GENIUS FORUMS

Wow. You've been reduced to a serial one-line adhommer...

Leyla Shen wrote:Wow. You've been reduced to a serial one-line adhommer...

LOL (sweet irony). Adhomming by the way is when it's not about what is actually said ^^

Hm. Not really. After all, you've made no secret to me of your allusion to "very, very high standards, Leyla". Why you continue to associate with lowly ol' folk like me is the mystery, though.

Lol

Jee, thanks for the clarification.

Leyla Shen wrote:Hm. Not really. After all, you've made no secret to me of your allusion to "very, very high standards, Leyla". Why you continue to associate with lowly ol' folk like me is the mystery, though.

So you bring some off-the-record remark from outside the forum in here to interpret my possible motive. Hmm. I rather just discuss the topic at hand. Or are you gonna bail out. Faint perhaps? :-)

Usually, between the humour and sarcasm, there's an equal amount of something to address in your posts. The last was the worst I've ever seen. And, yes, I do plan to leave it alone given the obvious deterioration. Pointless to go on like this, no?

Wrong tool for the job, but it can be broken, according to the definition of the word.

Leyla, then lets limit ourselves to one point and I will let the disagreement on what Buddha wrote and might have meant aside.

Leyla wrote:The teaching here is that it is possible to live each day with courage and honour in the face of suffering (to live without delusions about life), not in some delusional euphoria built around the false notion that things don’t exist (for example) or that something in life is missing or lacking.

I'm struggling to see what you're saying here. Are you calling the idea that "something in life is missing or lacking" a false notion? Or did I read it wrong? How does it differ with Dennis his "there's nothing to fix" which I got the impression you opposed earlier.

Take the time to read my post, I did address that. Perhaps then you can tell me what's missing, eh?

Leyla Shen wrote:Take the time to read my post, I did address that. Perhaps then you can tell me what's missing, eh?

I just told you I didn't understand it the way it was written (as well the phrase: this is quite distinct from any notion of “brokenness” and “fixing”). Isn't there any other way you can explain it? What notion of brokenness?

Breaking and fixing focus energies and account for many expensive gifts, both literal and figurative.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt1W0F0yObg

Perfection accounts for brokenness.
Perfection accepts brokenness and everything else.
It's like a tree.
Perfection is the tree trunk, unmoving.

seeker,

Yeah, how could I not have, it was reflected so well I could have shown that to a 15 year old and had them understand. I know I only gave a couple of small examples, but reflecting attachment as "stopping" and "hindrance" which causes "tension" that mounts to what we perceive as suffering perfectly fits every experience of suffering I can think of. From pain to crying to craving. A fresh reference for clinging, embedded and locked in for the future.

The word 'news' is an anagram based in north, south, east, west.

It's the news.

Getting the north, south, east, west in it's boundedness as 'unbrokenness' gestalts boundlessness.
There's no surprises and yet surprising is the way of it.
Grateful for being.

Leyla Shen wrote:Wow. You've been reduced to a serial one-line adhommer...

Pow!

Right between the eyes...

Ding!

Diebert wrote:

Leyla, then lets limit ourselves to one point and I will let the disagreement on what Buddha wrote and might have meant aside.

How generous of you, considering I was addressing the “one point” (the buddha's first noble truth) you had referenced, and you were the one who quoted me out of relevant context as follows:

The teaching here is that it is possible to live each day with courage and honour in the face of suffering (to live without delusionsabout life)

Just to claim:

Damn, then Gautama should have just said "live with courage and honor". Would have saved everyone a lot of trouble discussing damned causality and why people end up having delusions about life.

Notwithstanding the fact that what preceded your quote snipping was this:

Really, I’m not sure what the problem is. Maybe it’s in the subsequent teachings?

A little more integrity would not go astray on you here. Be a man and admit it! Admit that you deliberately attacked me for the sake of your bloated ego by ignoring my having qualified the conditions of my reply.

~

Leyla wrote:The teaching here is that it is possible to live each day with courage and honour in the face of suffering (to live without delusions about life), not in some delusional euphoria built around the false notion that things don’t exist (for example) or that something in life is missing or lacking.

D: I'm struggling to see what you're saying here. Are you calling the idea that "something in life is missing or lacking" a false notion? Or did I read it wrong? How does it differ with Dennis his "there's nothing to fix" which I got the impression you opposed earlier.

(1)

Leyla Shen wrote:Take the time to read my post, I did address that. Perhaps then you can tell me what's missing, eh?

D: I just told you I didn't understand it the way it was written (as well the phrase: this is quite distinct from any notion of “brokenness” and “fixing”). Isn't there any other way you can explain it? What notion of brokenness?

(2)

I wrote:

The teaching here is that it is possible to live each day with courage and honour in the face of suffering (to live without delusions about life), not in some delusional euphoria built around the false notion that things don’t exist (for example) or that something in life is missing or lacking. It is from the latter condition that craving, clinging and attachment are born and develop; and this is quite distinct from any notion of “brokenness” and “fixing”. As if the Buddha—a wise and enlightened man—would never have fixed anything and lived, instead of a life of noble truth, one of ineffectual disorder and disaster. One doesn’t cling to a thing because it’s broken, one clings to it because of a real or imagined lack.

(1) No. I’m saying, with regard to clinging, craving and attachment, that the triad is born and develops from an experience of loss and/or lack and that it is possible to live each day with courage and honour, which is to say, without compensating for such loss/lack with deluded ideas about them. Further, in my last sentence, I suggest that the experience of lack can be real or imagined. It follows from these premises then that one can compensate for real lack with delusion and that an imagined lack is necessarily deluded.

(2) Brokenness and fixing are not deluded activities in themselves. Rather, they are ideas about the function of a thing as a whole and these ideas are not deluded unless what fuels them is a delusion based either on a real or imagined lack.

Anyone who does not agree with me is obviously not enlightened.

It may be the very sole purpose of those who disagree with me is a warning to others.

Leyla, as for attacking and integrity, it looks to me as if you, as well, have given yourself a free pass to attack everyone and question the validity of anyone's fundamental views (I quote "moron", "parody of wisdom") and often also with one-liners but then anyone who questions the validity of your insights or plays jokes with your own attitude is now suddenly being vilified as "attacker" without integrity. It strikes me as odd but not for me to examine further here. I'm not saying I've been an angel and I haven't been always nice with members for example lately Dennis, Cahoot, Alex, Being, John, etc. That's because I think people tend to make it too easy for themselves and in their thinking. That's what I'm challenging always and all the time, even when I might be wrong at times but how to find out?

Leyla wrote:No. I’m saying, with regard to clinging, craving and attachment, that the triad is born and develops from an experience of loss and/or lack and that it is possible to live each day with courage and honour, which is to say, without compensating for such loss/lack with deluded ideas about them.

Delusions are then here defined as compensations for a perceived lack or loss. Is that correct?

Further, in my last sentence, I suggest that the experience of lack can be real or imagined.

Do you mean the lack is real/false or the experience of it? I mean, is there something inherently different between the experiences themselves?

It follows from these premises then that one can compensate for real lack with delusion and that an imagined lack is necessarily deluded.

So there are real and delusional lacks which can be acted upon delusional or non-delusional. Is that correct?

Brokenness and fixing are not deluded activities in themselves. Rather, they are ideas about the function of a thing as a whole and these ideas are not deluded unless what fuels them is a delusion based either on a real or imagined lack.

You're saying fixing can be deluded or realistic because the brokenness can be delusion or reality.

My overall issue with this is that it doesn't address the original quote from Buddha about suffering. His statement was only about suffering, including realistic sounding events of birth, death, frustration about change etc. It doesn't try to distinguish between real and delusional experiences at this stage of analysis. Opinions on which experience is real or not can vary but suffering will remain suffering. And Buddha doesn't continue talking about which suffering is real or not but about cessation of all suffering.

All we'd know with your analysis (if I parsed it correctly) is that "there are delusions" and "some lacks are delusional". What seems important here is to ask when at root would anything become delusional and why, all in the most universal sense? This is in my opinion what the Noble Truths attempted to describe: how ignorance would be able to grow and in which circumstance so that it can be cut short with the right approach. In that context it might very well be okay to say nothing is truly broken since there's no way to be sure some "real" fix will do anything "good" beyond any temporary moral point of view, which remains provisional and ambiguous. When one person fixes an issue, the other thinks he's actually breaking stuff and so on.

This might sound all very abstract but it's about what's ultimately the case and what's not. Or at least this forum targets that subject.

When speaking the brutal truth consider if your interest is in the brutal or the truth.

*

“Why did Buddha explain suffering in the first of all his teachings? It is not because it was particular interesting, or that people wanted to know about it, but because suffering is universal, and everyone has had that experience. Suffering is not a subject about which we can agree or disagree.

“If Buddha had explained the nature of mind, for example, there would have been many who agreed or disagreed with him. We human beings are in general very limited. We have very strong egos, and, generally, people are convinced they have knowledge and understanding with their points of view.”- NNR

Cahoot wrote:When speaking the brutal truth consider if your interest is in the brutal or the truth.

And when avoiding brutal truth, consider if avoiding is because of the brutal or the truth.

“Why did Buddha explain suffering in the first of all his teachings? It is not because it was particular interesting, or that people wanted to know about it, but because suffering is universal, and everyone has had that experience. Suffering is not a subject about which we can agree or disagree.

If it's really universal then agreement about its universality is unavoidable. And yet not everyone will see the suffering carried with existence itself when hearing such teaching.

“If Buddha had explained the nature of mind, for example, there would have been many who agreed or disagreed with him. We human beings are in general very limited. We have very strong egos, and, generally, people are convinced they have knowledge and understanding with their points of view.”- NNR

As I wrote before, any position will meet opposition. It's the nature of anything arising, it's not about humans being "very limited". But it takes a strong ego to get far enough to release and see. The rest is left quoting nonsense.

Well of course you don’t look away. That’s pretty fundamental, little fella. Otherwise, the tendency to hide the broken under a mountain of bullshit.

I think the Buddha used suffering as the starting point.
To get clear on that first before going anywhere near doing philosophy because the philosophy required a certain 'compass bearing' as an access.

He worked one side of a polarity to begin. (suffering)
Like Diebert notes, in effect, exposing one side of a polarity opens up its other possibility.

Suffering denotes the constant quest for satisfaction.
Tethered to emotion.

It's just getting clear on how much suffering is 'mind on fire' and a recognition of the kinds of fuel it takes to stoke the flames.

Can we 'have' this 'havingness' of an 'unbroken' succession of going for pleasure and avoiding pain?
This dependent arising.

Dennis Mahar wrote:Suffering denotes the constant quest for satisfaction. Tethered to emotion.

It's just getting clear on how much suffering is 'mind on fire' and a recognition of the kinds of fuel it takes to stoke the flames.

When saying "how much...is", are you trying to distinguish here to between two types of suffering (dukkha) or several compontents to it?

Isn't the fire in our mind as well the world itself? Feverishly dreaming about being someone, doing something, somewhere and actual making sense.

Can we 'have' this 'havingness' of an 'unbroken' succession of going for pleasure and avoiding pain? This dependent arising.

Going for pleasure and avoiding pain is in terms of biology the way life find its way with reflexes, healing and growth. Then life cannot cease suffering!?

I speak a concept into your listening as a dependently related event.

It's just getting clear on how much suffering is 'mind on fire' and a recognition of the kinds of fuel it takes to stoke the flames.

Into your listening it has landed.

and you seek satisfaction.

D: Leyla, as for attacking and integrity, it looks to me as if you, as well, have given yourself a free pass to attack everyone and question the validity of anyone's fundamental views (I quote "moron", "parody of wisdom") and often also with one-liners but then anyone who questions the validity of your insights or plays jokes with your own attitude is now suddenly being vilified as "attacker" without integrity.

Yes, I have certainly been known to attack arguments with relevant insults. The difference is that I was addressing the particular argument at hand, whereas you introduced an argument that had not even been presented but only assumed on your part for the particular purpose of attacking me.

The question, my dear Dibsy, is, is the insult relevant to the argument? If you can prove to me that this it is the case in any given instance such an insult was not relevant to the argument presented, then and only then can you have proven an instance of adhom. So, the determinant necessarily is and always will be the argument itself and not any instance of supposed insult singularly quoted out of context.

Therefore, let’s talk specifics, eh, instead of letting you get away with more bullshit. The specific context in which you engaged in adhom is very clear here. Now, for me: Lol I wasn’t fussy about whether I first found the “parody of wisdom” context or the “moron” one. Turns out I found the moron one. So, let’s have a look!

SeekerOfWisdom, quoting L, wrote:

Leyla Shen wrote:data is false.

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

L: 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 » Thu Jul 18, 2013 8:25 pm
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).

by Leyla Shen » Thu Jul 18, 2013 8:31 pm
What I'm experiencing at this moment is a moron. Sure, it's empty; which is why it is possible.

Now, that’s where the adhom, as alleged by you, occurred. Yet, it was perfectly in context and relevant to the argument and counter-argument already presented. What happened in the conversation after this is, I wrote:

Diebert posed the question:

"How would you describe the experience of some phenomena being "permanent" instead of temporary or empty?"

Seeker of Non-wisdom provided an example:

You are experiencing appearances, they exist, that's what you know, that is reality.[...]

by SeekerOfWisdom » Thu Jul 18, 2013 8:53 pm
Yeah.

You know all you can directly experience are impermanent appearances, that's all anyone in existence has ever known.

Whatever reason your clinging to that holds these appearances (reality) as a reflection/representation, arises, then fades away just as quick, only proving the point; fleeting concepts are meaningless. Reality is not a reflection of something else.

And all appearances are transient so I'm not sure why you quoted that above.

So, even though all you can directly experience is reality (impermanent appearances), any reason you might have for “holding” reality as impermanent appearances are also impermanent and necessarily therefore the result of clinging!

Meaning, his argument defeats itself.

Now, would you care to tell me on what grounds my experience of a moron was delusional rather than real? Please provide your supporting argument, taking care to actually present as an argument anything new; i.e., outside of a rebuttal of the existing argument/counter-argument.

D: It strikes me as odd but not for me to examine further here.

Why should I be concerned how it strikes you, Diebert? Nevertheless, too bad I guess, because my intentions are different. What are you going to do, run away?

Leyla Shen wrote:Why should I be concerned how it strikes you, Diebert? Nevertheless, too bad I guess, because my intentions are different. What are you going to do, run away?

It clearly appears to concern you because instead of continuing the actual topic you're try to defend yourself with lots of energy! You're making all kind exceptions for yourself but if I would attempt to show you how my "one liners" were in context and relevant to the argument you will certainly dismiss it. You always win! You are always right! Others are left being intensive, attacking or lacking integrity. Reading that I can only encourage further self-examination before doing this particular victim dance again. Embrace your inner asshole and stop the bullshitting! :-)

Now, would you care to tell me on what grounds my experience of a moron was delusional rather than real? Please provide your supporting argument, taking care to actually present as an argument anything new; i.e., outside of a rebuttal of the existing argument/counter-argument.

Experiences are not "delusional". So nice straw man there. It's just that the noun is considered "obvious deterioration" in any public discourse. And that's just opinion. Why does that need "proving"? Are you going to "prove" why this post made you feel insulted? Just because I repeatedly questioned your understanding of something? Jeesh, do I have to walk suddenly on egg shells or something?

So, even though all you can directly experience is reality (impermanent appearances), any reason you might have for “holding” reality as impermanent appearances are also impermanent and necessarily therefore the result of clinging!

But earlier in this thread I questioned that directness. Your raw information argument. It's to me nonsense, some "inherent" thing in some "moment" of experience. I think what we call reality is constructed way further along in relation to a shitload of other processes and connections.

The Buddha is stark and uncompromising in his teaching, which is why it is so difficult for the mind/consciousness (existence) to dwell upon the fullness of its meaning. No wonder, to dwell upon it is to begin its walk to its cessation.

""Monks, held by two kinds of views, some devas and human beings hold back and some overreach; only those with vision see. And how, monks, do some hold back? Devas and human beings delight in existence, are delighted with existence, rejoice in existence. When the Dhamma is taught to them for the cessation of existence, their minds do not enter into it, acquire confidence in it, settle upon it, or resolve upon it. Thus, monks, do some hold back. And how, monks, do some overreach? Now some are troubled, ashamed, and disgusted by this very same existence and they rejoice in nonexistence, saying, 'In as much as this self, good sirs, is annihilated and destroyed with the breakup of the body and does not exist after death, this is peaceful, this is excellent, this is just so!' Thus, monks, do some overreach. And how, monks do those with vision see? Here, a monk sees what has come to be as having come to be. Having seen it thus, he practices the course for disenchantment, for dispassion, for the cessation of what has come to be. Thus, monks, do those with vision see." (It 49; 43-44)