/lit/ - Literature

many people confuse buddha the model to buddha the wish granting spirit

very interesting post OP

I think people just need to dumb things down/'domesticate' foreign ideas in order to be able to feel like they understand them. Most westerners obviously don't actually know what you were talking about and in fact most buddhists I bet don't even see it that way. They just see it as their familiar culture, a series of rituals and so forth with not much deeper just like how most christians treat christianity.
In other words I'm betting that very few buddhists have the extremely nihilistic views that your post expressed, even if that was the original point of the religion, simply because that's how things tend to go - religions get coopted by the mainstream. You know what I mean.

>>5475989
This and OP are both examples of what make this the best board on one of the best websites.

>>5475918
>Birth is nothing to celebrate, it just means a new heap of suffering has arisen...

What? I'm not a parent, but isn't there happiness in seeing a child? Will the child itself not have happy experiences? I did as a child, and I still have positive experiences now.

Why shouldn't I go home and bang my wife? It's fun, and it makes me feel loved.

>>5475989
This guy answered it pretty well. Billions of people in Asia - not exactly antinatalistic. I'd imagine that all the people who DID get Gautama's message have passed on centuries ago. The people alive over there today are descended from the pissants who didn't get his memo.

>>5477601
Why is someone so stupid on /lit/? Go back to Facebook, you're clearly lost.

>>5475918
Buddhism was never anti-natalist, pseud. Get your cross-over fan-philosophy out of here.

Soooo I hate to be that guy, but could someone explain the whole "your self is an illusion" concept to me? I always had trouble grasping the particular bit of Buddhism, I mean it seems like i have a self and everyone else has a self.

>>5477640
prove to me that you have a self

>>5475989
>Most westerners obviously don't actually know what you were talking about and in fact most buddhists I bet don't even see it that way

lol no it's East Asians that corrupted Buddhism in the first place. They created a bunch of nonsense about the 'Pure Land' and such that basically turned it into a Hindu-themed version of Christianity.

>>5477643
A japanese hosso monk and zen master was teaching a class on Lao Ze, known riddler

”Before the class begins, you must adopt a meditation stance and reverence Lao Ze and accept that he was the most enlightened being the world has ever known, even greater than Heraclitus!”

At this moment, a brave, phenomenologist, continental German philosopher who had published over 1500 papers on hermeneutics and understood the necessity of an ontological characterization of human beings and fully supported all deconstruction of metaphysical thinking stood up and held up a rock.

”Does this rock have buddha nature?”

The arrogant professor smirked and smugly replied “mu, you stupid Westerner”

”Wrong. An existential analysis of the rock reveals that it has no language and therefore it is not opened to the disclosure of Being . If it was neither Dasein or not Dasein and its ontological nature, as you say, was indeterminate… then its rock-Being should be a concern to it!”

The monk was visibly shaken, and dropped his bonsai and copy of Tao te Ching. He stormed out of the room reciting those obsolete buddhist sutras. The same sutras buddhists recite for the “souls of the deceased” when they jealously try to devalue responsibility over their finitude from the deserving authentic Daseins. There is no doubt that at this point our monk, Gautama Boddhidarma, wished he had pulled himself up by his bootstraps and become more than an inauthentic onto theological thinker. He wished so much that he had a non metaphysical characterization of truth to reconstruct his ontology over a groundless ground, but he himself had petitioned against it!

The students applauded and all registered with the university of Freiburg that day and accepted Nietzsche as the last and greatest western crypto metaphysician. An eagle named “Ereigenis” flew into the room and perched atop an ancient oak and shed a tear on the now standing reserve of timber. The Ister was read several times, and Being itself showed up and spread existential angst across the country.

The monk lost his tenure and was fired the next day. He died of the technocratic plague nihilism and was tossed into the impossibility of possibilities for eternity.

Ex nihilo omnia
p.s. It rests by changing.

>>5477644
Jesus, stop talking.

>>5477643
Prove to me I don't have a self

>>5477649
It's true though? A large percentage of Buddhists in Asia believe that Siddhartha Guatama was basically Jesus sent to tell people that if they do good deeds they'll earn good karma and get to spend a few thousand years in the 'Pure Land' (i.e. heaven)

>>5477622

Maybe I'm trying to learn something.

>>5477640
Buddhists argue that because all things are impermanent and interrelated any individual thing is just the fleeting collection of phenomena. They argue that they self has no unchanging, unique quality so there is no permanent self at all.

>>5477640

http://web.archive.org/web/20140707092229/http://deoxy.org/egofalse.htm

Also consider that atoms are made up almost entirely of empty space. You never really touch anything. Everything is a continuation of everything else.

>>5477657
He is right. The Buddha's orginal message was distorted and Asia and India both added a bunch of ritual crap that wasn't part of the religion. My ex gf was an Asian Buddhist and I don't think she even knew about the Wheel of Life but she prayed to some some gods.

>>5477640
>>5477679
Exactly.

If you swap out the pieces of a ship one by one then in the end is it even still the same ship?

Buddhism is sort of the position that higher forms in the Platonic sense do not exist.

>>5477601
You are just making another being suffer by giving him life.

>>5477647

>>5477657
1) Pure Land Buddhism is one tradition of many in Mahayana and Asia.
2) the Western Paradise is not heaven.
3) You don't know what you're talking about.
4) You absolutely don't know more than even lay Asian Buddhists of a Pure Land tradition.

>>5477692
>implying there is being
>implying existence is separate from non-existence
>all these implications

>>5477601
Well, as I get it the idea is that to reach that birth the soul went through an absurd number of repetitions through the world until it got depurated into a being capable of reasoning. Once you reach that stage you can only ascend beyond the physical means or remain trapped in that stage. It's okay if you want to, it's just a chance you get to fulfill some sort of categorical imperative.

>>5477622
Why do you refuse to expose your thoughts to those interested in them?

>>5477624
But yeah, I'm with this guy. You could sort of see it that way but it's projecting a bit too much

>>5477640

>Within Buddhism, samsara is defined as the continual repetitive cycle of birth, death, and intermediate bardo state that arises from ordinary beings' generating and fixating on a mistaken concept of self and experiences. Samsara arises out of wrong knowledge about reality (avidya) and is characterized by dukkha (failure, suffering, anxiety, dissatisfaction). In the Buddhist view, liberation from samsara is possible by following the Buddhist path.

Its a religious concept and not a philosophical one. Because of belief in reincarnation and the oneness of things individual lives are thought to be illusory.

>>5477695
All Mahayana Buddhists believe in the Pure Land, Pure Land sects are just the ones who emphasize it.

Mainstream Buddhism in Asia is full of bullshit Siddhartha fanfic involving rituals and pure lands and gods and shit.

Stop being such a weeaboo most Asians don't understand real Buddhism any more than the average Westerner understands the theology behind Christianity.

>>5477601
According to Buddhism
1. happiness doesn't negate suffering
2. The child's happy experiences don't cancel out the inherent suffering from life

>>5477690
>>5477679
>>5477679
So I don't exist because I am not permanent and I am mostly empty space? First off, how do we really know atoms are mostly empty space? We didn't always know about atoms, who is to say there isn't something smaller in the space, like gravitons or something? Second, something doesn't have to be permanent to be real. We change every day sure but how does that mean our "self" isn't real?

>>5477692

I think you are repeating what the OP said. I'm saying that the newly-born being's life isn't all suffering. He can enjoy life and his experiences, as I have.

Why must life be suffering?

>>5477647
if you wrote that variant you should feel proud of you

Alright, this seems like a good thread to ask this: What should I read if I want to learn about Buddhism? Preferably secondary texts unless you think there are any primary ones that aren't too difficult without any background knowledge.

>>5477667
Alright, I apologize then. Its late, I'm on my phone, and I have work in the morning. So I'll be a 21st century parent and give you a video to watch instead of showing you myself :)

http://youtu.be/m7a04MAX2Cg

That should be the right one. Listen to the whole thing if you truly want to understand the concept of antinatalism.

>>5477647
Excellent read

>>5477703
Well I think we can all agree reincarnation is crap and it doesn't really make sense without a soul, or am I missing something? Sorry for my lack of knowledge but I stopped studying Buddhism because I could never get past the reincarnation phenomenon

>>5477713
Atoms never came into play, that's continental lies.

>>5477715
being alive is suffering.

Just the birth is painful, you will say:

>but their parents love them?

What is love?

is that love gonna be always there?

No.

>>5477729
In a sense it's been proven by science. Every atom in your body was once a part of someone elses.

That's probably not the same thing though.

>>5477655
I can't even prove to myself that I have a self.

Since you can't directly measure a self, there must be an indirect means to do so. I am assuming that which is immeasurable is inconsequental.

So, does your self have indirect effect on your environment?

From wiki

>The self is the subject of one's own experience of phenomena: perception, emotions, thoughts. In phenomenology, it is conceived as what experiences, and there isn't any experiencing without an experiencer, the self.

Does your personal experience alter the perceivable reality?

In science, personal experience does not count as proof, thus if you abandon the notion of a self, you lose no information.
The planets orbit the Sun and entropy increases no matter how you feel about it.

No selves.

>>5477712

Ok, so it doesn't negate suffering. Negative and positive experiences are part of the entertainment of life. So just as you might pay to ride a roller coaster (negative), you would still enjoy the ride (positive).

>>5477701
So choosing not to, for example, give birth or have sex, etc. is just a choice made with faith in the idea that doing so will lead to a better afterlife?

>>5477723
Seconding this

>>5477729
http://youtu.be/07Ch4A9PnZI

Makes perfect sense to
me.

>>5477732

There is suffering. Do you even Dukkha?

>>5477729
Well, the catholic soul comes from the platonic idea of perfect forms. You could call it soul but for a buddhists is just you, the rest is illusion.

>>5477723
If this thread is alive tomorrow afternoon, I'll give you a complete list. I'm not on my own computer at the moment.

>>5477746
It is an illusion itself too.

>>5477713
Our self is the real thing that maintains constant even if we change molecules, dead is just an illusion of the physical world as hard to ignore as it is to notice when you replace potassium or carbon.

>>5477713
Our concept of an object is a 4-dimensional one. Because things change over time, if you try and view objects 3-dimensionally the term becomes useless, because every time an object changes, it becomes a different object.

Like the old thought experiment, if you have a boat, and slowly replace the individual pieces one by one until every piece is replaced, is it still the same boat? Viewing the object 3-dimensionally makes the boat a different object every time you change a component of it, but looking at the object 4 dimensionally yields a new problem, what if you take all the pieces you removed from the boat, and put them together into a boat. Which boat is the real boat? Depending on how you look at the boat, it is either an object that slowly had individual aspects of it replaced, or an object that was slowly broken apart and reassembled. Both boats are The Boat at the same time.

And it just continues from there. The nails that were in that boat were once part of ore, that was in the ground, that was part of a mountain, etc. The more you look at it, the more objects branch out and become one another. Any distinction between objects is arbitrary, everything is one object.

>>5477734
Don't bring science into a clearly antimaterialistic discussion, it's like dawkins quoting jesus

>>5477740
>So choosing not to, for example, give birth or have sex, etc. is just a choice made with faith in the idea that doing so will lead to a better afterlife?
No. There is no 'afterlife' in Buddhism. There's reincarnation, but that's view as more an extension of one life. The goal is to achieve enlightenment by stripping away worldly desires, and to not create more suffering for others, because morality and whatnot.

>>5477743
OK well if there isnt a soul then what is being reincarnated? I mean when I die, if I am buried, I will become plant and fungi nutrients and something will eat those, but is that isn't reincarnating that's just the food chain.

Do Buddhists revere life?

>>5477740
>are part of the entertainment of life.
And life isn't about being entertained, that's a very modern american way of seeing things.

>that doing so will lead to a better afterlife
No, all life is present. You reincarnate because you never ceased being, it was just a different state of it. Once you brake the circle of reincarnation you become pure being, free of material ideas like cause and effect.
it's not about being happy for more time, it's about maturing.

>>5477692
You are just making another being able to enjoy life by giving it to him.

Whoa! This argument works too!

>>5477764
They enjoy it in a not posesive way, Buddha chose a cool tree to sit and meditate for example.

>>5477763
Personally, I used to be a Buddhist for a few years, and the whole reincarnation thing is one of the main reasons I don't call myself a Buddhist anymore. Maybe I'm missing something, but I never felt it gelled with the rest of Buddhism. Like, most of Buddhism is just philosiphy, but then there's reincarnation which is a completely unscientific spiritual thing.

You can interpret it as a sort of food chain, circle of life type thing, but that's really not accurate to Buddhism.

>>5477763
sort of aswered you here
>>5477766

>>5477744
everything is dukkha.

>>5477776
>unscientific
lol
great criteria for your spiritual search

>>5477764
Kinda. For the most part yes, but not in the same way that some people do. Buddhists believe life is sacred and respect it in all it's forms, but do not consider death tragic, or people being born to necessarily be a good thing. It's in more of a 'respect the life that is and do not cause it suffering' type thing.

>>5477764

I'm no expert on Buddhism, but there is a view that human lives are blessed because there is the right balance of suffering and wisdom. The lower realms suffer too much to have wisdom about suffering and the higher realms don't suffer enough to have wisdom about suffering. They view human life as the type of life in which one has the greatest capacity to do good.

>>5477763
You're still holding on to this "you". Where were you before your birth? Where will you be after? You grow from conception, AKA accumulate earth, but somehow you are not earth?

Understand that you ARE the universe. All that exists is constant change. What happens, is happening, and will happen; it's all you. Ride the wave.

>>5477783
It's based on nothing. It's not based on logic or rationality or thought like the rest of Buddhism or other stuff in philosophies, it's a completely unfounded and unsupported claim on how the world physically works. It's no different than theism or belief in an afterlife in that respect.

The reincarnation of Buddhism isn't a philosophical aspect, it's a religious one.

>>5477776
Wow, Buddhism is a religion? What do you know?
Glad you were disappointed.

>>5477713
>I am mostly empty space?
No, "you" are a delicate and ever changing thing. Your body is composed of cells that age and die. Your mind is composed of thoughts that change and disappear. Who is this "you"? Buddhism says that "you" you think of is not there, your incorrect way of thinking leads you to believe that your self is real, so your mind is chained here. But contrary to the hipster OP, Buddhism is anti-nihilist. Those who awaken to the truth and become untethered, become enlightened, attain nibbana, which is basically absolute being without individual qualities.

>>5477794
K... guy. You're literally made of the same shit as the sun and asteroids. You are also literally made of the matter that used to be ancient fish and reptiles. How in the fuck is reincarnation not real?

>>5477805
Buddhism exists in a weird middle ground between religion and philosophy.

There is no creation myth. There are no deities. The majority of Buddhism is just philosophy. But you have these very occasional spiritual aspects such as reincarnation, which have no philisophical or logical basis.

It has too many spiritual aspects to just be a philosophy, but it's not a religion either, at least not in the way that something like Christianity or Hinduism is. It exists in the weird middle ground, where the only things remotely close to it are some asian religion/philosophies like Confucianism or Taoism.

>>5477729
Buddhism does not posit reincarnation. Buddhists claim there is no self that reincarnates but mental phenomena, like matter, dissipates and is reborn.

>>5477813
>There are no deities.
Buddhism is polytheistic. Buddha is canonically said to have had a conversation with Brahma, which shows that he is not really the creator of all things.

>>5477810
atoms don't constitute a person only, the arrangement of those atoms in a certain order is also necessary

whether the atoms that make up were part of a fish or a cat at some point is irrelevant

>>5477810
But that's not the reincarnation of Buddhism. Buddhism's reincarnation is a lot more specific than that, it deals heavily in karma, and karma's effect on the conditions of the rebirth.

Ya'll motherfuckers need Set. Develop your subjective universe. Work to make your subjective universe act in the objective universe. KHPR buddhafags

>>5477690
Are you in my metaphysics class right now?
Nevermind. What a stupid thought. Im really drunk

>>5477750

Not him, but please do.

>>5477843
Go back to /x/!!

Buddhism also emphasizes compassion and reverence for human (and all forms of sentient) life.

This is not a dogmatic tenet. It's a conclusion one reaches after seeing the world as it is.

OP's hostility to being is despairing and, as a Buddhist might say, aflame.

Being is. The world is. To call these-- fundamental of fundamentals! -- into question...

It brings despair, for such things are so far beyond one's power as to be flatly ridiculous: so you've given up on enduring life, but what about birds and bugs and mice? Is there aggregate suffering not far greater than all of humanity?

Life is not something to despair about. It is something to celebrate; otherwise, what else is there to celebrate?

>>5477908
Celebrate destruction?

>>5477792
this is solipsism, isn't it?

>>5477813

Why this obsession with classification and comparison?

It's just empty chatter that speaks over and around a vast collection of ideas that exceeds our comprehension and explodes across history.

Do you know how many brilliant minds have etched little marks on that thing we call "Buddhism"? All those sages and fools who spoke languages we'll never know, and lived lives we can't guess... surviving across the ages in practice and writing...

And here at long last, in the preceeding two or three centuries, it has begun to drip into the minds of the west, and all we can do is sit here and ponder whether it is is "religion" or "philosophy"?!

If I understand reincarnation correctly, it's not that I will be reborn, it's that I never was to begin with. I am not anything. Nothing within observation can be separated from anything else.

Have I kind of got it here?

Also, suffering refers to simply the nature of existence. A tornado displacing and killing a tree is no different from me stubbing my toe, or a father and son falling out. The changes and impermanence of the world we live in are in all things.

Am I on the right track here? What are the conclusions to made made after this? Does meditation move me toward the goal of escaping this?

>>5477916

It was a bit of a play on words. Without life there is literally, exactly, and completely NOTHING to celebrate.

Even someone who advocates (for God knows why) destruction, in all seriousness, is necessarily advocating life. There's nothing to destroy if there is no life.

Being precedes everything. To oppose being is to oppose everything. The idea collapses almost immediately.

>>5477941

There are many different ideas about reincarnation running through Buddhism and Indian religion in general.

If there's anything I know about karma/rebirth, it's that there is nothing simple about it and that one cannot possibly conclude he or she has "got it."

I know that's not super helpful, but you have to have respect for the size of the mountain you're about to climb if you're serious about getting up it.

>>5477940
That post was the single most pretentious thing I've read all day, and that's saying something.

>>5477949
Are you saying that advocating for the collapse of all things, forever and always, is not an acceptable stance?

>>5477957
I'm not trying to project any arrogance in the form of having 'got it'. I just wondered if I have a basic understanding of these concepts are. I listened to a series of lectures and this was my takeaway. To gain any more understanding obviously will take more study.

>>5477792

The idea that "I-being" is synonymous with "all-being" is found in pre-Buddhist Indian philosophy.

It's one of the earliest ideas in fact: the Atman-Brahman equivalence is a thesis of the Upanisads, usually guessed to have been written from the 5th-6th centuries BC on.

But the Buddha rejected it explicitly. Dependent arising and non-self do not propose an equivalence between the sense of I and the world entirely.

The notion of "the world" and of "I" are just that-- notions. The human mind is constantly doing this; taking overlapping intersections of ways of being and labeling it as a single object. Take our friend Steve for example.

What we call "Steve" isn't anything at all. It is a body-plane intersecting with planes of sensory experience and occasionally bursting out in speech!

Steve isn't a simple object. He's a collision of dharmas (ways, behaviors, inherent properties) that constantly shifts and rearranges, occasionally manifesting as Steve feeling sad or smiling to us.

>>5477963

I think people miss the point entirely when they go about trying to answer these kinds of questions, and I think that it's pretentious of us to try and situate massive traditions of thought into our tiny database of ideas.

I think we do it so we can feel like we understand, so we can talk about Buddhism at dinner, so we can feel some control over a depth that vastly exceeds us.

I don't see why it should be pretentious to emphasize that something is much bigger and much deeper than we realize.

>>5477965

It's a ridiculous question to even pose. We don't have control over it one way or another.

>>5477792
As a human being I have feelings and emotions, I can experience the world in all its beauty and horror. I do not solely rely on instinct and I am nothing like a rock except for the fact that we have share a few atoms. How am I not me?
>>5477808
The person I am is always changing but there is still a spark inside of me, some call it a soul, I don't believe in souls but I still feel like there is something, the symbolic me if you will. How would I even begin to let go of that symbol?
>>5477941
I remember hearing that the word Buddha used is more closely translated as meaning unsatisfied than suffering. No matter what we desire anytime we get what desire we are never fully satisfied. You will always hunger and thirst, you will always be restless. Life is ultimately unsatisfying.

>>5478000
No, but we could extinguish our own species, and possibly all life on this planet by the year 2500.

>>5477970

Yeah you're right, and my post was not helpful.

A few distinct ideas of karma have rubbed off on me.

There is the sense that karma/rebirth explains what looks to us like injustice: it is the reason why one person experiences more misery than another.

There is the understanding that death/rebirth is nothing but the dissolving of consciousness (jiva, here) into smaller bits, which reassemble again into other forms of consciousness (Jainism).

There is the sense that karma is a link between the different worlds; the world of the Gods, the world of men, the world of enduring bliss.

There is it's most ancient meaning-- "(ritual) acts." In the Vedas, karma was the force that gave the vedic sacrifice rituals their power. One who performed the recitations and rituals properly (karma) could force even the gods to act in a certain way.

There's the modern western apprehension, which is certainly found in Indian thought as well: karma is "what goes around comes around" -- it is heavily tied to morality and causality in this life.

Does Buddhism have a particular reason for respecting life and opposing suffering? If anything it seems like it wouldn't recognize the distinction between living objects (i.e. people) and nonliving ones.

>>5478001
>The person I am is always changing but there is still a spark inside of me,

Not the person you're replying to, but the "spark inside" is literally your sense of "I." It's nothing but a construction the mind uses to navigate the world; an inevitable consequence of the sense organs being located so close to one another.

If you are that "I" inside your head, and you are really a real thing, then where are you? Are you in the middle of your head? Are you slightly to the left? Are you all throughout your eyes and ears, and down into your toes? Do you stop where your skin stops?

For a modern perspective, see Hofstadter.

>>5477723
Interested in this as well, cheers guys.

>>5478024

Compassion is something that inevitably occurs when you realize that there are other people who experience the world as you do.

This idea is easy to express in language but it's extremely difficult to hold down in your actual experience! I certainly don't claim to.

If you're like me you realize that all those other people in the world are mini-worlds walking around with their own centers, and their own "I"- but you find it astonishing and difficult to sustain this realization for any amount of time ("WOW!! Look at all these people, just like me! Oh shoot, why am I people watching. I have to go get the dry-cleaning...").

>>5478033

>>5477723

Here's my reading list for the semester, and I have a very good professor who has spent the last 50 years studying Buddhism and speaks seven languages.

*Gethin "Sayings of the Buddha"
*Gethin "Foundations of Buddhism"
*Nagapriya "Exploring Karma and Rebirth"
*Carpenter "Indian Buddhist Philosophy"
*Harding "Studying Buddhism in Practice"

There has been a handful of posts here asking for secondary texts on Buddhism. Here are two that I particularly liked (one is actually a general Indian philosophy thing, but hey, there's a bunch of cool shit going on in ancient India).

Buddhism as Philosophy by Mark Siderits
Classical Indian Philosophy by J.N. Mohanty

Some people take issue with Siderits due to his biases and his eisegesis but as far as an introduction goes, it's pretty nice. Mohanty's book is a little more philosophically rigorous while still being general (it covers a lot of material in a short amount of space).

I'm no expert on Buddhism in the slightest, I just have a passing interest in it really. So perhaps someone will come in here with better sources.
And they did!>>5478049

>>5477657
Pure Land Buddhists hold Amida as the Jesus-y Buddha. I don't think anyone gave a shit about ol' Sid by the second dharma. I know all Japanese Buddhist sects take power away from Sid. Shingon and Tendai hold that Sid basically gave a babby's-first version of the real path to Enlightenment because lay people were too dumb to comprehend the esoteric ideas.

Source: I'm studying East Asian Buddhism in uni

>>5477715
Buddhist "suffering" is a harsh mistranslation. The original Sanskrit is more akin to "inconvenience." Everything is an inconvenience, and to be Enlightened is to be unburdened from these inconveniences. Essentially.

>>5477813
>Buddhism is the "middle way" between hedonism and asceticism
>Buddhism is the middle way between philosophy and religion
DEEPEST LORE

"Buddhism goes deep into no-self philosophy until your sense of self is entirely erased. It's monastic nihilism because it encourages a meditative disciplined way of living without any concept of god or soul as a support. Other religions have monks but they're always after something (eternal life for self). Buddha and his monks were meditating to go extinct, to extinguish the seeds of rebirth, to prevent any birth at all into life. If that isn't antinatalism, what is? Buddhism is the most intense antinatalistic tradition ever, yet few seem to realize or discuss it from this angle. "


Can we see where this is actually implicated in the source material, pls no secondaries.

>>5478097

Hint: there are no sources for this.

>>5478094
>Madhyamaka is the middle way within Buddhism itself
Nagarjuna confirmed for deepest philosopher.

>mfw I simply gave up desire for result and got all the results
>now dancing atop myself as a sexy Dakini

>>5477792
give in to the healing earth magic of the universe wooOooOoooo

>>5478116
yeah bro blaze it up lmao

>>5478105
So why the fuck do people keep saying it?

>>5475918
The highest peaks of all the religious philosophy is in the esoteric qualities of mysticism. They all invariably say the same thing, but are divulged differently because the people who interpret them don't see the truth.

>>5478132
my nigga

>mfw Godel showed that all logical axioms are inherently untrue in some respect
>mfw Buhhda was right and absolute truth is impossible. As is any real logical costruct such as the "self" or "meaning"
>mfw Godel's theorem is also inhrently wrong or it disproves itself.
>mfw illogical universe

>Not one mention of Siddharta by Hesse

For shame /lit/. I think the core experience of the protagonist in Siddhartha and his experience speaking with the Buddha is relevant to OP's question:

>Why should a species go on and on, killing and being killed in this cycle of life?

There are some spiritual leaders that can develop that realization -- the wheel, suffering, etc, all of it quickly and on their own (The Buddha).

Most people can't though. A small number of people will have this innate desire to seek out a spiritual teacher.

But most people, the far majority of people can't attain realization until they have experienced most or all of what life has to offer.

Words on paper and even words from a realized person can ring hollow.

But when someone experiences pain, death, violence, sex, birth, love, hate, fear, etc for their whole lives, that suffering builds the staircase for realization.

That's my interpretation based on what Hesse wrote anyway -- it might contradict the actual Buddhist teachings.

>>5477703
>wrong knowledge about reality
>a vidya
Top kek.

Yo real talk /lit/
Where did the whole fat happy buddha thing come from?

Buddha was an Indian/Nepali prince who attained realization... not some happy fat dude who looks like he belongs in some hedonistic court with a bunch of bellydancers around him

>>5478161
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budai

bump so I can post the books I promised about Buddhism tomorrow when I'm at my own computer

Is it just me or are there a lot of similarities between Buddhism and Gnosticism?

>>5475918
I think "psychological suicide" or "antinatalism" is at least as much an oversimplification of Buddhism as any Lululemon shit

I mean, why does Buddhism not actually advocate suicide or antinatalism? Think about it.

>muh reincarnation
but that's an article of faith, at least if you understand it naïvely. And the kind of pure Buddhism you're describing (i.e. divorced from all the Chinese/Japanese/Tibetan literal gods and demons stuff) made a point of abandoning those to reach the truth. It applied an almost scientific method to human suffering.

However, as you observed, Buddhism successfully deconstructed the notion of self. So personally dying, or personally not procreating, means jack. There is no important difference between you/your offspring and whoever else would go on living in their stead. You are all just part of the same self-deluded mass of life. Even if the human species were to die out, animals would go on killing and being killed, only without the potential to reach nirvana by meditation until some other "intelligent" species evolved.

Buddhism doesn't aim to abscond from reality in despair because that would be meaningless. It aims to transform suffering via an encounter with its opposite. Even the Buddha himself, for that reason, returned to the engage with this world of suffering for the sake of all those still living in it, knowing that he could detach himself from suffering when necessary. This is the model that Buddhism wants you to emulate.

Totally different consciousness-focused religion, but you should read Idries Shah's book The Sufis for a more in-depth exploration of the idea of returning to the world from an "Enlightening" experience as a necessary aspect of living in accordance with it

>>5478197
Good post.

>>5477624
This pretty much. OP has a warped understanding of Buddhism.

Daily reminder that Westerners can only understand Buddhist philosophy through the use of psychedelics

>>5478211
er, no.

The Bible shares many of the same wisdom you can find in Buddhist teachings, its just that people don't know how to read it.

>>5478221
The bible can't teach ego death, which is pretty much the core of Buddhist (or at least Zen) philosophy even if it writes about it. Ego death can only be understood experientially, and it especially difficult in western culture because of exceptionally advanced individualism.

>>5478236
Gnostics did

Nobody in these threads ever knows anything about Buddhist philosophy. The Way of Zen should be required reading for these threads.

http://terebess.hu/english/AlanWatts-The%20Way%20of%20Zen.pdf

Educate yourselves

>>5477647
/thread

>>5478236
Do you even know what Ego death is

True Christianity is all about anihilating self importance, but at the same tine, where does Budhissm denounce individuality? Isnt the Middle Way about embracing life and spirituality without going to either extreme?

>>5478239
I mean, I don't deny that (not that I'm a bible scholar or anything), but it's essentially impossible for a Western audience to understand ego death, even if it made sense to ancient Semitic tribes.

>>5478244
No. The Middle Way is about abstaining from material pleasure without fucking starving yourself.

Buddhism absolutely denounces individuality. It abdicates that such thing as an individual ego exists.

>>5478251
it seems to be about avoiding extremes, according to wikipedia...

and you cannot avoid individuality at all in a practical sense

>>5478244
>True Christianity is all about...
No true christian ;)

And you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Ego death has nothing to do with "self-importance"; it's the loss of your idea of yourself, ie your "self" becomes identical to your consciousness.

But again, this isn't something that can be understood unless it is experienced, which is what I was originally getting at. Even if Christianity was originally "about" ego death, it is now unable to provide an experience of ego death on its own because of western culture.

>>5478261
tldr: do psychedelics

>>5478258
>avoiding extremes
see above post.

>according to wikipedia
lol.

Here's a definition of the middle passage from an actual Buddhist:

>An outstanding aspect of the Buddha's Teaching is the adoption of the Eightfold Path is the Middle Path. The Buddha advised His followers to follow this Path so as to avoid the extremes of sensual pleasures and self-mortification. The Middle Path is a righteous way of life which does not advocate the acceptance of decrees given by someone outside oneself. A person practises the Middle Path, the guide for moral conduct, not out of fear of any supernatural agency, but out of the intrinsic value in following such an action. He chooses this self-imposed discipline for a definite end in view: self-purification.

>The Middle Path is a planned course of inward culture and progress. A person can make real progress in righteousness and insight by following this Path, and not by engaging in external worship and prayers. According to the Buddha, anyone who lives in accordance with the Dhamma will be guided and protected by that very Law. When a person lives according to Dhamma, he will also be living in harmony with the universal law.

(http://www.budsas.org/ebud/whatbudbeliev/78.htm))

I see nothing about individuality being a good thing.

>>5477657
>It's true though?
Yes, it's true. The original gautamist Buddhism is an anti-human totalitarian sect, literally an evil religion.

The 'Buddhism' in East Asia today is just hindu-themed cultural baggage without the caste system cancer.

>>5478265
bro, what you just posted literally repeats what ive been saying. And Christianity is very big on self-purification

>>5478272
As an unbiased observer: you are wrong and need to stop posting

>>5478277
>The Buddha advised His followers to follow this Path so as to avoid the extremes of sensual pleasures and self-mortification.

thats all, it says literally nothing about avoiding sensual pleasures, just not indulging in them. If you want to lock yourself into a monastery thats your call, but you're not anymore faithful or worse off than someone who simplu practicees moderation and makes an effort to inprove themselves

how the fuck do people confuse such a simple message into all this life denying rhetoric?

>>5478282
Gautamic Buddhism was an esoteric cult. Meaning that the rules for the 'inner circle' of true believers are different from the rules for the 'herd' that's only there to cough up the money.

See catharism or masonry for more modern examples of the same.

>>5478317
I'll look into that, thanks.

Gotta admit my Christianity points were largely unprepared and off-the-cuff, guess I'll have to study some more.

>>5478241

>Allan watts

I can learn about Buddhism without the help of a washed up beat, thanks

>>5477647
12/10

>>5477601
must b bait

>>5477715
it's not about the arithmetical rapport between the two, even a slight suffering that bears a great happiness is unjust.

>"Oh Buddhism isn't /reeeeally/ a religion!"
>"Oh they're just kidding when they say karmic rebirth it's like a metaphor or something"
>"Buddhism is, like, atheist! Someone said that on the internet!"
>"Boy I sure am smarter then everyone else that ever actually spent their lives practicing and theorizing this reli- I mean /philosophy/!"

Why do whiteys feel the need to take a religion they don't understand at all, and didn't bother to research outside of pop-philosophy, and warp it to their dumb insecurities. They could do this with their own Christianity, but they have to pick something MAGICAL from the orient, only to basically strip it of its magic. These threads should be bannable, they're just horrid.

>>5479182

I don't think modern trends in looking to the eastern traditions to find what one feels is lacking in western traditions is such a simple matter.

New age constructions can definitely be disingenuous, but the impulse to seek them out is an indicator about modern, post industrial conditions.

Mostly, people feel like they don't belong to a home culture that can feed their spirituality, and they don't want to pick up their grandfathers religion because they associate it with all the conservative moralism you find on the right.

>>5478141

Incompleteness isn't nearly that profound. It's a highly technical result about the theoretical limitations of set theories. It certainly is not self-contradicting, and it certainly never came close to crossing Buddhas mind.

>>5477601
Existence is suffering.
The child will suffer if it is brought into existence.
Bringing the child into existence would increase the amount of suffering in the world.
Therefore, antinatalism is correct.

>>5478065
>I'm studying East Asian Buddhism in uni
why

>we are all one
>reincarnation
>not a single evidence
>you have to believe all this bullshit without a single evidence


lol

>>5477647
0/0, 10/10, Whole/Whole, etc.

>>5477723
I started with reading wikipedia articles, and when you know something about buddhism, and types of it, you can start reading. Of course, the best would be reading the entire Pali Canon, but that's much reading. Dhammapada is good for the start.
Here's a book list (not mine):
General Recommendations


Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind - Shunryu Suzuki
Mindfulness in Plain English - Bhante Gunaratana
Dhammapada - Multiple Translations
Buddhism Plain and Simple - Steven Hagen
What the Buddha Taught - Walpola Rahula
The Way of Zen - Alan Watts
Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha - Daniel Ingram
Buddhism Without Beliefs - Steven Batchelor
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying - Sogyal Rinpoche
Hardcore Zen - Brad Warner
The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching - Thich Nhat Hahn
The Art of Happiness - Dalai Lama
Peace is Every Step - Thich Nhat Hahn
Old Path, White Clouds - Thich Nhat Hahn
Be Here Now - Ram Dass
Awakening the Buddha Within - Lama Surya Das
In The Buddha's Words - Bhikku Bodhi
Wings to Awakening - Thanissaro Bhikku
On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are - Alan Watts
Against the Stream - Noah Levine
A Path with Hearth - Jack Kornfield
Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist - Steven Batchelor
How to See Yourself as Your Really Are - Dalai Lama
The Joy of Living - Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
The Miracle of Mindfulness - Thich Nhat Hahn
The Universe in a Single Atom - Dalai Lama
The Wisdom of Insecurity - Alan Watts
Zen Buddhism - D.T. Suzuki
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism - Chogyam Trungpa

Beginner's Books on Zen
Beyond Thinking, A Guide to Zen Meditation - Zen Master Dogen
The Flowing Bridge: Guidance on Beginning Zen Koans - Elaine MacInnes
The Heart Sutra - Red Pine
Zen flesh, Zen bones - Paul Reps (Compiler), Nyogen Senzaki (Compiler)
The Three Pillars of Zen: Teaching, Practice, and Enlightenment - Philip Kapleau Roshi
Dropping Ashes on the Buddha - Zen Master Seung Sahn
Not always so - Shunryu Suzuki
Still, would recommend reading some sutras, but I don't know which would be the best for start, also the Theravada readings are different from Mahayana, Zen and Vajrayana, so when you'll know what to look for, you'll find it.

>>5478244
Self-importance is not the self.

>>5475989
>>5475918
You know, most prominent Buddhist sages since Buddha's time have gone out of their way to refute the claim that Buddhism is nihilistic. It is considered one of the most common fallacious beliefs among new western converts of Buddhism. Buddha did not embrace non-existence. In the sutras, things are continually described as having four possible states. These four states are that a thing is, a thing is not, a thing both is and isn't, or a thing neither is or is not. Buddha claimed that each of these views was false and unable to describe the truth.

Buddha's non-self was not a teaching that nothing existed, it was a teaching that nothing contained inherent existence, i.e. nothing exists in a vacuum. Buddha described at great length what may be translated as interdependent co-arising. You should look in to it if you think the teaching of non-self/emptiness is nihilistic. The Three Marks of Existence do not posit that nothing exists, but rather that nothing exists in the way that we perceive, and that our natural perception of reality is fundamentally flawed, and that is the fundamental source of our suffering.

>>5479553
You have a really, really weird definition of 'nihilistic' there.

>>5479571
It's not just weird, it's wrong, or at least a fundamental misunderstanding.

>>5479526
Thanks so much! Think I'm going to start with What the Buddha Taught

Buddhism is like a hard drug, you think you have it, because of circular logic you understand everything, but you don't, because it should make you think more, rather than believing more.

IMHO the best way to understand buddhism is believing in it, and after a while leaving it because of how assumptious it's

>>5477644
>>5477657
>>5477682
>>5477711
This is true. Mahāyāna is to Siddhartha's true Buddhism as Protestantism is to the Second Temple Judaism of 500 BC. Theravāda is the true "way".

>>5477723
>>5477742
>>5477894
>>5478027
>>5477750
This is going to sound crazy, but you all you need to read is the Pāli Canon. It is THE text of Theravāda (the oldest and closest to original) sect of Buddhism. Vajrayāna is nothing more than Tibetan and Mongolian shamanism, and Mahāyāna is an agglomeration of Confucianism, Buddhism, and elements of Taoism. Though it is correct in its own way, and Bodhidharma really wasn't very different from Gautama.

So seriously guys... read the Pāli Canon. It is short, and the closest you're ever going to get to Gautama and his original message. EVERYTHING else is fan fiction.

>>5479600
half of colors on that map don't have a legend

>>5479600
I should add when I say the Pāli Canon is short, I mean the translations and refining done make it not nearly as bad as when written out in traditional Pāḷi. There are also many free PDFs by scholars that break down the text and explain it thoroughly. So if you want to know anything about real Buddhism; read those.

>>5479610
The map is refined for Buddhism. It has no concern for Catholicism, Islam, etc.

>>5479610
That map is wrong anyways, the way they colored Russia is total bullshit.

>>5479630
IT GIVES YOU A GENERAL IDEA OF WHERE THE TYPES OF BUDDHISM ARE LOCATED YOU KNOB LICKING CUR.

>>5479624
still it's a strange map, why all non-buddhist territories aren't painted with one color then? and also i'm pretty sure that south korea was as buddhist as the north and that the natives of the south of russian far east were either animists or buddhists, while those territories are painted with the same unknown color as england, scandinavian countries and sar. i wonder what religion it is, it's not even christianity since england has its own unique church, russia is orthodox etc

>>5475918

>takes buddhism seriously
>considers this angsty, anti-everything, pseudo-nihilistic bullshit "profound"
>muh suffering!!!

>>5475918
you guys, this is a copypasta

>>5479657
All the Buddhist territories are different colours because it was relevant for what I was trying to say jesus fuck. Also that unknown colour is Protestantism. Are you really so ignorant as to not know that Britain/Scandinavia are Protestant? South Korea is becoming a Protestant/Atheist country more and more every day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_South_Korea

The rest of Europe is Catholic, Russia/Eastern Europe/Balkans are Orthodox, Albania is clearly attached to Sunni Islam, Iran is clearly Shia Islam, and Australia/Central Africa are Christianity in General.

This is not hard if you're over 18.

/lit/ discussing eastern philosophy is one of the most cringe inducing things

>>5479695
that map is a complete bs. leaving aside that england is anglican which is not protestantism at all and accepting that south korea has a few protestants, mind you, the south of russian far east never ever was protestant

>>5479775
Does that negate its relevance to Buddhism? No. So eat shit you attention whoring tripfuck.

>>5479784

at the very least it shows that map is very questionable

also they painted the territory whose natives were iirc either animists or buddhists with the wrong color so it's already wrong even considering buddhism only

why do you defend a bad map? i'm not even the only one who said you that map is crap

>>5478194
Didn't the Buddha specifically ignore questions about the nature of reality?

>>5479807
leave

>>5478161
>>5478170
I always imagined Budai as sounding like Winnie the Pooh

>>5478197
>However, as you observed, Buddhism successfully deconstructed the notion of self. So personally dying, or personally not procreating, means jack.
But that's not true. Just because the notion of self is false, doesn't mean your actions don't have consequence. That's what karma is based around. Whether or not your actions cause more suffering in the world or alleviate suffering is important, and whether or not you personally die or procreate is important.

>>5478236
you clearly know next to nothing about any religion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenosis

>>5479182
>Buddhism is, like, atheist!
Buddhism IS atheistic. There is no arguing that.

Not to mention it doesn't have a creation myth or anything of the sort.

>>5475918

Because I like to like and I like when others like.

>>5479851
stop, I'm becoming a perennialist!

>>5479853
That's a consequence of a different conception of time, though. Eastern religions see time as circular, or just generally without beginning or end.
It's still belief, just a belief of a different kind.

>>5479853
>Buddhism IS atheistic.

No, it IS NOT. The existence of the Hindu Gods is NEVER questioned by Buddhist religion and the Pali Canon explicitly mentions many of them and Buddha meets many of them including Brahma.

PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT THINGS YOU DO NOT KNOW ABOUT

>>5477647

>>5477647
oh boi

>>5477738

All you did was prove that you don't have a self to others. Others can only perceive you, they can't know that you know.

I can prove that I have a self to myself and no one else.

>>5479853
> Buddhism IS atheistic

detected : someone who has never actually been to a Buddhist temple or Buddhist country

captcha : 101. how orwellian

>>5477843

What he said

>>5477738
not that guy but

>Since you can't directly measure a self, there must be an indirect means to do so.
Why?

>I am assuming that which is immeasurable is inconsequental.
Why?

>Does your personal experience alter the perceivable reality?
What is personal experience? By 'perceivable reality' do you mean physical objects? What kind of conceptual scheme are you operating in here?

>In science, personal experience does not count as proof
Citation needed. Not to mention that all of psychology is based on personal testimony, often about internal experiences. Many neurologists assume there is a part of the brain that constitutes the 'self' or the feeling of psychological continuity with past sensual experience.

>thus if you abandon the notion of a self, you lose no information.
Except you lose everything about the self including personality, responsibility, history and their future plans.

Buddhist thought isn't about proving there is no such thing as the "Self". The Buddha himself is said to have remained silent on questions about the self, instead criticizing the creation of theories about the self. He taught that these theories and questions just distract the mind from contemplating the Four Noble Truths.

The Self, and indeed everything in this transient (i.e. not ultimate and thus illusory) is causally dependent on everything else in the universe, and cannot be described in self-referential terms. This is why Medieval Buddhists said that the nature of the world is to have no nature; the world isn't really as it seems. Why this is like this depends on who you ask.

(NB: I don't think there is a self, but its for conceptual difficulties rather than some kind of physical/scientific argument.)

>>5477757
under-rated post

monism has been making a well deserved comeback.

Has anyone read pic-related? I really want to get it but have a long backlog already. Priest is a logician and metaphysician, and in this work he lays out a monist view of the world with an underlying logic based on Nagarjuna's. I think it has some Lewisian Modal Realism, too.

>>5480043
>Lewisian Modal Realism
Ew

>>5477680
>atoms are made of empty space
>therefore noself
That Woman Logic

>>5477929

His phrasing isn't right. He is implying the universe is material, and you're a part of that material whole, with no "real" significance.

Solipsism would imply that you are the only thing that can be proven, you can't prove the universe is material, so it's perfectly plausible that the universe is basically revolving around you.

He is denying you in the scope of the universe, whereas solipsism denies everything BUT you.

There is an anon here who posts things like this on rare occasions. Op, are you him? If so you should maybe adopt a trip.

Link related:
>>/lit/thread/S4666124#p4668572

hat was especially at stake was the value of the “unegoistic,” the instincts of pity, self-abnegation, self-sacrifice, which Schopenhauer had gilded, deified, and projected into a beyond for so long that at last they became for him “value-in-itself,” on the basis of which he said No to life and to himself. But it was against precisely these instincts that there spoke from me an ever more fundamental mistrust, an ever more corrosive skepticism! It was precisely here that I saw the great danger to mankind, its sublimest enticement and seduction—but to what? to nothingness?—it was precisely here that I saw the beginning of the end, the dead stop, a retrospective weariness, the will turning against life, the tender and sorrowful signs of the ultimate illness: I understood the ever spreading morality of pity that had seized even on philosophers and made them ill, as the most sinister symptom of a European culture that had itself become sinister, perhaps as its by-pass to a new Buddhism? to a Buddhism for Europeans? to—nihilism?

>>5480633
Atoms are largely made of empty space. Learn to chemistry.
>Woman Logic
Your argument, it is invalid.

>>5475918
>How did buddhism become a misunderstood meme?

It was Providence.

>>5477680
This is an excellent example of the very common dilettantish practice of integrating two ideas you have no actual knowledge about and claiming it's an insight.

>>5481017
>f integrating two ideas you have no actual knowledge about and claiming it's an insight.
postmodern_philosophy.exe

>>5480946
But that doesn't really have anything to do with the concept of self.

>>5479596
A whole lot of nothing in this post

>>5479439
Minoring in Philosophy because my major requires a minor, and the Japanese Philosophy class was the only one that fit in the time slot I wanted

>>5481101
you have my blessing then

Know what I'm just going to blow you the fuck out.

Nirvana is a word that is not understood.

Nrvana comes from nirvati-ana. "ana" means "without." Nirv means "blow", and Nirvati means "goes still." The winds that "nirvati" or as we say "die down", or ceases to blow. Nirvati morphs to mean "die", and nirvati-ana is the "without death" immortality of the likes of Enoch. Who became metatron and went with god, but did not die. - a bodily and essential transcendence.

So, IF you die - you do NOT achieve Nirvati-ana, or Nirvana.

What he was said to do is actually Prapothati - which is to "blow out himself" - leave his body by releasing his essence with his breath.

Nirvati-ana, or Nirvana, is an older concept that Buddhism or Hinduism. Their adoptions of it morph it and none really match each other, nevermind the original proto-hindu idea.

Buddhism adopts and redefines terms it does not understand all the time, and it makes a muck out of trying to reconcile such inaccuracies as bad as most modern religions. Everything is sensible until some clings to an inaccuracy or mistranslation. As buddhism found its way into assimilating, the word's meaning changed.

Nirvana was a transcendence of life without dying. Nirvana does not mean ORIGINALLY ending the cycle of reincarnation.

punarjanaman is the word translatied for "reincarnation" - but it is not.
Punar means "again", jana "birth", aman "long to be"

It is not reincarnaton, it is the DESIRE to reincarnate. You do not end the cycle of reincarnation, you do not want to again... and so you experience dissolution - EVEN though you still continue to "be born again." This gives you a sense of "completion", or samadhi. This does not mean you do not have an ego, it means you do not have a bias as to what your ego is attached to.

it is this kind of nonsense of what it or is not samadhi or if it is some permanent state that is silly and born of religious comforts provided to people who need to be laity to feel safe enough from what they don't know. It is religious competition that creates notiions of what is "really real" samadhi, or maha-samadhi. and so next thing you know schools erupt, divide and merge to create all manners of "definitive" models or stages of paths to enlightenment, completion, or other abstractions.


You cease to have an ambition born of regret or attached to a desire to re-experience one particular thing. When this manifests as you merging with the psychopomp, or "Metatron" or Adam Qadmon or whatever you want to call it - there is no you, there is only that which has always been - man deified and not dead as death also has a mass of zero and is not material - thus it is an energy, or rather a tendency of energy to decay when materialized to terminal levels in animate matter.

Sidenote, the buddha's greatest words on religion are don't believe them because nothing is so simple. This is why he offers SPECULATION, not TRUTH.

Cont

>>5481144

reincarnation as proposed in modern times is a 9th century BC idea, according to linguistic forensics and comparative religious studies. The first explicit mention of samsara is not until after about 4 centuries AFTER the 13th century BC Vedic hymns. In fact until the British intervened during their colonization, it was custom to provide the dead with food, family, and goods for trade or crafting in India.


The Vedic hymns basically say humans continue as Living Beings after their perceived death. Dissolution is not a spiritual aspiration until the 9th century Upashinads. The Upashinads are the OLDEST writings to imply a return to life after death.

The idea of Karmic debt forcing a reincarnation is a relatively new idea, and its oldest traces are in the Upashinads, which are 400 years after the freaking Trojan War, to put it in perspective. Even then, they were not a popular one. It was not until another 6 centuries it would infuse Taoist thought.

It wasn't a original teaching of buddhism either. http://www.buddhistsagainstreincarnation.com/

In buddhism, REAL authentic buddhism, Siddhartha taught that the sense of self is the product of the skandas:
Form
Sensory Input
Perception
Imagination
Regard of the existence of self and others.

none of these are permanent, so there is really no value to the self - nor a term to their conclusion. Anatman.

Self as infinite variety is pretty much the key - and damn, that all matches what I said on the subject, hmm...?

Dharma Chedi is the oldest known Buddhist document according to most of the world. The Tripitaka is based on it, but there are differences.

also, http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Buddhist- ... 0295977698

I am not saying older is better - rather I am trying to illustrate in Nirvana, as originally concieved the ego was not destroyed - because the ego was unified to deity. BUT it persisted, even in unification. The REAL ego is exactly what is married to the Divine and persists in an afterlife of equal cognizance, while the false ego is what is stripped away.

mahat is "truth of self"... Mahat is ego. PURE good EGO - a sense of self only given by interrelation and due consideration of all things. It is the sense of self that is married to the divine, losing itself in it and being magnified beyond its limitations by the divine. Mahat is Pujyam, noble and worthy of honor

ahankhara is false ego - THIS is what one should seek liberation from to achieve Nirvana. The point is not to destroy all sense of self, but to destroy false sense of self.

Surely this can all be read in Sankhya-Yog, Chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita.

Cont

>>5481156

The Vedic idea of Nirvana as found in the Bhagavad Gita is centuries older and far more organic than the Buddhist form. We hear something VERY different. But Could you say the cow and the hamburger are both different approaches to beef? No, because one is the origin of the main ingredient of the other, but only when processed, and given many additives and condiments and made easier to digest, but ultimately far less healthy or nutritionally optimal.

Yes I am talking about eating beef in the context of the Vedas, because it was only a Varna who was forbidden to eat meat. Cow flesh was consumed in pre-hindu pre-buddhist Vedic religions. In fact, there are recipes for Cow, goat, and many other animals in Vedic texts, eaten at sacred times. The trick was a cow should only be slaughtered when there were enough people to eat it all without waste. In fact, one who refused to eat beef offered, and would let it go to waste, was cursed as many times as the animal had hairs.

The simplicity of the cow becomes a political statement to appease the "untouchables" as the caste arises - they are to be free from abuse, becuase they like the cow give up sustenance to the higher castes as easily as milk from the teat, which does not require the death of the cow. simple, pastoral, obedient, conformity. blech!

. To call Nirvati-ana, or Nirvana absence of suffering is, frankly, dishonest. Krishna tells Arjuna there is no NEED for perceiving suffering because there is no end to existence in killing or being killed. The Bhagavad Gita unifies one with the Divine as Nirvana. BUT the only difference between the divine and the mortal is the mortal is restricted in what he does and what he thinks he is. METATRON is the perfect example of the goal unification with the divine, as the fate of Arjuna; the unification of the divine - past the illusion of death - transcending it and released to his own infinite nature.

the absence of suffering was a call to SUBMIT. CONFORM. ASSIMILATE. OBEY. to pretend anything else is modern marketing to make people feel better about ancient cultures. Don't trust the system, any system, is the biggest tenet of Buddhism, and they created a system to show people how to not trust systems, which slowly became a system of control. Because people want to be controlled, so why not get some of that action if you can.

There is no one ego in the Vedas. There is "true" ego and "false" ego. Mahat is the true ego and it is not destroyed by union with the divine - It BECOMES LIKE THE SUPREME. The "false" ego dies in the battle. In Qabalistic terms, it eats of the fruit of life, and becomes like the Elohim - who are free of the restrictions of good and evil or the preference for either. In essence of Western Magics, it is the "false" ego that is consumed in the ordeal of the Abyss. The Mahat persists until it become a Magus.

Cont.

>>5481169

The supreme being "Krishna" in the Bhagavad Gita is not so concerned with having a world free of zombie followers. He says it is the fate of most mankind to be the armies of the drones, slaves, whatever. It was Arjuna of the whole of all the armies that was liberated from the guilt of battle and killing his kin from his Mahat- the others had none except what was a show of it, but in fact - he is told, that is their false ego playing civil when their Mahat is to submit to infinite perpetual bloodshed and combat - AND THAT IS OK!!! In fact, Krishna delights in that aspect of creation as much as any other.

The "healthy ego" is Mahat. The false ego is built of fear, shame, and guilt that limits people.

And also DEATH is a lie according to the Vedas - which display a overlapping enternal stacked world system. There is no death - but the death of other. You can shed and slay your "false ego" purifying your Mahat - and at that time - it is a feeling and event you can revisit. BUT so perfect is the Mahat that it often dives back down INTO once again be subject to a false ego - as eager as a child playing with his toys who decides to jump in his toybox. The fact is, if you want to get eaten and end the game - so be it... but this just means you submit to those who choose not to. WHICH IS OK!!! Because it is what revealed itself to Arjuna as "Krishna" that you submit to:furthermore, it is said on the nature of Nirvana in the Bhagavad Gita (8:5):

anta-kale ca mam eva
smaran muktva kalevaram
yah prayati sa mad-bhavam
yati nasti atra samsayah

the end-in time / and / no / already again
reminding / freeing himself / from body
joining / approaching / like the spring wind
come into / non-being / here / the collective

Which for some damn reason is translated after centuries of morphology and british colonial influence as:

And whoever, at the end of his life, quits his body, remembering Me alone, at once attains My nature.
Of this there is no doubt.

And remember BUDDHA WROTE NOTHING DOWN according the Tripitaka. This means either he did not, or people did not like what he wrote. He passed his teachings, Qabala, as the hebrew would say, "Mouth to Ear." keeping the words, as the Vedic would say, Kapala, "in the skull."

The Vinaya were the first alterations, but by the third century the Sangha has many differences of opinions. They used the defense the words were Upali's and not Buddha's to change them. By time the 4th council occurs, significant variations occur.

This like people attributing the words of "Paul" to "Jesus."

Mahat is EGO - pure unfiltered, uncontrolled self. It is immortal. For example, "Vishnu" is the Mahat of Arjuna. And "Krishna" is the Mahat of "Vishnu". Thus, it can be said, Krishna is the Hyperdimensional Arjuna.

Cont.

>>5481188

Maybe the parable of the chariot makes more sense now, and why hanuman has to help repair it. The Archer in the chariot is Arjuna, born of Indra. Arjuna is himself divine; the Ego of Him is Vishnu, and the Superego of him is Krishna.

Anakhara is not seen as "false" as undesirable - it is seen as "gregarious" - for the sake of others. After the realization of the ego and the super ego he is again Arjuna and goes and fights entire armies and all.

You can not rid yourself permanently of Anankhara, you continually break it apart so you do not get stuck with a residue of sentiment or delusion. These are false assumptions or "residual thinking patterns." They are not ALL assumptions, such as the Pandava Brothers, Arjuna and

See, here is the big difference, the Anankhara is not antagonist - it is also a virtue. It was for example, of Arthurian Myth, that Arthur never knew he was supposed to be king, that he was such a noble king - to a fault even. The finite self is not a rag to be tossed in the street when it is upon your back. It is not to be ignored, it is meant to be emphatically enjoyed and engaged. When Krishna comes to the would-be but reluctant warlord Arjuna, he comes as a god of war and vengeance and says, why would you find yourself in a war if you did not want to be in a war? Why did you train your whole life to be a warrior if you don't want to fight. - so, for now, BE A WARRIOR... but there is so much more to you than that. He didn't say avoid the conflict.

Zombieness is not really something like the Christians. It is not until influence from islam that the dead are judged immediately upon death. before then, the saved are peaceful and the unsaved are tormented by their own remorse - until everyone is saved.... and later until "the people we don't like" are damned. "mindless undead" are forgotten ancestors, and christianity found a niche in providing a repose for them. As for walking, hungry, corpse infecting others - my vote is this was the minds of the time trying to explain and grasp leprosy, which often accompanied madness. A rabid leper is little more than a zombie. And there are cases of swelling of the aggressive center of the brain in lepers.

There were entire kingdoms that fell to leprosy. Talk about your zombie apocalypse...

the time that Buddhism emerged in was a time full of uncertainty and calamity. I am not saying Vedic religions are any better - but they are well older and do not include modern notions like "freedom from incarnating" and such notions as reincarnation.

They are much more based on the idea that there is a "happy hunting ground, a valhalla where men can kill each other all day if that is their nature to fight, and other formed of perpetual existence - and that we who liberate ourselves can pass from one of these events to another - and should by necessity.

OP, BTFO.

Bump

>>5477814

This is an important point that many people miss. Non- and lay Buddhists (in both Asia and the West) may visualize "rebirth" in terms of the transmigration of souls, but that's not really what's being claimed.

I think it's probably true that the Buddhist understanding of rebirth is incompatible with strict physicalism, but it's more sophisticated than classical metempsychosis.

>>5481202
neat

>>5481616
Does the idea in the 1 minute long video in the linked post convey the type of reincarnation the Buddha meant?

>>5477743

>They are completely free of semitic influence
lol die

>Why should a species go on and on, killing and being killed in this cycle of life?

Between the velvet lies; there's a truth that's hard as steel, yeah. The vision never dies; life's a never ending wheel. Say, Holy Diver, you've been down too long in the midnight sea.

>Oh what's becoming of me?!

No! No!

Ride the Tiger; you can feel his heart but you know he's mean.

Some light can never be seen!
...
The water freezes at the top of the vessel, and drips to the bottom where the fire of Naraka turns it to gas, and it rises up to freeze again.

In my opinion, even Buddhas eventually drip down, back into Samsara. They burn, and erupt up through the worlds, until eventually finding their way back to the upper Void.

This is the truth that's hard as steel;

The vision never dies. The wheel never stops turning. The midnight sea has no surface.

What's becoming of you is the same thing that's always become of you. The only thing that can become you; You're riding the Tiger, and by now you know he's mean.
...
You're just a picture. You're an image caught in time. We're a lie you and I. We're words without a rhyme.

There's no sign of the morning coming. You've been left on your own, like a Rainbow.
...
The Tiger is all there is, and all there ever shall be. He - we - I - dashes forth through an eternal blackness towards nothing.

I thrill in my shivering fur. My quivering muscles. My saliva, which covers my teeth. My yellow eyes, which despite the vanity of the quest, pierce the darkness before, aside, and behind me for a destination.

There's only one game in town. You can turn your back to the television, but you'll never find anything else.

My answer is to jump into life. To numb myself to the fatigue and the pain, and relish the endless chase of phantoms.
...
Turn off your mind. There's nothing to find. Find out there.

>>5481725
Abrahamic philosophy is inferior to Greek, Taoist, and Buddhist.

Get fucked kike

>>5481773

i love you for this

>>5481725
The Nazi and the Jew are one and the same, understanding one is understanding the other. Judaism created half of modern civilization, if you don't delve into it you'll understand nothing of what it means to be a Western person

>>5481773
>mean.
Clean

>>5479432
How do you know the child is going to suffer if it's brought in to the world?

>>5481859
First noble truth.

>>5481859
Read the thread, specifically the posts about what Gautama meant by "suffer"

>>5481773

Thank you for this. If Dio cannot provoke thought (deeper than Siddhartha I might add) I don't know who can.

Buddhism is hardly deep.
Self hating, anti-natalististic bullshit is all it is.

>>5481952
You seem upset. May I recommend killing the desire to be thought intelligent?

>>5479182
>Why do whiteys feel the need to take a religion they don't understand at all, and didn't bother to research outside of pop-philosophy, and warp it to their dumb insecurities. They could do this with their own Christianity, but they have to pick something MAGICAL from the orient, only to basically strip it of its magic.

It was specifically marketed that way to the West beginning in the early 70's. The monks responsible for bringing to Southern California deliberately left out the more dogmatic elements of the religion to make it palatable to the New Age sorts they were selling it to.

This kind of "Buddhist modernism" is not new or exclusive to dumb white kids, basically it started in sri lanka and thailand as a response to protestant missionaries and sought to present Buddhism as rational, scientific and modern.

Blame the gullible and the guys selling it.

>>5481964
I don't know how you could think I'm upset from that.
May I recommend the desire to stop being a pretentious, "muh mystic east" faggot?

>>5479182
>>5482121
Also, I think it's very funny how, in my experience at least, most of "those guys" you and I talk about really get mad at or don't consider people "actually religious" unless they follow every word of their religious texts down to a T.

>>5482123
Personally I prefer Heraclitus and Epictetus. Checkmate Easterners.

wasn't Guatama like the 12th buddha or something? And the rest of them happened in cave man days, all learning the same stuff. makes sense, not like ppl were any more dumb 25000years go right. I like to think about the cavemen buddhas - is comfy.

I've never liked how there are soo many schools, so many traditions, books, techniques. Everyone always seems to dismiss one or another. It makes it hard to focus on what to do.

Within like months of Vipassanā meditation (lead by a white nun, but trained in thailand iirc) I was starting to give up and become detached from all my friends, never trying to hang out with them. I stopped working at school, and pretty much stopped doing everything.

So I gave it up. because fuck buddhism. I want to feel the dizzying highs, the terrifying lows, and the creamy middles.

>>5482178
for some people anon, if they don't numb themselves, their next low will be their last of anything

>>5482186
sometimes i wonder if western comfort is the antidote, and we don't need to meditate for like 10 hours a day (which is so boring). whereas in the past your parents would be murdered and raped by hordes and everyday friends dying and stuff.

>>5475918
So is "Buddhism is anti natalist" the new "Buddhism is atheistic/not a religion/the only peaceful religion" etc that the Wapanese are gonna start spouting?

>>5479853
>Buddhism IS atheistic. There is no arguing that.

Gautama thought that certain metaphysical questions (such as "is there a God") should not be asked because those questions can't be answered or the answers are too confusing.

Gautama himself however was basically a Hindu and he spoke about deities all of the time, to show that even beings of higher powers, more pleasurable existences and so on are still marked by the same conditions that our lives are marked.

Even if it's a mistake to interpret Buddhism as anti-natalist, there has to be some reason the mistake has been made so often since Schopenhauer.

>>5482266
One could say even then Buddhists are still engaging in a atheistic critique of values. Even if Gods are allowed to exist our relationship with them isn't meaningful compared to ours with samsara.

>>5482304
>Even if Gods are allowed to exist
>Even if
He literally met the Brahma. I have a feeling you haven't read many texts and are glorifying it because it's so exotic and peaceful and not like pig disgusting Western religions.

>>5482304
It has more to do with the polytheistic view of the word god against the absolute God.

Holy shit this board is pretentious as fuck.

I have never seen a better example of the disconnect between spoken words and behavior.

>>5482304
The whole Buddhist cosmology doesn't leave much room for a supreme deity as the Abrahamic faiths understand it, but that doesn't mean that Buddhism rejects or criticize the notion of a God or gods.
>>5482361
What do you mean?

>>5475918
>their sense of self is empty and illusory.

How?

>>5482365
What do you want clarified?

>>5482375
I'd assume he refers to the only thing you said related to this thread.

>>5482375
The disconnect between spoken words and behavior going on in this thread or board.

>>5482379
pretentious behavior

>>5482380
It means saying one thing and then acting in a way that is contrary to what you're saying.

>>5482402
I'm not seeing what you mean. Maybe you could highlight an example or two?

>>5482417
Originally I wanted to do just that, but there's just too many examples of it in this thread for me to highlight any.

>>5482425
It's really not fun for either of us if you don't put any effort into this kind of thing.

>>5482433
what kind of thing?

>>5479182

>"Oh Buddhism isn't /reeeeally/ a religion!"

Well, if we define religion as the belief in a god, it isn't one.

In truth, the notions behind Buddhism go beyond the boxes of theism and atheism. Buddhism, rather then being a religion, is a firm statement to the reality both of concepts that contradict western, scientific, materialist atheism, and concepts which by complete chance can be melded with this flavor of atheism.

For example, Buddhism proposes distinct realms of existence. This contradicts the notions of western atheism. On the other hand, concepts like evolution and extraterrestrial life pose no problems for Buddhism.

>"Oh they're just kidding when they say karmic rebirth it's like a metaphor or something"

By denying the notion of the self, there's nothing to be reborn. The only way Buddhism contradicts western atheism in this sense is the belief that mind emerges from matter at a more fundamental level than the brain.

The Buddhist belief is that first mind emerged, and then it produced sensation to stimulate itself. Then, it produced things like form. We continually produce sensation and form, because we don't like lack of sensation and formlessness. Our rebirths are not rebirths, but a collection of dreams of various qualities.

>Why do whiteys feel the need to take a religion

Siddhartha was from Northwest India, before two thousand years of ethnic migration. He was certainly Caucasian, and probably fairly light-skinned, and perhaps light-haired.

The indo-Europeans - my direct ancestors - came from the same place (Northwest India.) We know all this because of certain similarities between Sanskrit and European languages.

My race *invented* Buddhism. Yellows converted to it hundreds of years after the fact.

>they don't understand at all

After seeing how wrong Asians have gotten Buddhism, I can't be that off.

>They could do this with their own Christianity

Christianity holds beliefs that make no sense at all. Rather then uncountable Kalpas before and behind me, I'm given a mere few thousand years. I'm told I was born with original sin (Even though Jesus died to redeem us,) and that god was such a little bitch, he tossed my ancestor Adam out of paradise so that he wouldn't eat a fruit that made him immortal. Rather then a logical system of morality, I'm given a list of rules that the LORD can wave as he sees fit, but if I don't adhere to them I go to hell for eternity.

Moreover, Christianity isn't my religion. It's the religion of the Jews, mutated into a sycophantic freak show. My parents are atheists, and raised me atheist.

Hilariously enough, Christianity also came from Asia, and like Buddhism, was invented by Caucasians.

>have to pick something MAGICAL from the orient

Like Christianity?

>>5482435
>accepting certain sets of spiritual/metaphysical concepts, by faith, is not a religion
glorious

>>5482435

>Siddhartha was from Northwest India

Er, central Nepal.

I'm not sure where I got that idea.

I'm so smart I don't even have to make sense.

Buddha man already told me everything I need to know.

Please listen to me while I talk about the correct way of living that I just don't feel like following myself.

Gee, being uncommited is so much fun :D

I love fun.

>>5480043

oh man, that book sounds awesome. thanks for posting it

>>5482453

>accepting certain sets of spiritual/metaphysical concepts

Spiritual and metaphysical by who's analysis? All beings are stuck on the wheel. Even Brahmin will one day die. Everything is subject to the same set of laws, be they of physical or mental origin.

Siddhartha Gautama was explicit in his command that his students not even think of metaphysics. It didn't matter how the mind came into being, only that it did, and that it's existence was the cause of suffering.

>by faith

By inference.

>is not a religion

Just because you say it's one doesn't mean it is. Moreover, Buddhism being a religion is immaterial, and if it is, that doesn't nullify anything it has to say. This is an argument you're having inside yourself.

Let go of it, or don't. One way or another, you'll find yourself having it again and again, until you give up attachment to such things.

And before you turn that back around at me, understand that I'm responding to you because I'm attached to being correct; this too is a 'fetter' which according to Buddhism must be eliminated.

But to strive to eliminate it would be attachment itself. So I just watch, and let my body go where it wants to.

>>5482497
>Siddhartha Gautama was explicit in his command
>command

Faith.

>>5481026

Our concept of self is an illusion of being separate from the universe rather than what the universe is doing.

>>5482435
This is some pretty good satire.

>>5482502
What's the universe doing?

>>5482497
>By inference.
Holy shit get help. It's fine if you believe in things buddhist concepts of things like the pure land, naraka, karma, samsara and what not but I draw the line at claiming it isn't based on faith. You just want some secular humanism with tinges of exoticism, and so you twist and turn to a reduced pop-Buddhism that has nothing in common with the real thing. You sicken me.

the locust who wrote the words which initiated this tangled thread is present and has the following to say:

exhaust past khamma by asceticism and non-involvement, after a while you will lose interest in debating things, it goes beyond intellectual interest

when you reach ataraxia you will be like a rock of a man

don't play these mind games, waste of time, cultivate detachment and discipline your life harshly

don't bother with trying to convert people or win them over to your or my side, who cares, everyone is creating own kharmic path in life through every moment actions and thoughts, not everyone is ready for buddhizm

focus on your own private discipline
mature and embody the truth yourself
life will make you hard and disillusioned
insight will arise in due time when ready
don't try force it in online debates

be neutral concerning world affairs
don't get involved - it's all khamma tangling you up in maya's web

do nothing - wisely

>>5482501

Yes. The same faith that your math teacher isn't telling you lies. Or the command by a science teacher to always follow Occam's Razor.

>>5482505

I don't get it.

>>5482513

>Holy shit get help

Well, I'm might not being able to pay the rent this month, but otherwise I don't really need any.

>It's fine if you believe in things buddhist concepts of things like the pure land, naraka, karma, samsara and what

How nice to be given permission from someone on the internet.

>not but I draw the line at claiming it isn't based on faith

The logic behind it is verbose. If you'd like to debate specific points, I'd be interested.

>You just want some secular humanism with tinges of exoticism

Actually, I've completely exited the western worldview. Not to mention humanism, which I think doesn't go far enough.

>and so you twist and turn to a reduced pop-Buddhism that has nothing in common with the real thing

Aside from the fact that I don't think Buddha-hood is permanent, I'm a fairly mainstream Mahayana Buddhist.

>You sicken me

Oh well. The only person feeling bad over my beliefs is you. What an accomplishment.

>>5482502
>Our concept of self is an illusion of being separate from the universe rather than what the universe is doing.

The Mahayana explanation in the sutras goes the route of 'linguistc structures pasted atop the empirical'. the exact parable uses the dialogue of the king and the monk, where the monk deconstructs the concept of the King's chariot, then the concept of King, then the concept of self. A similar example was circulated by western schools using a boat, whereby the question is posed that if one replaces a small piece of rigging, is the boat the same one? then continues until the whole boat has been replaced, and asks again. While this has a slight difference, the concept is very similar, and one can still conclude that "boat" or "this particular boat" is just a linguistic tag that a human applies to the perception of the physical, and 'boatness' or 'self' cannot be an inherent essence or form residing within the physical.

The thing I can't figure out is why so many Buddhist countries practice a strong form of monotheism and worship a diety, when the notion of not-God can be as easily applied to any descriptive form of deity, with 'omniscience', 'omnipotence' and other abstracted concepts also being man-made constructs that are applied to a variable and personal linguistic concept of God.

>5479580
great book

>>5482557

The real OP has spoken.

>>5482557

The true OP has spoken.

>>5480035

Fuck you
Stop posting you fucking pleb
You reek of false skepticism n edge

>>5477647
Ten out of ten.

>>5482614
>The thing I can't figure out is why so many Buddhist countries practice a strong form of monotheism and worship a diety
Buddhism, in common usage, is just "Hindu religious philosophy minus caste system". Gautama just happened to be the most influential Hidu philosopher who rejected the caste system. Simple as that.

Why did Buddhism virtually go extinct in India?

>>5482999
i read it's because buddha refused to sleep with some apsara and she got mad and revenged him

>>5482608
>Yes. The same faith that your math teacher isn't telling you lies. Or the command by a science teacher to always follow Occam's Razor.

They don't command you to do anything though.

>>5482999
muslim scum of course

>>5483115

Question Occam's razor. You'll be rejected and laughed at, and told you're stupid.

You don't even have to question it; just use it in a way someone else doesn't like and you'll get the same response.

Dogma exists everywhere. The justification and reality behind it is always secondary.

>>5483155
>You'll be rejected and laughed at, and told you're stupid.

This happens to me every single day on 4chan, can't see what the big deal is.

>Dogma exists everywhere. The justification and reality behind it is always secondary.

I'm not quite sure I understand, secondary to what?

>>5482557
how's the website coming along, antinatanon?

>>5477763
This was my first full reference to the Bhuddhism canon. It is fully enriched with texts translated from the original writings.

Enjoy it: http://www.accesstoinsight.org

>>5483137
Even the Jains and the Bahai managed to survive though despite being in a simmilar area, likewise Hinduism also took a beating but recovered

>>5483429
dude, you don't mean the bahai

>>5477607
Good point. Although buddhism/anti-natalism is a very selfless idea because of its very nature it's not an ideology that can survive in the "natural selection of ideologies".

>>5483593
why not just be completely honest and say what you think: I don't like being alive".

>>5483606
Because my opinion is irrelevant.

>>5483613
Why express it then?

>>5475918
>How did buddhism become a misunderstood meme?

Because its different and therefore unique and open to parody. Its just that people that follow it don't realize they are a parody of the belief.

>>5483618
i didn't. Also i quoted the wrong post if that's the confusion

>>5483178

>This happens to me every single day on 4chan, can't see what the big deal is

*All* groups force you to voice their beliefs, if you want to be one of them. This includes atheists.

These groups monopolize power, and force people to either convert or be fined. This is literal in Islam, and less tangible in the west.

To illustrate;

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hueyatlaco
>After excavations in the 1960s, the site became notorious due to geochronologists' analyses that indicated human habitation at Hueyatlaco was dated to ca. 250,000 years before the present.
>Steen-McIntyre claims that some of the original research team were harassed, viewed as incompetent, or saw their careers hampered due to their involvement in such a controversial and anomalous investigation.
>Biostratigraphic researcher Sam VanLandingham has published two peer-reviewed analyses that confirm the earlier findings of ca. 250,000ybp for the tool-bearing strata at Heyatlaco. His 2004 analysis found that Hueyatlaco samples could be dated to the Sangamonian Interglacial period (ca. 80,000 to 220,000ybp) by the presence of multiple diatom species, one of which first appeared during this era and others that went extinct by the era's end.[9] VanLandingham's 2006 paper[10] refined and re-confirmed his 2004 findings.

>I'm not quite sure I understand, secondary to what?

Reality. Humans were in Mexico 250,000+ years ago. This is fact. Yet if you say this, you're crazy.

To ask people you label 'religious' to meet a level of intellectual honesty that people who call themselves 'skeptics' and 'rationalists' refuse to abide by is hypocritical.

I don't agree with Buddhism out of faith; I agree with Buddhism because I believe there's evidence for it's vast timespans, and it's cosmology makes more sense then the western one whose worldview it renders redundant.

Evolution, ET's, humans in Mexico 250,000 years ago, etc make perfect sense within the context of Buddhism; Form is impermanent like all other things; ET's are just like us, and the heaven realms are delineated based on proximity from planets rather than altitude above Earth; and according to Buddhism humans have existed since eternity.

On the other hand, Hueyatlaco doesn't make sense within the context of western, scientific atheism. Massive changes to the chronology of man, not to mention an explanation of what they were doing in the Americas all that time ago are necessary.

Science can acknowledge Hueyatlaco, and I think it someday will have a complete theory that explains how humans were there 250,000 years ago. It will do so by adopting certain concepts from Buddhism, such as it's timespans.

Never once however, will it give credit where it's due.

>>5483706
>labels labels labels labels

usernamen, is that you?

>>5483706

>Reality. Humans were in Mexico 250,000+ years ago. This is fact. Yet if you say this, you're crazy

Er, dogma rather.

That is to say, reality and the justification for the dogma is secondary to the dogma. It's more important to force ideological purity than it is to be factually correct.

This is why the scientific community ignores Hueyatlaco.

>>5483724

No, just a lost, elder /b/tard from the reign of Cracky-chan who's seen some shit.

>>5483706
I don't understand how scientists disputing a claim is proof of dogma. People disagree about shit all the time. New data is found and is often controversial for a time.

>>5483744
>No, just a lost, elder /b/tard from the reign of Cracky-chan who's seen some shit.
You never grew out of bragging about how much of an oldfag you are then? Good riddance to you and gackto.

>>5483749

>Steen-McIntyre claims that some of the original research team were harassed, viewed as incompetent, or saw their careers hampered due to their involvement in such a controversial and anomalous investigation.

Also, why hasn't this been in the textbooks? Could it be the same reason Texas took Thomas Jefferson out, and put Phyllis Schlafly in?

>http://www.economist.com/node/15710558
>The most dramatic change is that Thomas Jefferson has gotten the boot. The conservatives on the board deemed him to be a suspiciously secular figure. The new guidelines would pay more fond attention to their favoured presidents, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. Phyllis Schlafly and the National Rifle Association are in.

>>5483781
It's not that I don't believe there's any dogma in scientific circles at times, I just think your example is retarded.

>>5478141
>mfw Godel showed that any set of logical axioms which are powerful enough to embed the expression of arithmetic cannot be both consistent and also have all possible arithmetical statements provable within its theoretical constructs.

>>5483764

>You never grew out of bragging about how much of an oldfag you are then?

I wasn't bragging; someone asked about my identity, and I established what it was, in regards to 4chan. I've never used a tripcode.

>Good riddance to you and gackto

I was here before you, and I'll probably be here after you.

>>5483792

K.

>>5483824
>I was here before you, and I'll probably be here after you.
I don't doubt it.

>>5475918


I have been wondering the same thing myself, OP. Buddhism seems to be, in its core, a great call for a tender and sweet form of human suicide.

I started meditating to get rid of my anxiety disorders. When the attacks bite me I am unable to write. Actually the very act of sitting down to write is what triggers my anxiety in most cases. There are months where I don’t write anything, not because I am out of ideas, but simply because I start to feel dizziness, tachycardia, shortness of breath and a tingling in my hands and forehead when I sit at my desk: it’s a nightmare. I am actually living right now on one of those periods of dark moon-side. I suffer immensely for this need to work that is not fulfilled because of my sickness.

So I started meditating and learning about Buddhism: I wanted to feel more spiritually clean and calm. I wanted to feel that way in order to be able to write and create all I wanted to create. I take meditation and do Cognitive Behavioral therapy, but I wanted something more.

Problem is that, the more I read and study Buddhism, the more I learned that I should let go of my desire to write and my feverish drive to create significant characters and poetry. Meditation and the study of Buddha’s philosophy was helping me to get calmer, but was also telling me to simply abandon my ambitions. The problem is that I don’t want to live for nothing – I want to create something meaningful (not to the whole world, meaningful to me).

I don’t know how to reconcile the way of the Buddha and my creative desire. It seems that they are opposites. If you guys can help me to solve this problem I would be very grateful.

>>5483883
Use your creative desires and capabilities in dedication to Buddhism, of course.

>>5475918
So Buddhism is worse than I thought?

>>5483883
My thought is that you should use mindfulness, meditation, CBT etc. as tools for helping you during your existence. Stop your brain-mind from doing things you don't want it do by being aware of what it's doing. Have ambitions but not expect them to be fulfilled, don't expect yourself to fail in achieving them, just work towards them and react as the situation changes. For example I want to go to grad school but my mind may start worrying that I may not be good enough etc. Is this a helpful thought? Maybe, it encourages me to check that I'm working hard enough which is good. The feeling of anxiety that comes with it? Not so much so I become aware of it and let it pass as a feeling or thought and don't attach myself to it.

It's a way of meta-thinking.

>>5483883
>The problem is that I don’t want to live for nothing – I want to create something meaningful (not to the whole world, meaningful to me).

Tough luck anon. Btw. getting rid of desire is also desire. Just saying.

>>5483883
I'd say forget about buddhism and take a ten second break from all self improvement wankery and act like it wouldn't exist. No matter what you want to believe or not believe you still will be here, for now at least. Ultimately you will just die. So what should you do now?

inbf some whiner saying something like this "waaaah waaaah you act like you know more than me but you know nothing! I one the other hand am the one who has figured it out"

>>5477679
Our form is permanent and unchanging

>>5484008
What form?

>>5483955
>Using meditation not to experience, dive into the subconscious, explore the nature of reality and silence, embark on an spiritual journey or anything for that matter, but as means to an end (i. e. improve your life quality: think better, enjoy life more, be more successful...)

This is my main problem with Western approach. Capitalistic dialectics have taken property of the Buddhist phenomenon to market it in such a utilitarian and reductionist way I can only put my face away in disgust. Hence general misinterpretations and the whole ''Buddhism meme''.

>>5484020
The divine form that's part of every man.

>>5484038
Show it to me.

>>5484042
this is a SFW board, buddy

>>5484042
You can test it for yourself. You know that feeling of 'free will' that's a constant fixture of everything you do, 24/7 from birth to death? Yeah, that's it.

>>5484031
I see what you're saying. For me though to follow "true buddhism" is to reject life. Clearly this can't be done in the tradition capitalist world in which I live so I'd either have to move to a monastery or kill myself. An alternative is to become life affirming. This comes from a combination of Nietzsche, Heidegger and some eastern thought whose name I can't remember but it kind of consists of the idea that you're Atman, a true self that is embodying a false self. You're here to experience something, life and so you can choose to treat life as some kind of adventure. It doesn't matter if you die, suffering which comes from the non-present mind is an illusion with this awareness you're truly free to become an experiencer of this world. Enjoy its challenges, the emotions you feel etc.

These are both ways of coping with Nihilism/understanding of the human condition.

>>5484088
I actually I don't. You're talking about the illusion of free will.

>>5484183
Where is the illusion?

>>5482435
>Well, if we define religion as the belief in a god, it isn't one.
Please, please, please... read a book about Buddhism and about religion in general that isn't in the barnes & noble "philosophy/religion" section.

>>5484326
Where is the universe?

>>5483883
the OP is copypasta and you are a poorly-read fool for thinking buddhism is anti natalist
>>5483706
You realize "new earth" creationism or whatever the fuck where they think the Earth is 5000 years old is only believed by a small amount of Christians? You sound like a fucking trilby wearing teenager obsessed with pointing out the "flaws" in organized religion for some reason. Nobody worth your time gives a shit what you believe if you don't act like a faggot about it.
>>5483824
>I was here before you, and I'll probably be here after you.
We got ourselves a TRUoldfag here folks.

>>5483186
Ha, I thought I was the only person who recognized this guy. Must be the way he spells "buddhism"

At the moment his site seems to have a creepy back ground.

http://buddhizm.altervista.org/index.html

>>5483242
That is a very cool website.

>>5485309
I think his style is very distinct and his posts pretty poetic. wish he posted more.

>>5483883
You dont have to be a buddhist to meditate! Im not. Meditation isnt exclusive to a religion or world view. So keep practicing!

develop a culture of asceticism within your own life. the problem with discussing buddhizm is that people pick one little thing they can use to throw the whole thing out and forget about it and continue with their normal lives. in the buddha's time there was a culture of asceticism prevalent throughout india, wandering sages went from cult to cult, master to master, seeking wisdom and the way. if they disagreed with someone, they did not abandon the ascetic life entirely and return to hedonic worldliness. this is the problem here - discussion of buddhizm becomes an all or nothing thing, accept every bit of buddhist belief and doctrine or forget it completely. it's much more important to create a culture of asceticism in your own life, it becomes a strong ground to stand on. without that, you have nothing, just some thoughts ping ponged around a message board. it doesn't matter where you live, in what kind of social system, in private develop a culture of asceticism even if you are the only one. no capitalist police will arrest you for meditating and detaching from the world.

if i knew some of you in person, i would be more open to discussing things and getting into specifics, but i've lost interest in doing it on message boards. i don't know who i'm talking to, whether it's a genuinely interested person, a troll, etc. i have no way of assessing your level or kharmic stage in life simply by reading your text. in person a lot more information is transmitted instantly and i can sense more about you and what would be beneficial for you.

here is my down to earth advice for anyone who is looking to take their interest in buddhizm to the next level:

>reduce all your involvements in life; quit jobs, school, end relationships, abandon all dreams and goals of success, cut off any progress you've made in these areas. it will be hard, because it's all khamma you've put in over time that has to be exhausted otherwise it will leave a trace. see the buddha's simile of the jackal with mange, who is not content anywhere he goes. that is the condition of someone seeking fame and success, at home in your room you cannot be content, because you are always dreaming of something better on the horizon.

>incline towards celibacy, completely cease sexual relations with other people, this is very important but very difficult. romantic and sexual relationships are absolutely devastating to living this way of life. they will trap you in deep ignorant attachments and increase your lust. to be single, solitary, and completely content with it is a wonderful thing. don't worry about missing out on anything.

>buy or download as many books on buddhism as you can, sift thru the shit to find the gems. read obsessively. learn some basic pali and chant the nikayas. make efforts to understand it. read and re-read and contemplate it deeply. you cannot understand buddhizm from a ten minute read of wikipedia. it takes time to truly grasp it. you must live it.

>>5485396
thanks for the support, but i will not be posting at all anymore. the website will have content soon, but i will not engage in discussions with anyone about it.

2500 years ago, the buddha attained the extinction of nirvana. he did not stick around on earth to help people any further. he put his message out and left the rest up to us. in a similar sense i do not want to get trapped in debates and discussions. my experience is that insight is shy and only emerges in solitude, in the midst of debate intellectual passions are aflame increasing self-attachment ("I will prove I am right"). buddhizm leads you towards complete egolessness, uprooting the concept of self entirely. /lit/ has many headstrong egoists intent on making their splash in the world, it is not my place to provide them batting practice.

>>5485556
any books you recommend?

>>5485656
www.uploadmb.com/dw.php?id=1411687015

here is a good one. no viruses i promise. also recommend the same authors "the notion of emptiness in early buddhism". they are very good, concise summaries of the fundamental doctrines and ideas in the nikayas.

>>5485716
thanks, that looks very elaborate and not wishy-washy feel good.

>>5485767
exactly, there's a thousand wishy-washy books on buddhism for every scholarly masterpiece. it's useful to encounter both kinds to know what to avoid and what to seek in future. the particular book i uploaded will set you on the right path in studying the samyutta-nikaya. i must stress the importance of learning some pali. in the buddha's time, these discourses were memorized and written down later. people often wonder, how could they remember it accurately? the answer is in the pali language and structure of the suttas. they were burned into the memories of monks who chanted them regularly as part of their own practice. it's very different to reading translations. many words simply can't be translated accurately, like nirvana/nibbana. it's similar to studying the quran, a translation gives some semblance of the meaning, but none of the poetic power that moves people. the pali language has a power like that.

find childers' pali-english dictionary. there's a pdf somewhere.

seyyathāpi bhikkhave rañño vā rājamahāmattassa vā vīṇāya saddo assutapubbo assa, so vīṇāsaddaṃ suṇeyya, so evaṃ vadeyya: "ambho kissa nukho eso saddo evaṃ rajanīyo evaṃ kamanīyo evaṃ madanīyo evaṃ mucchanīyo evaṃ bandhanīyo"ti? tamenaṃ evaṃ vadeyyuṃ: "esā kho bhante vīṇā nāma yassā eso sadde evaṃ rajanīyo evaṃ kamanīyo evaṃ madanīyo evaṃ mucchanīyo evaṃ bandhanīyo" ti. so evaṃ vadeyya: "gacchatha me bho taṃ vīṇaṃ āharathā ti. tassa taṃ vīṇaṃ āharayyeṃ, tamenaṃ evaṃ vadeyyuṃ: "ayaṃ kho sā bhante vīṇā yassā eso saddo evaṃ rajanīyo evaṃ kamanīyo evaṃ mucchanīyo evaṃ bandhanīyo"ti. so evaṃ vadeyya: "alaṃ me bho tāya vīṇāya, tameva me saddaṃ āharathā"ti. tamenaṃ evaṃ vadeyyuṃ: "ayaṃ kho bhante vīṇā nāma anekasambhārā mahāsambhārā, anekehi sambhārehi samāraddhā vadati. seyyathīdaṃ? doṇiñca paṭicca cammañca paṭicca daṇḍañca paṭicca upaveṇañca. paṭicca tantiyo ca paṭicca koṇañca paṭicca purisassa ca tajjaṃ vāyāmaṃ paṭicca evāyaṃ bhante vīṇā nāma anekasambhārā mahāsambhārā, anekehi sambhārehi samāraddhā vadatīti. so taṃ vīṇaṃ dasadhā vā satadhā. vā phāleyya, dasadhā vā satadhā vā taṃ phāletvā sakalikaṃ sakalikaṃ kāreyya sakalikaṃ sakalikaṃ karitvā agginā ḍaheyya, agginā ḍahetvā masiṃ kareyya, masiṃ karitvā mahāvāte vā opuneyya, nadiyā vā sīghasotāya pavāheyya. so evaṃ vadeyya: asatī. kirāyaṃ bho vīṇā nāma, yathevaṃ yaṃ kiñci vīṇā nāma, ettha ca panāyaṃ jano ativelaṃ pamatto palāḷito'ti.

>>5477776
>>You can interpret it as a sort of food chain, circle of life type thing, but that's really not accurate to Buddhism.
isn't it? i think it's like that what that guy said about the nails earlier

>this nail was once steel
>which was once ore
>which was once river and mountain
>which was once volcano
...
>which was once a star
>which was once space debris
>which was once a star
...
>which was once whatever came first

>>5486140
childers' pali-english dictionary
epic from late 1800's:

www.uploadmb.com/dw.php?id=1411693316

his essay on the meaning of nirvana is worth the read even if you're not interested in learning pali at the moment. a lot of the work that these savant-like scholars put into buddhism in the 1800's is forgotten these days. childers died at 38 right after finishing his dictionary.

>>5486140
>evaṃ kamanīyo evaṃ madanīyo evaṃ mucchanīyo evaṃ bandhanīyo

interesting fact: this particular line mimics the sound of a vina, certainly not a "lute" like others have translated it, but something like an indian sarangi or rudra vina, sitar, etc. the raja-king hears the sound and describes it to his servants with those words, sung to the melody he heard. they are descriptive terms regarding the alluring nature of the sound and the 'raaga' or passionate attachment it induced in him. the sutta is deep on many levels.

>>5484397

In Buddhism, even Brahmin is imagined to be a very powerful mortal. Moreover, Buddhism tells it's followers not to worship these powerful mortals, since it won't lead to nirvana.

It's an alternate worldview with beings who bare passing resemblance to the gods of other worldviews.

I'm perfectly willing to accept that Buddhism is a religion; I'm simply saying that belief in the supernatural or the metaphyisical aren't universal features of religion, and are therefore poor criteria for it's definition.

>>5484836

>You realize "new earth" creationism or whatever the fuck where they think the Earth is 5000 years old is only believed by a small amount of Christians?

I've been talking about Buddhism, not Christianity.

>You sound like a fucking trilby wearing teenager obsessed with pointing out the "flaws" in organized religion for some reason

Or rather, any thought conceived within the confines of society. Organized religion is flawed because of it's history of use by secular interests to acquire power.

This is coming from someone who claims to be a Buddhist; even Buddhism has produced monsters. In China, people murdered in exchange for Bodhisattva-hood from secular/religious authorities. The Japanese murdered so that their victims would be reborn as glorious Nihonjin.

Siddhartha Gautama warned us that if women were allowed into the sangha, Buddhism would last only 500 years. Not that it took anything special to predict the corruption of his establishment.

I can see the dukkha involved in organized Buddhism, and I don't want to contribute to it.

>Nobody worth your time gives a shit what you believe if you don't act like a faggot about it

Have you ever been under the thumb of someone who's wrong, and begrudges you being right to the point of coercion? Are you aware that Muslims wiped India clean of Buddhists due to Buddhism's perceived atheism?

I hide my beliefs in real life, firstly because I don't want attention for them, secondly because people in general don't like freaks telling them off, and thirdly because Right Speech in Buddhism forbids any form of trolling.

When I come to debate here, I do so anonymously, and attempt to be as civil as possible. Right Speech includes the stipulation that in some contexts, uncomfortable speech is acceptable due to the understanding or thick skin of the audience.

>>5485556
why not just suicide?