[Acting Like Godot]

Oh sorry, I still haven't addressed this,

Originally Posted by Kanzeon

This leads to a second major flaw of LOA: the rejection of community and the needs of others. It seems to me that everyone who advocates LOA ends up, if they dabble in the larger philosophical questions, stating that only the practitioner exists.

Nope.

A person who follows the LOA far enough will actually end up, if he dabbles in the larger philosophical questions, stating that actually HE himself doesn't exist.

You can see this in Steve's own posts with other people. He will be talking to XYZ, and suddenly Steve will say something like: "But I'm not really here. I'm just an aspect of your mind."

In other words, a person who follows the LOA far enough ends up with the same conclusion as the Buddhist who follows Buddhism far enough. The conclusion is that the self doesn't really exist.

Nevertheless, this doesn't seem to hinder Buddhists from having compassion for others, and in the same way, as a LOA practitioner, my belief in the LOA does not hinder me from having compassion for others.

Now, whether he adopts this view consistently, or as one alternative view, or whether he is entirely serious, consider:

- Would you trust anyone who believed, even temporarily, that you didn't exist, but only he existed?

- Would you admire a person who believed, even temporarily, such a thing?

It isn't the BMW I object to. Rather, it is the spectacle of people who are so ammoral and self-centered that they would try to make themselves believe, literally, that they are the only person in the universe,

LOL .... If that disturbs you, why does Buddhism not disturb you? Little bits of Buddhist commentary for you to ponder on:

Very basically, the Buddha taught that "you" are not an integral, autonomous entity. The individual self, or what we might call the ego, is more correctly thought of as a by-product of the skandhas.

On the surface, this appears to be a nihilistic teaching. But the Buddha taught that if we can see through the delusion of the small, individual self, we experience that which is not subject to birth and death.

Link

Objects of attachment also include the idea of a "self" which is a delusion, because there is no abiding self. What we call "self" is just an imagined entity, and we are merely a part of the ceaseless becoming of the universe.

Link