No state solution: Would dissolution of Israel bring peace?

This suggestion is prompted by John Lennon's song "Imagine" about a world with no countries. To be precise, a world with no nation states. Americans ought to take the lead and initiate the dissolution of the USA in the same fashion as the ending of the Soviet Union.

People, of various different cultures, have been living naturally together among each other until their subjugation by divisive ideological power groups through the formation of governments. Power groupings are divisive.

Governments are corporations run by elites to control citizens for the achievement of nefarious agendas. Business enterprises are also corporations run by elites to gain profit at the expense of workers and minority shareholders.

Humanity are people. Governments are not, and they possess people the way the mind, when driven by rage, possess the body and commit it to kill other human bodies.

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SW-User

Well, Nation States are a fairly modern phenomenon. We even project them back into the past, with such ideas of the ancient Greeks being some sort of example. Before the Nation State was the "empire".

But whatever there was, we had war and conflict.

It really is up to us, as individuals, to seek solutions, first within ourselves - but finding, as the Buddhist texts say:-

In protecting ourselves we protect others
In protecting others we protect ourselves

sree251 · 41-45, M

@SW-User You quoted:

"In protecting ourselves we protect others
In protecting others we protect ourselves"

Your quotation is an ideology. In itself, it is a string of words evoking platitudes of illusory selves. Human bodies are real, as real as the bullets and bombs that tear them to bits. They suffer when we fictitious selves vent our fury on each imaginary other.

SW-User

@sree251 No, i see no ideology at all.

"We are what we understand"

Maybe yet another ideology to you!

sree251 · 41-45, M

@SW-User Yes, I do see my self as an idea, an illusion. Is that not what you realized?

SW-User

@sree251 I have realised nothing. There is no self. Therefore it cannot be an "idea". The "idea" (if there is one) is to realise non-duality within duality.

To see is to understand. We are what we understand. Yet such is not static.

"To Dogen, mind was at once knowledge and reality, at once the knowing subject and the known object, yet it transcended them both at the same time. In this nondual conception of mind, what one knew was what one was—and ontology, epistemology, and soteriology were inseparably united." (Hee-Jin Kim)

To Dogen though, as said, what was seen was not static (being) ‘Things’ seen as they are are transformable. (within becoming) Our task is to change them by seeing through them. From Dogen’s perspective
seeing was changing and making.

Anyway, enough. Just a tad pissed off at the moment.

Thanks

sree251 · 41-45, M

@SW-User You said: "Anyway, enough. Just a tad pissed off at the moment."

Getting pissed off is the self in action. It is one of the Seven Deadly sins defining the nature of the self.

Liberation from the self cannot be attained through denial of its existence. The self is the Jew (an idea) fixated on the need for the homeland of Israel (another idea).

SW-User

@sree251 Of course it is the self in action!

And the not-self (anatta) teaching is not to argue of the "non-existence" of anything as such.

But yes, I'm sorry, my words did give the impression of denying it's existence.

It is more Dogen:-

To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all things.

And

Conveying oneself toward all things to carry out practice-enlightenment is delusion. All things coming and carrying out practice-enlightenment through the self is realization.

Thus....

flowers fall even though we love them; weeds grow even though we dislike them.

Just to add an edit. Just to look from another angle. There is no self. Yet here we are!

As D.T.Suzuki says, "we are empty from the beginning". We do not acquire it or attain it.

Yet here we are! We do not become empty by "practice", there is no attainment, no "works". Grace.

sree251 · 41-45, M

@SW-User You said: "Of course it is the self in action!

And the not-self (anatta) teaching is not to argue of the "non-existence" of anything as such."

This is really a great post capturing an understanding of the nature of ignorance. Words are the composition of the self, a movement of thought that motivates the body in action.

Dissolution of Israel is dissolution of the object of desire for a homeland. What homeland? This entirety of human existence is an illusion the liberation from which ends suffering. And what suffering has already been endured since the materialization of the Jew!

SW-User

@sree251 Well, "ignorance" (avidya) is in Buddhism the cause of suffering. Which can be seen as a very positive teaching, in as much as the implication is that if we can see and know correctly then we shall know the end of suffering, here in this life.

As I see it, much religion (and I include Buddhism) can be simply a betrayal of this life for some imagined "other".

Obviously Buddhism is not one monolithic teaching that has remained unchanged throughout its 2500 years. In my own experience and understanding, Theravada is more world denying than Mahayana. Mahayana, with its teaching that "samsara" (this world of birth and death) IS "nirvana", is potentially an affirmation of this world. Nothing is betrayed.

Then you mention "desire" (tanha) , which follows from ignorance. Simply put we desire the wrong things.

Anyway, it can come back to Love, which the Buddha called "the liberation of the heart," "the most sublime beauty". And switching Faiths, there is Meister Eckhart who said simply:-

Love has no why

.....which illuminates all that has been said.