UnbornTao

You are like the therapist on the video. The belief presents itself as true - it is experienced as real, or as the way reality is. The key is consciously recognizing it as belief. Look into what a belief is.

Of course - that's the point. See above: there's a difference between the legend and the man. He was a human. Could you imagine him swearing, getting dressed, or taking a shit? Apparently, he had some anger management issues, too. For sure. I'm not saying he wasn't a profoundly enlightened guy. Then again, what do we know for sure? How much of it is historical hearsay? The gripe is with the way people relate to this whole business. It's worth checking what you actually know about historical figures. People, by and large, are followers - they want to be told how to behave and what to believe.

Ahh, thanks. Hey, I had to come up with a full sentence on short notice.

It's the Buddha - he's got the biggest ego. Regarding the segment on the mind, it's better left as something to contemplate. (Also, fancy way of saying 'I don't really know').

The fantasy and faith-based thinking does. For starters, did any of us meet Jesus? What do we know about him?

Why project annoyance when presented with a question? I mean it. Don't we all generally take our perceptions at face value? Anyway, I guess I sidetracked the thread. My contender is the sentence: @This @Koala @Isa @Loaded Shaman

Don't do drugs, kids.

@Water by the River Who, in his or her own mind, is not selling water by the river? Who's @Peeing by the River?

Emotions are an unconscious drive for people in general, although I'm not clear on what is feeling and what is emotion.

Definitely.

I know it wasn't the point; I was just sharing that little fun fact. Probably exclude Trump from the list - but leave Santa. @Carl-Richard's gaydar, of course. (for context, there's another thread where some of us joked about this.) On a serious note, the direct consciousness itself is the 'who.'

It's funny, the existence of Lao Tzu as a real historical person is uncertain, and there's no scholarly consensus on the matter.

Yeah. It's useful to start with basic facts: Jesus was a man who lived and died thousands of years ago. We readily conflate the image or legend with the individual.

I sympathize with that.

It's been said that the Buddha was 'completely' awakened - hard to get beyond that, as inconceivable as that is. It's also plausible that Jesus traveled to the east and studied Buddhism and yoga during his so-called "lost years." What if he was a Buddhist? Reading the Gospel of Thomas, you can see clear parallels with Buddhist sutras.

For example, why wasn't the Buddha, or Lao Tzu, the ones who did it for you?

As if one's thinking and speaking were inconsequential activities and didn't reflect one's stance. I answered 'Yes' Sorry, it was done as a joke.

Of course I've taken a side. Don't compare an individual to an entire party. And is that even true, though? If you equate Trump with any other contemporary president or even presidential candidate, you're not paying attention. Biden may have been cognitively declining, but even that doesn't trump being an immature, pathological liar - to put it mildly.

Can something that is presumably based on interaction be said to exist in and of itself? Can it stand on its own two feet, so to speak?

I've practiced Tai Chi rather sparingly. It's essentially a form of "moving meditation" and can be very beneficial for both body and mind. It's more about moving gracefully and in an incredibly relaxed way than about the specific set of movements themselves. I'd definitively recommend giving it a try. Anything can become boring if you do it for long enough.

Come on. Just consider the amount of lies he spouts, for example.

I think this video speaks directly to your obsession with trying to fit reality into a viewpoint or framework. You keep assuming that believing in something is the only way to approach this work.

He did not. His followers did. And notice: the very creation of a religion reveals their failure to directly apprehend the original communications. Just as a sidenote.

I'm saying we don't even have a clear understanding of what this "realm" is, or what self and experience actually are - let alone any real knowledge about the presumed existence of other ethereal beings. And yet, drugs can induce states where people might begin to take highly subjective experiences seriously - like believing they are all sorts of things. It doesn't help that people start calling them medicine, either. I'm not denying that such experiences may have value and power, but that doesn't make them any less invented in many cases. If your self itself is constructed, what else could be? If you're sincere, can you say with a straight face that you know who Jesus was - what he looked like, or even what he said? Most of what we have about him is secondhand. So what are we really talking about here?

Start by making a distinction between pain and suffering. You can leave pain aside for now, as it is a more advanced topic. Begin with the non-physical, mental-emotional unnecessary suffering you like to engage in habitually, and pick a minor form of that. Catch yourself in the act by paying attention to what you're 'thinking.' But you have to do the work, otherwise it's just more ineffective mental activity. And the recognition needs to be experiential! Could it be that we actually want our suffering? If so, we might as well fully embrace it and enjoy it - though doing so will likely change our relationship to it. After all, suffering is defined as enduring an unwanted experience. If we shift - genuinely - to wanting the experience, then to the degree we do, suffering cannot occur.