> And isn't it suspicious that meditation always leads to a higher place?
Er, what? Meditation is a chance for you to stop reacting to everything around you, stop reacting to the animal impulses that keep floating up in your mind, and just see the world and your mind for what they are. If somebody cuts you off in traffic or makes fun of some idea that you hold a little too close for your own good, you probably feel anger or irritation building up, but that's just some animal part of your brain making noise. (It doesn't know that not everything is a matter of life and death.) You can let it go, and you don't need to get mad and snap at people because you had a crappy day at work. (That doesn't do anybody any good.) Likewise, don't get so caught up in thinking about a bug that came up this morning, or whatever, that you forget to taste your lunch. You can spend so much time worrying about an idea, something that doesn't even exist, that you forget to appreciate the things that do.
If your idea of a "higher place" is a world in which people stop doing as much stupid shit because they're no longer reacting like threatened animals half the time, then, ok, cool. (I think that capital-e Enlightenment is another idealized thing to drive yourself crazy trying to chase. Not all Buddhists believe in enlightenment, though there are probably as many Buddhisms as there are Buddhists.)
Also, a lot of the religious stuff came into Buddhism because, well, try showing that stuff to someone thousands of years ago in India, then having them explain it to someone else, ... who shows someone else in China how to see their mind working that way, who ... and see if it gets a bunch of their cultural symbolism mixed in along the way. Nowadays, we talk about the mind like it's a computer. Is it a computer? Or do we just talk about it that way because that model seems useful to us? Will that seem weird to people in the future?
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> And isn't it suspicious that meditation always leads to a higher place?
Er, what? Meditation is a chance for you to stop reacting to everything around you, stop reacting to the animal impulses that keep floating up in your mind, and just see the world and your mind for what they are. If somebody cuts you off in traffic or makes fun of some idea that you hold a little too close for your own good, you probably feel anger or irritation building up, but that's just some animal part of your brain making noise. (It doesn't know that not everything is a matter of life and death.) You can let it go, and you don't need to get mad and snap at people because you had a crappy day at work. (That doesn't do anybody any good.) Likewise, don't get so caught up in thinking about a bug that came up this morning, or whatever, that you forget to taste your lunch. You can spend so much time worrying about an idea, something that doesn't even exist, that you forget to appreciate the things that do.
If your idea of a "higher place" is a world in which people stop doing as much stupid shit because they're no longer reacting like threatened animals half the time, then, ok, cool. (I think that capital-e Enlightenment is another idealized thing to drive yourself crazy trying to chase. Not all Buddhists believe in enlightenment, though there are probably as many Buddhisms as there are Buddhists.)
Also, a lot of the religious stuff came into Buddhism because, well, try showing that stuff to someone thousands of years ago in India, then having them explain it to someone else, ... who shows someone else in China how to see their mind working that way, who ... and see if it gets a bunch of their cultural symbolism mixed in along the way. Nowadays, we talk about the mind like it's a computer. Is it a computer? Or do we just talk about it that way because that model seems useful to us? Will that seem weird to people in the future?