GENIUS FORUMS

The idea of charity (caritas: unexpected and usually undeserved good fortune) seems to be a cornerstone of Catholic philosophy. Schools, hospitals, that sort of thing. And at the base of it is a very strongly defined 'personalism': that the person is the relevant and important thing. And that explai...

What happens when someone starts believe in the existence of the illusionary self? A certain reinforcement happens and this could help in the development of certain activity. It's like a feedback loop. What then happens when the reinforcement stopped? It all returns to normal. Does that mean the re...

It's not entirely clear to me if that really encapsulates the core "Occidental" understanding and "that school" or if it's even practiced in that way in Christendom, Europe or "West". It seems more like something you've found, a path you're chasing yourself. Of course ...

In those Indian schools, Diebert, one surrenders one's will and intentions to a guru-master who assumes the role of deity, but in every instance I am aware of there is always some technique or practice. Even surrendering to that guiding figure is a 'technique'. And in one school of raja-yoga the 'te...

*Sigh*

Talking Ass finds himself, yet again, down among the acid-eaters...

But the traditions Steve seems to question are generally talking about concepts on the boundary of self, its causes, its lack of any permanence and so on. The confusion arises sometimes because for example the Buddhist path appears in some cases to have consequences for how one might value things o...

I don't want to appear an ego-driven dick---though such claims against me HAVE been made---but Alex really scavenged his 'philosophy' from me, and I am the 'Avatar of Simplicity' if truth be told. Interesting that this 'strong ego' approach sets its goals on almost exactly those of the 'egoless'. Th...

And naturally you are totally missing the point I am attempting to bring to your attention. Can you at least try to identify it?

A pithy quote of K. Marx: (just seems to fit)

"The means are part of the truth, as well as the result. The search for truth must itself be true; true research is truth spread out before us, the scattered members of which are reunited in the result."

It was abrupt and to some extent shocking: that day I invited Dennis and Cathy and David and Dan to share a 'reconcilliation meal' and where I lay me down before the altars of neo-buddhism. I left them chatting about abstract 'things' in the living room and went to the kitchen to cook up the reconci...

Cathy, digging a little under the façade you present of 'nirvana' and other such contrivances, one discerns a lack of critical analysis of the 'facts of reality, its problems and challenges, and sees rather a fog bank of pretty words, of idealistic mumbo-jumbo. You provide just one more layer of evi...

This may seem underhanded, though it really does go to the center of the issue, but that non-inherent self that is(n't) Cathy has indicated she chows down on the flesh of beings killed for her benefit. The super-Buddhist nirvanic rap is lovely as a sort of disembodied psycho-babble, but the challeng...

Cathy's description, the definitions she works out, are cogent. One CAN indeed look at things like that, and doing that, one is living out of a perspective. What ahe describes might well be a route to eliminate suffering. One would then tolerate pain. Still, one could achieve basically the same goal...

Au contraire, James. You write in the way most recommended to a forum like this: complete essays where you spell out your views. I find your posts always readable and 'successful' in the above sense.

This post of yours I do not understand. It doesn't seem to follow from what I wrote. Isn't it interesting how far away we are from even a basic understanding? How do you think your view(s) threaten mine? If I wasn't threatened what do you imagine I'd do?

Yes, but Cathy, the fervor and commitment that you demonstrate, which appears to come out of nowhere, or directly from your life lived, actually has roots in the past, and not in Buddhist traditions. This is one of the Talking Ass's® great discoveries. And while the religious awakening is valid and ...

Naw. I don't hold that up as a 'value', Cathy, though I suppose it is an attainment. Those states are states from which we then live our lives, they are not the end of our life or of living. I think (if you'll allow me to express it in this way) that my position is more mature than yours. Unlike as ...

Cathy, we operate from radically different positions, suppositions, preauppositions, conclusions, visions, desires and needs. Yours, to you (and others who also enjoy such views and find use for them), is the apex of all possibilities, the first and last realization, the central thing, no-thing, pre...

I prefer to think that it never came to life! But I am an optimist... I often 'accuse' people who share the particular focus that is expressed by the practitioners of this form of neo-Buddhism as being too radically exclusive, to self-assuming (as to the veracity of their stance). But I do understan...

And if that is true, and it does seem to be true about the Hindu-Vedic teachings and the nature of the existential investigation made in that culture-time-situation, it leads to a question: to what degree is 'all this' [those teachings] bound up in a 'mere' manipulation or modification of the mind? ...

Cathy, while I am not one to mope, still my feelings are likely to be hurt if you do not respond to my post. As you see I had a couple of humps to get over but I did.

Cathy writes: "Life is the belief in a self which is born and thus dies. I'd like to cure people of this false belief. It is a death, death of an imagined self who lives and dies and suffers in between. It makes all the difference in the world. In life we struggle to be free, with this underst...

Okay, you did good. It took some work but you achieved the goal you had in mind. And now let us agree to leave it at that. Is there anything more you'd like to say nefore we hang it up, so to speak?

Mad? Why should I be mad? If I'm mad at anything it is the shitty Droid keyboard. ;-)

I think it is time, Diebert, no matter what, to agree to bring whatever it is the happens between you and I---conversation, argument, blocking, defense---to a close. Based on what you wrote in the first paragraph I don't see why really you'd involve yourself in any conversation. Let's settle it that...

Notice that I am answering you as if you are sincere but I really do feel that you aren't. You know how to and are.quite accomplished in throwing up blocking posts. It is pretty much what you do, certainly in relation to me. If there were a genuine interest in exploring both the pros and the cons of...