leolibby

There certainly are immaterial things. Beauty is an example. How can you quantify the beauty of a poem? And yet there it is.

That's a better example than what I said. Well you can't quantify it... my evolutionary definition of beauty is anything that ensures or is indicative of sexual/ reproductive success or failure... like a beautiful woman...which trails make her beautiful? youth? good genes? a wide pelvis that can emit lots of babies? or can old be a kind of poetic beauty? It seems the ability to evoke complex emotion and trigger memory is tied to beauty.. i think most things that are beautiful, remind of youthful states when we were children or of our own children.

You don't know one way or the other.

exactly. I'm not following an established path.

I said sensation, not perception. Dizzyness is a sensation in the brain that does not have a cooresponding sence,, so is drunkeness and the sensation any drug will give you.

I'm gonna say something unpopular here and claim Karma, rebirth, etc. don't exist. no one would have followed buddhism if it didn't have some way of explaining things like every other religion

yup, causality is an illusion.. I read that sometime in 2002. I studied Hinduism more than Buddhism though-- Hindus consider Buddhism to be athieistic.

Maybe we have different definitions of material... to me, a thought is incorporeal/immaterial-- it has no physical substance or form. It has a bit of energy, but that energy is non physical and formless. Brain activity emits energy, but consciousnessness is a sensation generated by activity in those bio-chemical pathways... like a side-effect of thought. Consciousness is essentially ego. It is evolutionary. The ego is self-preservation. From what I understand of Buddhism, thoughts don't exist in a way, or they deceive.. causality is an illusion. But I'm an athiest-- so I guess I don't belong in this discussion.

Scientifically, the neuronal activity in the barin does not explain consciousness. It might be an illusion -- theres a big article on it in wikipedia though. i don't understand how it could be material--it's not.. it's totally incorporeal and abstract, and it can't be proven. Humans have been on the brink of extincion before-- genetically all 8 billion of us come from a small pocket of Humans--about 600. Apparently, there was a huge drought in Africa that pushed humans to the coast, where they lived off shellfish for a long time... to do that, we had to figure out the tides... and the theory is that's how we got to be so intelligent-- the DHA in the shellfish probably helped too.

If I am not mistaken, the Hindu belief is that there exists a universal consciousness, and we are each a part of this or, more correctly, are, as Atman is to Brahman. This is absolutely not a teaching of Buddha, to whom consciousness is only individual and fleeting. As you note, it seems the Mahayana have reverted back towards the Hindu as far as "consciousness" goes.

Correct. That universal consiousness is paramatma.... congruent to the Holy spirit in christianity (it seems). Paramatma is the intermediate between the impersonal brahman effluegence, and the personal form of God, Bhagavan -- Hindus believe one of these 3 are GOD (brahma, Vishnu, Shiva), and all the other dieties are merely aspects of one of those 3... Bhagavan would be congruent to Jesus. Krishna (bhagavan) is an avatar of Vishnu. Sound familiar? Hindu scholars also believe Buddha is an avatar of Vishnu.

When I was trained how to do transcendental meditation, I was told basically that the subconscience, or a non-thinking state, is paramatma.

Mostly, Hindus identify shiva as God because (he/she/it) brings change... I think kali is shhiva's wife (hence kali is an aspect of shiva)

Cockroaches teach us something about our inner attitude towards "the ugly/disgusting". They came up through the shower drain at night and even walked on me while I was sleeping when I still lived in Bangkok (there was no open food out! So, that is not needed) The thorns on the legs really hurt when you try to brush them away. But I can honestly say I have not killed one on purpose and will try to keep that up.

When I lived in the Philippines, I bought some shoes from a nice a/c mall place... but when I got home, a huge roach fell out of one. Unfortuately, I don't object to killing them if they are in my living quarters. I gave that one a proper Christian burial though.. buried it right near the church. every year I leave it some flowers. If they are outside in their own habitat, I won't kill them. But if a bee is in my room, often i'll pick it up and release it outside. they won't sting me. Mosquitos dont seem to bother me either. I'm afraid of things that look like spider.. but i have nothing against snakes (garden snakes).

one can imagine the suffering of the cockroach when electrically repelled, even if its life is not taken

the question would be, is this acceptable to your conscience?

I don't think "electric repelling" means like a bug zapper. It means that the device needs a battery.. I think they are ultrasonic mostly.. like a dog whistle. they can live a week without a head, so I think they can take it...

I mean the brahman effulgence

It's a real stretch to imagine the cosmos as an intelligent entity or organism that is self-aware.

But in Buddhism, isn't something an impersonal order or intelligence? isn't it dharma?

But organic things are comprised of the exact same matter as the inorganic, so is consciousness itself a property of the individual or the universe at large? Is evolution evidence of the universe itself attempting to awaken?

Yes these are intellectual excersizes that at best are harmless, and at worst they are just something else the ego attaches to in self-preservation. however, the best definition of life i've come across was by william sidis-- he noticed that its a reversal of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.. life does and can reverse entropy. your last sentence is what i think the article says. I think evolution is just physical. Mental evolution (figurative), in this instance is seeing entopy and negative entropy as the same.

They hate soap. I clean with a floorsoap from Amway. This soap I have found most effective

Yes, I clean with soap also.. usually use comet or lysol. Most Thai's don't seem to understand the concept of using soap to clean.. just water. When they see me adding comet or lysol to the water, they just smile. Like if to say ; those crazy farangs.

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Oil is nonpolar.. so is dirt.. meaning there are no + or - ends to the molecules....... but water is polar, thus it does not dissolve or mix with oil and dirt well. It repells oil. However, soap molecules have a polar end and a nonpolar end... the polar end sticks to the water.. but the nonpolar end sticks to the dirt and oil, allowing water to clean dirt.

Western science is more or less, often unconscious, building on and emancipating from these religious ideas and prejudices, but they sit very deep and many western scientists have a religious background. But I would not be surprised if western science comes in the end to the same conclusions as Buddhism has found on a more intuitive way.

I don't think that's true. The scientific method entails proving or disproving a hypothesis through empirical, measurable observation... and that observation must be repeatable. For example, if you want to proove the Earth is round.. you can't just make a theory saying it must we round because that's what makes sence. You have to go to the sea and you can observe the curvature of the earth: if a ship is far enough away, only the sails will be visible. Lets say ourtheory is that the universe is eternal... it gets created and destroyed and created and destroyed again eternally... that can't be scientifically proven... what would you measure to proove it?

On another note, the "heat-death"of the universe, I think means that everything will reach maximum entropy. movement itself won't be possible. life wont be possible

Generally speaking in the east there is a circular idea of evolution (and of life and death) and in the west a linear. In the west with death life is definitively finished, in the east death is the beginning of a new life. Both can untill now not be proven scientifically. It also means that in the east existence, the universe, time and space are eternal and infinite, while in the west there is a beginning and there will be an end and it is not infinite.

For me the eastern view makes more sense, for when there is a beginning the question of why and how easily leads to the assumption of a supernatural God. You can say that the west sees only a small part of the circle, which looks like a line if the circle is very big or infinite big.It is also an indication that the west has not gone beyond the mind, with its dualistic ideas of existence and limited ideas of time and space. Rationalisation and science can bring a lot of insights and progress in the material world, but it has its limitations, it can not go beyond the mind as this is the function with which it is working. Meditation can bring you beyond the mind and can be a way to experience other dimensions of existence, it can give a deeper and wider insight in existence although it can not or only to a certain extend be shared with others via words and language which are tools of the conditioned mind.

Innteresting. I have to forget I'm an athiest for a second: Okay... well I think time is created by our minds. don't ask me to explain, because I can't. Did you notice time means "duraton" a start and end. If you had always existed, and always will, you wil not percievea time (proof:) you know how as you get older, time goes faster? well if you are infinitely old, time will go infinitlely fast... it will cease to exist. I believe humans can reach a state where they don'tg percieve time... i used to do it.

Been wanting a few answers to this one too. All life on Earth is genetically simmilar. There is very little difference between a human and a frog too. Just a tiny percentge of the total genetic structure we all carry is actually in use to make us. Also chimpanzees have a different number of chromasomes so cannot be related to humans.

maybe I misunderstand... other apes (we are apes) have 24 chromosomes, we have 23 ... it is because two chromosomes fused. This is actually concrete evidence that we evolved from a common ancestor . We are not single, individual organisms... we are many bilions of life forms... all the friendly flora in your gut.. every mitochondria is each cell (mitochondria were origionally a separate life-form... that's why they have their own DNA) We would die pretty soon without mitochondria ... they developed a simbiotic relationship with us. chloroplasts in plants are the same... a seperate, non plant, organism. So we are probably related to plants. Humans and the universe have not always existed.. and we wont exist forever either. How is it that a monk said that? Impermanence is a key part of buddhism.. everything is temporary.

The meaning of "the human genetic code is 200,000 years old" means that 200,000 years ago we became homo sapiens... there has been little change since. so a human 200,000 years ago, theoretically, would be roughly identical to us now. It has taken maybe half a bilion years to get where we are.

Sentience is an arrogant, subjective human conecpt... are we sentient compared to a buddah? our egotistical intellect is nothing compared to the intelliegence of.. well, creation. It seems to me that most life has a degree of "sentience"The origin of life is unknown.. but it has been around for half a billion years.. at least life forms that leave fossils. I researched the origin of life a lot.. life developing spontaneously is pretty much impossible probability-wise... so either there was an intelligent deasign force at work, or Earth was seeded.

Hindu theology recognizes sentient life throughout the universe.. including the gods. Buddha believed in the Hindu Gods... so why wouldn't he believe in life existing elsewhere?

Bangladesh also has geckos.. I spent some time there too. I'm talking about the tiny brown lizards that live in the walls... filipinos also told me its bad luck to kill them. I never noticed a strong reaction to them by bengali's.

. Ditto for amulets, sacred

Indeed. As has already been stated, the indigenous beliefs (in this case anamism) are very durable and stick around.. It's like that for all cultures.. thus, there are different flavors of all the religions depending on where they have migrated to; Filipino Catholics, for example, are very different from American Catholics who are different from Bolivian catholics.

There are sociological functions of religions... if one religion doesn't meet all people's needs, they will mix and match

Western thinking got the big-bang right, but they start off wrong by assuming it came from nothing. The truth is that is came from the enery and matter from the previous big-crunch cycle. Buddhism sees the past and future as infinite so in the past there have been infinite big-bangs.

The time from one to the next is what is referred to as an aeon or MahaKappa by the scriptures.

Yeah, scientifically it is impossible to know what was before. My theory (the one I had a few years ago) is that our universe is just the other side of what we see happen in our own universe: black holes. Essentially, we are on the inside of something like a singularity in another universe. it doesn't make total sence, but you get the idea. This idea is in Hindu theology as wel, and Hopi.. although it's not scientific because it can't be validated through an expiriment.... although it has been proposed that out universe will collapse in on itself.. creating a new big bang.. but at present they think it's just going to keep expanding until everything is lifeless and absolute 0. By the way, did you know that genetically, chimps are closer to us than they are to gorillas?

I also wonder if the genetic mutations are really random. Evolution does not occour at a fixed rate -- it sometimetimes comes in bursts, followed by stagnation. for example, the ancestors of whales was a 4 legged land animal. I imagine it must have evolved pretty quickly when it took to the water.

I guess coming to the Phuket forum to ask a simple question isn't recommended then!!

I suppose so I asked where in Phuket can I get one-- one person said where. A lot of people assumed I know nothing about what a sak yant is, and proceeded to judge my descision/character.

Also because I have a disease that causes the coordination centers of my brain to slowly die off-- so I can't run or jump or ride a bike, and eventually I wont be able to walk, but my memory and thinking will never be affected.

I mention that because I can't do regular, physical work. Is it true that monastic life can be relatively sendentary? maybe not

secondly, my life will be shorter.... as I age, more and more of my brain will die (but nothing that affects intellect or memory). Its hard to accept-- once I was in the military. But it means I have a hightened awareness of suffering.

I have not chosen to be a Buddhist. But I almost did. I was going to join a South African seminary in which for a few years you live like a monk, and at the end, you can give it up or stick with it.

Much of the reason was to get some direction in myy life. Also because I have a disease that causes the coordination cennts of my brain to slowly die off-- so I can't run or jump or ride a bike, and eventually I wont be able to walk, but my memory and thinking will never be affected.

I've always admired Buddhism... I'm an athiest... but I do believe in an impersonal God, not a supreme being.. but an intelligence or creativity that's not a living organism... for my dad, it's nature. being in nature for him is a religious experience. I don't know what mine is--but I woul like to form a relationship with it.

Well that's ruined my day! I'm disliked by someone I don't know.

I sincerely believe you should get some counselling, judging from your comments and replies on this thread.

I don't dislike you, I care for you as a fellow human being who's making himself look like a fool on a public forum. Peace on you bro

Point out which comment led you to this conclusion. It seems I'm doing fine in the Buddhist forum. anyway, i will not return here.

The cleaning of the bamboo by the monks is not good enough to kill anything/everything from the last recipient of a tattoo, using that peice of bamboo. Understand now???? These are not rumors, they are medical facts.

Google is your friend.

I was never calling you a racist, nor do I claim that anything you said isn't true. In fact, I'm fully aware of all you say. I posted a video of someone gettting a Sak Yant; so why do you think I'm unaware of how they do it?.