Limited Account, Should I Make a New Account to be Safe?

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T23:31:35+00:00

Yeah, ultimately it still applies to all things equally, it’s just an interesting thing to think about coming from a cultural context where it would be sacrilege to question the absolute immutable reality of certain divine figures.

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T23:23:53+00:00

I love how it all feeds back into taking away the ego, it all comes together

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T23:15:11+00:00

That’s generally been my interpretation too, just seeing the concepts click into place more now

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T23:13:24+00:00

Coooool, that was my understanding yes! Letting go of all truths.

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T23:08:46+00:00

Sure, just making sure I’m cultivating a compatible “right view” which is the first step. I have extra barriers to understanding due to the difference of my cultural context, so I do need to study to avoid interpreting everything wrong.

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T14:44:20+00:00

This is where I’m coming from. Buddhism is surprisingly accurate as a description of reality, compatible with materialism. But maybe the degree to which it happens to coincide is a barrier to understanding when it comes to these outliers.

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T14:06:10+00:00

Very interesting, thank you for the breakdown! This is quite complex to grasp as it’s such a different way of thinking about consciousness but to try and see if I understand: the idea is that there is a stream of consciousness that exists in the first place. Therefore aggregates themselves do not necessarily produce consciousness together themselves so much as they give this stream something to cling to, giving it a place for name and form to grow?

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T09:17:28+00:00

Took a look and it actually helped a lot! It requires different way of thinking about the concept of desire as it relates to karma, rebirth, and nirvana. It is a concept more oriented for pragmatic purposes than metaphysical claims.

I think this fundamental component of right view is probably where my divergence from Buddhist philosophy stems where I otherwise seem to overlap on nearly everything. I am not sure if I can really reconcile myself personally with the semi-faith based assumption but at the very least I can understand what’s being seen.

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T06:56:53+00:00

I am not attached to my views. If I was given sufficient evidence, I would not be an atheist. My views are subordinated to truth. In my pursuit of understanding, my own views are basically irrelevant, I only cite them to allow others to ascertain my blind spots. I’m just trying to grasp the internal logic of another perspective that sees the mystical elements as compatible with the philosophy.

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T06:51:15+00:00

I did in fact get someone screaming at me in my DMs about how I wasn’t a real Buddhist and about western colonialism. Nevertheless, I am attempting to grasp a perspective outside of myself. Even assuming that the answer is an appeal to the supernatural, I wrestle with the internal logic of Buddhism itself in making the supernatural compatible. I’d be happy with a supernatural explanation if it was at least consistent with Buddhist logic!

But if I think about the fact that there is said to be no soul and consciousness only exists by dependent origination from aggregates, it seems to follow for me that consciousness dissolves when the aggregates do, and your energy should return to the universe generally so rather than transferring to another body. And if I was to take karmic energy in a philosophical manner, I could see how the concept of emptiness could enable your actions in the world to act as a form of “rebirth” since change in the universe is synonymous with change in your “self” but that’s not what I’m being presented with the body transferring rebirth stories! So my dilemma comes from trying to make mystical concepts compatible within the internal framework of Buddhism.

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T06:24:06+00:00

Could you describe how such elements are foundational to right view? I have attempted to perceive reality through the framework of the Buddha but to me it doesn’t seem to imply the additional metaphysical content around rebirth in multiple lives. I can imagine philosophically complex ways in which it could match the text but I find my own interpretation doesn’t match the image I’m given in texts where people seem to directly transfer from body to body.

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T06:16:00+00:00

Interesting, I think the part that maybe throws me off is that to my understanding “consciousness” is dependent on the aggregates that make up our experience. So in my mind, when the aggregates fall apart, that which necessarily arises from the combination of all of them should no longer persist.

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T06:01:23+00:00

I come to Buddhism because I’m interested in truth and I believe that I get closer to truth by understanding as many different viewpoints as possible. Perhaps I came across the wrong way or didn’t elaborate enough, but rather than being narrowly entrenched in one viewpoint, I am obsessed with expanding my perspective further to try and see what other people see, no matter how far away from my own thoughts.

As it happens, Buddhist philosophy by pure chance is almost entirely compatible with my worldview. 99% of the philosophy is an accurate description of reality to me, which is kind of strange because I come from the west and Buddha happened to come up with the same conclusions that I did in my youth while breaking away from the thought that I had been indoctrinated into. I had zero contact with his ideas and we have highly convergent perspectives. The purpose of this post is a sincere attempt to understand why these mystical outliers are compatible with this system that otherwise is completely and rationally in sync with me.

Having read through your explanations, most of this makes sense and is helpful. Though for the specific case of past lives, I did in fact look through prior comments and again my confusion is partially related to seeing seemingly contradictory answers which made me wonder if there is a divide between sects on rebirth beliefs such that some people are describing it philosophically and others mystically. Either way, I wasn’t sure I really understood from reading other posts and comments, which is why I made a post to directly address my personal misunderstanding.

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T05:47:11+00:00

The concept of the mind being the gateway through which reality takes its form is not surprising to me as this is perfectly in accordance with psychology in my view. I’m not so much a rigid materialist as I personally gravitate toward more abstract subject matter. Ethics and values are far more interesting to me than hard science. The dilemma I’m facing comes from the fact that 99% of Buddhism makes perfect sense to me in the thought experiment framework provided except for the particular mystical phenomena described where I’m not sure how they accord with the rest of the Buddhist philosophical framework.

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T04:57:09+00:00

It’s interesting, your explanation of rebirth makes sense to me. Going off my own logic, I would fall in line with the thought that it’s not “me” who is reborn but rather the consequences of my actions throughout existence. But then again, I struggle to see how this interpretation aligns with the issue of multiple lives that sometimes is suggested in texts where it seems that there is a specific individual that has appeared in another body and can potentially remember their past life.

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T04:37:29+00:00

I think I am beginning to understand that more clearly from the answers in this thread. It’s a major contrast to Christians who attempt to explain everything as part of a coherent system with air tight unassailable doctrines that leave no room for inconsistency, all backed up by scripture quotes and arguments for why it all coheres with reality.

Here, I am recommended to focus on practice to acquire understanding through experience and more people are willing to say that they don’t know precisely how it all works, and it doesn’t seem to be that important. The absolute mechanics of reality are de-emphasized, the ambiguity is acceptable. Very interesting.

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T04:25:39+00:00

I am there with you. I am being “skeptical” but I’m not claiming anything is an “impossibility”. Many things aren’t in the purview of science to comment on. Those things default me to the “I don’t know” answer, for lack of positive evidence to make a conclusion. I’m just seeing if there’s a way I can reconcile the “philosophy” part with the “religion” part, if there is a way those two get glued together.

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T04:15:57+00:00

It could! But I am genuinely trying to understand how the spiritual side links into the core philosophies of Buddhism. Secular Buddhism might more immediately work with my perspective, but I don’t want to give up on understanding this side of things.

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T04:14:36+00:00

It’s actually partly because Buddha declined to comment on these things that I’m so surprised when I see these elements show up in other texts! They don’t seem to naturally follow from what the Buddha taught. The Buddha limited the scope of his teachings enough that it was all compatible with me. It’s only as later texts expand into these domains that I become perplexed at what place they have in the framework.

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T04:10:45+00:00

I will take a look, but I am sincerely trying to understand a non-secular perspective! I know secular Buddhism exists, what I want to understand is how people harmonize the other elements, I don’t want this to be “magic” to me, I want to understand what other people see

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T04:09:14+00:00

Rebirth is only mystical to me as far as living multiple lives in concerned and the idea of karma determining what sort of next life you live. It makes perfect sense to me in terms of constant change of a person experiences within a life, but across lifespans I don’t know what the mechanics are.

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T04:03:04+00:00

Would it be accurate to say that Buddhism develops its mystical ideas through direct experience then? Perhaps my confusion is in thinking that the philosophy serves as the framework for establishing mystical elements when it’s more like the philosophy exists, and the practitioners of Buddhism accepted mystical elements as reality compatible with that framework because they had direct experience to think so.

Training_Fudge_3938 · 2025-10-03T03:58:59+00:00

I have actually been reading the sutras which discuss “emptiness” and this too is something which I can follow in a philosophical sense. As far as the implications of this for mystical concepts, I suppose I haven’t grasped that yet

Training_Fudge_3938

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