This video was randomly recommended to me and it's only 15 minutes long but it has it all, including a Buddhist Master who draws penises on the walls of temples.
@Tfmonkey I am all for clear thinking. Enlightenment as defined in this video (there is no separate self) is bullshit. This "Enlightenment" is just as fanciful as heaven and hell.
You can practice being present, and compassionate, and being in flow without denying a separate self.
But good on that monk to get the unenlightened to bring him liquor and beautiful women. What a good con.
@redmaple I see it as the opposite. The existence of a separate self implies a soul, or some individual "self" that exists, and THAT is fanciful.
Your sense of self-awareness and conscious reality are emergent properties of your brain. Your identify is mere memory. There is real science to confirm this. Here is a Ted Talk about it (there are longer videos about this too, but this is a nice bite-size one): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyu7v7nWzfo
@Tfmonkey I don't know if we are talking about the same thing. The existence of a "separate self" I do not translate to a soul. To have a self is to realize there is a limit to your pyhsical control and experience. So if I get cut, you don't bleed. And if you think thoughts, I don't hear them.
Because your identity is memory does not mean it is not real. We mentally experience ourselves through our memories/mind. We physically experience ourselves through our body.
@redmaple the body is not a self. It is a biosystem of billions of living things that are constantly living, dying, and being regenerated from food.
When you dream you are completely unaware of the body, and yet you have a sense of your own existence. When you awaken from a dream there is an instantaneous persistence of identity. You knew you were "you" in your dream, and you know you are "you" when you awake and once again become aware of the body.
What is the "you"? Where does it come from?
@Tfmonkey The mind is a map of the information that the body experiences. And within that information, the mind realizes there is a "you", it's human nature to identify a you.
Just like a red marker on a map that identifies where you are on a map. Because the "you" in your mind is a representation, does not mean "you" don't exist in the physical. The mind is a map of the physical.
@Tfmonkey well we will have to agree to disagree. From my perspective, just because the body is a complicated system with other organisms does not invalidate the identity of "you".
And if a stranger came on your property and used this same logic of your property is abstract, it's an ecosystem, it wouldn't fly practically. You is a useful tool to identify that which you are responsible for navigating through the world. It reflects the physical.
But everyone gets to choose their own worldview.
@redmaple The idea of the self is very useful, just like the idea of "rights" is useful for ethics and morality.
@redmaple Once again, your body is not a "you", it is billions and billions of living organisms, half of which aren't even human cells, but are microbes and bacteria that influence your health and even what foods you like.
There is no "you" except in the abstract sense. You are a hallucination of your body. Your body is a biosystem in relationship with everything else.
There is no individual self that objectively exists. There is only an abstraction, a hallucination, an illusion.