I find I can disagree with just about everyone :)

[Thief]

I like this one -

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 realization, 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?"

find @godnotgod and let him in on this

 

[Geoff-Allen]

The idea of God will always raise more questions than it answers if you have anything close to an inquisitive mind at all. I believe that only if one is satisfied with completely inadequate answers for things will they even entertain the notion of God.

True enuf - questions do arise - such as if we are only going to be truly happy in Heaven why stick us on this planet in the first place - at times it seems like a perverse plan ...

Tanks for your input.

 

[Geoff-Allen]

find @godnotgod and let him in on this

Another good book is "Siddhartha's Brain" - goes into the whole doctrine of non-self amongst other tings ...

Cheers!

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Thanks 4 your input but I am not entirely sure what you are trying to say.

I had to look up conflation in the dictionary!

If you are saying I am too emotional and sometimes not too clear in my thinking you may have a point.

Been re-reading a little Osho since I started this thread ...

The modern mind has become too rational; it is caught in the net of logic. Much repression has happened because logic is a dictatorial force, totalitarian. Once logic controls you, it kills many things.

Logic is like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin; it does not allow the opposite to exist, and emotions are opposite. Love, meditation is opposite to logic. Religion is opposite to reason. So reason simply massacres them, kills them, uproots them. Then suddenly you see that your life is meaningless - because all meaning is irrational.

Thanks for your interest anyway ... feel perfectly free to explain your position differently if I have got you wrong ...

Cheers!

I wasn't really making comment on your emotions at all, and I think I was a little obtuse with my post, to be honest.
Let's just leave it as 'luck' being a word without much meaning to me. People commonly define things as 'lucky' or 'unlucky', but it's just shorthand for being beyond discernible control.

 

[Geoff-Allen]

I wasn't really making comment on your emotions at all, and I think I was a little obtuse with my post, to be honest.
Let's just leave it as 'luck' being a word without much meaning to me. People commonly define things as 'lucky' or 'unlucky', but it's just shorthand for being beyond discernible control.

Thanks 4 that - need to look up obtuse now

Don't you feel there is "luck" in whether a person experiences love and happiness or not? Seems 2 me that many people get a very raw deal ...

Cheers!