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To: Talisker
"That’s not what Buddhism teaches."

Really? What did I get wrong?

I just checked wikipedia. Nirvana is extinguishing all desire. I just restated it a different way. Nirvana is the ultimate state the buddist is trying to achieve to avoid being reborn because life is suffering.

It must be the part about the spirit losing it's indviduality and rejoining the mother spirit. Maybe that's from hinduism. According to wikipedia, there is no immortal soul for the buddist.

Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it looks to me like the goal for the buddist is to die to desires to that you quit being reborn and thus really die once for all and avoid the cycle of suffering.

As for me, I desire life and life more abundantly. Not absence of desire, which to me sounds like death.

131 posted on 03/23/2014 12:16:27 PM PDT by DannyTN
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To: DannyTN

“As for me, I desire life and life more abundantly. Not absence of desire, which to me sounds like death.”

Personal desire isn’t a good way to determine what is true.


133 posted on 03/23/2014 1:46:05 PM PDT by Fuzz
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To: DannyTN

You’re looking at the creation of a human life as an addition - something existing that did not before.

But Buddhism teaches the opposite method -that infinite consciousness reduced itself to make a human.

So in Buddhism, letting go of desire means letting go of desires that continue that limitation of consciousness, so that the nirvana of infinite consciousness can be experienced once again.

It’s really not such a bizarre concept - Christian mystics have fled to the wilderness, or pursued poverty, for millennia.


138 posted on 03/24/2014 12:30:37 AM PDT by Talisker (One who commands, must obey.)
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