The second
Buddha lecture
- Thread starter Kyriakos
- Start date
For westerners who have too much and feel burdened by it
to get used to the idea of less, and get used to the process involved
A practical philosophy ?
Here a vid of Marie Kondo
Her approach:
Look at an item and ask yourself: " does it make me happy ?"
When not: "thank the item for having been there for you... before giving, selling, throwing it away"
A brother staying over with Christmas wanting to move to a smaller house had started doing it. Also many books (how many are you really going to read once more ?). Internet is a game changer for many interests. He told me he felt great doing it.
Also triggered because of the big heap of the belongings my mother had when we were moving her to an dementia care house. Reducing the number of items that went to her new home was really a relief for her. A feel of overview and control and less stress.
The difficult thing was that she was already too demented to be really part of that filtering. We did that as the four children together not really with the "thank you" but certainly with an emotional feeling of a nice-memories-goodbye.
And on topic.
My experience is that the older you get, the more you are kind of torn between two conflicting needs:
on the one hand the need to have an object, a picture as memory on something much bigger
on the other hand the need to simplify your life to what really matters, a kind of boiling down
possessions can stress at older age.
Buddhism will be felt differently throughout the phases of your life. We are all travellers.
to get used to the idea of less, and get used to the process involved
A practical philosophy ?
Here a vid of Marie Kondo
Her approach:
Look at an item and ask yourself: " does it make me happy ?"
When not: "thank the item for having been there for you... before giving, selling, throwing it away"
A brother staying over with Christmas wanting to move to a smaller house had started doing it. Also many books (how many are you really going to read once more ?). Internet is a game changer for many interests. He told me he felt great doing it.
Also triggered because of the big heap of the belongings my mother had when we were moving her to an dementia care house. Reducing the number of items that went to her new home was really a relief for her. A feel of overview and control and less stress.
The difficult thing was that she was already too demented to be really part of that filtering. We did that as the four children together not really with the "thank you" but certainly with an emotional feeling of a nice-memories-goodbye.
And on topic.
My experience is that the older you get, the more you are kind of torn between two conflicting needs:
on the one hand the need to have an object, a picture as memory on something much bigger
on the other hand the need to simplify your life to what really matters, a kind of boiling down
possessions can stress at older age.
Buddhism will be felt differently throughout the phases of your life. We are all travellers.
yung.carl.jung
Hey Bird! I'm Morose & Lugubrious
this is precisely what I was saying about "logic" in the other thread. humans don't strive towards logic nor objectivity, but rather towards "common sense", "seems good enough", "seems believable", or "best explanation yet", "makes sense to me". it's a gut feeling, intuition, sixth sense, whatever it is, it isn't formal logic, it is something worldly, experienced, related to the human condition (and, due to that, escaping objectivity).
so does that mean that Jordan is a prophet and Peterianism a religion?
yung.carl.jung
Hey Bird! I'm Morose & Lugubrious
the more I ponder it the more I accept the conclusion, that "happiness", as a construct, not necessarily as a "feeling" created by hormones, is a trap that makes one unhappy. it's a goal that is unachievable. if you asked the ancient greeks, they would probably tell you that what really makes you happy is a balance of all those drives I mention below, and that is how I feel aswell. being happy is not about asceticism nor about indulgence nor about ego-death, but rather about a harmonic balance of those. and, of course, to be truly happy, you don't just need those 3 different forms of happiness, but also suffering. suffering is what makes our state of happiness feel meaningful. if you were happy all the time you wouldn't know it. if you were utterly, 100% healthy all the time, as are people around you, you would have no concept of "healthiness" and no idea how blessed you are to have it.
as Kyr would tell you, the greeks had much better ideas than we do today. I'm sure I have posted this before but anyway. they had:
Hedone - pleasure. sex. wine. drugs. violence. indulgence. "Triebbefriedigung", as Freud would say. the lowly drives. sins of the flesh. and so forth.
Eudaimonia - (literally: to be haunted/posessed by a good demon/spirit/guardian?). "life happiness". being virtuous. achieving things you set out for. prospering. doing the right things according to ones own moral/social compass (this nietzsche picked up).
Ataraxia - a state of utter calm, of being entirely unaffected by everything around you, especially emotions.
what the **** does happiness today mean anyway? it means to not be "unhappy". to not be "discontent". to live a good life. "live laugh love", yeah, go **** yourself. happiness today means "yeah, I'm okay, totally okay, content with what I have". it's a defensive reaction.
I have nothing but contempt for people that are content. curious people, passionate people, driven people, "faustian" people (as Spengler described "westerners") constantly strive towards something. that act, that mentality, is paramount to living a good life.
this is just my ****** opinion and everyone else is entitled to theirs
what I like about her is that she thanks the objects for their "service". I think we (plural we, as in western society or whatever) have a highly dysfunctional relationship with our objects. consider the following:
only half a century ago some items were so indispensable, so important to us pragmatically, emotionally and philosophically. a little story:
for my thesis I interview refugees from czech republic, who were driven out and killed nearing the end of WW2. many of them fled beforehand. this one woman I talked to, bordering 90 years, told me that her parents managed to get over the border two beds (they made themselves, feathers from their own geese and so forth), in which they wrapped a huge standing clock. the clock never worked, and in a cruel twist of fate, it almost revealed to the czech police their plan and might have cost them their life. that woman was a child back then, has moved thrice, and still has the clock aswell as the beds. the clockwork has been missing for more than 80 years now. the clock however is not just sitting around, collecting dust. it is being cherished, cleaned, kept in shape, interacted with, it both reminds and is used by us to remind ourselves (objects are not only passive in this process!). I like to call this "Erinnerungspflege", which translate to momery care / memory cherishing. I think it's an important process for mental hygiene.
meanwhile I am on my 12th pair of headphones this decade, broke my phone and had a new one delivered 12 hours later, and am thinking of buying another laptop when I have a functioning one.,....
existence is suffering and "existence is only suffering" are two very different statements. buddhism is also not about "hey let's stop existing, bro". that's just a dumb, crude, misunderstanding from your side.
suffering is absolutely paramount. without suffering there would be no joy, no satisfaction, no overcoming, no catharsis, no nothing. an existence devoid of suffering is utterly meaningless, even more so than an existence devoid of happiness, whatever that is. if that's not obvious to you then I don't even know what to say.
fundamentally disagree with you and Freddy there. that quote I could not find via google, even after translating it into German. what book is it from? I do believe you whatever since that sounds like something he could (or Zarathustra could) say.
I don't see much "logic" in Heraclitus, Plato's forms, nor in any aphoristic or prosaic philosopher, but they're still undoubtedly philosophy.
philosophy is ultimately about asking questions, pondering questions, then asking further questions. it's as much about abstraction (which logic really is, by the way. it is, to say it with Kant, a priori knowledge, meaning non-worldy, non-empiric knowledge) as it is about inquiry.
as Kyr would tell you, the greeks had much better ideas than we do today. I'm sure I have posted this before but anyway. they had:
Hedone - pleasure. sex. wine. drugs. violence. indulgence. "Triebbefriedigung", as Freud would say. the lowly drives. sins of the flesh. and so forth.
Eudaimonia - (literally: to be haunted/posessed by a good demon/spirit/guardian?). "life happiness". being virtuous. achieving things you set out for. prospering. doing the right things according to ones own moral/social compass (this nietzsche picked up).
Ataraxia - a state of utter calm, of being entirely unaffected by everything around you, especially emotions.
what the **** does happiness today mean anyway? it means to not be "unhappy". to not be "discontent". to live a good life. "live laugh love"
, yeah, go **** yourself. happiness today means "yeah, I'm okay, totally okay, content with what I have". it's a defensive reaction.I have nothing but contempt for people that are content. curious people, passionate people, driven people, "faustian" people (as Spengler described "westerners") constantly strive towards something. that act, that mentality, is paramount to living a good life.
this is just my ****** opinion and everyone else is entitled to theirs
what I like about her is that she thanks the objects for their "service". I think we (plural we, as in western society or whatever) have a highly dysfunctional relationship with our objects. consider the following:
only half a century ago some items were so indispensable, so important to us pragmatically, emotionally and philosophically. a little story:
for my thesis I interview refugees from czech republic, who were driven out and killed nearing the end of WW2. many of them fled beforehand. this one woman I talked to, bordering 90 years, told me that her parents managed to get over the border two beds (they made themselves, feathers from their own geese and so forth), in which they wrapped a huge standing clock. the clock never worked, and in a cruel twist of fate, it almost revealed to the czech police their plan and might have cost them their life. that woman was a child back then, has moved thrice, and still has the clock aswell as the beds. the clockwork has been missing for more than 80 years now. the clock however is not just sitting around, collecting dust. it is being cherished, cleaned, kept in shape, interacted with, it both reminds and is used by us to remind ourselves (objects are not only passive in this process!). I like to call this "Erinnerungspflege", which translate to momery care / memory cherishing. I think it's an important process for mental hygiene.
meanwhile I am on my 12th pair of headphones this decade, broke my phone and had a new one delivered 12 hours later, and am thinking of buying another laptop when I have a functioning one.,....
existence is suffering and "existence is only suffering" are two very different statements. buddhism is also not about "hey let's stop existing, bro". that's just a dumb, crude, misunderstanding from your side.
suffering is absolutely paramount. without suffering there would be no joy, no satisfaction, no overcoming, no catharsis, no nothing. an existence devoid of suffering is utterly meaningless, even more so than an existence devoid of happiness, whatever that is. if that's not obvious to you then I don't even know what to say.
fundamentally disagree with you and Freddy there. that quote I could not find via google, even after translating it into German. what book is it from? I do believe you whatever since that sounds like something he could (or Zarathustra could) say.
I don't see much "logic" in Heraclitus, Plato's forms, nor in any aphoristic or prosaic philosopher, but they're still undoubtedly philosophy.
philosophy is ultimately about asking questions, pondering questions, then asking further questions. it's as much about abstraction (which logic really is, by the way. it is, to say it with Kant, a priori knowledge, meaning non-worldy, non-empiric knowledge) as it is about inquiry.
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I assume you are talking about the death and resurrection of Jesus; Christianity is not unique in claiming manifestations of god in human form and "people" inhabiting physical and spiritual realms simultaneously. A fundamental aspect of Hinduism and Sufism is that there is no actual separation between the physical and spiritual just one's awareness bias of one over the other. Buddhism offers a path to improvement.
Hinduism is the oldest and religion adhering to the concept of reincarnation. Within Hinduism individual souls are only individual because of their limited consciousness. In Reality there is only one undifferentiated existence of a single Paramatma or oversoul/godhead, etc. The individual souls are an illusion (Maya). Those individual souls journey through Maya existing in every form of physical existence. When those individual souls grasp the nature of Reality, Maya disappears and they understand that they are and have always been Paramatma. So the physical universe is infinite and constantly unfolding.
Eastern Religions tend to be cyclical over large time spans. Judaism added linear time to western thinking. The world had a beginning and will have an end. End of story. That change was significant to how people think about things.
The multi verse is both new and just a mathematical concept. Hinduism doesn't rule such a thing out, but there is actually no evidence that there is more than one universe. The bible does its best to explain the races, but fails to include native Americans. NA were totally unknown to Jews or others in that time, so it is not surprising that they were not included. Then in the 1820s the Book of Mormon explained the existence of NA and that was part of its popularity. There is no reason to be surprised that Hinduism doesn't explicitly include a multi verse.
The Jews passed down the concept there was an eternal half physical part of existence where a ghost of the former you existed after the physical you died. Whether or not this was the Greek influence of a "physical" after life, may be hard to determine. There are examples of humans returning from this after life, and they were identifiable.
The only "proof" of reincarnation as depicted within Hinduism is from the various groups that study and document people who claim to remember past lives. Some of those stories are very strange and interesting. They try to be scientific about how they document those lives, but science doesn't take them seriously.
Do you know any? Can others meet them in the flesh?
the more I ponder it the more I accept the conclusion, that "happiness", as a construct, not necessarily as a "feeling" created by hormones, is a trap that makes one unhappy. it's a goal that is unachievable. if you asked the ancient greeks, they would probably tell you that what really makes you happy is a balance of all those drives I mention below, and that is how I feel aswell. being happy is not about asceticism nor about indulgence nor about ego-death, but rather about a harmonic balance of those. and, of course, to be truly happy, you don't just need those 3 different forms of happiness, but also suffering. suffering is what makes our state of happiness feel meaningful. if you were happy all the time you wouldn't know it. if you were utterly, 100% healthy all the time, as are people around you, you would have no concept of "healthiness" and no idea how blessed you are to have it.
as Kyr would tell you, the greeks had much better ideas than we do today. I'm sure I have posted this before but anyway. they had:
Hedone - pleasure. sex. wine. drugs. violence. indulgence. "Triebbefriedigung", as Freud would say. the lowly drives. sins of the flesh. and so forth.
Eudaimonia - (literally: to be haunted/posessed by a good demon/spirit/guardian?). "life happiness". being virtuous. achieving things you set out for. prospering. doing the right things according to ones own moral/social compass (this nietzsche picked up).
Ataraxia - a state of utter calm, of being entirely unaffected by everything around you, especially emotions.
what the **** does happiness today mean anyway? it means to not be "unhappy". to not be "discontent". to live a good life. "live laugh love"
I have nothing but contempt for people that are content. curious people, passionate people, driven people, "faustian" people (as Spengler described "westerners") constantly strive towards something. that act, that mentality, is paramount to living a good life.
this is just my ****** opinion and everyone else is entitled to theirs
what I like about her is that she thanks the objects for their "service". I think we (plural we, as in western society or whatever) have a highly dysfunctional relationship with our objects. consider the following:
only half a century ago some items were so indispensable, so important to us pragmatically, emotionally and philosophically. a little story:
for my thesis I interview refugees from czech republic, who were driven out and killed nearing the end of WW2. many of them fled beforehand. this one woman I talked to, bordering 90 years, told me that her parents managed to get over the border two beds (they made themselves, feathers from their own geese and so forth), in which they wrapped a huge standing clock. the clock never worked, and in a cruel twist of fate, it almost revealed to the czech police their plan and might have cost them their life. that woman was a child back then, has moved thrice, and still has the clock aswell as the beds. the clockwork has been missing for more than 80 years now. the clock however is not just sitting around, collecting dust. it is being cherished, cleaned, kept in shape, interacted with, it both reminds and is used by us to remind ourselves (objects are not only passive in this process!). I like to call this "Erinnerungspflege", which translate to momery care / memory cherishing. I think it's an important process for mental hygiene.
meanwhile I am on my 12th pair of headphones this decade, broke my phone and had a new one delivered 12 hours later, and am thinking of buying another laptop when I have a functioning one.,....
existence is suffering and "existence is only suffering" are two very different statements. buddhism is also not about "hey let's stop existing, bro". that's just a dumb, crude, misunderstanding from your side.
suffering is absolutely paramount. without suffering there would be no joy, no satisfaction, no overcoming, no catharsis, no nothing. an existence devoid of suffering is utterly meaningless, even more so than an existence devoid of happiness, whatever that is. if that's not obvious to you then I don't even know what to say.
fundamentally disagree with you and Freddy there. that quote I could not find via google, even after translating it into German. what book is it from? I do believe you whatever since that sounds like something he could (or Zarathustra could) say.
I don't see much "logic" in Heraclitus, Plato's forms, nor in any aphoristic or prosaic philosopher, but they're still undoubtedly philosophy.
philosophy is ultimately about asking questions, pondering questions, then asking further questions. it's as much about abstraction (which logic really is, by the way. it is, to say it with Kant, a priori knowledge, meaning non-worldy, non-empiric knowledge) as it is about inquiry.
Iirc it is either in zarathustra or ece homo
timtofly
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Philo of Alexandria claimed that Simon the Sorcerer was the last one that makes any sense to me. The account is found both in Acts, and the writings of Philo.
It is possible that the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD marked the end of such contact. I highly doubt the Mormon account or any so called alien phenomenon. But contact with such versions of humanity may explain such accounts. I would link the Mormon encounter as similiar to how Hinduism started.
I have read some of the translated Vedic texts. The war between "good" and "evil" is similiar to ancient warfare found in most ANE texts. Battles that were hidden from humanity fought in a realm just out of sight, but yet the accounts were given to humans in some religious fashion.
Humans being the offspring of the ones fighting, but from a different genetic line. Even the Egyptians viewed these "gods" as humanoid, but with added abilities that humans were lacking.
Thus we come to what is known as the 3 parts that make up what it is to be human. I think we would have to agree on what those were to come to an understanding how the different major religion's of today evolved over the last 4000 years.
One's memories and recollections are hardly proof of re-incarnation. The point about thought being transferred into a person's mind refutes that. Beliefs within eastern religious teachings conflict each other. If one holds that one can clear one's mind and let another entity take over, refutes the idea of one's own previous life. Being controlled by multiple entities would answer the point of living past lives, because those entities did have a life in the past. Because the ability of such phenomenon is part of humans being a 3 part entity.
I accept there is an ability whereby communication goes on instantly between all conscious created beings. It is not physical nor is there any way humans in the physical can use it in any controlling manner. Just like we do not conscientiously control every aspect of our physical bodies, nor does an individual organ have any say or control over the rest of the body. While we are independent and have limited freedoms, we do not have access to everything including one of the 3 parts it is to be fully human. Although many humans have attempted to figure out and gain control over such areas.
Re-incarnation and purgatory are popular beliefs to help us get over our fears, but reality of fact may be totally different than how we interpret a truth to make us feel better about life.
timtofly
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I guess your guess is as good as mine. If you can keep an eternal body out of sight from human view, there is no way to prove that particular body is dead.
It is not too much more to say there is an eternal you that can take over another physical body.
The point is when does an eternal you start?
With the breath of life? How can you breath without a physical body? The lungs are the last organ to develop and form. The brain is already functioning rather nicely or so we are told. It does have to be there for the rest of the body to function. How many eternal souls are fighting over that particular physical body?
I think you have to just pick your starting points and define your terms.
I would go with physical existence as one form that begins with an awareness of separateness from surroundings, consciousness, at some level, of self and non self. You might restrict this to living things, but you don't have to. that gets down into how one exactly defines consciousness.
If one assumes that there is a non physical component to life/existence, then one has to ascribe characteristics to that: eternal, individual, group, universal, unchanging, conscious or not, interactive or not with the physical, etc. Since this gets murky at best, we have to pick and choose in some way. Some people turn to the Bible as a source for assigning characteristics; others the Vedas, and so on. Of course there is always an option to choose for oneself.
If you have two dimensions to life, physical and non physical, you then have to figure out if they interact and if so, how. Hinduism has the oversoul and individual souls that appear to be separate, but in the end there is only the oversoul that is Real. They have Reality and Illusion where Illusion encompasses both the physical and the spiritual realms. Reality, the oversoul, transcends both and is the only thing that is permanent and eternal. Buddhism refines this by calling the soul the self and offers more than one definition of Nirvana/Reality and focuses on the more practical aspects of living in Illusion.
So, I would say that we have a physical component, a non physical component and a means to connect them. I think this applies to all living things. Physical forms tend to be unique and the non physical not so much.
So, within your framework, is the eternal you individual and unique? If it is non physical, does it transcend space? Can two eternal souls occupy the same space? Must each eternal you be in a physical form also?
timtofly
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If you do not need a source, why state an all inclusive soul makes up the reality or totality of what the individual soul exist from?
That seems to me, just one interpretation of God. Except there is nothing that states physical reality as existing, hence the physical is not real but an illusion. The same can be said of God. We only exist in the mind or thought process of a non-physical being.
I am not sure all humans can be convinced that the physical is not real.
The eternal you, I would separate from the soul, and use the term spirit. It is the ability to be one's own independent individual self without being part of a universal whole. This is based on the point we do not have access to or control over this universal whole. Now we are told that is where prayer or meditation comes into play. But giving up on one's individuality would be the result.
I would say the spirit is who you really are, and is the ghost form of the physical body. You start when your body starts. The soul is the eternal you that is part of whatever mechanism behind the universal whole. The part of us we do not have access to. That is the reason some think we have two parts, and others think we are just one physical being. The soul is what shapes the spirit, unless it is ignored.
Eastern religious thought does not seem to give an answer for a beginning of reality because it is only a splintered or evolutionary result of a single entity. God to me is the start of physical reality and without God reality would not exist, but the physical is separate from God. That is the definition of creation and separate from just an evolution of nothingness.
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