A Surprisingly Budist Thought in Nietzsche

Nietzsche once wrote that there is a commonly held belief that thought precedes emotion, but that he suspected this to be false and the reverse to be true.

Say, for instance, I am an avid fan of rap music. But one day I become convinced that it is the mediocre product of an inferior race. In between those positions, life dealt me a bad hand and made me bitter. Is it more likely that my bitterness accounts for my new critical thoughts or that I am bitter because I discovered rap is a mediocre product of an inferior race?

Budists claim that thinking is a disease that springs from emotion. Suffering. Clinging to desire.

The resemblance is striking.

To be more faithful to modern Western budism, it is emotions that they claim must be mastered instead of thoughts. The adept must pierce the deceitful veil of thought to disarm the real fountain of suffering. An emotional state of peace produces peaceful thoughts.

Zoots Allures wrote:https://vocaroo.com/i/s0lJijfWZFMr

Well put.

We appreciate beauty....we do not declare it, nor create it using language, expressing preference.
There's a cost to failing to appreciate beauty.
Consider the risks entailed in ignoring what physical and mental symmetry and proportionality.
Will the offspring of a male who think obesity is sexy, and ugliness is beautiful not suffer the consequences?
What of the woman who does not believe race is real? Will she question her judgment, on the matter, or will she blame the world when her child undererformes academically?

Higher is preferred to lower.
Not hatred....not ignored, nor silenced.
Melody surpasses primal beats; word-associative rhymes are exceeded by a Yates poem.



One requires a complex mind to appreciate, and to create....the other appeals to the simplest and most mediocre, and only those find pleasure in creating it. Their standard is populist....being popular, loved, appreciated by the many.
The first can, in times of mirth and comfort, turn to the lower and find in it what others also do...but the mediocre can never appreciate what is beyond their grasp.



The Modern assumes that because his subjective judgments are based on trauma, emotion, any reaction to world that focuses on the reaction itself, and is called 'esoteric', that this is so for all art, and all judgments, and all opinions.
He wants it to be so.