/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19838068]

>only thinker yet to be refuted

[Anonymous No.19838074]

>>19838068
>thinker

[Anonymous No.19838078]

>>19838068
>only thinker yet to be refut-

Buddha: So you see, consciousness is of course merely an illusion.

Socrates: I see. But, simplify this for me, I do not understand. What do you mean by “illusion”?

Buddha: Of course, good Socrates, an illusion is an appearance that is contrary to reality.

Socrates: That is well, but I still desire clarification about “appearance.”

Buddha: Appearance is how an object is perceived by an observer.

Socrates: I understand. So, consciousness is an appearance perceived by an observer contrary to reality.

Buddha: No, Socrates, that is not right. There is no observer to consciousness, as this would be another consciousness.

Socrates: Then you contradict yourself, Buddha. For if consciousness be an illusion, there would yet be another consciousness observing this illusion, and how could this second awareness be unreal?

[Anonymous No.19838094]

>>19838078
This is the only reason why I still come to this website

[Anonymous No.19838119]

>>19838078
it doesnt matter how you twist the words around, buddha just straight up wouldnt care
neither would socrates, they are all buddhists you autists just dont realize it, buddhism is the first step to actually functioning as a human being

[Anonymous No.19838138]

>>19838078
>Buddha: So you see, consciousness is of course merely an illusion.
Not at all what Buddha says. It says that there is no impermanent (You), and that furthermore the thinker is the thought : there is no (You) that exists beyond the thought of your self perception.

Get your facts straight before trying to be clever, fella.

[Anonymous No.19838157]

>>19838138
He's just copying it from another thread. If you want to be autistic such a debate would never happen because Socrates wouldn't be able to humor the idea of discussing philosophy with a non-Greek without cracking up in hysterics and Buddha would just steamroll over him and jabberjaw a massive theory that he'd been thinking over for years for an hour straight and Socrates wouldn't be able to get a word in edge wise to do the Socratic Method

[Anonymous No.19838186]

>>19838078
Wasn't this ripped apart in the last thread? Are anti-buddhists just npcs?

[Anonymous No.19838512]

So what is the main ideas of Buddhism:
It gets to the simplest universal form of human being?

It gets to the cowness of the human fundamentally, it strips away all pretense, culture, personality, instinct, desire,
To then view the self and the world from the purest simplest starting point?

So similar to Socrates.

It's a method to take steps back and observe and contemplate, instead of blindly following pulses impulses, trends and the crowd?

[Anonymous No.19838521]

>>19838078
The Republic is literally this but for 500 pages.

[Anonymous No.19838660]

>>19838078
someone translate this to a brainlet

[Anonymous No.19838681]

>>19838660
He's saying that an illusion cannot exist without someone real observing it.

[Anonymous No.19838733]

>>19838512
>fundamentally, it strips away all pretense, culture, personality, instinct, desire,
>To then view the self and the world from the purest simplest starting point?

>It's a method to take steps back and observe and contemplate, instead of blindly following pulses impulses, trends and the crowd?

If this is what it's about that's pretty cool I geuss

[Anonymous No.19838776]

>>19838068
I think most analytics believed consciousness to be real

[Anonymous No.19838790]

>>19838660
So there's two basic epistemological models ("theories of how minds work"). The first, put forth by Socrates (in the post, in reality Platonism gets more complicated), is that there is a distinct "Thing" that does observing. Thus, when we say that "you see something", there is a (you) that is receiving the input and making determinations about it; the (you) is the one doing the seeing. This thing cannot be broken down any further, it is discrete. To take it apart would be to break it. It is a black box, you can only put stuff in and see what comes out, you cannot see how it works. The two common ways for actually explaining this are either a Tiny Man in your head that's piloting your body using levers, or of a ghost that is piloting your body and has ghost-body interfaces in the brain. There's a lot of implications from this, but they don't really matter here.

The post is a strawman for the Buddha because Buddhism doesn't actually posit this sort of stuff. For example there are no illusions in Buddhism for example, there's just delusions. Even a hologram is real, we just misunderstand it's nature. Rather than the above, Buddhism posits that "a mind" is actually a complex series of parts that interact; not all of these parts are material. So when we say that "you see something", we're actually saying that a complex apparatus receives input and then certain parts react in certain ways in response. This counters the last line of Socrates's in that there are no observers, there's just observing. This is also how we can observe our own thoughts for example, as one part of the mind (the thought) is observed by the rest of the mind, which generates a new thought, which is observed, so on and so forth. Skillful meditators then are able to observe the observing, until eventually they observe a ceasing of anything but pure observation. A discrete (you) could not do this, however, as it cannot observe its inner workings, because it cannot get inside itself to observe inside itself (that would break it, after all).

Which, as >>19838157 pointed out, is why this entire scenario wouldn't happen, as the Buddha would infodump a huge theory of the mind before Socrates could even finish asking what an "illusion" is.

[Anonymous No.19838822]

>>19838078
Big brain post. The smartest thing I read in the past two years. I miss classic /lit/ so much. The endless shitposts about Gravity's Rainbow, Infinite Jest and Ulysses were infinitely better than the porn and anti-Christian shilling.

[Anonymous No.19838838]

>>19838822
Christian philosophers have always been utter intellectual dregs of their respective societies, propped up once again by that devil known as nepotism, his 'piety' towards Christ and the church elevating his dogshit to canon status. Every fucking time.

[Anonymous No.19838876]

>>19838790
one is the observer that can't observe itself and the other is the observer who observes its mind and stuff??

[Anonymous No.19839048]

>>19838876
Socrates's observer can observe itself, but not its own inner workings. Cogito ergo sum, it can only know that thinking is occurring because it sees thinking start, end, and result in some kind of thing separate from itself, but it can never actually see how thinking works by watching what happens in between thinking starting and ending.

By contrast, the Buddha's model does away with observers and the observed, allowing for a mind to observe the beginning, end, and middle of thought by generating new thoughts that progressively change as it "hones in". The mind, under the Buddha's model, isn't a blackbox, you can totally open it up and watch it work (Buddhist meditation is all about that). What's more, a mind can, as said, "observe itself" (because it's a collection of parts, rather than a singular discrete thing).

[Anonymous No.19839058]

>>19838822
Perhaps you should know then that Thucydides never wrote that

[Anonymous No.19839078]

>>19838822
>a post completely misunderstanding Buddha
>Big brain post
>post a misattributed quote
Defenestrate yourself forthwith.

[Anonymous No.19839167]

>>19838078
This is how every pseudo intellectual redditor talks and thinks they are being deep

[Anonymous No.19839234]

>>19838068
>Just take a seat and stop being so retarded all the time

There's no way I could ever go back. Life is just so different now

[Anonymous No.19839338]

>>19839048
how can an observer observe himself?

[Anonymous No.19839358]

>>19838078
>Socrates: I understand. So, consciousness is an appearance perceived by an observer contrary to reality.
Buddha: Yes.

[Anonymous No.19839365]

>>19839167
>reeeeeeeeee
>>19838119
>reeeeeeeeee

[Anonymous No.19839473]

>>19838078
>consciousness is an appearance perceived by an observer contrary to reality.
And here is where he fucked up
>No, Socrates, that is not right.
No further explanation or correction is needed as the previous statement is self-justifying.

>consciousness is an appearance perceived by an observer contrary to reality.

It was no where stated or implied that an observer needs to be conscious to observe and make judgements about reality. This is extra information that is being pulled out of no where and essentially "putting words in Buddhas mouth" to use a colloquialism.

The true nature of reality self-exists independent of what judgements any observer might make about it. The reverse could also be said if reality itself were capable of making such judgements (which it is not because god is dead), that the observer even if without consciousness would self-justify itself independent of the judgements of reality.

[Anonymous No.19839647]

>>19838838
>>19839058
>>19839078
Seethe and dilate.

[Anonymous No.19839755]

>>19839473
>It was no where stated or implied that an observer needs to be conscious to observe and make judgements about reality.
What? This is so idiotic lmao.

[Anonymous No.19839787]

>>19839338
He can't, that's the point. At best he can just observe the results of observing.

The Buddha is making an empirical argument here, he is saying that you CAN observe your own observation in real time, and that this is something that you, the reader, can do. What explains this simple fact? His theory of the mind, such that there is no observer (or an observed), just observing.

[Anonymous No.19839836]

>>19839787
Think of it in terms of forces, what is forcing what to happen?

Where is the force of activity coming from?

First of all the senses.

Information is forced into the head, by light and sound and taste etc.

The mind is energetically chemically jumpstarted by processes, and so thoughts and memories can appear.

I recognize that I am in control of my body, and more and less my thoughts.

[Anonymous No.19839960]

>>19838119
>buddhism is the first step to actually functioning as a human being
mfer you mean nihilism?

[Anonymous No.19840202]

>>19838822
Imo Christian thought is massive and everything that isn't too dependent on dualism is ok.

[Anonymous No.19840619]

>>19839647
Not an argument

[Anonymous No.19840626]

>>19838512

Buddha's first sutra from the deer garden encapsulates the religion. The 4 Noble Truths, the Middle Way, the 8-Fold Path.

[Anonymous No.19840634]

>>19839960
not nihilism but enlightenment. for that you need detachment, acceptance, meditation...

[Anonymous No.19840927]

>>19839787
observe the observation?

[Anonymous No.19840948]

Don’t meditate. I went to a retreat and was doing 5 hours a day after several years of doing it, and had a fucking horrible experience. I realised what this insidious shit is actually doing. At first you think negative emotions and attachments are going away, that bullshit, it’s all emotions and attachments. Every tiny aspect and association that forms who you are is being slowly but surely chiselled away at during meditation. If you pursue it, you will get to the point where it all collapses. You will look at yourself and see total absence, just nothing. Your identity is important, and everything about it goes away, all the things you thought mattered, all your plans for the future just fall into this facade of one dimensional nothingness. That is the end goal. I don’t where all this happy shit comes from after this, it seems like this was the endgame all along. Everything feels dull, I feel like a zombie, I’m an empty hole and everything is just superficial nothingness. It’s not pleasant, I feel as though I’ve permanently damaged myself and my mind, and barely clung onto core aspects of myself. That’s what this shit does, never forget that. It will make you beyond a nihilist, and it won’t stop. I can’t follow thoughts anymore because I’ve trained my mind to stop them- you can’t undo that. You will be unthinking, just reactionary, no judgments, no opinions, no emotions, no attachments, like a fucking insect. That’s what this shit does, it makes you a fucking insect. Like a bundle of nerves that just responds to things, there’s nothing really there. All I am now is a weird fucking void that drifts around and reacts to things without any sort of personality involved, like a programmed machine. I fucking hate this so much. There would be no difference if I was dead, I basically feel like I am. Don’t start this path. Even if you do only like 10 minutes a day, this is the endgame, this is what it’s slowly doing to you.

[Anonymous No.19840983]

>>19838068
>believes an individual can completely rely on their own willpower for salvation

cope

[Anonymous No.19841028]

>>19840948
That's a nice diary entry.

But the human ego reboots. You surround yourself with people whom matter to you and re-form your personality into serving that community better.

Life is a simulation, yes. And it's terrifying to have the gravity of seriousness of life yanked away. But you can live your best life that you define when nothing is serious anymore and your PTSDs are nothing but humorous jokes rather than knee jerk OCD compulsions and the "need" to have a certain drug or treat RIGHT NOW is just a suggestion.

I would rather live life that way. If you believe you need to feel really strongly about life to live, you're probably some hikikomori suburbanite that wishes they had some sort of amazing romance or war experience that drives them.

As someone with PTSD from Afghanistan, it's nice to have seriousness of life stripped away so I can focus on my kids and disregard "history in the making" that's simply distracting all of us and actually just background noise cranked up too high.

Fucking read some Brave New World you sad sack streamentry larper.

Or you are experiencing what's called "the dark night of the soul"

[Anonymous No.19841032]

>>19841028
Thank you for your service.

[Anonymous No.19841039]

>>19841032
If this is TAIRT, thank you for your meditation diary entry.

[Anonymous No.19841046]

>>19840948
I always thought that meditation is a regression to NPC state, like throwing your mind to the trash bin, why even?

[Anonymous No.19841058]

>>19841046
Because you gotta defrag the soul and/or factory reset it sometimes when you run into corruption event(s)

[Anonymous No.19841626]

>>19840634
wrong, nihilism is the foundation
to create whatever enlightenment you want, first you need to start with a blank canvas

[Anonymous No.19841717]

>>19838078
this is the cheap strawman people like shankara liked to do
buddha never said consciousness is an illlusion, much less an appearance
in fact conciousnes and apapreances are two different skandas
what buddha said is that conciousnes is interdependent with phenomena, which to this day no one could refute, not only that but western philosophy end up agreeing with him in that matter

[Anonymous No.19841719]

>>19838822
>The smartest thing I read in the past two years
you need to read more dude