I don't really understand meditation people's focus on diagnosing location with stuff like stream entry, second path, third path, attainments, etc.
I'm not totally sure what about it is triggering the confusion I'm noticing. Maybe-
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it's something like, they talk about the finger pointing at the moon and then diagnosing attainments feels like discussing the finger, or something?
or maybe it's the way it's discussed, like the progression signs are more objective/universal than I intuit that it is?
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Or maybe I'm confused about *why* this is important? I mean I get some curiosity, like if weird shit is happening to your brain and you want to make sense of it using external narratives, but it feels like the importance it holds in these communities is greater than just that.
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Maybe it's cause it feels like it's actually appealing to some authority? Like, attainments get 'diagnosed' by authoritative people, or ppl falsely claim attainments and u gotta sus them out, it all carries the vibe of getting credentialed from a university
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...yeah I think this last one feels closest to the heart of it. Maybe I am interpreting meditative focus on attainments as actually being about subjecting yourself to external authority, like deriving validation from a non-you system, and then im like ??? u r god tho like why
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for the record it seems like a lot of buddhism is pretty dumb
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also ur "the thing ur complaining about isn't really Buddhism, true Buddhism is actually fully not-dumb" card fails against me, the Christians used it on me too many times and now I'm immune
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I think it’s more the “I, a person with extremely cursory knowledge of a thing a half billion people find value in, have decided it’s dumb” thing
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the star study you’re complaining about (astrology) isn’t really star study, true star study (astrophysics) are actually fully not-dumb
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I don’t know where you’ve learned to meditate and where your knowledge of Buddhism comes from, but it’s no where near anything I’ve ever heard. My best friend is a 4th-degree blackbelt in Jiu-Jitsu and a Buddhist who’s studied with monks in Tibet and Japan to learn how to
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That is a fully-general counter-argument against any religion's teaching. There is a signal that can be extracted from the noise. If you cluster the data in your meditation survey you will find not only correlations but also distinct populations. Include the text fields.
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Okay but like... It's true in this case. The guy is actually not a Scotsman at all