Buddhism and Christianity make it sound like you have to be perfectly clean and disciplined to be “enlightened”, causing feeling of guilt and failure when you stray from the behavioral/moral prescription.

Indians like Siddarameshwar and Nisargadatta were addicted to tobacco. Nisargadatta (who claims he was in the “highest state” and I have no reason to doubt it) died of throat cancer due to hardcore smoking of cloves. When pressed about his addiction he would say “When I showed up in this body I found it with certain habits and didn’t see any reason to interfere.”

> feeling of guilt and failure when you stray from the behavioral/moral prescription.

Those feelings are caused by attachment and craving. Learn to let go of your attachments; that's a big part of the "discipline" that's conducive to spiritual practice.

I agree with this. We are always going to have to deal with our cravings. I find The Seven Deadly Sins to be a useful model of what to try to avoid.

This is specifically mentioned in Buddhism as one of the ten hindrances, "sīlabbata-parāmāso," attachment to rules and rituals. In Christianity, this is similar to the idea of works-righteousness which was the basis of Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation. In either case, spiritual practice would be meaningless without passing through the messiness of life and learning from mistakes rather than dwelling on them.

Prayer, meditation and therapies like CBT certainly help prevent relapse, but hard core alcoholism requires medical intervention to manage the shakes and delirium tremens (the best and most vivid hallucinations I have had. Better than plant hallucinogens.) The very definition of the disorder is a total loss of control. It's a very scary feeling to know you're going over the falls and there's no way to the safety of shore. The medical community long ago classified addiction as a disease (substance abuse disorder)

I used to read Nisargadatta to try and get sober, but it didn't help. He seems to imply there's some deeper level of consciousness beyond just resting without thought or emotion in the present moment.

I found the teachings of Zen to much more helpful and in fact many Western therapies like DBT and Wise Mind are based on those principles.

> I used to read Nisargadatta to try and get sober, but it didn't help.

Reading is just another kind of attachment. You have to practice, even and perhaps especially when it seems challenging and difficult. Most spiritual traditions are very clear on this, including yoga itself.

this! all of my favorite zen teachings describe it as 'your practice'. Zen Mind Beginners Mind says something like "in the mind of the expert there is only one path, in the beginner's mind there are many" and urges the zen practitioner to always keep the beginner's mind... It emphasized to me that it should be _your_ practice of the teachings, not just inhaling more and more teachings

Although reading and mulling over it, trying to understand what it means within yourself, is a form of practice. It’s a kind of Jnana yoga.

> He seems to imply there's some deeper level of consciousness beyond just resting without thought or emotion in the present moment.

I’ve come to realize that all paths lead to the same state, including Christianity. Christian worship is a form of Bhakti. It’s all a matter of what fits your personality.

> Buddhism and Christianity make it sound like you have to be perfectly clean and disciplined to be “enlightened”, causing feeling of guilt and failure when you stray from the behavioral/moral prescription.

I don't really get why this is. I'm not saying it's wrong. But it's only a couple pages into the Bible that you find Noah getting drunk and blacking out naked (Genesis 9). And this is someone who is trusted to hear the voice of God, know the future, and save humanity. Seems to be a pretty low bar for being 'good enough' for God.

Christianity in practise does not strictly correspond to "what's in the Bible", and I say that as a Christian. Maybe sometimes for the better, but often for the worse. And that's before we even talk about how to interpret something like Genesis 9.

I'd say that mainstream and powerful Christianities do have the effect the parent commenter noticed, especially in America. And to me, it's quite plain that that is a perversion of the message of grace that is central to the Gospel.

Lack of coherence is a major benefit for a sacred text. It allows the cult clerics to be flexible, to pick and choose what they like, what is socially acceptable at the time.

A rigid sacred text that claim things are one way or that something must be done someway will inevitably fail when reality shows that things are some other way or that the results of some other action are better.

Sounds a lot like "Democracy, our most sacred institution". Defend it blindly, with your "good faith" "critical thinking".

I do not see what point you are making. Care to reformulate?

Cultural norms are often described (and perceived) as being ~sacred (beyond reproach, discussion, etc).

After the events of January 6 at the capital (the "literal" coup attempt), "Democracy, our most sacred institution" quickly coalesced as a common sound bite across the mainstream media complex.

As religious people are reluctant to question the axioms of their religion (as a consequence of psychological conditioning, at least in part), I propose the same general phenomenon (and causes) exists with respect to "facts" and power structures within culture.

To be even more clear: I believe that "democracy", the flavors that are currently practised in this era, are highly illusory...and, I also believe that most people have ~"cognitive viruses" within their mind that activate when any criticism of democracy arises, plausible artifacts of which can be seen in massive quantities across social media conversations. /r/politcis is famous for this sort of thing, but on certain topics it is not difficult at all to find the same thing on HN.

This is kind of a tangent, but driving the J6 conversation toward “sacred democracy” is a red herring that focuses away from the real issue, which is jockeying for power by playing dirty and bending the rules to create unexpected outcomes.

For example McConnell inventing a rule from thin air that you can’t fill a scotus seat in an election year. Then cynically breaking his own “rule.” Or Trump insisting Mike Pence “can send the votes back to the states.” Or submitting “alternate” electors who would break the pledge to match their votes to the majority vote. Or install a DOJ puppet AG who would seize voting machines.

This has nothing to do with whether America should be a democracy or not. It’s all about whether we should normalize a toxic culture of scummy power jockeying.

> the real issue, which is...

One problem I have with claims, sincere as they may be, about "the" issue is that there are many, many thousands" of "the issues" in circulation. It's a lot like God(s): how shall we tell which "the one" is THE "the one" (is there only one?). And, I suspect the underlying epistemology/cognition of each resembles that which underlies religion more than a little.

> This has nothing to do with whether America should be a democracy or not. It’s all about whether we should normalize a toxic culture of scummy power jockeying.

I think it may be worth noting that for any given issue, whether it has "nothing/anything to do with" something else is often subjective (such as in this case), and also that the mind has a tendency to render subjective matters as objective at runtime (more so with some topics than others).

I am not opposed to democracy per se, I am opposed to fake democracy (or fake anything for that matter), where "fake" means approximately "what it says on the tin does not match the product inside"....kinda like the picture of a Big Mac on a poster vs what you get when you actually buy one.

You have the order reversed. In Buddhism, you learn to let go of attachments, and because of that you let go of smoking, alcohol, etc. It's not the other way around.

* >Buddhism and Christianity make it sound like you have to be perfectly clean and disciplined to be “enlightened”*

I'm my no means a scholar of such matters but I don't get than impression of Christianity at all. From the concept of original sin, to the tale of Jesus kicking off in the temple, the embracement of man's flaws seem to me to be one of Christianity's biggest selling points.

> Christianity make it sound like you have to be perfectly clean and disciplined to be “enlightened”

Yes, it is true that the church often presents it this way. Which is odd, because the bible is almost always presenting the other case, that the person with the issue is the enlightened one.

For example, the bible lists 5 women who are in the geneology of Jesus. This includes a prostitute (Rahab), a Moabite (Ruth, and according to the bible marrying a moabite was punishable by death), and an adulteress (Bathsheba; she may have been innocent but this isn't clear).

Heck, even the idea of extending the blessing of God to the gentiles is sus. The gentiles are by definition unclean.

All of which could be seen as a way to highlight that "enlightenment" is due to the grace of god, not works of man. And yes, "enlightenment" means something very different in christianity vs buddhism.