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283 lines
17 KiB
Plaintext
283 lines
17 KiB
Plaintext
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% Origin of the Buddha's teachings
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One question plagues me, plagues me more than anything else. It undermines my
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rationality, casts doubt on all that I believe. Let me tell you a little story
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about it.
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Milinda and the Minotaur
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Imagine you are standing in front of a labyrinth, composed of lush hedges,
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expanding into the vast distance. You climb on a tree next to the entrance and
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can see the many twists and turns, make out same dead-ends, maybe even note a
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few promising paths, but the maze soons just becomes a uniform green canvas.
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There are many rumors about the labyrinth, and while a few warn about a monster,
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most speak of the wonderful trees that are supposed to be hidden deep inside.
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O, what delicious fruit those trees have!
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You want to confirm this, climb up on the tree again. If it is so great,
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shouldn't you be able to see it? But try as you may, you can't see them. Maybe a
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few openings, which could contain a small tree, or some glittering on the
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horizon, which may come from the golden fruit, but are you confident? Of course
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not.
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Some of those rumors are more plausible than others, as you can see from your
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watch. There isn't any space for trees right at the beginning, which you can
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clearly oversee. The gargantuan tree in the middle of the garden also seems
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unlikely - while you can't see the middle, surely the tree would tower over it
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all, visible from everywhere? And if there really is a monster, it can't be
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*too* large, as the path is quite narrow and doesn't seem to widen.
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Nonetheless, you embark on an adventure to explore the labyrinth. You gather all
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the maps you can find - even if they are wrong, and most must be, as they all
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contradict each other, they surely can't hurt. You intend to try them out and
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see how far they get you. You take heed of the warning that maybe there are no
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trees, that all the maps are only based on speculation, after all, and that you
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surely don't want to fall into a trap or encounter the monster. Regardless, you
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enjoy the scenery and the exploration, so the journey is already it's own
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reward.
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You wander around for a long time and maybe even find some very interesting
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spots, meet new people along the way and once, you came to a little
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clearing, inside which stood a little sapling. It is not a tree, and carries no
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fruits, but the sight invigorates you because it makes the rumors a bit more
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plausible. Maybe, one day...?
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Excited, you get out all the old maps you nearly forgot about and study them.
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Does any mention the sapling? You search and search, but they are all very
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confusing and incomplete and you can't quite be sure you are even reading some
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of them right. Some are easy to discard, they contradict your own notes of the
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maze. A few look more promising and you set out to follow them for a bit. But
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alas, you find yourself inside dead-ends again, but if you read the map a bit
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different, or accept that they may contain some mistakes, you still find some
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help in them. But is this true? Are the maps really essentially right or do you
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just want them to be true? All the little contradictions and mistakes, and the
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nagging doubt whenever they *don't* mention a flower or sculpture you found. If
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someone really drew the map from experience, wouldn't they have seen them, too,
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and written them down?
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But there is this one map. It is very old and seems fairly unremarkable. Often,
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it just contains rough drafts, a few broad strokes on how the way goes. In many
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places, there are also revisions and additional lines, surely added much later
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by other wanderers, but a strong handwriting can be seen underneath. One night,
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when you take rest and the refreshing cool air calms your mind, you read it
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again, more carefully. And two things come to mind, features you hadn't noticed
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before or seen much anywhere else. Far away from the entry, the map suddenly
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gets more and more specific, noting seemingly random turns and hidden passages.
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And maybe even more curiously, there are no trees on that map. No fruits, no
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sights, nothing of interest at all, at first. But you look closer and think you
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can make out a pattern, a converging of paths and then you see it - there is a
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*space* at the end. You didn't see it because you always looked for drawings and
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notes, but it is the absence of lines that stands out. As if there was a point
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where there was no labyrinth anymore. As if it ended there.
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This place captures your attention. How would you get there? There are many
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turns on that map, but no complete path. Often the notes don't even seem to fit
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together in any way, as if they not just contained gaps, but were impossible.
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But you can make out some spot not too far from here, so you decide to go, to
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see for yourself how good the map really is.
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The new goal leads you along a very different way, one that you hadn't
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considered before. At times, it gets very confusing and the map offers no help,
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and sometimes, there are even thorns and thistles, but worst are the long
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stretches of boredom, when the labyrinth gets very simple and straightforward,
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but just goes on and on. You have no problem figuring out which turns will be a
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dead-end well in advance, but then suddenly, there comes one of those very
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specific notes on the map. The part of the maze looks like one you have seen
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many times before and you are already sure where to go, but the map urges you to
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take a turn right here. Your intuition and experience tell you that this will be
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a dead-end, one like many others just like it you have ended up in, but for some
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reason, you decide to follow the map.
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To your surprise, the map is right! It really wasn't a dead-end and you can
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proceed. Maybe it is useful after all? But doubt creeps in again when you notice
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that the new path is very close to the old one. Sometimes you can even see it
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right through the hedges. Does it make such a difference? The map gets quiet
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again, but your intuition serves you well for the time being, when suddenly,
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just like before, the map notes an important turn. But this time you question
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its judgment even more because you can look down the way and clearly see that it
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is a dead-end! The map must be wrong, you can see the wall, there's nothing to
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be done here.
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Disappointed, you turn around. The map is faulty like the others, after all, so
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there's no use staying in those tedious parts. Particularly the undergrowth
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really makes you wish to return to your old ways. But one night, during another
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rest, you read the map again. Maybe there *is* another way to read it... when
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you notice some of the random scribblings and your vision *shifts*, it changes
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of how you *see* the map. Those other lines are not about the general turns, but
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about the thistles and thorns! When you look back at your last few day, you now
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see that occasionally, you came to a well-known pattern and on your way through
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always encountered those painful plants, but if you had gone how the lines told
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you, a bit more inefficiently and seemingly in circles sometimes, then yes, it's
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true, you would have avoided most of them!
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That's quite a level of detail there, something you didn't expect at all. Is it
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just a fluke? The next morning, you want to find out, so you follow the map
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again, back to the dead-end, but this time, you try to go more along the way the
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lines seem to indicate, taking detours, but to your surprise, you really have a
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better time. Rarely does the path get painful, and because you wander around so
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many curves and loops, even the boredom ceases.
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You return to the dead-end. You can clearly see it there. If you follow this
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turn, as the map says, you won't be able to go on anymore. It is futile. Still,
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the recent discovery has made you more confident, so you just take the turn
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anyway. You might as well see the dead-end in all its glory. Just a few minutes
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and you are there, surrounded by thick hedges, with no hope of continuing your
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journey. You study the map, but there really is no other interpretation.
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Saddened, you sit down to rest.
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You give up on thinking yourself through this, put away the map and stop
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thinking about what mistakes you might have made, about how you could have
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walked or what those lines really could have meant and just close your eyes and
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lie down to sleep, right where you are.
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You sleep long, and even though it was just the middle of the day, you do not
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awake until the next morning. The sunshine finally wake you up and when you open
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your eyes, you *see it*. Right in front of you, there is a small passage, right
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through the hedge. You would have never seen it from above, but the twigs give
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away just slightly and form a narrow space you can probably crawl through. You
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have no doubts anymore. This is what the map meant, you understand now. You make
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your way through the dark underwood and arrive again on a more secure path. This
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time, you listen closely to the map, try out it's playful suggestions and over
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all this new-found joy, you nearly forget where you were going, until, after a
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long journey, something appears you have never seen - a straight path.
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No turns anymore, no curves, just a straight path, that gets brighter and
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brighter, the further you go, and at the end of the path, the hedge gets thinner
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and spottier, until it finally stops altogether and the ground, which so far has
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always been earth and sand, becomes grass and then you see it, what you could
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never have seen from the entrance, because it is not a high tree, towering over
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the garden, but a wide and clear lake. The glittering, it was not from the
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fruits, but it is the sunlight, reflected in the calm surface of the water.
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There is no wind, no disturbance at all. You sit down at the lake, let your feet
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hang into the water, but before the peace of the sight can overwhelm you, you
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look onto the horizon and the lake just stretches on and on, and you start to
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swim, thinking, maybe, there is another shore...
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What comes before a question?
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=============================
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There is an important fallacy, one that plagues all religious thought. I'm gonna
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call it the Unjustified Focus. What it means is that among the vast realm of
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possible ideas, one needs a large amount of evidence upfront to even consider one
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idea as worthy of investigation. You start with general evidence, then look for
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hypotheses that might fit them. Once you have narrowed it down a bit, you can
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start trying to disprove specific ideas. But you can't just pick any one idea
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and start the research with it. Imagine if the justice system worked like
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this - you can only start investigating a specific person *after* you have some
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evidence already that they might be relevant, not just on a hunch.
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This is important, but hard to really grasp because it puts the normal order of
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an argument on its head. Let's look at an example. Imagine there's been a
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traffic accident, a car crashed into a tree. The police starts the
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investigation, when one officer suggests that it was clearly aliens. Aliens?,
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you ask, why aliens? And he explains, there is no evidence that *disproves*
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aliens, right? No eye witness that didn't see a UFO? And if aliens did it, they
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surely would leave no obvious evidence behind, and that is exactly what we find.
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And of course, if aliens did it, they would probably use a laser beam of some
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sort, so we would expect the car to be still hot, and just feel the hood, it
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really is hot!
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The problem is hopefully clear. It's not that any of the three later claims is
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false - they aren't. The hood really is hot, there are no obvious signs and we
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don't have evidence *against* aliens. But that's *irrelevant* because we don't
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have any reason to think of aliens in the first place! We first would have to
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find evidence that clearly points towards aliens, *then* we could think about
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whether it actually is true or not. Just picking an arbitrary idea with no
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justification and focusing on that is invalid.
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And that's the crux here. Instead of dismissing any specific evidence or
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argument, we need to dismiss *the question*. You don't just need evidence to
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answer something, but you already need evidence to even ask about it, too!
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This has been a major revelation for me. Let me state it again because it is so
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important - to even start asking questions, you already need evidence at hand.
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If you don't have it, then all the further speculation is irrelevant, completely
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independent of the strength of any following claim.
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This blows many religious lines of thought right out of the water. It matters
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not how convincing a case Christians, for example, make that God *might* have
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created the universe because before all that, they need to establish that they
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have evidence that we even should think about this. They get the order of proof
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wrong - they start with an conclusion "God did it" and then work backwards. And
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it all matters not, none of it. We would first need to have evidence that points
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forward, and until we have that, we can dismiss all further claims, *unseen*.
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So if someone has no good reason to start asking questions, we can ignore all
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their answers, even if they might be valid or even true! That's the strength of
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this fallacy.
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And this dismantles not just religious thought, but so many things. Whatever the
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ancient Greeks thought about atoms, we can ignore it - they had no way to
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observe them, so it is all meaningless. The old enlightened philosophers,
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thinking about human nature? All irrelevant - they didn't know about evolution,
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without which they couldn't have possibly understood the origin of any
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behaviour. If you don't get your first step right, nothing that follows it
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matters anymore.
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How could the Buddha have known?
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================================
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For a while, I thought I wielded not just Occam's razor, but Occam's meat
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cleaver. The power of the Unjustified Focus was so strong, I could take apart
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whole traditions in one precise strike. But then one thought came up, and with
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it doubt, a little at first, then more and more, until I realized that Eris had
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successfully stolen the cleaver right out of my hand and cut me in two.
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"Does the Unjustified Focus really only go one way?"
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The idea of it is, after all, if you haven't been through the maze, you can't
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draw a map. You can ignore the map of anyone that never entered it - it can't
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possibly be correct. But, that's just one direction. It also goes the other way
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- if someone has an accurate map, then they must have been through the maze.
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And with that thought, it all came down. I have been cheating, mentally. I had
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accepted ideas without considering where they came from. I took Buddhist
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teachings and practices, but never considered their origin. It is not that they
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might be wrong that got to me because I *knew* that they were right. I had seen
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it for myself. This didn't upset me. It's the implications that got to me.
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If the map is reliable, then what about it's other features, the ones I
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wrestle with? And what about the one that drew it? How could it be conceivably
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possible that someone knew the details without having seen them themselves? But
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he claims that there is an exit. Should I then trust him?
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And with this realization, the second fetter fell.
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It makes no sense. Some common insights, sure. Even anatta, even that. It may,
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after all, be just a lucky guess. Philosophers have claimed nearly everything by
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now, so *someone* has to be right, after all. But all the details later?
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If you had a map that was right the first few times, ok, that could just be
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chance or maybe you had a really good look from the entrance or collected all
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the popular stories you heard, hoping they'd converge to some truth.
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But if the map just keeps on being right, even when you get deeper and deeper?
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Beyond a certain depth, there is only one plausible interpretation - the map is
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correct. But the map claims to lead you to an exit. If it is correct, that exit
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must exist. If it is correct, the one that drew it must have reached it.
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The more I learn about his teachings, the more I see that they are true. His
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insight seems to be without limits. From every mystic I learn, I find flaws in
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their teachings. This is to be expected; no one could have understood
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*everything*, certainly not on their own. They all provide valuable insights,
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but also many clearly false ideas.
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Only one seems immune. I run out of excuses. I fail to come up with plausible
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scenarios how he, in his time, could have been so wise. I find it harder and
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harder to dismiss the possibility that, really, he did achieve nirvana. That the
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teachings must be true. All of them. That I can no longer dismiss the parts I am
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uncomfortable with, the parts I don't *want* to be true.
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It seems impossible. On what knowledge could the Buddha have built his
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teachings? He didn't know neuroscience. He didn't know evolution. He predates
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all of science. Yet, his teachings are *true*. How can this be?
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And I think of Thích Quảng Đức. He didn't even move. Desire can be overcome.
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Oh, and btw. The monster is real. I have met it. It is quite nice and has some
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very interesting things to say. May you encounter it one day, too!
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