/lit/ - Literature

ITT we discuss (or at least tell me about) contemporary Buddhist literature. Both fiction and non-fiction.

Especially things that specifically concern Buddhism and modern life, if you please.

>>2824369
Buddha's get their peace solely from accepting transience. They've done away with grasping for permanence.

>>2794633
Something like this:

Once too Diogenes, when he came to him, brought a dagger. And when Antisthenes cried out, "Who will release me from these pains?" replied, "This," showing him the dagger. "I said," quoth the other, "from my pains, not from life."

Especially since Buddhists believe one can be relieved of suffering short of death and a lot of Buddhists believe that death is not the end of suffering. And also because most Buddhist intend to end suffering in general, not just that of their own. So helping people out takes care of more suffering than ending your life. There's also Buddhists who belief that suffering is essentially bad karma being "used up" for lack of a better term, and that in that way it leads to a life free from bad karma or at least with less of it.

So they have a lot of reasons to believe that suffering can't be escaped by dying, but only dissolved by the Buddhist practice. As far as suffering in general goes, I believe they are right.

I believe there's some antinatalist tendencies in some forms of Buddhism though, but rarely suicidal ones.

>>2781110
>But then we can point to absolutely any macromolecular object and say the same thing about it - of bananas, chairs, balls, whatever.

Indeed. In Buddhism they call this sunyata, or emptiness.

> The obvious questions seems to me to be: what difference does it mean?
Seeing the emptiness (sunyata) and impermanence (anitya) shows us that there is no use clinging to things. When we stop clinging to things, we thereby become free of desire (not of all wants necessarily, one has to eat, but desire in the sense of thinking you truly must have and need some things). Being free from grasping around us all the time, we free ourselves from suffering. So in short, the people who want to free themselves from suffering and have lasting contentedness give a fuck.

Or so the Buddhists roughly see it as far as I know.

>>2694521
The Buddha noticed that life is suffering or at least contains it. He wanted to fix this. He's found insight into the matter and gave instructions. Buddhism basically is this guy Siddharta's method of making life less shitty.

These things are determined by insight into actions and consequences. Casual sex, while nice, comes with a lot of ways to induce suffering. There may be diseases or unwanted children. One of the parties may have more feelings for the other than the other way around and can become hurt. Other people might become hurt by it. Then there's reputation. The stability of society. It would save humanity tons of shit and suffering if people would stop fucking around.

The real trick though is that once you get into the habit of not fucking random people you change your outlook. You don't walk the streets on the hunt anymore. You can treat people as people instead of as items to be consumed. Which in turn makes life more pleasant for everybody.

There are a lot of things that seem quite harmless but cause a lot of suffering. The Buddha said that it is better to refrain from such things, because both you and your fellow people will benefit from it.

The Dalai Lama is actually seen as an incarnation of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (basically the compassion saint of Mahayana buddhism). The Tibetans are a strange bunch though. Their flavour of Buddhism is very esoteric.

>>2635597
>Identify the object in question

You mean create artificial boundaries in the flux of phenomena. Objects are no more real entities than the borders of a country. We have forgotten this, so we "identify" objects (create them in fact, wish them into existence) and stick with this rigidly.

Flux doesn't give a fuck however, so as time goes on your object changes. We then become mad because things change. People change, friendships end, tits start to sag, people die. We then feel that this is some sort of horrible injustice and pity ourself. Instead of this, we should recognise that it's been flux all along and our suffering merely stems from being unable to make peace with this fact. Once we loose the attachment to arbitrary definitions of objects, we suffer no longer.

Isn't Buddhism amazing?

>>2583021
Achieving enlightenment isn't the central tenet of Buddhism, seeking the elimination of suffering (through enlightenment) is. With emphasis on seeking, not finding. Someone who seeks this is a Buddhist, someone who does this is a Buddha.

>>2552384
Well in that case I'm a Buddhist who has renounced the four noble truths and altruist ethics and has embraced materialist egoism while still maintaining the concepts of flux and emptiness.

That doesn't really sound right, does it? I think it's important to draw a line somewhere. At least it would be for the reputation of Buddhism as to not get high jacked by all kinds of nasty buggers.

You could look into the most wide spread atheist/apatheist doctrine there is, OP.

(inb4 some forms of buddhism have gods. I'm aware of the believe in deities in some traditions, but those are seen as merely another form of (albeit powerful) sentient beings and do not pose the same philosophical problems as a creator god. They are more like gnomes and goblins and such)