Re: Joy of this, Joy of that

On Sat, 7 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 07/12/2024 10:20, D wrote:

  On Fri, 6 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:
 

On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 10:09:11 +0100, D wrote:
 

Don't even go there. Natural and I had very lively discussions on that
theme.  But yes, I'm in the camp of the people who accept the real world
as a fact, and that without humans, there's no ethics, math, true or
false.

 Buddhism has the concept of two truths, conventional and ultimate.
Conventionally I went out this morning to feed two cats. Ultimately 'cat'
is a construct I imposed and there aren't two of anything.
 https://thebuddhistcentre.com/system/files/groups/files/heart_sutra.pdf
 Nietzsche condensed into a couple of hundred Chinese ideograms...

 Buddha seems to have been far ahead of his time. I really like his position on god, that instead of speculating, they should "shut up and meditate". ;)
 

There are states of mind that can be achieved that clarify  why people started talking about gods and spirits and other realms in the first place.
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On the other hand, I do not know if this is what he actually thought, or if it is just hearsay.
 

Does it matter?
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The sound of one hand clapping is a phrase that seems to make sense, in that you understand all the words, but it points to an impossible or meaningless event.
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The intention is to guide the student away from a dependence on the reality of words to a reality beyond them.
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I tried for a bit, to try and "distill" original buddhism, and although it was difficult to find anything specific, my feeling was that original buddhism was more about doing, rather than speculating, so heavily meditation focused, and not very speculation focused.
 

Buddhism is what one bloke said after he had successfully stopped his mind from thinking but yet wasn't actually unconscious. And a set of instructions on how to copy his techniques.
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I met a guy once who spent a long time doing that, who had also taken LSD He claimed that 'the end result is the same, but the LSD is much easier, and a bit more dangerous'.
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:-)
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Another thing I found out was also that original buddhism was heavily adapted to the individual (naturally) where buddha tried to tailor the techniques and teachings to the individual he was talking with, and that is why it started to diverge over the millennia.

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Yes. If you regard the primary purpose as detaching the consciousness from the intricate entanglement with ordinary affairs, which as far as I am concerned is all that it is, then the method will differ for each individual since their involvements all differ.
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Stopping the incessant flow of internal conversation is the name of the game, and it's (meditation)  not the only way to do that. Trauma does it. Isolation and asceticism does it. Self punishment (flagellation) allegedly does it. Even lack of sleep does it. Some drugs do it.

I think it can even happen spontaneously, and then there's near death experiences as well.
That brings me to the thought, since psylocybin and other mushrooms are now starting to become so common, if there's something to be gained by doing it the natural way instead of "shocking" the mind with external drugs?
The reason I'm thinking about it is that I 've read about underground trip-clinics where people get "hooked" on the spiritual experience of merging with the universe. They want to experience it again and again.
Contrast that with a buddhist monk who trained meditation for decades, and then has his realization. He might be a kind and loving man, with enormous compassion, continuing with his meditation and helping people.
The young man in the trip-clinic, goes there once a week to get his dose of spirituality.
Is this good or bad? Is there a component that favours one or the other method?
I have a business colleague who is afraid of death. He went to an underground clinic and took a trip, and for a week or two afterwards he felt more in tune with the world and more spiritual and even hesitated to kill mosquitoes out of compassion. But then the effect started to wear off as life came back.
I don't know if it did anything long term, about his fear of death.
For me, the tetrapharmakon is as good a treatment as any! =)