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zenphor667x



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 PostPosted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 8:01 pm Reply with quote        
This is just a random thing I made so I can just chat with you guys and get to know some of you better (if you want).
I used to go on this forum quite often but ended up stopping due to many reason. I always end up coming back and checking it out whenever I have the chance. I'm usually more of a person that likes to discuss serious topics or debates
fickle



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 PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 3:46 pm Reply with quote        
hello, welcome back. i don't think we've met before and chatting is cool, and sometimes i like to talk about serious things too, depends.

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zenphor667x



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 PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 4:55 pm Reply with quote        
Yea I don't think I've met you before. Have you been part of the forum for a while?

Started back around 2011 I think

What kinda serious topics do you prefer?
KaceyCat



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 PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 6:08 pm Reply with quote        
Hey there. You don't know me, I joined this past September. Anyway. Hi there, the name's Kacey. What kind of serious stuff do you like to talk about?
fickle



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 PostPosted: Mon Feb 24, 2014 6:24 am Reply with quote        
a short while, i joined last year in the summer.

i cant really answer that because i don't know lol! if i can have a well formed opinion on it than chances are i'll talk about it. i've actually reserved my thoughts on this site cos i want people to enjoy talking to me. but anyways, topics i've talked about before: little philosophy, a little bit on government/politics, social phenomenon, health and fitness, buddhism.

i don't have a firm grasp on philosophy at all, or government and politics, though i might contribute if i can/want to. these things arent holding much of my interest these days.

lately, ive been meditating on dependent arising phenomenon, or dependent existence.

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Nab Cachet



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 PostPosted: Mon Feb 24, 2014 3:45 pm Reply with quote        
fickle wrote:

lately, ive been meditating on dependent arising phenomenon, or dependent existence.


oh can you explain? i've loitered around buddhism for a while but i hadn't heard of it before now
zenphor667x



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 PostPosted: Mon Feb 24, 2014 7:07 pm Reply with quote        
I'm actually quite interested too when it comes to the whole dependent existence topic

I'm interested in anything that has to do with psychology also
fickle



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 PostPosted: Mon Feb 24, 2014 7:26 pm Reply with quote        
i'll try to explain best i can, however, i havent fully grasped the concept yet. Soft Smile

dependent existence is actually a stem of emptiness, and emptiness is the philosophy that objects don't exist in the way they appear to exist, all things are dependently arising therefore they are empty of inherently existing within its own right, by its own side.

all phenomenon dependently arises and dependently cease and all objects around us, including ourselves, do not inherently exist within it's own right. we call ourselves "i" and we appear to ourselves to exist so concretely but when we examine ourselves, no inherently existing i can be found. most religions have an idea of a soul, buddhism has what is called no-self.
we can look at a chair and it will seem to us as if it exists independently. if we try to examine the chair to see if we can find that it inherently exist, what will we find? all things are dependent on special causes and conditions, its parts, and thought. the chair, does it inherently exist? can we split it up into parts? it has legs, it's made of materials, it has a back, and a spot to sit on. this can be taken even further to examine if the parts inherently exist, like one of it's legs. it's made of wood, it's been painted, cut to size, harvested by someone. this can be taken even further to examine the atoms, are atoms dependently existing? dependent on space, all of its components, etc. also space is dependent on other phenomenon to exist. to make sense of all of these objects we have words, give them names, these names and objects themselves are two different things. the name can even be examined to see if theres an inherently existing chair in that, the name is dependent on the object itself, and our thoughts, and various other things. the chair is dependent on our thoughts, our idea of what a chair is. in trying to find a chair that inherently exists we find that it's dependent on causes and conditions, parts, and thought. a chair does not inherently exist from it's own side, it does not exist the way it appears to.

buddhists use the idea of emptiness to know who they are, remedy ignorance, and end the cycle of cyclic existence.

i like buddhism because of its psychological benefits, i'm not a spiritual person. i started looking into the wheel of life and became aware of when i was an azura, hungry ghost, animal, etc. and i sort of began gaining more control over my life, like the person i am at a moment.

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zenphor667x



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 PostPosted: Tue Feb 25, 2014 4:44 pm Reply with quote        
Ah I see, I actually like this topic. There's just so many things that we overlook when it comes to calling anything or anyone independent. It's funny how it has more than one definition yet depending on which way you look at it, every living thing or one can be dependent on something.

Even someone who thinks they're moving out of a house, living under their own roof and paying bills is called being independent, they can actually be very wrong. You need a supplier for your lights, you need a supplier for your house or apartment. Renting out an apartment from someone else or even leasing a house. You're still relying on the owner of these structures to help maintain your overall living. Having a job and making money isn't even a form of independence if the whole process of doing your job is to have someone hand your this money for a certain amount of labor.

Society now has actually begun to minimize our overall existence when it comes to independence and using a controlled way of living throughout the Earth so that we depend on these ways of living to keep ourselves going. We're so handicap now and we don't even realize it. Poverty, being homeless or out on the streets are so much more drastic in this day and age as to when humans were considered to be called cavemen and lacked that knowledge to build this structured life that we have now.
Nab Cachet



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 PostPosted: Tue Feb 25, 2014 9:05 pm Reply with quote        
Ah thank you for explaining. From your description I do actually recognise the ethos dispersed in a few different systems - some forms of pantheism, as you mentioned the 'chair' exercise in buddhism, and I've been using a psychological training manual recently that encouraged the exercise of picking an object and describing it out loud for 10 minutes, which should be done daily with different objects. It's amazing how many properties of the things around us we overlook in the usual modes of thinking.

>Society now has actually begun to minimize our overall existence when it comes to independence and using a controlled way of living throughout the Earth so that we depend on these ways of living to keep ourselves going. We're so handicap now and we don't even realize it. Poverty, being homeless or out on the streets are so much more drastic in this day and age as to when humans were considered to be called cavemen and lacked that knowledge to build this structured life that we have now.

yeah. I've heard this described as the Revolution of Lowered Expectations (http://blog.chucklehound.com/general/2007/08/the-revolution-of-lowered-expectations/).

Bearing in mind dependent phenomena theory it's something of a wake up slap knowing how much responsibility all of us have for.... this mess. I'd go as far as to say most of us are in denial of our own power. And also, as the article I linked to above considers, the creepiness that is, paradoxically, how little of it may actually lie in our individual hands unless we assert this power. What we believe about ourselves defines more than we realise.
Strix Varia



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 PostPosted: Wed Feb 26, 2014 9:07 am Reply with quote        
That somewhat ties into a flawed pseudo mathematical theory that I like to use to prove that nothing exists. I only use it to annoy or confuse people but it is kinda fun.

Every new dimension must exist 90 degrees from ALL previous dimensions. You start with a nonexistent point with no width, length, or height. A point can never be measured because it has no volume or mass. A single dimension is created when an infinite number of points extend away from the point of origin creating a line. No matter what direction that line goes, it is 90 degrees from the point of origin. The second dimension is created when an infinite number of single dimensional lines are set 90 degrees from the line of origin, forming a plane (Plain?). The third dimension is created when an infinite number of planes are set 90 degrees from the plane of origin, forming what we see as 3 dimensional space.

This means there is no real 3 dimensional space, only an infinite collection of 2 dimensional planes. But there are no real 2 dimensional planes, only an infinite collection of 1 dimensional lines. And of course that 1 dimensional line doesn't exist except for an infinite number of nonexistent points. A point is literally nothing. An atom, a molecule, and even a quark is theoretically measurable but a single non-dimensional point is absolutely nothing. And an infinite amount of that nothingness is what creates what we see as reality.

I came up with that idea which made perfect sense one night while I was drunk while camping by a bonfire with friends. But then, SO many things seem to make perfect sense when you are drunk while camping by a bonfire with friends Sweat
fickle



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 PostPosted: Wed Feb 26, 2014 2:18 pm Reply with quote        
yes yes! emptiness does allow us to see a more holistic picture of how things are connected. it allows us to be more aware of the extent of our own emotions, and who we are as we live moment by moment. each finding could lead to something more profound than the last, first i started thinking about objects then just last night, i thought of the emptiness of my consciousness for the past year. i'm not sure if i'm understanding it, and it's hard to explain also. i can't explain what emptiness is because i don't know what it is. i'm actually not sure if it's something than can be explain, rather experienced. though i do know that seeing how things are connected isnt realizing the emptiness of things but noticing that things are connected is beneficial to understanding emptiness.

nab cachet, i do it at work sometimes, though it's not optimal for meditation cos my mind isnt focused on one thing, heh! theres other exercises covered in the audiobook im listening to, one is to examine the consciousness of observing the object.

strix, buddhists dont practice nihilism, but they dont argue for the non existence of nothing. dont quote me, i could be wrong, but i think buddhists would say that because dependent existing is real, then independent existing is real also. emptiness is not nothingness, is form.

edit, i hurried myself off to bed yesterday, heres the rest of what i could've posted:
i actually saw an episode of through the wormhole where a woman theorized that the world is one dimensional instead of many dimensions. also a man who theorized that the universe has a dodecahedron shape to it, like a soccer ball. i dont remember their names or the episodes :P but it might have something to do with the theory you've thought of.

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Nab Cachet



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 PostPosted: Wed Feb 26, 2014 9:45 pm Reply with quote        
>You start with a nonexistent point with no width, length, or height. A point can never be measured because it has no volume or mass. A single dimension is created when an infinite number of points extend away from the point of origin creating a line.

reminds me of the way crowley explains the sephirot on the tree of life. kether - one point indivisible, binah - duality of 2 points, chokmah - synthesis of three points etc. i was never awesome at math though so i didn't read so much by him.

fickle, tbh most of the buddhist philosophy confuses the hell out of me too lol. but then, i think it's meant to. confusion can act something like a mind-emptying gnosis lol. i prefer to absorb the philosophy through koans. Here's one I found precisely on the subject of emptiness:

Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen, visited one master after another. He called upon Dokuon of Shokoku.

Desiring to show his attainment, he said: "The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all, do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is emptiness. There is no relaization, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received."

Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing. Suddenly he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe. This made the youth quite angry.

"If nothing exists," inquired Dokuon, "where did this anger come from?"


http://www.ashidakim.com/zenkoans/zenindex.html
fickle



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 PostPosted: Sat Mar 01, 2014 7:52 pm Reply with quote        
lol thats funny! ive never heard of koans. seems like a cool way to visualize buddhist concepts.
i first learned about buddhism with a nova documentary on the history on the buddha, his journey and how it began. i think it's on youtube, i can find it if youre interested. then i studied the samsara because it was interesting to me to know where i was on it psychologically. when i started meditating i saw these bright flashes of blue light right between my eyebrows, it was crazy, i researched and apparently thats normal. that excited me to learn more about buddhist teachings, i feel like now i know more about my condition as a person and i'm starting to gain more control of how i feel, which makes it easier to navigate my thoughts in stressful situations. it's given me more clarity than confusion. first when i read or hear some things it's confusing, but then later when i experience whatever it has to do with, it makes sense.

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Weiss



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 PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2014 11:19 am Reply with quote        
Well hello there, what do you like to debate about?
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