How do you explain the consistency with which religious/spiritual people don't act on what they preach?
How do you explain that when conversing with so many religious/spiritual people, there is a palpable contempt or hatred, sometimes blatant, sometimes just under the surface on their part? — baker
Or does it just say that determining the difference is very hard? — Tom Storm
Or does it just say that determining the difference is very hard? — Tom Storm
Pretty much the way Buddhists and Hindus disparage and misrepresent Christianity. — Apollodorus
The difference of opinions shows that there is no objectively determinable quality of art works, music and literature. — Janus
Someone being one person's guru and another's charlatan doesn't make that person a guru, or a charlatan.
— baker
The fact that someone can be one's guru and another's charlatan just goes to show that there is no objectively determinable fact of the matter about whether anyone is a guru or a charlatan.
The fact that someone can be one's guru and another's charlatan just goes to show that there is no objectively determinable fact of the matter about whether anyone is a guru or a charlatan.
— Janus
Or does it just say that determining the difference is very hard? — Tom Storm
If we start from the premise that Philosophy in the original or true sense is love of, and quest for, truth and that systems like Buddhism also aim to discover the truth — Apollodorus
For example, from what I see, there is no evidence that Buddha attained enlightenment.
I'm not saying that this applies to Buddhism exclusively but, basically, what tends to be the case is that what we’ve got is evidence-free assertions that are being defended by means of other, similarly evidence-free claims.
How do you explain the consistency with which religious/spiritual people don't act on what they preach?
How do you explain that when conversing with so many religious/spiritual people, there is a palpable contempt or hatred, sometimes blatant, sometimes just under the surface on their part?
— baker
To be fair this applies to many (if not all) areas of human behaviour not just religion. The same thing happens in most organised value systems - especially politics - where people regularly betray their ostensible principles. There's a reason there's a word for hypocrisy...
The kinder explanation for this would be that those folk are stuck in dualistic thinking and divide the world into winners and losers, with scorn and hatred constantly on the boil. In other words, their spirituality is shallow and ritualistic and they are unable to partake in the good or the true. — Tom Storm
The difference of opinions shows only that there is a difference of opinions. Nothing more. — baker
Harry: Hey, I got laid last night. Susan is really good in the sack!
Dick: Really? I want to hit that too!
(a week later)
Dick (to Harry): You liar! You told me Susan was great in the sack! I did her last night, but it sucked. Man, you made a fool out of me!
Question: Is Susan to blame for Dick's bad experience of the sexual relation between them? — baker
Buddhism isn't after the truth in the general sense you're using the word here. — baker
There is no Buddhist who is losing sleep over your not seeing any evidence that Buddha attained enlightenment. — baker
Upon which you pile on more evidence-free claims. — baker
You're just providing further evidence for my points. — baker
Does the word enlightenment hold any real meaning, or is it just a poetic umbrella term for a fully integrated and intelligent person? — Tom Storm
"There are," says Plotinus, "different roads by which this end [apprehension of the Infinite] may be reached. The love of beauty, which exalts the poet; that devotion to the One and that ascent of science which makes the ambition of the philosopher; and that love and those prayers by which some devout and ardent soul tends in its moral purity towards perfection. [...] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real#In_philosophy
I used to be struck by this quote from Carl Jung. I am not a Jungian but he takes the idea into a different place. Illumination through darkness. Perhaps I hear Nietzsche calling.
"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”
― C.G. Jung — Tom Storm
Well, for a layperson like me, it tells me not to confuse genius with sagacity or decency. A lesson we need to re-learn periodically. So I keep coming back to virtue as being a key element of enlightenment - if we are going to accept this loosely understood doctrine as a phenomenon we might encounter in the world. — Tom Storm
This whole “deification” motif of being enlightened, to me at least, might be an utterly wrongminded approach to it. — javra
We also need to bear in mind that the word "divine" in this context need not have the usual religious connotations. — Apollodorus
The "perennial philosophy" is...defined as a doctrine which holds [1] that as far as worth-while knowledge is concerned not all are equal, but that there is a hierarchy of persons, some of whom, through what they are, can know more than others; [2] that there is a hierarchy also of the levels of reality, some of which are more "real," because more exalted than others; and [3] that the wise of old have found a wisdom which is true, even though it has no empirical basis in observations which can be made by everyone and everybody; and that in fact there is a rare and unordinary faculty in some of us by which we can attain direct contact with actual reality--through the Prajñāpāramitā of the Buddhists, the logos of Parmenides, the Sophia of Aristotle and others, Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis, Hegel's Vernunft, and so on; and [4] that true teaching is based on an authority which legitimizes itself by the exemplary life and charismatic quality of its exponents. — Edward Conze, Buddhist Philosophy and its European Parallels
The Buddha and Jesus were philosophers first before becoming the source material for movements in their name. — Tom Storm
whereas easterners tend to view the enlightenment of all humankind as a good to be hoped for, we westerners have typically been enculturated into viewing it a sin, if not pure evil, this via our mainstream tellings of the acquisition of knowledge of right and wrong so being. — javra
it's worth noting the argument that 'Many pagan, Jewish, Christian and Muslim philosophers from Antiquity to the Enlightenment made no meaningful distinction between philosophy and religion,' whereas on this forum, and in today's culture, it's almost universally assumed that they're at loggerheads. — Wayfarer
At a very high level of generalisation, the 'Western' view of the human condition is that we're 'ensnared in sin' as a result of the Fall. The 'Eastern' view is that we're ensnared in ignorance, avidya, as a consequence of beginningless karma. So the 'Western view' is volitional, a corruption of the Will, whereas the Eastern view is cognitive, corruption of the intellect (in the sense of the organ of knowledge).
However in my view, these are not quite as far apart as many would expect. — Wayfarer
However in my view, these are not quite as far apart as many would expect. I've had some exposure to Pure Land Buddhism, which also views human nature as intrinsically corrupted - that all of us are bombu, 'foolish mortal beings' - who can no way save ourselves by engaging in meditation. — Wayfarer
Well, I certainly qualify as a bombu most likely. — javra
Can you clarify your views as to how this speaks to the Western vilification of enlightenment when enlightenment is understood to minimally entail knowledge of right and wrong? — javra
The point about the implications of knowledge in the sense of 'enlightenment', is that the Eastern conception of avidya (translated in some texts as 'nescience') carries the implication that real knowledge is itself salvific. — Wayfarer
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