I prefer the joys and experiences of existence to oblivion--why is that difficult to understand?
Attachment to joys and experience of existence is just as damaging, seems to me. Perhaps that's part of the reason you're also attached to the self as some possession.
Being created for a purpose does not make us a robot, if we are free to chose to not fulfull that purpose.
But it makes us little different than robots in the sense that we are designed with some purpose that overrides our own individual goals. Why should I care about this purpose just because some creator thinks it knows what's best for me?
I don't know why we would not want to extend existence. Life is preferable to death unless there is only suffering and no hope in our existence of course.
Life is only preferable to death in that we are conscious, but that consciousness can lead to clinging and aversion, general delusion. It would be better to die and start anew in some sense than to continue to persist in delusion for eternity.
I don't follow why our impermanence makes annihilation preferable to existence.
Annihilation in itself is not preferable. I don't think I implied that. Annihilation of the self is simply a fact of existence in Buddhist metaphysics. If you want to deny it,you have that freedom, but it would be persisting in a sort of delusion,which concerns me. Existence is existence, annihilation is annihilation. To make absolute judgments about either seems to be missing the point.
I find that worthless--not worth mentioning in fact. That is my point. Why avoid the term annihilation because that kind of survival is not survival.
I never said annihilation equalled individual survival. You seem to be putting words in my mouth.
But that is not survival and even that is temporary.
You cannot deny you survive in some sense through others. Why would you say you don't survive in some way through others remembering you, even if you don't exist as a consciousness anymore? But I never said it wasn't temporary.
I don't hate them and I don't think God hates them. I simply don't believe they have a destiny of existence--like all people in the Buddhist theology I guess.
Existence is not understood in black and white terms as you're structuring it. Samsara is an existence in bondage to our attachments, nirvana is being free of those attachments and simply living as you are. That seems to be the distinction I'd make in some tentative way.
I see no problem with understanding self exists and being attached to its continued existence.
You think continued and permanent/eternal existence is a good thing, where that has not been defended as good. In fact, it would be preferable in that context to be annihilated even if you were not reborn, since eternity would drive a person insane just by the notion of unending existence and no real sense of time.
That is meaningless. I think you are too attached to the temporary memory people will have of you after you are gone.
I am hardly attached, I simply acknowledge that fact, where you don't seem to have the nuance to accept that you survive in a nominal sense through others, even if you yourself don't experience life anymore technically speaking.
It is neither hope nor comfort to me.
Only because you insist that meaning can only exist in individuals, when it can also be a shared thing, even when a person leaves existence, so to speak. I can share with you a value of things and a meaning in life, but if I die, that meaning does not cease to exist.
Wrong. Meaning to me is purly a self centered thing. If I do not exist, the meaning to me does not exist.
The meaning to you is not the only meaning ever. You are fixated on yourself and how much everything you do matters as opposed to considering yourself as part of a whole. Not to say you aren't individual in some sense, but you are not absolutely unique necessarily.
Their meaning does not give me meaning
You keep looking at meaning as a possession, when it is an experience first and foremost.
Incorrect. Whatever you do meaning to you will cease when you die and it matter not what others memories are and how long they last.
Only if you continue to think that if you do not possess something, it has no value.
Why dance around the issue. You are talking about non existence as your destiny, period, end of issue.
Not my destiny, since I do not strictly exist in eternity in any sense. My identity is always shifting, my experiences are always changing my self through a web of interrelated aggregates, including my senses, my judgment and varying perception of things.
I do not deny that my understanding of the Creator is flawed at best. That does not mean the existence of the Creator is limited to what I think of the Creator. Yes the Creator is not the same as the creation. It is different.
I don't think that is the case, since you merely perceive this great being as the creator and cannot demonstrate absolutely that it actually is the creator and is therefore separate from existence. Creation would be a mistaken term, since it presumes things are created, when it would be better to say they are generated from natural processes. Big bang, abiogenesis, evolution, etc. This does not render our life meaningless, but you seem to have attachment to things outside yourself as the source of your meaning in life.
No I really exist. I think, therefore I am.
I don't deny you experience, but this does not follow to your self consisting in any sort of indestructible soul. You have failed to defend this part of your claim.
This does not mean I do not exist.
Empirical existence is not the same as absolute existence
I don't know what you are saying here.
When you die, your experiences cease and therefore your "self" breaks down and dissipates like a chemical reaction breaking down things into base elements
I see no reason at all to not be attached to this life simply because I am changing as I live.
Because your attachment is delusory. You think that just because you are attached to life that you will persist even though it may very well not be the case that you will persist after you die. You may very well just cease to be and that attachment will be for nothing, a wasted effort of trying to remain eternally existent.
No it is neither non existence nor emptiness. It is part of what my existence means.
You're taking a western approach to this. non existence doesn't necessarily mean absolute negation, nor does emptiness mean nothingness as in void. There is a potential gap of understanding of these terms from a western/european sense and an eastern/asian sense. Neither of those words have the nihilistic interpretation you placed upon them in Buddhist thought.
I agree with focus on the present, but that does not push me to assume there is no future.
Depends on how you define future, I suppose.
You assume much. How would being able to live longer than we now can force us to be stangate?
It would make our psychological existence stagnant, because we would have no experience of contrasts, of suffering, of loss. Our life would become meaningless much more than one might say it is meaningless when it is finite.
I do not agree this life is good only because it is limited and we will all die.
Life is good as we experience it,but its transience is not something to view as good because people go away, but only because we recognize that we need to value things as they are, not as we want them to be. Very Zen sort of thought process, I suppose.
It is not immortality and its value is not apparent to me.
Because you insist on only finding value in things you have and things that you think are yours.
I cannot demostrate the existence of God to you. He has however demonstrated His existence to me. Our view of God must be voluntary on our part and we will not see God unless we chose to see Him.
Then you ignore the fact that God's existence is twofold. God can exist as a concept, which I acknowledge as reality in that sense. But God can exist as an experience, which I do not acknowledge as reality. You seem to boil God's existence down to experience when God can be understood conceptually and theoretically in some sense without therefore believing it exists in reality like, say, numbers, even if they don't have actual manifest form.
No they are not, when you are discussing our inevitable destiny of oblivion.
I would not say our destiny is oblivion at all, but merely existence in its varied forms. Existence persists even if you or I cease to be as selves. "We" will come back, one might say, so it is not as if humanity ceases to be because one human dies and becomes part of the past.
But you haven't argued why it is preferable to exist eternally as opposed to existing for a finite period of time. Which is more valuable: a sakura tree that blooms forever or one that blooms once a year?
If our ultimate destiny is to not exit, what is the meaning of our existence? Why do we exist? Any meaning you can imagine is temporary. It will not be there after humans are extinct for example and probably much sooner than that.
We exist to seek out knowledge and wisdom. Just because our experience is temporary does not negate that we have learned things. You seem to want things to exist in an eternal line of events that never ends, but that seems to just want something that is both unrealistic and selfish. I cannot say what the meaning of life is ultimately except to seek truth as it comes to us. Beyond that, it varies on the individual.
You may or may not have truth in your belief in ultimate oblivion. There is not wrong with desiring to live rather than die.
There is wrong in desiring to live beyond your limits. If you want to live to be thousands of years old, that seems to me unrealistic and insane on some level. But if your will to live is still strong as you are alive, then it does not make you wrong for pushing past near death.
I would say possibilities.
So you admit reincarnation/rebirth could be correct, hm?
I don't follow how I am more hostile to the universe than you are. You are the one who desires to escape the suffering in this world , correct?
I see being in relationship with a loving being as more desirable than being one with a rock.
I desire to find enlightenment. Suffering is not avoidable, it is only able to be faced with dignity. Some people just run away, some people cling to it as if it makes their life meaningful. Suffering is a double edged sword, it can make or break us. Suffering itself is not evil nor good, it is simply a fact of existence. It is what we do with our experience of it that matters. I don't believe that being one with a rock is preferable to loving my family and friends. But I am not attached to either.
I understand we all die. What is it you are saying here? How am I going to be dissppointed while I live with hope of destiny other than oblivion?
Because you will see that living forever is not satisfactory when you will actually want some release to existence and leave others to take your place. Part of the problem with immortality is it creates a population problem by its very nature. Death is a way to balance out population density, is it not?
