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Originally posted by Blake
Except happiness is really the very purpose of Buddhism. It's not just a side aspect or side effect.
Originally posted by Blake
I'll tell you something.
Before I started Buddhist practice I had Asperger's Syndrome.
I no longer have Asperger's Syndrome.
While not a mental illness, it is an intractable. According to psychology.
Originally posted by Blake
Buddhism doesn't care what your brain is like.
What does it matter? Try to come up with an instance, where a buddhist monk being ignorant of science, actually matters - actually matters to him, actually matters to the people he interacts with.
Originally posted by Blake
Bearing in mind that buddhism is a heck of a lot more effective than psychology both at developing your own mind and the minds of other people. Monks have a superb understanding of what actually causes people problems in their lives. It's really a very funny thing, how people will think that their problems and stuff are highly unique when in reality all people pretty much suffer from the same problems. Problems like conflict with other people. And these problems, arise from much the same causes, like, lack of communication.
Originally posted by Blake
And Buddhism is (and buddhist monks are) excellent at teaching communication skills, opening up the mind makes it so much easier to communicate with other people.
That's where Buddhism rules and Psychology drools. Psychology attempts to catalog everything, make a million different psychological disorders. Buddhism is like a grand unified theory in comparison. Amazingly simple, elegant and accurate, explaining all phenomena astutely and providing highly effective remedies.
Your notion that psychology attempts to explain every problem as a disorder is false. Some of this comes from some messed up ways that psychologists bill insurance companies and a host of other institutional problems. But at the academic level these problems. don't impact their discovery of truth.
Originally posted by Blake
The main difference is, Buddhists aren't in it for the money (a greedy buddhist is a useless buddhist). And people find it hard to believe, that something which is given freely can be far more effective than something which costs hundreds of dollars. It's hard to make money out of Buddhism, because someone who is greedy wont be a good buddhist. Because buddhism is abysmal at making money, it's basically incompatible with capitalism, unlike science. Buddhists tend to consume a lot less, so it's bad for the economy. That's how it is.APOSTOLNIK BEANIE BERET BICORNE BIRETTA BOATER BONNET BOWLER CAP CAPOTAIN CHADOR COIF CORONET CROWN DO-RAG FEDORA FEZ GALERO HAIRNET HAT HEADSCARF HELMET HENNIN HIJAB HOOD KABUTO KERCHIEF KOLPIK KUFI MITRE MORTARBOARD PERUKE PICKELHAUBE SKULLCAP SOMBRERO SHTREIMEL STAHLHELM STETSON TIARA TOQUE TOUPEE TRICORN TRILBY TURBAN VISOR WIG YARMULKE ZUCCHETTO
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Originally posted by Blake
I actually find equanimity to be the most legitimate morality (As in the hardest to argue against without sounding like a major dick).
A common attitude people hold, expressed through action is:
"My happiness is more important to me than your happiness"
Whether people verbalize this (and most don't, most don't even think it), it's clearly true in their actions. This is especially true, in their interactions with non-human entities. But it's also readily apparent with all forms of bigotry, with victimless crimes, and so on.
Now clearly, when you have multiple people all with this belief, something is off:
Person A: Person A's happiness is more important than Person B's happiness.
Person B: Person B's happiness is more important than Person A's happiness.
Clearly both of these can't be simultaneously true!
However taking this attitude:
"Your happiness is equally as important to me as my happiness"
Such contradiction does not arise. In fact it's the only stance, where contradiction does not arise.
Putting such morality into practise, it's clearly only possible to directly effect our own happiness.
In practise this involves harmlessness; not willfully doing things which would cause others to suffer, combined with thankfulness; when someone does something you appreciate you be grateful in mind, speech and action. Trying to go around making people happier with "random acts of kindness" doesn't actually work, but when you interact you consider the other parties happiness as if they were you (if you don't want to do this, refrain from the interaction), so think of this attitude as a code of conduct for interaction, not a moral imperative for your life.
Truly embracing the attitude "Your happiness is equally as important to me as my happiness" actually causes the ego to fade away and is thus beneficial both for them and society at large (the ego is a terribly destructive thing, both at individual and societal level).
It is more helpful, to think of moral code as an attitude than a belief.
A belief, I tend to define as something like this:
"I believe that if I put my faith in God, i will be rewarded in heaven after I die"
While an attitude, you see the effect it has, it is measurable, you can adopt and keep that attitude because you see it has positive effects.
You cannot love others better than you love yourself. You cannot love others equally as you love yourself.
What you can do, which is very close to what you seem to be prescribing, is to treat others as you would want them to treat you. This is logical, and doing otherwise is illogical, as it cannot help but result in people treating you badly.
In this way, "morality" is secular and rational.
And further, any religious morality applied under threat is amoral and irrational.Best MMORPG on the net: www.cyberdunk.com?ref=310845
An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. -Gandhi
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Originally posted by The Mad Viking
Nice response. The reality is that your happiness is MORE important to you than others. So ultimately, it is impossible for you to consistently act otherwise.
You cannot love others better than you love yourself. You cannot love others equally as you love yourself.
What you can do, which is very close to what you seem to be prescribing, is to treat others as you would want them to treat you. This is logical, and doing otherwise is illogical, as it cannot help but result in people treating you badly.
In this way, "morality" is secular and rational.
And further, any religious morality applied under threat is amoral and irrational.
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Anyone here read "God Is Not Great - How Religion Poisons Everything" by Christopher Hitchens?
Somewhat hyperbolic at times, but generally very well reasoned. I enjoyed it greatly.Best MMORPG on the net: www.cyberdunk.com?ref=310845
An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. -Gandhi
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Originally posted by Geronimo
Given that people can hate themselves it would seem strange that they would be incapable of loving others more than themselves.
But given that hating oneself is (a) a psychoses; and (b) often does not negate acting in self-interest; I do not believe this is much of a refutation of my statement, so much as a justifiable criticism that my language (as usual) was too absolute.
It is generally inconsistent with the mammal Homo Sapiens to expect each individual it to behave in a manner wherein its desire for survival and propogation of other individuals is equal or greater than the desire for the survival and propogation of itself.Best MMORPG on the net: www.cyberdunk.com?ref=310845
An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. -Gandhi
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No, I think even if I were an atheist I would not read that book, just like I wouldn't watch Michael Moore movies even if I were a hard-core liberal or listen to Rush Limbaugh if I were a Neanderthal conservative. Stop enabling vitriolic ass-clowns to poison our discourse through your money!
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Originally posted by The Mad Viking
Nice response. The reality is that your happiness is MORE important to you than others. So ultimately, it is impossible for you to consistently act otherwise.
You have total control over your own happiness, and no real control over the happiness of other people.
But that doesn't mean you have to make your own happiness more important, it just makes it is easier to make your own happiness more important.
In some sense, since you can so EASILY effect your own happiness, it doesn't need to be made particularly important at all, it takes a lot more effort to influence the happiness of others, so that can be made more important, something to devote more effort to.
To be a bit cheeky, it's completely effortless for me to be happy. So equating importance to effort, I can easily and truthfully say that "The happiness of others is equally important to me as my happiness". I make no effort to be happy, I make no effort to make others be happy.
But it's more accurate to say, I make no effort to make myself unhappy, I make no effort to make others unhappy.
Because happiness is just kind of the default state, when you aren't wanting, you are happy.
You cannot love others better than you love yourself. You cannot love others equally as you love yourself.
But the most loving people, will love both themselves and others. Anyone who loves themself excessively, or loves others excessively, fails at being loving, the "gap" basically ends up being filled with a degree of loathing.
So a vain person loathes others, to a degree.
The person who clings excessively to a loved one, loathes themself, to a degree.
The balance, is to love equally.
What you can do, which is very close to what you seem to be prescribing, is to treat others as you would want them to treat you.
This is logical
, and doing otherwise is illogical, as it cannot help but result in people treating you badly.
But many people, do things which aren't decent to others, even quite knowingly. They justify doing this, in some way. "This is not a decent thing to be doing to this person, but I can justify it, because my need is greater than theirs... I am more important than them"
The golden rule, is simply too naive. Maybe at a very meta level, it works - like for instance, keeping it as vague as "I'd like to be treated with kindness and respect", but I think there are better ways to express the sentiment, less open to obvious retorts.
And further, any religious morality applied under threat is amoral and irrational.
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Originally posted by Blake
You have total control over your own happiness, and no real control over the happiness of other people.
But that doesn't mean you have to make your own happiness more important, it just makes it is easier to make your own happiness more important.
In some sense, since you can so EASILY effect your own happiness, it doesn't need to be made particularly important at all, it takes a lot more effort to influence the happiness of others, so that can be made more important, something to devote more effort to.
To be a bit cheeky, it's completely effortless for me to be happy. So equating importance to effort, I can easily and truthfully say that "The happiness of others is equally important to me as my happiness". I make no effort to be happy, I make no effort to make others be happy.
But it's more accurate to say, I make no effort to make myself unhappy, I make no effort to make others unhappy.
Because happiness is just kind of the default state, when you aren't wanting, you are happy.
In situations like these, in situations of want, human beings are biologically programmed to care more about themselves (and perhasps their immediate families).
But the most loving people, will love both themselves and others. Anyone who loves themself excessively, or loves others excessively, fails at being loving, the "gap" basically ends up being filled with a degree of loathing.
So a vain person loathes others, to a degree.
The person who clings excessively to a loved one, loathes themself, to a degree.
The balance, is to love equally.
I accuse you of your words being empty.
Further, I do not believe, even if you do, that such a way of living is sustainable.Best MMORPG on the net: www.cyberdunk.com?ref=310845
An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. -Gandhi
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In buddhism, Monks (who are the ones who live exemplary lives) are not expected to live as poorly as humanely possible.
They are in fact entitled and obligated to 3 pairs of robes (no nakedness) and a bowl.
Monks eat by alms round. They may not prepare food themself (and are not allowed money with which to buy food) ((nor are they allowed to beg for food)) (((nope nor pick it up off the ground))), they must eat only what is offered freely by the laypeople, they are quite expected to starve to death before breaking these rules.
(There are at least 3 separate very good reasons for these rules)
The interesting thing here is, if there truly isn't enough food to go around the Monks would probably starve to death first, and help alleviate the food shortage. Of course a Monk is allowed to disrobe at any time if he decides he really is needed more as a farmer than a monk (but realistically speaking, how often is a food shortage caused by a lack of farmers rather than an excess of greed?)
But anyway, Buddha clearly recognized that a certain level of comfort and sustenance is a desirable to have. This is, not taking more than is needed, or if you're really devoted, not consuming more than can be spared.
Perhaps more to the point, Buddha recognized that starvation and other extreme forms of physical suffering (such as untreated injury), were detracting to the extreme, and thus are to be avoided. This is not the same as saying that people should steal food from other hungry people in order to live at their expense (indeed a good buddhist should be prepared to starve to death if required) but that any decent society should provide enough food for everyone because in general, starvation (and such) makes it more difficult to become enlightened.
Once someone has been trained as a Monk, they have a much greater capacity to deal with starvation without becoming unhappy and detracted but to expect the same from non-monks would be unreasonable, it is also a generally desirable thing for monks to remain alive and HIGHLY expected for them to be receptive to compassion, so they are encouraged to not deliberately starve themselves to death, even if it is a potentially enlightening experience.
But anyway, there's a world of difference between not getting enough to eat (and suffering for it) and not getting a second SUV (and suffering for it). Starving people can become enlightened, but someone whose sole focus in life is getting enough to eat will never become enlightened.
edit: And my point. I aspire to live as Monkly as possible, to the extent that I can without abandoning my responsibilities. I use the same basic reconciliation tactics as anyone, the same as a Monk would use even. Like what's more important; Upholding the precept against touching women, or helping a badly injured woman? Any good Monk would choose the latter. That's responsibility and it trumps any ideals.Last edited by Blake; January 20, 2008, 21:51.
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Blake, I may have missed this, but does this mirror say Taoist or other monks?
Just curious, religions abound, some feel a gift from a higher being, could be berries and vegetables growing wild, to help compensate for service to a higher being.
Thanks
GrampsHi, I'm RAH and I'm a Benaholic.-rah
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I refer to Theravada Monks, it's the oldest school of Buddhism and most true to Buddha.
The idea of food found in the wild being a gift from a higher being for service to a higher being, would be ah, superstition . Such superstition must be abandoned very early in a Buddhist's path. Holding onto such superstition is an excellent way to avoid enlightenment about the way things really are.
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I don't know. Perfection made some good points.“As a lifelong member of the Columbia Business School community, I adhere to the principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”
"Capitalism ho!"
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