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isnt it even more bizarre to assume there is a purpose or goal (or whatever you call it) like nibana.
I don't think so. I submit as evidence your 'absence' during a perfect kiss, a humungous sneeze or a pedal-to-the-metal laugh. I don't care what anyone calls it, but what is it like when you are perfectly present and perfectly absent both at once?
isnt it even more bizarre to assume there is a purpose or goal (or whatever you call it) like nibana.
I don't think so. I submit as evidence your 'absence' during a perfect kiss, a humungous sneeze or a pedal-to-the-metal laugh. I don't care what anyone calls it, but what is it like when you are perfectly present and perfectly absent both at once?
Buddhism at its core is about only one thing: suffering and freedom from suffering.
The mechanics of the material world isn't really it's focus. Maybe we came from monkeys, maybe we're descendents of aliens or maybe God created us on the sixth day of creation. Regardless, we suffer. When want to ease that suffering, that's where Buddhism comes in.
isnt it even more bizarre to assume there is a purpose or goal (or whatever you call it) like nibana.
Mental disorder?
Mental disorder and being perfectly present is seldom compatible...so no not mental disorder.
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
First, I understand the word theory and scientific theory just fine. Second, I think it was probably pretty clear what I meant when I said "why don't we go back to living like animals." Of course we are still animals. But we don't live like them most of the time. We have reason and logic and compassion for other beings (well most people do). We don't run around based solely on survival and instinct anymore, which is what I meant (and I'm pretty sure you knew that, @Daozen.) If we don't have a higher purpose then why bother to hold onto compassion at all? If it doesn't matter, why do it? Because I think most of us know it *does* matter.
I agree here but does there need to be a "higher" purpose than that we are here now? What if there is no purpose and it's all just the way things go? Would that make it matter less? I don't think so because I think purpose makes itself. If we're going to do something, let's try to get it right-type thing.
Why does the material world have to be real but our spiritual purpose is not? I think we are spiritual beings, first who happened to create a material world to live within. I think we have far higher "powers" than we believe we have and we are capable of living different lives than we do, but we haven't gotten there just yet. We have a purpose simply because we are spiritual beings and the universe is a spiritual place. Not because someone gave us a purpose. That's what I believe about it, not saying it's fact.
I can't separate life from the universe itself. I don't think the universe is a deity or an organism of some kind but whatever it is, it isn't just where we hang our hats.
We could be just like drops of rain between clouds and oceans... Could the same drop ever manifest more than once? How much of one drop is residual of other drops?
Buddhism relies on the mind, because that is where we can get work done. Better technology won't liberate the mind.
Well, in a sense, maybe it can.
For example, let's say you're a family man living in 1910. Your work day was usually 10-14-hours, 6 days per week. Not much time left to focus your mind on Buddhism.
Yes. The Jewel Ornament of Liberation (Kagyu school gradual path text) says that you need two things to start the path. They are leisure and endowment. Leisure is exactly what you say ie getting more time. Endowment is like reading and writing, a Buddha in the realm, the Buddha's teachings still in the realm, not a barbarian, enough intelligence or emotional stability.
But once we have all that even if you had 24 hours a day of freedom from work or other responsibilities you still cannot progress without working with your mind. They can't make a machine that helps your enlightenment other than leisure and endowment.
The universe is just part of the form skhanda of a sentient being. The world, when I say world, means a mental experience. I have never experienced anything outside of my consciousness and senses because that is all there is to a being.
What other theories are there for how we all got here that don't involve a creator god? I would say evolution and Buddhism can exist in harmony and I am in support of both.
Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts, but i am afraid my questions are ... Well, let me put it this way. When life first appeared, was there any reason to believe that it would evolve in such a way as to produce humans who would seek nirvana? Of course not, just a random occurrence.
Until humans appeared with their questions, sorrow, and emotional baggage, nirvana wasn't anybody's concern ( despite insects, birds, and animals also suffering). So isn't it logical to conclude that it is a man made concept, or it would have existed forever (like gravity existing even before we discovered it).
But appearing is a sentient experience. We have never experienced anything other than sentient experience. So when you say the world started, well it wasn't an experience until sentient life. So the world did not appear until there was someone for it to appear to.
The universe is only significant as sensed by beings.
That said it is pretty amazing about evolution. I think Buddha said that certain questions do not lead to the loss of I, me, and mine.
I think that all religion is an attempt to explain something we sense and feel but do not know enough about to explain. I think it is a man-made concept, but that doesn't mean that nothing happens, either. It just means we seek to understand it.
For me, the only thing that matters is right now. Will right now matter 100 years from now? Probably not. Maybe in some fashion it'll carry on in how I treated my children at bedtime tonight. Maybe my great great grandchildren will live better lives because of it in some way. But really, my only concern is now. I do not practice Buddhism, or do any of the other things in my daily life in order to reach some state after death, or lifetimes away. It just is not a focus for me. Whatever happens when we die, happens. If we just go out like a candle. So be it. My being afraid that might happen won't make it not happen. Practicing until I am blue in the face won't make it not happen. Same with rebirth, reincarnation, heaven, hell, and so on. Whatever does happen, doesn't matter. So I guess I just don't spend much time thinking about it. I am not afraid to die, or of what happens after I die. But my family is here now, my kids are here now, and I can make some sort of difference, at least in theory, as to how they turn out and how they treat the world around them. Whether that matters in the very end of all just doesn't matter to me.
I think that all religion is an attempt to explain something we sense and feel but do not know enough about to explain. I think it is a man-made concept, but that doesn't mean that nothing happens, either. It just means we seek to understand it.
For me, the only thing that matters is right now. Will right now matter 100 years from now? Probably not. Maybe in some fashion it'll carry on in how I treated my children at bedtime tonight. Maybe my great great grandchildren will live better lives because of it in some way. But really, my only concern is now. I do not practice Buddhism, or do any of the other things in my daily life in order to reach some state after death, or lifetimes away. It just is not a focus for me. Whatever happens when we die, happens. If we just go out like a candle. So be it. My being afraid that might happen won't make it not happen. Practicing until I am blue in the face won't make it not happen. Same with rebirth, reincarnation, heaven, hell, and so on. Whatever does happen, doesn't matter. So I guess I just don't spend much time thinking about it. I am not afraid to die, or of what happens after I die. But my family is here now, my kids are here now, and I can make some sort of difference, at least in theory, as to how they turn out and how they treat the world around them. Whether that matters in the very end of all just doesn't matter to me.
Although variations on the quotation go back to Voltaire, I remember long, long ago reading one of historian Will Durant's books, and he said something along the lines of, "If there were not a God, man would create one."
You can’t teach biology all week and on Sunday believe that God created the world in six days and that the lion grazed next to the lamb in Paradise. You would have to admit that such an image must be a metaphor; if it isn’t plain nonsense.
I applaud your later comments... But in terms of that first paragraph... I can only tell you that while at university, where my major was geology with a focus on historical geology and invertebrate paleontology, every one of my professors was a regular church-goer. While I doubt they saw the religious examples you mentioned as real, they definitely believed in God, even though they avidly taught Darwin and the evolution of evolution.
Very relevant point to this discussion —in terms of how loose and scattered our thought systems are, I think. However, I'd go much further and say that human thinking is much more organic than we like to admit. Even the philosophers have quirky systems of thinking that are hard to delineate exactly. One chief property of organisms is their ability to compartmentalize things for their convenience and security. Therefore, by saying that the way a human being thinks tends to be more organic than mathematically precise and systematic, compartmentalization is a big part of the picture. We go about through life using all sorts of crutches and couches to lay our suppositions and presuppositions on, fleeting from one convenient outlet to another. We do not insist on everything being tangible or self-evident, so that we are not only capable of holding two contradictory beliefs, but would often find ourselves incredibly uncomfortable if we didn't possess this faculty.
In many ways religion fleshes out the crutches and the couches that we rest our weary selves on. Maybe its function is to serve as a higher organ or a link to a higher dimension. Yet there is absolutely no reason for an intelligent and educated person to subscribe to anything in scripture literally and simplistically, just as there is no reason for such to dismiss all of scripture categorically, either: Hence the physics professors and professors of other sciences. Without Hope, what is the point of living? (Admittedly, though, that question could make absolutely no sense to the strict materialist.)
(In Christian theology, Faith, Hope, and Charity make up the three-legged stool that points the Heart Godwards. Called the Theological Virtues, they are each a part of each and dependent on each other. None can be long sustained and well-nourished without being buoyed up by the other two. --All this parenthesis just to help bolster my argument about Hope's import.)
Listen to people supporting their ideas and you will hear incredibly contradictory things being held dear at the same time. Such is the human condition. We blunder or we bust.
Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts, but i am afraid my questions are ... Well, let me put it this way. When life first appeared, was there any reason to believe that it would evolve in such a way as to produce humans who would seek nirvana? Of course not, just a random occurrence.
Until humans appeared with their questions, sorrow, and emotional baggage, nirvana wasn't anybody's concern ( despite insects, birds, and animals also suffering). So isn't it logical to conclude that it is a man made concept, or it would have existed forever (like gravity existing even before we discovered it).
You are falling into the trap of thinking that Nirvana is anything to do with time. Nirvana is atemporal.
The Zen tradition has produced a nice analogy. This is not verbatim, but the sentiment is something like this. A goose flies over a lake. The goose has no intention of creating a reflection..the lake has no intention of reflecting it..but there it is. Goose, lake, reflection. A coming together of conditions.
A wish for all of us. ChNN says that in addition to the overall dream, we spend a lot of time dreaming within the dream. One of the dreams is that of escape. We cant escape. But given the right conditions we can wake up.
And just like some forms of Sufism and just like Apophetic Christianity. And just like Chassidic Judaism ( NB not Gnostic Christianity..which is mistakenly thought to more sympathetic to a Buddhist world view , when in fact it is deeply dualistic ).
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts, but i am afraid my questions are ... Well, let me put it this way. When life first appeared, was there any reason to believe that it would evolve in such a way as to produce humans who would seek nirvana? Of course not, just a random occurrence.
There wasn't a reason to believe anything or if there was, there was nobody to believe it. I can see many logical reasons why life goes the way it does and a few of them could have awakening to our true nature as the goal.
Saying "Of course not, just a random occurrence" dismisses many possibilities, one of which is that it isn't random at all... That certain conditions were met that allowed for life and on to a conscious storage of information that seeks growth and awakening.
Until humans appeared with their questions, sorrow, and emotional baggage, nirvana wasn't anybody's concern ( despite insects, birds, and animals also suffering). So isn't it logical to conclude that it is a man made concept, or it would have existed forever (like gravity existing even before we discovered it).
I think it would be odd if this planet is the only one with life in the entire universe but either way, life obviously evolves and as it does, it understands more.
I'd say it is a discovery. Many concepts have been made out of it but I don't think it is a man made concept because from what I can tell, it is a seeing through of man made concepts.
I almost said "stripping away" instead of "seeing through" because often times what we perceive as anchors are actually good tools once we see them for what they are... I think duality is a good example.
Really I think the only reason there is conflict between organized religion and ToE, is because it contradicts timeline assertions in certain holy books
As my friend says "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly, wobbly, time-y wimey stuff"
Comments
Mental disorder?
The mechanics of the material world isn't really it's focus. Maybe we came from monkeys, maybe we're descendents of aliens or maybe God created us on the sixth day of creation. Regardless, we suffer. When want to ease that suffering, that's where Buddhism comes in.
I can't separate life from the universe itself. I don't think the universe is a deity or an organism of some kind but whatever it is, it isn't just where we hang our hats.
We could be just like drops of rain between clouds and oceans... Could the same drop ever manifest more than once? How much of one drop is residual of other drops?
But once we have all that even if you had 24 hours a day of freedom from work or other responsibilities you still cannot progress without working with your mind. They can't make a machine that helps your enlightenment other than leisure and endowment.
Until humans appeared with their questions, sorrow, and emotional baggage, nirvana wasn't anybody's concern ( despite insects, birds, and animals also suffering). So isn't it logical to conclude that it is a man made concept, or it would have existed forever (like gravity existing even before we discovered it).
The universe is only significant as sensed by beings.
That said it is pretty amazing about evolution. I think Buddha said that certain questions do not lead to the loss of I, me, and mine.
For me, the only thing that matters is right now. Will right now matter 100 years from now? Probably not. Maybe in some fashion it'll carry on in how I treated my children at bedtime tonight. Maybe my great great grandchildren will live better lives because of it in some way. But really, my only concern is now. I do not practice Buddhism, or do any of the other things in my daily life in order to reach some state after death, or lifetimes away. It just is not a focus for me. Whatever happens when we die, happens. If we just go out like a candle. So be it. My being afraid that might happen won't make it not happen. Practicing until I am blue in the face won't make it not happen. Same with rebirth, reincarnation, heaven, hell, and so on. Whatever does happen, doesn't matter. So I guess I just don't spend much time thinking about it. I am not afraid to die, or of what happens after I die. But my family is here now, my kids are here now, and I can make some sort of difference, at least in theory, as to how they turn out and how they treat the world around them. Whether that matters in the very end of all just doesn't matter to me.
I like your post!
In many ways religion fleshes out the crutches and the couches that we rest our weary selves on. Maybe its function is to serve as a higher organ or a link to a higher dimension. Yet there is absolutely no reason for an intelligent and educated person to subscribe to anything in scripture literally and simplistically, just as there is no reason for such to dismiss all of scripture categorically, either: Hence the physics professors and professors of other sciences. Without Hope, what is the point of living? (Admittedly, though, that question could make absolutely no sense to the strict materialist.)
(In Christian theology, Faith, Hope, and Charity make up the three-legged stool that points the Heart Godwards. Called the Theological Virtues, they are each a part of each and dependent on each other. None can be long sustained and well-nourished without being buoyed up by the other two. --All this parenthesis just to help bolster my argument about Hope's import.)
Listen to people supporting their ideas and you will hear incredibly contradictory things being held dear at the same time. Such is the human condition. We blunder or we bust.
This is not verbatim, but the sentiment is something like this.
A goose flies over a lake. The goose has no intention of creating a reflection..the lake has no intention of reflecting it..but there it is. Goose, lake, reflection.
A coming together of conditions.
ChNN says that in addition to the overall dream, we spend a lot of time dreaming within the dream. One of the dreams is that of escape. We cant escape. But given the right conditions we can wake up.
Saying "Of course not, just a random occurrence" dismisses many possibilities, one of which is that it isn't random at all... That certain conditions were met that allowed for life and on to a conscious storage of information that seeks growth and awakening. I think it would be odd if this planet is the only one with life in the entire universe but either way, life obviously evolves and as it does, it understands more.
I'd say it is a discovery. Many concepts have been made out of it but I don't think it is a man made concept because from what I can tell, it is a seeing through of man made concepts.
I almost said "stripping away" instead of "seeing through" because often times what we perceive as anchors are actually good tools once we see them for what they are... I think duality is a good example.