/lit/ - Literature

>>16755271
>I don't see how apathy or not caring about anything result from this, unless someone was already disturbed to begin with.
I think the crux of the matter here lies with the eastern denial of an individual soul, or its sublation into a higher universal principle (as seen in the nondualist strains). You're entirely right, rebirth doctrine on its own doesn't do much, you have to qualify what exactly is being reborn to get to the point I'm trying to make. I'll make some sweeping generalizations here to make my point but bear with me.
Western philosophers seem to hold soul (Psyche, Nous, Logos, w/e) to be self-evident and foundational. The eastern analogue would be something like the atman of the *dualist* traditions (atman =/= brahman but you can enter into communion with him) Eastern thought holds this kind of belief in an immutable and individual soul to be 'unreal', that is to say transient and consequently a delusion. To them it's confusing the relative with the absolute, as I'll try explain.
What would hypothetically be the western soul in eastern thought is split into two components -- the gunas (psychophysical foundational 'attributes'), and what is keeping the gunas self-perpetuating according to their nature -- karma. What exactly is *karma*? Karma is both a mechanism and a measure. It is the measure of how bound you are to the waxing and waning of the gunas, and it's the mechanism which determines what is being reborn. This is because being bound and being reborn are *the same thing*.
Good karma implies you are less identified with, or bound to, the qualities of your "individuality", and consequently you're born less often, because you are those qualities. You suffer less. Bad karma is the converse, you identify yourself with a lot of things, desire a lot of things, and so karma is simply just the measure of *how much you want to be reborn*, or to put it in the western sense, and to get back to the point I tried to make earlier: how much you're concerned with the world.

yes they are comfy and way more imaginative than anything a single person can invent, theyre more dreamlike

>>15615018
You just asked a good question

>>12483504
Seems like a solid list to me.