Will doesn't come OUT of nothing. It moves independent of anything. That's the difference in abstract terms

Thanks

There are no simple clean answers, but maybe that proper and how it should be

I take my suffering as a way to grow into moments of happiness

Maybe there should simply be laws for how right people should use their wealth for others. So cooperation. Sean Hannity said wealth causes more problems for the wealthy, so why not help everyone out with proper governmental programs.

There is corruption when there are too many rich people as well. Capitalists say their right to money is absolute, but what of hippies' "right" to use the drug of their choice. Nobody is an island and the wealth of each person is for them primarily and for others secondarily. The latter part is what I'm emphasizing

There will never be paradise in this universe. You can't find "no suffering" as long as you breath. To suffer is to struggle and to struggle is good. To suffer is to find happiness, because world is astathmeta/anepikrita as the Greeks said, which best stated as phenomena in modern times. Kant and German idealists lived well because they said world was becoming (a horrid word though, phenomena being better) but keep intellectualizing, therefore reducing there suffering through the suffering of thought

It's not "other peoples'" money. They live in society

There will always be some capitalism, as there will always be struggle (suffering). That's the way it is. A "better option" is socialism where materialism slows down. People say socialism doesn't work very well but that's the whole point. Too much riches causes too many problems in another way

it certainly isn't the Buddhism of the foundational Buddhist scriptures, the Pali Canon. — baker

Latter schools are defined by their ethos as rebellion against traditionalism Buddhism. This happens in all religions

Sorry for the delay in response. I was told that meditation is like exercise. It about gaining control. Trying to find altered states through it might not be a good idea.

You can't eliminate needs by meditation. That's just nonsense. When a criminal is punished he might thing the punishment is a restriction on his freedom, but it is really a manifestation of his karma, his will. To live in the world but apart from it is the "way" of all religions

Try searching Parmenides, Zeno, or Eleatic school and India. They are close in thought, as is Plato (as you remark). Indian art for me is decadent Platonism, or Platonism taken to it's natural conclusion

More:

They "mean", then, doubtless this bit of paper here, which is quite different from that bit over there; but they speak of actual things, external or sensible objects, absolutely individual, real, and so on; that is, they say about them what is simply universal. Consequencely what is called unspeakable is nothing else than what is untrue, irrational, and something barely and simply " meant"- Hegel

Those who put forward such assertions really themselves say, if we bear in mind what we remarked before, the direct opposite of what they mean: a fact which is perhaps best able to bring them to reflect on the nature of the certainty of senses experience. They speak of the existence of external objects, which can be more precisely characterized as actual, absolutely particular, individual things, each of them not like anything or anyone else; this is the existence which they say has absolute certainty and truth. They mean to say " this bit of paper I am writing on", or rather have written on: but they do not say [write] what they mean. If they really wanted to say "this bit of paper" which they "mean" and wanted to say so, that is impossible, because the "this" of sense, which is "meant", cannot be reached by language- Hegel, first chapter of PoS

In order to communicate, humans developed language which is very universal. The intricacies of inner life are such that we can only speak in general terms. It appears that Platonic ideals and talk about noumena results from the function of language itself. It is as if we can't really speak of individual phenomena in itself without putting it into general agreed upon categories

Search "Zeno and Nargarjuna".

Buddhists posit "interdependence" in order to separate from the world when it should be the opposite. A natural ally for Buddhism is Marxism, in a relationship within together they can learn from each other. On their own they are trouble

You don't understand metaphysical process. You're not seeing that antinomies of self, geometry, world, and divinity reach a point, literally a point, in the brain around which your mind revolves. Your mind isn't revolving

I suppose you think you can refute solipsism

We're not interested in why there is a universe. Language is platonic because it's human. Reality is non-platonic: real non-real phenomena

The antinomies could be seen from all (infinite) angles and resolved only if there is a "thing in itself" (that is, a Platonic reality) but such a thing can only be spoken of, and is what we speak of in all our speech

This thread is about how Buddhism relates to political social theory

That could be understood hypothetically but not as long as we are connected to phenomena

Plato thought the world was phenomena (real but not fully reality). Kant believed truth was immanent and not transcendent. His basic epistemic stance is that WE are phenomena

The world is phenomena. Why is there something? Why not no thing? It doesn't matter! Why is the sky blue

I don't find the question of why there is something instead of nothing meaningful. We can ask "why something" but not "why not nothing". At death we go to nothing but we don't know what that is or what that means

All the antinomies lead the mind in different ways but they are not solved but transcended

The world is phenomena so its best to see the world as eternal but in Kant's way, not Aristotle's. Modern physics has this all worked out. The only antimony that defies any explanation is the one about infinitesimals

He doesn't solve them

Materialism creates desire. Channel your efforts into the right social endeavours and you can make a change

George Harrison, who I've read a lot about, became more selfish with the obsession with finding meditative states. He thought he was wrestling with Christianity, when he really just needed to get off drugs and find something besides the Beatles to do. Instead he stayed with the Beatles and used meditation to escape, and ended up continuing with drug use for much of his life

The way is not "in". That's a place for vacation, not a destination

Kant said the antinomies are necessary contradictions which lead the mind to higher levels

Time exists in understanding physics. Space, as well. On a higher level there is just phenomena but Kant leads to those higher levels of thought and its not required to have a "proof"

Proof for what

I understand my place perfectly and how to minimize the bad stuff is not another story. Buddhism and Marxism point out how bad materialism becomes and finding something to help the situation is what this thread is about

"...life consists before all in this: that a living creature is at each moment itself, and yet something else. Life is therefore a contradiction, present in process, continually accruing and solving itself. And as soon as the contradiction ceases, life ceases and death steps in." Engels

I wasn't saying everyone should own the same things. Capitalism causes a lot of misery and I see that everyday

I don't believe in any spiritual benefits someone can find apart from society