No Self

Regarding this question specifically, I'm on the side of 'fail'. Jesus 'failed'. If this lifetime were the entirety of all existence, and if there were no natural consequences for harming others, maybe another approach might apply. But I'd rather be 'unsuccessful' in this lifetime and not have to go through future burdens. We are supposed to learn that love matters more than other stuff. This is a common theme in near-death studies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_Bahadur_Bomjon

Ah I see! Each religion has branches which offer the purest teachings and cast aside the political/egoic stuff. For example, Sufism in the Islamic tradition, Zen in the Buddhist tradition and Advaita Vedanta in the Hindu tradition. Anyone seeking more than belief structures or cultural traditions only need to look to the common essence that any of these 'purified' systems points towards.

I had a similar experience with a local meditation group. I want insights into the egoless state, not just an exotic-sounding method of reducing the stress of my 9-5 job. Sometimes the internet is a better resource.

The beliefs around rebirth and Samsara are where Eastern philosophy becomes more egoic and dogmatic. It loses its purity. For example, in having reincarnation, we are taking for granted a simplistic human perspective of time and sequential events. The physical universe as described by Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, and the afterlife as described by Near-Death Experience reports, both agree that time is far stranger than that. It can be said that everything is happening 'now'. Your past self of 10 years ago and your future lifetime are happening now, just at different points in a multi-dimensional space-time continuum. In a more practical sense, my understanding is that people have a choice in terms of whether they are reborn here or not. There is a lot more in existence than this world, or even this universe. The goal in the bigger picture seems to be reaching a state of mastery (expression of oneness and selfless love within the physical world, like Jesus), and then the whole process repeats. But as profound as all of this is, it all falls under the banner of beliefs from our perspective, so is not worth focusing on too much. Just rest assured that God knows what He's doing.

Eckhart Tolle has commented on this situation before. He says that true surrender/nonattachment is different from "I don't care", since the latter still carries the burden of an ego. If a compelling vision means "I will be happy when this or that happens", this is just a treadmill. But if the striving towards goals comes as a result of the joy of being, and there is no attachment to success or failure, you cannot go wrong and will be enjoying the step being taken right now. Normally we have to keep revisiting these issues over and over, as the ego will never stop trying to sneak back into the driver's seat.

@PurpleTree This is a great question. I'll do my best. Firstly, the word worship implies the duality of the worshipping entity and the worshipped deity, as per Western traditions (eg. the Good Shepherd and his flock). It is already missing the point from a nondual perspective. It is 'Westernising' the Eastern wisdom; the latter is offering the collapse of the ego and all these dualities. The world is beautiful in many ways, but a brutally honest acknowledgement of the 'bad' side inherent in everything (for example, death, ageing, failure, sickness, cruelty as opposites of life/new birth/success/wellbeing/compassion) makes us aware that one must have a bias, therefore a non-truth-seeking perspective to only see beauty. It is like having a coin but denying that it has 2 sides. Somebody posted a quote along the lines of 'the suffering of the animal that gets eaten is greater than the pleasure of the animal that consumes it'. Once the way of the Buddha has been followed right through, then all of life is beautiful because it is not seen as 'real'. The dualities are no longer believed in, yet the process can go on. I hope this makes some sort of sense!

It seems no different to traditional Western religious traditions. You've got an exclusive in-group, a future promise of salvation, a saviour (Donald Trump for fuck's sake!), a belief structure, claims of moral superiority, etc, etc. The difference is that the Roman Catholic Church had the right political foundations to survive for the better part of 2 millennia. The latest internet trend will probably be forgotten within months. But notice the common, age-old systems to exploit human psychology. We'd have to actually be conscious of this stuff in order to transcend it.

Yes, it just reads a bit like a deliberate misinterpretation/misunderstanding of the Eastern traditions to sneak in a promotion of fundamentalist Christianity. Not really possible to have a constructive discussion on those terms.

You are correct. The more correct statement is something like 'suffering is an unavoidable aspect of all life'. And the Buddha presented a genuine solution.

I must have missed the bit where everyone was worshipping death?

Extra toilet paper would be good. Trump will be spreading a lot of crap.

I love the poorly educated.

Just another opinion. No need to worry about all this self-love stuff. Be as you are.

You must question the questioner.

I tried foster care but was knocked back. There's a very long list of ethical reasons that make biological parenting out of the question for me.

The highest purpose is discovering what is true beyond superficial appearances. 'Feeling good' could be a motivator, since the masters describe all sorts of bliss, but in the short term, there is the destruction of comfort zones, chaotic confusion and the loss of all familiar identity. Certain movements (New Age, Western religion) are there for people who want to merge some aspects of spirituality whilst keeping the ego alive and well.

It is a substandard source, so here is the video from Maher's channel.

There was a group of psychiatrists who broke the Goldwater rule to warn the country that Donald Trump appeared to have narcissistic personality disorder. There is definitely no cure (with the possible exception of spiritual awakening, which I've never heard of in such cases). Trump has managed to turn his condition into a spectacle of entertainment. Not exactly presidential material, though. Eckhart Tolle has commented that such mental health conditions are just a more extreme version of the everyday ego-dominated person.

Yes, I posted the video link yesterday in another thread. Bill Maher is in a tiny minority of left-leaners who isn't afraid to question the actual reason for losing so often. I watch his videos religiously because they actually expand my mind, rather than repeating the same brain-dead leftist narrative. I remember how much of the 2016 presidential debates were fixated on nonsense like transgender bathroom rights. Is this really the sort of issue that the average, underpaid, unsupported American is concerned with? Now it's defunding the police and defending looting. Democrats could hardly be more out of touch if they tried. Get rid of the garbage identity politics and you'd have a party so strong that the Republican party would go extinct, and the Democratic party would need to be split into two to avoid a monopoly.

We need working brains before tackling any sort of problem.

Without a doubt! But the slim victory of Biden even under the extreme circumstances shows that there is much work to be done detoxifying the Democrats.

People like to play a game of being ridiculously biased to their team. Such people don't have anything to offer except inducing outrage inspired by their Facebook feed. The MAGA guy is saying that crime is bad, therefore it's fine for the police officer to commit a crime by murdering someone. There are unhealthy extremes on both sides as you say, but the larger party has to 'own' the actions of the extremists. And it is important to avoid enabling the sicknesses in either 'team' which will scare people over to the alternative side.

In the 0-2 age group, modern research says that one should respond without delay to all of the child's wants and needs. Food, attention, whatever. This builds up trust and confidence in the world as per attachment theory. In later years, one has to start to deal with behaviour that is more manipulative and it is more complicated to distinguish actual needs from whining. I personally like the idea of being a child's friend overall, but there's definitely an art to it. Sometimes discipline and boundary-setting is exactly what the child is appealing for with certain behaviours. A failure to understand this can leads to the bratty behaviour that Bill Maher is admonishing.

@Lindsay It's all good my friend. This is a topic that I'm very interested in, even if I'm not a parent myself. I used to work in child care and a lot of this stuff was in my studies. Plus I'd already done research just to try and figure out where my own parents went wrong. (Basically everywhere!) There was a big movement of promoting self-esteem in the 1970s, which gave rise to a lot of infamous errors like 'participation trophies'. It manifests in modern times in the enormous selfishness and entitlement of swaths of the population. One of the modern movements has been towards exposing children to risk. For example using 'real' scissors rather than those plastic safety scissors. Teaching children about being careful, responsible and aware. Also, promoting imaginative play by giving children a bunch of loose materials from a building site rather than, say, a colouring-in activity where there is a specific 'right' way to do it. Earlier this year I had 10 year old my niece over and let her drive my V8 car away from public roads. Very real risk and she was nervous, but felt very satisfied with herself afterwards. This is what builds real self-esteem and maturity, not being told she's a special snowflake or whatever people used to say! (As an aside, I made a video on YouTube about it, and some Karen found it offensive so it was taken down!)