Well, the 26 centuries of Buddhism, and all those monks and laypeople. I'm not sure if you consider all that they've said and written to be evidence, but I think you should.
(This is not a statement of disagreement, just a comment.)
As for the teachings, I think they’ve been misleading people for centuries. Every religion comes up with rules and symbols to explain the “way to the truth” and mostly what happens is they gain a following that just worships and embellishes the symbols. Those people would have been better off being naive. Maybe then they’d be free to have a visceral insight.
The idea that only Buddhism holds the keys to self-realization is dangerous, frankly. The Catholic Church want you to believe the same thing, that only the Papal hierarchy can direct you to God.
In short, I take these people's word for it because I see no reason to doubt it, just like any non-enlightened person takes the word of Buddha or Buddhist monks that they were/are enlightened. There are numerous instances of Hindus like Ramana and Nisargadatta claiming that their state of mind is identical to what Buddhists call Enlightenment.
If anything, it's Buddhism that has these crazy religious narratives about the cycle or rebirth and so on. Nisargadatta, for example, rejects all this stuff. God, reincarnation, is all conceptual fluff; ignorance. Because what is the "reincarnation" concept to the silent mind? It a disturbance.
What I doubt is that doing so is prudent.
When you look at the ambiguously labeled knobs and levers in the locked control panel of your mind, is it really a good idea to pick the lock and mess around with the levers?
(Also, why would I even want to change whether a thing would cause my mental reaction to be “suffering”? Either “suffering” refers to something other than what I generally mean by the word, in which case, well, whether it is a benefit would depend on what that meaning is (but the default would be not to mess with things beyond my ken) , or it does, in which case, uh, no, I’d rather not be wireheaded kthx. Along the lines of https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/utilitarian-time-travel , if the baron would impale me on a pike, my preferred solution would be to prevent that, not to have a neural restructuring beam make it so I love getting impaled. )
A major purpose of happiness is a difficult-to-fake signal to others of an outcome being good for me (rather, of it seeming to me to be good/desirable).
Happiness is what happens when I get what I want. Making happiness into the thing I want is almost completely backwards.
> Happiness is what happens when I get what I want.
Well, that's how it seems at first. But even though you were overjoyed at the presents you got on your 10th birthday, that happiness did not last. After seeing enough ups and downs, the mind might get tired of being endlessly pushed around by wanting or aversion. It might prefer to just be still, unmoved. Meditation helps develop this kind of stability.
And of course the happiness from getting things I want doesn’t last; if it did, my happiness would cease to be a useful signal for others of what I want, and therefore the mechanism which modulates my happiness would cease to usefully serve its purpose, which would be detrimental regarding the goal of me getting more of what I want.
Your arguments are all assuming that I terminally value being happy, and without that assumption they have no foundation.
To me the question was kind of like "is there really any evidence that this 'exercise' stuff is useful at all?" And the answer would be "yes... all the thousands of books about exercise and all the people who exercise regularly."
Just because it's a Buddhist practice, and it's ancient, that's all you need...?
The same can be said about any other religious practice.
You sound almost like a Christian preacher who could very well say,
"Well, the 20 centuries of Christianity, and all those priests and laypeople. I'm not sure if you consider all that they've said and written to be evidence, but I think you should."
You need reasons actually grounded in preferably personal practice.
That is, something treated like a scientific experiment performed on yourself, to see if following the steps affects you. Then, you look at the results others have attained.
And then you draw rational and logical conclusions based off of that cumulative data.
Hmm, no, sorry if that's how it seemed. I mean the tens of thousands of books, talks, testimonials, etc, that make specific claims like attaining freedom from suffering using various specific strategies and meditation practices.
> You need reasons actually grounded in preferably personal practice.
My personal practice is a few thousand hours of meditation. It's obvious to me that the practice is working, but I can't say exactly what it's doing to my brain, and I can't prove it to anyone else (unless I would already appear odd on a brain scan)