goldisheavy

These people are slime. It's one thing to withstand the shit the world throws at you, and it's another thing to throw your personal shit at the world in a manner that is completely unethical and inconsiderate. These people don't just post on some forum. They physically disrupt people's lives in their face. They're one step short of violence. In fact, if these same people were Muslims, they'd be setting off bombs with that kind of attitude, I guarantee it. It's lucky these fundies happen to be Christian. They probably have what Christ said about loving thy enemy on the back of their minds to moderate them at least somewhat.

Yes, I do. You choose to accept fallacious physicalist assumptions unchallenged. I don't. I used to be a physicalist. I have analyzed my physicalist ideas and found them to be inconsistent with themselves and reality and thus I rejected them. This means I reject the physicalist metaphysics of science, but I still respect scientists and the scientific method. Also, it's a technical point, but I am not a creationist. I don't believe anything was ever created by anyone. It's a container in a philosophical sense. Calling it an organ instead of container changes nothing and only obscures the meaning. The real point is that in your view the organ is outside the experience like a container is outside that which it contains. You are hopeless. I consider your viewpoint to be an ignorant one. If meanings are not real then brain is not real either. Does having a brain have meaning? If yes the meanings must be real. So when you say meanings are not real you lie to yourself and others. When we say meanings are real we mean two things. You take meanings seriously, one, and two, and you believe at least some meanings are either in and of themselves true or conditionally true of that which they represent depending on your metaphysical beliefs. From there you can logically deduce that if some meanings are real, all are. Etc. But this requires thinking. Buddhism is only compatible with physicalism at the shallowest level. (search for "bompu Zen") It's obvious you didn't get very deep into Buddhism if you claim it's compatible. Dalai Lama is very politically correct when he interfaces with science. He's very gentle. He doesn't say things that are too challenging for the scientists, but he does challenge them. For example, neuroscientists used to think the brain could not change from meditation. At Dalai's insistence they ran some experiments and proved otherwise. In other words, the mind controls the brain. Based on what you pay attention to your brains grows and shapes itself differently. But that's as far as Dalai goes when challenging science. He's very political and a "smooth talker" so he's not going to tell you something he knows will contradict your belief system too deeply. Thinking that consciousness arises from matter is a huge mistake and it will block all your spiritual progress. EDIT: I found a decent video that describes my position with regard to physicalism. Now, this guy is a theist (I think he called himself panentheist, which is not the usual kind of theist though, he might not be a creationist either), and I am not. However, with regard to what he says about the physicalist assumptions, his logic is the same as mine. Here it is: I've seen other great videos discussing this. I might be able to find them. Here's David Chalmers, a famous philosopher, talking about why consciousness must be fundamental and why it cannot be a product of matter interaction. This video presentation challenges materialists with some hard questions. David doesn't go far enough to actually smash the view of matter, but he delivers a mortal wound to physicalism nonetheless:

What is more important is that you don't reject your body. When you say "my body despises me" it tells me there is a good chance it's you who despises yourself at some level of your being. Our bodies don't have independent will from us. Our bodies represent our own subconscious mind. Still, I can't really say this kind of thing for sure without knowing you as a friend for many years, which would be required for me to try to inspect your deeper being. Try to avoid thinking of your body as something foreign to you and try to do the visualization I suggested. When you do it, more feelings might come up (or might not). It might become more obvious to you what the issue is between you and yourself, or you and your body. Did this problem start after you decided to join USMC? Do you have any doubts or second thoughts about USMC? I might be barking up the wrong alley here, so please don't read too much into any of these questions. It is my firm belief that ultimately no one knows you better than yourself. I believe at some level of your being you know exactly what's going on with you. I suggest that while or if you use all these methods here you still keep the regular Western doctors in the loop, but do get more opinions. Try to do the following: research your condition/symptoms online. Visit more than one doctor if you can. Even visit 5 different doctors and get 5 different opinions. I had a very severe problem with my left eye called "recurrent corneal degeneration" and I visited many docs before I got any useful advice. In my experience Western doctors tend to be assholes who only care about money. The best advice I got was from a Western-trained Chinese doctor working with the Chinatown poor in a very simple/humble kind of clinic, and not from the fancy doctors in expensive clinics. I healed myself using combination of all the advice I gathered from all the sources plus my own intuitive knowledge and visualizations and before the healing took place I was in hell for 2 years straight. I never visited any alternative doctors because I do my own alternative healing, so I don't need another doctor to cover the alternative side of the equation. You may want to visit an alternative medicine doctor, like an acupuncturist, or even a hypnotherapist. As far as acupuncture or traditional Chinese medicine goes (TCM), I am by far not the best person to talk to. A hypnotherapist may be willing to do a hypnotic diagnosis for you. It's when the therapist puts you in a state of hypnosis and have you yourself tell the therapist what your problem is. Surprisingly, this way you can get some pretty accurate diagnosis at least sometimes because like a I said before, you know yourself best, and that's why this method works. But not all hypnotherapists may be willing to do this with you. Some therapists might think this is too unscientific and weird. Others may think this is natural and normal. You'll get the best results from a therapist with beliefs similar to your own, who cares about your well-being and wants to see you heal. Try to get some good sleep. Clean up your bedroom if necessary and air it out. (in other words, make it inviting and pleasant) Play some soft music that has a sooting and calming effect. Read a good book in bed before you go to sleep. You can also get a generic hypnosis MP3 (I purchased two hypnosis CDs myself, ripped them, copied the MP3 onto my iPod and had fantastic results) aimed at wellness and relaxation and play that while you are in bed. From personal experience this method worked for me even when strong pain pills like Percocet had little or no effect on my pain level. Hypnosis by contrast took all the pain away and let me sleep. Get some good sleep because that's important. Also you can try drinking one or two shots of vodka before sleep. The amount should be just enough to relax your body, but not enough to feel buzzed. Don't drink more than that if you use this method. And it may be best to combine it with other methods above. If you take pain pills, you shouldn't drink... so you have to make a choice. In my experience a drink surprisingly is often more effective than a name-brand pain pill for pain management because not only does it dull the pain, it relaxes the body too. It's like taking two pills in one: a muscle relaxant and a pain pill. But don't overdo it and don't get drunk no matter what.

I've done some digging on this and I found that what you're talking about is an accepted modern guideline, while in the past "insure" and "ensure" were interchangeable spellings. That's a very likely reason why Merriam Webster dictionary still shows two acceptable meanings for the word insure, one of which is synonymous with ensure. So if we took a vote, my guess would be that most editor type people would agree with you while a sizable minority would disagree. So your remark is reasonable, but the issue is not as cut and dry as you make it sound.

I share this sentiment. This kind of politikin completely discredits the religion of Buddhism.

I asked if you could make a constructive comment, but you came up with another defensive and dismissive comment essentially stating the author of the page is stupid. What bothers me, besides the defensiveness, is that the language you use to dismiss the author of meaningness.com is that of Thusness. It's as if you're comparing what that page (meaningness.com) is saying to what Thusness says, and whenever it differs from what Thusness says, you reject it. If this is really what you are doing, you are in deep trouble.

According to Vajrahridaya enlightenment is completely impenetrable to ordinary beings. So if someone comes up to you and says "I am enlightened" and you ask some questions and receive answers you consider to be illogical, misleading, harmful and/or wrong for whatever other reason, you really don't have any grounds for saying, "no, I don't think you're a buddha" unless you too claim to be a buddha. My problem with Vajrahridaya's view is that it's too extreme and simplistic. Ordinary beings never enter into the extreme of ordinariness. In other words, ordinary beings have a measure of wisdom available to them at all times. At the same time buddhas do not enter into the extreme of buddhahood. In other words, buddhas can get arbitrarily wise, but no matter how wise they get they all still have a measure of ignorance. This means the difference between buddhas and ordinary beings is not an extreme kind of difference, but Vajrahridaya's language portrays an extreme difference. If you accept my view that ordinary beings do not differ from buddhas in the extreme, then it gives ordinary beings valid grounds to evaluate claims of buddhahood. If we accept Vajrahridaya's view, then ordinary beings can accept or reject the claims of buddhahood based only on blind faith and nothing else, since the gap in wisdom between the two types of beings is extreme.

Yes it is. Why? Because all ways of existing involve a point of view of some sort. This is like saying that space exists through bottles. Or it's like saying that the ocean exists through the waves.

Can I be an authority on the subject and yet be in error on that same subject? If yes, then authority is meaningless. If not, then it makes no sense for you to say that my authority with regard to my own actions is erroneous.

Hmm... that's a pretty defensive reply. Your sole concern and focus in the quoted post is to defend the "no self" idea. Is that all you have to say?

So being an authority is not a matter of convention according to you. This means anyone has a right to claim to be an authority because it's a matter of one's inner conviction and nothing else. This is not a conventional understanding of what authority means. I am simply using a conventionally accepted meaning of authority. And so should you. You should not be using your own private definition of authority in a public discussion. So when you don't want to admit you said something stupid, it is me who is being head strong? You are saying that ultimately all authority is purely internal. In other words a solitary Buddha has the same authority as the wheel turning Buddha with the only difference that the wheel turning Buddha has more groupies. Or in other words, all Buddhas have the same authority, but some are more ornamented than others. Or to say the same thing in yet other words, all Buddhas have the same authority even if the sizes of their retinues differ. Is that what you are saying? So Buddha's authority on communicating the methods depends on other people's capacities. But Buddha's authority on liberation depends only on Buddha feeling like he or she is liberated. This means whoever claims to be Buddha always has an easy out if the students fail to achieve results, because the Buddha can always blame the student for not being good enough. So if I understand all this correctly, it implies this world is full of Buddhas as far as any non-Buddhas can know. All that one needs to be a Buddha as far as others (non-Buddhas) are concerned is to simply claim to be one. If other people fail to receive one's teachings favorably one can always blame those people. That's the logical implication of what you are telling me here.

Would Buddha be an authority to you if you thought poorly of him? I think the answer is no, he wouldn't be. What if everyone in the world thought poorly of Buddha? That is a possible scenario. There are some realms where this is the case. Would Buddha still be considered an authority in those realms? You don't just promote the Buddha. You promote the idea of authority in a more general sense with all the ugly downsides of that idea. Buddha himself warned people not to rely on any authorities, but instead Buddha asked people to see things for themselves. So by promoting the validity of authority in a general sense you are actually going against the wishes of the Buddha. Nope. That statement is so simple and solid in meaning that no additional context would change its meaning. You should just admit you had a brain fart when you made that statement. Let's investigate this further. If you truly believe that the phenomenon of authority is something that is dependently arisen, then tell me, depending on what do people consider someone an authority? Or if being an authority is not dependent on people's considerations, then depending on what is someone an authority? Please pick either the latter or the former question and try to answer it.

It sounds like you don't trust the nurse to report her observations faithfully. It's possible her report is biased. It does ring true to me though. I think it is spot on. I think this is largely the same thing because most people are not selfish. So for most people being true to oneself already implies being compassionate to others because most of us have a social (rather than anti-social) view of who we are. Had you read the linked page you would have realized you're talking about exactly the same thing. Interesting point, but this is very much what #1, being more true to oneself, is all about too. Interesting point. This thing here is a dodge. You should read what the linked page says about 5 and see if you can come up with a more relevant reply. #5 in the linked page reveals that people who are near death often realize happiness is a choice. In other words, these people realized that they can choose to be happy in a wider array of circumstances than they previously thought possible. To be relevant your retort needs to somehow address that crucial aspect. As it stands, it sounds contrived, like you are grasping at straws.

The word is not the problem. The problem is what the word "authority" refers to and how it plays out in life. You say that authorities are true friends of society. Society is nothing but a collection of individuals. To be a friend of society one must be a friend of every single individual. So if Buddha is a friend of society, it's only because Buddha is my friend. If Buddha is not my friend, he's not a friend of society because he is rejecting at least one person who is a member of society. Now I ask: Assuming Buddha is both my friend and an authority, is Buddha my friend because he's an authority, or is Buddha an authority because he is my friend? In other words, what is more fundamental? Is friendship more fundamental than authority? Or is authority more fundamental than friendship? Does authority build on top of friendship? Or does friendship build on top of authority? I believe friendship is more fundamental than authority. If I don't consider someone to be my friend, that someone ceases to be an authority for me, and by extension society. What does authority imply in the context we are discussing? To me authority implies the ability to say things without being questioned. Is there anything that should be accepted without question? My answer is no. Is there any person whom we should listen to uncritically? No, there is no such person. Even Buddha said the same thing to Kalamas, but many so-called "authorities" were not so kind. In fact Mohammed, the Islamic "authority," has declared himself to be the last prophet, the last and final authority. This is why authority is immoral and bad. No one who claims to be an authority is a friend of society. People who promote others as authorities are not friends of society either. Suggesting to people that there is a class of knowledge or a person who is not to be questioned is promoting ignorance. Anyone who promotes ignorance is an enemy of society. Look at all the meanings embodied in the word "authority": http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/authority In our context out of all the meanings the least ugly meaning is 7, which says that an authority is an expert on a subject. What makes one an expert? If I say I am an expert, does that mean I am? If 1000 of my friends and I all say I am an expert, does that mean I am? Or is every person free to decide who is and who is not an expert? And how about a situation where two experts in the same subject disagree with each other? Finally, what makes the quote in my signature crazy and deliciously ironic is your, Vajrahridaya's denial of dependent origination. The quote basically says that authority stems from itself. It says that someone is an authority inherently instead of dependent on causes and conditions. You keep harping and harping and harping about dependent origination and then you say that authority is exempt from dependent origination.

I actually appreciate a lot of things Vajrahridaya writes about. It's just that he has some tendencies related to religious affiliation and religious identity that I don't appreciate. If Vajrahridaya could simply forget what religion he's from when he's on this board, and just talk about what he finds to be meaningful and true without mentioning his club, and without reminding people that they're not getting everything they can out of life until they join his club, that would be perfect for my taste. The quote in my signature is a reminder that sometimes Vajrahridaya says some really crazy things though. Semper Vigilare

It is wrong to say that mind is only true when there are thoughts. You can sit in meditation without thoughts but you don't become mindless when you do that. Don't take my word for it. Try it and see. Brain is not the context for thought. It is part of the context at certain times. Basically you are saying that physicalism offers an adequate account of life. I am saying physicalism is a joke, a really stupid doctrine which offers a deluded faith-based myth more so than a useful account of life. I don't want to get into the details here because discussing the drawbacks of physicalism is commonplace in Buddhist literature and I don't feel any desire at the moment to go over something for the 100th time, something that is talked about in-depth in many writings available to you. It's enough for me to just show you the general direction if you're interested. If you're not interested, that's fine too. Just know that you can't really understand what I am saying from a physicalist POV. Experiences don't happen in the brain. That's just your assumption. You should question that assumption. One good question you can ask yourself is this: if experiences happen in the brain, where does the brain happen? If the brain is a container for experiences, then it must be external to the experiences it contains. If the brain is outside experience, then how do we know about the brain? I'm just scratching the surface here. Mind is real in the sense that the meanings are real. Do you consider meanings to be real?

It's worse than that. Not only does Vajrahridaya extoll the virtues of Buddhism, but he also goes around putting people down not for being foolish, but purely for being outside the formal Buddhist fold. He also invites people he thinks are "good" to take Buddhist initiations and vows. This has been my experience personally. I don't recall Vaj ever taking any issue with anything I say when it comes to how I view phenomena and on many issues that are considered of critical importance in various Buddhist traditions. So for the most part he agrees with the non-religious stuff I have to say. At the same time he still attempted to put me down numerous times. Why? Well, the only reason is purely political -- it's because I oppose organized religion for one, and because I oppose secret clubs two, and three because I am not submissive humble enough for Vaj's foolish idea of humility. What's truly mind-blowing is that while he tried to put me down, he also invited me more than once to become a Buddhist. It's sort of like telling the person how poorly dressed one is, and then inviting that same person to shop at your clothing store right in the same breath. It's a very...how shall I say it...unclean tactic. Very manipulative, arrogant, presumptuous and selfish. I am grateful for all the teachings Buddhists have decided to openly share. But I am not grateful for attempts at manipulation, authoritarian control, and dogmatic indoctrination. I am also not grateful for the tribalistic, clannish, cliquish, cultish nature of the Buddhist secret clubs.

Yea, it's pretty obvious when I read your other posts in this thread. I completely agree with your view of religion.

I don't believe this. It's like saying that if Microsoft didn't exist we would have no personal computers now. It's not true. Maybe personal computers wouldn't be as popular without Microsoft. Or maybe they would be even more popular and even more advanced. It's hard to say if Microsoft helped the evolution of computers or hindered it. Saying that without Buddhism we would be in darkness means that you cannot imagine something that's either equivalent or wiser than Buddhism. I can, so this isn't true for me. I can imagine infinite possible religions that are at least as wise as Buddhism and that are not exactly like Buddhism, but have a distinct character and style to them. The best teachings in Buddhism have an anti-dogmatic quality to them. At the same time, Buddhism has a lot of dogma and cultural baggage. So the best of Buddhism is at odds with the worst of it. To think only of what's the best in Buddhism is to be blind. Religion in general has been much more harmful than helpful to humankind. It's just a lucky fluke that Buddhism has some good elements in it that cancel out the bad elements, and the bad elements in Buddhism are not that bad compared to the bad elements of Islam, for example. Whatever is truly wise and beautiful stands apart from religion. Religious movements immorally try to appropriate and monopolize something they have absolutely no right to. For this I have condemned all religions, including Buddhism. This is why eventually religions will become marginalized in this mindstream. That is my vow. It's not a new vow I just made either. It's been my vow for a long time. My vow opposes dogma because dogma is inflexible and thus dead to life. My vow opposes ownership of truth because ownership has the negative qualities of excluding beings and of despotic and arbitrary control. Ownership in general is bittersweet at best, but when it comes to truth and wisdom, attempts to own truth and wisdom are downright devastating and disastrous. Whatever I say here is never in the spirit of me owning or monopolizing anything I talk about. I demand the same from everyone, and this means religions are taking a hit, because the vast majority of religious leaders fail to live up to the moral standard I am talking about here.

Everyone who likes to stress the idea of selflessness or "no self" as the truth, check out this chart: http://meaningness.com/self-schematic-overview I think it's a very useful chart and I think it makes at least some observations worth paying attention to. The column for "no self" is the one in the middle. What I like about the above chart is that it shows a balanced and in my opinion surprisingly honest view that notes both negative and positive aspects of eternalistic true self and nihilistic no self, and shows how both of these views deviate from how life really is when you examine what happens in life honestly. Buddhists tend to focus on only the negative aspects of the "true self" idea, and only on the positive aspects of the "no self" idea. The chart shows that "true self" idea has some surprising merit, and that "no self" idea has some surprising demerit. It's surprising to most dogmatic Buddhists anyway. It may not be surprising to everyone. Both the eternalistic "true self" and the nihilistic "no self" ideas are simplifications, caricatures of reality, but as caricatures, they both have some merits and they both have some demerits. This is the kind of honesty we need to make progress toward wisdom.

The essence of what you are saying is twofold: 1. Resolve matters. When you make a serious vow, you are demonstrating (mostly to yourself) the strength, the depth, the sincerity, and the tenacity of your resolve. It is a way for you to convince yourself beyond doubt that you are truly serious, that your resolve is diamond-like. It's also a way to give your dream a more concrete shape. 2. It's the nature of mind to manifest whatever you resolve on. Buddhism is not the only system of thought that teaches this kind of wisdom. Hindus teach the same thing, for example. I am sure others teach a similar set of ideas. Wisdom will never completely disappear. Wisdom can be difficult to recognize, but it's never completely absent. Enjoy the wisdom you find in Buddhism and make the most of it, because Buddhism is not going to last forever. Knowing that this human life does not last forever causes you to appreciate the opportunities in this life. Knowing that Buddhism does not last forever causes you to appreciate the opportunities in Buddhism. It is the nature of all things to change. At some point things change beyond recognition. That's only natural. All things are cyclic. There is nothing to fear and there is nothing to hang on to. Or let me put it this way, if you want to hang on to Buddhism, make all the best that's in it emblazoned on your heart and share without reservation. But be vigilant. Not everything in Buddhism is great. You'll never learn anything of significance if all you do is emulate, copy and follow. Do some of your own thinking and feel free to question everything.

I like this question a great deal and I think it's very important. My personal answer to it is that basically, no, you don't go hunting for all your erroneous beliefs. That's not going to work. What I believe one should do is cultivate 24/7 mindfulness (an opposite quality would be mindlessness, absentmindedness, roboticness and zombieness), and then live life with a presence of mind. Then when a pain point arises, see into it very deeply right then and there! Right then and there you should see what's happening. You should see what is the nature of the pain, why it hurts, what beliefs support the pain and so on. You may not see all of the details and supporting context right away, but you'll see quite a bit right away if you make mindfulness a habit. Then when you have a chance, you can bring up a recent pain point in meditation. You can bring it up in your mind's eye, relive the pain one more time, and as you relive the painful even in meditation, you can gain a lot more insight into it, including at least some of the core beliefs that contextualize it. You may not discover everything right away, but you should find enough to make the practice useful. As the painful event becomes more and more of a distant memory, it becomes less valuable for this kind of practice. This practice works best with relatively recent, fresh events, or with anxieties and concerns that always exist as a kind of psychological undercurrent at all times (if this is true for you). Of course if you are profoundly relaxed most of the time, you won't have an undercurrent of anxiety, and there is no need to invent problems if they aren't there. Exactly. Well said! Deep beliefs are not necessarily obvious until life circumstances or other beliefs contradict them in some significant (and often painful) way. Breaks are important and so are naps.

This is huge. Thanks for bringing this up. EDIT: I read the linked article and it's even better than the summary Jetsun posted. I encourage everyone to click on the link and read the whole thing.

I like it.

What would a discussion that didn't lack understanding be like?