/lit/ - Literature

I don't think they dislike it, but I do think a lot of people here have the wrong idea about it. And far, far less exposure to it than Western philosopher, understandably.

All the best parts of eastern philosophy have been made into sensible thinking by western philosophers.

>>3539671
Care to explain?

>>3539676

Schopenhauer, Hegel, Heidegger. All these guys took their best ideas from eastern thinking.

>>3539677
What wasn't "sensible" beforehand?

Eastern philosophy has a bad rep here not thanks to any immense flaws on the part of the philosophers or schools of thought (though some may have a bone to pick), but because of the orientalist nature of dumbasses who think they're much smarter than they are. Think of soccer moms who do yoga or "meditate" every day. They're not pondering the nature of existence the way monks supposedly do in their Chinese mountain peaks, they're emptying their minds of all thought and as such are wasting the brief period of existence that we have. Same with those cunts who say, "Oh, I'm not religious, I'm spiritual" and become Buddhist for two weeks before returning to their inherent state of drool.

I've tried to break away from these biases and associations myself, and I just can't do it. I look at one of my favorite directors, Jim Jarmusch, and I see how much he is influenced by Eastern philosophy, and it just makes me think less of him. I can't help it.

>>3539694

>favorite directors
>Jim Jarmusch

Why?

>>3539694
>immense flaws on the part of the philosophers or schools of thought
For example?

>>3539711
>NOT THANKS to any immense flaws
I'm saying there are no immense flaws that come to mind.

Philosophy is bullshit. Any sane human can learn all that just by thinking. If you need books for that, you are stupid. I haven't met a single not obvious and not retarded idea in a philosophical book.

>>3539716
My mistake, I didn't see the "t".

daoism is good. rest is crap

i guess tantric stuff is good for whatever idk

Let's be honest. If you start talking about how you follow this exotic form of Buddhism or whatnot, it's going to be very difficult for me not to think of you as a moron trying to be all edgy and shit.

||>>3539725||
>daoism is good. rest is crap
I'm no expert myself, but casually righting off
whole traditions of thought seems foolish.

||>>3539721||
You know better than them, no doubt. Keep being sane, pleb.

||>>3539733||

>seems foolish

Writing off foolish thinking is anything but.

Eastern philosophy defines the worst parts of the East today, western philosophy; the best.

||>>3539696||
because Dead Man

||>>3539745||

You can't think of a better film than Dead Man?

I agree that it, along with Down By Law, is his best film, but it's hardly stellar.

||>>3539743||
You are calling most of eastern philosophy foolish? Can you go into detail on that?

||>>3539733||
meditation is good. it doesn't provide new source of meaning though, you should be able to form more intimate bond with your life surroundings etc through meditation. read that bicycle repair book or something

||>>3539750||
>meditation is good
Not really.

||>>3539757||
that's like saying taking a stroll in the park is not really good.

||>>3539760||
You misunderstand. It's a mirror of the problem with Eastern philosophy; stagnation and waste. 'Meditation' is almost exclusively the domain of Marxian Eastern monk communes and spoiled white kids frittering dad's hard work away.

||>>3539763||
it's not a very ambitious activity. nothing wrong with doing it provided you are not also insisting that this is all there is.

Why do you even need this stuff? I'm a former Catholic' now just an atheist. I don't feel like I lost anything. I mean, being completely honest, the only part where religion was involved in my life was for the sake of religion itself. Yes, there are all these wisdom such as the famous "What would Jesus do" and "Do unto others, as you want others to do unto you". But pragmatically they are never helpful and not always correct either. I'm especially disgusted by the "Turning the other cheek" fanatic pacifism. That only serves to ensures that the good will be taken advantage of by the evil.

So, where do you guys use this stuff?

There are three, maybe four camps.
1. Those who don't understand it and don't like it
>Hurr durr, what if I'm like a flutterby, but it's only a dream. Stupid Zhuangzi, butterflies can't dream because science...
2. Those who don't understand it and like it
>Well, what if we're all like in a dream and dying is like the dream ending and linear time and asymptically spread out time like in that movie Inception

At this point, one could easily make two further categories based on this, but it makes more sense to me to have:
3. Those who have some understanding, and treat it like any other form of philosophy
>The idea that we can never be sure what we are has interesting implications for the problem of regress, and has parallels in the philosophy of Descartes, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche...
And the possible 4, though I can't recall seeing this much if at all:
4. Those who put it on a pedestal, and may have some understanding, but refuse to believe anyone from the west could ever hope to comprehend even an iota of the meaning within because glorious nippon or similar
>implying the western mind even dreams like ancient Chinese philosophers >implying we even understand what butterfly means in Chinese >no, you can't dream you're Zhuangzi, that doesn't count

||>>3539771||
Communities are still important. Their destruction hasn't enriched your life.

As for turning the other cheek... indeed! But this seems to be less the domain of religious folk and more the domain of sheltered leftist teens.

you have to properly naturalize all of this stuff first though. none of the subjective idealism, flubby metaphysics etc.

||>>3539775||

>Communities are still important. Their destruction hasn't enriched your life.

Less so in my case. I happen to be living in one of those dreaded uber conservative towns. Everybody is religious here so there isn't any feeling of community gained from religion. The only vibrant communities around here are politically motivated or football clubs and I'm not particularly keen on either.

||>>3539787||
Reminder that theocratic authoritarianism isn't conservative, anon.

||>>3539789||

True, I must have been exposed a bit too much to the pop-rhetoric where religion and conservatism are synonymous.

||>>3539784||
You should be doing the same with a lot of other Western philosophy. I also don't think it matters that much, I've seen some really terrible interpretations from Chinese academics on Chinese philosophy, and some decent looking interpretations from Western academics on the same material.

So much of 'pop-culture Buddhism' as it were reads like a lobotomy. Perhaps much like Aristotle's Metaphysics (According to Plutarch in his treatment of Alexander) the Buddhist 'way' as canonically received serves better as a reminder to one who has reasoned or found 'truth' on his/her own. The story of the Buddha I find fascinating, however. The Zen Patriarchs also are intriguing to me, to say the lesat, as I see men full of 'Mind' bursting as it were, and expressing themselves in a logical system highly different than our own.

In perhaps a similar light I see the steady progression of Western thought starting with the German reaction to the French Revolution (though of course has started much earlier, perhaps with Descartes) through the 20th century schools and up to 'post-modern'.

I would much rather spend an evening reading, writing, or listening to a Bach toccata than emptily meditating on 'suffering' or some abstract point, which for me begs-the-question. I believe Western Enlightenment is worth doing and is equally as valid as Eastern. both have developed within their respective means.

An interesting movement in recent philosophy post-WWII is to reconcile the late Existentialist and phenomenological schools of thought (which is to say high-late modernism, per thought) with Buddhist methods of inquiry and reason. Perhaps such an effort will lead to a revitalization of the philosophic inquiry of the 20th century that today has evolved into an investigation or rather cataloguing of the mass-media world - in short, the phenomenological pursuit of what is 'real'.

buddha had no regrets about aging because he lived it up till 29, smoking the finest hindu kush and eating dat ass in his palace all day long.

if he was born into the lifestyle he chose to live after age 29 he'd take the opposite route and try to acquire the good things of life.
he was a pussy running away from responsibility, he enjoyed all the fruits of the ruling class but ducked out when he was getting old enough to actually do some ruling
let me fuck hot indian chicks for 30 years and i'll eliminate my consciousness with a shotgun to the face after i finish lel
jesus suffered and died for his beliefs, mohammed risked his life fighting for his beliefs...buddha sat around under some trees in a tropical paradise lecturing everyone to stop enjoying life. dude sounds like more of a nag than a spiritual leader if you ask me.
at least christianity has respect for the poor, meanwhile buddhism is just like "fuck they deserve to be poor they were probably bad in a past life or something, besides being poor isn't so bad as long as you stop wanting shit" lol sounds like some republican shit you'd hear at a tea party rally

tl;dr buddha was a rich cunt who got everything he wanted

Reading this comments I get the feeling that most of the so called critical thinkers, aren't that critical after all.
Most of the people here dismiss large part of eastern philosophy's on ground which are non-rational or poor argumentated.
Seems they are scared of questioning their own believes so they just don't expose themselves to this philosophy's.

>>3540017

Give me one good thing I might learn from any Asian philosophy and I might reconsider my opinion.

Until then I would rather invest my time otherwise.

>>3540068
do it yourself, I have absolutely no reason to convince you.

Can someone explain Buddha's moral view to me?

"It can thus be said that, while an empirical self exists - or rather consists of a changing flow of mental and physical states which neither unchangingly exists nor does not exist - no metaphysical Self can be apprehended."

"There are many statements in the suttas to the effect that a person acts, and then reaps the consequences. These statements are made to rebut the various theories circulating among philosophers that deny the efficacy of moral action, attributing all change to fate; these were forms of determinism. The Buddha's statements are not metaphysical in nature, and do not imply an unchanging subject of experience. Instead, continuity is maintained not by positing an extra-empirical entity such as a Self, but by a theory of causality."

It seems like Buddha is simultaneously rejecting determinism, while embracing it via causality.

We don't exactly get many east asian posters on here and no one trusts the opinion of a convert.
They're shouted down for being converts, I don't know if anyone really has a problem with the philosophy itself.

European philosophy has got us to the point of being depressed, post-modern, materialist, nihilist, atheists.

This is the point at which Eastern Philosophy starts. Not only does Eastern cover pretty much everything European did –1000-2000 years before European, it does a better job of addressing it too.

I think most of the loathing comes from those who see people learning Eastern Phil as dreadlocked, dope-smoking, incense burning hippies, and Eastern Phil itself as having some kind of pseudo-spiritual falsity when compared to the more 'academic' European philosophy.

Part of the problem comes from having a cult of celebrity. With Euro, you can latch on to some figure and proclaim loudly, "today I am going to read Kant," and herald Kant as an icon. There is just as much of a worship of figures as there is a reading of philosophical ideas. With Eastern, you are much more likely to say, "today I am going to learn Mahāyāna." And the figures get removed, or all obscured underneath Siddhartha himself. – and that's kind of the point. It's supposed to be more 'holistic'. It's supposed to be one inter-related subject, instead of a fractaled field, split into sub headings and studied in isolation.

I think Greco-Buddhism was pretty cool. If they could overcome the differences I suppose we should be able to too.

>>3539733
Taoism took moral prevalence in Asia (discounting the subcontinent). The other 'traditions of thought' were only world-navigation stuff; superstitions. The only notable dissonance was between Taoism and Confucianism, which was effectively just Introversion versus Extroversion. Theories about time and the nature of knowledge are all pretty much aligned and the entire first world is pretty on board with a lot of what they had to say, even if they don't know it. There isn't much to gain: read the Tao Te Ching, I say, and read the rest only if you want to establish context for other literature, or to study history.

>>3540137

A rich fuck that had everything he could possibly want, yet no desire nor imagination to do anything useful like for example, his contemporaries who immersed themselves in academics or governance. Instead he though lazing about doing nothing was the greatest thing ever and everybody else should totally try it out.

>>3540158

I think you are missing a very ironically intoned "Why?". Many people are fine without any sort of big name philosophy or religion.

Decent practitioners of Eastern philosophy don't spend a lot of time on 4chan.

I think partly it is disliked because eastern philosophy is deeply tied with religion. Western philosophy separated from religion during the enlightenment, probably because of the contradicting dual nature of western thought (semitic religion and hellenic philosophy) but in the east there was no such dualism. This means that eastern philosophy can be "softer" than western philosophy, it can be more subjective and based on personal experience. Like some anon mentioned above, eastern philosophy is also associated with hippies and druggies and other types of people that are generally disliked on /lit/ for a variety of reasons.

All that being said, I think that eastern philosophy still has some interesting ideas to offer, especially Buddhism, zen and daoism. Also, the practice of meditation is also a great technique which has been scientifically proven to enhance attention, relieve stress and even increase grey matter. I don't think that you have to swallow the entire Pali canon's philosophy about blowing out all desire or become a monk to get some benefit from the meditative practice. Also, the Buddhists were pretty much the first phenomenologists, for all that's worth and their theory of the self is very spot on I think.

There's something else that drives me to eastern thought. Here in the west we talk about nihilism and the death of god, and - some - are driven to a crisis because of this. But if you look to the east, here are these people who have accepted and even reveled in the inherent emptiness and meaninglessness of the world. That has to count for something.

Judging by the posts in this thread, you guys should
give this a read: http://bookos.org/book/779341
He does a great job of clearing up many all too prevalent
misconceptions of Buddhism.

>>3540195
Maybe they did not have to overcome any difference but to find the resemblance lying behind apparent differences.

India and Greece were pretty closely related and even can be related in its origins. No coincidence that both languages, along with latin, are Indo-european.

>>3540422
This.

How do I into eastern philosophy?
I've read this and that on Buddhism, the Tao, and I'm learning a bit on the I Ching.

Though, the philosophy in the east goes hand-in-hand with living it out. You can't take the complete Eastern Philosophy without the experience.

>>3541632
see>>3541571
>http://bookos.org/book/779341

>>3541571
>>3541636
Appreciate it.

>>3541644
If you enjoy that, this is also by Evola:
http://bookos.org/book/1054348

>>3541660
I appreciate it.
I like amassing more literature than I could possibly read.

>>3541632
To be honest, I wouldn't recommend >>3541571, Evola was not a Buddhologist by any stretch, he was a right wing traditionalist Italian esotericist - not the best place to get your eastern philosophy from.
If you want a good introduction to traditional Buddhism, read 'What the Buddha thought" by Richard Gombrich, he was ex president of the Pali text Society and Indologist at Oxford. For primary sources, there's nothing better than 'In the Buddha's word" by Bhikku Bodhi, a collection of the most important Pali Suttas.

You might not want to start there though, if you're more interested in the practice of meditation, check out any of the books or CDs on Vipassana - 'insight' meditation.

As far as Zen, the best way would be just to see a teacher, though I find these videos on zazen very instructive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_djWyC1-_4

There's always 'Three pillars of zen" - the classic on zen in the west.

I word of advice from someone who's been down this path before, you're going to find shit you don't like - rebirth, karma, asceticism, gods and demons in the suttas - it's all part of the deal when you're studying a 2500 year old religion. Don't feel you need to agree with any of this, use what works for you in the here and now.

we dont need yet more layers of metamagical thinking

>>3542222
also
>Most surprisingly, he [Evola] argues that the widespread belief in reincarnation is not an original Buddhist tenet.

This is, of course, nonsense. No Indologist worth his salt would make such a ridiculous claim. This, by itself, is enough to discredit this book.

>>3542222
How can you have zen without asceticism?

>>3542238
Eastern philosophy is about simplifying the mind, not complicating it. You are already doing unnecessary "metamagical thinking" without realizing it. Read the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. It is the owner's manual for the mind.

>>3539911
>mfw this is right

>>3542222
>'What the Buddha thought" by Richard Gombrich,

been looking for that one... got a link maybe?

>>3542285
http://bookos.org/book/1237329

here's some guided stuff from the Insight Meditation Society
http://www.dharma.org/resources/audio#guided

>>3542270
I think you'll find that it's quite possible, in fact, most zen priests in Japan are married and have kids and don't really keep to the Vinaya strictly.

Even in the ancient suttas though, you see laypeople reaching high levels of attainment, even arahantship. See - http://www.dhammawiki.com/index.php?title=Lay_arahant

>The Commentaries mention some lay followers who attained full enlightenment, such as Uggasena who was a lay man with the householder responsibilities with family and work as an acrobat in side shows.
>The Milindapanha mentions by implication that lay people can attain full enlightenment

>>3542280
>Eastern philosophy is about simplifying the mind, not complicating it.
there's your answer OP

>>3539911
shit, that makes sense; but only from a certain pov. one could say that the buddha had from the start what everyone wants, and realized that it is not that great, that it is ephemeral and does not justify a whole life of work, so he went to look for a more definitive realization.

or maybe he saw that life can only be enjoyed during youth, then when you reach 30 you need to do something else.

>>3540117
round this parts that means you cant, ball's in your court bud

>>3542401
I think this is all reading way too much into a heavily mythologized story to be honest. Sid was a kastriya - warrior caste, but that does not mean he was extremely rich or that he was a king. Indian tribes at the time were not like Indian kingdoms during the middle ages, there were no massive palaces with huge concubinages and treasures.

>>3542351
thanks!

also, it looks like you've read a good deal of stuff. what do you think about the "academic" works on buddhism?like Conze, Lamotte, Poussin, or more recently Tillemans, Dreyfus Garfield, Huntington etc?

>>3539694
it's actually because of posters like this who snub any discussion of eastern philosophy as belonging to the shallow new age trendy yoga soccer mom

>>3542433
I'm not an academic so I'm not as well read in this, I tend to be more practice oriented.
I do have Garfield's translation of Nagarjuna's middle way. It was really fun watching the Madhyamaka conference online. Check it out if you're into that.
http://www.smith.edu/buddhism/event-mmsymp.php

I find Tibetan stuff interesting, but it can get really insufferable - almost like continental philosophy in its abstruseness.

>>3539911
I hope you're just trolling, this is the most retarded thing I've read in a while

>>3542476
Yeah, that symposium is neat. I enjoyed it too, specially the Tillemans intervention. But yeah, that is the feel I get, that this is just too focused on the philosophy disregarding a little bit the practice side. But that's the thing, one gets a too academic side, or a too practical side, both, if not disregarding, at least leaving as a 2ndary thing the other.

Anyway, if you liked that symposium you'll find here some similar videos and more stuff if you are interested: http://www.shedrub.org/videoarchive.php

>>3542516
thanks, will check it out

This all reminds me of Stephen Batchelor's confession book, where he talks about being a student in the Gelug tradition in Dharmsala. It was basically like being in a scholastic medieval university, the monks do little to no meditation and spend most of their time dissecting old texts and having philosophical discussions about small doctrinal points between various Tibetan schools. Sometimes you just need to sit.

>>3539771
Maybe you got the "turn the other cheek" part wrong. I remember in a movie about the life of Gandhi, Gandhi and a priest walk along a narrow street that doesn't seem too secure. And Gnadhi says something like "why did Jesus said you should turn the other cheek ? Not because you should be asking for violence, but because you should show to violent people that you are ready to face their violence and not cower away from it. That you are ready to resist, no matter the cost". Probably more useful in those terms since most bullies use violence only because they think it will scare their victims into submission.

I don't hate eastern philosophy. I hate white people who appropriate eastern philosophy and then proceed to tell you all about why it's better than lulz silly western silliness or turn into massive hippie faggots with long hair and shit.

>>3542631
And then Gandhi slept with his niece.

Buddhist and Daoist thought is interesting because it evolved in an environment without monotheism or a central religious authority, so the questions and approaches are quite different to the European tradition. Too bad they usually suffer from misinterpretation, particularly Buddhist concepts of 'suffering' and 'desire'

>>3542634
Do you hate ALL white people who like eastern philosophy?

>>3542631
but tahts a wrong reading of jesus

>>3543294
http://www.southerncrossreview.org/39/wink2.htm

>>3543301
heresy!

I like Taoism. It seems like one of the least bullshitty religions there is.

>>3539726
I kinda thought I was steeped in the philosophy of my culture, so I may as well try to understand really different philosophy

>>3543301
>http://www.southerncrossreview.org/39/wink2.htm
what makes you think this is some kind of authority on the bible?

Only reason eastern philosophy isn't discussed so much here is that most thinkers on this board were brought up in the analytic school of thought. Nothing more than that, I don't think there's any specific disagreement towards it.

Because all of it is anti-human nihilistic bullshit.

>>3543358
No, it isn't.

>>3540422
>t, here are these people who have accepted and even reveled in the inherent emptiness and meaninglessness of the world

So they're just as wrong, heh.

>>3543358
It bears the closest relation to how humans actually live out of any philosophy.

>>3540422
>here are these people who have accepted and even reveled in the inherent emptiness and meaninglessness of the world
It's more complicated than that. It's not that the world is meaningless. It's that a moment is valuable despite its transience, and that clinging to pleasure and fearing pain are counter-productive, since pain will happen and pleasure is temporary.

>>3543372
That doesn't even make sense.

>>3543375
your mom is my pleasure transient to the divine

your dad is the pain during the transience

>>3543383
Okay.

i'm literally not ready for any of that shit yet
i'm too busy jacking off over my glorious western thought to have enough time to be a lazy and ambiguous shit

i read bits of the tao te ching a while ago and it was alright but it was 2frivolous4me to consider seriously

>>3543388
>the dao
>frivolous
Nah.

If Eastern philosophy is so good, why didn't they come up with logic or the scientific method?

>>3543394
>treat life as a frivolous thing
>but this text isn't frivolous!!!!!!

>>3539773
>Those who put it on a pedestal, and may have some understanding, but refuse to believe anyone from the west could ever hope to comprehend even an iota of the meaning within because glorious nippon or similar

I'm number 4. Death to Whitey!

>>3543402
I didn't say the Tao Te Ching wasn't frivolous. I said the Tao/Dao itself wasn't.

The book is not the Way.

>>3543403
Your position is meaningless unless you've read the texts in the original.

>>3543394
>>3543404
meh, taoism is just a lighter form of stoicism

>>3543291
Pretty much.