Everyone is WRONG

Everyone is WRONG Not Tao 6/16/15 3:02 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Eva Nie 6/6/15 10:28 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Richard Zen 6/6/15 11:03 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Small Steps 6/7/15 1:40 AM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Not Tao 6/7/15 4:46 AM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Noah 6/7/15 10:24 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Richard Zen 6/7/15 11:45 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Not Tao 6/7/15 10:27 AM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Laurel Carrington 6/8/15 3:41 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Small Steps 6/8/15 4:08 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Not Tao 6/8/15 4:35 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Not Tao 6/8/15 11:20 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Laurel Carrington 6/9/15 8:56 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Not Tao 6/9/15 9:53 AM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Not Tao 6/9/15 5:51 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Not Tao 6/10/15 9:51 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Eva Nie 6/10/15 3:00 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Adam . . 6/12/15 5:08 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Alexander Entelechy 6/12/15 5:41 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Adam . . 6/12/15 6:15 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Eva Nie 6/12/15 11:37 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG . Jake . 6/15/15 9:52 AM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Not Tao 6/16/15 3:30 AM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Dream Walker 6/16/15 1:31 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Not Tao 6/16/15 2:56 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG The Poster Formerly Known As RyanJ 6/15/15 3:52 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Eva Nie 6/16/15 1:47 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG . Jake . 6/16/15 9:16 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Eva Nie 6/16/15 11:55 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG John Wilde 6/16/15 6:14 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Eva Nie 6/17/15 1:41 AM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG . Jake . 6/17/15 11:57 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Eva Nie 6/17/15 12:29 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Eva Nie 6/17/15 2:16 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG . Jake . 6/17/15 2:48 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Eva Nie 6/17/15 7:13 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Eva Nie 6/17/15 11:55 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG John Wilde 6/17/15 7:32 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Eva Nie 6/17/15 7:29 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Eva Nie 6/17/15 11:30 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG . Jake . 6/17/15 2:46 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Eva Nie 6/11/15 12:31 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG cian 6/11/15 7:29 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Bill F. 6/11/15 7:53 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Richard Zen 6/11/15 8:13 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG cian 6/11/15 8:32 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Alexander Entelechy 6/11/15 11:19 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Eva Nie 6/11/15 1:08 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Richard Zen 6/11/15 1:30 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Bill F. 6/11/15 3:54 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG cian 6/10/15 4:57 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Not Tao 6/10/15 5:11 AM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Oochdd 6/10/15 6:25 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Not Tao 6/10/15 7:07 AM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG cian 6/10/15 9:55 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Not Tao 6/10/15 12:18 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Adam . . 6/10/15 10:17 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Noah 6/7/15 7:05 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Not Tao 6/7/15 8:33 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG John Wilde 6/7/15 9:44 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG CJMacie 6/9/15 4:11 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Psi 6/7/15 10:00 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Not Tao 6/7/15 10:39 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG John Wilde 6/7/15 11:30 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Not Tao 6/8/15 4:10 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG John M. 6/8/15 5:45 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG John Wilde 6/8/15 9:53 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG John M. 6/8/15 1:29 AM
RE: Everyone is WRONG svmonk 6/8/15 1:47 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Adam . . 6/10/15 3:42 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Nikolai . 6/10/15 4:44 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Not Tao 6/16/15 4:12 AM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Laurel Carrington 6/16/15 2:08 PM
RE: Everyone is WRONG Eva Nie 6/16/15 3:05 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Not Tao 6/17/15 2:07 AM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG Not Tao 6/17/15 10:51 PM
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 3:02 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/6/15 9:50 PM

Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 995 Join Date: 4/5/14 Recent Posts
This is my last insight.  It's the last, because it is complete.  Stress, all stress, has one single cause: caring.  Whenever there is anything you care about, you will feel stress related to that thing.  When you don't care about anything, you are free from stress.  It is direct, linear, and has no other causes.  It is not mysterious and it needs no further instructions.

Concentration meditation is a waste of time, as is vipassana, mindfulness, morality, contemplation of the self, and metta.  None of it is directly attacking the truth.  You can swear like a sailor, kill people, say horrible egotistical things, be completely distracted, and even strive for a life of luxury, and none of this will be stressful if you simply don't care about any of it.  Alternatively, you can be a vegan, and only say saintly things, and kiss babies, and live without any possesions, and still be full of anxiety, anger, lust, and passion.  No aspect of your life has any bearing on your happiness - it is only caring that will create stress, and only by not-caring will that stress be eliminated.  All attainments are worthless in comparison.

(EDIT: A lot of people have voiced concerns about this paragraph, so I will point out the obvious fact that doing things you personally consider to be wrong makes it much harder to stop caring - which is why most religions have strict morality clauses.  The good news of this paragraph, which everyone missed, is that, if you have lived your whole life as a "bad" person by going against your own ethical code, you can become free just the same as if you have lived a perfectly moral life - there is no karma to burn aside from your own cares and inhibitions.  There is no need to forgive yourself for anything, you can simply let go completely.  When you do this, you will find that it is not difficult to live according to your own ethics because those ethics have no pride, shame, fear, axiety, or misery steering them.  There is no need for a happy person to kill - barring the basic self defense if that is the only option, and in modern society most people don't have to face this kind of situation if they lead a simple life.  If you feel some need to test out whether you can kill people and still be happy by not caring about it - you should realize that you're caring about the ideas and your ability to follow them and are actually missing the point completely. Most of the people posting on this thrwad have missed the point completely, though, so I understand this is a real danger.  To be perfectly clear: you should not head out to kill people and expect it to be easy or expect yourself to be free from your actions quickly and without long term painful feelings.)

To end stress, just look for anything you care about, and stop caring about it.  This is all that's required.  If this is hard to do, it's caused by fear of losing who you are, fear of betraying responsibilities, fear of becoming something you don't want to be.  But what is this fear really?  You're afraid that without punishing yourself you won't be able to keep yourself in line, without stress you won't be able to control yourself and do the right thing (and maybe you'll even turn into a boring midless robot because you'll be too happy to do anything else).  The truth that I have seen directly (and, I expect, all of you can recall vividly by looking back to whatever big event got you into this meditation business in the first place) is that the perfect peace and hapiness that results from the freedom from responsibility, worry, and caring will cause you to be the exact person you wish you could be and that you aspire to create by forcing all this worthless caring upon yourself.  That was your stream entry - seeing that you would still be complete even when you let go of everything completely.

So why wait?  Just be reckless and throw it all off with wild abandon!  Fuck Theravada, and the Buddha, and cycling, and vipassana, and mindfulness, and effort, and attainments, and spirituality, and pathways, and teachers, and all of that drivel.  It's not worth a damn thing.  All you need to know is that you don't have to care about anything!  Find things you care about and destroy them with your mind!  Roll in the mental mud, piss on your inhibitions, belch in the face of your moral upbringing, and roast all your sacred cows on the barbecue of who-gives-a-shit.  Be free, right now, and live the rest of your life happy.

The end of stress is, simply, directly, freedom from all caring.  You can't attain this or work towards it, you just DO IT!


P.s.  PHAT!
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/6/15 10:28 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/6/15 10:28 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
Not Tao:
This is my last insight.  It's the last, because it is complete.  Stress, all stress, has one single cause: caring. 
What is the difference between caring and clinging?  (probably close to the same)

Whenever there is anything you care about, you will feel stress related to that thing.  When you don't care about anything, you are free from stress.  It is direct, linear, and has no other causes.  It is not mysterious and it needs no further instructions.

Concentration meditation is a waste of time, as is vipassana, mindfulness, morality, contemplation of the self, and metta.  None of it is directly attacking the truth.  You can swear like a sailor, kill people, say horrible egotistical things, be completely distracted, and even strive for a life of luxury, and none of this will be stressful if you simply don't care about any of it.  Alternatively, you can be a vegan, and only say saintly things, and kiss babies, and live without any possesions, and still be full of anxiety, anger, lust, and passion.  No aspect of your life has any bearing on your happiness - it is only caring that will create stress, and only by not-caring will that stress be eliminated.  All attainments are worthless in comparison.
I suspect that attainments are just something that happens along the path to lack of clinging, that's why all those old wise men say not to cling to them. 
To end stress, just look for anything you care about, and stop caring about it.  This is all that's required. 
Therein likes the rub, how to do that?  I think that's what all those other methods are trying to get you to get to.  But how many times has a parent told a kid to stop worrying, wanting, etc at things?  Just saying it to someone does not yield groking.  Seems like groking involves a long road for some reason. 

If this is hard to do, it's caused by fear of losing who you are, fear of betraying responsibilities, fear of becoming something you don't want to be.  But what is this fear really?  You're afraid that without punishing yourself you won't be able to keep yourself in line, without stress you won't be able to control yourself and do the right thing (and maybe you'll even turn into a boring midless robot because you'll be too happy to do anything else).  The truth that I have seen directly (and, I expect, all of you can recall vividly by looking back to whatever big event got you into this meditation business in the first place) is that the perfect peace and hapiness that results from the freedom from responsibility, worry, and caring will cause you to be the exact person you wish you could be and that you aspire to create by forcing all this worthless caring upon yourself.  That was your stream entry - seeing that you would still be complete even when you let go of everything completely.
Yep, mediation is interesting that way, trying very hard seems to back fire big time.  Letting go seems to work.  But how to teach people to let go?  WHy is it hard to do? 

So why wait?  Just be reckless and throw it all off with wild abandon!  Fuck Theravada, and the Buddha, and cycling, and vipassana, and mindfulness, and effort, and attainments, and spirituality, and pathways, and teachers, and all of that drivel.  It's not worth a damn thing.  All you need to know is that you don't have to care about anything!  Find things you care about and destroy them with your mind!  Roll in the mental mud, piss on your inhibitions, belch in the face of your moral upbringing, and roast all your sacred cows on the barbecue of who-gives-a-shit.  Be free, right now, and live the rest of your life happy.
This is not new, See the Buddha, Kill the Buddha.  Just that people keep not seeing it and not doing it, I imagine because it's hard for some reason, probably all those reasons you said and more.   

The end of stress is, simply, directly, freedom from all caring.  You can't attain this or work towards it, you just DO IT!
I suspect you do have to work towards it, you have to get go of all the things that are stopping you, apparently that tends to be a lot of stuff.  Otherwise when people told you to top clinging, you would have done it the first time you were told.  This is very old Buddhist philosophy that desire equals pain, etc.  What you said is the same thing they've been saying for eons, most of the argument starts when you starting asking how to get there..
-Eva  

P.s.  PHAT!
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/6/15 10:43 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/6/15 10:40 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Caring is a choice.  Imagine something you care about, and then destroy it in your imagination.  When you tense up, that's the caring.  Do the same thing again, but this time, just don't care.  It's actually very simple to do.

Some options: imagine yourself killing your favorite pet, imagine yourself masturbating at work, imagine getting hit by a car or stabbed. While imagining these things, stop caring about them. Do the same thing with everything in your mind you care about, everything that seems wrong, and everything you might defend. Imagine when people have made fun of you, and when you've done things you regret, and stop caring.  Do it in real time during the day.  When someone yells at you, just stop caring as soon as you notice you are.  If you are afraid, stop caring whether you live or die.  If you get stuck on the consequences, just stop caring about those.  Whatever you're stuck on, that's where you care.

If you need a hint, this feels reckless and wrong. It feels like you're betraying your responsibilities. What it is, is the destruction of the mental image you have of yourself.
John Wilde, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 2:04 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/6/15 10:53 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Not Tao:
(...) The truth that I have seen directly (and, I expect, all of you can recall vividly by looking back to whatever big event got you into this meditation business in the first place) is that the perfect peace and hapiness that results from the freedom from responsibility, worry, and caring will cause you to be the exact person you wish you could be and that you aspire to create by forcing all this worthless caring upon yourself.  That was your stream entry - (...)

This part rings true and is consistent with my experience.

However, I have no confidence that you're right about the rest. I feel that to no longer care (in a certain way) is a consequence of attaining what we seek, rather than a cause of it... and for that reason (and others), I don't intend to practice this way. But I'll be very interested to hear the results of your experiment if you keep this up for a year.
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Richard Zen, modified 8 Years ago at 6/6/15 11:03 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/6/15 11:03 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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This doesn't sound like the Buddhism I'm interested in. When stress is lower your compassionate tendencies can be released. Being irritated, because you resist what you can't control, is the problem. I don't resist my emotions so the rumination is less. Yet I have full emotions and let them out naturally because they are impermanent and quite healthy. Ruminating is NOT healthy and is the direction towards personality disorder. Emotion + Rumination/obsession/fixation = Bad. Emotion by itself is not.

I think there's too many people doing just the mindfulness practice and developing equanimity but forgetting a whole bunch of other things (metta, normal self-improvement, healthy goals, positive imagery practices, exercise, diet) and claiming "it's wrong", "it doesn't work." Of course your practice doesn't work because there's a shitload of aversion you aren't seeing. When seeing emptiness you don't have to eliminate craving. With Mahayana practice you can pursue goals with your hearts desire (especially if they are wholesome goals). You will see their impermanence and there will be some pain but I currently don't feel much pain from my emotions, yet they are still there. Too much weaning without giving yourself some healthy neurotransmitters is not a full practice IMHO. Use goal oriented imagery practices (we do this all the time without thinking much about it) and follow your deep goals instead of old habits. This to me is the real purpose of these practices. Let go of unskillfulness and cultivate skillfulness.

This practice has shown me so much and adding modern CBT and other psychology practices (and existentialism) has rounded it out so well. I feel grateful. This stuff has changed my life so much that I feel happy I went through so much hell which got me to learn this in the first place.  I take great pleasure in treating people with kindness. I like flouting status and treat people in a more equal way. I enjoy and savour things without clinging to them so I get both the actual enjoyment and the relief from clinging at the same time. If I didn't do this practice I probably would be depressed/bi-polar/avoidant personality disorder or some variety of that.

I even find it fun seeing different psychologists falling over each other trying to take different mindfulness and metta practices and adding them to their CBT making it their own.

I hope this is a wakeup call to you to understand that Buddhism isn't a panacea but is a good toolbox to add to other conventional things you are already aware of. You should rethink your practice and make the practice more a part of your overall goals than the goal itself. Meditation can create stress when it's fixated over, and that's personal experience talking here.

Caring is not a problem if you don't fixate over it.
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Ryan J, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 1:15 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 1:09 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 121 Join Date: 2/19/14 Recent Posts
"I hope this is a wakeup call to you to understand that Buddhism isn't a panacea but is a good toolbox to add to other conventional things you are already aware of. You should rethink your practice and make the practice more a part of your overall goals than the goal itself. Meditation can create stress when it's fixated over, and that's personal experience talking here."

This is how I have approached meditation from the get go (mostly :p), and I feel it has seved me well, even though I simultaneously have built my entire lifestyle around it for a temporary period of time, 2 years. (I just graduated college, so without obligations and no debt it is obviously a good time to good deep.) before I got into meditation I had a phase where I basically worked on myself emotionally, I overcame an intense social anxiety, I talked to a LOT of people, basically did a metric fuckton of psychological work, so to speak. I feel it has prepared me (in addition to a lot of other things, like formal mathematical training) to approach meditation sensibly.

I worked on my emotions to a high enough degree that feel like I worked through countless emotional unmet needs, or shadow work, that I bring proportionally less to the table. Shadow work seems like old news, like advocating for equality, it's such a boring proposition I'm surprised it still needs to be advocated. 

But but I feel like this really gets to the heart of the translation of awakening to the 21st century and beyond: the traditions that once encapsulated these methods, while genius, are not complete, particularly in the realm of morality. That was one of the most salient messages from MCTB and the founders of pragmatic dharma, no?
Small Steps, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 1:40 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 1:40 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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I thought most of us would have moved past this sort of apathy after reading Catcher in the Rye and graduating from high school. Wrong again!
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Richard Zen, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 1:59 AM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Ryan J:
the traditions that once encapsulated these methods, while genius, are not complete, particularly in the realm of morality. That was one of the most salient messages from MCTB and the founders of pragmatic dharma, no?

Especially in MCTB 2.
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Psi, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 4:21 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 4:21 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Not Tao:
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 4:46 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 4:46 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Yes!  See how miserable they all look!
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Nikolai , modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 5:47 AM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Not Tao:
Not caring!

Are you preaching what you actually practice? Habitually checking if someone has posted a reply to your OP and then responding and reacting to the urge to reply to the above query probably means you aren't. Clicking on the link below probably means you aren't either. 

Everybody's wrong.
Derek, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 7:21 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 7:21 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 326 Join Date: 7/21/10 Recent Posts
Not Tao, it is your MIND that is making you see things this way. The very fact that you post here shows that a tiny part of you KNOWS this already.
Pål, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 8:50 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 8:50 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 778 Join Date: 9/30/14 Recent Posts
•Do you really think you would have come to this conclusion/insight/opinion/experience w/o meditation? 
I personally think meditation increases my awareness of when I care about things and in which way I'm caring, which is pretty valuable and prepares me for letting go completely. But then I don't know if the kind of letting go you're describing is what I'm pursuing, which brings me to my next question...

•Is this bullshit according to you?

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.1.08.amar.html

"If you need a hint, this feels reckless and wrong. It feels like you're betraying your responsibilities. What it is, is the destruction of the mental image you have of yourself."

•Doesn't this explain the DN:s and show it's actually quite skillful?
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CJMacie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 8:59 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 8:53 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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re: Not Tao (6/6/15 10:01 PM)
"Stress, all stress, has one single cause: caring. "

Interesting choice of terms. We use 'care' commonly to reflect interest, particularly self-interest – "I do/don't care about xyz". More particularly "I care for you", as a form of affection. Basically thought to be good stuff.

Once I dug into my etymology book:
" 'To care' derives from OE (old English) ceariangrief, sorrow, akin to OS (old Saxon) kara … a lament … to cry … to L garrire … to chatter … to Gr gerus … voice … a cry or call or shout … a cry or weeping … IE [Indo-European] r *gar- ,to cry (out), is clearly echoic … to murmur, complain … to growl [hence 'cur' for a dog]… "

In fact, very interesting, that the modern meaning has such a relatively 'postive' connotation. But then again, so does 'affection', which, however, in the Pali form 'pema' is first on a list of things the Buddha considered dangerous, unskilfull.

And (more etymology):
"affect, affectation,… affection…
The effective origin of all these words is L afficere, to do to, set oneself to,… to attack,… to aim at… "

Related, the issue of the translation of metta as 'loving kindness', rather than as 'good will', or 'benevolence' as some translators / commentators prefer. 'Loving' in common usage is too close to the sense of affection and caring, as basically wanting something and griping about it. And 'kindness' going back to 'kin', close personal relation… All counter to the dominent use of metta in the Pali sutta-s as immeasurable, unbounded (impersonal), ecstatic (jhana) well-wishing.

Basically my practice has revealed similar experience. Way back on my first-ever retreat (2008) noticing that both attraction (that pretty girl sitting on my left) and aversion (that obnoxious person to the  right) BOTH manifested as an uncomfortable muscular tension in the head and neck, a sense of leaning, off-balance, out of mental equipoise. Vimalaramsi makes the same point somewhere (and no doubt many others).

(The rest of Not Tao's rendition seems to me a bit rhetorical…)
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Noah, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 10:24 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 10:24 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1467 Join Date: 7/6/13 Recent Posts
I hope this is a wakeup call to you to understand that Buddhism isn't a panacea but is a good toolbox to add to other conventional things you are already aware of. You should rethink your practice and make the practice more a part of your overall goals than the goal itself. Meditation can create stress when it's fixated over, and that's personal experience talking here.

@Richard: This is how I have approached Mahasi noting after reading MCTB.  I see the attainment of paths as a way to round out my health and functioning.  I see Insight as one of the arms of contemplative fitness but believe that Absorption and Positive Emotional meditations provide different types of healing.  I'm just the type to want to specialize in each one, one at a time.  I was happy to read about your path and how you have used everything to create a rounded out life.  It is a path that I am currently on, but much earlier along the road.

I feel it has seved me well, even though I simultaneously have built my entire lifestyle around it for a temporary period of time, 2 years. (I just graduated college, so without obligations and no debt it is obviously a good time to good deep.) before I got into meditation I had a phase where I basically worked on myself emotionally, I overcame an intense social anxiety, I talked to a LOT of people, basically did a metric fuckton of psychological work, so to speak. I feel it has prepared me (in addition to a lot of other things, like formal mathematical training) to approach meditation sensibly.


@Ryan: Very cool.  I am in a very similar situation, having graduated college this past January.  I've delayed looking for a job with my degree to stay in the more physically-oriented labor of the service industry which allows me to note throughout the day rather than use my brain.  I've also seen therapists for years and used the EMDR protocol to overcome crippling social anxiety in 2013.  Its great to work out one's "stuff" to a certain degree before pursuing hardcore insight.  Thanks for sharing, the Dho is one of the rare places where I can connect with others on similar paths.

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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 10:27 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 10:27 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 995 Join Date: 4/5/14 Recent Posts
Anyone willing to give my ideas a try?  You might be suprised!

@Chris: That's very interesting... I've been thinking along those exact terms. It seems like a lot of the things I considered positive about my identity were actually quite negative and have been the source of a lot of problems.

@Pal: Actually, yes! This insight presented itself fully for the first time when I was in the shower one night about two years ago, and it's what caused me to start meditating(I didn't quite understand it at the time). I haven't done any meditation for about a month now because I was following this lead, and for the last two weeks I've just stopped caring about things as they come up. I've had some incredible moments that are very similar to my last peak period from about a year ago, and it's amazing how much less work it seems to be this time around. I suspect anyone trying this would see very quick results.

@Pawel: I'm not dismissing the things I care about, I am stopping the caring itself. Which, is to say, I'm recklessly jumping off of cliffs. It really is as simple as making a decision. The reason this seems hard is because we want to take our opinions with us when we jump. There are many times where I've caught myself trying to "stay a good person" while not-caring about a moral issue, for example. What I've found is, when you give it up completely, pack it all in, when you say, "that's it, I just don't care at all anymore," when you hit the bottom and the feeling is gone, the opinions that are justified stick around - since they're logical - and the opinions that aren't (like, worrying about what someone might think of you) go extinct without any cause for remorse.

@Nicolai: Being interested in something isn't the same as caring about it. Caring is an investment. It means something is important. Being interested is just play. If you all think I'm crazy, that's fine with me! emoticon (The ngondro thing didn't work out BTW. Turns out I'm too lazy to draw every day, HA!)
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Richard Zen, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 11:45 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 11:45 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Noah S:
I hope this is a wakeup call to you to understand that Buddhism isn't a panacea but is a good toolbox to add to other conventional things you are already aware of. You should rethink your practice and make the practice more a part of your overall goals than the goal itself. Meditation can create stress when it's fixated over, and that's personal experience talking here.

@Richard: This is how I have approached Mahasi noting after reading MCTB.  I see the attainment of paths as a way to round out my health and functioning.  I see Insight as one of the arms of contemplative fitness but believe that Absorption and Positive Emotional meditations provide different types of healing.  I'm just the type to want to specialize in each one, one at a time.  I was happy to read about your path and how you have used everything to create a rounded out life.  It is a path that I am currently on, but much earlier along the road.

That's good to hear. Don't let hardcore types steer you away from a balanced approach to life. The Oracle of Delphi said "Nothing in excess" and that pretty much describes flexibility and survival on this planet. Most importantly a mindfulness practice can be successfully added to a normal life and may yield better results because one isn't hermitting themselves on retreat and losing the skill of living in a complex world.

If Daniel can do these practices and still be a doctor then high-performance and goal achievement are not incompatible with a meditation practice.
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Richard Zen, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 11:46 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 11:46 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Not Tao:
Anyone willing to give my ideas a try?  You might be suprised!

 If you all think I'm crazy, that's fine with me! emoticon 

Yeah you are, except you're going to pay the consequences of "not-caring". If someone mugged you and stole your wallet I'm pretty sure your brain would release some moral indignation at a minimum. Why do people have to be so fanatical?
John M, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 2:02 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 2:01 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 135 Join Date: 2/11/12 Recent Posts
To care -- that is, to feel interest, concern and hold preference -- is integral for being an empathetic, well-adjusted, mentally-sound individual. It also happens prior to any attitude that you might happen to hold about it. So, all of this strikes me as a pointless exercise in ignorance and denial which is bound to froth up more of the same suffering you're hoping to avoid.
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Ian And, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 2:36 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 2:32 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 785 Join Date: 8/22/09 Recent Posts
Not Tao:

The end of stress is, simply, directly, freedom from all caring.

Aren't you just restating (perhaps a bit unskillfully, I don't know; depends upon how others perceive your use of the word "caring") what Gotama said when he made the point that one should not become "attached" to phenomena?

The short version of what he said goes as follows: "Sabbe dhamma nalam abhinivesaya." Roughly translated this means: "All things are not fit to be clung to," or "Nothing is worth holding on to."

The longer, more detailed version of this, goes as follows (AN VII.61):

Here, Moggallana, a monk has learnt this: "Nothing is fit to be clung to. If a monk has learnt that nothing is fit to be clung to, he directly knows everything; by directly knowing everything, he fully understands everything; when he fully understands everything, whatever feeling he experiences, be it pleasant, painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant, in regard to those same feelings he dwells contemplating impermanence, contemplating dispassion, contemplating cessation, contemplating relinquishment. When he thus abides contemplating impermanence, dispassion, cessation and relinquishment in regard to those feelings, he does not cling to anything in the world; without clinging he is not agitated; being unagitated, he personally attains Nibbana. He understands: 'Destroyed is birth, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more for this world.' "

Or have I totally missed the mark?
Pål, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 3:46 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 3:46 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 778 Join Date: 9/30/14 Recent Posts
Mostly @Ian And but @everyone else too:
What is the difference in meaning between "nothing should be cared about" and "nothing should be clung to"? If Not Tao is just restating the suttaic teaching then is the Buddha saying for example that morality is useless?¿

@Not Tao
But... How can you strive for luxury, or anything, while not caring? How can one not live a n ascetic life while not caring? Ascetic, for me, does not equal ethical. 
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cian, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 4:20 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 4:13 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 62 Join Date: 5/22/15 Recent Posts
I must admit that about 10 seconds before the last big Fruition I hit, I distinctly recall saying to myself:
"What if I just completely stopped caring...about anything!"  ... and then did that.  And along with all cares went all world.

Now I did also happen to be right at the end of three days straight of highly rigorous non-stop self-enquiry, so I can't help but think that that might've helped just a little bit...

As a mini control experiment I'm gonna "do" the same thing now (stop caring) and see what happens...I'll even give it a full minute just to be fair, given the favourable conditions on the last occasion...

...ok, I must admit it's a great practice 'cue' and things did get a little wowy there, and maybe depending on one's mental wiring and so forth it might work better than the cue to "surrender" or "let go" or suchlike
 but 'fraid the entire structure of reality didn't quite crack open just now like it did last time 
but my point is, "just stop caring" is a practice cue, not a call to stop practicing altogether and rubbish everything else but the little cue that happens to be working for you right now.  

And most importantly here is "Right plane, right time"
I like Chris J Macie's etymologys of the word 'caring' suggesting that what the word actually means might not be such a great contribution to one's general life or sila practice

but then John M.'s response (above) is probably pretty typical of how most people understand the word 'caring' most of the time and hence its a fine thing that we have more sophisticated teachings to draw from than simply going around telling everyone to "stop caring! Do it now!"

But given a balanced understanding of "right plane, right time" - I think it's a truly awesome insight practice cue.


as an aside note, as I was coming out the other end of that fruition experience I mentioned, I distinctly recall saying to myself "Just pray! That's all one's gotta do - all this 'practice' business is nonsense!"  (i'm not making that up, that actually did happen in my crazy mind, yep   emoticon    )

Thankfully I didn't cling to that conclusion (or who knows, maybe i was on to something...)
Point here is:  Humans tend to think that 'Result X' happened because I made 'Action Y'
just like those experiments where:
they electrode-zap a bit of your brain that deals with humour
you laugh
...BUT...
when asked why you laughed you say something like "oh i just remembered a joke my friend told me the other day!"

--->people invariably contrive a cause to their 'doings' (doesn't rhyme with 'boings') that their own mind was in control of.  

So, one gets a pleasing result, and says "oh it must be because i decided to stop caring. therefore that'll work for everybody all the time"
Not Tao, deciding to stop caring was NOT what got you whatever result you found pleasing.
That just happened by itself.
'You' are not in control.
Of anything.
Conclusion: Just stop caring dude!!!

hahahahaaa ok now i'm taking the piss out of the universe, time for sleep
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Psi, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 5:52 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 5:37 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1099 Join Date: 11/22/13 Recent Posts
Not Tao:
  You can swear like a sailor, kill people, say horrible egotistical things, be completely distracted, and even strive for a life of luxury, and none of this will be stressful if you simply don't care about any of it.  Alternatively, you can be a vegan, and only say saintly things, and kiss babies, and live without any possesions, and still be full of anxiety, anger, lust, and passion.  No aspect of your life has any bearing on your happiness - it is only caring that will create stress, and only by not-caring will that stress be eliminated.  All attainments are worthless in comparison.

If a person truly did not care, they would not swear, they would have no attachment to any outcomes, and thus would have no reason to swear about anything, they would be untroubled.

If a person truly did not care, they would not kill people, they would not care about doing such an act.

If a person truly did not care, they would not say horrible egotistical things, they would not care about supporting the ego.

If a person truly did not care, they would not be completly distracted, as phenomenon arose, they would not care enough about the phenomenon to be distracted by the phenomenon.

If a person truly did not care, they would not strive for a life of luxury, they would not care about a pile of luxuries anymore than a pile of debris.

Alternatively, they could be a vegan, because they would not care to kill sentinent beings.

And only say saintly things, because they do not care to offend.

And kiss babies, because they do not care to have sad babies.

And live without any possesions, because they do not care to be bothered with any unnecessary burdens.

And not be full of anxiety, anger, lust, and passion, because since they do not care about worldy matters, the worldy matters would not give rise to such reactions.


To study the self, is to forget the self.

Dogen

Psi Bear  emoticon




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Noah, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 7:05 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 7:05 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1467 Join Date: 7/6/13 Recent Posts
I must admit that about 10 seconds before the last big Fruition I hit, I distinctly recall saying to myself:
"What if I just completely stopped caring...about anything!"  ... and then did that.  And along with all cares went all world.

Now I did also happen to be right at the end of three days straight of highly rigorous non-stop self-enquiry, so I can't help but think that that might've helped just a little bit...
I know exactly what you're talking about.  Its happened to me a bunch of times like this.  The first gear practice (in your case, self-enquiry, in my case, noting with mental labelling), penetrated deep into the mind, priming for a fruition, the phrasing of the question to yourself was a side effect of high equanimity.  I would highly reccomend you stay in first gear, rather than trying to 'drop effort' or surrender! 
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 8:33 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 8:12 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 995 Join Date: 4/5/14 Recent Posts
The thing that has been important for me is the realization that the things I think of as harmless, like moral feelings, common sense right/wrong, self protection, etc are, specifically, the causes of suffering.  Psi, like you said, a person who doesn't care wouldn't have any reason to swear like a sailor or persue a life of luxury - but they would ALSO have no problems doing those things.  Someone who doesn't care is free to murder, steal, or do anything they want.  This freedom is what allows them to avoid thise things without actually worrying about them.  So, if a person models their life around saintly ways, they're actually moving further away from their goal than they would if they simply stopped caring about saintly way in the first place.

The basis of the problem is the caring, not the actions.  So, by stopping my caring when I come onto these things, I've found that I now have the mental freedom to do them if I like, yet I still choose not to because there is no reason to.  The freedom to do anything removes the stress from all contemplated action.  The mind is free to do whatever it wants, and the natural choice is to do things that are interesting, pragmatic, or utilitarian since there is little need for anything else.

The important part is the freedom, not the actions.  The basis of freedom is not-caring.  This only requires that you trust yourself not to be "evil" once you've freed yourself from the system of self punishment that is caring, seriousness, and importance.  Like I said, anyone who has experienced equanimity knows there is nothing to fear from being carefree.  So, just drop out the middleman of practice and stop caring about everything, even when it seems wrong to do so - this makes very fast changes since nothing bad ever happens in the wake of such a decision.

Here's an example: I decided to stop caring about animals recently.  I sat down and imagined some of the clips from the Earthlings video in my mind, and when the feelings of horror came up like they usually do, I let myself off the hook.  I just let myself stop caring.  The result was that I no longer felt suffering for the animals.  I didn't feel compassion, either.  I was not sombre or respectful or apathetic or cold or tensly suppressed.  I was just at peace.  More importantly, I still had no desire to inflict that kind of suffering on other animals, and I still had all my same opinions about whether it was right or not to torture things.  These opinions just didn't have EMERGENCY, or URGENT attached to them.  My emotional well-being was detached from the state of the world or its outcomes.  So, the conclusion is that there is little reason to support those feelings when they obviously have no use, and I decided to stop caring about everything.  The result of not-caring about anything is perfect contentment because there are no longer any mistakes possible. It's simply a perfect state of existance.

The use of the word "caring" is important.  It isn't a special context or definition.  "Attachment" is too clinical and abstract to mean the same thing, and "letting go" or "surrender" are too passive.  It isn't a passive act to stop caring, it's a decision to change a fundimental aspect of yourself.  To become indifferent towards something that IS NOT OKAY is, precisely, what I mean.

EDIT: What John M. said "to care -- that is, to feel interest, concern, and hold preference" - that is the cause of stress. Without that, there is no fear of any outcome, and thus, no stress.
John Wilde, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 9:44 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 9:18 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 501 Join Date: 10/26/10 Recent Posts
To anyone who's been exposed to actualism, what you're talking about in this thread is familiar territory... but there are a few things worth bearing in mind.

It's not enough to get rid of the moral/ conscientious/ socially-instilled forms of caring unless/until you also deal with the more rudimentary, instinctive forms of 'caring' (which includes fear, aggression, desire, nurture, and all sorts of raw, ruthless, instinctual self-interest).... because it's those very forms of rudimentary instinctual 'caring' which have made moral/conscientious caring necessary in the first place (as an antidote). In other words, if you just rid yourself of all conscience, you're not automatically going to be freely harmless... you're going to be a sociopath who doesn't care that he's a sociopath. Presumably that's not what you want.

In principle, it makes sense that if you're free from all caring impulses (including the raw, pre-rational, instinctual ones), you no longer need morality. But that's a big if. And if your focus is on removing the moral / socially instilled forms of caring in order to feel less stress, you're looking only at the tip of the iceberg.

Also, as I suggested to you earlier, I think you're mistaking cause and effect. There is an effortless benevolence that requires no morality, but it's not caused by giving up caring; rather, freedom from care -- (of a certain kind, which Chris Macie delineated quite well) -- is a consequence of something more fundamental.

Another hint, take it or leave it: you're not going to get rid of those more primal forms of caring by choosing to be indifferent toward them. It just doesn't work that way. (At root, your very indifference will be just another disguised expression of it).
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Psi, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 10:00 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 9:58 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1099 Join Date: 11/22/13 Recent Posts
Not Tao:
  I just let myself stop caring.  The result was that I no longer felt suffering for the animals.  I didn't feel compassion, either.  I was not sombre or respectful or apathetic or cold or tensly suppressed.  I was just at peace.  

Yes, I understand.

Here is my third person perspective of your post.
You will probably get some backlash, due to the choice of wording, and way of explaining.
You will probably further develop and deepen your insight.  

From what I see, this is not about caring or equanimity or any of that.  This is about the sensation you notice when the thoughts about things arise, or the sensations that arise when situations in life occur.  From what I see, it is all about releasing that sensation of tension (for lack of a better word) when it arises, and indeed actually being carefree and tensionless before it even arises, that is even better.

Again, from what I see, what you are describing as caring is actually craving, or perhaps clinging.  But you like your own words, your own descriptors, which is fine.  None of that really matters, especially when you start working with the mind and body at the sensation level, i.e. vedana. That is where the real work begins.  Vedana has its secrets, secrets one has to see and unravel for themselves.  And it seems to be a little different for everyone.

If you forget your Insight, it will fade back into the background of your mind.  Remind yourself to re-read your posts from time to time.  Remembering is very important, remember what happens to the mind when Concentration practices are abandoned, that was one of your keys before, you lost that key for a while, and without the key some doorways remain locked.

Just one Yogi to another,

Take it easy,

Psi
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 10:39 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 10:32 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 995 Join Date: 4/5/14 Recent Posts
Haha, I think my rhetoric is bugging everyone.  I wasn't trying to put anyone down!  I'm just excited about these ideas and I've lost my filter a bit through practice. emoticon

I don't think it's wrong to do insight practices or concentration - but while doing any of these things, I think it's good to chop them all to bits and stay focused on the core problem, which is what I was trying to point out here (and what I've been missing over the last two years).  You can use logic to reason out why you don't need to care, or you can use vipassana to weaken the sense of identity, and thus the thing that cares, or you can use concentration to distract yourself from the caring, but all of these things are not the core of it.  The core is the feeling of concern about and for things.  I haven't read anyone put it as baldly as "stop caring about everything" before, and this is a great slap-in-the-face kind of insight.  I don't care if it sounds nice or not - I think the effort to dress it up is part of what has killed good practice for me in the past.  Don't judge it through a caring lense, try just not caring and then see if it's the result you're looking for!  It always is for me.

In terms of concentration practice, I stopped practicing becauce the state of not-caring is the same as perfect concentration.  It might be helpful to say that I've never really practiced concentration though.  It just always seemed to happen magically before because I didn't completely understand what I was doing when I "let go."  My past concentration practice could be described, in hindsight, as sitting down and giving up, or not-caring as I keep harping here.  It's much easier than trying to keep the mind still on some object.  The mind just stops moving by itself, and I just sit there in a world of beautiful colors enjoying the sensation of existing.

@John: There's no reason to break caring into different categories.  It's all equally stressful, so it's nice to drop all of it.

EDIT: Actually I should say more.  Your post is iterating the very particular fear that has kept me from going all the way into not-caring: fear of losing myself or becoming a bad person.  This doesn't happen when you stop caring.  Anger is caused by the same caring that causes love.  When the caring is gone, neither arise.  Like you said, it's very much related to actualist ideas (this thread is in the actualism section).
John Wilde, modified 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 11:30 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/7/15 11:14 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 501 Join Date: 10/26/10 Recent Posts
Not Tao:
It's all equally stressful, so it's nice to drop all of it.

Yes, but you'll find that it's much easier to drop the socially-acquired stuff than it is to drop the instinctually driven stuff... and the consequences of dropping the socially acquired stuff while leaving the instinctually inherited stuff in place are not good. To truly uproot and eliminate the instinctually driven stuff, you DO need to care, in a big way.

But by all means, do it your way, and see what happens. Like I said, I'll be interested to hear what happens if you stick with this. (Genuinely curious, because I can definitely relate to an intelligent, unforced benevolence that is stress-free and needs no control, and I know it to be possible. I just do not believe that not-caring is the way to bring it about).

EDIT: I prefer to think of this unforced benevolence as a freedom to care, as much as a freedom from care. (And in this regard, Chris's comments on the meaning of care are indeed highly relevant).

Anyway, good luck with it, and please keep us posted. Whichever way it goes, an honest account of your longer-term results will be valuable.
John M, modified 8 Years ago at 6/8/15 1:29 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/8/15 1:29 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 135 Join Date: 2/11/12 Recent Posts
Not Tao:

EDIT: What John M. said "to care -- that is, to feel interest, concern, and hold preference" - that is the cause of stress. Without that, there is no fear of any outcome, and thus, no stress.
I would suggest that the real source of stress is actually the false impression that things can or should be other than they are. To pretend to stop caring no doubt produces some measure of incidental relief from that misapprehension, but it really is missing the point. It's like cutting off your foot to be rid of a wart. There's a reason the fourth brahmavihara is equanimity and not apathy.

Being a good / bad person is also entirely missing the point. Even awful, mal-adjusted, thoroughly rotten people care -- their caring simply tends to be largely self-centered. In other words, caring happens, regardless of your attitude toward it.
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/8/15 4:10 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/8/15 4:07 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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John W: I don't understand the distinction you're making between instinctual caring and socially-acquired caring.  The anger I feel at a co-worker is caused by the same mechanism that makes me flinch when I'm riding with a scary driver.  In both cases, letting go of any feelings of caring I had diffused the stressful emotions I was feeling.  The division that the AF guys make is largely arbitrary in my experience.  Fear/agression/nurture/desire happen for a reason.  They happen because there is an object being given a level of importance that relates to survival and self-protection.  When you stop caring about the object, the feeling stops as well.

What you seem to be proposing is that caring is required to stop aggresion or other instinctual passions from arising.  This is just a second layer if caring added to the first.  It's much easier just to remove the first layer instead.  Maybe you can explain what you mean in more depth, though.  I'm not sure if this is what you're talking about or not.

John M: "I would suggest that the real source of stress is actually the false impression that things can or should be other than they are. To pretend to stop caring no doubt produces some measure of incidental relief from that misapprehension, but it really is missing the point."

I don't think pretending to stop caring would help anything. You seem to be implying that it's impossible to stop caring about something, which isn't true in my experience. I do rather like your first sentence, there, though. It seems to be what I'm pointing to when I talk about caring. Caring is the desire to maintain a certain state or change a state to match an ideal in the mind. When there is no caring, there is no concern for the state, and thus no desire to change it or maintain it. This doesn't mean the state, or it's posibilities, lacks any interest, it simply means there is no emotional involvement with the state. Caring is emotional weight added to an opinion or judgement.
John M, modified 8 Years ago at 6/8/15 5:45 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/8/15 5:45 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 135 Join Date: 2/11/12 Recent Posts
Not Tao:
I don't think pretending to stop caring would help anything. You seem to be implying that it's impossible to stop caring about something, which isn't true in my experience. I do rather like your first sentence, there, though. It seems to be what I'm pointing to when I talk about caring. Caring is the desire to maintain a certain state or change a state to match an ideal in the mind. When there is no caring, there is no concern for the state, and thus no desire to change it or maintain it. This doesn't mean the state, or it's posibilities, lacks any interest, it simply means there is no emotional involvement with the state. Caring is emotional weight added to an opinion or judgement.

I think we're closer to understanding one another, thanks for the clarification.

It's not impossible to stop caring, but it is impossible to stop caring from arising in the first place as it is causal and inevitable to the human condition. So, if caring happens (which it 100% does) and your condition for relief is predicated on that it does not happen, the so-called solution is actually feeding into the essential problem: the misapprehension that things could or should be other than they quite clearly are.

I suppose what I'm getting at is the distinction between feeling preferences and feeling attachment to preferences (i.e. valuing them higher than actual manifestation) -- but maybe you're already there?
John Wilde, modified 8 Years ago at 6/8/15 9:53 AM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Not Tao:
John W: I don't understand the distinction you're making between instinctual caring and socially-acquired caring. 

Okay, to revisit a couple of examples you used up-thread: Consider the kind of feelings or impulses that might lead you to kill your favourite pet or masturbate at work (or rape or murder somebody). Now consider the secondary feelings of remorse, regret or shame that a civilised person would feel on doing these things.

When you were talking about no longer caring, you weren't speaking in terms of not slaughtering pets or not masturbating at work; you were speaking in terms of being free from the secondary conscientious feelings of remorse and shame. I'm arguing -- (and I'm pretty sure you'd agree) -- that it makes little sense to abandon the secondary (moral-conscientious feelings) unless you're also free from the original, more primal, self-centred impulses in the first place. Even if it's less stressful to be remorseless and shameless, it's not the advance you're really looking for in the long run.

Now, I know you're also talking about being free from the harmful primary impulses as well... and that you're treating them all alike. But I'd argue that they're not all alike. Those primal/primary impulses -- fear, aggression, lust, raw instinctual self-interest in all its forms -- go much, much deeper, and are much less susceptible to change than the secondary socially-conditioned conscientious feelings of shame, remorse, regret, etc. And they go much deeper than a high-level cognitive decision "not to care" can reach. Of course you can choose "not to care" about a particular issue that makes you afraid or angry, but doing so doesn't uproot fear or anger itself. They're still there in potentia, waiting to flare up at the next provocation. And meanwhile, your decision "not to care" can make the potential consequences of those passions even more severe.

What you seem to be proposing is that caring is required to stop aggresion or other instinctual passions from arising.  This is just a second layer if caring added to the first.  It's much easier just to remove the first layer instead.  Maybe you can explain what you mean in more depth, though.  I'm not sure if this is what you're talking about or not.

I can see why you'd think that's what I'm saying, but no.

I'm saying that while ever aggression or any of the other primal passions do arise, it's not safe -- for yourself or others -- to abandon the second layer of caring (moral conscience). It's quite easy to abandon conscience (compared with abandoning instinctual passions), and it can feel liberating; but unless you can abandon the underlying impulses that made conscience necessary in the first place, it's like closing your eyes, taking your hands off the wheel and foot off the brake on an alpine road because it's so stressful to brake and steer. (If you're not into caring at all, why care about stress anyway?)

Aside from that -- (and now I'm no longer speaking from experience, and no longer believe it myself, so take this part with a pinch of salt) -- the only people who claim to be entirely free from all instinctual passions say pretty much the opposite of what you're saying. For them, it's not about "not caring"; it's about caring to the nth degree, caring like you've never cared before, having such a vital interest that it overrides every other concern... making the ultimate 'self'-sacrifice possible.

Anyway, I guess I'll keep my own counsel on these matters, just as you will. It'll be interesting to talk about it again next year, after you've given it some solid road testing. By then, one or both of us will have learned something new.
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svmonk, modified 8 Years ago at 6/8/15 1:47 PM
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Hi Not Tao,

I'm sorry, I'm not getting this.

The Bramhavihara practice was introduced specifically by the Buddha to generate friendless (most people translate metta as "loving-kindness" but that's just a big, technical sounding word that puts people off I think), compassion, joy in the success of others, and equanimity. These are all positive qualities of mind. Equanimity acts as a balancing factor, tamping down on the mind's tendency to become involved in and attached to the outcome of the other three.

So I think its not a matter of not caring about anything but rather about having equinimity toward the outcome of your feelings about something or someone. That is, I think, a big difference. It's the same kind of difference as between compassion and sympathy/empathy. With sympathy, you sort of have a mental stake in the outcome, that the suffering of the other must stop, which, if it doesn't, leads you to suffer. With compassion, you have a kind of fierce wish for the other not to suffer, but a kind of cool detachment toward the outcome.

Perhaps the teaching is different in the Actual Freedom practice?
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Laurel Carrington, modified 8 Years ago at 6/8/15 3:41 PM
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I've read your remarks on this thread, and have several points. The first is to say, oh, like, why didn't I think of that? It's that easy, huh? Like right now my sister-in-law has just died, my teenager is a P in the A, my mother is slowly fading away in memory care, I have gained 25 pounds over the past winter, and on and on and on, and all I have to do is (ping!) not care!! Well, after some tears shed with the family over my sister-in-law, and some expressions of exasperation to my son (at elevated volume), and a visit to my mother where I sat stroking her hand, and finally getting outdoors to walk and garden and swim, I can say not that I don't care, but that I'm okay with The Way Things Are. This is equanimity rather than indifference. I was able to arrive at this point by practicing, both concentration and insight. These practices don't take all pain away, but they allow me to handle it, rather than suppressing it or ruminating on it for days and weeks and years on end.

My misgivings with your quick-and-dirty method is that it sounds like an invitation to spiritual bypassing.  But then, maybe like everyone else I am just plain WRONG. I do think, though, that the temptation to wish one's troubles away is strong and capable of generating powerful delusion. So I'd advise caution.
Small Steps, modified 8 Years ago at 6/8/15 4:08 PM
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A good reminder that indifference is the near enemy of equanimity.
John, modified 8 Years ago at 6/8/15 4:26 PM
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On a lighter note, we should change the name of website to Drama Overground. ^ ^
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/8/15 4:35 PM
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Laurel,

Does it seem wrong to stop caring about the things you listed?  If so, why?  When I was doing the thinking that led up to this realization, I was examining some of my more powerful feelings and trying to understand why I was holding on to them (at that point it was already apparent to me that I was making the choice to create the feelings).  I discovered that the basis of my caring was a desire to be someone specific.  I felt the need to keep an eye on myself and make sure I stayed within the lines I drew around who I was.  It takes a big leap of faith to let that go - faith in the "rightness" of your own nature and the spontaneous actions that come out of it.  Everything challenges this idea - I think it's against the very nature of the way the mind functions.  We form attachments to survive and procreate.  To sever these atachments is nothing short of suicidal.  But, in the wake of the final act, it's amazing to see that nothing bad happens, and the resulting freedom makes the world so much easier to live in.

When you love someone, you are holding an object of them in your mind.  When they no longer match that object (by dying, or by being a pain in the ass) there is greif because the object is lost.  To stop caring is to remove that object, to destroy all expectations, and let the world be what it is.

It IS easy, the main problem is that we don't WANT to do it.  The hard part is deciding to let it happen.  You are choosing to feel the way you do, as am I, as is everyone.  We can choose to stop.  What we really hope for is to keep caring without having to suffer for it, and we're afraid of losing ourselves if we stop caring.  This fear stops us from trying it, but if you do try it, you'll find caring is not necessary to be the person you want to be.

Another way to look at it: caring is a selfish act.  It is the creation of a set of ideals and imposing them on the world.  When you stop caring, you let the world be, and you stop focusing on yourself.  When this happens, there is freedom from suffering.


@John Wilde: I never made any distiction about what should be cared about and what shouldn't be cared about.  If you don't care about guilt or shame, but you still care about other things and start murdering people to get what you want, you wouldn't have been following the instruction, haha. If you're angry at someone, it's because you care about their opinion.  This is no different from feeling guilty - you're still just caring about someone else's opinion.  I disagree that the degree of difficulty is split the way you say.  The difficulty is baised on your personal value system.  The things you value most will be the hardest to stop caring about.


@svmonk: How can you have a fierce wish for something, and yet a cool detachment at the same time?  I can understand benevolence mixed with equanimity - which is to say, wishing someone well, but being indifferent to whether they are or not.  But a fierce wish requires some kind of urgency, some stake in the outcome, and this will create suffering.  The only way that makes sense to me for this to work is if it's accepted, from the very beginning, that the worst might happen, and this isn't a problem.  Or, put another way, there is no longer a "worst" because there is no stake in the outcome - no caring.
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Bill F, modified 8 Years ago at 6/8/15 5:25 PM
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A Collection of Abandoned Not Tao Epiphanies:

This "be here now" thing I'm doing is the holy grail.  It's like I've tapped into some perfect part of the mind that is always clear and still.  I'm not even kidding, it's effortlessness itself.  Try it, Beoman, if you aren't already!

Aha!  The best way to approach this practice is to realize you are removing something (self-referencing, being, identity, ego, etc) you aren't trying to get something. 

So you don't let go of "I feel bad," you let go of, "I'm not very good at sports," and the feeling bad goes away - it has no cause anymore.

We run around in circles trying to convince ourselves to feel better or to dissociate or to let go of problems, but all we ever need to do is just enjoy being here. I don't say all this to make people feel bad - I know how much it sucks to be stuck in anxiety or depression. Maybe I've just hit a point where this makes sense now. But it's worth a try, no? How do you feel? If it sucks, why not just feel good instead? If you have a good reason, just stop seing it as good reason - there is no good reason to feel bad.

Whelp, I think I've figured it out.  Negativity is just suppressed opinions.  How simple...

Now everything suddenly seems so simple.  My anxiety is all but gone, I can just let go of negative reactions to things, my emotional baseline is very positive.  I guess concentration is what I've been looking for.

Haha, I get it now.  It's so simple.  As long as there are any expectiations, there is stress.  

I'm starting to think that it all just comes down to concentration.  At least, my own goal of living in that perfect state of mind.

That's not to say everyone is already enlightened - it's just so much easier than anyone makes it out to be.  All you need to do is let go.

Katy, what you just described is jhana.  The gratification of no gratification is the fourth jhana - equanimity.  You don't need to do anything but abandon the hinderances to remain that way all day.

So, my original point was that there is nothing you need to do or practice besides stabilizing the mind - concentration

The problem is wanting.  It's very simple.  I've identified a lot of manifestations of wanting in this thread, but at the heart of the matter is that simple urge to DO SOMETHING.  I've also identified a lot of logic to work through the wanting, but it isn't necessary, the heart of the matter is to simply STOP WANTING.

The only thing I'm fairly certain about is that vipassana and Actualism are 180 degrees opposite, haha. But if someone could explain how vipassana leads to the end of identity, then I'd be willing to change my mind (not that I'd actually practice it - who want's to go through endless dark nights?)...


 I'm sure my past self would scream in horror reading this, but what I needed was, specifically, vipassana - or clear seeing. 

 Patience seems like the "cure" for me because it doesn't require active maitenance, and it will still allow me to be lost in thoughts without feeding stress

So I think it's finally clear to me what freedom actually is.  The freedom I'm looking for is freedom from effort.

I just had the most simple and obvious realization.  Happiness is not caring.


Ease up, baby boy. This too shall pass. 
John Wilde, modified 8 Years ago at 6/8/15 9:53 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/8/15 5:33 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Not Tao:
@John Wilde: I never made any distiction about what should be cared about and what shouldn't be cared about.  If you don't care about guilt or shame, but you still care about other things and start murdering people to get what you want, you wouldn't have been following the instruction, haha.



Hmmm.... but someone who chooses "not to care" actually still cares greatly -- but the one thing they care about, to the exclusion of all else, is their own stresslessness. In most people's eyes, to sell everything people hold dear down the river for the sake of their own peace is about as self-centred as it gets.

Even so, I'm not blind to the possible paradox here: if you could truly apply this across the board, right down to the deepest instinct level, and still have a benign intelligence operating that works better than all your previous forms of caring, then why not? Being so free from your own cares (suffering), you'd be free to care (ie. engage considerately) in a way that you never could before.

I think that possibility is real. As for whether this particular method brings it about, time will tell. Good luck.
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/8/15 11:20 PM
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Bill, that's a great collection!  I can actually see a very clear relationship and refinement of the same insight in all of those quotes, so I'm surprised you would present them as an array of different ideas.  That's one of the reasons I've been excited about this particular way of describing things. It's seems to be the most direct and simple way of describing the thing I've been trying to work with and understand from the very beginning. It's the core of all of those ideas you listed.

"Be here now" is a good cue if you understand to drop everything else you're thinking about, but even this is an extra step - thinking is not so much a problem if you don't care about the thoughts. I used to favor "letting go" to describe this dropping, but that is a more passive way of saying "stop caring" which is more accurate and to-the-point. I've used both "equanimity" and "jhana" to describe the outcome, which is freedom from stress, but those words are used to describe a lot of different things and have probably become somewhat meaningless through overuse. The cue to abandon the hinderances, as well, is better stated as "stop caring" to form a single cue.

@ John Wilde: It's also important to stop caring how you feel. If you care about your own stresslessness, you're likely to fall into rumination about feelings themselves. This has happened to me a few times - and may be the biggest weakness in this cue - but it's easy enough to break out of if you understand that the caring is the problem, and not the feeling. The feeling goes away when the caring does. A good way to break this cycle if you get stuck on it, I've found, is actually noting practice. I think that may be its main function - to help us stop caring about the way we feel. It isn't really effective at dissolving any other form of caring, though, which is why I don't think it's a good across-the-board solution.
John Wilde, modified 8 Years ago at 6/9/15 3:29 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/9/15 1:30 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Not Tao:

@ John Wilde: It's also important to stop caring how you feel. If you care about your own stresslessness, you're likely to fall into rumination about feelings themselves. This has happened to me a few times - (...)


That's been my experience too. If I pay a lot of attention to how I feel -- especially with an intention to feel better -- I end up feeling worse on average than if I'd done nothing at all. It makes me less prone to spontaneous happiness, less able to freely appreciate life, and more prone to having bad feelings become entrenched. OTOH, If I just let my feelings be, not try to manipulate them directly, I tend to feel better on average, and bad feeling states tend not to stick around as much.
Abba, modified 8 Years ago at 6/9/15 2:25 AM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG

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I do belive you came to the right conclusion and I'm ready to be proven wrong. The atitude of "fuck it all" is an ultimate weapon to fight all dissatisfaction, as nothing can stick and in my opinion is closly related to void/nothingness. My younger brother sent me this a while ago, you should relate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYsrV3zGd0c ;) Also where I live youngsters have a saying "don't give a fuck and you shall recive" seems like they figured it out ;)
With this attitude you should also check for your bad side - which is usually neglected. It always pisses me off that in all "spiritual" communities everyone is to be a saint. The "bad" side of everything is beeing neglected. We live in a dual realm so there is as much evil as there is good. Evryone of us is a little Hitler, just lacks the power to manifest his wrathful side (power does not corrupt it just enable us to play with our new toys). It is vital to be aware of this.
Now you are in an opposite of an atitude you hade before starting your spiritual path and as always the truth is somewhere in the middle. Now is the time you can make concious decisions to get attached to something and beeing aware of the consequences. This is funny, becouse you are making a full circle here, to the first truth - there is suffering. This time thogh, you are conciously choosing to suffer (becouse all actions you take will result in some kind of suffering - to be without it, is to do nothing - since nirvana as nothingness).
I heard this story some time ago about god and if blew my mind: imagine all powerfull and all knowing god - he is everything. he is everthing and therefore he knows it(like beeing a meditator and beeing aware of every possible sensation). Now, to create something "different" than himself, he is to restrain himself, abandon his power, becouse only then something which he dosen't controll can arise, something new. As above so below.
Anyway this is my current understanding in written words. Thoughts?

Ab
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Laurel Carrington, modified 8 Years ago at 6/9/15 8:56 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/9/15 8:56 AM

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There are times when I've been able to stop caring about something because I had an opportunity to view the matter differently than before. For example, I used to get mad in traffic at other drivers cutting me off or what have you, until I read somewhere that road rage is a product of low self-esteem. I thought, "well that's stupid!" and from that time forward just didn't take any of it personally any more. Or lately I've been reading about fat-shaming, and I have come to the recognition that my weight gain is not a problem, but rather the consequence of a chain of causes, and that the things that led to it were unavoidable. It is possible now to do something different, and that's good, but the number on the scale may or may not go anywhere. Who knows? 

On the other hand, both examples are products of a long history of causes, a lengthy period of self-loathing that I couldn't even see clearly for years, much less drop on command. So that moment of recognition, of dropping it, may appear to be a simple act of the will, but it really was anything but that. 

So, back to the drawing board, my friend: get some decent concentration going, get some insight, do some self-inquiry or whatever, and things will unfold for you in their own sweet time. At least you are in a good place for it hanging out on this forum. 
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/9/15 9:53 AM
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Haha, it was definately attention seeking.  I am excited and I'm trying to spread my ideas.  I guess at times I can be a bit more like a virus than anything though.  I did pause for a moment before I posted and thought to myself, "isn't this a bunch of egotistical rambling?"  And then I replied to myself, "Of course it is, that's your personality!  What did you expect?  Anyway, that doesn't make it any less true and you don't have to care anymore!"  So I hit the post button and eagerly awaited the replies.

That said, I don't think meditation is a complete waste of time, so I'll walk that back if it makes you feel better.  I was just having some fun killing the Buddha.  I figured I might as well go all the way if I wasn't going to edit myself out if the post. emoticon 

@Laurel: That's good stuff!  It started like that for me but it's turned into a cascade now that I stopped trying to logic it out.  Why not just jump into the pool instead of dipping your toe in.  You already know the water is warm!  You don't need any reasons to let go, you can just do it!  It feels a bit reckless, but that's half the fun, hehe!
Oochdd, modified 8 Years ago at 6/9/15 3:07 PM
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Hi Not Tao,

Sounds very interesting! Although the key trick is I guess to truly be all-inclusive in your not-caring. If there is still some residue left somewhere caring about something, and there is no longer any caring to "be a good person", you can fuck up your life pretty quickly. So it seems to be kind of tricky: it works as long as you can do it 100%, but even 99% will probably lead to bad results. And who is to say that you will be able to keep it up for 100% all the time? (Impermanence and all that)

My second question is more about what sorts of practices do you think lead you to this? You make it sound like you just have to "do" this and you'd be fine. Which is kind of like telling someone pre-streamentry that they just have to "see" it. It takes practice to see it, and I guess it takes a lot of practice to not care about anything given how caring is ingrained in us. You think it was your clock-staring practice that did it? 

Anyway, also curious how this will hold up over time, and looking for towards your next great Not Tao insight ("For really realz this time!!") emoticon 
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svmonk, modified 8 Years ago at 6/9/15 3:09 PM
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Not Tao:


@svmonk: How can you have a fierce wish for something, and yet a cool detachment at the same time?  I can understand benevolence mixed with equanimity - which is to say, wishing someone well, but being indifferent to whether they are or not.  But a fierce wish requires some kind of urgency, some stake in the outcome, and this will create suffering.  The only way that makes sense to me for this to work is if it's accepted, from the very beginning, that the worst might happen, and this isn't a problem.  Or, put another way, there is no longer a "worst" because there is no stake in the outcome - no caring.

When it comes to actually taking action, because the world is lacking any permant, underlying basis, we cannot control the outcome of anything. All we can do is set up the causes and conditions for that outcome, with the best intentions for everyone and everything in mind, including ourself. This is what I meant by a fierce wish, the intention for the best outcome for all, but a cool indifference toward the outcome. If what you mean by "not caring" is "not being attached to the outcome of action", ie taking action with no gaining thought of the result, then I think we are in agreement. But I would interpret not caring as rather entering into action with lacking any thought of best intentions for everyone and everything in mind, possibly with not having any intention or perhaps even not realizing what our intentions are.
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Nikolai , modified 8 Years ago at 6/9/15 4:00 PM
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Not Tao:
  I am excited and I'm trying to spread my ideas.  

Someone beat you to it. And is making money off of it too. **Gasp**
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CJMacie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/9/15 4:03 PM
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"@Nicolai: Being interested in something isn't the same as caring about it. Caring is an investment. It means something is important. Being interested is just play..."

The Daoist teacher I studied with for a decade (his speciality was classical Chinese medicine) had an interesting take on 'judgment' (paraphrasing): Being 'judgmental' is to put valuation into it, to invest one's "blood" in it (as in 'qi & blood' – the concrete correlates of 'yang & yin').

Similar to saying 'having skin in the game'? And distinct from simply giving attention and exercising discernment?
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CJMacie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/9/15 4:11 PM
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re: John Wilde (6/7/15 9:44 PM as a reply to NotTao.)

The word 'care' is being used in somany different senses, particularly in this dialog between John Wilde and Not Tao. So many different connotations, that makes the dialog tricky to follow.

John Wilde's explicitly bringing up 'Actualism' is helpful, in that it supplies context for the dichotomy between the instinctual and inculturated levels. (Many here have been exposed to this terminology, and/or haveread in the AF website, and, to my limited understanding, John's depiction seems accurate.)

Hopefully without re-inciting the Buddhism vs Actualism rucus (which we've also been over-exposed to around here), I would suggest alternative terms for some of the various aspects that have been covered by 'care' or 'caring'. Terms in English, though pointing them out as translations of Pali terms.Whatever one may hold of Buddhism, the Theravadan tradition does offer a refined vocabulary for describing subtle aspects of the arising of experiential phenomena and the mental processing thereof, honed by a couple millennia of analysis, usage, and practice.

One alternative would be 'attention' (manasikara), or 'attending to' as perhaps in the instinctive form of 'caring'. Raw, instinctual impulses (as arising phenomena or MCTB 'sensations') attract one's attention; they're 'in your face'. One another level, this attention can be wise / skilfull (yoniso manasikara), or unskilfull, which has to do with both how one focuses, directs attention (whether one allows attention to idly float around and possibly get hijacked, or purposefully concentrates on certain things to avoid falling into a trap) and how one allows the mind to react or respond to the stimulus (once it's appeared, does one let an instinctual reaction blossom out, or activate mental tools to disable that conditional linkage, to rechannel attention and energy more productively).

The other possibly useful term here to express some connotations of 'caring' would be 'mindful' or 'mindfulness'. As in the good-bye sort of salutation "take care!", or "take care of yourself!", meaning not "be sure and worry and fret over everything", but rather "keep your wits about you". The meaning of mindfulness (Pali 'sati') is discussed no end here in DhO (as a microcosm of the entire ratherl ively Buddhist discussion of it's meaning), but a good, widely agreed upon meaning has the sense of "keep your eye on the ball", "keep in mind what you're about and what you're up to". That 'caring' embodies that good (if provisional) kind of 'desire', namely to persevere in practicing, developing mental behaviors, habits which will empower one to finally be in a position to abandon any and all desire (i.e. 'caring').
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/9/15 5:51 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Quick note to Bill and Laurel: if my comments have caused any problems please ignore them.  I'm certainly not trying to hurt anyone's feelings or suggest greif is wrong or suggest that suppression of feelings is a good idea.  It isn't wrong to be angry, confused, sad, or any other emotion.  The problem, specifically, is the urgency and importance attached to these things, not what these things are.  It doesn't matter what you're carng about, it's the caring that creates the stress and suffering.  When you feel grief, and you allow yourself to stop caring about the grief, and you feel love and allow yourself to stop caring about the love, and then you think of your memories and allow yourself to stop caring about those, and then you feel a hole or a lack in your heart and allow yourself to stop caring about that, it's like a wind blows through and cleans everything off.  The grief isn't a problem, and neither is the lack, and neither are the memories.  They come up and then they are gone and there is nothing there to stop them from going.  The point we inject outselves is when we say, "It's important to keep feeling greif," or, "It's important to keep feeling anger."  Or if there is no grief or anger, we generate it when we feel we need it.  There is a lot more purpose in the equasion than anyone seems to be talking about, and this is what I'm trying to point to.  What I'm saying is that you never have to have a reason to stop caring and let go.  You never have to logic it out or wait for time to heal your wounds because this emotional holding is not the cause of our goodness.  You won't lose anything by dropping greif - you'll just gain happiness.  This happiness seems perverse from the position of grief, and that's because greif is a self-flagelation.  In that state we don't want to consider being happy instead.  It takes the natural course of life's distractions to distract us enough to forget the greif.  Then, when we come back to it, we have a reference point that weakens how strongly we hold onto the grief.  We've seen that we are fine without it, but maybe we don't quite want to believe it yet, so we dredge it up again and again until, finally, we're abke to say "enough" and let it go.  I'm just saying why wait?

I think most people are reading what I say as, "Become careless."  What I'm actually saying is, "Become carefree."  Here's the kick, though - these aren't different things.  Chris, I think the whole gamut of meaning attached to the word "caring" is important.  I think it's the most accurate way to translate "tanha" into english.  Go through this and see what replacing "craving" with "caring" does: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca2/tanha.html

EDIT: Also, please understand I am not carefree.  I made this thread to explain something that works as a method for me.  This isn't a claim of an attainment - except maybe the attainment of understanding what stress is. Undoubtedly, I will make a mistake in how I apply it somewhere. If I have and it's caused any trouble, I'm sorry to whoever is affected.
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 2:38 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 2:21 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 995 Join Date: 4/5/14 Recent Posts
Bill,

If your spouse dies and you feel grief, and then you pretend that greif doesn't exist, that will obviously cause a lot of problems.  I'm not sure why you keep repeating this, as I haven't said this was a good idea at any point in the thread.  I said, specifically, to stop caring.  If you can't stop caring, then this method isn't going to work for you.  I'm guessing you just can't relate to the idea because it's so outside of what you consider good or correct.

Consider they way you've been reacting to my ideas here.  When I suggest a person can stop caring when feeling greif, you react with disgust.  Why is that?  What about greif is so sacred that means it has to be given space and respect?  In this thread, I'm pointing at this respect you are displaying for these negative emotions and I'm saying that's where everyone is wrong.  There is no reason we have to feel greif, or sadness, or anger, or any of these negative emotions.  (Though, I don't blame anyone for experiencing them or feeling a need to hold onto them - this is a part of human nature and I understand it through experience.)

You can certainly continue to hold your sadness sacred, but the only reason it feels healing is because it's usually preceeded by something worse.  A shock happens when something that is cared about is lost.  Maybe we'll call this horror.  When sadness and greif comes, it's a step down from horror, so we hold on to it as our safety.  It feels like a part of the healing process, but it's actually just an escape.  Maybe a step down from greif, then, is sadness.  It feels like things are moving on, but we're really just starting to feel less attached to what happened. Then when the sadness fades there is nostalgia, which is a kind of respect for the power of an attachment, and a reminder to continue making attachments in the future.  All of these things can certainly feel beautiful in context, but the simple truth is that they are all stressful, and they're all optional.  We don't have to keep feeling them, and we don't have to go through this stepping down process.  I think there is even the possibility that they don't have to arise at all in the first place after  period of practice, as this has happened for me in a number of contexts (Laurel mentioned a few from her own life as well).

The whole lense you're using to read this thread is incorrect.  That's why I pointed out that there is no difference between "careless" and "carefree."  If you think I'm saying to become careless, you see me challending this notion of the sanctity of emotion and the perverse nature of being without them or challenging their legitimacy.  If you can change your lense to read what I'm saying as a cue to become carefree, then that can act as a stepping stone to the truth, which is that there is no difference - negative emotions are stressful, and being without them is the end of that stress.  You can dress them up as much as you like, put them on any pedistal you want (natural, beautiful, healing, wholesome), but in the end, if there was no context for an emotion, and you were given the choice to feel happy and content or sad and full of greif, why would you ever choose grief?  The objects if atachement are unrelated to the nature of these emotions.

It's obvious you have little respect for me, Bill, but you really are projecting a lot of assumptions on me.  I'm not emotionally stunted, and I certainly don't hate myself or my emotions.  I am just very objective in judging them.  Greif is not a positive feeling compared to happiness, and if there is an option to choose between them then I think it's unwise to continue to choose grief.  What I've figured out is that there is a choice, and the main thing that's in the way of making this choice is the very stance you're advocating here.  This is why I said everyone is wrong and meditation is a waste of time.  I was specifically trying to use a "dharma hammer" on this idea.  If this was too offensive to you, though, then it wasn't the right thing at the right time.

So anyway, how do you stop caring?  By removing the sacred quality from everything you consider important - this is caring.

EDIT: Also, I'd like to thank you for chllenging me so much lately, Bill.  I've really had to struggle to defend my ideas (both here and in the eating animals thread), and this has helped me learn more about them.  I don't think you should take the process so personally, though.  You really have given me a lot to think about.  Even if I always come back with more arguments, it doesn't mean I'm not considering what you say.  I did a lot of thinking yesterday about whether I'm on the right course with this thread, and I made a few discoveries.  One of the things I still hold sacred is a sense of pride, and I think you've done a lot to point this out to me, so thank you.
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cian, modified 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 4:57 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 4:56 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 62 Join Date: 5/22/15 Recent Posts
Ease up, baby boy. This too shall pass. 
Bill F. is totally rocking my world right now

Also, I'd like to thank you for chllenging me so much lately, Bill.  I've really had to struggle to defend my ideas (both here and in the eating animals thread), and this has helped me learn more about them.  I don't think you should take the process so personally, though.  You really have given me a lot to think about.  Even if I always come back with more arguments, it doesn't mean I'm not considering what you say.  I did a lot of thinking yesterday about whether I'm on the right course with this thread, and I made a few discoveries.  One of the things I still hold sacred is a sense of pride, and I think you've done a lot to point this out to me, so thank you.

I don't see Bill as taking it personally, Not Tao, he's taking it to heart and doing it all for you with great skill and kindness.  Great you're getting some undoing from the asskicking-onslaught.  There's more yet.  Succumb totally.  Drop.
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 5:11 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 5:11 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 995 Join Date: 4/5/14 Recent Posts
Cian,

Bill uses a lot of personal attacks in his debate style.  This is why I assume he's taking things personally.  It doesn't seem very kind to me, but I do my best to try to get something out of it nonetheless.  Where exactly do you think he's kicking my ass in the debate?  At the moment I'm still satisfied with the original premise so I must have missed something.
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cian, modified 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 5:45 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 5:45 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 62 Join Date: 5/22/15 Recent Posts
Not Tao:
Cian,

Bill uses a lot of personal attacks in his debate style.  This is why I assume he's taking things personally.  It doesn't seem very kind to me, but I do my best to try to get something out of it nonetheless.  Where exactly do you think he's kicking my ass in the debate?  At the moment I'm still satisfied with the original premise so I must have missed something.

you ARE right!

so what?

it's not the debate he's kicking your ass in. He's just kicking your actual ass.
Oochdd, modified 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 6:25 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 6:25 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 101 Join Date: 12/16/14 Recent Posts
I must say I do find the reactions of most people in this thread pretty strange, at least for a place that is supposed to be about aiming high with your practice, openly discussing attainment, etc.

People seem to be taking the suggestion that you can simply stop caring very personally. But that's basically what, at least according to the suttas, the goal is supposed to be right? All those Arahants at the Buddha's death that were completely unfazed and kind of made fun of Ananda because he was grieving: they learned to stop caring.

And supposedly we are here to support each other to Master the Core Teaching of the Buddha, that allows us not to care even when your most beloved teacher would die. Instead it seems that people think that Not Tao deserves an "ass kicking". Very odd. 

Now for me personally, the suggestion to "simply stop caring" also arouses fear in me ("I would totally fuck up my job and my life if I did that!"),  and I personally do not feel inclined to try the method (yet?). But that's no reason why at the same time we cannot just be happy for Not Tao that he has found this insight that at least for him clearly makes life better, no? And maybe find out exactly how he got to that place, and how it will unfold in the future?
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 7:07 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 6:44 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 995 Join Date: 4/5/14 Recent Posts
Oochdd,

If it arouses fear when you think of doing it permanently, try just doing it for an hour or two and see what happens.  You can even write down the things you care about on a list in order to pick them back up when you're done (this makes it easy to let them go).  I think what you'll find is that, even without caring, you're perfectly capable of doing your job and living life.  Everything seems much easier, to me, when I'm not caring because there is no resistance or urgency.  Caring is an after effect of cognition.  The very fear you're pointing to as keeping you from wanting to try it is the self-flagelation I'm referring to.  There is an instictual feeling that we need to keep ourselves in line by imposing stress on ourselves to remeber to do things or be a certain way.  By removing the importance from those things, the caring fades even though pragmatic interests, and even enjoyment, remains.

As to the reactions, I think people don't like being told they're wrong, and I've never been very nice about saying it.  My OP could probably have been more tactful - though I originally thought people would have more fun with it since it was kind of over the top. emoticon

EDIT: I realized I never answered your other post.  What I descibed in this post is a good way to practice it.  When it's time limited it's easier to go further because you don't feel obligated to stop caring forever.  Practicing this way will make a reference point that you can look back to when you have problems during the course of everyday life.  Eventually it starts to feel very comfortable just to drop things as soom as you notice them.

If it doesn't make sense to "just stop caring," another way to look at it is to consider why whatever you're caring about seems important.  The Buddha has a list of daily contemplations that are helpful to compare against: In the future, I will grow old, I will be ill, I will die.  Everything I know will fade and pass away.  Is it really worthwhile to care about transient phenomena?  Another point is to consider that, when you really care about nothing, you feel perfect, and because of this there is no need to rely on stress to motivate you - the perfect state is perfect for any activity.  So, not only is there no reason to feel stress (because stress makes activity harder), there is also nothing worth being stressed about.

Finally, if you can't stop caring about something while thinking about it, just stop thinking about it for a while.  When it comes up again, you can see where the stress begins and have a point of reference to go back to.  Just a second ago, you weren't caring about the thought and the world was just the same, so there's no need to care about it now, even though you're thinking about it.  Forgetting thoughts is very effective, but it's better to see it as a stopgap, since being able to think a thought without stress is better than having to banish the same thought over and over.  I think this current insight of not-caring arose for me out of my forgetting concentration style practice.  There is no need to focus on any object in specific since forgetting all stressful thoughts settes the mind naturally into concentration, or stillness on the present.
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Noah, modified 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 7:00 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 7:00 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1467 Join Date: 7/6/13 Recent Posts
You can certainly continue to hold your sadness sacred, but the only reason it feels healing is because it's usually preceeded by something worse.
 All of these things can certainly feel beautiful in context, but the simple truth is that they are all stressful, and they're all optional.   

I think this is sort of a both/and situation, rather than an either/or.  It has been demonstrated on these forums that something like an Actual Freedom, as a permanent attainment, is possible (but not "static" or permanently one-dimensional, I might add).  For one to go down this path, it appears that these negative emotions are truly optional.

But there is also another path, another option: the tantric approach of opening up completely and fearlessly to emotions.  Daniel writes about this in MCTB in a section called "Harnessing the Energy of the Defilements."  In AYP, it is considered possible to convert this emotional energy to spiritual energy, or shakti, through the natural processing of a healthy chakra system.  And perhaps most intricately, the idea is fleshed out in the Buddhist Vajrayana.

Just two options for advanced contemplative development.  Both separate, but valid in their own ways.
C P M, modified 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 8:54 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 8:52 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 218 Join Date: 5/23/13 Recent Posts

That being said, for you as a person I have no ill wishes. I would be happy if you were happy and at peace. When I say I feel compassion because of the anxiety i imagine you experience and my perception of your self dislike, I'm not being snide. It's really true. I really do feel it in my chest. It's not a problem.

I also don't feel I personally attacked you as much as your argument. Since I believe the argument rests on some basic assumptions that are false and have more to do with you and your own personal issues than any sort of universally relevant practice, I said so.


and earlier in the thread:

They are generally incredibly simple (not saying that's bad), but mostly they are balms for your own idiosyncratic neurosis. Keeping an open mind I tried the above experiment. It did  nothing for me. It's a juvenile attempt at avoidance. If I relax around my response I can feel compassion because I see so much of your search is fueled by an intense dislike for yourself and your emotions, and that sucks. Where I feel you err is you take on the attitude of the teacher with stuff that most of outgrew a long, long time ago. Let's call this thread what it is. A neurotic need for attention being met on the internet. 


This looks like personal attacks to me.
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 9:51 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 9:31 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 995 Join Date: 4/5/14 Recent Posts
Well, to be fair Bill, in the Eating Animals thread you said multiple times that I was a hypocrite who avoided answering questions when I know I'm wrong and here you said my arguments were "fucked up and unethical."  There have been a number of other debates in the past that have devolved this way, as well.  I think, generally, you just don't take the time to understand what I'm saying.  For example, in your last post you say it's arrogant and wrong to try to dissuade people from experiencing what they experience.  I never said anything like this in this thread, and I even explained this in my last post to you.  In fact, a lot of what you're countering my arguments with here are my own arguments stated differently as your opinion, which is just very odd.  Here's an example:

They are only negative to the extent you think the energy arising in the body is personal, and try to clamp down on it. Experiment with just being with the energy. Do this for a long time meaning months, not minutes, and you understand that there is nothing to be feared in emotions, nothing negative.


This is a good start - not caring how you feel. I talked about this earlier in the thread and mentioned noting was a good way to accomplish this, actually. Where I believe you go wrong (and why this thread is called "everyone is WRONG" - since this is a prevaling opinion) is when you say the story is what causes the emotion to be negative. This doesn't actually make sense. For the emotion to arise in the first place there needs to be a story to trigger it. This story is the cause of the stress, and the story is created by caring. Without caring, there is no story, and with no story, stress doesn't arise at all. So I see it as impossible that the emotions would arise without some degree of negative story preceeding the "energy" that arises. I am suggesting that it's better to find the cause of the energy and stop caring about it than learn to live with the enegy itself. When you stop caring, it's just gone, like a snap of the fingers. Not only that, but it arises less and less powerfully in the future, which certainly implies some kind of attainment. What exactly is wrong with avoiding a problem if we are the cause of it. To me, you appear to be saying that, if I were punching myself in the face on a regular basis, and I suddenly realized I was doing this and decided to stop, I'd be avoiding the problem somehow.

But, anyway, maybe it would be best if we leave things here.  I understand clearly that you disagree with my ideas and you have a low opinion of what I write. If you want to make civil arguments about the content of my posts I'll do my best to make civil replies, but I'm not really interested in defending my integrity after every post you make. It's just not that fun being demonized on a regular basis - though I do see that this is me caring about my pride and it's something for me to work on in the future. Also, please don't worry about me (if, in fact, you really are)!  These ideas have actually been working very well for me. I'm not sure I've ever had a happier, easier period in my life. emoticon

@Noah: My experience with radical acceptance was that the same state of equanimty resulted from going through the emotion to the other side as simply not caring about the cause of the emotion in the first place. However, I'm not sure I'm completely understanding what you're saying about converting the emotion into spiritual enegry. Maybe this is what Bill is referring to as well. The question I would have, though, is whether this spiritual energy is truely a lack of stress, or just a conversion of one stress to another. If the energy is still there, something has to be fueling it, no? If the goal is to let the eneregy pass through and reach a state of equanimity, then its simpler to make a comparison.
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cian, modified 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 9:55 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 9:51 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 62 Join Date: 5/22/15 Recent Posts
Oochdd:

And supposedly we are here to support each other to Master the Core Teaching of the Buddha, that allows us not to care even when your most beloved teacher would die. Instead it seems that people think that Not Tao deserves an "ass kicking". Very odd. 


I get and dig what you're saying Oochdd.  
But, ok, I feel we're swimming in a soup of a Semantic-Explosion Nonsense Zone (or SENZ for short emoticon
so let's do this like this...

my summary of this thread goes something like this:  

1 Not Tao says: "stop caring"

2 the core of what he (? neutral name) seems to mean by this gets understood and appreciated by some.

3 others get hung up on the choice of wording used and a whole discussion of what 'to care' means ensues (NB this wordy discussion is relevant only to the extent that Not Tao clings to his wording and considers that particular choice of wording crucial to whatever he's trying to get across - whereas if he means just whatever it is that he means by "stop caring" (which as far as I can tell happens to be something very brilliant, true and useful) and recognise that the specific word-choices for getting it across are secondary, then the whole discussion about the meaning of 'to care' becomes redundant for this thread.  If however he sticks by his guns and say no, no it actually is all to do with the WORDS "stop caring" then there's tons more nonsense to deal with here and Not Tao may want to re-examine his understanding of what words actually are)

4 Not Tao is questioned about stating things like "Everyone is WRONG", but he later retracts this.  Sorted.

5 Not Tao is questioned about his history of chronic "I just discovered the answer to everything"-ism


It is this last point I'm working with.  And, ok fair enough, Bill F's posts are a bit full-on and maybe a bit on the attacking side and I chose to call it kindness in a maybe-it'll-be-a-self-fulfilling-prophecy kind of a way, but his overall point seems very valid to me and here's my summation of (my understanding of) it...

*** It is the grasping mind that says "Now I understand, Everything comes down to ... x".  Discuss. ***
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 12:18 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 12:12 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 995 Join Date: 4/5/14 Recent Posts
Ah.  Well, around the middle of last year I had a streak of that.  We were having a Vipassana vs. Actualism debate in a few threads and I got a bit angry about the whole thing and made some graspy threads trying to show why vipassana was wrong.   I left the forum for a little while after that to clear my head.  Most of the quotes Bill posted, though, are actually from my practice thread, where I work through ideas and once in a while make an "oh, I finally got it!" post when I see how it's all working.  Even with all of that mixed together it all seemed to relate rather well.  That's why I was suprised Bill said "this too shall pass" considering it hadn't passed and was just being re-expressed many different times over the course of a year.  You can see the thread here if you're interested: http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5585629
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 2:32 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 2:32 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
[quote=
Pål]Mostly @Ian And but @everyone else too:
What is the difference in meaning between "nothing should be cared about" and "nothing should be clung to"? If Not Tao is just restating the suttaic teaching then is the Buddha saying for example that morality is useless?¿

@Not Tao
But... How can you strive for luxury, or anything, while not caring? How can one not live a n ascetic life while not caring? Ascetic, for me, does not equal ethical. I suspect it has to do with subtle variation of how you think about things.  For instance, if you go for a walk in the forest, I think part of the reason it is often relaxing is because often you will have less goals and desires for what you want ot see and happen in the walk.  You are more content to just let the forest be what it naturally is.  You are not trying to improve it, upgrade it, direct it another way, pass judgement on it, feel bad that you didn't do enough for it in the past, etc.  You don't worry about the outcome and state of it so much, you don't take it on emotionally as your responsibility.  It's not that you don't care about the forest at all, just that you accept it for its natural current self.  (not saying it's always that way but it tends to be more that way for most)  You may even alter it as you walk, perhaps moving a fallen limb away from the path, whatever feels right at the time, but you probably don't get emotionally invested that much in the future of the limb, if you put in the right place, if another might fall in its place, or if someone else undoes what you did or if you made the right decision.  You are less likely cling to all those things. 

You can move through the forest and perform actions with a lighter mind and without all that burden of clinging and worry and mental clutter.  Again, it's that weird zen thing where if you try too hard, it backfires but if you perform actions with a light clear mind and less clinging, ironically, now that you worry about it less, ironically, the actions seem to yield more fruit and less trouble.  Maybe it has to do with that old adage that you get what you concentrate on.  If your mind is often full of worring about this and wanting only certain things to happy, I suspect you get more of of the junk you worry about, plus by fixating on only certain outcomes and clinging to them, often it turns out there were better options you did not know about which could have happened except you were clinging to more limited paths that you were more easily able to imagine with limited knowledge.  For instance, if we don't want anything bad ot happen to someone and cling to that, maybe we are blocking the growth they would have if that thing did happen to them.  I don't think we would learn much if we only just sat around on clouds strumming harps for 10,000 years.  Or we tend to assume it's all bad if someone dies but maybe death is just a reprieve from here and a place to rest and recover.  Then is it so bad or is it actually good that people move on once their time here is done?  Are you so sure you know the real 100% truth in all things already such that it's a good idea to strongly cling to those assumptions?

IMO, not clinging is like letting the rest of life be like the forest.
-Eva
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 3:00 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 3:00 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
Not Tao:
Where I believe you go wrong (and why this thread is called "everyone is WRONG" - since this is a prevaling opinion) is when you say the story is what causes the emotion to be negative. This doesn't actually make sense. For the emotion to arise in the first place there needs to be a story to trigger it. This story is the cause of the stress, and the story is created by caring. Without caring, there is no story, and with no story, stress doesn't arise at all. So I see it as impossible that the emotions would arise without some degree of negative story preceeding the "energy" that arises.
I used to think that, ie get rid of the stories and the emotions will be gone, but they weren't gone, to my surprise.  Not sure if that is because there are some kind of preverbal subconscious stories in there, could be, maybe the story comes from when I was 6 months old or somehting, who knows.  But anyway, I did find that I had negative emotions without any apparent story and that various strategies have been useful for those, one was the 'just sit with it' kind of method.  Try not to run or pass judgement, kind of thing.  What also seems to help is rebranding with a new story.  The fact that this works may suggest that there is some kidn of preverbal story under there but say if you feel sadness, you can experiment with going from 'Oy, I often feel sad and I need to something about it because it is wrong,' to maybe something like 'Hm, there is sadness again, I feel like it is part of the healing process and over time and I will soon understand it better'  Because I suspect there is always a story and many stories as long as we are still here playing the game, even if the stories become much more subtle the more we work with them. 

I am suggesting that it's better to find the cause of the energy and stop caring about it than learn to live with the enegy itself. When you stop caring, it's just gone, like a snap of the fingers. Not only that, but it arises less and less powerfully in the future, which certainly implies some kind of attainment.
If it sneaks back later, then was it gone to start with?  Or was it just put on hiatus temporarily?

What exactly is wrong with avoiding a problem if we are the cause of it. To me, you appear to be saying that, if I were punching myself in the face on a regular basis, and I suddenly realized I was doing this and decided to stop, I'd be avoiding the problem somehow.
To continue with that analogy, which I think is a pretty good one, I would say that realizing you have been punching yourself in the face is a very big and important realization that must be made somewhere on the path and can be very profound.  After that, you are tasked with learning to notice the punching when it happens and to figure out how not to punch yourself in the face once it starts.  I suspect that figuring out WHY you have been punching yourself in the face is a good way to not just stop doing it in the short term but also to be less likely fall back into the habit in the future.  Maybe that is what is meant by not avoiding?  Personally, I have found that the more I understand the why, the more energy is drained out of the habit more quickly.  But maybe this is more a case of different people putting different emphasis on the the stopping vs the why.  However, I suspect that everyone on the path does both, just perhaps leaning more strongly in one direction than the other.  
-Eva    
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Bill F, modified 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 3:08 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 3:08 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 556 Join Date: 11/17/13 Recent Posts
 This looks like personal attacks to me.-  CPM

None of those are personal attacks. A personal attack is an insult unrelated to the discussion that has nothing do with discussion. I invite you to research. My saying someone may have issues with anxiety or "low self esteem" is not an attack. Some people struggle with those things. If you think they're insults that's your own bias. Just because something someone writes may cast someone in an unflattering light it is not a personal attack. It is my belief that this is not spirituality, but neurosis and avoidance, and will appeal only to people who are afraid of their emotions and looking for an escape hatch. Those things are not nice to say, they are not compliments, but it's not a personal attack. It's on point for what the discussion is about. I stand by all of those statements. I still believe they are correct. I only wish I had bolded them myself. If you want you can flag it for moderation, but then you'd have to explain how you without bias saw this as an attack when Not Tao's writing:


Fuck Theravada, and the Buddha, and cycling, and vipassana, and mindfulness, and effort, and attainments, and spirituality, and pathways, and teachers, and all of that drivel.  It's not worth a damn thing. 

Which is clearly a violation of the forum rule of:
No taunting, mocking, or intimidation of an individual or a group on the basis of race/ethnicity, sex, disability (including mental illness), sexual orientation, religious preference, or spiritual practice

is fine. 
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Bill F, modified 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 3:14 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 3:14 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 556 Join Date: 11/17/13 Recent Posts
I must say I do find the reactions of most people in this thread pretty strange, at least for a place that is supposed to be about aiming high with your practice, openly discussing attainment, etc.-Oochd

What is the attainment that's being proposed? 

People seem to be taking the suggestion that you can simply stop caring very personally. But that's basically what, at least according to the suttas, the goal is supposed to be right? All those Arahants at the Buddha's death that were completely unfazed and kind of made fun of Ananda because he was grieving: they learned to stop caring.-

Source?

And supposedly we are here to support each other to Master the Core Teaching of the Buddha, that allows us not to care even when your most beloved teacher would die. Instead it seems that people think that Not Tao deserves an "ass kicking". Very odd. 

Have you read the book? Did you read the section on Emotional Limitation Models?

Now for me personally, the suggestion to "simply stop caring" also arouses fear in me ("I would totally fuck up my job and my life if I did that!"),  and I personally do not feel inclined to try the method (yet?). But that's no reason why at the same time we cannot just be happy for Not Tao that he has found this insight that at least for him clearly makes life better, no? And maybe find out exactly how he got to that place, and how it will unfold in the future?

We don't need to belittle others in the process of finding something else that worked. If you actually believe it's worthwhile, why even care how people respond? Doesn't that negate your thinking it's a good idea? 
Adam , modified 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 3:42 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 3:42 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 613 Join Date: 3/20/12 Recent Posts
Hey not tao, have you happened across this conversation from the AFT site? I am using it as one of my main guides for how to proceed in eliminating suffering. The main limiting factor for me at this point is a lack of courage/boldness in proceeding.

RICHARD: Yes, twenty four hours a day, three hundred and sixty five days of the year ... and has been thus since 1992. From 1981 to 1992, I lived in an Altered State Of Consciousness for the twenty four hours of the day. It is an irrevocable and thus permanent condition ... I could not reverse it if my life depended upon it.

RESPONDENT: If there is no psychic entity in your body than you don’t know and don’t care what will happen next moment.

RICHARD: There is no next moment ... there is only this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space. I can intellectually know that there possibly will be a now that is presumably going to happen (and that there was a series of past now-moments that did happen) and can plan according to the probability that certain events are likely to occur (that the banks will be open tomorrow at 9.30 AM, for example) based upon those past experiences. But there actually is no future (or past) whatsoever as I sit here now.

Living here, there is only now ... and it is always now. I care for the next moment inasmuch as sensible planning can ensure the optimum creature comforts and ease of life-style ... I purchased a carton of cream yesterday afternoon so that I can have some in this cup of coffee I am sipping now (3.36 AM) when all the shops are closed. Other than sensible planning it is simply silly to ‘care what will happen in the next moment’ (substitute ‘worry’ for ‘care’ ) as it is unknown in that it does not exist. The future is not ‘out there’ somewhere already formed and just waiting to happen ... it has no existence whatsoever until it happens. When the future happens it is called now ... hence there is no future at all.

RESPONDENT: So, your experience is always fresh and no boredom or fear is possible.

RICHARD: No boredom or fear whatsoever. This moment has never happened before and never will happen again ... thus life is always ever-fresh, novel, original, unique, peerless, matchless and impeccable.

RESPONDENT: And because there is no ‘I’ in you, there is nobody to worry about anything or correct, improve anything?

RICHARD: There is no worry, no, but I am not too sure that this is because there is no ‘I’ ... it is simply silly to worry as worrying does nothing whatsoever to get an event changed. I correct – and thus improve – what can be corrected ... according to a preference for creature comforts and ease of life-style. For example: if I can sit upon a cushion instead of the brick pavers of the patio I will ... that is a preference. But if a cushion is not available it does not matter ... I thoroughly enjoy being alive at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space irregardless of what is happening. I could be just as happy and harmless on bread and water in solitary confinement in some insalubrious penitentiary ... but I would be pretty silly to act or behave in such a way as to occasion that outcome! The ‘I’ that used to inhabit this body did everything possible that ‘I’ could do to blatantly imitate the actual in that ‘I’ endeavoured to be happy and harmless for as much as is humanly possible. This was achieved by putting everything on a ‘it doesn’t really matter’ basis. That is, ‘I’ would prefer people, things and events to be a particular way, but if it did not turn out like that ... it did not really matter for it was only a preference. ‘I’ chose to no longer give other people – or the weather – the power to make ‘me’ angry ... or irritated ... or even peeved, if that was possible. It was great fun and very, very rewarding along the way. ‘My’ life become cleaner and clearer and more and more pure as each habitual way of living life was consciously eliminated through constant exposure. Finally ‘I’ invited the actual by letting go of the controls and letting this moment live ‘me’. ‘I’ became the experience of the doing of this business of being alive ... no longer the ‘do-er’. Thus ‘my’ days were numbered ... ‘I’ could hardly maintain ‘myself’ ... soon ‘my’ time would come to an end. An inevitability set in and a thrilling momentum took over ... ‘my’ demise became imminent.

The moment of the death of ‘me’ was so real that it was experienced as being that one was going into the grave physically ... that is how real ‘I’ am.

RESPONDENT: So, the world is perfect.

RICHARD: The clean and clear and pure perfection of peace-on-earth never goes away despite all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicide. There is the preference for the creature-comforts and ease of life-style, of course, but one takes the world of people, things and events as it is. Even if every single human being was happy and harmless, there would still be cyclones and earthquakes and tidal waves and fires and crocodiles and sharks and mosquitoes and so forth. Life is an adventure, after all.

The physical world cannot ever be perfect, in the sense that nothing uncomfortable would happen, due to the finite nature of spatial/temporal things – animal, vegetable and mineral – and events happen which some people welcome but others not (a farmer may want rain to germinate the crop whilst a builder may want clear skies to get the roof on). I cannot consider for a moment that people would want a nearby volcano to explode and engulf their village or town or city ... yet it happens. And there are the trivial matters of daily life – I spilt hot coffee only a couple of days ago – yet in the final analysis none of these events matter. Ultimately nothing is of utter importance because we are all going to die, some day. Things are only as important as one makes them be.

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Nikolai , modified 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 4:44 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 4:36 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1677 Join Date: 1/23/10 Recent Posts
Not Tao, your approach, no matter how you have described it, sounds like it could lead to Atammayata.

I think there are many things we can do to move in that direction. The mind that clings, grasps (and creates) "things" that it "cares" about needs to be refined, so that the "things" that it cares about aren't so in one's face, more refined, easy to deal with and then one can eventually develop dispassion towards those more refined "things" and see an eventual dropping away of that "caring". Vipassana and other approaches move in this direction, hopefully, if one is so inclined towards seeing dispassion take root. **

If the movement is too strong towards "caring", then advice to simply "stop caring" may go in one ear and out the other. So not everyone is wrong just because they don't or can't put this into action (or non-action). They just need to refine the incessant "caring" a little so that it isn't so in their faces, and then develop dispassion and inclination towards turning away from giving shape to "that" which is triggering the "caring". 

Substitute "care" for "intend, arange or obsesss (about anything)":

"But when one doesn't intend, arrange, or obsess [about anything], there is no support for the stationing of consciousness. There being no support, there is no landing of consciousness. When that consciousness doesn't land & grow, there is no production of renewed becoming in the future. When there is no production of renewed becoming in the future, there is no future birth, aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, or despair. Such is the cessation of this entire mass of suffering & stress." Cetana Sutta




*
*Not very refined and in-your-face "things" could include the 5 hindrances
**More refined and easier to deal with "things" could include mental fabrications that are more "peaceful" such 'felicity' or 'jhana territory'. 
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Noah, modified 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 5:05 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 5:05 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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@Noah: My experience with radical acceptance was that the same state of equanimty resulted from going through the emotion to the other side as simply not caring about the cause of the emotion in the first place. However, I'm not sure I'm completely understanding what you're saying about converting the emotion into spiritual enegry. Maybe this is what Bill is referring to as well. The question I would have, though, is whether this spiritual energy is truely a lack of stress, or just a conversion of one stress to another. If the energy is still there, something has to be fueling it, no? If the goal is to let the eneregy pass through and reach a state of equanimity, then its simpler to make a comparison.

There is an idea in certain traditions (you can research Swami Rudrananda, if you wish- I studied with his student, Stuart Perrin), that the chakras function as a machinery that has the potential to literally take in negative psychic tension and spit out shakti or spiritual energy (which also has something to do with the kundalini rising/progressing on the progress of insight).  Its all very theoretical and quite messy, conceptually, tbh.

 However, many 4th Pathers say that things have become "less sticky" than before.  I would say this is because their chakras are now processing experience more effeciently, doing this energy conversion automatically.  Basically, path attainments=open chakras=smooth processing=tension becoming flow.

Further conceptual mess/play: In general, I would say this "energy conversion" idea is equivalent to Buddhist tantra.  This is basically the difference between left and right hand practices in all mysticism.  Do you reject the energy/seek to rise above it OR do you seek to go into it and convert it/use it??

In terms of the idea that you can eliminate the thing that is fueling the energy in the first place, I don't think its possible.  In fact, everybody who claimed AF later dropped that claim, right?  I still think they changed their baseline through the Actualism method, and I still think it deserves to be called Actual Freedom, but I doubt that they could permanently, always-and-forever, in all situations, eliminate emotion.  I don't believe your method will do that either, even though I predict it will be of huge value to you (not that thats what you want, anyway).
Adam , modified 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 10:17 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/10/15 10:17 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 613 Join Date: 3/20/12 Recent Posts
In fact, everybody who claimed AF later dropped that claim, right? 


uhh no. where did you get that information?
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 12:58 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 12:58 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts


A real life example: Last week I was driving to work. There was a moderately intense energy in the body. I was very much aware that this feeling previously would have led to anxiety. I would have had attendant thoughts as a way of disassociating from the intesity of energy, and believed I was anxious. Last week it was not experienced like that at all. It was vibrant, alive, severe, and I remember thinking how pleasant it was, this energy of "anxiety" in the body that was just allowed to be there. Have you experienced that?
I've experienced something like that but I can't say I am sure there is no story.  Like you are driving and in past experiences you might be late or might be irritated at the extra time it is taking, but now you just feel it as an energy, so you think there is not story.  But maybe what has changed is the story you are telling yourself about the energy.  Before you might blame it on the circumstance and that the circstance is unfavorable, now you are telling yourself it is a nice natural kind of energy to be enjoyed.  Both are stories you tell yourself.  Does the energy exist without the story?  I can't say I know the answer but I have seen occasionally there are parts of me that I am not usually conscious of but once in a while I get a peek at them, some kind of subconscious self or somesuch.  I suspect it's also the part that drives the car when I think of other things, moves me out of the way of danger before my brain even notices there is any, and those kinds of things.  SOmething operates the body at times when the conscious mind is distracted thinking about its energh or whatever, not to mention there is a part that handles breathing and jillions of other bodily functions.  So I don't now if that part of me, the subconscious or whatever it is has a story.  And I do know I can shape my experiences quite a bit by changing my stories  LIke I can notice that anxiety is really more like energy and excitement that is a bit misdirected.  If I can tell myself that, then I can see it that way and it's a more pleasant way certainly.  but seems to me that everyone has things they tell themselves and think about, ways they interpret what hapepns and how they feel, and those are that person's stories.  Not sure if it's possible to get rid of all stories and still be alive. 

As for caring and clinging, thinking about this, I think it's unlikely that anyone got rid of all aspects of caring in every way.  If that were the case, why get up in the morning, why bother typing on some forum someplace, why bother eating and drinking, if you don't care about anything?  Other enlightened people still had individual personalities, did duties, some held down jobs that suited their personalities
, they must have cared about some things enough to get things done.  I suspect what they got rid of is the subtley related feeling of clinging. 
-Eva
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cian, modified 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 5:20 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 5:19 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 62 Join Date: 5/22/15 Recent Posts
As for caring and clinging, thinking about this, I think it's unlikely that anyone got rid of all aspects of caring in every way.  If that were the case, why get up in the morning, why bother typing on some forum someplace, why bother eating and drinking, if you don't care about anything?  Other enlightened people still had individual personalities, did duties, some held down jobs that suited their personalities
, they must have cared about some things enough to get things done.  I suspect what they got rid of is the subtley related feeling of clinging. 
-Eva

As I see it for this "stop caring" thing to be a useful and meaningful practice, its got to be seen as what it is: 
quite a 'high up' or advanced practice, with a 'high up' or advanced understanding.  

Of course it doesn't work for your 'relative self' to give up caring, but your absolute self quite frankly doesn't give a fuck! emoticon this is one of the reasons we resist enlightenment so much because that terrifies us.  
But its an advanced understanding because its riddled with paradox and I sure don't pretend to get it, but the absolute self both doesn't give a fuck and gives a supreme fuck at the same time (sorry about the choice of wording here).  This doesn't make any sense at all to our relative self, which hears something like "just stop caring" and it ... just ... doesn't ... compute!!
 
But here's the thing:
You can totally still get up in the morning, keep a job, eat and drink, be good to your kids etc etc
at the same time as completely 'stop caring' on seem deep fundamental level.
It seems paradoxical, but only if we innacurately answer the question of "WHO stops caring?"
Next time you get up in the morning, type on some forum someplace, eat and drink ... observe who is doing it.  If you have supreme observation skills you will notice it is all automatic. It happens by itself and a pesky conceptualised self keeps up with it and says "I did that"  "...because I care!"  and then it makes a big fancy show to itself about how much it cares and ties itself into knots and starts bossing the rest of beingness around to really show off what a caring hotshot it is. And the rest of beingness just complies because it really doesn't give a shit!

So there is a cause/effect error happening.  You THINK you do these things because there is a 'you' that cares about them.  Those things are just happening and they'll keep on happening, and indeed become smoother and freer most likely, if this manic little 'you' wizard stops thinking its in charge all the time.  

Hence, 'stop caring' is a cue to that crazed little wizardy 'you' monster to chill the beans and quit bullying reality around.
And it's a cue for your sense of identity to take a shift away from wizardmonster and onto the real wild impersonal terrormonkey-of-doesn't-give-a-fuck truth.
This is all a very fine thing to do.

The shadow side of 'Just stop caring' (as we know all practices have a shadow side)

is there could be a tendency for the relativistic self to take it as an excuse to stop doing the stuff that brings relativistic happiness.
But actually this is based on stuff like fear and laziness, which also stem from caring; if you think "im gonna just stop caring, therefore instead of going to work/eating/being kind to my neighbour, im just gonna lie here forever on the couch instead" that's totally duping yourself!  Lying on the couch might be motivated by lots of caring; it might be motivated by laziness, a strong desire to shut the world out, a strong desire to be inactive, a fear of activity/the world/what might happen etc.  Depressed people are exhausted after an hour of lying on the couch, because they're expending lots and lots of energy in keeping the body locked into that static position, locked into fear, locked into actively shutting out the world.  If they had the power to suddenly give up caring about all those things, the body would get up and move, it would find good food and love and activity and fun because we are blueprinted to do these things.  It's just in us.  Give up all cares and those programmes run automatically.  Lucky us.  

So that's one shadow side: it is very easy to misunderstand. (just look at this forum for a clear example of this ;)  )

Other shadow side: it is bound by a specific wording and is therefore automatically exempt from ultimate truth.  kaboom.
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cian, modified 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 7:29 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 7:29 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 62 Join Date: 5/22/15 Recent Posts
SNAP! Pawel  ;)
(more or less)




and...
Imho whole issue with Not Tao is that he is guy from double rainbow

HAHAHA...  yep  emoticon
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Bill F, modified 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 7:53 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 7:53 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Eva,

     Thanks for your response. It gave me some things to think about, some assumptions to question. I'll have to write more after work as it may be lengthy.
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Richard Zen, modified 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 8:13 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 8:10 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Eva M Nie:


As for caring and clinging, thinking about this, I think it's unlikely that anyone got rid of all aspects of caring in every way.  If that were the case, why get up in the morning, why bother typing on some forum someplace, why bother eating and drinking, if you don't care about anything?  Other enlightened people still had individual personalities, did duties, some held down jobs that suited their personalities
, they must have cared about some things enough to get things done.  I suspect what they got rid of is the subtley related feeling of clinging. 
-Eva

You pretty much nailed it. This "not caring" people are talking about stinks of nihilism which is not the middle path.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjh-nFCfp2s

That's why I like Rob Burbea's understanding of the push and pull over likes and dislikes. If the push and pull is let go of sufficiently then there would be cessation. One cannot live in cessation. As long as someone is conscious there is a subtle push and pull happening. You are just learning to let go more of what you can't control and what is out of your sphere of influence. Accepting what is out of your control is equanimity. The attention to pay attention is always moving automatically towards one object or another. Any attention movements require objects to attend to. Understanding this is enlightenment because consciousness is completely interdependent. You cannot climb outside your body and be a floating dispassionate knower that "doesn't care". So if anyone says they don't care but are conscious, they are liars or just ignorant. 

When it comes to caring I think people are misusing the word because they aren't agreeing on what it means.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk

This is a fool proof test. If your conscious you can fabricate in a skillful way or unskillful. Brahamaviharas would keep you mostly safe but with a lot of caring about what you do.

http://www.audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/5119.html
Everything you do is important

Okay so now I've stopped caring about this topic. emoticon
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cian, modified 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 8:13 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 8:13 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 62 Join Date: 5/22/15 Recent Posts
Bill F.:
I think you may be giving more credit here than is due. To the best of my knowledge Not Tao has not hit any major transformative pathways, has had no discernible insights into emptiness or the absence of self,

I've no idea what Not Tao's personal level of insight is like.  Do you know this?  How? 
in fact, much more importantly: how is it at all relevant?  
If it is what you are suggesting, how is that different from Advaita Devanta? I may be wrong...etc

Dude that's not wrong, it's a question.  What do you mean by the question. You're implying something without stating it. Can you state it?
a invitation to flesh out your own understanding.

our own understanding of...?  Not Tao's personal level of credibility?  What are we talking about here?





 
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cian, modified 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 8:32 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 8:25 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Richard Zen:
[quote=Okay so now I've stopped caring about this topic. emoticon
]
(...and everything else that came before it...hehe)

I think this is an example of what I meant earlier about the shadow sides of a practice of 'not caring'

From what I can see your post there is getting stuck in words just as much as Not Tao.  So, same basic problem (semantics strikes again!), just happens to have an opposite result.  well, opposite superficial result...the deeper result being the same; conviction - inability to see another's point of view out of fear it'll take your own truth away.  It won't.  


I wonder:  What do you REALLY believe is underneath if you feel the need to put on a caring mask

Edit: Re-reading your post you probably totally get this already ... but, just wondering
Alexander Entelechy, modified 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 11:19 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 11:19 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 27 Join Date: 4/7/11 Recent Posts
 
I'm interested in the phenomenological details.

In terms of bodily sensations what has happened to the experience of tension, weight and effort.

Is there any strain at all in moving? Does it require any effort to stay standing? To move from sitting to standing?

In terms of vision. Are colours brighter? Any collapse of inside/outside distinction? Any broadening of vision? Any residual effort or strain when looking at something?
 
On the cognitive side. How do you figure out it is caring? Are you assuming all unpleasantness is caring and then finding the 'caring' that is the source of the unpleasantness or is it just obvious in direct experience that there is caring and this creates suffering? Another way to put this. Is any figuring out required or is it immediate and obvious?
 
lastly. When you realise there is caring is it more like A or B or something else altogether.
 
A) You notice you care and then tell yourself not to care and the caring diminishes or disappears.
 
B ) You notice you care and immediately realise that caring is superfluous and the realisation itself is enough to diminish or disappear the caring.
 
Thanks
 
Alexander
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 12:31 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 12:31 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
cian:

As I see it for this "stop caring" thing to be a useful and meaningful practice, its got to be seen as what it is: 
quite a 'high up' or advanced practice, with a 'high up' or advanced understanding.  

I don't think it's doable as just a command to self unless you've become good at understanding your inner landscape.  if you tell a little kid to stop worrying about his birthday present, the kid will likely have no idea how to stop and will not stop.  Later as we get older, we switch to worrying about grades, work performance, bills, etc.  But worrying actually does not help those things one bit, it's just an energy drain.  I think step one is really recognizing that and letting it sink in on a regular basis, a desire to realize what mental activities are helping you and which are not.  Caring and worrying and desire to control are heavily intertwined.  Perhaps not clinging is more like a letting go of the worrying and desire to control and letting the caring still exist free and clean. 
-Eva
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 1:08 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 1:08 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Richard Zen:

That's why I like Rob Burbea's understanding of the push and pull over likes and dislikes. If the push and pull is let go of sufficiently then there would be cessation. One cannot live in cessation. As long as someone is conscious there is a subtle push and pull happening. You are just learning to let go more of what you can't control and what is out of your sphere of influence. Accepting what is out of your control is equanimity. The attention to pay attention is always moving automatically towards one object or another. Any attention movements require objects to attend to. Understanding this is enlightenment because consciousness is completely interdependent. You cannot climb outside your body and be a floating dispassionate knower that "doesn't care". So if anyone says they don't care but are conscious, they are liars or just ignorant. 

When it comes to caring I think people are misusing the word because they aren't agreeing on what it means.
Sounds like the push pull idea is similar to my idea of still having stories.  Like in a dream, you can be more or less lucid.  When you are more lucid, you undestand more that you are in a dream, instead of getting all sucked into the dream events, you recognize the dream events as just dream events and so they don't bother you as much.  But I think if you totally withdraw yourself competely from all the dreamline stories, you would not be in the dream anymore, the dream would disappear.  For here in 'waking' state, if you were in a state of no longer observing things and sorting those experiences according to your mental algorithms (ie stories), then I expect you would no longer be experiencing an Earth experience at all.  I am not sure what happens in those other states.  Does anyone remember what happens during cessation, my understanding is no one ever does but if they did, I guess people would argue that you can't remember because not remembering is part of the definition of cessation. (ie if you had the experience and claimed to remember, then the knee jerk response would probably be that you can't remember because it is defined as not remembering)  Anyway, perhaps that info does not translate or make sense to the version of us that is exists in the Earth experience so we just aren't able process it at all.  Thing that are incompatible with this Earth existence will just not be remembered.  You see that all the time with lesser issues, people will simply be unable to see evidence or ideas if it threatens their current world view (ie their stories) too much, no matter how obvious that evidence is, their conscious mind will repeatedly dodge around it.  It's only when that person is ready that he/she can finally see it.

Hence my issue with the simple command of 'not caring,' which in my mind I translate to not clinging.  First you need to get an idea of what is clinging and that you do it, then you need to notice and realize when you are clinging, and realize the benefits of not doing it, then work with fears of change and letting go of these habits, then explore your mind enough to work out ways to accomplish it.  If you've already spent years exploring your mental landscape, then it might seem more easy to do that when someone suggests it, but most have not spent years on internal inquiry.  Many are not even aware of when they are clinging or why it might be good to change.  Because in their minds, in their stories they tell themselves, their problems may still be the fault of someone else and have nothing to do with some airy fairy Buddhist concepts they never heard of..  ;-P
-Eva 
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Richard Zen, modified 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 1:30 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Eva M Nie:
Richard Zen:

That's why I like Rob Burbea's understanding of the push and pull over likes and dislikes. If the push and pull is let go of sufficiently then there would be cessation. One cannot live in cessation. As long as someone is conscious there is a subtle push and pull happening. You are just learning to let go more of what you can't control and what is out of your sphere of influence. Accepting what is out of your control is equanimity. The attention to pay attention is always moving automatically towards one object or another. Any attention movements require objects to attend to. Understanding this is enlightenment because consciousness is completely interdependent. You cannot climb outside your body and be a floating dispassionate knower that "doesn't care". So if anyone says they don't care but are conscious, they are liars or just ignorant. 

When it comes to caring I think people are misusing the word because they aren't agreeing on what it means.
Sounds like the push pull idea is similar to my idea of still having stories.  Like in a dream, you can be more or less lucid.  When you are more lucid, you undestand more that you are in a dream, instead of getting all sucked into the dream events, you recognize the dream events as just dream events and so they don't bother you as much.  But I think if you totally withdraw yourself competely from all the dreamline stories, you would not be in the dream anymore, the dream would disappear.  For here in 'waking' state, if you were in a state of no longer observing things and sorting those experiences according to your mental algorithms (ie stories), then I expect you would no longer be experiencing an Earth experience at all.  I am not sure what happens in those other states.  Does anyone remember what happens during cessation, my understanding is no one ever does but if they did, I guess people would argue that you can't remember because not remembering is part of the definition of cessation. (ie if you had the experience and claimed to remember, then the knee jerk response would probably be that you can't remember because it is defined as not remembering)  Anyway, perhaps that info does not translate or make sense to the version of us that is exists in the Earth experience so we just aren't able process it at all.  Thing that are incompatible with this Earth existence will just not be remembered.  You see that all the time with lesser issues, people will simply be unable to see evidence or ideas if it threatens their current world view (ie their stories) too much, no matter how obvious that evidence is, their conscious mind will repeatedly dodge around it.  It's only when that person is ready that he/she can finally see it.

Hence my issue with the simple command of 'not caring,' which in my mind I translate to not clinging.  First you need to get an idea of what is clinging and that you do it, then you need to notice and realize when you are clinging, and realize the benefits of not doing it, then work with fears of change and letting go of these habits, then explore your mind enough to work out ways to accomplish it.  If you've already spent years exploring your mental landscape, then it might seem more easy to do that when someone suggests it, but most have not spent years on internal inquiry.  Many are not even aware of when they are clinging or why it might be good to change.  Because in their minds, in their stories they tell themselves, their problems may still be the fault of someone else and have nothing to do with some airy fairy Buddhist concepts they never heard of..  ;-P
-Eva 

I don't know what is so difficult to understand. If you are conscious the attention span will have some preferences no matter how "enlightened" you are. There is no way to avoid ALL dukkha. You can reduce dukkha by accepting what you can't control but you still will imagine avenues of choices (existentialism) and there will be some stress to get people. Also there's war, conflict, injustice etc.
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Bill F, modified 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 3:54 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 3:54 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 556 Join Date: 11/17/13 Recent Posts
I've experienced something like that but I can't say I am sure there is no story.  Like you are driving and in past experiences you might be late or might be irritated at the extra time it is taking, but now you just feel it as an energy, so you think there is not story.  But maybe what has changed is the story you are telling yourself about the energy.  Before you might blame it on the circumstance and that the circstance is unfavorable, now you are telling yourself it is a nice natural kind of energy to be enjoyed.  Both are stories you tell yourself.  Does the energy exist without the story?  I can't say I know the answer but I have seen occasionally there are parts of me that I am not usually conscious of but once in a while I get a peek at them, some kind of subconscious self or somesuch. 

Eva,

      Yes, I tend to agree with all you've said. If you look at the passage I wrote, the part where I wrote about even thinking "this energy is pleasant" is a story, at least at the level of conceptualizing the energy. That slipped by me so thanks for pointing it out. Is the energy itself pleasant in the absence of conceptualization, is it neutral, is it related to subconscious events from a time we were too young to remember? I'm not sure. I could get into a tantric explanation of the energy, of the liberating power of what people think of as negative emotions, but I don't think this forum would be too receptive to that.
      From what I've read and understand of neuroscience what we might call the emotion is a relation between the body and it's environment. The body has a life of it's own. Some of it is obvously influenced by our observable and external environment (the tightening that occurs whe you see the car careening towards you) and some of it is just a pattern of movement felt as a subtle somatic energy in the body. Most people have no relationship or understanding of this subtle somatic presence. So there is the relationship between the body and the environent (yes, even this is a story) and then that relationship plays out in the body and in subtle ways in the brain and this becomes conceptualized into a story with a subjective experiencer. Damasio is my source for this understanding, but practice has informed it as well.
      I worked for a while with Reggie Ray in a 1:1 capacity, and he repeatedly spoke of the body as enlightenment itself, and of aspiring towards relating to our body in a devotional way. The body seems to be able to process experience in a way the conceptual mind can't. 
Returning to the orignal premise the experience of the body is a form of story, but that story is raw and empty, not static and tight, in my experience. If there is a subconscious story below the surface that is directing the energy I am not able to detect it as such, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
        Thank you.

Bill

      
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cian, modified 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 5:46 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 5:46 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 62 Join Date: 5/22/15 Recent Posts
I already stated the "how" but you ignored it and left that part out of the quote.
true. my bad.
Not Tao is a beginner. He began not practicing, and posting here regularly about a year ago. You can glean where someone is at from how they describe their insights.

how accurately you can glean this may depend a lot on how open you are to the vast possible variation in individual idiosyncracies of how people communicate.  
For instance:
You are a beginner too. You belive you've hit stream entry if I remember reading you correctly. You haven't and I'll demonstrate why shortly. 
The stage of believing in Absolute Self and Relative Self, Ultimate Reality or Awareness apart from phenomena is a stage along the way. That you are still caught up in it's dualism implies you have not really seen cleary into anatta. I've been there. It's not wrong, it's just not complete.
I don't think this tells you about a stage I'm at, dude. It tells you about a concept I'm trying to communicate.  
In order to communicate it, failing telepathy (i hold no false claim to siddhi powers! ;) ) I chose to use these things called words.  Maybe you've come across them in your studies.  They're very clunky and mean a million possible things each and sometimes its fun to use them to talk about things other than the ultimate name of God which you swiftly burn and bury underneath a skull.  
you know the story of the old zen dude hanging off a cliff by his teeth from a tree branch who wants to call for help but if he opens his mouth he's gonna drop!
The moment I open my mouth I'm basically already bullshitting and lying.  Words and ideas are not my nor anybody's actual experience.  If you really wanna play that game then really go for it. Pick any phrase or sentence of what I or yourself or anyone writes or says, pick apart its total inconsistency with the way things actually are and deduce that its speaker/writer is not seeing clearly.  It's a very easy game to play and you're doing good so far.  

The opposite game, also fun to play, is to listen beyond linguistic red-flag markers in how people clunk their thoughts/theories/ideas/insights/theories,thoughts or ideas about insights etc into words, to the actual (admittedly unknowable) what-their-actual-meaning-is behind all that.  For instance, that Daniel fella who wrote a nice book I read once, writes a lot about this idea of "Right plane, right time" and isolating your endeavours into different trainings of sila, samadhi and panna.  He writes pretty nice and he's a clever fella so he expresses it perhaps a lot more clearly or dharmically-consistently than I do in these swiftly written posts, but that's the general idea I was going for with dividing between concepts of "relative self" and absolute self".  Useful communication.  

I'm totally happy to dance a dance of 'where do my experiences and insights fit onto these map things'.  I was thinking of starting a thread on it and ask some folks here for some friendly diagnosis.  Based on the pretty clear&descriptive info going around I've more or less concluded which points on the maps are matching to this wild aliveness adventure I seem to have found myself in.  But I am where I am. However these maps like to reflect it is up to the maps. That's their business.  


It's like "discovering" your neighbor's back yard.

Can you boil the insight down for me into something unique?
Haha, yeah, pretty much.
Can I boil it down to something unique?  Nope.  
Fairly throwaway insight.  Don't know why we're still talking about it.
I also don't like your orange pants.
Right.  

I love your eyes.      
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cian, modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 6:02 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 6:02 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 62 Join Date: 5/22/15 Recent Posts
The insight into anatta is the realization (meaning permanent change in processing rather than temporary experience of) that .
In the same way that someone past stream entry in the way it is described in mctb would not talk about the self as individual, enduring solid entity, someone who has realized anatta would not speak in terms of absolute and relative self. It is the realization of the fall out of such distinctions. In it's wake each experience, even that of self-referential cognition occurs without a watcher separate from the experience. In this way the entertaining of absolute and relative does not occur. 
Edit: I actually don't have enough information to say that you have not hit stream entry as defined in mctb. That was an error in my communication, and not something I should have stated with certainty.
Yeah, fair enough.  I've had several temporary experiences of something like what you describe, and the MCTB descriptions of fruition describe these experiences pretty well, but my day-to-day experience most of the time includes a sense of separation between self and other.  There is some very noticeable permanent change which I find quite tricky to describe, but not seeing the self as an "individual, enduring solid entity" quite fits as description.
So perhaps your <edited> diagnosis is accurate enough.  

Then again, your accurate diagnosis is what? That I'm not an arahat? Or I haven't attained to whatever level you're referring to? You could very easily guess at this. I still very much question that my use of the WORDS "relative self" and "absolute self" are what brought you there.   I'd love to get someone else's opinion on that.  
Here's my quote again:
Of course it doesn't work for your 'relative self' to give up caring, but your absolute self quite frankly doesn't give a fuck! emoticon this is one of the reasons we resist enlightenment so much because that terrifies us.  
But its an advanced understanding because its riddled with paradox and I sure don't pretend to get it, but the absolute self both doesn't give a fuck and gives a supreme fuck at the same time (sorry about the choice of wording here).  This doesn't make any sense at all to our relative self, which hears something like "just stop caring" and it ... just ... doesn't ... compute!!

Aside from jumping on the words I'm using, what do I actually mean here?  

If someone is filling out their tax return and decide to heed the advice "Just stop caring" and they interpret that advice in terms of their perceived separate self in relation to other people, tax corporations, relative physical locations such as my body here, home and prison, relative time concepts such as me here now, me somewhere else in the future. I never said anything about whether or not I experience reality like this, but I think we can agree that there are people who at least seem to.
This is what I mean by "relative self" - it has little to do with insight and lots to do with pragmatism.


"
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
"


I love your eyes.

Thank you. I always felt my eyelashes were too long in a feminine way, but I'd agree they are nice to look at. It doesn't change my opinion about the orange pants though. 
I'm finding myself not so up for the game with the italicised bit and kind of flagging in my desire to continue interaction with you at all.  This is totally separate from the content of discussion. I feel an undertone of hostility off your posts.  I thought I was fine with it but this interaction is becoming more and more of an unsavoury experience for me <note I'm talking about myself here>. 
For instance, you say you don't like my orange pants.  This is fine not to, but can you say what your emotional intent is behind saying so?  


cian




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cian, modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 9:49 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 9:46 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 62 Join Date: 5/22/15 Recent Posts
Your note of hostility made me reread my previous post. I do not detect anything that I would call hostile there, and know my own internal experierience while posting. Perhaps you are picking up your own internal experience, and projecting that on to me. I really don't know. 

Perhaps re-read all your previous posts in this thread as well as people's reactions to them.  For whatever reason I'm not alone in picking up on the hostility thing, whatever it is.  

I'm finished with this thread.  
Apologies to anyone I may have thrown inconsiderate comments at myself. Not Tao and Richard Zen are possible examples.


Bill F, I guess you'll suggest I'm just backing out of discussion for fear of being challenged, but there's just such a backlog of stuff here that I think we're all talking about different things and getting our wires crossed and I feel like you're just not getting me and I feel attacked and that to me just ain't good grounds for a discussion, so if anything we should start over but for now I'm out.  

And if there's nothing you can learn here about your treatment of other people around this stuff, I'm genuinely totally content with accepting that it's just me feeling a negative air in this thread...

I mean it's called "Everyone is WRONG" - WTF!!! no wonder there's been so much bickering emoticon


If you collect the core of the potentially very interesting "territory that people don't often talk about on this forum" and present it fresh in a new thread, I'll check it out.  

Over and out,
Metta to all  <3
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Jenny, modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 2:09 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 2:07 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 566 Join Date: 7/28/13 Recent Posts
Bill:
I already stated the "how" but you ignored it and left that part out of the quote. It's relevant because you think this is "high level" advanced stuff. It's not. Not Tao is a beginner. He began not practicing, and posting here regularly about a year ago. You can glean where someone is at from how they describe their insights. You are a beginner too. You belive you've hit stream entry if I remember reading you correctly. You haven't and I'll demonstrate why shortly. You, and Not Tao are both beginners. That is fine. Nothing wrong with it. When you think you have a deep understanding when you are just a beginner you deserve correction. 

Bill is correct. Moreover, he's been respectfully engaged throughout this thread, as is his habit on other threads, however much I consider such investment of his time and energy reminescent of the adage about pearls and swine. 

The DhO culture used to be one whereby those with very high levels of insight and attainment, those such as Bill, kindly and honestly gave of themselves by offering beginners exactly the correction Bill speaks of and has offered here. I'm a beginner next to Bill, and I'm further along in insight and attainments than either you (Cian) or Not Tao. If you want to have half a chance of benefiting from some actual wisdom, then I would stop, calm down, stay, and listen to what Bill is saying and observe closely how he says it.

Jenny
Adam , modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 5:08 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 5:08 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 613 Join Date: 3/20/12 Recent Posts
Being human is the best thing there is. To refuse and run from it is to do violence to ourselves, and others.

Is it fair to say that this is your main point in commenting on this thread? if so...

Being human is what is violent, have you noticed that humanity's history is a history frought with murders and suicides?

Is continuing it because it is natural intelligent?

For me I am trying to run from, avoid, and escape being human and achieve peace and harmony using methods pretty similar to not tao's. By the way it has nothing to do with repression, it has to do with deeply acknowledging my feelings and deciding *together with* the feeling that it would be more intelligent to stop caring and get on with being peaceful & happy.

I can very much understand that you see this as indicative of a lack of prespicacity, because repression is endemic and this can easily look like repression (or easily be practiced as repression if done so with the wrong intention). Can I ask you a question: what are your own goals in practicing whatever it is that you practice?
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Bill F, modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 5:29 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 5:29 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 556 Join Date: 11/17/13 Recent Posts
Thank you, Jenny. You may be suggesting more of a gap between my own and your experience than I would but I thank you for the support.-Bill
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sawfoot _, modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 5:29 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 5:29 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 507 Join Date: 3/11/13 Recent Posts
Jenny:
Bill:
I already stated the "how" but you ignored it and left that part out of the quote. It's relevant because you think this is "high level" advanced stuff. It's not. Not Tao is a beginner. He began not practicing, and posting here regularly about a year ago. You can glean where someone is at from how they describe their insights. You are a beginner too. You belive you've hit stream entry if I remember reading you correctly. You haven't and I'll demonstrate why shortly. You, and Not Tao are both beginners. That is fine. Nothing wrong with it. When you think you have a deep understanding when you are just a beginner you deserve correction. 

Bill is correct. Moreover, he's been respectfully engaged throughout this thread, as is his habit on other threads, however much I consider such investment of his time and energy reminescent of the adage about pearls and swine. 

The DhO culture used to be one whereby those with very high levels of insight and attainment, those such as Bill, kindly and honestly gave of themselves by offering beginners exactly the correction Bill speaks of and has offered here. I'm a beginner next to Bill, and I'm further along in insight and attainments than either you (Cian) or Not Tao. If you want to have half a chance of benefiting from some actual wisdom, then I would stop, calm down, stay, and listen to what Bill is saying and observe closely how he says it.

Jenny

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Bill F, modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 5:40 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 5:40 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 556 Join Date: 11/17/13 Recent Posts
Adam,

      I remember that you used to post here more often. I always felt this place benefitted from your description of your af practice as it seemed to come without any sort of evangelical zeal or belittling the practice of others (the two things this thread begins with). I was not able to see anything that I would consider unwise in the way you described your practice. I believe I intentionally tried to engage you about your journey with AF as you never seemed to get as much attention as the more evangelical folks and it seemed to me what you were doing was valid.
        But I have trouble with this post:
       It rest on assumptions (incorrect assumptions, such as that the main point of my entering into this thread is the two sentences you quoted) to fulfill its point through rhetorical questions and generalizations: I am obviously not suggesting that the apex of human potential is war, rampant consumerism, and  widespread alienation (you only suggested the first, I'm just reflecting on the general climate of contemporary culture).  Do you want to try again and we can see what we can work out and learn that may be of benefit to both of us? I'm down if you are.

P.S- I was not aware of the word "prespicacity" so I had to look that one up. Thanks.


       
Alexander Entelechy, modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 5:41 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 5:40 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 27 Join Date: 4/7/11 Recent Posts
Hmm

I personally prefer the insights of NotTao over that of Bill or Jenny. As long as NotTao persists in his perrenial preaching though, his threads will be clogged up in a similar fashion to this one. NotTao, is it possible for you to tone it down or be more diplomatic in your future posts? You're one of two people who post here whose threads I regularly read and I think those threads would be better served if they didn't draw the ire of Bill.

Something to think about anyway

Alexander
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Bill F, modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 5:51 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 5:51 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 556 Join Date: 11/17/13 Recent Posts
Alexander,

       I like that you said "I personally prefer". I can respect that. I am aware of Not Tao's insight but what are mine in your opinion? I looked up recent posts because I wasn't too sure who you are. It seems you don't like AEN too much either. Are you interested in meditation or something else?

Bill
Adam , modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 6:15 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 6:15 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 613 Join Date: 3/20/12 Recent Posts
Hey bill. I started a new thread to continue our conversation.
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Nikolai , modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 8:07 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 7:05 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1677 Join Date: 1/23/10 Recent Posts
sawfoot _:
Jenny:
Bill:
I already stated the "how" but you ignored it and left that part out of the quote. It's relevant because you think this is "high level" advanced stuff. It's not. Not Tao is a beginner. He began not practicing, and posting here regularly about a year ago. You can glean where someone is at from how they describe their insights. You are a beginner too. You belive you've hit stream entry if I remember reading you correctly. You haven't and I'll demonstrate why shortly. You, and Not Tao are both beginners. That is fine. Nothing wrong with it. When you think you have a deep understanding when you are just a beginner you deserve correction. 

Bill is correct. Moreover, he's been respectfully engaged throughout this thread, as is his habit on other threads, however much I consider such investment of his time and energy reminescent of the adage about pearls and swine. 

The DhO culture used to be one whereby those with very high levels of insight and attainment, those such as Bill, kindly and honestly gave of themselves by offering beginners exactly the correction Bill speaks of and has offered here. I'm a beginner next to Bill, and I'm further along in insight and attainments than either you (Cian) or Not Tao. If you want to have half a chance of benefiting from some actual wisdom, then I would stop, calm down, stay, and listen to what Bill is saying and observe closely how he says it.

Jenny

Bleurgh, I just reacted......

I am now now unable to act as a mod in this thread as I'm in agreement here. I also vomit rainbows all over Not Tao's manner of preaching his own insights and poopooing others' approaches  I don't often post about my internal reactions these days, but it bubbled up quick and spewed out of my fingers to express my growing multicoloured disgust at the direction people have gone. So much unwarranted elitism. Fuck you all and fuck all your high and mighty "insights" (as well as all of my own). They are just conceptual overlays that have us acting like elitist fools. What's the point? 

Nick's techni-coloured yawn

EDIT a few times: As soon as I typed and posted this, I get a tinge of regret and question my motives and begin to edit out stuff. If I'd done this before I posted it, I'd probably have just gone "meh!" and moved on with life. But we'll leave it in and see what it triggers. 
Alexander Entelechy, modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 7:09 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 7:09 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 27 Join Date: 4/7/11 Recent Posts
Space
 
Hey Bill

My practice is informed by experiences I had doing the Alexander Technique, Open Focus, noting meditation and philosophical examination of my first person experience. I try and look at peoples descriptions of their experiences, see if they match mine and then learn about whatever path they are on. Specifically the experience/feelings of tension, effort and weight or their absence. Due to this I tend to parse everything into (things that talk about the elimination of felt tension, felt effort and weight; relevant to me) and (things that don't; irrelevant to me).

As to your views Bill. I've mentally put you in what I call the conceptualist Anatta box, very loosely I admit, since you don't talk about the above stuff in a way I recognise I tend to disregard your content. If you're wondering what a conceptualist Anatta is (I mean I did just make it up after all) then in very rough form it's:
 
a) All human beings are born with an innate predisposition to a very specific cognitive error. That error being the illusion of self.

b) The illusion of self causes suffering.

c) To remove suffering one must perform praxis that allows one to see though the illusion, like a magic eye picture I guess, when correctly seen suffering no longer arises.

Really these are my views of AEN's philosophy and I'm just kind of inferring you're in the same category. Since I tend to parse stuff fairly strictly by my own idiosyncratic criteria I could be totally wrong about your views but you're still in the category of people who talk about stuff I'm not interested in.

Lastly. I regret the post I made criticising AEN's views. It was lazy and 'clever'. I take issue with his critique of actualism, and by extension his whole philosophy, but my post was bullshit and just clogged the forum up. I've thought about writing a more thorough critique but really my time is better spent on pursuing things I'm more interested in.
 
Alexander
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Bill F, modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 7:43 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 7:39 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 556 Join Date: 11/17/13 Recent Posts
 I don't often post about my internal reactions these days, but I have to step in and express my growing multicoloured disgust at the direction people have gone. So much unwarranted elitism.

Haha. Just cultivate dispassion, bruh. It's not a big deal. 

Fuck you all and fuck all your high and mighty "insights". They are just conceptual overlays that have you acting like morons. What's the point? ***

"F word...grrr!" Haha. Preaching to combat preaching. Conceptual overlays to counteract conceptual overlay.

EDIT: As soon as I typed and posted this, I get a tinge of regret and question my motives. If I'd done this before I posted it, I'd probably ahve just gone "meh!" and moved on with life. But we'll leave it in and see what it triggers. 

It was interesting to read at least, the irony being that you became exactly what you were criticizing. And then some. 
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Bill F, modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 7:41 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 7:41 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 556 Join Date: 11/17/13 Recent Posts
Really these are my views of AEN's philosophy and I'm just kind of inferring you're in the same category. Since I tend to parse stuff fairly strictly by my own idiosyncratic criteria I could be totally wrong about your views but you're still in the category of people who talk about stuff I'm not interested in.

That's fair enough. Thank you for writing all that up.
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Nikolai , modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 7:54 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 7:52 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1677 Join Date: 1/23/10 Recent Posts
Bill F.:
 I don't often post about my internal reactions these days, but I have to step in and express my growing multicoloured disgust at the direction people have gone. So much unwarranted elitism.

Haha. Just cultivate dispassion, bruh. It's not a big deal. 

Hehe, true. Very true.

Fuck you all and fuck all your high and mighty "insights". They are just conceptual overlays that have you acting like morons. What's the point? ***

"F word...grrr!" Haha. Preaching to combat preaching. Conceptual overlays to counteract conceptual overlay.

Yes, gasoline on fire. 

EDIT: As soon as I typed and posted this, I get a tinge of regret and question my motives. If I'd done this before I posted it, I'd probably ahve just gone "meh!" and moved on with life. But we'll leave it in and see what it triggers. 

It was interesting to read at least, the irony being that you became exactly what you were criticizing. And then some. 

What is  the "some"?.....agh...don't worry about it, I realised why I originally avoid posting these reactions. We all get tied up in these games and competition. 

Good day to you sir.
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cian, modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 7:57 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 7:57 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 62 Join Date: 5/22/15 Recent Posts
ok, so i said i was outta here but,
(i should know by now that everyone who ever does that comes back and says "One more thing!!" emoticon so here's my one more thing...)

you said this
 labelling me "hostile" or my criticisms "attack"
and i rather not leave an interaction like that.  that would be me being hostile and attacking you.  
So I wanna say No hostility intended bro.


i guess i wasn't clear enough. i said:

Bill F, I guess you'll suggest I'm just backing out of discussion for fear of being challenged, but there's just such a backlog of stuff here that I think we're all talking about different things and getting our wires crossed and I feel like you're just not getting me and I feel attacked and that to me just ain't good grounds for a discussion, so if anything we should start over but for now I'm out.  

I know I've been pretty argumentative here and generally spewing out a bit too much nonsense for the little I really know, and Jenny, thanks for that clarification too.
But when I wrote that bit quoted above I genuinely meant very simply: "I feel like you're just not getting me and I feel attacked".  
That was just purely being honest about my feelings, it's a different way of communicating. I very much DIDN'T mean: "You're not getting me and you're attacking me" and I definitely DON'T think that's true. 

And before that I wrote:

This is totally separate from the content of discussion. I feel an undertone of hostility off your posts.  I thought I was fine with it but this interaction is becoming more and more of an unsavoury experience for me <note I'm talking about myself here>. 

I hope you get that I get that this really has nothing to do with you.  This is my stuff.  These are feelings I felt.  It just so happens I'm not anymore.  So it goes.


And I meant it too that I'm potentially on for future discussion, if such a thing comes about. I'm sure I'll have gained some humility from all this. 
But if you're going to talk about me and my attainments, please do so when I'm not feeling overly defensive, attacked and unheard.  
That will be much more conducive to diving into some of that "really dope shit" you got going on if Jenny is to be believed at all ;)

you hearing me brother!?   - Man I really imagine you seeing me as such a delicate little flower - 
Well... maybe so.





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Bill F, modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 8:03 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 7:59 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 556 Join Date: 11/17/13 Recent Posts
We're good, bro. I can hang. Anger is not a big deal. Maybe sometimes it's even justified (gasp). Maybe it was mainly provocation. Maybe it's just conceptual overlay. Maybe it's dogma.


People aren't going to like this. it reeks of excusivity. It could be used in a hierarchical way and contribute to the worst sort of arrogance, and delusion. That's not what I'm proposing. I think people should be allowed their journey, and to express where they are, and we should respect that. The reality is that we have different things to offer and using very elementary insights as a way to put others down should be challenged. If you start a thread where you tell everyone they're wrong based on your own idisyncratic insight, and insult the practice of others, there's going to be blowback, as there should be.- Bill F.

Edit: Oh yeah. Fuck you too! 
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Bill F, modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 8:02 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 8:02 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 556 Join Date: 11/17/13 Recent Posts
Cian,

     Thank you for the response. I will respect your wishes in the future, and I understand your perspective and why you would feel that way. I'm a bit of a delicate flower myself.

Metta,
Bill
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 11:37 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 11:37 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
Adam . .:
Being human is the best thing there is. To refuse and run from it is to do violence to ourselves, and others.

Is it fair to say that this is your main point in commenting on this thread? if so...

Being human is what is violent, have you noticed that humanity's history is a history frought with murders and suicides?

Is continuing it because it is natural intelligent?

For me I am trying to run from, avoid, and escape being human and achieve peace and harmony using methods pretty similar to not tao's. By the way it has nothing to do with repression, it has to do with deeply acknowledging my feelings and deciding *together with* the feeling that it would be more intelligent to stop caring and get on with being peaceful & happy.

I can very much understand that you see this as indicative of a lack of prespicacity, because repression is endemic and this can easily look like repression (or easily be practiced as repression if done so with the wrong intention). Can I ask you a question: what are your own goals in practicing whatever it is that you practice?

I can see why you think that, yes, humans definitely have violent tendencies and sometimes do terrible things, but I also see many wonderful amazingly beautiful acts mixed in.  I don't think we come here with the best goal to just to try to not be us.  I think all the things we deal with, feel, and experience are how we are learning.  Learning is often a messy process but also beautiful in it's own way.  The bad is part of the learning as much as the good.  IMO, you may learn more from the mistakes than from the times you get it right and you can't deal with something properly when you are running away.  Besides you ARE human and IMO you chose to be human, so trying to run away from it or aspects of it is really going to be a waste of energy.  Sooner or later, you will have no choice but to stop running, turn around and start dealing with your ugly and scary demons, you will sooner or later deal with every single one of them, every little niggling aspect of them both good and bad until you make peace with them, it's only then that you will be 'free.'  But I think you will find in the end the demons were not at all what you expected anyway and that the prolonged effort of continually running from them was not worth it after all because they were paper tigers. 

It's kind of like when NotTao used the analogy of realizing you have been continually punching yourself in the face all along, it's very exciting when you realize that because suddenly for the first time, you have a clear idea of the problem and also to the solution to that problem and you realize you have been doing it mostly wrong and backwards the whole time and making it way harder for yourself.  (not that the solution turned out to be as easy to impliment as I first suspected but still it was the correct solution).  I totally understand NotTao's urge to say, 'it's all wrong', I felt something similar in a general sense that it had been almost all wrong, that I had most of it wrong previously.  But not that I had never heard it said correctly by any others, just that my perspective had been so skewed in a certain direction that I had been going mostly in the wrong direction and had not recognized and groked the importance of certain things I had heard previously that were more accurate. 

For me, it took an enormously long amount of time and effort to get to where I finally understood that, IMO, very important realization.  Before that was a long period of time where I finally got around to really looking at my demons, picking away at them one by one, I guess I finally got tired of them chasing me everywhere so it seemed my only option left.  ;-P  And then finally I realized I was my own worst enemy all along and not anyone else.   But I had to understand and make peace with both my good and bad sides reasonably well before I could get to that point.  In many mystic traditions, there is strong emphasis placed on learning to deal with your dark side and accepting it too as part of you, so it's not just me saying this.  ;-P  Constantly fighting (or fleeing)  with aspects of yourself is a real energy drain so it can be quite a relief when even one demon is sorted out inside you.       
-Eva
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/13/15 12:05 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/13/15 12:05 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
Bill F.:
Cian,

     Thank you for the response. I will respect your wishes in the future, and I understand your perspective and why you would feel that way. I'm a bit of a delicate flower myself.

Metta,
Bill
LMAO!  Somehow I didn't expect  you to say that at all!  Maybe it was all those f bombs that lead me astray.  I suspect the prob with these kinds of threads is it's very hard to say that you (or anyone) think you are right and that others are wrong without stomping on all the 'wrong' people's egos.  The more you strike at the core of their current beliefs, the more emotional the response will be, and Bill, you are one that tends to strike with rather laser precision and rather large clodhoppers.  (and NotTao too) ;-P  As long as any reasonable amount of ego remains, typically people will get irked almost for sure if you tell them they are not only wrong but lower/behind you on the path.  If you spend a lot of time on the subject elaborating on each point of how they are lower or more wrong, you are even more likely to step on their ego.  And if any aspect of what you say about their lack of attainment is right, it's likely to be even more irritating than ever!  I suspect it's because to do that without blowback, one either needs a high enough position in the group that you are in that you are already socially expected to take the role of guru (and only one person here can I obviously think has that position currently), or you have to really have so little ego left that most people can sense your lack of it very strongly.   I suspect it always takes two egos to tango, so you've got to really really have at least one ego very very much tamed to avoid a pissing contest in such circumstance.  If there is more than one whiff of it left, then everyone else is going to sense it from a mile away.   Either that or the power gradient has to be strongly preagreed in advance.  Niether is the case much on these boards so you get a lot of pissing contests.  But in between the pissing, there is still a lot of great content sometimes.  ;-P 
-Eva   
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Psi, modified 8 Years ago at 6/13/15 1:46 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/13/15 1:46 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1099 Join Date: 11/22/13 Recent Posts
Not Tao:

You can swear like a sailor,

kill people,

say horrible egotistical things,

be completely distracted,

and even strive for a life of luxury,

and none of this will be stressful if you simply don't care about any of it. 
Not Tao,

Can you please delete the part of your post where you are implying that it is okay for people to kill people as long as they do not care about it?There should be no need to elaborate upon this.  The other four points above just show a mundane level of ignorance and can stand as foolishness on their own.  But, in my view, the justifying of killing people is intolerable, and it could be, again, just plain ignorance at work, ignorance in regards as to how the general populace may take such statements as justifications for evil doing, such as murder.


Psi  
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Psi, modified 8 Years ago at 6/13/15 7:31 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/13/15 7:31 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1099 Join Date: 11/22/13 Recent Posts
Psi:
Not Tao:

You can 

kill people,


and none of this will be stressful if you simply don't care about any of it. 
“When you’ve done the types of things I’ve done, it’s easier not to reflect on yourself. When I start thinking about how it’s affecting the families of the people, and my family and everything, it doesn’t do me any good. It just gets me very upset.”

Jeffery Dahmer


Not Tao, You are not alone in being WRONG.

Psi
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Psi, modified 8 Years ago at 6/13/15 11:38 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/13/15 11:38 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1099 Join Date: 11/22/13 Recent Posts
Not Tao:
This is my last insight.  It's the last, because it is complete.  Stress, all stress, has one single cause: caring.  Whenever there is anything you care about, you will feel stress related to that thing.  When you don't care about anything, you are free from stress.  It is direct, linear, and has no other causes.  It is not mysterious and it needs no further instructions.


You have all of this completely out of order.  You are thinking your definition of caring is craving, it is not.  Craving arises before the actions you describe later in your post.  Your definition of not caring arrives after the instinctual reactions, and actually would be just another instinctual reaction itself, so not an insight or change, what you are describing then, would be called apathy.

Apathy


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


To get to the roots of suffering requires more than what you are describing.  You have to get in deeper to see the process, which does require mindfulness and tranquility.  The mundane mind will just either react or spin in circles, confused.

Also,

I still disagree with your ideas about killing people and await your response.  You posted the concept and I would appreciate it if you explained yourself to the group about the how killing people does not matter as long as you do not care.  

DHO

  • personal responsibility: you take responsibility for the choices you make and what you say and claim


Psi
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/13/15 1:01 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/13/15 1:01 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
Bill F.:
LMAO!  Somehow I didn't expect  you to say that at all!  Maybe it was all those f bombs that lead me astray.
My "fuck you" to Nikolai was a joke. I don't think I've ever actually expressed those words to anyone. As for Cian's response, I totally respect vulnerability. I don't talk about it much but most of my professional work has been in the realm of mental health. If someone is open, and vulnerable, and seems genuine, there's no way I'm going to respond with defensiveness. I'm going to be exactly there. I'm probably not a "delicate flower" haha, but I certainly have tenderness.
I very very much respect honesty with self and others.  The closer you can come to being honest with self about weaknesses, IMO, that is the beginning of strength.   And yes, good point, that bit of honesty really seemed to clear the air, at least from my perspective, which is nice, you have to give credit to that.   
  I suspect the prob with these kinds of threads is it's very hard to say that you (or anyone) think you are right and that others are wrong without stomping on all the 'wrong' people's egos.  The more you strike at the core of their current beliefs, the more emotional the response will be, and Bill, you are one that tends to strike with rather laser precision and rather large clodhoppers.  (and NotTao too) ;-P  As long as any reasonable amount of ego remains, typically people will get irked almost for sure if you tell them they are not only wrong but lower/behind you on the path.  If you spend a lot of time on the subject elaborating on each point of how they are lower or more wrong, you are even more likely to step on their ego.  And if any aspect of what you say about their lack of attainment is right, it's likely to be even more irritating than ever!  I suspect it's because to do that without blowback, one either needs a high enough position in the group that you are in that you are already socially expected to take the role of guru (and only one person here can I obviously think has that position currently), or you have to really have so little ego left that most people can sense your lack of it very strongly.   I suspect it always takes two egos to tango, so you've got to really really have at least one ego very very much tamed to avoid a pissing contest in such circumstance.  If there is more than one whiff of it left, then everyone else is going to sense it from a mile away.   Either that or the power gradient has to be strongly preagreed in advance.  Niether is the case much on these boards so you get a lot of pissing contests.  But in between the pissing, there is still a lot of great content sometimes.  ;-P  

Yes to all of this, but particularly the last part. There are some things I'm just not as skilled at as others. I will never have your intelligent writing style, and ability to analyze a situation. That's fine. What I can do is share my own experience as honestly as possible, and sometimes that experience is that someone is expressing something I disagree with. And there is definitely "me" in my writing syle, but maybe the pissing can be used to share something of value as well.
We all have different strengths and weaknesses and different insights that we can help each other with.  Hashing these things out on the forum really helps me think of new things and angles on things and notice things I hadn't seen before. 
-Eva
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/13/15 1:25 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/13/15 1:25 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
Psi:
Not Tao:
This is my last insight.  It's the last, because it is complete.  Stress, all stress, has one single cause: caring.  Whenever there is anything you care about, you will feel stress related to that thing.  When you don't care about anything, you are free from stress.  It is direct, linear, and has no other causes.  It is not mysterious and it needs no further instructions.


You have all of this completely out of order.  You are thinking your definition of caring is craving, it is not.  Craving arises before the actions you describe later in your post.  Your definition of not caring arrives after the instinctual reactions, and actually would be just another instinctual reaction itself, so not an insight or change, what you are describing then, would be called apathy.

Apathy


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


To get to the roots of suffering requires more than what you are describing.  You have to get in deeper to see the process, which does require mindfulness and tranquility.  The mundane mind will just either react or spin in circles, confused.

Also,

I still disagree with your ideas about killing people and await your response.  You posted the concept and I would appreciate it if you explained yourself to the group about the how killing people does not matter as long as you do not care.  

DHO

  • personal responsibility: you take responsibility for the choices you make and what you say and claim


Psi
If I read NotTaos statement correctly, I think he was saying if you did those various things, killing or whatever, but didn't care, then it would not be STRESSFUL.  I didn't read anywhere that he did or didn't say it would be 'OK.'  As his statements stand, I think I would have to agree that there seems to be some various sociopaths who are not stressed by killing, some have the job of snipers or  other military jobs.  I don't know what NotTaos opinions are on the goodness/badness of such activities, but what I read was more a statement of just an observation that removal of caring can remove stress.  Yes, I do agree with that specific statement.

Psi, I also generally agree with the part of your post where you said that the order of things was backwards.  In most cases, the various actions, swearing and killing and whatnot would be preceded by a great deal of caring/clinging/anger, or whatever.  Those types of things usually happen under influence of strong emotion/clinging type feelings.  Yeah, sure, after the action is performed, there are likely some individuals that then don't care much anymore and so don't feel much stress afterwards.  But I think in general those examples are not going to be good examples of a person that is free from caring/clinging in life in general or that would be enlightened.  They would only be good examples of how not caring can allow them to not feel stress in specific situations where most people would feel stress, hence the attempted point I think is that clinging equals stress, a specific point I think most of us can agree on. 
-Eva
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Psi, modified 8 Years ago at 6/14/15 12:17 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/14/15 12:14 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1099 Join Date: 11/22/13 Recent Posts
[quote=Eva M Nie

]If I read NotTaos statement correctly, I think he was saying if you did those various things, killing or whatever, but didn't care, then it would not be STRESSFUL.  I didn't read anywhere that he did or didn't say it would be 'OK.'  As his statements stand, I think I would have to agree that there seems to be some various sociopaths who are not stressed by killing, some have the job of snipers or  other military jobs.  I don't know what NotTaos opinions are on the goodness/badness of such activities, but what I read was more a statement of just an observation that removal of caring can remove stress.
Yes, I do agree with that specific statement.


Yeah, I know, I was playing dumb, sorry. Caught me.  I was just trying to prod Not Tao into explaining his kill people statement, because,  I was trying to irritate Not Tao into intellectual discussion. My "Shadow" intention is to try to lead Not Tao into the deeper realms of Dependent Origination, specifically right at the Vedana/Tanha juxtaposition.  Though, upon reflection,  without Samma Samadhi/Sati/Vayama, this point of inflection must be Invisible to Yogis, this is what I am beginning to understand from feedback.
Hypothetically speaking:
The removal of all caring may end stress for the individual, and yet wreak havoc upon the rest of the world,  the individual, who may even launch a biological attack, or detonate a nuclear bomb, (to use extreme make believe examples in Not Tao fashion) if they did not care , they would be stress free.

The above type of practice is a problem.

Hypothetically speaking:
Say your child comes home and shows you some art work from school, and practicing the not caring method, told the child, that is nice, but , "I simply do not care."  While the practioner may remain carefree, the child would be heartbroken.

The above type of practice is a problem.

But this type of teaching lacks any wisdom or common sense, and I think that no one in their right mind should train towards such a goal.

Further it may remove internal stress, yet have no impact upon outward stress, so, no, it is not to a path of cessation of stress.  If one commits an act that causes harm to another , i.e. causes another to have stress, then that is the creation of stress, not the cessation of stress.  So, in that light this is a very selfish approach to ending stress.

So, to sum up, it does not end stress overall, but may actually add more stress in total to the Universe.
Psi, I also generally agree with the part of your post where you said that the order of things was backwards.  In most cases, the various actions, swearing and killing and whatnot would be preceded by a great deal of caring/clinging/anger, or whatever.  Those types of things usually happen under influence of strong emotion/clinging type feelings.  Yeah, sure, after the action is performed, there are likely some individuals that then don't care much anymore and so don't feel much stress afterwards.  But I think in general those examples are not going to be good examples of a person that is free from caring/clinging in life in general or that would be enlightened.  They would only be good examples of how not caring can allow them to not feel stress in specific situations where most people would feel stress, hence the attempted point I think is that clinging equals stress, a specific point I think most of us can agree on. 
-Eva
Right, if I am reading you correctly, Not Tao is describing an after the fact type of method.  

Not Tao's Not Caring Method in one sentence:

Someone performs an action, either wholesome or unwholesome, then simply does not care, then they will have no stress.

That is the method Not Tao is describing , summed up in one sentence, and it is a method that will lead people to disaster.  

@ All

Does this need elaboration?  Or are the pitfalls obvious?

@ Future  Not Tao

But, this is not to say that Not Tao is not actually progressing in the right direction if he continues with his spiritual journey.


Psi
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SeTyR ZeN, modified 8 Years ago at 6/14/15 12:36 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/14/15 12:34 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 113 Join Date: 9/9/14 Recent Posts
Psi, i think there is no need to elaborate. Right view, Right speech,  Right action
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CJMacie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/15/15 8:31 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/15/15 8:24 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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A couple of parting shots -- re using 'caring' polysemiously (using multiple meanings) obfuscates more than clarifies:

re: Oochdd (6/10/15 6:25 AM as a reply to cian.)
Now for me personally, the suggestion to "simply stop caring" also arouses fear in me ("I would totally fuck up my job and my life if I did that!"),…"
This perhaps best points out the problem. 'Caring' in the sense of simply paying-attention (in order to continue functioning at the mundane level) is NOT dispensible, just as it's nobler form, mindfulness, is at any level of cultivation or awakening.

re: Not Tao (6/10/15 7:07 AM as a reply to Oochdd.)
"If it doesn't make sense to "just stop caring," another way to look at it is to consider why whatever you're caring about seems important.  The Buddha has a list of daily contemplations that are helpful to compare against: In the future, I will grow old, I will be ill, I will die.  Everything I know will fade and pass away.  Is it really worthwhile to care about transient phenomena?"  "Another point is to consider that, when you really care about nothing, you feel perfect,…"

Good example. G. Buddha admonished, in effect, to 'take care' (be mindful/ remember) to daily reflect on sickness, aging, death, everything dear will disappear, and (all you've got left to work with is) kamma (karma).

"Another point is to consider that, when you really care about nothing, you feel perfect,…"
Well, maybe, maybe not. Mindfulness (sati is essential at all levels of (Buddhist) samatha) at the 7th arupa jhana ("nothingness") has a certain perfection to it. But 'feeling' doesn't pertain, ever since the 4thrupa jhana.

A point that stands-out in Alexander Wynne's analysis of passages in the ("early") Sutta-Nipata (in his 'The Origin of Buddhist Meditation') is the evidence that G. Buddha for sure inherited the jhana system from Vedic / Brahmanic tradition (i.e. those two documented teachers), BUT when he used it later in discovering his solution (where that tradition fell short for him), he did this by permeating it (samatha-jhana), at all levels and stages, with mindfulness (sati). And this made it possible for liberation in this very life. (In the Vedic system, the accomplished yogi, while living, mastered jhanas as the blissing-out part, simply anesthetizing dukkha, so to speak; only after physical death was it thought 'liberation' could happen.)
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Jake , modified 8 Years ago at 6/15/15 9:52 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/15/15 9:52 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 695 Join Date: 5/22/10 Recent Posts
Nikolai .:
sawfoot _:
Jenny:
Bill:
I already stated the "how" but you ignored it and left that part out of the quote. It's relevant because you think this is "high level" advanced stuff. It's not. Not Tao is a beginner. He began not practicing, and posting here regularly about a year ago. You can glean where someone is at from how they describe their insights. You are a beginner too. You belive you've hit stream entry if I remember reading you correctly. You haven't and I'll demonstrate why shortly. You, and Not Tao are both beginners. That is fine. Nothing wrong with it. When you think you have a deep understanding when you are just a beginner you deserve correction. 

Bill is correct. Moreover, he's been respectfully engaged throughout this thread, as is his habit on other threads, however much I consider such investment of his time and energy reminescent of the adage about pearls and swine. 

The DhO culture used to be one whereby those with very high levels of insight and attainment, those such as Bill, kindly and honestly gave of themselves by offering beginners exactly the correction Bill speaks of and has offered here. I'm a beginner next to Bill, and I'm further along in insight and attainments than either you (Cian) or Not Tao. If you want to have half a chance of benefiting from some actual wisdom, then I would stop, calm down, stay, and listen to what Bill is saying and observe closely how he says it.

Jenny

Bleurgh, I just reacted......

I am now now unable to act as a mod in this thread as I'm in agreement here. I also vomit rainbows all over Not Tao's manner of preaching his own insights and poopooing others' approaches  I don't often post about my internal reactions these days, but it bubbled up quick and spewed out of my fingers to express my growing multicoloured disgust at the direction people have gone. So much unwarranted elitism. Fuck you all and fuck all your high and mighty "insights" (as well as all of my own). They are just conceptual overlays that have us acting like elitist fools. What's the point? 

Nick's techni-coloured yawn

EDIT a few times: As soon as I typed and posted this, I get a tinge of regret and question my motives and begin to edit out stuff. If I'd done this before I posted it, I'd probably have just gone "meh!" and moved on with life. But we'll leave it in and see what it triggers. 

The issue of elitism vs. chaos is an important one in my opinion.
I disagree with my sense of the spirit of Jenny's post and also had a reaction to it-- mine along the lines of, I just don't think that it's a good direction to head to have 'authoritative' practitioners and newbies as this is likely to lead to a weeding out process that encourages sychophantic dynamics spiked with occasional 'trolling' (which may be actual trolling or may just be defined as trolling by the group think of the Authorities and their Loyalists).
I also worry about the forum being overrun by newbies like NT offering practice advice in authoritative voices, as this can reduce the signal to noise ratio.
There has to be a middle way.

I like the recent conversations about all of us trying to be explicit about whether we are writing from personal experience or more theoretically.  Mix that with the basic adult acknowledgement that people also can have different experiences which are equally valid but mutually exclusive, different values that are likewise. And mix in the growing (contemporary) awareness that there appear to be a variety of transformations that can be accomplished through contemplative practices which are different-- they look and feel different from the inside and out, they are accomplished with the application of differing methods in the light of differing views.

When I look back on the discussions that led to the earlier schisms I see these same dynamics: newer, younger practitioners who are very adamant about their newest discoveries (such as, at the time, actualism) and older, more 'elite' practitioners basically being assholes (is that where the whole asshat thing came from?). There was so much projection flying both ways that reading those threads has always led to a big face palm for me but whatever.

Also, for what it's worth, I think this is clearly another of Not Taos embarrassingly adolescent pseudo-insights and I think Psi has done a good job of countering it here. It is actually dangerous for people to espouse such either poorly articulated or poorly conceived views as if they are authoritatively true and negate everyone elses experience. Next time I wish NT would just go with something along the lines of "this is something I'm trying; this is what the effects seem to be so far...". Share personal experience. Without needing to negate others' experience and practice. Oh, and to be super clear, i *am* negating Not Taos contribution here; I don't see any evidence of insight beyond adolecent philosophical mumbo jumbo which bares a passing resemblance to some buddhist and actualist ideas. Bottom line, I may be wrong about that, which I ackowledge, in which case, I think Nt could and should do a better job of articulating these things and do so without speaking so authoritatively about others' practices and views.
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Noah, modified 8 Years ago at 6/15/15 1:14 PM
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RE: Everyone is WRONG

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I like the recent conversations about all of us trying to be explicit about whether we are writing from personal experience or more theoretically.  Mix that with the basic adult acknowledgement that people also can have different experiences which are equally valid but mutually exclusive, different values that are likewise. And mix in the growing (contemporary) awareness that there appear to be a variety of transformations that can be accomplished through contemplative practices which are different-- they look and feel different from the inside and out, they are accomplished with the application of differing methods in the light of differing views. 

Yeah, that should be our new manifesto, seriously.  This is how the Dho can stay out of the shit.  Different things are possible, equal, valid, powerful, transcended, etc.  Hopefully, the more we say this outloud, the more everyone will start to get into "adult mode" all the time.
Bottom line, I may be wrong about that, which I ackowledge, in which case, I think Nt could and should do a better job of articulating these things and do so without speaking so authoritatively about others' practices and views.

This part is very important, for all of us.  Both the acknowledgement of it being your opinion, as well as the identification of a specific problem and the offering up of a specific solution.

I don't think these notions of successful communication have to do with the dharma or sila.  For me, they are how I choose to live because I don't like fighting with people.  When I do fight, I fight to win and I see no other option.  I can't ever imagine why I would have to fight on a message board.  Instead, I identify a percieved problem and offer up a possible solution.  Or we can agree to disagree, and simply tolerate the uncomfortable ambiguity and uncertainty than an unresolved conflict brings up for us.   

May all users of the dho stay grounded in actual practice experience and communicate that groundedness steadily.
May all users of the dho stay out of the endliss pit that is certainty-of-opinion.
May all users of the dho practice communicating in a way that helps themselves and all others progress quicly along the path.
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The Poster Formerly Known As RyanJ, modified 8 Years ago at 6/15/15 3:52 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/15/15 3:52 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 16 Join Date: 6/12/15 Recent Posts
You and Noah basically said what I wanted to say, which saves me time from writing a longer post! I'm not quite sure what exactly what must be done (The more I think about it, the less sure I become), but I do believe a sort of middle/moderate solution does exist.
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 1:47 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 1:47 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
. Jake .:
Nikolai .:

When I look back on the discussions that led to the earlier schisms I see these same dynamics: newer, younger practitioners who are very adamant about their newest discoveries (such as, at the time, actualism) and older, more 'elite' practitioners basically being assholes (is that where the whole asshat thing came from?). There was so much projection flying both ways that reading those threads has always led to a big face palm for me but whatever.

Also, for what it's worth, I think this is clearly another of Not Taos embarrassingly adolescent pseudo-insights
Um Ok, is it just me or did you just talk about the dynamics of elite practioners acting like a holes to the young adamant ones, and then turn around and say that NotTao had an embarrassingly adolescent pseudo-insight?  That is not an ahole kind of thing to say? 

-Eva     
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 3:30 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 3:30 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 995 Join Date: 4/5/14 Recent Posts
It's lovely to say, "let's all get along and agree to disagree," when you're on the recieving end of being told you're wrong, but considering that every non-vipassana related post I've made on this forum has eventually turned into a lecture about how undeveloped my insight is, I thought it was best to simply state, flat out, that I believe everyone here is wrong instead of seeing my ideas turned into yet another, "well this is very nice, but in a few years you'll be able to talk to the grown ups about REAL mental development!" haha.  The main problem I've faced on here is that I'm trying to match up to the same framework even though it's fundimentally opposed.  Vipassana attainments simply have nothing to do with direct emotional/reactionary modification - even the concept of attainment gets in the way of this kind of practice.  If you're happy, that's your attainment. If you're not, then you have some work to do.  Who cares about the future?  Future happiness can't ever be experienced.

Consider this, how would you react if everyone went into your threads and kept pointing out that you obviously were nursing a sense of self because of x, y, and z, and this proves you are hypocritical and undeveloped and vipassana isn't working?  Even if everyone was nice about it (which most people on here aren't in relation to things that oppose their viewpoint) it would be difficult to keep motivated about what you're doing, and you'd certainly have a thirst to prove yourself.  I WOULD like to prove my ideas, but this is actually a pretty dumb concept. This is just a forum.  I could just pretend to be perfect if I was looking to sell myself - calculating out exactly what turn of phrase is perfectly in line with what I believe an expert would say.  Instead, I've done my best to be genuine and the general reaction to this is ridicule.  Oops, I'm not perfect yet, so I'm supposed to just agree with everyone until I am?  How silly.

I think, generally, the main problem with the DhO is that everyone takes themselves too seriously.  The easiest solution is for everyone to stop being so passive aggressive and elitist and simply state what they think.  If you disagree, that's fine, but it doesn't mean the person you're disagreeing with is wrong or at a "lower level" than you.  This has been the general atmosphere on here since I joined, I didn't suddenly invent it with this thread.  My original post in this thread was my bombastic way of throwing off all this stupid baggage.  So, I still stand by what I said.  Fuck vipassana, and theravada, and the buddha, and all the attainments.  I'm not getting bogged down by any of that anymore, and it felt lovely to make that decision.  I wasn't aiming my words at anyone in particular, but rather the zeitguist of the forum, which I generally disagree with.  I think you're all wrong, and I think the posts on this thread are good evidence of it.  Look at how strong a sense of self has to be developed against the crazy newb who is ranting about infantile ideas.  Sorry to be brash about this, but damn, guys, turn that jugemental lense on yourself for once.  You might not look so different from how you see me.

So, anyway.  I don't want to disown this thread or apologize for it.  I wasn't being that serious when I made the original post, but the theory is sound in it and I don't think I was actually being very offensive.  While I originally felt defensive because of how coldly judgemental Bill was towards me, it actually helped me realize something else I was caring about too much, and I was able to get something out of it, which is great!  T o the point, though, what's wrong with someone saying "fuck vipassana" once it a while?  If you guys want a forum that supports a lot of ideas, there should be just as much "fuck vipassana" as there is "fuck actualism" (along with every other practice, haha).  Maybe when you guys can bring yourselves to get down off your high pedistals you'll see there's something of value down here on the ground you obviously disdain so much.  From my new vantage point, you all look like you have to do a lot of teetering about to stay up there. emoticon
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 4:12 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 4:12 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 995 Join Date: 4/5/14 Recent Posts
Psi,

Your analysis of my ideas are somewhat simplistic.  If your child shows you a piece of art, saying, "I don't care," has no relation to whether you care or not.  A parent wouldn't WANT to say this to their child, so they wouldn't.  When you stop caring about everything, this give you a free will to do what you find INTERESTING.  Caring is not the same as interest (nor is it the same thing as desire or will).  Caring means, when you look at the art work, your attachments to your child, feelins of affection, a vision of the child's future as an artist, etc. go through your head.  If you simply don't care about anything, you look at the picture and you see what the child drew, and there is nothing else involved in looking at it.  To be without caring is to be without purpose, goals, paths to follow, places to be.  You look at the picture and you have nothing in relation to it, and this means it's perfectly itself and needs nothing from you.  Your child will be very pleased with your reaction because it will be completely free from judgement, you'll simply be enjoying yourself, and the child will see this.

To your other point about killing people.  If you've killed someone in the past, you will have to find a way out of caring about it to gain your freedom from it.  We use all kinds of justifications for this - like righteousness, or justice, or attonement, or forgiveness - but you can cut out the middle man and just do it without any reasons.  The result is the same.  I think what we all really want is freedom from our opinions.  We try to create frameworks that harmonize our actions with our environment in such a way that pleases our minds aesthetically (which we call logic) but this is all arbitrary.  We kill things all the time (which you pointed out in the Eating Animals thread) and often this doesn't bother us at all.  Some people drive themselves crazy by deciding to care about killing nothing at all down to the tinyest insect or flower bud, some people decide to stop at certain plants, some people don't care about animals but think people are somehow more important.  What I found for myself after looking at all this recently was that I didn't have to care about killing anything to still make a judgement about whether I wanted to be a part of the meat industry.  After watching Earthlings, I watched myself spend 3 days caring about what I saw in such a strong way it made me kind of sick - and this was because I was terribly afraid that I wouldn't have any desire to help animals if I didn't care whether they lived or died.  What I found was, when I no longer cared, I still wanted to help them.  It's really that simple.  The caring had nothing to do with it.

So, if you'd like me to be more specific, I'm defining caring as the emotional attachment to something.  Caring is your dependance on one outcome over another.  If you care whether your children live or die, this means it's important to you that your children stay alive.  When you no longer care, it is no longer important - your children can die and this would not feel wrong.  However, this does not mean you turn into a listless slug who just sits there.  You may be just as interested in keep your children alive, it just has no more emotional importance attached to it.  You are not COMPELLED to keep your children safe, you just do it because that's your intellectual desire.  When you care about nothing, you have a perfectly free will.  I actually think most people will find that they match who they feel they are the closest when they stop caring and simply use their will how they desire.

This is the point to stress, for me, though: it's precisely this idea that we need to care to continue being who we want to be that makes dropping stress so difficult.  The caring is the set of emotional regulations we put on ourselves to keep our vision of who we want to be together.  When we abandon caring - we really can be anything at all (including a mass murderer!) and this is incredibly frightening bexause we don't trust ourselves.  When you make the leap of faith and stop caring, though, I think you'll find you're still the same person.  You have the freedom to be a mass murderer, and you choose not to because it isn't what you want to be - not bexause it feels wrong or bexause you're afraid of it.
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Psi, modified 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 11:09 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 8:27 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1099 Join Date: 11/22/13 Recent Posts
Not Tao:
Not Tao, You seem to be Caring person, perhaps that is your Shadow.  Maybe you are rejecting this positive quality within yourself.  Compassion is okay to have, but Compassion with no strings attached.

To Care just for the sake of caring, but not clinging to the outcomes.  Yes, of course I understand.  I have understood you all along.  I do not think the average reader of your words would think so, to state that people should not care, comes across wrong, vague. And the word care, caring has inherent with it, multiple meanings.

So, I had someone close to me read your initial post, the OP, to get a non-practioner, third person perspective, I did not lead them on or discuss the post with them before hand.  This is what they had to say about your OP.

Selfish, Not Caring about your kids or family,  What is your point in life then?  Is this how you want to be treated, Like of you were hit by a car and someone says, "Who cares."

You said in OP, "No aspect of your life has any bearing on your happiness"  They  Said, "That is not true!"

Not caring about others around you, people would think you were a joke.

Kid comes home, "Daddy, I got an A, but who cares?"

Very disrespectful of others beliefs.

Very selfish, or very angry.

Defense Mechanism, Has possibly cared, and been burnt by it.

To Care without Emotional attachment to the outcome is called Karuna.
To Love without Emotional attachments to the outcomes is called Metta.
To Observe without Emotional attachments to the outcomes is called Upekkha.
To be Happy for others without Emotional attachments to the outcomes is called Mudita.
emoticon

I am not here to poke fun at you, or trash you personally, I am here because I care, I care, but am not attached to this emotionally.

Psi
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Jake , modified 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 9:16 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 9:16 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 695 Join Date: 5/22/10 Recent Posts
Eva M Nie:
. Jake .:
Nikolai .:

When I look back on the discussions that led to the earlier schisms I see these same dynamics: newer, younger practitioners who are very adamant about their newest discoveries (such as, at the time, actualism) and older, more 'elite' practitioners basically being assholes (is that where the whole asshat thing came from?). There was so much projection flying both ways that reading those threads has always led to a big face palm for me but whatever.

Also, for what it's worth, I think this is clearly another of Not Taos embarrassingly adolescent pseudo-insights
Um Ok, is it just me or did you just talk about the dynamics of elite practioners acting like a holes to the young adamant ones, and then turn around and say that NotTao had an embarrassingly adolescent pseudo-insight?  That is not an ahole kind of thing to say? 

-Eva     

Maybe so; I also wrote "Bottom line, I may be wrong about that, which I ackowledge, in which case, I think Nt could and should do a better job of articulating these things and do so without speaking so authoritatively about others' practices and views."

I don't think it's realistic or helpful to pretend to be something I'm not (i.e., someone who lacks human responses, even assholey ones). I have tried to frame my response in a way that makes it explicit that this is my response, and have tried to add caveats to the effect that I am admitting that I don't actually know whether this (NT's insight) is what I think it is. That doesn't change the fact that I find his tone and manner annoying and disrespectful if not disengenuous at times. i still have those thoughts and feelings about NT a lot of the time-- 'for what it's worth' ;) I also like his enthusiasm and find some of what he shares stimulating and interesting. I find it difficult to remember that in the face of his high number of (as I judge them) pretty pedestrian insights and the lack of evidence of much transformation of his experience; it seems to me he is going around in circles and posts when he thinks he's figured it all out and does so in a way that is dismissive of others' experience, methods and views, as Bill has done a good job of pointing to IMO.

Also, I'm not claiming by any stretch to be an 'elite practitioner'. I'm really sorry if I've given that impression, or implicitly claimed that, which I admit is possible, as I too have a habit of speaking authoritatively. The truth is i can only be authoritative about my own experience and even there, the unknowns vastly outnumber the knowns so I'm not even an expert on my own experience! Hahaha emoticon

I think part of the reason why I feel OK being kind of harsh with NT is the fact that he comes on so strong about the value of his own insights and can be so dismissive of others' ways. To me it is definitely a sign of someone who doesn't even get the beginner stuff when someone constantly finds themselves arriving at 'it' and shows little insight into the process of finding and losing 'it'. Insight into that process of oscilating between confusion and certainty, and what drives it,  seems much more important to me in my own life than any of the 'it's I've thought I found along the way.
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Jake , modified 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 9:55 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 9:54 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 695 Join Date: 5/22/10 Recent Posts
Not Tao:
  Vipassana attainments simply have nothing to do with direct emotional/reactionary modification

The problem is, people come along who are looking for information and come across statements like this, which you make with such an authoritative tone, and they may not realise that this statement is bullshit. They may think "well, guess I'll try something else, that guy with almost 900 posts in a year says so!" Which would be a shame.
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 11:55 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 11:55 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
. Jake .:
Eva M Nie:

Um Ok, is it just me or did you just talk about the dynamics of elite practioners acting like a holes to the young adamant ones, and then turn around and say that NotTao had an embarrassingly adolescent pseudo-insight?  That is not an ahole kind of thing to say? 

-Eva     

Maybe so; I also wrote "Bottom line, I may be wrong about that, which I ackowledge, in which case, I think Nt could and should do a better job of articulating these things and do so without speaking so authoritatively about others' practices and views."

What i was talking about was YOU suggesting something and then appearing to do the opposite all in like a few sentences. Sure we can talk more about NT instead but seems to me has already gotten the thorough smackdown so I didn't feel the urge to continue in that vein.  I was confused because you have been here much longer than me and appeared to be making a statement about how the board should run, but I don't understand what you were saying we should do.

I don't think it's realistic or helpful to pretend to be something I'm not (i.e., someone who lacks human responses, even assholey ones).
Are you saying any kind of self control or editing of what is in your head and then put out through typing is considered pretending to be something you are not?   But you did also imply others should not act like assholes to newbies so are you saying now that if they didn't, they would be pretending to be something they are not as well?  It's OK to personally insult others with the justification that it's an authentic feeling and you feel they did it first and you are more advanced so that makes it fine?  Or because 'he deserves it?'  Or am I missing something because I don't yet see the logic.      

I have tried to frame my response in a way that makes it explicit that this is my response, and have tried to add caveats to the effect that I am admitting that I don't actually know whether this (NT's insight) is what I think it is. That doesn't change the fact that I find his tone and manner annoying and disrespectful if not disengenuous at times.
Sounds different when you say it like that, doesn't it?   Ie that YOU find his tone and manner annoying, etc.  Instead of passing judgement on him so much.   Does he really have the power to control your actions and feelings and make you say ahole things?  Sounds like that NT guy is a real menace!

i still have those thoughts and feelings about NT a lot of the time-- 'for what it's worth' ;) I also like his enthusiasm and find some of what he shares stimulating and interesting. I find it difficult to remember that in the face of his high number of (as I judge them) pretty pedestrian insights and the lack of evidence of much transformation of his experience; it seems to me he is going around in circles and posts when he thinks he's figured it all out and does so in a way that is dismissive of others' experience, methods and views, as Bill has done a good job of pointing to IMO.

Also, I'm not claiming by any stretch to be an 'elite practitioner'. I'm really sorry if I've given that impression, or implicitly claimed that, which I admit is possible, as I too have a habit of speaking authoritatively. The truth is i can only be authoritative about my own experience and even there, the unknowns vastly outnumber the knowns so I'm not even an expert on my own experience! Hahaha emoticon
I have found for myself that people bug me the most when the have my same weaknesses and bad habits.  Passing judgement is often a problem of mine as well.  (lets pretend not to notice that I am doing it right now! yes, I can be a real ahole sometimes too)  I have to work hard to remind myself it is my problem when I feel irked, not theirs.  They are just showing me my own issues. 
I think part of the reason why I feel OK being kind of harsh with NT is the fact that he comes on so strong about the value of his own insights and can be so dismissive of others' ways.
And he comes on and says he feels OK being harsh because others here were harsh to him, he uses the same justification as you did.  It takes 2 to tango. 
To me it is definitely a sign of someone who doesn't even get the beginner stuff when someone constantly finds themselves arriving at 'it' and shows little insight into the process of finding and losing 'it'. Insight into that process of oscilating between confusion and certainty, and what drives it,  seems much more important to me in my own life than any of the 'it's I've thought I found along the way.
Could be but if so, that is IMO his problem.  Is the goal here to help him with this perceived problem or just react to how you personally feel irritated by what you perceive as his problem?  Or is the goal to get him to go away?  To be honest, I am not sure myself of the standards on this board.  In the board preamable, its says that beginers shouldn't claim things authoritatively, but in order to inforce that, you might need a list of nonbeginners who are given the authority of not being beginners and so are allowed to pass judgement on others.  SOunds like people don't want that.  But the alternative is that anyone can claim to be above the person they are insulting if that person's words irritate them or they disagree with them.  Or if you have a good argument that you really ARE above him in accomplishment, then does that make it OK to personally insult him?  It's Ok because you feel he did it first right?  Or is it OK if a few others agree with you?   Is there  a list of times when it is Ok to do that after all, like if someone else does it first, someone else is irritating to more than 5 people, because to not say ahole things would be disingenuous?

Anyway, I do agree with you that, ASSUMING dissemination of advice that is perceived to be more correct is the priority (is it the priority?), then there should be a discussion or formulation of a system on how to handle assertions from those perceived to be lower on the totem pole, otherwise you'll probably continue with the current free for all types of arguments. Which is worse, more rules or the more of the status quo?  I don't now see an easy solution either way though.  IMO as long as meditation continues to become a popular and growing large niche and this board continues to be public, this issue will continue to develop on the board. 
-Eva 
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Dream Walker, modified 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 1:31 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 1:31 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1657 Join Date: 1/18/12 Recent Posts
Not Tao:
So, I still stand by what I said.  Fuck vipassana, and theravada, and the buddha, and all the attainments.  I'm not getting bogged down by any of that anymore, and it felt lovely to make that decision.  I wasn't aiming my words at anyone in particular, but rather the zeitguist of the forum, which I generally disagree with. 

T o the point, though, what's wrong with someone saying "fuck vipassana" once it a while?  If you guys want a forum that supports a lot of ideas, there should be just as much "fuck vipassana" as there is "fuck actualism" (along with every other practice, haha). 
As moderator I will remind you of the rules clearly stated on the home page
  • No taunting, mocking, or intimidation of an individual or a group on the basis of race/ethnicity, sex, disability (including mental illness), sexual orientation, religious preference, or spiritual practice
Reguarless of pointing to zietguist (or zeitgeist),  you are still in violation. Encouraging others to join in is also not acceptable. Please stop.
Not Tao:
You can ... kill people...and none of this will be stressful if you simply don't care about any of it.
  • No threats of violence, even if metaphorical or aimed at no one in particular

"The Moderators will warn and, as a second step ban posters who are absolutely not willing to respect these rules. "

Consider yourself warned.
Have a good day all
~D (as Moderator)
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Noah, modified 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 1:33 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 1:33 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1467 Join Date: 7/6/13 Recent Posts
Not Tao:
It's lovely to say, "let's all get along and agree to disagree," when you're on the recieving end of being told you're wrong, but considering that every non-vipassana related post I've made on this forum has eventually turned into a lecture about how undeveloped my insight is, I thought it was best to simply state, flat out, that I believe everyone here is wrong instead of seeing my ideas turned into yet another, "well this is very nice, but in a few years you'll be able to talk to the grown ups about REAL mental development!" haha.  The main problem I've faced on here is that I'm trying to match up to the same framework even though it's fundimentally opposed.  Vipassana attainments simply have nothing to do with direct emotional/reactionary modification - even the concept of attainment gets in the way of this kind of practice.  If you're happy, that's your attainment. If you're not, then you have some work to do.  Who cares about the future?  Future happiness can't ever be experienced.

Consider this, how would you react if everyone went into your threads and kept pointing out that you obviously were nursing a sense of self because of x, y, and z, and this proves you are hypocritical and undeveloped and vipassana isn't working?  Even if everyone was nice about it (which most people on here aren't in relation to things that oppose their viewpoint) it would be difficult to keep motivated about what you're doing, and you'd certainly have a thirst to prove yourself.  I WOULD like to prove my ideas, but this is actually a pretty dumb concept. This is just a forum.  I could just pretend to be perfect if I was looking to sell myself - calculating out exactly what turn of phrase is perfectly in line with what I believe an expert would say.  Instead, I've done my best to be genuine and the general reaction to this is ridicule.  Oops, I'm not perfect yet, so I'm supposed to just agree with everyone until I am?  How silly.

I think, generally, the main problem with the DhO is that everyone takes themselves too seriously.  The easiest solution is for everyone to stop being so passive aggressive and elitist and simply state what they think.  If you disagree, that's fine, but it doesn't mean the person you're disagreeing with is wrong or at a "lower level" than you.  This has been the general atmosphere on here since I joined, I didn't suddenly invent it with this thread.  My original post in this thread was my bombastic way of throwing off all this stupid baggage.  So, I still stand by what I said.  Fuck vipassana, and theravada, and the buddha, and all the attainments.  I'm not getting bogged down by any of that anymore, and it felt lovely to make that decision.  I wasn't aiming my words at anyone in particular, but rather the zeitguist of the forum, which I generally disagree with.  I think you're all wrong, and I think the posts on this thread are good evidence of it.  Look at how strong a sense of self has to be developed against the crazy newb who is ranting about infantile ideas.  Sorry to be brash about this, but damn, guys, turn that jugemental lense on yourself for once.  You might not look so different from how you see me.

So, anyway.  I don't want to disown this thread or apologize for it.  I wasn't being that serious when I made the original post, but the theory is sound in it and I don't think I was actually being very offensive.  While I originally felt defensive because of how coldly judgemental Bill was towards me, it actually helped me realize something else I was caring about too much, and I was able to get something out of it, which is great!  T o the point, though, what's wrong with someone saying "fuck vipassana" once it a while?  If you guys want a forum that supports a lot of ideas, there should be just as much "fuck vipassana" as there is "fuck actualism" (along with every other practice, haha).  Maybe when you guys can bring yourselves to get down off your high pedistals you'll see there's something of value down here on the ground you obviously disdain so much.  From my new vantage point, you all look like you have to do a lot of teetering about to stay up there. emoticon
Your response was listed as a reply to mine, so I'll take that as a reference point, even though I don't think each sub-point was directed at me.  I like your realizations.  Specifically, the one's you have commented on in my practice logs and the one's I have commented on in your practice logs.  I am not a huge fan of the one in this thread, as it is described.  But I didn't even say that out loud.  Instead, I chose not to participate.  I think thats a pretty good way to include your opinion as well.

I do agree with you that trying to prove things is a silly concept.  There are a few people sort of challenging my claim to technical 3rd Path right now, which I think is silly because its not my claim, its my teachers.  But even if we're both wrong, its still okay!  So definitely, not taking this whole thing too seriously.   The only thing I take absolutely seriously are the actual, real-time effects the practice has on my mind directly, not necessarily whether or not others feel that I fit in to their models of enlightenment.  Either my mind changes sufficiently so I don't have crippling anxiety in daily life, or it does not.  Either I am able to get a good job with my college degree, or I am not.  Either I make my relationship with the girl of my dreams work, or I do not.  These are my proving grounds.

I think the best way to say 'fuck vippassana' or 'fuck actualism' is to describe what you are offering instead of them, and carefully describe how that might fundamentally differ from these two other teachings, and why it works for you, while also (along the lines of intellectual honesty) acknowledging that you could also be wrong and that you can't say for sure that anyone else is wrong in their practice.  Its that other people's views are wrong for you.  I think you did this successfully at least several times in this thread.  But I also think there was a lot of communication that went outside these boundaries. 

These are my two cents.  I could be wrong.  You could be wrong.  Either way, its okay emoticon


If I can change, and you can change, everybody can change!
-Rocky, Rocky IV

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Laurel Carrington, modified 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 2:08 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 1:46 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 439 Join Date: 4/7/14 Recent Posts
I've kind of zoned out in the middle of this thread, but caught some of the more recent discussion. There is one point I have to make, and it's supporting Psi's concern about NT's comment about killing people.

I am going to say here that certain things are just too dangerous to treat lightly. There is a subtlety to NT's way of getting this remark into perspective, but it should not have been said in the first place. This is not a free-speech issue, but a right-speech issue. My reason for saying that such a remark is over-the-top bad is that some of the worst, cult-like stuff has happened as a result of putting certain spiritual teachings into practice with a lack of understanding. Dosteovsky wrote a whole book (Crime and Punishment) on such misinterpretations. A century later, we have Charles Manson preaching universal love, big-picture spirituality and creating a cult and then sending his followers out to kill.

The most sublime insights, understood wrongly, lead to the most horrific ends. Spiritual teaching is in its own way a highly combustible substance. People come to it with overwhelming needs, with longings that penetrate deep into their experience of themselves. Navigating this terrain is serious business. While we're all telling each other not to take ourselves too seriously, we still need to take seriously, and handle with care, the things we say and do. Human history is littered with both survivers and victims of bad spiritual teaching.  Over on AN people are discussing cults. I'm thinking partly of some of the things that have come up on that thread as I write this.

Anything we might say here is most likely to have been said numerous times in the past. The "don't care" approach could be compared to the Heresy of the Free Spirit during the medieval period, or maybe even the Greek founder of the Cynic School, Diogenes. It's worth discussing, but also worth treating with the care (yes, I used that word) it deserves.

ETA: And of course, the first post said this and it flew right past me at that point. I will also add one point: someone with a lot of bad stuff in his or her background would have to go through the process of learning to understand and forgive his or herself. But the process would involve learning to care deeply, accept the consequences, and work through it.
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 2:56 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 2:56 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 995 Join Date: 4/5/14 Recent Posts
@DW: I think you're grossly mischaraterizing my statement.  I haven't made any threat of violence anywhere on this thread.  However, I have made an edit to the original post that should address the concerns people have about this.
John Wilde, modified 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 6:14 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 3:00 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 501 Join Date: 10/26/10 Recent Posts
Eva M Nie:
(...) Is the goal here to help him with this perceived problem or just react to how you personally feel irritated by what you perceive as his problem? 

Eva, in the five years that I've followed these discussions, I've never seen Jake be overly critical of anyone, or be disrespectful (let alone dismissive) of other people's ideas or approaches. He's always been thoughtful, considerate, inclusive, constructive, charitable in his interpretations, and receptive to a wide variety of views. That says something to me.

Contrast this with someone who thinks he's cracked the problem of human suffering every week or two, doesn't hesitate to declare that everyone else is wrong and their practices are misguided, and shows little evidence of thoughtful engagement with feedback that doesn't directly affirm his current views.

Which attitude would you rather see more of? Which attitude would you rather see less of? If you had to choose, would you rather support someone who -- in general, in fact almost always -- espouses the former (with rare exceptions)? Or someone who more often espouses the latter (with some exceptions)?

Eva M Nie:
Or is the goal to get [Not Tao] to go away? 

No. Jake already said what he'd prefer, and it's pretty reasonable and easy to implement:

Jake:
Next time I wish NT would just go with something along the lines of "this is something I'm trying; this is what the effects seem to be so far..."

This wouldn't inhibit free thinking in any way, and it needn't dampen anyone's enthusiasm... unless the enthusiasm is actually derived from fancying oneself a maverick-prodigy who alone has The Answer.
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 3:05 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/16/15 3:05 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
Laurel Carrington:
I've kind of zoned out in the middle of this thread, but caught some of the more recent discussion. There is one point I have to make, and it's supporting Psi's concern about NT's comment about killing people.

I am going to say here that certain things are just too dangerous to treat lightly. There is a subtlety to NT's way of getting this remark into perspective, but it should not have been said in the first place. This is not a free-speech issue, but a right-speech issue. My reason for saying that such a remark is over-the-top bad is that some of the worst, cult-like stuff has happened as a result of putting certain spiritual teachings into practice with a lack of understanding. Dosteovsky wrote a whole book (Crime and Punishment) on such misinterpretations. A century later, we have Charles Manson preaching universal love, big-picture spirituality and creating a cult and then sending his followers out to kill.
You mean I shouldn't say 'See the Buddha, kill the Buddha?'  Why it's already entrenched Buddhist dogma!  Also, I better stop talking about all those koans where teachers often smack their students with sticks repeatedly.  Then there was that Buddhist story where a teacher demanded a student cut off his own arm to prove his commitment to learning..  Yes violence, it does seem to percolate everywhere doesn't it? ;-P
-Eva
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Psi, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 1:10 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 1:10 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1099 Join Date: 11/22/13 Recent Posts
Not Tao:


 You can swear like a sailor, kill people, say horrible egotistical things, be completely distracted, and even strive for a life of luxury, and none of this will be stressful if you simply don't care about any of it. 
What this statement says exactly is that you can do all of the actions above, and none of it will be stressful if you simply do not care about any of it.

You state that the actions can be performed, and then there is the not caring after the fact of the actions.

This teaching is stating that one can perform evil actions, and the way to not have stress after the evil actions is to simply not care about any of it.

(EDIT: A lot of people have voiced concerns about this paragraph, so I will point out the obvious fact that doing things you personally consider to be wrong makes it much harder to stop caring - which is why most religions have strict morality clauses.  The good news of this paragraph, which everyone missed, is that, if you have lived your whole life as a "bad" person by going against your own ethical code, you can become free just the same as if you have lived a perfectly moral life - there is no karma to burn aside from your own cares and inhibitions.
Karma means action driven by intentions, so what do you mean no karma to burn?  What do you think karma is?  Are you saying we can all just immediatley drop all of our bad habits immediately?  So, your teaching will help smokers stop instanty, by simply not caring?  Your teaching will help liflong criminals instantly, all they have to do is stop caring about their past, and then stop caring about their future?  Reality does not work this way, this teaching of yours seems impractical.


  There is no need to forgive yourself for anything, you can simply let go completely. 
Oh, okay, that is awesome, now how do you have someone who just ran over their daughter's puppy in the driveway, on accident, to simply just let go completely? Instantly?


When you do this, you will find that it is not difficult to live according to your own ethics because those ethics have no pride, shame, fear, axiety, or misery steering them.  There is no need for a happy person to kill - barring the basic self defense if that is the only option, and in modern society most people don't have to face this kind of situation if they lead a simple life.  If you feel some need to test out whether you can kill people and still be happy by not caring about it - you should realize that you're caring about the ideas and your ability to follow them and are actually missing the point completely.

What if someone just really does not care about any stupid ideas, none of them?  Even to the point of not caring if they are happy, and not caring if they hurt anyone, they just simply do not care, because it is so stress free....  That is what you are teaching, to not care, about anything, just let it go , drop all of it, it is so simple to understand.  There would even be no caring of missing your point completely, who cares?



Most of the people posting on this thrwad have missed the point completely, though, so I understand this is a real danger.  To be perfectly clear: you should not head out to kill people and expect it to be easy or expect yourself to be free from your actions quickly and without long term painful feelings.)
Holy  Shit!!!  Am I reading this guy right?????


I am not trying to be a prissy little prude or anything, but can I get another perspective on that statement in bold highlight.  Maybe this is just me viewing this all incorrectly.  I feel I am in a pretty nonjudgemental frame of mind, equanimous and all, but maybe it is just me, but isn't that statement read as an inference?  Am I out of context?

Not Tao, What are you trying to teach here??

You are starting to lose all benefit of the doubt with me.  Do you read what you write before you send it off to cyberspace?

Psi
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 1:41 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 1:41 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
John Wilde:
Eva M Nie:
(...) Is the goal here to help him with this perceived problem or just react to how you personally feel irritated by what you perceive as his problem? 

Eva, in the five years that I've followed these discussions, I've never seen Jake be overly critical of anyone, or be disrespectful (let alone dismissive) of other people's ideas or approaches. He's always been thoughtful, considerate, inclusive, constructive, charitable in his interpretations, and receptive to a wide variety of views. That says something to me.
Could well be true but I can only see the statements that were in front of me just yesterday and am responding to those.  People learn more about themselves when under pressure, that's when the weak spots often show.  I am not attempting to line people up in order of who is good and who is bad or group people into categories, I don't think I even remember long enough to remember where someone got grouped if I tried it.  I just respond to the behaviors that are currently showing.  If that changes tomorrow or 5 minutes from now, then I will probably change my response pattern almost as fast.  
Contrast this with someone who thinks he's cracked the problem of human suffering every week or two, doesn't hesitate to declare that everyone else is wrong and their practices are misguided, and shows little evidence of thoughtful engagement with feedback that doesn't directly affirm his current views.
I've done my share of disagreeing with NT as well.  Although sometimes I agree with him.  He often disagrees with me, and that is fine.  However, you are totally missing my point.  My point is that people have to take responsbility for their own behavior.   If someone says something and then does the opposite, it's not NTs fault, no matter if NT is the devil incarnate or whatever.  I am not going to buy that someone else's behavior is NTs fault, NT cannot take control of your typing fingers and remote control them. 
         Which attitude would you rather see more of? Which attitude would you rather see less of? If you had to choose, would you rather       
          support   someone who -- in general, in fact almost always -- espouses the former (with rare exceptions)? Or someone who more     
         often espouses the latter (with some exceptions)?
Even if someone is perfect for 100 years and then does something I disagree with, then I will still disagree with it.  I don't care if he is the Pope or Jesus Christ, I'd probably still do it.  And even if someone is like Hitler for 100 years, and then finally does something I agree with, I will still agree with it.  Past unrelated actions don't make a current action right or wrong.   No matter how good you isuaally are, if you do a wrong thing one time, it is still wrong.  And no matter how bad you usually are, if you do a right thing one time, it is still right. 



Jake:
Next time I wish NT would just go with something along the lines of "this is something I'm trying; this is what the effects seem to be so far..."

This wouldn't inhibit free thinking in any way, and it needn't dampen anyone's enthusiasm... unless the enthusiasm is actually derived from fancying oneself a maverick-prodigy who alone has The Answer.
Well yeah, I think it's a good idea too, but I was not talking about NT anymore.  Maybe it's because I am not super attached to any current belief system that NT is just not able to effect me that much.  Ironically, I think that has been his attempted point all along for this thread, ie that it's that clinging that makes people get all upset.  If no clinging, then no stress.  If you are confident in yourself and your beliefs, who cares if NT says they suck?  NTs been stomping on a lot of peoples' sacred cows, I guess it's no surprise that there have been some ruffled feathers.  But if NT were to stop or go away, I can almost guarantee someone else would immediately come along to take his place. Although NT is a sweet little kitten compared to many I've seen, still there is always gotta be at least one irreverent sacred cow stomper that stirs up the pot, ever notice that?  IMO, it's quite interesting when you think about it. 

But it also means that if you want peace and quiet, then you have to find it in yourself and your own reactivity becuase you are never going to be able to control everyone else in the entire public domain to act like you think they should act so that you can feel better without having to try hard.  Believe me, I tried that many times and it never works!
-Eva
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 2:07 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 2:07 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 995 Join Date: 4/5/14 Recent Posts
Psi,

Everything in this thread is completely consitent to one idea.  The main problem is that you are still connecting the act of caring to the outcome of actions.  This is specifically what Im pointing to - there is no connection there.  So, let's use some of your examples:

If you run over your daughter's puppy, and you don't care, that means you won't feel bad about it.  Should you feel bad about it?  If so, why exactly?  You said it was an accident.  This doesn't mean you're going to laugh when your daughter cries about the lost puppy.  This doesn't mean you're going to be cold and distant from your daughter about the incident.  It just means the death of the dog doesn't make you feel bad.  Let's go further - should you feel bad when your daughter cries?  Why?  Why not simply console your daughter, explain accidents happen, and be there for her.  If you feel bad about killing the puppy, this is all actually much harder to do - you'll be focused on defending your actions, "I'm so sorry honey, it was an accident, I didn't mean too, I feel so bad!"  Me, me, me.  Grief is self-focused.  If you don't care about the puppy, and you don't care about your daughter crying, you'll just be there for her because that's probably what you WANT to do.  Her sadness would be the center of the show, and you wouldn't try to make it go away, or remove your involvement with it, or feel sorry about it, or any other way of focusing on yourself.  Whatever your daughter needs, you'll be able to provide it, assuming this is what you want to do.  And here's the important part: we alread know what we want to do.  You have an ideal version of Psi in your head.  That's who you are completely when you stop caring about everything.  There is nothing saying, "Do this!  Do that!  Tension because of this!  Stress because of that!"  There is just complete freedom to be what you want to be.  It's a truely free will for the first time.

It's completely true that if you kill people, and you don't care about it, you will not experience stress.  Why is this such a frightening concept?  Human nature is such that the only time people kill eachother (or even quarrel with eachother) is because of strong emotions.  We have a natural desire to cooperate.  So if someone is truely free from caring, they wouldn't kill people - even though they would be perfectly FREE to do so if that's what they wanted to do.

To use more of your examples: a smoker who stops caring about the way smoking makes them feel will be able to stop smoking, yes.  There is a physical component to this, but they say nicotine addiction is only 3 days long.  A lifelong criminal that stops caring about the things that lead them to commit crimes will stop being a criminal, yes.  Why is this impractical?  If you look at patterns of behavior, the reason people generally do "bad" things is not because they wanted to do that bad thing in particular, it's because they are trying to get something else or do something else to make themselves feel better.  Freedom is the end if this kind of activity.

But, maybe you think it's hard to stop caring about things.  The problem is not that it's hard to stop caring, the problem is that we don't want to.  It's a choice we keep making.  It does take time to get accustomed to making the choice not to care, but it doesn't matter WHAT you stop caring about - once you begin to see how it works, it becomes clear that all caring is created equally, and dropping it only seemed hard because all the time we've been looking for justifications.  It SEEMS WRONG just to stop caring about your children's safety and well being, so mothers go through a period of empty nest before they can come to grips with the idea that they can let go.  It SEEMS WRONG not to care about other people's suffering, or doing bad or shameful things, or not matching up to who you think you should be, so we need justifications before we can stop caring.  Laurel, for example, had to learn about fat shaming before she could stop caring about her weight.  The same result can be achieved by giving up caring with no reason at all.  But we're afraid to do this - this is why it seems hard.

It's true that heading out to kill people and expecting it to be easy is an incorrect view for most people.  Some people simply WANT to kill people, and so if they care about nothing they will go out and kill people.  These people are very rare, though, and they don't need any philosophical justification to do so anyway.  For the rest of the human population, people would choose not to kill simply because they didn't want to.  The EDIT is there for peope who are misunderstanding the whole thing, which I've since realized is easy to do.

Psi, I am using the word "care" for the very specific reason that it evokes the most fear when you consider "not caring" in relation to things that you feel are important.  That fear is the thing that is enslaving our minds.
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b man, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 2:17 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 2:17 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 199 Join Date: 11/25/11 Recent Posts
I have been trying to avoid inflamatory threads after getting sucked in during some of that discussion about the state of the DhO a few months back, and as soon as I saw the thread title "Everyone is WRONG" that just screams troll thread to me. But seeing as this thread seems to be ongoing, I will add my opinion!

1. I agree with the general premise that caring = attachement to outcome = suffering
2. I took up vipassana, as one of the benefits of the path, I thought, was to reduce this tendency to have this caring = attachement to outcome = suffering by developing equinimity. 
3. I currently work in a part of London where everything is so ghetto, that I pretty much am in a constant state of aversion of people spitting in the street, wandering around unemployed and being agressive, or just depressed, I see the misery on peoples faces, the scared looks in thier eyes and I tried not caring, it isnt something I have managed to acheive. Those roots run deep in me. I do care. I also want to get away from it! (aversion). So the only way I can deal with this on a daily basis is to bring compassion to these situations. Realise the pain behind these discusting and saddening behaviours. This is a real lesson for me, and one that I have really struggled with. 
4. I think we could all benefit from lightening up alot most of the time. One of my favorite songs for reminding me of this is the eagles in their classic. Take it Easy - http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/eagles/takeiteasy.html

"Take It Easy"



Well, I'm running down the road 
tryin' to loosen my load 
I've got seven women on 
my mind, 
Four that wanna own me, 
Two that wanna stone me, 
One says she's a friend of mine 
Take It easy, take it easy 
Don't let the sound of your own wheels 
drive you crazy 
Lighten up while you still can 
don't even try to understand 
Just find a place to make your stand 
and take it easy 
Well, I'm a standing on a corner 
in Winslow, Arizona 
and such a fine sight to see 
It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed 
Ford slowin' down to take a look at me 
Come on, baby, don't say maybe 
I gotta know if your sweet love is 
gonna save me 
We may lose and we may win though 
we will never be here again 
so open up, I'm climbin' in, 
so take it easy 
Well I'm running down the road trying to loosen 
my load, got a world of trouble on my mind 
lookin' for a lover who won't blow my 
cover, she's so hard to find 
Take it easy, take it easy 
don't let the sound of your own 
wheels make you crazy 
come on baby, don't say maybe 
I gotta know if your sweet love is 
gonna save me, oh oh oh 
Oh we got it easy 
We oughta take it easy

John Wilde, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 3:47 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 2:33 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 501 Join Date: 10/26/10 Recent Posts
Eva M Nie:
Well yeah, I think it's a good idea too, but I was not talking about NT anymore.  Maybe it's because I am not super attached to any current belief system that NT is just not able to effect me that much.  Ironically, I think that has been his attempted point all along for this thread, ie that it's that clinging that makes people get all upset.  If no clinging, then no stress.  If you are confident in yourself and your beliefs, who cares if NT says they suck?  NTs been stomping on a lot of peoples' sacred cows, I guess it's no surprise that there have been some ruffled feathers.  But if NT were to stop or go away, I can almost guarantee someone else would immediately come along to take his place. Although NT is a sweet little kitten compared to many I've seen, still there is always gotta be at least one irreverent sacred cow stomper that stirs up the pot, ever notice that?  IMO, it's quite interesting when you think about it. 

But it also means that if you want peace and quiet, then you have to find it in yourself and your own reactivity becuase you are never going to be able to control everyone else in the entire public domain to act like you think they should act so that you can feel better without having to try hard.  Believe me, I tried that many times and it never works!
-Eva

Eva, you seem to be casting this as Not Tao's original, iconoclastic thinking being too much for people to take, and people are reacting against having their sacred cows threatened. That would probably feed pretty nicely into NT's narrative too... but that's not at all how I see it. Anyone who's been through adolescence with half a brain must have entertained the idea that -- hey, all we have to do is stop caring, stop worrying, and then we'll have peace... and because we'll have inner peace, we won't be such bad guys after all; we won't NEED to worry and care so much, etc, etc, etc.

It's not that these ideas are so shockingly original that people can't handle them. Many of us have been there, and many of us recognise a kernel of validity there. And if you re-read the thread, you'll see that not everyone has reacted with outrage -- though that hasn't stopped him (and you) painting with very broad brush strokes. Some of those who have raised some criticisms and offered some feedback weren't necessarily objecting on the grounds that their sacred cows were being slaughtered.... but because the ideas are basically banal and half-baked, and served up as if they make everything else wrong and irrelevant now.

From my POV, that's more irritating in a tedious way than in a challenging way.... but hardly a big deal either way.
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Psi, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 8:11 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 8:11 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1099 Join Date: 11/22/13 Recent Posts
Not Tao:
Psi,
Everything in this thread is completely consitent to one idea.  The main problem is that you are still connecting the act of caring to the outcome of actions.  This is specifically what Im pointing to - there is no connection there.  So, let's use some of your examples:


No, you still have it backwards, you are saying that a person can perform any action in the world that they want to , and not not have any stress, simply by not caring.  I am saying that is an incorrect way of teaching.


If you run over your daughter's puppy, and you don't care, that means you won't feel bad about it.  Should you feel bad about it?  If so, why exactly?  You said it was an accident.  This doesn't mean you're going to laugh when your daughter cries about the lost puppy.  This doesn't mean you're going to be cold and distant from your daughter about the incident.  It just means the death of the dog doesn't make you feel bad.  Let's go further - should you feel bad when your daughter cries?  Why?  Why not simply console your daughter, explain accidents happen, and be there for her.  If you feel bad about killing the puppy, this is all actually much harder to do - you'll be focused on defending your actions, "I'm so sorry honey, it was an accident, I didn't mean too, I feel so bad!"  Me, me, me.  Grief is self-focused.  If you don't care about the puppy, and you don't care about your daughter crying, you'll just be there for her because that's probably what you WANT to do.  Her sadness would be the center of the show, and you wouldn't try to make it go away, or remove your involvement with it, or feel sorry about it, or any other way of focusing on yourself.  Whatever your daughter needs, you'll be able to provide it, assuming this is what you want to do.  And here's the important part: we alread know what we want to do.  You have an ideal version of Psi in your head.  That's who you are completely when you stop caring about everything.  There is nothing saying, "Do this!  Do that!  Tension because of this!  Stress because of that!"  There is just complete freedom to be what you want to be.  It's a truely free will for the first time.
Wrong again, I did not say that I would personally have an overly emotional reaction to the puppy incident, it is most likely that I probably would not at this stage in training, and if I did have such a reaction, it will most likely be easily dismissed, due to the training and insights of understanding how the Universe works.

So again,   What I am saying is that most people are not going to be able to do what you say, immediatley and without anykind of training, which is what you are specifically claiming on this thread, which is why I am saying that your Not Tao, not caring teaching is incorrect.
It's completely true that if you kill people, and you don't care about it, you will not experience stress.  Why is this such a frightening concept?  Human nature is such that the only time people kill eachother (or even quarrel with eachother) is because of strong emotions.  We have a natural desire to cooperate.  So if someone is truely free from caring, they wouldn't kill people - even though they would be perfectly FREE to do so if that's what they wanted to do.
How do you know, how many people have you killed?  How do you know that if someone does not care about anything they will not go out and kill?  How do you know that if someone practices not caring they will be a safer, saner , harmless individual?  All this wisdom and self proclaimed knowledge that you are claiming to posess comes from what, a week of your Not Caring method?  And in your OP, you are claiming that your method is superior to methods handed down and explained in specific detail for thousands of years, that is egotisctical arrogance.

To use more of your examples: a smoker who stops caring about the way smoking makes them feel will be able to stop smoking, yes.  There is a physical component to this, but they say nicotine addiction is only 3 days long.  A lifelong criminal that stops caring about the things that lead them to commit crimes will stop being a criminal, yes.  Why is this impractical?  If you look at patterns of behavior, the reason people generally do "bad" things is not because they wanted to do that bad thing in particular, it's because they are trying to get something else or do something else to make themselves feel better.  Freedom is the end if this kind of activity.
Yes, to stop smoking, just stop smoking, quit caring about anything and just stop smoking. Again, if not caring is your method, it is an incorrect teaching, not caring does not work, that is what alot of people do, it is called Apathy, and it induces about Zero change in an individual, for the better , anyway.  So , again, this is why your teaching is incorrect and inferior to not only most other teachings, but probably inferior to not even having a teaching.


But, maybe you think it's hard to stop caring about things.  The problem is not that it's hard to stop caring, the problem is that we don't want to.  It's a choice we keep making.  It does take time to get accustomed to making the choice not to care, but it doesn't matter WHAT you stop caring about - once you begin to see how it works, it becomes clear that all caring is created equally, and dropping it only seemed hard because all the time we've been looking for justifications.  It SEEMS WRONG just to stop caring about your children's safety and well being, so mothers go through a period of empty nest before they can come to grips with the idea that they can let go.  It SEEMS WRONG not to care about other people's suffering, or doing bad or shameful things, or not matching up to who you think you should be, so we need justifications before we can stop caring.  Laurel, for example, had to learn about fat shaming before she could stop caring about her weight.  The same result can be achieved by giving up caring with no reason at all.  But we're afraid to do this - this is why it seems hard.
Maybe Not Caring is hard for you, but Not Clinging and Not Craving is not so hard, after one practices a proper path.  But, again what you are teaching is incomplete, and does not stand up very well all by itself, it is not a one all solution.

I have chosen a Path that leads one systematically to Not Craving and Not Clinging, and it works, your teaching just seems so inferior and incomplete. Even though you claim that you are right and everyone else in the world is wrong, this does not mean that what you say is true.


It's true that heading out to kill people and expecting it to be easy is an incorrect view for most people.  Some people simply WANT to kill people, and so if they care about nothing they will go out and kill people.  These people are very rare, though, and they don't need any philosophical justification to do so anyway.  For the rest of the human population, people would choose not to kill simply because they didn't want to.  The EDIT is there for peope who are misunderstanding the whole thing, which I've since realized is easy to do.
Well, some people in the history of the planet did NOT want to go out and kill people, but precisely because they did not care, they went out and did it anyway.  At least that is what some of the Sociopathic serial killers have seemed to say.  Which is another reason I think your teaching is incorrect and incomplete.

Psi, I am using the word "care" for the very specific reason that it evokes the most fear when you consider "not caring" in relation to things that you feel are important.  That fear is the thing that is enslaving our minds.
No, you do not know if fear is enslaving anyone elses mind, that is just your own projection.

Examples that look like Not Caring, to me anyway

Even psychopaths have emotions, then again, maybe not.”
Richard Ramirez

“You know, if I wanted to kill somebody, I’d take this book and beat you to death with it. And I wouldn’t feel a thing. It’d be just like walking to the drug store.”
Charles Manson

"I'm Jesus Christ, whether you want to accept it or not, I don't care." - Charles Manson

Now, I am not saying that someone who has no emotions, and is born that way or whatever is bad or wrong or any of that, it is just a phenomenon, as is anything else.  And to exist in society someone with no internal emotional caring guidance will have to have some sort of guidelines to go by in order to not have societal consequences plague them for life.   But to teach anyone to not care without any other structure or guidelines, is an incomplete and incorrect teaching.

You stated in the OP.
Concentration meditation is a waste of time, as is vipassana, mindfulness, morality, contemplation of the self, and metta.  None of it is directly attacking the truth.
And I am stating that your teachings are wrong.


Psi
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Laurel Carrington, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 9:00 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 8:45 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 439 Join Date: 4/7/14 Recent Posts
I've watched this movie before--meaning, I've seen people argue this out, and no one's opinion is changed, as far as the words on the page reflected. Perhaps people reading from the sidelines have had changes of view; I can't know about that. But I remember Kenneth on KFD arguing about the persistence of emotion being a good thing; he told me once that we need our aversions at some level, as otherwise we might eat rotten meat. So it's partly a survival issue to respond in certain ways. What does disappear is the intense reactivity that comes with clinging to views in order to protect one's self-image. 

I have found that one effect of this practice has been to drain a lot of my motivation for things I used to care about passionately. It has been confusing at times, but I recognize that much of my motivation in the past was based on fear, or on wanting to present myself to the world in a certain way, or to present myself to my self (hope that makes sense), maintain a self-image. I also in the past did a lot of things because I believed they were what other people wanted, needed, or expected. I created enormous stress for myself, and eventually was forced to stop when that stress manifested in my body in debilitating ways. 

The the caring in these cases has dropped off naturally as a result of practice. It took me awhile to see it clearly, however. Now I'm in the position of waiting to discover what my motivations and actions will be. I'm already making good progress on that front. Certain activities bring me joy. Others bring me stress. My teenager treats me the way teens often treat their parents, and not reacting to it is helpful. I am also aware, however, of the stress of living day to day with another human being who is going through such tumultuous mood changes and aversion, most often to me just being my own sweet self. So I can see myself experiencing stress, which arises in the body. Not caring whether he admires me or thinks I am a revolting fool would help here. It is better, however, to watch my own reactions and see them for what they are. I also have a duty, which as a parent I gladly accept, of guiding my child to an adulthood where he knows the value of treating people with kindness and respect. 
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Jake , modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 10:12 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 10:12 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Not Tao:
  If you feel bad about killing the puppy, this is all actually much harder to do - you'll be focused on defending your actions, "I'm so sorry honey, it was an accident, I didn't mean too, I feel so bad!"  Me, me, me.  Grief is self-focused. 



Here's another good example. This is just bullshit. What bothers me about you stating things like this in a matter of fact way, as i wrote up thread, is that you can confuse people by stating such nonsense as if it were obviously factual, when it's actually theoretical.

Unless you are saying "For me, NT, grief is totally self-focused; it's all about me. When I, NT, am grieving, it is actually just selfishness".

OK, that's a report of your experience. Fine. No one can argue with that per se, although someone might have clarifying questions and then it would be up to you whether you wanted to or would benefit from examining yuour experience closer.

Or you could say "according to my current theory, grief is always selfish, so in this puppy example, it would therefore be better to...". There again, someone can call into question your theory from their own experience for example or in some other way.

When you put it out there as a statement of fact, you don't leave a lot of room for folks to do anything but call BS.
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Jake , modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 11:57 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 11:57 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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John Wilde:
 

Eva, you seem to be casting this as Not Tao's original, iconoclastic thinking being too much for people to take, and people are reacting against having their sacred cows threatened. That would probably feed pretty nicely into NT's narrative too... but that's not at all how I see it. Anyone who's been through adolescence with half a brain must have entertained the idea that -- hey, all we have to do is stop caring, stop worrying, and then we'll have peace... and because we'll have inner peace, we won't be such bad guys after all; we won't NEED to worry and care so much, etc, etc, etc.

It's not that these ideas are so shockingly original that people can't handle them. Many of us have been there, and many of us recognise a kernel of validity there. [...] Some of those who have raised some criticisms and offered some feedback weren't necessarily objecting on the grounds that their sacred cows were being slaughtered.... but because the ideas are basically banal and half-baked, and served up as if they make everything else wrong and irrelevant now.

From my POV, that's more irritating in a tedious way than in a challenging way.... but hardly a big deal either way.
Exactly. Exactly!
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 12:29 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 12:29 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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John Wilde:

Eva, you seem to be casting this as Not Tao's original, iconoclastic thinking being too much for people to take,
I never once said the idea was original, in fact I said the opposite.  I am thinking maybe you have developed a concept of me and my motives that is somewhat inaccurate and then are basing your arguments on that concept instead of what I really said. 

and people are reacting against having their sacred cows threatened. That would probably feed pretty nicely into NT's narrative too... but that's not at all how I see it.
I don't care if it feeds into NT's 'narrative' or not.  I've said it before, I don't think this should be about NT against others on the board or categorizing NT into any particular category.  If he says something I agree with, then I'll agree, if he says something I don't agree with, then I won't agree.   

Anyone who's been through adolescence with half a brain must have entertained the idea that -- hey, all we have to do is stop caring, stop worrying, and then we'll have peace... and because we'll have inner peace, we won't be such bad guys after all; we won't NEED to worry and care so much, etc, etc, etc.

It's not that these ideas are so shockingly original that people can't handle them. Many of us have been there, and many of us recognise a kernel of validity there. And if you re-read the thread, you'll see that not everyone has reacted with outrage -- though that hasn't stopped him (and you) painting with very broad brush strokes. Some of those who have raised some criticisms and offered some feedback weren't necessarily objecting on the grounds that their sacred cows were being slaughtered.... but because the ideas are basically banal and half-baked, and served up as if they make everything else wrong and irrelevant now.

From my POV, that's more irritating in a tedious way than in a challenging way.... but hardly a big deal either way.
I don't think the idea of not caring/not clinging is original either.  But NT  has taken it mentally much much further than  people like to think about.  He has taken it verbally to the point of saying not to care about all those things that many people REALLY care about like religious beliefs, death, etc.  That's what I meant by sacred cow stomping.  And I think why some people are extra irked with him.  Yes, I agree, it was inflammatory, but also a good example of exactly what he was saying.  Various gurus may often say part of the path is to let go of clinging, but in practice, most people still cling to certain things and even get really upset if someone tells them not to cling to those ideas.  I think people are upset with NT because he is poking on peoples' sensitive spots.  What I am saying is, it's more efficient to work on your own sensitive spots than try to control people like NT, get all irked by him, pass judgement on him, etc.  Not saying it's easy of course, but in order to do it, you would first have to really understand that is a good direction to go. The alternative, which I think is way easier but also not beneficial is to just blame your upset on NT.  Now you don't have to do anything because now it's NTs fault for bugging you, you can just make a negative opinion of him, pass judgement on him as bad or a troll or whatever, and be satisfied with yourself without changing yourself at all.  Yes, it's easier that way.  

In reality of course, everyone is not going to suddenly stop caring about their sacred cows in 5 minutes, it's just not that easy, so I do respect that moderators will need to try to keep things on an even keel and counterbalance the chaos force.   But I would also argue that the chaos force is valuable and serves an important purpose, that's why there is always a chaos force around.  
-Eva 
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Psi, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 1:16 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 1:13 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1099 Join Date: 11/22/13 Recent Posts
[quote=I don&#039;t think the idea of not caring&#047;not clinging is original either.  But NT  has taken it mentally much much further than  people like to think about.  He has taken it verbally to the point of saying not to care about all those things that many people REALLY care about like religious beliefs, death, etc.  That&#039;s what I meant by sacred cow stomping.  And I think why some people are extra irked with him.  Yes, I agree, it was inflammatory, but also a good example of exactly what he was saying.  Various gurus may often say part of the path is to let go of clinging, but in practice, most people still cling to certain things and even get really upset if someone tells them not to cling to those ideas.  I think people are upset with NT because he is poking on peoples&#039; sensitive spots.  What I am saying is, it&#039;s more efficient to work on your own sensitive spots than try to control people like NT, get all irked by him, pass judgement on him, etc.  Not saying it&#039;s easy of course, but in order to do it, you would first have to really understand that is a good direction to go. The alternative, which I think is way easier but also not beneficial is to just blame your upset on NT.  Now you don&#039;t have to do anything because now it&#039;s NTs fault for bugging you, you can just make a negative opinion of him, pass judgement on him as bad or a troll or whatever, and be satisfied with yourself without changing yourself at all.  Yes, it&#039;s easier that way.  
]
In reality of course, everyone is not going to suddenly stop caring about their sacred cows in 5 minutes, it's just not that easy, so I do respect that moderators will need to try to keep things on an even keel and counterbalance the chaos force.   But I would also argue that the chaos force is valuable and serves an important purpose, that's why there is always a chaos force around.  
-Eva

 Hi everyone,

Not trying to butt in, but I want to clarify my view here.

As far as I know I do not have a sacred cow, nothing really to defend, things and ideas are not mine anyway, not really a creation of myself or somesuch idea, so there is really nothing to cling to here.

The ideas and concepts written by Not Tao do not irk me or upset me, they are simply ideas and concepts.

I understand what Not Tao is trying to convey, and I also see his viewpoint.

This is my viewpoint, what Not Tao does not understand, or at least will not admit to.

 He states he understands , but in later statements shows he does not.  Here are a couple of misunderstood points, again my view of the Not Caring teaching.

Point 1
Not Caring, many people already do not care, they are hell in the workplace , and usually have to be picked up after, there slack and laziness affects the whole group.  While it is true that the Not Carer in a group setting will experience little or no stress, the stress and burden is shucked off onto others that have to pick up the slack.  The stress , as a form of energy has to go somewhere.

Point 2
Not Caring, this method again is already practiced by default, by many on the planet, there is a listless wandering around, doing whatever, it may be nice to others, it may be harmful to others, and yes the person Not Caring probably has little stress.  Running over someone's mailbox and leaving without fixing it, if you do not care will cause a Not Carer little stress, that much is true.  But the Stress is transferred to the one who has to fix and pay for the mailbox.  The Universe is a System, again the Stress as a form of energy has to go somewhere.

Point 3
There should be understood the difference between Indifference and Equanimity.

Point 4
There should be understood the difference between Not Caring / Apathy and Flow.  See Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and his Flow Model.
Not Caring is on the low skill level and the low challenge level.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apathy
 
Point 5

The difference should be understood between Not Caring and Not Craving, as one has Wisdom and the other has not, you decide.

Point 6

The difference between the Non clinging Non attached Emotional States , i.e. the Brahma Viharas, and Not Caring.  The Brahma Viharas are in and of themselves carefree and stressfree.

Point 7
Add points as anyone sees fit, or please correct my view if you see any incorrectness, it will not bother me.


"Buddhas don't practice nonsense."
― Bodhidharma

Psi
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 2:16 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 2:16 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Psi:


Point 1
Not Caring, many people already do not care, they are hell in the workplace , and usually have to be picked up after, there slack and laziness affects the whole group.  While it is true that the Not Carer in a group setting will experience little or no stress, the stress and burden is shucked off onto others that have to pick up the slack.  The stress , as a form of energy has to go somewhere.
Those people probably care about some things, just not the things you and the boss wish they cared about.  But I disagree the stress HAS to go somewhere.  What created the stress?  If it comes then it can also go. Is there a low of stress conservation like there is a law of conservation of momentum?  The boss could just fire those guys, hire some new ones or whatever.  So some guy does not do his job, why do you need to feel stressed?  Does the stress help you do your job?  Does the stress do the laundry for you while you are busy or help you staple the papers?  Nope.  In the end, you choose if you are going to take on that stress.  Alternatively, you could just do the exact same work you would do anyway, but without feeling stress.  The stress is just a waste of energy.   In any large corp, there are always some that don't do their job, this just a natural part of life so why stress?  If you think about it, you already know it will probably happen, it's not even a surprise.   

Point 2
Not Caring, this method again is already practiced by default, by many on the planet, there is a listless wandering around, doing whatever, it may be nice to others, it may be harmful to others, and yes the person Not Caring probably has little stress.  Running over someone's mailbox and leaving without fixing it, if you do not care will cause a Not Carer little stress, that much is true.  But the Stress is transferred to the one who has to fix and pay for the mailbox.  The Universe is a System, again the Stress as a form of energy has to go somewhere.
Still don't agree, those people do care about something, they are looking for happiness in their own way (not very efficiently I'd guess).  They care, just not about what you wish they cared about.  Anyway, so your mail box is broken, so?  You can fix it either while feeling stress or while not feeling stress.  Again, it's your choice.  You may not know how to make that choice just this second, but it's still your choice.  You currently have a habit of stressing and so do a lot of people, so it seems normal to you, but it's not something that HAS to happen.   

Point 3
There should be understood the difference between Indifference and Equanimity.
I agree, terminology could be upgraded, that's why I like 'not clinging' better.  Ironically NT has already said something that I interpreted to mean he likes using 'not caring' instead because it gets your attention more.  He seems to be right on that score!
Point 4
There should be understood the difference between Not Caring / Apathy and Flow.  See Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and his Flow Model.
Not Caring is on the low skill level and the low challenge level.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apathy
Yep, I agree, I prefer different terminology as being more accurate, as I've already stated in previous posts. 
-Eva
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Jake , modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 2:46 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 2:42 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Eva M Nie:
. Jake .:

I have tried to frame my response in a way that makes it explicit that this is my response, and have tried to add caveats to the effect that I am admitting that I don't actually know whether this (NT's insight) is what I think it is. That doesn't change the fact that I find his tone and manner annoying and disrespectful if not disengenuous at times.
1) Sounds different when you say it like that, doesn't it?   Ie that YOU find his tone and manner annoying, etc.  Instead of passing judgement on him so much.   Does he really have the power to control your actions and feelings and make you say ahole things?  Sounds like that NT guy is a real menace!

2) Anyway, I do agree with you that, ASSUMING dissemination of advice that is perceived to be more correct is the priority (is it the priority?), then there should be a discussion or formulation of a system on how to handle assertions from those perceived to be lower on the totem pole, otherwise you'll probably continue with the current free for all types of arguments. Which is worse, more rules or the more of the status quo?  I don't now see an easy solution either way though.  IMO as long as meditation continues to become a popular and growing large niche and this board continues to be public, this issue will continue to develop on the board. 
-Eva 
1) i think I was just spelling out for you what I did in the first place: I tried to contextualize my response by framing it as a response and I tried to inject caveats to the effect that i knew i was interpreting and those interpretations could be wrong. I don't think they were but i know they could be.

2) well, my point is actually to side step the whole issue of newbies vs elite. I first posted in this thread in response to what i viewd as a naive, black and white appeal to authority and hierarchy*. I don't like the idea of having a formal system whereby the words of certain posters are weighted more heavily than others (and how would that be determined? Like I said, this is seemingly an invitation to in-group / out-group dynamics and to group think). What i suggest as an alternative is that

people be explicit about having a perspective
people be explicit about whether they are speaking from experience, and if so, of what breadth and depth
people be explicit about whether they are speaking theoretically (as opposed to experientially)

And the reason i am making these suggestions is because I suspect this way, the maturity or lack thereof of insights people are bringing up or critiquing will sort itself out without need for appeal to authority or the creation of an elite in group of 'advanced practitioners'. I think if we all tried to follow these principles more closely in our posting then we could collectively raise the signal to noise ratio.

Oh yeah... ETA: * if you (reader) think I'm poopooing hierarchy in principle please re-read that whole nine word phrase. I am explicitly poopooing "naive, black and white appeal to authority and hierarchy". So there.  
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Psi, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 2:48 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 2:45 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1099 Join Date: 11/22/13 Recent Posts
Eva M Nie:
[quote=
]
Those people probably care about some things, just not the things you and the boss wish they cared about.  But I disagree the stress HAS to go somewhere.  What created the stress?  If it comes then it can also go. Is there a low of stress conservation like there is a law of conservation of momentum?  The boss could just fire those guys, hire some new ones or whatever.  So some guy does not do his job, why do you need to feel stressed?  Does the stress help you do your job?  Does the stress do the laundry for you while you are busy or help you staple the papers?  Nope.  In the end, you choose if you are going to take on that stress.  Alternatively, you could just do the exact same work you would do anyway, but without feeling stress.  The stress is just a waste of energy.   In any large corp, there are always some that don't do their job, this just a natural part of life so why stress?  If you think about it, you already know it will probably happen, it's not even a surprise.   

Well, I am not saying it stresses me out ,  I do hear alot of complaining from others, so I deduce that this Not Caring behavior induces stress. And I remember it well. Practice reduces and even eliminates these normal daily stresses that most feel.  It really does stress them all out.  These are metaphors, not descriptions of what I personally feel or react, but what is seen when the untrained mind goes through the samsaric rigamarole.  If some guy does not do his job, that does not stress me out, that is their problem.  I am not responsible for others actions.  So yeah, why stress?  Who does?  Well, the reality is, most people do, and that is the point I am making, an Not Caring method of dealing with life and responsibilities shucks off stress and it lands on others.  Others who may not be practioners, so it causes them stress.  So, in that view Not Caring is not an End to All final Solution as is being claimed, in my current view.
Still don't agree, those people do care about something, they are looking for happiness in their own way (not very efficiently I'd guess).  They care, just not about what you wish they cared about.  Anyway, so your mail box is broken, so?  You can fix it either while feeling stress or while not feeling stress.  Again, it's your choice.  You may not know how to make that choice just this second, but it's still your choice.  You currently have a habit of stressing and so do a lot of people, so it seems normal to you, but it's not something that HAS to happen.   
My mailbox is not broken, I would just fix the mailbox and get on with my life, no real need to stress about it.  But, the point is that most people are not practioners, and if someone broke their malbox and , the mailbox breaker , By Not Caring , ran off, this would cause most people stress.  I do not have a habit of stressing, as you have stated, this actually makes me chuckle.  emoticon


Point 3
There should be understood the difference between Indifference and Equanimity.
I agree, terminology could be upgraded, that's why I like 'not clinging' better.  Ironically NT has already said something that I interpreted to mean he likes using 'not caring' instead because it gets your attention more.  He seems to be right on that score!
Point 4
There should be understood the difference between Not Caring / Apathy and Flow.  See Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and his Flow Model.
Not Caring is on the low skill level and the low challenge level.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apathy
Yep, I agree, I prefer different terminology as being more accurate, as I've already stated in previous posts. 
-Eva


Oh well, I have made my points, stress free, if I may add.

 I am going to leave this turd alone, poking the Not Caring Method seems to just stir up shit.

Metta to Everyone, for real, big mushy Metta Cyber Hugs!!!!  emoticon

Psi
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Jake , modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 2:48 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 2:48 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Hey, before you go Psi, I just wanted to say I love how you are framing 'the end of suffering' in systems terms rather than in individual terms. I think this is implicit in early buddhism (and maybe someone with good Sutta knowledge can show me it's explicit) and I've often suspected that drawing out these implications as you are doing was part of the impetus for the cultural shift into Mahayana. Cool stuff.
John Wilde, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 7:32 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 5:05 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Eva M Nie:
(...) What I am saying is, it's more efficient to work on your own sensitive spots than try to control people (...), get all irked (...), pass judgement (...), etc.  Not saying it's easy of course, but in order to do it, you would first have to really understand that is a good direction to go.


Okay Eva, I'll take that as your bottom line.... and try not to notice that you've again framed the situation in terms of gurus leading disciples beyond their comfort zone, or jokers-in-the-pack / chaos forces whose presence is disruptive to the status quo, but who serve a valuable and important purpose (a glamorous and ill-fitting narrative that's likely to further feed into what I perceived as the main problem here).

Anyway, there's been plenty of peer review of various kinds in this thread. I'm happy to leave it at that, and let each do with it as we see fit.
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 7:13 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 7:13 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
Psi:
Eva M Nie:
[quote=
]
Those people probably care about some things, just not the things you and the boss wish they cared about.  But I disagree the stress HAS to go somewhere.  What created the stress?  If it comes then it can also go. Is there a low of stress conservation like there is a law of conservation of momentum?  The boss could just fire those guys, hire some new ones or whatever.  So some guy does not do his job, why do you need to feel stressed?  Does the stress help you do your job?  Does the stress do the laundry for you while you are busy or help you staple the papers?  Nope.  In the end, you choose if you are going to take on that stress.  Alternatively, you could just do the exact same work you would do anyway, but without feeling stress.  The stress is just a waste of energy.   In any large corp, there are always some that don't do their job, this just a natural part of life so why stress?  If you think about it, you already know it will probably happen, it's not even a surprise.   

Well, I am not saying it stresses me out ,  I do hear alot of complaining from others, so I deduce that this Not Caring behavior induces stress.
It may induce stress in those who still care/cling, sure.  Or maybe not, depends on what the not caring/clinging one does and how people around that person respond.  Maybe the not caring/clinging one will be in a better mood, stop worrying so much and get MORE work done.  You only gave negative examples, but letting go can go many ways.  It can be an end to sadness and lead to a more efficient and better life as well. 
So yeah, why stress?  Who does?  Well, the reality is, most people do, and that is the point I am making, an Not Caring method of dealing with life and responsibilities shucks off stress and it lands on others.  
Not always, depends on what the not caring is about and what is and is not done. 

Others who may not be practioners, so it causes them stress.  So, in that view Not Caring is not an End to All final Solution as is being claimed, in my current view.
Yes, I think I already agreed, I don't think it is the end of the entire story.

My mailbox is not broken, I would just fix the mailbox and get on with my life, no real need to stress about it.  But, the point is that most people are not practioners, and if someone broke their malbox and , the mailbox breaker , By Not Caring , ran off, this would cause most people stress.  I do not have a habit of stressing, as you have stated, this actually makes me chuckle.  emoticon
I bet others will notice your example as a valid alternative that they may not have considered before too.  Yes, not caring MIGHT cause stress in others, depending on what you do and what you are not caring about, however, I don't recall NT suggesting people not do their jobs or any such, he was just giving examples of how one might learn to deal with one's own stress.  I actually think he was fairly clear about that in later postings.
-Eva 

Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 7:29 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 7:29 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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John Wilde:
Eva M Nie:
(...) What I am saying is, it's more efficient to work on your own sensitive spots than try to control people (...), get all irked (...), pass judgement (...), etc.  Not saying it's easy of course, but in order to do it, you would first have to really understand that is a good direction to go.


Okay Eva, if you want that to be your main point, I'll take it on board.... and try not to notice that you're again framing the situation in terms of gurus who take their disciples further than they're willing to go,
At first I wasn't sure what you were talking about on that one until I remember I gave some examples of how violence and killing are often spoke of in Buddhist literatures, sometimes as parables and allegories.  It was in response to someone's suggestion that NTs even talking about violence, even though he didn't advocate it, was dangerous.  My only point there was that it's already common place in the literature, even to the point of apparently advocating it, so NT probably would not be able to do much damage in comparison. 

or jokers-in-the-pack / chaos forces whose presence is disruptive to the status quo,
Yes, I did say something like that. 
but who serve a valuable and important purpose (a glamorous and ill-fitting narrative that's more likely to perpetuate what I perceived as the main problem here).
I do not recall saying or insinuating there was anything glamorous about it, it was just an observation of group dynamics. In fact, I think I mentioned it seems like a very normal dynamic that repeats over and over, different players but similar dynamic, not just on this board but almost all that I have ever been on.  The only boards that don't have much are boards that very very heavily moderated and kick people off for smallish things.  Then you either get a lot more of the hierarchy/sycophant dynamic instead, or the board just dies. 
-Eva 

John Wilde, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 8:18 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 7:50 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

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Eva M Nie:

Okay Eva, if you want that to be your main point, I'll take it on board.... and try not to notice that you're again framing the situation in terms of gurus who take their disciples further than they're willing to go,

At first I wasn't sure what you were talking about on that one until I remember I gave some examples of how violence and killing are often spoke of in Buddhist literatures, sometimes as parables and allegories. 


Actually, I was talking about something closer to hand: In the post I was responding to, you wrote: "Various gurus may often say part of the path is to let go of clinging, but in practice, most people still cling to certain things and even get really upset if someone tells them not to cling to those ideas. I think people are upset with NT because he is poking on peoples' sensitive spots."

And I'm suggesting that, considering NT's tendency to instruct, to advocate, to regard everyone else as WRONG, and to regard their ideas and practices as irrelevant, because this week he's discovered something that supercedes them all, this kind of narrative -- of the guru who's saying things that others aren't ready to hear yet and can't handle very well -- plays right into the hands of his worst tendencies... doing neither him nor the rest of us any favours, ultimately.

John Wilde:
(...) or jokers-in-the-pack / chaos forces whose presence is disruptive to the status quo, but who serve a valuable and important purpose (a glamorous and ill-fitting narrative that's likely to further feed into what I perceived as the main problem here).

Eva M Nie:
Yes, I did say something like that.  I do not recall saying or insinuating there
was anything glamorous about it.


No, I did... for reasons above. It plays right into the hands of someone who's prone to regarding himself as a maverick/prodigy who has The Answer that others through the centuries have sought and failed to find. (As opposed to someone who says "this is what I've been trying lately; this is what's been happening for me".)

It was just an observation of group dynamics. In fact, I think I mentioned it seems like a very normal dynamic that repeats over and over, different players but similar dynamic, not just on this board but almost all that I have ever been on.  The only boards that don't have much are boards that very very heavily moderated and kick people off for smallish things.  Then you either get a lot more of the hierarchy/sycophant dynamic instead, or the board just dies. 

Yeah, okay. For the record, I'm not in favour of heavy moderation or over-explicit group policy. For my part, all this is just informal peer review.... and I've said my piece.
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Psi, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 8:02 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 8:02 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1099 Join Date: 11/22/13 Recent Posts
Eva M Nie:

It may induce stress in those who still care/cling, sure.  Or maybe not, depends on what the not caring/clinging one does and how people around that person respond.  Maybe the not caring/clinging one will be in a better mood, stop worrying so much and get MORE work done.  You only gave negative examples, but letting go can go many ways.  It can be an end to sadness and lead to a more efficient and better life as well. 
Maybe, there are surely two sides to this coin.  There seems to be , perhaps a wholesome caring and a wholesome not caring, and there also seems to be an unwholesome caring and an unwholesome not caring.  Perhaps that clears it any confusion, something we can all agree upon, or not, Who cares?  jk, lol, hahaha, hohoho, hehehe

Wholesome Caring would be caring without any emotional craving and clinging to results, and would be of benefit for all.

Wholesome Not Caring would be beneficial to all, and one would Not Care for performing or supporting unwholesome actions, thoughts or speech.

Unwholesome Caring would be caring and clinging to the results derived from the caring, i.e. hoping for something in return, i.e. Love but with selfish conditions attached, would not be of benefit to all

Unwholesome Not Caring would be of no benefit excepting to the one Not Cating in this manner, a very selfish form of Not caring, would be akin to Apathy


So yeah, why stress?  Who does?  Well, the reality is, most people do, and that is the point I am making, an Not Caring method of dealing with life and responsibilities shucks off stress and it lands on others.  
Not always, depends on what the not caring is about and what is and is not done. 
I bet others will notice your example as a valid alternative that they may not have considered before too.  Yes, not caring MIGHT cause stress in others, depending on what you do and what you are not caring about, however, I don't recall NT suggesting people not do their jobs or any such, he was just giving examples of how one might learn to deal with one's own stress.  I actually think he was fairly clear about that in later postings.
-Eva 


But, as I have stated earlier, in my view, Not Caring as an all encompassing Method is not practical, which is the Thesis presented in the OP.  So, staying in line with the thesis, and remaining mindful of that thesis, it does not seem to be an all encompassing method for the epitome of human development.

Especially since the Not Caring Method drops all other formal methods, of which many of us here know ork, and work well, and indeed Not Tao has even laid claim to success at most of the Methods being dropped as a whole, by Not Tao,  and replaced in favor ot the New Not caring Method.

Here below are the Methods Not tao has said should be abandoned.

Concentration meditation is a waste of time, as is vipassana, mindfulness, morality, contemplation of the self, and metta.


So, when taken as a whole and in context, one is to adopt Not Caring, and abandon Concentration, Vipassana, Mindfulness, morality, contemplation of the self, and Metta.

So, everyone, I am looking at this method in its entirety, and within the framework that Not Tao has laid out, 

Not Caring as a Method, coupled and entertwined with Not having Morality is a disaster, along with the abandonment of the rest of the list...

 Does that now make sense why Not caring standing alone makes no sense?

Not Caring without Morality leads to---->  You can swear like a sailor, kill people, say horrible egotistical things, be completely distracted, and even strive for a life of luxury, and none of this will be stressful if you simply don't care about any of it.  

The Not Caring method may lead to beneficial outcomes, okay, maybe, and maybe a chimpanzee types out Mozart in some parallel Universe, yeah, maybe, but the level of probablity drops without a Moral , Wise framework, based upon common sense.

And if one is to equate Not Caring with Not Craving, then one does need, in my view, Right Mindfulness, or else you will miss the point of entry to nip Craving in  the bud.  Not Caring alone is an after the fact method, it is too late, the damage is already been done.  At least that is how I understand Dependent Origination.

Also, just imagine Not Caring coupled with the abandonment of Metta.  Firstly, Metta has no cling or residual clinging in it anyway, so abandoning Metta and switching to Not Caring only would be a Net loss, both for the individual and for the Whole of the Universe.  Plus, Metta, probably has some very healthy chemical side effects for the brain and body health, immune system and whatnot.


I could go on and on, but this body needs some rest.

May all beings be free from suffering

Psi  

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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 10:51 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 10:14 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 995 Join Date: 4/5/14 Recent Posts
Psi,

The perspective I'm coming from is the state of freedom itself.  When I am experiencing complete not-caring, there is nothing that can enter my mind that creates resistance or tension.  I can equally contemplate killing and kindness the same way - objectively.  I haven't killed anyone, nor do I plan to.  The point of this philosophy isn't to make it easy to go out any kill people, it's to point to the thing that is causing stress - which is the idea that killing/stealing/apathy/taboo/etc should feel bad.  You guys just keep making the assumption that complete apathy will turn you into a robot, or a cold lump of dirt, or a mindless slug, or a sociopath. This is the main problem I'm pointing to.  As long as you believe this, you're going to be stuck trying to find justifications for each bit of caring you try to let go of.  It's much quicker to just start not-caring about everything you come across in your mind, without discrimination or judgement, since all caring is superfluous to who you are and what you actually want.  Caring is tacked on - it's the ancient automated control system taking over the functions that the newer locgical thinker has created.

Psi, you don't need a method to stop caring.  You simply make the decision.  If you believe that caring is important in certain cases, you're going to be stuck, forever, trying to justify not-caring in each case as it comes up.  If you can't justify letting it go, you will have to take action to fix the situation in order to stop caring (since then the problem no longer exists), or learn to live with the caring (which is the function of metta or other such exercises).

Anyway, I understand that you guys didn't like the rhetroical style of the thread opener, but since that's all anyone seems interested in talking about I don't think there's much left for me to say here.  It's getting hard to keep all of the conversations straight.  Psi, thank you for trying to debate, but you just aren't getting what I'm saying.  (Though, I suspect you're just being a bit stubborn for the sake of argument, haha.)  I understand that you think I'm wrong, but from how you've recreated my argument in your posts, I don't think you're arguing about reality, but rather a false assumption you have of reality based on extrapolation.  I'm not sure why you're doing this, actually, since I'm fairly sure you've experienced complete not-caring baised on our past discussions.  You already know that it's like, I'm just defining how/why it happens here.

By the way, why is "projection" such a popular word on here?  Whenever I see someone use it, I imagine them ducking away from some sticky substance haha...  Sorry if I'm projecting too much at all of you, lol.

EDIT: Per your last post, I don't think it's possible to care while also being emotionally detached.  You could frame this as having interest in something, as in, "I was interested in the brightly colored flag."  It captured attention and perhaps elicited action of some sort or another.  But to care is to have emotional attachment.  If it's difficult to say, "I don't care if my friend dies," then there is attachement there. The wrongness of the statement is directly proportional to the caring. I think you want to have the best of both worlds - caring without attachment, loving without clinging, compassion without pain - but these worlds don't overlap. Not in the way english works. Perhaps metta and karuna are referring to something like benevolent interest without attachment, but compassion, caring, and that sort of language doesn't work because it's specifically emotional. Kindness might be the best we can do since it implies action rather than a feeling. Kindness without caring. I'm particularly fond of "benevolent indifference" myself.

But "caring" goes to the heart of it. You can't escape any fragment of attachment with it. Trying to do so shines a spotlight on the atrachment, I think.

EDIT 2: There is no need for morality, just not-caring. The moral solution to anger is, "it's wrong to express anger because it hurts people." The not-caring solution to anger is, "It feels bad to care about this and generate anger." When the anger goes away, the moral solution leaves a residue, "Anger is wrong, so I need to care about anger." The not caring solution leaves no residue - there is nothing left to care about. Morality categorizes caring and gives it a framework. Not-caring relies on the benevolent nature of a happy person to do good.

Since I know you'll be tempted to bring up the killing line again in response to that - not-caring is not a decision to be "good," it's the freedom to be anything, and choosing to be benevolent since that is how a content and happy person acts. If they wanted to kill people, they still could. Maybe Manson is being honest, but he's the odd man out in the human race. I think it's more likely he cares about being an infamous killer, and thus creates his persona by figuring out what people find the most repulsive (like, not-caring).
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 10:26 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 10:26 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 995 Join Date: 4/5/14 Recent Posts
Jake,

Since anyone who ever speaks about anything will present their view of the world as fact, I'm not sure why you think I am somehow special in doing this.  For example, in your posts you didn't say, "To me, this is bullshit.  In my opinion, the way you state things as fact may possibly lead people to believe that what I think of as nonsense is actually factual."  This is just a silly way of talking.  I present what I believe to be the truth as if it were the truth.  Feel free to state why you think it isn't the truth rather than endlessly pointing out why you don't like me or the way I'm talking.  That doesn't really accomplish anything.

You'll even have the last word since I probably won't be posting much more in here.
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 11:30 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 11:30 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
John Wilde:
Eva M Nie:

Okay Eva, if you want that to be your main point, I'll take it on board.... and try not to notice that you're again framing the situation in terms of gurus who take their disciples further than they're willing to go,

At first I wasn't sure what you were talking about on that one until I remember I gave some examples of how violence and killing are often spoke of in Buddhist literatures, sometimes as parables and allegories. 


Actually, I was talking about something closer to hand: In the post I was responding to, you wrote: "Various gurus may often say part of the path is to let go of clinging, but in practice, most people still cling to certain things and even get really upset if someone tells them not to cling to those ideas. I think people are upset with NT because he is poking on peoples' sensitive spots."

And I'm suggesting that, considering NT's tendency to instruct, to advocate, to regard everyone else as WRONG, and to regard their ideas and practices as irrelevant, because this week he's discovered something that supercedes them all, this kind of narrative -- of the guru who's saying things that others aren't ready to hear yet and can't handle very well -- plays right into the hands of his worst tendencies... doing neither him nor the rest of us any favours, ultimately.
OK, I think I kinda see.  I was saying that what NT said is similar to what some gurus have said, but was not attempting to imply we should talke him as a guru himself just because he said one thing that was similar.  I was only pointing out the similarities in that particular insight to what others have said in the past. 
John Wilde:
(...) or jokers-in-the-pack / chaos forces whose presence is disruptive to the status quo, but who serve a valuable and important purpose (a glamorous and ill-fitting narrative that's likely to further feed into what I perceived as the main problem here).

Eva M Nie:
Yes, I did say something like that.  I do not recall saying or insinuating there
was anything glamorous about it.

No, I did... for reasons above. It plays right into the hands of someone who's prone to regarding himself as a maverick/prodigy who has The Answer that others through the centuries have sought and failed to find. (As opposed to someone who says "this is what I've been trying lately; this is what's been happening for me".)
I have disagreed with NT on many things in the past, so I think it's safe to say overall I have likely not inflated his ego overly much, but if I agree with him on something, I will likely continue to say it.  I am just going to say what I think is true, whether it comes from NT or the man in the moon, I personally do not consider it super important.  Sorry but I will not be accepting responsibility for any perceived or potential megalomaniacal tendencies anyone on this board may or may not have in the future just because I said what I thought was true at the time.  Nor do I personally worry that NT will be getting any new power or influence just from a few sentences by me on one of the days I happen to agree with him on just one aspect of his opinions.
-Eva 
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 11:55 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/17/15 11:55 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
Psi:

But, as I have stated earlier, in my view, Not Caring as an all encompassing Method is not practical, which is the Thesis presented in the OP.  So, staying in line with the thesis, and remaining mindful of that thesis, it does not seem to be an all encompassing method for the epitome of human development.
Replace 'not caring' with its close cousin, 'not clinging,' and it becomes a basic Buddhist tenant.  ;-P 

Especially since the Not Caring Method drops all other formal methods, of which many of us here know ork, and work well, and indeed Not Tao has even laid claim to success at most of the Methods being dropped as a whole, by Not Tao,  and replaced in favor ot the New Not caring Method.

Here below are the Methods Not tao has said should be abandoned.

Concentration meditation is a waste of time, as is vipassana, mindfulness, morality, contemplation of the self, and metta.


So, when taken as a whole and in context, one is to adopt Not Caring, and abandon Concentration, Vipassana, Mindfulness, morality, contemplation of the self, and Metta.

So, everyone, I am looking at this method in its entirety, and within the framework that Not Tao has laid out, 

Not Caring as a Method,

I don't consider 'not caring' as a method, although it could be considered a goal.  Just as nonduality is not really a method, it's a goal.  A method tells you how to get there and NT has not to my knowledge given any advice on how to do it.  Which I have already said repeatedly that I think is a big problem with it. 

coupled and entertwined with Not having Morality is a disaster,

NT did not say not to have morality.  He did not cover that issue much but he did seem to indicate that he did not think you would WANT to do bad things, and that you would not want to do bad things, only that to not care about them would alleviate stress. From that, I surmised that he was not actually advocating doing bad things, only that he was not covering the issue thoroughly.  

along with the abandonment of the rest of the list...

 Does that now make sense why Not caring standing alone makes no sense?

Not Caring without Morality leads to---->  You can swear like a sailor, kill people, say horrible egotistical things, be completely distracted, and even strive for a life of luxury, and none of this will be stressful if you simply don't care about any of it.  
Well yes, I do think that is likely true, that you would not be stressed if you did not care.  I did not see anyone here advocating actually DOING those things though, just discussing theory of not caring.   I am not sure, but I got the impression NT seemed to think that decent morality would sort of fall into place on it's own if not caring was successfully achieved across the board.  SOme may argue, but if you replaced the words with 'not clinging' then perhaps that argument could find some traction.  

And if one is to equate Not Caring with Not Craving, then one does need, in my view, Right Mindfulness, or else you will miss the point of entry to nip Craving in  the bud.  Not Caring alone is an after the fact method, it is too late, the damage is already been done.  At least that is how I understand Dependent Origination.
That may be a whole nother thread I think.  If you succeed with not craving/not clinging but make no particular efforts at 'right mindfulness' will a decent amount of right mindfulness still develop?  Of course, if you want to say control is illusion anyway, then it really doesn't matter what we try or try not to do because it will all happen the way  it's going to happen anyway.  (another of those ouch my brain hurts conundrums..)
Also, just imagine Not Caring coupled with the abandonment of Metta.  Firstly, Metta has no cling or residual clinging in it anyway, so abandoning Metta and switching to Not Caring only would be a Net loss, both for the individual and for the Whole of the Universe.  Plus, Metta, probably has some very healthy chemical side effects for the brain and body health, immune system and whatnot.
I don't think if you 'abandon' metta, that you won't have it.  Most people have some naturally and it can develop naturally without any special exexercises.  I suspect if you didn't have any metta, then you would not have been practicing it to start with.   These are not aspects of personality that have easy on off switches, so I think it's reasonably safe to say that people are not going to be just switching them on and off on a whim. 
-Eva
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/18/15 12:37 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/18/15 12:37 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
Not Tao:
Psi,

The perspective I'm coming from is the state of freedom itself.  When I am experiencing complete not-caring, there is nothing that can enter my mind that creates resistance or tension.  I can equally contemplate killing and kindness the same way - objectively.  I haven't killed anyone, nor do I plan to.  The point of this philosophy isn't to make it easy to go out any kill people, it's to point to the thing that is causing stress - which is the idea that killing/stealing/apathy/taboo/etc should feel bad.  You guys just keep making the assumption that complete apathy will turn you into a robot, or a cold lump of dirt, or a mindless slug, or a sociopath. This is the main problem I'm pointing to.  As long as you believe this, you're going to be stuck trying to find justifications for each bit of caring you try to let go of.  It's much quicker to just start not-caring about everything you come across in your mind, without discrimination or judgement, since all caring is superfluous to who you are and what you actually want.  Caring is tacked on - it's the ancient automated control system taking over the functions that the newer locgical thinker has created.
I generally agree. In fact, it is sometimes said that the enlightened are beyond normal morality, social tenants etc and I suspect that it's in a similar vein that they can look at all things equally as part of the illusion.  They are said to not cling even to things like life.  Again, more classic Buddhist philosophy, yet you do not see that the enlightened running around killing everybody.  Just because you can look at everything dispassionately does not mean you will do bad things. 

Psi, you don't need a method to stop caring.  You simply make the decision. 
Now i don't agree so much, in fact, one might suspect if you had accomplished 'not caring' then you would not care that some people did not like your way of talking or whatever.  Of course, that is an assumption based on not exaclty rock solid evidence.  But I don't think it's that easy for most people.  IMO, for at least most people, clinging is a well established habit and often needs to be peeled off tendril by tendril and there are a lot of tendrils all entertwined.

If you believe that caring is important in certain cases, you're going to be stuck, forever, trying to justify not-caring in each case as it comes up.  If you can't justify letting it go, you will have to take action to fix the situation in order to stop caring (since then the problem no longer exists), or learn to live with the caring (which is the function of metta or other such exercises).
For the case of metta, I like the word 'not clinging.'  You can have a universal appreciation and love without clinging to outcome.  You can wish them well, but not stress over if it happens in any particular way for them, understanding that they must walk their path.  So it's like caring but without that desire for control that brings stress.  Personally I think the correct definition of metta includes the not clinging aspect and so is a good thing. 
 I think you want to have the best of both worlds - caring without attachment, loving without clinging, compassion without pain
I suspect that is about what you get with nondualism. 
- but these worlds don't overlap.
Depends on your definitions used. 
Not in the way english works. Perhaps metta and karuna are referring to something like benevolent interest without attachment, but compassion, caring, and that sort of language doesn't work because it's specifically emotional.
You did pick the English words to use. That is probably why many use technical terms that have more specific definitions specially to dharma ppractice. 


EDIT 2: There is no need for morality, just not-caring. The moral solution to anger is, "it's wrong to express anger because it hurts people." The not-caring solution to anger is, "It feels bad to care about this and generate anger." When the anger goes away, the moral solution leaves a residue, "Anger is wrong, so I need to care about anger." The not caring solution leaves no residue - there is nothing left to care about. Morality categorizes caring and gives it a framework. Not-caring relies on the benevolent nature of a happy person to do good.
I think I see where you are going but i think of it slightly differently.  Some might say that one should not do such and such because it is wrong.  But I think the enlightened will say they do not do such and such because they don't want to.  They just don't have the urge to do it in the first place.  Perhaps your argument is that in your opinion, when all clinging is eliminated, the urge to do bad things would also be gone? 
Since I know you'll be tempted to bring up the killing line again in response to that - not-caring is not a decision to be "good," it's the freedom to be anything, and choosing to be benevolent since that is how a content and happy person acts. If they wanted to kill people, they still could. Maybe Manson is being honest, but he's the odd man out in the human race.

I think it's more likely he cares about being an infamous killer, and thus creates his persona by figuring out what people find the most repulsive (like, not-caring).

Yes, he did not appear to care about some things like the feelings of others, but seemed to care a ton about other things, a dangerous combo in his case.
-Eva
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Not Tao, modified 8 Years ago at 6/18/15 1:33 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/18/15 1:33 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 995 Join Date: 4/5/14 Recent Posts
Maybe a better statement would be: There is no method to stop caring.  That won't imply it's easy but rather that it's simple.  You can't really try to stop caring, you just have to do it.  It can help to practice meditations and create moral theories, but ultimately they are just crutches and eventually need to be thrown off.  Like I said before, justifications will eventually culminate in letting go, but they aren't necessary.

Something I like to consider: In a million years, none of this will matter.  Whatever comes up, it's the same justification.  If you think you're ugly - in a million years it won't matter.  If you aren't living the life you want to - in a million years it won't matter.  I f your sad or happy or hopeful or angry - in a million years it won't matter.  If a million years isn't far enough away, just keep going.  Eventually we all will become noise in the universe and nothing we are doing, have done, or could do will survive this fact.  Purposelessness is freedom.

Or, as the stream enterers say throughout the suttas: Everything that is subject to arising is also subject to cessation.
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Psi, modified 8 Years ago at 6/18/15 8:59 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/18/15 8:57 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1099 Join Date: 11/22/13 Recent Posts
Not Tao
The wrongness of the statement is directly proportional to the caring. I think you want to have the best of both worlds - caring without attachment, loving without clinging, compassion without pain - but these worlds don't overlap.


It seems that you believe that one can not have caring without attachment, loving without clinging, and compassion without pain.

If one does not believe that the above conditons are true, then they have not experienced them, and for them the statements will not be true.

For one who has experienced that there is indeed, caring without attachment, loving without clinging, and compassion without pain , then they will understand that these things are true, the understanding will come from having had the experience.  Understanding coming from experience is what cultivates Wisdom and Insight.  Wisdom becomes unshakable, for it is not speculation or belief.

One can have , caring without attachment, loving without clinging, and compassion without pain , this much is true.

One can know what they know, and think that is all to be known.  One can also know what they know, and know there is more to be known.

I think there is  more to be known, at least in my current view, what about you?

Psi
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/18/15 10:52 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/18/15 10:52 PM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
Not Tao:
Maybe a better statement would be: There is no method to stop caring.  That won't imply it's easy but rather that it's simple.  You can't really try to stop caring, you just have to do it.  It can help to practice meditations and create moral theories, but ultimately they are just crutches and eventually need to be thrown off.  Like I said before, justifications will eventually culminate in letting go, but they aren't necessary.
I could go with that, lots of things are simple but yet for some reason, we don't do them, and we may want to or think we want to but it doesn't hhappen for a long time, and then we finallly do them and we wonder why it took so long cuz we realize it was simple! 

Something I like to consider: In a million years, none of this will matter.  Whatever comes up, it's the same justification.  If you think you're ugly - in a million years it won't matter.  If you aren't living the life you want to - in a million years it won't matter.  I f your sad or happy or hopeful or angry - in a million years it won't matter.  If a million years isn't far enough away, just keep going.  Eventually we all will become noise in the universe and nothing we are doing, have done, or could do will survive this fact.  Purposelessness is freedom.
Actually, I would use that one sometimes if something was really irking me and it does work to alter perspective and take a longer view.  But after you saying there is no method, that there my friend is in fact one of many possible methods!  ;-PP
-Eva
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Psi, modified 8 Years ago at 6/19/15 6:58 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/19/15 6:58 AM

RE: Everyone is WRONG

Posts: 1099 Join Date: 11/22/13 Recent Posts
Eva M Nie:
Not Tao:


Something I like to consider: In a million years, none of this will matter.  Whatever comes up, it's the same justification. 
And, actually, anything and everything we are made up of has already existed for a million years, and more.  Even now, we are just Universe Noise.

Psi

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