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I read a story about the Buddha as a kid and I never got it until a few days ago. Once Buddha meets a woman in pain because her new-born child had died. She beg

I read a story about the Buddha as a kid and I never got it until a few days ago. Once Buddha meets a woman in pain because her new-born child had died. She begs him to bring him back to life and he agrees provided she could get him a handful of rice from a house without death. Needless to say she couldn't find such a place. The point is that eternal bliss would be such a wonderful thing, but it doesn't exist anymore than perpetual motion does. Let's face it everything alive today on this earth during this very second in which you have read these words will die. I am an atheist to the core and I will remain an atheist to the core. I don't think that there are any angels, or heaven or some kind of hell out there. I know that the only thing out there is emptiness. There is no doubt about it, and that's the beauty of it. By accepting the fact that nothing truly ever lasts we can prepare ourselves for peace. It's a really twisted concept that I can't explain in words, but whenever you see the truth that happiness is not just another shot away then you don't crave for things. You don't seek to replace the pain with something else. All you do is focus on just being and that opens the doors for everything else. You learn to love and create for the sake of doing just that. You see beyond yourself and you actually care about other people. Most importantly you realize that just like life learning is a process that will never end till the day you die. It's amazing. I hope that you understand.

Ardit20 16y ago
It is indeed amazing, but the answer can be simpler. Without pain, there is no such thing as not pain. You need to feel what pain is, so that you know what it feels like to not have pain. If we all were in some sort of utopia, or heaven, we would be dead bored. Life is good because we keep learning and in pain there is much learning which is different from the learning one acquires when not in pain. If there was only one state of being, there would not be many opportunities for growth. In life however there are many states of being between absolute pain and absolute not pain which gives one so much room for growth and learning and also variety for everyone to be unique in their own way. Once one stops learning however, everything is familiar, and eventually, boring. Which is why the concept of heaven or hell is attractive at first, but only because we are not in heaven or hell. It is like buying those gorgeous trousers you wanted, or car, which eventually becomes just a pair of trousers or just a car. So too with heaven, if it existed, it would be great in the first days or week or month, but in a year you would get dead bored of it and want to move to America again :P
Jach 16y ago
I understand, I've read various texts of Eastern philosophy and I enjoy the benefits of being able to let go at times, but I was really hoping for a different argument than this one and the similar one given by Ardit. I can imagine a world without pain, and a world without death (at least a world where people live a lot longer than 75 years, I won't argue for some physics that lets us live forever), and if I were a member of that world instead of this one, nothing you two have said would convince me to say "Yeah, pain and death are great, I want some of that. I need some of that!" Similar arguments have also been made for trying Meth and the like, that you just have to experience it! No thanks. I also don't buy the whole "You need pain to experience happiness", but I haven't formulated an eloquent knockdown argument against that yet. While it's true pain and pleasure are related through endorphins, my idea of happiness isn't constant orgasm. I've wondered if these arguments for pain could simply be using an overly broad definition of pain that includes any struggle or conflict, any challenge or exercise... Being for death, especially if you're an atheist, is just ludicrous. Anyway, I can also imagine being very not-bored in such a different world that knows no pain nor death for very many years, longer than any lifetime any human has yet had. I can imagine that in that world where life is valued oh-so-high, that people are constantly at work to increase it, to let people live even just one more day. I can imagine learning for the sake of learning and creating for the sake of creating, I can imagine doing those things for other ends as well, some selfish, some not. The brain pattern making up "you" is fairly unique, and it's such a sad shame, a true shame, that so many patterns have already been annihilated even before a mere 75 years have passed. There may be nothing out there that says your matter's state is worth preserving, but there is definitely something in here. In human brains. Unfortunately our brains were built by the ancestral environment, not by any benevolent being, and thus we have certain problems such as this contradiction of sometimes believing death and pain are things acceptable, even good, yet nonetheless having a very strong aversion to death and pain. I think the aversion is the saner part of our minds.
- orangecat 16y ago
  Very well said. Eliezer Yudkowsky makes similar arguments, most recently in his (outstanding) Harry Potter fanfic: (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/39/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/39/Harry_Potter_and_the_...). "Death is bad," said Harry, discarding wisdom for the sake of clear communication. "Very bad. Extremely bad. Being scared of death is like being scared of a great big monster with poisonous fangs. It actually makes a great deal of sense, and does not, in fact, indicate that you have a psychological problem." there's this little thing called cognitive dissonance, or in plainer English, sour grapes. If people were hit on the heads with truncheons once a month, and no one could do anything about it, pretty soon there'd be all sorts of philosophers, pretending to be wise as you put it, who found all sorts of amazing benefits to being hit on the head with a truncheon once a month. Like, it makes you tougher, or it makes you happier on the days when you're not getting hit with a truncheon. But if you went up to someone who wasn't getting hit, and you asked them if they wanted to start, in exchange for those amazing benefits, they'd say no. And if you didn't have to die, if you came from somewhere that no one had ever even heard of death, and I suggested to you that it would be an amazing wonderful great idea for people to get wrinkled and old and eventually cease to exist, why, you'd have me hauled right off to a lunatic asylum!

Ardit20 16y ago

It is indeed amazing, but the answer can be simpler. Without pain, there is no such thing as not pain. You need to feel what pain is, so that you know what it feels like to not have pain. If we all were in some sort of utopia, or heaven, we would be dead bored. Life is good because we keep learning and in pain there is much learning which is different from the learning one acquires when not in pain. If there was only one state of being, there would not be many opportunities for growth. In life however there are many states of being between absolute pain and absolute not pain which gives one so much room for growth and learning and also variety for everyone to be unique in their own way. Once one stops learning however, everything is familiar, and eventually, boring. Which is why the concept of heaven or hell is attractive at first, but only because we are not in heaven or hell. It is like buying those gorgeous trousers you wanted, or car, which eventually becomes just a pair of trousers or just a car. So too with heaven, if it existed, it would be great in the first days or week or month, but in a year you would get dead bored of it and want to move to America again :P

Jach 16y ago

I understand, I've read various texts of Eastern philosophy and I enjoy the benefits of being able to let go at times, but I was really hoping for a different argument than this one and the similar one given by Ardit. I can imagine a world without pain, and a world without death (at least a world where people live a lot longer than 75 years, I won't argue for some physics that lets us live forever), and if I were a member of that world instead of this one, nothing you two have said would convince me to say "Yeah, pain and death are great, I want some of that. I need some of that!" Similar arguments have also been made for trying Meth and the like, that you just have to experience it! No thanks. I also don't buy the whole "You need pain to experience happiness", but I haven't formulated an eloquent knockdown argument against that yet. While it's true pain and pleasure are related through endorphins, my idea of happiness isn't constant orgasm. I've wondered if these arguments for pain could simply be using an overly broad definition of pain that includes any struggle or conflict, any challenge or exercise... Being for death, especially if you're an atheist, is just ludicrous. Anyway, I can also imagine being very not-bored in such a different world that knows no pain nor death for very many years, longer than any lifetime any human has yet had. I can imagine that in that world where life is valued oh-so-high, that people are constantly at work to increase it, to let people live even just one more day. I can imagine learning for the sake of learning and creating for the sake of creating, I can imagine doing those things for other ends as well, some selfish, some not. The brain pattern making up "you" is fairly unique, and it's such a sad shame, a true shame, that so many patterns have already been annihilated even before a mere 75 years have passed. There may be nothing out there that says your matter's state is worth preserving, but there is definitely something in here. In human brains. Unfortunately our brains were built by the ancestral environment, not by any benevolent being, and thus we have certain problems such as this contradiction of sometimes believing death and pain are things acceptable, even good, yet nonetheless having a very strong aversion to death and pain. I think the aversion is the saner part of our minds.

orangecat 16y ago
Very well said. Eliezer Yudkowsky makes similar arguments, most recently in his (outstanding) Harry Potter fanfic: (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/39/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/39/Harry_Potter_and_the_...). "Death is bad," said Harry, discarding wisdom for the sake of clear communication. "Very bad. Extremely bad. Being scared of death is like being scared of a great big monster with poisonous fangs. It actually makes a great deal of sense, and does not, in fact, indicate that you have a psychological problem." there's this little thing called cognitive dissonance, or in plainer English, sour grapes. If people were hit on the heads with truncheons once a month, and no one could do anything about it, pretty soon there'd be all sorts of philosophers, pretending to be wise as you put it, who found all sorts of amazing benefits to being hit on the head with a truncheon once a month. Like, it makes you tougher, or it makes you happier on the days when you're not getting hit with a truncheon. But if you went up to someone who wasn't getting hit, and you asked them if they wanted to start, in exchange for those amazing benefits, they'd say no. And if you didn't have to die, if you came from somewhere that no one had ever even heard of death, and I suggested to you that it would be an amazing wonderful great idea for people to get wrinkled and old and eventually cease to exist, why, you'd have me hauled right off to a lunatic asylum!