Australian Buddhism is much easier to understand
- don’t be a cunt
- see #1
alas, not many practitioners.
Chat is this real? Which Buddhist stories are like this?
I was gifted a book called “Pointing at the Moon” that was filled with these things. Stuff like "A student was asked by a master, “what was you’re face before you were born? The student walked to a river, saw his face reflected in the water, and was enlightened.” Like wtf is that supposed to mean? Lol.
I didn’t even understand the title of the book until I saw this meme.
The idea is that those are supposed to make you understand something that does not fit in your existing thinking habits. So they’re puzzling all right, and the idea is you reflect on them over and over, for as long as it takes, until epiphany strikes, and you get it in a way that would be hard to achieve with words alone, and unlocks thinking about things in new ways.
So for instance, in this case, the words “What was your face before you were born?” would not be the titular moon, but the finger pointing at the moon. Reading them and responding to that with “WTF, it’s not the moon, it’s just a fucking finger” is a natural immediate reaction, I suppose, especially if you were taught highly materialist thinking habits, though I’ve found there’s value in unlearning that reaction.
To the person who replies to this, with a 4 dimensional “TRUTH” of this 3 dimensional TRUE projection, please ping me too.
They’re the OG postmodernists
I think I can explain. In Buddhism, you have to understand if he didn’t the last into the pizza, but from where I stand it simply is. I hope that helps.
I just have 2 verses in my personal book of Philosophy and Words to Live By.
Verse 1: If you think you understand what’s going on, you haven’t been paying attention.
Verse 2: There is no situation that is so bad that it can’t get worse. And it’s about to get worse.
My preferred version of verse two is: There isn’t anything you can’t blow up twice.
My verse 2 stems from when I was a medic back in the day, and we got paged for a “don’t feel so good” call. We got there and the patient was visually not in the best shape. I decided we were upgrading the call to a “swoop and scoop” to hit the road to the hospital with little delay.
We were lifting that patient out of her recliner and turning her enough to sit her down on the cot when she literally died right then and there. Which of course got the patient another upgrade from the “swoop and scoop” to “Oh shit! Oh shit! We gotta go! We gotta go now!” which also adds the “Inject ALL the diesel!” upgrade for the driver.
A quick check found no pulse or respirations. So I started CPR and my partner grabbed the 12 lead to get the big pads if we needed to shock and placed the pads. I did 2 rounds of CPR and we hit the analyze button. Which said no shock. And a quick check of the patient’s vitals showed everything was working again. If in a bit of a sketchy fashion.
We got loaded and roared off in a cloud of diesel smoke and made the 20 mile trip to the hospital with little delay and no worsening of the patient’s condition. After radioing in to the hospital with a patient report, the patient was met with all hands on deck at the door when we arrived.
I heard the patient died about 2 months later in a nursing home. One of the perks of working rural EMS where you work on family and friends.
And thus, rule #2 was born.
Reminds me of the kind of thing you’d read in a Douglas Adams book.
Life is a Douglas Adams book.
You’d think I’d be able to spout off some good quote off the top of my head because ive read the guide probably 12 times, but I just can’t. Maybe something about the cricket wars?
Scientist theorize that if we knew why the
bowl of petuniaspiles of shit thought this, we’d have a better understanding of the universe.
If you have to ask… then you don’t know
I was reading some Proverbs (Bible 1) in a simplified translation and every second verse is a straight tautology. Better translations use phrasing and rhyme to hide it, but people love platitudes and will meme them into a global religion.
If it had so many straight tautologies, are you sure it was not a sort of dictionary?
It is what it is!
I hadn’t even seen the episode yet! Michael Vsauce doesn’t have to ask, so he must know.
But I don’t think it’s very wise to say the same thing twice, it just highlights that there is no actual argument. At least “it is what it is” says something about things outside of our control. When it’s “An honest witness tells the truth, but a false witness tells lies.”, I’m just left there thinking “yeah… I guess that’s what words mean.”
You (self) will never achieve nirvana (enlightenment) unless your Buddhist (eastern religion) stories have a bunch of untranslated Sanskrit (language) words in them that the translator (language expert) was too lazy (high on their own farts) to translate (explain). So every Buddhist buddhavacana (text) reads like this
all according to keikaku
*keikaku means plan
Danke
Everyone here is wrong and the gum on your shoe is a rock on your Lake. If you look at it.
If you immediately know the candlelight is fire, then the meal was cooked a long time ago.
Yes but yet A tree has leaves even when you eat dinner.
Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know
Unless you can master your anger, your anger will become your master
But the guy who said that was speaking
Unless he wrote it down.
Why are all buddhist stories like this?
Anon has apparently never read a buddhist story
Yes.
Koans are designed to be given by a teacher to a student when the teacher personally assesses that the student could benefit from considering it. They’re also designed to not be comprehensible rationally or immediately, but rather to prompt introspection and to get someone to reflect on their own thought patterns. You can’t just rip them out of that context while not understanding the belief system and treat them like a riddle from Reader’s Digest and expect to get anything out of them.
Rationality is the basis of any understanding. Something that can be understood but without the involvenment of rationality, is an oximoron. Nothing can be understood without rationality.
How do you understand the taste of a peach with rationality?
Just taste it, then you’ll understand it. No rationality required, unless you’d rather spend hours being distracted by a series of abstractions that never actually tell you what a peach tastes like.
I once came to understand the answer to the classic: “Show me the face you had before your parents were born.” koan. One of the most amazing experiences of my life - the golden needle penetrated the veil of my mind.
I could tell you my answer but it would seem trivial and uninteresting. The answer has to be experienced to be grokked (fuck you, Elon). Plus also, perhaps the answer would be different for different people. Now, if only I could work out the sound of one hand fapping…
…and the Lemming was enlightened
I admire your knowledge of Buddhist theory.
But this is a shit post community so it’s as unserious as the most zen person in the world.
Meanwhile, the silliest zen practitioner:
Bonus:
I’m not very serious, to be fair
This comment when I read it aloud made the sound of one hand clapping
Fair, although I wouldn’t assume there is zero overlap between Zen and shitposting. Discordianism for instance is – possibly – a sort of DIY Zen shaped like a shitpost, though the jury’s still out on whether it’s just a shitpost shaped like a sort of DIY Zen.
I wold call it a Zensation
If you immediately know the candlelight is fire, the meal was cooked a long time ago
Zen buddhism kōans are intentionally incomprehensible https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p5Oi4wPVVo
