And so if your child were to be stricken with cancer and slowly and agonizingly withered away over a five year period, you would simply be indifferent to his/her suffering?For your point to be taken seriously, you need to explain how a person who is free of attachments can experience loss (and therefore suffering). Simple chest-beating on your part isn't going to convince anyone. Exercise some logic, for a change.
Even if a sage were to experience physical pain, he still wouldn't suffer. For he no longer craves any particular kind of state, and thus, no longer feels any (emotional) need to escape whatever situation he is in.
More false thoughts, David.
DQ: The mode of complete non-attachment is a permanent, static state which is perfectly consistent with the flowing, everchanging nature of the Universe. The unattached person is fully immersed in the flow of Nature, yet always remains unattached.
N: Non-attachment is dependent on attachment, it is dependently caused, it is therefore impermanent and unsatisfactory, which results in the perpetuation of human suffering. That which is dependent and intrinsically empty is not permanent.
This sounds scripted to me.
So then, like I said. If it is dependent, it IS impermanent and therefore can NOT be a static and/or permanent state as you claim.The non-attachment of enlightenment simply depends upon a wise brain that comprehends the nature of Reality and the elimination of attachments.
Well, for all intents and purposes and if you had the integrity, your argument should end here, David
The path to enlightenment can really only be travelled by healthy, stable individals who are looking to rid themselves of the suffering of spiritual ignorance. It isn't really for deeply hurt individuals who are thrashing around in a sea of past traumas.
In effect, it is a cure for the well, not the sick. The sick first have to become well, before they can make a bid for enlightenment. Psychotherapy thus has its place.
If a person is starving, he needs food before he can strive for enlightenment. Otherwise, he won't have the capacity or strength to go very far.
DQ: For your point to be taken seriously, you need to explain how a person who is free of attachments can experience loss (and therefore suffering). Simple chest-beating on your part isn't going to convince anyone. Exercise some logic, for a change.
N: And so if your child were to be stricken with cancer and slowly and agonizingly withered away over a five year period, you would simply be indifferent to his/her suffering?
And you would feel nothing for your child?
DQ: Even if a sage were to experience physical pain, he still wouldn't suffer. For he no longer craves any particular kind of state, and thus, no longer feels any (emotional) need to escape whatever situation he is in.
N: So if you walked in on a monster raping your wife, you would simply just stand there feeling nothing? Doing nothing to stop his actions?
DQ: The mode of complete non-attachment is a permanent, static state which is perfectly consistent with the flowing, everchanging nature of the Universe. The unattached person is fully immersed in the flow of Nature, yet always remains unattached.
N: N: Non-attachment is dependent on attachment, it is dependently caused, it is therefore impermanent and unsatisfactory, which results in the perpetuation of human suffering. That which is dependent and intrinsically empty is not permanent.
DQ: This sounds scripted to me.
N: More false thoughts, David.
DQ: The non-attachment of enlightenment simply depends upon a wise brain that comprehends the nature of Reality and the elimination of attachments.
n: So then, like I said. If it is dependent, it IS impermanent and therefore can NOT be a static and/or permanent state as you claim.
DQ: The path to enlightenment can really only be travelled by healthy, stable individals who are looking to rid themselves of the suffering of spiritual ignorance. It isn't really for deeply hurt individuals who are thrashing around in a sea of past traumas.
In effect, it is a cure for the well, not the sick. The sick first have to become well, before they can make a bid for enlightenment. Psychotherapy thus has its place.
If a person is starving, he needs food before he can strive for enlightenment. Otherwise, he won't have the capacity or strength to go very far.
N: Well, for all intents and purposes and if you had the integrity, your argument should end here, David
You’ve in fact reenforced my initial declaration that "Enlightenment is entirely, 100% ,unadulterated bullshit. Philosophical, New-Age, or otherwise. A dogmatic hang-over from the archaic past." ..."as effective as a prescription of Bloodletting, or as valid as a flat Earth."
Absolute, pure, mental masturbation for Brahmans, Kings and social leeches....er...ahh..I mean Sages, such as your self.
The enlightened person could get brain-damaged, which then causes him to lose this mode of non-attachment.DQ: The non-attachment of enlightenment simply depends upon a wise brain that comprehends the nature of Reality and the elimination of attachments.
N: So then, like I said. If it is dependent, it IS impermanent and therefore can NOT be a static and/or permanent state as you claim.
DQ: No, it is permanent and static. Once the enlightened person successfully reaches the mode of non-attachment, he never leaves it again. Even in death, he is still without attachments. He is free of all attachments - forever.
.You know what, you may be right, but it all depends on how you have come to understand what that word means or what is it that is supposed to happen, that is, if anything is supposed to "happen" at all. In any case, I prefer not to get stuck up with any particular word especially when others define it differently. As far as I'm concerned, it is nothing more than understanding the truth of existence through logic and reasoning
But perspective can not change to a permanent state. All that perspective is dependent on, is in itself impermanent.Once that is understood and accepted, all that would happen is a permanent change of perspective, and how you interact with your environment then on.
I will use one their definition’sJust that I may understand your POV better; how do you define enlightenment?
Have you experienced a permanent state of non-suffering?
Have you removed ALL false thoughts?
So then when you say...No. States are generally not permanent. I've removed all false thoughts momentarily, then the falseness appeared again. I've never consistently removed all false thoughts.
But if he's enlightened, he is free of all false thoughts. How is he experiencing false thoughts if he is enlightened?
Obviously, he's not perfectly enlightened if he experiences false thoughts.
That’s fine, it may be undeniable, so what. Does it alleviate human suffering? No.Ultimate truth is undeniable. If you choose to deny the blatant truth, you're only tricking yourself.
Exactly, Diebert! Nothing but concepts built on myth, ambagious metaphor and pointless allegory.About this "mental masturbation", does it involve also mental sperm and where does it go? Could it impregnate thought? Or do we need a mind fuck for that?
To the degree that I experience any emotional reaction, I am deluded and still under the grip of egotism. It would demonstrate that my mind is still gripped by the spell of things inherently existing, that I am still ignorant of the nature of Reality.
This doesn't mean that the converse is necessarily true, of course. The absence of emotional reactions in a person might simply be due to his skills in mental suppression, and not to any wisdom he might have. The fully-enlightened sage doesn't engage in any kind of suppression, and yet he still never experiences any emotion. There are no emotions inside him to either express or suppress.
Oh I get it now....So then if you walked in on this horrific scene, but at the same time, some street-corner preacher, was soap-boxing against Wisdom. Promoting ignorance and the crowd was being influenced and deluded by this ignorance. You would leave your wife to the rapist and tend to the UnWise preacher instead. Got it, all in the name of Wisdom!Which part of non-attachment don't you understand?
A sage operates spontaneously and unemotionally for the cause of wisdom. This is his nature. His decisions in each situation are entirely shaped by this.
Well, obviously, if we remove attachment from non-attachment all we are left with is, non. What part of dependently originated, inherently empty and impermanent don’t you get?Okay, so how is non-attachment dependent on attachment?
No, it is permanent and static. Once the enlightened person successfully reaches the mode of non-attachment, he never leaves it again. Even in death, he is still without attachments. He is free of all attachments - forever.
Well, I try to think for myself rather than simply listen, believe and follow. I think that is what you have been doing very earnestly without first analyzing it. Why are you bothered with what one claims? If you really have the fire to know about existence for your self then none of the others claims really matter. You are all alone when it comes to your mind.It’s not the definition that I have an issue with, it’s all the erroneous claims that Enlightened Buddhas have maintained for the past 3000 years.
I don’t get this. If I know something, I know, how can that turn into un-know? Unless I burst my brain cells for some reason. In any case, truth would however remain irrelevant of the knower, and the knower doesn’t seem to last long, let alone his “stateâ€.But perspective can not change to a permanent state. All that perspective is dependent on, is in itself impermanent.
In my opinion, permanency of a certain perspective is all that one can have until the perceiver is caused to un-perceive. And that is definite for no-thing could be permanent except the flow.This is the bullshit Quinn is trying to pass off. A permanent state dependent on impermanent factors.
I see nothing wrong with that. Things are truly as they are. Life is life, death is death, and sufferings are sufferings. I’m told that the Buddha’s quest was initiated because he wanted to eliminate the sufferings of sickness, old age and death, and yet here we are with all the three, but the fact of the matter most probably is, that that is existence and cannot be avoided for absolutely any reason, so why lament about and over these “sufferingsâ€? They are exactly what they are, face it! And be done with it.“To see things as they truly areâ€
?NOX, I am curious - what will you do now? I mean, when you're done fighting, rejecting enlightenment here.
What (other) activity is now in store for your thinking-life, your life
I was never a Fundamentalist. I set out in the beginning as an agnostic, to see if there is anything to the claims of Enlightenment, I maintained this agnostic mentality for years, throughout my entire investigation, right up until I concluded that it is NO different the any archaic ideology, or superstition.Whoa, fundamentalism falls hard, doesn't it . . . ..
Interesting. How is what I am doing any different then what I did in the past?I remembered you here once as an incisive and stern-ish schoolmaster -- making the rare appearance, correcting, cracking rulers down on knuckles here and there . .
oh, no difference in form, to be sure. huge difference in content. I must have been asleep at the switch to have mistaken your corrections to people -- on buddhism, buddhist scripture, the Void, the errors in David Quinn's interpretations -- as "agnosticism." I have gaps in my attendance here, I admit, but I never once picked up the spirit of inquiry from you. I thought you were a flat-out serious Theravada person. Just a guy who understood everything and tended to point out who didn't.Pye: I remembered you here once as an incisive and stern-ish schoolmaster -- making the rare appearance, correcting, cracking rulers down on knuckles here and there . .
NOX: Interesting. How is what I am doing any different then what I did in the past?
NOX23, could you give any indication what kind of results you would require to start reconsidering at least some of the 'erroneous claims' ?N0X23 wrote:Enlightenment is just another dogmatic assertion, debunked by it’s own inability to actual provide any useful, or tangible results beyond faith and intellectualization.
And it's hard to imagine that 'nothing has changed' for you. Following seriously a spiritual path, any such path, upsets and uproots all of our life. Even the 'erroneous' ones. If you'd really had crashed and burned, in some tangible way, it would prove at least you lived what you believed to be true, beyond intellectualizing.Nothing has changed for me, this is no different then when I found Christianity to be contradictory and dreadful mythology
DQ: To the degree that I experience any emotional reaction, I am deluded and still under the grip of egotism. It would demonstrate that my mind is still gripped by the spell of things inherently existing, that I am still ignorant of the nature of Reality.
This doesn't mean that the converse is necessarily true, of course. The absence of emotional reactions in a person might simply be due to his skills in mental suppression, and not to any wisdom he might have. The fully-enlightened sage doesn't engage in any kind of suppression, and yet he still never experiences any emotion. There are no emotions inside him to either express or suppress.
N: So as you watched your child suffer unbearably through the bleeding gums, vomiting., seizures and suffocation, you would feel absolutely nothing for your child. No more important to you, than a disease-infested rat, dying in a septic pool.
Wow, that’s fucking nice.
Does your child know that you feel nothing for him? That you wouldn’t give a shit whether or not, he lives, suffers or dies?
DQ: Which part of non-attachment don't you understand?
A sage operates spontaneously and unemotionally for the cause of wisdom. This is his nature. His decisions in each situation are entirely shaped by this.
N: Oh I get it now....So then if you walked in on this horrific scene, but at the same time, some street-corner preacher, was soap-boxing against Wisdom. Promoting ignorance and the crowd was being influenced and deluded by this ignorance. You would leave your wife to the rapist and tend to the UnWise preacher instead.
DQ: Okay, so how is non-attachment dependent on attachment?
N: Well, obviously, if we remove attachment from non-attachment all we are left with is, non. What part of dependently originated, inherently empty and impermanent don’t you get?
DQ: No, it is permanent and static. Once the enlightened person successfully reaches the mode of non-attachment, he never leaves it again. Even in death, he is still without attachments. He is free of all attachments - forever.
N: You will have to explain what you mean. It's easy enough to throw around accusations, but if you want to be convincing you need to back them up with solid reasons.
Bah, you're not a neuroscientist. What if it knocks out his higher reasoning brain areas and memory of all philosophy and his past life, and then without these he slowly begins to regain attachments like a child who lacks philosophy and a high level of rationality? Anyway, that's just the particulars, it not the heart of the issue. My point is that your last statement below is wrong(and might even be a flat out lie):J: The enlightened person could get brain-damaged, which then causes him to lose this mode of non-attachment.
DQ: If his egotistical pathways have truly been wiped away, then not even damage to the brain can bring them back. Instead, the result would be a functionally-impaired Buddha - depending on which parts of his brain have been damaged, of course.
You've gone overboard there trying to prove a point. You said yourself that non-attachment relies on a wise brain. Your version of non-atachment is dependent on causes, and causes can change. You can't know the future and can't guarantee non-attachment or a wise brain will remain forever. Reality giveth and Reality taketh away.DQ: The non-attachment of enlightenment simply depends upon a wise brain that comprehends the nature of Reality and the elimination of attachments.
NOX: So then, like I said. If it is dependent, it IS impermanent and therefore can NOT be a static and/or permanent state as you claim.
DQ:Once the enlightened person successfully reaches the mode of non-attachment, he never leaves it again. Even in death, he is still without attachments. He is free of all attachments - forever.
J: The enlightened person could get brain-damaged, which then causes him to lose this mode of non-attachment.
DQ: If his egotistical pathways have truly been wiped away, then not even damage to the brain can bring them back. Instead, the result would be a functionally-impaired Buddha - depending on which parts of his brain have been damaged, of course.
J: Bah, you're not a neuroscientist. What if it knocks out his higher reasoning brain areas and memory of all philosophy and his past life, and then without these he slowly begins to regain attachments like a child who lacks philosophy and a high level of rationality?
Anyway, that's just the particulars, it not the heart of the issue. My point is that your last statement below is wrong(and might even be a flat out lie):
DQ:Once the enlightened person successfully reaches the mode of non-attachment, he never leaves it again. Even in death, he is still without attachments. He is free of all attachments - forever.
You've gone overboard there trying to prove a point. You said yourself that non-attachment relies on a wise brain. Your version of non-atachment is dependent on causes, and causes can change. You can't know the future and can't guarantee non-attachment or a wise brain will remain forever. Reality giveth and Reality taketh away.
No, it was all very sincere inquiry.oh, no difference in form, to be sure. huge difference in content. I must have been asleep at the switch to have mistaken your corrections to people -- on buddhism, buddhist scripture, the Void, the errors in David Quinn's interpretations -- as "agnosticism." I have gaps in my attendance here, I admit, but I never once picked up the spirit of inquiry from you. I thought you were a flat-out serious Theravada person. Just a guy who understood everything and tended to point out who didn't.
My purpose and nature is Honesty, Truth and Wisdom. And this the reason that I am speaking out against these fraudulent claims, made by these deluded Gurus.
p.s. I really didn't think "what will you do now" was a stupid question (not that you did) (or maybe you did). Clearly, you have been involved in consciousness-raising and seeking for some time. I was wondering if you were done with it. Or perhaps what was next in this endeavor. Or no-endeavor anymore.
No, none. My certainty is resolute. I will not be tempted or confounded by ignorance.NOX23, could you give any indication what kind of results you would require to start reconsidering at least some of the 'erroneous claims' ?
No. You are strongly mistaken. I do not claim that enlightenment doesn’t exist, as a matter of fact, I have claimed to be enlightened by definition, several times through out this thread. My contention is with the false claims that the proponents of enlightenment declare.Trying to have a rational discussion with N0X in this topic doesn't seem to work. He has an agenda...to show you that he's right. That enlightenment doesn't exist...that there's no way out of suffering. I don't see the purpose in his agenda.
He might be right, but the truth should be seen by all: there is no way to disprove something like enlightenment. The mere fact that there are still people arguing about it proves this.
You prefer to maintain that semblance of hope. I mean you might actually have to consider that your seeking has been in vain and the ego will NOT let that happen.I prefer discussions that have a point. I like it when people are open to the truth. I don't like people who have firm beliefs. Especially when they're wrong.
Your attempted dismissal of my position is simply a defense mechanism. Don’t worry illusions cant last forever, no matter how hard you try to perpetuate them.So basically, I don't know why people are still discussing this. It comes down to the fact that we don't know if enlightenment is real or not. So perhaps we should find out instead of yapping away. Yap yap yap yap.
Well I didn't want to do this, but I'm going to have to bust out the infamous space-aliens on your arse. What if space aliens come around and zap him with their anti-non-attachment/pro-ego beam? What then? Enlightenment and non-attachment no longer. You enlightened folks must have a fear of space aliens to be sure - your last and greatest enemy.DavidQuinn000 wrote: His wisdom, knowledge and consciousness will surely pass away at some point, but this doesn't mean he will slip back into having attachments. On the contrary, he will have disappeared completely. Thus, it remains true that once an enlightened person sheds his attachments, he does so forever.
DQ: His wisdom, knowledge and consciousness will surely pass away at some point, but this doesn't mean he will slip back into having attachments. On the contrary, he will have disappeared completely. Thus, it remains true that once an enlightened person sheds his attachments, he does so forever.
J: Well I didn't want to do this, but I'm going to have to bust out the infamous space-aliens on your arse. What if space aliens come around and zap him with their anti-non-attachment/pro-ego beam? What then? Enlightenment and non-attachment no longer. You enlightened folks must have a fear of space aliens to be sure - your last and greatest enemy.
David that answer would make the slimiest politician proud. It seems you've confirmed my suspicion that you have been deceitful about this issue all along.DavidQuinn000 wrote: If a space alien were to wipe away a Buddha's enlightenment and knowledge, and plant a new ego in his brain, then in effect he would be killing the Buddha completely and replacing him with a brand new person. So the same basic scenario remains: the Buddha disappears without re-entering the realm of attachments.
