And so, if one is motivated to become a monk (being a lay buddhist is like, meh, in buddhism), your best reason is, 'this is not for me, i don't exist, i'm more or less a fiction, im just giving up this deluded experience, I want off this merry-go-round'.
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Replying to @stgabriel @Xrayhighs
I suspect that monasteries and religions are economic and political institutions and thus may not have interests that are fully aligned with what you intend. A religion or monastery that leads its clients efficiently to deliverance would perish. Instead, it must sell the promise.
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Replying to @Plinz @Xrayhighs
I wouldn't dismiss 2500 years of cultural practice, with terms like 'efficiency', or discuss the 'deliverables' of their monastic traditions. Or speculate about what they 'sell'. We can do better than applying western consumerist interpretations of 'quaint oriental beliefs'.
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Replying to @stgabriel @Xrayhighs
I don't think that they are "quaint oriental beliefs". Yet the Buddhist practices of today are largely not the same as 2500 years ago (they are evolving and culturally exchanging too), and we don't do Western schools of thought justice if we dismiss them as consumerist etc.
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Replying to @Plinz @Xrayhighs
"we" didn't dismiss western thought as consumerist. anyway, im out of time: go read that book, joscha; it's fun and not uninteresting, but you'll sound like you're talking out of your hat until you have some basic concepts.
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Replying to @stgabriel @Xrayhighs
What do you think of this little summary? Or David Chapman’s “Vividness”? https://aeon.co/amp/essays/what-lies-behind-the-simplistic-image-of-the-happy-buddhist?__twitter_impression=true …
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Replying to @Plinz @Xrayhighs
Most of us in the west grapple with the idea of a religion can be non-theistic. "Buddhism’s image in pop culture is woefully deficient, more a reflection of our own history, culture and needs". Verifyable true. Lexiconical differences, our enthusiasm to embrace it, etc.
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I remember reading about Buddhist cosmology, and feeling deeply unsettled and amazed. It's remarkable, alien almost. I've read of monks, who have meditated for their entire lives, and quite calmly can point to a mountain their eyes can see, as 'objective reality'.
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So here in the west, we can only see buddhist cosmology through our own lens, and interpret much of it positively, as fascinatingly metaphorical. Psychological states induced by calm thinking, etc. We are filtering it, in a well-meaning way, through belief systems of our own.
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What gets to me, is, a community of monks who, after a lifetime of (clever self-regulation of emotions and meditation) can point to a bloody mountain we can't see. What are they seeing? How? Most of us don't want to be troubled by that. "Collective hallucination", etc.
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Most of these mountains are not mysterious at all, I think.
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Replying to @Plinz @Xrayhighs
Provided they're 'Not Mysterious' because our world-view demands it. Fact is, if you spend the rest of your life meditating 12 hours a day, you'll become insightful, perhaps unsettlingly so, I suspect. I won't tell you you're delusional; if I did, it would be about me, not you.
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Replying to @stgabriel @Xrayhighs
It would be about your representation of me, and your judgement about what you should let me know. Also, if you spend the rest of your life meditating for 12 hours a day, it is quite possible that you go insane. Meditation is not a magic mind improvement medicine.
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