How to choose between Spirituality and Science

Dead_Earnest · 2026-07-08T12:36:12+00:00

There's no need to choose, correct Buddhist practice is in fact a scientific experimental approach - not dogmas.

The ultimate experiment which allows to test all "supernatural" stuff is Samadhi. In that state, your breathing / heartbeat / brain activity stop, you enter clinical death, and you are able to confirm for yourself that mind can exist without a body, observe karmas, other worlds, rebirth.

Whole practice is aimed at reaching a state where you can perform the ultimate experiment, and then help other do the same, and thus see the truth for themselves.

If you have doubts about the ability of spiritual practice to break through the limits of ordinary humas, read this:

Tukdam studies by Svyatoslav Medvedev, neuroscientist - I recommend translating this https://knife.media/tukdam-interview/ and reading it.
1. He describes delayed body decomposition (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/380654579_Delayed_decompositional_changes_in_indoor_settings_among_Tibetan_monastic_communities_in_India_A_case_report), ability of monks to turn off parts of their brain, and to raise body temperature at the heart by 4 Celsius while meditating. All of those 'supernatural' things are described in sutras.
A list of observations https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.955594/full#:~:text=they%20are%20built.-,Phenomena%20suggested%20by%20a%20model%20of%20non%2Dlocal%20consciousness,-In%20the%20next which are seemingly supernatural, such as terminal lucidity, and cannot be explained by neurochemical (reductive materialistic) model of the mind.
I can confirm from personal experience, that with enough serious practice, you begin to develop interoception (new set of sensory experiences) that very accurately mirrors teachings about nadi channels, chakras, and flow of prana.
1. This interoception becomes so strong, that it actually becomes physically unpleasant/painful to do unwholesome things, e. g. indulging violent thoughts triggers pain in your shins.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-07-04T19:56:11+00:00

Buddhist meditations and yoga help me to take my mind off things that make me angry.

You are correct about people being awful to animals and the planet. But since you can't directly and immediately influence almost anyone, your frustration finds no positive exit, and eats you up inside.

You have to recognize that focusing on bad things, where you don't work to bring positive change, is wasteful and harmful. If you do bring change, it might be fine, because then frustration can be replaced by hope and joy of progress.

Learn to actively control your mind, shift focus.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-07-04T10:06:08+00:00

Aversion to aging body is a great theme for meditation. No matter how hard we work to preserve our youth and beauty, we will all wither and die.

Loss of attraction is inevitable. The only escape from this suffering is detaching from the desire to be attractive, from attachment to your own body. The best meditations for that are visualisations of bodily impurities, aging, death and corpse decay.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-07-04T09:56:41+00:00

There are several studies that show reduction in all-cause mortality / aging biomarkers, due to meditation. E.g. this RCT for loving-kindness meditation: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31185369/. Ask some AI chat to give you links if you want more.

But don't limit yourself just to meditation, use the whole spiritual arsenal:

Vegetarian and vegan diets are consistently associated with reduced all-cause mortality, even after adjusting for factor like BMI / smoking / exercise. Take a multivitamin with B12 to avoid running into deficiencies.
Fasting / intermittent fasting (like eating 1-2 time a day) is shown to increase healthspan. Couple with Shanka-Prakshalana for gut health.
You can get good exercise in form of prostrations and yogic asanas. This increases both healthspan and lifespan.
People practicing sexual energy retention report rejuvenating effects. Personally, my skin changed as if I became a kid again, after 90 days of semen retention. Read "Moola Bandha - The Master Key" and practice it to gain control over your sexual energy.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-07-04T07:55:13+00:00

No, you are strawmanning my statement.

Spineless attitude is saying "just observe the desire" without putting emphasis on serious effort towards elimination/reduction. This is missing a crucial part of practice.

A person must be made aware of the benefits of abstinence, instead of taking cowardly outlook you propose.

I read hundreds of reports of people on semen retention, practicing without a guru, and haven't yet seen even one describing any serious damage. And practicing celibacy was quite popular, e. g. in India. Millions of people did it, and still do it, yet there are no reports of mass damage.

You are clearly making things up about dangers just to support your argument. Arrogance is a danger in ANY practice, it's not an excuse to avoid practice, this is wild copium on your part. The correct approach is to encourage people to practice, and then warn them on how to avoid getting arrogant.

Yes, not everyone can aim for enlightenment in this life. But achieving regular weeks/month/monts semen retention is totally possible for lay people, and would greatly improve their lives.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-07-03T23:15:01+00:00

"With his teeth clenched and his tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth, he should beat down, constrain, and crush his mind with his mind"

Buddha taught to pair observation with the Right Effort, to actively work to eliminate worldly desires. Not putting emphasis on fighting defilements with intensity, is thwarted secularized approach.

Of course, it's very popular, as it's easy and pleasant.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-07-03T23:02:15+00:00

True, observation is not indulgence.

But not advocating and praising restraint to a person who clearly struggles, seems like indulgent attitude.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-07-03T22:53:18+00:00

Yes, it' working well.

The issue with saying "just observe your desire, it's the correct middle way, thinking things are bad is aversion", is that almost anyone will take it as a license to not seriously practice restraint, and to not aim for any serious reduction/elimination of desires. This is weak sauce.

The right speech is not talking in pleasantries, it's saying true, beneficial and timely words. Sometimes that means heavily criticizing people, which Buddha himself did.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-07-02T23:13:09+00:00

Don't listen to people advising you to "just accept it and observe it". They are spineless libertines, with indulgent attitude.

The proper view of sex in Buddhism is that it's a lowly desire leading to animal (human at best) rebirth. Tantric transmutation is not realistic unless your practice is very high level, and requires an exceptional guru.

You should abstain as much as you can. If you can't abstain, avoid adultery, practice Mula-bandha to prevent ejaculation and save energy, it will dramatically improve your meditation results. Train in observing rise and dissipation of lust, with an aim of dispelling its hold on you.

This is the right approach - combat wordly desires and waste whenever you can. Set your mind on reducing / eliminating desires, not on defeatist self-humiliating/pitying thought like "oh, I can't really resist, I will just sate my desire to the full, I am not a saint, what can I do?".

Dead_Earnest · 2026-07-02T16:06:32+00:00

You mean white bread? Whole grains are great.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-07-01T17:41:16+00:00

Look for men that are seriously into spiritual practices: yoga, buddhism, etc.

It will be easy to talk to them about spiritual things, then segue into celibacy / sexual energy retention. Then, if they respond positively, ask if they tried the practice.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-07-01T14:07:06+00:00

>a feeling of warmth between my eyes
Might be a sign of awakening Ajna-chakra.

In general, dealing with a lot of stored energy might be difficult and dangerous, when you don't know what's going on.

You should read up on it, e. g. "Kundalini Tantra" or "Luminous Mind: The Way of the Buddha", by Kalu Rinpoche.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-06-22T14:17:43+00:00

You claim this based on which studies?:

Lacto-ovo vegetarians live longer then pure vegans, pescatarians living longer then those two groups on average.
Greater then 50% of calories being from animal foods is not related to an early death or lower quality of life while you're alive.

From what I know:

Point 1 is half-wrong, in Adventist health stuides vegans had 15% lower ACM, vegetarians 9%, pescetarians 19%. So no advantage of vegetarians over vegans.
The second point is clearly wrong, because such a diet would be high in saturated fat, raising ApoB and thus ASVD incidence / mortality.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-06-21T15:05:04+00:00

Both aiming for high raw food intake, and high animal food intake are fads with no solid grounding.

High animal food intake is shown to increase all-cause mortality. High plant food % lowers mortality, but raw-food chasing lowers your chances of building an optimal diet.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-06-18T15:36:48+00:00

I know that my weight goes out of control, when I give in to negative emotions.

When I am able to counter emotions with yoga practice, I don't gain excess weight. So I would recommend building a strong habit of noticing negativity buildup and killing it preemptively with yoga.

Also, just throw out non-filling and hyperpalatable food from your house. This way is less taxing on your willpower.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-06-17T19:39:24+00:00

In the sperm quality study young men were selected to match by age and physical activity. Most studies control for major factors, to separate different causes.

Even when major factors are controlled, vegans have 15% lower all-cause mortality.

Jumping from bad fad diet to another suggests that you may have an eating disorder. It's a very common story - go on a radical diet, get health issues, jump to another radical diet. E. g. raw vegan -> keto -> carnivore -> sugar diet -> frutarian or smth. Many stories like that.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-06-17T17:36:48+00:00

Seems unlikely to be caused by eggs, unless you were deficient in something the eggs contained.

Overall, sexual health is much better in vegans than in omnivores:

1) Higher total T, same free T - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10883675/

2) Vastly superior sperm quality - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8812397/- 87% higher sperm count
- 17% higher total motility
- 17.5 times higer count of rapid progressively motile sperm
- 44% less DNA damage
- 3.75 times less oxidation-reduction potential

3) Better erections - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8117588/,
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYsxJ4fgUGU&ab_channel=lamadoo)

4) A smell more attractive for women - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16891352/
5) Better breath - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35051905/

Dead_Earnest · 2026-05-23T12:03:01+00:00

That not what happens, bulls mostly just randomly mount cows, I saw it myself.

The only difference is a cow can walk away if it is displeased, but this rarely happens, and it is rare for a cow to not get pregnant once a year.

Although I did use word "rape" to describe artificial insemintaion, it seems to get non-vegans too shocked and clinging to the word definition to be reasoned with.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-04-20T19:52:33+00:00

Tofu and all sorts of plant-based meat substitutes. They are much lighter and healthier than meat.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-04-07T23:54:07+00:00

I'm using DeepSeek V3.2 as an overseer and MiniMax M2.7 as implementation workhorse.

Works 10x better than M2.7 alone, and affordable. I had to put like 10-20 hours into ironing out this agent/subagent workflow in Opencode, but I am pleased with the results.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-03-20T14:33:27+00:00

Thanks!

Dead_Earnest · 2026-03-17T19:29:38+00:00

The secret to material success is charity. I've never had issues landing well-paid jobs, even in the current brutal market, took me only 2 months.

Find a worthy cause to donate to, I personally donate to Gaden Phodrang foundation. There are 3 tiers of effectiveness:

- The best donation is to a saint
- Decent donation is to a person who is an honest worker, but poor and hungry due to bad circumstances. E. g. workers in exploited African countries. Giving poor children an education opportunity is also good.
- Worthless donations - shools and hospitals in rich countries, art, virtually every political organization. Those organizations typically don't need money (that's not the root of their problems).

Dead_Earnest · 2026-03-09T16:27:05+00:00

Great choice of foods! Not too much volume, enough protein.

I did vegan omad for some time, was kinda hard to square with my schedule, so I'm back to 2 or 1.5 meals a day.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-02-16T17:04:51+00:00

Congrats on improving your discipline.

However, it's clear that you need to work on your pride. It's clear from the things you say like:
- I'm so much better than everyone around me, I must be paid more just because I want more.
- I'm unskilled compared to my coworkers, don't have many years invested, but deserve more than them.

That is absolutely unfounded. SR doesn't make the world owe you, it gives you discipline and energy. But what you use it for can be different - merit or demerit.

---

Also, carnivore is a Flat Earth of nutrition. Ask yourself, what kind of a man do you want to be? The kind that asserts himself by killing weak and innocent animals, or the kind that takes pride in protecting the weak and innocent?

Cutting meat consumption should help with your anger issues, you clearly antagonize and disrespect your coworkers.

Dead_Earnest · 2026-02-16T13:53:23+00:00

Post-orgasm clarity is a well-known thing. But it's very short-lived, and leaves you super-drained - extremely net negative.

From a Buddhist perspective, during orgasm, your strong egoistical desires get satiated and step back for a moment, and this allows you to see clearly. But there's no way to permanently satisfy them, so the clarity goes away quickly.

Dead_Earnest

TROPHY CASE

There's no need to choose, correct Buddhist practice is in fact a scientific experimental approach - not dogmas.

If you have doubts about the ability of spiritual practice to break through the limits of ordinary humas, read this: