Author: Lsusr

Stream entry is the completion of your first insight cycle. Your first insight cycle is special because it forever changes the trajectory of your life. Stream entry is like becoming a parent. It fundamentally alters your value system and the constraints you live under.

The most important thing about stream entry is that it sets off a chain reaction. Prior to your first insight cycle, you can “get off the train”, so-to-speak. Stream entry triggers a cascade of insight cycles. After your first insight cycle, insight cycles will continue for a long time. You can speed it up or slow it down, but there’s no stopping or reversing it. This process takes years, and may end only when you die.

All insight cycles lower your baseline suffering by repairing disassociation, and stream entry is no exception. Stream entry can have an outsized impact, because stream heals the chronic suffering you perceive first, which tends to be the coarset, most obvious chronic suffering. It’s not unusual for stream entry to reduce your chronic suffering by something on the order of 90%.

Stream entry is destabilizing too. Insight cycles are often destabilizing, but stream entry can be especially destabilizing because you go into it blind. The first time your basic perceptions about reality are shredded is more shocking than the tenth time.

Clinging to the evil acts people have done is unpleasant. The act does damage once, and then clinging to it continues to hurt you until you forgive the person.

But what if the person is evil? All the more reason to forgive them. To say “this person is unforgivably evil” is backwards. The only reason to forgive someone is for being evil. After all, there is no need to forgive someone for being good.

Forgiving does not equal forgetting. When a person does bad things, it is useful data. Useful data should be preserved. Forgiveness isn’t about consequentialism or justice. Those are extrinsic processes. Forgiveness is an intrinsic process. Forgiveness is simply letting go of grievance and accepting that people are what they are.

What if a person’s acts are atrocious? Bad people are like crocodiles. Crocodiles are dangerous. It is a wild crocodiles’s nature to eat people. Pretending a crocodile is safe just puts people in unnecessary danger, which is bad. Forgetting that crocodiles are dangerous puts people in danger too. You shouldn’t allow a crocodile into your bedroom.

Notice that forgiveness doesn’t have anything to do with strategic decisions. Forgiveness does not mean treating dishonest people as if they are honest, or treating violent people as if they are gentle. External actions are useful to the extent that they facilitate this internal process. It is difficult to forgive someone in your heart while you are screaming at him or her.

Accepting that crocodiles are crocodiles does not put anyone in danger. It’s just a form of accurately modeling reality, which protects people from physical danger.

Meanwhile, the crocodile you observe is a crocodile in your umwelt. When you resent it, you are resenting a part of your own umwelt, which drives disassociation and traps you in samsara.

Is morality objective or subjective? This is a question I like to ask when teaching philosophy. It is a zugzwang gambit. Both answers are traps.

Politics is dominated by calls to “Crush <outgroup>!”, social conformity, and moral relativism. When you encounter those rare people with ethical sense, they tend to advocate an orthogonal compass.

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who persecute you.

―Jesus

In Cyberbuddhism, the morality of conduct is defined by its intrinsic effect on your disassociation.

• Moral conduct is thought and behavior that decreases your disassociation.
• Immoral conduct is thought and behavior that increases your disassocation.

Universal love is moral because it directly attacks dualism. Unconditional forgiveness is moral because it is incompatible with clinging. Speaking truthfully prevents doublethink. Mistreating other people for your own self-advancement is immoral because it it fuels disassociation.