Neutrality of Everything

General Discussion
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https://www.drlwilson.com/articles/PERFECT.htm

https://drlwilson.com/Books/real_self.htm

I get that everything in the world is inherently neutral, but (unlike the link suggests) it would be a huge stretch to say that “who would honestly say that being sick is better than being healthy”. I know who, pretty much everyone. I don’t really believe there are “lessons” to be learned in life, I think that is something we tell ourselves to feel like the center of the universe.

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I don’t really believe there are “lessons” to be learned in life
Is that why you chose to spend your time and energy chasing your tail?

 

Just to be clear, that is your opinion and a great deal of people have found life full of profound and fun lessons.

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I appreciate the links Xian, they help me understand how you cherry pick them and misunderstand Buddhism. The conclusion of the one about a perfect world is right there at the bottom. It has the heading “CONCLUSION”.

Dare to try a grand experiment. Allow yourself to see the world as perfect the way it is. Imagine that it may be an orchestration of the grace the Creator in order to help us wake up and learn important lessons and have certain experiences. -- Dr. Wilson
It’s saying you can control how you see the world. You can imagine whatever you want. I don’t particularly care for the “learn lessons” theme either or the “Creator” stuff, but it works fine for some. I like an image of everything sailing towards nothing, a sort of meteor of color and light heading into the void. As it hits each successive moment I play a tiny part in creating what is left behind. We’re constantly at the point where time doesn’t exist and never will and we meet that from within our time bound perspective. But that’s just me, I digress.

It doesn’t even say what you claim it does, about choosing between sickness and health. It says this;

This means that, in truth, no situation is necessarily better than another. It is simply a different variety of experience. -- Dr Wilson
I couldn’t find the thing you put in quotes. I’m guessing it came from you. The real_self link didn’t work. I don’t know where you get that pretty much everyone would rather be sick. That sounds like something a psychologist would have a code for, a diagnosis of a disorder. Sounds like someone who has the option to lie around and have nurses wait on him all day.

Instead, I found the above. The first part is what you keep saying, nothing is better than anything else. But you take that as bad, something to justify you not being happy. You use bad logic that happiness doesn’t really exist. The second part says there a variety of experiences. That’s Buddhism. Buddhism doesn’t say experiences don’t exist, it just says to not get attached to one kind of experience over another. Let them go, and you’ll end up being happy and content more often.

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@snowcity

I suppose that depends on what you mean by “lessons”. Of course there are lessons to be learned in general. It’s called making mistakes and learning from them. But if you’re talking about some hidden meaning to everything around us, no, that isn’t a thing. Life has what meaning we assign it. Nothing more. At least, that is my opinion, which cannot be proved ever, no matter how much we learn about ourselves and the universe around us. God has moved many times through the millennia. From mountaintop to clouds to space to “wherever” he jumps around to whatever is “untouchable” at the time. If, ten thousand years in the future, we freely hop from dimension to dimension then God will move to some other mysterious place we cannot touch. So there will never be a way to prove no gods exist, thus, no way to prove no meaning is assigned to our lives for us.

As for all events being neutral the point of that is to view it from another perspective. There is no “good” and “evil”. That’s a human construct and what is good and what is evil is different for every single person on the planet. When a person is sick that is bad for them. But it is not “bad” in general. I don’t care when you’re sick. I don’t even know when you’re sick, so how could I? Evey person on the planet cannot agree that is “bad” because most people just don’t know about it and wouldn’t care much about a stranger having a cold if they did. And I don’t believe it is saying that you can’t have the personal opinion, “I am sick. This is bad.” You’re taking it too literally. It’s just saying have an open mind and view it as “just a thing that’s happening” to gain perspective and understanding.

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Is that why you chose to spend your time and energy chasing your tail?

 

Just to be clear, that is your opinion and a great deal of people have found life full of profound and fun lessons.


The lessons they have found are just made up to give them a sense of order to their lives. It’s useful, but it would not be accurate to say life has lessons.

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He changed the real self page and renamed it:

https://drlwilson.com/Articles/REAL.SELF.htm

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From Merriam-Webster Online:
  • lesson (noun)
    • 3a : something learned by study or experience "his years of travel had taught him valuable lessons"
    • 3b : an instructive example "the lessons of history"
I suppose that, to someone who refuses to learn, life would have no lessons. But c'mon man! what kind of person doesn't learn from life?! They'd sure be a real drag to talk to because they would refuse to listen to anyone and would say the same thing over and over and over. I certainly don't know anyone like that.

On a completely unrelated note, I’m curious to know if Xian has been thinking about what people are telling him. Hopefully he is, because there are many excellent lessons to be found in the hundreds of posts we’ve put on here for him to read.

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I think this might be a failure in communication. I think what he might be saying is that there are no “intended” lessons in life. As in, we may learn something from life, but that is not life “teaching” us. The difference, I think, may be intent.

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I really do hope you are right and there is at least a sliver of light between Xian’s idea and the idea that life is totally meaningless.

 

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You can see that christianity is bunk, but you can’t find anything wrong with that real self thing?

Really?

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I think this might be a failure in communication. I think what he might be saying is that there are no “intended” lessons in life. As in, we may learn something from life, but that is not life “teaching” us. The difference, I think, may be intent.
That's sort of it. The way this guy phrases it is like life was made for us as some trial to awakening, which is just nonsense. Learning from experience, sure I can admit that. But intended lessons, no.
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Instead, I found the above. The first part is what you keep saying, nothing is better than anything else. But you take that as bad, something to justify you not being happy. You use bad logic that happiness doesn’t really exist. The second part says there a variety of experiences. That’s Buddhism. Buddhism doesn’t say experiences don’t exist, it just says to not get attached to one kind of experience over another. Let them go, and you’ll end up being happy and content more often.
Actually that is like saying happiness doesn't exist. Because being attached (or invested in something) is what makes us happy. What you are saying is to be indifferent to these things. It's just like the Broward people of "cleansing the false picture mind based on experience".
This means that, in truth, no situation is necessarily better than another. It is simply a different variety of experience. For example, if a person had been healthy instead of having to stay home and rest, that person might have been run over by a car and killed. So who is to say that being perfectly healthy is better? In fact, perhaps one’s illness or other disability may have kept the person alive.
This is the quote I was linking.
Conspiracies are usually considered bad. However, the word conspire simply means 'to breathe together'. It is possible to perceive this world as a gigantic and extremely complex ‘breathing together process’. It is a coming together of events, perfectly orchestrated at the deepest level, to heal our minds, to wake us up, to demonstrate to us our total power and responsibility for our lives, or to teach us how best to live.

This means that all things are working for good, and that you are always in the right place at the right time. It means that love is real, and being expressed through every event and situation, no matter how brutal or negative they may seem.

A helpful affirmation. One way to affirm that the world is perfect is to say often, “I abide in a perfectly loving universe. I can be at peace with whatever is occurring around me”.


This whole bit is just going on about the world being perfect as it is. I don’t think you are actually seeing what is being said here, this isn’t a “life is what you make it” thing.

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What you are saying is to be indifferent to these things.
I showed you that Buddhist master who said that deciding to be indifferent is an error that Buddhist students make. But you ignore what you want instead of listening to teachers.
This whole bit is just going on about the world being perfect as it is. I don’t think you are actually seeing what is being said here, this isn’t a “life is what you make it” thing.
Did I say “life is what you make it”? I’m pretty sure I said the world is what it is. That's similar, but it's not what you are doing. You are the one who is making something out of that. You are the one who is coming to a logical conclusion to be indifferent.
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I really do hope you are right and there is at least a sliver of light between Xian’s idea and the idea that life is totally meaningless.
Life is totally meaningless except the meaning we assign to it ourselves. We can't "find" meaning in life because there is no higher power to have assigned meaning for us to find. We can, however, "assign" meaning to our lives, which we all do.
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I showed you that Buddhist master who said that deciding to be indifferent is an error that Buddhist students make. But you ignore what you want instead of listening to teachers.
I listen to them but their words and their actions showcase indifference. When you “Be neither pleased nor concerned over that which you do and do not desire…and know that these feelings are created only in the mind." then that is indifference. Despite their repeated comments to the contrary that is what non attachment is.
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Bill Hicks had a comedy routine about The People Who Hate People party. He wanted to organize them, but it was hard to get people to come to meetings. Get it? Because they hate it each other.

I think Xian is going to have a similar problem getting people to accept his “unhappiness is the answer” form of Buddhism.

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It’s the same philosophy that tells you to abandon desire in order to be happy. When asked that without desire we would not do anything the reply is “why do we have to do anything?”

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Not to mention saying everything is empty which is pretty nihilistic: Emptiness Teachings : Everyday Zen Foundation