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Pseudo-Dharma
Homoeopathy, chiropracy etc are Psuedosceince.
How do I know that my understanding of Buddhsim isn't pseudodharma?
Its a tricky question for me to answer but one I think I should ask, and perhaps you might wish to ask of your own views. How do we know?
What do you think?
Salome:)
Mat
How do I know that my understanding of Buddhsim isn't pseudodharma?
Its a tricky question for me to answer but one I think I should ask, and perhaps you might wish to ask of your own views. How do we know?
What do you think?
Salome:)
Mat
0
Comments
Its entirely possible that your understanding of the dharma is pseudodharma
I have undergone chioropractic treatment and it works.
It's a form of massage foucssing on the back.
Why would you call that pseudoscience?
Homeopathy has been in use for longer than chemical and pharmaceutical medications, is used extensively by medics and veterinarians with much success and is available on the National Health.
I used it on my 4-month old daughter with great success (so it wasn't all in her head) and it worked very well on all my dogs...
Take it from me - yours very probably is....
By thorough examination, cogitation, evaluation and assessment. If it works, go with it.
If it doesn't, leave it aside.
But insofar as the Dhamma is concerned, I know - for sure - that if something is not quite gelling for me, it's in all probability due to my own ignorance, rather than through any Dhamma-defect. I think you should take a break from posting.
A long one.
Because - and no, I don't hate you, quite the opposite - really, this is getting silly.
As in dance of the 7 veils, no doubt?
The head of John the Baptist was a little too much for her to take, in the end.....
You would need to do your own research on that, there is oodles of it out there:)
It shouldn't work and demonstrably doesn't work, again, be your own light on this, but you might want to check out the NHS's recent change of policy.
I am glad to hear that, but that doesnt make it scince:) The Placebo effect is very real and misunderstood and also, kids and dogs do get well etc. Ben Goldachres book is worth reading in this kind of stuff.
I am very aware of that, but that wasn't the question:)
That's what I do though for "works" I guess I mean: fits, explains, is explained by, helps, etc
No, not as in that:)
I am willing to acknowledge I am not a very applied practitioner, although I am all chatty about it ahahaha, so I am likely very pseudo-dharmic, yes yes. Even being so, the tidbits of Dharma that I might have gotten right have helped me heaps.
The test of a system of medicine is whether it heals. To quote Samuel Hahnemann, founder of homeopathy
It's been my experience that homeopathy works quite well. If your experience differs, I'd like to hear so. If you are merely parroting the opinions of others, keep reading.
The test of the dharma is whether it leads people to liberation. To quote the Buddha, the author of the dharma:
It's been my experience that traditional forms of the dharma work quite well. They have produced enlightened persons in the past are are producing enlightened persons now. If you doubt traditional forms of the dharma and favor a more modern, streamlined, "scientific" version, take my advice:
Put it to the test. Put it to the test. Really, there's no other way to know.
I think you may be struggling with the old epistemology chestnut of "how to we know what we know" or "how do we really know anything".
In a strict philosophical sense we cannot prove we know anything at all. Everything COULD be a dream etc
But I think it is pretty safe to assume that reality is broadly as we find it and as reflected in all Wisdom traditions/Religions. If you don't then you are applying a possible but highly improbable world-view.
I think FiveBells response really nailed it - The test is: is there a sense of deepening in your practice that stands up to calm reflection also. We cannot trust our analytical minds completely and we cannot trust our feelings but somewhere in there between those 2 faculties lies common sense and a 'felt sense' of life. When it comes right down to it, you just have to have faith in that.
The best bit of advice I ever got was "All we really need to do is trust that voice in that deep part of us that we all have". Meditation helps clarify that voice.
Blessings,
bagg
I can't be asked.
Can we keep this on track. There is no scientific evidence it works. IE Large sample sizes, double blind testing etc etc
It may work for you, as may kissing dream-catchers in the morning, but that doesnt mean its scientific. And when the Homeopaths say its scientific it demonstrably isnt, hence it is labled not by me, but the scientific community, as pseudoscience.
You see the Buddha as the author of Dharma, thats interesting, I see him just as the discoverer.
The eightfold path works, Ithink we can all agree on that. That is the dharma we all seem to share without question, the "pseudodharma" isnt so much to do with that but the aspects covered specifically by right view, ie, the nature of reality.
Here tehre are many conflicting views and thats what is interesting to me reagding this.
How can I(we) tell that I am not deeply in wrong view? <<< this is what the thread is about.
I have been, and it works for me, but as said, in the specifics of right view, how can I know?
You seem to be like me I'm an engineer with a science background I hate when I read psudo science often on here. But I have a found from my own study that Buddha had an insight into the nature of the universe and life that exceeds anyone else I've read. I don't think he offers us a sugar pill, it's not paradise and eternity with the people you love. It's suffering, you have this cancer, but there is a cure, it can be treated.
That isnt what I am asking:) I am asking the corpus of dharma not just the pratcice.
We all agree, I am sure, Dharma pratice works: this may be as simple as the common sense "if you stop wanting so much you will be happier".
But I am asking about Dharma as the encompassing system that we are told and I believe is true of all realities.
I know! I love that fact, and in neurological terms too.
Yes, but not in the supernatural, for example.
yes, completly. But again, not in all "claims of Buddhism".
A philosopher but with the same critical principles of analystsi for sure.
I dont mind it so much. But when its barking up my tree I will respond back:)
I agree, yet what of the stuff that may or does contradict that rational world view.
how do we sort out the wheat from the chaff?
Much metta
Mat
Gosh, I hope so! I will feel a bit of a schmuck if I have lived my life thinking that all the majic and mumbo-jumbo that billions of people believe is bronze age nonsense whereas, in fact, its true and thus I get reborn as a mollusc or sent to hell (I live a good moral life so hopefully this wont happen!)
I want to live this life, my only life, as free from delusion as possible, and that means seeing and accepting the ideas of ""more than this life" for what they are.
I don't know. I get the feeling that we should be deconstructing our false views and that is what Dharma is for. If something in it works for you good. If it doesn't patience.
Let's say your whole life you believe people are "just like that", they are born in a way and they will have those characteristics forever. The mumbo jumbo is saying is that people are born with innate tendencies, but that they are not permanent. So in this case it might help. Just an idea :P
Peace:)
mat
I think for me at least you will need to explain what you mean by Dhamma?
I see Dharma as the eternal truth that is true of all possible realities.
At its most fundamental level it is the truths of impermanence and interconnectivity/emptiness/negativity and then as complexity emerges these truths condition all other truths, from the simplest to the abstract truths of human experience.
Dharma is not Buddhism. Buddhism is an attempt to represent and understand Dharma, specifically with relation to human suffering.
Some are happy with just that human aspect, I want to know more, as I feel do others.
So for me something like the rebirth issue is crucial to this understanding, though as we all seem to repeately agree, its pretty irrelevent to the practice of the middle way.
i hope that makes sense!:)
mat
I am as certain of anything that when I die, I die.
There is no mystery in this respect to me.
My practice of Dharma is about my life but that is a different angle to the dharma that is true of all life, all systems, all contingent things.
This is my only life, it is short and rare and without any inherent value or meaning. Yet Dharma changes that, it augments it by emergence, but it doesn't add anything to the end:)
mat
In the Mahayana they say there are 3 motivations for practicing dharma. To have a good life. To escape the cycle of birth and death. To help all beings.
What does the song say? 2 out of 3 ain't bad?
That is an interesting way of looking at it that I haven't before:)
I would say, for sure, that my hanging out here is as a hobby, like chess. I learn lost here and often enjoy the chats and find its good for understanding my take on things and how others take things too.
I have a very spiritual side to me that is completely completed by Dharma, it fills most moments at various levels. That side, which I dont think belongs here, isn't about death though, its about my life.
I have a very philosophical side that I do love to immerse myself in, again, that isn't about my trivial little death but about all realities.
I don't have any issues about death, or about the fact that this life is so short and final. I hope I live longer, I hope we all do, so in that sense I would say Dharma helps me understand life rather than prepare for death.
What people often don't try to look at, because the "Great Later On Con" is so engrained in human culture is the realsiation that the very fact this life is so short and final empowers it to be more valuable and special to each of us.
If my life is just one of countless rebirths then well, so what, what's special about it? not much.
If it is the only life I will ever have, a fact I am utterly and foundationally certain of, then I wish to live it to the best in accord with the eightfold path: maximise peace, truth and happiness.
This, to me, is the enlightenment that starts Buddhism, the middle path between the false and the meaningless.
My Dharma practice isn't about some eternal life after this one, it is about this life.
mat
You are missunderstaing me:)
1) I categorically believe that rebirth is false.
2) I think the Buddha believed this too and his teachings have been distorted by the masculine religious hegemony, cultural influences, errors and... time.
3) I am not trying to "win anyone over."
4) By far most of the negative discussions I have been involved with here are the result of others saying I am mistaken etc, rather than the other way round. This thread a case in point.
5) I do love a good debate!:)
Mat
We may be in the same palce regarding rebirth then:)
Do you believe that when you die, that in every sense, that is it, game over? ie, that there is no nontrivial sense in which you are reborn?
Is this your only life?
mat
My uncle who was like a father to me always used to say "Thankyou very much" in an Elvis accent, I do the same more than 20 years later.
These are trivial examples.
I am starting to understand no self, there's a little crack of light coming through the door.
I don't see any scientific evidence for transmigration. My philosophy of life doesn't agree with that view. I now think I am reborn constantly. The ideas and karma are being whipped up all the time.
Hi tony,
Sorry to hear about those losses.
I guess we are in the same place regarding the dharma issues, I am probably more sure than you, but it aint a competition:)
peace,
mat
If it teaches and doesn't contradict The Four Seals it's Buddhism, as far as I understand anyway.
I don't believe you can ever truly "know" You may, or may not, chose to believe.
But that's just my own insane .02
This is a devil's advocate of course!
Then focus on it and don't waste it.
I call this attitude double blind myopia. Why would you insist on double blind studies of homeopathy and not double blind studies of meditation? How do you know the good feeling you get from meditation isn't just a "placebo effect"?
Sounds cool, not sure what it means here though?
I would be fine with that in methodological sense, but its a bit of a silly notion to compare meditation with a medical substance.
The claim of homoeopathy is that water can effect physical change, specifically curing a specific physiological ailment.
For your question to make sense you would need to, say, meditate to cure your shingles. And if the shingles went you would have an interesting question for sure! Was it the meditation or the placebo effetc?? I wouldnt have a clue how to answer that.
By the way the pseudodharma question isnt about meditation but the underlaying dharmic system and what we can know about it as accurate to reality or not.
I do believe that people who claim to experience past lives in meditation are very probably subject to some kind of illusion, much like NDE's etc.
We can spend a lifetime locked into our own speculative understanding.
As far as psuedoscience is concerned there is no real comparison.
With proper guidance you can test the truth of the Dharma for yourself, and you will find that it at no point is illogical. Although sometimes it is alogical, until least until certain apparant conradictions are resolved at a higher level.
Homoeopathy IS illogical, Its nonsense. literally.
To prepare a homoeopathic remedy one takes a substance..arsenic for example, and it is then diluted in one in million times its own volume of water.
That one millionth is then diluted to a further one million times its own volume. By which time there is not one molecule of arsenic left...but, apparantly the WATER (
Frankly if it was a belief coined by an individual rather than by a group of people it would be seen as evidence of psychosis. Its clearly total nonsense.
Any effects are due to the extraordinary powers of autosuggestion which gives rise to the placebo effect.
The Dharma is not the same order of phenomena. It is actually testable and does not rely on a conditioned response to hocus pocus.
This isn't about knowledge or testing. If I found a teacher they would need conviction in the principle "Doubt Everything, be your own light"
If they didn't have that I would assume them indoctrinated:)
My understanding of dharma is far from speculative, it is derived from the first principles of there three marks.
I completely agree!! Its wonderful isnt it. The time it gets illogical is when you start adding anomalous things like rebirth and miracles.
I don't believe in that concept.
Yep, but do you see, some people think the same about the magical?
I agree, but I feel the same about majic:)
Meh, not just the placebo effect but also thefact that people sometimes just get well.
Incidentally, I dont really understand the placebo effect, I used to think i did but it is much deeper and involved than i thought.
I agree, apart from the parts of it that are hocus pocus!:)
Mat
I philosophically agree with you Matsalted and in the past would be arguing as well, but I think that just leads to my and others suffering. You will never force people to believe your points, in the same way they will not prove theirs to you but quoting translations of manuscripts.
If rebirth as a transmigration concept is wrong, but belief in it helps people through life, helps them live a better then for the moment it's all they need.
My grandparents and great aunts uncles, were devout working class Irish Catholics. They believed in the whole lot, Jesus, virgin Mary praying to Saints. But they were good people, their houses were full of love and laughter. Now I'm pretty well educated, so are my friends. But we can be real smug dismissive smart arses.
I think my friends and I in our cleaverness have be removed from simple human compassion. Which I think this thread often seems to be . Putting a smiley at the end of a cutting remark does not remove the intent
Absolutely, and that this fact is unchanged whether or not the Buddha was certain of rebirth, agnostic about rebirth or against rebirth.
It is for this reason I no longer get into these debates with my Christain friends.
I agree, equally I like to talk about these issues in a free and open manner with those who consent to talk to me about them:) Many other people like this too, hence the popularity of internet forums.
Is this Forum in some sense sacred to you?
I have not tried to convince anyone they are wrong.
I only only ever defend myself against those who tell me, dogmatically, I am wrong.
I am happy to make this a concrete precept if you would like.
Suppose for a moment that I am right, my most extreme view(which I am not at all certain of, it is a theory): The Buddha taught that belief in any more than this life was a delusion that could only ever waste this life in some compromise for a future life. If that was true, then he would be saying that your point above "the comfort of the belief" is itself a cause of suffering.
I find that view highly plausible based on my own experince and highly compatible with core dharma.
I have a family member very ill and very Christian, I utterly understand your point and fully respect it. If this person wanted to debate with me about if I belived in jesus I would speak what I believe. All beliefs can be compatible, its dogma that messes it up.
Wait a minute. What are you saying here. it seems two things:
That I should be censored on the grounds of compassion and that I have bad intent?
Wow. I would love to hear your justification for both of those pretty nasty points.
No, that is really not what you are doing. Think about it. You accuse me of bad intention, just because I talk freely and openly about Buddhism on an Internet site, called, ironically "New Buddhism" and then say I should censor myself because you deem my actions discompassionate?
I studied philosophy for 8 years at Univeristy, taught it too, have always loved it and still do. I am a philosopher, that's what I am. I dont really get the chance to discuss it in the real world what with family and work and all that, so I come to the internet.
I am also a dilligent Buddhist. I am practice well, am mindfull, I think I have a good grasp on dharma and I have a few freinds who would say I am, good at explaining it.
I love to Philosophise about Dharma, laws and principles that are so profound to the human condition it still amazes me, as I guess it does all of us.
So I come here to philosophise and get all kinds of negativity towards me (Frankly some of it is astounding) which I try very hard not to react to, I am by no means perfect at that.
So when you say to me that you think I have bad intentions with my chat here, I just think you must think very differently about people to me.
Please use the feature in the control panel to ignore me, it's far better than censoring.