Discussions

I did find this site after searching for
Buddhism and Compassion.
http://www.self-compassion.org/

there is an alternative to self-esteem that many psychologists believe is a better and more effective path to happiness: self-compassion.

Maybe not the most relevant quote but I am not a good reader
Have any of you read it. Or what impression do you get after reading that site?

Typical of me I see a inconsistency between
having or being self compassionate and not-self.

If Self not even exists or if one should practice not-self
that what is self-compassion about? Okay you are not attached
to your self just show compassion for the illusion of having one?

I am not intelligent enough to get these sophisticated words.

To me the physical body acts and those acts
make the self or the illusion of a self to emerge.
That body may be gone in 100 years but while it last
even if every atom is changed then the pattern
of the personality is rather stable.

It is almost impossible to change people unless
you have a mean to make them highly motivated
to change and even then deep friends can recognize
them to be same personality apart from those that
get a fatal blow to the head then their brain circuit
can get damages that change their personality.

Candol does this not support my naive take
that one can never rely on that Buddhist words
means what they say. One should always to go
to the original word and realize they have failed
to find a good English word for it. Not self
is more like saying something like.....

Humans tend to have very self centered egoistic
views on themselves and that is not atta.
The individualism that we tend to see as our
trues self is more like a false take on the true self.

We only see a superficial false self caught up in
being attached to values that is short sighted and
they miss the mark and so on.

That is my hasty sketch of what Buddhism really say?

Obviously I have no idea what they really say.

But they don't talk about the body acting and
those acts producing the awareness of a story
of who I am that is my historical take on "self"

As science has found out that "self" does not exist.
That which exist is the physical and biological body
and the acts it do that makes the emergence of the
sense of self working as a tool for to live a social
life.

All tools has their limitation and sense of self is
also limited and I don't trust that we can be aware of
how it really works. I trust the body by default has
built in mechanisms to protect us from knowing too much.

A lot of people actually do suicide when they get
glimpses of how they are seen by those around them.

The contrast is too big between their sense of self
and the others sense of them as persons.

Mind the gap as we say I trust that my body
kept hidden to my awareness how I where seen
by those that bullied me for to let me survive.

I trust it is some kind of biological computer
function that works a bit like a auto-pilot
on airplane or big boats that allow the crew
to relax and let the auto pilot do the flying.

Keeping balance when we walk and when we pedal
a bike is mostly done by the auto-pilot and
that is a good thing because if our awareness
got too caught up in taking care of that we
could easily crash into things.

Even talking and writing is partly done by
automatic circuits that have been trained to
suggest words for to say thoughts.

I am rambling.

Thanks Rick,
self-compassion, self-esteem, not-Self
egoic-self, false-self, true-self

Me, Myself and I get confused by all these self.
Neuro researchers even may have some proto-self
awarrness they have measured? Luminous dreams
claim one have a kind of self that can direct the dream.

My very personal needs is to survive and
how can I find enough value in myself knowing
that I am seen as worthless by almost all others
that I am dependent on for living?

The solution could be what you refer to there.

you can still bring a kind attitude toward yourself

I seems to fail to do that by myself.
I am not skilled in doing such and
I have no talent for it either.

That is why I referred to Amida Buddha
being someone that care about me from
outside. Sure I know that Amida Buddha
is a symbol but the symbol points to
something real which science sooner or
later can identify.
My wild guess is that it is some kind of
survival add on to the auto-pilot that
take care of the autonomic processes in
our body. HeartBeat and such. Breathing
while we are asleep or doing important things.

My body is very good at lying about who
I am. I thought me where very accomplished
for many decades. some 40 years or so.

A kind of default lie or false Self that
I fall back into too often. Pride and arrogance
and self centered views.

Thanks Dana, good link to a teacher
that seems to be a caring teacher indeed.

I trust she is able to help many.

But we are all different. I give example from her text.

Try replacing self-judgment with thoughts of self-compassion.
Each time that you hear an inner dialog that is self-degrading,
replace it with kind words.

May I be free from pain and suffering.

May I be at peace.

I care about my pain.

May I be a peace with myself just as I am.

One would need to test this on thousands to see
what happens on average. Maybe a majority can follow
her advices there.

I can only follow them if I translate her words
to words that works for my personality. I have no
good talent for doing such translations though.

May I be free from pain and suffering.
May I deal with the pain and suffering that happens
in my life in less destructive ways.

As she worded it fail to work for me.
I don't trust that I can say such things
without doing something not moral.

Buddhism stress that N8PT is about
using Right thought and Right speech
and Right effort and so on.

To me to say what she says there is morally wrong

May I be at peace.
That one is not easy to translate at all.
It promise too much, expects too much,
gives a false image of something that
may never happen. I am skeptical to
if it really is a good thing to do it too.

I care about my pain.
I maybe would translate it to
May I care about my pain in a way
that is not destructive.

The problem is that I have no knowledge
how I could do that. I lack the know how.

May I be a peace with myself just as I am.
That one is very interesting because it reminds me
of how I found Amida Buddha as the Shin Buddhists
see Amida through the texts by Shinran Shonin

But I would still have to reformulate it
to something that would be more moral.
I have struggled with this since 1983
and have not found a solution to it.

Shin Buddhism comes rather close
but they are deep into Japanese culture
and that is not what I am being heavily
indoctrinated in Swedish culture.

I have a hard time to adjust to their way
of using words and symbols and everything.

Maybe the solution for me is to find
a personal variation of her
May I be a peace with myself just as I am.

I feel for asking the Shin Buddhists
how they would express it. I am too biased
by my aggressive atheism for to trust
that I give it a fair try.

edit has she done a typo or a grammar error
there in that text?

May I be at peace with myself just as I am.

at peace sound more grammatically right to me
but my English is very makeshift and home built.

oops she writes this just above
May I be at peace.
so she made a typo in the second take below