/lit/ - Literature

>>22150853

>>21271830
That's a shame because the Avatamsaka is the vastly superior work. Half of the Lotus Sutra is the Lotus Sutra telling you to read the Lotus Sutra. It's as if the author had really bad anxiety.

>>21224234
Got u

>>21041671
Jodorowsky is fine in graphic novel format but I wouldn't rely on him as a commentator on Japanese interpretations of Chinese interpretations of Indian Buddhism. Western readings of Zen are to Buddhism as Mormonism is to Coptic Christianity. Zen is the tail end of a thousand years of development in Mahayana Buddhist philosophy; need to be familiar with the source material if you are taking a text based approach

>>20462110
I would suggest Shingon (Japanese Vajrayana) is more palatable than the Tibetan for westerners. We have no analogue to the Saivism and charnel asceticism that influenced the Esoteric Buddhism exported to Tibet. But the Japanese version is based on a more concise set of earlier Vajrayana texts and rituals. Not that the Tibetans are "wrong," but the theology-demonology they have is from a very pluralistic religious culture, whereas we have been more monotheistic. Kūkai is something like Spinoza; there's breach with convention but not an alien one. It's less you have to learn, basically, in order to "get it." But if you are set on Tibetan stuff don't let that stop you, although the Vajrayana developments and texts in India that influenced Japan are a bit earlier than the ones that influence Tibet, so it doesn't hurt to study it anyway. Study as many schools as you can, see what branches to what, what questions you still have, what clicks, what seems unwieldly

Just read the actual stuff

>>20363284
Theravada is just the oldest surviving school of Buddhism, there are like half a dozen before it that went extinct. It is as much of an exegetic tradition as the Mahayana schools are, even though they come later. Shouldn't assume Theravada is biblical literalism or sola scriptura—it's not. (In fact if you want that it is best displayed in Nichiren's attitude to the Lotus sutra, which one of the Japanese Mahayana schools). The nikayas are not dropped in Mahayana either, but reinterpreted, and referred to as the agamas, which is the Sanskrit rendering. So they aren't "theravadic" and what would be genuinely the exclusive province of Theravada are texts like Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga
>>20363303
Read the Vairocana sutra before his works. It is critically important to his presentation of esoteric Buddhism and was his motivation for travelling to China to learn Sanskrit and the Siddham script

>>20292668

>>20263428
Hua-Yen

>>20230819
Take the buddha pill

>>20071083
Lankavatara with DT Suzuki's translation and commentary. It's considered a Yogacara text but influenced Zen due to its association with Bodhidharma. Zen is the Japanese version of Chan, which is a Chinese-developed school, i.e. it had no direct correspondent in India like some other schools did. It is named after the Chinese transliteration of jñana/dhyana which are the meditative states detailed in the Buddhism of the Pali nikayas (or to the Sanskrit based Chinese schools, the agamas). Chan, and by extension Zen, are Mahayana Buddhist.

Do the needful

>>19935571
Based and vairocana pilled

>>19924291
Here’s another chart. Haven’t started yet but plan to eventually.

So there's this, the Theravada chart, and the start with the jeets chart, but what about the Tibetans? I'm looking to learn about Vajrayana and I'm completely lost, which books should I start with?

>>19892786
Read the Lankavatara

>>19838948

>>19810725
Do the needful
>>19810730
Ever hear of Barlaam and Josaphat? Your entire religion is plagiarized

>>19803404
>its soteriology hinges on faith in revelation that's treated as external from one's mind rather than penetrating the true nature of one's own mind
Yes there's an almost vicious sense of nihilism towards experience or consciousness in a system that merely demands you worship someone because someone else says so. I don't think you necessarily can troll such people into rejecting their beliefs so you may want to give the upaya thing more thought. There is tediously long discussion on what methods and knowledges a bodhisattva should aspire toward in the Asanga-Maitreya corpus of texts. I think these are almost all in English now as of the 2020s.

>>19780587
If you've read the Jeets you can try the Japanese/Chinese next

>>19726326
I prefer my cute girls reading cute things to your cute girls reading cute things.

Any religion which teaches immanence rather than transcendence will have far fewer dogmatic claims which cannot be demonstrated than otherwise.