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From: The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Joy of this, Joy of that
Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2024 13:43:12 +0000
Organization: A little, after lunch
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On 07/12/2024 10:20, D wrote:
> 
> 
> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 10:09:11 +0100, D wrote:
>>
>>> Don't even go there. Natural and I had very lively discussions on that
>>> theme.  But yes, I'm in the camp of the people who accept the real world
>>> as a fact, and that without humans, there's no ethics, math, true or
>>> false.
>>
>> Buddhism has the concept of two truths, conventional and ultimate.
>> Conventionally I went out this morning to feed two cats. Ultimately 'cat'
>> is a construct I imposed and there aren't two of anything.
>>
>> https://thebuddhistcentre.com/system/files/groups/files/heart_sutra.pdf
>>
>> Nietzsche condensed into a couple of hundred Chinese ideograms...
> 
> Buddha seems to have been far ahead of his time. I really like his 
> position on god, that instead of speculating, they should "shut up and 
> meditate". ;)
> 
There are states of mind that can be achieved that clarify  why people 
started talking about gods and spirits and other realms in the first place.


> On the other hand, I do not know if this is what he actually thought, or 
> if it is just hearsay.
> 
Does it matter?

The sound of one hand clapping is a phrase that seems to make sense, in 
that you understand all the words, but it points to an impossible or 
meaningless event.

The intention is to guide the student away from a dependence on the 
reality of words to a reality beyond them.


> I tried for a bit, to try and "distill" original buddhism, and although 
> it was difficult to find anything specific, my feeling was that original 
> buddhism was more about doing, rather than speculating, so heavily 
> meditation focused, and not very speculation focused.
> 
Buddhism is what one bloke said after he had successfully stopped his 
mind from thinking but yet wasn't actually unconscious. And a set of 
instructions on how to copy his techniques.

I met a guy once who spent a long time doing that, who had also taken 
LSD He claimed that 'the end result is the same, but the LSD is much 
easier, and a bit more dangerous'.

:-)

> Another thing I found out was also that original buddhism was heavily 
> adapted to the individual (naturally) where buddha tried to tailor the 
> techniques and teachings to the individual he was talking with, and that 
> is why it started to diverge over the millennia.

Yes. If you regard the primary purpose as detaching the consciousness 
from the intricate entanglement with ordinary affairs, which as far as I 
am concerned is all that it is, then the method will differ for each 
individual since their involvements all differ.

Stopping the incessant flow of internal conversation is the name of the 
game, and it's (meditation)  not the only way to do that. Trauma does 
it.  Isolation and asceticism does it. Self punishment (flagellation) 
allegedly does it. Even lack of sleep does it. Some drugs do it.



-- 
Gun Control: The law that ensures that only criminals have guns.