/lit/ - Literature

Is this why this board is so retarded? It's people who watch video game streamers when they aren't busy on /pol/? The book in question is probably fine for what it is, a selection of Pali suttas translated by the author, however I would recommend you pick up both the Long and Middle Discourses (latter also translated by Bh Bodhi) as a better starting point, both of which have decent introductory essays and comprehensive endnotes. As this volume is an abbreviation of those and the other Discourses, I would assume some of that information has been sacrificed to accessibility. (And if you do decide to read onward you'll now be buying the same texts twice). I would not consider any translation of Asian material to be a "normie gold standard for an intro into Buddhism" as they barely read to begin with, let alone this sort of literature. Alan Watts or his descended pop-spirituality contemporaries would be more appropriate.

>>21749276
Start with the jeets.

>>21717344
Start with the 'Jeets

>>21699732
Start with the jeets. Badly asked questions will not be answered.
>>21699737
No Buddhist considers himself a "Hindu"
>>21700441
All this seething just to say you hate the idea that life is suffering if you see it that way. Sounds like you're some sort of nihilist.
>>21700474
If that's a bridge in Athens, Ohio then you're right; otherwise even the Greeks are wiki'd.
>>21700632
If you were not born into it then sectarianism is larping and you should read broadly across the different schools. Even with a favored interpretation, it is worth knowing the background of what is being abbreviated, what is being debated, and why.
>>21702021
Escapism in its worst forms but Nietzschean in its best.
>>21702051
Pain is a reductive translation of dukkha. See Stcherbatsky for commentary but in a nutshell it's the idea that life or experience is felt as a sort of constant motion of arising and ceasing. There's no essential enduring object to grasp—which is roughly experienced as "pain" or unsatisfaction.

>>21673413
Start with the 'Jeets, not wiki. Nagarjuna covers all of those questions, the nikayas will give you an understand of the terms being asked about. Read those first.

>>21652856
You always start with the 'Jeets. Note that reading books=/=conversion.
>>21652981
Shankara is my favorite crypto-Buddhist. But to appreciate him you'd want to read Nagarjuna first.

>>21618480
>if you wanna get in touch with Buddhist philosophy read
Read Buddhist literature that's a good start

>>21595924
>Wagner's ideal followed closely the lines of a kind of Western Vajrayana, with his only knowledge of Buddhism being of Theravada from Schopenhauer
Sounds like complete nonsense. Start with the jeets

Do Buddhist apologetics exist? I need plenty of Christian and Muslims giving convincing arguments from their positions but Buddhism seems to be just about teaching their system and not a reason why it is true

>>21389769
There's a lot of overlap between Saivism and the Vajrayana Buddhism in Tibet basically as two sides of the tantric movement (not in a left-hand vs right sense but "Hinduism" vs Buddhism). I'd recommend:
Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism
Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism
Landaw & Weber, Images of Enlightment
Kinsley, The Ten Mahavidyas
For Shingon there's Abe, The Weaving of Mantra, the BDK translations of Kūkai and Kakuban as this anon noted >>21392409 and it would also be worth reading the Vairocanabhisambodhi sutra. Of course, medieval Buddhist literature isn't going to make much sense without a foundation in early Buddhist and Mahayana Buddhist thought, for which I'd recommend at least reading some of the nikayas and Nagarjuna. For suvey literature on Buddhism see Conze, Buddhism Its Essence and Development.

>>21385199
Why don't you start with the 'Jeets instead of lurking /lit/ and checking Wikipedia? Shankara is a proponent of orthodox Hindu theology so of course he rejects Buddhism. By the time he is writing, Buddhist bulls have done so much brahmin breaking that the Hindus are forced to actually explain—or attempt to explain—their scriptures instead of just charging fees for sacrificing animals and reciting spells. Shankara combines this with attempts to refute several Buddhist schools but nowhere can he demonstrate an eternal self let alone that it is equal to some absolute reality, so even when there are issues, from his perspective, with what a Buddhist is saying, his own position itself is heavily dogmatic. Buddhism is not without dogma either, but generally grants that authority to mystical experience rather than adherence scripture, so much so that historically they just kept adding new scriptures as doctrines and practices evolved in dialog with both Buddhist and non-Buddhist sources. There's no strict analog to the Vedas where you have this totally closed canon of divinely produced syllables.

>>21304483
Start with the 'Jeets.

>>21299285
Start with the 'Jeets

>>21269965
You have to start with the 'Jeets. Even if you were to read specific "Zen" materials they would be mostly nonsense without a foundation in the Indian source material

>>21252127
Start with the 'Jeets.

Start with the Jeets. Evola is more interested in upholding his pet version of the based/cringe dichotomy than anything else, although he credits Buddhism with helping him avoid suicide.

>>21038630
Try different sacred texts. The ones about giving your foreskin to the volcano demon are essentially worthless to someone divorced from the context they are from.

>>21023463
sirs do not redeem advaita it is cryptobuddhism

>>20992453
Start with the 'Jeets, not with your interpretation of half a wikipedia article

thread sucks; none of you started with the 'Jeets

>>20876189
No coming/going, no "things" "deviating" from some other thing. Start with the 'Jeets.
>>20885240
ditto for literally any English rendering of a concept from Buddhism, since few here understand "desire" or "suffering" or whatever else is being used as part of an interrelated technical vocabulary and not how you colloquially use the word in 2022

>>20864212
Start with the jeets
>>20864330
sooffering is poor translation, it's more of a sense that the things we grasp at are themselves transient or in a state of commotion, they are not capable of providing any lasting satisfaction

>>20844511
Start with the Jeets. Avoid any best-selling pop-lit written by Western laymen.