I just have 2 verses in my personal book of Philosophy and Words to Live By.

Verse 1: If you think you understand what's going on, you haven't been paying attention.

Verse 2: There is no situation that is so bad that it can't get worse. And it's about to get worse.

Reminds me of the kind of thing you'd read in a Douglas Adams book.

Scientist theorize that if we knew why the bowl of petuniaspiles of shit thought this, we'd have a better understanding of the universe.

'Then buddha detonates 20 old people'

Yes but yet A tree has leaves even when you eat dinner.

Actually true, tho~

My preferred version of verse two is: There isn't anything you can't blow up twice.

Unless you can master your anger, your anger will become your master

It is what it is!

...and the Lemming was enlightened

I didn't try the pizza, pizza in asia is almost always disappointing.

I can understand if someone doesn't like coffee and just wants a flavored milk drink with coffee undertones.

I think I can explain. In Buddhism, you have to understand if he didn’t the last into the pizza, but from where I stand it simply is. I hope that helps.

— @Gullible@sh.itjust.works

My verse 2 stems from when I was a medic back in the day, and we got paged for a "don't feel so good" call. We got there and the patient was visually not in the best shape. I decided we were upgrading the call to a "swoop and scoop" to hit the road to the hospital with little delay.

We were lifting that patient out of her recliner and turning her enough to sit her down on the cot when she literally died right then and there. Which of course got the patient another upgrade from the "swoop and scoop" to "Oh shit! Oh shit! We gotta go! We gotta go now!" which also adds the "Inject ALL the diesel!" upgrade for the driver.

A quick check found no pulse or respirations. So I started CPR and my partner grabbed the 12 lead to get the big pads if we needed to shock and placed the pads. I did 2 rounds of CPR and we hit the analyze button. Which said no shock. And a quick check of the patient's vitals showed everything was working again. If in a bit of a sketchy fashion.

We got loaded and roared off in a cloud of diesel smoke and made the 20 mile trip to the hospital with little delay and no worsening of the patient's condition. After radioing in to the hospital with a patient report, the patient was met with all hands on deck at the door when we arrived.

I heard the patient died about 2 months later in a nursing home. One of the perks of working rural EMS where you work on family and friends.

And thus, rule #2 was born.

all according to keikaku

Life is a Douglas Adams book.

You'd think I'd be able to spout off some good quote off the top of my head because ive read the guide probably 12 times, but I just can't. Maybe something about the cricket wars?

That's OK so long as you can feel the rules in your bones.

Because in retrospect , juat because you know and understand , doesn't mean other side willing to do the same when you convey it to them in your way, you need to somehow make other understand in their way and miraculously result in same understanding. Now it doesn't need to be miracle if the one that both need to understand is the truth.

Pizza!

I once came to understand the answer to the classic: "Show me the face you had before your parents were born." koan. One of the most amazing experiences of my life - the golden needle penetrated the veil of my mind.

I could tell you my answer but it would seem trivial and uninteresting. The answer has to be experienced to be grokked (fuck you, Elon). Plus also, perhaps the answer would be different for different people. Now, if only I could work out the sound of one hand fapping...

They're the OG postmodernists

*keikaku means plan

I was gifted a book called "Pointing at the Moon" that was filled with these things. Stuff like "A student was asked by a master, "what was you're face before you were born? The student walked to a river, saw his face reflected in the water, and was enlightened." Like wtf is that supposed to mean? Lol.

I didn't even understand the title of the book until I saw this meme.

Danke

That was honestly painful to watch but oh man was it funny 🤣

To the person who replies to this, with a 4 dimensional "TRUTH" of this 3 dimensional TRUE projection, please ping me too.

If it had so many straight tautologies, are you sure it was not a sort of dictionary?

The idea is that those are supposed to make you understand something that does not fit in your existing thinking habits. So they're puzzling all right, and the idea is you reflect on them over and over, for as long as it takes, until epiphany strikes, and you get it in a way that would be hard to achieve with words alone, and unlocks thinking about things in new ways.

So for instance, in this case, the words "What was your face before you were born?" would not be the titular moon, but the finger pointing at the moon. Reading them and responding to that with "WTF, it's not the moon, it's just a fucking finger" is a natural immediate reaction, I suppose, especially if you were taught highly materialist thinking habits, though I've found there's value in unlearning that reaction.

Fair, although I wouldn't assume there is zero overlap between Zen and shitposting. Discordianism for instance is -- possibly -- a sort of DIY Zen shaped like a shitpost, though the jury's still out on whether it's just a shitpost shaped like a sort of DIY Zen.

Chat is this real? Which Buddhist stories are like this?

Rationality is the basis of any understanding. Something that can be understood but without the involvenment of rationality, is an oximoron.
Nothing can be understood without rationality.

I'm not very serious, to be fair

I hadn't even seen the episode yet! Michael Vsauce doesn't have to ask, so he must know.

But I don't think it's very wise to say the same thing twice, it just highlights that there is no actual argument. At least "it is what it is" says something about things outside of our control. When it's "An honest witness tells the truth, but a false witness tells lies.", I'm just left there thinking "yeah... I guess that's what words mean."

Meanwhile, the silliest zen practitioner:

This comment when I read it aloud made the sound of one hand clapping

I wold call it a Zensation

How do you understand the taste of a peach with rationality?

Just taste it, then you'll understand it. No rationality required, unless you'd rather spend hours being distracted by a series of abstractions that never actually tell you what a peach tastes like.

Honestly if I'm reading a translation, I'd rather read "sunyata" than "emptiness," rather read "skandhas" than "aggregates," rather read "prajna" than "wisdom", etc...

"Emptiness" has a range of meanings in English that distract from what's indicated by "sunyata." A cup is empty after I drink it. Lacking any permanent/inherent/essential nature is sunyata.

"Aggregate" is what you put in concrete to give the cement something to bind to. "Skandhas" are the aspects of identity that we tend to conflate as an essential self-image; i.e. body, sensation, perception, cognition, and awareness (now be grateful I didn't say rupa, vedana, samjna, samskara, and vijnana).

"Prajna" is a direct insight into the nature of reality that defies verbal explanation. "Wisdom" is a loaded term with many possibile meanings, including the unsolicited advice that your older family members get upset when you promptly ignore, the inane tautologies that a preacher spoon-feeds his unquestioning flock every Sunday, or even the snakepit of discursive reasoning that's come to be known as "philosophy" in the west. Prajna is none of those things, and the closest any of them come is probably when Plato says true philosophers are derided as cloud-gazers.

So you see, when translators choose to preserve a Sanskrit or a Pali word, it's not them being lazy. It's them deciding that English (or the language they're translating to) doesn't have an equivalent concept, and that it's better for the reader to learn a new word with its full range of associations, rather than try to squeeze so many layers of meaning into an existing English word that is already loaded with pre-conceived notions.

Australian Buddhism is much easier to understand

1. don't be a cunt
2. see #1

alas, not many practitioners.