r0ckyreed

Our true purpose never dies, it just changes as we learn more about the world and ourselves. Keep following your curiosity and inspiration.

What else are they doing? If they are actually contemplating and deeply questioning reality, then I have no problem with "meditation. The issue is that you will find monks and other people like Jianyu, who have IQs of 75 and have little understanding of reality after years of meditation. That concerns me. Meditation isn't enough to understand reality to its fullest. If all one does is meditates and follows Buddhism doctrine, then they are missing out of 99% of the rest of reality. However, I think a good point is made that it is a matter of the quality and kind of meditation that one does. I guess I don't. I thought I knew what it was. What more is there to meditation than counting breaths and repeating a mantra? I thought meditation was supposed to be simple, as simple as being present? I thought Buddhism was about alleviating suffering through its noble truths and eight-fold path? Anatta or no-self is only a 1/3 of Buddhism. The other 1/3 is anicca, impermanence and 1/3 is dukha, suffering. I prefer to be humble and curious. That is why I made this thread. The small clip gave me doubt, and I want to see what evidence there is or if there is anything that was missed or overlooked. So far, I have done satisfaction meditation really successfully. I am able to embody high levels of happiness from no external stimuli, but my understanding and intelligence hasn't change at all. Meditation has been a method for bringing peace to my mind rather than pure understanding. Can you see this? What insights cannot be gained through traditional meditation?

I don’t think any logician would say that God creating itself is logical. They would call that the fallacy of begging the question or circular logic. God is a fallacy in the logicians mind. How can something come from nothing? No logic can explain that. No logician would except magical thinking or magic as the answer. A logician sees reality as a kind of clock whereas a spiritualist sees it as a mysterious mind. Logic and mystery are at odds. The logician wants to make sense of the mystery. But the True Mystery of Not-Knowing puts logic in its place.

I guess meditation can be very broad. I think meditation is important to learn to not identify with thoughts and let them control you. And I also think it is good to let the mind wander for creativity. So I guess you could call the former Vipassana and the latter Do Nothing.

Realizing what existence is takes a lot of intelligence and wisdom I would think. God is more complex than calculus. But I guess you have a point that one could understand God but not calculus since calculus is something invented whereas God is something Absolute. But I would still feel like that the person who realizes God is more intelligent than a mathematician. Intelligence is such an interesting and complex concept. I think intelligence and wisdom are deeply connected. I guess you could have an awakening and stop learning after that. Yeah, awakening isn’t the end goal.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/13/tech/tiktok-ban-bill/index.html This is liberalism and conservatism in action. I personally air on the conservative side because I think TikTok has done nothing but lower the IQ and work ethic of its active users. There is a reason why it is called TikTok ("Tick tock" your life clock). However, the bill seems to be more about the potential for national security breaches. What are your thoughts about this? Should we be more lax about social media or should we be strict?

You imagine a reality with logic. If you stopped imagining logic, it would cease to exist. Logic is a language that is dependent on the mind. Why would God create such a thing? Because God is Infinity and Love. Love is complete wholeness and lack of bias that also includes bias. God includes all of reality that is bias and non bias, good and bad, logical and illogical, etc. etc. I would suggest that science is beyond logic. I could be wrong, but science is such a broad concept. The basic definition of science is "a method for deriving knowledge and understanding." Observation is science, meditation is science, psychedelics are science, academic science is science, witchcraft is a science, etc. The question is what kind of science do you want to do? What are you most curious about and how can you derive knowledge about that in the best possible way? Every question you ask will require to you invent methods to derive the answer. There comes a point where logic meets its limit when it comes to more intuitive ways of understanding reality. Academic science is only a narrow domain within Science with a capital S. There is nothing beyond science but our lack of knowledge.

Where did you get the idea of non-attachment from?

Where do you find logic? Can you find logic on a tree or in your hand or is logic something you project onto the world? Where did you first learn about logic from? How do you know that logic is logical? Is logic relative to our epistemology or is logic relative to a certain dimension? These are all good questions to contemplate. Somebody invented logic and fallacies. Logic is a structured way of thinking about reality and concepts. It isn't necessarily true because there are many nonlinear, illogical ways to conceive of reality that are also valid. Logic is relative to ones experiences. If you are an atheist, you think the idea of God is illogical. If you are a spiritual person, you think of rigorous scientists and atheists to be "illogical." The boundary between logical and illogical is not so clear cut. We imagine logic. What is true in all cases. Logic is only true relativistically to one's state of consciousness. There are insights that can be had about life that are counter to and beyond your rules of thinking.

But what do you think about the clip in my original post? It confirmed my deep-seated doubt that you can meditate for 50 years and never reach infinite intelligence. How can you raise your intelligence if all you do is sit and do nothing? To become wise and intelligent requires having new experiences and insights. There is only so much that can be learned at a university or monastery. What is an awakening if your IQ is still at 75? What is awakening if you don't even know any facts about the universe or how to simply live life and pay taxes and treat people with kindness and love? Just because one raises their consciousness to the realization of no-self does not mean that they are intelligent and truth-realized. There is more to it than cessations.

How is it wrong? It is literally what is stated in The Mind Illuminated? I don’t deny that creative people don’t use anapanasati or that it is useless. I doubt these creative folks are doing anymore than 1 hour a day. They do the meditation and then they forget about it and do their thinking. If all they did was anapanasati like a monk at a monastery, they wouldn’t be writing their books. At some point, you have to stand up and think deliberately.

Caring and Desire are good. The issue is selfishness not desire/attachment. That is what the Buddha overlooks. You can have desires and be selfless. But like Buddha says you need the middle way. You need to balance selflessness (self-denial) with selfishness (self-indulgence). It isn’t an extremity but rather a balance that makes one whole.

Ok. I agree contemplation can be considered a form of analytical meditation. The meditation I am criticizing is a anapanasati, where all you do is focus on the breath and then when you notice a thought, you keep bringing it back. Just imagine what this trains your mind to do if you do it long-term. It trains your mind to not think. I have had creative ideas and questions, but following the practice, I just noticed them then return to breath. At times, I would forget the ideas I had and I would notice myself naturally returning my attention to breath instead of instead of letting my mind wander. Mindwandering is essential to creativity, learning, and memory. Brute concentration has its limits. I don’t consider meditation and contemplation the same in this case. Anapanasati if done to the extreme can stunt learning, creativity, and memory. How can we learn, create, or remember anything if we cannot engage with our thoughts? This is my critique of meditation and people who are anti-thinkers. I do anapanasati only 10 minutes because of what I have stated above. I also do analytical meditation (I.e., contemplation), visualization meditation, running meditation, and satisfaction meditation. I believe meditation done moderately is good. But too much can create blood clots, sedentary lifestyle, and can limit my memories and learning. Being too present comes at a cost. The cost is lacking a vision for the future and slowly forgetting the past.

Logic doesn’t exist. Logic is relative within your given hallucination that you call reality.

Other people at the gym are your own mind. Others are imaginary the same as you. Reality is a hallucination. Oxygen, food, and water are hallucinogens to keep you in this Trip!

That's great! I guess there isn't much of a difference between contemplation and analytical meditation. What I meant by "meditation" was the practices that are designed to still and shut off the mind. Of course, it is a good practice to do and it is healthy to shut off the mind at times. But anything to an excess can become troublesome. I still meditate, but after that, I contemplate and USE my mind more rather than trying to shut it off. I think contemplation is far more practical and easier to do and has quicker results than meditation. At least, that is how it is for me at this moment.

Apologies for appearing too judgmental and nearsighted about that. I was looking at it from a narrow perspective. The monk made a sacrifice for something greater, even if I don’t agree with his methods. I have great respect for the courage and kindness of Buddhist monks, but my concerns about “enlightenment as meaning the end of all suffering” still remains. https://allthatsinteresting.com/thich-quang-duc-burning-monk

Lighting yourself on fire isn’t a symptom of happiness. It takes a suffering and twisted mind to even think about something like that. Detachment from the world and your desires does not mean you are free from suffering. That is what I think Buddhists get wrong. The Buddhist conception of enlightenment and happiness would only be applicable to 1% of humans. If only it was that easy.

Nobody has any idea what enlightenment is. That version of enlightenment is a Buddhist fairytale. Suffering is part of life. If you want the end of all suffering, then that is death not enlightenment.

Therapy isn't ineffective. Therapy in many places in the United States is almost too cheap. You can literally go to a university counseling center and get free counseling from an intern at some places. Other places offer free community mental health for low-income folks, but such places aren't as commonplace as private practices that will charge you $100-200/hour. At the same time, for what the therapist has to deal with, I feel like therapists get significantly underpaid compared to other professions. Therapists save lives, at least the good ones anyways.

It will stunt human curiosity, critical thinking, and much more.

Care about the meaningful, detach from the meaningless.

No. Curiosity in its simplest form is the desire to understand. Without that desire and intention to learn something new, your mind can never be open and receptive to insights. Look at MAGA folks. They have no insights at all because their minds are so closed off from curiosity, learning, and understanding.

I posted a thread with all the questions homework for you to complete. I don’t necessarily agree. Insight comes like lightening. But what helps insight is raising consciousness. The main ingredient is immense curiosity. If you aren’t curious, insight will be less likely. I talked more about it in my other thread.

Being banned is imaginary.