GENIUS FORUMS

Kevin Solway wrote: There may be some young people who read that forum, and perhaps some that are not so young, who haven't yet bought into the whole thing, and suspect that there might be a lot more to the Buddha's teachings than what they are being told.

Someone blustering in and fearlessly speaking the plain truth might just be enough to make them see a little light and give them some confidence, before their light is snuffed-out.

Kevin do you recall Richard, I found an old discussion here.
http://www.theabsolute.net/phpBB/viewto ... =11&t=1012

Curiously there are some folks who have bought into his caricature of enlightenment and set up a group here

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/actualfreedom

I believe you can set the record straight for enlightenment and that Buddha and others did not mean this by enlightenment:

The Altered State of Consciousness commonly known as Enlightenment is a classic delusion of grandeur for how exaggerated an estimation of one’s own personality can there be than to consider oneself to be God or at One with God. In a monotheist society such an extreme delusion would be regarded as a severe case of mental illness, but in the current New Dark Age with the fashion for Eastern Spiritual belief this delusion of grandeur is coveted and regarded in the highest esteem. Sustained by passionate belief to the point of conviction, the Glamour, Glory and Glitz of not only becoming God, but having others worship you as a God, is a mightily seductive lure for the merely mortal ‘self’.

The greatest delusion of grandeur is the transition from ‘self’ to ‘Self’, from mundane mortality to Divine Immortality.

Looks like Laird's over there, too (earnest.seeker).

brad walker wrote:Looks like Laird's over there, too (earnest.seeker).

Laird tells me that's not him.

There is an unchanging rhythm to, and particular and fundamental fixation in, Laird's thinking, making him pretty easy to identify.

I doubt very much that he'd use a full-stop as part of his moniker. Not the proper use of technical language, is my guess...

Apparently I am the only one who can't find your posts, Kevin, despite having logged in and clicked on the link in this thread---or have they since deleted them?

Leyla Shen wrote:Apparently I am the only one who can't find your posts, Kevin, despite having logged in and clicked on the link in this thread---or have they since deleted them?

That link still works. My user name on that forum is TheWanderer, and I made the first post.

I've started up my own "E-Sangha" at e-sangha.net.

Please come along and register an account. We'll have more members than that other crowd in no time!

[Edit: It's now i-Sangha, at i-sangha.com, just to avoid any confusion.]

I've been researching this place a bit and have found it unappealing, to say the least.

It's massive popularity should have been the first clue - and was for me. Anything that appeals to that many people is automatically suspect, since most people are chock-full of all sorts of silly ideas and conditioned beliefs.

It appears to be a place which strongly undermines the various claims that Buddhism should not be considered a religion. Judging by the tone at e-Sangha, it is very much that - at least for the e-Sangha members. One finds a lot of the same sort of stuff that would be expected at a Christian forum - up to and including blatant theism and marginalization of atheism.

What the majority of people in any spiritual tradition are looking for is in fact faith-based religion. e-Sangha is popular because it caters to this, and marginalizes anything which questions the faith-based aspects. In this regard, it is scarcely different from any mainstream religious forum.

When it comes to philosophical and spiritual matters, anything popular should be regarded very skeptically. The facts of human nature and psychology dictate that popularity cannot be achieved without catering to nonsense.

how unfortunate. These buddhists have no clue what the buddha meant - kevin could have said what the buddha said - and he'd be repeating it - he could have said it in a different way - and it would be dismissed, because the two things are one and the same, but what they see is not the buddha and what kevin writes they see as obstructive to what they see as the buddha. As literal as they could possibly get, you'd think they gave some thinking to what the buddha was saying, instead of taking his teachings on blind faith, and dismissing everything else.

If the buddha was right, and they understood what he was saying, they have every right to dismiss everything that does not contradict, but kevin does not contradict in his posts, his fault mainly, is that he is not their personally idolized buddha.

Alot of these people were hopeless, one guy asked for evidence:

Kevin: I'm not saying anything different to what the Buddha himself teaches.

‘I am yet to see any evidence that supports this statement.’
The ignorance in his statement is clear: he has no evidence because the evidence would have to be in his own mind(understanding) and thus he has none.





Nontheless, several of them thought of a meaningless life as soon as they thought of not being rebirthed - that nothing mattered, why should one want to live once; really? .
I rather not live at all that than live once. How redicolous. Even if you were to be reborn, and thus alive for longer, why would you waste your time now, as a human, even? It seems that they have abandoned the idea of becoming buddhas, in the safe comfort of knowing that their future lives will pick up the slack. Comforting ideas of reincarnation and a somewhat virtuous life is enough for these buddhists to believe that their making some headway. They mostly slung off ideas of becoming Buddhas in a lifetime not because they knew it was impossible, because they wanted to create a rule that it was perfectly fine to fall short in your life because it took more than one. I wonder if buddhists know how many lives they have gone through so far; how do they know their current life is not to be THE oppurtunity? what if their next reincarnation leaves all oppurtunity gone? or is that going to frighten aswell.