Thoughts on Buddhism

[Epimethean]

Flow with the cluelessness.

[reverendjeremiah]

This whole idea of "we are one" just doesnt jive well with me.

99.99 percent of the Cosmos is cold, dark vaccum of nothing.

Doesnt sound like something that would exist in a "oneness".

[Epimethean]

Much better as depicted in Alien. These cosmohuggybears tend to come off like the little aliens from Toy Story when they say, "The Claw!"

[Abracadabra]

This whole idea of "we are one" just doesnt jive well with me.

99.99 percent of the Cosmos is cold, dark vaccum of nothing.

Doesnt sound like something that would exist in a "oneness".

99.99 percent of our bodies are basically nothingness if you take into account the empty space between the nuclei and electrons in the atoms that make up our bodies.

Does that mean that our bodies are far from being "one thing"?

And how would that work with the human brain that has as many neurons as our galaxy has stars and the idea of a single "emergent property" of consciousness?

We better not even go there.

[Bgood]

99.99% nothingness...the realization of Emptiness and Impermanence in the enlightened mind. But that .01% must be consciously awake and aware to flow with Nature's cosmic winds of Tao. Only Buddha sees the whole, we only witness small aspects of IT. Going with flow is going against flow, and vice versa.

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It is easier to understand if you take a huge bong hit first. lol

[passionatefool]

yeah Buddha was definitely smoking some bodhi leaves lol...And i'm sure Abracadabra did too lol

[Bgood]

yeah Buddha was definitely smoking some bodhi leaves lol...And i'm sure Abracadabra did too lol

that's our magic concoction to alter one's personal Multivese of Mirrored Dimensions. Like androids in my head. lost my train of thought...haha gonna have one more,,,light er up bro! Ouch burnt my cock.

[The Grand Nudger]

Oh, I see, this all requires chemical assistance before it starts to sound like something a sane person might take seriously...roger.

[Angrboda]

That's true apophenia, and I confess that this is one area where I personally have difficulty with accepting philosophies like Taoism too literally.

If you're were a German in Nazi Germany should you "go with the flow" to persecute Jews and contribute to trying to conquer and enslave the entire world?

If you live in the buckle of the Bible Belt should you "go with the flow" and become a highly zealous Christian bigot and support that mentality?

These kinds of concerns do cause one to question precisely what is meant by "flow with the Tao". Is that basically the same thing as "When in Rome do as the Romans do?"

I personally feel that it should be taken in a different light. And I'll confess that it's not easy to decide precisely what it should mean exactly.

But then again, if the secular atheists are right it doesn't truly mean anything. It's just philosophical mumbo jumbo spouted by mere spiritless mortal men who will soon perish and may as well have never existed at all.

You need to fortify that Taoism with "wu wei", which is normally translated as "no action" or "inaction". Perhaps a better translation would be "right action", similar to that in the eightfold path of Buddhism. One of my favorite passages from the Tao Te Ching asks, can you remain still until the mud settles. Inaction when inaction is called for, right action when action is called for. You don't stand there, stuck in the mud forever — act when acting is worthwhile, but don't fill life with action because you have no stillness inside you. Another relevant quote, which will be bungled because I'm not going to look it up, but basically it says that sometimes the sage is ahead, and sometimes the sage is behind. I have a couple of bronze statues of Nataraja, which is Shiva in his role as Lord of the Dance. The Dance is creation, and in one hand, Shiva has a drum with which he beats out the rhythm that propels the unfolding of creation. I think in more direct terms, the Taoist sage attempts to attend to the rhythm of creation, and act in tune with that, instead of his own vain rhythms of greed, fear, want, and so forth. Now, I'm not gonna pretend to be an imitable sage; many of the questions you ask, as you asked them, or as I see them in my own life, make me stop and scratch my head at times. I spent 12-13 years puzzling over a question about life that I didn't feel was adequately answered by the texts I follow as a Taoist. In the end, I pulled in some strands of Buddhism and Sun Tzu to patch up the hole. I still am uncertain whether I accepted that patch because it fit the hole, or rather because I needed - wanted - to fill that hole, even if I had to lie to myself and pretend that it fit when it didn't. Anymore i don't worry too much about my beliefs, as they serve me well from a functional aspect, and my life's focus is on human minds' function, irrespective of the beliefs they are shuffling around at the bottom level - I'm looking for the constants in human behavior and psychology, irrespective of belief content, with an aim for improving all people's ability to reason about their beliefs in productive and useful ways, regardless of whether those beliefs are Christian, atheist, Buddhist or whatever. So I don't worry as much about "what's true" any more - as there's a heavy load of irrationality in them all - I'm looking for ways to improve function across the board.

Anyway, sorry for the tl;dr.

[Angrboda]

"All I know about it is that, to me at least, it [life] is very amusing while it lasts ... When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness. No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever."

H.L. Mencken, What Is The Meaning Of Life ?