Taoism And Buddhism

[Evolution_beyond]

How is it optional? I am sure there are ways to reduce it, but I don't see it as natural, human, or even possible to be able to remove it. Imagine that I find out today that the people I love most have been killed in a terrorist attack, or I find out that I have some incurable illness that is going to severly disable me in a year or so -- how would I not suffer, unless I am some complete emotional zombie? How would it seem if I reacted to such news with detachment and no feeling of suffering? Why should I think being able to do so should be our goal? I. Also if one admits there is pain, then how can one experience pain - whether physical or emotional - and not suffer from it - is one just supposed to observe it and say, "oh that's interesting, pain is being experienced" I don't see how that's supposed to work.

 

You ask some deep, deep questions. I'm not sure whether I can fully answer them. It is of course appropriate to express sadness, concern and compassion in the face of such tragedies.

 

I read that there are Buddhist exercises where you are supposed to detach from any feeling of disgust at normally unpleasant things or attraction to normally pleasant ones -- that an enlightened person, could, for example, eat a gourmet meal or something rotten with the same equanimity.

 

I don't understand why that would even be a useful exercise. Natural instincts are there for a reason.

 

But it seems to me it is just normal and human to feel bad about unpleasant experiences that happen to us and enjoy pleasant ones.

 

Sadness, anger or any other emotion you could name - are natural things and have their uses. Those emotions are appropriate at times. It's how you use those feelings that matters. Suffering is something deeper than mere emotion. Emotions are fleeting things. Sometimes they are honourable things - like sadness when a tragedy occurs. Sadness can lead to compassion for others who are experiencing pain. It is an appropriate and honourable emotion.

 

But suffering is a deep dissatisfaction with life - and deep-rooted feeling of unease, a constant struggle that makes life confusing and troublesome and unpleasant for most of the time. It is a sense of unease with yourself and with life, that you feel at all times. Many, many people experience this deep sense of unease. Buddhism is the way to make your peace with life and not expect or require it to be anything other than what it is. To stop struggling against reality. It can lessen the burden of pain during tragic moments - and it can allow you to stop dwelling on pain and to move on - and it can remove that deep sense of unease with life and with yourself and help you to learn to accept all of life's imperfections and fluctuations with some equanimity and balanced perspective.

 

At least from what little I've seen of it working in my life it seems to have that potential.

 

Buddhism is a useful method for helping you to manage your own mind - nothing more, nothing less.

 

As for enjoying pleasures. I may be a Buddhist heretic (if such a thing is possible), or influenced a little too much by Taoist perspectives also - but I certainly think that enjoying pleasures during their fleeting presence is perfectly acceptable and desirable. What is not so acceptable or desirable, and diminshes and tarnishes life's pleasures - is continuing to grasp for such pleasures when they are gone. Learning to let go is an important thing in life. there is often this tendency to get annoyed, angry and frustrated when pleasures are taken away from us - and to worry that they will end when we are experiencing them. Living in the moment, enjoying what comes, but learning to let go when it ends - these are important lessons to learn.

 

Also I think it seems unrealistic to try to have no ego at all when the fact of the matter is we are bodies and experience the world through them and are inevitably seperate beings who need to take an interest in our survival and proposerity and well-being.

 

Our separateness is really an illusion. We are not inevitably separate beings. We are apparently separate being who are actually a mass of biological and chemical processes that are intimately connected to the mass of biological and chemical processes going on around us all of the time.

[Deva]

How is it optional? I am sure there are ways to reduce it, but I don't see it as natural, human, or even possible to be able to remove it. Imagine that I find out today that the people I love most have been killed in a terrorist attack, or I find out that I have some incurable illness that is going to severly disable me in a year or so -- how would I not suffer, unless I am some complete emotional zombie? How would it seem if I reacted to such news with detachment and no feeling of suffering? Why should I think being able to do so should be our goal? I. Also if one admits there is pain, then how can one experience pain - whether physical or emotional - and not suffer from it - is one just supposed to observe it and say, "oh that's interesting, pain is being experienced" I don't see how that's supposed to work.

 

This is rather complicated and not easy to explain without a lot of study and meditation. I see suffering as clinging to thoughts, ideas and mental patterns. You would not really be speculating or guessing ahead of time how you would react to any of the above situations if you were able to see things as they really are. You would see that activity as a futile and unproductive thing to be doing that is a form of suffering. If such events actually happened what you would able to see (when those people died, for example) is how much you "love" those who have been killed and how much of that grieving is for yourself rather than for them and what "love" in this sense actually is. You seem to have the idea that Buddhists don't react to events and are numbed out zombies all the time. That is nonsense. They do react. There is pain, but it is seen for what it really is -- purely temporary and essentially empty. There is no suffering.

 

Also I think it seems unrealistic to try to have no ego at all when the fact of the matter is we are bodies and experience the world through them and are inevitably seperate beings who need to take an interest in our survival and proposerity and well-being. Just because one can experience some blissed out state of "oneness"in meditation I don't think this changes anything in real life

 

Sorry to say, but this seems to be your major misunderstanding. Meditation is not some "blissed out state of oneness," meditation (and there are different kinds) leads to an apprehension, a "seeing" of things as they really are. It is somthing a person can experiment with and test out. Oneness is the actual state of the universe. Buddhism says reality is non-dualistic. Everything is interconnected and relative - this is the Buddhist view of dependent origination. We are not "inevitably seperate beings" and we are not bodies. There is nothing in Buddhism that says we don't take an interest in our survival or well-being. In fact, a true view of the world contributes much to our well-being.

[Deva]

I have studied as much as it interests me to spend time doing so. I find it as incomprehensible as the Trinity, for example. I have heard no clear explanation of how one life can actually lead to another if nothing is being passed on, and how the second being can be said in some way to still be the same entity as the first one as is suggested by the doctrine of samsara and the idea that one should seek to get off the cycle of rebirths, or by the Tibetan belief in reincarnated Lamas, or by the idea that there is some essence of you to exist in the bardos.

 

I missed your earlier comments. If you wanted a better understanding of rebirth, as with any subject, you need to study the matter but you say you have studied as much as it interests you. In view of this statement, I doubt that anything I could say would make any difference to you since your mind is already made up.

 

My understanding is that Nirvana is the end or the extinction of craving or attachment which leads to suffering.

 

What's wrong with "escaping" -- or does that just sound too blunt and negative to you? What else is Buddhim about if not escaping from samsara, which is deemed undesirable?

 

Not at all blunt or negative, its just not the right word. Its an ending. Escape, implies a separate entity doing something, but "you" are not doing anything, which is implyed by the word "escape." Buddhism teaches everyone already has the Buddha nature and also, to repeat, Buddhism is non-dualistic.

 

Buddhism teaches you to detach from enjoyment of the senses and from strong emotions etc and be some kind of serene saint; i just don't think that is a practical way of getting the most out of life. So life can have suffering and disappointments, but we can accept that fact and still try to focus on getting as much of the enjoyable stuff as possible can't we?

 

Its not about being a serene saint, but if Buddhism is something negative to you, you would probably be better off as a hedonist.

 

Buddhism teaches to despise the body because it is corrupt and impermanent, to detach from pleasures, to have no ambition, to not love or need any individuals too much but to have detached compassion for all.

 

Untrue. Buddhism shows the true nature of all these things. "Despise" is not correct. It is a fact that the body is impermenent, and it is corrupt in the sense that it is even now undergoing a process of ageing and decay.

 

I don't think that is what humans are like or should think they have to be like.

 

Yes, we get the message once again that Buddhism is not for you, or rather your misconceived ideas about Buddhism.

[Legion]

Orlando I seem to share some of your misgivings about Buddhism. However I also see some potential there, some glimmering of power.

 

Here are some of my misgivings…

 

The idea that Buddhism is non-dualistic concerns me to some extent. Why? Because I think every mode of discrimination or discernment creates a duality. So for me to hear “non-dualistic” almost says to me “don’t discern” and that raises red flags.

 

Another misgiving, as you have mentioned, is the treatment of ego. My view of the ego is not all dark. Although I recognize that ego is often a hindrance to us, I also recognize that ego may play a vital role at times. So when I hear others imply that ego is entirely undesirable I become wary.

 

But with Buddhism I also see some potential. In particular, the Buddhist notion of dependent origination seems quite powerful to me. It seems to resonate nicely with Western science. Many scientists have come to view causality as a web in constant flux of interrelated being. Through dependent origination Buddhists are encouraged to understand. And understanding is powerful.

 

Perhaps some think Buddhism will touch the West and transform it. And I suspect they may be right. But I also suspect that Buddhism will touch the West and be transformed.

[orlando]

--- if I am allowed to post to another board, this thread I just found (first poster) some expresses similar thoughts to me about Buddhism better than me :

 

http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=7884

 

however, re some of the recent posts,

 

Evolution Beyond, I liked your posts and the thoughtful way you expressed them. You do show a way of looking at Buddhism that is more useful and meaningful than the more extreme way I put things in my criticisms

 

Legion, I am also wary about the usefulness of great emphasis on negating the ego

 

Deva Light, re rebirth, I don't want to write an essay, but it just seems to me that Buddhist views on this involve a certain amount of faith and dogma, and a certain amount of religious jargon (in the sense of a stock phrase that is supposed to sound conclusive and meaningful, but seems less so when you try to get at what it means factually), as in , sorry if I seem rude, when you said something like "you've just got to understand dependent origination properly". I see statements like that as a bit like "to understand the Trinity you've just got to understand that God is three persons in one substance" - to be convinced I would want to hear some down to earth facts about how it is supposed to work. What I have read before did not do that, just saying, in essence, a far as I remember, that everything involves cause and effect. I have never heard clearly how attachments and karma etc are involved in physically causing a new human rebirth, or how extinction of ego/desires etc resulting in a state of "nirvana" causes this process to cease. I can see theoretically how an "enlightened"person, might "tread lightly" in the world as it were, causing a minimum of negative repercussions, for example, but I don't see the link with literal rebirths or lack of them. I cannot see how in any sense the feeling of liberation supposedly achieved in elightenment has any literal impact on what happens to you after death.

 

Also Buddhists say everything is interrelated to explain nirvana and egolessness etc, and often say this matches what science says, but scientifically this idea only goes so far. You say we are "not seperate beings" and "not bodies". I don't know what else we are unless specifically religious - and to be believed on faith - concepts are brought in. The ways in which we are related to "everything" are IMO quite rational, and don't really require any very special insights -- e.g. we are made of similar basic building blocks as many other things in the universe, but the particular atoms and collections of chemicals making us, and their particular arrangement in time and space are still seperate from those making up other things in a quite literal way; yes we are affected by many events external to us (our atoms came originally from somewhere else and will go somewhere else after we die, our life experiences are constantly affected by others - the people in our lives, the people who grow our food or make our clothes etc etc) but that does not stop us factually being individual beings that all these other individual beings are impacting upon; likewise our actions have effects on others and on our environment etc - and science says enegy is never destroyed - but all this does not explain how something fundamentally significant happens when one discrete human individual has an experience inside their heads of feeling egoless. You can feel as much "at one" as much as you like, but it is not going, for example, to make you able to be telepathic or cable to remote view or perform acts of telekinesis or anything else showing some literal expansion of yourself outside your body and "ego." At the most it seems to me a feeling of enlightenment -- something, basically, like thinking "hey, you know what, I guess my little worries don't really matter that much in the big picture, I guess I should chill out about it and just see myself as one small part of a big whole" -- would involve the individual experiencing it being able to feel more at peace, but I don't see how it has any greater cosmic significance.

 

I remain unconvinced one can achieve a state where one never suffers, but thanks for trying to explain. I also agree that suggesting the aim of Buddhism is just to be "blissed out" was maybe not the right way to put it

 

I suppose essentially I see Buddhism somewhat as I see Christianity - if you take out the supernatural claims etc you are left with some useful moral precepts, but that if you took some of them to literal extremes even they are probably not very useful for enjoying the only life we can be sure we have. And I would say, like with very liberal Christianity, if you are going to end up with such a watered down affair, why not just be a secular Humanist and not have to worry about reconciling yourself to the bits you don't find useful? However I do think the emphasis on practices and working on yourself, not just believing things, makes Buddhism potentially more interesting and beneficial than Christiainity

 

Another thing I'll just throw in -- if the goal of life is to achieve perfect equanimity and egoless oneness etc then who is to say a tree, for example, or maybe a cow, placidly chewing the cud, is not more enlightened than us?

 

 

Anyway, I know this site is not meant to be exbuddhist.net ...

 

It's fine if it works for some people here. And sometimes maybe a particular way of looking at things works well for some people for a certain period of their lives, and they learn some useful things from it and then move on. Or they find it is just right for them and is satisfying and they stay with it, or whatever. I don't think any one system of thought or practices can claim to have all the answers, but many no doubt have some useful things to teach

 

PS Just found this nice quote attribute to the Dalai Lama, on the British Humanist Association site:

 

The Dalai Lama differentiates rather better: "…I believe there is an important distinction to be made between religion and spirituality. Religion I take to be concerned with faith in the claims to salvation of one faith tradition or another, an aspect of which is acceptance of some form of metaphysical or supernatural reality, including perhaps an idea of heaven or nirvana. Connected with this are religious teachings or dogma, rituals, prayer and so on. Spirituality I take to be concerned with those qualities of the human spirit - such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony - which bring happiness to both self and others. While ritual and prayer, along with the questions of nirvana and salvation, are directly connected with religious faith, these inner qualities need not be, however. There is thus no reason why the individual should not develop them, even to a high degree, without recourse to any religious or metaphysical belief system. This is why I sometimes say that religion is something we can perhaps do without. What we cannot do without are these basic spiritual qualities." [ 2 ]