Smoking: a disgusting habit

Originally posted by genius
can't bhuddists stop pain and such though?

also-my RE teahcer got us all to watch a video of a number of heroine addicts who wanted to quit. they went to a buhddist monastry, and pretty much gave it. it wasn't instantaneous, but it was pretty quick! 😛

the only thing i remember though was them puking up...which was just gross 😕

Actually, I think in World War 2, several Buddhist monks lit themselves on fire as a sacrfice to release prisoners (or something).

Tibetan Buddhist monks can sleep in the snow and not get hypothermia because they can control their blood flow and body temperature.

The key to this is meditation. You still feel the pain, but you realise that it lacks inherent existence, as does your burning body. Contemplating this, the pain is felt, but no reaction arises as a result. There are many different types of meditation. I won't say how to sleep in the snow because I don't want people trying it.

The dopamines that cause this reaction also lack inherent existence (everything does!). This is not to say that they do not exist, they do exist, but just not in the way we think they do. A bus for example, it functions as a bus because people get on it and the driver takes them to their stop. However, a bus is just a concept made in our mind from a collection of many other things; seats, wheels, windows. Even these objects are a collection of molecules, and molecules are a collection of atoms, and atoms are a collection of subatomic particles. Even quarks lack inherent existence, it is still only a concept brought to our mind. We can continuously find smaller objects. We can always say this smaller particle has a left side and a right side. It goes on for infinity. If it did not have a left side and a right side, or top and bottom, it must be infinitely small and have no dimensions... and hence we have reached infinity 😉.

Knowing this, the physical states of our brain that alter our mental states of happiness and sadness for example, would have no effect to a Buddhist, because he or she would contemplate the lack of inherent existence of the physical causes of suffering (if he or she had the mind to do so). Thus, physically caused depression (as opposed to emotionally induced), and also addictions, can be completely eradicated through the mind, hence only in the mind do they exist.

Originally posted by DreamlaX
Tibetan Buddhist monks can sleep in the snow and not get hypothermia because they can control their blood flow and body temperature.

what a fascinating post, dreamlax!
i recall hearing of and seeing documentaries of yogis who have achieved an incredible degree of mind control similar to what you are talking about.

on a more mundane level, tennis great arthur ashe apparently attributed his surprise wimbeldon win in 1975(?) to transcendental meditation.

and a dentist i knew a decade ago told me that a few of his patients had such control over their minds that they didn't use anesthetic even for the pulling of a tooth or serious drilling!

in friendship,
prad

Originally posted by kyngj
Well, the way you phrase the question, you CAN disprove that it's released as a result of mental phenomena... Dopamine is released in response to nicotine acting at receptor sites for other neurotransmitters (acetylcholine) - Hence, even in a neurochemical system that did not possess a mind, the same cascade of events would occur in response to nicotine, and ...[text shortened]... ree, I'm firmly in the materialist camp, and you're firmly not 😉

Fun debate though!

Joe

Kyngy: "..... you don't need a mind for the mechanisms of addiction to occur... "

I knew it, I knew it ....... 😵

Originally posted by pradtf
what a fascinating post, dreamlax!
i recall hearing of and seeing documentaries of yogis who have achieved an incredible degree of mind control similar to what you are talking about.

on a more mundane level, tennis great arthur ashe app ...[text shortened]... he pulling of a tooth or serious drilling!

in friendship,
prad

Hehe, yeah, a well known Swami Gajanand came to my Buddhist centre the other day, not only to admit his great interest in Mahayana Buddhism (despite being a yoga monk) but he and I had a looong chat about meditation, but none of it would mean anything to someone who doesn't meditate.