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Like nearly all Buddhist teachings, there are practices you can do to develop these faculties. For example, you can reflect that all beings have at one time or

Like nearly all Buddhist teachings, there are practices you can do to develop these faculties. For example, you can reflect that all beings have at one time or another been your mother, or your child; realizing this, how can you feel hatred towards any other being? It doesn't work for me, of course; I don't believe in rebirth.

cracoucax 3y ago
Imo the belief in rebirth is not needed to practice metta, you just need to realize that every being wants to be happy, just like you. Yet all of them are mired in delusion and most of the time do things which go the opposite way of generating real happiness, we all do. Everyone is mired in delusion and most of the time react to feelings of anger and craving (vedana), which are generated based on their history, social norms and whatnot. They are just being manipulated by those all the time, unless they're very mindful of what's happening in their mind temporarily. Realizing this you can't really hate anybody, and in fact you realize they are 100% like you.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  > the belief in rebirth is not needed to practice metta That's not what I was saying; I was commenting on that suggested technique for developing metta, in particular, which is dependent on belief in rebirth.
  - cracoucax 3y ago
    Ah yes I understand
Glench 3y ago
> It doesn't work for me, of course; I don't believe in rebirth. Are you still able to generate loving-kindness in yourself? If so, then those teachings that don't work for you don't matter.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  Well, honestly I don't know. If I had feelings of loving kindness, I'd know that; but that would be just feelings. I don't have a loving-kindness detector, and I wouldn't know how to calibrate it if I did. I suppose one could work from hatred; people generally know if they hate something. So if one has reduced the incidence of hatred, then perhaps you could say the technique worked. I used the technique (along with others) over a period of a couple of decades, during which I "suspended belief" concerning rebirth. But over a couple of decades, it's quite possible that my personality changed for other reasons - such as other techniques, or watching my children grow up, or simply maturing.
  - Glench 3y ago
    If I may tease you lovingly for a moment, when you smile at your child do you go "I am unable to detect what is happening!" :P
    - thenobsta 3y ago
      Small animals also help. :) I can't help but feel happiness and goodwill for a cute cat or bunny. Once I have that feeling, I can pay attention to it, keep it going, sit with it, or wish that feeling for myself or to others. If I lose it, I just bring up an endearing image or thought of the cat/bunny/my kiddo and pay attention to that feeling again.
    - denton-scratch 3y ago
      Both of my "children" are adults in their 30s; either of them could kill me with their bare hands if they chose to. I don't think loving kindness manifests when I smile at someone; I think it manifests when I forgive them for some outrage that has left me seething. That is, I don't associate loving-kindness particularly with good feelings.
      - Glench 3y ago
        > Both of my "children" are adults in their 30s; either of them could kill me with their bare hands if they chose to. My friend, if this is truly the state of your relationship with your children then I'm so sorry. I wish you a swift resolution to any and all ill-will. > I don't think loving kindness manifests when I smile at someone; I think it manifests when I forgive them for some outrage that has left me seething. That is, I don't associate loving-kindness particularly with good feelings. It sounds like loving-kindness practices don't work particularly well for you but forgiveness does so that's great. Still, I hope you get to feel a sense of warm-heartedness toward yourself and others. Even the Dalai Lama, one of the preeminent Buddhist figures in the world, says his true religion is kindness. > Warm-heartedness is my favourite subject. As human beings our mothers gave birth to us and we survived because of her care and affection. Warm-heartedness is not only the key factor for human survival, it’s also the basis for being able to live as peaceful, happy human beings. https://twitter.com/DalaiLama/status/1680874205854990336 https://twitter.com/DalaiLama/status/1680874205854990336
avgcorrection 3y ago
> For example, you can reflect that all beings have at one time or another been your mother, or your child; realizing this, how can you feel hatred towards any other being? What's the exact cosmology again? 1. Every being is likely to be your mother 2. Every being has been your mother with certainty (beginningless time)
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  Buddhist cosmology holds that the cycle of rebirth is endless, so all beings have been your mother and your child at some time in the past, and will be again in the future. So it's 2. And for clarity, the view is that time is both beginningless and endless.
MilStdJunkie 3y ago
Yeah, I don't buy the "remembering past lives" business, but "life after death" seems like a physical certainty if you're not necessarily attached to the "self"[1]. I suppose it's sort of how life works, on our planet anyway, for the last two billion years when we invented sex to outpace the viruses. Some sort of sentient planetary slime mold might have different ideas. One thing that's interesting is that Indian philosophy of the 800-400 BCE era had a concept congruous to the Greek atomos, the kanu. One of the neat things about kanu is that it knows where it's been, in a moral sense. This was posited as one explanation for reincarnation, all your bits fly around according to these moral laws, creating new points of awareness. Bad people burn all their energy whoring around, drinking, eating, so the kanu don't have a place to go (pigs, lower castes, etc), but good people spread their lives around, and kanu get higher life forms to coalesce into (brahmins, nice people, gods, etc). Obviously there's no morals at the Planck length, but it's an interesting notion. Auschwitz ashes in our lungs, tears of Christ in our blood. One of Buddha's "memories" of past lives was as a man who sacrificed himself to feed a starving tiger and cubs. I've always thought that locking corpses in eternal tupperware was a little creepy. Always keep in mind, though, at the heart of a lot of Indian philosophy is a certain brutality. I mean, the word for heaven is "non-existence"; as an old professor of mine[2] once quipped, "that's a perfectly reasonable posture if you've ever been to Bangalore". The entire notion of "higher" and "lower" life forms - including different kinds of PEOPLE - sort of gives away the game. Important to remember that AAALLL of these old systems were built to justify the civilization they emerged from, and it wasn't always purty. [1] Whatever that is. Some sort of recursive system that simulates outcomes for a given range of choices? That seems way too pat. [2] Who was also a minister, so there's that. He already believed in a Big Rock Candy Mountain with fluffy beards and chubby wingbabies.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  Regarding "the self": Buddhism is seriously conflicted about that idea. The self is said to be illusory, but we constantly apply all of our energies to defending it. Why do they go on so much about it, if it isn't real? It's been described to me as a pathetic, insignificant thing, absolutely in need of a defender. Western (or I should say, english-speaking) Buddhist teachers call it "ego", but I'm pretty sure that's wrong, in that Freud and Jung coined the term "ego" (they had different definitions, but it's not the self from Buddhism that either of them defined).

cracoucax 3y ago

Imo the belief in rebirth is not needed to practice metta, you just need to realize that every being wants to be happy, just like you. Yet all of them are mired in delusion and most of the time do things which go the opposite way of generating real happiness, we all do. Everyone is mired in delusion and most of the time react to feelings of anger and craving (vedana), which are generated based on their history, social norms and whatnot. They are just being manipulated by those all the time, unless they're very mindful of what's happening in their mind temporarily. Realizing this you can't really hate anybody, and in fact you realize they are 100% like you.

denton-scratch 3y ago
> the belief in rebirth is not needed to practice metta That's not what I was saying; I was commenting on that suggested technique for developing metta, in particular, which is dependent on belief in rebirth.
- cracoucax 3y ago
  Ah yes I understand

Glench 3y ago

> It doesn't work for me, of course; I don't believe in rebirth. Are you still able to generate loving-kindness in yourself? If so, then those teachings that don't work for you don't matter.

denton-scratch 3y ago
Well, honestly I don't know. If I had feelings of loving kindness, I'd know that; but that would be just feelings. I don't have a loving-kindness detector, and I wouldn't know how to calibrate it if I did. I suppose one could work from hatred; people generally know if they hate something. So if one has reduced the incidence of hatred, then perhaps you could say the technique worked. I used the technique (along with others) over a period of a couple of decades, during which I "suspended belief" concerning rebirth. But over a couple of decades, it's quite possible that my personality changed for other reasons - such as other techniques, or watching my children grow up, or simply maturing.
- Glench 3y ago
  If I may tease you lovingly for a moment, when you smile at your child do you go "I am unable to detect what is happening!" :P
  - thenobsta 3y ago
    Small animals also help. :) I can't help but feel happiness and goodwill for a cute cat or bunny. Once I have that feeling, I can pay attention to it, keep it going, sit with it, or wish that feeling for myself or to others. If I lose it, I just bring up an endearing image or thought of the cat/bunny/my kiddo and pay attention to that feeling again.
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    Both of my "children" are adults in their 30s; either of them could kill me with their bare hands if they chose to. I don't think loving kindness manifests when I smile at someone; I think it manifests when I forgive them for some outrage that has left me seething. That is, I don't associate loving-kindness particularly with good feelings.
    - Glench 3y ago
      > Both of my "children" are adults in their 30s; either of them could kill me with their bare hands if they chose to. My friend, if this is truly the state of your relationship with your children then I'm so sorry. I wish you a swift resolution to any and all ill-will. > I don't think loving kindness manifests when I smile at someone; I think it manifests when I forgive them for some outrage that has left me seething. That is, I don't associate loving-kindness particularly with good feelings. It sounds like loving-kindness practices don't work particularly well for you but forgiveness does so that's great. Still, I hope you get to feel a sense of warm-heartedness toward yourself and others. Even the Dalai Lama, one of the preeminent Buddhist figures in the world, says his true religion is kindness. > Warm-heartedness is my favourite subject. As human beings our mothers gave birth to us and we survived because of her care and affection. Warm-heartedness is not only the key factor for human survival, it’s also the basis for being able to live as peaceful, happy human beings. https://twitter.com/DalaiLama/status/1680874205854990336 https://twitter.com/DalaiLama/status/1680874205854990336

avgcorrection 3y ago

> For example, you can reflect that all beings have at one time or another been your mother, or your child; realizing this, how can you feel hatred towards any other being? What's the exact cosmology again? 1. Every being is likely to be your mother 2. Every being has been your mother with certainty (beginningless time)

denton-scratch 3y ago
Buddhist cosmology holds that the cycle of rebirth is endless, so all beings have been your mother and your child at some time in the past, and will be again in the future. So it's 2. And for clarity, the view is that time is both beginningless and endless.

MilStdJunkie 3y ago

Yeah, I don't buy the "remembering past lives" business, but "life after death" seems like a physical certainty if you're not necessarily attached to the "self"[1]. I suppose it's sort of how life works, on our planet anyway, for the last two billion years when we invented sex to outpace the viruses. Some sort of sentient planetary slime mold might have different ideas. One thing that's interesting is that Indian philosophy of the 800-400 BCE era had a concept congruous to the Greek atomos, the kanu. One of the neat things about kanu is that it knows where it's been, in a moral sense. This was posited as one explanation for reincarnation, all your bits fly around according to these moral laws, creating new points of awareness. Bad people burn all their energy whoring around, drinking, eating, so the kanu don't have a place to go (pigs, lower castes, etc), but good people spread their lives around, and kanu get higher life forms to coalesce into (brahmins, nice people, gods, etc). Obviously there's no morals at the Planck length, but it's an interesting notion. Auschwitz ashes in our lungs, tears of Christ in our blood. One of Buddha's "memories" of past lives was as a man who sacrificed himself to feed a starving tiger and cubs. I've always thought that locking corpses in eternal tupperware was a little creepy. Always keep in mind, though, at the heart of a lot of Indian philosophy is a certain brutality. I mean, the word for heaven is "non-existence"; as an old professor of mine[2] once quipped, "that's a perfectly reasonable posture if you've ever been to Bangalore". The entire notion of "higher" and "lower" life forms - including different kinds of PEOPLE - sort of gives away the game. Important to remember that AAALLL of these old systems were built to justify the civilization they emerged from, and it wasn't always purty. [1] Whatever that is. Some sort of recursive system that simulates outcomes for a given range of choices? That seems way too pat. [2] Who was also a minister, so there's that. He already believed in a Big Rock Candy Mountain with fluffy beards and chubby wingbabies.

denton-scratch 3y ago
Regarding "the self": Buddhism is seriously conflicted about that idea. The self is said to be illusory, but we constantly apply all of our energies to defending it. Why do they go on so much about it, if it isn't real? It's been described to me as a pathetic, insignificant thing, absolutely in need of a defender. Western (or I should say, english-speaking) Buddhist teachers call it "ego", but I'm pretty sure that's wrong, in that Freud and Jung coined the term "ego" (they had different definitions, but it's not the self from Buddhism that either of them defined).