Best Of
Re: Why does Buddhism waste so much time on esoteric philosophical speculation?
@opiumpoetry said:
@federica said:
Takes all sorts to make a world.True, of course a Buddhist would tell you to meditate for a few hours every day on the fact that the whole world is an illusion and so are you. On a related note, meditation is total self-absorbed egoism. Every hour you spend meditating is an hour you DON'T spend on helping the poor, the sick and the weak.
Oh no! Here we go…
Bunks
Re: What happens to the world when everybody attains Buddhahood?
...Gee... I dunno... Is this a quiz?
federica
Re: Some delusions that come from meditation
Some delusions that come from meditation
The greatest delusion born of meditation is believing oneself enlightened.
...And "I" should know 
Shoshin1
Re: Have you ever witnessed an exorcism ritual??
@Tavs said:
I'm not really a trekkie but can you tell me more about exorcising Klingons?
@lobster is something of a court jester. Don't take at least half of it literally.
person
Re: Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!
Have you heard about the AI homeless man prank? This is a kid taking a bunch of pictures of his empty family home and asking AI to insert a homeless man in them, and then dispatching them to parents in some kind of escalating order…. Homeless man at the door, homeless man in the living room, homeless man in parents bed.
Apparently this has parents so freaked out that they call the cops… multiple times the police helicopter was called in… Now the police have kindly asked kids to stop pulling the AI homeless man prank!
Jeroen
Re: Have you ever witnessed an exorcism ritual??
I’ve seen @federica exorcise a few demons from the newbuddhist forum, and they don’t go quietly. It can get scary at times!..
Shoshin1
Re: Have you ever witnessed an exorcism ritual??
Yes. Also done them.
Form of theatrics.
You?
lobster
Re: Some delusions that come from meditation
I think it is interesting that some enlightened beings are said to say that everything that comes from love is justified.
Jeroen
Re: My favourite 'cult'
@Jeroen said:
It’s interesting how many alternative religious movements are now being targeted as cults. I’m not sure if you remember this, but back in the eighties when the word cult was much more niche, there was a very open feel to experimenting with these things.I think when you are interviewing a ‘cult intervention specialist’ you are automatically going to get a narrative that is slanted a certain way, that person has a vested interest in perpetuating a certain set of ideas around cults on which their livelihood depends.
But in a way monasteries are organisations where people come together to spend time on the spiritual parts of life, and I wonder how long it will be before they are called cults. It seems to be an attack on the spiritual mindset, to convince people not to support these organisations.
There are definitely cults out there, and people organized to help others get out of them. Its all a spectrum though and it can be hard to draw a line on when something is a cult and when it isn't. A lot of cults also start out not culty but then devolve into one. So people on the lookout for cults almost certainly become a bit of a hammer and start seeing nails more often than probably deserves. A simple metric that came up in the interview was how controlling a group was. But again, if a group that controls at 49% isn't a cult but one that controls at 51% is how do we really define these things?
person