So, I'm a Buddhist now.

[Agent]

when they make you shave your head people are gin start askin g quetstions

[Despanan]

[Despanan]

[Samurai]

[Agent]

once you turn 34 you officially know more stuff than jesus christ ever did

[Despanan]

[Rip]

hahaha o wow yeah total cult

[Rip]

srsly

[Rip]

Okay but for reals. It almost sounds like you're using a lot of new age speak to either say something I agree with (we're all self-aggrandizing apes), or something really dumb (we're all reincarnated spirits who keep forgetting that we're reincarnated spirits because golf/money/republicans). Either way holy shit man don't talk like that anymore.

[Despanan]

Neither actually, though #1 more than #2. I'm illustrating a philosophical concept, not talking about magic or spirits. Buddhists don't really believe in The Self, so there are no individual souls anyway. I have virtually no supernatural beliefs as a consequence of my Buddhist practice.

I'm explaining that because Buddhists view time & space not as a continuum but as a single thing (which is drawn from the concepts of "Esho Funi" which roughly translates to the "Oneness of Self and the Environment" and "Ichinen Sanzen" Ie: "three thousand realms in a single moment of life" ). Think "time is a flat circle" from True Detective, except seen from a positive rather than pessimistic standpoint.

The line of thought is roughly:

1) Everyone has the potential to become an enlightened being, and this potential can be realized within a single lifetime.

2) If this potential exists, then in truth, everyone already is an enlightened being, because given a long enough timeframe if something can happen, it will happen, it's just that people don't realize this because of delusion (Mara).

3) If this potential is realized in the future or the past, than it's realized right now because time itself is also illusory.

So essentially, everyone is an enlightened being already, we just get so focused on the bullshit of day to day life we don't realize it - so the process of becoming enlightened is more a process of "remembering" what we already know, rather than becoming something different.