Re: Joy of this, Joy of that

On Sun, 8 Dec 2024 12:10:55 +0100, D wrote:

I'm no expert, but I'd say the sitting version sounds more "original".
As for Watts, I'm always skeptical of those kind of new ages guys, but
very often people seem to be huge fans.

The story has several variations but the general theme is Gautama spent 6
years trying the various New Age techniques with no success until he
decided to plant himself under the Bodhi tree until he figured it out.

Then came the systemizers and the immense body of Abhidharma literature,
followed by the different schools arguing over interpretation.

I always had problems with some of those texts. Those people would have
loved LibreOffice since everything is enumerated lists. I can't reliably
remember the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the Twelve
Links of Dependent Origination let alone the subgroupings like the Five
Skahndas.

That's probably why I like Nietzsche; sprawling, self-contradictory, spur
of the moment aphorisms with no attempt to build a system. That's better
than Schopenhauer's 'On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient
Reason' which he claims is the key to understanding The World as Will.