Inflate or destroy self?

Olivier, your questions about Buddhism, like the notion that Buddhists want to elminate personal pronouns from their speech and thought reveal your admitted--and understandable-- ingorance of the practice. Buddhist (and Hindu) meditation is not the attempt to stop thinking, to cut it off, although I can understand why non-practicioners might think that it is the case. The task is to see experience as it is, without thinking (something very different-from an inhibiting effort at not thinking--to see your "true" self and experience sans the mediation of categories and abstractions). Of course, abstractions and categories are very useful for survival, as is the ego illusion. But not for the purposes of Buddhist enlightenment/liberation. Please try to keep that straight.
But I do think that much of the exoteric expressions of popular Buddhism can be characterized as superstition, idolatry and explotation and mystification of the public much as is seen in the history of European religion.
Illumination is the principal purpose of esoteric Buddhism, and this pursuit (especially in the Mahayana branches) focuses on the illumination (enlightenment or psychospiritual liberation of one's Self (big mind not little ego mind).
Meditation has ethical implications, i.e., personal illumination results in a deep and effortless attitude of empathy and compassion for others. Although the Buddha provided precepts for ethical behavior, the purpose of such "rules" was only partly for the maintenance of social order; most importantly it was for the removal of behaviroal and attitudinal obstacles to enlightenment: one cannot evolve into an enlightened state if he or she is riddled with selfishness, greed, hatred, envy and the attachent to or fixation on objects of desire.

Provided I'm sick of course...

Indeed, "mentally destroying" or "letting go" worldviews based on meditation alone seems pointless to me. I go by the time-honored Western approach of critique based on logical consistency, how well the worldview fits with known facts, and its practical results. Harder to do though...

I never said Buddhists wanted to get rid of pronouns, in fact I said precisely the opposite. I said it would be an impossible feat, because that would assume the locutor's inexistence.

Isn't the big mind a self itself?

I suppose JL is not satisfied with "local government" he rather have some sort of "United Nations" in its place !... I in turn am not sure UN exists at all...

Were you not implying that I and our other anti-dualists somehow oppose the use of personal pronouns. I hope I misread you there.
By the way, Big Mind in zen is a nickname for one's "True Self" which is no-mind or consciousness without attachment to ego (little mind). But I agree with IGM that it is a waste of time to discuss "esoteric" Buddhism with one who is making no real effort to understand it.

I think YOU were implying that personal pronouns were problematic, reifing or something.

Glad to see you don't deny the existence of mind and self, including your self. Of course there can be narrow-minded, self-centred people, and they are pretty annoying, but that's not a reason to deny the existence of the (big of course) mind.

And you're right, I am not interested in Buddhism. Hope your true self don't mind. You don't seem too interested in what I have to say either, but I can live with that...

On the contrary, I AM interested in what you say. That is why I read your posts. Indeed, it was how I thought in my twenties (I'm now in my seventies). My point (Buddhism's point--as well as that of Nietzsche's and other non-Buddhists)--about pronouns is not that they are not useful, even essential, but they are misleading when not seen for what they are. It is spiritually (and perhaps philosophically) misleading to assume that because we have a subject-predict grammar we live in a subject-predicate world.
I'm off to the movies. Little Mind thinks he's going to see Star Trek.

They are just concepts, nothing more. What else could they be?


That's where I don;t follow. The existence of subjects is, I believe, empirically established by the cogito, and the negation of subjects leads to logical contradictions, so should be discarded on logical grounds alone.

Beyond the lack of consideration for empirical evidence and the lack of logic in the position, isn't it negative, as an attitude? What good is there in negating subjects? E.g. if subjects don't exist, is it okay to kill people?

You see I can empathise with what JL is trying to convey in a metaphorical way...but not when he is trying to take it seriously...of course we all should be aware we are all linked and inter dependent, we are a social species...we gather from each other as we are mimetic creatures...no one is trying to disable the importance of society here...but killing the "self" is shooting our own foot as a group...I was hoping he got to get why it is so...

Is this what he is talking about? I was under the impression his critique of selves was more radical and spiritual than just pointing at social determinism.

It is...but I am trying to bridge the gap...(JL is one of the nicest persons to whom I ever disagree with)

Just one rejoinder to the cogito...

Like I try on the other thread with CI and you. Ci is okay - he just doesn't like weird spacey stuff too much.

The fact that the X is phenomenal does not make X non existent..."I" reports the objective relation of being at a given organized way of thinking, a pattern of experiencing thought about stuff...Kierkegaard wants to extract to much but phenomena are real objects to...

..."weird" is often the less weird and most logical explanation there is...the so called "normal" is a lot like magic when seen up close...

...by the way is there a gap between us ? do you need help climbing up ?

Just got back from seeing the latest star trek. I love to suspect rational judgement.
Olivier, you ask about the limitations of the non-dualist approach. You ask , in particular, how one can doubt the self when it is established empirically by the cogito. I thought it was obvious by now that Descartes established only with his "Cogito ergo sum" that there was the experience of thinking, not evidence of a thinker (I repeat it is the subject-predicate trap that insists the deed requires a doer). His was not an empirical demonstration of anything more than a subjective experience. Moreover, from the anti-dualistic perspecdtive there is no point in negating subjects since they do not exist. What does exist in that regard is the interpretation of the existence of subjects as egos. There do exist interpretations of bodies and minds experiencing life and for that reason we wish to assist them in doing so maximally. When the day of our death comes it will be nice to enjoy the realization of our true ego-less nature, that we are, as you put it, "concepts, nothing more.".
Please consider my signature line.

Makes no real difference.

wait wait right there J...patterns are REAL patterns...the experience has a pattern there going on, is not just imagination....that pattern is what you would call an "I"...

Then you'll not want to agree with me: I'll slobber all over you. (just kidding).