To Elohim, tell me about cherry picking in the Pali Canon

[yrreg]

Animals play, but they don't play games.

Hi Yrreg

The 'game of life' is certainly a good metaphor, and within that 'game' is the fun you describe. But there can also be pain and suffering, and of course ultimately death as 'scripted in biology' (nice phrase of yours).

[...]

The way I see it animals also live exactly like humans in terms of staying alive and as long as they can, and reproduce their kinds.

And they also play, but they don't do games.

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

Perhaps it is a useful distinction to divide games on the basis of the source of the rules in a game, which source can be biology or experience.

We don't write the rules of biology, but while we live we can write rules on the basis of experience for the games we want to engage in, in order to win, i.e., to achieve whatever goal we also discover or invent for ourselves.


I like to ask you, since you put experience as of primary importance to yourself, why would you still want to set up an ancient writing like the Pali Canon as a validating criterion to your experience?


What are the rules and the objective of these rules in the Pali Canon or generally in Buddhism, which you want to subsume your experience to in order to validate them, meaning in order that you might attain the goal the Pali Canon has set up for you and the rules according to which you must comply with in the pursuit of that goal?


Shouldn't you being an independent agent propose your own goal and formulate your own rules, from your experiences in life, and move toward that self discovered or invented goal according to your own rules?



Yrreg

 

[Solus]

Yrreg you can play your little games here but don't think myself and other JREF members are going to let you have a soapbox here.

 

[Solus]

You sure know how to empathize a point...

The bolding is mine. "Lets keep it civil but at the same time it's your "game" and your rules. Therefore it's fine for you to type in gothic size 7 font when addressing other new posters here. Let's be honest for a moment. Your real "game" here is trying to make it on the JREF's unofficial list of the top five dumbest trolls isn't it?

Dear Elohim, I addressed this thread to you because I thought you could and would exchange views with me on what is Buddhism to you and why it is important, that is from your part; from my part I want to do critical thinking and the search for empirical evidence on what people think Buddhism is to themselves and why it is important; and essentially this activity is a game for me.

.​

As I said in answer to nosho saying that to him I am taking my inquiries about Buddhism as an intellectual game, I said to him:

A game is a drama of sorts and life is a stage. ​

If anyone cares to be attentive, that is exactly what I think of my inquiries here and my purpose, to play a game; and my life itself is a game and it is also the stage for my game; and I claim to be the playwright of my game of life.

Dear Mike, I found your website and I thought that it is very useful for my game of critical thinking and the search for empirical evidence in Buddhism.

Thank you so much for coming here and joining my game of critical thinking and search for empirical evidence in Buddhism.

My suspicion from the start of my curiosity with Buddhism and Western Buddhists is that

And I am here for fun, fun in playing the game of critical thinking and the search for empirical evidence in regard to Buddhism and Western Buddhists or Buddhism enthusiasts.


Let us all join in this game, and remember a game is played according to rules, and the first rule is to act civil, keep to the game and abstain unsportslike behavior.

This thread is about cherry-picking in the Pali Canon.

Yrreg

ANNEX:

What do you plan on annexing by the way? I hope it's not Tibet, the Chinese are ahead of you on that one.

 

[Complexity]

This from a catholic!

Shouldn't you being an independent agent propose your own goal and formulate your own rules, from your experiences in life, and move toward that self discovered or invented goal according to your own rules?

Yrreg

Thus speaks Yrreg, a self-professed catholic.

Irony meters are useless here...

Yrreg - Answer our questions before you babble again.

 

[Dr Adequate]

I wonder what yrreg think that "cherry picking" means.

 

[Complexity]

Dr. A. - I keep forgetting that we're talking about Yrreg...

I don't think he gets any of its meanings.

 

[Mojo]

Yrreg, do you now, or have you ever eaten shrimp?

Remember: pinch the tail, suck the head, burn in hell (Leviticus 11:9-12).

 

[Complexity]

Yrreg, we're not asking about shrimping (no one wants to know about that aspect of your life).

We're asking whether you've ever eaten shrimp.

Have you?

 

[yrreg]

Wherein lies the 'awe-thority' of the Pali Canon?

I am an extraterrestrial being with the intelligence of humans but without their emotionality except curiosity.

I have read about their method of critical thinking and the need to search for empirical evidence.

One day I came across people who take endless trouble, time, and money to delve into a piece of ancient writing allegedly authored by one of themselves who lived 2,500 years before them, in order to discover what are the rules for them to arrive at what goal the ancient piece of writing is directing them toward, by the rules which they have still yet to discover after all these centuries some perhaps at least twenty hundreds of years -- a most brief antiquity when compared to the much greater length of time human civilization and society had existed prior to the confection of the Pali Canon.

What then I ask myself and also the people delving into the Pali Canon is the 'awe-thority' of the Pali Canon, aside from being ancient, which antiquity is not like the aging of wine whereby the wine gets better, but it is an antiquity by which the matters one can read in the Pali Canon get more and more obsolete, and the people differing among themselves in their cherry-picking of what rules and what goal the Pali Canon has for them, should get more and more of no relevance today, except to themselves and among themselves.


Yrreg

 

[Zep]

Gerry, you're officially wEiRd!, dude.

 

[Dancing David]

I am an extraterrestrial being with the intelligence of humans but without their emotionality except curiosity.

I have read about their method of critical thinking and the need to search for empirical evidence.

One day I came across people who take endless trouble, time, and money to delve into a piece of ancient writing allegedly authored by one of themselves who lived 2,500 years before them, in order to discover what are the rules for them to arrive at what goal the ancient piece of writing is directing them toward, by the rules which they have still yet to discover after all these centuries some perhaps at least twenty hundreds of years -- a most brief antiquity when compared to the much greater length of time human civilization and society had existed prior to the confection of the Pali Canon.

What then I ask myself and also the people delving into the Pali Canon is the 'awe-thority' of the Pali Canon, aside from being ancient, which antiquity is not like the aging of wine whereby the wine gets better, but it is an antiquity by which the matters one can read in the Pali Canon get more and more obsolete, and the people differing among themselves in their cherry-picking of what rules and what goal the Pali Canon has for them, should get more and more of no relevance today, except to themselves and among themselves.


Yrreg

I guess you missed the part where someone said that the pali canon is alleged to be the alleged teachings of an alleged historical figure.

It doesn't matter if the Pali Canon was written by a group of people 500 years later, if it is a clobbered together set of other people's ideas, if it was generated by monkeys playing bongos or it is the actual teachings of a Gautama Shakyamuni. It doesn't matter.

If it has merit for the student, then it is useful to that student.

BTW, what empirical evidence would you show to an alien that an empty philosophy with God is better than an empty philosophy without god?

I prefer 'authority' it has author in it.

 

[Complexity]

I am an extraterrestrial being with the intelligence of humans but without their emotionality except curiosity.

Yrreg

This is the closest Yrreg has ever come to telling the truth.

Of course, his claim to have the intelligence of humans is silly.

And we know he's got more human-like emotionality than he claims - we've certainly watched him get pissed off and even more controlling.

Buddhists and some others would dispute the 'I'.

Even 'being' requires a judgement call.

But there is no question, whatsoever, about 'extraterrestial'.

 

[yrreg]

I am doing critique of Buddhism, not disparaging it and Gautama and Buddhists.

There are broadly two kinds of sources for Buddhism, written and oral.

The oral sources today are the -- if we want to hear their oral accounts of Buddhism -- traditional peoples in the Far East who have been Buddhists since from their earliest histories.

The written sources are primarily what are called the canonical writings of Buddhism, among which is the Pali Canon, and also secondarily all writings endowed with some antiquity as to testify to their proximity to the very historical origin of Buddhism but essentially what we might call written accounts of early oral traditions of Buddhism.


The Pali Canon is the canonical source record in writing for the Theravada school of Buddhism.


Since the founder or alleged founder

-- as someone here takes pains to emphasize, which is good, about things alleged (by him understood in the first instance and then in the second instance by his masters in Buddhism) in regard to the grounds underpinning his enthusiasm for Buddhism -- ​

namely, one Gautama, is no longer available for interview on his views or findings or inventions of Buddhism (for being deceased all these 2,500 years more or less), I take the tack of examining the Pali Canon to do critique of Buddhism in all the aspects and approaches any critique should be done according to the principles of critical thinking and the search for empirical evidence -- instead of trying to determine what in the Pali Canon really comes from him and what not.


In this connection, my purpose is not to disparage Gautama or Buddhists of all kinds and on all degrees and on all and any extent of adherence to Buddhism, but just to exercise my curiosity in regard to Buddhism.

My interest is no different from that I also have for examining cockroaches, of which I have an account some four or five days ago on cable television, where some Thais are keeping them for pets and having them drawling all over their body and face, and attesting to their cleanliness because they the cockroaches do spend hours on end to self-grooming, and also I have seen a British on cable television who not so much keeps cockroaches but ingests them with relish for their delicacy and healthy nutrients.

No, I don't in my examination disparage cockroaches or people who have a positive regard for them on their own beneficial grounds.

And no, I am not into disparaging Gautama or Buddhists, I am just studying Buddhism as a human phenomenon: on the basis of critical thinking and the search for evidence, purely to enjoy a fun hobby for a mental exercise, again on critical thinking and the search for empirical evidence.

It is just like Randi examining no end, paranormal phenomena and instances of pseudoscience; and even though he is accused of being biased-ly hostile toward or shall we say disparaging of enthusiasts for paranormal phenomena and what to Randi is pseudoscience, he Randi will not stop from his examination and reporting to the world his findings.


Now, back to the cherry-picking in the Pali Canon, there is rhyme and reason in this activity of cherry-picking, or there is none, or there is to some extent and in some respect -- all that again should be a very absorbing undertaking for yours truly; but I have to fix my passion on some specific concretely circumscribed area of the Pali Canon to exercise my critical thinking and search for empirical evidence, giving more direction to my attention in re cherry-picking in the Pali Canon.


I will report what I intend to concentrate my investigation more precisely on in regard to cherry-picking in the Pali Canon.

Contributions from members of this JREF Educational Foundation forum are wholeheartedly welcome, but just keep to the topic.


Yrreg

 

[yrreg]

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Here is a text from a comparatively anciently recent piece of writing which can be the launching pad for my examination on first, what kind of a document is the Pali Canon.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator* with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

*Read that karma for Buddhists.​

Let us just concentrate on these words: "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."


The way I see it, the Pali Canon is in the nature of a piece of ancient writing from people who put it together to tell fellow humans about life, and the free pursuit of happiness -- the way they have come to convince themselves.

And why would they want to tell fellow humans about what they have come to convince themselves to be life and the free pursuit of happiness? Because they felt compassion for fellow humans, who otherwise would miss life and the free pursuit of happiness, that's why.

If Buddhists or Buddhism enthusiasts here cannot agree with my analytico-synthetic summation of what the Pali Canon is all about, just let me know; but spare all kinds of impertinent remarks obfuscating what you would want to say in intelligible utterances.


So, if I were involved in cherry-picking lines from the Pali Canon on what I would consider important for me to know, I would start with looking for words in it indicative of what the drafters of the Pali Canon want readers to know what life is and what it is all about, according to themselves.


First, I have to look for a critical and readable English version of some complete part of the Pali Canon. I understand that it is composed of three socalled baskets.


Can anyone among the Buddhists in this forum suggest some parts of the three baskets called the Tipitaka whatever, which are the most accessible in English to themselves, and which I can approach to do my own kind of cherry-picking for what is life and what it is all about, in this component portion of the Pali Canon?


What I plan to do is to employ my own concordance searcher and look up all the lines where life is mentioned, to find out what is said about life in these lines, and thereby somehow arrive at the concept of life and its appurtenances, in the component portion of the Pali Canon I am limiting myself to for cherry-picking.


Thanks for any help.



Yrreg

 

[Complexity]

Yrreg - You are not equipped mentally to critique anything.

And how dare you call another creature a 'cockroach' as though that is something beneath you?

Answer the questions that we have put to you.

 

[Solus]

This thread is about catholicism and why you believe in it. It is whether you know it or not in fact; that's the interesting part. You can't start to criticize other belief systems until you have fully examined your own.

I must be tired I gave a clear reply to Gerry's post here. What school do you go to by the way Gerry?

 

[Ryokan]

Am I reading right? Are my eyes deceiving me? Yrreg wants to read the Pali Canon?

It only took you, what, nearly two years before you wanted to actually read the books you're criticizing? Unbelievable.

Well, I have no idea where you can find them. Also note that we're talking about a huge set of books, I doubt very many people have been able to read them all. I suggest starting with the Dhammapada, which can be said to be a sort of 'Best of Buddha'. I'm sure a websearch will find an online edition very quick. I have no idea which version to point you towards, as I'm not familiar with English translations of the Dhammapada - I read mine in Norwegian, loaned at the local library and translated by Kåre Lie, one of Europe's foremost experts on the Pali language.

I wish you good luck in reading the Dhammapada - it's not too long a book - and look forward to discussing it with you when you're done with it.

Bravo, Yrreg!

 

[Mojo]

Am I reading right? Are my eyes deceiving me? Yrreg wants to read the Pali Canon?

Nope: he wants to cherry-pick it and quote it out of context (remember how he did this with Cochrance Collaboration reviews in the acupuncture etc. threads?):

What I plan to do is to employ my own concordance searcher and look up all the lines where life is mentioned, to find out what is said about life in these lines, and thereby somehow arrive at the concept of life and its appurtenances, in the component portion of the Pali Canon I am limiting myself to for cherry-picking.

 

[Dancing David]

There are broadly two kinds of sources for Buddhism, written and oral.

The oral sources today are the -- if we want to hear their oral accounts of Buddhism -- traditional peoples in the Far East who have been Buddhists since from their earliest histories.

The written sources are primarily what are called the canonical writings of Buddhism, among which is the Pali Canon, and also secondarily all writings endowed with some antiquity as to testify to their proximity to the very historical origin of Buddhism but essentially what we might call written accounts of early oral traditions of Buddhism.


The Pali Canon is the canonical source record in writing for the Theravada school of Buddhism.


Since the founder or alleged founder

-- as someone here takes pains to emphasize, which is good, about things alleged (by him understood in the first instance and then in the second instance by his masters in Buddhism) in regard to the grounds underpinning his enthusiasm for Buddhism -- ​

namely, one Gautama, is no longer available for interview on his views or findings or inventions of Buddhism (for being deceased all these 2,500 years more or less), I take the tack of examining the Pali Canon to do critique of Buddhism in all the aspects and approaches any critique should be done according to the principles of critical thinking and the search for empirical evidence -- instead of trying to determine what in the Pali Canon really comes from him and what not.


In this connection, my purpose is not to disparage Gautama or Buddhists of all kinds and on all degrees and on all and any extent of adherence to Buddhism, but just to exercise my curiosity in regard to Buddhism.

My interest is no different from that I also have for examining cockroaches, of which I have an account some four or five days ago on cable television, where some Thais are keeping them for pets and having them drawling all over their body and face, and attesting to their cleanliness because they the cockroaches do spend hours on end to self-grooming, and also I have seen a British on cable television who not so much keeps cockroaches but ingests them with relish for their delicacy and healthy nutrients.

No, I don't in my examination disparage cockroaches or people who have a positive regard for them on their own beneficial grounds.

And no, I am not into disparaging Gautama or Buddhists, I am just studying Buddhism as a human phenomenon: on the basis of critical thinking and the search for evidence, purely to enjoy a fun hobby for a mental exercise, again on critical thinking and the search for empirical evidence.

It is just like Randi examining no end, paranormal phenomena and instances of pseudoscience; and even though he is accused of being biased-ly hostile toward or shall we say disparaging of enthusiasts for paranormal phenomena and what to Randi is pseudoscience, he Randi will not stop from his examination and reporting to the world his findings.


Now, back to the cherry-picking in the Pali Canon, there is rhyme and reason in this activity of cherry-picking, or there is none, or there is to some extent and in some respect -- all that again should be a very absorbing undertaking for yours truly; but I have to fix my passion on some specific concretely circumscribed area of the Pali Canon to exercise my critical thinking and search for empirical evidence, giving more direction to my attention in re cherry-picking in the Pali Canon.


I will report what I intend to concentrate my investigation more precisely on in regard to cherry-picking in the Pali Canon.

Contributions from members of this JREF Educational Foundation forum are wholeheartedly welcome, but just keep to the topic.


Yrreg

A 644 word derail by someone asking us to stay on topic.

 

[Dancing David]

Here is a text from a comparatively anciently recent piece of writing which can be the launching pad for my examination on first, what kind of a document is the Pali Canon.




Let us just concentrate on these words: "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."


The way I see it, the Pali Canon is in the nature of a piece of ancient writing from people who put it together to tell fellow humans about life, and the free pursuit of happiness -- the way they have come to convince themselves.

And why would they want to tell fellow humans about what they have come to convince themselves to be life and the free pursuit of happiness? Because they felt compassion for fellow humans, who otherwise would miss life and the free pursuit of happiness, that's why.

If Buddhists or Buddhism enthusiasts here cannot agree with my analytico-synthetic summation of what the Pali Canon is all about, just let me know; but spare all kinds of impertinent remarks obfuscating what you would want to say in intelligible utterances.


So, if I were involved in cherry-picking lines from the Pali Canon on what I would consider important for me to know, I would start with looking for words in it indicative of what the drafters of the Pali Canon want readers to know what life is and what it is all about, according to themselves.


First, I have to look for a critical and readable English version of some complete part of the Pali Canon. I understand that it is composed of three socalled baskets.


Can anyone among the Buddhists in this forum suggest some parts of the three baskets called the Tipitaka whatever, which are the most accessible in English to themselves, and which I can approach to do my own kind of cherry-picking for what is life and what it is all about, in this component portion of the Pali Canon?


What I plan to do is to employ my own concordance searcher and look up all the lines where life is mentioned, to find out what is said about life in these lines, and thereby somehow arrive at the concept of life and its appurtenances, in the component portion of the Pali Canon I am limiting myself to for cherry-picking.


Thanks for any help.



Yrreg

433 words, you can drive real fast and still go nowhere.