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> “In older language, distances were typically given by time — the days it takes to go from one valley to another — since it was not distance but the number of

• zerostar07 8y ago
  Time was always with us and we have organs that regulate with circadian rhythms for example and brain is one of them. There are also processes regulated by daylight, so its fair to say it always mattered even if we didn’t have a reason to measure it
• blueprint 8y ago
  The greatest masters in the history of the human world such as Gautama Buddha never taught or used the term "ego". That ought to tell humans something.
  • Pimpus 8y ago
    I've developed an intuitive understanding of what people mean by this term after experiencing its absence and subsequent return. It's the judge, the classifier, the model-maker; it filters incoming information and tries to make sense of it, usually distorting it in the process. Without it, the outside world is strange and magical but also chaotic and overwhelming. But that's just a description, the feeling of its presence is something else. I can pinpoint exactly when it starts to work overtime after e.g. a personal attack as it tries to maintain an undisturbed worldview. What would be the closest analog to such a concept/process in Buddhism?
    • blueprint 8y ago
      It's not a matter of what it is in Buddhism, the term doesn't refer to an existent thing as it is, THAT is the problem. It's used only by those who don't perceive. Let me give you an example. Think of a mathematician who knows their shit. Now think of that mathematician using an ambiguous term that lacks rigor and therefore introduces inaccuracies in a range of cases. A lay person who doesn't understand the term may use it easily but the mathematician in the other hand finds it very hard to use such a term. The reason is merely that they can realize it's not true.
      • Pimpus 8y ago
        I don't understand, is the "ego" just an illusion? Not the one who downvoted you btw. I did read somewhere that Buddhism doesn't have the concept of ego, which genuinely confuses me as there seems to be a very real process occurring in our brains that labels and categorizes information, which introduces distortion and the "ignorance" that leads to delusion and suffering (in the Buddhist view).
        • blueprint 8y ago
          Illusion? It depends on the exact range of your definition of the term. What exists itself is the truth. Who can see it as it is? No one can speak of something they haven't seen as it is. Every living thing suffers.
          • Pimpus 8y ago
            No offense, but this wasn't helpful to me. I feel like you're speaking in riddles now. Do you have any sources I could read up on?
            • blueprint 8y ago
              I had a short time to reply and wanted to tell you the information you needed. It takes time to confirm. Every living thing suffers means to stop suffering then you have to die forever. Really think Buddha taught that? People don't need a rare master's help to do that lol
  • swamp40 8y ago
    Wasn't it Freud only 100 years ago who popularized the modern usage of the word 'ego' as everyone uses it today?
    • blueprint 8y ago
      Yes, however, people a long long time ago have used variations of the term. Why do you think deteriorated forms of Buddhism nowadays have attached themselves to the term ego? The term has got a certain characteristic which those who propagate deteriorated truth need to use. They talk about losing your ego for a reason. So, I wonder if you've done this exercise before... have you ever tried to come up with as concrete and rigorous a statement of the definition of the term ego as you can? It doesn't have to be so profound nor complicated. When people lose their ego and don't gain a true ego in replacement it means in real life they lose themselves and die forever. (Buddha taught people to save their own self, remain themselves, and live forever.) Therefore people's usage of the term must be understood to be imprecise and subtextually cover too wide a range. You never hear of a mathematician being fairly called egotistical for insisting it's incorrect to state 1+1 = 1 or 3. Buildings and bridges made by those who believe it can be so will collapse. Then why do we accept this lack of rigor in subjects so important as our mental and spiritual health? Only because we've been compromised by something already. However, many influential people still aren't willing to admit this.
      • Pimpus 8y ago
        I'm finding your posts intriguing despite disagreeing with you. Do you have any sources for further reading? > Why do you think deteriorated forms of Buddhism nowadays have attached themselves to the term ego? Is it deterioration or just accepting new ideas? I don't think that 2000-year-old Buddhism had all the answers, or would even be useful to a Westerner (I do feel that we are mostly exposed to "deteriorated" forms of Buddhism, but maybe it's for the better).
        • blueprint 8y ago
          > I don't think that 2000-year-old Buddhism had all the answers Buddha while alive only gave answers to the level of the questions people at that time were able to bring to him. No one from modern times asked Buddha about gravity, or electromagnetism, or calculus, or about Bernoulli's principle, nor is he alive in modern times to inform us of what we ourselves can't recognize right in front of ourselves. However, if, hypothetically, someone were to bring questions about black holes or dark matter to Gautama Buddha, then I feel very confident based on my understanding of philosophy that his reply would be to the effect or meaning of "if you can tell me or point out exactly what X from your question is, concretely, then I will be able to tell you whether it exists or not in reality, by placing that matter upon the formula that operates the world, and checking the result". > would even be useful to a Westerner (I do feel that we are mostly exposed to "deteriorated" forms of Buddhism, but maybe it's for the better) What is left is not helpful to us ordinary people for discerning or learning Buddha's teaching. We lost his truth through the process of it being handed down. His teaching is not meditation, four noble truths, eightfold path, nor precepts. It's not that you go to sleep, abandon yourself, stop suffering, and die forever. He taught people what exists, and how it exists, because he knew that was the way to enlighten people. Nevertheless he didn't explain about the steps to achieving enlightenment. First, falsehood must disappear (you must be free of lies). That means you have to open your eyes to the truth. Secondly, you have to be able to see 'what is'. You have to know where right and wrong exist: facts. Third, you need conscience and courage. You wouldn't go to people and teach them through terrible treatment without conscience and courage. Fourth, there must be endless love in yourself to go teach people 'what is' repeatedly. Through the process, you burn up the karma in your consciousness. Anyone who teaches enlightenment can be achieved without agony and love is telling a lie.
  • JoshCole 8y ago
    The same could be said of the term graphene, transistor, computer, genetics, probability distribution, bayesian, nueron, electricity, and millions of other words. We can't learn much from the lack of their use, because the lack of their use says little about their validity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anachronism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anachronism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(literary_and_historical_analysis) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(literary_and_histo...
    • blueprint 8y ago
      Are you suggesting categorical equivalence between an unconfirmed concept in psychology (which people use without being able to give its definition) and a confirmed physical effect used in material technology? Your fallacy is.....
      • JoshCole 8y ago
        Yes, I'm suggesting an equivalence. The reason that fallacies exist is because there is underlying structure to arguments. For some arguments, its possible for every statement within the argument to be true, but for the conclusion to be false. The argument which you gave for skepticism toward the concept of ego is one such argument that exhibits structure level weakness. The fallacy label is argument from authority. Often this argument form is used despite it being fallacious, because authorities tend to be authorities for a reason. So using conclusions they derived, despite not sharing the logical backing which led them to their conclusion, can end up providing correct answers. In this case though, in addition to the flaws in argument form, some of the premises the argument is built upon are also untrue. Experts in the past aren't necessarily authorities on their subject matter thousands of years in the future and what someone teaches about doesn't reflect the full sum of their knowledge on a topic. Seeing this lack of integrity in structure, I set out to provide counterexample which demonstrated the lack of integrity in the argument structure. In that sense, as inputs to the fallacious argument structure, both ego and the terms I gave are alike. Both the terms I gave and the term ego were inputs to the argument structure, they can be categorized as inputs used in such a way, and they share that category with each other.
  • awesomepantsm 8y ago
    "Ego" is a European word so why would Buddha use it? Please try to stay on topic.
    • blueprint 8y ago
      I'll be sure to tell all the Buddhists I meet who use the term that you said so.
      • awesomepantsm 8y ago
        Buddha lived literally over 2000 years ago. Please go read a book.
• mbrumlow 8y ago
  I don't think we have any proof that time is steady. It may just appear as steady. Much like clock based games way back when. You could speed up or slow down the clock rate and the game would be run the same. Only a external observer out side of the system would be able to detect the change. Edit. But I guess you were talking about our perception of time.
  • drb91 8y ago
    This idea involves mapping one time line to another. Why would you suspect a timeline in which our timeline is embedded? That seems like a more interesting question than the shape of the mapping.
    • phkahler 8y ago
      It's Time Turtles all the way down.
  • PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
    If there is an outside observer with their own sense of time, how would we know which time is real? Are they both? It would seem that, even if not steady to the outside observer, our time is still steady. In a world where physics depends upon time, is it even possible for time to not be steady?
    • mbrumlow 8y ago
      When I was typing that I was thinking the hypothetical observer. I don't think there can actually be one with respect to actual time. But to be able to think about how maybe it does work you have to think as though there was a an ability to observe the universe in such a way. But you are right, if there was a outside observer the same stands, just for that observers observer -- hypothetically. > In a world where physics depends upon time, is it even possible for time to not be steady? I think so. Physics is a construct that we have to describe how our universe works. Lets think about things in "ticks" where a "tick" is just one particle or I should say interaction happening in our universe. Or better think of our universe as a big state machine. Between each new state there are many ticks arranging the matter and getting ready for the next observed state. And by observed state I mean observed by the universe -- or realized. Now we have two time domains to think about. One, tick time. How long is a tick? Would it matter if some ticks took "longer" than others. Then you have the notion of time outside of a tick, that gives ticks its "tick time" or what makes some ticks "longer" than others. If this is anywhere near the case then time outside of the umbrella of each realized universe state does not matter. I may not be doing a good job of getting the notion out of my head. But try to think of it if you were in a video game. Lets take it back to maybe the "Max Payne" days given it is a game that has some dealings with time. If you were playing the game on a laptop and closed the lid and the computer suspended would Max be able to detect or care even that the time between rendering one frame the other went from something like 60FPS (well back then 12FPS) to 2 hours our observed time to render the next frame? We would be the hypothetical observer. Max would not have a clue. Anyways thinking about how time works is always fun. About all we can do is learn how time works from our observable position.
• cecilpl2 8y ago
  Interestingly, where I'm from (BC, Canada), it's quite common to give distances between cities in terms of driving time. "Oh, Kelowna is about 5 hours away." Is this expression common anywhere else?
  • wil421 8y ago
    Yes I would give the distance in time if I was telling someone which suburb I grew up in. Ex. 30 minutes from downtown or about 45 from the airport. I would do the same referencing smaller cites or states/locations close by. 6 hours from the gulf or 2 hours from this college.
  • TeMPOraL 8y ago
    I suppose. I've noticed that I often answer questions ostensibly about distance with time units. For instance, I was recently asked by the boss how far do I live from $meeting_place, to which I answered "90 minutes or so". Because what he was really asking for is how difficult it would be for me to get there, for which time is a much better approximation than distance. Usually people don't care about actual distance. It's not useful for much, unless you're drawing a map. Also, note how new transport options change the perception of the world. 200 years ago, my ancestor would probably not bother with a casual visit to a town 70+ km away. These days, I don't think much of running errands over that distance - it's a 1.5h bus ride away, so I can go there in the morning, do stuff, and come back before dinner (and thanks to the current tech, I can also clock in some work time during commute).
  • prophesi 8y ago
    My friend from Houston, TX says it's very common over there. My guess is that it's due to how chaotic the roads are in Houston, so a 5 minute drive versus a 10 minute drive makes a world of a difference.
    • stefantheard 8y ago
      Also from Houston. Giving distances is almost meaningless in this city 2.8 miles away could be 20 minutes or it could be 3 minutes, so time is really the only accurate measure.