/lit/ - Literature

because it's the same fucking thing as Christianity, just with foreign terms so it's "exotic."

>>2044718
facepalm 0/10 i dont even..

>>2044728
all religions are the same.

its a hipster religion, created by a hipster. probably one of the firsts.

>>2044729

lol babby just read the god delusion?

>>2044730
suffering is so mainstream

>>2044729
>after 500 BCE
>still a materialist
LOL Epicurius sure showed them stoopid theists am i right or am i right?

>>2044730
he was a hipster before it was cool to be hipster

>>2044745
All religions are one.

>>2044754
So what does that make him?

>>2044757

just because you say it doesn't make it so

read Buddhism Plain and Simple or the free Mindfulness in Plain English. Or venture into some Alan Watts.

It's more about being in the present and being compassionate than beads or statues. If they just burn incense and pray for money - missing the plot.

>>2044769

exactly. there are a lot of sects that don't really ask for anything other than that you be 'mindful'. learn your shit. you don't even have to meditate.

just because there are extremists and stupid people that practice buddhism doesn't mean that the religion is valueless. though i can't say the same for, well... pretty much every other religion


i'll also add that if you eat animals and purchase animal products which indirectly support their slaughter you are a major cunt

>>2044776

>eat animals and purchase animal products which indirectly support their slaughter you are a major cunt

Siddhartha Gautama: Major cunt.

>>2044793

yes, and the dalai lama.

I'm not a Buddhist because I'm not willing to commit to a lifetime of meditation and being a total pacifist. To take Buddhism to its logical conclusion, you pretty much can only choose to sit and starve to death.

>>2044810

>hurrrrr

>>2044811
prove me wrong.

>>2044810
Buddhists at that stage wouldnt "starve". Starve implies an absence due to hunger. Hunger is a desire. They simply fade from existence. Rid of it. It being desire. They are of purity. Something I wish to achieve before this tumor takes me. :3

>>2044810
Sitting and starving to death is a desire—an excess of self and self-mortification—and isn't the middle path at all.

Buddha choked to death on pork.

>>2044817
>>2044817
You have a tumor?

Does that mean you might possibly die and consequently stop shitting up this board?

>>2044819
Eating pork is taking life. That ain't Buddhism the way I see it. But, hey, rationalize your failings however you want.

>>2044823
Two Thursdays from now its estimated. Acceptance!

;3

>>2044828
We're all counting down the days.

>>2044829
dibs on his books

>>2044828


u mad cos you dying?

enjoy the dissolution of your consciousness into pure bliss and singular entity of which makes us all

also smoke DMT before it happens

>>2044810
Mate... Buddhism isn't about asceticism. Siddartha's alleged enlightenment included the idea that you don't have to starve yourself. He tried asceticism but ultimately decided that it was the wrong approach.

>>2044825
>But, hey, rationalize your failings however you want.

Your egoism is like covering your fingertips with glue. You appear highly attached.

>>2044835
As do you. The difference is, I don't buy into that.

>>2044834
I think you have a superficial understanding of the implications of Buddhism.

I'm not Buddhist because Sufism is ten times coolah

>>2044839
I think you have a superficial understanding of the implications of trolling.
1/10

>>2044816

Status of Wrong = Proven

thanks for coming out fuckwit

I'm not buddhist, or religious, because the subscription to an permanent and dogmatic set of rules is a poor choice of idealism when you could simply create your own morals and ideals. You can even take what you agree with from the different religions.

Read "Buddhism Without Belief".

>>2044839
Once there was a man who got his dick superglued onto a watermelon.

He kept claiming he wasn't attached as his cockhead scraped along the floor.

im not a buddhist because i take buddhist philosophy seriously

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
- Siddhartha Gautama

>>2044710
Daoism is better.

Adorno on the evil of a benign, all-loving, all-accepting state of consciousness:
"When a man of advanced age becomes famous for being especially benign [abgeklärt: clarified, mellowed], one can presume that his life represented a series of scandals. He has gotten used to outrage. The broad conscience passes itself off as greatness of mind [Weitherzigkeit], which forgives everything, because it understands it all too well. A quid pro quo steps between oneʼs own guilt and that of others, which is resolved in favor of whoever got the best of the deal. After such a long life, one just canʼt distinguish who did what to whom. In the abstract representation of universal injustice, every concrete responsibility collapses. The scoundrel twists it around, as if he experienced it himself: if you only knew, youngman,what life is really like. Those however who are already distinguished in the middle of life by special benevolence, are usually drawing an advance on such benignity [Abgeklärtheit]. Whoever is not evil, does not live benignly [abgeklärt], but in a peculiarly bashful manner, hardened and intolerant. Due to a lack of appropriate objects, the latter hardly knows any other expression of their love than the hatred of inappropriate ones, through which they admittedly come to resemble what they hate. The bourgeoisie however is tolerant. Their love for people, as they are, originates in the hatred of rightful human beings."

Zizek (1/2):
"One should mention here the well-known concept of "future shock" that describes how people are no longer psychologically able to cope with the dazzling rhythm of technological development and the social changes that accompany it. Things simply move too fast, and before one can accustom oneself to an invention, it has already been supplanted by a new one, so that one more and more lacks the most elementary "cognitive mapping." The recourse to Taoism or Buddhism offers a way out of this predicament that definitely works better than the desperate escape into old traditions. Instead of trying to cope with the accelerating rhythm of techno-logical progress and social changes, one should rather renounce the very endeavor to retain control over what goes on, rejecting it as the expression of the modern logic of domination. One should, instead, "let oneself go," drift along, while retaining an inner distance and indifference toward the mad dance of accelerated process, a distance based on the insight that all this social and technological upheaval is ultimately just a non-substantial proliferation of semblances that do not really concern the innermost kernel of our being. One is almost tempted to resuscitate the old infamous Marxist cliché of religion as the "opium of the people," as the imaginary supplement to terrestrial misery. The "Western Buddhist" meditative stance is arguably the most efficient way for us to fully participate in capitalist dynamics while retaining the appearance of mental sanity."

Zizek (2/2):
"The only ‘critical’ lesson to be drawn from Buddhism’s perspective on virtual capitalism is that one should be aware that we are dealing with a mere theater of shadows, with no substantial existence. Thus we need not fully engage ourselves in the capitalist game, but play it with an inner distance. Virtual capitalism could thus act as a first step toward ‘liberation.’ It confronts us with the fact that the cause of our suffering is not objective reality—there is no such thing—but rather our Desire, our craving for material things. All one has to do then, after ridding oneself of the false notion of a substantial reality, is simply renounce desire itself and adopt an attitude of inner peace and distance. No wonder Buddhism can function as the perfect ideological supplement to virtual capitalism: It allows us to participate in it with an inner distance, keeping our fingers crossed, and our hands clean, as it were."

I'd really like to know why people think Buddhism and Christianity are the "same thing."

>Why aren't you Buddhist?

Just becuase there practices might be more moderate than the Abrahamic faiths doesn't change the fact that there are no supernatural entities. Why should I suffer through a less sufferable faith when I could just make up my own mind?

>>2045042
>supernatural entities
>faith

We're talking about Buddhism, you seem to be talking about a made up thing you learnt about in Wonder Woman comic books.

I assume because I was never raised with a religion, so I never really felt any need to have one (nor have i felt the need to rebel against any religion, but that's not the point of this thread). If I'm anything at all I'm a discordian or a Joseph Campbellianist. also this: >>2045027

Some people apparently feel a void in their life that I have never felt. I'm quite content this way. I think my love of linguistics and anthropology has probably filled any human instinct of mine to worship something; i certainly react to studying in a way i've seen people react to churchgoing and prayer.

>>2044748
hahahah

>>2045045
There is no evidence that any cycle of suffering and rebirth takes place. Reincarnation is an idiotic notion. There is no such thing as Karma. It's all unproveable mumbo-jumbo. Cry more, all religions that rely on supernatural precepts are inherently worthless.

>>2044816
burden of proof falls on the one making the claim
etc etc

>>2045045
Do you actually know any of the distinctions between schools of Buddhism or do you have a naive western understanding of Buddhism?
>>2045038
Mahayanists for example believe in a transcendental Buddha, who is pretty much a deity, who took form in the historical Buddha, and Tantrism has even more deities.
Christian Ethics are pretty similar to Eastern concepts of selflessness. You might think that Buddhists are more pacifist and pure than Christians but their followers are mostly the same as the majority of the followers of any religion.
That being said I do like Buddhism a lot, >>2045076
whether reincarnation is an idiotic notion or not, it still has pretty good ethical implications. You need to be calmer and more level headed about this, it would be like an eastern thinker calling the idea of linear time and idiotic notion because its unproveable mumbojumbo.

>Why aren't you Buddhist?
Because I'm not white.

>>2044842
:D Ibn Arabi was almost a buddhist, I would say.

Ontological suicide doesn't really appeal to me, sorry.

>>2044710
Because I'm not an idiot.
/thread

>>2045102

Because I don't need labels, tales, and holier-than-thou attitude to enjoy and understand life.

>>2044710

Because Vedic metaphysics are whack, yo.

>>2045060

You have no religion, but you DO feel the need to be devoted to dated scholarship?

Man, people who don't believe in God really WILL believe in anything.

>>2045076
>rebirth
>Reincarnation
>Karma
We're talking about Buddhism, you seem to be talking about a made up thing you learnt about in Wonder Woman comic books.

Also you seem to have as poor an understanding of saṃsāra as 12th century Christians did of Judaism.

Because I find this memplex even more ridiculous and harmful to European civilization than christianity.

>>2045101
Yes I am aware of the distinctions between various schools of Buddhism. Depending on who we're talking to in Mahayana results in whether we're talking about a pseudo-Spinozan concept of consciousness as emergent or not. As you'd know, Tantrism is as connected with the practice of Buddhism as the Roman Saints are with the practice of early Christianity.

Moreover—most actual practice of Buddhism is the practice of pre-Buddhist folk religions—Tibet, I'm looking firmly at you.

This thread:

>You do not share my views, so I will adapt a patronizing tone.

Buddhism doesn't make sense without rebirth.

>>2045915
>Buddhism doesn't make sense without rebirth.
>Buddhism doesn't make sense.

There, Anonymous, I fixed it for you.

I would like to meditate more often but to call myself a buddhist would be >implying things

>>2045915
禪, Thiền Tông much?

By the way, what was your face like before your father was born?

Because I'm a deist

because jesus christ was god

>>2045107
>:D Ibn Arabi was almost a buddhist, I would say.

"Beware lest you ever say anything that does not conform to the pure Sacred Law. Know that the highest stage of the perfected ones (rijal) is the Sacred Law of Muhammad (s.) And know that anything esoteric that contravenes the exoteric is a fraud."

>>2045142
Probably for the best too

>>2044745
nope, babby read Carl Jung back when he was in high school.

Jung explained the fad of westerners embracing foreign Eastern religions. It's because Christianity and western religions have become stagnant and boring, it lead to the rise of occultism and interest in foreign religions.

Jung believed that rather than jumping ship and embracing a foreign religion you should just try to revitalize your own inherited religion. Partially because all religions at their core are the same damn thing, different symbols, same meaning, only with an "exotic" feel to them. Partially because Jung thought it was your duty as your inheritance. Partially because Jung foresaw Westerners adopting and bastardizing Eastern religions while Easterners adopted and bastardized Western religions only to make the switch again in the future. Which I think would be pretty funny.

tl;dr: if you're a Western Buddhist you're no better than those retards who get Chinese tattoos that are most likely misspelled.

>>2044710
Because I reject samsara

>>2044769
horrible choices, just read Nagarjuna's work

>>2044776
>exactly. there are a lot of sects that don't really ask for anything other than that you be 'mindful'. learn your shit. you don't even have to meditate.

If you aren't being asked to do much of anything in the way of spiritual exertion, chances are you aren't following an interpretation of your religion with any grounding in tradition or orthodoxy.

Why WOULD I be Buddhist?
You seem to be distressed due to your desire for everyone to be Buddhist.

Virtually all concepts in Buddhism are also articulated in various Western religions, occult traditions, and philosophy from virtually every period of Western history.

That's why.

>>2045945
I got Buddhism at the tit and knee; and, I'm certainly not denying that because it better suits Jung's archetypes. Also, Jung is blurring over the existence of real and different insights into the nature of consciousness in different religious. Kierkegaard answers epistemic questions, Zen ontological.

has anyone known a western buddhist who took it seriously? I know islamic converts who take it pretty seriously, paying the zakat, praying 5 times a day, fasting, all that. All the buddhist converts are like even more annoying versions of Lisa Simpson, looking for a fairy tale that demands nothing from them.

>>2046041
Most first generation converts are insufferable pricks.

>>2046055
what would a second generation convert be?

not refuting your point that they are douchebags, just saying that "generations" and religious conviction dont go together very well logically

>>2046055

I have NEVER met a second generation Buddhist convert. Why would you bother, if even your parent's didn't take it seriously?

>>2046058
eat a barrel of dicks, dawkinhead. Family is the primary conduit of indoctrination.

>>2046058
I inherited Buddhism off my father, a first generation convert. The concept of n-generations of converts ought to be familiar to anyone who has dealt with the social history of religion. In particular, some Jewish communities keep up conversion resentment for multiple generations.

>>2046059
Oh my mother didn't buy into that shit. My father took it seriously enough to meditate daily and feed his kids gateless gate. Getting set koans when you're 8 sucks by the way.

Why bother? It answers some core ontological problems of being and consciousness, many of the koans are inherently amusing, Zen provides a natural theory of pedagogy.

Also, Sufism, which supplies most of the ontology, funny stories and pedagogy generally demands keeping Islam.

The story of Jesus can be seen as allegory for ego-death in a Buddhist sense. Buddhism is silly though.

How about we embrace who we really are, its pretty similar to Buddhism anyway.

1. Get on mental illness disability pension for autism
2. Live off tax payers money for food etc.
3. Build a wonderful garden of fantasy for an inner life, complete with imaginary waifu etc
4. Never contribute anything to the world because of living in a mental fantasy
5. Don't leave the house so you don't hurt anyone

Done.

>>2046063
>Sufism
>buddhist
your parents are retarded hippies, and you are too. Or a wikipedia-buddhist.

I'm not a Buddhist because I don't think existence is suffering. I enjoy my existence.

Because there's no salvation in it. Only in Christ. Deadly serious here.

>I'm not a Buddhist because I don't think existence is suffering. I enjoy my existence.

>>2046063
>Also, Sufism, which supplies most of the ontology, funny stories and pedagogy generally demands keeping Islam.

If it doesn't demand keeping Islam, it isn't really sufism.

>>2046073
Believe what you like. I've repeatedly tried to discuss Idries Shah here but haven't managed to find any takers.

>>2046080
Non-Islamic Kurdish sufism.

>>2046055

As are most first generation atheists.

>>2046074
Me too. Even when I do suffer and go through painful experiences etc. I would do it all again and again because I love what it is to be human and live life. ALL of it, good and bad. We are lucky enough to experience anything at all.

>>2046084
Exactly. This guy gets it.

you have to careful when considering dukkha too literally because it will end you up as a pessimist, if you are a simpleton, or a nihlist (this is not necessarily a bad thing under conditions of intellectual flourishing, this does not apply to the despairing type however)

>>2046087
He sounds like he's attached to both pleasure and pain, not like he's unattached from desire. Having a generalised desire for both pain and pleasure; he'll still be in a state of suffering—his reach exceeds his grasp.

As we dealt with up thread, "suffering" isn't negative physical or emotional response, but the disparity between the mind's possibility and the world's concrete reality.

>>2046091
So which the latter happened to you.
Probably because of your obsession with Nietzsche.

>>2046093
Go project elsewhere.

Buddhist arrogance and assumptions of the mind are disgusting.

>>2046081
>Idries Shah

One of a few sorry figures (along with Bahá'u'lláh, Inayat Khan, etc.) who attempted to portray sufi teachings as "universalist" in nature by presenting them in a crudely bowdlerized form. Anyone who undertakes an honest and thorough study of sufism/tasawwuf will understand that there's no possibility of tariqah in the absence of shari'ah. Universal sufism is the pseudo-sufi counterpart of the pseudo-Buddhism that became popular with the hippie movement.

>Non-Islamic[...] sufism.

A contradiction in terms if there ever was one...

>>2046101
As opposed to the butt-devastation evidenced amongst first generation atheists who are ill equipped to critique buddhism?

>>2046102
>A contradiction in terms if there ever was one...

The normal Islamic-Arabic attitude to the Kurds has been to eliminate the contradictions of life using argumentum ad baculum.

>[Shah's deficiencies]
Mainly reside in the historiographical plane. There's a reason he was best mates with Robert "Make shit up" Graves.

>>2046101
Ironically a Buddhist who is arrogant is a failure. A Buddhist who argues against those who do not believe in Buddhism is violating his own religion. Not a single "Buddhist" in this thread is enlightened, because an enlightened Buddhist won't have arguments. That's what makes this entire thread hilarious. These people are hypocrites.

>>2046105
An antagonistic Buddhist troll. Well done. And you have such wonderful examples of glorious counter arguments too.


>>2044810
>>2044811
>>2044816
>>2044846

Desire isn't inherently wrong in any case. Maybe people would like to live a more hectic life and feel desire among other emotions than become empty?

Of course, Buddhists are hypocrites. If you didn't desire you wouldn't be on here arguing with people. And speaking of Buddhist hypocrisy, there is nothing more egomaniacal than some old fucker sitting on a lovely cushion, draped in robes, being fed for free, being worshipped by people of his impoverished nation.

>>2046110
The story about the wild fox tends to disagree with you.

>>2046113
If you don't work, you don't eat. Last time I checked the Lamocracy were still praying to pagan ethno-Tibetan gods.

>>2046110
Indeed.

"Enlightenment is the final dissapointment of the ego."

These people arguing for it are actually using Buddhism as a function of their identity. They don't see that either which I personally find quite funny.

Hey sufi (the real, eg, islamic one) guy,


Do you get a sweeter verison of heavan depending on how you act? Like if you pray the 5 times rather than 4, do you get more chicks and burgers in heavan?

>>2046117
>The story about the wild fox tends to disagree with you.

Disgraceful back-pedalling. Don't draw on koan to justify you're own failures.

>>2046125
>Do you get a sweeter verison of heavan depending on how you act?

The short answer is yes. Give me a minute and I'll dig up something a bit more detailed.

>>2046131
>you're own

Obviously you have never carried a woman across a stream.

>>2046140
Oh yes, an error of grammar. Nice retort.

You should probably take the advice of your own koan.

>>2046143
Which?

>>2046153
I thought you were referencing the story of the two monks.

Either way, until you recognize your self using being a Buddhist as part of your identity you are a failure.

>>2046101
So are the anti theistic equivalents.

>>2045027

This.

Enjoy your obsession with suffering, Buddhistfags.

>>2046158
>Either way, until you recognize your self using being a Buddhist as part of your identity you are a failure.

Think of /lit/ as a stream. Think of yourself as a whorish dancing girl. Currently you're grinding your silk covered Chinese quim into my back. When the thread 404s I'll just be some guy who has firm views on the nature of consciousness and ontology and has a bunch of funny stories remembered about monks.

Currently, however, I'm keeping your tits dry and your snatch wet.

>>2046162
I also agree.

Find the inner smile bros!

>>2046125
>>2046135

Yeah, I'm having trouble finding something that goes into detail at the moment, but the immensity of your 'reward' in paradise is positively correlated to the sincerity of your practice and to your spiritual rank. Same idea with hell.

Buddhism doesn't seem to have a very extensive theory of digital communication or simulation.

>>2046166
You overestimate how much I actually care about this "discussion."

In reality I think the situation is probably closer to being the reverse of what you are trying to say.

I know I'm replying to a troll too, thats how little I care about this and how bored I am.

>>2046173
Expand.

>>2046178
Rather than referring obliquely to the stickiness of attachment, I'm drowning you in a body of water?

Don't they believe in reincarnation?
That seems like a pretty good reason to not follow it.

>>2046441
A very limited number of Buddhists believe in reincarnation of individual consciousnesses.

More believe in the general reincarnation of consciousness; or, that each moment of consciousness is an incarnation.

>>2046444
I wouldn't say very limited, a large amount of the Buddhists living the middle of nowhere east Asia believe in crazy shit.

>>2046450
I've seen Vietnamese Buddhists whose practice of _Buddhism_ par Buddhism separate to cultist practice is effectively cultist. In addition, they are also cultists.

Also, the crazy shit they believe isn't the Western fantasy of personal individual conscious reincarnation at all.

>>2046453
Damn right... the whole point of Buddhism is that it doesn't do the Hindu reincarnation thing, and all anyone thinks they know about it is that it does

If I had a face, it would be when.