Woman with her husband at the Psychiatrist’s office: Doctor, doctor, my husband thinks he’s a chicken.
Psychiatrist: Be at ease my good woman. We have medicines that will bring him right back to himself.
Woman (looking worried): Well is there another option? Cause we sure can use the eggs.
(Point being, if you’re laying eggs, you must really be chicken-like. And if your self is functioning like a self for all intents and purposes that is sufficient for actually being yourself. Go with that. If you are still compelled to determine whether we are in the MATRIX or something, you could still continue that quest.)
I saw the video, his bit about the patterns was interesting and mirrored what I thought, that it’s an emergent phenomenon that you can’t just analyze in terms of its parts. Attempting to do so would lead you nowhere. I think he mentioned it being independent of it’s parts, my guess is that you can’t observe it by looking at the parts that cause it (which is what Buddhism seems to do with the self by reducing it to parts). It was interesting and does address the issue I had with people reducing people to “just” parts (a la that Huffpost article I saw).
Granted though I am still HAUNTED by that article I read about how “if Buddhism wasn’t true then…” but I can’t remember the rest of it or where I read it from. I can only get the gist of it in that if Buddhism is wrong then our current way of doing things is our only hope. The our worries are correct and we should cling to things. It’s still stuck in my head to this day because I can’t find it anywhere.
Plus I think this article negates the point being made by the physicist, in that it says that much of what we take to be reality is really just concepts. Every “thing” is just a collection of parts but having no true essence.
How so? As I have shown its not like other religions, it proves itself through argument. Like the link that I can’t find. It felt like definite proof of Buddhism being true, because it said if it wasn’t then it’s opposite would be working for us.
There is also the claim that Buddhism itself is a scientific religion because Buddha didn’t just take this on faith but conducted analysis and tested hypothesis on the matter.
You’ve said the thing about Buddhism being scientific many times now Xian. Please refrain from repetitious posting. We want people to come to CFI and find discussion of issues. If regular users have addressed your points, a new user should be able to find that, and they can add to the conversation if they want. If you post the same thing over and over, a new user might not see that your point was addressed somewhere else. The overall sense of the forum becomes confused. I have the ability to delete posts and I will use it if you continue.
This includes putting a link and simply saying, “I can’t contest this”. Be specific about what has convinced you of what.
The Buddha understood the operations of the mind in precise detail, explaining how desire, hatred, and ignorance motivate actions that eventually result in all manner of physical and mental pain, and he set forth the practice of meditation to bring the chattering mind and the unruly emotions under control in order to reach a state of serenity. But beyond this, he analyzed the myriad physical and mental constituents that together are called the person, finding among them nothing that lasts longer than an instant. Thus, he discovered, through his analysis, that there is no self, that there is no soul, that what we call the person is but a psychophysical process, and that the realization of this fundamental truth results in a certain liberation.
It's mostly the above statement and remarks about the self, calling it just a process. I don't know it just makes it seem like we aren't solid. But part of me can't help but feel like this interpretation is wrong, that calling it a bunch of parts isn't accurate. I know that our mental aspects don't last longer than an instant but he didn't know about the subconscious and how much of our thinking isn't known to us. Also what we call the self is more like the average of some behaviors, like how people usually respond to things. Sure our liking of something is only for an instant, but it does repeat if we do it again. I think he had a false view of the self. Also the "precise detail" seems false, especially about desire. To me Buddhism more creates another reality than reveals one, but I find it hard to convince people who believe in it otherwise. But I guess the part that, in spite of all that, gets me is the fleeting nature of our feelings and thoughts. How do we determine a self out of that?
In addition to what they mention about nothing being “solid” because things are always in a state of flux and change. Like how the body appears to be a “solid” entity but it’s really just a collection of processes that are always changes. Some of them even suggest that nouns are illusory because it suggests that something is permanent and unchanging.