Do you think Buddhsim promises too much?

hmm
i see "complete cessation of ____________"
you can insert anything you want into the blank space
the logic remains the same and should still hold up

i'll give it more thought tho
pardon if i erred

i do have the answer i wanted

i missed it and i had already posted my question

 

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Well, Buddhism deals with one issue alone: suffering and making an end to suffering. Keeping this in mind should spare us from unnecessary semantic meandering.

 

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perhaps
unfortunately the buddha has not convinced me why his "offended" sensibilities can be applied to my experience and thus define it

can nirvana be attained without putting an unnecessary spin on life?. thats a question i would like to have the answer to

 

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Yes, in some ways.

 

Then I suppose a thread like "Can nirvana be attained without following the Buddhist course of practice?" might be in place.

 

What spin are you talking about, Gustav?

 

perfect. the crux of the matter. in fact..."can nirvana be attained? short, sweet and to the point

the emotional considerations seem to be a sales pitch. convince the populace to view the life experience thru a narrow prism; amplifying a particular aspect of life and holding it out to be the whole of it. then assume it would motivate them to do good works and whatnot

it is irrelevant whether life is blissful or one of grief. the questions are, does nirvana refer to an actual state of being/whatnot and is there a viable methodology presented in order to attain that state if one so wishes

answered, spider?

 

It cannot be attained, only remembered. There cannot be a path to it, since it does not hold any points in common with ordinary experience, so no triangulation is possible, just like you cannot know the taste of something entirely new merely by it's description.

 

...Ah, so my non-existent, non-suffering can only be remembered by stopping to think....

Correct.

I would also add that since thinking cannot be stopped unless you are thinking about thinking, even not thinking must be given up. In this state thinking still happens, but it seems to be compartmentalized, called up or given full awareness only when necessary. Our mistake is in thinking that thinking is ourself, when it is only a facet of ourself. Conscious, language-based thought is only one function of the brain.

 

i am smoking crack as i type
suffering down by 50%

 

oooh
40%

 

indications are then that this alleged "remembrance" cannot be justified either.
how do you derive these notions, spider?

 

Thinking but not identifying oneself with the thought. Our true self is not the one thinking. There is no center of "selfness".

 

This has been my experience.

 

...Have you remembered all this or did you read it in a book?...

both

I read about it, and felt that there was something there, but I couldn't understand it. I agonized about it for years, then one day something happened. I was reading "The Way of Zen" on my lunch break, when I turned the page expecting more and it was blank. At that moment my mind went blank as well, and I burst out laughing at how foolish I had been looking for something in a book that was closer than anything could be. I put the book down, drove to the mall and walked around about 2 inches off the ground, the glow lasted into the evening and for several days. What seemed obscure about what I was reading suddenly became obvious. My thinking seemed compartmentalized, I could call on it when necessary, but it wasn't me. Talking and all action seemed more spontaneous, I had no idea what I would say or do. I felt weightless, directionless.

 

good enough.

 

Wow.

EDIT: Would you call that experience you describe above "enlightenment"? If yes, by what criteria?

 

Classification and definition is beside the point. That's how good old fashioned insight becomes religious institution. Broadly, yes, my symptoms matched the common descriptions of satori, or enlightenment. It will probably be somewhat different for everyone. There was an aspect of it that refused to be described. Words seemed inadequate to capture the experience.

I also posted about this here before, years ago, but it happened in 1992.

 

Spidergoat,

Do you still suffer, ever?

(I take you still experience physical pain, when the body is injured or ill.)

 

I don't know. People say I'm never moody, and things don't seem to bother me. I think my experience wasn't the complete transformation that is talked about, but I don't care. One taste goes a long way.