Destroy My Belief System, Please!

Are you asking if Jesus died of an excess of love/compassion? If so, if was a great death?

Yes, it was a great death.

I note you did not respond to my comment upthread that the subject is useful to place all of one person's experience under one "roof", in one "set".

Yes, the illusion of an ego-center (of an internal unity) depends to a large extent on the capacity to put together a story-of-self based on memory. This suggests that the "subject" is the result rather than the cause of this process of creating a single roof/set.

Depends what you call the "subject" I guess. But I agree that we construct ourselves. The point I am trying to make though, is that such a self is essential to understanding the value of our mind for survival. A disparate, discontinued series of experiences that are not comparable or cannot be aggregated may be - I imagine - how simpler animals see the world. We can do better than than because we have a mind, i.e. a "space" where a large number of experiences and thoughts are put together and can be compared/aggregated. That "center" or "ego" or "consciousness" or however you call it is not an illusion, it is a central feature of what we humans are.

I never understood the need to negate or destroy the self, at least philosophically. I agree that morally speaking, being able to "tame one's self" is useful to not become obsessed by status or money. But a self is useful, if well trained.

No need to "negate" or "destroy" the "self", only to realize its illusory nature. The illusion of self is useful, and that's why it exists almost universally. But I would rather what I really am, one with the World that some puny, isolated, and essentially alienated ego within and surrounded by the World.

Corrections: "But I would rather BE what I really am, one with the World, RATHER THAN some puny...."

Interesting blind guess about REALITY, JL.

Interesting blind guess...all the way around.

Thanks Frank.

Just because being a "self" carries painful implications in terms of our remoteness/alienation from the world, doesn't mean we are not selves. I hope that you don't run away from each and every idea that you find painful or unappealing. Who said philosophy was for the faint-hearted?

Good argument, Olivier. But Buddhism does not deny the egoself because it is a reality that causes suffering, Buddhism (and other mystically oriented practices) identifies the egoself as a condition of deep existential suffering, and provides ways to function with the illusory egoself (because of its eufunctional aspects) while prophylactically identifying its essentially painless ontological status. In other words Buddhism denies the egoself because it is an unreality that causes unnecessary suffering.

Oh yeah . . . spread that dogma, beat that drum!

Looks like throwing the baby with the bathwater to me... In jest: if your head hurts, take an aspirin rather than chopping your head off. But maybe you could provide a few specific examples of the types of "unnecessary suffering" Buddhism tries to get rid of, and how it does so?

You are most welcome.

You are a guy who blind guesses with the best of 'em!

With the BEST of them? Thanks again.

JLN has the merit of being truthful polite n constructive, so from all the hot pot guessing artists around the forum I like him best.

I like him myself, Fil.

Oh, JLN, please provide an example of "choices" without "choosers"...Please disprove agency via meaningful agrammatical practices...Please describe the circumstance that allows "you" to "agree" with Krumple v. an alternative, sans agency...

Your understanding of both grammar, usage, and context is weak...

My choice to answer your last challenge is a foolish one, but I see no chooser behind it, only a grammatical convention, the convention that suggests an agent behind rain; when rain falls we see and think that "it rains". Nietzsche rightly called grammar the metaphysics of the masses.

There are several ways to examine it. But if it never goes examined it is easy to be mistaken for agency. I'll attempt to show you what I mean using my re-occurring thought experiment.

Imagine you are born without any of your senses working. You are blind, deaf, can't taste or smell and your sense of touch all don't work. Your body is kept alive but you have absolutely no way of experiencing anything. The concept of self would never arise because the concept relies on the concept of "other".

This is me and this is not me.

Here is another example. If your arm were severed from your body and lay on the ground at your feet. Would you say that is still your arm? After all it is just a mass of cells laying on the ground. If it decomposed and became nutrients in the soil would you still say it is your arm? If those nutrients were adsorbed into plants would you still say it was your arm?

What is the point of these thought experiments? They are an attempt to turn your examination inward to look for where the self exists. If you examine it long enough you will discover there is no place that a self persists. There is an inflow of information through the senses but we are NOT this data. However; we react as if we are the data. This is why you say things like, I see this, or I hear that. You are trying to claim that you are experiencing a piece of data. No the data arises flows and ceases. No where is there a self that is experiencing the data.

We are taught the concept of self through our sense data. We attach to this concept as if it were real and important. The fact of the matter is, all there is, is the data. Nothing else.