That would be a weird kind of happiness entirely separate from life. The challenge is to be OK with life as it exists now, without wishing you were something else. I would say unhappiness comes from the separation between fantasy and reality.
Why do we need a God?
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That would be a weird kind of happiness entirely separate from life. The challenge is to be OK with life as it exists now, without wishing you were something else. I would say unhappiness comes from the separation between fantasy and reality.
I'm a rather insignificant primate...so... yeah.
A certain Indian prince was convinced that there has to be more to life than merely pursuing happiness that is subject to aging, illness and death.
LG -
What do you think: How come some people (many, in fact) are essentially content with the status quo of material existence?
LG -
What do you think: How come some people (many, in fact) are essentially content with the status quo of material existence?
What are you talking about??
I don't hold any statement to the effect of "This is how God made it."
Sure: everything that has a beginning, also has an ending.
It seems you married Eastern holism with Western materialism.
Yes, I did, if not my beleif in God and etc... I would be dead right now, I thought about suiciding few times, but my beleif in God and trying to see the positive side in my problems as tomorrow will be better and that is another test and lesson in life, infact the whole life is lessons, you learn intill you die.
So, to me, yeah, I did need God, and I need God.
So, to me, yeah, I did need God, and I need God.
Now you are pretending that you aren't religious?
Probably. But we don't know if the universe had a beginning. We don't know that the Big Bang was the beginning or just a phase.
I don't think there's a difference. Enlightenment isn't the search for "something more", as in some other mystical reality, it's about being where you are here and now. When your mind is at peace, all you need to concern yourself with is the material.
When the old master *Hiakajo was asked 'What is Zen?' he said 'When hungry, eat, when tired, sleep,' and they said, 'Well isn't that what everybody does? Aren't you just like ordinary people?' 'Oh no,' he said, 'they don't do anything of the kind. When they're hungry, they don't just eat, they think of all sorts of things. When they're tired, they don't just sleep, but dream all sorts of dreams.'
I'd be really poorly off if I adopted your criteria for what it means to be religious ...
A contemporary Buddhist teacher noted recently that Westerners tend to approach religious texts "from a position of superiority and in terms of humanistic psychology."
I think it only seems that way. But to answer fully would slip the discussion into issues of free-will.
I aspire to many things but concentrate on the genuine options.
"Our own making" covers our evolutionary biology... and I'll leave it to evolutionary biologists to explain why we have teeth rather than bone or some other mechanism.
A more immediate and obvious problem of our own making is if we do not care for them properly... we eat corrosive foods, don't brush, don't get regular check ups etc. But it is material problem with material solution.
Aye, they're a pain... literally.
One can endure them philosophically... "It hurts, therefore I am!"
And I'm not familiar with eHow articles?
I don't have that bias, since I started with Buddhism. I thought you were interested in it too.
So we make ourselves and the things we get attached to temporary?
So its inevitable that one get attached to things that will shortly cease to exist.
If you think one can simply "decide" not to get attached you haven't thought the issue through deeply enough I'm afraid.
Even if one accepts that it is inevitable to get attached to things that will shortly cease to exist it doesn't mitigate an iota the consequential issues of individual and collective conflict.
How he made the material world - yes.
Given the incredible resources we pump into avoiding the inevitable ending of all things it seems hardly the case.
HOW is putting a lock on your door and getting burgled, seeing the dentist or having your teeth fall out or even living and being dead part of ultimately the same issue so that neither extreme warrants more attention than its precursor?
regardless whether we are talking about eastern thought or the teachings of jesus, we are not talking about the standard for happiness being the contact of the senses with the sense objects
Not in the sense that indulging the senses brings happiness. Only that the mind fulfilled needs nothing extraneous.
tamas - the essential ingredient of material existence.
hence the need of higher subject matters for the mind to dwell on other than the senses and the sens objects ... hence the need for god (or the notion that materialistic driven ego is a source of suffering ... or the doctrine that ego is essentially the abode of misery - since there is no viable alternative- if one is a buddhist)
No, quite the opposite. The senses are all one needs (if you are tired sleep, if hungry eat) if the mind is free from it's endless seeking. It's not the senses that make us suffer, it's the illusory need for something other.
We can't make something what it already is.
No, it's inevitable that we will all cease to exist.
:shrug:
You've lost me with this strawman, I'm afraid.
I have not mentioned anywhere about deciding not to get attached.
Perhaps if you indicate where you think I've said this, or implied this, then I can correct your misunderstanding.
I am referring to the inevitability of mortality.
Not sure what you're referring to, to be honest.
Who said it does??? Life has conflicts because that's what life does. We create problems for ourselves, sure, but those are problems we create, not problems with material existence.
You seem to think material existence itself is a problem that requires a solution, yet a lifeless universe has no problems that I can fathom. Can you?
If you can answer what problems such a universe has then perhaps I could understand your position better with regard material existence.
Wow - in this one sentence you say there is a "need for God"... and then immediately offer an alternative which thus negates the "need for God". Just a stunning line of self-contradiction all in a single sentence.
"Yes - we all need God... or something else that is not God." :shrug:
And your comment further suggests to me that God is merely a conception, a tool if you will, used to assist in alleviating any anxiety one may be suffering in their material existence. And if not God then some other idea.
And it does this by stimulating material patterns in the material brain, giving rise to material effects.
Yep - we all need God... or something that is not God... or we don't.
An interesting experiment would be to put a number of objects of cultural value, such as a computer, a stack of money and a valuable painting in front of a dog. Although all these things have value to us, the dog would be oblivious to this value. Unless these objects smells like food and can directly correspond to his limited sensory expectation of what is valuable to a dog, he can not comprehend any value.