One of the many reasons not to believe we can be trained not to breathe for days, weeks, months, is that there are exceptionally motivated people who would jump on the chance to do this were it true. I’ve been researching freediving at the elite level for a few weeks and considering the techniques which allow people to dive to over 200m and hold one’s breath for over 10 minutes come from yoga (and our own bizarre mammalian dive response) it is odd that divers would not be aware they were just scratching the surface.
An actual application for for what seems like perhaps the world’s most pointless activity. Finding food, escaping from housefires. Getting off on depriving your body of air, food, water, whatever just seems like the ultimate vanity of man’s desire to control the physical world. Buddhism just seems like the application of dominion over oneself. Why? What’s the point? Why are people psychologically drawn to it? I kind of understand the psychological hooks to Abrahamic religions, and even Hinduism seems to have its own internal logic. But Buddhism? Is it an attempt to come to terms with suffering through the four noble truths? Is that the point? The alleviation of pain? And is it my own psycho-social environment that makes that seem funny/childish?
Oh no you didn’t ! :no-no: You’re going to get a right talkin’ to by someone in this thread when he sees that. 
Triceratopses will probably say you have to be completely still for it to work for a year, but you’re absolutely right. There would be so many practical applications if this were even remotely possible, even just a few minutes beyond where we are now. Are we really supposed to believe that Buddhism is immune to the power of Youtube? Nobody on earth ever thought to put up a video showing someone with these magical powers?
This is what really annoys me about people who believe in such things. We’ve heard it all. People that can levitate, read minds, actually bend spoons, become fire proof,etc… Not once ever was it captured on film in a scientific environment? 
Want to see what happens when someones beliefs in ancient mysticism come face to face with reality? Here’s a Kung Fu master who can crush anybody without ever even touching them, just using the power of Chi. Watch how truly shocked he is that a regular dude can just punch him in the face. He actually believed this shit through and through.
Love it. I wonder if he applied oil of bear tail to the wounds and had acupuncture for the pain. :bravo:
Oh no you didn’t ! :no-no: You’re going to get a right talkin’ to by someone in this thread when he sees that.
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Without being too much of a dick, the proof is in the pudding. Places with a high concentration of Buddhists are depressing as fuck. I think it’s the focus on minutiae that does it. Effect or cause? Or no connection?
Bhutan is the happiest place on earth.
It’s probably not the unhappiest. However, since most Bhutanese seem loath to discuss politics and the country has nothing that resembles an efficient economy, one suspects there’s room for improvement.
It’s probably not the unhappiest. However, since most Bhutanese seem loath to discuss politics and the country has nothing that resembles an efficient economy, one suspects there’s room for improvement.[/quote]
Self-reported studies never lie.
There’s a Zen story about a wandering monk who comes to a river bank where an ascetic has been practising extremely austere and powerful disciplines for decades; he tells the pilgrim he now has the power to walk on water across the river.
The Zen monk replies “For a small copper coin you could have paid the ferryman to take you across twenty years ago.”
I heard that cannabis grows so plentifully in Bhutan it’s often used to feed pigs. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Bhutanese pigs are the happiest in the world. Perhaps infectiously so. The Buddha statues seem skinnier there but still appear way over 12%. 
But it’s hard to be sure. The Lonely Planet guides never have this kind of information. :bluemad: Perhaps the only way I can find THE TRUTH in this world is to start travelling with a set of calipers.
I think more scientists should be open towards religious experience. Like every time I see Steven Hawking I think: That guy really needs to try meditation. He’d be such a natural - he’s had that whole “not moving” thing nailed for the last few decades, without even trying! I reckon he’d be able to concentrate for at least 5 seconds.
Excuses? Maybe they’re telling the truth.[/quote]
Or…maybe they’re not- you know, like when the TM people were losing their following, so they suddenly claimed they could fly. You believe them, of course?
Um, no- if some people claim can live for a year without breathing, they are making an empirical claim, which is not something you establish by logic- you do it by testing. Doesn’t matter how many generations have been claiming this ability, or how complex their reasoning is. Remember cold fusion? Uri Geller?
No, it doesn’t- whether or not they want to submit themselves to it has nothing to do with whether the method is valid or not; it only speaks to their inclinations- whatever their motive for declining.
I’m not saying anything whatsoever about their reasoning- I’m simply asking to see evidence of a physical verifiable claim they’re making. If they tell me they have achieved a state of unity with cosmic consciousness, I’ll say “good for you”.
Question: do you believe everything that anyone of any religious/spiritual/magical belief tradition says? If not, aren’t you doing exactly the same thing, proclaiming the superiority of one tradition?
And, even if true- and it’s obviously subjective and/or culturally biased- what does this have to do with whether a person can live for a year without breathing?
I wasn’t even in Athens that weekend- I was visiting my buddy Daedalus down in Crete.
No, man, that was my cuz Alex, from up in Macedonia
No, I can’t see- don’t have my Third Eye open at the moment (you ever read Lobsang Rampa?- now there was cosmic wisdom, bro.)
I assume you mean studies based on self-reported data. If so, it’s emphatically not wise to always take them at face value, because, for instance, of the tendency toward socially desirable answers on sensitive questions, e.g. regarding virginity, STDs, sexual experiences and inclinations, infidelity, and so on. See e.g. psychologyconcepts.com/socia … lity-bias/ (There are various techniques being tested to overcome such obstacles.)
However, there seems to be no reason for social desirability on self-reported measures such as happiness, so in the case of Bhutan, there’s no obvious reason to doubt the data.
Apparently 41% report as happy, which seems a bit on the low side if they’re the happiest country on earth. On that basis I’d expect, say, the curmudgeonly British to be reporting about 7% happy.
I remember reading something about happiness surveys during my nap time in the library. IIRC, most people consider themselves happy unless they’re actually depressed. Therefore even in places where you would expect people to be downright miserable - Britain, say, or Somalia - they still report as basically happy because well-adjusted people seek out things to be happy about, even if they’ve got a severely restricted palette of options.
I assume you mean studies based on self-reported data. If so, it’s emphatically not wise to always take them at face value, because, for instance, of the tendency toward socially desirable answers on sensitive questions, e.g. regarding virginity, STDs, sexual experiences and inclinations, infidelity, and so on. See e.g. psychologyconcepts.com/socia … lity-bias/ (There are various techniques being tested to overcome such obstacles.)
However, there seems to be no reason for social desirability on self-reported measures such as happiness, so in the case of Bhutan, there’s no obvious reason to doubt the data.[/quote]
You’re a little low in irony these daze though yes I meant the longer sentence. I thought I had actually written that.
I meant for me, not the inhabitants. 
For example, yer average Bangkokese person is as happy as a clam but the place makes me want to bash my own brains in after a couple of weeks, without fail.
Of course they are happy because they have an insular, incredibly solipsistic way of relating to the world. If your chief religious practice is sitting on your arse, pretending not to think about yourself, you’re bound to feel good because it’s essentially a closed system with very little disturbing feedback from interaction with other people. Plato’s cave stuff.
Dat is intresting, finley.
[quote=“Ermintrude”]Of course they are happy because they have an insular, incredibly solipsistic way of relating to the world. If your chief religious practice is sitting on your arse, pretending not to think about yourself, you’re bound to feel good because it’s essentially a closed system with very little disturbing feedback from interaction with other people. Plato’s cave stuff.
Dat is intresting, finley.[/quote]
Yeah, basically, some bald guy got a research grant for writing a paper about what you just said there. If you google it there’s a whole load of research on the methodology of happiness surveys and the sources of bias, error, etc.
Just my observation: the governments of shit countries take pains to tell the inhabitants (from an early age) how wonderful their shit country is, to make sure they can’t see what other countries are like, and to denigrate foreign advantages that are overtly visible. So as well as being inherently happy, as humans generally are unless they’re being rounded up and tortured, they construct a bizarre view of reality in which their happiness is caused (in part) by their shit surroundings, thus perpetuating poverty in its various forms.
Middle-class types seem to go along with this. Oh, those Africans, they’re always singing and dancing!
The entirely one sided relationship with God, in the words of one of the great poets of our time, Hopsin 
Parental discretion is advised 
pretty sick
Interesting debate on how the concept of Jesus as God developed, for anyone into the more historical side of things
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The question about the existence of god doesn’t make any sense because existence and non existence are categories of the human mind. God is beyond the categories of human rationality.