Tag: Buddhist Practice

The same could be said about Buddhism

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Historically, most religions have ‘Rendered unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s’, which typically translates into allowing political authorities to do as they please with little or no objection. At some levels, this is a good way to think and behave, but like all short phrases this attitude or belief can sometimes be deeply misguided. At the end of the day if you are totally defeated, then render unto Caesar. If the matter is of small importance, render unto Caesar. But when Caesar becomes an all-seeing, Satanic panopticon who is killing large numbers of people, it is no longer right to render unto him. We passed that point in the West on 9/11 if not much earlier. Since the Obama presidency, when IC began directly spying on political opponents and is now using that information to punish them, it is obvious we the plebs must at least resist, at least speak up when an opportunity presents. Even simply honestly filling out a post-treatment medical survey takes some courage, but if many of us do stuff like that, we will collectively develop the courage to do more. We do not need to be obstreperous, but we do need to let people know where the uncrossable lines are. During covid, Christians stood stronger than anyone else, including Buddhists, atheists, Jews, Muslims, and more. Out of one million American doctors, only about 500 spoke and acted against the the terrible anti-science covid dictates. And of those 500, the majority were Christians. ABN

Tulsi Gabbard supports Trump because Kamala Harris is as bad as Hillary and represents the same elite cabal

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I highly approve of Gabbard saying this. We live in a world ruled by elites, but we are capable of having some influence on them. When Gabbard, a Democrat, shows she is willing and able to publicly support the candidate of the other party, she is showing she understands the deep political structure of our world today, which is no different in this respect from all of human history.

My partner just reminded me that the cabal behind Kamala is never going to allow her to run. They will put in someone else just as bad or worse. That’s been the plan all along. By kicking Joe out late in the game, cabal can choose whoever they want without input from the Democrat voter base. The deep point of this post and my reason for praising Gabbard is we have to understand what is actually politically possible in this world and how to work pragmatically with that. I would support Hillary Clinton if I could somehow be sure she would do everything I thought a president should do. Buddhist practice is all about not clinging to impractical ideals, desires, thoughts, or behaviors. ABN

Who is JD Vance and why is he dangerous? And what can we do about it?

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UPDATE: This is an excellent essay and I encourage everyone to read it. I believe this is the kind of outlook we want to get massive numbers of people to understand. We the plebs have some say in how we are ruled pretty much only through public opinion. The better many of us understand the world we really are living in, the more likely we will be able to humanize post-modern totalitarianism if we cannot defeat it entirely, which is a very daunting task. With Sundance’s permission, I have posted the entire essay on this site. ABN

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Abandoned by his father to a troubled single mother; eventually raised by grandparents. He is then recruited from an Ivy league law school by shadow figures, a specific billionaire and a network of interests. He changes his name, writes a book about his life story, and with the support of the aforementioned – who eventually pays for the assembly of a strategic campaign influence network, becomes a Senator for 2 years before being quickly elevated into position in the White House.

Many people reading that paragraph would be familiar with the life story of Barack Hussien Obama. However, that paragraph also explains the right-side version of the exact same storyline, James David Vance. It’s a mirror.

On one side of the UniParty mirror we have an emotionally constructed political figure for the left.  On the other side of the UniParty mirror we have an emotionally constructed political figure for the right.  Each person, each emotional narrative, carrying the specific nuances to appeal to their wing of the UniParty audience.  However, both are following the same playbook.

It started with a conversation several weeks ago.  Who is JD Vance and where did he come from?

How does a person without any baseline in politics, not a council member, not a mayor, not a state rep – or state senate, governor etc., become a U.S. Senator and then quickly get into the White House?

What I was told sounded eerily familiar.

JD Vance was born James Donald Bowman in Middletown, Ohio (August 2, 1984). He then changed his name to James David Bowman. He then changed his name to James David Hamel. Eventually, in 2014, notably after Yale Law School (class of 2013) and after marrying his wife Usha, now age 30, he changed his name to write a book.

It was 2014, that’s when JD Vance was born.

Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy was published by Rupert Murdoch’s publishing house, Harper Collins in 2016. The book was made into a Netflix movie, [Reed Hastings] created by Imagine Entertainment and directed by Ron Howard (2020).  However, the interesting background on JD Vance goes back to Yale, and the Obamaesque tap on the shoulder that comes from a billionaire most are familiar with, Peter Thiel.

Continue reading “Who is JD Vance and why is he dangerous? And what can we do about it?” →

WRITER ALARMED WHEN COMPANY FIRES HIS 60-PERSON TEAM, REPLACES THEM ALL WITH AI

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Impostor Syndrome

The pace at which AI has damaged countless industries is whiplash-inducing. And no one understands this better than a writer who in 2023 was excelling at his copywriting job with a team of writers 60 people strong — and by the next year found himself the last human standing, arm in arm with AI imitators he was expected to drag along and get up to speed.

“They wanted to use AI to cut down on costs,” the writer told the BBC, using the pseudonym Benjamin Miller.

At first, the new workflow was this: his manager would feed a headline into an AI model, and it would generate an outline that the team were expected to work with, with Miller doing the final edits.

But that was just the beginning. Months later, management decided to cut humans out of the loop almost completely. Going forward, the AI model would generate articles in their entirety. Shoddy automation was here, and as a consequence, most of the writers lost their jobs. Miller kept his — though his role was going to be a bit different than before.

Now, he was tasked with polishing up the AI’s lackluster prose, and, to quote the BBC, “make it sound more human.” If only there was a way of doing that with, uh, human writers.

Dehumanizing Drudgery

Soon, Miller was the only human employee left on the team. It was down to him, and him alone, to fix up all the AI-generated articles.

“All of a sudden I was just doing everyone’s job,” Miller told the BBC. “Mostly, it was just about cleaning things up and making the writing sound less awkward, cutting out weirdly formal or over-enthusiastic language.”

“It was more editing than I had to do with human writers, but it was always the exact same kinds of edits,” he added. “The real problem was it was just so repetitive and boring. It started to feel like I was the robot.”

And so Miller found himself in the unenviable position of legitimizing the intrusion of AI into his very own job by making the extremely fallible models appear more capable than they actually are. This hasn’t been a fate exclusive to writers; in the service industry, for example, an army of underpaid, outsourced workers secretly worked behind the scenes to power the “AI” drive-thrus at the fast food chain Checkers.

link

I worked as a translator for many years. Gradually, computers took over and I moved on. I found it liberating to be replaced by machines. The other day I posted a song supposedly composed and played by AI. I think the song is pretty good and is a masterpiece of composition, employing almost every major lyrical and musical trope in its genre. It’s humorous, cleverly mocking, has many good lines—I think her name was Hailey. Where’d you run? The song was based on a Tik Tok clip with the pictured women making a reference to a sexual act. She was joking. The video was widely received with good humor. You can find more reactions at the link. As for the musicality of the tune, I play guitar but AI selected riffs ‘twice as better than I will’. Lots of people dump on music, especially country, because it’s just simple patterns. Steve Pinker has said as much. But AI is going to show Pinker that even his exalted thoughts and prose can be imitated. They too are just simple patterns, tropes. AI is revealing the core of Buddhism, itself the root of skepticism and stoicism, by forcing us see and feel the amalgam of experience and memory that is human ‘creativity’, its transience, emptiness and copyableness by a machine. ABN

People’s Use Of Alcohol Or Opioids Causes Greater Secondhand Harms Than Marijuana Consumption Does, Study Finds

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A new study of thousands of people nationwide suggests that secondhand harm caused by marijuana use is far less prevalent than that of alcohol, with respondents reporting secondhand harm from drinking at nearly six times the rate they did for cannabis. Perceived harms from opioids and other drugs also outweighed those related to marijuana.

Looking at responses from 7,799 people to the 2020 U.S, National Alcohol Survey, researchers found that more than a third (34.2 percent) said they’d experienced secondhand harms related to alcohol use over the course of their lives. Just 5.5 percent, meanwhile, said they’d ever experienced secondhand harms related to cannabis.

As for other substances, 7.6 percent of people said they’d ever been harmed by others’ use of opioids, while 8.3 percent reported ever experiencing harm from unspecified “other” drugs.

link

Panpsychism, pansignaling, and Buddhism

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Panpsychism means “all mind” or mind in all things, with an emphasis on cognition being a fundamental aspect or part of nature.

Pansignaling means “all signaling” or signaling in all things, with an emphasis on signaling being a fundamental aspect or part of nature.

I like the term pansignaling because it gets us to look at the signals, without which there is nothing.

Another word that is close to these two is panexperientialism, which connotes that “the fundamental elements of the universe are ‘occasions of experience’ which can together create something as complex as a human being.”

These ideas or similar can be found in the Huayan and Tiantai schools of Buddhism.

Highly recommend giving these ideas some thought and reading the links provided above.

I  tend to favor thinking of this stuff from the signaling point of view. A signal can be found, defined, analyzed, and so on. A signal is a fairly objective thing. When we consider signals and consciousness, it is very natural to consider that signals are parts of networks and that networks can be parts of bigger networks.

As I understand it, panexperientialism holds the view that atoms have experience, and that molecules have experience as do the atoms that make them up… and so on till we get to cells, organs, brains, human consciousness. Human consciousness, which is fundamentally experiential, is what humans mainly think of as experience. At all levels, the “parts” of human consciousness also are conscious or cognizant and thus capable of experience. Thus, there is no mind-body problem. Cognition or awareness is part of nature from the very bottom up. For example, a single bacterium can know to move toward something or away from it.

Life is “anti-entropic signaling networks” that organize, self-organize, combine, cooperate, compete, eat, and change constantly. From this, we can see where impermanence and delusion as described in Buddhism come from.

When matter breaks down into waves and laws, it becomes information, but similar processes are still at work. In Buddhist terms we find again dependent origination, no intrinsic self separate from other information, impermanence, rational structure, karma (the work of this producing that), the primary consciousness found in deep samadhi.

first posted FEBRUARY 25, 2017

A picture of early Buddhism based on what we can be reasonably sure of today

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As ascetics,31 the Śramaṇas (Buddhists) owned little more than a simple robe and a few other necessities. Thus did Gautama Śākamuni, ‘sage of the Scythians’, wander, meditating and searching for answers, before his “awakening”. He may well have met others doing the same thing, and studied with some of them, but we have no remotely credible evidence that he knew anything about Jains, Ājīvikas, or other non-Brahmanist sects. The traditional view, which actually accepts this problematic notion as dogma, has not been seriously questioned for a long time. Yet these sects are unattested in any dated or datable Pre-Normative Buddhist sources. It is because their teachings needed to be refuted and rejected by much later Buddhists that they eventually appeared in the written Buddhist tradition, but in works that are patently late doctrinally, full of magic and other forms of fantasy, and unreliable in every other way. Chronological incongruities reveal that the putatively “early” forms of what eventually became identifiably Jain, Ājīvika, and so on, did not yet exist as such anywhere near the time of the Buddha, but took on recognizable forms only much later due to heavy influence from Normative Buddhism, therefore no earlier than the Saka-Kushan period.

~Beckwith, Christopher I.. Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia (pp. 70-71). Princeton University Press

Psycholinguistics: our normal interpersonal communication system inevitably produces significant error

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Our normal interpersonal communication system inevitably produces significant error; thus leading to misery, personality disorder, mental illness. In spiritual terms, the normal ways we talk and listen carry toxic seeds of ignorance (and evil) that scatter everywhere. Even the sciences are affected.

Without the FIML corrective, nothing will change.

I have done FIML long enough that I feel deeply sorry for everyone who does not do it.

It’s not super easy to do FIML, to correct the mistakes that cause so much suffering, but it can be done with no more effort than learning to cook well or play the piano passably well. And like those skills, it’s fun to do once you get going with it.

Societies collapse because ignorance, greed, and madness accumulate and rot them out from inside. It happens to all of them. It is happening to us very seriously right now.

Marriages, friendships, and individual lives collapse for similar reasons. Errors build on errors, minds overwhelmed; suffering ensues.

I beg of you. Give it a shot. Learn FIML.

Within a short time you will see what it does, how it does it, and why it is so necessary for a good life.

Buddhism and ethical signaling

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Buddhism is very much a system of ethics. Buddhist practice is founded on the Five Precepts of refraining from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and the irresponsible use of alcohol.

In most Buddhist traditions, these precepts are taught as if they are fundamental to the workings of the universe. But how can morality be fundamental to the workings of the universe? How does it really even matter to human beings?

If we think of a human being as a signaling system, we may be able to show that ethical thoughts and behavior are of fundamental importance to the system itself.

Human signaling systems signal internally, within themselves, and externally, toward other people. Our most important signaling system is the one we share with that person who is most important to us, our mate or best friend. Let’s confine our discussion to this sort of primary signaling system.

If I lie to my partner or cheat her, I may gain something outside of our shared signaling system, but that signaling system will suffer. And when that shared system suffers, my own internal signaling system will also suffer because it will contain errors. It will no longer be in its optimal state. Similarly, if she lies to me or cheats me, our mutual signaling system will become less than optimal as will both of our individual, or internal, signaling systems.

My own signaling system cannot grow or become optimal without my partner treating me with the best ethical behavior she can muster. And the same is true for her with respect to me. And we both know this.

We would be good to each other anyway, but it is helpful to see that our being good to each other has a very practical foundation—it assures us optimal performance of our mutual and internal signaling systems.

FIML practice is designed to provide partners with a clear and reasonably objective means to communicate honestly with each other. FIML practice will gradually optimize communication between partners by making it much clearer and more honest. In doing this, it will also optimize the operations of their mutual and individual signaling systems.

To my knowledge, there is nothing like FIML in any Buddhist tradition. But if I try to read FIML into the tradition, I may be able to find something similar in the way monks traveled together in pairs for much of the year. I don’t know what instructions the Buddha may have given them or how they spoke to each other, but it may be that they did a practice with each other similar to FIML practice.

In any case, if we view human being as a signaling system, we may be able to claim that clear signaling—that is, ethical signaling—is fundamental to the optimization of that system.

first posted FEBRUARY 3, 2013

NY District Attorney Sandra Doorley who was caught speeding and berating cops releases apology

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link

Whether you like her or not, from a Buddhist point of view this is a good apology. She takes full responsibility, briefly explains why she thinks she did what she did but does not turn that into an excuse. She disciplines herself and in essence vows never to do it again (an important part of a Buddhist apology). She deserves forgiveness from the public for this incident and, while she should reflect on it fully for a year or so, she should also gradually put it out of her mind and move on after that. I do not know anything else about Doorley and am just commenting on her apology. ABN

Tibetan Buddhist viharas were the model for European colleges and Islamic madrasas

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Central Asian scholars also developed an Islamic system of higher education modeled on the Central Asian system of the Buddhist vihâra, or monastic college. The vihâra was supported by a tax-exempt pious foundation that paid the expenses of the students and also of the teacher or teachers, who lived in the vihâra with the students. The primary method of teaching was oral lecture and debate, and the main subject of study was the Dharma, or Buddhist law and theology. These fundamental elements were taken over wholesale by the Arabs, who adopted even the distinctively Central Asian form of the vihâra architectural plan—a square structure with a large courtyard, each side of which contained chambers for the students and teachers plus four îwâns, large half-open halls in the form of gateways. The vihâra seems to have been Islamicized as the madrasa in Central Asia in the eighth and ninth centuries, though it is only noted in historical sources somewhat later.

Beckwith, Christopher I.. Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present (p. 154). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

Medieval Western European culture grew intellectually as a direct result of contact with Muslim Spain and Palestine. The translation into Latin of Arabic books introduced new, exciting, and often controversial ideas. The work of al-Khwârizmî54 (Algorithmus) translated as the Book of Algorithmus introduced Arabic numerals, including the zero and “algorithmic” calculation along with them, while the Algebra introduced advanced algebraic mathematics. They were revolutionary to the scientifically oriented minds of Western Europe. The translation of previously unknown philosophical and logical works of Aristotle, along with the works of the great Islamic Aristotelian philosophers, also caused fundamental restructuring of Western European thought. The ideas accompanied at least one important institution. The first European college,55 the Collège des Dix-huit or ‘College of the Eighteen Scholars’, was established in Paris in 1180 by Jocius of London (Jocius de Londiniis) after his return from the Holy Land.56 It was the oldest of the colleges that formed the original University of Paris. The college retained most of the essential characteristics of its direct ancestors, the madrasa and vihâra, including the pious foundation that supported the student residents and a professor,57 and perhaps the architectural form as well.58 The transmission of Islamic knowledge, techniques, and institutions to the West thus fueled the intellectual revolution of the High Middle Ages.

Beckwith, Christopher I.. Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present (pp. 179-180). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.