belief we have that our
ego-self is real, that each of us has an absolute identity separate
from other life. This deluded belief in the ego-self then causes us
to view everything only from our own self-centered perspective and
mistakenly think that our skewed perspective is real. The ego-self
creates all kinds of problems--samsara in Buddhism--for us and for
the lives around us. For example, I believe that the current
political and religious conflicts in the world are a reflection of
this human tendency to believe we are "absolutely right," even to the
extent that we believe we have the right to kill others. That there
is war is not an illusion; the causes of it however ultimately stem
from the illusions created by our ego.

What then does Buddhism teach as being real? The answer is
"impermanence," the reality that the world around us is nothing but
constant change, that nothing stays the same; life is always being
born, living and dying. Anyone who has experienced the death of a
loved one has naturally also had to confront their own inevitable
mortality. But it's crucial to point out that Shakyamuni Buddha, the
founder of Buddhism, went further than simply recognizing the
impermanence in the world around him. He realized the truth that
everything within him--including his mind (thoughts, ego-identity,
opinions, emotions, etc.)--was also impermanent. Thus, what we have
to awaken to in Buddhism is not the illusion outside us--the easy
part--but the illusion within, which is much more difficult.

The Real World Buddhism section of the Living Dharma Website seeks to
offer contemporary examples of people awakening to this kind of
self-understanding. Not surprisingly, the acquisition of such a
powerful insight has been the dramatic focus of a number famous
movies, providing the "ah-ha" moment in films like "It's a Wonderful
Life" (Jimmy Stewart), "Groundhog Day" (Bill Murray), "American
Beauty" (Kevin Spacey), and "Seven Years in Tibet" (Brad Pitt). These
films (and others) are reviewed in the Real World Buddhism section.

As Buddhists, our advocacy then is for the sharing of this teaching
of the impermanence of all things, including the impermanence of what
we consider our "permanent" ego-self. Awakening to this truth is
extremely difficult--the Jimmy Stewart character in "Wonderful Life"
only "awakes" after things get so bad in his life that he tries to
commit suicide. However, once awake, such a person becomes a more
"real" human being...and certainly becomes easier for others to be
around.

Best Wishes,
Peter Hata
The Living Dhama Website
West Covina Buddhist Temple
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What do I say to that response? See next post, tomorrow.
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What do I say to that response?

I had a clever classmate in highschool who was unknown to others used by the teacher in English composition to correct writing assignments of fellow classmates. [This is a literary device, don't take it verbatim.]

One of his tricks he confided to me is to feel how any piece of writing is getting to be what I can now best describe as labyrinthine. Once he got that feeling, he would just put a note at the bottom of the paper being corrected, the following:

"Remember, you are not to engage in maze-wandering, do this composition again so that you don't give the impression to intelligent and experienced readers that you are obviously yourself lost in a labyrinth (look up that word if you don't know it)."​

And that is the note I would also put at the bottom of Peter Hata's exposition and explanation of how the Real World Buddhism can be compatible with the core doctrine of Buddhism on the illusions of life, the world, and everything, or whatever Buddhism teaches to be illusional.

And as I shared also with Dancing David: what does the doctrine of illusions have to do with the everyday acts and routines of life as we have it from our physiology?

In Philosophy 101 I learned that things should not be multiplied without necessity. Now, is that doctrine about illusions of any necessity, since Buddhists are trying so hard to tell us that they are just like you and me in the world of everyday life and deeds and pursuits and routines.

Maybe it just makes them feel better in any manner they think they feel better for harboring that bit of doctrine or belief inside their cranium.


Yrreg
 
In Philosophy 101 I learned that things should not be multiplied without necessity. Now, is that doctrine about illusions of any necessity, since Buddhists are trying so hard to tell us that they are just like you and me in the world of everyday life and deeds and pursuits and routines. Maybe it just makes them feel better in any manner they think they feel better for harboring that bit of doctrine or belief inside their cranium.
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Mein gott, does the sound of words make you feel better? Every philosophy major here seems to have the same affliction with long-winded rhetoric and vague rationalizations, and the same aversion to Occam's Razor. In your case it doesn't seem like you even bothered to research or read up on the context of anything you were throwing up for discussion (Wikipedia is your friend..).
 
And no wonder Buddhists eventually discovered and honed into a pretentious subtle non-productive mental exercise, to wit, the Zen school of absurd thinking.
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What isn't absurd? There is positive absurd (improbable order) and negative absurd (probable disorder), but every dualism carries an inherent contradiction. This is the point of meditation.

You tell these smartaleck Buddhists not to rejoice with endless rebirths, because they can never be sure who they are in preceding and succeeding rebirths (so, what's the big deal), besides there is no identical self, that doctrine of the non-self (and it's all an illusion) as one building block in the whole edifice of Buddhist beliefs system.
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You fail to recognize, in this pile of verbage and elsewhere, that Buddhism is not intended to be grasped on an intellectual level any more than the benefits and motivation of athletics are. The concept of practice is central to all asceticism, especially Zen. Impermanence means entropy. In an objective sense, it means the universe collapsing back into a singularity - death is akin to a drop falling back into the ocean. The drop is distinguished by seperation from the ocean. The illusion of a distinct personality refers to the five senses. We all have five senses, but our circumstances are different.
 
yrreg said:
Here are the succinct lessons Dancing David has learned for the present that is, since he can and will change in time, from Buddha and a string of other teachers like the present confidant, Thich Nhat Hanh.



But I am asking Dancing David, aren't those lessons what every baby eventually comes to in the process of psycho-motor development? what I might call coming to terms with life?

Except for that item about there being no self. But that idea is useless because what are the acts and routines of daily life Dancing David translates that idea into, does he know if any? I can't imagine any, for having in his pedagogical coffer that kind of an idea.
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Feel free to ignore what I wrote of the subject, and I am certain it is not pedagogical, you however are a true believer, you have not applied critical thinking to your own beliefs, enjoy.

Yrreg, you still can't answer the question: Where does the self reside. Self as in the atma, or 'consiousness' that the immaterialists are beloved of.

There is no 'vital essense of the car',' the supreme car-ness', the 'car that lives eternaly'. There is the conventional defintion of the self, which is just fine, but where is a self that exists beyond the five shkandhas, I await enlightenment.
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I wrote extensively upon this subject in the past. Continue to ignore at will.
Yrreg
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If they are self evident, then I missed that day in class, as have many people. I won't belabor the point at this time.

You again assert things as being self evident, because they seem self evident to you. That does not mean they are self evident to most people.
 
There is no 'vital essense of the car',' the supreme car-ness', the 'car that lives eternaly'.
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I dare you to take a bullhorn and shout that at a classic car show. :p
 
The 'discovery' of the non-self is a useless 'discovery'.

Still, I haven't read from Buddhists here what uses are being served by the idea of the non-self.


A useful idea can be for man to get something done or to feel some mood even though nothing outside his feelings is getting done.

For example, gravity is a useful idea for it enables dirty laundry to get to the basement by way of the laundry chute.

As for mood, an idea can also give some people a high even though nothing is getting accomplished that is really to the advancement of life and society, for example, what else but Nirvana!


So, Buddhists: please, before you go into maze-wandering and labyrinthine thinking, just tell me how the idea of the non-self is useful to you for getting anything outside your inner mood done, or exactly what good feeling or mood you experience for entertaining the idea of the non-self.


Buddha and his supposedly followers keep harping on the non-self; but perhaps what they really mean is that -- if I may be metaphysical at this point on what is also one possible model of the universe and all phenomena, is that namely there is for Buddhists -- even though they don't realize it, only one big super all inclusive self and everything else is just the illusion of this super giant one-self.

In which case, we can all continue to go about our daily life without paying attention to that super self, notwithstanding that we are all illusions, all non-selves, but only figments of the imagination of that one all super self -- because we can do so without giving any heed to that super self and without attending to the 'fact' of our non-selves.


Is that okay with me? Well, if Buddhists see it that way, then I would not be one to argue with them. It's like kids who saw the Matrix movies and entertain the thought that they are all hardwares manipulated by a super software operator, something like that.

That doesn't keep them from reporting to the fridge when they get hungry and going to the john when coerced by their bowel or bladder -- unless they prefer to not be toilet-trained.

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What? even that super all inclusive massive one-self is an illusion? Okay, then good Buddhists here, whose illusion?


And if I may, then also Nirvana, and karma, and dependent origination, and rebirth, they are all illusions, and also meditation with all its beneficial effects, the ultimate one being enlightenment. (You meditate to reach enlightenment, and you have arrived when you can say with an air of self-conviction that you are a non-self, all illusions. Terrific! In which case then, may you stop meditation, having reached enlightenment? the reality of you being an illusion?).


Yrreg
 
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