FmAm

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Time has passed, and I've lost my faith in experience, too. Thanks to Nagarjuna and Gorgias. There's a good paper on Madhyamikas and nihilism: "Sunyavada: A Reinterpretation" by Harsh Narain.

"The true world - we have abolished. What world has remained? The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one."

There's much common to Hume and Buddha: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity#The_no-self_theory http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/james1.htm

I'm claiming that there's no "upwelling". Nothing stems. There's no source. I'm not talking about some metaphysical or religious nothingness here. What I mean is that there's no consciousness or mind behind or beyond experience. If someone says experience happens in/on/at/to/etc mind/consciousness/Mind/Consciousness, I disagree. There's no doer, just doing. No experiencer, just experiencing. There's no hierarchy in experiencing. There's no base experience (such like consciousness). No foundation. No eternal Absolute. Experiencing (whatever it is at the "time") is all there is. And it can't be defined. If someone says he's experiencing ego or Consciousness, it's the experiencing that "exists", not the ego or Consciousness. The possible ego-experiencing is only experiencing, like hunger-experiencing (although I don't believe there's an experience of an ego). If there's table-experiencing, it's the experiencing that exists (for sure), not the table. I'm not a big fan of Nietzsche, but there are some things he said quite well:

I know. I can feel it all the way over here.

Reality can't be defined. Reality can't be experienced. Experience is reality. A shoe isn't an experience.

A foot, of course.

Yes, I'm saying that body is just like mind. It doesn't exist. When I experience my foot, for example, that's not what's really happening. "Me" and "foot" are thoughts, the inner story. The experience of the story and the thought is real. But the story isn't true. What we experience is a collection of sensations and forms (and even "form" is too much said - it is just a sensation without the story of a form). No "my foot". This is what can be absolutely certain. It is possible that "my body" is living in a "world". But I can never be sure about it. There are sensations I link together. One link contains the thought "foot" and some other sensations (which really aren't separate). But there's no proof for "a foot". The problem with mind is that there isn't even a sensation which could be labeled as "mind". There's just the story. The Bundle Theory of the Self http://m.sparknotes.com/philosophy/hume/themes.html

It's the illusion of ego I'm talking about. I'm not denying other people's experience (although I can know nothing about it). I'm just saying that other people and myself are just stories and there's not even an illusion of an ego or I. Has someone experienced an ego? I have never heard anyone saying that. Ego/I isn't something that can be experienced. Mind is like ego: it doesn't exist and can't be experienced. It's only an unnecessary noun added to the experience. (And I have no purpose behind this. I'm not denying (and I haven't denied) religions or beliefs, or stories. I don't care if someone believes that illusion of ego/mind exists. These are just thoughts.) Philosophy to me is always about the Absolute. When it comes to the Relative (the stories), I turn to psychology instead of philosophy. There's no possibility for free will. How could it be possible? I have never heard any plausible explanation. The belief in the story exists. Together with the belief comes the need to punish and judge, and the need to get acknowledgement. The kind of nihilism I'm talking about here clears all the obstacles to love and compassion.

Of course. Just like a mountain is formed by plates, the plates are formed by other factors etc. But what you call "me" is just a bunch of reactions (again, thoughts, feelings and other impressions) to environmental stimulation. And because of the infinite series of causes and effects, those reactions can't be separated from the environment.

Feel free to bash me. I'm not saying that I'm enlightened and without "I/ego" in a sense it is described in some religious texts. Not at all. I am an ordinary wanker with a very sensitive "ego". What I'm trying to say is that the ego doesn't exist even in a normal, everyday experience of a sensitive retard like me. Experience of ego isn't there even when it is insisted that it is there. There is just thought (an inner story) and other impressions. No one can experience ego or self. No one can experience oneself. Because there isn't one. This thread isn't about me.

My impression of karma is that of a pessimist. The world might return evil for good and good for evil. Or it might return nothing at all. Doing good and being compassionate is the last and only effort of the powerless. It's some kind of refusal and objection. And even the effort doesn't stem from "me". There's "good" and "evil" without real good and evil. There's doing and actions without doers or actors.

Both. Morality and free will can't be experienced. Affection and compassion can instead. So it's just realising the experience. This is a logical conclusion, too. And I've been searching literature that describes these conclusions.

Actually Hume criticised Descartes for his notion about the self. So my view is humean (or nietzschean) on this particular issue. I don't care about Nietzsche's solutions. Gautama's "letting go" is more honest standpoint.