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Josef bugman posted:Who/what created Dharma? Does it just exist prior to everything else? What set it all in motion (as it were)? Dharma can be translated as literally "truth", and "practicing dharma" could be said as "living in accordance with the universe". Noone created dharma and it is not specifically Buddhist, you can have Christian dharma, Hindhu Dharma, even humanist or atheist dharma. You can say the Buddha's dharma was created by the Buddha in one way (maybe in the same way Planck's constant was created by Planck) but it is like truth - noone creates or owns the truth, it's just the truth (you can own lies though). As for what set it in motion, idk but here's a cool Dzogchen interpretation. Note that Samsara comes about due to ignorance about the nature of the universe, which lead to actions that do not accord with it.
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Feb 16, 2020 23:48
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Josef bugman posted:So if the nature of reality is suffering, could not a goal be to end reality? Careful! Paramemetic posted:2) The Truth of the Cause of Suffering: Suffering is a characteristic of phenomena but it is not the nature of phenomena. All phenomena by nature are empty or without essence. Thus, suffering is not a characteristic of the phenomena. Instead, it’s a characteristic of the experiencer. Specifically, suffering come from ignorance, attachment, grasping, and aversion. Suffering occurs when we want something that is not the case to be the case (grasping), when we want something that is the case to not be the case (aversion), or when we want something that is the case to remain the case (attachment). We do those things (grasp, attach, fear) when we think that phenomena are real, or when we are ignorant to the nature of phenomena as inherently empty*. In any case, how would one go about ending reality even if one wished to?
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Feb 17, 2020 00:06
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Josef bugman posted:Simply allow heat death to occur. That or die continuously so that you cannot be part of the wheel. In the Buddhist worldview (at least as I understand it) the mind is primary, not physical reality. Even if this universe is destroyed a new one would pop up in relation to the ignorant mind not dissimilar to how the past and future pop up in relation to the present. Not only is the universe not innately hostile due to buddhas and bodhisattvas as Goldreallas says but the flip side of samsara is nirvana. The mind cannot be destroyed, as long as there are ignorant minds there will be a reality to experience samsara but the mind can be transformed to experience nirvana instead. The universe is not sentient other than you (as a sentient being) being part of the universe that is aware - you are the sentient aspect of the universe. Josef bugman posted:So what if we Crave non-existence. No, the mind cannot be destroyed. You could go to the formless realms or something which are very subtle though. I'm not sure you'd want to not be if you became a buddha.
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Feb 17, 2020 00:37
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Goldreallas XXX posted:This would be the cause of rebirth in the formless realm, specifically the realm of Ākiṃcanyāyatana: problem with this kind of rebirth is that it sounds like a long time (it is in fact a very very long time) and you aren't going to be suffering when you're there but eventually your karma runs out and like it was a dream you wake up (not remembering it) right back in the lower realms again no closer to escaping samsara.
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Feb 17, 2020 00:56
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Yorkshire Pudding posted:New question: I have really inflexible hips and knees, so even sitting basic cross-legged for me is hard. I basically have to be sitting against a wall or something, which tells me my posture isn’t good. Nothing wrong with using a wall for support, although you probably want to cushion the lower back and as said a raised rear end is probably necessary. A lot of postures ( including as the one Paramemetic describes) are designed (aside from being relaxed and stable) to optimise the subtle energy channels in the body but if you are too distracted by the posture to meditate that's not going to do you a whole lot of good. Some types of meditation require a specific posture but when I'm practicing shamatha I prefer something like a shavasana posture lying on my bed because I find it easier to relax. Unless the meditation requires something specific the best posture is the one that is most comfortable IMO, although a straight spine is important.
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Feb 23, 2020 19:39
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NikkolasKing posted:How important is getting a proper teacher in your opinion? This was a big discussion over on he Dharma Wheel forums back when I found it and posted on it for a while. Some think it's essential that you go and get personal instructions. I heard an anecdote that the Dalai Lama was asked something like "Is a guru really necessary?", he thought about it and replied "No, but one can save you a lot of time" (something to that effect). I personally don't see it as a reason not to practice in the meantime. As has been said there are plenty of podcasts and online offerings many of which are as authentic as they come as long as you do some amount of due diligence.
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Feb 26, 2020 19:24
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I'm making my way through Fearless in Tibet by Matteo Pistono at the moment which is a biography of the mystic Terton Sogyal. The dude was one of the most powerful tantric masters in Tibet in the late 19th / early 20th centuries and was a teacher of the 13th Dalai Lama. He was responsible for tantric defences of the nation as it was menaced by British India and Qing Manchuria from the outside, and corruption and sectarianism from within. It's a great book that combines a fascinating story with some of his practice advice and a good taste of the history of Tibet from that time. I'd recommend it to just about anyone - the Terton led an extraordinary life regardless of whether you believe he was an actual wizard. I'm lending it to a non-Buddhist friend when I've finished.
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Mar 9, 2020 21:58
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I remember reading (and this could be quite wrong) a theory that some senior monk had a beef with Ananda and so quite often in the Pali canon he's blamed for various things like the female Sangha. The other one I remember is according to the canon when the Buddha was on his deathbed he told Ananda something like "I could have lived for a whole other eon and helped countless beings if only you had asked me to Ananda, but now it's too late and I'm gonna die". Later on after the Buddha's death in most places the Bhikkhuni order was dismantled and female ordination was seen as a bad thing, so perhaps this monk (or someone following his lead) decided to blame Ananda for it bringing its legitimacy into question. zhar fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Mar 11, 2020 |
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Mar 11, 2020 14:44
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Thirteen Orphans posted:Beautiful. I think this can be developed after attaining one of the jhanas (meaning this way is not specifically "buddhist" as training in samadhi is not unique to buddhism and training to this level is not necessary for the sravakayana afaik). this dude, the Venerable Drubwang Konchok Norbu Rinpoche is the real deal and he can do it: https://youtu.be/GrWhX1BixBk?t=2216 it's a great film as well zhar fucked around with this message at 23:16 on May 5, 2020 |
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May 5, 2020 23:10
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echinopsis posted:Do the more esoteric buddhisims bring in "tricks" to advance toward enlightenment? well karmamudra is a thing but i'm not sure you're allowed to pay for it
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Jul 5, 2020 16:43
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Spacegrass posted:Is it ok to be a Buddhist and still believe in Jesus Christ? Anyway I don't think anyone is going to stop you and I wouldn't worry unless it causes problems. I am not up on my Christian knowledge and exactly what a belief in Jesus entails, I'm inclined to think it probably conflicts with certain parts of buddhist philosophy but maybe cross that bridge when you reach it? I'm reasonably certain you could be a perfectly practicing buddhist with a belief in Jesus and just avoid the conflicting parts in many traditions though, 84k doors to enlightenment and all that.
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Sep 21, 2020 21:48
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Refuge in the three jewels isn't just some ceremonial thing. The dharma jewel is the last 2 truths (cessation and paths), sangha is whoever has made progress along the path and buddha jewel is both the physical buddha and maybe the culmination of the path (may be a little different in theravada). After recognizing that there is suffering, one takes refuge from it by trusting the buddha as someone who had it worked out and that the path he taught is the way out of it. I think this may be the point at which one becomes a full-assed 'Buddhist'. It's supposed to be a virtuous cycle where the benefits of practicing the path produce more faith in the buddha (as his teachings turn out to work) which deepens refuge and inspires further practice, so it can start very shallow and doesn't require belief in anything too crazy.
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Sep 24, 2020 11:17
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I remember hearing somewhere (in a tibetan buddhist context probably drawing from yogacara, not sure if it translates to theravada etc) that there is a continuum of ones subtle energy or prana that is physical but not material, therefore exists within spacetime so you cannot be reborn back in time. If you can't be reborn back in time which seems to me to be the general stance, there must be a physical continuum, right? The buddhas mind however must transcend time in some way, in all traditions afaik the powers of the buddha include omniscience with respect to past present and future.
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May 10, 2021 22:15
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At a certain level of realisation you can be reborn as anything you want as in entering a dream lucidly with a form you have chosen. I believe HHDL has joked before about wishing to be reborn as a meadow if he chooses not to be reborn as another Dalai Lama. It seems to me that if there is demonstrable evidence of an AI having a conscious mind (which seems rather unlikely to me as there is no consensus on a definition for consciousness or any way to measure it within the scientific community, perhaps because it isn’t physical) and not just really good at imitating certain behaviours, it would prove the materialist theory of the mind being an emergent property of the brain (or logic gates in this case) thereby disproving the foundation of the Buddhist worldview and one would rationally have to discard the notion of rebirth altogether.
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Aug 4, 2021 17:04
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I didn't say there aren't ways to tell if something is conscious, just that it seems unlikely to be possible to do so within the framework of scientific materialism if the mind isn't material. I'm not going to stop using my toaster if someone adds a sensor and a speaker that imitates screaming when it gets hot (I may cruelly break the speaker).Nessus posted:I figure that there could be pragmatic demonstrations. How do we know we aren't just really good at imitating certain behaviors? Why, my post history is proof! My consciousness is self-evident to me because I am conscious of it, if I wasn't, I would be unconscious and be unable to comprehend it even to that extent. Even on a purely solipsistic level this is obvious. Nessus posted:An artificial intelligence would not seem to disprove the concept of suffering nor of rebirth... our brains all came from the expression of complex evolutionary genetic codes, but they had an origin, and they have an ending. One day, even if nothing untoward happens, there will be no members of the Earth species homo sapiens alive... but there would, I assume, still be people suffering and desiring. And the idea of a 'digital intelligence' seems to share a lot of traits with the description of the residents of the deva realms, from what I remember. I'll be the first to admit I know fuckall about AI. I'm remembering these quotes: Thomas Huxley posted:How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the djinn when Aladdin rubbed his lamp Donald Hoffman posted:Now, Huxley knew that brain activity and conscious experiences are correlated, but he didn't know why. To the science of his day, it was a mystery. In the years since Huxley, science has learned a lot about brain activity, but the relationship between brain activity and conscious experiences is still a mystery. and I don't know if AI researchers are actually trying to reproduce concsiousness or merely imitate it, but if they are going for reproduction I would assume they're trying to do it via the manipulation of logic gates and hoping for a Djinn. If this works then doesn't that mean in principle the mind is caused by, and can be fully explained by physics? On what basis can you say that there is something that is reborn after a power cut, why wouldn't the mind that arose as a property of the electrical configuration be extinguished with the electricity? but speaking as an authority neither on AI or buddhism I could be barking up the wrong tree entirely lol Nessus posted:Perhaps the ability to experience dukkha is a useful shorthand for consciousness? is a buddha or arhat conscious?
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Aug 4, 2021 19:27
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it's a thangka (wiki it) and id bet that's shakyamuni in the middle based on an image search where he always seems to be holding that bowl thing and I can't see anything that would mark him as someone else. there are resources online to decoding the symbolism, paramemetics last post in the thread is about it as well and he might be able to help you out more but i don't know much about it. e: definitely shakyamuni, the two figures below him are his two chief disciples zhar fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Aug 4, 2021 |
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Aug 4, 2021 21:41
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I’m not arguing against the idea of intelligence in artificial intelligence especially as it pertains to problem solving as I’ve certainly been thrashed by a fairly low difficulty chess bot more intelligent than me before. I don’t think that implies it was a sentient being possessing a conscious mind. As we both know in the Buddhist view the mind from previous life conjoins with sperm and egg probably sometime after conception (I don’t think it’s clear exactly when) and sure maybe it’s possible for a computer to be a suitable basis for that kind of conjunction but I think the only way to be sure is to wait for the proof. I looked up general ai and brain simulation (which doesn’t seem to be going anywhere soon) and I’m sceptical neural simulation would provide that basis. Demonstrably having an identical sentient mind repeatably emerge in the same state from a specific physical configuration (like reloading a save file on a video game) would disprove rebirth for sure as that mind is clearly being produced by that physical configuration. If it is not shown that the mind is an emergent property of the computer then maybe this doesn’t disprove rebirth. All hypothetical of course though and I think in practice we will not have to worry as sentient ai seems extremely unlikely.
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Aug 5, 2021 01:49
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Yorkshire Pudding posted:Is this a generally accepted view of rebirth? maybe not. that was a very bad post i fired off in a hurry using sloppy language. what I was referring to as 'mind' is the idea of the continuum of mental conciousness, but Ithink even this does have a pranic component. I was using conception to reason that rebirth into an AI/computer is possible, I didn't mean to imply that that was the only mechanism for rebirth (I can't see how you would have parents in the formless realm) but it does come off that way. Achmed Jones posted:having a mind require physical things to dependently arise does not "disprove rebirth." neither does a physical configuration leading to particular reproducible mental states. and that's ignoring the gross oversimplification of "like a save" when you're talking about something that is firmly in the realm of science fiction anyway. I agree. I tried to say in my last post I believe maybe it's possible for a mind to arise in dependence on a computer but the way I phrased it maybe implied something else, the only thing I think would disprove rebirth is if there was evidence the mind was an emergent property of the computer, that is the computer caused the mind. You're right that my example wouldn't prove that though, I didn't really think it through. Nessus posted:I have never heard this said as a specific statement on when the mind connects to the newly formed body. I don't think Shakyamuni spoke much about that specific, it would have kind of been getting off the plot. I do recall the analogy that rebirth is like lighting a candle from another candle: the two candles can be completely different, yet it is not incorrect to say that they shared the flame, right? Yeah, I think this is correct. If you simulated a bunch and they didn't diverge under the same conditions it would be worrying.
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Aug 5, 2021 12:31
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I was thinking a bit more about the AI thing and maybe I should clarify my own position and hopefully someone can tell me if I'm getting it wrong. I'm really sketchy when it comes to buddhist philosophy but at some point I was taught that everything has a substantial cause, eg the substantial cause of an apple tree is an apple seed and not a pear seed, soil, water or sunlight (the latter three being cooperative conditions). Something can't be the substantial cause for, or transform into something of a completely different nature. the mind has a different nature to the physical world including brain matter and electricity: although mental states can be inferred from and changed by the neural correlates and behaviour, the mind has no physical characteristics and even the wonders of modern science as rooted in physics have been unable to detect or measure consciousness (how much does a coma patient have, when does it arise and how much at each stage of foetal development etc) or determine the minimum requirements for conciousness to arise. The conclusion is that each moment of consciousness/mind has the preceding moment of consciousness/mind as substantial cause. I thought I originally heard this from a Theravada source but it seems it originates from Dharmakirti (goes through logic in more detail) so maybe not. I have no idea how widely held similar ideas are in buddhism as Dharmakirti is not a universal figure although from a cursory search I found this idea of rebirth consciousness in the abhidhamma which seems very consistent. There are obviously very different views regarding an intermediate state. The view held by scientific materialists of the relationship between mind and brain seems to be as I previously quoted like lamp and djinn or switch and light. Obviously switch position and light are correlated. it would be foolish to think the light switch is the light but less unreasonable to think the switch causes the light and likewise not unreasonable that the neural correlates cause the mind. I do not believe this is the traditional buddhist view. Neural AI simulation seems to depend on this view, and if a very realistic light switch was simulated in a computer and this resulted in light being produced, I agree this does not prove that the simulated switch caused the light - maybe it suggests the switch attracts the light or something. Personally I think noone will ever get light by simulating a switch but if they did it would certainly call into question my currently held beliefs regarding the relationship between light and switch and I have similar thoughts regarding brain and mind.
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Aug 6, 2021 20:32
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Achmed Jones posted:mind is one way of talking about observable systems. i can best make sense of you by saying "zhar is minded." I also wanna defend myself a bit here as when I was saying "not just really good at imitating certain behaviours" or seeming to have an observable mind, I was thinking of what is apparently referred to as 'narrow ai' or what my understanding of ai was outside of brain simulation. it's concievable that ai language processing and image generation get so good that you can have say, a visualised donald trump onscreen that you can call names and he gets angry in a way that the real donald trump might. my understanding of how this kind of thing works (based on the current method) is that you'd feed some fancy algorithm a big dataset of all the interviews and so on trump has done, language and so on and it uses some kind of magical mathematics to process what you're saying, distil this down and use how trump appears to react to things in other interviews (maybe augmented with how people generarlly react to thingss), the behavioural appearance of anger and so forth to poo poo out audiovisual information within some statistical margin of whats realistic enough. So it's been trained with what the word 'anger' means, with peoples facial expressions, definitions and so on and maybe it can infer with complex statistics from trumps prior interviews when he's angry and the whatever quirks he displays and generate something that looks like a genuine response, it really looks "minded", right? but this system has never been trained with the subjective experience of anger, it would be impossible to do so (in buddhist psychology anger is a mental affliction one is born with, not learned), it's just using complex equations and video files to generate an observable appearance of anger. to think that in the process of doing so a sentient being pops up and subjectively experiences anger behind the scenes and then dies is imo laughable and i'll have as much compassion for this ai as i do my toaster. Impermanent posted:does the switch cause the light, or does the switch allow the flow of electrons to create light? in this example i think the switch is a cooperative condition for the light like water for the apple seed (the latter) zhar fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Aug 6, 2021 |
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Aug 6, 2021 21:06
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Achmed Jones posted:oh if you're talking narrow AI it's easy. you just show it stuff outside of its applicability. then it clearly reacts in a non-minded way and we say "mindedness is not a good way to interpret what i'm observing about this thing" and we're done I just meant maths I have no hope of understanding when I said magic, not that it’s actually magic. It seems we both agree narrow ai isn’t going to do it though so I’m not going to continue this thread. Laocius posted:I’m no expert in philosophy either, but fundamentally I don’t see any inherent conflict between emergentism and Buddhist views of the mind. Buddhists don’t universally* conceive of consciousness as a “substance” that moves between bodies, but primarily as a line of karmic continuity that links each moment of consciousness to the next, including between lifetimes. I’d be very interested in a link or something to an emergentist school! I agree about the identical brain configurations to an extent: if they continued to behave and think identically for ever and ever that would mean they have not only very similar karma, like twins, but identical karma which seems unlikely. And I’m really not arguing that the human mind doesn’t depend on the human brain, otherwise id try to prove with by hitting my head with a brick but I’m not that dumb. I agree wrt karma to an extent but I’m still convinced by Dharmakirti’s logic that the brain doesn’t transform into a state of mind. Laocius posted:Especially in Buddhism, since anything you’re “born with” must be something you “learned” in a previous life. The mental afflictions like anger are derivative of the three root afflictions (kleshas) the king of which is ignorance which is the first link of dependent origination. How does one learn the cause of birth in a previous birth?
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Aug 6, 2021 22:31
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Achmed Jones posted:oh if you're talking narrow AI it's easy. you just show it stuff outside of its applicability. then it clearly reacts in a non-minded way and we say "mindedness is not a good way to interpret what i'm observing about this thing" and we're done Ok maybe I will return to this now I have a few minutes. One ethical problem is it’s entirely subjective what one considers as displaying “mindedness” so I’ll have to use what seems minded to me in these examples but maybe this isn’t your definition. A puppet can appear minded but obviously isn’t. A cartoon character is the same. I don’t imagine it would be too hard to make a little robot that scuttles around, runs away from heat and moisture and ‘dies’ with the battery, but similar to the previous examples it’s just a human mind figuring out what might seem minded to other humans, in this case programming it in without any fancy ai. Not sure many people would say it’s having conscious experience. For the same reasons an ai that’s been designed to do this automatically based on people clicking an angry face on a captcha that modifies some kind of statistical algorithm until it can compare some abstracted visual pattern with an arbitrary face which selects the same one as a certain percentage of captcha users, this still just human minds producing instructions to generate an image which hopefully appears realisticly angry and ‘minded’ to another human mind. I’m just not seeing where this new mind is arising from no matter how good it looks. Maybe it’s begging the question but yeah I don’t think it’s gonna have conscious experience kind of by definition. I mentioned kleshas in my previous post, I’m not going to double check a source or provide a citation for this one right now and I’m not saying it’s true but I’m reasonably confident it’s fairly classic Buddhism. If the mind was free from mental afflictions one wouldn’t generate karma for future rebirth, and if one could learn them why not an ariya bodhisattva?
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Aug 7, 2021 00:01
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Laocius posted:Until that situation actually presents itself, who cares? absolutely lol, 100%. this maybe also applies to emergentism: as far as I can tell there is no traditional buddhist school that asserts this, although I haven't looked hard. Laocius posted:Anger and the other afflictions are simply negative psychological habits formed over the course of our samsaric existence. We can only overcome them—unlearn them—because they are not intrinsic to us. This is stated most clearly by the tathagatagarbha school, which claims that enlightenment is our original state of mind, prior to the development of these afflictions If the enlightened mind existed prior to the development of the afflictions that generate karma leading to birth, how did it aquire them and wouldn't this imply a buddha could fall back into samsara by re-aquiring them?
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Aug 7, 2021 10:23
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If you feel like doing some kind of positive action, according to the Tibetan tradition when someone dies it would not be inappropriate to practice and do good deeds on their behalf ( whether meditating or donating in their honour etc), especially in the 49 days after their death (the max length of stay in the bardo) and this can actually benefit the deceased. Even if you don't believe that, it might help bring some meaning to their death and wouldn't hurt. Recently I learned about the Japanese art of kintsugi (funnily enough from a lana del rey song about grief). I'm sorry for your loss, obviously it sucks, and if it's only been a few weeks it is going to still be quite acute. But maybe the possibility exists that the process of figuring your way through the grief could have some value? I don't know. I don't think it's unusual to be confused, though. Just try to have faith that you will, eventually, come to some kind of terms with it. If things get overwhelming, that's probably the time to experiment reflecting that your thoughts and feelings are also impermanent, this too will pass. You could also try loving kindness/compassion with the cat as the object and similarly the reverse, visualise the cat looking at you with love and sending you love. Use discretion though, not ideal if bringing it to mind makes you miserable.
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Jan 26, 2024 01:13
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I have found these documentaries of individuals who spent 20 years in Chinese concentration camps getting tortured, starved and the like coming out the other end more loving and compassionate quite inspiring.
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Feb 24, 2024 17:48
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