Best Of
Re: The Plant Medicine Path
Thank you for that, I ended up watching most of the interview. He is an interesting character, he says he is a Christian and therefore he believes in external beings of evil, which they call the antichrist and which they say is trying to manifest as ‘the machine’. But then he says his literary style is one of exaggeration, which is what makes him hard to grasp, he talks a lot in archetypes and fragments of memes.
His book appears to be an attempt to understand the modern age. It puts me in mind of something that Terence McKenna used to say, that mankind as a species “extrudes technology”, as a kind of matrix within which we exist. There is an extensive discussion of AI, as a kind of ultimate manifestation of that matrix.
This is very much about a way of looking at Western civilisation as a kind of agent of creating the machine, and so in a way his book “Against the Machine” is a critique of Western civilisation.
Jeroen
"Buddha's Teachings" - in 1,000 years, how will they know?
This may have already been mentioned in another thread but on Facebook, at least here in America, I have seen a big rise in popularity of social media pages with names like Buddha's Teachings or even just The Buddha.
Unsurprisingly they are full of quotes that are not from recognized teachings but are mostly just self-help nuggets. Many of them are benign and may even be good advice, but I realized that this whole large language model, or whatever AI is supposed to do on the research side, is not going to be able to differentiate between this stuff down the road.
Obviously Buddhism looks very different for us than it did for people 2,000+ years ago, but I think even just a few centuries from now, the concept of Buddhism may not look like anything we would recognize today.
Re: "Buddha's Teachings" - in 1,000 years, how will they know?
"Buddha's Teachings" - in 1,000 years, how will they know?
Thus have I heard:
Through realisation, as they have known throughout the millennia.
The Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path...
the nature of suffering and the way to its cessation.
We all stray from the path at times, and most of us come to see that we have.
Some realise it sooner than others, yet the light of awareness always finds its way through.
Shoshin1
Re: "Buddha's Teachings" - in 1,000 years, how will they know?
Books last quite a long time, in paper form. There are people who have bought all the volumes of the translated Pali Canon. In digital form, who knows how long the files will be copied and re-copied.
But perhaps online archives like Access To Insight will stay the course and provide the authentic words of the Buddha to LLMs.
Jeroen
Re: "Buddha's Teachings" - in 1,000 years, how will they know?
Buddhism has changed and will continue changing until the world has forgotten the Buddhadharma. Then, a new Buddha will arise, and turn the Wheel of Dharma
Re: Theravada & Mahayana Buddhism: Differences & Similarities
Cloud
Re: Similarities between Buddhism and the Tao Te Ching
An elder Zen master is sometimes given the title of Roshi which literally means Laozi or Lao Tzu.
Re: Comparing the teachings of Jesus and Buddha? Jesus is still the way?
I'm not sure if your intention was anything beyond charing a good article, but if you were trying to convince Buddhists that Christ is better, then....*yawn* .... I won't be pulled into another one of these debates. It's getting tedious.
Buddha compared the "way" to a raft for getting across an ocean - to get to the other side. Once you have reached the shore, you would not carry the raft on your back. Do not become too attached to your religion.
But thanks! :bigclap:
