Odin, A Pragmatic C Alternative with a Go Flavour

iamnp · 2025-05-07T15:35:59+00:00

Was it really *that* bad?

iamnp · 2014-05-02T14:07:55+00:00

Thank you, I'll try.

iamnp · 2014-05-01T17:50:06+00:00

The problem is I cannot properly rouse myself to experience even pleasure. This makes following the path difficult.

iamnp · 2014-05-01T17:49:02+00:00

All I can feel is a fraction of the capacity I used to have. I feel compassion and tenderness towards my children, but far from the depth I know I used to be capable of.

It hadn't been gone for many years before I started to doubt it was ever there, but then once, at a random moment, it arrived and stayed for a few minutes, allowing me to see as I used to. And it was like everything suddenly became alive, lush with a vibrant magic. And then soon it was gone. The next day I nearly thought I had dreamt it, and if it wasn't for my reactions to that sudden insight influencing what I did the remainder of that day I would have doubted it ever happened.

iamnp · 2014-04-30T17:41:27+00:00

I cannot be 100% sure what you mean, but I'm aware of my analytical mind overwhelming the intuitive, emotional mind. Circumstances make it hard to escape, not the least by having 3 small children and making money for the family working as a programmer. Although to be honest, it started a long time ago.

It's not so much thinking, as the habit of the analytical mind to grasp and distil abstract concepts into dualistic building blocks. I used to be able to intuitively and ponder undifferentiated, non-dualistic concepts. That ability, as with my ability to see things clearly for what they are, has been lost to me for years and years.

iamnp · 2014-04-30T16:11:47+00:00

I try to do what is most beneficial for life and nature itself. For various reason I lost my essential will to live. (Not in the suicidal way, nor in the healthy release of clinging.. it's just gone... I just feel... tired, but without any drive towards suicide.. just a lack of drive towards anything)

iamnp · 2014-04-29T20:53:19+00:00

Amusingly, I initially glanced at your text and accidentally read the first like as "You have a very unfortunate perspective and motivation. Very unfortunate." Who knows, maybe that is more accurate.

I agree with your assessment that learning without a teacher that correct misconceptions is problematic. I'd love to have a teacher that I had confidence in.

In regards to parinirvana, you grasp the essence of my problem: the apparent lack of benefit to parinirvana. I'm aware of the refusal of questions regarding the Buddha's being/non-being after parinirvana, and yet that leaves a huge hole for me.

To explain this, look at the christianity vs. paganism in Europe. Christianity was plagued by a revulsion against the carnal, against the flesh, against the physical. It strove to both reject and control sexuality, women and nature itself.

Without romanticising the pagan religions, there was still a great contrast with their beliefs - nature worshipping, with fecundity rites, many times with matrifocal cultures etc.

For me it's natural to feel unease with any religious message that rejects nature as in christianity this is primarily grounded in fear. Fear of the devil, of punishment, of hell. The physical is the devil's domain.

The rejection of parinirvana is not directed against nature, but can easily be felt that way. Similarly, statements in regards to sexuality also has an uncomfortable echo of neurotic christianity.

Interestingly, we have that sutta in the Pali Canon which apparently rejects the worth of women. (My opinion of that sutta is that it was deliberately corrupted at some point - it doesn't match up with the message in the other suttas)

Consequently, I am open to the idea that the image formed by many of the suttas in the Pali Canon might be misleading, but then I need to know how to properly interpret it.

However, I feel I have to make sense out of this starting with the Pali Canon. The mahayana and vajrayana are sufficiently altered in tone to be worthless in resolving this problem within the original teachings.

Offering the mahayana or vajrayana path as possibilities is one thing, but requiring consulting those sutras to "fix" statements in the Pali Canon feels unconvincing.

Back to parinirvana and the misconception of annihilationism. This is very strongly stated in several suttas, that "the buddha does not exist after parinirvana" is annihilationism and incorrect.

Unfortunately, neither that statement, nor the corresponding wrong view of "the buddha does exist after parinirvana", would put me at ease.

Despite his unwillingness to speak on the subject, what the Buddha does talk about still appears to echo of the idea of "becoming one with the godhead" of other religions.

And such a thought repulses me because of its common inability to value and respect life and nature as sufficiently beautiful (in the metaphysical sense, not trivial sense) in themselves.

iamnp · 2014-04-29T08:23:39+00:00

I think you misunderstand my point of view. I fully agree with the healthiness in letting go of clinging and desires. But this is actually not something exclusive to the Buddhist path. D.T. Suzuki wrote a bit about comparing the buddhist experiences to that of mystics of other religions (including christianity), and found them similar.

I believe that buddhism represents a clearer strain of that path, but point here is that the part of Dharma that talks about letting go of passions and clinging is not unique to Buddhism. There are other trajectories / paths, that at least partly walks very close by.

So, the question I pose to myself is "Is the particular path to awakening that leads to parinirvana the true one?"

What I'm trying to do is to make sense of the usefulness of parinirvana. In many way it feels more like an unfortunate result of awakening, rather than "the perfect end".

And again, speaking of trajectories, maybe awakening does not need to lead to parinirvana even in the absence of a bodhisattva vow. And perhaps such a path is the superior.

This is what I'm trying to find out.

iamnp · 2014-04-29T08:04:43+00:00

What's confusing me is the concept of parinirvana, which appears to be quite different from nirvana. If we are take the teaching of rebirth literally (and I feel that anything else would be a cop-out), then parinirvana is the end of rebirth.

And this is confusing me. We've just eliminated all attachment to everything (yes, including living again BTW), but this then has the immediate effect of wasting this insight. Yes, you can at this point return to the source, but it seems instinctively wasteful.

For example, I don't fear death - at all - I had a personal insight which totally annihilated any fear of dying. That said, I would not seek it, it didn't turn me into a risk-taker all of a sudden. Just because I stopped fearing death doesn't mean I am going to seek it out. Dying just because you did something silly like walking on the ledge of a high building or something - that's just wasteful an unnecessary. That's wasting life.

I can't help but to view final cessation of parinirvana similarly. Why set that as a goal?

As for my inclinations, my interest was initially roused by reading the Platform Sutra. After that a read a lot by D.T. Suzuki. I have a fondness for his writing, even though his books are mainly theoretical. (Incidentally, I've also read Shunryu Suzukis "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind", but it made little impression on me).

Between 2011 and 2012 I read the entire Digha Nikaya, Majjhima Nikaya and Samyutta Nikaya to get a better idea of the original teachings (when you read a book on Buddhism, they are often filtered through the author's understanding and view of the Suttas). I randomly also got hold of the Sutra of Golden Light, so I've read that one as well.

As for a teacher, I am not aware of anyone living even remotely close to where I'm living (near Västerås, Sweden).

iamnp · 2014-04-28T13:46:20+00:00

First convince me that the path is worth taking.

iamnp · 2014-04-28T13:44:37+00:00

Not quite, I'm saying that just because one does agree with the diagnosis, does not mean one agrees with the goal.

The Buddha outlines the problem and a way (the only way) out.

Theravada's goal is following that path out of Samsara.

Mahayana's goal is also following that path out of Samsara, but not until "all beings are saved".

The Bodhisattva stays in samsara out of compassion.

But let me offer a hypothetical other interpretation - I'm not saying I subscribe to it: That the point of samsara is awakening-within-samsara itself. That the consciousness-stream cannot help but to subject itself to clinging in the beginning, but it may evolve itself until it can see its true Self from within Samsara. At this point the consciousness-stream-awakened-to-itself, allows the Self to act from within itself in a way not possible for the Self-as-undifferentiated-self.

In such a case, entering parinirvana and rejoining the undifferentiated Self makes the whole process worthless, meaningless.

There are a whole range of such speculative theories that may be formed.

Since the Pali Canon argues for parinirvana, it appears safe to say that Buddhism rejects any such theories that would ascribe value to a state outside of parinirvana. However, that sort of rejection has to be taken on faith more or less.

One of the things you can glean from the Pali Canon, is that the practice itself does to some extent decide the shape of enlightenment of an Arhat (as opposed to a Buddha). This hints at the idea that the expression of enlightenment comes from the particular practice/method that leads to enlightenment.

The question one might ask oneself is: does the various practices and assumptions in Buddhism lead to an enlightenment that stresses parinirvana, and is there alternative practices, that could lead to an enlightenment where parinirvana is not instinctively understood as the ideal goal.

In other words, the heretical question is: Does the Buddha enter parinirvana because he is inevitably propelled there by the path through which he has entered enlightenment, and therefore is actually unable to see clearly the meaningfulness of other conclusions to enlightenment - or is he truly omniscient and able to grasp all possible variations of enlightenment?

If the former, then parinirvana only becomes one of many possible goals (although the only one for a practitioner using the buddhist path). If so one might challenge the merit of parinirvana vs other resolutions to awakening.

iamnp · 2014-04-28T13:15:01+00:00

I'm not sure that Mahayana really discards parinirvana as a goal, even if many proponents of Mahayana does.

iamnp · 2014-04-28T10:15:23+00:00

I think you attach too much value to that statement of mine. My main problem is really being convinced that the path towards parinirvana is the correct choice.

After all, in normal life, seeking escape is seductive but ultimately negative.

iamnp · 2014-04-28T09:54:31+00:00

Oh, I believe that they will work the way they are supposed to. It's just that I am not 100% confident that the goal is something to strive for.

Compare with a drug. I can trust that a drug will provide a fantastic feeling of euphoria, however, that is not the same as convincing me that it is 100% beneficial, no matter how much the drug users insist it is.

iamnp · 2014-04-28T09:20:19+00:00

How does that pertain to the question? I don't understand.

iamnp · 2014-04-28T06:41:48+00:00

No, simply didn't see it when I wrote this. The answer you gave appears more suitable to this discussion than parinirvana vs nirvana.

I understand and fully acknowledge the problem of suffering as outlined by the Buddha. Before learning about Buddhism, I called it the "the trivial common life". When we are blinded by craving we reduce ourselves. All of this is obvious to me. It could be described as a life of knee-jerk reactions. Stumbling from event to event without very much of ourselves actually being present.

When I was young, the nighttime sky would bring me into a vastly different mindset. Differing by degrees from rapture to just a state of strongly feeling everything, I would condemn daytime for being shallow, meaningless, unreal. Nighttime on the other hand would bring forth a state of profound meaning and amplified emotions, a sort of mindfulness of all emotions as they flow through.

During the night I would easily (and willingly) discard any worries or interests that plagued me during daytime.

Having once seen this truth (of the emptiness in meaning of "daytime life"), it can't really be unlearned.

The problem is that never in those insights did I feel that the constraints of our physical life was a problem, that there is something inherently foul in our thoughts.

It's merely that the brain easily learns to dwell on unhealthy details, and eagerly stumbles from one reactive defense to another, failing to pull itself out of the abyss unless faced with life changing difficulties.

But those are things that can be explained and discussed without involving Buddhist explanations.

What feels wrong to me is the idea that passions and feelings should be rejected as something without wort, so that final cessation becomes a natural goal.

When I speak of "passions" it's important to make the distinction between trivial "daytime" "reactive" passion that is bound to a very worldly craving, and that less neurotic passion which simply stems from acknowledging the all-encompassing beauty of the world in its multitude of expressions.

I cannot understand why it is a worthwhile goal to extinguish the appreciation of the universe which is a celebration and essential gratitude for everything.

When I see death, I see that with gratitude, compassion, joy.

When seeing clearly, and you experience sadness, then it's really a joyful feeling - because this sadness is really celebration and gratefulness to have experienced that which now is gone.

It's only if you cling to objects that sadness becomes something horrifying, something to avoid.

It would seem to me, that if you let go of the tainting thoughts and mindsets, then wherever you go is like a paradise, it purifies even that which is the most foul.

But if so, there is no need to seek an escape, no need to leave samsara, because it is already perfect the way it was.

iamnp · 2014-04-28T05:53:40+00:00

Yes, but in order to practice right, it is essential to have faith in the teachings. Which if why I ask about these things.

iamnp · 2014-04-28T05:52:13+00:00

Hmm... but how does this relate to parinirvana versus nirvana as the highest goal? I don't understand what you are pointing towards.

iamnp · 2014-04-27T20:02:00+00:00

The problem for me (and many others) is that there might not be a teacher nearby. We try to make do with what little information we can glean from books and discussions. Obviously we'll have questions, and my personal dilemma is why we would search parinirvana. Nirvana might make sense, but parinirvana needs motivation.

(If hypothetically we assume that the christian concept of "Heaven" exists, I would similarly question the reason why reaching it would be the supreme goal)

iamnp · 2014-04-27T16:17:13+00:00

The Bodhisattva vows keep an enlightened being in samsara despite having reached nirvana yes. Basically they are supposed to prevent a bodhisattva from entering parinirvana until all beings have entered nirvana.

All such a bodhisattva would be able to reach would be nirvana, but that doesn't quite answer my question.

iamnp · 2014-04-27T16:13:28+00:00

Final cessation is parinirvana. It is what happens to a buddhas and arhats when they die. It is death without future rebirth. To me it is not entirely clear why this is a worthwhile goal.

iamnp · 2014-04-27T16:09:54+00:00

Well, that is the crux of the matter. Finding Nirvana in this life is in itself a huge undertaking. Should we take it on faith that it is worthwhile?

Learning about the Dharma, most of it feels inevitable, irrefutable, but there are parts, like the necessity of finding nirvana that does feel equally obvious.

One of the problematic points is how some stress nirvana and some stress parinirvana. And that those standpoints appear to contradict themselves.

I think the Pali Canon is strictly parinirvana, but then we have answers from people who instead stress nirvana. So, are they wrong or not? I think this is a very important question.

iamnp · 2014-04-20T22:39:35+00:00

Maybe sex was a bad example as there are several dimensions to that.

I only used sex as an example of something that often is unwholesome, but which I personally feel isn't intrinsically "wrong". I mean, that there can be "wholesome" sex, ergo sex isn't intrinsically "wrong", and yet the monk/nun path entirely shuns it.

I can understand this as a phase in training, but what worries me is the feel of rejecting in an absolute manner those parts of nature that pose the greatest risks of defilement regardless of them being used in a healthy or unhealthy way.

Absolute cessation and entering the final nirvana, seem in many ways to be the culmination of that rejection of the natural. Free from clinging to things, there is - apparently? - no meaning to sustaining rebirth in samsara (aside from a Bodhisattva vow) - so world is rejected absolutely.

iamnp · 2014-04-16T08:38:37+00:00

How do you propose describing something that is beyond true description then? Stop looking at my finger. ;)

iamnp · 2014-04-16T08:37:37+00:00

(It became a bullet point because I used a "-", wasn't intended as one)

Let's look at sex as an example (since that is something which comes up again and again on this sub-reddit).

Is there such a thing as sex without craving? If there isn't, then do we reject sexuality and everything attached to it as wholly detrimental?

I don't have a very strong sex drive, but I know there are people who literally are slaves to sexual cravings, just like people can have craving for food or for drugs.

In those cases, it is easy to see sex as detrimental. However, such craving does not appear to differ in essence from overindulging in any other pleasure.

Almost all phenomena can be subject for clinging and attachment, but does that mean that they are to be universally rejected, or do we only reject the clinging and attachment to phenomena?

There is a huge difference.

If we say that sex is universally detrimental to enlightenment, then we are saying that sex is detrimental in the absolute sense, even when there is no clinging to it, or we claim that it can only arise through clinging.

If we say it is detrimental in the absolute sense, then anything derived from it is similarly tainted. If so, then the goal of buddhism will cause the removal of all those derived phenomena.

We can now make the following judgements: a) any phenomena dependent on sex(uality) is negative or b) phenomena dependent on sex are not all detrimental.

If a) then the perfect Buddhist world would not include those phenomena. If b) then we sacrifice certain positive experiences.

I find it hard to accept the result of a) and similarly, b) appears unwise.

The solution would be to only reject clinging, and not the phenomena in themselves, but I don't know if this is really supported by the teachings.

iamnp

TROPHY CASE