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0 pointsjiggywiggy2y ago0 comments

You speak mostly of not getting attached. Which is mostly a method not to build negative karma in Buddhism and build positive karma. But positive karma is not a goal in itself in Buddhism, realization is.

The Madhyamaka way, translated to the great middle way, mostly refers to combining freedom & meaning from emptiness. Meaning things are neither real, nor or they an illusion. Therefore the middle.

This is because understanding emptiness often leads to nihilism: "nothing really matters". The opposite seeing things as real, instead of acknowledging everything is changing, often leads to suffering: if laptop breaks, relationships end etc. Both are true and both are false.

The goal of madhymaka is to explain middle way between those and also practical how that leads to freedom, joy and meaning in every moment of life.

In the end the goal of Buddhism is not to change outer conditions but to get to a state were hapiness is experienced regardless of outer experiences.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhyamaka

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movedx2y ago

> In the end the goal of Buddhism is not to change outer conditions but to get to a state were hapiness is experienced regardless of outer experiences.

I would argue not trying to change the outer conditions is an extreme view, which is a notion rejected in Buddhism ;-)

Some things can be changed, like keeping your environment clean. You can, of course, simply find happiness regardless of the state it's in - clean or filthy - but you're kidding yourself, and only yourself, if you believe you won't be happier if it is clean(er). Therefore, you can find (more) happiness by changing the environment you're _but_ also excepting that it will get dirty again, requiring you to clean it again.

All this being said, neither of us is right or wrong. That's sort of the point.

yarekt2y ago

Interesting that Aristotle's Ethics also speaks about this. Good and bad are not at the ends of a scale, but good is in the middle, and bad either side. From what I understand it, excess of anything, even something normally regarded as "good" would result in bad things. Yea, I'm not very eloquent here, but you get the idea

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