The Danes really have it going for them

[Blake]

I'm a Buddhist!

I'm not allowed to obsess over titties :P. It's unseemly.

But I am allowed to obsess over Buddhism!

though it is discouraged.

In short I am being a "Bad Buddhist", I will blame the fact that I'm forced to continue to remain on the internet to do my job. If I could just go hang out at a Monastery ALL THE TIME I'd never bother anyone by talking about Buddhism.

And I will be a bit of a wild monk, ambitious and difficult to train, like most young monks. The whole excessive enthusiasm about Buddhism is something Buddhists have to get out of their system, once they see it's pointless... Buddhism IS okay as a hobby but it shouldn't be an obsession, a Monk should spend some time meditating, some time chanting, some time working, some time talking, some time eating, some time sleeping... and not be obsessed by any of it...
I CAN see it's pointless but I keep doing it for some reason :P.
There's a saying something like "knowing is half the battle".

You "know" something then try to put it into practise, in the effort of trying to put it into practise, you learn some more, which you then need to try to put into practise...
Effort/practise/learning/growth...

What was my point...
Oh yeah. If I COULD run off and join a monastery tomorrow, I WOULD. And then I'd be badgering the other monks and guests with my enthusiasm for Buddhism . You guys get to suffer instead. You're doing a very nice thing for Buddhists! . It's good merit.

edit: I might clarify what I mean by "not bother anyone".
Ajahn Chah, a very famous monk in the Forest Sangha, loved the bad monks, the bad monks were precious! They taught over monks patience and stuff...
So while being a bad monk is bad for the monk in question, it's good for the other monks...
When the other monks get annoyed by the bad monk they know they have their own problems to confront...
Obviously this is in moderation. A monk who isn't bad enough to actually get booted out according to the rules, but is bad enough to be a pest.
If Ajahn Chah was my teacher (pity he's dead), he would be like "Excellent! Excellent! You're a real keeper and I hope you never improve as a Monk!"
Monasteries are a place for keeping the rules but having fun, you don't need manners when everyone has a sense of humor.

A Gandhi quote may also be useful:

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

Just replace "violence" with "silliness".

It does, from personal experience, work out better in the end. It's like true speech, if you strive to NEVER lie, to always say what you're really thinking to the best of your ability, you are FORCED to eventually confront what you are really thinking. You'll eventually REALIZE what you're really thinking, AND realize that it's stupid. You might need to be told a thousand times before you figure it out for yourself... but if you REFUSE to be silly, refuse to express silly ideas, you'll be ignorant of them forever.

I don't know. This is one of the only ways to root out "delusion". Greed and Anger are so easy to notice in action, I just know when I'm being greedy, I know when I'm angry - there are feelings which are noticable. Delusion is so much more SUBTLE, it can perform massive distortions to reality which you can't feel in that way.

If you HAVEN'T figured it out yet, I'll explain.
I'm mostly talking to myself here :P. Unashamedly so. I sometimes just find a "mirror" and talk into it, to see more clearly what I'm doing.
Thank you Aeson, and I mean that sincerely.

[Winston]

Blake, just promise me this: If you ever wind up in a monastery, be sure to bring the legos.

[Monk]

Originally posted by Blake
a Monk should spend some time meditating, some time chanting, some time working, some time talking, some time eating, some time sleeping...

Chanting? What's the procedure for changing your username?

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Blake
Does it seem a little pretentious to you to believe you can skim read something and actually comprehend it well?

First of all, I said I skim read a specific part of your posts... the personal experience stories, which tend to be very long and don't introduce anything new to the picture rather than re-iterate (or occasionally pre-iterate) what your point is. I spend more time on the actual point of the personal experience stories, or certain points within them that I choose to address.

Second, no, it is not an outrageous claim to say a person can skim a few paragraphs in 20-30 seconds with good comprehension. I know people who can read far faster than I can. I have seen people who read several times as fast with good comprehension.

Third, the time spent reading in no way equates to the time spend contemplating the points within the reading material. I mentioned the amount of thought I put into these types of discussions, and you ignored that completely. You are picking and choosing what suits your predetermined viewpoint, and missing the point because of it.

Fourth, pretending that what I have said is or is not relevent based on my stated reading speed is retarded. Sorry. That's all it is, retarded. My points either stand or they don't. I could have spent hours crafting them, or seconds... they are what they are.

Fifth, your reply is a cop out, even if true. My points are there to refute if you think they are poorly thought out. It should be easy for your to do if you are correct.

I could never claim such a thing myself (it sounds as impossible as doing a quality rush job), but maybe you just have a far sharper and faster mind than me.

People vary in abilities. There are people with photographic memories who could recite word for word your whole story after just having glanced at it. There are people who would have to read it several times very slowly just to get the gist of what is going on, or might never figure out what your point is. Most of us are somewhere in between.

As for "quality rush jobs", that's an oxymoron. A quality job can be done in a short amount of time (especially relatively speaking), but then it isn't a rush job, it's just someone skilled enough that they can do a quality job in less time than someone else.

Watch this video. I can safely say no amount of time (short of weeks, months, or maybe years of practice) would allow me to make this object. Yet a skilled craftsman does it in a very short time.



Abilities vary. It's ignorant to pretend that someone doing something faster than you necessarily results in poor quality.

[Blake]

Watch this video. I can safely say no amount of time (short of weeks, months, or maybe years of practice) would allow me to make this object. Yet a skilled craftsman does it in a very short time.

No offense, but you spend enough time pointing out that I contradict myself, so I'm sure you wont mind that I point out the inherint contradiction of:
"No amount of time (short of weeks..."

Why not simply say "It would take me some time to learn how to do this".


But anyway, I feel it is a flawed assumption of yours, that true comprehension of what someone else is thinking is something which can be done quickly...
You can quickly comprehend the thoughts which are immediately generated by reading something, but they are just your own thoughts.
Technically, everything which enters your head is just your own thoughts, that's why I call people mirrors. But they are mirrors which distort thoughts, I send out my thoughts, and they come back distorted through some weird process called "someone else's mind".

The complete process goes like this:
1) My thoughts.
2) Are converted into language.
3) Which is converted into patterns in the world (photons or sound waves).
4) Which are read or heard by this "someone else" entity.
5) And are converted into language.
6) And become their thoughts.
7) Which are converted back into language.
8) And are converted into patterns in the world (photons or sound waves)
9) Which are read or heard by me.
10) And are converted into language
11) And become my thoughts

Sometimes I marvel at this journey. Once I realized just how INVOLVED communication is, I realized why miscommunication is so common and such a problem for people (for a start they expect too much of it!!!). There are so many steps where things can get distorted. Sometimes this is pointed out in a comical fashion, like various tricks with sentences - have you ever seen that kind of trick? Someone gives you a sentence, tells you to glance at it, then puts their hand over it and asks you to read it. You think "easy!" and read it back. They remove their hand and it turns out that "Paris" showed up twice but you only read it once . Or some of the words are different from what they looked like. And pretty much everyone will be tricked - they read it quickly and read one thing, they read it slowly and see what's REALLY there... the thing is, you're always confident you read it properly in the first place.
And that's not the only thing which can go wrong, different words mean different things to different people. A word evokes meaning based on experiences associated with that word. For example, I noticed about 5 years ago, that words like "Terrorist" or "Communist" or "Rape" evoke negative emotions while words like "Freedom" or "Democracy" cause positive emotions, I was like "hey cool, but I don't actually like that" so I disconnected the emotional connotations from the words, I didn't like having my emotions played with like that because people can just attach the word to a person, and suddenly that person has negative emotions attached to them...
There are people who equate Buddhists to Muslims, they really think that Buddhists and Muslims are the same thing, the same religion. Why do they think that? God only knows, but they really do. It's not a stab at Buddhism or Islam, it's just they don't know much except about Christainity perhaps. I say "I'm a Buddhist" and they start talking about Islam (ie: What we understand as "not us") and I patiently explain that Buddhism comes from Asia and Islam from the Middle East. You never know what a word might mean to someone else, what emotions it might evoke.

But I'm not really judging you for being lazy in your reading, because I'm being every bit as lazy. I'm quick to assume I don't comprehend something properly because most likely it's just plain true. Thus I have few expectations, I don't expect something to be logically consistent. That's why I'm quick to just try a new angle, it's a useful form of clarification. And I'm slow to refute, because I know I'm just refuting my own thoughts and not someone elses thoughts.

When you see communication as a thoroughly imperfect process which can be distorted at every step in a long series of steps, you stop obsessing so much over the small stuff.

I put much more weight on what people say they do, than what people say they think...
It's easy to comprehend what is meant when someone says what they do, and it's easy to get clarification.
Also when someone says what they FEEL, that's actually not hard to understand either, we all have pretty similar feelings, evoked in different ways, but the feelings are the same. It's not hard to figure out when someone is burning with anger or blissing out.
But what people THINK? That is much, much harder to understand. In some ways, I think it's impossible to understand.

So I don't make a big deal over what people say they think, I can be confident I DON'T comprehend much of it.

[chequita guevara]

this thread needs more Danish boobs

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Blake

No offense, but you spend enough time pointing out that I contradict myself, so I'm sure you wont mind that I point out the inherint contradiction of:
"No amount of time (short of weeks..."

Why not simply say "It would take me some time to learn how to do this".

Because I was refering to the fact that if I sat down and tried to make something like that, I would fail to create a quality piece. The amount of time that glass is workable would pass before I could make anything approaching a high quality result. The amount of time I could stay awake would pass as well. I would have to give up and come back some other time to try again. (Probably before I could even make an average quality piece even. Though I do sculpture, so perhaps I could come up with something passable if I could figure out the basic tool use quickly enough.)

I would have to start over again, try again.

The reason I phrased it so was because we were comparing the amount of time necessary to perform a task, not the time necessary to learn a task. It takes me 20-30 seconds to skim a few paragraphs at a high comprehension level. It took me about 10 years (from 4-14 while my reading abilities were developing) to get to the point I've roughly maintained since.

I don't say it took me 10 years to skim a few paragraphs. Doing so would be obtuse and misleading.

But anyway, I feel it is a flawed assumption of yours, that true comprehension of what someone else is thinking is something which can be done quickly...
You can quickly comprehend the thoughts which are immediately generated by reading something, but they are just your own thoughts.

Reading comprehension means retaining what was said in a technical sense. It is not the same thing as contemplating what you have read. I once read the quote in my sig. Took me less than 5 seconds to read it (and that long because I had to look at the references at the bottom of the page to get a translation). I've spent years thinking about it off and on, even though I don't have to read it again to do so.

That is the difference between time spent reading, and time spent contemplating the subject matter.

(Also, they are always just your own thoughts. No matter how long you contemplate them.)

But like I said, if my comprehension was fallacious, the results are there for you to address if you feel up to the task. Or you can just continue to hide from the issues behind your "you can't read that fast" blanket of ignorance.

But I'm not really judging you for being lazy in your reading, because I'm being every bit as lazy.

Obviously you are, either that or intentionally obtuse.

I stated I skim through your personal stories quickly. You ignore the qualification "your stories" and assume this means I skim through everything quickly. (Which in and of itself is still meaningless.)

You then made the fallacious leap from "read fast" to "doesn't take the time to comprehend what's been read", even though I clearly stated that I spend most of my day contemplating the discussions I have.

And you are still ignoring the results of the process, pre-judging my answers based on your horrifically flimsy (and outright ignorant) grasp of the process.

Before you were talking about trying to "win" or "understand". Well you're clearly not understanding. You're pulling juvenile stunts trying to cop out of the discussion and/or make inane and irrellevent assertions about how I'm not trying hard enough, or not thinking hard enough...

[Blake]

You ignore the qualification "your stories" and assume this means I skim through everything quickly. (Which in and of itself is still meaningless.)

The stories are where 90% of the meaning is found though, maybe more like 95%. But it's most of it. The rest is just windowdressings.

There's a question I want to ask you again though:

Q) Have you ever met a person with no respect for the rights of others?

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Blake
The stories are where 90% of the meaning is found though, maybe more like 95%. But it's most of it. The rest is just windowdressings.

No. Your stories simply illustrate a moral or lesson. I think about the moral or lesson. I don't spend much time thinking about the unnecessary filler like what the guy's name you knew was, or how many times you said the word "buddhism" in your story. Things like that don't need to be contemplated much. They're just filler.

In any case, the time I spend reading a story is not equivalent to the time I spend contemplating the meaning thereof

Until you accept that reality, you're objections to my statement about my reading/comprehension are going to continue to be completely irrelevant.

Q) Have you ever met a person with no respect for the rights of others?

I already answered that.

Originally posted by Blake
That is your belief, but I ask you, have you ever actually met or even heard of such a person with an actual complete disregard for the rights of others?

You are trying to be pedantic.

I have met several who when treated kindly only took advantage of that kindness. I have met several who ignore the rights of others, clearly and consistently.

Murdering someone is a complete disregard for the rights of the person murdered. We have all heard about murderers.

I will add that I have met at least one murderer who had no remorse for what they did.

[Darius871]

this thread makes my eyes bleed

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Darius871
this thread makes my eyes bleed

It's always good to hear that my efforts haven't been fruitless.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Aeson

You are trying to be pedantic.

I have met several who when treated kindly only took advantage of that kindness. I have met several who ignore the rights of others, clearly and consistently.

Murdering someone is a complete disregard for the rights of the person murdered. We have all heard about murderers.

I will add that I have met at least one murderer who had no remorse for what they did.

I'm not being pedantic (thought I suppose I might have been trying )

But you see, I've never met a single person who has a complete disregard for the rights of others... not a single person. That is my evidence for doubting they exist.

I've heard stories of hunters who love their dogs more than their kids.

Sounds horrible, but that's a person who has respect for others which spans two species. Dogs and their kids, regardless of the bias, they certainly love their kids too. They certainly have the capacity to regard the rights of others, and they exercise it with gusto! Oddly hunters often have high regard for the lives of prey-species which they choose not to take, for example, killing sick animals so the healthy ones may be free from illness, or insisting on regulations which protect the environment - I see this a lot within these people who hunt animals.

Criminals in prisons who can afford to buy chocolate bars, share it with fellow inmates, because it's not nice to eat nice food in front of others without sharing.

I just haven't ever met or even heard of, a person who has a complete disregard for the rights of others. I doubt they are evolutionarily possible. You knew I was asking a trick question and I was. You can't have met a person with a complete disregard for the rights of others, because such a person must kill everything they come across.

A lot of these people, have only ever shown a disregard for one persons rights, and have mostly respected the rights of every other person they have ever met... I can't see a "complete disregard" there, it's not there to see.

Everyone loves someone, they just love some people more than others... some creatures more than others... But in all of them, the little inner voice which says "Be nice!" unquestionably flourishes and is directed towards friends, families, pets, entire ethnic groups, entire religions, vast swathes of people and other beings.

I am a little ashamed of my bias. There are some people I respect the rights of more than others, some much more. I respect the rights of pretty girls much more than other people, especially young pretty girls who are nice to me. I think there's some kind of genetic bias there. It's wrong to have that bias, I should have equal regard for the rights of others, not biased regard... especially not in such a petty way. I can understand being biased against plants in favor of humans. But being biased on the bias of mere looks and how they regard me? That's both petty and vain.

I admit I used to disregard the rights of every species except humans and pets.

In fact, when I was a kid, I even disregarded the rights of people in certain countries. My Dad prattled about how the starvation problem in Africa could be solved better with bullets than food, and I imitated my Dad. That's something worthy of being ashamed of.

I see a spectrum here, everyone has a lot of regard for the rights of some being, some regard for the rights of others, and little regard for the rights of few.... I've definitely not found any exception to that!!! Only extremely apathetic people, who clearly hurt an awful lot inside (they are emo), show a significant disregard for the rights of ALL beings, but that includes their OWN being, they are actually quite unbiased and certainly not self-biased, if anything they have even less regard for their own rights, than the rights of others. Often they feel burning regard for their family and great sorrow at being miserable failures in the eyes of their parents... perversely they sometimes kill themselves as an expression of this regard; "You will be happier without me, and your happiness is more important than my life...". Maybe I should be an emo instead of a that-which-shalt-not-be-uttered.

A lot of these people, whom you may have viewed as having a complete disregard for the rights of others, actually only need to be a tiny little bit more expansive in their regard for the rights of others in order to no longer qualify as criminals. Maybe just add a few more people or just one ethnic group to the long list of beings they do have regard for the rights of...

And I've got personal proof, that the regard for the rights of others, can be expanded and expanded with ease.

In my life, I have expanded it to include all sorts of new things. Like when I was about 10 I expanded it to all humans when I realized my Dad was not a good person to imitate on this issue. When I was 15, I expanded it to fish when I decided fishing was more stress than fun. When I was 25 I expanded it to the lives of all domesticated species by adopting Veganism, the taste of meat wasn't worth it. And a little later, expanded it to the lives of mice, bugs, crawlies etc and even started showing more regard for the lives of plants - I just ran out of reasons to kill things...

My list currently terminates, at just short of "all plants" I still kill plants deliberately, showing a disregard for their right to life - in fact, it is a complete disregard, it completely destroys their life.... But I don't think that's what was meant by someone with a complete disregard for the rights of others.

This expansion; it's not even hard to do. Often it's simply a matter of realizing "This reason I disregard XYZ's rights, it's actually not so important to me after all..."
That is all I did in my own expansion of regard. Someone needs a reason to disregard a living beings rights... an important reason.

I'm not being pedantic, this is worthy of thinking about, and at lengths. Everyone does have goodness, the will to be kind, respectful and to let things be, inside them, it's even blindingly obvious if you look for it.

If you want cryptic, try contemplating on why you might disregard your own rights, as an emo does in a serious way. What I call(ed) "compassion for yourself" was a big point for me when I just got started down my path, people lack compassion for themself, they disregard their own rights (such as to life, joy, peace and freedom), to a huge degree. And yet, I really can't explain it, I still can't, but I did stop doing it, it can be done.

Blake.

NOTE: This kind of contemplation will take many weeks to bear fruit, perhaps even years. This is not a logical argument which can make someone suddenly see the light. The mind just gets works on it in the background. The only things I've found useful, is to be gently persistent, keep edging the mind on to answer a question of life for you. I tasked my mind with a question like "What is special about this girl, which allows her to make inspiring videos" and it blew my mind when I got an answer. You would of course, need to ask that of someone who ACTUALLY inspires you.
For some reason you also need to feed the mind some "loving-kindness and compassion", insight can't occur in the absence of such positive emotion. I do not know why that is. In my case I simply thought "I'm feeling love and compassion towards that girl (and some other people whom I liked), and I don't care about the reasons not to (like geographical distance and non-reciprocity)"
Ajahn Brahm does say that Insight = Positive Energy + Goal and he may actually understand what's going on, or he just knows it works.
I suppose it's JUST like achieving something with the body, you need energy and a goal. The reward is a fitter body, but you want to be striving towards the goal rather than fitness. The goal is something like climbing a tall mountain, you don't actually carry the goal around afterwards, it's not the reward, but it's inspiring in a way which striving to be fitter just isn't.
Likewise with the mind, you need energy and a goal. The reward is a fitter mind (it feels good, like a fit body), but you can't make that fitness your goal - the goal needs to be something which inspires the mind to exercise, to try hard, like a question you REALLY want to know the answer to.
That's what worked for me, to get a fitter mind which feels better to live in.

That's it from me. I'm all talked out.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


Ah right, the ole "we're protecting you by putting more onerous burdens on you" argument.

Heaven forbid we just hold men to the standard that they shouldn't be guided by their ****** rather than put more and more burdens on women.

This sort of crappy arguments end justifying the burka for some Mid Eastern women (after all, it's to protect the women from men's lusts!!!1!)

The burqa is something which is claimed to be necessary for all women.

These rules are only for those women who choose to go into the monastic order in the first place.


HUGE difference, don't you think?

[Darius871]

Originally posted by Aeson


It's always good to hear that my efforts haven't been fruitless.

They still have been if you seriously think Blake can be dragged kicking and screaming out of the thick haze in which he envelops himself. It's a lost cause.

[Kidlicious]

I'm beginning to think the other monks are going to think Blake has gone a bit overboard with this crap.