/lit/ - Literature

>T. bugman who fell for the Buddhist modernism meme and thinks Buddhism isn't actually a religion.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_modernism

Yes sadly everything really is fake gay shit even buddhism

That's because it syncretized with the native Bon religion. Buddhism always mixes with the local religion, which is usually fine when the local religion isn't demon worship.
Also they combined religion and politics, so many of their monks are actually just evil politicians.
They probably have some real monks though. If there's some sect that never had much political power, that's probably the least demonic. Can any Tibet experts tell me what the weakest Tibetan sect is?

>>21651316
>Can any Tibet experts tell me what the weakest Tibetan sect is?
The ruling Gelug sect attempted and failed to erase the Jonangpa or Jonang school of Tibetan Buddhism. Some Jonang monasteries with uninterrupted lineages continued in the Tibetan-inhabited areas of China outside of Tibet proper and today they are patronized by the Rime movement. Because of this history though, you still see many books and websites today and also speeches by religious figures which speak of “4 main schools of Tibetan Buddhism”, omitting any reference to Jonang despite it surviving.

>>21651316
>native Bon religion
The Bön religion is more recent than buddhism. It's Kagyu with more shamanic elements.
OP I haven't read that book but if they're equating "demons" with wrathful Buddhas then I suggest you throw away that drivel

>>21650880
The Tibetans believe the author of that book was cursed by the demons he revealed to the outside world. He died mysteriously just three years after it was published at the age of 36.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_de_Nebesky-Wojkowitz

Tibetans keep the book in sealed sections of libraries or under the counter because of the power they believe it holds to harm the naive reader.

>>21650880
welcome to eastern 'religions'

>>21652021
That’s actually cool though.

>>21651449
Based Jonang appreciator.

>>21650880
yea non-catholics worship demons
this is not news

>>21652021
Metal af. It's no wonder söyboys hate it.

>>21650880
There’s actually reputed to sometimes be a split between Tibetan Bönist shamans, witch-doctors and the like (those who more heavily preserve the ancient shamanic customs and see the Buddhists as intruders on their land and culture) and the Buddhists in Tibet (lamas, tulkus and their disciples).

The core of Tibetan Buddhism is Indian Buddhist teachings brought to Tibet by Guru Rinpoche Padmasambhava, as well as a heavy admixture of Indian tantric teachings, practices, icons, symbolism and terminology adapted into the Tibetan language. Hence the tantric aspect of Tibetan Buddhism, why it’s sometimes called Tantric Tibetan Buddhism.

However there is also a large subset of Bön which fused with the Tibetan religion and didn’t keep so strictly to its native Tibetan shamanistic and animistic roots, now incorporating all these Buddhist and tantric teachings, hence creating a strange gray area, as if in the Americas we were to have a lot of Christianized shamans who kept something like shamanism culture and practices and heritage undergoing but into a Christian framework (with saints, miracles, prophesying, angels etc. as described in the Old and New Testaments explaining and incorporating their tradition), and these shamans were accepted by a settling Church as part of this Church, while yet other shamans disliked and distrusted the Christian settlers and kept more closely to their native roots. Not a perfect analogy but nothing is.

The “wrathful deities” are no more demons, than Jesus Christ in the Book of Revelation is a demonic figure for returning in full glory and triumphant power as a wrathful judge against the evil and a savior for the good and faithful, but of course I don’t expect you to understand or credit this if you’re already hard-wired, for whatever reason, against doing so. Every religion and culture has its quaintnesses and anthropological quirks and oddities which can be solely portrayed to make it seem like a grotesque sect, but often these are simply the outer layers, how it feels to a crude grasp of the thing.

>>21651316
>>21651486
Read about this somewhere in I think Snellgrove but yeah Bon isn't even entirely from Tibet, it came from a neighboring region that has since gone ethno-linguistically bust but had already been permeated by Mahayana Buddhism. So if you like there's a spectrum in Tibetan Buddhism of teachings that are basically "ancient" as far as Tibet is concerned up to "an Indian pandit brought this Sanskrit text to our temple yesterday and it has all these kino rituals" and finally you have authoritative sectarian shastras and commentaries written natively in Tibetan on those texts.

Just read the Sutta Pittaka and stick to Theravada.

>>21653863
the hyperprotestants have arrived

>>21653879
>le purity spiral NO YOU ARE LE PROTESTANT

>>21650880
Just replace the word "demon" with "architetype" or "meme" and tell me any of it's wrong. Thoughts are made up of neurons, they're organisms that want to live. Societies that laugh this off end up like the modern world where retards in their moms basement can enrage millions.

>>21653947
>just read the books and do nothing else
>interpre-what? It's all there in the book just read the book and you'll always be correct, just like the theravadins they just read the book not like the mahayanists they started writing books you can only read books there's a deadline where it cuts off because i guess so

Don't trust anything /lit/ has to say about buddhism. op is a fag

>>21651449
the problem with the jonang is their shentong views that kinda goes against the anatta principle of buddhism, the shentong is view as crypto-monoteism disguised as non-dualism, so it''s not really political but doctrinal, the gelug even practice their kalchackra system

>>21653879
The one actually OBSESSED with Protestantism has arrived.

>>21653815
>wrathful deities are no more demons
The book says it’s actually demons that converted to Buddhism and became dharma protectors (reminds me of jinns that convert to Islam in Islamic lore). If that is accurate or not then take it to the author; I’m only a curious reader.

>>21654031
>shentong views
>against the anatta principle of buddhism
Lets be careful with our loanword salad here. "Anatta" is not going to come up in Tibetan discourse because they are not working from Pali (and barely touching the Sanskrit agama versions of those texts). Roughly speaking what is at stake is whether there is a positive exposition of sunyata or emptiness (the idea that phenomena lack an intrinsic self-nature, nairatmya or anatman) or not. The orthodox Gelug position follows Chandrakirti's reading of Nagarjuna insofar as even emptiness must be empty while the Jonang is following Dolpopa's use of Yogacarin texts which often privilege consciousness as sort of positive emptiness. And this debate really can be dialed back even further to the Sarvastivadans, who are the doxographical ancestors of the Yogacarins—so you get Madhyamikas arguing against both throughout the course of medieval Indian intellectual history. Both Yogacara and Madhyamaka are going to agree that dharmas in the sense of entities are without an intrinsic identity, but again the debate becomes how to present that emptiness—is it just the quieting of all possible assertions of this or that, or some sort of purified mind that lacks all those assertions. The orthodox will prefer door a to door b, not because door b is wrong but because they are of the view that door b is essentially for dumber people who cannot grasp door a. Whether that is convincing is ultimately up to you

>>21654106
It's ironic people think Theravada is sola scriptura by comparison to stinky catholic Mahayana given that you have stuff like Nichiren which blows it out of the water in terms of monomanaical textual adherence, to say nothing of Theravadin practices which have nothing to do with the five nikayas.

>>21654137
Yeah, Nichiren, not Theravada, is the closest analogue to Protestantism in Buddhism, and it’s Mahāyāna.

Another book, about Tibetan astrology actually, relates that the Tibetan people are very superstitious, and besides the host of Buddhas, bodhisattvas and dharmapalas, there is a host of horary and directional deities, which propitiation is crucial for success in any endeavor, even simple travels. The expert “Buddhist” priest is supposed to know all their names and characteristics in order to successfully placate them, there being a multitude of them, one for every hour and degree, not counting deities of geographical features such as mountains, rivers, trees the underworld and the atmosphere. So yeah, the Tibetan world is “full of gods”, to paraphrase Thales.

It's the same in pretty much any place where you have Buddhism. Buddhism usually doesn't deny the existence of local divinities and will readily set up shrine to them in their temples. It just considers gods irrelevant to reach enlightenment. That is not incompatible with worship to get some useful boon in the current life. This is a very practical view on gods.

>>21654408
Well that's part of the joke, the people applying a protestantized hermeneutic of evaluating religion to Buddhism are throwing out all of Mahayana as spurious and the worship of saints and local tutelaries as stinky because the Pali nikayas are the oldest texts and therefore the "true" Buddhist Bible, which they then view the way Nichiren Buddhism views the Lotus Sutra and assume this is what Theravada must be like. Truthfully they'd be much happier as Mahayanists!

>>21652021
Damn I just finished an introduction to tibetan buddhism I have to read this shit

>>21650880
There are quite a few sects, all syncretized to a degree with the native Bon religion. You'll get the most mileage out of Dzogchen as far as minimizing that.

>>21654117
Wrathful yidams are not the same as dharma protectors. Yidams are enlightened and are emanations of peaceful buddhas and bodhisattvas. The yidam in this picture >>21653815, Vajrabhairava, is an emanation of Manjushri.

>>21654947
>Vajrabhairava, is an emanation of Manjushri
the name Vajra-bhairava alone tells you this is a baptized Shaivist god, and the association with Manjushri is meant to place him under the power of that bodhisattva. Regardless of terminology it is, as the other anon is recognizing, the same pattern of "demons" being converted for apotropaic use, and also indicates the medieval northern Indian roots of this aspect of Tibetan Buddhism

>>21653815
That's the naive historical view. Bon grew out of Tibetan Buddhism, it wasn't a pre-existing religion that distorted the introduction of Buddhism. Bon is free interpretation of Tantra and Yoga, the innovations all came from India which in turn was heavily influenced by the Greeks in Gandhara and other Sub-Continental traditions, from Indo-Aryan Steppe mannerbund (the origin of all male yogic outsider groups) to South Indian magic men.

Buddhism captures the gods and demons of local religions it encounters, gurus and Buddhas engage in psychic battles with the genii locorum, defeat them, and turn them into servants of the dharma. Your characterisation of them is fair, they are demons, the wrathful aspect of their nature grew out of court magic needs during the wars between the post-Gupta Empire statelets. Wrathful deities were emphasised and invented to serve as vehicles in magic spells during wars. Sex deities were also emphasised by the same court magicians to increase the kings virality within his harem, the more virile your local king was the better he was than the neighbouring king. The Mandala originated as a political concept to describe vassal relations between local kings, and was later translated into the religious concepts by court magicians:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajamandala

Hinduism and Mahayana, Zen, Vajaryana are a monistic Universalism: the totality exists and nothing else. There is no multiplicity, everything is absolutely identical. THis is qualified of ''acosmatic''
They mix this view with a huge amount of symbols, incantations, rituals, worship, idolatry, mantras, deities, chanting,entertainment reading with lengthy Scriptures with thousands of verses, sacrifice and sacred objects, and rules for lay people in order to create a religion.
For the Hindus and mahayanists, people have the knowledge that they have a true nature, but people are misguided on what they take as their true nature. This is why the Hindus say that people are already enlightened, they just do not know about it... The true nature of people is not the 5 senses or their objects, but the mind itself with the world [loka] itself identified with the cosmos, or their deification of this, ie their Brahma or their Buddha or non-duality, and when people realize this they are enlightened. The way to realize this is by relying on lots of sacrifice, chantings and rituals, also on material objects which magically purify the minds for them, like sounds, logic, mantras, little beads, amulets.
Mahayana-Hinduism tries to make a human society, some political system too.

It is only when there is a allegedly good creator [a god or just ''nature''] that it makes sense to ask the usual question ''why the cosmos produce things which do not know that they are the cosmos?'' ie ''why some good god did not get people to be born directly enlightened? instead of being born unenlightened which produces lots of suffering?''
So far the Hindus have no answer to this ''problem of evil''. The Hindus keep replying with their main thesis, ie ''because people do not know their true nature, which is pure primordial mind and cannot be described'' and that's their pathetic cope...

>>21656361
in Buddhism, there is no non-duality, people do not have a true nature, people are not the cosmos, people are not Brahma, people do not come from Brahma, people are not nibanna, people do not come from nibanna, people are not Buddha, people do not come from a buddha, people are not their mind, people are not loka, people are not born already enlightened. In Buddhism there is only craving for pretty things and the pretty ideas of having ''a true nature'', and there is the opposite: a lack of craving for pretty things and pretty ideas. People get enlightened when they stop craving for those. The way to get enlightened is to purify the mind, however not with useless incantations and rituals nor with magical objects, nor worship, unlike the Hindus do, but with the mind itself, ie all the time inclining [with the mind] the mind towards what the buddha calls good qualities and then directly knowing the mind as it really is, which is anicca, dukkha, anatta [contrary to what the hindus say], which is the condition for dispassion, dispassion which is the condition for liberation, liberation which is the condition for direct knowledge that dukkha is ended.

>>21654123
Good post.

>>21654444
Yes, reminds you of the army in Xenophon's Anabasis performing a sacrifice and augury ritual every morning to decide whether and where the ten thousand should march. A common "world full of gods" tradition.

>>21654821
Bon grew out of Tibetan Buddhism and other Indic tantra and yoga practices, the view of it as a native religion that contaminated Buddhism is naive and unhistorical.

>>21655002
>the association with Manjushri is meant to place him under the power of that bodhisattva
Yes as his vassal, the mandala originates as a political concept of vassalage between local kings in post-Gupta Empire India. The poltical mandala is then spiritualised to express the same concept of divine vassalage of defeated genii locorum and other demons and gods.

>>21654444
>The expert “Buddhist” priest is supposed to know all their names and characteristics in order to successfully placate them
Part of this is also to ensure the socio-political status of the monk class. The monk must be maintained in an esteemed position in order to keep warding off the hostile gods that continually threaten the community. Conceptualising the world as a hostile domain of wrathful gods necessitates the cultivation of an apotropaic class or social function to keep those hostile gods at bay.

Interestingly Islam spread in South-East Asia in a similar war to how Buddhism spread through Tibet (and the same regions earlier): the new Sufi saint would defeat the local demons plaguing the land, now reconceptualised as hostile jinn, and the local rulers and people would convert to partake in the apotropaic power of the new faith.

>>21655002
>>21656437
posting in an apotropaic thread

>>21656380
Bon is indeed syncretic in origin, but it preserves many features of the indigenous shamanistic pre-Indic, pre-Buddhist religion diffuse throughout the Tibetan highlands and Siberian steppes.

Shamans are always cringe.

>>21656677
The Bon rituals are Indic tantra. Indic tantra may incorporate indigenous South Indian "shamanistic" like practicies in a loose sense. The idea that shamanism represents an ancient practice that influences others, and isn't itself a continual development in reaction to other religious practices and changing spiritual needs, is mistaken. Bon isn't syncretic in the sene your using of "traditional Shamanism + Buddhism", it's a religious development from Indic sources following their introduction to Tibet.

>>21656364
>there is no non-duality, people do not have a true nature
This is an incredibly ignorant post. I ignored all the rest.

Posted this in the other Buddhist thread so might as well post here too:

Anyone here read Reexamining Jhana: Towards a Critical Reconstruction of Early Buddhist Soteriology by Grzegorz Polak? He studies Buddhist texts to discover the jhana techniques.
The conclusion he comes up with is quite interesting although he says early Buddhism is lost and what we have now are reconstructions.

>>21657075
It's the Madhyamaka retard who completely misunderstands Nagarjuna, along with most of the Mahayana tradition and its understanding of sunyata.

>>21650880
Buddhism sounds very interesting (the life-denying part of it anyway), but why is everythinig I've ever heard Buddhist wise men say so trivial and retarded? Is it some kind of conspiracy to get more money for the Dalai Lama, uppaya for the masses?

>>21657317
Because early Buddhism is lost. If you read Buddhist texts critically, you will find some of it contradict themselves.

>>21650880
Buddhism is nothing like what Westerners think. Even reading Japanese Buddhist texts one can see the entire religion consisted of chanting buddha names and being reborn in the Western Paradise of Amida Buddha, mixed in with all sorts of bodhisattvas and kami

>>21653815
The “wrathful deities” are no more demons, than Jesus Christ in the Book of Revelation is a demonic figure for returning in full glory and triumphant power as a wrathful judge against the evil and a savior for the good and faithful
Do you have any books on this exclusively?

>>21656364
>a lack of craving for pretty things and pretty ideas.
Please point me in the direction of books/articles written by people who understand this.

>>21653815
>as if in the Americas we were to have a lot of Christianized shamans who kept something like shamanism culture and practices and heritage undergoing but into a Christian framework (with saints, miracles, prophesying, angels etc. as described in the Old and New Testaments explaining and incorporating their tradition)
That's exactly how it is in some countries like Mexico. They incorporate pagan beliefs like Santa Muerte and witchcraft into a catholic belief system, though some reject the catholic aspect and are more "pure" in their shamanistic practices.

>>21653815
>>21658008
theres a documentary on coca-cola in mexico where a healer sacrifices a hen to the virgen of guadalupe

>>21658836
more authentic than pretending to be a medieval Catholic theologian on /lit/

>>21657425
A better comparison would be if Jesus had "defeated Satan" and thereafter had an attendent he called "Saint Lucy the Bright" who would follow him around and project an aura on people whose souls were unclean so he could exorcize them or something.

>>21654123
The crucial point of the shentong though, which you completely failed to mention, is that the Absolute is itself not empty of self-nature or own-nature and it is instead only empty of other-nature. This has nothing to do with the status of phenomena, since the Absolute in Jonang isnt one of phenomena, so phenomena being empty of own-being is a different topic than the Absolute and its emptiness of other.

>>21654031
> the problem with the jonang is their shentong views that kinda goes against the anatta principle of buddhism,
Not really, this is only true if you start with an a priori belief that rangtong is the right interpretation of anatta, which has never been proven or conclusively demonstrated.

>>21659012
>the Absolute is itself not empty of self-nature or own-nature and it is instead only empty of other-nature. This has nothing to do with the status of phenomena
it has everything to do with phenomena if it's only the phenomena are empty of essence/intrinsic self-nature etc. If as the frankensteined Tibetan doxographies would have it there is this "shentong" view that emptiness is to be empty of other that is just a redux of Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha texts being distinguished against a more purist Madhyamaka "rantong" assertion that emptiness is empty. It is all about the phenomena. It's coming out of Yogacara. Mind goes quiet and you get Buddha nature instead all these sliced up impressions of phenomena, and the buddha nature is emptiness as a positive expression and not as the negation that it is in the other system. The other system doesn't care as much about phenomena or noumena it flattens them.

>>21659069
>it has everything to do with phenomena if it's only the phenomena are empty of essence/intrinsic self-nature etc.
The classic Shentong of Jonang/Dolpopa (there is other non-Jonang atypical Shentong that comes later) affirms that the Absolute has its own self-nature of Buddha-qualities and that it is only empty of other nature and not empty of own-nature. Your post talked about Shentong and Rangtong, under the pretense of providing some informative tdlr, but without so much as mentioning the crucial point on which Shentong and Rangtong differ. That strikes me as dishonest.

>If as the frankensteined Tibetan doxographies would have it there is this "shentong" view that emptiness is to be empty of other that is just a redux of Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha texts being distinguished against a more purist Madhyamaka "rantong" assertion that emptiness is empty.
That's just your preferred way of understanding how these texts relate to each other. But of course Tibetan masters like Dolpopa disagreed and he considered his texts and Shentong as correctly explicating the doctrine of Nagarjuna and he considered Rangtong to be an incorrect doctrine which wasn't intended or taught by Nagarjuna et al.

>It is all about the phenomena.
Incorrect, if you actually read Dolpopa he is talking about the Absolute and he doesn't limit himself just to talking about and analyzing phenomena. You have not actually read him I presume?

> It's coming out of Yogacara
For Dolpopa, the Pali Canon, Nagarjuna, Asanga and the Tathagatagarbha texts and Tantras all teach Shentong, he doesn't see it as originating just from Yogachara.

>>21659214
>he is talking about the Absolute and he doesn't limit himself just to talking about and analyzing phenomena
Implicit in any discourse on "the absolute" is a discourse on phenomena and both are here rooted in Yogacara, which is not to say Yogacarins ignored Nagarjuna or the concept of emptiness, or that Dolpopa ignores this either. Of course, in his view, his view is the more correct one versus the prasangikas or whoever, but it would be a waste of time to get into the specifics. I am just pointing out that shentong is associated with a different basket of Indian root texts than rangtong, there is some overlap especially on Nagarjuna of course, but it is questionable whether the Tibetan doxographic categories overlaid on these are helpful or not outside of a specifically academic or monastic interest in Tibetan Buddhism. An interested party can access many of these Indian texts in a modern European language, along with many of their Tibetan commentaries, and decide for themselves which reading seems the most effective

>>21659264
>>21659214
Niggas why did they janny jonang? It seems almost as if someone was real spooked by the other emptiness.
>btw Dolpopa (formerly gShenrab)

>>21659264
>Implicit in any discourse on "the absolute" is a discourse on phenomena and both are here rooted in Yogacara
Of course, but Dolpopa also explicitly talks about the Absolute *AS DISTINGUISHED FROM PHENOMENA* and any attempt to pretend otherwise is absolutely dishonest. Saying "oh but in talking about the absolute he also talks about phenomena" is irrelevant since Dolpopa EXPLICITLY says his Absolute is not just some meta-statement about the way in which phenomena exists but it is instead actually something different from mundane phenomena. He is very clear when he is talking about the Absolute vs when he is talking about phenomena.

> but it is questionable whether the Tibetan doxographic categories overlaid on these are helpful or not outside of a specifically academic or monastic interest in Tibetan Buddhism.
Regardless if you think the Tibetan doxographic categories should be considered as being valid/applicable universally or not, there is still a very real philosophical difference that cannot just be hand-waved away except as cope

>>21659304
>any attempt to pretend otherwise is absolutely dishonest
that's not what I am doing—and moreover as I've been saying all along this all has its basis in the Indian literature independent of Tibetan doxographical categories. Consult for instance the Dharmadharmatāvibhāga, which Maitreya-attributed treatise about the very same subject you are talking about.

>>21659355
>that's not what I am doing
What you did was present a supposed TLDR of rangtong vs shentong that papered over their crucial difference, which is misleading. I can't imagine why someone would want to mislead others like that unless they are butthurt/uncomfortable over Shentong and would rather gaslight and mislead people about what it actually teaches.
>—and moreover as I've been saying all along this all has its basis in the Indian literature independent of Tibetan doxographical categories.
So? I don't know why you keep repeating that, it changes nothing and is believed by Dolpopa himself who sees Shentong as being taught by and originating from Indian Buddhist writings

>>21659380
>believed by Dolpopa himself who sees Shentong as being taught by and originating from Indian Buddhist writings
So what is your problem again if I am in agreement with Dolpopa? Not trying to write a book here in my posts, just get a point or two across

>>21659399
>So what is your problem again if I am in agreement with Dolpopa?
As I have already stated, your original post was actively misleading. If you don't want to be called out, then don't do that, it's quite simple.

>>21659417
>>21654123
>Roughly speaking what is at stake is whether there is a positive exposition of sunyata or emptiness (the idea that phenomena lack an intrinsic self-nature, nairatmya or anatman) or not.
Where is this misleading? Should I have said "positive or absolute"? I think you are hung up on loanword salad which is a persistent problem in discussing Buddhism, and one very hard to mitigate.

Posting in an epic thread, I'm learning so much in here. Keep bickering about tibetan culture please, I want to know more.

>>21659465
>Where is this misleading?
It's highly misleading since it suggests that the crux of the debate between Rangtong and Shentong is about how to best explicate the premise that phenomena are empty of self-nature. But this is false and misleading because Rangtong and Shentong AGREE that phenomena are empty of self-nature; where they disagree and what the crux of the debate between them is about is whether or not the ABSOLUTE is empty of self-nature or not. Thus, the point about phenomena being empty of self-nature ISN'T what the debate between Shentong and Rangtong is about and it's dishonest and even gaslighting to present it as such to the unsuspecting reader. For Shentong, the Absolute having it's own nature isn't simply a way of expressing the lack of phenomena's self-nature but the former teaching about the Absolute having Buddha-qualities is its own teaching with its own fruit and purpose and it is not superseded by anything, so it cannot be construed as subordinated to the task of talking about phenomena being empty unless one is lying about what Dolpopa taught and wrote.

>>21654477
So.. in theory, it should be possible for Christian Buddhists to exist?

>>21659528
>it cannot be construed as subordinated to the task of talking about phenomena being empty
It is because that is the actual starting point both sides are coming in at, that phenomena are empty of self-nature. And for the prasangika-Madhyamika-rangtong-gelugpa camp that's fine and dandy because that's what they've gotten from their texts, there's no absolute that would be exempt from this deconstruction—emptiness is grasped as empty and not as another thing or "dharma" if you will... because the root of the root verses of the middle way is to jackhammer the sarvastivadins. And as I've said the other team takes the more positive view of presenting emptiness not as a great negation but as something else, because their roots are kind of reformed sarvastivada and they like that sort of thing. Now, to somebody less familiar with all this, what benefit is there in skipping the reason a positive or absolute expression of emptiness is being debated in the first place?

>>21659559
In theory, yes.

>>21659559
There's plenty of Buddhists who include Yahweh in compassion prayers. You can absolutely be a Buddhist and believe that the Jews were tormented by a minor demon who had a change of heart and took human form.

You can't believe in a cosmic Rabbi that lives outside of spacetime that is actually his own father, who creates souls that are atmans at the time of conception.

>>21659626
> It is because that is the actual starting point both sides are coming in at, that phenomena are empty of self-nature
I dont know why you keep engaging in this weird form of coping but Dolpopa explicitly says that this isn’t his purpose, he explicitly criticizes people who think this is the main point of emptiness and he offers prayers in his writing that these people eventually come around to the correct view. In Dolpopa’s view, thinking of phenomena as empty of self-nature is only a step and not the end in itself. Viewing phenomena as self-empty is subordinated to the endpoint of an Absolute that is only other-empty, so its wholly incorrect to assert that the purpose of his Shentong doctrine is to explicate how/why phenomena are empty or that his Shentong is subordinated to this; Dolpopa himself refutes this claim explicitly. Imagine being triggered by a long dead philosopher to the point that you are lying about his teachings when you have not even read him.

Gurus in Mahayna contradict each other all the time. It's just a useless jungle.

>>21659694
This is one way to say it, but a view at least amongst some Tibetans is of Christ as a benevolent mahasiddha, but this is with some ambivalence and not necessarily their own support of theism (the Tibetan Buddhist belief system is largely nontheistic). They can also believe some Hindu yogis or tantrikas can be spiritually developed and miraculous but would have the view that their interpretation of it is and attribution of their development to Brahman, a Universal Spirit, Cosmic All-Pervading Self, Over-ruling God, or Deity is wrong and a projection of their own minds. It’s simply them developing on phenomena somehow inherent or possible to the human interaction with reality, even when they’re Hindu siddhas (lit. those with siddhis, miraculous abilities).

An analogy is if a Christian priest admitted and saw a Sami shaman could perform miracles or healing, but the Sami shaman still had the incorrect worldview in the eyes of the Christian for rejecting or standing outside Christianity. Like, “Sure, it happened, but we still believe our way is better and explains more accurately and guides people better,” to introduce an element of cultural chauvinism into it (which many invariably have — Jews, Christians, Muslims and Sufis, Hindus and Buddhists, Tibetans and Chinese, etc., of these cultures, outliers aside)

>>21659559
>>So.. in theory, it should be possible for Christian Buddhists to exist?
No it is not. Judiams and all it's variant are devotional religion, devoted to a jewish god, a jew like moses and a jew like jesus. Ho and also killing your son in the name of the jewish god, until he stops you in the nick of time, saying it was all a prank. lol

In buddhism devotion is not even part of the 8 fold path.
And devotion makes the jews awful at meditation. Buddhism is based on right meditation and hacking the mind to get fully enlightened.

The only way the jews can salvage their religion is to do like the hindus who also had a religion based on devotion and sacrifices in their Vedas. The hindus changed all their religion due to proto Buddhism and they turned it into the Upanishads.

However they did it by using the meme of ''interpretation by a guru'' and this lead to 2000 years of shitshows with gurus making shit up all the time and a pathetic one upmanship of the guy playing ''i am a guru more enlightened than the previous gurus''.

At this point in hindusim you can find pretty much a sub-sect where any claim you want to be true will be true lol.
THis is why the atheists love Hindusim and MAhayana since atheists being fucking idiots in the firt place, and having bet everything on material hedonism, they have no notion of mroality and right or wrong, so when they stump on the supermarket fo gurus and pirituality, they just tak the one which they want to be true, ie ''universal love and some non-theistic primordial heaven totally exist'' (which favors mahayana and hinduism, over jainism and buddhism) and they get rid of the parts they don't like, ie the parts incompatible with their hedonism. This excludes Hindusim because the hindus have a hardon for their caste systems and the universal love the atheist crave for so much is not really okay with that (no matter what the hindus claim). Buddhism is anti hedonism so it is excluded too, but Mahayana was created precisely to cram back hedonism into buddhism, so the atheists really dig this crap.
Jainism is excluded form the bat, because it is just too hardcore for the average atheist and roastie.

>>21659843
>hacking the mind to get fully enlightened.

>>21656361
>So far the Hindus have no answer to this ''problem of evil'
Good and evil are an unreal duality that humans subjectively impose onto things and they have no objective reality, thus there is no real "problem of evil".

The transformation of the Vedas into the Upanishads is really a pyrrhic victory.

>>21659855
look people, reddit is upset!

>>21659559
>>21659647
The Rev. Thomas Merton was another modern “rock-star” spiritual figure (I use that phrase, with the quotes around it, with a sense of irony — but also with warm respect and appreciation) who heavily delved into Zen, as well as other Eastern mystical and religious traditions.

Hinduism makes more sense to be synthesized or syncretized with Christianity on the surface — they simply can admit Christ as an Avātāra of Brahman, a great saint and prophet, who indeed had the functions and status He attributed to Himself and as was attributed to Him by others.

For Buddhism, the fundamental nontheistic viewpoint ultimately becomes a sticking-point if you want to somehow “merge both” yet still have a coherent worldview, but there are some similarities which don’t have to be tortured out. The focus in Buddhism on virtues like maitri and karuna — lovingkindness, compassion, and mercy. The Tibetan tonglen practice is surprisingly “Christian”-sounding: in it, one “takes in” negativity, ill-will and malice from others with the breath, accepting it passively and understanding and forgiving them, and “gives out” this love, forgiveness, compassion and understanding with the out-breath. There’s even a commentary I read on it recently by a Tibetan tulku meditation-master where he speaks practically exactly in the same way as the “Last shall be first, and the first shall be last” of the Gospels, or “turning the other cheek” of the Sermon on the Mount, where he notes how this practice (tonglen) is a deliberately inverted and counterintuitive one from our normal thought-process, and it’s precisely in that that it’s miraculous quality lies — that anyone could even come up with it at all and get many people to practice it.

Haven’t read this one but it’s reputed to be another goldmine of that seemingly strange intersection, between Christ and Oriental religions, taking Taoism now. independently, I saw the same thing when reading translations of the Tao te Ching. All this mischievously written out explicitly and precisely to bust the chops of people who hate “New Agers,” “syncretism,” “lukewarm religious dabblers” etc., or even any mention of Eastern religions and philosophies.

>>21659855
It's funny how you think hacking means science, you brain is really rotten by atheism, isnt it?
Let me guess, you thinl ''everybody is already enlightened'' like the average westerner.

>>21659741
>everything everyone else says is a cope
ok retard then it's a cope for you to say Dolpopa disagrees with the position which I said his position argues against—clearly there is a nuance between disagreeing with and arguing against which we ought to split hairs over—and it is certainly a cope to suggest starting with this position in order to understand positions which respond to it

>>21659880
They teach the same thing and don't disagree about anything

>>21659930
>>everything everyone else says is a cope
No I never said this, but it's a cope for you to keep lying about Dolpopa and deceitfully misrepresenting his position (evidently as some kind of damage control or to downplay something you dislike) when Dolpopa himself refutes this falsehood that you stated

>>21659948
>deceitfully misrepresenting his position
When you stop doing this to me I might take you more seriously. Sadly it seems you are viciously sectarian, which is a great irony. Oh well.

>>21659960
I'm not misrepresenting you, I correctly called you out for lying about what the debate between rangtong and shentong is about

>this thread

>>21659968
>posits that the other is empty of essence
>fights shitpostingly to prove he is right
Yeah bro you def are not a petty identiterian who found the newest cool thing to stick to

>>21661239
>Calling out error when you see it is being an identiarian.
Faggot.

>>21650880
Buddha is an anti-Christ for a reason.