Compassion and cooperation seem to fall out of iterated games
for a simple explanation

https://ncase.me/trust/

I'm assuming from your use of ontology and determinism that you are more convinced by rational means.

In any case the self vs no self debate has been going on forever between Vedic and Buddhist camps it seems to me like your choice if you prefer 1 or 0. It's like arbitrary choice between identity of multiplication vs identity of addition. Both are identities of their respective groups IMHO.

I like Michael Taft's interpretation of the topic but I can't find the video. At the end of Shinzen's doc on noting gone he also lists Gone as synonyms for both True Self (Ātma in Hinduism) • No self (Anatta in Buddhism)

https://www.shinzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/art_PowerofGone.pdf

It is common to feel a sort of deadness or sadness or flatness when emptiness becomes apparent. Lots of teachers talk about it. Luckily, you don't need universal consciousness to get out from the deadness and move to compassion.

You say, "I can understand self-love, we all want to have a good experience in every single moment and that intention to have a good experience, to have pleasure, to avoid pain, that IS love, literally. That makes sense. I am a force of love, in that sense, towards my "self"."

You are right. You, as an animal, you were built to care for yourself, to see yourself as something to be protected, and nurtured, and made happy. 

You say, "The more I buy into a deterministic worldview, the more depressed I get that there is no "I" that actually loves my fiance, there is only this love arising naturally because of evolution/determinism."

So, if there is no "I," what is going on when you feel compassion for yourself? If there is no I, you cannot be loving yourself. You may think that you are loving yourself, but if there is no "yourself" then you must just be loving.

Now, consider that it's natural, for example, to be kind to your leg, and look after it when it is hurt. It's part of you, and you extend that natural compassion toward it. Imagine that someone said that they loved themselves, but they only loved their torso. They didn't love their legs. When they stubbed their toe, they would say, "What do I care? That's the toe's problem, not mine." You would probably think that person was crazy. 

So what would happen if "I" were to disappear, and there was no more boundary between you and the next person (or, for that matter, the next thing) than there is between your torso and your legs. To say, "What do I care about how that person feels?" makes no more sense than to say "What do I care about my toe." 

The bottom line is we are built to be compassionate, just as you pointed out. The idea that there is a separate self to which that natural love can be limited is only one of the possible ways of seeing the world. 

It's natural.

It just will happen, no choice.

Golden Rule - Wikipedia

​​​​​​​

Of your many struggles, does this really rate? 
If you were enlightened, you might not worry about bullshit, or what preference was going to be what until it happens.

Yes yep uh huh and sure.
Possibly there is multiple people with different experiences, but want to not be an asshole. I used to get off on being an A-hole but as you can clearly see I got over it.    :o)     
When nonduality kicks in as an awakening the seperation of other vs "you" breaks down in a way. Everything and everyone is alive such as you are, perhaps more so. So maybe that makes sense why you don't hurt yourself/other capariously, unless thats your trip.


And how is that a problem if you got love regardless? I got all this "philisophical faKE LOVE, WoE IS Me" The meaningless horror of my creation of fake love or whatever lets me degrade my experience.....
Have fun with that.

uhhhh, you might have a different problem that what you think....

Stop freaking out. Just take a chill pill and maybe do some meditation, I hear its good for ya.

towards "self" or "other" (finger quotes) WhAtEvers. Keep creating love, I certainly do.....out of nothing at all....amazeballs...perhaps there is a skill set there that evolves to a word like compassion.

Because it gets my rocks off to be so F'n powerful and amazing. Look Nietzsche, I'm not even using my hands! wheeee

Your welcome, (please be tolerant of my humor, I blame the A&P)
Good Luck
​​​​​​​D

Don't confuse the deep effects of Buddhist practice with a superficial intellectual understanding of Buddhist philosophy.

When you meditate, how long can you concentrate before a distraction arises? Do you see your thougths, emotions, and impulses forming in your mind or do they just appear into consciousness? Why do you trust your mind if you can't control it and you aren't producing it? Is it really you or yours?

If you want relief from your problem, consider a different question: What is the origin of dukkha and what causes dukkha to fade? When you study that, your other question will just not be relevant, it won't exist in you mind, you won't wonder about it, you won't be troubled by it. Relax and watch your mind in meditation and during daily life, notice when dukkha arises, keep watching and notice when dukkha fades. Notice the sensations in your body that accompany emotions. Watch thoughts emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, and your sense of self fluxuate from one moment to the next. You will see that dukkha (mental anguish) is something we do to ourselves. It is a habit we can give up (without suppressing it).

Can you give some examples of people who are enlightened who have demonstrated they became kind, loving, giving, etc. after becoming enlightened.
Because I think you have expressed a common misunderstanding.
The truth is that enlightenment doesn't necessarily make you a nice person.
There are a lot of scandals involving supposedly enlightened people who were abusive toward others.
https://tricycle.org/tag/sex-scandal/
https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/21393142
I suggest you look inward and see if it isn't really the other way around: when you are depressed, your thoughts become focused on determinism.
That's what I find for myself anyway. When I am in a bad mood, my thoughts are negative, when my mood improves those thoughts just don't enter my mind - they are not relevant, important, significant. What I felt was a big bad problem just goes away.



Don't confuse the deep effects of practice with a superficial intellectual understanding of the philosophy. 

One way of looking at Buddhist practice is that it changes you so that you use your intuitive mind more and your rational mind less.

Emotions are not logical. We use logic more to defend beliefs that we hold for emotional reasons rather than to adopt our beliefs. That's why I think we get confused about whether our thoughts are determining our emotions or our emotions are determining our thoughts.

http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2018/04/your-logical-mind-is-illusion.html


Maybe you should try metta meditation?
https://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2020/10/metta-meditation.html

When you practice Buddhism you become less selfish because as you suffer less you become less focused on yourself, and as you become less focused on yourself you suffer less. When you are less selfish you are not as defensive you don't experience self vs other as strongly you don't feel as much separation between self and not-self. You feel the same things for others that you feel for yourself. (I haven't said this is part of enlightenment so I haven't contradicted what I wrote above about enlightenment not necessarily making you a nice person.)

I think this will help too because I find it is very effective at dissipating dukkha:
https://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2020/08/preparing-for-meditation-with.html

There are no other people - just streams of dependently arising processes interacting. Nurture one, nurture all.

Other people are sentient, conscious, living beings. Dependently arising does not mean "non-existent." The reality of existence is more subtle and nuanced than that. It's too easy for people to jump from a realization of the three characteristics to "nothing exists at all." That would be the wrong interpretation. Interdependence - yes. Non-existence - no.

+1

Hi Tom,

I'm wondering how much of this driven by your feelings towards your fiance.

I'm probably projecting, but when I was 29 I got engaged to someone who really wanted to get married. At the time I thought it was true love, but in retrospect I was acting out of a sense of obligation and trying to convince myself that it was the right thing to do. I ended up calling off the engagement, which was ugly, but it was the right thing to do and shortly after I met my wife (we've been together for almost 20 years now and have 2 children). I don't think choice comes into that kind of love much at all, it's just a deep feeling that develops over time when you realize you've met your match and want to spend the rest of your life with them.

I'm sorry if I'm off base here, it was just seeing the mention of your fiance in the context of helping others and compassion that reminded me of this ...

Best wishes,
George

The question is Why would you even care for such thing as "compassion" in the first place?

Could there be no self and no others? Compassion can form when you see forms caught in the illusion. It is kind of like helping a consciousness eddy. You could pull a Taoist' Wu Wei or you could help the many facets of conciousness with a helping hand. Born into the dukka trap, conditioning and dependent origination, should one help thee? Sure.

Now should "you"? No one is making you. It might be harder to overcome the illusion of self though. Choices, do you have them?