Ask us about Buddhism: This thread is Avici

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask us about Buddhism: This thread is Avici

Perpetual Hiatus: Oct 29, 2011

Hello everyone, I was wanting to get some peoples perspectives and maybe some advice if possible. When I was younger I was quite a troubled person in some ways but over the last few (4-5) years I have really put a lot thought and reflection into who I am and the way thought and emotional processes work and just life in general. Over the last maybe 6-9 months I have been discovering that a lot of the attitudes and concepts that I seek to embody are also Buddhist principles, impermanence, non-attachment, being present and in the moment, trust of self etc.

It has been really great to discover these things have names and have been discussed and reflected upon for thousands of years, although I really am someone who must re-invent the wheel - I have to earn my truths or they just don't mean anything to me. I guess its probably time to get to the questions...

I have no real understanding of spirituality or religion other than that intrinsic or innate to my self, do you think that Buddhist texts and thoughts are able to be properly understood without having a lens of spiritual practice? Are there any books or lectures you could recommend that would help me to understand the place that Buddhism comes from? (I guess the mental framework of Buddhism in general not just the mindfulness aspects) I am not against religion at all but have honestly no experience in the spiritual except for experiences personal to myself. I got a lecture called Mindfulness and the Brain by Jack Kornfield and Daniel Siegel which was absolutely fantastic, and it really spoke to me but I would like to know about placing that in a context and just more about Buddhism proper.

How do you (personally) distinguish between your own (internal) truths, universal truths, and falsehood or misunderstanding? Do you have any advice for distinguishing the voice of clarity from your ego/mind/emotions/self-concept-preservation? I don't know the proper term but I think you will know what I mean, I guess I could say the light of the process of insight and reflection instead...

My friend who studies(?) yoga suggested that learning a basic routine would help me to focus in learning meditation and that meditation is a lot less about the mind and more about the interaction between the parts of your self, what are your thoughts on this?

I am probably really far off in my non-understanding of this but here goes: One of the central ideas is that it is the attachment brings suffering, how does non-attached love work in the Buddhist philosophy? Id also like to know what sexual misconduct means, which isn't actually very related to the last question surprisingly.

Please don't take this as trying to be offensive, that is the opposite of my intentions. If you believe in a karmic system of reincarnation how do you distinguish between suffering that is part of your/their purpose in this reincarnation and suffering that should be alleviated when possible? I really struggle with this concept when I try and think about it... How do you parse the horrors that man can inflict, is a child born into sex-slavery simply living out there karma? How do your beliefs balance the freedoms of will(choice and intention) against the experiences that people are apportioned? How does the karmic 'butterfly-effect' work?

And a final question to take the bad taste out of your mouth, when you meditate or dream have you ever met 'spirit guides' or similar archetypes? Or Bodhisattvas? Or yourself/your ego? If it's not too personal could you give a brief description of what they were like?

Thanks for reading through that wall of text guys, I hope it made sense.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2013 13:22

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 06:46

Perpetual Hiatus: Oct 29, 2011

Thank you for your replies, you have given me a lot to think about. I will take a few days to think over (and re-read) what you have said and then work out my next course of action.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2013 12:17

Perpetual Hiatus: Oct 29, 2011

I picked up a definition of karma (from this thread I think) that it amounts to "If you do good things then there are more good things in the world", and this concept brings me a lot of joy, as I love to do things simply for the sake of the doing and this simple statement so eloquently describes that.

Edit: I had a question but decided this was not the place to ask it.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2013 12:05

Perpetual Hiatus: Oct 29, 2011

I was wondering what your personal takes would be on deeper understandings of simple concepts, ie when you understand things at another layer of your mental/physical/emotional makeup... I feel like there are certain understandings I had to earn to understand, that may only be valid for my own subjective experience but resonate deeply with me. If I am attracted to those lenses then I am attached to my understanding of the world through that lense/frame which interferes with perceiving the world underneath that, but at the same time they are useful tools for not becoming attached to other thoughts or modes of consciousness. What are your thoughts on that situation? I should note I am not a proper buddhist I do find a lot of the tools very useful and beautiful tho in exploring the world and myself/not

# ¿ Dec 4, 2014 12:17

Perpetual Hiatus: Oct 29, 2011

Paramemetic posted:

I mean, yes? Okay? The idea that something "supernatural" was happening would be entirely dependent on the idea that the "natural" goings-on of day to day material existence are "actual" or "real" and that there's another class of actual or real existence that is greater than or even more real.

I am not a realized, enlightened being, but that doesn't seem logically consistent at all with what I understand to be the best descriptions available.

The "holy hush" regarding mystical experiences is not because they are "too sacred to share," but because they are, by their very nature, impossible to relay or communicate. "The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao" and all that. The conceptual understanding that comes from conceptual explanations are by their very nature deficient, if nothing else because they lack the qualia of the mystical experience. Just as we can't communicate what it is "like" to see the color red, we cannot communicate what it is "like" to have a peak experience, to have a meditative realization, or so on.

Reluctance to speak of such things isn't because of some kind of "pearls before swine" sacredness, but because it's a fruitless and ultimately misleading endeavor. The "ordinary mind" isn't, because the "ordinary mind" is a kind of experience that defies conceptual explanation. It can only be understood experentially.

Now, the trick to that is, of course, that it's impossible to know if "my" peak experience, enlightenment, non-dual awareness, or whatever matches "your" peak experience or so on. But that doesn't really matter, because if you attain that state of non-dual awareness or enlightenment or ordinary mind or so on, it seems as if you know, based on the reports of those who claim to have done.

Is it supernatural? Not really, what does that even mean? There are certainly reports, historical and contemporary, of supernatural experiences by mystics or others, across cultures and so on, but that doesn't mean that all mystical experiences are supernatural. Beyond that, even if they are, so what?

The experience is what the experience is, right? A person has an experience, they ascribe it meaning, they draw from it. In cases of "enlightenment" or non-dual awareness or so on, they are fundamentally and permanently changed, in a way not unlike astronauts experiencing the overview effect, although, reportedly, much more so. That these experiences are real can only be disputed if we are to try to claim the ability to assert an objective knowledge of the actual nature of other people's experiences, the ability to say, "actually, what you experienced is just..." and that ability, more than any kind of mystical experience, would be truly supernatural.

So, at the end of the day, the experience of the material world, the natural world, as "actual" and the experience of the supernatural as "supernatural" or "not actual" or so on is profoundly dualistic, just right off the bat. The reports, modern and contemporary, of individuals achieving realization are that it is a fundamentally life-altering, permanently worldview changing event. That's what makes these experiences satisfy the "transformational" element of transpersonal experience. Whether we say "oh, that experience is purely neurogenic and nothing special" or we say "oh gosh their consciousness has merged with the universe and recognized its non-dual nature" or whatever doesn't really matter.

What matters are the individual's own experience, how it has transformed them, what it means to them, and what it means to others when they direct us on how to experience that thing, if that's a thing we want. Inasmuch as the experience purports to bring an end to suffering, and that's a goal some people seek, it's worth approaching, and the approach is not benefited by trying to claim that people don't actually know what their experience was. I don't think any enlightened being has ever been troubled by being told "oh, it's all in your mind." Because, well, yes. That's something of the point.

In any case, tl;dr: I think that the "holy hush" and so on is less about the sacredness and more about the fact that it's supposedly a profound and transformative experience which cannot be communicated conceptually and thus can't be discussed at all really.

fake edit: This is the difference between Tibetan Buddhism's "outer, inner, and secret" distinction, incidentally, where the outer meaning is the observed meaning on its face, the inner meaning is the psychospiritual narrative that is communicated through initiation and so on by the guru, and the secret meaning is the one that can't be communicated at all, but has to be personally experienced, to which the guru can only point and guide the practitioner but which the practitioner must discover for him or herself. Nothing about "tantra is too sacred to taint with mundane explanation" and everything to do with "no really, any conventional explanation is by nature deficient, you've got to experience it for yourself."

I just wanted to say I really appreciate this post. It really succinctly draws attention to a lot of interesting concepts around understanding *whatever* from any standpoint. So thanks

# ¿ Jul 7, 2018 04:49

Perpetual Hiatus: Oct 29, 2011

Is compassion always the same, or is it responsive and fluid? Is compassion always passive? Can compassion be active? What does it feel like in your body, in your heart? How do you stay with that or allow it to inform you? How do you interpret what is a clear response to a situation, and what is not (its near enemy, or prior experience playing out, or a mental-model superceding the situation)?

Im not particularly a Buddhist (and no type of scholar) so I apologize for not having answers. But additional questions are free of charge. I believe all the questions you posted are worth considering, the difference between conceptual understanding and a *knowing* seems pretty important in life. My immediate reaction was to type the question below, I'll leave it there.

Is allowing someone to continuously harm you (or placing their need for 'uplifting' over your need to heal) showing compassion? For yourself, the person, or the interactions they will have with the world in the future?

# ¿ Oct 7, 2018 07:20

Perpetual Hiatus: Oct 29, 2011

TLDR; Can someone suggest a link to a solid (online) dictionary of terms used in Buddhism. Maybe a Buddhist encyclopedia based on original etymology (?) would be a better term. I know that the nuances of these words/experiences etc can be extremely complex, especially transcribing experiential phenomena and that I could read many books exploring these facets - but for now I'd just like a bit more context, not maps just a basic guide to the legends on the sides of some traditions maps.

I experience broken sleep a lot, and during one of these periods I was contemplating 'awake'ness, and how it differs according to how much capacity I have to experience (eg if I am in pain then a lot of capacity to experience goes into masking that pain, when I havent slept I conflate and confuse information easily), and how lucidity in dreams varies, I would say I have had dreams where I have greater capacity to experience what is in the dream than I experience waking life normally. Then there are the moments where you step beyond the dream content, or in waking life perceive a deeper layer or arising of something. Or I have heard people speak on dream yoga or people becoming realised in dream.

A point of this meandering was me realizing that my misunderstandings are greatly compounded by my mis-assumptions, eg in the original usage in this very particular meaning of a word (or several words) that eventually translated to 'awake' in English what were they pointing at? This also applies to my knowledge of lots of non-english-translatable terms (I hear people speak or I read about them and feel I have a sense of them, which may be a varying level of untruth).

A friend who practices yoga learnt Sanskrit to understand the subtleties of the practices, a lot of terms carry incredible nuance that does not translate easily or cleanly. His examples were beautiful and also a sobering moment.

I know that the nuances of these words/experiences etc can be extremely complex, especially transcribing experiential phenomena and that I could read many books exploring these facets - but for now I'd just like a bit more context, not maps just a basic guide to the legends on the sides of some traditions maps.

# ¿ Nov 13, 2018 10:35

Perpetual Hiatus: Oct 29, 2011

No-one in this thread knows about your personal life experiences, history, internal subjective experience, or anything other than the words you have written.
Most of the posters seem to have tried to be careful in offering advice.
Mental health and working with peoples perceptions of self and reality is really complex and nuanced.
For one person a meditative practice about grounding and getting into the body might be pretty life-changing, for another that will dump them straight into the abuse they have suffered.
I have read that some vajrayana practices described subjective experience appear similar to dissociative states. I have absolutely no idea of how true that is.
There are many many many ways to work with experience, its probably best to look into a range of approaches.
If someone tells you their path is the correct and only one for you, probably not the place to start.
My own personal opinion is that often subtler and less direct approaches and explorations can yield surprisingly large changes over time.
Also if you are working with someone the interpersonal relationship massively influences the outcome.
This has been statistically shown with psychological interventions as well as medication.
I assume that the same is true of a meditation instructor, guru, or a poster on the internet.
I dont know your situation or assume to make suggestions, but I felt like acknowledging both your situation/you because frankly thats the most appropriate response.
Good luck

I guess the above applies equally to RandomPaul and fffffffffffffffffff.

Perpetual Hiatus fucked around with this message at 07:36 on Oct 27, 2019

# ¿ Oct 27, 2019 07:06

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 06:46

Perpetual Hiatus: Oct 29, 2011

echinopsis posted:

Though I am super keen to experience it. I wonder if I�ve had glimpses but not sure

I was listening to a podcast with some older psychology/spirituality types chatting. Talking about the old days at Esalen, coming back and breathlessly to others 'do/did you *get* it?'. Then coming back from another retreat, 'do/did you *get* it?'. A warm shared chuckle.

Most likely there will be profound experiences that will change your (anyone's) perceptions of your (anyone's) self and the world. Epiphanies and breakthroughs, breakdowns. Frameworks and things will pop up, words and context (I asked this thread for links to a glossary to try and translate something I *got* into an idea). I think something I enjoyed from meditating fairly regularly was getting a bunch of different experiences simply sitting there, it provided a better context for my day-to-day experience. Boring, soul-crushing, blissful, pure fantasy, hard, soft, rapidly-flowing, still, epiphany, 'epiphany', counter-epiphany. Now its easier to move through my life and go 'well thats weird' (in a truly positive way).

Perpetual Hiatus fucked around with this message at 10:57 on Jan 20, 2020

# ¿ Jan 20, 2020 09:43

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask us about Buddhism: This thread is Avici