This is what is unique to Buddhism - it always has some connection, even if vague and tenuous, to some sound logical principle. — TheMadFool

A vague and tenuous connection to sound logical principles. :chin: :lol:

absence of inconsistencies

I think you’re guilty of seeing what you want to see. I could point out some glaring inconsistencies though, if you like.

Look at my reply to wayfarer

I’m completely with you, nevertheless, I think we’re too ignorant (in the general sense) to say this is true.

The promise of a warning doesn’t give me any peace of mind, and if I were warned I don’t think my behavior would change. If I were in the middle of an interesting discussion I might try to up the quality, as far as I’m able, in order to pursue the topic, but generally I’d continue with my level of quality, such as it is.

he’s still doing a better job than any grandiloquent, Ivy-league lawyer that has dominated the position until now. — NOS4A2

I am not confident in Trump’s re-election.

Obama brought the country out of the Great Recession, and was re-elected. I think that even Trump’s supporters realize on some level that he’s far too incompetent to deal with the current state of affairs.

Consciousness is what it feels like when your brain is working.

Only a once-in-a-century pandemic could disrupt such a term, which is amazing considering all that was thrown at it. And here you guys promised us the next Hitler... — NOS4A2

I assume you're joking, a wide range of things could disrupt so fragile an economy. Not the current administrations' fault, though I think it could be argued that they've made it less stable.

11. No top 11 lists.

Buddhism opts for a reasoned approach, basing itself on not metaphysics but on the empirical - impermanence is its foundation and who, in his right mind, can deny the truth of the ever-changing nature of reality? — TheMadFool

Someone discovered empirical evidence for karma, rebirth, etc. and didn’t tell me? :sad:

Such simplicity with such profundity is missing even in the dominant faiths of present times.

The alleged simplicity has you expressing curious thoughts like ‘cause is the engine of impermanence’, I notice. Anyway, you could just as easily reduce Christianity to ‘love’ or whatever, claim its simplicity, and be equally wrong.

This, however, isn't the case which proves that it's not ignorance in and of itself that's the obstacle but ignorance of certain truths,...

We can’t say that something like ‘emptiness’ is true, can we?

In a way the Buddha got what he wanted - he meditated furiously on impermanence and came to the conclusion that change is the only constant. — TheMadFool

I hate to nitpick but he might have included stuff like time or gravity. Maybe he wasn't as observant as they say.

Perhaps not, his desire to exit the causal web, cause being the engine of impermanence, and attain nirvana (extinguishment) - his hope was to transcend impermanence by extricating himself from the causal web and, in that, achieving something eternal. — TheMadFool

According to the doctrine, impermanence isn't the cause of suffering but ignorance. Ignorance of our true nature (emptiness). If we could realize our true nature or 'make emptiness real' then we wouldn't suffer, so they claim. That actually makes sense. For instance, a rock doesn't suffer when it's broken because it has no illusory sense of self that it wishes to sustain. For the rock, there's no before or after, no gain or loss, no cause or effect... nothing at all to stress over. People are not rocks, however, but a subdued sense of self definitely reduces existential anxiety and can lead to greater well-being.

That’s an odd take on Buddhism, a basic tenet being that everything is impermanent.

I've been practicing that with swimming, taking 5-9 strokes between breaths at a moderate pace. Can feel a slight headache sometimes.

what I mean is that if you truly desire something and think you can achieve it then by all means go for it. Why hold back? — Gitonga

The topic is about happiness, isn't it? Granted there's an amount of satisfaction that can be gained in merely pursuing a goal, of any sort, and achieving it.

So instead of pretending to be satisfied with the little you have, strive to achieve and get more. — Gitonga

That sounds like a bad habit to me, and bad advice to reinforce it.

You are a victim of cultural conditioning.

It convinced me to become a dedicated nose breather. I had already been doing some breath work in meditation over the last few years but have stepped it up after reading the book, with the immediate goal of no longer snoring, for my wife's sake :grimace:, which is supposedly an attainable goal with the various practices and techniques outlined in the book.

This is more a subject for Zen meditation. There one learns, or experiences one's "I" as a fabrication. Instead of "I am aware" there is only awareness. An instant of realization is worth more than a lifetime of philosophical dialogue.
— jgill

I think you ought to mean a life time of practice is worth more than an instant of realization. :P Especially if there is "nothing" to realize. — Nils Loc

:grin: Instances of realization appears to have the unfortunate effect of inflating the ego in many cases, oddly enough.

@Baden

Speaking badly of moderators, is that 'Baden' like I'm a baden (bad guy or badass)?

Seemed fairly well educated and knowledgable, from what little I read from him. The weirdness of his comments on race surprised me though! I suppose had they not been a surprise, it would not have seemed so weird! — creativesoul

I read through quite a few of his posts (here and Facebook) to get a better sense of him, because I questioned honesty. I believe he’s sincere. And yeah, educated and intelligent, though emotionally... off, perhaps somewhere on the spectrum.

Never underestimate the importance of banning ernest.

The artist stated that he doesn't "want the dogs of Manhattan to feel left out of the pee party." Seems pretty decent of him.

How so?

The End of Growth by Richard Heinberg

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, by James Nestor
A fascinating book, well written, and important for anyone's good health.

At the risk of being indelicate, if you’re living in the same neighborhood it would be somewhat irresponsible of you to get another cat, being that if the circumstances haven’t changed it may suffer the same fate.

What if you shrunk people down to the size of an electron and used them in the famous "double slit experiment"? Would you get the same results? What would the experiences of the people be? — RogueAI

Either wavey or particley, depending on if you checked on their progress through the slits.

Banned in the midsts of my rapport building. :sad:

Taking Nuke’s advise...

You are clearly non-whites who want to see the west fall. — rec

Hello, rec, and welcome to the forum. That’s a valid point and indeed I am myself a quarter Mexican. My inclination to wish western downfall is of course based on a bad case of TDS. Know any good therapists?

It's a curious thought that a majority is required to make something real.
– praxis

Well this is what I observed, I may have been mistaken in assuming that everyone had to be in on it for it to be real. It just was, and appeared not to be at home, that's all. — Punshhh

It makes sense, it just initially struck me as odd, then I recalled how religion can tightly bind a community, and, necessarily exclude all outsiders. You were there of course and partook, as anyone who follows the narrative can, until they don't.

And did these remote Himalayaians validate your experience?
– praxis

Yes they did — Punshhh

Did you need them to?

The way I saw it was in the way they all believed in a divine presence — Punshhh

And you experienced this divine presence, as something separate from yourself?

It also enabled me to put into some kind of focus how my society at home had lost this. This is not to say that there weren't people at home who realised this, or who had faith, but rather the society as a whole had lost this and it relied on everyone, or at least most of the people for it to be, to be real. — Punshhh

It's a curious thought that a majority is required to make something real. Very disturbing in that it invalidates minorities. Some don't like to talk about tribalism when romanticizing the past. It seems that some things are never forgotten and impossible to imagine.

I don't want to speak for Wayfarer — Punshhh

I wouldn't worry about it. His position is so tenuous that he's rendered himself speechless.

I see it is that it is a situation where one can't see the wood for the trees. — Punshhh

Funny you should put it that way because I was thinking that emersion in nature could be like experiencing the forest, for example, as "an intrinsically alive presence with which one had a relationship beyond the merely adaptive." Unfortunately, being a modern person I cannot validate such an experience for myself, having unshackled myself from the great chain of being and the all-to-human authorities that reign supreme in that divine domain, I stand alone in a nihilistic wasteland.

I have experienced what was lost in the way he puts it while spending time with people living in remote areas of the Himalaya. — Punshhh

And did these remote Himalayaians validate your experience?

How do you deal with prejudice? Firstly, the prejudiced need to want to overcome their prejudice.
— praxis

Yea man, that's what I'm trying to discuss. Do we lefties wish to overcome our prejudices? — Nuke

No, only three sentences after this you say the objective is "reaching policy objectives." Can that be achieved by everyone but Trump supporters overcoming their prejudices, and if they're not an obstacle to that objective then why bother? If it's true that "few to none of their [non-Trump supporter] objectives can be reached without lots of Trump voters on board," then the prejudices of Trump supporters might need to be somehow overcome.

Not denying biases on both sides, and personally, I've been working on trying to understand Trump supporters from day one, and studying the situation from various angles.

Unfortunately, my personal Affect is rather flat. I don't have strong emotional swings. That's not a sign of depression, but of a stable happy-go-lucky temperament. I am by nature rather Buddha-like in the sense of a peaceful state of mind. I suppose that's why my general mood seems rather two-dimensional to more emotionally volatile people. — Gnomon

I can appreciate your personal assessment and acknowledge the quality of equanimity in your manner. Nevertheless, your brain is irrevocably linked to a body that experiences fluctuations in energy and satisfaction, or arousal and valence, respectively. That is affect. What your brain does with that information is largely dependent on your conditioning, and that is largely dependent on whatever culture you were raised in. Earlier you asked what the difference was between Possibilities fifth (personal conditioning) and sixth (shared cultural conditioning) dimensions. Both are essentially about adaptively regulating energy, though the sixth dimension is collaborative between 'relational structures' in nature.

What would it take for me to experience the Fifth Dimension stage of enlightenment? — Gnomon

Note how you're feeling and realize that at its core it's simply a state of arousal/valence, and whatever emotions you might be experiencing are just so much conditioned prediction to your current situation.

If you need to fart, you must first file a 17 page application with the EPA. :-) — Nuke

You joke, but it’s not a joke for the people you’re talking about, who’ve been lead to hold all sorts of absurd prejudices.

How do you deal with prejudice? Firstly, the prejudiced need to want to overcome their prejudice. Then they can dissolve their prejudice by merely getting to know what they’re prejudiced against.

Obviously.

I guess that if you addressed the question at all you would be arguing against yourself.

Maybe @Punshhh is braver than you?

Part of the implicit condition of modernity is the sense of oneself as an intelligent, separate subject in a domain of objects (and other subjects), whereas in the pre-modern world, the world was experienced as, or realised as, an intrinsically alive presence with which one had a relationship beyond the merely adaptive. Having fallen out of that, it is impossible to recall or imagine what has been lost or forgotten. — Wayfarer

I hate to state the obvious but if something is impossible to recall or imagine then how can you recall or imagine it? You just described it as the world “experienced as, or realised as, an intrinsically alive presence with which one had a relationship beyond the merely adaptive.” What is so outlandish about that?

I've interpreted what Possibility has written about it to be like a dimension of measurement, if that makes sense. Affect is a dimension like depth is a dimension. There is depth information available to perception as there is affect information available to perception. Make sense?

That's my take on it, for what it's worth.

Feeling uncomfortable about it I scanned through some of his Facebook posts to try and get a sense of Ernest. Best guess is that he's entirely serious.



Never underestimate the importance of getting a sense of Ernest.

I still don't know how the hypothetical Fifth Dimension might fit into my theory of Information. I don't understand how it differs from the spiritual New Age notion, or from the mathematical universe of String Theorists. My Enformationism thesis has a lot to say about space-time, but doesn't mention higher or multiple dimensions. That's because I have no personal experience with anything beyond the mundane dimensions of apparent reality. — Gnomon

I'm sure it would help if you familiarized yourself with: Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

I just hope he posts more after returning from the ER so I can watch this play out.

If you want more ideas, why not get off your butt and share some? — Nuke

Cuz I'm not sitting on any.

Poster intent matters. — fdrake

The intent is interesting to consider. The guy's not psychotic so, what's the cool intent about?

According to moral foundations theory, liberals primarily value care and fairness, out of all other moral intuitions. Philosophers value reason. So here we have a forum largely comprised of individuals who value care and fairness (and is part of their identity) and also reason. So where does one end and the other begin? It could be a fun game to see where the line is drawn.

If?