It's quite simple. If you have a 5% of the puzzle pieces on the board can you tell if you're looking at a picture of puppies or if it's flowers? Maybe but you could very easily be mistaken. If you have 99% of the pieces places and the puzzle looks like puppies do you think you will reasonably find out later that it was actually a donkey-pinata?

It's all about recognizing what way is reasonable to count.

You'd have a hard time supporting a number like that since it's impossible to know how much we don't yet know.


Have you not even been paying attention to modern science? It's recently been proposed and supported by observations that everything we know about this universe is less than 5% of what the universe is actually made of.

So where do you come up with your 99.999%?

It's more like, all scientific knowledge put together represents less than 5% of what the universe is actually made of. And we don't even understand that 5% very well.

So as far as I can see there's over 95% of the universe that we don't yet know or understand at all.

So I guess we differ in our views quite dramatically then.

Amoda Maa Jeevans wrote "It is precisely our wanting things to be different that creates our suffering. It is not the hardship, discomfort, or pain itself that cause us to suffer (although it appears to be) but the resistance to fully experiencing it."

A ha! I think that might be pretty darn close to a viable answer!

What is the point of being??? Is it simply to live breed and die???

ah... thats the one!
but... you CAN pick your kid's nose... sometimes ya just gotta!
(eewwwww! )

Doken was told to go on a long journey to another
monastery. He was much upset, because he felt that this trip would
interrupt his studies for many months. So he said to his friend,
the advanced student Sogen:

"Please ask permission to come with me on the trip. There are so
many things I do not know; but if you come along we can discuss
them - in this way I can learn as we travel."

"All right," said Sogen. "But let me ask you a question: If you
are hungry, what satisfaction to you if I eat rice? If your feet
are lame, what comfort to you if I go on merrily? If your bladder
is full, what relief to you if I piss?"

I applied this to teachers and politicians. Now I have been applying it to my dates, man does it ever thin the herd. LMAO

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. Buddha

Well, unless you are a monk, you have some sort of possessions, that said. do you attach to them? So in a sense you do "have" but if it is lost or stolen, you release it.

However the point I was trying to make is that through observing human nature and the consequences of certain actions, philosophical or religious tenets as you call them may have been developed. But these cause and effects existed outside of these structures. So, then are they "RULES" or merely the nature of the beast, in this case human.

I don't consider them rules. I think the notion of rules comes in when you have a divine presence that says if you do these thing you will get in trouble, I won't love you, you are bad bad bad etc...

I left the christian church because of this. I believe that I am responsible for my own actions and if I do things that I feel are outside of my intuitive or viseral sense of what is good/right/fair/just/cool however you choose to name it, I will suffer.

That said, we know there are people that have no morality, or rather don't adhere to our same sense of right and wrong, or at least they appear not to on the surface. I have a feeling that, that is a mask for them, that on an unconscious level they still are holding themselves responsible, they may punish themselves by continuing to be involved in behavior that causes them physical, emotional and spiritual harm. Addiction, low self-esteem, legal problems, cronic pain etc...

As far as my studies have lead me there is no end to this, in fact as soon as you say to yourself I have mastered this or that attachment or desire, it will appear in some other way or worst yet a new version of something you already feel you dealt with before.

I also think that one can become as you said attached to the idea of getting it all at once. These are the people that have the hollier than thou attitude. They try to shelter themselves from anyone that doesn't adhere to their tenets, they think that they can protect themselves and or not be a part of all the evil around them. They are dealing with heavy fear karma, they actually don't trust themselves. In fact they attach to some false moral rightousness. Denying oneself a desire is not the same as facing it and actively being conscious of what it will cost.