So, "Pete, and the rest of the Blogger team" are currently saying goodbye to Eric Case, a fellow employee at Google. That means, every time I log in to do a post, I have to look at a picture of Eric, with a message that says, "So long, and thanks for all the zen!" So, I ask you: Can there be a more intrusive way to remind me I'm surrounded by these spiritual so-and-sos?
The ancient religion of the samurai is not in fact a true religion by definition, as the practitioner of Zen does not worship a god (or gods), but instead studies the body’s complexity, especially the complexity of the mind. This "belief in nothing" is an assimilation and distillation of techniques drawn from many other religions from the East.
ReplyDelete"Drawn from many,...religions from the East."
ReplyDeleteYea, yea - you say "tomayto" and I say "tomahto".
Where do apologists come from? And how do you think such flimsy excuses will actually mean anything?
I swear, I'm surrounded by idiots.
Just another point:
ReplyDeleteYour "ancient religion of the samurai" caused Japan to be the bad guys in WWII. It also led to the kamikazes (the first true "suicide bombers") and the raid of China - which is probably the singular reason China is the way it is today - which, of course, everyone in the West who practices Buddhism hates.
My conclusion:
You people will eat your own young for your beliefs.
Well, as a Strong Atheist who practices Zen Buddhism (zazen etc...) I was just curious if there are any others who find that Buddhism and Atheism are extremely compatible? I've met a lot of Atheists and a number of Buddhists, but I have only met a half dozen or so who share the two... philosophies. That is not to say that I'm Buddhist in that I follow the religous aspects of Buddhism; I just agree with much of the philosophy and have found practicing zazen to be very ... right.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if anyone happens to have something to say about the idea of combining these two philosophies (and to me Atheism is really a philosophy in some ways) feel free to mention it... it's a subject I'm interested in discussing *shrugs*
"I was just curious if there are any others who find that Buddhism and Atheism are extremely compatible?"
ReplyDeleteOh, man, did you come to the wrong place! What's compatible about a religion and atheism? A religion that caused the Japanese to think a four-eyed weanie, like Hirohito, was a god? That got people to kill each other? That gets people to pay attention to their "breathing" - something that's automatic and requires no attention - as opposed to the world around them? (If you've "mastered" breathing, then please, let me stand up and applaud! Whoopie!)
Face it: Buddhism's a "philosophy" for losers.
Scientists are taking advantage of new technologies to see exactly what goes on inside the brains of Buddhist monks and other so-called "Olympian" meditators -- individuals who meditate intensively and regularly. The neuroscientists hypothesize that regular meditation actually alters the way the brain is wired, and that these changes could be at the heart of claims that meditation can improve health and well-being.
ReplyDeleteBut the rigors of the scientific method might never have been applied to studying the practice of meditation if it weren't for a vocal population of scientist-meditators. For decades, several of these individuals have been spreading the word about the beneficial effects of this traditional Eastern practice to the Western world.
In 1998, Dr. James Austin, a neurologist, wrote the book Zen and the Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness. Several mindfulness researchers cite his book as a reason they became interested in the field. In it, Austin examines consciousness by intertwining his personal experiences with Zen meditation with explanations backed up by hard science. When he describes how meditation can "sculpt" the brain, he means it literally and figuratively.
Before Austin, others had aimed to teach meditation to individuals without experience and without interest in spirituality, people who hoped to reap mental and physical health benefits. In 1975, Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Mass., where they continue to practice and teach meditation. Salzberg has written several books, including Faith and Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness. Kornfield holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India. He's written an introduction to the field, called Meditation for Beginners.
Jon Kabat-Zinn brought mindfulness into the mainstream by developing a standardized teaching method that has introduced multitudes of beginners to the practice of meditation. In 1979, he founded the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center in Worcester. He is professor emeritus of the university's medical school. Kabat-Zinn has written several books that show readers how to incorporate meditation into their daily lives.
One center with which Kabat-Zinn has had a long-standing association -- the Mind and Life Institute -- took a particular interest in partnering "modern science and Buddhism -- the world's two most powerful traditions for understanding the nature of reality and investigating the mind." The institute sponsors scientific conferences for meditation researchers. At the most recent one, scientists discussed how meditation might change activity levels in the brain.
Some 150 centers around the country are shaped in the mold of Kabat-Zinn's Stress Reduction Clinic, and about 150 more teach meditation with slightly different philosophies.
More than 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific articles have been published on the subject of meditation. Until recently, most of them simply observed correlations between meditating and improved mood or decreased disease symptoms. But with so many scientists -- and thousands of consumers -- becoming "believers" in meditation, researchers seek to move beyond simply showing that meditation can influence the brain, to knowing exactly how that influence is accomplished.
Somehow, all that text leaves out the part about Buddhism making a person so rude, and hard-headed, that they'll ignore everything I just said about Buddhism driving people to become killers, and sucking up to dumbshits as gods, in order to just keep insisting "it's a good thing" like they're Martha Stewart on crack.
ReplyDeleteWhatever dude. Your mind is gone. I put up a new post, just for you, and, I guess, since the normal way a discourse takes place is beyond your brainwashed mind (y'know, you speak, I speak, and we address each others concerns - as opposed to you just ignoring what I say) then that'll be the end of this for me.
Go look up Miss Manners - I've got a post on her somewhere - about the rudeness "believers" display regularly.
BTW:
ReplyDeleteI think it's hilarious that you guys can do that - spend all your time staring at your navel and never realizing what assholes it makes you become. A simple thing, like talking about Buddhism, becomes an exercise in rudeness. Because you're a Buddhist, you think you have the right - in a dialogue - to just ignore what the other person said (about killing!) and just soldier on with your bogus belief bullshit. It's incredible.
But that's what you get when you spend too much time focusing on yourself:
You forget what common courtesies - or normal behavior, or even other people - are.
Like I said: "loser".
A religion that caused the Japanese to think a four-eyed weanie, like Hirohito, was a god? That got people to kill each other?
ReplyDeleteI am sorry I was so rude. You are correct, of course - Japan is the only nation on the face of the earth whose citizens have ever gone to war, and this was 100% due to the practice of meditation - it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that FDR cut off Japan's suppply of oil.
**************
In 1937, following a clash on the Marco Polo Bridge outside Peiping, Japan and China went to war. For four years they fought, with Japan controlling the coasts and China the interior. For three years of this war, America saw no vital interest at risk and remained uninvolved.
But when Japan joined the Axis and occupied Indochina, FDR sent military aid to Chiang Kai-shek under lend-lease and approved the dispatch of the Flying Tigers to fight against Japan. He ordered B-17s to Manila to prepare to attack Japan’s home islands. He secretly promised the Dutch and British that, should Japan attack their Asian colonies, America would go to war. Japan was aware of it all.
In July 1941, FDR froze Japan’s assets, shutting off her oil. Adm. Richmond Kelly Turner warned FDR it meant war.
Indeed, when Israel’s oil supply was imperiled by Nasser’s threat to close the Straits of Tiran to ships docking in Israel, the Israelis launched their own Pearl Harbor, destroying the Egyptian air force on the ground before invading the Sinai and ending the oil threat to Israel’s survival.
Nevertheless, knowing it meant war, FDR cut off Japan’s oil. Thus was the Japanese empire and national economy, entirely dependent on imported oil, put under a sentence of death.
Japanese militarists wanted war but the government of Prince Konoye did not. He offered to meet FDR anywhere in the Pacific. The prince told the U.S. ambassador that if oil shipments were renewed, Tokyo was ready to pull out of Indochina and have FDR mediate an end to the Sino-Japanese war. FDR spurned the offer.
Japan then sent an envoy to Washington to seek negotiations. On Nov. 26, Secretary of State Cordell Hull rejected negotiations and handed an ultimatum to the Japanese: get out of Indochina and China.
Japan faced a choice: accept a humiliating retreat from an empire built with immense blood and treasure, or seize the oil-rich Dutch East Indies. Pearl Harbor followed. The Tojo Doctrine of pre-emptive war.
Did FDR truly believe China’s integrity was a vital interest? Hardly. Once war broke out, China was ignored. The Pacific took a back seat to Europe. U.S. forces on Corregidor were abandoned. Aid to Churchill and Stalin and war on Germany took precedence over all.
At Yalta, FDR, without consulting Chiang Kai-shek, ceded to Stalin Chinese territories that were to be taken from Japan.
Was America’s war on Japan a just war? Assuredly. Were U.S. vital interests threatened by Japan? No. Provoking war with Japan was FDR’s back door to the war he wanted—with Hitler in Europe.
After a meeting with FDR, Nov. 25, Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote in his diary that the main question is “how we maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.” That is the American way to war.
Because you're a Buddhist, you think you have the right - in a dialogue - to just ignore what the other person said
ReplyDeleteYes, I did ignore that you called me an idiot and a loser and claimed that claimed that zen meditation causes people to worship a "four eyes," etc, etc.
When people have so little understanding of the things they are writing about, and mix cliches and stereotypes in with crude name-calling, then it is better to change the focus, because to continue in the same vein is useless, like explaining music theory to a deaf person.
In fact, I have now spent an hour reading your blog it seems that you dont actually want dialogue - instead this is a platform for you to insult people.
You hate women, you hate science, you hate religion... is there anything you don't hate, besides the sound of your own voice?
In my opinion what you need is not "dialogue," what you need is a skilled psychotherapist who can help you work out some of these issues, then you can have the chance at at happy and productive life.
Good luck.
Wow, Eric - you really know how to practice avoidance. Not one word about Buddhism in that entire text. Amazing. I know a good therapist if you ever want to deal with that. (He reads my blog, too - just let me know.)
ReplyDeleteLook, let's try the direct approach:
Japan+Buddhism+Hirohito=God
Come on, Buddy. You can do it:
I'll wait.
Eric,
ReplyDeleteYou come to a blog - called The Macho Response - and think it's the place for "I want to hold your hand", or "I feel your pain", or "Let's be 'Best Buds'"? I told you: you're in the wrong place. You want to cut to the chase and deal with this issue - for real - then, maybe, I can help you. Otherwise, go waste somebody else's time. Go talk to a "guru" so he can tell you all the wonderful things that wasting your life, sitting tranquilly like a dead person - while studiously avoiding topics you don't like to confront - can do for you.
Follow your "guru" to the ends of the earth if you want. Really, if being a "follower" feels "right" to you - as it did for the Nazis and so many others that got into the meditation thing - then "just do it" (as the saying goes). But don't think, even for a second, it's universally attractive, or that you're EVER going to convince someone like ME to follow anybody or anything. There's a name for followers, Eric:
It's called being a fool.
Show some self-respect, man.
Ah - and I love this line of reasoning:
ReplyDelete"When people have so little understanding of the things they are writing about, and mix cliches and stereotypes in with crude name-calling, then it is better to change the focus, because to continue in the same vein is useless, like explaining music theory to a deaf person."
Why do I love it? Because (get this:) you think you get to make that choice for the both of us! Isn't that amazing? How much power you give yourself? You engage a person and - all by your lonesome - decide you get to control things! Man, I tell you, that Buddhism stuff really works! For making people into assholes, that is.
And what's this:
"In my opinion what you need is not "dialogue," what you need is a skilled psychotherapist who can help you work out some of these issues, then you can have the chance at at happy and productive life.
Good luck."
Ran out of patience, have we? I guess Buddhism wasn't much of a help with that either, was it? Seems to me it's not worth very much if it can't even teach you that. You're not humble (since you try to control conversations) you're not patient (since you obviously to lack it) and you're rude.
Tell me, Eric - what the hell is Buddhism really doing for you - except getting you to avoid the truth of how you're wasting your fucking time on bullshit?
"Sexy Sadie, what have you done? You've made a fool of everyone,...."
Emperor worship was a function of Shinto, not Zen.
ReplyDeleteBut of course, as an expert on world religions you know that already - I'm sure you called me an idiot and a loser as some sort of test of my patience.
And of course, as an expert on world miltary history, you also know that the real reason Japan attacked the US was because we cut off their oil supply - again, the barrage of childish insults here was probably just some sort of well-meaning lesson.
Finally, as an expert on the neurobology of the brain, you know very well what Zazen meditation has to do with atheism and the functions of the parietal lobe - you asked, I answered, and then you ignored the response and attacked me again, once more I suspect, as some sort of test.
That is an interesting way to dialogue with people, actually - trumpet obviously ridiculous and angry viewpoints based on falsehoods, insult and attack anyone who interacts with you, and then hold this up as proof of... something?
I wonder what that is? I wonder what you are trying to teach here?
There must be some sort of lesson. Even the crazy homeless person I buy coffee for every morning on my way to work has some sort of lesson to teach, if only I learn to really listen.
I wonder what your lesson is?
"Emperor worship was a function of Shinto, not Zen."
ReplyDeleteAnd you, again, are avoiding the point: they were Buddhists - "enlightened" - and yet they still fell for Emperor worship. Being Buddhists brought them nothing. The Tibetans and Chinese communists are, both, Buddhists - and it's brought them nothing. No one, in the history of man, can convincingly claim to have been "enlightened" to/about anything - it's all talk - and the sooner you grasp that the better.
"I'm sure you called me an idiot and a loser as some sort of test of my patience."
Hey, man, you're the one on the Buddhist kick, so act like it. Me, I can be a human being; as rascally as I want to be; with no spirituality-imposed rules, religion-mandated expectations, or self-imposed demands. You should try it: a good ol' regular American human being - it sure beats the teasing I'll give ya for bogus claims about being enlightened, that's for sure.
"And of course, as an expert on world miltary history, you also know that the real reason Japan attacked the US was because we cut off their oil supply"
You're weird: you started on this trip about FDR and oil - like it's a bad thing he did - and, somehow, you think I care too. We won - and broke the idiot spell that held Japan. They're our allies now, free of dogma, and leaders in the world. We did good. That's all I care about.
"Finally, as an expert on the neurobology of the brain, you know very well what Zazen meditation has to do with atheism and the functions of the parietal lobe - you asked, I answered, and then you ignored the response and attacked me again, once more I suspect, as some sort of test."
Idiot - you don't get it: stop focusing on yourself. You're not worth it. That's not what life's about. You want to get enlightened? Here, buy two little books: "On Bullshit" and "On Truth" both by Harry G. Frankfurt. They'll tell you more than years of study of any Eastern philosophy can.
And, by the way, I was born an atheist - I've never believed in anything - so screw "Zazen": it's bogus bullshit that's designed to make you waste your life being a follower and is completely unnecessary for abandoning belief.
"That is an interesting way to dialogue with people, actually - trumpet obviously ridiculous and angry viewpoints based on falsehoods, insult and attack anyone who interacts with you, and then hold this up as proof of... something?
I wonder what that is? I wonder what you are trying to teach here?"
You're really incredible: I'm writing a blog, asshole, nothing more. What else you think is going on is all in your head (like your assumption we were discussing Japan's oil problems in WWII). That's why Buddhism is bad: you can't think straight. You don't seem to understand how YOU look as a Buddhist:
Avoiding topics.
Trying to take control of conversational situations when, as a Buddhist, you're supposed to be humble and free of ego. (Can you spell "hypocrisy"?)
Seeing things in my blog that aren't there.
Assuming my blog is what it isn't.
Assuming my blog should be what you desire when (gulp) you're not me.
Assuming - when you call me on women hating or some such - that words on my blog reflect a life lived as opposed to a point made.
Assuming women are above criticism. (Can you spell "pussy-whipped loser"?)
Assuming you have nothing to learn, or there can be no worth, in being a plain ol' human when you readily admit you already turn yourself over to a belief system (Buddhism) that promises you something that has never been attained in the thousands of years of it's existence - and you do it in the year 2008 when (Duh!) anyone with a decent 4th grade education would know better.
And you're, cultishly, on the prowl for others like you. Loser.
I could go on. But I have a blog.
"There must be some sort of lesson. Even the crazy homeless person I buy coffee for every morning on my way to work has some sort of lesson to teach, if only I learn to really listen.
I wonder what your lesson is?"
Here's a tip for you, free of charge: if homeless guys were so smart, they wouldn't be homeless. If Buddhist monks were so smart, they wouldn't be Buddhist monks. (Especially not Buddhist monks who advertise they've taught the shit to dogs.) And, if I was so smart, I wouldn't be talking to you. I'm just a guy with a blog, dude, trying to get you to understanmd one little point:
If you go off on a search, don't be surprised if you find someone who tells you where to go.
And that's your fucking "lesson" for the day.
See ya.