Stosh

Sorry, I dont mean to hammer you about this. Just consider This,,, Dude a is somehow deemed not ideal by guy b, guy b judges dude a , and dude a knows it, Is this in any way better for either of them than if guy b just accepted dude a , and minded his own business? attending to their own issues? are women better off being scared by men , men expecting skin color to be predictive of virtue,? etc A price is paid by judge and judged, whether the price is well spent as compared to making decisions ad hoc ...... I think Taoism and other faiths suggest not.

His or her choice how they choose to live, not yours or mine, nor do heavy folks deserve the hatred and self righteous judgement aimed at them. You dont know how or when, so if you got hit by a truck, the point was moot, people die of many things and every time it nullifies all the rest. But the fatness isnt the issue ,its not the only message, need more? That its fine to retaliate, fine to hate, fine to judge, lie ,hoard, violate, sneak ,objectify, and do every other ugly thing that folks excuse by saying everybody else does it. Yknow vegetarians and folks that take multivitamins live shorter lives too? How about the stat that says ten percent of americans suffer from cognitive disorders and and generalized anxiety. Im sure you feel the attitude is appropriate because you judge overeating Deserves condemnation, that is exactly the problem.

The secret to intelligence, is making up a new definition for it.

Im a nuts and bolts version kind of guy.. It would just be nice to get to the next page for a change. Page 1, breathe,,something something,, then , you enter nirvana. the end. Its a little like daoism ,where they really only cover chapter 1 In the begininng ,it was mysterious, ,,argue argue no concensus , the end.

To know who said what, like that, requires me to know every version of every translation ever written . These are little meaningless snippets which do not outline or suggest any broader philosophical point. For all I can tell, they could all be from the Matrix..

We are socialized as children, and end up with many ideas we do not originate, nor remember the first lesson for. For instance, the religion that folks have, is the legacy of their parents. Each kid doesnt reinvent that whole shebang for themselves. Another might be the directive, to always do your utmost, others like being fat is bad, may never even be verbalized. That which kids absorb , may or may not be good to have learned blindly, and so one needs to shed their indoctrination, to grow a new nose. Natural, is a word which folks may construe as meaning not human in origin IN modern English,but its wrong to imply that the english connotations are the connotations of Lao. Consider what it mean if you knew for a fact was a bad translation..

If this is acceptable to you , And I am not stretching credibility. Then you can start trashing some of the ideas from earlier. Skip the grandiose capitalism ,marxist blah blah. You do Not , have to be pessimistic to see the world accurately. to see the world accurately is to see the external world as neutral. You do not have to evade reality with diversions in order to find some happiness being in it. You have to correct your desire to remain critical ,due to considering negativity to be accurate. The philosphical negativity is not fact ,nor is it fate ,nor is it dumb luck , nor is it desirable. I hope this was or is acceptable and I have not stretched credibility, I think all this is easy stuff.

Good answer for why you do not trust your emotions, in fact I gotta agree that emotions arent a good place to start for judging the external situation. I was however concentrating on the thing that the external world is ,, well , what it is , and the emotional value,,, or cost,, in your case, is internally attributed. For emphasis, ill add an example,, even if you get this idea solidly, I dont want to make big jumps. You look at a strawberry, is it good or is it bad? Well, It is a piece of fruit, looks red , moist, perhaps has sugars , perhaps you have memories of others which were nice. This info however is neutral , its not bad nor is it good , it contains no inherent sentiment or morality or value. If you however were allergic to them, you might understandably veer off and proclaim it to be Bad. This is internally applied judgement. You said that the external world doesnt delude, you are correct, it simply is whatever it materially is, and has no virtue or vice of its own, in terms of goodness or badness. Secondly, you understand that ones attitudes, have at least, a degree of independence , from the external objects . Person A may be happier than person B in exactly the same physical situation. Right? So , being very explicit, you can already agree, without changing your mind at all, several things. 1, The external world is neutral 2, the internal experience is not locked into any particular sentiment about the external situation , By the external situation , but may be self inflicted internally OR, may be suceptible to the attitudes we hold ,, in such a way that we can influence ,, and so potentially may mitigate our experience of our lives and end up happier. None of this may seem earth shattering news, but its important to see these things clearly , with complete confidence, since its reaaally basic stuff.

please confirm this is the true sentiment you have, People dont get deluded from the outside, they internally arrive at an emotional stance ,and since this is an internal choice of sorts , you do not trust it ?

Why?

They have a tradition which encourages argument, it causes one to dig deep , get to the core of what one believes, and so , they get down there where a point can have its full impact. Certainly this isnt the habit under all circumstance, .

We can go there later, Im just asking if we undermine that , will you fight it. This should be an easy softball question , but you need to gut check.

I didnt say anything you didnt suggest, so Ill go to part two. IF we undermine the idea that grimness and sadness are inescapable logical conclusions one must arrive at, are you going to fight it?

Did you just say you have a bone to pick with having a positive attitude in buddhism,? and that they dont instead use more critical thinking? Dude! Those guys will argue from sun up till sun down for sport! But more importantly, Ive got a critical thinking thing for you. If you like working the grey matter. See if I got you right first. If your critical thinking bums you out, and yet you persist, you deem the truth you believe exists ,to be more important to acknowledge than for you to be happy but wrong. Is that not so? This puts anyone who is happy ,in the category called deluded. Is that not so? and so anyone who was having fun, can only be enjoying themselves, if they are distracted momentarily from the unavoidable dismal assessment that they should be suffering from. So far, am I getting your mindset basically correct?

Oh, ok, I m trying to make a concerted effort to understand the mental landscape from the buddhist point of view, in a way promotive of my own progress. So there are things I need to reconcile , and present to you , in order to do that. Please bear with me. HHDL , funds a program which is aimed at this , and I think its a wise and modern effort to make. The speaker he had , Bro Billy Tan ? Said that info is processed by the amygdala before the frontal lobes even see the data., dualistic emotional content has already assessed and assigned before we are even aware of the source, and so Some questions arise on their own , simply attempting to be clear on what is being indicated. Is it the amygdala's processing to be the problemaic self people keep calling ego,? If this ego filtering happens before my frontal lobe self gets the data, What method is there to overcome ones reflexive assessment ? which doesnt demand constant attention all day long to squash the emotional content attatched to literally every shape I see ,noise I hear etc.

While I am certainly not going to read all that, which is your thing, I do see that its an annotated text from several hundred years later, and has parts wrtten by Cfs grandkids. Which means it was modified in a way which could be seen as favorable to Cfs lineage, and undermines the idea that this should be considered as unassailable testimony that Cfs was the student of revered Lao. Looking to the content, it appears quite favorable to ideas of memorizing formalities associated with every aspect of life, which doesnt strike me as consistent with the theme of forgetting, and returning to the natural sincere core of ones humanity. Quite the opposite, I would say. Considering if he was the student of Lao is really rather unimportant if they are not appearing to be supportive of a common ideology. , right? Different men with different ideologies. Am I wrong in anything I am saying? Please correct me if I have erred or confirm what you feel is not wrong factually.

Its a good story though.

Never, no, so it obviously didnt... besides Reincernation isnt supernatural, nothing is.

Confucius, the deciever is guilty of that, the gullible is guilty of that, would you blame the gullible to protect the deceiver? Besides, though the messenger couldnt decode the way, Yen read it anyway.

I recognize this , and see the prompt response, feel the quick tension at some noise, and let that go, but , what am I supposed to do with this ,now noticing it? I tolerate some tension , is that important ?

I hope you hang around here a while and continue to participate , one day you might notice some gaps opening up in this grim scenario , as I did.

I don't know what that means, but like footprints upon the shore , the wave tosses up, and the prints are no more. The world is in still in balance

Do you mean that Conf. is so humble that he can grovel at the feet of his own student? Dont forget, this dude is the professor at the start, making little of Yen's progress. Its not like its a story about being young himself , or going to a immortal or something for guidance. He has been teaching about stuff he hasn't achieved and doesn't recognize the path to get there!

He is being used as a Tool, to show where peoples ideas go or get things wrong. So when his student begins , Confucius doesn't recognize that the student is on the right path, he acts arrogant and superior , the student progresses, and finally says -- essentially the same thing- but in a more complete manner , Confucius finally recognizes that the student has done what He cannot , but that which Confucius wishes more than anything to know. Zz knows Confucius is smart and can talk the talk , he just cant walk the walk , mainly because he is not humble enough to start at the beginning, or hasn't even gotten the basics clear. Either way , its the progression which leads to the final end zone , Confucius doesn't recognize the path to the end is the means of getting there. This isn't being a mouthpiece , this is being used as a negative object lesson ,'Don't let this happen to you.'

You said it yourself at the start , nothing to see in a thesaurus "Brevity the soul of wit , or nitwit ?" And the subject was? Brevity in speech, And the similarity between those who do or do not search long and hard for wisdom? They both consider it that their understanding is based on subjective opinions , which makes explanation untenable or fruitless. So can can one see a difference in the brevity of speech of the wise and plain? No, its just brevity of speech ,, which is functionally the same. Could either party be verbose ? sure, but , could someone consider it smart to be brief ? yes. When? When the point is to draw in conversation.