There's not many online resources to debunk this since the recent expiration of the australianatheists forum thread so here goes again with just a few starters:
what Goenka spends a huge amount of his time doing. Spinning a fairy tale whereby the historical Buddha did exactly what he’s doing, and nothing else. That he taught this very specific technique, known as Vipassana, and that this was lost to the world after his passing… but it survived in Burma, from where — so it was prophesied — it would be reintroduced back to its land of origin, and then the wider world, 2500 years after his death. And Goenka came to do his first 10-day course exactly 2500 years after the Buddha’s death. And then he started teaching the courses in India… and now millions have learned the true, pure dhamma through him. This story is so… unbelievably… full of shit… that I’m genuinely at a loss as to how to begin to refute it. ... He is, in a word, trolling us. Massively, massively trolling ...
was reminded to post this when reading a shortform summary of Victor Frankl, about depersonalisation, and also leading to Nihilism, absence of comprehension of meaning: https://www.shortform.com/summary/mans- ... tor-frankl
Following their release and liberation, the primary symptom was depersonalization. During depersonalization, you feel disconnected from your thoughts, your body, and yourself. You view yourself from the outside, or feel as if you’re dreaming and not truly present. The conditions of the camps forced the prisoners to detach from themselves, and it was difficult to repair this even after they were free.
Imagine a fitness programme where they take you for ten days and make you run ten laps around a track, then do a hundred push-ups and then a hundred sit-ups, on a loop, for ten hours a day. By the end of it… you’d be physically fit. Is it because those laps around that specific track are fucking magic? No. It’s because they actually make you do it. Other fitness programmes don’t sequester you and force you to do it. So, other fitness programmes don’t get the same results. That being said, other fitness programmes don’t usually end up with a bunch of brainwashed drones running the same ten laps around the same track for ten days in a row again and again and again… forever… but… whatever.
A slight diversion from the cult topic, but I read Man's Search for Meaning when I was in high school. I think I'd just read Anne Frank and I was looking for more like that. It doesn't seem to be very famous nowadays, but it was very memorable. I recall the core of it was that his experiences in the holocaust gave him an insight into fundamental human traits, because life in the camps stripped away so much, but what he called "meaning" was the one thing they held on to. On one hand, I feel like "meaning" is a pseudo-religious concept, but if you define it rigorously, the idea has merit. I also sense in it a way of stripping away the unsustainable parts of a religion, and reclaiming the cultural aspect religions had appropriated, so the holocaust and what it means is just as valid for secular Jews as it is for the religious. Although in the Netanyahu era, maybe that's under threat now.
This is also in my mind because of Musk siding with Nazis against the ADL and others. Holocaust denial is tied up in his of his "free speech absolutism" sham.
The crisis is particularly acute right now as the ADL tries to portray itself as an ally of Black Lives Matter while also shielding Israel from criticism over its plans to annex Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, further entrenching the system of apartheid.
A leaked memo obtained last week by Jewish Currents writer Josh Leifer highlights the dilemma of ADL leaders.
The memo sets out how the lobby group can, in Leifer’s words: “find a way to defend Israel from criticism without alienating other civil rights organizations, elected officials of color and Black Lives Matter activists and supporters.”
The ADL itself equates criticism of Israel with anti-semitism, which in a very real sense is itself, anti-semitism. That is I am saying that the ADL is anti-semitic in that it equates Jews with Israel. That diminishes all Jews everywhere:
Some manifestations of anti-Semitism are more indirect. The excessive criticism of Israel leads
some people to feel more comfortable attacking Jews and Jewish institutions around the world.
wadaye wrote: ↑Wed Sep 06, 2023 9:12 am
The ADL itself equates criticism of Israel with anti-semitism, which in a very real sense is itself, anti-semitism. That is I am saying that the ADL is anti-semitic in that it equates Jews with Israel. That diminishes all Jews everywhere:
Some manifestations of anti-Semitism are more indirect. The excessive criticism of Israel leads
some people to feel more comfortable attacking Jews and Jewish institutions around the world.
It must not be forgotten that Palestinians and others living in that realm are all "semitic people" if one uses that classification system.
Greedy fuckers cannot self-regulate.
Prove me wrong.
The previous incarnation of this thread was a primary source of information for those wanting to see a view of the Goenka stuff that wasn't biased in favour of the movement. I hope this one carries on in the same direction.
I missed out on the Goenka experience, my only even-close-to-parallel experience being a few intro sessions in the early 1970s with the Ananda Marga, which I noped out on because I thought it was very akin to mind control.
Let's talk Goenka...
Greedy fuckers cannot self-regulate.
Prove me wrong.
Thanks Black I appreciate the feedback. I did save a copy of the thread and could look at making it a closed blog in a single pdf file for posterity, warts and all, and post a link in this thread.
The Israel thing is a sort of separate thread of course.
wadaye wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 9:19 pm....
was reminded to post this when reading a shortform summary of Victor Frankl, about depersonalisation, and also leading to Nihilism, absence of comprehension of meaning: https://www.shortform.com/summary/mans- ... tor-frankl
Following their release and liberation, the primary symptom was depersonalization. During depersonalization, you feel disconnected from your thoughts, your body, and yourself. You view yourself from the outside, or feel as if you’re dreaming and not truly present. The conditions of the camps forced the prisoners to detach from themselves, and it was difficult to repair this even after they were free.
Not replying to myself but rather following on from the Frankl review, its not that I am equating the experiences or anything like that, but rather that the outcome of depersonalisation as a state being sought is a very dangerous thing to do with one's mind, and may be difficult to recover from. Suicide post Vipassana, and psychotic experiences post vipassana, actually occur. I have seen the latter, nearly experienced the former, and had friends who did.
