Owledge

I could have bet you'd post on the topic after saying you wouldn't anymore, but more or less just repeating your earlier statements is a little surprise. ( I didn't bet because I didn't want to influence the outcome that much. ;-) ) Here you are, lecturing people about how they can't claim to have knowledge of compassion because they don't demonstrate it in their forum activity ... while you aren't either. This is delicious for the mind. It's like a hypocrite comdemning people in a hypocritical way for being hypocrites.

I've heard cats are very musical. Or did I mix something up?

Quote Immortal4life: "You don't sit down and have "intelligent conversations" with evil. You wouldn't sit down have an intelligent conversation with Julius Caesar, Nero, Hitler, Napoleon, members of the CCP, Saddam Hussein, or Osama Bin Laden, so why would you with Globalists, the New World Order, Bush, Obama, Clinton, or any of the western evil beings in the current times?" I'd love to have a chat with Julius Caesar, Hitler and probably Bin Laden. Regarding Caesar... good that someone wrote a book with a different view, but for me things are alreay quite clear based on the 'popular version'. Caesar was a head of state so to speak, murdered by a conspiracy of wealthy politicians who were afraid of losing their influence. It's easier to corrupt a parliament than to corrupt a ruler with principles. Julius Caesar is an example of how long propaganda can twist historic perception. He surely was responsible for deaths, wars and the usual that comes with 'the office', but he might have been a bit like Ghaddafi.

Satire? Well, more like agitprop. That video is not very creative, original or reputable. I'd have preferred a mock historic report from the future about events happening now, in the style we today have historic reports about the past.

And many US Americans are still to busy calling the Chinese and North Korean government evil. No time looking at the own government. From the top down there will only be more crap with the current power structures. It's unavoidable to practice civil disobedience. If people can get along on a local level, person-to-person, and the more distanced it becomes, the more messed up, then what's required is more local self-administration. There's one problem though: You could call that Communism, haha. I'm wondering whether people are aware that most families have an internal socialist rule. Regarding civil disobdience: Encourage ALL kids to use any kind of gun symbology they can think of. This will make the indoctrination system go batshit crazy, and that's what's needed to wake people up.

Very unskillful trolling. You lack phantasy. Also, the I-know-more-quotes-than-you game is boring. Lack of original thought leads to intellectual materialism, hiding behind supposed authorities. You might be suffering from a severe case of academia. ... P.S.: Guys, who was that deluded preacher a while ago who thought he's super-ascended and on a mission to liberate everybody and that sex is evil? I was just reminded of him but forgot his name.

Yeah, I know the frustration. I am an incarnation of a Daoist deity, but nobody can even perceive my huge divine aura. It's almost impairing my mundane vision, all over the place, but non-deities just can't see it. Bummer.

Why do you draw a line in the definition? So there's a threshold? Isn't basic common humanity compassionate? Maybe it's simply flying under the radar of society, not considered exceptional, and thus easily handwaved, while it's just the massive basis of compassion happening all the time?

It's not a problem, but the right definition, because the chain of resulting outcomes is infinite and increasingly unforseeable. Apart from this being kinda wacky, it would move compassion into the realm of calculated action. It's sad that you get so worked up about the definition of compassion while getting it so wrong. Your own writing advocates 'everyday compassionate action', but based on that I have to say: Sorry, it's not for you to decide whether your actions are compassionate. It depends on the outcome. ... Kinda sucks to see it that way, no? If you give a homeless guy a sandwich to impress your girlfriend, it says nothing about your capacity for compassion. Either you would have done the same under other circumstances and thus are compassionate, or you just know that it impresses people and are insincere and manipulative. No moral highground there that would justify your righteous indignation.

Social darwinism is a constructed inaccurate term, yes. And it won't get more profound than fear-based. ... Well, you could get more specific: fear of death. The root of all fears. Pursuing ideas that don't benefit society as a whole can be seen as rooted in the belief that there's so much competition out there that not standing out will not ensure a satisfying existence. It's an inadequacy issue, which most likely is a combination of rational and irrational fears so to speak. Rational fears meaning those threatening conditions in society that are created by everybody's fear-based behavior. This points to the saying: There's nothing to fear but fear itself. Fear is not easy to deal with, but if noone does, it only gets worse. What society needs is motivation to have courage, not guides on how to live comfortably with our fears - because they significantly shape our behavior, our perception of reality and thus our society. It is OK if we can't overcome all our fears. I'm just saying that the easy path should not be glorified. Following a guide on how to be rich is an admission of weakness, of failure, and thus not related to "being successful" in terms of being productive to society. People give clear feedback about socially inacceptable behavior. Things like the term "banksters" and common opinion about criminal politicians and all. It's just that the power that fear awards to people nourishing it makes them not having to care for those opinions, so that (social) standpoint won't represent an incentive to change. Those who make themselves agents of fear are running a pain-avoidance scheme, and thus only pain can give them an incentive to change. I don't mean by creating empathy. Those people are usually way beyond help like that. But the initial means for turning things around for an agent of fear is the removal of the comfort zone. I've seen some examples of that. I tried to encourage someone with great compassion and positivity to free himself of his obsession, but it was housed in a castle he erected for it, and I didn't have the means (or intention) to tear it down. If you try to help those people, you might believe you've gotten through to them, but then they come back and haven't changed one bit.

Yeah, every case has its details and uniqueness. It's just that recently I became aware of something: A good help for the general public has to be one that would work if followed by everybody. Relatively easy to make that test and a good indicator of whether advice is socially nourishing - good for humankind, or rooted in the 'old fear-based survival of the fittest crap'.

What I was trying to point out is that someone writing guides on how to be successful should be able to present credentials, and if the only credentials are the writing of those guides, then it's a pyramid scheme. Just like getting rich through investment funds. That wealth is empty. It's not an accomplishment.

To emphazise the guy's conviction about himself that he's the real deal. Of course "real" is a shallow label, as I hinted at before in a different context Drama queen. Too bad I'm refusing to see the bigger picture, otherwise I could check out info links about your claims. ... Especially evidence that the DL is taking that supposed intrigue into consideration in a way that won't do more damage than good and giving his opponent exactly what he wants.

The story is more about mixing up means and ends than where motivation comes from. About self-corruption and weakness. About losing sight. One can become 'successful' in modern society by writing books about how to be successful.

Wow, you actually don't know the difference. Your lack of confusion is real. By the way, here's an anecdote from my shaman: A while ago an Indian yogi (a REAL indian yogi, haha) came to him for an ayahuasca ceremony. He was very sure of himself, he was a highly advanced guru, knowing far-out stuff, having seen things and all. He took the brew and nothing happened. Nothing. Next day he participated in the second ceremony. Nothing happened there either. He couldn't believe it so he upped the dosage ... twice. He had a shitload of entheogens in his body, but nothing happened. A while later he reported to the shaman his realization that he had been massively fooling himself, that his whole spiritual path and 'yogi-career' was an escapism from ordinary life. What a huge spiritual growth!

If it were just that, it would be fine. But he decreed social discriminatory means against Shugden worshippers, and that's such a basic folly. It's the behavior of a high-ranking Western politician. It's Dr. House behavior. Putting one's own agenda of supposedly 'protecting people' above respect for their free will. You say "keep in mind" as if it is a common truth while it is just a thesis. Not a good sign to confuse a thesis with truth. It's a bold thesis, too. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Just look at the degree of Teresa-like behavior in a social subgroup and look at how much suffering there is, how emotionally healthy they are, how close to what Lao Tzu regards as life in harmony with the Tao. For me the 'spiritual predicament' is that fear generates more fear and love generates love, and there's still a widespread habit of trying to fight fear, while fighting is a function of fear. Fear and love both perpetuate themselves, and only the courage to not nourish fear can reduce fear in the world. It is difficult to imagine a world with 6 billion Teresa-minded people, but such a world would surely be almost beyond our current comprehension. I think it would quickly lead to a massive ascension (frequency jump if you will) for humankind, making that ascended state the new average. All one needs to do is to find a small scale example of something in the real world and then extrapolate. Real world examples are very empirical, grounded. It's still highly philosophical though, since suffering can be a useful part of spiritual growth. It is debatable whether the average degree of suffering in the universe (very theoretical of course) did ever change. It might be part of the game of life that while there's motion everywhere all the time, basically nothing changes, since that would ruin the whole game. No point actually trying to explore this, since it goes way beyond what the mind can handle.

It is far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them. That's what I'm saying. The Dalai Lama has political function. Politics and a lot of talking/preaching is a problematic mix. The statements of him about the Shugden issue that I know of have been almost shockingly unempathic. He creates a social separation and borderline existentially threatening discrimination and talk about it being the right thing like it's the most obvious and self-explanatory thing in the world. Let me say it this way: ... He's getting old. I'm currently watching the TV show "House MD", and there's a lot of food for thought about this issue. I think it would be delusional to call Dr. House a practitioner of "true compassion" that masks his seeming lack for common empathy. The character is very rich and good for raising awareness of many facets of the human psyche, about belief systems, perpetuation of emotional pain and their effects.

This is a bit confusing. You throw a lot of labels together and claim I'm doing something which I'm not. You mention "everyday ordinary" in one breath with "nonpsychological enlightened". You blame me for not wanting to combine "limited conditioned" with "enlightened". What I'm doing is much more simple and down-to-earth. Maybe your mind is too much in spiritual philosophy mode and not in language syntax mode. This issue here is preprogrammed to occur when a spiritual philosophy takes a word that already has a meaning and adds "true" to it, making it something else. Compassion and skillful action are seperate things working together, as has obviously been pointed out by several people. There can be compassion without skillful action and there can be skillful action without compassion. You use a lot of labels showing a certainty about things. What is "emotionalist"? Is it bad? Is "everyday ordinary" selfless action not based on emotion? This is all extremely vague and labeled. Please give a reasoning in clear steps so I can follow your thought process.

Why is noone bothered by this part?: Claiming that people who talk about the idea of "true compassion" are above common compassion - wow. Sounds a lot like an intellectual avoidance strategy. Like talking about love with the desire to become a renowned love expert because one is incapable of feeling love. Also, the word true/truely is so often used as a filler, and arbitrary distinction based on a belief of self-righteousness. It is so easy when habitually disagreeing with other views to just call the own one "true". And quoting others using that rhetoric to support the own view is even less impressive. When it is claimed that so-called true compassion can be practiced while acting in a way that has the effect of a lack of so-called relative compassion, I am very skeptical. It is immensely useful as such a convenient excuse. The way the Dalai Lama handles the Shugden issue shows me that he is not a paragon of wisdom and compassion. He believes he is right, so he considers any means he chooses as appropriate. The universe self-regulates this unwise behavior by supplying the Dalai Lama with an increasing number of opponents. And for the matter of absolute truth: Based on my own experiences, the only absolute truth might be that there is no absolute truth. On a deep level (probably beyond subconscious) our beliefs create reality and thus truth. Truth is whatever we make it to be on a unified level. No point arguing about 'higher' truths, since that is just part of the process of creating truth. Accordingly, it might be that the so-called "true compassion" is just a compassion rooted in a high level of reality where whatever is believed becomes truth. That's why I advocate practicing the good old compassion based on mutually agreed principles. It has less potential for delusion.

I couldn't tell you my last acts of kindness. I don't keep track of them.

Some time for exploring higher concepts like real compassion - if you're not content with having life problems alleviated. And then eventually you might arrive at the same conclusion that Lao Tzu did: Live a humble and happy, down-to-earth life. A bit like the monk who studied and practiced a lifetime in a monastery and finally was overcome by regrets of not having lived an 'ordinary' life. The pursuit of higher goals should only be done if you enjoy the journey. If you have a problem with the idea of being left empty-handed when you SUCCEED, better forget it. ... If you can't laugh about the cosmic joke, that is.

If this is not just a narrow view on things, but to any degree representative, it would draw a sad picture about the state of Buddhism. It would also confirm what I'm trying to say. @Seth I think you took a detour without changing your view. The point was not that relative compassion served the goal of helping the masters continue to pursue the 'real thing'. The masters were on the experiencing end of compassion. They felt it. It made them appreciate it. It is very powerful, since it acts on the physical plane. Very mundane. Very solid. "People suffering less can spend more time on the big issues." - And I thought suffering IS the big issue. ;-)

Is the video's title correct? I wouldn't be surprised if something got mixed up somewhere... considering how incomprehensible the lyrics are. Woke up this morning, splitting a carrot, Stubbed another carrot on the way out of bed, Made it to the carrot room, but there were no carrots, House was still trashed from the carrots before, Got to the grocery, but was out of instant carrots, Cried out in pain "oh Carrot, why have you forsaken me?"....

Did YOU know? ;-)

@Aaron Good elaboration, although the problem still persists: If compassion is a thing of the heart, then bringing skillful action into the mix subjects it to a mind-based control instance. It's the classical attempt of the mind to control and thus pervert things. Compassion in itself is pure. It does not look at the outcome. That's the mind. The mind can improve the outcome, but it can also ruin it, and since there's chaos in the universe, it's a dangerous game, especially when the mind starts to believe it knows all the outcomes. That's why I emphasize the importance of not assuming that both things inherently belong together. To me, "Compassion means skillful action" is a badly worded philosophy, approach, strategy. Take CPR for example. People are told they should do it, even when there's a risk that due to their unskillfulness they might break a rib. But imagine you do CPR and break ribs in a severe way that cause internal bleeding, and only a minute after, the ambulance arrives, and while they have no problem getting the oxygen flowing again, the rib damage poses a severe problem. Maybe add another pre-existing unknown health condition into the mix. The outcome is that not doing CPR would have had the better outcome. But how could you have known? All these questions don't touch compassion. Compassion is not afraid of doing the 'wrong' thing. The act of compassion itself might be all that is needed to help someone. All strategic considerations are fear-based. And while one COULD call relieving people from their suffering fear-based for the actor, I think the important distinction is that compassionate action is not anti-fear, but pro-love. If you do it out of fear of more suffering, it's not compassion. You do it for the good feeling that the act itself creates in you and others. As I said, it is heart-opening. The simple gesture signaling you that someone else cares for you is very powerful.