SkyPanther

Where did I say they were upsetting me? I said they were not upsetting me, I send them Metta. Trump does not upset me either, nor does ISIS. I see they are doing unskillful actions, but I have zero Ill will, hate, dislike or stress towards them.

There was a question asked in the OP, I answered it. Dealing with people that you personally find "difficult" can be used to point out the parts of your ego that is finding them difficult. By figuring out what is making them difficult for you, you can work out that part in yourself so that they are no longer seen as difficult. I am sorry if the label is upsetting, but words on a forum have to convey meaning.

You can call them lovely people, if that meaning convays people that you personally have non-equanimous reactions to.

Yes, provided that both parties are actively working on improving themselves (practice patience/Metta) it's win-win. I think ultimately if there is mutual respect, and we are following the Golden Rule, it's win-win for everyone involved. But people like Trump that divide people due to race, sex, creed, etc are not out to minimize thier ego. They are out to grow it. That is what the Buddha, Leo, Tolle, etc, would call an unskillful, unwholesome volitional action.

Well, everyone is "ordinary"; or do you mean people that aren't famous or infamous? I mean in the general sense, anyone that is perceived as "difficult" to deal with because of the choices they make, which are sometimes unskillful, unwholesome or "evil". Or as Leo would call them, ego/selfishness driven.

Lol, sorry if it comes off "brainwashed", I have been reading the Pali canon, so it's all still fresh in my mind, and I really like the word choice of the people that transcribed the Buddhas teachings. (Well, or technically it's the people that translated the Canon from Pali to English)

No, I usually send Metta to people that I sense are trying to play political games, and give objective answers without being dismissive, etc. Seeing it from their POV, and then trying to explain the other sides POV, the truth is usually someplace in between. I see it as people playing thier parts; "all the worlds a stage", I just refuse to take my queues from them in a reactionary way. They may want me to pick a faction, or side, but I refuse by remaining an observer. That is unless action is required because it will actually be a good choice for the company, department or customer.

In politics, yes, and no. I work in a large corporation with a lot of politics that I stay away from and do not take sides unless I actually think the decision is a good one. Around me people are usually nice; but with the 24 hour news cycle we are bombarded with "bad news", ISIS, Syria, democrats vs republicans, etc.. Fear driven news of people and places. Use these as your teachers. Instated of buying into the fear/despair/aversion.

Yes, the types of people you send Metta to. Ditto with Donald Trump. They are your teachers. If you have hate in your heart (or aversion) towards them, there is still work to do on your part. You can still acknowledged they are doing unskillful actions, (which is judgement) but you harbor no ill will towards them as people.

I think you misunderstand what I am saying. First I had difficult in quotes for a specific reason. It's another way of saying "so called". By difficult people I mean people that act with either a lot of aversion or ego; a good example is someone like Donald Trump. Or people who cut heads off and are members of ISIS. There is nothing wrong with seeing things as they are, and responding accordingly. I do not subscribe to moral and cultural relativism. As for Tolle and the Buddha, they are exemplars.

Not shying away from truth is a virtue. Some people are what Eckhart Tolle calls "unconscious" or the Buddha called either fools, unwise, or "with lots of dust in their eyes". These people should not be hated but loved, they help with development more than most think.

Heh, Yeap, this is true. Everyone wins.

To start off, I used to be an irreligious person. I was/am an Agnostic Atheist. However I had an experience that I cannot explain. The best way of putting it would be a deeper version of the "Overview Effect" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect a shift in world view. I work as a Software Engineer, and since I can remember, have had a deep attraction to gaining Knowledge, Science and a search for meaning of existence. Basically the “who am I, why is there existence instead of no existence" I read a lot of books on biology, information theory, quantum physics, time, process philosophy, Artificial Intelligence, etc. All secular science books. The experience is kind of hard to explain; Blissful Fear, I think about sums it up. It was like a cascade of "connect the dots” moments(of all the past knowledge I had acquired), which ended in a momentary loss of self(an expanded awareness, and no thought), and then a confusion/fear of what "that" was... followed by a sense of a weight being lifted off my shoulders that I did not realize was there before this. After which I had an understanding of a few things that I did not see before, but had previous knowledge of that was not “connected” until that moment: 1: That what we call the "self" is a compounded entity, a concept. Which I now see as Memory, Future projections based on memory, various emotions, genetic tendencies, and cultural programing. Words, labels, and concepts are all "empty" we give them meaning. I got what I would describe a two second divide between my thoughts/emotions and my identification with them. I could just label it a thought or an emotion, and ignore it. I also lost the “fear” of death because nothing "dies"; the ego entity is an illusion. 2: Entropy or change is constant. Nothing ever stands still, and nothing is ever constant, except entropy. 3: Things are connected to each other. For instance, a magnet has a positive and a negative poll, if you break it in half, you will still have both polls, because one poll cannot exist without the other. Love implies Hate, Black implies White, etc... One causes the other, and neither can exist without the other causes that preceded it. Essentially Cause and Effect, or Chaos Theory. And all of this is from a scientific perspective. I had a very superficial understanding of Buddhism before this all happened, I did not really meditate, though my job requires a lot of focus. I did have an understanding of Kamma which I did not so much “believe” but followed. Secular Humanism was my ethics system. After this experience happened, I had a week or so of a kind of euphoria, where things did not seem to bother me. Then that faded, but did not go away completely, though it did change into contentment/equanimity. Along with that, Race, Sex, Countries, etc, stopped mattering to me; not that they mattered to me to begin with, but it was more that I did not see a point of labeling people as their color, or sex, etc... all life on this planet came from the same single cell, and we all “want” the same thing, to be loved, accepted, etc, and try to avoid suffering. War became a dumb thing to do. Hate does not stop hate. Since then, by trying to figure out what it all means(I thought at the time, that I had a very pleasant mental breakdown), I eventually found Alan Watts, and then through him (Theravada) Buddhism, and have started Meditating. I still know there is a lot of cruft to clear up, etc, but I now know the path (from the Buddhist point of view, and speaking to people that lead the meditation retreats, I am at the Sotapanna stage). So there is still a lot of work to do.

Thank you for sharing that, I have not seen this but I will take a look.

Practice mindfulness with "difficult" people. For instance, how do you know you are patient unless your patience is tried? Being around difficult people is a workout for your mindfulness, and they can be the best teachers and show you places in your psyche that are still bound with a bit of ego.

Constant meaning change is constants, i.e. Impermanence The observer is the observed. Or, to put it in another way, we are the universe observing, and learning about itself. Because we have no memory of anything (beside this experience), and the awareness of now, which is always in flux.

Heh, from my point of view, It would be more like the things "outside" the universe, the unconditioned (quantum like) element that collapses into energy to become the building blocks of "the universe" (and all of us).

Narcissism is ego driven. You love yourself more than others. And "love" is not really at play. Acceptance is. "Being" is at play not "love". Meanness is usually ego driven, and excitement is usually not something sought out by people that are enlightened. In fact most feel happy being away from other people. (And renunciation becomes very easy.) Not being attached to emotions is different than being mean. Being mean creates bad mind states, so an enlightened person would not be mean on purpose. Their intent is not mean. Though it could be taken that way to people that have an ego driven sense of "respect". I think people just get upset that an enlightened person does not react the way they expect them to, and that is because "react" is ego driven. Lacking an ego, you respond. And usually the response is "I choose not to respond". I think outwardly appearances are very different from the internal ones, and people tend to project emotions/concepts on other people, so when a person does not react like others think they will, they get a bit freaked out.

Yeap. That is why people have the fear of death. An ego entity is afraid of not being(and/or fear of the unknown). Once you surpass that the fear goes away because there was nothing to die in the first place. The ego entity was an illusion.

This does not explain this: No Brainer. For decades now, I have been haunted by the grainy, black-and-white x-ray of a human skull. It is alive but empty, with a cavernous fluid-filled space where the brain should be. A thin layer of brain tissue lines that cavity like an amniotic sac. The image hails from a 1980 review article in Science: Roger Lewin, the author, reports that the patient in question had “virtually no brain”. But that’s not what scared me; hydrocephalus is nothing new, and it takes more to creep out this ex-biologist than a picture of Ventricles Gone Wild. What scared me was the fact that this virtually brain-free patient had an IQ of 126 Source: http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6116 Besides which, there are two assumptions. Which event goes before the other. The "mind" or the brain. They are dependent on each other. Is the mind acting on the brain to show the difference on the EEG, or is the brain acting on the mind to make you "feel" like you are not there. And besides that, check out: Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness (by Roger Penrose) http://www.amazon.com/Shadows-Mind-Missing-Science-Consciousness/dp/0195106466 And this is backed up by this: Discovery of quantum vibrations in 'microtubules' corroborates theory of consciousness http://phys.org/news/2014-01-discovery-quantum-vibrations-microtubules-corroborates.html Existence is not as cut and dry as materialists wish it to be. And I say that as an Agnostic that used to be a pure materialists.

Spiritual Enlightenment is the destruction of the ego. Once that happens, the fear of death goes with it, because nothing "dies". And the worry of what happens "after you die" is irrelevant. What you are talking about it just being a decent human being. You do not need to be enlightened to be one. All religions teach you to be a decent human being. They just add-on things that need not be included(usually from the culture), like how women should act, or who it is ok, or not ok to have sex with(homosexuality), etc... As for purpose, the purpose is whatever it is you give it. You are god. That is the best part. There is no "ultimate purpose", besides the one you give yourself. What are you good at? What do you enjoy doing? That is your purpose, if you want it to be. For someone that is enlightened purpose becomes meaningless. Just being (or not) is purpose enough. The root of all religions is the Golden Rule:

This is correct, and I would also not call the root of Siddhartha Gautama's (the Buddhas) teachings a religion. Though it has been turned into that via culture. If you go to Thailand for instance, there is a lot of Ritual, Idolization, etc, going on of the Buddha. Which is ironic, and funny, because the Buddha himself said that Rites and Rituals accomplish nothing, and he was a normal (but enlightened) human being.

By wanting something "after" death(which creates the concept of an immortal ego being (soul)), by propping up following laws, and rituals ( praying 5 times a day), you build up an ego that is "different" from the ego that is normally conditioned by nature. Nature of being human in a sometimes limited resource area. A cultural ego. Religion informs culture. And religion and god themselves are concepts. You change one form of conditioning for another.

I think if there is harm, it is absolutely fine to stand up for yourself. When there is "perceived harm" out of an event that does not need to have any meaning to it, but is given one by the ego, that is what you can ignore. Real Harm Example: Someone hurting you(or someone else) physically (Punching, kicking, etc). Perceived Harm: While Driving someone cuts you off (without you having to worry that you will hit them, or they you, etc) Perceived Harm: Name calling... someone making fun of you, or how you look. There is a Buddhist story that kind of points this out: The important part is bolded. You can decline someone else's verbal, or meaningless abuse that only "hurts" your ego.