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I know there are Buddhist traditions that diverge from this pattern, of course. I know it's not suffering all the way down. That's a big part of the reason why I preference, say, Zen over Mahayana. A cosmology built ENTIRELY around removing suffering? Please. That's ridiculous.

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is it? Or is it that you're coming from a Finno-uguric background? People also feel a need to pronounce on stuff far before they have accomplishments equal to the level of people who made these statements in the first place. That seems... unwise.

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I'm not saying I'm right. That would be gross negligence on my part to imply. But that's a ditto for most people saying anything about anything. Authority is mostly a power fantasy. Sometimes derived from experience, but even then highly specific. I think questioning is good.

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It's a fair enough point that you shouldn't go around spouting off, but the original comment I made was specifically about people spouting off. That was the entire point. I'm not telling anyone how to practice in private. I don't think I have any business doing that.

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Even if Buddhism gets things right, though, I don't think that qualifies arbitrarily chosen Buddhists to tell others how to practice. This is maybe a minor point in the grand scheme of things, but I've encountered it enough times that it seriously bothers me.

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Also: it's great if qualified people can defend their practices, but that doesn't mean a claim to authority is necessarily valid. And when it comes to lineages that are millennia old, we can hardly claim to understand them anymore (yeah, that also applies to shamanism ofc.)

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there are specific accomplishments in the spiritual paths. And saying that they don't do something, or do do something without having them strikes me as dangerous. And, ofc, as you point out, since we've lost so much, who knows what the Buddha and his original Sangha could do?

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i mean, take the various dhyana: the Buddhists now have 8 of them. But there were tons more of them, they are written of, and mostly we don't know what they were. Or when Chan Mahayanna guys wrote about Hinayana stuff they were very clear their enlightments were different.

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Look, I'm a Jhana essentialist. I have experienced states that, to me and to more accomplished practitioners, fits with the formal descriptions of the Jhanas. I'm not saying the stuff doesn't work. I am making a critique of the philosophy and the approach, not the craft.

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perhaps, then I misunderstood, or chose to grind my own axe. I'm just not sure that suffering can't be gotten rid of, effectively, for example, so I'm not sure it's a ridiculous philosophy. (Dukkha, otoh, well, perhaps not. But if you don't care, that's very close.)

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Yeah, I came at that particular problem from my own cyclothymic baseline. I have periods where suffering is an overwhelming constant and I wish only for its end, and periods where it feels hardly relevant at all. Over time, that both damages and immunizes you.

8:42 PM · Jul 7, 2018Twitter Web Client

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There may be stable states which avoid it. The core Mahayana criticism of Theravada is that Arhat nirvana is not a stable state. Eventually you will fall out of it. That is unacceptable to them. Arhat is not a stable state, whereas Buddha level is. (Again, no idea if true.)

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So, things I agree with: - Only an accomplished practitioner can say what something is really like, experientially. Things I disagree with: - Accomplished practitioners are qualified to deal in absolutes. How do they know what does or doesn't end? I don't see how they could.

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I fully understand why some people come to Buddhism looking for an end to suffering. That was my own start. At this point, my own attitude has drifted towards something like "who cares about suffering? figuring out how to live is where it's at." Maybe not better, but different.

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Sure. The most important thing is knowing what you're trying to get. If you aren't trying to end suffering, then... Me, I'd still like something fairly close to an end to suffering, because without I don't much see any point in living.

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