I’m suggesting that salvation may not be all that, uh, mystical or grand, and that religion helps to fulfill basic needs such as meaning, purpose, and connection, for those who have difficulty fulfilling such needs on their own. — praxis

Thank you for the second attempt.

I think to be clear you should give your version of what enlightenment is because it seems different to the general notion of it. I am getting the sense you are just seeing enlightenment as some kind of self help style self-actualisation akin to ticking all the boxes on Maslow's hierarchy of needs?

I would say it would extinguish those existential issues by coming to the realisation they don't matter, as in the removal of the needs (loss of attachment/desire).

Have you read any of my thread: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/16333/can-the-supernatural-and-religious-elements-of-buddhism-be-extricated?

There is quite some overlap.

There was a book called 'flow' by a guy with a really long eastern name which said that essentially ALL flow activities are the same, be it meditation, playing in the pocket, whatever. I don't think I would agree with that, but an interesting concept to explore. Just being 'in the zone' is not the same as being enlightened although they might share some similarities. I know this is not what you are asking but it is related in comparing 'flow states' with one another.

In my thread I have discussed many times that both eastern and western religious people have reached what might be called a state of enlightenment. A notable figure of the west is Meister Eckhart. He would not have meditated I doubt, probably doing traditional prayer, but still achieved some higher state of consciousness. I don't know much about him but noticed him mentioned several times as an awakened one of the western tradition by contemporary voices.

Apologies if I came across as asserting this kind of view — boundless

Thanks for your clarification and not going on the defensive.

It seems we are largely in agreement from that last post. Of course I agree that one cannot rationalise their way to enlightenment but still, just like there are routines they follow in Buddhism to act as breadcrumbs to get there, I would just be looking at how one would do it as a secularist.

Then this can be done absent any religion, ideology, or teaching. It is a natural process which can be done in isolation. But religious teachings and practice provide a system that helps, or directs people in achieving this goal**.

My advice to you would be to view the supernatural teachings in Buddhism as symbolic, or allegorical. They provide a narrative which provides a framework, or intellectual structure that the individual can use to build a personal narrative which enables them to undertake that natural process. From what I’ve experienced from my brief foray into Buddhism, a few years ago now, is that it is the meditation based practice itself which is important here, not the religious teachings. — Punshhh

This is my view too but the majority voice in this thread has been the usual pushback I expected from 'devouts' that any attempt to question the teachings or go outside the box will be met with failure, and maybe derision.

I guess they will say neither of us are enlightened so we have no place to try and change the tried and true method of the prophets. I have had the same arguments from most things I have learned in life, which have nothing to do with Buddhism. Most often ridiculed for 'going against the grain' and outside of the box but I have found it easy to separate the wheat from the chaff of what is good information vs. bad and irrational stuff in other areas and the proof is in the pudding when I achieve my goals in whatever thing I set out, so I don't see this as being any different.

Oh and good to see some lively discussion in this thread now a few others on different sides have joined into the fray. :)

we have to reinvent it in a modern context. — Punshhh

Exactly but the dogmatists will say even changing it 1% is bastardising it beyond recognition.

Here is a good real world example I thought of which avoids the whole reincarnation issue.

I recalled a concrete example from a video I watched where a traditional Buddhist was asked about the theory of karma. The questioner asked if it was bad karma to be a medic who does abortions since life is sacred and should not be terminated according to Buddhist doctrines. The Buddhist's* answer was 'yes it slightly bad karma each time the surgeon performs an abortion' and then he said something like he should even out the bad karma by doing other stuff to make up for it.

So nothing metaphysical to argue about whether it exists or not (well karma could also classify as that but it is behavoiur that is is question here) and the Buddhist recommendation is something that would be considered inappropriate by most rational people today in cases where an abortion would be appropriate for the individual. Now of course there could be a forum thread about the topic of abortion and whether it is right but the point it in modern society, at least in the West, it is accepted and normal now.

Perhaps modernising Buddhism would be to accept abortion as 'ok' but the fundamentalists will say no and that it destroys the core teachings.

*As a related aside this was a long time white Western practitioner who had been learning a traditional school, by the book, it seems, of the Thai Forest tradition for many decades so seems he was not deviating and adding his Western revisionism.

such that it takes skilled investigation to recognize how forms of thought not unlike Buddhism and Hinduism hide deep within the foundations of judeo-christian traditions. — Joshs

I am glad someone else is highlighting what I have been trying to get at throughout the thread and have been a lone voice so far and what Joseph Campbell devoted much of his works to, among others.

The religious dogma has been ripe in this discussion.

Which seems to imply that the rituals (and other aspects of religion?) are superfluous to enlightenment :starstruck: . If that's the case then what purpose does religion serve? — praxis

A very dishonest conclusion you have drawn there and shows you do not have a serious interest in exploring this topic.

Not sure why @baker has derailed the thread into some back and forth about how leaders should act in positions of power? I don't see how it is related to the OP, which is asking how a lay seeker should find their own path. If so please 'enlighten' me.

People without doubt tend toward fundamentalism or zealotry. — Tom Storm

This is exactly what the 'you must completely adhere to the teachings or you are going to get nowhere' folks in the thread, and the usual mindset I see when I have asked similar questions elsewhere in the past, are like imo. Fundamental uncritical faith or you are not practising at all.

I just realised this is actually really ironic and the opposite of what the Buddha himself suggested. In his sutras he would talk about how you should not believe him, but practice and see for yourself through experience. Also didn't he become enlightened by refuting all the myriad systems he tried before and looking for his own way?

How far would he have gotten if he followed these 'total faith in one school or nothing' folks? There would be no Buddhism. :)

Well then, whatcha waiting for?!

People who promise to know the way to enlightenment are a dime a dozen, including those who believe one doesn't need the "supernatural elements". It's on you to take the next step, though, which is actually what seems to be at issue here. — baker

Making the post, and studying religions and the common threads does not count as a step? It might not to you, as you seem to been pushing orthodoxy to whatever school, but it does to me.

the most radical thing one can do, as far as Buddhism is concerned, is to be a Westerner and explicitly approach (or at least attempt to approach it) the Asian way. Show up in some Buddhist venue, whether a Western or Asian one, and show that you take for granted that the Buddhist tradition is correct, and, if you're lucky, you'll be ridiculed. If not so lucky, you'll be considered disrespectful, "spreading lies about Buddhism" and such.

It's bizarre, really. In my experience, the most rebellious, radical thing you can do is to openly have no qualms about kamma and rebirth — baker

This seems a very idiosyncratic view to you. Never heard anything like that and I doubt most people in Buddhism would agree to that either. More likely they will not say anything and welcome you with open arms. What kind of Buddhists would they be if they did the passive aggressive stuff you mentioned there? Sounds more like something in a housewives cooking class.

Honestly I think the salvation is found in the limitations or order that religion provides. The grand narratives and moral codes offer a sense security and meaning. And of course comfort is found in a unified community. — praxis

Maybe in part but you cannot really be claiming that is all that is entailed in becoming enlightened? You know another huge institution which has those qualities you state? The military. Not seen many Buddhas come out of their ranks. :D

To give you a liferaft so to speak I would say the ritual is a part but only one. I think what kind of rituals must be examined, not just any old ritual. Many professions have mechanical rituals and again we cannot say they have anything to do with the subject of enlightenment.

Why do some people go to such great lengths to invent their own paths and practices, and then stilal call them "Buddhist"?? — baker

It is not about inventing your own path and still calling it Buddhist; it is about having grown up in a time of modern science which refutes central tenets of Buddhism and thus seeing fundamental problems with following that path in earnest without sloughing those parts away.

I don't care what it is called if it was a fruitful path. This isn't about gutting Buddhism and still calling it Buddhism. It is about asking the question, can one have a fruitful practice, whatever you call it, without those supernatural elements.

Nothing to do with revisionism. It is an open question as to whether one can have a good practice without supernatural elements - again - whether it is called Buddhism or not is not the subject of this post. Good practice would be the attainment of what is loosely called enlightenment as the ultimate goal but there are many positive checkpoints on the way before that too which could be called worthwhile goals in themselves.

I am reading Joseph Campbell's Masks of God, the volume on Oriental Mythology and he makes a distinction between the eastern traditions of India and the Far Eastern traditions of China an Japan.

Indian would be Buddhist and Hindu and China, so far he is discussing Taoism - I am not far into the book so will go over much more I am sure.

An important point though so far is that he states that enlightenment in the East is generally seen as going beyond the world of forms and achieving stillness in the nothingness beyond while in the Taoist, and he implies other far eastern traditions too, the idea of enlightenment rests in seeing the arising of things and just accepting it and engaging with it in none attached play - wu wei.

Now of course there was heavy intermingling between the two once Buddhism reached the Far East but the point is there was an idea and practice of what may be called Enlightenment before the dominant Eastern idea, with all its other baggage of rebirth would have come with it in the form of the Buddhist package.

So ideas of enlightenment are out there, and have been for thousands of years, even predating Buddhism, without this dogged clinging to rebirth as a necessary part of it that most the Buddhist advocates here are advocating unwaveringly.

Now I imagine Taoism would have its own holdover dogmas from the time which could also be seen as parochial today but if rebirth is not one of them, maybe they also believed in it I don't know too much, but certainly have not read about it front and centre like it was in Buddhism when I used to study Taoism quite a bit years ago, we can assume it is not essential for attainment of what one might call enlightenment.

Ok, just a quick search which turns up this, which seems to state that Taoism is more focused on life than life after death (rebirth) which is what I do loosely remember it as being: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoism_and_death

Now reading that it reminds me of their own supernatural elements such as immortality through storing up semen or suchlike. Ghenghis Khan was supposed to have consulted a Taoist before dying to try to attain immortality but of course failed.

I suppose a definition of enlightenment in the current discussion would be appropriate. I would just put it as finding inner peace in this life to get rid of the usual gnawing existential anxiety of 'birth, old age, sickness and death'. Nothing more or less.

This is also what Buddhism defines as enlightenment, to be free of mental suffering of the cognisance of those causes. People here are saying that one must necessarily believe in rebirth to achieve that goal where as I am proposing it can be achieved in different ways. That is not contingent upon believing in rebirth, though it certainly might help some if they do believe in it, it is not contingent upon it. To simply fully accept the comings and goings of life, as seems to be the Taoist way, seems also to be another way to achieve this peace. There are many other ways too probably which don't rely on rebirth as a central tenet.

Lol, ok looking at my own thread title I see the focus on Buddhism is largely my own fault, but my thoughts developed as a product of the discussion so far. It would probably be better to revise the question to: Can enlightenment be achieved without appeal to any supernatural elements?

It seems clear to me that you're simply trying to faithfully support your religious beliefs. — praxis

Lol, while they have stated they definitely are not Buddhist or believe their beliefs they do seem to have an extreme interest in supporting them beyond an interested layperson.

I don't think it matters if they are believers or not, and I take them at their word they are not.

@boundless whether you believe or not it seems you were earlier stating that my subjective belief that the same attainment can be achieved from any religious school was incorrect and implied I had no place stating that based on textual evidence, yet you have countered it as being incorrect only with Buddhist textual evidence that rebirth is essential and such so why is your text better than mine? You were also quite condescending about my suppositions earlier which implies you think your beliefs are better and 'right'. It seems odd you defend Buddhism so doggedly if you are not invested in it. I took the more pantheistic view that neither one is more right, so long as it gets to the destination, which you were also dismissive of. This, rather that what I apologised for above, is what I took issue with.

-edit-

Actually I have had a change of heart and agree now with earlier comments about shying away from discussion which could possibly enable someone.

Plenty of other interesting philosophy topics to discuss which do not have such a weight of responsibility.

(2) Conscious choice cuts both ways
Niki wants consciousness to do two incompatible jobs. On the one hand, consciousness is dismissed as a post-hoc rationalizer ("cope"). On the other hand, consciousness is elevated as the faculty that allows us to override biology and choose death. — Esse Quam Videri

A lot of distilled information in the post so I won't try and respond to all in one go but will pick this one up.

I am not saying I agree 100% with all the assertions, but rather I approved of the general thrust that all human motivations and rationalisations for the specialness of life can be reduced to survival instinct.

You can't have it both ways. If reflective agency is real enough to negate survival instinct, then it is also real enough to generate reasons, commitments, and meanings that are not reducible to instinct.

That is a very good and sneaky point lol.

I did not make that argument so I don't have to defend it hehe. Your counter does indeed make me re-evaluate what can and cannot be attribute to, or is in the service of, instinct though.

Gonna have to think about that some more, perhaps reading their original post again as well for context.

I hope I clarified what I meant and I also hope that I clarified that I am not writing these posts just for the sake of being a 'contrarian' or being obscure for the sake of being obscure or whatever. — boundless

Yes thank you and I apologise for the accusation as I think I was a little uncharitable there. You are clearly making honest efforts to explain your position.

I suppose our forking in the road is that you are saying the attainments of Buddhism are explicitly dependant upon the belief in rebirth and that these achievements are exclusive to the religious study of Buddhism and so without walking the path and all it entails then one cannot achieve them while I am saying it is a more general religious experience universal to any good religious practice.

So bad religious practice will not produce results in any schools while good practice of the respective religion will produce results. It may be true though that difference religions are more likely to produce awakened ones as the different religions will have different priorities about these outcomes.

I suppose what I am proposing is, to make an analogy, that there are many different martial arts and they are all capable of causing serious injury in the right hands. The injuries to the unfortunate person on the receiving end will be the same so it doesn't matter which martial art it is, even though the techniques to cause injury might be different.

While what you are saying seems to be the only Buddhism is the effective martial art or maybe the only one to cause a certain kind of damage? while the others might cause different and unique damage but not the same damage as Buddhism?

I already mentioned that in my reply.

I am not saying it won't. It might. It is open for discussion.

Once again I can’t make sense of what you’re saying. — praxis

I have got the feeling this user likes to be contrarian rather than agree with points we are saying, perhaps thinking it some kind of losing ground, and will throw a spanner in the works even on things that don't seem contentious just to keep the adversarial dynamic.

Yes I know what thread I was posting in. I saw your comments earlier about power requirements for some other stuff and AI technology is one that is said to require huge amounts.

Maybe the glass manufacturing produces more in comparison now, I don't know I haven't looked, but as per your claim, but AI is increasing so fast and at an exponential rate the power requirements will likely ramp up in kind. Glass manufacture has been happening for hundreds of years and is a very established industry yet AI is a nascent technology so of course it is expected the infrastructure are not going to be comparative at this time.

It is also salient because probably many of the tech bros who are claiming to be very green conscious will also be funnelling their resources into this none green technology.

What do y'all think about how with this mad arms race for getting the best AI amongst the mega corps it is using humongous amounts of resources?

Apologies if it was mentioned already but I did a quick search in thread for 'ai' and of course got a litany of unrelated results.

I guess the proponents will be saying that the benefits to humanity are worth the cost of finite resources and that the better iterations will be able to solve the very problems of resource use that they are causing.

So, how can we test such a hypothesis. The OP apparently thinks that "scientific evidence" + "some comparative religion studies" showed once for all that it is indeed possible to achieve the same states of 'enlightenment' of the Buddhist traditions without agreeing with their belief. Fine. However, are we sure about that? — boundless

I am not the one who came up with this and I think the subjectivity of religious experiences has been hotly debated for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.

In this general case I am not out to prove anything to the world, it is simply finding what will be satisfactory for my own journey. Likewise anyone who might be on a similar quest they may or may not resonate with what I am suggesting. Isn't that generally how it works?

People on the path try out different teachings and teachers until they find something that works for them.

Even the Buddha himself went around all different disciplines until he rejected them all and found his own way.

Best response I have read yet. Clear and plain.

I feel like these 'excuses' people make about life being special are akin to the classic religious tropes of intelligent design and such.

Yes it might be very slim a chance that the universe and then in turn life came into existence, and that coming about can be quite interesting to learn about but it doesn't mean that life is intrinsically good and must be preserved at all costs, which is the leap that most make.

The Buddhists have it right with 'life is suffering' however they then pile on their own religious delusions like the rest.

Oh that reminded me when I was thinking of this again. Nietzsche is just the same as the others in that he makes the leap that Will to Power is good in itself, same kind of life affirmation as the other existentialists, which we could say he was a precursor to. However, Schopenhauer, who he got most of his theories from up to the point of will to power where he then diverges had it best I think.

Schopenhauer is a good middle ground between western empiricism/reductionism and eastern thought and he was pessimistic in his outlook, which Nietzsche rejected calling it, and the eastern traditions, life denying. I had forgotten all about him but will have to take another look now at his The World as Wille and Representation.

This might be true but the original question was something like "is it possible to attain the same 'achievements' even if I do not believe in what Buddhists have always believed?".

IMO there are good arguments that the answer is 'no'. — boundless

You are ignoring again that evidence I have highlighted that many other religious disciplines reach similar levels of transcendence of the physical world yet don't believe in rebirth.

They have their own cultural analogies and explanations but I would hazard the spiritual experience is the same. Just like feeling love would be a human experience which would be explained in many difference ways across different cultures but the actual experience of love is the same for all.

Your sticking on rebirth being necessary to achieve a spiritual experience is very narrow if you are dismissing all other groups that don't believe in it and their own cultural versions of mystical awakening.

Meister Eckhart is apparently one who reached a high level but in the western tradition.

Eckhart Tolle has written quite a bit about the universal nature of the spiritual experience in his books and apparently was well read and refers to many different traditions in his writings drawing on the similarities.

Many other spiritual gurus which do not hold to a particular discipline who do the same.

The flip side of the question is 'what makes life worth living'. My problem I have had throughout my life is that society in general I find so vapid and disgusting. For most people in western society consumerism and binge drinking are the highest ideals.

If there was something worth fighting for that gives one reason to live but why does one want to fight for the above soulless nonsense? It seems that is satisfactory for the majority of society and I have never been able to get it or see how that can bring them satisfaction.

Some good points.

I don't think the things you mention are necessarily contingent on rebirth though. Why does becoming a mendicant have to have anything to do with rebirth? I think that is one thing which doesn't while others would be more tricky to explain away.

Even the explanations of the benefits from the Buddhist perspective, from what I recall, do not appeal to the supernatural. It is simply living humbly and I do remember now specifically the text stated the Buddha insisted on it in order to highlight the intertwined nature of the bikkhu and the lay people where one hand washes the other. The bikkhu gives insight for the lay person when the latter asks for guidance and the lay person gives the bikkhu food to survive. Nothing of that has to have anyhthing to do with supernatural explanations.

I agree that the traditional answer is going to be 'no' on all counts but of course they are biased and not able to give an uncoloured opinion.

As to the 'no selfness' being contingent upon rebirth I again don't think it is necessary. Lots of neuroscience, and this is a point Sam Harris makes when discussing the topic, has confirmed there is no 'I' to be found and it is just a social or cultural construct. So it can easily be explained from an empirical standpoint. To actually have some huge insight just from that data is another matter.

As mentioned earlier though, the same spiritual experiences have been documented from vastly different cultures and through the lens of their own religions and worldviews. This means that like the idea of God there is no one right answer. This then means that all the talk of reincarnation is not necessary to have such spiritual awakenings as the Christian mystics managed just the same and do not hold those same beliefs.

What should be done is to read through the different mystical experiences from each culture and religion and look for the common threads. Joseph Campbell apparently has done this in his work Masks of God. I have started reading it but not gotten very far in it and put it down after not many pages as I had another one of my downswings in motivation for the stuff again but seems I might be on an upswing again now, so maybe time to take another look.

Like with the Jungian archetypes, of which I know Campbell was also inspired by quite a bit, the spiritual experience is a human experiences, and not exclusive to one particular religion. The shallow or pop analysis of Buddhism states it is to have these experience without the religious dogma of the orthodox western religions, but when you scratch the surface you see Buddhism is steeped in its equivalent dogmas. It may just be a little more palatable for some as there is no solid "God" in their doctrines but all the devas and their antics and rebirth as just more of the same.

I would hazard a guess that it is the rituals of whatever religion not the actual content of the mythologies that allow the transcendent experiences. The question then is how to recreate that roadmap of the path to attainment as one who does not believe in any particular one? Can the same states still be achieved if one only takes them as allegories rather than realities?

If you're asking 'is Buddhism is a religion', then the answer is definitely 'yes'. But the deeper point is, the cultural background and underlying belief systems are vastly different from the Middle-Eastern religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), to the extent where 'religion' itself means something different to what it is generally taken to mean in a Western culture — Wayfarer

I don't see how you could garner that interpretation from what you quoted. I of course know it is a religion. What I am asking is whether the none religious person can go as far along the path as the religious 'believer' when they do not accept a large part of the 'canon', seeing it as fallacious dogma.

If you believe there are levels of attainment and a destination it seems you’ve already drank much of the Kool-Aid. — praxis

Why?

There are physical feats that you can clearly see that Buddhists can do far above the normal human and nothing to do with the previous mumbo jumbo anecdotes mentioned. A prime example would be the self-immolation of Vietnamese Buddhists in protest during the Vietnam war.

That is evidence of some pretty amazing levels of emotional control to not even be visually disturbed when their whole body is set alight.

I would call that a higher level of attainment than the average human. It doesn't have to have anything to do with some unseen realm, it is there in plain sight for the cool rational western mind to observe empirically.

Likewise some Buddhist traditions would self-mumify at a certain age, for whatever spiritual reason they aimed to achieve. The reason might not hold water scientifically but their ability to control the body to remain perfectly passive and at ease while they know it is going to be destroyed is quite the feat.

Another slightly less drastic example would be those Buddhists who are able to go into trance state to have operations without any anaesthesia.

So their rationalisations for being able to do it might be fallacious but clearly they can control the mind to a far greater degree than the average none practitioner.

I suppose that is answering my own question that we can separate the two and visually see the results but I am wondering how a none woo woo person might achieve the same result.

Joseph Campbell studied the religions of the world and saw common themes of the spiritual experience among them all. It is how to manufacture, from a secular perspective, that common experience.

A lot of mention so far about reincarnation and I think that a lot of the time the practitioners couch their sufferings in this life against the idea of reincarnation or that they are going to a better place. It is just a variation of the Christian idea of going to heaven if you are good boys and girls.

I am wondering if one who practices and doesn't believe in any of that could attain similar earthly results to the above knowing this life is their one and only shot.

I see, what about the Ryan person mentioned above?

Besides past poster's personal issues it has been a fruitful discussion and likewise should it not be discussed as catharsis, indeed all the more reason to as Moliers and Jeremy Murray above have noted they get value from such exercises.

Of course, if you know particular poster's to be particularly vulnerable one must tread very carefully but I did not know any of that background and besides isn't the thread several years old? so I doubt the OP is even watching it any more so new people need not have that initial concern.

The suit comment was low-level but I feel the observation your discourse style is like Jordan Peterson is a valid one. When pressed you always go back to the modus operandi 'define x' when it seems you do not grasp a topic and them 'blame' the other person for not explaining properly and keep leading people round and round with irrelevant semantics as a smoke screen.

This is classic JP style.

You run the forum now or you 'told' on me to teacher? I have enough high level posts I think to balance out a couple of off hand remarks.

Or you meant you will 'deal with me' in the Mafia sense? Ok, the suit makes more sense now...

He wears a suit in his profile pic, so that must mean he knows what he is talking about. :smile:

I get the impression of a chap who is an alumnus of the Jordan Peterson school of Philosophising.

I've had both bad and good experiences with counselling. I also take medication. — Moliere

I believe this is where you exited the thread of mine on communism/anarchism when I implied that western medicine is mostly in place to pacify the worker and keep them productive in the Protestant work ethic tradition.

I am not saying some great things are not achieved with modern medicine, like how they can put a wire up through the groin with a camera and pull out a blood clot from the brain for example. There is lots of value, but there is also lots of not wanting to find a cause and just pacification because it is easier/cheaper to do that.

I am saying that medicine, like pretty much anything in society is steeped in politics as to what decisions are made on where to pour money to treat what. Sometimes that happily aligns with what is best for the patient/their ailment and often times it is not.

To bring it back round to counselling I would say that is subject to the same things as mentioned above. What counsellors encourage as healthy vs maladaptive will be in line with what the status quo is of society at large.

Fair enough, and it does. I can't believe in the mystical stuff either, but I do see value in ritual for those that do, or who practice it as ritual. — Jeremy Murray

Ah I didn't know you were familiar with them too, more than a pop understanding. Yes I tried to dig deeper into it and the metaphysical became a stumbling block each time as it is pretty unavoidable.

You have to do a lot of 'bracketing off' of that stuff and there comes to be so much bracketing off you wonder 'is this still Buddhism'? I still haven't found a good teacher/writer on the subject who seemed to have a high level of attainment while also dismissing that stuff. The book Buddhism without Beliefs promises it but did not deliver imo. They just do silly renaming of everything, even things there was no need to - for example, changing 'life is suffering', to 'life is anguish' - yea so what was the point of that? and much other semantics reshuffling. There was no conflict there, I think they just wanted to 'soften' it but anguish seems just the same kind of weight to it so don't know why they would change it. Mostly other pointless changes like that which made me stop reading not for in.

Sam Harris in his book Waking Up does the best job at extricating the useful from the bloat but all too little attention is given but what he did write in there was good. His basic evaluation was that the fantastical stuff was a product of their worldview or the times or just their flawed characters, which we must accept they were still human and capable of flawed judgement, despite what the writings would say that they are perfect beings who always made perfect decisions (that might be another debate if they always acts perfectly or not having attained 'enlightenment'), but we can still take a lot from their skills at insight and should not let the former color the latter.

Oh actually, now I think of it, Ajahn Chah and the Thai Forest traditional has been the closest. Although on deep inspection, from my reading, he did still believe in all the 'woo woo', but from some snippets I got he deliberately downplayed them in his teachings as he thought them distractions to learning the path as should be learning the nuts and bolts of practice.

Whatever his personal reason that did make his teachings very palatable from my perspective.

(Just so you know, the level of quibbling and evasion that you are engaged in within this thread is precisely what gets people onto my ignore list. So if you enjoy our conversations I'd suggest upping the ante.) — Leontiskos

I noticed that is his standard 'ace in the hole' lol. Used it a lot when debating with the formidable @Boethius.

For human minds, humans are ipso facto special as the one species who is itself (from their perspective). Thats fine. — AmadeusD

That is all this is about I think for the subject matter set out in the OP.

No cause for searching for immanent reasons, it is just that humans see other humans as special.

Oh and I was thinking, back on the topic of special/valuable, for a baby, they only maintain that status for the few years they are babies. Back to the hierarchy of values: If a baby becomes an adult male, they would no longer be seen as special: ripe for cannon fodder in a war or such. If a very attractive women, or even just being any woman, relative to men, they keep their specialness. Also this actually feeds back into the original criteria. Why are women seen as relatively more special than men? because they produce those special little things called babies! Back to evolutionary explanations, men only have to provide the seed so not special. Making a baby takes about 9 months.

The specialness could be seen, from the alien outside observer viewpoint again, as possessing consciousness and reflective perception. We are the only species that knows they are going to die as one example, so they say.

Now that is only special to us because we can appreciate it but perhaps other species with similar intelligences could also appreciate it as special. From a none (relatively higher) consciousness being's perspective it would not be special. Any of the animals you stated above of course would not see it as special.

So I suppose the question of special is, to whom? and only those species with similar traits would see those traits in other species as particularly special.

Some interesting debate has been had from a so called 'creepy and disgusting' thread eh? :)

This is why "special" seems a random label designed for something, rather than reflecting something. I don't know why. That said, i am most closely aligned with antinatalism, so showing my hand a bit. I think you've got it right - we've inserted this term without sufficiently defining it so we can continue to have babies despite overwhelmingly good reasons not to, for the most part. Not a moral argument here - I just cannot understand the press to consider babies 'special'. They simply aren't. They're one of a billion and useless, without sucking out resources from the world around them. I want the reason that gets past this.
I note the two arguing against me are (most likely.. Don't want to put my foot in it) coming from theological positions. I accounted for that, so unsure I need continue answer those challenges without the reason I'm after articulated clearly. — AmadeusD

You seem to be going on the assumption that society acts in perfectly rational ways and so why aren't they making the perfectly rational designation to devalue childbirth for the good of the greater society.

Most politics in populism. There is quite a bit of overlap with was discussed in my previous post a few weeks ago on humans following traditions, 'just because', when most times they are irrational.

Look at the stupid laws that stay in place like drug prohibition and euthanasia because of the puritanical views about both. No guys I am not a Puritan! as many here have accused me of being just from my OP.

Also on that note, for those who say it is Puritanism to say sex is somehow dirty, in the great words of Paulie Walnuts of Sopranos fame (paraphrased), "pi**ing, shi**ting, and fu**ing all take place within a few inches of each other, did you ever wonder why that is?" You can dress up having sex as much as you want, calling it beautiful love making or whatnot, but it is still getting pleasure from those waste expulsion orifices. That is a biological observation, not some theistic moral judgement.

As I have thought about this over the last few days there are many similar paradoxes in life - the union of the man and the woman begins in beautiful lovey dovey and can so easily turn to hatred, abuse and custody battles and even murder of the spouse.

Forgot the other examples but there are plenty when you think about it a bit.

I suppose it is just the age old yin and yang at play.

What it is is precisely something that will grow to be able to do those things. — Leontiskos

Indeed, it is like buying stock with potential. They know that, as a human, it has value.

However I would not say that is why there is the urge to protect the baby. It is rather it is just an instinct. Likewise how a man finds a woman attractive it is not some rational calculation that she will provide good off spring. A man just finds her 'hot'. It isn't a calculation that a person who finds a baby 'cute' is saying to themselves 'one day they will maybe be the next Einstein'. They just have the instinct to protect them due to natural selection having favoured those before which did so.