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These are more accessible modern works that point you to more classical works if you’re interested:

Tantra Illuminated by Christopher Wallis

Roots of Yoga by Jim Mallinson

Three Pillars of Zen by Philip Kapleau

The World of Tibetan Buddhism by the Dalai Lama

People like to recommend the Heart Sutra and Pali Suttas, and Bhagavad Gita but I’d say it’s better to get some intro first so you can at least become aware of any prior assumptions you have about the world and realize those works come from a wildly different experience of being.

Bonus: Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe The Hermetic Tradition in African Philosophy by Theophilus Okere Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram

Welcome! Hope you enjoy.

If you steer close to questions about metaphysics and spirituality, I highly recommend stepping outside the western paradigm. A lot of our philosophy is saturated with Christianity-influenced background assumptions, way, way more than people realize. Reaching all the way to modern psychology. It was very fascinating to recognize (and discard) them in my own thinking - and I was a basic intellectual atheist with what I incredibly naively thought was 0 Christian influence in the way I viewed the world.

Ah, I see. Unfortunately online one has come to expect people saying things like this seriously, especially when people discuss anti-authoritan ideas.

I read some Plato and philosophical works but my focus has been more on Indian and Buddhist philosophy.

Unless you are an avid reader, I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to read everything as listed. Figure out what your genuine questions about life are and read the works that attempt to provide answers. That’s why having HTRB on the background is highly useful. Don’t read just to say you did, seek to gain understanding, which is easier when you can make the books relevant to your life.

There’s something deeply ironic about saying people should be forced to read Orwell…

How to Read a Book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book

Because people severely lack media literacy. People say read Orwell… and alt-right was saying it for years too.

There’s someone in this thread saying kids should be forced to read Orwell. Which I think illustrates the issue perfectly…

When I practiced Zen Buddhism formally, yes.

Though I still do open sitting for a few minutes to conclude whatever meditation I was doing. My nonduality teacher recommended it and I found it useful.

Edit: for those interested, The Way app from Henry Shukman is a decent intro to this. Though finding actual Zen Buddhist community is better.

I believed that I had to be certain way in society or I was fundamentally flawed and bad.

I dropped that belief, acknowledge that to some point it’s convenient for me to follow societal norms but trying to fit in makes me mostly miserable. I naturally don’t want to do things that bother other people but I also don’t really want to be around them so why should I try to be likeable to them any more than is normal to me. This way people who like me, are sure to like me as I am. If I like them enough, I’ll naturally also want to be considerate of them, even if I have to occasionally behave a little different.

I somehow made it very complicated with just beating myself up for being bad/stupid/ugly/broken because I kept believing people who I don’t even like.

You wait and digest. Don’t rush into the next thing just because you think you’re supposed to.

There’s just way more content today but probably the percentage of good vs. bad hasn’t changed much. Finding the good in the sea of bad might be harder though. Actively maintain and curate your feeds.

And keep around indie web and federation etc. Internet used to be a niche domain of the nerds. It is happening again where some find it’s just the time to depart from the mainstream web. Just don’t get too attached to visible engagement.

Few options that don’t necessarily even require a whole lot of capital (and I’m already doing one of these):

• Work in finance (and stay educated to be good at it), donate as much as possible to well researched charities.

• Work in healthcare, volunteer your services where they’d be otherwise unavailable.

• Build a community with certain values and offer life-enhancing (basically odd jobs) services freely to people outside the community. Or just offer community, just be transparent about the rules and expectations (don’t be a cult).

If you want to be friends with people interested in certain stuff, it’s a good idea to know about that stuff.

Pop culture is easy and common, meaning you’ll increase the amount of people available to make friends with.

I know a little about a lot of things to the point that I can easily make pleasant, inconsequential conversation with most people as I somehow learned small talking growing up but being an introvert, I’m not particularly interested in making friends with anyone who isn’t into the stuff I really care about.

Certainly we must rely on experience to learn anything about matter so from an epistemological point of view it is the foundation of knowledge but I do think we can discover a deeper foundation for reality through science.

There’s the crux of it. Problem is that science is the product of the human mind. Experience isn’t just the foundation of knowledge, it has to be the foundation of everything because to say anything about anything, nonsense or science, you need experience first. This includes any idea about what matter is or isn’t. We must first have an experience, and then we conceptualize it in some way - and then we try to desperately conceptualize it in a way that makes sense in the context of our previous conceptualizations. Because ironically, while some people insist on matter being prior, without realizing it they often make the human mind equally prior (“thoughts ARE the thing itself”). Bring them the map-territory problem and they get it, but it’s often hard to get them to apply the same idea onto their own mind.

To be sure, science is a great and reliable way to make predictions. However, ultimate reality will always be grander than anything the mind can capture, and as such, science will never be able to distill it either. That said, one hopes, eventually science will meet this realization (and indeed some scientists have). To put it very shortly, as long as one insists on a logical continuum, one can keep asking “and what’s beyond that” as logic necessarily requires a continuum of values to function. Foundation on which logic operates though, must be beyond what can be captured with logic.

You know, I feel like I see a surprising amount of people on Lemmy who have stepped out of the basic materialistic view. It’s encouraging but also a bit bizarre. There seems to be a weird subsection of people who are able enough computer nerds to not be scared by the interface here, but have actually looked into some pretty deep philosophical stuff (though some definitely have just done enough psychedelics). I include myself in the weird subsection of course but I really didn’t expect to see as many others here as I have.

Assuming people are actually able and willing to recognize when they start hiding in circular reasoning (or other logical fallacies but by experience, begging the question is most common):

Argument about matter being the foundation of reality. It’s not. And I’d start by questioning your understanding of the word “matter”.

Look into Waking Up app. Listen to the talks on psychedelics.

I literally cannot continue this conversation before we understand each other on the nature of wanting. Or like, I can… but we’d just keep going over the same things, reducing us both to just practicing intellectual wankery. And I have a feeling you have more self-respect than that, if you think that my argumentation is “unbecoming of an intellectual”.

And in any case we’ve been at this for 4 (very delighful) hours but this body really wants a different activity for now.

Pity, I had so much fun with this discussion. For that I thank you. Lemme know if you want to return to it later.

I’m not going to get into a discussion about justice with you before you explain what is an acceptable want and how it differs from a want in a controlled population.

“As to your second question, I’m afraid I’ll need for you to give me an example of something independent of biological, societal or cultural factors before I can answer that with any candor.”

The fact that you ask this from me specifically highlights the problem in your arguments. It is your view that necessitates the existence of something independent of biological, societal or cultural factors. I don’t think such a thing exists. I don’t think it’s possible to have a want independent of imposition. However when you say that “the notion of want is not applicable to a controlled population” as an argument against me positing that the guy in the comic is doing what he wants, implies that in your mind there is a “pure” want, independent of any imposition. You then refer to the rat as an example of consent, implying that a biological drive to survive is an example of a pure want. If you wish to make the case that a biological want is an example of a pure want, then I can say that the guy in the comic is following his biological drive to survive over any personal opinions on wearing pants - meaning a want is applicable to a controlled population.

How do you defend applying human idea of consent to a rat, but very conveniently for your own argument, refuse to apply oppressor to the hawk?