The Human Condition According to Gautama

Debate Room
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This is from the “Upanisa Sutta”. It is a list of the causes and conditions that outline the origin of suffering and the end of suffering. There is one reference to “Rain Gods”. Besides that, I’m wondering what the atheists among you have to say about these 23 conditions given by the Buddha as both an explanation of why we suffer and a path leading to the end of suffering.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.023.than.html

"Just as when the gods pour rain in heavy drops & crash thunder on the upper mountains: The water, flowing down along the slopes, fills the mountain clefts & rifts & gullies. When the mountain clefts & rifts & gullies are full, they fill the little ponds. When the little ponds are full, they fill the big lakes. When the big lakes are full, they fill the little rivers. When the little rivers are full, they fill the big rivers. When the big rivers are full, they fill the great ocean. In the same way:

“Fabrications have ignorance as their prerequisite, consciousness has fabrications as its prerequisite, name-&-form has consciousness as their prerequisite, the six sense media have name-&-form as their prerequisite, contact has the six sense media as its prerequisite, feeling has contact as its prerequisite, craving has feeling as its prerequisite, clinging has craving as its prerequisite, becoming has clinging as its prerequisite, birth has becoming as its prerequisite, stress & suffering have birth as their prerequisite, conviction has stress & suffering as its prerequisite, joy has conviction as its prerequisite, rapture has joy as its prerequisite, serenity has rapture as its prerequisite, pleasure has serenity as its prerequisite, concentration has pleasure as its prerequisite, knowledge & vision of things as they actually are present has concentration as its prerequisite, disenchantment has knowledge & vision of things as they actually are present as its prerequisite, dispassion has disenchantment as its prerequisite, release has dispassion as its prerequisite, knowledge of ending has release as its prerequisite.”

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My oh my- here… the real explanation has eluded you soooo long…

(800-900 BCE)

And of course Eve … eating the forbidden fruit…

Fuck, if Buddha had just hung around his wife (instead of fucking off), he would have figured the “suffering cause” a lot earlier in life (and more accurately)! It’s the woman’s fault :smiling_imp:

On a more “serious” note :memo:, the Buddha was a writer, eh?

BTW… he (the writer) makes a lot of assumptions as statements.

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What objective evidence can you demonstrate for those assertions?

I don’t believe we need religion to explain suffering, and I don’t believe any woo woo superstitious claims, nor will I until someone can demonstrate some objective evidence for them.

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Awwwww Fuck! Ratty! You aren’t going to try that Buddhist shit again are you? Why don’t you just go back to the Over Lord. he made more sense than anything else you have come up with. Okay… let’s go read whatever it is you have to say… (Sigh*** ) Oh, how … mind-numbingly tedious…

OH FUCK! A link to 23 verses? Are you insane or has the inner rat inside of you just eaten away at your brain. Choose the best one an post it. Who in the fuck wants to wade through 23 verses of repetitive Buddhist Bullshit.

Buddhism is no different than any other religious belief system. It usurps normal, natural, everyday, human experience, and labels it as a pathology. Once it convinces you that you are sick and in need of help, it offers you the only cure. And then Buddhism actually admits, unlike Christianity, ‘you never really needed the cure because it was there all along, you just never noticed it before.’

Get a grip. There is nothing in Buddhism that is not human. Anything that appears ‘spiritual’ (beyond human) or (an explanation of the unknown) is made up bullshit.

  1. The gods, do not pour rain. Rain comes from clouds; however, I will give you poetic license. We will pretend this Buddhist happens to also be a theist. (NEXT).

  2. So far, the water has fallen from the clouds, hit the mountains, and flowed down the slopes, filling ponds and lakes. When these are full, they fill the little rivers and when the rivers are full they fill big rivers and then flow into the great ocean. (A WONDERFUL FABLE IN SUPPORT OF TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS AND CAPITALISM. Are you going to assert the Buddhists invented ‘Capitalism’ or just the ‘water cycle.’ Can you think of anything cyclical that this analogy can not be applied to? Are you next planning on attaching some mystical meaning to it? How about an analogy for “The Cycle of Life, Birth, Death and Rebirth” BULLSHIT!

OKAY, now we are exiting the real world and jumping to higher abstractions. Something called “Fabrications.”

“Fabrications have ignorance as their prerequisite.” REALLY? You understand that to ‘fabricate’ means to ‘invent?’ You just called every scientist and inventor on the planet ignorant…

“Consciousness has fabrications as a prerequisite?” Animals are conscious. How do they fabricate? A baby is conscious, how does it fabricate? Demonstrate the fabrication process of a mouse. (You read this shit and repeat it. Do you ever actually think about it? Is that rat brain so handicapped as to be unable to question silly ideas?)

How do you know? A tree would not exist were there no one conscious to perceive it? How would anyone know and what the hell difference would it matter. This is a ‘deepity.’ It is meaningless. ‘If nothing is observed, it isn’t observed.’ So what!

This is just nonsensical? WTF are you talking about. Human beings have well over 20 different senses. “Media” is not one of them. Which of the additional senses, beyond the basic 5 we teach children about, are you referencing? Media is not a prerequisite for anything.

No, it does not. Empathy is feeling and it requires no contact at all. It requires, imagination. (You can not emotionally or mentally contact another person. These types of ESP experiments have been tried and failed. You are trapped within your own skin and within your own brain. When you love, the love you feel is generated by your own brain, not by the other person. When someone hates you, it is not their hate you feel but a brain state occurring within you that you feel. You are responding to what you perceive but perception itself is not any form of ‘contact.’

Another fuck shit stupid deepity… is this even worth talking about. “Thigs that come into existence, come into existence.” DUH “People that are born are born.” “People that become people, become people.” Utter and complete nonsense.

UTTER AND COMPLETE NONSESE: There are no Buddhist convictions? Karma is not true? Reincarnation is a fallacy. The 8 fold path is bullshit. Nirvana is a made up bit of horseshit. Meditation is a fucking waste of time. There is no enlightenment. Where is this stress you speak of when you want to assert the very thing you are convinced of, your ‘CONVICTION’ is supposed to relieve you of stress. CIRCULAR BULLSHIT!

AWWWW FUCK ---- This shit is just boring as shit. BULLSHIT PILED ON BULLSHIT. Learn to fucking think!

There is not an assertion in the bunch you can defend. Pour some arsenic in your right ear and see if you can’t extinguish that inner rat before it eats away the rest of your brain. You will need what you have left to find the cheese.

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@Cognostic I read the same post, and have NO idea where he is getting this ideas about Buddhism from. Maybe he should go to the nearest Barnes & Nobles, and get a “Buddhism For Dummies” book.

Or better yet, get it from their website:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/buddhism-for-dummies-jonathan-landaw/1102168137?ean=9781119643265

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@rat_spit You know, there are a lot more sutras in Buddhism than what you quoted, which recorded the words and teachings of the Buddha…….provided that they are even accurate and faithful in recording what the Buddha himself taught.

I suggest you study further on Buddhism, before commenting or posting. Thanks.

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He has done this before. I was a fan when I was younger. 25 years of Japanese martial arts and Buddhist readings along with other stuff.

Probably University classes along with the writings of J. Krishnamurti and his challenges against Buddhism are what freed me up. And, at that time, I was becoming a bit to savvy for Krishnamurti’s BS as well. “It’s all about Love.” Horseshit.

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I am not a fan of J. Krishnamurthy myself…I usually avoid him, for some reason.

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Probably not a bad thing… He is an existentialist thinker with a background in woo woo. Not only does he spin his own version but he runs circles around the Buddhists. He actually uses a lot of Socratic questioning. "Let’s stop, and examine this claim? How would we know it is true… bla bla bla… But then he also engages in fallacious BS, personal experience, emotional appeal etc…

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@Cognostic Before his spiritual awakening, he was a member of the Theosophical Society. But again, something inside of me is saying to stay away from him. And that’s probably a good thing.

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Seems I dabbled in a lot of these guys… G.I. Gurdjieff was a favorite author of mine for a while… There was a time…

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@Cognostic I have heard of him, but never read anything about him or what he teaches, and likely, I am not inclined to do so anytime soon.

I have no idea what @rat_spit is on, but he really had to make such a bad thread on this forum. Maybe he should do some research on the subject matter before he posts. It is, as Mark Twain said: “It is better to keep quiet and be thought of as a fool, then to open your mouth and clear all doubts”.

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Ratty, has been around for years. We love the little fucktard. He will pop in and hammer us with his latest bullshit for a month and then vanish for a month after being shot down multiple times.

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@Cognostic Just like herpes…in this case, rat herpes……still with us, I see…….

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@Cognostic Unusual behavior. Probably scrounges for food and hibernates, when he is offline.

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Ratty almost always confounds or simply irritates the shit out of me.

Am mildly interested in Buddhism. Read about the Five Noble Truths and the Eightfold path when I was about 16 and beginning to search. That was in 1963, I’ve forgotten what they are to be honest.

I took away a few bits which I hope you will correct if I’m wrong:

The cause of suffering is attachment. Selfishness? The surest cure I know for that is selfless actions (altruism) The more other-centred we are the happier we tend to be. (?)

Ahimsa; Initially I accepted that the principle of ahimsa means non harm to any living creature. After many years I concluded that it means the absence of desire to harm. That’s a very hard gig.

Finally, it is written somewhere that The buddha said; “above all loving kindness”

These are the few Buddhist principles I more or less accept and do not find antithetical to my atheism.

Again, please let me know If am factually incorrect.

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Hmmm :thinking: thanks @BigNeerav -for whatever reason ratty :rat: didn’t correct me when I said the Buddha wrote this stuff down. Tsk tsk tsk. They never do. shaking head

Well, except Hubbard. He personally wrote his shit down. Oh! And Joseph Smith!!! He did too.

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@Boomer It’s “Four Noble Truths”, not five. LMAO! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

In studying the Four Noble Truths, I have come to realize the cause of the First and Second Noble Truths is the notion that we have some sort of “self”, which exists as being separate, distinct and independent of everything else, including our body/mind, by which it is eternal, unchanging, fixed and permanent, and that we cling to this notion of “self”. We even go further and identify this “self” with the body mind, which consists of the Five Aggregates of form, feeling, perception, volition and consciousness, and therefore, identify our mortal, human selves as who we are.

So life is suffering and desires and clinging is the cause of suffering, but both are based on a notion of a “self”, that is separate, eternal, unchanging and independent.

Hope that helps.

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@Whitefire13 I am actually studying Buddhism, and practice it, as part of my spiritual practice, so I can tell you, with certainty, that what @rat_spit posted about Buddhism is either incorrect or incomplete.

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The Buddha never wrote down any of this teachings…it was his disciples that did that.

The problem, however, just like with Jesus, is whether the recorded information is correct, being that it was written down centuries after the Buddha passed. Had the records been written as the Buddha was giving out the teachings, that would have been better. Then again, the Buddha is not much an actual person, as it is a term used for one who has achieved full and complete spiritual enlightenment, so……