Doesn’t affect your main point, but this is SO not what the Buddhists were talking about (at least Indian and TIbetan Buddhism, which are the strains with which I have passing familiarity).
The Buddhist position on this stuff would be, “stop maximising a personal utility function; the fact that you feel you have to do that will lead you to bigger problems later on. [Why that is so is an involved discussion and I’ll get it horribly wrong if I try.] Instead, learn to let go of the whole dichotomy of me and not-me, regard your consciousness being a local* phenomenon as a transient accident, and the you’ll attain Nirvana—you’ll get outside the cycle of birth and death which is the only reason your consciousness has this local manifestation.” (Yes, I see the obvious mistake here, but think of the whole identifying the listener as someone separate as a stepping stone to a point where that becomes superfluous.)
(And all three keys are related. I imagine that if you fill in the thoughts about why they’re related, you’ll get as good an understanding as I, so I won’t go into it.)
*Local in the sense of ‘in your body,’ not the way it’s used in physics.
Doesn’t affect your main point, but this is SO not what the Buddhists were talking about (at least Indian and TIbetan Buddhism, which are the strains with which I have passing familiarity).
The Buddhist position on this stuff would be, “stop maximising a personal utility function; the fact that you feel you have to do that will lead you to bigger problems later on. [Why that is so is an involved discussion and I’ll get it horribly wrong if I try.] Instead, learn to let go of the whole dichotomy of me and not-me, regard your consciousness being a local* phenomenon as a transient accident, and the you’ll attain Nirvana—you’ll get outside the cycle of birth and death which is the only reason your consciousness has this local manifestation.” (Yes, I see the obvious mistake here, but think of the whole identifying the listener as someone separate as a stepping stone to a point where that becomes superfluous.)
(And all three keys are related. I imagine that if you fill in the thoughts about why they’re related, you’ll get as good an understanding as I, so I won’t go into it.)
*Local in the sense of ‘in your body,’ not the way it’s used in physics.
Thank you for this. I’m revising my models accordingly.