When you let go of ideas of what you or the world are supposed to be like, you start to experience life in a direct, guilt-free, child-like way. There is no you and no world, just pure experience. Every experience feels like the first and only experience.
There's a reason Buddhist systems have been so successful. It's not that Buddhism has the one true answer, but rather that Buddhists have been unusually effective at articulating and navigating this territory.
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That said, there's no reason to think awakening must always follow the 4 stage model, despite the declaration of Theravada fundamentalists. It is just a model after all, albeit a particularly useful one.
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decent model, but an awful lot of historical baggage and unhelpful metaphysical assumptions. also a bit of an obsessive focus on attainments, levels, "experience points", etc.
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True. I do think it has much less metaphysical baggage than, say, the Tibetan schools, and it's also easier to polish off. But we certainly need newer models that are more appropriate for the modern world.
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problem on my mind lately: what should we think of reincarnation metaphysics viewed from a modern perspective? the hard skeptic stance (there is no reincarnation) seems like a cop-out. also runs counter to some lived experiences (psychedelic and meditative glimpses).
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There doesn't seem to me to be a reason to believe in reincarnation. Why should I believe one person's experience over another person's scientific data? There's no way of finding a conclusive answer.
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My view on reincarnation is: Does it even matter? We're stuck here now, so we gotta deal with this train-wreck first. Obviously it's still fun to talk about and speculate on, even if it's not relevant to suffering. The trick is just not imagining that we'll ever have an answer.
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deeply pragmatic and therefore probably correct in all the ways that matter
End of conversation
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