My world view

Discussion in 'Philosophy' started by IGOTJOINTS4YA, Feb 7, 2009.

  1. Meditating is a selfish action just like any other, the problem with it is, life is a serious of ups and downs, and no amount of enlightenment can change that.

    You can talk of core existence all you want, but we are not to exist in our core, or it would be that way from the start. We are organisms, not ghosts. There is no amount of limbo in the 5th plane to unjustify this.
     
  2. Thats like saying if we were to die, we would have never been born. But we do die, and we were born. Basics of existence, birth and death, contradict what you are saying very bluntly. You can say "we are just our bodies all we want", but meditate and you will discover an intangible, unquantifiable, scientifically unproveable "I am" that reveals itself as the state to abide in. Nobody is talking about planes or limbos, thats your own assumption coming from your own biases against spirituality and supernatural phenomena, never once was it mentioned, where then are you pulling it out from if not from bias?

    Enlightenment is not an amount. Life feels like it has ups and downs as we are dependent on external things, identity, accomplishments, relationships, for our "juice". When all those are dropped, there is just you. If you can find bliss in just being, not doing anything, just sitting, then what situation can you not find it in?

    Our bodies are organisms, what makes you think that thats all we are? When you go to sleep, the sense of "I" vanishes. Where has it gone? The body exists, moves on its own accord, yet the "I" is not present. Are you your body? You will find through meditation that you are not even your thoughts let alone your body, and that your thoughts are independent of you. "I think" is a lie. You do not think, thinking happens, you can choose to observe it or blindly follow it. What of all the meditative experiences since time immemorial where consciousness left the body, to observe and report upon return to the body accurately occurings that were real but not possible for the person to know given where they were? There are near death experiences even today that baffle.

    It is easy to say life has ups and downs when your only concept of "up" is the relative, everyday up that occurs from something, because of something. It is easy to say "no amount of meditation can change it" when you have not experienced meditation, when you have not gotten deeper into awareness. Its a different world, a different dimension, not just "more happy", its like your born into a new world - but its the very same world, your awareness of it has simply changed to the primordial unconditioned. Everything is equal, everything is perfect, you are perfect and nothing needs to be done, even death is perfect - not conceptually, but really. Where is the room for "down" in such a space?

    Of course meditation is selfish, who said it wasnt? Enlightenment however cannot be selfish because there is no self.
     
  3. #23 bkadoctaj, Feb 8, 2009
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 8, 2009
    I think you need to take a moment and reflect on the following. Then you can tell us what Zhuangzi got wrong:

    Yin and yang appear to compete, but they cannot compete with the Source they have in common: Inseparability.

    Compete all you want to... there is another way.

    Contradictory though it may sound, this I can agree with. How can I know? Because I know what non-enlightenment is.

    Actually, Androgenicx, on second thought I'd just like to stress a distinction between the two of our world views in general: you stress finding the un-you part of you, as that is what you really are (not not), while I stress recognizing the inseparable relationships you have (with all sorts of things, perceived and unperceived). Two paths illustrating the same thing, finding oneself.

    - Lao-tzu
     
  4. My miscommunication if this is how I have been coming across. It is un-you only because of the veil of delusion modern man has, never once seeing his true nature. It is inseparable, it is always there, it is all that is there - if one is not messed up enough to not be able to see it. You have to go away from "you", most people, because their "you" is so far lost in delusion that telling them that "here it is. see. it is you it was always you, everything is everything" will not prove fruitful until their usual "you" is significantly shattered.
     

  5. Hmm... is philosophy anything other than the order and way of semantics, I wonder? :p

    That's not directed at you haha... I'm just thinking out loud. It would be an interesting hypothesis nonetheless.

    But if you haven't seen my Seng-Chao thread, you should really check it out.
     
  6. If I remember reading the Buddha story right, he had a family with a child and one day he decided he couldn't deal with the world so he went out in the forest to be a hermit. That was from some historical scrolls they uncovered on Buddha.

    In his religious doctrines depict him as a man with no flaws, and rightfully so, who would follow a man to enlightenment that left his child and wife?

    If those scrolls have any accuracy, that would point out that even Buddha, literally know as "The Enlightened One", lived life with a series of ups and downs. Also not everyone has the ability to run off into a forest and become a hermit. Your going to have to live life, witness a series of ups and downs.

    I have done meditation and I must tell you, what I got from it was all you say, but what I came to realize is, I live in this world on this plane. I need to try to make this plane better, instead of waving my enlightenment around like some kind of snob.

    What are we doing here if we are not trying to make this world like the one you see in meditation?

    Are we just existing?

    fuck that.
     
  7. [quote name='IGOTJOINTS4YA']

    Are we just existing?

    QUOTE]

    yup, theres no real point to anything.


    interesting read
     
  8. #28 IGOTJOINTS4YA, Feb 8, 2009
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 8, 2009
    i'd rather make my offspring existence better then mine.
     
  9. Fuck what. You just exist, that is all there is. No matter how hard you work, you will stop existing, and so will one day the world you are working on. Saying fuck that is just resistance to what is, it cannot accomplish that which cannot be accomplished.

    Buddha wasnt enlightened when he was born. Yes his life had ups and downs. When he became enlightened there are no ups and downs, just as is.

    If you have experienced what I talk about you would not talk about it the way you are. Forgive the bluntness, but you have not experienced it.

    You don't see any world in meditation. Things just appear as they are and perfect as they are. You don't see a vision of beauty that you try to transform the world then into. You realize the perfect bliss of as is existence. Nothings needs to be changed.
     

  10. Nothing needs to be changed provided you are truly satisfied with your perspective; not deluded into repetitive ritual.
     
  11. Yeah after leaving his child and wife behind, if that is enlightenment than you can count me out.

    Look I'm not here to persecute Buddhism, it's got enough skeletons locked away in it's own closet I'd rather just leave them alone. I would like to point out that the countries that practice this meditation through Buddhism and have it as there state religion are among the most unhappy in the world, riddled with civil wars and persecution of ethnic groups. All I am saying is, even the countries were this meditation widely practiced it isn't making people lives any better.

    I am looking at this from practical standpoint, if enlightenment doesn't equate to happiness, why bother.

    You look at countries that have a majority of Buddhist like lets say Japan and you notice that country is exceedingly happier if they take pursuit for enlightenment less seriously. Countries like Thailand have seen civil wars recently, and as for Bhutan who actually punishes those who do not follow Buddhism and suppresses ethnic groups.

    There are more important things than enlightenment, that is all I am saying.
     
  12. And the Buddha's parents too... don't forget about them. Wonder what would have happened if they hadn't caved in to his beliefs. Maybe they felt guilty after trying to force-shape his youth?
     
  13. #33 Androgenicx, Feb 8, 2009
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 8, 2009
    Your making very obvious and very haphazard jumps. "Buddha left his son and wife if thats enlightenment count me out". Of course thats not enlightenment, thats just something he did. What connection do these things have? This point is highly illogical and obviously emotionally charged. If your trying to debate something, objective rationality is key, if you bring emotional bias and attachment into it, even if something is more rational you will side the way of your attachment.

    Furthermore, I never promoted Buddhism, I didnt even bring up the Buddha, you did. Your posts keep adding one thing or the other from your own side and posing them as my side. I don't agree with any organized religion. Meditation has nothing to do with religion. It is simply going into the space of thoughtless non-doing. True meditation requires no concepts, no attachments - its just fallen into. With highly organized and even slightly indoctrinated monasteries, the large number just do things to better their karma, many don't even discover real meditation once. Meditation transforms the inner space to clarity and bliss. It might have its reverberations in the outer world, but thats not what its for. It is not rational to try to judge the effects of meditation by simply looking at nations that claim to practice it and seeing if they have war or not. The government has nothing to do with the meditation. This argument just doesn't hold any water.

    The proof of meditation is in the experience. Meditation doesn't make a nation happier, it makes the practioner more blissful. Enlightenment is bliss, being a Buddhist does not equal being enlightened.

    What does a nation enforcing a religion that I never even talked about factor into this debate?

    Furthermore, when you are going to die, when there is no discernable external "purpose" to life, when you could die any moment, what is more important than falling into the space of existential bliss and peace where you wordlessly, conceptlessly realize the nature of the entire universal structure that you are part of? How can any personal goal or persuit be "more important" than falling into a space that answers all your questions, removes all your fears, and endows you with perma bliss as you first hand experience all there is to experience? What else could be more important? Careers, relationships, inventing and discovering stuff and "progressing"? Where do you see people around you that are genuinely and fully happy? And I dont mean "Im happy" with a sigh and a nod of the head - most people who claim to be happy are just temporarily in a space that is above their acceptable minimum level of suffering. Which person who has considering these things more important has been truly joyous, with a smile on his face and bliss breezing through his hair, at least most of the time if not all the time, for years on end? Your argument is "enlightenment is not happiness so its pointless to follow it" - your apparent study of meditation and enlightenment is first off seemingly too limited to pass a judgment of this kind, and furthermore how can you use this argument unless what you consider more important gives you this happiness instead? Relationships come and go, your perceived identity if it matches the other persons and what they look for in a person, it clicks. Where are YOU in this and are not the things you do, the attributes that you have the dominant factor? The only real relationship is with yourself, through and through, from start till end. Your going to walk into the end on your own. If those last seconds are spent wondering wtf is going on why did I ever live what was the point of all this, crap i dont wanna die, like most people's are, what use were all the accomplishments and relationships?
    Where has "progress" brought us? We have to now start looking for another planet to live on, while our world is slowly becoming more lazy, living an average number of less years, is more divided and personalized, is more stressed, is more polluted, is more confused and more painful than ever.

    It appears your concept of enlightenment is quite downplayed. Its not some wisdom by which you smile. It is the first hand experience of the nature of existence, the perfectness of all existence, the quelling of all questions and fears - it is a radical transformation of the consciousness beyond everything and its nature cannot be any less than the nature of anything else, for everything else is but a part within it.

    Your side of the debate comes accross as very patchy, emotionally biased, and doesn't seem to follow much of a pattern. It adds alot of stuff from its own side, while ignoring or misunderstanding what is being quoted, throwing all kinds of random things into the salad.
     
  14. The story goes, it was prophesied that Gautama would either become a king or a saint and become enlightened. The father wanted the son to be a king. You cant protect someone from the world, even if he became a king he would ultimately see the pain. Furthermore, in royal families at that time, especially after the son had grown enough, parental influence was much less and much less imposed than it is in usual families today and then.

    Lastly, Gautama ran away on a horse "whos feet were muffled by the gods themselves". Not likely that they would have been able to do anything :p
     
  15. I guess you aren't seeing what I am, are you? That's alright, we have different intentions.

    But who cares how the story goes? Why not live your story, like any Buddha would have lived his?

    By the way, happy post 1111!!
     
  16. I do not think that I enjoy reading anyone's posts more than bkadoctaj's and androgenicx's.
    You two have got the backbone for everything!
     
  17. as usual i didnt read the whole thread, but i agree with you OP. my guess is selfishness is part of the whole "self preservation" thing. humans are animals, and i agree that it is human nature to be selfish.

    lol i know, these guys keep spirituality and philosophy running
     

  18. Well, that's almost like a full-time job... And it will be when Androgenicx leaves for India.
     
  19. I thought he decided to stay?
     
  20. The mind is always in flux. DMT is great, but I want the space without drugs. For now I am returning.
     

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