Kant

[Veritas Aequitas]

Veritas Aequitas wrote

These are elements that is driving the rather earnest drive for the 'religious turn' from some of the writers in your Phenomenology and Religion. I downloaded and read the Introduction.
I am not interested in the details of those articles but more interested in the fundamental drive that drove them towards the 'religious turn' from phenomenology.

Not from phenomenology, but more deeply into it.Husserl presented the famous, or infamous, phenomenological reduction. If you are interested in what drives these phenomenological theology theorists into religion, one has to see why Husserl thought the epoche was so important, and this is only possible through the rather tedious reading. It is not about a theoretical problem solved, but a method of going about thinking and, experiencing the world. Yes, it is an experience, that is, it requires an altering in the structure of one's thought, something Kant never dreamed of. It requires a "doing" in the field of experience, and this gets, frankly, only as alien and unfamiliar as the inquirer is capable. There is a reason why analytic philosophers cannot take this seriously: they are very good intellectuals, but not very good intuitively. They are appalled by the French lack of clarity, e.g., but it in this ideal clarity they are so adamant about that they fail to acknowledge the extraordinary threshold twilight of the human actuality that faces us. If one has no intuitive grasp of Being, the strange affectivity, the alien realization that we are somehow alien to this commonplace world and beneath the manifold presentation of things there is something mysterious and mystical. then one will not get far with the religious revelations the epoche can instill.
The drive is only revealed as one makes further inroads into the process of tearing down the years of normalcy built into us. The more we question things at the level of basic assumptions, the more everydayness falls away. One has to really want this, and this only comes from within, this drive, or, as Kierkegaard put it, that which in childhood is presented as wonder, a reaching beyond to be later understood as self alienation and anxiety. Heidegger thought the history of philosophy has filled our heads with very bad thinking about metaphysics, and wanted to rediscover what has been lost , this primordial wisdom. See also Phenomenology and Mysticism by Anthony Steinbach.
Alas, the tearing down of institutions is what reveals the drive, and this process lies in the reading of the details; that is, unless you want to climb a mountain and meditate. A very hard path, but then, so is philosophy.

All the philosophers you mentioned above are merely scratching the surface and with some intuitive insights and reasonings into the deeper realities but they are unable to realize the truth of what drives them to the self-in-itself.
In addition Husserl, Heidegger and the likes, did not introduce any practical approaches that are parallel to their philosophical theories.
As for Kiekegaard, he would recommend one to believe in God.

Even where Eastern philosophers has the intuition and established practices to deal with the problem, they are best using a black-box approach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_box
i.e. by trial and error on adjusting inputs and outputs but never understanding the actual process within the black box.

The pathway to understand that dreadful drive to the self-in-itself or soul-in-itself is via evolutionary psychology, neuro-psychology, neurosciences, and other related advance knowledge.
Note Andrew Newberg's Neuro-theology [should be neuro-spirituality] where is starting to dig into the brain.
There are loads of other researches that are going on in that direction.

Kant demonstrated rationally in theory [not in practice] that is no substance to the self, i.e. no self-in-itself which is the same as Buddhism's core principles of 'anatta'.

That Kant made room for faith is not for religion [theology or others] at all but for the deliberation on morality and its grounding which has to be illusory but rational.

Well, it depends on what you mean by religion. Existential religion looks to the structure of experience to find theological truth, as with Rudolf Otto, Martin Buber, Emanuel Levinas, and so on. Kant is not an existentialist, but his moral rationalism is takes a step beyond mere the natural, good willing agency. If you look at, say, Eugene Fink's SIxth Meditation, he claims to being taking the Kantian mantle up, in search for the generative conditions latent in Husserl's epoche that produce phenomena (or something like that. This is right, but there is more to it). Not that this is explicitly religious, but possesses threshold analysis of phenomena.

As long at there is the element of 'theo' and some relation to an ultimate being, those involved are driven to align with the self-in-itself which according to Kant, Hume, Buddhists and others is an illusion.
I note not all existentialists are into the 'theo' related matters.

As to the no-self, I am inclined to say that there is, in the difference you note between practice and theory, that which sets Estern thinking from Kant on the matter of the self. No self in the East is a revelation of one's freedom from the constraints of an otherwise binding world of attachments that keep one in suffering. It is not really an ontology of the self, but an experience of liberation. For Kant, the matter is not about this at all.

Kant, Hume and other intellectuals only provided theories about the self and nothing practical to deal with its related problems.

The idea of no-self is Buddhism is about ontology, i.e. there is no ontological substance to the self.
From the Buddhist POV, once one is driven to align with a 'self' i.e. self-in-itself, there is an impulse of natural 'own_ness', possessiveness, attachment, desires, etc. where it is a natural instinct to keep it as long as possible till eternity - i.e. eternalism.
This drive for eternalism [to live forever] unfortunately is glaringly refuted with the very evident inevitable mortality, thus the emergence of a cognitive dissonance and its ensuing sufferings and seeking of consonance.
In seeking consonances, people seek it in various forms with the extreme of salvation and ending with a God & religion that command believers to kill non-believers.

Re Atla's misunderstanding of 'detachments' from attachment to things including the self [ego].
Detachment in the Buddhism and other effective spiritual sense, means detachment from blind emotional attachments to things, especially illusory things.
While detached from ignorant attachment, one is still interacting and entangling with reality within the Middle-Path toward optimization.

[Atla]

Re Atla's misunderstanding of 'detachments' from attachment to things including the self [ego].
Detachment in the Buddhism and other effective spiritual sense, means detachment from blind emotional attachments to things, especially illusory things.
While detached from ignorant attachment, one is still interacting and entangling with reality within the Middle-Path toward optimization.

You fell for the big lie of Buddhism. First they give up the import attachments as well, and then they take them up again in an unnatural way. The latter is merely a superficial imitation of the former.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Re Atla's misunderstanding of 'detachments' from attachment to things including the self [ego].
Detachment in the Buddhism and other effective spiritual sense, means detachment from blind emotional attachments to things, especially illusory things.
While detached from ignorant attachment, one is still interacting and entangling with reality within the Middle-Path toward optimization.

You fell for the big lie of Buddhism. First they give up the import attachments as well, and then they take them up again in an unnatural way. The latter is merely a superficial imitation of the former.

Take them up again in another way??
Show me the evidence from the various Buddhist sutras to support your point.

[Atla]

Re Atla's misunderstanding of 'detachments' from attachment to things including the self [ego].
Detachment in the Buddhism and other effective spiritual sense, means detachment from blind emotional attachments to things, especially illusory things.
While detached from ignorant attachment, one is still interacting and entangling with reality within the Middle-Path toward optimization.

You fell for the big lie of Buddhism. First they give up the import attachments as well, and then they take them up again in an unnatural way. The latter is merely a superficial imitation of the former.

Take them up again in another way??
Show me the evidence from the various Buddhist sutras to support your point.

Most to all the Buddhists I've encountered were like this, you also come across like this. All of Buddhism supports my point.
Distancing ourselves from our attachments and then 'handling' them is a pathology, because those attachments are part of us and define us. We should fully live the good ones. No wonder romance is virtually unknown in Buddhists countries.
Of course Buddhists will claim that they are selective about this, but they really aren't.

[seeds]

_______

I don’t know if this was discussed earlier in the thread, but how does everyone feel about the rationality of Kant’s reasoning when it comes to such things as the “murderer at the door” issue?

-------
On a lighter note, I’m guessing that one of the reasons why Kant never got married might have something to do with his categorical imperative of never telling a lie under any circumstances.^^^

In which case, he may have been confronted with the era equivalent dilemma of being asked:

“Do these jeans make my butt look fat?”
_______

[odysseus]

Veritas Aequitas wrote

All the philosophers you mentioned above are merely scratching the surface and with some intuitive insights and reasonings into the deeper realities but they are unable to realize the truth of what drives them to the self-in-itself.
In addition Husserl, Heidegger and the likes, did not introduce any practical approaches that are parallel to their philosophical theories.
As for Kiekegaard, he would recommend one to believe in God.

Jnana yoga is a practical approach. This is because ideas are the very dynamic that keep the "illusion" in play, and further, to understand how these work in the constitution of the world (reality, if you like) it may help to look into Andrew Newberg's Neuro-theology, given that such inquiry could lead to an practical method that can guide one toward deeper states of mind where revelatory possibilities lie. But the purpose of such a method would be only to encourage the phenomenological reduction, which, ideally, delivers the subject from, if you will, the illusions of the lived daily affairs. This latter is what illusion is made of.
Two things you have to keep in mind:
One is that neurology is an empirical science, and as such the attention is on data that can lead to conclusions of various sorts, and this, we all know, can be very useful. But how it is useful to achieving liberation in the Eastern sense of this term? The flaw is an internal one: Empirical science is bound to data that is gathered through the very agency that is the essence of illusion. Real spiritual disillusionment properly described is a liberation from the habits of thinking that produce empirical science! This is why you have to read these philosophers before you pronounce judgment. Heidegger's Being and Time certainly is NOT a excursion into the mystical arts, but it does undo beliefs system and habits of thought that constitute "illusion" and from this great book follows many whose writings serve as a genuine vehicle to tearing down barriers to primordial understanding.
The "method" here is thinking. The Eastern term for this is jnana yoga, and this idea has it right: Thought IS inherently interpretative; it makes what IS Real, the Real things we experiece. in our daily lives we do not live enlightened lives, but this term 'enlightened' hangs on the flaw of interpretation, and this is a taking something "as" something in the symbolic language.

This is a fascinating and liberating enterprise, but it is usually dismissed by those who don't want to put the reading in.

Note Andrew Newberg's Neuro-theology [should be neuro-spirituality] where is starting to dig into the brain.
There are loads of other researches that are going on in that direction.

See the above. But consider, brain?? Do you think such a term has any place in a yogic's lexicon? It is the yogi's purpose to rise above exactly this kind of thinking, for term, as all terms, is inherently a distraction. Release from attachments is release from the mind. Nirvana,or, the realization that the atman is brahman (it matters not to me. Language is simply a tool, a yoga. Ordinary language is karma yoga), is not a "mental" affair, for the brain, the mind, are themselves illusory concepts. The true approach is to drop language in its interpretative influence. This is what meditation is about: to relieve one of endless round of thought and interpretation. this is also, what Husserl's epoche is about, and it is what philosophy should be about: tearing down the assumption of knowing.

The pathway to understand that dreadful drive to the self-in-itself or soul-in-itself is via evolutionary psychology, neuro-psychology, neurosciences, and other related advance knowledge.

You contradict the very essence of eastern thought and you move toward complexity, engagement, illusion. The pathway to understanding is personal, subjective, not found in an empirical science.

[Veritas Aequitas]

You fell for the big lie of Buddhism. First they give up the import attachments as well, and then they take them up again in an unnatural way. The latter is merely a superficial imitation of the former.

Take them up again in another way??
Show me the evidence from the various Buddhist sutras to support your point.

Most to all the Buddhists I've encountered were like this, you also come across like this. All of Buddhism supports my point.
Distancing ourselves from our attachments and then 'handling' them is a pathology, because those attachments are part of us and define us. We should fully live the good ones. No wonder romance is virtually unknown in Buddhists countries.
Of course Buddhists will claim that they are selective about this, but they really aren't.

Your thinking is too superficial.

Detachment means not be too emotionally attached to anything even those things are off critical necessity.
For example, one can eat any type of nutritious food but one must NOT let gluttony take over that the lust to eat become the end itself rather than the necessary nutrition of the food.
This is where obesity take hold and that comes with all its related diseases, sufferings and premature death.

Thus one can interact and entangle with food but not with blind attachment in the above sense.
Therefore it is necessary one need to cultivate mindfulness and detachment.

[Veritas Aequitas]

_______

I don’t know if this was discussed earlier in the thread, but how does everyone feel about the rationality of Kant’s reasoning when it comes to such things as the “murderer at the door” issue?

-------
On a lighter note, I’m guessing that one of the reasons why Kant never got married might have something to do with his categorical imperative of never telling a lie under any circumstances.^^^

In which case, he may have been confronted with the era equivalent dilemma of being asked:

“Do these jeans make my butt look fat?”
_______

You misunderstood Kant's moral philosophy as led by the mob.

Kant demonstrated theoretically [note Pure Reason] in principle why 'lying' is absolutely not permissible without exception.

But Kant did not insist one cannot lie in practice where the situation is justified for a greater good.
However if one has to lie with justified reasons, one should always realize one has done wrong and thus strive to align with the absolute moral law in future where such not-lying is within one's control.
If the need to lie is not within one's control, then humanity must control the situation that lead to a situation where one has to lie justifiably.

In the above case, humanity [collectively] has the onus to prevent anyone from being a murderer from the moral maxim, i.e.
'no human ought to kill another'
then, there will be no need for any one decide whether to lie or not to a potential murderer of the location of his intended victim.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Veritas Aequitas wrote

All the philosophers you mentioned above are merely scratching the surface and with some intuitive insights and reasonings into the deeper realities but they are unable to realize the truth of what drives them to the self-in-itself.
In addition Husserl, Heidegger and the likes, did not introduce any practical approaches that are parallel to their philosophical theories.
As for Kiekegaard, he would recommend one to believe in God.

Jnana yoga is a practical approach. This is because ideas are the very dynamic that keep the "illusion" in play, and further, to understand how these work in the constitution of the world (reality, if you like) it may help to look into Andrew Newberg's Neuro-theology, given that such inquiry could lead to an practical method that can guide one toward deeper states of mind where revelatory possibilities lie. But the purpose of such a method would be only to encourage the phenomenological reduction, which, ideally, delivers the subject from, if you will, the illusions of the lived daily affairs. This latter is what illusion is made of.
Two things you have to keep in mind:
One is that neurology is an empirical science, and as such the attention is on data that can lead to conclusions of various sorts, and this, we all know, can be very useful. But how it is useful to achieving liberation in the Eastern sense of this term? The flaw is an internal one: Empirical science is bound to data that is gathered through the very agency that is the essence of illusion. Real spiritual disillusionment properly described is a liberation from the habits of thinking that produce empirical science! This is why you have to read these philosophers before you pronounce judgment. Heidegger's Being and Time certainly is NOT a excursion into the mystical arts, but it does undo beliefs system and habits of thought that constitute "illusion" and from this great book follows many whose writings serve as a genuine vehicle to tearing down barriers to primordial understanding.
The "method" here is thinking. The Eastern term for this is jnana yoga, and this idea has it right: Thought IS inherently interpretative; it makes what IS Real, the Real things we experiece. in our daily lives we do not live enlightened lives, but this term 'enlightened' hangs on the flaw of interpretation, and this is a taking something "as" something in the symbolic language.

This is a fascinating and liberating enterprise, but it is usually dismissed by those who don't want to put the reading in.

I started with advaita vedanta and was a Jnanist [Jnana Yoga] for a long time and I have now graduated from Jnana to be a generalist.
Any yoga master will advice Jnana Yoga is the intellectual approach and it must be consummated with Bhakti to "yoke" with the ultimate Brahman.

I believe reduction is necessary in all fields of knowledge, in this case 'spirituality' but reduction in spirituality is to ensure the spiritual practice is holistic.
In this case, one can target the neurons and parts of the brain specifically so as to expedite the spiritual process rather than rely on trial and error [hit and miss] or the experience of past masters where there is no final verification that all of them are right and precise.

Looking into the brain for specifics in the right direction but there is still a long way to go before we can reach any reasonable progress.

Note Andrew Newberg's Neuro-theology [should be neuro-spirituality] where is starting to dig into the brain.
There are loads of other researches that are going on in that direction.

See the above. But consider, brain?? Do you think such a term has any place in a yogic's lexicon? It is the yogi's purpose to rise above exactly this kind of thinking, for term, as all terms, is inherently a distraction. Release from attachments is release from the mind. Nirvana,or, the realization that the atman is brahman (it matters not to me. Language is simply a tool, a yoga. Ordinary language is karma yoga), is not a "mental" affair, for the brain, the mind, are themselves illusory concepts. The true approach is to drop language in its interpretative influence. This is what meditation is about: to relieve one of endless round of thought and interpretation. this is also, what Husserl's epoche is about, and it is what philosophy should be about: tearing down the assumption of knowing.

From the Jnana perspective, the Jnana yogi would definitely be interested to understand the brain if such knowledge was available for the Jnana yogi of the past. But then neurosciences were only active merely about 50 years ago.

As I had stated, the authors you mentioned would qualify to be described as adopting the Jnana Path, but they don't delve into the practical path or even recommended any. There are merely armchair philosophers of NATO.

Re the brain, the Indian yogis [Vedic and Buddhists] reflected deeply into consciousness from outside the box and established various methods to achieve various states of consciousness.

Heidegger interacted with Buddhist scholars but he never talk of Buddhist practices nor did he adopted any spiritual approaches. ??

According to Tomonobu Imamichi, Heidegger’s concept of Dasein in Sein und Zeit was inspired — although Heidegger remains silent on this — by Okakura Kakuzō’s concept of das-in-der-Welt-sein (being-in-the-worldness) expressed in The Book of Tea to describe Zhuangzi’s philosophy, which Imamichi’s teacher had offered to Heidegger in 1919, after having followed lessons with him the year before.
http://teapedia.org/en/The_Book_of_Tea

The pathway to understand that dreadful drive to the self-in-itself or soul-in-itself is via evolutionary psychology, neuro-psychology, neurosciences, and other related advance knowledge.

You contradict the very essence of eastern thought and you move toward complexity, engagement, illusion. The pathway to understanding is personal, subjective, not found in an empirical science.

I did not state the Science is the ultimate pathway.
Science is at most a tool and facilitates one's spiritual journey.

Note the Dalai Lama's thought on Science;

“If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”

― Dalai Lama XIV, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

The above is after the Dalai Lama was exposed to the convincing researches the various neurosciences.

From the above the Dalai Lama founded the Mind & Life which hold annual convention of Neuroscientists and Buddhist Spirituality in the Dalai Lama location.

Mind & Life emerged in 1987 from a meeting of three visionaries: Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama—the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people and a global advocate for compassion; Francisco Varela, a scientist and philosopher; and Adam Engle, a lawyer and entrepreneur.
https://www.mindandlife.org/mission/

[odysseus]

Atla wrote
That's dangerous rubbish if you ask me. One can (and should imo) keep the important attachments and continue to care all the same. Why did the Easterners even come up with the idea that all the attachments should fall away after awakening.. giving up attachments and dismantling the ego is a method to realize our true nature, it's a very effective but in a sense pretty brutal and inhuman technique. It's used to reach a certain realization. It's a method, not some kind of "final state"..

But ALL of the interesting philosophy takes you where things at first sound like rubbish. That's why no one reads it, aside from the fact that it's dense and difficult. Kant is an idealist. Does this mean, to use a cliche, that if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, it doesn't make a sound? For Kant, the answer is, at the level of basic questions, no tree, no forest, no sounds; in fact, such a scenario is utterly without meaning. The Buddhists are mild, in their theory, in comparison, (though once you get into it, it's not mild at all, and, as you say, quite brutal. It changes the world. This begs the question, what is the world that IT can be changed by such a thing? And then, thought and life become philosophical). Hegel is just plain knock down drag out insane.

I read Einstein's general theory of relativity (the lay person's version) and the idea of space bending was just patently absurd. Bending required a stable foundation that does not bend in order to make sense at all, yet it was space itself that was bending. Was this dangerous rubbish? To me, it is still a kind of rubbish, simply because I can't wrap my intuition around it. It's like spontaneous causality: impossible. But then, I know I'm wrong, and Einstein is right.

Buddhists are not going to say that you should not continue to care for the things love if your intention is just to be happy in the world in the usual way. Just take some hatha yoga classes and learn to relax. You have to be a fanatic, of sorts, a bit monomaniacal about getting at the heart of things, wanting the Truth with a capital 'T', in order to spend your says just sitting quietly and meditating in the effort to achieve selflessness.

[odysseus]

Veritas Aequitas wrote

I started with advaita vedanta and was a Jnanist [Jnana Yoga] for a long time and I have now graduated from Jnana to be a generalist.
Any yoga master will advice Jnana Yoga is the intellectual approach and it must be consummated with Bhakti to "yoke" with the ultimate Brahman.

I will take this mean this: once you have taken the interpretative enterprise, that is, philosophical thought, to the point where you understand that a perceptual encounter in the world is not an irreducible event, but has, if you will, parts, and thus analyzable, and analysis then shows you that the truth you seek is foundational truth, something that is truly not reducible, and is the basic "given" of the world, then you will encounter nihilism: the failure to find meaning in meaning, value in value (see Witgenstein's Tractatus, btw. He understood this threshold very well). At this point, one needs faith, which is where Bhakti yoga becomes helpful. Kierkegaard can be understood to have said the same thing.

The trouble with this thinking is that faith becomes naive when the world is closely examined, and it is also a terrible distraction from the serious undertaking you are in. The point is, or part of the point, is to let thought and interpretation (thought is inherently interpretative) fall away altogether.

I believe reduction is necessary in all fields of knowledge, in this case 'spirituality' but reduction in spirituality is to ensure the spiritual practice is holistic.
In this case, one can target the neurons and parts of the brain specifically so as to expedite the spiritual process rather than rely on trial and error [hit and miss] or the experience of past masters where there is no final verification that all of them are right and precise.

Targeting neurons? I don't take your meaning. Though I do take that you mean neurological studies can be useful to an end, somehow. But then, there are no neurons, and to participate in the world as if there were is to buy into that which you're trying to undo. In my understanding, the very nature of the concept of Eastern "illusion", regardless of the literature (one must see that what others tell us, even if it is dead right, is only a utility for personal enlightenment. The "telling", the scriptures, the philosophy, is, all of it, only a means to an end, and, as the parable goes. Thought itself is yoga, the "light of reason" that attends our karmic journey) is interpretative error: things are not what we "say" they are. They are something entirely Other.

From the Jnana perspective, the Jnana yogi would definitely be interested to understand the brain if such knowledge was available for the Jnana yogi of the past. But then neurosciences were only active merely about 50 years ago.

As I had stated, the authors you mentioned would qualify to be described as adopting the Jnana Path, but they don't delve into the practical path or even recommended any. There are merely armchair philosophers of NATO.

Fortunately, this is not true. I care nothing for the politics as it has no place here.

But sadly, I cannot convince you of the value of Husserl, Heidegger, and the rest in a post. You would actually have to read Heidegger's Being and Time yourself. But, alas again, he is thoroughly embedded in Western philosophy, so this requires a lot of reading besides. I can present an idea or two. For one thing, Heidegger explains is a very well reasoned argument what the nature of illusion is, though, of course, this is not his explicit aim. He makes phenomenology clear as a bell, and he leaves Truth an open concept, which is exactly where philosophy should take a person.

Husserl predates Heidegger, and this philosopher is, for some, closer to the Eastern notion of liberation. He took the presentation of the world as a Given, when observed phenomenologically. The trouble with traditional philosophical approaches was that it lacked the significant movement from mere abstract thought to actuality, and his epoche invites just this: it is a perceptual event of removing from t he perceptual field what would make an implicit knowledge claim on it. Husserl leads one the fountain of "selflessness" where things themselves in the perceptual act are seem AS SUCH. His phenomenological reduction (epoche) is a practice!

Re the brain, the Indian yogis [Vedic and Buddhists] reflected deeply into consciousness from outside the box and established various methods to achieve various states of consciousness.

Box?

Heidegger interacted with Buddhist scholars but he never talk of Buddhist practices nor did he adopted any spiritual approaches. ??

What Heidegger sought was a way back to experiencing the world that has been lost in the thick of very bad thinking over the ages. We are alienated in our lived habits, and he sought to show the way back to the primordial experience that were once in place, and this could be achieved through ontology, a stepping back from the usual world to get to what underlies it. He believed that the world is constructed, as with Kant, of thought and what is given, though, the given is always given AS thought. For him, there is no separation. The world of thought is "of a piece" with actuality. People are thought constructions.

He is so illuminating because once one goes through the reading of Being and TIme, one understands the empirical self, the divisions that separate and allow things to be things, the pragmatic (instrumental) nature of our everydayness, and so on. His is a vehicle to a higher understanding of what the East calls illusion, and if you can see this in the clarity he presents, disillusionment is possible.

[Atla]

Take them up again in another way??
Show me the evidence from the various Buddhist sutras to support your point.

Most to all the Buddhists I've encountered were like this, you also come across like this. All of Buddhism supports my point.
Distancing ourselves from our attachments and then 'handling' them is a pathology, because those attachments are part of us and define us. We should fully live the good ones. No wonder romance is virtually unknown in Buddhists countries.
Of course Buddhists will claim that they are selective about this, but they really aren't.

Your thinking is too superficial.

Detachment means not be too emotionally attached to anything even those things are off critical necessity.
For example, one can eat any type of nutritious food but one must NOT let gluttony take over that the lust to eat become the end itself rather than the necessary nutrition of the food.
This is where obesity take hold and that comes with all its related diseases, sufferings and premature death.

Thus one can interact and entangle with food but not with blind attachment in the above sense.
Therefore it is necessary one need to cultivate mindfulness and detachment.

Your thinking is too superficial and you just confirmed what I wrote.

[Atla]

Atla wrote
That's dangerous rubbish if you ask me. One can (and should imo) keep the important attachments and continue to care all the same. Why did the Easterners even come up with the idea that all the attachments should fall away after awakening.. giving up attachments and dismantling the ego is a method to realize our true nature, it's a very effective but in a sense pretty brutal and inhuman technique. It's used to reach a certain realization. It's a method, not some kind of "final state"..

But ALL of the interesting philosophy takes you where things at first sound like rubbish. That's why no one reads it, aside from the fact that it's dense and difficult. Kant is an idealist. Does this mean, to use a cliche, that if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, it doesn't make a sound? For Kant, the answer is, at the level of basic questions, no tree, no forest, no sounds; in fact, such a scenario is utterly without meaning. The Buddhists are mild, in their theory, in comparison, (though once you get into it, it's not mild at all, and, as you say, quite brutal. It changes the world. This begs the question, what is the world that IT can be changed by such a thing? And then, thought and life become philosophical). Hegel is just plain knock down drag out insane.

I read Einstein's general theory of relativity (the lay person's version) and the idea of space bending was just patently absurd. Bending required a stable foundation that does not bend in order to make sense at all, yet it was space itself that was bending. Was this dangerous rubbish? To me, it is still a kind of rubbish, simply because I can't wrap my intuition around it. It's like spontaneous causality: impossible. But then, I know I'm wrong, and Einstein is right.

Buddhists are not going to say that you should not continue to care for the things love if your intention is just to be happy in the world in the usual way. Just take some hatha yoga classes and learn to relax. You have to be a fanatic, of sorts, a bit monomaniacal about getting at the heart of things, wanting the Truth with a capital 'T', in order to spend your says just sitting quietly and meditating in the effort to achieve selflessness.

Drawing a parallel with Einstein's relativity makes no sense here. Buddhist selflessness does destroy the natural human interpersonal bonds and then it imitates them or not even that, it's for goddamn schizoids like Veritas. And again, it's strictly speaking not relevant to the 'Truth' of awakening.

[odysseus]

Atla wrote
Drawing a parallel with Einstein's relativity makes no sense here. Buddhist selflessness does destroy the natural human interpersonal bonds and then it imitates them or not even that, it's for goddamn schizoids like Veritas. And again, it's strictly speaking not relevant to the 'Truth' of awakening.

Sorry, but "awakening"?

[Atla]

Atla wrote
Drawing a parallel with Einstein's relativity makes no sense here. Buddhist selflessness does destroy the natural human interpersonal bonds and then it imitates them or not even that, it's for goddamn schizoids like Veritas. And again, it's strictly speaking not relevant to the 'Truth' of awakening.

Sorry, but "awakening"?

Enlightenment, the realization of our "true nature". The theme that many Eastern philosophies are centered around and what Western philosophy lacks in general, even though it's true. I was talking about nondualism.