baker

Death. Winning the lottery. A pandemic combined with global warming wiping out life as we know it and the remaining humans left with very little work ...

Well, Murican culture is shapeless, shape-shifting. China at least has definition. And it was the Muricans who started the 1918 influenza pandemic and...

Yes, because the US is too amoebic to blame.

That depends on the school of Buddhism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_deities See Tara worship, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ta...

No, the question of whether the Buddha was sourgraping is often on my mind, it pertains also to topics that nominally don't seem related to it. Of cou...

Right. It's about the money. A powerful motive for blaming. As long as people can blame others, their egos are satisfied. But why doesn't anyone blame...

But what if they actually know, and are above and beyond interpretation?

Not sure where this is coming from ... Lasting social change appears to be very difficult to bring about deliberately, but is, rather, a side effect o...

Yeah, for zombies.

Racist/nationalist classism is alive and well. But then we get other problems. And we still have classism. No peace, no peace.

But it isn't sufficient evidence as far as I'm concerned.

This is Stoic doctrine, and we know you're a Stoic. Okay. But this I don't understand. Are you referring to Stoic epistemology, epistemology according...

I asked you to sketch out how "appearances deceive us". I've never felt "deceived" by an appearance, I don't know what that would be like.

The way one acts depends on one's mind.

A genuine change of a person's mind.

In what you say, I hear the echoes of Pema Chodron, Thich Nhat Hanh, Ajahn Sumedho. But not the Pali canon.

Do you believe there are any conditions that leave a person feeling powerless to achieve happiness?

It's a supposition that is impossible to substantiate, other than by an appeal to faith; ie. making a statement of faith, rather than a statement of f...

I meant the other now elderly lady. Not mentioning any names. I'm not sure about that at all. What I am sure is that people tend to love to zone out, ...

What you're describing isn't acceptance (or the path to it), it's more like "putting up with" or being apathetic to the point of seeming accepting.

I'm asking about possible explanations for the decline in racism in situations where people of different races are forced to be together. When people ...

So they haven't really accepted gay marriage, they're just fed up with the whole issue?

So failure to find satisfaction in things which, by their very nature, cannot provide satisfaction, is evidence of mental illness?

Denying? How did you get to the point where you hold that Buddhists deny "what many consider to be life"?

I am anticipating some usual courses of discussion of this topic, and addressing them early on to avoid dead ends. I'd love to see you take this up wi...

Pffft. Westerners, a sense of the numinous? When an aged Western celebrity chants some Eastern mantra, and does so for "inner peace", that isn't "a se...

What, you can't list 3 examples of this phenomenon? Then perhaps it is not so widely spread/possible? In the two you do list: How exactly did that cur...

Unless we have all been teleported to Humpty Dumpty Land, one still cannot make words mean whatever one wants them to mean. Conceptual clarification i...

Do list 3 examples where this actually worked.

It can, depending on one's epistemic theory. The problem is also known as "confusing the map for the territory". Saying "There's a draft" when you're ...

Then you need to read more "Buddhist literature". There, what you now claim "doesn't work" is very well worked out as working.

What is the basis of your claim? (It is at least inconsistent to praise rugged individualism to other people.)

Back to issues of naive realism and direct realism.

In religious doctrines, terms have definitions. Some people have been trying to bypass those definitions, and insist on using terms in idiosyncratic w...

Since when are empirically observable events or empirically observing events the priority or even all that matters?

You're just detracting from the logical consequences of your idea.

We can surmise you beat your spouse, so that they can appreciate your tendernesses.

Because that would be socialism! We can't have that!! People must fight for their daily bread, or perish.

I think most people are not such relativists and "to interpret" is usually taken to be pejorative, derogatory. "Those who don't know the truth or who ...

Do you really have to ask???

So what is it that you're really concerned about? That covid is China's biochemical warfare in an effort to take over the world?

How ironic that of all the patent holders of the different covid vaccines, we're nearing the monopoly of one of them.

"Interpretation" is a hot topic in some religious circles, surely you are aware of that. The Hare Krishnas, for example, go so far as to say that they...

Authoritarianism can come in subtle, implied form as well. The invisible force that makes people conform, live in constant fear of public censure. The...

That's why I say that if God exist, God is a Trumpista. It's the simplest explanation.

The good thing about a monarchy is that the decision as to who should rule is, for all practical intents and purposes, taken out of people's hands (le...

If only it'd enable virtual diarrhoea.

Self-help authors, wannabe gurus who try to borrow the legitimacy and authority of a religion without actually promoting that religion. Buddhism appea...

And what effect were you trying to induce in me by pointing this out?

And then, of course, there's the option that what some people believe is "evil", is actually good.