/lit/ - Literature

>>15165525
You ignore the pain. Not that difficult, just completely useless. Which is the point.

oh he felt pain lol -- and he also wasted his life, his protest did nothing

>>15165557
how is it not that difficult to ignore the pain of being burned alive. It's crazy

>>15165588
>his protest did nothing
we're still talking about it, aren't we? It's literally one of the most famous images in history.

>>15165525
In deep Jhana your senses are cut off. Strong sensations can go through, but you are able to ignore them.

>>15165525
One of the things about mindfulness meditation in particular is that it allows people to withstand pain better. I realize that that it is a big jump from something like a twisted ankle to the extreme pain of burning oneself, but regardless, there have been numerous examples of monks that have essentially starved themselves for 4-5 years. Yeah, they have a goal of dying at such a light weight that they won't rot because not rotting means that they are more enlightened or holy.... so the first stage of a year and a half is where they eat plants..... stage after that allows them to just eat seeds......the final stage that lasts for a year and a half allows them to just eat bark. By the final stage they look like an ethiopian, sadly. Then they put themselves in a box with the exit sealed up and are determined to meditate until death from dehydration. Every day they rang a bell to let the monks know that they were still alive.... and they dying monk would sit in lotus and meditate until death. This is just a small sect that does this kind of thing, but many examples from them have arisen, enough that this extreme pain thing seems plausible.

>>15165713
>Then they put themselves in a box with the exit sealed up and are determined to meditate until death from dehydration. Every day they rang a bell to let the monks know that they were still alive.... and they dying monk would sit in lotus and meditate until death.

>>15165588
He accomplished exactly what he set out to do
>Accrue merit
>Break the wheel of reincarnation
>Kick Frogs out of his homeland
>Die by fire
We cannot be sure he did #2, but he sure as shit succeeded in #1, #3, and #4.

>>15165713
It's worth noting that the sects that do this only do it with very elderly monks, and they drink what amounts to wood polish and lacquer in order to preserve their mummies.

>>15165525
No, anyone can do that if they develop sufficient discipline, mind-over-matter, or whatever you want to call it. And “Buddhism” is an umbrella-term for a vast enough number of different sects, such that not all Buddhists even agree with what this monk did. Some have made arguments like this >>15165588, and said he should’ve stayed alive to fight for his cause more. Although I don’t have an opinion on it myself, I’m just throwing that out there.

>>15165739
Agreed. It makes our western lives seem very weak in comparison to what they can put themselves through.

>>15165739
>Kick Frogs out of his homeland
By self-immolating nine years after the end of the First Indochina War? Good one buddy

>>15165819
They can only put themselves through it because their contempt for the real world makes them disassociate. It's not determination, it's nihilism, and it can't be used to accomplish anything other than stunts and dick waving. The guy in the pic would have been just as successful in communicating his political message if he pulled a Tank Man, and wouldn't have been so disgustingly nihilistic about it.

Also, Christian martyrs would do shit like this all the time. People in developed countries just came to recognize it as the backwards savagery that it is after the enlightenment.

>>15165934
>I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I'll have you know my opinion is very important!
Sorry, it isn't.

>>15165952
Absolutely none of this is true, at any level. Could you please cite your sources where you got these claims from? Your statements about why aren't rooted in Buddhism, at all, and your understanding of why the self-immolation was done is just completely wrong.

You do realize that we know who this guy is, right? And we know why he did it, right?

>>15166003
Typical Buddha faggot, whines that nobody really understands his cult but doesn't offer any alternative explanations. Please explain how contempt for the world of sensations isn't the core premise of your religion, idolater.

>>15166003
Nigger this is no matter of opinion, Thích Quảng Đức set himself on fire to protest South Vietnamese oppression of buddhists in 1963, nine entire years after the French left the country for good in 1954.

>>15166040
The impetus is on you to explain how it is, because none of this is found in any Buddhist tradition. At all. Nihilism, and the hatred of the physical world, are explicitly condemned by the Buddha. Are you getting hung up on the whole "illusion" aspect? The illusion isn't the world, the illusion is how you see the world. There's no "contempt" for the world of sensations at all. Improperly understanding how things are leads to people acting badly out of ignorance, which leads to suffering. The reason monks retreat to monasteries in Buddhism is the exact same reason that Christian monks do: to remove distractions from their goal of seeing reality how it truly is.

Forget about Buddhism's rich tradition of poetry and literature which can hardly be described as "contempt for the world of sensations", if Buddhism was just about flagellating yourself because PAIN GOOD, why did the Buddha drop proto-Jainism in favor of making Buddhism? This is literally a part of his life story: The Buddha is born in a world of pleasures, realizes that doesn't make you truly happy, leaves it for a life of masochism, realizes that's pretty shit too, and comes up with Buddhism. If the entire point is just to snuff yourself out, why did the Buddha bother spending 45 years teaching this stuff?

>>15166053
The French most certainly had not left the country. The Diem regime was packed to the gills with French (many were (((French))) but that's semantics) corporate and government interests. The Catholic Church was the largest landowner, and when it wasn't burning down villages to sell the land to French corporate interests it was forcibly converting Vietnamese villages to Catholicism so it could use them as slave labor in factories run by French corporate interests.

It's not that they don't feel pain, they're just G enough that they don't even flinch.

>>15165525
Sense withdrawal is like step 1 in most meditative traditions. The Western meme approach to meditation doesn't include this of course, but there's nothing special about it.

>>15166163
You seem knowledgeable on the subject. Tell me then, is setting yourself on fire for political reasons following the buddhism teaching?

>>15166224
Partaking in political action to prevent the crimes outlined in >>15166178 is considered meritorious, yes. Stopping someone from committing a bad action is meritorious, yes. Is setting yourself on fire the go-to problem solver? No, and it's not encouraged.

Many in the West hold to this silly Protestant concept that in order for anything to be "good" it has to be entirely selfless and nice, kind, fluffy, cushy, soft, rosy, and pink. That's not the truth, at all. Compassion in Buddhism involves both compassion for yourself and for others. Compassion in Buddhism means that sometimes, you have to take hard measures with people to stop themselves from hurting themselves and others. By burning down villages to sell the land to corporate interests, the French corporate mercenaries were not only hurting others, but themselves.

If you're looking for some "AH HAH! THE BUDDHA SAID FIRE BAD! GOTCHA!" moment, it's not going to happen. Self-immolation was a clever trick to prevent further suffering (it lead to the leadership of the army coup that would overthrow the Diem regime a month later deciding to actually do a coup). That's all there is to it.

If you're looking for some Gotcha! moment to prove yourself right, ask yourself why? Are all of those murdered in the name of global finance okay if the Buddha would have tutted his finger at this monk for stopping suffering this way? Why would it make you feel better if that was the case? What does that say about you, and how would the people you look up to feel about you believing this?

>>15166317
I'll take your words that burning yourself for shock value to incite a change in the society is tolerated in your religion's teachings. But no I don't feel bad being disgusted with your utilitarian and earthly morals. To me each life has an undefinable value that can't be counted or compared, no equivalence. Perhaps it's the better way to serve a society, a country or a people. But to say it's moral to exchange one life for many is simply unimaginable to me.

>>15166163
I didn't claim "pain good" to a Buddhist, I said they have contempt for sensation. Very different. And you didn't at all address the assertion that Buddhism is nihilistic, which is the central point I made. And you didn't address the cycle of rebirth or the concept of nirvana at all. It seems like YOU don't understand the philosophical core of Buddhism, since you didn't actually engage with its assertions in this comment, but just gave circumstantial and tangential evidence.

>>15165525
Neat thread. based buddha poster

>>15165525

His final moments were absolute kino.

>>15166317
>Compassion in Buddhism means that sometimes, you have to take hard measures with people to stop themselves from hurting themselves and others.
Why ''in Buddhism''? This is true for basically everything, not only religious praxis.

>>15166163
>The illusion isn't the world, the illusion is how you see the world.
Again, basically what every religion and philosophy (in the modern sense) teach, even genuine nihilism. I think only modern way of life of capitalist consumerism is attached to an illusion.