What's the Point of Religion?

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Where are you from? What are the main religions you are talking about?

[HUNTEDvsINVIS]

It's not really a good idea to talk about it too much. I used to live on a different continent, 4700 miles from where I am now. Some of the indigenous people there have religions with similar "requirements" as the ones I was talking about. They mostly live in rural areas though, so I didn't really witness their ceremonies. We do have quite a few Buddhists here though, and I really like their religion. I've met some people from Myanmar, they are really friendly. They explained to me, in broken English, that Buddhism is big in their country. Some people maintain that it is the Buddhists here who always put food out for the stray cats. Maybe that is just an urban legend LOL. I mean I do see people tossing food at strays, but I can't be sure of their nationalities or religious identities.

[Cahoot]

Today I came across this article Deprivatization of Disbelief?: Non-Religiosity and Anti-Religiosity in 14 Western European Countries, published recently in the Cambrige Journal "Politics and Religion".

“There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Buses with these words drove around London and other British cities from the beginning of January 2009.

If that were on buses around here in Bible belt USA, people would be calling for someone's head. Of course, all of the offensive and oppressive Christian billboards are allowed to stand.

It's easy to see that these people are driven (or restrained) by immense fear. Try to discuss a reality with no God with one of these people, and they can't wait to tell you how you better "watch your mouth" or their sky-daddy will reign supreme justice on your ass. Logic goes out the window in the blink of an eye.

If religion serves any purpose around here, it's to keep the people unified in pessimistic closed-mindedness. This results in a docile society in which consumerism and indulgence run rampant. No wonder the fattest states in America are also the most religious.

Taking a more encompassing perspective, religion is like sex and food. It ups the odds of propagating the species (sex) by sustaining the individual (food) through hard times. It is not food, but under adversity it can maintain the will to find food.

The sustenance of religion is proven to be compatible with human nature by the fact of its existence.

Thus, in nature unaffected by delusional intent that runs counter to upping the odds of propagating the species, religion thrives, as evidenced by history, which is somewhat more convincing than opinion.

[Russell Parr]

Taking a more encompassing perspective, religion is like sex and food. It ups the odds of propagating the species (sex) by sustaining the individual (food) through hard times. It is not food, but under adversity it can maintain the will to find food.

Perhaps, but the point of training wheels is to eventually shed them.

The sustenance of religion is proven to be compatible with human nature by the fact of its existence.

The same goes for diseases.

Thus, in nature unaffected by delusional intent that runs counter to upping the odds of propagating the species, religion thrives, as evidenced by history, which is somewhat more convincing than opinion.

Disease is as rampant as ever too.

Religion certainly unifies people, but it certainly doesn't cure ignorance, especially in it's modern day form. Seems to perpetuate it actually.

[Cahoot]

Taking a more encompassing perspective, religion is like sex and food. It ups the odds of propagating the species (sex) by sustaining the individual (food) through hard times. It is not food, but under adversity it can maintain the will to find food.

Perhaps, but the point of training wheels is to eventually shed them.

The sustenance of religion is proven to be compatible with human nature by the fact of its existence.

The same goes for diseases.

Thus, in nature unaffected by delusional intent that runs counter to upping the odds of propagating the species, religion thrives, as evidenced by history, which is somewhat more convincing than opinion.

Disease is as rampant as ever too.

Religion certainly unifies people, but it certainly doesn't cure ignorance, especially in it's modern day form. Seems to perpetuate it actually.

Does religion cure disease? Depends on what ails you, and on the individual's capacity of awareness.

“The poor who are members of a compact group – a tribe, a closely knit family, a compact racial or religious group – are relatively free of frustration and hence almost immune to the appeal of a proselytizing mass movement. The less a person sees himself as an autonomous individual capable of shaping his own course and solely responsible for his station in life, the less likely is he to see his poverty as evidence of his own inferiority.”
Eric Hoffer
- The True Believer

[SeekerOfWisdom]

'He who is contented is rich.'

or

"Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

Btw Cahoot, you were more than correct in saying it's possible to live each day without any suffering. More than possible, it's easy. Suffering in essence is a deception.

[Cahoot]

'He who is contented is rich.'

or

"Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

Btw Cahoot, you were more than correct in saying it's possible to live each day without any suffering. More than possible, it's easy. Suffering in essence is a deception.

If not then Buddha got it wrong, but he was a talented prince and still had to struggle for years. Maybe not so easy for those of lesser talents than he.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

it's possible to live each day without any suffering

Buddha's first noble truth: "life means suffering".

This is the noble truth of dukkha: birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, illness is dukkha, death is dukkha; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are dukkha; union with what is displeasing is dukkha; separation from what is pleasing is dukkha; not to get what one wants is dukkha; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are dukkha.

Now how do you live without being birthed, aging, pains, errors, unpleasant experiences starting or pleasant experiences ending? Cease experiencing what everyone else is experiencing? It cannot having been anything like "living each day" for Buddha as he just described that as essentially suffering.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Can't argue the clarity of that quote. The words are clear cut.

"Life and death",
it is said and implied that this need not continue as is. The "unborn" is referenced.

Is it said that "unborn" and an experience of eating/sleeping cannot 'co-exist.

Discussion of this sort is heavily reliant on an experience based understanding or definition of "ending the craving for existence". And other terms like unborn.

How can one properly communicate what these are referring to? In my view it requires a mutual kind of co-operation to equate two experiences and two definitions with one word.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

And other terms like unborn. How can one properly communicate what these are referring to?

Welcome to the forum!

[SeekerOfWisdom]

The forum should invest in a welcome mat, would have saved me and everyone 1500 comments.

So, what do you think of the 'agenda' as described, an end to daily experience due to complete lack of desire for such an existence?
Letting go, the end, a process that comes with inevitable death? (Yet who'll be noticing or caring at that point aye)

[Diebert van Rhijn]

...an end to daily experience due to complete lack of desire for such an existence? Letting go, the end

Since we were ventriloquizing Buddha, here's the unbinding spell from the Nibbāna Sutta Ud 8.4:

• To the settled there is change, to the not settled there is no change. When there is no change, there is repose. When there is repose, there is no inclination. When there is no inclination, there is no coming and going. When there is no coming and going, there is no disappearing and appearing. When there is no disappearing and appearing, there is no here or there, or in between. That is the end of dukkha.

The key issue seems to lie in hard to translate words like "not settled", it's "independent" and everywhere released: unbound. As if consciousness wouldn't touch down on anything, not settle, not keep, not becoming?

• Human & divine beings delight in becoming, enjoy becoming, are satisfied with becoming. When the Dhamma is being taught for the sake of the cessation of becoming, their minds do not take to it, are not calmed by it, do not settle on it, or become resolved on it. This is how some adhere.
  
  Some, feeling horrified, humiliated, & disgusted with that very becoming, delight in non-becoming. This is how some slip right past.
  
  And how do those with vision see? There is the case where a monk sees being as being. Seeing being as being, he practices for disenchantment with being, dispassion toward being, cessation of being. This is how those with vision see....
  
  (Itivuttaka 49)

There's more to say of course but this might serve to focus a conversation a bit better if it's going to be continued.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Where have you been reading those Sutta's?

Here is the Pali Canon I've been looking at: http://www.palicanon.org/index.php/sutt ... ?start=125
Would you say this seems like an accurate source? It definitely follows the methodical pattern of repetition Buddha uses.

"whatever is conditioned and volitionally produced is impermanent, subject to cessation.’1143 When he knows and sees thus, his mind is liberated from the taint of sensual desire, from the taint of being, and from the taint of ignorance. When it is liberated there comes the knowledge: ‘It is liberated.’ He understands: ‘Birth is destroyed, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more coming to any state of being.’"
.....
"Whatever recluses and brahmins in the present enter upon and abide in pure, supreme, unsurpassed voidness, all enter upon and abide in this same pure, supreme, unsurpassed 'voidness. Therefore, Ānanda, you should train thus: ‘We will enter upon and abide in pure, supreme, unsurpassed voidness.’”

The key issue seems to lie in hard to translate words like "not settled", it's "independent" and everywhere released: unbound. As if consciousness wouldn't touch down on anything, not settle, not keep, not becoming?

That seems to be an accurate interpretation. Settled meaning in reference to immersion, attachment. As opposed to no attachment, no immersion. -Not being settled,

For example to be settled in, or immersed, in the experience of bodily formation or any formation as self, seeing these as self.

Or even to be focused on any formation with desire for it, a person or an activity, would be an example of being settled, - "the taint of sensual desire, the taint of being"

I can only see 'unsurpassed voidness' in reference to our experience as pointing toward one 'thing'.
That which isn't of the taint of being or sensual desire; the void, non-being, without attachment to any passing experience, not settling or being immersed in anything.

Now I know there are some others here that assert 'meditation' is useless as a practice, and I would agree as a short term practice it isn't of much value except to widen one's awareness, but I know Buddha referred to a student in meditation as 'having found the light'.

I understand this 'voidness' as something you 'reside in', not a practice with any goal, but a sort of resting place which is free of desire and being. We should both know it as a state which is indescribable, the void which you can't even remember yet spend hours timelessly experiencing seemings and nothingness.

Which would you propose? The end of becoming and suffering as a complete lack of attachment to existence, the end of daily 'living life moving toward death' which would mean no continued life, eating, etc, and so requires 'death' for the final end to this being, followed by nothing but the 'unsurpassed voidness'.
Or the possibility that this is simply referring to life continued as it is yet without any clinging and so no suffering?

I see the second 'possibility' as the truth though who knows, perhaps it is only an ongoing path until all desire for sensual existence has been completely snuffed out.
Here is a few descriptive references from another sage as to the 'final goal of the holy life' though he uses obscure descriptions of this state: (It seems he is referring to the second 'possibility' also, continued life yet without attachment)


17.8
Knowing Self,
mind empty and at peace,
the sage lives happily,
seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating.
17.9
There is no attachment or non-attachment
for one in whom
the ocean of the world has dried up.
His look is vacant,
senses still.
His actions have no purpose.
17.10
The sage is neither asleep nor awake.
He neither closes nor opens his eyes.
Thus, for the liberated soul,
everywhere there is only This.

18.29
He who believes he is a person
is constantly acting,
even when the body is at rest.
The sage knows he is not a person,
and therefore does nothing,
even when the body is in motion.

18.33
The ignorant practice
meditation and no-thought.
The wise,
like men in deep sleep,
do nothing.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Where have you been reading those Sutta's?

Here is the Pali Canon I've been looking at: http://www.palicanon.org/index.php/sutt ... ?start=125
Would you say this seems like an accurate source? It definitely follows the methodical pattern of repetition Buddha uses.

This time I used a text at accesstoinsight.org which offers at least two translations, one of them from Bhikkhu. I was also reading Bhikku's Paradox of Becoming at the same time, which has interesting material and translations in there on this topic.

In the end, no matter the source, translation or cultural understanding one applies to a text, its "accuracy" remains up in the air. One can only stab in the dark really or create a little canvas for a conversation to happen on.

I'll reply to the rest of your post later this week.

[Cahoot]

Now how do you live without being birthed, aging, pains, errors, unpleasant experiences starting or pleasant experiences ending? Cease experiencing what everyone else is experiencing? It cannot having been anything like "living each day" for Buddha as he just described that as essentially suffering.

One lives without suffering experiences by directly and perpetually experiencing the empty nature of changing phenomena.

The alternative, from whence births suffering and is the ignorance which results in suffering, is to erroneously experience phenomena as permanent.

Because the emptiness experienced is the root of all phenomena, and because experiencing emptiness directly is "how" to live each day without suffering, then the relative and conditional aspects of any specific phenomena are ancillary (thus equanimity).

[Diebert van Rhijn]

to erroneously experience phenomena as permanent.

So as long it's considered temporary and fleeting we all can indulge in ego, fiction, entertainment... I mean it's just for a few moments right?

[Cahoot]

to erroneously experience phenomena as permanent.

So as long it's considered temporary and fleeting we all can indulge in ego, fiction, entertainment... I mean it's just for a few moments right?

No. Those happenings lead to suffering when phenomena are erroneously experienced as permanent. Pay attention.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

So as long it's considered temporary and fleeting we all can indulge in ego, fiction, entertainment... I mean it's just for a few moments right?

No. Those happenings lead to suffering when phenomena are erroneously experienced as permanent. Pay attention.

How would you describe the experience of some phenomena being "permanent" instead of temporary or empty? What exactly is being permanent in each instance? We all know that nothing lasts forever, right?

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Yeah he makes a point, one isn't experiencing them as permanent as the point is that can't happen for what is impermanent, or experiencing them as self-existing since they are not. It is simply to be immersed,settled, attached to the experience at hand. This immersion is what leads to erroneous belief in the nature of the phenomena. Sensory desire, distraction,attachment is what obscures a wakefulness of impermanence. Though I do agree to experience these as they are, empty,is to be released from the apparent identity such as "suffering".

I'll quote that same sage, "The only cure is to realize what is seen is not there", a deception.

[Leyla Shen]

In other words, Cahoot, the idealists are suggesting that the senses/sensory data is false.

[Dan Rowden]

Actually, sense data cannot be false; it's only our interpretations and inferences that are false.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

data is false.

What does that mean exactly, that the data is 'false'?

[Leyla Shen]

Actually, sense data cannot be false; it's only our interpretations and inferences that are false.

Yes.

[Leyla Shen]

data is false.

What does that mean exactly, that the data is 'false'?

It’s pretty straightforward, really. It means raw information.

In the case of sense data then, it means the information received by the senses before it is systematised into the form of meaning (a complex of associated/differentiated data); concepts, imagery, abstraction. (Naturally, this only holds if you value coherent thinking and accept the obvious truth that we are experiencing things.)

The assertion, for example, "The only cure is to realize what is seen is not there" as it stands, presupposes that all sensory data is necessarily false, since “to see” requires first the sense data (of that which is seen) and next the complex of meaning, and it makes no distinction between the two.

Therefore, that’s not "the cure", it’s actually a deception.

The sort of abject idiocy that follows from this deception is clearly discernible in people who on a daily basis: avoid walking in front of cars, off cliffs, wear protective clothing, avoid drinking copious amounts of mercury, eat and drink and then deny those things are there or ever happened.

And this you want to call the cure for impermanence and suffering?

[SeekerOfWisdom]

You are experiencing appearances, they exist, that's what you know, that is reality.
Then you go on to imagine these experiences are some kind of reflection or representation, data received from an external source, this is your own problem. The essential nature of the totality is what you experience every day, there is no 'more', it is not a reflection of something else.

If you were to recognize this assertion of yours is an impermanent belief, a view that is existing only as momentarily appearing imaginations, then you might stop clinging to it.

Conceptual assertion is meaningless, it is of the same empty nature as all other appearances (which are all that exist).