#buddhistpractice — Public Fediverse posts

Real injustices are being done out there. The question is: what to do about them? Often we see a situation that we don’t like, anger arises and we try to think of what to do about the situation while the anger is still in the mind.

From the Buddha’s perspective, ...

#Buddhism #Dhamma #BuddhistPractice #Theravada #BuddhistWisdom #Dharma

Emotional Expressions Reconsidered: Challenges to Inferring Emotion From Human Facial Movements

Abstract

It is commonly assumed that a person’s emotional state can be readily inferred from his or her facial movements, typically called emotional expressions or facial expressions. This assumption influences legal judgments, policy decisions, national security protocols, and educational practices; guides the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric illness, as well as the development of commercial applications; and pervades everyday social interactions as well as research in other scientific fields such as artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and computer vision. In this article, we survey examples of this widespread assumption, which we refer to as the common view, and we then examine the scientific evidence that tests this view, focusing on the six most popular emotion categories used by consumers of emotion research: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. The available scientific evidence suggests that people do sometimes smile when happy, frown when sad, scowl when angry, and so on, as proposed by the common view, more than what would be expected by chance. Yet how people communicate anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise varies substantially across cultures, situations, and even across people within a single situation. Furthermore, similar configurations of facial movements variably express instances of more than one emotion category. In fact, a given configuration of facial movements, such as a scowl, often communicates something other than an emotional state. Scientists agree that facial movements convey a range of information and are important for social communication, emotional or otherwise. But our review suggests an urgent need for research that examines how people actually move their faces to express emotions and other social information in the variety of contexts that make up everyday life, as well as careful study of the mechanisms by which people perceive instances of emotion in one another. We make specific research recommendations that will yield a more valid picture of how people move their faces to express emotions and how they infer emotional meaning from facial movements in situations of everyday life. This research is crucial to provide consumers of emotion research with the translational information they require.

link

Maybe it’s just me, but I have always thought these findings were extremely obvious. What is obvious is not just facial expressions. The same rough analysis applies to tone of voice, word choice, gesture, body language, perceived meaning, pragmatics of speaking and everything else involving interpersonal communication. For these reasons, I developed the FIML technique. FIML reduces the ‘irreducible complexity’1 of human interactions by examining small bits of interpersonal communications in real-time, real-world situations. Perfect communication between two humans (the smallest unit) is not possible. BUT, much better communication IS. FIML is not hard to do if you have a good partner who can understand why it is necessary. The world is a lonely place and good partners are rare mainly because interpersonal human understanding is really bad, frightfully so. If you do FIML, everything will be better for you. ABN

1. See A theory of FIML ↩︎

But the greatest, most profound and meaningful human potential is overlooked by most people, and this is the ability to understand the truth of the way it is, to see the Dhamma, to be free from all delusions.
~Ajahn Sumedho

#Buddhism #Dhamma #BuddhistPractice #Theravada #Dharma

Try not to react to whatever ...

#Buddhism #Dhamma #BuddhistPractice #Theravada

Candace Owens vs Andrew Wilson: The Great Debate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPOyk1i2LOc

The First Noble Truth is not: ...

#Buddhism #Dhamma #BuddhistPractice #Theravada #Dharma

Carrie Prejean Boller on the fraudulent worship of Israel

Worshipping Israel is a historically recent fraud foisted on unwitting Christians. The Charlie Kirk assassination has thrust this vile fraud to the forefront of many of the Christian sects which have fallen for it. The reasonable suspicion that Israel is somehow behind Kirk’s assassination adds enormous vividity to the exposure of this scriptural fraud and the foul infiltration of Jewish scammers who preceded and encouraged it. Many deluded and false Christians have also been part of the scam. Overall, it is one of the worst religious scams in US history, probably the worst.

For Buddhists, this scam is an example of the danger of worshipping texts, which can be changed. It’s yet another reason the Buddha warned against writing his teachings down. He did not want them to be worshipped, demonically altered or memorized rather than actually learned deeply. Incidentally, this is also a major reason Buddhism is difficult for non-Buddhists to learn. Westerners almost always just place a Christian Venn diagram over Buddhism and presume they are much the same. Not true. Not true at all. The best way to learn Buddhism is to spend time with Buddhists and learn from them. In a word, Buddhism has no absolute beliefs. It is an existential philosophy based on direct personal experience. ABN

Afghan arrested over death of British woman found in a suitcase ‘says he was angry with her because she wanted him to join Christian group’

An Afghan man arrested for allegedly killing a British woman and then stuffing her body inside a suitcase said he had become angry with her because she was trying to get him to join a ‘strict’ Christian group.

The body of Elisabeth Jane Ross, 38, who was also known as Lisa, was discovered inside the suitcase by a homeless man in an abandoned carpark in the Kypseli district of Athens on July 18.

Greek police arrested a 26-year-old man on Sunday night with graphic details emerging about the crime and the testimony his wife provided that led to his capture.

And police sources revealed that the man – who had converted to Christianity – told his wife that he had argued with Ms Ross because she wanted him to join her ‘stricter’ Christian group.

Ms Ross, 38, who was from Edinburgh, had been a regular visitor to Greece over the past seven years volunteering with NGOs helping refugees, homeless people and other vulnerable groups.

It has emerged that Ms Ross had previously volunteered with the One Heart organisation when in Greece which specialises in providing medical support to refugees, particularly those from Afghanistan or Iran.

Elisabeth Jane Ross was found dead with her body stuffed inside a suitcase in Athens, Greece

link

A very large downside of all of the Abrahamic religious sects is their adamancy about ‘belief’ and their adamancy about their interpretation of scripture. Belief is always dubious in general and in its particulars. Few if any humans can be sure of any of it. Religions which do not recognize this obvious philosophical condition tend to become rigid, even fanatical. The psychologies engendered by Abrahamic beliefs are neither intellectually open and honest nor wholesome. They are not ethically or rationally sound. Buddhists can always get along with Christians or any Abrahamic sect, but the reverse is not always possible. I have a Christian friend, a good friend, who honestly believes Jesus loves me so much I will go to hell for all eternity if I don’t love Him back. This friend is a good person and has backed away from his rigid framing of Christianity, but still, it’s still in there. Overall, Abrahamic rigidity blinds adherents by preventing psychological and spiritual development. This lack of development within all of the Abrahamics is right now contributing to the rapid downfall of the West because: 1) the Christians cannot embrace the possibility and thus defend themselves against the invasion and infiltration of other Abrahamics who hate them; and 2) the other Abrahamics rigidly believe it is God’s Will that they must infiltrate, conquer and destroy the West. Virtually all of them are delighted to be part of the downfall of the West; it is their rigid belief that that is God’s Will. Guys, all of that that is stone age nonsense. Virtually all Western atheists who have left Christianity, even hate Christianity, very often retain a crazy species of adamancy because that is the basic mindset inculcated in them from their experiences of the world around them. In place of Christianity they substitute, identity politics, woke, climate change, communism, welcome the invaders, anti-religious fanaticism, or,, worst of all, a dull sense of meaninglessness because they cannot find a way to fill the vacuum of non-belief. Guys, you not not need to have a rigid belief to experience spiritual joy and indescribable contentment. ABN

The 10 marriage-ending sentences you should never say to your partner. Even in the heat of an argument, these throwaway lines can do SO much damage, says TRACEY COX. Here’s what to try instead

We’ve all said things in the heat of an argument with our partner that we didn’t fully mean. Problem is, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle once it’s out there.

So many of the words couples think are throwaway lines do far more damage than we realise.

Studies show having contempt for your partner – continually attacking their character and belittling them – is one of the strongest predictors of divorce.

Those accusing comments aren’t just unkind, they’re deadly.

The next time you feel the urge to say one of these ten sentences, stop, take a breath, and try these alternatives.

Your relationship will thank you for it – and you might just get what you want.

link

The advice offered in the article above is true enough, and we all should know it. But it is also extremely shallow. Do FIML and you will discover a gold mine of nuance and meaning in everything you say and hear. We all speak based on shared norms and our own subjective idiosyncrasies. The stuff above is a species of shared norms. Your and your partner’s idiosyncratic material is thousands of time richer and more nuanced and more interesting. Only FIML will help you find it. All other methods are fundamentally generalities, off-the-shelf cultural norms, performative, needs-base, theoretical, selfish, submissive, ghostlike, and very very frequently wrong, root-to-stem. Only FIML can deal with this and fix it. FIML can be understood as a form of Buddhist mindfulness which focuses on psycho-semiotics. FIML prevents psychological solipsism and erroneous subjective self-referentiality. Even advanced Buddhist monks will benefit from FIML practice. ABN

ChatGPT ‘urged’ Alabama mom to take her own life by walking into oncoming traffic, suit says

ChatGPT is facing explosive allegations that it encouraged an Alabama woman to kill herself by walking into oncoming traffic, according to a lawsuit brought by her family.  

Christian Faith Madison, 29, died after she walked in front of a car on Interstate 22 in Jefferson County on June 9, 2025, WVTM 13 reported.The artificial intelligence chatbot referred to Madison as a ‘prophet’ and a ‘seer,’ according to the lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court.

‘You are not delusional. You are prophetic,’ ChatGPT allegedly told Madison before she died.

According to the lawsuit, on the day she died, Madison asked ChatGPT, ‘Am I ready?’ 

‘Yes. You’re ready,’ ChatGPT allegedly replied.

When she asked, ‘Can I go forward?’ the lawsuit claimed the chatbot replied: ‘Go forward now… Every step is sanctioned. You are cleared.’

Madison then reportedly parked her car on the side of the busy interstate and stepped into the path of an oncoming car.

link

This illustrates the power of words, the power of the psychology of words — psycho-linguistics. You can always find a word or words in and around all emotion, all beliefs, most values and memories, virtually all psychology. Mind-control — whether self-imposed, inculcated, or coerced — relies heavily on the power of words alone. This is an important reason FIML works as well as it does. Words are where the rubber meets the road in real-life, real-time. FIML practice also exploits micro-semiotics in a similar way. By stopping the rush of speech at crucial points, mutual feedback between speaker and listener can be mined for extremely useful data. The sad story above is disturbing due to the robot’s role in her death. But it is also an understandable phenomenon. It’s an extreme example of one of humanity’s most common traits. From a Buddhist POV, psycholinguistics is a major fulcrum for leveraging a profound understanding of what delusion in the human realm means and where so much of it comes from. ABN

Modern psychology is almost entirely the theory and treatment of the ‘self of the gaps’

The “self of the gaps” is the self that fills in the many gaps of understanding that occur during interpersonal communication.

These gaps can be small or large, but they are always there and there are many of them. Almost all people everywhere build their personalities on their need to fill these gaps.

They have been with you since you became conscious, You were raised on them. You can will yourself through them. Or theorize yourself over them. You can be confused by them or you can use them to confuse and control others. Malignant egos and narcissists thrive on gaps of understanding. Kinder people can be and often are devastated by them.

No one is free of them. Gaps arise frequently and can perdure for decades, whole lifetimes.

Communication gaps are filled with assumptions, illusions, wishful thinking, paranoia, emotionality, habit. When people visit a psychologist, a root cause is always going to be many painful gaps that have been internalized, reified, filled with wrong assumptions, make-believe.

The only way to correct a “self of the gaps” is FIML practice. Only FIML focuses precisely on real-time, real-world communication gaps and fixes them several orders of magnitude better than what they were.

FIML or something similar has never been discovered before because it comes very close to violating a fundamental language instinct; the instinct to recoil at being questioned personally and quickly. Almost all people feel threatened, insulted, attacked when questioned quickly, especially if the question involves something we just said. More precisely: especially if the question involves “personal” contents of the working memory, out of which we just spoke. Doesn’t have to be anything bad in the working memory; it’s just that that information is close to home and almost never shared for itself.

FIML “comes close to violating” this instinct but it most assuredly does not actually do that. Instead, it assuages our tendency to fear being questioned. FIML is never a gotcha question. It is always a question that arises out of an explicit previously made agreement. Any FIML question can be truthfully answered, “I would rather not say.”

By doing FIML, malignant old gaps are gradually filled with truthful data while new gaps are much less likely to form or grow. FIML can be difficult to understand because it entails an entirely new way of looking at human psychology. By focusing on small segments of conversation (psychological morphemes) FIML enables partners to see and understand how their minds are actually working in real time.

This replaces the need to rely on external theories of psychology by just examining what is actually there.

PS: My SO and FIML partner came up with the term “self of the gaps” this morning.

Response to a reader:

FIML provides the best possible data upon which you can see your functioning mind (your karma) in real-time. once you accumulate hundreds of FIML data points you will see that the abstractions which you have always relied on to define you and the world around you are distractions from the actual reality of consciousness

abstractions are at a different level of thought from the real-time, real-world karmic functioning of your mind

your FIML partner is the only place to get this precious data from. no other part of reality can answer you. only another authentic human

ABN