Ah... I see, so your claims are not contradictory when their assumptions are considered true.
What responsibility do relig./spirit. organizations have toward failed aspirants?
- Thread starter wynn
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Ah... I see, so your claims are not contradictory when their assumptions are considered true.
If it cannot be objectively determined then it is subjective, which is strictly a matter of the individual deciding for himself in lieu of full information.
If a god and individuals have the same traits, how do you distinguish them? I don't rule out such a "personalist" system.
Subjective experience and understanding. There are objective facts, but their bearing on the question may be debatable. In lieu of having all the information with which to determine truth value we must rely on personal experience, knowledge, intuition, etc..
Only insofar as they allow their beliefs to be swayed by others. I said that they can accept full responsibility, not that they necessarily do.
What, you don't consider yourself to have ever integrated things externally sourced as your own? How you respond to and your attitude towards things that affect you are still within your power of choice. If you've opted out of that then you have given up a large degree of personal responsibility.
Sounds like you just have a personal dilemma over the significance of your own choices. No organization can help you with that, but it has been shown that people are more ethical when they believe that their actions are not determined.
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2008/04/changing_belief_in_free_will_c.php
You can cultivate your sense of free will.
You don't recall at all.
If everything that happens is a god's will.
And
Individual choice exists.
Then
The free will of the individual is a portion of that of the god, ceded to the individual. Because it may be externally sourced does not mean that the authority of exercise is any less that of the individual. Same goes for the viewpoint that free will exists within a completely naturalistic world. Just because it is emergent from naturalistic processes doesn't necessitate that it is merely illusory. Stochastic processes are still naturalistic.
So no one ever developed anything new, huh? So what have latter people used to "figure things out" if nothing new could ever be postulated?
Really? Which came first, the enlightened individual or the spiritual organization? This is even easier than the chicken or the egg question...
Here's the crux of the issue... You can sit around waiting for someone to tell you what to do, and then whine when it doesn't work. Or you can take responsibility for your actions and learn from your mistakes. :shrug:
In that God is infinitely greater and more powerful than the individual entities and their source.
In Eastern system, they would probably call this "realization."
I'm not sure that in ordinary situations of choosing, all information is ever available.
No, I was talking about a more specific level, one that relativizes notions of one's own will vs. other people's will.
I think there is no need to venture into an ad personam here.
I just want to discuss this, as neutrally and precisely as possible.
Sure. But the concepts used in this cultivation are what interest me here.
Obviously, in a general psychological sense, the approach you suggest is perfectly in place, but it doesn't withstand closer scrutiny.
Those are truisms. The question is whether they are adequate to reality or not.
You do know that even the Buddha is by some considered an incarnation of God (so no wonder he came first and was enlightened), and also that from the Buddhist perspective, there can be only one rightfully self-enlightened being at a time? (Ie. as long as the dispensation of one rightfully self-enlightened being still exists, even in the slightest way, there can be no other rightfully self-enlightened being.)
That is your usual reply when you arrive at the end of your ability to discuss something.
Doesn't mean that everyone is as limited as you are.
:shrug:
Nonsense. This is what happens every time. Put the guy on a pedestal so you can rationalize your own failures. (not your's wynn, I mean in general)
Maybe it's because you appear to be looking for ways to avoid taking responsibility for yourself. Don't expect God, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed or the FSM to save you. It's up to each individual to work it out... Realizing that is the first step.Wynn said:
Buddha said:
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Yes, but he did not preach the exclusivity of his experience.
But can you distinguish the exercise of will? If you cannot tell the will of a god from the collective will of individuals then the only difference is the individual shares and cooperates in what a god is postulated to exercise absolutely.
I never said otherwise, and actually would assume such things as intuition to have developed for this precise reason.
In a causal world that cannot be avoided, but it does not make choices insignificant either. Actually, competition of wills adds significance to personal choice. What would be noteworthy about anything an absolute will may achieve, and relative to what?
So you want to discuss spiritual success, which cannot be otherwise than subjective, but you want to avoid any personal investment? There is no ad hominem implied here. It is simply a matter of your subjective view being the primary issue. If you're not willing to examine that then you probably aren't prepared to make any religio-spiritual progress.
Perhaps atheism or non-committal agnosticism would suit you better.
How so? If the desired effect is better ethics, as espoused as successful by most religio-spiritual views, and some way to achieve those is known, by embracing personal responsibility, then it seems your notion of "spiritual success" is what is lacking here.
If believing in personal agency over a strict determinism has an actual positive effect on actions, then it is demonstrably adequate to reality.
I dare you to provide actual quotes from the Pali Canon, and not some popular bastardizations of it.
Knowing which will is whose is sometimes seen as an important spiritual goal.
I'm not sure I understand your question.
How did you come to that conclusion??
Because that which we usually consider to be our "self" is a conglomerate of thoughts and emotions.
Surely you are aware of the Eastern critical notions of "false ego"; the false ego being our usual sense of self, based on our mistaken identification with our body and mind.
If it is true that we ordinarily walk around with a mistaken sense of self, then the question is how this mistaken sense of self affects our religious/spiritual choices.
I'm not talking about the dichotomy between free will and determinism.
Essentially, I think that a person's spiritual success is a team effort - their own effort plus the efforts of others.
I don't think that a person can make spiritual progress on their own. The input of others, in some form or another, is necessary, and needs to be acknowledged.
The problem is when others take it upon themselves to be our teachers (as normally happens when a person approaches a religious/spiritual organization) and expect us to follow their instructions - and then, when we fail, they refuse to take any responsibility for that failure and instead insist that their teaching was perfect, or that the student is the one to carry the whole responsibility, while the teacher has none.
This entire thread is a exercise is avoiding responsibility. Find your own quotes.
Yes it is, and usually to the ends of realizing it is your personal responsibility to choose to align your will to higher spiritual goals.
If will wasn't relative there would be no distinction for success.
Well, if you wish to exercise neutrality it is definitively without personal investment.
So what, is your freedom of choice terminally crippled until you sort that out? I would argue that, regardless of mistaken locus of identity, it is only through the exercise of free will that you are likely to cultivate any larger free will. People often have the mistaken impression that this requires denial of self. Quite the opposite. Any truer locus of identity would necessarily include the current self in a way that would merely seem like growth of that self.
Nonsense. Blame is how you further confine your sense of self, not how you expand it. If you wish to expand your locus of identity than you must be willing to take responsibility for others as well, even if initially only your reaction to them.
To the best of my knowledge, the Pali Canon says nothing to the effect of what you posted as supposed quotes from it.
And I can think of several suttas that are mistakenly interpreted as you posted them.
You haven't read anything from the Pali Canon, have you? And you nevertheless see yourself fit to judge. Fascinating.
All the major religions that I know of hold the view that a person's spiritual success is a team effort - their own effort plus the efforts of others, and that a person cannot make spiritual progress on their own; the input of others, in some form or another, is necessary, and needs to be acknowledged.
Cite some sources to back up that claim.
For example, from Buddhism:
Then the focus on having a spiritual master:
And from the Bible: