Nice thread brother. I have been thinking on my own vanity as of late, I used to work out to stay healthy and look good, now only for health. I chipped my front tooth and my mate who is a dentist said he would fix for free but I see no need, my looks do not define who I AM. I hardly use perfume and have a lot of designer clothes, which I wear for the sake of wearing but only buy cheap clothes for myself now. I use DMT and LSD to help me remove my sense of identity from my body/mind on a regular basis. If only we were free like other animals?



I love this! Hang on I if I believe what you believe Your God is My God? There is no religion. Just what is. I call myself a Christian and wear a crucifix because I am a follower of Christ. Christ never said anything about the church. so most Christians would not classify me as Christian but I feel most miss what Christ teaches us. The old testament is more a history of a people with their God. the Creation story and the Gospels are all I see as relevant, the rest are interesting but nothing more. All religion is the same thing, so there is no real religion. We are all the same any difference is a illusion.

Much love.

I don't think so. They seem like polar opposites to me.

I like it.

humans can be divided by fake or real with one simple sentence.

" what do you gots"

if they dont cough up something tangible instantly , step off.

ive discovered that the most serious players,
are never offended by the "tangible" test.
frauds, of course, go wild and may become violent.

that was brilliant

What about fake humility? --> "Please like my humility on vainbook!"

vanity is social mindfulness in excess, a natural habit which serves a purpose as much as any acquired instinct does. and what that can look like depends on intelligence level, from person to person, region to region.

we all gravitate to like minded people, and everywhere there is vanity, and vanity is not always a weakness.

Look how i am humble !

That's still vanity.

Vanity is the conscious act of making oneself appear more attractive. The intention of the "Please like my humility on vainbook!" is not to raise awareness for whatever cause they are championing (or if it is, it only comes second). The main reason is so that other people will like them more.

Just like psychs, vanity is all about intention. Say you have an unbelievably attractive person. The type of person that makes jaws drop when they enter the room. Is the mere act of washing their hair an act of vanity? If it's so that it can be styled, then yes. If it's just a hygiene thing, then no.

What if one were to go through all the effort of making their external appearance appealing to none but themselves?

Then I praise you for loving yourself providing me the opportunity to love you truly.
What we dislike, all of us, is falseness. There are not very many people alive today, actually. They say billions, I say millions.
By alive I mean conscious. The few that are conscious, always seem to have in common the trait of being conduits of love, which happened as a result of finding approval of oneself in the eyes of oneself. And this is call loving yourself.
If you love yourself, this energy attracts that which is like itself from others around you.
Loving yourself, you become lovable indeed.

It is no virtue, and in fact a disgusting vice, to pretend you are not vain, when you actually are.
The first thing is Honesty. If you are vain, then you are vain. For if you deny vanity if you have it, you will be adding vanity to vanity, and be hopelessly mixed up. If you are selfish, you are simply selfish. Why lie? Selfish is good.
And who cares about this vanity thing anyway?
For concern for vanity is vanity.

You're trying to praise yourself while slipping your detection of yourself praising yourself.
Very clever, but it's an ego trap you're playing on yourself, trying to one-up yourself.

Vanity may be like a great snowball rolling down the snow covered mountain slopes which gains momentum on the way down, but when reaches a flat plane, is only a matter of time before it rolls itself out of existence.
Vanity reaches the flat plane when you manage not being concerned about it.
Then one day, it disappears.

I am humbler than thou!

Hmmm.. solipsist vanity.. an interesting philosophical conjecture.

In the spirit of brutal honesty I think it is because it is easy to fake. To try and garner status through alignment and achievement in other more conventional areas (sports, academics, rat-race career etc.) is so much harder. The bulk of “spiritual” people I have come across seem to have a deep seated feeling of being lesser-than in life and so gravitate toward areas where renouncement of objective measures of success and status become the very thing that can elevate them.

Bodisativa, highly recommend reading "the myth of freedom" and "cutting through spiritual materialism" by chogyam trungpa. He basically says in a very beautiful, concise way that sometimes we think we are super advanced spiritually but the fact that you feel spirituality needs to be perceived a certain way shows you have much work to do

It doesn't bother me that it's being discussed, I just thought it was a perspective that should be addressed, we often are bothered by harmless acts, and most people never stop and think "why?"

When you judge someone as vain and fake, this may not have anything to do with the reality of this person, it has to do with your perceptions of this person...

I point out the flaws with humanity more than most, however I'm always careful never to single out an individual, but rather single out the behaviors and actions that are harmful...

And if a person isn't harming anybody, they simply dress in a certain way, or keep images of God's around them, or have vain tendencies, or simply are not living up to your expectations of what a "real" spiritual person is...then they don't deserve to be singled out...they are just living their lives, and if they are not hurting anybody, then who cares?

If this person truly is vain, the vanity will be its own punishment...in Buddhism, they explain why attachment, desire, and ego cause suffering...your punishment by feeding into these things is what you reap by feeding in to them...

I find it's better to point out the negative behaviors, speak on why vanity or dishonesty is wrong...

But to single out an individual, and keep in mind this has nothing to do with the actual individual, it has to do with your perceptions of them, doesn't seem productive...it says more about you than the individual you singled out...

And it may help to look at these tendencies in yourself, before others...

When you judge a person, or talk bad behind their back, it's ego driven, because you have ultimately decided on your superiority, and you want others to recognize it, when you talk bad about a person with another, the two of you have ultimately decided you are the two best people on earth...This is not productive behavior...

Again, these are just my thoughts, I've caught myself being judgemental in similar ways, and it wasn't until I sat down and really thought about "why does this bother me?" That you come to find out that the problem is within you, and has little to do with the individual you have singled out.

Nothing can be changed except ourselves, and if you find it necessary to point out the negatives of an individual, point them out in yourself, more productive change will result.

-eg

^ taking sides w eg on this

Again, I just used an EXAMPLE. I don't care what this person does or doesn't do. I just wanted to explore the concept of vanity from a philosophical perspective.

With the example person I have used, their vanity is so apparent and painfully obvious that it is not judgemental to point it out, it's observant.

I've lost count on how many times I've said it doesn't bother me in the slightest. Let's see if the count keeps going up.

*sigh*

I love you Buddha don't worry

It's an interesting discussion. It could be that people who display signs of vanity feel short changed. It may be that they feel they have a certain level of importance or attractiveness that hasn't been duely noted or sufficiently hailed by their peers. If this is the case, perhaps they overcompensate for this distinct lack of acclaim. This overcompensation might manifest itself in the form of vanity.

Perhaps they do recieve adulation, either genuinly or as a result of the output of vanity. They may feel that the praise was not sufficient, it needs to be maintained or they are locked in this pattern of behavior. Maybe all or a combination of these attributes is at play.

Peace

Macre