[vodaPlaps]

Hello everyone,

Thanks for your replies, i cant answer every point in your posts becuase i cant cope with the volume so i will try to summaries what i was trying to say and hopefully answer few of the important points mentioned in your posts.

There are too levels of reality (they are one but to make this discussion possible i have to divide them), the subjective reality (Buddists call it the conventional truth) and this is what most of us experience, and there is the objective reality (mind independent reality/ ultimate truth).

Maybe most of us agree that we dont see things as they really are because we are conditioned by our past/memories/ideas/knowledge. In order to be able to see things as they really are (not as we want them to be) we need to be free from all knowledge. (so far i have not come up with anything new)

A possible problem with being a buddhist is that buddhism has already given me the answers and the method, and then told me to investigate if its true or not. But if we are humble enough to admit that we are too conditioned to the extent that when you give me an answer in advance, you are influencing me. Its similar to the palcebo effect (take a fake medicine without knowing it and you will feel better).

If i am allowed to give examples from other traditions, the first verse of the Tao Te Ching says:

The tao that can be told is not the eternal tao, the name that can be named is not the eternal name. When i read the above, i cannot improve on it, he does not play the game, he is not even a participant.

I totally agree with Element when he said consider examining the reality of life (rather than filling the mind with theories about 'freedom' and Buddhism is one of those theories about freedom that i am trying to clean up my mind from.

Do we really need someone to tell us how to live? how to taste our foof or how to listen to the birds?