A serious non-Buddhist

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Pulsar
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Re: A serious non-Buddhist

Post by Pulsar »

radix wrote
Buddhists don't even try much to convince those who have some interest in Buddhism, what to speak of approaching those who are hostile to it.
Have you ever tried explaining the first step of origination of suffering to anyone? even to a so-called Buddhist?
You said on another thread that many Buddhist have not heard of DO, which is the foundation of Buddha's teaching. What qualifies a person as a Buddhist?
I don't find a definition in the Pali canon. I find instances where people say they took refuge in the Triple Gem, without a clue as to what those gems are. You are smart, do you think it is possible to take refuge in Dhamma, without understanding DO, the foundation of the Dhamma?
In one scenario in the Pali canon Buddha is asked by a wanderer "How would you define a follower of Buddha?" Buddha replied "one who does not engage in identification" or something to that effect.
No wonder some great scholars do not identify themselves as Buddhists.
Do you see what enormous effort is required to be a Buddhist? Have you tried on occasion not to identify with your thoughts, or not to identify with people you see, things you hear, things you cognize?
you wrote
They simply dismiss those whom they deem as having too much dust in their eyes.
Can you blame them? Pali canon itself says If one can convince another it is one of the miracles.
With love :candle:
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justpractice
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Re: A serious non-Buddhist

Post by justpractice »

Sam Vara wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 8:27 pm Sure, taking something seriously doesn't necessarily mean accepting it. I take Christianity very seriously - more than medical diagnoses and treatments - yet don't accept it. I merely accept that it should be taken seriously.
With your head on the chopping block and the axe swinging down, how seriously would you take Christianity then?

What I was trying to highlight in my previous post was that there is taking something seriously on an intellectual, religious, or social level, and then there is taking something seriously on the level of one's fundamental predicament. The article's author is concerned with the former, but the Buddha's teaching applies to the seriousness of the latter.
"Whoever avoids sensual desires
— as he would, with his foot,
the head of a snake —
goes beyond, mindful,
this attachment in the world." - Sn 4.1
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Sam Vara
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Re: A serious non-Buddhist

Post by Sam Vara »

justpractice wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 8:56 pm
Sam Vara wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 8:27 pm Sure, taking something seriously doesn't necessarily mean accepting it. I take Christianity very seriously - more than medical diagnoses and treatments - yet don't accept it. I merely accept that it should be taken seriously.
With your head on the chopping block and the axe swinging down, how seriously would you take Christianity then?
Depending on the circumstances leading up to me having to put my head there, very seriously indeed.
What I was trying to highlight in my previous post was that there is taking something seriously on an intellectual, religious, or social level, and then there is taking something seriously on the level of one's fundamental predicament. The article's author is concerned with the former, but the Buddha's teaching applies to the seriousness of the latter.
I think you have chosen the wrong target there. One thing Bill Vallicella repeatedly stresses is that he philosophises not as an academic, but as a means to understanding the nature of existence and our possible salvation. He has what looks like a genuine interest in and respect for Buddhism, but claims he cannot consent to its tenets because of intellectual objections such as those outlined in the article.
Pulsar
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Re: A serious non-Buddhist

Post by Pulsar »

Radix wrote
If anything, I would describe the Buddha as rather aloof.
True. Was he not nibbanized?
When people asked him questions, he qualified this as "pestering".
Not always, it seems to me like he liked being pestered by Radha, an entire Radha Samyutta as evidence, and there are many more suttas associated with Radha in the Agama suttas, which Pali compilers chose not to include. I can think of others, for instance Vaccagotta.
you wrote
Like he was ready to give up on them at any moment. One speck of dust too much in your eyes, and you're done away with.
This is unfair. Buddha tried harder with quite a few and succeeded. Think of the nuns in MN 146, its Agama parallel reads better. In the agama parallel all the nuns became Arahants, at the end of discourse. I am sure some of those nuns had at least one speck of dust.
With love :candle:
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justpractice
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Re: A serious non-Buddhist

Post by justpractice »

Sam Vara wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:09 pm
justpractice wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 8:56 pm
With your head on the chopping block and the axe swinging down, how seriously would you take Christianity then?
Depending on the circumstances leading up to me having to put my head there, very seriously indeed.
Head on chopping block is the current situation. It seems as if you consider Christianity relevant to your current predicament, despite not accepting it. With my head ablaze, I don't take seriously practices that do not provide the necessary water to douse the flames. To each their own.
justpractice wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 8:56 pm
What I was trying to highlight in my previous post was that there is taking something seriously on an intellectual, religious, or social level, and then there is taking something seriously on the level of one's fundamental predicament. The article's author is concerned with the former, but the Buddha's teaching applies to the seriousness of the latter.
I think you have chosen the wrong target there. One thing Bill Vallicella repeatedly stresses is that he philosophises not as an academic, but as a means to understanding the nature of existence and our possible salvation. He has what looks like a genuine interest in and respect for Buddhism, but claims he cannot consent to its tenets because of intellectual objections such as those outlined in the article.
I appreciate the additional context, but from what I can gather it simply verifies the target was sound.
"Whoever avoids sensual desires
— as he would, with his foot,
the head of a snake —
goes beyond, mindful,
this attachment in the world." - Sn 4.1
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Re: A serious non-Buddhist

Post by Bundokji »

Permanence is the standard against which the ordinary satisfactions of life are judged deficient. Absolute permanence sets the ontological and axiological standard. The operative presupposition is that only that which is permanent is truly real, truly important, and truly satisfactory. But if, as Buddhism also maintains, all is impermanent, then one wonders whence the standard of permanence derives its validity. If all is impermanent, and nothing has self-nature, then the standard is illusory. If so, then we have no good reason to reject or devalue all ordinary satisfactions. Failure to measure up to a nonexistent standard is no argument in devaluation of anything.
I have sympathy with the author that he understands/analyses impermanence against the standard of permanence. Sankhara is dependent on signs of which "impermanence is thought of as a negative and permanence as a positive. His understanding of the "all" is mistaken because it does not link the first mark of existence with the second: If life is suffering because the "all" is impermanent, then permanence becomes a solution regardless of the state of being (his underlying assumption). Had he seen permanence as false solution equally dependent on signs, he would have seen the danger of existence. All it takes is to imagine permanence in hell as suffering.

It is therefore to be expected that he misunderstood the Buddha's solution as nihilism, rather than the middle path. It is his conclusion that is faulty:
The cure is faulty because it issues in nihilism, as if the goal of life could be its own self-extinction.
I find his attempt to differentiate between different types of change noteworthy. If impermanence is understood as a description of change/influx that is empirically observable, then the Aristotelian version of change is more on the mark. While i doubt that Buddhism is best used to provide theoretical basis to explain the ordinary experience, i admit that it is tempting to do so. Meditating/contemplating the four elements might provide some basis as to why certain experiences appear more enduring than others, such as the experience of a self that arises, persists and ceases.
And the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus, saying: "Behold now, bhikkhus, I exhort you: All compounded things are subject to vanish. Strive with earnestness!"

This was the last word of the Tathagata.
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Sam Vara
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Re: A serious non-Buddhist

Post by Sam Vara »

justpractice wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:42 pm
Sam Vara wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:09 pm
justpractice wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 8:56 pm
With your head on the chopping block and the axe swinging down, how seriously would you take Christianity then?
Depending on the circumstances leading up to me having to put my head there, very seriously indeed.
Head on chopping block is the current situation. It seems as if you consider Christianity relevant to your current predicament, despite not accepting it. With my head ablaze, I don't take seriously practices that do not provide the necessary water to douse the flames. To each their own.
Mixing metaphors offers us the opportunity to see them in context, I suppose. A head, on fire, on a chopping block, with an axe and water both to hand. What to do?

In reality, "the current situation" is that I am comfortably seated in front of my computer, with no immediate existential threats in sight, but with an understanding that life could get a lot harder at any time. And yes, given that I am married to a Christian priest and am temporarily safe from fire and axes courtesy of the Anglican church's largesse, then Christianity is indeed relevant to my current predicament. Not knowing for certain that Buddhism is somehow "more true" than Christianity, I tend to treat them both as something that different people favour, according to past experience.
I appreciate the additional context, but from what I can gather it simply verifies the target was sound.
Yes, to adopt this particular metaphor, the target is sound, but your aim was off. BV tells us he takes his thinking seriously as relating to his fundamental predicament. If I don't believe him, should I believe you?
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justpractice
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Re: A serious non-Buddhist

Post by justpractice »

Sam Vara wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 10:16 pm
justpractice wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:42 pm Head on chopping block is the current situation. It seems as if you consider Christianity relevant to your current predicament, despite not accepting it. With my head ablaze, I don't take seriously practices that do not provide the necessary water to douse the flames. To each their own.
Mixing metaphors offers us the opportunity to see them in context, I suppose. A head, on fire, on a chopping block, with an axe and water both to hand. What to do?
The Buddha's teaching tells us "what to do," but seeing as you're not certain Buddhism is "more true" than another practice you have already explicitly not accepted, then I suppose the mixing of metaphors would give rise to doubt.
Sam Vara wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 10:16 pm In reality, "the current situation" is that I am comfortably seated in front of my computer, with no immediate existential threats in sight, but with an understanding that life could get a lot harder at any time. And yes, given that I am married to a Christian priest and am temporarily safe from fire and axes courtesy of the Anglican church's largesse, then Christianity is indeed relevant to my current predicament. Not knowing for certain that Buddhism is somehow "more true" than Christianity, I tend to treat them both as something that different people favour, according to past experience.
Thanks for the background. It seems I'm the one at fault for assuming we at least had the common ground of a certain amount of clarity in regards to the Dhamma.
justpractice wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:42 pm
I appreciate the additional context, but from what I can gather it simply verifies the target was sound.
Yes, to adopt this particular metaphor, the target is sound, but your aim was off. BV tells us he takes his thinking seriously as relating to his fundamental predicament. If I don't believe him, should I believe you?
I wouldn't believe me or him. I'd be putting all effort into clarifying whether or not the Buddha's teaching was "more true" than other teachings.
"Whoever avoids sensual desires
— as he would, with his foot,
the head of a snake —
goes beyond, mindful,
this attachment in the world." - Sn 4.1
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Re: A serious non-Buddhist

Post by Sam Vara »

justpractice wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 11:00 pm
Sam Vara wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 10:16 pm
justpractice wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:42 pm Head on chopping block is the current situation. It seems as if you consider Christianity relevant to your current predicament, despite not accepting it. With my head ablaze, I don't take seriously practices that do not provide the necessary water to douse the flames. To each their own.
Mixing metaphors offers us the opportunity to see them in context, I suppose. A head, on fire, on a chopping block, with an axe and water both to hand. What to do?
The Buddha's teaching tells us "what to do," but seeing as you're not certain Buddhism is "more true" than another practice you have already explicitly not accepted, then I suppose the mixing of metaphors would give rise to doubt.
Certainty in these matters would, I think, require attainments that I don't have. I believe that Buddhism is the best practice available to me, but can't be certain, and I have to start where I am. Mixing metaphors don't cause doubt in me, merely the realisation that they are just figures of speech.
Thanks for the background. It seems I'm the one at fault for assuming we at least had the common ground of a certain amount of clarity in regards to the Dhamma.
That's right, but don't feel bad about it.
I wouldn't believe me or him. I'd be putting all effort into clarifying whether or not the Buddha's teaching was "more true" than other teachings.
That wouldn't really help in discerning the level of Vallicella's seriousness, would it?
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Re: A serious non-Buddhist

Post by justpractice »

Sam Vara wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 11:38 pm
justpractice wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 11:00 pm
I wouldn't believe me or him. I'd be putting all effort into clarifying whether or not the Buddha's teaching was "more true" than other teachings.
That wouldn't really help in discerning the level of Vallicella's seriousness, would it?
Not entirely sure if you're being rhetorical here, but I'll entertain the question anyway. Yes, it would. As I thought was made clear over the course of this exchange, I understand seriousness with the Buddha's teaching much different than you understand it. The seriousness that I refer to results in taking up the practice with great urgency and at the expense of any other potential serious practices in order to uproot the suffering at the root of one's existence (the Buddha's diagnosis and his cure would be the foremost of all one's conceivable concerns, in other words). It certainly does not result in flat-out rejecting that very suffering, the very basis of the teaching, and tossing it aside due to it being intellectually displeasing.

Vallicella may be very serious about the nature of existence and finding salvation, but he evidently holds that as a greater concern than he does the Buddha's teaching. At best, Buddhism offers him some useful ideas on his continuing quest for final salvation. A stepping stone on whatever path he's on. So maybe the question should be: is Vallicella serious enough about Buddhism? If I understand your position, along with your entertaining of his argument, you would answer yes. I would answer no, in light of what I said above and in relation to the contents of the linked article.
"Whoever avoids sensual desires
— as he would, with his foot,
the head of a snake —
goes beyond, mindful,
this attachment in the world." - Sn 4.1
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Re: A serious non-Buddhist

Post by Sam Vara »

justpractice wrote: Mon Nov 28, 2022 2:39 am
Sam Vara wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 11:38 pm
justpractice wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 11:00 pm

That wouldn't really help in discerning the level of Vallicella's seriousness, would it?
Not entirely sure if you're being rhetorical here, but I'll entertain the question anyway. Yes, it would. As I thought was made clear over the course of this exchange, I understand seriousness with the Buddha's teaching much different than you understand it. The seriousness that I refer to results in taking up the practice with great urgency and at the expense of any other potential serious practices in order to uproot the suffering at the root of one's existence (the Buddha's diagnosis and his cure would be the foremost of all one's conceivable concerns, in other words). It certainly does not result in flat-out rejecting that very suffering, the very basis of the teaching, and tossing it aside due to it being intellectually displeasing.
You seem to be confusing two things here. How would me putting effort into clarifying whether the Buddha's teaching was more true than other teachings discern the level of BV's seriousness? Unless you think I would thereby gain mind-reading powers, all that would do is to help me clarify whether the Buddha's teaching was more true than other teachings. BV's seriousness is another matter entirely.
Vallicella may be very serious about the nature of existence and finding salvation, but he evidently holds that as a greater concern than he does the Buddha's teaching. At best, Buddhism offers him some useful ideas on his continuing quest for final salvation. A stepping stone on whatever path he's on. So maybe the question should be: is Vallicella serious enough about Buddhism?
Again, that's a different question, isn't it? Your initial question was about being serious, but now you have changed it to being serious enough.
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Re: A serious non-Buddhist

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(Written very fast! I have little time, but the argument is...tempting!)

Reading Buddhism with the lens of Schopenhauer "all but Nibbana is suffering" is not a good reading. I would not slightly re-read all the Dhamma also with sister Vajira's eyes (which has a Milindapanna understanding of the aggregates) or with some other sparute passage that can be interpreted in various ways, have no parallel or, in one case, the parallel makes a lot more sense.

The problem is that the equivalence "all is suffering" (or "life is suffering") fails immediately. In fact not all life is suffering, and it is not certainly so for most of us. Life is a mix of Dukkha and Sukha and neutral sensations that greatly varies between lifes. The human realm is precisely the one in which the Dukkha is there, but not so much to bewilder and incapacitate the being. Even in the four noble truths we see that Birth is Dukkha, Old-age is Dukkha: what about youth without illness? If all is Dukkha, there's no point to distinguish between youth and old-age, or distinguish between separation from the loved or separation from the unloved.

We have to distinguish between feelings of Dukkha, grief, despair, lament, physical pain and the idea of Dukkha, which must be used skillfully and as a raft. The idea "all is Dukkha" is not Dukkha, but an evaluation, a thought, which have its role to make sense of the world, but it is not the actual feeling of Dukkha.

Only when this distinction is understood, I think, there can be meaningful discussion. Life is not only feelings of Dukkha or only-grief: this is, I think, pacific (and I would also say that this "all conditioned is Dukkha" is a bad thing to entertain without the understanding that it is a strategy to arrive at the happiness of non-delight and non-being, because one can miss the dependent-from-craving nature of Dukkha here and now about all the mental dukkha avoiding the happiness of the path: if all is Dukkha, what is the point of removing it? But that would be a digression here).

The only way in which one could say that all experience is Dukkha is that because it is Dukkha because compared to Nibbana everything is inferior and it is to be abandoned for your own welfare, which can be verified by ourselves and it is well-supported in the canon. But that is a very different message and again a perception/thought to be developed, not the actual feeling of Dukkha per se, it is just the perception of things being "Alien" that should be developed for purpose of dispassion. For example the cauterization of the lepers is Dukkha for the Buddha: why? precisely because he delights with what is superior: non-delight. But the feeling for the lepers is not Dukkha and, using the approach of the philosopher:
the impermanent is as good as it gets and as real as it gets and is good enough.
But that totally misses the fact that extirpation (understanding: the dispassion is natural and derives from a knowledge) of desire is happines, that the Arahant is Happy, the Arahant enjoys total-freedom, the path is for your welfare and happiness both now and in the future, and the main question of the Dhamma is "what will lead me to long-term welfare and happiness"?

So let's read the main argument:
For Buddhism, all is dukkha, suffering.  All is unsatisfactory. This, the First Noble Truth, runs contrary to ordinary modes of thinking: doesn't life routinely offer us, besides pain and misery and disappointment, intense pleasures and deep satisfactions? How then can it be true that all is unsatisfactory? For the Buddhist, however, what is ordinarily taken by the unenlightened worldling to be sukha (pleasure) is at bottom dukkha. Why? 

Because no pleasure, mental or physical, gives permanent and plenary satisfaction. Each satisfaction leaves us in the lurch, wanting more. A desire satisfied is a desire entrenched. Masturbate once, and you will do it a thousand times, with the need for repetition testifying to the unsatisfactoriness of the initial satisfaction. If it were fully satisfactory the first time, why would you be inclined to repeat the pleasure? Each pleasure promises more that it can possibly deliver, and so refers you to the next and the next and the next, none of them finally satisfactory. It's a sort of Hegelian schlechte Unendlichkeit, bad infinity. Desire satisfied becomes craving, and craving is an instance of dukkha. One becomes attached to the paltry and impermanent and one suffers when it cannot be had. One also suffers when the satisfaction sought is achieved but revealed to be less than what one expected.

There is more to it than this, but this is the essence of it. The thing to note is that the claim in the First Noble Truth is not the triviality that there is a lot of suffering in this life, but that life itself, as insatiable desiring and craving for what is unattainable to it, is ill, pain-inducing, profoundly unsatisfactory, and something to be escaped from if possible. It is a radical diagnosis of the human predicament, and the proposed cure is equally radical: extirpation of desire. The problem for the Buddhist is not that some of our desires are misdirected and inordinate; the problem is desire itself. The solution, then, is not rightly-ordered desire, as in Christianity, but the eradication of desire. The root (radix) of suffering is desire and that root must be uprooted (e-radi-cated). It is thus a radical solution.
The unsatisfactoriness of things is due to delight and craving. Dukkha as a feeling is not inherent in experience because it should need to be there all the time, while Dukkha as an idea of unsatisfactoriness is a problem only for those that search lasting satisfaction in the first place. So for those that craves. This again entails that Dukkha have a reason that can be removed: craving. Even the unsatisfactoriness of life is so because of craving it to be otherwise: you want a different existence (or experience) or non-existence (or non-experience). There cannot be unsatisfaction without the craving to be satisfied or things to be different in the first place.

Same with impermanence: if impermanence is simply that things ends, let's take a trivial example of a good film to make it simple, then it is the desire of the delight not-to finish the Dukkha of the film. That again, is something that is only for one that wants more. And that is why without craving, there's no suffering. Of course, one will not be interest to see the film since delight is no more for what is inferior.
But if, as Buddhism also maintains, all is impermanent, then one wonders whence the standard of permanence derives its validity. If all is impermanent, and nothing has self-nature, then the standard is illusory. If so, then we have no good reason to reject or devalue all ordinary satisfactions. Failure to measure up to a nonexistent standard is no argument in devaluation of anything.
Non-craving is permanent for the Arahant. I will also point out that DELIGHT is the root of suffering, not desire, which is the action of ignorance. It is the fact that inconstant and unreliable things gave us delight that makes us crave and then, in turn, will make us suffer or make us papable prey of suffering. But there's what is reliable that can give us delight too: and that is the absence of craving and ignorance: "Happiness in whatever ways is found". So the Buddha had very good reason to devalue all ordinary satisfactions: because he actually found a superior one with the characteristics that miss from the inferior ones: stability, non-disturbance, constancy, always-available, with no external conditions needed.

Then the question is not if life is Dukkha or not, but "what causes Dukkha in experience". From that point of view one can discover that the maximum pleasure is non-delight, non-being in debt and make renunciation our object of pleasure. This is something that everyone can do by himself, and his knowledge will be indipendent. You cannot argue with a monk that have the pleasure of renunciation or even stopped craving and convince him that having a Ferrari would be better. If he can stay 3 weeks with perfect happiness like the Buddha, no King can have the same all the time. At the same for the cessation of identity, we cannot convince an Arahant that having an identity is better (or even a stream-entrant, that already have this understanding, but he still maintain it): that doesn't require any argument, it is a self-evaluation indipendent of others that require only little imagination about the future since whatever arises passes away as well.
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Re: A serious non-Buddhist

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Sam Vara wrote: Mon Nov 28, 2022 8:39 am You seem to be confusing two things here. How would me putting effort into clarifying whether the Buddha's teaching was more true than other teachings discern the level of BV's seriousness? Unless you think I would thereby gain mind-reading powers, all that would do is to help me clarify whether the Buddha's teaching was more true than other teachings.
I was implying that if you were yourself to understand the perilousness of your situation in the way the Buddha described, which goes beyond the fact that you're comfortably sitting at your computer not experiencing any existential threats at the moment, then your seriousness would preclude entertaining any proposed seriousness of someone who outright denies the very basis of that situation. No mind-reading powers required.

Going back to the chopping block metaphor (just a figure of speech, remember), with my head on the chopping block and the axe coming down, along with an opportunity to free myself from that chopping block, I'm not going to regard someone who is rejecting the axe and the opportunity for freedom as being serious in any relevant way. Maybe seriously in denial, I suppose.
Sam Vara wrote: Mon Nov 28, 2022 8:39 am BV's seriousness is another matter entirely.
Yes, it is indeed! And as I've been trying to communicate this entire thread, I consider the matter of his seriousness as being inconsequential to the seriousness of suffering, and thus the Buddha's teaching in how I understand it.
Sam Vara wrote: Mon Nov 28, 2022 8:39 am Again, that's a different question, isn't it? Your initial question was about being serious, but now you have changed it to being serious enough.
It is a different question, proposed in a goodwill attempt to establish a common basis for discussing the difference in how we are taking Vallicella's seriousness. But calling his seriousness another matter entirely, as you did above, is much more accurate and what I was initially "targeting" and "taking aim" at.
"Whoever avoids sensual desires
— as he would, with his foot,
the head of a snake —
goes beyond, mindful,
this attachment in the world." - Sn 4.1
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Re: A serious non-Buddhist

Post by Sam Vara »

justpractice wrote: Mon Nov 28, 2022 11:37 am
Sam Vara wrote: Mon Nov 28, 2022 8:39 am You seem to be confusing two things here. How would me putting effort into clarifying whether the Buddha's teaching was more true than other teachings discern the level of BV's seriousness? Unless you think I would thereby gain mind-reading powers, all that would do is to help me clarify whether the Buddha's teaching was more true than other teachings.
I was implying that if you were yourself to understand the perilousness of your situation in the way the Buddha described, which goes beyond the fact that you're comfortably sitting at your computer not experiencing any existential threats at the moment, then your seriousness would preclude entertaining any proposed seriousness of someone who outright denies the very basis of that situation.
Blimey, it's all getting a bit complicated, but I don't think your implication is correct. Because I think I do understand the perilousness (peril?) of my situation, and any resultant seriousness does not preclude my entertaining the seriousness of someone who denies the basis of that situation. Not least BV, although I don't think he does outright deny the basis of that situation.
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Re: A serious non-Buddhist

Post by Ceisiwr »

My head hurts.
“Knowing that this body is just like foam,
understanding it has the nature of a mirage,
cutting off Māra’s flower-tipped arrows,
one should go beyond the King of Death’s sight.”
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