/lit/ - Literature

You're wrong. It doesn't.

They're right in the end. There's no meaning in pursuing pointless philosophizing in matters of no consequence, and things like science and technology are ultimately without point too. Just endure your hardships and die.

The teaching of acquiescence, compliance, silence, renounciation and obedience are not exclusive to China or the Indian subcontinent. They remind you of self-help because there is a demand for citizens with those characteristics and because self-help resembles wisdom literature out of convergent evolution.

>>11673754
Unless you're actually living by that dogma you're a hypocrite. See, people that read this stuff enjoy the fruits of everyone else's labour while criticism them for it.

>>11673757
Demand works the other way round: these books are in demand because they let you be happy with yourself, your flaws and your past mistakes. They tell you to ignore your history and just focus on the present, which is exactly what a person who's failed at life would want to hear.

>>11673771
So the citizen wants to buy and read the book because it tells him what he wants to hear. Sure. But how does the citizen know about the existence of the book and author themselves in the first place? Especially in a lively, competitive market such as self-help books, at that. The network of interests isn't limited to the writer's and reader's.

>>11673795
>But how does the citizen know about the existence of the book and author themselves in the first place?

You could ask this question of any other type of book, and the answer would be the same. All kinds of books are marketed (whether actively or through word-of-mouth); the ones that sell the most are marketed more, while the ones that undersell are removed from book stores. The market gradually adapts and converges to maximum efficiency, which is stocking only stuff that people are going to buy. Hence book shops being filled with self-help garbage. But what you're implying is that the book shop shelves are pre-emptively filled and demand is created artificially. This is starting to sound conspiratorial -- people don't just read what you put in front of them and businesses would fail. Over the span of your life you eventually find what interests you without someone needed to market it directly to you.

>>11673742
The best philosophy is about how to live the Good Life.

>>11673742
>U.G Krishnamurti
One of the more famous anti-gurus. I especially like his statement
>"Tell them there is nothing to understand!"

The thing is: U.G Krishnamurti was a "truth-seeker" for most of his life, coming from Theosophical background, but being dissatisfied with it. Widely read in different traditions; Hinduism, Buddhism eastern thought.

He also attended the talks of Jiddu Krishnamurti.

This guy abandoned his wife, children and spent even time as a homeless hobo just wandering the streets of London questioning himself "When do I know I am in that State"(Referring to the so-called "Enlightenment)

This was before his calamity: when he describes how even thought itself or the mechanism of the mind came to a stop and he even lost consciousness. He says that physical death will occur when the mind comes to a halt: his body became stiff: like a corpse and he was even baffled by medical examinations during his calamity. Various glands of his body swelled and there was also lots of static electricity present.

After this "calamity" U.G Krishnamurti claimed to function in a natural state: his body functioning without internal stress created by Mind: free of stress, free of worry, free of thought. But not in some animalistic kind of state of ignorance.

Unlike many other religious figures or authors: he maintained that it was a simple physical phenomena.

When the mind comes to a stop, or dies, meaning the whole experience-structure of man, something external which he has acquired through his life: when it all falls down for good the body undergoes physical transformation. All the stress, worries, subconscious tendencies: even perversions will come to an end.

This is not something blissful experience he also maintained: but physical agony that lasted for weeks and months and months. He describes them in a very detailed fashion. It is like erasing a hard-drive.

He said that even basic things such as sensations of smell or taste were transformed: the senses were now working independent of the mind-memory-emotions-connection and felt totally different.

U.G Krishnamurti is perhaps the only few authors who speak of these things in plain-language, without using any sanskrit, buddhist or any other terms.

I recommend this talk between U.G and quantum physicist/scientist David Bohm:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYI8BIky9H4

>>11673983
Oops, the person I read was Jiddu Krishnamurti, not U.G. Specifically, I read Freedom from the Known. I have just had a glance at U.G.'s ideas. I think talking about enlightenment in such an abstract, personal way doesn't seem to have much utility. I don't mean practical utility either, I mean he might as well be describing his experience with psychedelics... I'm just struggling to see what's attractive about any of this.

>>11673742
> Why does Eastern philosophy read like self-help?

Probably because you only understand its features that are familiar to you.

Non-Western cultures display different ways of thinking. It's no use in pushing them into forms that are alien to them, just as we can't define wave properties of a particle through logic that works with its corpuscular properties, and vice versa.

For example, Arabic thought may choose process as a base element. That's not a new age “everything flows”, etc. When you think about something happening, you may automatically fit it into the model of causes and effects, something that was “before” (vaguely, probably not at the same exact moment of time), and something that would be “after” that, two determined states of the world you can study to define the function that transforms one into another. However, reasoning about two arbitrary states of the process may seem strange if you are used to reason about processes themselves.

>>11674177
>From 1947 to 1953, Krishnamurti regularly attended talks given by Jiddu Krishnamurti in Madras, India, eventually beginning a direct dialogue with him in 1953.[note 4][5] U. G. Krishnamurti related that the two had almost daily discussions for a while, which he asserted were not providing satisfactory answers to his questions. Finally, their meetings came to a halt. He described part of the final discussion:

>And then, towards the end, I insisted, "Come on, is there anything behind the abstractions you are throwing at me?" And that chappie said, "You have no way of knowing it for yourself". Finish – that was the end of our relationship, you see – "If I have no way of knowing it, you have no way of communicating it. What the hell are we doing? I've wasted seven years. Goodbye, I don't want to see you again". Then I walked out.

I think U.G agrees with you. They never met with Jiddu after above-mentioned conversation.

>>11674177
>>11674482
>He rejected the very basis of thought and in doing so negated all systems of thought and knowledge. Hence he explained his assertions were experiential and not speculative.

I really recommend you to read "Mind Is A Myth" by U.G Krishnamurti

This guy did not believe that thought itself even exists. He denied the existence of mind altogether. That all "mindfulness" activity is essentially futile when it comes to "liberation"

You can read stuff by Osho, Sadguru and all the "popular" bearded wisdom-masters with aura of charisma: but after reading U.G Krishnamurti you will come back to him agan and again.

I laughed like hell when read a story when he was attending some meditation class: watching people sitting in cross-legged position, their eyes closed and breathing mechanically. "What the Hell are these people doing?" and then he just walks away

>>11674453
I very much doubt tradition or culture can change a person's fundamental mental processes, because those processes (like parsing language) are innate and alike in humans (we're all genetically similar enough to have these processes constructed in a similar manner).

I'm not even Westerner but still, whether I look at change in terms of function vs. input-output, it shouldn't affect my understanding of the points being made. The thing is, I actually do understand, I'm just contesting the value of these philosophies.

>>11674482
>>11674522
This guy seems to walk out a lot lmao.

This doesn't really sound like Confucian/Xunzi thought.

Self help books are often influenced by eastern philosophy

>>11673742
Because Eastern philosophy isn't really philosophy. It was never about truth. Since the beginning, the notion of "truth" has been considered illusory in the East.

>>11673856
>the book shop shelves are pre-emptively filled and demand is created artificially. This is starting to sound conspiratorial
It's called marketing, which creates needs and want people didn't know they had. The latest German edition of Mein Kampf, the first to be published since it was banned, sold out immediately, even a guy living in a marketing-free world like you will have to admit it's not just sales that inform the publishers' choices, as the meme goes, pssh nothin conspiratorial, kid.
>Over the span of your life you eventually find what interests you without someone needed to market it directly to you.
You do not know how quickly your desires and whims and interests will change and in which direction, I would expect this kind of delusions from /pol/ or /v/, not /lit/.

>>11674659
> I very much doubt tradition or culture can change a person's fundamental mental processes, because those processes (like parsing language) are innate and alike in humans (we're all genetically similar enough to have these processes constructed in a similar manner).

This is a disgraceful disregard for millennia of philosophy. Attributing something to genes simply shows that you are as clueless and driven by stereotypes as any everyman in history.

> whether I look at change in terms of function vs. input-output, it shouldn't affect my understanding of the points being made

“Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed.” If it is true for such “simple” objects like elementary particles, it should be many times more true for complex systems.

>>11673742
>The accumulation of knowledge is pointless. Some of these authors make it quite explicit too. You should, instead, focus on your inner experiences and "seeing things for yourself" rather than (what they consider) being spoon-fed. Throw away those textbooks and JUST FEEL.
That doesn't seem like a confucian position to me

>>11674522
>This guy did not believe that thought itself even exists. He denied the existence of mind altogether.
B-but I think

>>11674770
>You do not know how quickly your desires and whims and interests will change and in which direction
I didn't say this.

>>11674659
*snap*

>>11674796
Is eye colour determined by culture? I attributed a very specific thing to genes, i.e. mental processes (including cognitive biases and heuristics, for instance). I did not say every thought you have is determined by genes. Calm the fuck down and don't jump to conclusions.

OP here.

It's pretty clear that most Eastern philosophers are idealists, epistemologically speaking. I'm not too interested in discussing idealism per se, but what I want to know is how they use idealism to argue that pursuing knowledge is futile, and that you shouldn't even try ... this kind of logic extends to pretty silly scenarios.

For instance, one author writes that when you think of a person (a thief, a police man, your wife, your child) you're not seeing the person, but an abstract representation of that person, and therefore you will never know the real person. This is a truism: we known that we can't fully understand someone as an observer, so we construct a concept of that person based on our observations, which are pretty accurate and generally useful. But apparently this is wrong. We should just EXPERIENCE people as they are instead of creating concepts of these people, because concepts are necessarily bad.

This is ridiculous. If someone steals from me several times, that person is a thief. Even as self-help this is ridiculous shit.

>>11673742
UG Krishnamurti is a moron desu

>>11674974
If you'd start with the Greeks, you'd find they also realized that.

>>11674974
>To demonstrate the point, suppose you experience a visual illusion. A discrepancy is introduced between the real object and the visual representation of the object inside the brain. You look at a rock with illusory properties and are asked to report what is there. What do you report? Obviously, you report the informational representation, not the real thing. Due to a trick of perspective, you might decide it is triangular when it is actually square. You might decide it is smaller than your hand when it is actually larger than your whole body but much farther away than you think. Your decision machinery does not have direct access to the real object, only to the information about the object that is encoded in the visual system.


>The issue runs deeper than occasional illusions in which a representation in the brain is incorrect. A perceptual representation is always inaccurate because it is a simplification. Let me remind you of an example from the previous chapter, the case of color and, in particular, the color white. Actual white light contains a mixture of all colors. We know it from experiment. But the model of white light constructed in the brain does not contain that information. White is not represented in the brain as a mixture of colors but as luminance that lacks all color. A fundamental gap exists between the physical thing being represented (a mixture of electromagnetic wavelengths) and the simplified representation of it in the brain (luminance without color). The brain’s representation describes something in violation of physics. It took Newton to discover the discrepancy.

(Graziano, Consciousness and the Social Brain)

Basically, that's why we shouldn't be superficial like you

>>11673771
Because people that have "succeeded" at life are never bitter, unfulfilled, or delusional?

>>11674922
Is that mixture of errors deliberate?

First of all, colour itself is an invented property that doesn't match across different people, let alone cultures. Eye colour is not even something evident, as the same eyes in a different environment may have a different colour in the eyes of the viewer. Of course, you can invent a standard method and a standard environment to detect eye colour based on wavelength distribution, for example, but that would be precisely the construction of a theory to decide what can be observed. Also, those results would still be useless for cases of different perception (how does the knowledge that person has “standard” blue eye colour help if I only see gray ones?). The model has limits.

Second, your frivolity of reasoning about genes comes from blissful ignorance. Even the basic knowledge of how to “attribute” “mental processes” to “genes” would make scientists suck your dick for the rest of eternity, therefore I am sure you haven't got any. That's precisely the problem one is warned about in >>11674974 : you have the pop science model of “information” about organism being saved in genes (that is wrong, and simplified to the point of absurdity), and make unsubstantiated claims that “feel right” as if that model was the reality. If, instead of those couple paragraphs on Biology, you were taught that cross evicts the demons, we would read some reasoning based on that from you.

> people seriously argue about the invisible hand of the market
You truly are intellectual pygmies crushed by purposeless environment who try to find happiness with their inflatable god.

>>11675030
All of that is correct, but it's not relevant... We're talking about human interaction at an everyday level here, not the way we observe physical properties of matters. Arguments that take natural phenomena like light and sound and try to apply that logic to broader topics of life are generally shit, but this one's not even appropriate here. It's not analogous.

Respond directly to the point: how one is supposed to experience another person if not through our senses, which we concede are flawed? What is this non-superficial perception you talk of? Evidently, there isn't a non-superficial way in which we can truly experience another person's consciousness. I understand, there's no need to repeat this.

Now how do you go from that, to "well, I can't know other people so I'm just not going to make value judgements about them". This is horseshit.

>>11673742
Eh, well I haven't read a self-help book but isn't the jist of it 'yeah you go! you can do whatever you want to! positive think your way to success!"

At least thats what Tony Robins et al sound like when they talk. Seems youre describing the total opposite.

>>11673742
Eastern philosophy rarely concerns itself with metaphysics, but with self-improvement and ethics.

>>11673742
As far as I know, acceptance does not exclude prevention or contention of a problem. It is just a mechanism to have a clear judgement when dealing with said problem to not go overboard. Also, useful when problems are unable to be solved. Or some semblant shit, I'm just starting with this.

>>11675187
>blissful ignorance
Oh please enlighten me wise master.

Your post is utter crap full of the usual cliches about "scientists" doing "bad philosophy". It seems you have trouble understanding what "context" is. I mean, imagine if you're in a biology class and your teacher is trying to tell you about eye colour inheritance and you come out with this gem:

>First of all, colour itself is an invented property that doesn't match across different people, let alone cultures. Eye colour is not even something evident, as the same eyes in a different environment may have a different colour in the eyes of the viewer. ....

Yes genius, we get it. We all know this, but in this context nobody is retarded enough to bring that up. We're talking about the way humans think about abstract ideas, and my point was that the way we think is probably similar, that's all. You had a meltdown over this for some reason.

> you have the pop science model of “information” about organism being saved in genes (that is wrong, and simplified to the point of absurdity), and make unsubstantiated claims that “feel right” as if that model was the reality.

That's a shitload of assumptions based on the simple statement that "some attributes are inherited". You can't actually argue against this because literally every discipline confirms that we're not blank slates, so you resort to these assumptions.

>>11675381
To the contrary, eastern philosophy is almost exclusively about metaphysics. Ethics assumes a much larger role in western philosophy.

>>11675318
> human interaction at an everyday level
…is even more constructed from constructed constructions. Thinker is the one who is aware of that process, and compensates for it. Neither Western, nor Eastern thought advise to take folk understanding at face value.

>Why does "eastern" philosophy rearranged and marketed for a western audience sounds like self-help bullshit?

really makes you think

>>11673742
You've missed several key points.

First off, they're talking about worry. Worrying about what Kyle across the street is thinking, worrying about things that might not even happen... that sort of thing. If you actually HAVE an issue, you deal with it, and then (wait for it) you don't worry about it, either because you tried your best and it didn't work out, or it's just not a problem anymore. If your wife is cheating on you, you deal with it and move on with your life instead of dwelling on it for eternity.

Next, they're not against learning things, only pointless learning - learning for no other reason than to feel superior, or other selfish reasons. They're not against thinking for similar reasons. If it's to help people, or improve something worthwhile, there's nothing wrong. If they were so against learning and thinking, they'd never have made their philosophies in the first place. "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise" - Thomas Gray

Eastern philosophy says not to put yourself, your knowledge, or your labors above the happiness of yourself and those around you. It suggests you just relax now and then, enjoy what you have, and don't get caught up in the whirlwind of life and society.

>>11675381
Wow what? It's the absolute fundaments of eastern vs western thought. Western thought is rotten with ethics, morality and other anti-intellectual frivolities. You couldn't be more wrong with your post.

>>11673742
You can still try to change things despite not "worrying" about them. You can recognize that something in your life is harmful or inefficient, and actively work to change or remove it without ruminating over it and letting the thing make you miserable.

As for the point about thinking, you're pretty much right. Try bringing attention to your thoughts and noticing any of them that are repetitive and/or negative. For some people these thoughts make up a huge proportion of what goes through their heads, especially if there's a mental illness present. The point is to use thinking for problem solving and not problem making.
But not living inside your head and "not doing anything" are very different things.

>>11674974
Your thief example is useful in describing what is actually good about, for the sake of being slightly specific, Buddhist/Taoist thought. If you think of that person as a thief, you have an ingrained concept. If that person changes, or that person's motivations are different than your concept, you will clash with them. For the Taoist or the Buddhist it's not about denying reality, it's about seeing reality as it is - constantly changing. So you shouldn't hold on to your characterizations. Overall your understanding of Buddhist/Taoist thought seems pretty superficial (that they do nothing, which is patently false. That learning is bad, also false. When they say learning is bad it's that ultimately the process is personal. Buddha called learning a ladder - once you've reached your destination, discard the ladder.)

>>11675395
Not the other guy. In your first post you said language was innate. That's the more glaring error. Almost no philosopher or linguistic will tell you that the cognitive structures for language are the same across cultures. Chomsky had the universal grammar, but it's sort of dubious and isn't about all the parts of language. Meanwhile pretty much everyone accepts the weak Sapir-Worf hypothesis, and lots accept strong Sapir-Worf. Beyond that, language is couched in a geo-cultural background that provides tons of context which is absent when it is moved.

>>11675318
The model of white light as luminance and zero color is useful as a practical survival generalization-- quick sketch for quick decision.

Not everything in life is snap judgment.

How do you know a person more deeply? Same way we know white light is actually many colors and not no colors: OBSERVATION and EXPERIMENT

>>11675398
Buddhist thought specifically rejects a big swath of metaphysical pondering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_unanswered_questions

>>11675754

1) Buddhist thought is only a small subset of all eastern thought, I was talking about eastern thought generally

2) Your claim is still ridiculous because the largest Buddhist denomination Mahayana has a huge amount of metaphysical theories and doctrines that it comes up with. If you were talking about Buddha only that's one thing but if you use the term Buddhist thought that's completely wrong.

>>11675819
Just giving a specific answer. Buddhist thought might be broad; Eastern philosophy then, is an almost uselessly broad concept that you also generalized. Which is why this thread is filled with confused bullshit.

>>11675847
And to follow on; while there are a whole bunch of additional things that get tacked on, the core and biggest part of every buddhist school is meditative practice and liberation, which are not metaphysical.

>>11675494
I think you've injected common sense into their doctrine, but this was your doing, not theirs.

>First off, they're talking about worry.
It's possible that they are talking about anxiety (or worry, or any other negative state) from a psychological perspective, and simply advising you to avoid it. Assuming your interpretation is right, it's pretty much worthless advice because 1) anxiety, most of the time, is a useful mechanism to ensure our survival and 2) when anxiety isn't useful (e.g. when you're worry about Kyle across the street), well, do I really need a "philosopher" to tell me? You just proved my point that it's basic self-help crap.

>Next, they're not against learning things, only pointless learning
You're the one making this distinction.The stuff I read is quite clear in saying that reading information as opposed to experiencing life is incompatible with enlightenment.

>>11675860
Those core practices are dependent on a highly developed Metaphysics. I mean honestly now

>>11675654
Please tell me where I am going wrong here.

>If that person changes, or that person's motivations are different than your concept, you will clash with them.
When a person changes, our conceptual model of them also changes. You can't expect me to just change my conceptual model of someone at will - it is up to them to improve their track record and mend it.

>So you shouldn't hold on to your characterizations.
These characterizations happen almost subconsciously and are useful for dealing with real life situations where we need to make judgements about others. It's true that I can consciously give people a second chance, but for the most part there is little value in constantly reassessing everyone I see.

I think we are all aware that we create concepts based on our limited perception of reality, but these are not ingrained, they are based on past life experiences.

>>11675876
>You're the one making this distinction.The stuff I read is quite clear in saying that reading information as opposed to experiencing life is incompatible with enlightenment.
They're right, attaining enlightenment has nothing to do with conventional knowledge. Reading shitload of books won't magically make you realize the true nature of reality.
>1) anxiety, most of the time, is a useful mechanism to ensure our survival and 2) when anxiety isn't useful (e.g. when you're worry about Kyle across the street)
Even though in many parts of the world survival is essentially guaranteed, a lot of scenarios still trigger an emotional response of anxiety. Insight meditation allows you to see the underpinnings of this mechanism and through understanding through what is essentially a first-hand observation frees you from its effect. It's not just a matter of rational thought.

>>11675903
You're correct, our characterizations are useful for day to day life, but they are often incorrect and incomplete, and, like you said, subconscious. So you're going through life with an incorrect, incomplete, unconscious concept of the things around you. Add to this that your concepts are largely centered around you and your comfort which distorts them and confuses your reality. That's precisely what the Buddhist aims to get rid of, and what the task of meditation is for - developing the capability of doing so (well, one thing it's for). It's seeing clearly and broadly.

>>11675679
I wasn't talking about Chomsky's universal grammar (especially his description of it, which involves recursion and some other things), however, the poverty of stimulus argument is quite compelling. Claiming that some structures of language are not innate makes as much sense as claiming that voice isn't innate.

>>11675903
I like that your entire concept of this person is totally wrapped up in what he did to you. He is nothing other than "guy who borrowed a tenner and never gave it back"
While that characterization is useful for your economic relation with this person, it has no use otherwise.

This betrays your own superficiality, which is a mental world totally encysted by Market Ideology. All that matters to you is your perception of economic violence. For one thing, did you ever consider how you have an advantage in utilizing this person as an asset due to knowing his weakness? As well as social capital from others knowing what he did. That's just within your narrow market frame, only taking out your pussy feelings.
Imagine what you might gain from observing the thief in nontransactional contexts.
Maybe he's also a good cook and you could learn from him as repayment of your lost ten dollars, something worth far more.

>>11675876
And yet, people still worry about pointless shit all the time. So simple and common it manages to be "self-help crap," but barely anyone actually listens to it.

I'd be interested in knowing the exact stuff you've read that says this. Tao De Ching, for example, is very supportive of knowledge and learning - of the self, the world, others, etc.

>>11675903
>These characterizations happen almost subconsciously and are useful for dealing with real life situations where we need to make judgements about others.
The fact that you think these characterizations happen "almost subconsciously" just goes to show you how ingrained making value judgements is into our psyche from our childhood. It doesn't have to be that way, it's not an inherent feature of our awareness. Through insight meditation it is both possible to slow down that process of mental pidgeonholing and observe it clearly, as if through a magnifying glass. We just brought what we once perceived as unconscious into the realm of conscious and achieved freedom from and control over the whole process.

>>11675950
The guy got this stuff from vague feelings based on total non understanding of a YouTube of Osho or something.

It's tone based, like when you tell your dog he's stupid and ugly but in a loving tone so he feels like you're being nice.

The entire first stage of life in Vedic ashrama is Education.

A herp derp

>>11675896
Meditation is insight into nature as it is, not its origins or fundamental essence, so I think of it as not being a metaphysical inquiry. Granted, my knowledge of Buddhism is relatively scanty. In any case, my only point was that there's plenty in Eastern philosophy that doesn't concern metaphysics. Lots of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism etc. is not metaphysical.

>>11675999
I suggest you read source materials, all the things you have listed are all heavily metaphysical.
Tao Te Ching is entirely metaphysical. It's a description of a Metaphysics.

You're confusing meditation for Buddhism. Buddhists meditate for strictly metaphysical reasons.
Seriously, please please read more and rectify these glaring errors in your education.

>Eastern philosophy
I don't know how useful this phrase is. Lumping all of Indian and Chinese philosophy together seems crazily reductive. Imagine making sweeping statements about "western philosophy" and meaning all European and Islamic thought.

>>11676025
Eh, honestly, looking around, I think I'm just working with a faulty definition of metaphysics, more than misunderstanding the texts.

>>11676025
>Buddhists meditate for strictly metaphysical reasons.
Literally what the fuck are you talking about

>>11676059
I mean I'm thinking of metaphysical inquiry as inquiry directed at substance, which is avoided in Taoism and Buddhism. They advance accounts of the way the world works, but not what it fundamentally is (or, their version of what it is is circumscribed)

>>11675926
>>11675930
>>11675942
>>11675981
I understand. I actually practised meditation and various techniques from cognitive behavioural therapy (which seem to be similar), so I know this kind of stuff is useful for the busy, overworked modern man, going through the day on autopilot mode, getting angry over petty things.

I guess I'm just a bit disappointed because I was expecting more. When I first read Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Heidegger, Kiergegaard and many others, what I read felt profound. But here I felt nothing. Maybe it was just bad execution. I think a lot of Oriental philosophy could be more pragmatic without losing anything, instead, there's usually a strong element of mysticism (I have no problem with mysticism itself, it's just not necessary here). If you're giving people advice, just do it, no need to masquerade as philosophy.

Also I'm annoyed because I've literally seen people being mislead into not striving for excellence because of literature that makes being complacent a virtue. It's a bit like fat acceptance. And the criminalisation of things like stress, fear of dying, anger... it all seems extreme. Like there's no middle ground. I get the point but again it's misleading for the average person.

>>11676072
There's more than just substance ontology.
I know you like to pretend process Metaphysics aren't real, but they really do exist bro

>>11676109
I don't know what you're reading, but there's plenty that isn't mystical. And if you got the idea that complacency is the goal, you may need to read more, or secondary sources; that's a misunderstanding. The passive is emphasized to the extent that it is only because that's the place where things can be seen clearly. Action is still valued. I think your Nietzsche reading might be fucking up your current reading. If you want a recommendation: Dao De Jing: A Philosophical translation is good and relates it to process philosophy in the western tradition.

>>11676064
>Mahayana Buddhism has three schools depending on the extent to which the reality of the world is denied.

>Sautantrika school: This school starts from Idealistic Metaphysics. But after recognizing that the existence of the world cannot be ascertained in itself, it goes on to assert that the worlddoesexist based on inference, i.e., we infer that it exists from our common sense, because we see that it exists all around us and it goes against common sense to deny its existence. Once the world is accepted to exist on the grounds of inference, the rest of the philosophy follows the Theraveda in its principles, and accepts the same goal for spirituality.

>The Sautantrika school is almost non–existent at present.

>Yogachara school: The Yogachara school also follows Idealistic metaphysics and is led to denial of the world and considers it to have only a dream–like reality. Hence the world is unreal because it does not exist ( In Theraveda Buddhism, the world exists but is unreal, in Mahayana, the world does not exist at all). The only thing that exists is the ‘I’. The world in this philosophy is considered to be a dream, and its existence is like the clouds of phenomena, our thoughts and sensations, that float across the blue sky of our consciousness.

>The effort then is to concentrate the mind so that we are free from these phenomena, and we exist as the sky alone. This is the state of Nirvana in Yogachara. We are then free of seeing the phenomena of the world, and exist in our own original nature which is free of this world.

>The main school of Yogachara Buddhism at present is the Zen school of Buddhism.

>Madhyamaika School: The Madhyamika school of Buddhism is the most radical of the Mahayana schools. This is a philosophy of extreme nihilism. In Madhyamika, the existence of the world is denied first as in the Yogachara school, as a dream. The Madhyamika then examines our ‘I’. When we examine our consciousness, we see that it does not have any independent existence apart from the phenomena that arises in the world. Our ‘I’ exists only because there are clouds of thoughts, sensations, etc. which float across it. Without this, says the Madhyamika, there is no ‘I’, there is no independent ‘base’ which supports the whole thing, just as in a banana stalk or in an onion. Hence Madhyamika denies both the world and our ‘I’;nothing exists, according to Madhyamika, and we have only to realize this to obtain our freedom from the world.

Et c.

This doesn't even cover the realism of Theravada

>>11676140
The Dao De Jing was the first thing I read. I have one massive problem with it. When something is as terse as the Dao, too much is left is up to interpretation, sometimes to the point that it's all interpretation. For example, there's one line that says (paraphrasing) "if you want fewer criminals, have fewer laws". I actually like this - it's a nice quote that sums up liberal thought, and it would look good on a pillowcase. But an anarchist might extend the meaning even further. You see, witticisms like this are nice and all, but they don't contain much information - the information comes from within us. The peril is that we just end up repeating to ourselves things we already know, rather than actually learning new things. If it inspires you to think, that's good, but there's only so much navel-gazing you can do before it becomes detrimental.

>>11676194
The peril for the Taoist is that too many words become too rigid. Remember that the Tao Te Ching is a response to an overly formalized Confucianism ascendant at the time. It's terse on purpose, because it saw what damage came from heftier doctrines. It emphasizes spontaneity and naturalness as balms to ingrained thought. If you're repeating things you already know, you're not practicing the Tao.

>>11676194
It must be noted that the Tao Te Ching was written in a hurry as LaoTsu was leaving town. The people refused to let him leave unless he left them something to guide them.
So, pissed off and sick of these mental deficients, he just adlibbed a bunch of deep-sounding aphorisms.
Half of Indian literature is similar: snappy answers to stupid questions

>>11676118
>metaphysics
>exist
Never said they weren't. Recently read Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation. And I already admitted my understanding of metaphysics was spotty. Quit being a dick.

>>11676194
Jesus, "Love one another."
>People spend thousands of years killing each other over the specifics of how he said it.
Tao Te Ching, "Relax, bro. Just don't think about it too hard."
>People spend thousands of years thinking about it too hard.

It's like poetry.

>>11676235
The Dao De Jing seems to me to be mostly a natural and practical inquiry. The world changes constantly, here's how to respond to that. I don't understand why that's necessarily metaphysical.

>>11676284
>the world changes constantly

Think about that part more intently.
Metaphysics doesn't have baroqueness and counterintuitiveness as constitutional requirements

>>11674974
people view me how they view me, only i know who i am. i put on a mask

>>11676194
> You see, witticisms like this are nice and all, but they don't contain much information

Your obsession with *information* and mention of *personal track record* (do you also see colored bars above people?) hints at how closed and mechanized your mind is.

Old man Socrates knew that knowledge manifests in paradoxes — *witticisms* — that break the sophisms, as purely logical sophisms can prove anything.

>>11675139
They aren't. That's what we call "succeeding at life"..

>>11676588
Lmao, obsession... We're going around in circles here because of your refusal to compromise. I've already conceded that our conceptual models of the people around us could use occasional reassessments, however, I still hold that since we have nothing but our experiences to make judgements about others, those experiences will have to do in practical matters. Your position, on the other hand, is untenable - no matter how much you call me a drone, an automaton, a closed-minded sheep, you have to accept that statistical inference like "this person lies all the time, I'm just going to assume he's lying" is necessary for daily functioning. It seems that you're the one that's obsessed with ignoring data entirely because, to you, for some reason, using data makes you close-minded.

Anyway, OP here. Going to bed. Thanks for the fruitful discussion. Bye.

>>11673762
Reminds me of Atlas Shrugged.

I think you're basically right though.

I remember being struck by photos of Bhuddist monks in some eastern city lining up in the morning with their begging bowls to go out into the city and beg. I thought it was the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Aren't clerics supposed to help their community? Catholic monks garden/farm or do handicrafts to support the monastery, do they not? Taking donations freely offered is one thing, but to clog the streets of a city filled with truly destitute beggars with holy beggars seems immoral, dysfunctional to me.

What purpose do these beggar monasteries serve? Are they just a place to put extra men (like so you don't have violence/conflict due to too many men competing for wives)?

>>11676780
As the other guy arguing with you I want to make clear that I pointed out in great detail that I do accept the utility of caricature simplification in the context of fast situations.
I also showed you the folly of applying caricature to every situation using the example of white light

>>11676820
It enforces humility (same with shaved head) and ensures dependency on community. Can't misuse funds or cherry pick your community works if you're having to face the public daily as a matter of survival.

It's like an antidote to the abuses of the Catholic Priesthood as an example.

>>11677035
Hm. Well I suppose the dependence on the community might serve to keep them humble. But it still seems like they must serve some other function--like a place to store extra men that don't want to deal with all the crap they would need to do to raise a family. I suppose that is one of the principle functions of monasteries in the west too. Sometimes I think the "just accept it, go with the flow" current in eastern philosophies was born out of the dense population, since those societies developed agriculture and became dense so long ago. Basically, without an "just accept it" ethic, there would be way too much intragroup competition in those societies. Perhaps Europe would have gone the same way, but first the black plague cut down the population, and then colonization allowed surplus population to spill out into Africa, the Americas and Australia/New Zealand, so a philosophy to curb individual ambition wasn't necessary--in fact such ambition was rewarded when it comes to the frontier and colonization.

>>11677172
Not "go with the flow" like a western hippie.
Eastern society is rigidly traditional. In India there's four stages of life that dictate what you should be doing, when and how.
In Asia in general homes are large and multi generational. There's always stuff to do and honor to maintain.

If anything, Buddhist monasticism is a countertradition.
It WAS a radical reaction to the rigors of ancient tradition. It was bucking vedic authority and law.

When Asian philosophy says "go with the flow" they don't mean "do what you feel like doing" they mean "society is a machine made of tradition, do what you're supposed to in order to keep that machine working" which is the point of tradition: to take the guesswork out of life

>>11673742
Legitimate question, what's wrong with self-help?

>>11677172
You have to understand, Eastern societies aren't nearly as cynical when it comes to supernatural ideas as the West has become. To a secular, agnostic Western, seeing a bunch of men walking around asking for donations then just sitting in a temple all day might look like a society is just supporting a bunch of "slackers," but to the people supporting these monastics, they genuinely feel like they are benefiting from providing them with alms and so on. Belief in karma / reincarnation is huge. Belief in paranormal and supernatural powers is also widespread.

In my personal opinion, any healthy civilisation requires a segment of society to act as conduits to the transcendent. If you don't want to look at it in spiritual terms, you could look at in in purely psychological terms - having a section of society that devotes themselves to piety, humility, "truth", etc. acts as a powerful psychological signifier that there's more to life than the mundane business of day-to-day reality. It's a place where people who are feeling depressed, confused, angry, betrayed, etc. can go to and find some solace or guidance, knowing that the people offering this advice have a vested interest in the health of the community.

I think it's the reason why even most irreligious Westerners feel a sense of awe and respect when they see a monk (Buddhist, Christian, etc.) walking down the street. They might not personally believe in whatever it is the monk believes in, but just seeing the image of a person who has (hopefully) devoted his life to meditation, calmness, wisdom, compassion, etc. brings about a certain reassuring response in the mind.

>>11678159
Too much profit-driven submediocrity, often superficial to begin with, but mostly the audience of self-help and the seminar/workshop monetization of the entire thing makes it max cringe.

Honestly lots of shit like Frank Rudolph Young or New Thought or NLP are actually helpful things.

>>11674698
because it is

>>11673742
Truthfully so does most Greek philosophy.

>>11674698
It really depends on the context. If you're a Hindu yogi being instructed by an accomplished master, you may indeed be instructed that "truth" is an illusion that needs to be shed. If, however, you're discussing Eastern philosophies in pure academic terms, in relation to other philosophies like Christianity or Greeks, you would indeed be able to say that the East affirms the existence of truth.

>>11673742
>comparing UG to tolle and watts

delete this basterd

>>11675903
>When a person changes, our conceptual model of them also changes.
Except for all the times it doesn't. Think of how many people have bad reputations follow them around everywhere because of things they did in the past, yet they have since recanted on or repented for.

>>11674894
>Having the concept that you exist at all

>>11678242
Except the fact that absolute truth is the focus of most non-kaula traditions.

There's not a lot of relativism in Bhagavad Gita et c

>>11676363
Physics describes the motion of bodies and their interaction and how things develop and change. This is not metaphysics, no? It does not posit an ontology to say that the world is constantly changing.

>>11673742
because philosophy is always variously well hidden self help

>>11678231
But in the West, we came to that realization in a very different manner (through a long and difficult journey in an attempt to thoroughly understand the world), which means our realization is not the same as theirs. A fat, jolly Buddha represents the nature of their realization, while a man on the moon represents ours.

>>11678544
Oh please. Philosophy didn't put a guy on the moon. Instrumentalization of natural philosophy and its development under capitalism is a little closer, but come on, that's a ridiculous statement to refute. And anyway Chinese technological development far outpaced the West in some areas, and Middle Eastern math is fundamental. Low effort post.

>>11678570
>Philosophy didn't put a guy on the moon.
You don't know what philosophy is then.

>And anyway Chinese technological development far outpaced the West in some areas, and Middle Eastern math is fundamental.
The Chinese and Middle Easterners didn't build spacecraft first though, which is the sign indicating that Western philosophy was superior.

>>11678604
are you retarded? Spacecraft that wouldn't even be possible with Middle Eastern and Hindu-Arabic arithmetic and numerals

>>11678604
>western philosophy is better because it did this one thing that I decided was the criterion.

Also, you'll notice I mentioned that philosophy was part of putting a guy on the moon, but to say that philosophy itself was the thing that did it ignoring all sorts of historical facts is still ridiculous.

>>11678501
>this is not metaphysics
Until it is

>>11678604
Can putting a man on the moon stop you from being upset when you bang your toe on a table?

>>11678609
Are you? I'm not ignoring how they played a role in the development of Western philosophy. However, it still happened in the West and not in those places. What more is there to say on this? We did not reach the same conclusions as Eastern philosophers did, which means the philosophies are distinct, and whatever we learned from theirs, we adapted to our own, superior philosophical system. It did not carry over into ours in its original form; we changed it, made it better, understood it better, and our more advanced technology is proof of that.

>>11678611
Philosophy is the key driver.

>>11673742
I think Marcus Aurelius would agree with the first two points in a sense. But the third is stupid. I think a lot of people like to go to Eastern Philosophy now-a-days because it is easier than actually trying to work on yourself to improve. There is a certain amount of acceptance that is important, but you should always be striving to be better as well - and that's hard, really hard

>>11678629
God damn you guys need to take a week and read some primary texts starting with Bhagavad Gita.

This whole thread feels like erotica written by 16th century virgins, it's so totally oppositional to what the materials say and the adherents do

>>11678626
>Begging the question so much I'm not even sure where it begins and ends.

>>11678643
I honestly have not read any primary sources, nor do I claim to. I was just giving my own hot take on OP's points.

>>11678612
Sort of a non sequitur to the discussion, but this looks interesting.

>>11678665
There's no begging the question. Compare the technologies. If you can't see how ours is more advanced (i.e. superior), you're in denial.

>>11678671
>Shinto is the most advanced philosophy.

>>11678262
Because human nature doesn't really change. A liar is usually pathologically a liar. Sure, people make mistakes which lead to bad reputations, and we all mature to some extent, but there's a reason reputations are hard to shed. That reason is that we *do* have some inner nature that governs our actions and most of the time it's that nature that guides us, not conscious, rational decision making. If human nature could easily change then we'd all have realised this and reputations wouldn't be set in stone.

>>11678695
It isn't. If you think what I'm saying concludes with that statement, you're either confused on what the most advanced technologies are today, or you're confused on what philosophies created them.

>>11678701
You're so wrapped up in defending your idea that you just said any liar, without qualification, is more than half the time, an incurable, pathological liar. If that's not the definition of damaging conceptualization, I don't know what is.

>>11678707
Oh sorry, when we used Middle Eastern math it became ours, so I figured if the Japanese wanted to use our philosophy to hone their technology it became theirs.

>>11678643
>>11678626
>>11678611
>>11678604
Question for all of you. Does it even make sense to judge a philosophical system based on the civilisation that developed it (its achievements, inventions, discoveries, economy)?

>>11678719
Fuck no. That's why I'm fuckin' with him.

>>11678724
Philosophical system is just another bullshit term in this addled thread. Philosophical systems vary author to author, text to text. To posit western philosophy as a system is to say a whole bunch of contradictory statements somehow constitute a system.

>>11678713
The Japanese didn't invent the most advanced technologies in existence. They don't have anything like the LHC.

>>11678719
Why wouldn't it? The whole point of philosophy is to be able to apply it. If it's not applicable, it's shit; and what's been the most applicable so far has every right to be considered the most advanced form of philosophy yet, since philosophy is a study of life, and if a philosophy is not applicable in life, it has studied it poorly.

>>11678738
>The whole point of philosophy is to apply it.
STEMfag detected.

>>11678738
>The West invented rocket ships from whole cloth.

>>11678742
Go ahead and keep masturbating in your dingy corner to the thought of how metaphysically superior you are to other people then, you dumb Platonist.

>>11678750
>Platonism is the only philosophy that can't be applied.

>>11678747
Strawman

>>11678755
You're obviously against realism, so statistical probability says you're a Platonist, assuming you're educated.

>>11678710
Not sure what you're talking about but I just came here to point out a well-know, well-delineated evolutionary theory. Nothing I said is normative. Feel free to give people the benefit of the doubt, I'm just explaining to you why conceptualization is strong.

The vast majority of the time we operate subconsciously. I don't give a fuck if you're a Tibetan monk living in the present moment, you still don't think about putting one foot in front of the other when you walk. Now when you operate subconsciously, you operate according to your nature. A professional statistician might still commit a statistical fallacy if he's just talking to his buddy at the bar, because humans are not infallible rational machines. So when I say someone is pathologically a liar, it means that unless that person is really trying not to lie, they usually will, since it's their nature. This is why you get good people that sometimes inadvertently lie. Or why someone who is a staunch anti-racist will do something considered racist in an experiment set up by a psychologist to show that subconsciously we can be racists. There's literally thousands of experiments showing how our nature prevails, despite our liking to think that we're actually making choices most of the time. Hence strong conceptualisations.

I know this doesn't change anything but at least realize that people aren't being malicious when they assume once a cheat always a cheat. It's basic probability.

>>11678756
I'm fucking around in an Eastern philosophy thread. Not a Platonist. The point about whole cloth is that 'our' advancements aren't solely ours, nor do they adhere to one philosophical system (you're using that word more like 'tradition'), nor are they solely philosophically motivated. The cold war put a man on the moon as much as philosophy, dude. And to have defined A) technological advancement as the sole arbiter of the success of a philosophy and B) putting a man on the moon as the most advanced thing we've done (you said LHC in passing later, but the point is the same) is ridiculous. Even if I were coming from where you are I would debate the idea that that's the criterion. Why not living well (don't fucking tell me the LHC made me live better)? Why not descriptive power?

>>11678764
John Nash was fucking nuts, you know that right? Paranoid Schizo.
His ideas about human beings are fittingly wacked

>>11678764
Getting beyond living subconsciously is the point of meditation. And not for nothing, but walking meditation is a thing where you do precisely think about putting one foot in front of the other. The aim of meditation is to reduce and eliminate the subjective tendencies by sustained attention on actual present experience (in the form of thoughts and sensations). I don't claim to be an expert, and I've probably got that at least a little wrong, but still, the thing you're saying is why meditation is useless is exactly the thing that meditation aims to solve. You definitely can get better about being present and avoiding conceptualizations. Of course most people can't do it all the time; that doesn't mean there's no value to the practice.

>>11678814
This also doesn't even touch that there are context specific uses for these different modes of thought, hence the training.
If I'm doing something where it frees my mind to automate a behavior (factory work as example) then it's good, but if I'm in a debate I want to be totally awake aware conscious, as an example.
If you automate your whole life, you're a literal bugman and should self-lobotomize. Similarly, if you're never automated, then you're so entangled in repetition that you're wasting your reptilian brain and should be a brain in a jar

>>11678788
>The point about whole cloth is that 'our' advancements aren't solely ours
The problem with this statement is that it implies that cultures and philosophies are equal, when they aren't. A culture influences another; so what? They are not equal for it. The bigger and stronger animal eats the smaller one, so you can say that the life of the bigger animal is sustained by the smaller, but it is the bigger animal's life force that continues to have the greater effect on the world in the long term. Their effect is not equal because they are not equal. Cultures and philosophies work the same way. Nothing exists in a bubble, everything competes, absorbs, and grows, with some outlasting weaker competitors, and some having a bigger effect on the world. If we didn't think this way, we would end up putting the Greeks on the same level as the Aztecs and making other similarly absurd assertions.

> The cold war put a man on the moon as much as philosophy, dude.
And philosophy created the cold war. Philosophy is the reason why there is civilization at all. This just goes back to my original statement: you don't know what philosophy is.

>Even if I were coming from where you are I would debate the idea that that's the criterion.
See my above explanation. I use technology as the round-about metric because it is the surest way to measure the effect of civilization on the world. If you don't think it is, then feel free to recommend a better metric.

>Why not living well (don't fucking tell me the LHC made me live better)?
What does "living well" mean?

>>11678840
Living well is debatable, as is the criteria for most advanced philosophy. People disagree about the best movies; surely there's less certainty about thousands of years of heterogeneous traditions which have mutually influenced each other (and no that does not imply that those cultures or philosophies are equal. It's largely absurd to try to rank them, to my mind). Grain is more important to the creation of civilization than philosophy. Yet, I would admit it would be absurd to say grain put a man on the moon.

Again, you're begging the question when you talk about technology and effect of civilization; and again, you're confused about what you're referring to when you say 'civilization,' 'philosophical system,' 'culture,' etc. You're lumping in many different countries and cultures and conflicting philosophies when you do that. Anyway, your outdated social darwinism is showing.

>>11673742
>>something is a problem only if you make it one
inherently true, this is called stoicism in the West

>learning is bad
Learning is not the accumulation of knowledge like you imply,. The accumulation of knowledge is rather pointless beyond indexing references to said knowledge: as long as you can reliably find it you don’t need to necessarily store it.


>don't do anything
I’m not sure what you mean here or where this is supported. Are you referencing to meditation perhaps?

keep in mind I’m just trying to help you along your path, you cute little Brian Letter

>>11678812
Maybe go and actually read Nash's works instead of getting his ideas from cultural references

>>11678884
You're implying that there is simply no criteria for discerning what is the "best" in things, because it can't be agreed upon; but nothing is equal, so that can only be false. If nothing is equal, there are things which HAVE to be superior to other things, which means there HAS to be a "best" out there. "Best" does not mean perfect, because perfect things can only exist in a bubble, and nothing exists in a bubble.

Also, I find it ridiculous that you're comparing philosophy to grain. We have grain thanks to philosophy. Philosophy is literally what makes you tick as a civilized being. It is your pattern of thought which you use to evaluate and make use of the world. Without it, you are not civilized; there's no civilization when no one has it. There's no conception of what grain is and how it can be used without it.

>Anyway, your outdated social darwinism is showing.
So you really think the Aztecs are on the same level as the Greeks, huh? Nah, I think you're just playing devil's advocate at this point.

>>11678814
You're totally right there's value in it and I wish we could all try to improve our awareness, even if it's just being consciously aware of our actions an extra 5% of the time. What I said wasn't prescriptive: we CAN improve cognition, but because we can't just reprogram our brains entirely, we rely (justifiably) on strong models.

What this guy said sums up the whole debate on heuristic vs deliberate actions >>11678835

>If you automate your whole life, you're a literal bugman and should self-lobotomize. Similarly, if you're never automated, then you're so entangled in repetition that you're wasting your reptilian brain and should be a brain in a jar

>>11678913
>We have grain thanks to philosophy.
Who's the guy who doesn't understand what philosophy is? You seem to think all thought is philosophy.

Didn't say there were no criteria. Said the criteria were debatable. And if they're debatable, there's no one ranking, and if there's no one ranking, there's no one superior philosophical system (again, ignoring your confounding of so much in the use of that term).

>>11678927
>You seem to think all thought is philosophy.
As far as civilized beings are concerned, yes, all thought is. Uncivilized beings don't "think" in the sense that we acknowledge as the thought process; unconscious behavior is not "thought" to us.

>Didn't say there were no criteria. Said the criteria were debatable. And if they're debatable, there's no one ranking
The criteria is only debatable when everyone involved in the debate is equal, which is never the case.

>>11678916
I would doubt that we can't effectively reprogram our brains entirely (as in, rewire our brains enough so that even if many of the processes remain, process-delegation/control is redesigned), but I don't know enough to make an effective argument on that point. Otherwise I think we're basically reconciled at this point, if you're the same guy throughout. Been good.

>>11678939
OK. I'm done. You've got to be doing this on purpose.
>criteria are debatable only if everyone adheres to some prior criteria to judge whether or not they're capable of debating criteria, at which point there's no debate.
It must be a trip to be this trapped in your own worldview.

>>11678966
My point was that the criteria of the most powerful individual is THE criteria at any given time. Power is the true and only metric, something I should have clarified earlier. But it's late so I'm not continuing the discussion further either. Take care.

>>11673742
There is not such thing as "eastern philosophy". Philosophy is a pointedly European thing.

>>11673757
Christianity is nothing like that.

>>11679017
lmao are you fucking high kid?

>>11675187
You're insane if you'd saying genetics have nothing to do with eye color.

It doesn't matter how much fluff you vomit to pretend it doesn't. It does.

>>11673896
Sam what is the good life and why is it empirically good?

>>11676251
>"Just relax bro"
>get enslaved to build a big ass canal and die of dysentery
No wonder the Chinese are so docile