#online debates

[journeytothewestresearch]

Buddha Sun Wukong

The other day on Quora, someone asked the following question: "Can any Sun Wukong fan send me the scan when he obtains Nirvana and becomes transcendent over everything?" I get the distinct impression that the asker is someone who participates in online versus debates and is tired of people telling him that the Monkey Buddha is beyond their chosen character. Their use of "Sun Wukong fan" is a dead give away. But at least they are trying to research the subject, which is rare in this day and age. This is my answer:

The novel doesn’t explicitly state that he transcends everything, just that he is granted Buddhahood (Wu & Yu, vol. 4, p. 381).

It does, however, place him as more senior in rank than Guanyin in a list of Buddhist deities at the end (Wu & Yu, vol. 4, p. 385).

The journey itself is a metaphor for the spiritual cultivation that culminates in his ascension (see here, for example). Readers would have recognized his elevation in spiritual rank to include enlightenment and breaking free of both the wheel of rebirth and Samsara (as these are among the prerequisites of a Buddha) (Buswell & Lopez, 2014, p. 129). The Journey to the West cosmic hierarchy considers the Buddha (and Buddhist deities) to have the penultimate power in the universe (see this paper).

Sources:

Buswell, R. E., & Lopez, D. S. (2014). The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. N: Princeton University Press.

Wu, C., & Yu, A. C. (2012). The Journey to the West (Vols. 1-4). Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.

[chase-omega]

The one who feels like they always gotta have the last word is usually the most foolish.

i dont even argue with people anymore. i simply explain why theyre wrong, and leave them to their little temper tantrum.

[maxgicalgirl]

Being a “Fun Fact !” kind of autistic is all fun and games until you get halfway through sharing an interesting tidbit and realize that it probably wasn’t appropriate to share in polite company and now you have to deal with the consequences :(

[thevioletcaptain]

i genuinely don't care how good a piece of ai generated art or writing looks on the surface. i don't care if it emulates brush strokes and metaphor in a way indistinguishable from those created by a person.

it is not the product of thoughtful creation. it offers no insights into the creator's life or viewpoint. it has no connection to a moment in time or a place or an attitude. it has no perspective. it has no value.

it's empty, it's hollow, and it exists only to generate clicks (and by extension, ad revenue.)

it's just another revolting symptom of the disease that is late stage capitalism, and it fucking sucks.

[lary-the-lizard]

I like to ignore people that call me stupid in YouTube comment sections for at least an hour or so, sometimes even days, before asking them to prove it so that they know they’re words don’t hurt me; they entertain me. It’s even better if they’re men, which they typically are, because then they know not only that their words aren’t important, in order to make them important they have to perform for me. Come on sweetie, do a little dance for me. Oops, you’re too angry? You can’t prove your point? Then shut up

[fuckmeyer]

the choice between Edward & Jacob is not a question of which relationship is healthier or which partner is best suitable for Bella. neither is correct. neither is best. neither produces a happy ending for Bella. at the end of the day this is still a vampire novel. any choice Bella could make would yield, at best, a bittersweet happily ever after.

if she chooses Edward, she gets the terrifying Breaking Dawn ending: a girl who rejected her call to grow up has hung her love & her eternity on an emotionally stunted partner who hates himself marginally less than he loves her. she's a teen mom with a kid she never wanted who perpetuates the generational trauma passed down from her parents. by keeping this child, the Cullens have set the stage for an uprising/cold war against the Volturi who are likely to take revenge in order to maintain power. Bella is living in a tenuous "dream come true" wrapped in a nightmare & doesn't realize it.

choosing Jacob is the true coming-of-age ending that rips the stitches out of a wound that never fully healed. even if we ignore the fact that she ends up with a man who sexually assaulted her (we must bear in mind Jacob's character is influenced by smeyer's racism, but it did happen), they can't have a secure romantic relationship. based on the high imprinting rate of the pack, Jacob will likely find his imprint in his lifetime & will lose himself to the imprintee. he will no longer be her Jacob. he will inevitably abandon her (whether he wants to or not), & she must reconcile with the reality that she will always be inadequate to Jacob's imprint. & say he never manages to escape the vampires? he will presumably not age for a long time, meaning the relationship Bella always feared with Edward (her being an old grandmother while he stays forever young) remains a possibility. this is the story of a girl who slaps a Band Aid on an open wound & calls herself healed while flinching every time she sees the shadow of the knife that cut her.

if she chooses neither (team therapy), her healing requires her to lose or be at least partially disconnected from everyone she cares about. Bella must spend the rest of her life shut out from one world while never fully existing in her human world ever again. she must always keep secrets. she can never go back home. even in the unlikely event that she manages to escape the Volturi, the threat of being hunted by vampires will never leave her. in addition, she must face her worst fears (aging, losing Edward) while always keeping in mind the immortal life that could have been hers, if only.

even the "healthiest" option produces scars that will never quite heal.

Twilight is a horror. Twilight is a vampire novel. Twilight is gothic. Twilight is fiction. neither Edward nor Jacob is a "bad" choice because neither will give Bella her happily ever after. the choice between Edward & Jacob is simply a matter of which horror story you prefer to read.

[canisalbus]

Hello, I'm not sure if you're aware, but tumblr is going to start helping midjourney gather data for their AI. You're one of the artists I follow here pretty actively and I wanted to warn you to maybe start nighshading your art before posting it here so it doesn't get swept up!

I've seen a couple of posts about it. Feeling disappointed but not that surprised. Also not excited about having to start nightshading/glazing my pieces but if there isn't going to be any serious regulations regarding data scraping and ai "art", there aren't a lot of choices.

Thank you for taking the time to warn me just in case, it was very thoughtful of you!

[edenfenixblogs]

Well Drawfee is officially no longer safe media for me :(

Karina liked multiple tweets conflating a PSA for antisemitism with Israeli propaganda and claiming that Israel planned its assault to coincide with the superbowl…

Julia liked posts claiming that the war isn’t a war. Nobody has liked anything about antisemitism or even acknowledging Jews are in danger right now.

TBH I’m devastated.

I have Drawfee art all over my home. I was actually gonna become a patron this year. I’d literally been saving to make it feasible. This is crushing. I feel sick.

[l-a-l-o-u]

while I'm sharing art - here's my latest DnD character :3 technically this is a fairy, but I turned them into some sort of Bug Creature

pronouns are it/they, ranger/rogue multiclass

[moeblob]

New farmer (for 1.6 update reasons).

His name is Death and he's really death. He's pretty quiet and just wants to live in peace with his chickens. Tries to interact with the town as little as possible but is really curious about them and how they live and is super satisfied to simply watch them - but as the new person it seems no one wants to let that happen.

[steggymus]

in which ronan buys/dreams adam this shirt

[mildew-dread-mold]

something i am obsessed with as a concept is the public somehow finding out that neil is with one of the minyards, but not knowing which one.

reporters have asked them both about the rumours, hoping for clarification of which minyard, but aaron's reaction is always just visceral rage and disgust so potent it renders him speechless, which to the media has the same effect as andrew's staring.

[thermodynamic-comedian]

tmagp except ink5oul is a debate bro with a really intense cult-like fanbase instead of an influencer.

[nymphdiariesdotcom]

one thing you will learn from being in the sims community is how every disscussion- big or small- always traces back to antiblackness, like clockwork.

[atypical-irritant]

This just in: "misinformation" isn't just whatever info you don't agree with. Hope this helps.

[communistkenobi]

There’s this post going around about convincing conservatives to support trains by painting cars as “an attack on traditional transport” (I don’t remember it exactly, but they specifically used the words attack on traditional something)

Mostly people were taking it as a joke, or pointing out how this could be also be used to convince people of conservative goals and to read carefully when it comes to inclusive or sustainable language (like pinkwashing or certain ideologies related to overpopulation)

But I saw one argument that it was useful because “if your politics can only convince people who already agree with you it’s not useful” and while I agree you should tailor your arguments to tie audience, using “attack on tradition” specifically feels odd. (This argument was in response to someone mentioning the issues a rail system organized by people with that mindset would have)

I guess I’d like to know what you think about it, since I’m not very knowledgeable when it comes to politics.

I believe you’re talking about this post:

If you wanted to take this screenshot seriously I think it’s a pretty bad way to convince people of your own political beliefs and goals, because you’re not actually convincing them of anything lol. There is a difference between tailoring your arguments to your audience or meeting people where they are versus adopting the framework of your political enemies to make your own goals appear to align with their own. You have not actually convinced conservatives that public transit is good for the reasons it is actually good (the reasons public transit is good is diametrically opposed to their beliefs), you have only convinced them that public transit can fit under a conservative policy framework. Well conservative policies are disgusting! They are hostile to human life, they make the world a worse place to live in. The crux of the argument being made here is that ‘traditional society’ is something worth protecting, and public transit is an avenue through which this protection can be done. I think if you are conceding this much rhetorical and political ground to your enemy to make them ‘agree’ with you, you’re not being savvy or politically strategic, you are just making conservative arguments. The problem is that traditional society is a vile concept and no policy should rest on that kind of foundation. The way you frame a problem determines the potential solution outcomes; the solution being championed here is not that more public transit solves a host of pressing social problems (increased accessibility and mobility for disabled people, the elderly, children, and the poor, reducing/resolving congestion and traffic issues that plague every urban centre, vastly reducing the amount of deaths related to vehicle collisions for both pedestrians and drivers, reducing carbon emissions produced by vehicles, the list is effectively endless), but that ‘traditional society’ can be saved using public transit - this traditional society being built by white supremacist and cishetero-patriarchal politics, a system of explicit racial and gendered hierarchy and inequality, conservative cultural ideas about struggle, rugged individualism, the strong dominating the weak, and so on. You’re just making a conservative argument!

The whole liberal fantasy surrounding debates is that politics is primarily a game of rhetoric where ideas clash for dominance and the best ideas win. If you can’t even convince someone of your own political goals on your own terms using your own ideas - or worse, your political goals are so modular and vague that you believe using fascist concepts like ‘protecting traditional society’ is a productive vehicle for getting what you want - you are at best useless and at worst part of the problem. In either case I don’t think it’s effective or worth your time, you’re literally just increasing the amount of conservative arguments that exist in the world, and if you believe otherwise you’re either an idiot or you’re dangerous