From: Sehkenenra (Sehkenenra@netzero.net)
Date: Fri Jul 19 2002 - 11:38:28 MDT
>Personally I find much to admire in buddhism, but I also disagree with
>the fundamental tenet that all is suffering (this is why I enjoy Zen,
>which is rather far from this). Just as I see something positive and
>downright exuberant in existentialist freedom (unlike most
>existentialists :-) I think the real message of buddhism seems to be
>"existence is suffering if you feel so, ecstasy if you feel so".
Hmm... I always saw considerable exuberence in the writings of Nietzsche-
but then again, he was more of a pre-existentialist than a true
existentialist. I've wondered if our rather "grim" understandings of
existentialist philosophy might have more to do with trying to understand
the vocabulary and the ideas from a traditional western (read: Christian)
viewpoint than from anything inherent withing the philosophy. (Especially in
Sartre's "Being and Nothingness")
> What do I care for your suffering? Pain, even agony is no more
> than information to the senses, data fed to the computer of the
> mind. The lesson is simple: you have recieved the information,
> now act on it. Take control of the imput, and you shall become
> master of the output.
Alpha Centauri quotes! Those were one of my favorite aspects of the game.
Chairman Yang's futuristic Mao/Tao - ism was a most amusing (and somewhat
scary) synthesis, I thought.
>We are subsets of the universe, subsets with internal states shifting
>according to our strivings and directing our external actions. Hence our
>strivings and actions are the internal strivings and actions of the
>universe. In a way we are the mental subprocesses of it. So we better
>awake ourselves and the universe in the process of making it greater.
My sentiments exactly.
-Nicq MacDonald
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