/lit/ - Literature

Independent arising is Buddhism's trump card.

>What are Satan's critiques of God?

ftfy

>>6735658
Interdependent.

>>6735706
Whatever, I don't speak pali

>>6735654
>What are the Buddhist critiques of Christianity?
Under Christianity, eternal punishment or reward is meted out in response to an individual's finite balance of sins and virtues; invariably an unjust treatment of souls in the afterlife.

Also, Christianity contains a certain ego-centered element in its savior that Buddhism avoids. Christianity tells you to pray to Jesus for forgiveness, and says that even a virtuous man who does not make this act of submission to Jesus may still face damnation. Buddhism on the other hand, tells you to emulate the life and values of Buddha. It's only the virtues of the individual believer that matters in Buddhism. In essence, Christian salvation is external to the believer (Jesus decides who is saved) while Buddhist salvation is internal to the believer (Buddha himself is not in a decision making role).

>>6735723
>eternal punishment or reward is meted out in response to an individual's finite balance of sins and virtue

not at all true

>Christian salvation is external to the believer (Jesus decides who is saved)

no

Christians believe the world is evil and this ties them up in knots as they see the world filtered through this lens. This denies life as you try to avoid things which your doctrine says are bad and reinforces the human habit of judging (and I do believe that only God is supposed to do that.)

Buddhism argues that good and bad are interpretations based upon our need to protect ourselves from life and to impose a self-interested abstraction onto the paradoxical nature of phenomena. It suggests that you investigate these tendencies and their role in making you suffer in life more than you actually have to.

>>6735734
it´s not buddhism who said life is pain?

>>6735723

> Buddhism tells you to emulate the life and values of Buddha.

I am afraid you are mistaken, you're encouraged to try on his teachings in an experimental way and adapt them if need be.

A famous Zen saying is "if you see Buddha walking down the road, kill him!" This suggests that becoming attached to Buddha and Buddhism is itself another trap, it is attachment itself that you're trying to understand.

>>6735654

OP's post is surely a recipe for a long thread of misinformed people arguing about things they don't know very much about, but whatever.

I would say that from a Buddhist perspective that Christianity is flawed because it all revolves around being saved so you can go to heaven which allegedly happens after you die but if you aren't saved it will be bad.

This is basically a system that uses a combination of fear for the bad and a craving for the feeling of security in order to make people indulge in a belief system that doesn't even really have any immediate benefits but instead promises to deliver once you are dead.

From a Buddhist approach this would probably be considered useless as it does not do anything about your life right now and does nothing to alleviate or help you deal with suffering or other issues. Also Buddha has some quote that goes something along the lines of "if you rely on something other then yourself for enlightenment/happiness then how will you ever reach it?" I think that encapsulates the notion that immersing yourself in a belief system that without changing much about yourself isnt going to solve much for you or do much good if it just involves communicating with your imaginary friend and exhibiting rudimentary morals in your behavior.

Basically striving towards a point where you longer experience suffering and no longer are wrapped up in the false-sense of self and all the drawbacks that has is better then seeking someway to placate your fears of something bad happening when you die.

>>6735746
>Zen
>Buddhism

>>6735744

It does, but it also says that suffering is deepened by processes of attachment and aversion. By understanding these processes we can see that the extra suffering that we add onto the suffering we experience is optional. In fact suffering can be a kind of trial, an opportunity to learn and experience life more richly.

>>6735755
zen truly is the protestantism of buddhism

>>6735744
Suffering and pain are not the same thing. Pain is sensational, temporary. Suffering is continuous. All life suffers. All life is impermanent (decay and dies). This is actually an undisputed scientific fact. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

>>6735755

>Getting hung up on vehicles of Buddhism
>Buddhism

>>6735758
Ch'an is better

>>6735746

not that poster but Buddha did make it clear that it was extremely important to take up his lifestyle in order to reach enlightenment, i.e. abandoning possessions, wandering and not staying in one spot, begging for alms, etc.

I believe at one point he said it was not impossible to become enlightened without doing so but it would be significantly more difficult.

Also, while it is important to not get wrapped up in labels I would also say that interpreting what some Zen guy said of Buddhism is not a good way to understand Buddha's teachings as its just the opinion of someone who never met him.

>>6735766
Ch'an is Anglican tbh.

>>6735750

*where you no longer experience suffering

>>6735756
you say buddhism is to avoid the extra suffering of life?, not sufering itself?.

>>6735779
If anything it's Lutheran. Zen is more properly Anglican, since Japan is the England of Asia.

>>6735766

The Record of Linji is good stuff.

Q: WHO IS THE BUDDHA?
>A CYLINDER OF SHIT

>>6735759
the law of thermodynamics talks about suffering and pain?. ok, man.
all life is impermanent, but that doesn´t mean all life is suffering.

>>6735750

I was raised Christian. There is a huge emphasis on original sin, sinfulness in general, jesus as a big dicked savior, and damnation is pretty bad. The folk religion is truly this.

Whatever the philosophical standpoint, if it's alien to the average Christian, then it cannot be considered to supersede the average Christian's beliefs, as the least is equal to the greatest in the eyes of the Lord.

Faith is really the only thing you need in Christianity. Buddhism, as I believe, asks for understanding.

>>6735771

Kalama Sutra

“Now, Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’ When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted and carried out, lead to welfare and to happiness’ — then you should enter & remain in them.”

My interpretation of this is that one ought to judge a teaching's practical impact upon the spiritual path - does it lead to a lightening of my insecurity, does it cause me to do less harm, does it lead to a kind of fellowship with the philosophical or spiritual etc.

Not "is this what Buddha said?"

>>6735785
Is Seon Calvinist?

>>6735803
Christianity also promises understanding. Becoming faithful is an internal change that opens a believer's eyes to a new comprehension of the world.

>>6735807
What Euro country is Korea most like?

>>6735784

I haven't been clear. Life is suffering, it is inevitable. We make it so because we desire. This desire creates the suffering. The aim I believe is to get to a point where you suffer but no longer go "oh no!" but instead "oh yes!" I have a new lesson to learn about myself and the universe.

>>6735800
Fundamentally, it is. Just because you are having happy dippy day in your mind, doesn't mean you aren't in a constant state of decay; you in fact are. Suffering and impermanence are synonymous here.

>>6735818
The point is to cease existing, Nirvana is an end goal

>>6735811

Ah yes, allow the spirit of the Lord to engulf me, and I shall speak in every tongue of man.

>>6735825

I'm afraid that I cannot take that on faith. Nor the doctrine of reincarnation. No-one alive can tell us what happens after we die, and would we trust this person not to bend the truth for their own interests even if they could somehow report back.

Sorry m8, the Zenfag from above.

>>6735821
why suffering and impernanece are a synonymous?

>>6735811

How can you be sure that you're not just making it up? Minsinterpreting certain bodily signs like the comforting feeling one gets from believing one is winning and being affliated with an ingroup?

>>6735840
I dunno, literally every Buddhist I've asked about this has affirmed that Nirvana is as close to a 'goal' as the system gets.

>>6735854
Faith. That won't satisfy you but that's just too bad. It's the answer.

>>6735863

>>6735859

Putting their answers and mine to one side. What do you think? How likely is a perfect afterlife of serenity based upon your life experience?

>>6735818
i think the buddhism try to aboid the desire. your conclusion about transposing the suffering into a "learning" it´s just a conclusion to protect you. and it´s not a bad conclusion, i just say it´s not enough to make a religion like buddhism. (or any religion).

>>6735873
>How likely is a perfect afterlife of serenity based upon your life experience?
I don't think we conceive of Nirvana in the same way. Nirvana is freedom from the cycle of suffering and rebirth, essentially a state in which a being has absolutely no potencies and actuality cannot exist even potentially. In this state of absolute reality, Being is not the same as Non-Being; Being simply is not. Ultimately Buddhism says that this is the true nature of reality. Buddhism is a vehicle to arrive at this state.

>>6735817
80s germany

>>6735876

I see what you're getting at - I am only arguing from my experience. I find that by saying yes to more and more of life (rather than saying no to certain things) I live more richly and my psyche feels less battered by conflict. I also feel more connected with others and an urge to help them ease their suffering (not that I'm into evangelising or anything like that.)

You people have a long way ahead of you.

>>6735654
The Buddhist critique of Christianity would be that it is a form of eternalism. The idea that there is an eternal entity is untenable.

But Mahayana Buddhism itself posits such an entity. The Nirvana Sutra says that that Buddha in his ultimate aspect (Dharmakaya) is Self, Bliss, Pure and Eternity.

The Lotus Sutra also claims the Buddha is an eternal entity. And the Father of all sentient beings.

So Mahayana Buddhism teaches the same thing as Christianity. The only difference is - and this is Christianity's critique of Buddhism - that in Buddhism, the Dharmakaya (let's call it God for the sake of simplicity; Buddha's eternal aspect) and his compassionate aspect are separate. That is to say, the Eternal Buddha appears in the world in order to guide sentient beings. But while he appears, he is also save in his self-determinated inwardness. He appears as Shakyamuni and sends his emanations (Amitabha, etc.), but he is not affected by this process. His compassion is an automatic mechanism, and even if his emanation bodies are tortured and killed, he remains unaffected.

In Christianity, at least in my reading, God HIMSELF comes incarnate to Earth. Christ IS god, not an "emanation" or a "bodily aspect" of God. This is the difference. So Buddhist compassion cannot compare to Christian love. In Christian love, the Absolute loses itself fully in its otherness; he DIES in its self-estrangement completely. While in Buddhism, the Dharmakaya remains safe in its meditative inwardness. Kind of like playing an avatar in a game, you don't really care if your character dies. You do, but just a little bit. However, Christ is not an avatar of God. Christ is God.

OK, so we see Mahayana is an imperfect version of Christianity. So what a bout Theravada, is it better than Mahayana?

No, Theravada has an internal contradiction in that it teaches no-self, but also the quest for enlightenment. So in order to be enlightened, you have to realize you have no self; but then "who" gets enlightened? And how can you have a desire for self-enlightenment if that desire goes against the idea of having no self?

I know Theravadins will tell me I misunderstand the teaching and they will explain the khandas and all that shit but I read it all and I believe the contradiction exists, and that contradiction gave rise to Mahayana. Mahayana comes from that contradiciton. It resolved the contradiciton in two ways:

1) not only people, but all things are without self (universal emptiness);

2) so saving oneself is only a convention, really one is working for universal salvation, since otherwise one would be reinforcing the very illusion one is trying to dispel (enlightenment of MYSELF)

- This logically gave rise to the idea of universal salvation, in the Lotus Sutra. The Dharmakaya, the absolute, Nirvana, is no longer seen as an inactive state of self-absoprtion, but as infinitely dynamic enlightening activity.

TO BE CONTINUED

>>6735887

OK, assuming I accept that conception of Nirvana, can you answer my question?

>>6735903
>However, Christ is not an avatar of God. Christ is God.

This is a hugely controversial topic in Christianity, and empires have fallen during the fight over this issue.

>>6735887
that absolute reality is like death to me.
overcome the cycle of suffering and rebirth is a imposing challenge to life, not different from inmolate yourself because you will have virgins in heaven.

>>6735905
I don't think it makes sense to make assumptions bout an afterlife based on observations of this world, so affirming or denying would be going too far. But I also think you're getting hung up on 'the afterlife:' reincarnation is the Buddhist afterdeath experience. Nirvana doesn't involve any of the predicates you attribute to the afterlife in >>6735873. Neither does reincarnation, not as an essential predicate.

>>6735909
That's a common Western criticism of Buddhism.

>>6735903
CONT'D: Sorry that I cannot be more systematic in my presentation but I have no time to make it tidy and nice. I studied Buddhism for quite a long time and I want to present an argument that Buddhism is a most excellent philosophy that ultimately points to Christ as the truth.

So simplified (BUT WHAT ELSE DO YOU EXPECT FROM 4CHAN?) we have Theravada: self-enlightenment through self-absorption and the contradiction in it; which gives rise to the Bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana - universal enlightenment and emptiness; WHICH IN TURN CREATES ANOTHER CONTRADICTION that I will try to explain now.

Note that in our world, in history, and in science, it is always contradictions that bring development.

We have a system X, and we find an impossibility in that system. For instance, we have the order of natural numbers and we try to divide 2 by 7. That gives rise to a novel order of numbers. If in the real order we try to do "square root of minus 1" we find another impossibility which gives rise to complex numbers, etc. I know this is a rather simplistic metaphor but it's OK. OK end of this digression.

The inner impossibility and contradiction in Mahayana is that in order for a Bodhisattva to become a Buddha, he has to "save all sentient beings", but that POSTPONES enlightenment and projects it unto the horizon. So how can the Buddha be a Buddha if there are still sentient beings that haven't been saved?

One solution is given in the Diamond Sutra: sentient beings are illusions, so there is really no sentient beings to save. This is the SUDDEN position of Zen and Vajrayana.

Another possible solution is given in the Japanese Pure Land Buddhism of Shinran: ALL SENTIENT BEINGS ARE ALREADY SAVED IN THE FUTURE; and this future retroactively affects the past. So in a timeless sense, all are already saved. It is just that we are RECEIVING this "good news" at various times.

TO BE CONTINUED

>>6735903
>>6735919
>I studied Buddhism for quite a long time and I want to present an argument that Buddhism is a most excellent philosophy that ultimately points to Christ as the truth.

Westerners doing this kind of crazy shit.
Just stop man. You don't need to continue.

>>6735899
what i really want to say is that in your first post you said christianity have a vision of an evil world while the buddhism dont think in good and bad.
for me the two have negative visions of reality:
world is evil, life is suffering.
i understand what you say anyway. just pointing that all religions are dogmatic fields to me.

>>6735915
and what they response?

>>6735932
Jesus

>>6735932
'It's true all the same,' pretty much. Western religion needs an eternal afterlife. Eastern religion doesn't.

>>6735919
CONT'D: The difference is that in Christianity, the Dharmakaya/Absolute/God incarnates and becomes a sentient being who suffers and dies. In Buddhism this is never the case, the Dharmakaya is safe in its self-absorption and absolute negativity.

This is a problem because the Dharmakaya can never fully reveal itself unless it manifests itself completely and renders itself intelligible to us.

So Zen remains mysterious; some special people ("Zen Masters") can supposedly understand it inwardly but are unable to explain it in the form of propositions, only in strange gestures and incomprehensible poetic expressions such as "East Mountain walks on water" - this shows that the Absolute cannot express itself intelligbly, only in a garbled, absurd way

In Vajrayana, and Tantra in general, it's very similar as in Zen, except that it is more Indian in style (Zen is more Chinese) - so various objects can serve as transsubstantiated mediators between the Absolute and the Relative: mandalas, mudras, "twilight language", mantras - everything can be such an embodiment

The problem is that these things: gestures, kicks, screams in Zen, or mysterious mantras in Tantra, are not intelligible to an unenlightened being, so the compassion here is limited and still self-aborbed in an idiolect

The only exception is the Pure Land Buddhism, and this is the highest of Buddhism, where Buddhism comes closest to Christianity. There, Amida is seen as the Compassionate aspect of the Absolute reaching to us through Grace and bestowing on us salvation because we are incapable of saving ourselves. We are already saved in the future, but presently we cannot see this. This message comes to us through the nembutsu, the sentence "Namu Amida Butsu" which means "I take refuge in the Buddha of Infinite Light and Life", basically a submission to Other Power

The problem with this pure faith doctrine is that the true object of worship here is FAITH itself, it is a FAITH IN FAITH. As Shinran admits, he doesn't even know if the Pure Land exists or not. He simply knows he cannot save himself, so he has to give up and open his arms and ask to be saved by the Other Power.

This pure faith doctrine however, is not really as pure as it seems, because AMIDA was once a human, and he became a Buddha through meditation practice. So we are putting faith that someone else WILL DO THE WORK for us. So this doctrine is still based on WORKS.

Moreover, Amida is not a historical being, it's a mythical person. Shinran is Christianity without Christ. It is Buddhism's completion that awaits the salvific object, but has it only in imagination.

While Christ is the salvific object, that performs the salvation for us, but he does it in history, not in myth. It is Absolute AS INCARNATE, as a suffering seinteint being. This absolute identity between WISDOM/EMPTINESS and SKILLFULNESS /COMPASSION does not exist in Buddhism. It is called "LOVE" and is the God of Christianity, who is also Christ.

>>6735654
Christians want eternal life, it's the most extreme psychological affirmation of natalism, a Nietzschean amor fati of vitality and joie de vivre.

Buddhists want eternal death, it's the most extreme psychological affirmation of antinatalism, a Schopenhauerian will to nothingness of sickness and weariness.

>>6735948
you don´t understand what i said. the same criticism of imposings challenges to life can be done to any religion. also, eastern religions don´t need an eternal afterlife, how you call the end of the cycle of sufering and rebirth?

>>6735955
>The only exception is the Pure Land Buddhism, and this is the highest of Buddhism

What you just wrote, in a long informal banter, is nothing but proselytization. You have contorted thousands of years of Buddhist doctrines/literature/culture to fit you own Western interpretation. You are indeed a great case study into how Westerners can't formulate Eastern ethos/worldview perspectives.

>>6735925
The idea that "Westerners cannot study Buddhism" is a childish, idiotic idea. The best scholars in the world today are actually Westerners.

>>6735958
>Buddhists want eternal death, it's the most extreme psychological affirmation of antinatalism, a Schopenhauerian will to nothingness of sickness and weariness.
Not true, sorry. Nirvana is not death.

>>6735978

It's not study though, not even in a secular sense. This anon>>6735903 >>6735903 >>6735919
Is just spouting theology. None of this is secular academic study of Buddhism or Christianity? How do I know this? Because of apologetic remarks like this:>>6735919
>I studied Buddhism for quite a long time and I want to present an argument that Buddhism is a most excellent philosophy that ultimately points to Christ as the truth.

>>6735971
>You are indeed a great case study into how Westerners can't formulate Eastern ethos/worldview perspectives.
That's like saying a Chinese person can never understand Christianity. You're an idiot. Sanskrit is an Indo-European language and it's closer to us than Hebrew. So studying Buddhism is actually closer to us, culturally, than studying the Old Testament. I lived and studied in Japan together with Buddhist scholars and priests, abbots of temples, and I know my understanding of Mahayana is correct. Please stop commenting if you have nothing to add except: "You have blue eyes so you cannot understand the great Eastern Wisdom". Racist knucklehead.

>>6735965
>also, eastern religions don´t need an eternal afterlife, how you call the end of the cycle of sufering and rebirth?
Nirvana. See my description in >>6735887. Nirvana isn't eternal and it is beyond life, rebirth, afterlife, and death, it's the ultimate truth of all phenomena. Read up on the topic if you want more information, at this point I can only repeat myself to you.

>>6735985
>Is just spouting theology
The SUTRAS THEMSELVES SPOUT THEOLOGY. Read the Mahayana Sutras and tell me what is it then, if not theology. Read the commentaries by Tan-Luan, by Taosheng, by Zhiyi, Shan-Tao, and tell me what is it if not theology.
>None of this is secular academic study of Buddhism or Christianity? Because of apologetic remarks like this
The apologetic remark is just my personal conclusion. You don't have to follow me there if you don't want to.

But the truth remains that in Buddhism, the absolute is FORMLESS, while in Christianit,y the absolute is REVEALED. That is a major distinction.

>>6735995
but that notion of something beyond life and rebirth, afterlife and death it´s a notion of afterlife. it´s not that eastern religions don´t need an afterlife, they need a afterlife to the afterlife because they believe the "first" afterlife it´s not the real end. but it´s the same notion of fullness in the end.
i knot it´s a little messy everything...

>>6735982
It is the ultimate suicide where one stops rebirth, not only ending this life but the cycle of life.

>>6735948

This is factually incorrect most Buddhist in the world today (50%+) are Mahayana which means they pray to be reborn in a Pure Land which is the practical equivalent of Heaven. It's the same with the non-Mahayana ones really. Vajrayana too has Pure Lands, and Theravada has pure abodes, heavenly realms, etc. Most Buddhists don't believe they can accomplish the task of becoming Buddha in 1 lifetime so they hope to be reborn in a heavenly realm where they can do so.

>>6735990
>Sanskrit is an Indo-European language and it's closer to us than Hebrew. So studying Buddhism is actually closer to us, culturally, than studying the Old Testament.
This is a really elaborate bait, anon. Good job.

>>6736016
1) Nirvana is not described as death but as "neither existence nor non-existence", as a state beyond life and death
2) Nirvana is in certain Sutras described as Bliss
3) Nirvana is in certain Sutras described as unborn but nevertheless dynamic, not as a state of extinction but actually the ELEMENT in all Sentient beings that allows them to become Buddhas; basically you already have the Nirvanic Principle within you

>>6736015
You just misunderstand a lot about the concepts involved.
The Christian God is the ultimate reality of Christianity, but God Himself isn't the afterlife at all; His presence is what makes Heaven Heaven, but God is not the afterlife.
Now, this is where your claim that it's an afterlife after an afterlife seems nonsensical. In Buddhism every afterlife, precisely because it is a life into which one is reborn, falls short of elbeing a release from the cycle of death and rebirth. Reincarnation is not simply something that happens among humans in Buddhism; one might come back to life as the most powerful god ever to have existed. But this is not attaining Nirvana, this is being reincarnated. One could be reincarnated infinitely many times into infinitely many afterlives of afterlives; this is not the same as attaining Nirvana, and none of these lives is out of the cycle.
Nirvana is beyond life, death, afterlife, and rebirth. You think of it as an afterlife because you don't understand what it entails or what the difference between absolute reality and afterlife is.

>>6736020
>eternal
Very important word in my post. Buddhism explicitly rejects an eternal afterlife on the grounds of externalism. I acknowledge reincarnation in higher realms in >>6736025. My claim is that Nirvana is beyond all of this. My Buddhist friends have backed up this impression, as has my research into Buddhism.

>>6736022
The modes of thinking in Mahayana Sutras are closer to Western philosophy than the modes of thinking in the Hebrew Bible. The prophetic/dialogic conception of God is foreign to Europeans. Greek philosophy and Buddhist philosophy however, have many parallels. If you knew anything, you'd know the works of Plotinus, his theory of emanationism, and how closely it reflects Mahayana Buddhism. But instead you will say the idiotic thing that I am projecting Western ideas on the East. Don't you understand that there is no impenetrable Eastern mysticism, and that "The East" was already perforated by the West before we even began studying it? For instance, did you know that the statue of a Buddha is a Greek invention? The Buddhists originally had no statues. They used other objects for veneration. Later in Gandhara they saw Greek statues of Apollo and liked them so much that they copied them. Young Padawan, listen to me attentively. In this life, often what will appear foreign and mysterious and impenetrable to you is just because you're not man enough to penetrate into it. Pun intended. Buddhism can be understood by anyone who can read and think.

>>6736025
you don't understand what it entails or what the difference between absolute reality and afterlife is.
ok, the easterns don´t need an eternal afterlife. they have the absolute reality. it´s the same concept with different color to me.

>>6736035
Well, you should try to clarify your conceptions a little if you ever study the topic. That's all.

>>6736023
Sounds like Mahayana nonsense to me.

>>6736029
So is Nirvana eternal or impermanent?

>>6736033
Not to mention that Greco-Buddhism is the true progenitor of East Asian Buddhism.
Seriously, if you study Platonism or Neoplatonismat all you'll find everything you would in Buddhism but in a Mediterranean context.

>>6736033
>We have been radical christians for 1500 years but let me tell you that sanskrit belongs to the indoeuropean language family so we are culturally closer to buddhism
This is you.
And my language isn't even indoeuropean, fam.

>>6736044
Nirvana is neither eternal nor impermanent. It is beyond all states of being. It has no predicates. It isn't even a subject capable of having predicates.

>>6736051
This anon knows what he's talking about.

God I get annoyed at all the Western idiots who say "we westerners can't understand Buddhism" as if you need slant eyes to study it. Let me tell you something you effeminate weebs, if Europeans are smart enough to have invented quantum mechanics and to have decoded Egyptian hieroglyphs, we're smart enough to understand a few stanzas written by an Indian philosopher in 500 CE. Let alone the fact that Sanskrit is an Indo-European language and very similar to many of our languages so translation is not a big issue; LESS OF AN ISSUE than translating Hebrew.

>>6736059
> It is beyond all states of being.
You say it IS beyond all states of being.
So that is Nirvana's state of being.
And that is a contradiction.

>It has no predicates.
But don't you see that "having no predicates" is a predicate? "Nirvana IS that which lacks predicates" - that is assigning a predicate ("being without predicates") to a subject ("Nirvana").

> It isn't even a subject capable of having predicates.
Except that you have just done that: you assigned predicates to it.

>>6735723
So much wrong Anons plz disregard

>>6735971
This tbqqh

>>6736038
what i want to say it´s that the easterns needs an afterlife too, need a faith in a different form of being. and i say faith because i don´t know a better word to understand why they believe in the cycle of reencarnations.

>>6735990
Let's be clear: the problem is you set out on a goal and you developed a thought-pattern to reach that goal (that "good" Buddhism leads to Christianity). Anon's point is that this is nothing new, Westerns have a long, tedious history of finding justifications for themselves in the words, histories, and identities of "exotic" peoples.

>>6736020
>all Mahayana = Pure Land
>"equivalent of Heaven"

No

>>6736064
>God I get annoyed at all the Western idiots who say "we westerners can't understand Buddhism" as if you need slant eyes to study it.
>we're smart enough to understand a few stanzas written by an Indian philosopher in 500 CE
Forget Stanzas, forget a clause, and take just one single mono-syllabic word, 'li'. Early Buddhist philosophy is a certain kind of order, and this kind of order is not quite what we call order when we arrange everything geometrically in boxes or in rows. That is a very crude kind of order, but when you look at a plant it is perfectly obvious that the plant has order. We recognize at once that is not a mess, but it is not symmetrical and it is not geometrical looking. In the Sanskrit this is called li, and the scrawl for li means the markings in jade. It also means the grain in wood and the fiber in muscle. We could say, too, that clouds have li, marble has li, the human body has li. We all recognize it, and the artist copies it whether he is a landscape painter, a portrait painter, an abstract painter, or a non-objective painter. They all are trying to express the essence of li. The interesting thing is, that although we all know what it is, there is no way of defining it. The patterns of li are also the patterns of flowing water. We see those patterns of flow memorialized, as it were, as sculpture in the grain in wood, which is the flow of sap, in marble, in bones, in muscles. All these things are patterned according to the basic principles of flow. Again, just a single word, but utterly untranslatable into English without a hefty footnote, and you expect to be able to understand a few translated stanzas?

>>6735955
I bit my fucking tongue reading this. So much bullshit in one post.

>>6736108
We could invent a fucking word for it if we felt like it though

>>6736108
>plants not symmetrical
>not geometrical

I stopped there because you are one hell of a dumb cunt.

>>6736124
Well, we have the anglo version, 'li', and after a lengthy explanation we have crudely fumbled our way through it. We have only made it past the first word though, we are a long way from fully comprehending stanzas. The second word is 'qi' and the closest we have to that is "elan vital" -- the question of self-organisation and spontaneous morphogenesis of things in an increasingly complex manner, with the intuitive perception of experience and the flow of inner time -- but even that falls way short of describing it.

>>6736157
Still not as hard as translating Hebrew, and doesn't mean the clout of western scholarship can't into eastern philosophy

>>6735955
stawp

>>6736142
Find me one bush with perfect symmetry - each branch and leaf on the left and right perfectly identical, just at the molecular level not even atomic, and I'll paypall you $10,000.

>>6735903
>In Christianity, at least in my reading, God HIMSELF comes incarnate to Earth. Christ IS god
this is a heretical interpretation according to most respectable denominations and theologians. god is not identical to christ; christ was a man, felt all the fears, temptations, and pains of a man. this is hypostasis 101 and essential to even begin to understanding gospel.

>>6736166
Find me a form of Buddhist compassion which rivals the love of Christ

>>6736171
This is an example of how Christianity defeats itself, by being incoherent in its most important theory formula.

>>6735958
>Christianity
>Nietzschean
This isn't even good bait. 4/10 made me reply, to remind you Nietzsche was hostile towards Christianity due to its ressentiment. Christianity is a death cult of a different kind, with its adherents waiting around to die so they can finally start living, rather than just living.

>>6736174
Look up Vajrayana devotional writings.

>So in order to be enlightened, you have to realize you have no self; but then "who" gets enlightened? And how can you have a desire for self-enlightenment if that desire goes against the idea of having no self?

I lack the vocabulary to express how retarded this is

>>6736208
>So in order to be enlightened, you have to realize you have no self; but then "who" gets enlightened?

Seriously? Just skim the wiki article on The Ship of Theseus paradox and you should figure it out from there.

not-self, from your anglo perspective, can be almost understood as a basic anti-Aristotelian stance that claims the 'essence' is not in the, as it would be rendered in English grammar, 'object', but is a linguistic concept within the description of the object.

>>6736245
I'm a bit confused, are you the christposter?

>>6736276
No, I'm the Christposter. My critique of Theravada is quite simple. Pursuing enlightenment for oneself is contradictory if enlightenment means realization of the absence of a permanent underlying self.

>>6736080
If it's beyond all states of being it's obviously inexpressible and effectively indescribable. Predicate logic can't describe Nirvana, obviously. I'm just trying to get a vague sense across.
>>6736100
Agan, it's simply your confusion of the concepts of ultimate reality and afterlife.

>>6736319
I get the feeling you're equating the self and enlightenment with the Christian idea of the soul and heaven. If this were an actual contradiction then Theravada Buddhism would have been stamped out by missionaries centuries ago

>>6736320
> it's obviously inexpressible and effectively indescribable.
But you have just EXPRESSED it. "Inexpressible" is an expression. And "effectively indescribable" is a description. This contradiction is at the bottom of all "ineffable reality" Buddhisms. You will just repeat it again, "it's beyond even that beyond, and beyond beyond" and so on, but you will keep making it manifest and applying predicates to it. You never get rid of this contradiction.

The only Buddhist philosopher AFAIK that understands this is Zhiyi of Chinese Tiantai. He says somewhere that the ineffable, indescribable is identical to the the thinkable reality. The unthinkable identical to the thinkable. Or Nagarjuna perhaps ("Nirvana = Samsara", he wrote).

>>6736354
I am not equating it and in my interpretation of Christianity we do not have a soul that is separate from the body. That is a Greek Platonic idea that people superimposed on Christianity. In Christianity, there is no soul separate from the body.

I am aware there is no soul in Theravada. I am asking you whether you believe enlightenment is attainable, and what is it exactly? Is there such thing as an "enlightened person"?

>>6736354
>If this were an actual contradiction then Theravada Buddhism would have been stamped out by missionaries centuries ago

Please, please, please, get on the next flight to Thailand, Vietnam, or Cambodia, and see how 99% of the Theravada Buddhist population actually practice Buddhism. They have a monotheistic god who they pray to once a week, offering food to the shrine facing the door, and are basically Christians with Christ removed and a brief residual mumble about karma left.

>>6736382
This.

It's funny how Western armchair Buddhists imagine Buddhism as some kind of incredible elaborate philosophy.

Buddhism as it actually exists in Asia is full of superstition. Astrology, charms, rituals of rain. It's full of pagan nonsense.

The only exception is the "True Pure Land School" (Shin Buddhism) I found in Japan. There you have the purity of the Protestant Christians. No spells, no charms, no superstitious nonsense. Just a honest appraisal of oneself and a cry to Amida Buddha for help: "Thank you Amida for saving me" - but it's not a worshipping because they don't believe worshipping does anything. Even worshipping is seen as a self-power act that is impotent. Nothing a person does can help him.

In Shin Buddhism, Amida has already saved us and once the awareness of this "good news" comes to our consciousness, we can live a life of gratitude and thankfulness.

That really is the closest to Christianity Buddhism has arrived. Of course Protestant Christianity, Reformed, is the superior form of Christianity. I'm not talking about pagan Catholics or Charismatic buffoons with their idiotic nonsense.

>>6736382
I can't speak for the others but for for Vietnam that is a biggest fucking lie I've ever heard. You just made me hate Christians a little bit more, no easy feat i assure you

>>6736360
I'm not saying that it's correct, I'm not a Buddhist for this kind of reason. I'm just giving what I understand to be a generally accepted definition. The fact that you attribute the observation that the idea is actually a) an instance of infinite regress in which we simply provide a more specific definition with each new attempt to prove that what we're denoting can't be described, which is pointless in the end as you rightly point out, or b) simply simply denial of the fact that the object in question can be denoted properly.
I would still suggest that the other poster is confused when he equates 'afterlife' and 'absolute reality' and then gets upset at being informed that there's a difference between 'nirvana' qua post mortem status and 'reincarnation' qua afterlife.

I would suggest, in addition to this, that Buddhism is wrong because, as a naïve reading of Descartes's prove of the existence of God shows us, it is reasonable to infer the existence of a necessary (independently arising) Being from a contingent (interdependently arising) Becoming. This Being is the Godhead, speaking from these terms in favor of the Christian God.

I haven't read the really long multipart posts about Christian-Buddhist harmony, by are you the same anon?

I like Buddhism, but I seem to be impervious to faith. Can any Buddhists here give me a reason why they believe aside from that? In the same way that a Christian might use one of the arguments for God as justification for their belief.

>>6736427
Didn't the West prop up a Catholic dictator? Did the French push Catholicism, too?

>>6736429
>The fact that you attribute the observation that the idea is actually a) an instance of infinite regress in which we simply provide a more specific definition with each new attempt to prove that what we're denoting can't be described, which is pointless in the end as you rightly point out, or b) simply simply denial of the fact that the object in question can be denoted properly.

I basically meant that I agree with you

If Theravada Buddhism is such a good force in society, why is it that Thailand is the most perverse country in the world with ladyboys selling male booty for buttfucking in every corner?

>>6736465

If Catholicism is such a good force in society, why is it that Brazil is the most perverse country in the world with ladyboys selling male booty for buttfucking in every corner?

>>6736470
>Not Thailand

>>6736470
Because both Catholicism and Theravada are false religions. The true religion is Christianity.

>>6736319
>Pursuing enlightenment for oneself is contradictory if enlightenment means realization of the absence of a permanent underlying self.
Again, you are muddying the water: "for oneself," "a permanent underlying self." The premise is not that you don't physically exist, but that the conceptual essence of self-ness is superimposed over the physical and treated as if it was the physical.

You can cling to your self-ness essence if you wish, but what if you are lobotomized, or suffer head trauma in a car crash and have amnesia/some form of personality change. Are you the same self? What if you just increase your serotonin levels slightly with certain chemicals? What if ad infinitum. . . Carry this argument to a rented motorcycle that has a puncture and you replace the inner tube; are you returning the same bike? In both cases it only appears that we have a problem because the concept of self-ness and motorcycle-ness are being treated as if they were an inherent essence when they are not. They are conceptual structures that we have created for the ease of describing what we think of as reality. Hence not-self, and even not-motorcycle.

>>6736370
>I am asking you whether you believe enlightenment is attainable,
Possibly
and what is it exactly?
Only one who is enlightened could fully answer that, but in part, one who is free from the suffering of being shackled to the burden of semantic abstractions of reality; like our conversation above. They have the concept of a 'conventional truth' - a motorcycle is a conventional truth - and you slowly let go of these rungs as you progress higher up the semantic ladder. The next rung is the five skandhas, the sub-sections or dispositions that constitute you, and these are also discarded later when you realize you don't need them.

People who are not enlightened or anywhere near enlightened, like us, NEED conventional truths. we need to treat a cup as if it has cup-ness; we need car-ness and ipad-ness. Removing the 'ness' is only the first step down that deep rabbit hole though.
>Is there such thing as an "enlightened person"?
Someone on the path of enlightenment is a bodhisattva, someone who has allegedly attained enlightenment is a buddha.

>>6736491
>You can cling to your self-ness essence if you wish, but what if you are lobotomized, or suffer head trauma in a car crash and have amnesia/some form of personality change. Are you the same self?
So what if you achieve enlightenment, are you the same self as before or not?

>>6736529
The self doesn't change, only you do

Eventually 'you' are an abstraction, too

>>6736538
So the abstraction changes? That's enlightenment?

This is why Buddhism boils down to some hocus pocus.

That's your pitch: you will realize you have no self but even the "you" who realizes it is an abstraction so nothing will really have happened to "you".

Not as appealing as Kingdom Come and resurrection and eternal life, is it.

>>6736529
>So what if you achieve enlightenment, are you the same self as before or not?
Self? If I were to achieve enlightenment, I would probably act, think, and behave in a way that was discernibly different to how I do now.

>>6736547
Do you dislike dialectic or something, bro? Do you not into Hegel?

>>6736465
Capitalism. They're merely catering to Western perversity. Apart from that industry Thailand is pretty conservative.

>>6736547
>That's your pitch: you will realize you have no self but even the "you" who realizes it is an abstraction so nothing will really have happened to "you".
There is no pitch; nobody is exchanging scripture for third world medical care like the missionaries. One of the very first things you are told in Buddhism is to question it yourself and not accept it on faith. If you agree you can progress, if you disagree you can discard it and carry on doing whatever it was you were doing, or you can ponder why you disagree and probably realize the flaw in your thinking.

>but even the "you" who realizes it is an abstraction
No. The essence of 'you-ness' is an abstraction. Buddhists believe there is material.

>>6736429
> I would still suggest that the other poster is confused when he equates 'afterlife' and 'absolute reality' and then gets upset at being informed that there's a difference between 'nirvana' qua post mortem status and 'reincarnation' qua afterlife.

man, is simple.
all the religions says: if you follow this path, when you die you go to _____

buddhism have too the idea of the end of this shit and a better place.

>>6736435
There is no "Faith" in Buddhism. "Faith" in the modern usage is a meaningless concept created by Christians to try and hold back the tide of "No, it turns out Yahweh isn't responsible for [given phenomenon] and we can prove it". In the original Biblical context "Faith" refers to "Just keep praying to Yahweh, it'll get better eventually".

Ultimately, it comes down to "Do you want to escape suffering?" and if the answer is yes, then hey, Buddhism! If not, then you'll remain ignorant (In the Buddhist context). Maybe in a future life you'll come around. Or maybe not.

Or you can just meditate to improve your life. There is no specific "Conversion" process like in Abrahamic religions. You don't declare your monotheism like in Islam, you don't sell your soul to Media CEO's like in Judaism, and you don't get baptized like in Christianity. You just start meditating. This is of course for people who AREN'T becoming a monk. The monastic lifestyle is specially crafted to provide maximum ease of enlightenment, but if you're just being a "Better Myself" Buddhist rather than a "Achieve enlightenment Buddhist" then meditating on your floor at home works just fine.

There IS objective empirical proof that meditation is good for you. Or, more so, that it actually does something. The brain is pretty complex and all. There's mounds of evidence for it in this regard. So you don't need "faith" to meditate any more than you need "faith" to make your crops grow.

>>6736857
buddhism is equal to meditate for you. i doubt that is a complete vision of an organized religion.

>>6736857
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_in_Buddhism

There is faith in the teachings.

>>6736801
But Nirvana isn't a place.
Just read what the Buddha has said about nirvana in the sutras. Then maybe you'll understand.

Even if it isn't a place, it's true that it is "better". You can also reach that state while alive, you don't have to die first.

Israel did 9/11

>>6736610
>One of the very first things you are told in Buddhism is to question it yourself and not accept it on faith.
God you're naive. That's exactly what almost every cult leader says.

>>6736857
Your "meditation religion" is not Buddhism though. It's a Western invention. It's OK I have nothing against it but if you read the scriptures and look at tradition, faith has an important role, more important than meditation actually, especially for laypeople. You don't realize the vast majority of Buddhists do not meditate and have not, in history. Even monks.

>>6737077
It doesn't exist.

It therefore cannot be better than anything that also does not exist.

>>6735723
No, it isn't.

The living, those born again in the Spirit of God, go to heaven.

The dead, spiritually dead, die the second death, which is hell.

There is no balance. There is only life to eternal life, and death to eternal death.

>>6735750
It is a fearful think to be in the hands of the living God, whether you are a buddhist, or not.

>>6736491
Yes, you are the same self. Your soul is not changed by such events. It is spirit.

>>6737242
>go to heaven.
Is it a physical place?

>>6735750
> it all revolves around being saved so you can go to heaven which allegedly happens after you die but if you aren't saved it will be bad.
Christ's main message was actually the "Kingdom of God" and its coming.
> this would probably be considered useless as it does not do anything about your life right now
So only thing that matters is that you're happy now? What a disgusting, hedonist ideology.
>Also Buddha has some quote that goes something along the lines of "if you rely on something other then yourself for enlightenment/happiness then how will you ever reach it?"
Except that you have to rely on Buddha, Dharma and Sangha in order to walk the Buddhist path.
>if it just involves communicating with your imaginary friend and exhibiting rudimentary morals in your behavior.
Because the majority of Buddhists who are repeating mantras and asking Bodhisattvas and Buddhas for help are doing what exactly?

>>6737236
That's why I wrote "better". You can try to understand it with the way you understand and experience the world right now, that's why the sutras describe it negative terms like "not-X".

>>6737224
Not him but, that's not exactly correct. When it comes to attaining Enlightenment, nothing is more fundamental than meditation. However, meditation is one part of the tripartite training. Meditate as much as you want, you'll never become enlightened if you're not ethical, disciplined and wise. Therefore training "off the cushion" is also extremely important, and for most people initially more important than meditation.
Historically, meditation hasn't been the primary concern of Buddhism, due to many sociological realities. The world wasn't like this today where you can google "meditation" and you'll find mountains of sources of all kinds. Sometimes writing didn't even exist. That was the case for laymen, and so they've been oriented towards ethical cultivation and merit-making. For Pure Landers this took the form of wishing for rebirth in Pure Lands. Both of these forms degenerated as time went on, which is why today you have people who see the Buddha as a literal God that can affect your life if you pray enough.
For virtually all of them, the scriptures don't encourage people to perform rituals in order to get benefits, they rather talk about various practical methods of training oneself in the path. The role of faith is to trust the Buddha on his teaching being true. As it has been pointed out multiple times, this doesn't imply blind trust, because one of the conditions for Stream Entry is the disappearance of doubts after enough practice. Even at that point though you can't actually objectively know for yourself that they are true, you just accept that they are after having thoroughly tested them. The objective knowledge according to the sutras happens only when one is enlightened. Therefore canonically it's much more complicated than "ok I believe in buddha what next".
As for whether the majority of monks through history meditated or not, it's impossible to know that. We know that in certain parts of the world meditation practice declined enormously during certain eras, and that certain schools focus more on intellectual pursuits rather than meditation, but we can't actually bring up statistical data.

>>6737429
>Both of these forms degenerated as time went on
Not sure why you call Pure Land a degenerate path. It's kind of offensive.

>>6737532
I'm not. I meant to say that Pure Land degenerated with time, sorry.
I'm personally skeptical about PL, but I had read parts of a book about it and the way it presented the beliefs and practice was quite beautiful.

>>6737560
What do you mean by its degeneration?
Why are you skeptical about Pure Land?

>>6737276
>So only thing that matters is that you're happy now? What a disgusting, hedonist ideology.
No one should ever pretend that happiness, present or future, isn't the number 1 most important thing for any human being. Unless you're mentally imbalanced of course.
>Except that you have to rely on Buddha, Dharma and Sangha in order to walk the Buddhist path.
Rely on the Buddha because he's the one teaching you and has led by example. Rely on Dharma, because obviously you need to follow the teachings. Rely on Sangha because that's where you find people who can support you and you can support, and help each other advance on the path.
Rely as much as you want on these, you won't advance a single inch without personal effort. Its completely different from submitting to a God. No external power will or can liberate you, you can just borrow that power to advance.
>Because the majority of Buddhists who are repeating mantras and asking Bodhisattvas and Buddhas for help are doing what exactly?
Practicing incorrectly. If Buddhists were Buddhas right now, the world would have already become a Pure Land of its own.
You're talking about a strawman here however.

>>6737584
>What do you mean by its degeneration?
Just read about PL history. It reached points where just believing in Amida was sufficient to guarantee a Pure Land rebirth, regardless of your actions. It wasn't like this for all Pure Land adherents of course, and nor for all Pure Land schools. But some of the teachings did degenerate to something that was similar to a violent Christianity or Islam rather than Buddhism.
>Why are you skeptical about Pure Land?
Because it's not exactly included in the Suttas or the Agamas. However AFAIK it's not 100% contrary to the teachings contained there either. So I'm skeptical, but I can't say that it's necessarily false either.

>>6737629
Are you Theravada?

>It reached points where just believing in Amida was sufficient to guarantee a Pure Land rebirth
And what is wrong with that?
It's consistent with the Mahayana Sutras.
Nirvana Sutra:
>We say that unsurpassed awakening [bodhi] has faith as its cause. The causes of awakening are innumerable, but if stated as faith, this covers everything
Avatamsaka Sutra:
>Faith is the basis of the Path, the mother of virtues,

this was almost worth the purchase but I decided against it cause i have too much junk.

>>6735903
>Buddhism has contradictions

none as big as Christianity, in which the Infinite becomes the Finite, God becomes Man. That's the mother of all contradictions and Christianity doesn't claim to give us any evidence for this phenomena beside second-hand hearsay via Gospels. It demands that we accept this contradiction via Faith and faith alone.
Buddhism doesn't demand you accept it's claims on faith. It puts them forth as "hypothesis" and gives you a guide to test them.

>Theravada has an internal contradiction in that it teaches no-self, but also the quest for enlightenment. So in order to be enlightened

the concept of No-Self is better understood as a "Not-Self strategy". It shouldn't be seen as a concrete concept or doctrine in itself, it's not an answer to a question, but a way to approach problems/suffering. To say there is a self and to say there is no-self are both misguided. Not-self is a strategy for attaining enlightenment by avoiding identification and clinging to "self-constructs" whatever they may be (soul, body, mind, race, name, etc)

The one place where the Buddha was asked point-blank whether or not there was a self, he refused to answer. When later asked why, he said that to hold either that there is a self or that there is no self is to fall into extreme forms of wrong view that make the path of Buddhist practice impossible.

The point is that the question itself is similar to the question of whether God exists, to Buddha it is ill-formed and doesn't require an answer. The important thing is to not attach to self-constructs, whatever they may be.

> you have to realize you have no self; but then "who" gets enlightened?

That unnameable thing which suffers, changes and is reborn and can't be grasped intellectually.


>mahayana solves this by saying all beings can be saved universally

That doesn't solve anything, if you think 1 person can't be enlightened because of your misunderstanding of no-self then neither can 2 or 3 or 1000 at once.

>the bodhisattva ideal is contradictory in mahayana

sure, it's also impractical and based on a misunderstanding of enlightenment and anatta

>>6736039

It's basic theravada, probably true in mahayana as well.

Nirvana does not equal death and annihilation. It is "true happiness" the opposite of dukkha, a state of being that does not change and pass away. It transcends life, death and rebirth.

>>6737654
>Are you Theravada?
Not specifically.

>And what is wrong with that?
Because it's incompatible with the core of the Buddha's teaching. Perfection of conduct and mind are integral to the path and you cannot toss them out under any pretext. It's absurd to think that a person who kills can be reborn in a Pure Land just because he believes that Amida is real, it runs against both the Pali Suttas and the Agamas.
As for consistence with Nirvana Sutra and Avatamsaka Sutra, I know that in the context of the Nirvana Sutra it doesn't imply faith in an entity and cannot be made to mean that. No idea about its place in Avatamsaka sutra, but I suspect it's the same. There is nothing surprising about this because faith in the Buddha's example and teaching is necessary to genuinely start on the path. By this token there is no problem in having faith in Amida regardless of whether it has canonical justification or whatever, with the condition that perfection of conduct and mind as laid down in the Suttas and Agamas are also there.

>>6737242
I'd rather die eternally than be a slave.

>>6736370
in your interpretation of Christianity, what goes to heaven without a soul? I've heard about the translation of "breath of life" to "soul", but I don't understand that bit about afterlife.

>>6737744
>impractical and based on a misunderstanding of enlightenment and anatta
That's what I thought at first too but the more I read about it the more it seems to me that it's not really the case. It depends on what "type" of Bodhisattva we're talking about I guess.

>>6735903
Theravada focuses on the teachings of the Buddha exclusively

Mahayana is fan fiction

>>6737824

this^

>>6737824
>>6737837
Nope. If you actually believe this you don't know anything about Buddhist history and should rectify this. Let's not forget: the Pali Canon is not the same thing as Theravada.
Also you're responding to bait. The guy doesn't know anything substantial about Theravada nor Mahayana.

>you will never witness Aquinas and Tsongkhapa debate

One of master Gasan's monks visited the university in Tokyo. When he returned, he asked the master if he had ever read the Christian Bible.

"No," Gasan replied, "Please read some of it to me."

The monk opened the Bible to the Sermon on the Mount in St. Matthew, and began reading. After reading Christ's words about the lilies in the field, he paused. Master Gasan was silent for a long time.

"Yes," he finally said, "Whoever uttered these words is an enlightened being. What you have read to me is the essence of everything I have been trying to teach you here!"

>>6737855

mahayana is just fake buddha quotes man
get a job

>>6737950
I wonder what the Buddha and ancient Buddhist masters would have thought of stoicism.

I feel like there are many parallels between the philosophies and they would have respected each other's philosophies.

I think that stoicism could even be a path to enlightenment.

>>6737991

definitely some similarities, but Buddha was really interested in "muh eternal happiness and compassion for all life" while stoics just wanted to "move comfortably" through the world by sticking to their virtues.

They had different programs, but similar tools.

>>6737991
Pyrrho the sceptic supposedly went to India and studied under some of the naked holy lads. They weren't Buddhists probably, but there was some cultural exchange during those times.

>>6735766
Nichiren, nigger. Praise the Buddha or cut a bitch!

>>6735863
And this bullshit is why cults form.

>>6737219

Jesus demands faith, and he's the leader of a bloody, cannibal cult.

>>6738046

In Western Hellas Buddhism was seen as a kind of mother earth cult. Eastern Hellas on the other hand was into all kinds of experimentation, and not just sexual.

>>6736370
You understand the Bible better than most. Are you an SDA?

>>6736370
Enlightenment is realizing the true nature of the universe

>>6736370
>Is there such thing as an "enlightened person"?

from our outside perspective yes.
from their internal perspective neither yes, nor no.

>>6735723
>Under Christianity, eternal punishment or reward is meted out in response to an individual's finite balance of sins and virtues; invariably an unjust treatment of souls in the afterlife.


Fucking this.

What could you possibly do in life to warrant an eternal punishment or reward? What is the point of making souls spend 80 years on earth before deciding to sort them into the realm they will spend the rest of eternity in?

Abrahamic god is a piece of shit, I wouldn't worship him even if I believed in him.

>>6738934
>What could you possibly do in life to warrant an eternal punishment or reward?
not having attaied the ultimate good is a horrible punisment, it is eternal because the will is inmutable

>>6738934
Oh yeah, there is also the fact that if you spend an eternity ANYWHERE, you will eventually get used to or bored of it.

If you torture somebody for thousands of years without killing them, you'll turn them into a masochist.
If you keep a person in a realm of pure bliss where nothing ever goes wrong, they'll eventually get bored.

Buddhism is the only religion I know of that addresses that properly.

>>6738950
>Buddhism is the only religion I know of that addresses that properly.
>hey man you dont really exist

>>6738946
No it isn't. The will of humans change all the time, and there is no point to prayer if the will of God cannot change.

>>6735845
Because the Buddha did not speak English and never used the word "suffering". He talked about "dukkha". Translations of dukkha include: suffering, pain, stress, unsatisfactoriness, affliction, unease. It encompasses all of these and more.

As for why suffering is synonymous with impermanence, it's because living beings function by clinging into things, into anything and everything, material and immaterial. As long as the thing is there it will generate feelings of satisfaction- this doesn't need to be actual happiness, having something to hate or obsess over also actually create satisfaction. Since everything is impermanent however, anything that is clung to will change or disappear. As one perceives the loss of the object of clinging, the mind has a reaction to it, which is the opposite of its reaction of clinging, ie. it will generate unsatisfactoriness, which can take the form of actual suffering or not. Therefore the whole movement of change and fading away of things continually creates periods of satisfaction and un-satisfaction in the mind and there is no way of obtaining perfect happiness via clinging. Any honest introspection will reveal this as true for any person.
Taking a step further, the round of rebirths (samsara) itself is the 'incarnation' of this dukkha. Beings pass through innumerable existences, some existences being blissful, others painful, and the rest being anything in-between to any degree imaginable. Very similar experiences are lived over and over but the cycle keeps perpetuating itself, and even though they've felt the same things innumerable times before, beings still can't stop themselves from being affected by dukkha and the shifting nature of existence.

>>6738072

Yes, because science doesn't require any faith.

>>6738950
The whole point of paradise is that it realises the inexhaustible good, anon, so you're pretty much begging the entire theological point against the Christians.

You won't get bored of Heaven because it revolves around an infinite, unqualified good- i.e., a good whose goodness is not contingent upon location in time and space.

You won't get used to Hell because the misery consists chiefly in privation of the ultimate good with no distractions. It's the final failure of human finitude.

Buddhism doesn't address anything. It tries to will away the problem- either with a snuffing-out of the ego through "realising" it never existed, or through an impossible desire to become unconditioned- to become God and negate human nature entirely.

>>6735903
>muh contradictions
You're too logical about this sort of thing. The logos is an illusion. Buddhism isn't about contradictions, and if you care so much about contradictions and the logic of these religions why are you defending Christianity so much?

>>6736171
well, he's both, isn't he? he's supposed to be both

>>6736801
Read about concepts before making stupid claims about them. You seriously look like an idiot.

>>6737560
You're still saying it's degenerate.

>>6740023

Christ is a paradox, 100% man and 100% God
Christ as man had limits, his own will, faced temptations.

Christ as the logos, the word of God, was divine, something else, infinite. As he said himself "Before Abraham was, I am"

>>6736171
Ugh
Christ is fully human and fully divine
That's the whole point

>>6736191
Nietzsche's Christianity was the same as Kierkegaard's: flabby, uninspired, protestant—impossibly removed from the true teachings of Jesus.

>>6740032
>kierkegaard was flabby and uninspired

if kierkegaard couldn't achieve "true Christianity" then we are all doomed and Jesus is too spooky 4 us

>>6736051
the hellenic philosophers lived centuries after buddha died you pleb. if anything, it was the turgid original western logos that was informed by the decadent, foul smelling oriental defeatism—not the other way around.

>>6740036
Sorry, I was unclear. I meant that the christian milleu that they lived amongst at the time was bad.

A lot of Kierkegaard's and Nietzsche's respective works consist of criticisms of the state of the Christianity of their time. They're very similar in that regard; they just move in different directions.

>>6736171
I guess you missed the whole "Jesus is Lord" bit.

>>6740013
you don't understand what pure bliss is, man

>>6740043
meant for
>>6738950

>>6740036
Except Christianity isn't a matter of genius, it's a matter of faith. Kierkegaard himself says this.

Moreover, it's this exact mindset that it's up to bold individuals to work out what Christianity is that practically amounts to heresy in Kierkegaard.

Honestly, Kierkegaard's philosophy to me is more Cartesian than Christian. He puts way, way too much emphasis on the thinking subject.

>>6740048
Wait, are you saying that Kierkegaard himself says that it's up to bold people to be Christian—or does he consider that very viewpoint heretical?

Isn't the knight of faith an everyman kinda guy?

>>6740037
You don't even know what I was referencing. Please read a book.

>>6740063
The knight of faith is an exceptional human being.
But every Christian is supposed to be an exceptional human being by virtue of being saved and justified.
Therefore the knight of faith is the same as every Christian.

>>6740094
You're referencing Plotinus, born in 204 AD ... several centuries after Buddha died.

>>6740096
Ok. So how is his thought Cartesian?

>>6740110
I was mostly referencing the Greco-Bactrian kingdoms that synthesized Hellenic, Persian, and Indian ideas after the rise of the Hellenistic kingdoms in the Middle-East following Alexander the Great's conquest of the region, but yes, I did mention Plotinus. I'm glad you know he lived after the Buddha and his concepts had entered discourse.

>>6740115
He assumes a conflict between faith and reason exists. This is a Cartesian problem that comes from the res cogitans existing necessarily separately from the res extensa in Cartesian metaphysics.

>>6740165
How does one follow the other?

>>6740169
Reason can only be taken as a valid and particularly special faculty of the mind on faith. Reason is often characterized as a literal divinity in ancient literature. Logic=the metaphysics of logos, logos=reason, ratio, Christ (John 1:1, faggot). Anyone who accepts a proof of God as sound will see them as complimentary.

>>6740174
I don't understand the connection between the cartesian mind/body separation and the conflict between reason and faith.

>>6740187
It's purely historical, Cartesian metaphysics is often treated as a distinct break with traditional ontologies that allow for a harmony of subject and object. I'm not the anon that called Kierkegaard Cartesian, though. He's more of a Hegelian than anything, but Hegel could only exist in a post-Cartesian world.
I think the greater point is that modern Christianity and old school Christianity are phenomenologically different animals.

>>6736174
Li isn't just in Buddhism, an identical word with a meaning that similarly doesn't perfectly correspond to standard Western conceptions of order exists in Confucianism.

>>6740207
What are the main differences?

>>6740223
Necessary separation between the subject and the world it exists in relation to, a mechanistic view of physics rather than a naturalistic one. Read a book. I'm serious, read about this stuff, I don't want to explain this stuff to someone who doesn't even have a Philosophy 101-level of the underlying concepts involved in the transition from a Christo-Aristotelian worldview to modernity.

>>6735654
christian meditation is only the second jhana. Buddhism goes deeper up to the ninth jhana.

>>6740378

Christian mediation is an aid to becoming fully human, not mutilating the spirit and denying nature.

>>6740563
>he thinks a "spirit" exists

>>6740580
It's silly to deny it, once one knows what a spirit is.

>>6739365
not in the afterlife

>>6740593
>It's silly to deny it, once one knows what a spirit is.
*Once one adopts a particular definition of 'spirit' that's compatible with the semantic worldview they currently possess.

>>6740563
>mfw a fucking "Christian" talks about "denying nature" near me

>>6740609
Why would one adopt an incompatible definition?

>>6740615
The perfection of human nature is the whole point of resurrection, which is the whole point of Christianity. Don't see the problem with continuing the 2000 year tradition, here.

>>6740609
Who would try to define something from a perspective other than their own while trying to convince you that the definition is accurate and their position is correct?

>>6740618
>Why would one adopt an incompatible definition?
They quite often do, it's just restructuring their semantic framework.

>>6735654
Tibetan Buddhists enjoy all religions.

>>6740652
>all religions.
especially the one about tantric sex is western women. LAMAS = PURE PLAYERS

Are Hindus the Jews of Dharmic tradition?

I think it's missing the mark to compare Buddhism specifically with Christianity, though they share many similarities. It is doubly ineffective to argue a single Christian orthodoxy, and pull random folk Buddhist sects to compare to.

If you aren't going to restrict the discussion to a single sect on either side, then you've got to open the discussion to EVERY sect, on both the Abrahamic and Dharmic sides.

>>6738953
I think you misunderstand what negation of the self in Buddhism actually is.

Let's say I agree with the Buddhist notion of dukkha, but disagree with the notion of rebirth. Why not just die, then? It's really not a big deal.

>>6737260
Yes. It is this heaven, and this earth, renewed, restored, and refreshed, where God finally lives with us.

So the new universe will be the new stars, the new earth, and the New Jerusalem. God will live in the New Jerusalem and will light up the world. The New Jerusalem is a satellite city, which people have heard bits and pieces of. Pearly gates, streets of gold, etc.

Quite real, and quite eternal, and still has some vacancies.

>>6737790
Those are not your choices.

Your choices are to live eternally free, or be in the dark, alone, and on fire.

>>6737797
Breath of Life is the Holy Spirit of God. When a person is saved, converted, becomes a christian, is born again, etc., the Holy Spirit resides in them. Resurrects them. Gives them a new birth, a birth in the Spirit. And gives them eternal life. That is the work of the Holy Spirit, and it is wonderful.

Everyone with the Holy Spirit in them goes to heaven; everyone else goes elsewhere.

>>6738095
He's not, really. Catholics just think He is. He's got a whole other thing goin' on that they don't know about.

>>6738934
You could be dead, and then have to go where the dead are stored.

As you are an eternal being, and eternally dead, this would be an eternal state of being. Not to press the point, but again, alone, in the dark, and on fire.

I have seen Buddhist monks light themselves on fire, and sit there for many minutes before they die. This is different. You don't die, and the fire never burns out.

>>6738950
It doesn't, actually. Eternity is not a long time, but an absence of time. And an eternity with the living God is wonderful and satisfying beyond human measure.

>>6739994
You don't have faith that the gravitational constant will be the same next year as it is today?

How would you test that?

No, you take it on faith. And further, you take on faith that science is the only way to gain knowledge. You take that on faith too.

Faith is just the human ability to believe things you have not seen.

>>6736171
God manifested in the flesh as Jesus, the only begotten Son of God.

Jesus created the universe; He has always existed, and He will always exist.

Jesus is YHWH.

>>6740378
I'm sorry you feel that way.

>>6741951
The idea that souls can literally burn is retarded.

>>6742155
>implying Hell isn't the absence of God

>>6741972

I know man, I was being ironic.

>>6741638
Worse
They're the Babylonians

>>6741987
there is nothing to be sorry about a truth

>>6738934
Your acts have absolutely nothing to do with a persons eternal fate. The whole thing about christianity is that there is not a single person who deserves to go to heaven. "Not a single righteous man" and all that jazz. It's by the grace of God alone that allows any who accept him to go to heaven.

>>6736108
It's a good thing that the Buddha opted to give direct and pragmatical teachings instead of using deep language then.
The anon (>>6736064) is stupid but there's no reason whatsoever for not being able to understand Buddhism as a westerner.

>>6735654
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/godidea.html

"Not far from here do you need to look!
Highest existence — what can it avail?
Here in this present aggregate,
In your own body overcome the world!"

>>6741902
Rebirth is not reincarnation.

You do just die. And then your Karma causes people to be born in a similar position as you were. There is no soul to be recycled and promoted or demoted based on how well they conformed to Indian social mores.

It's closer to the idea of eternal recurrence. These people are you in the sense that they act like you would act, and experience the same kind of problems you experienced. But they aren't you in the sense that you share any kind of soul with them. If they can remember being you, it's because the same things that happened to you are happening to them.

>>6741964
What's the point even of storing souls in any form after keeping them alive on earth for 80 years?

>>6741964
You haven't seen it, you've seen pictures of it. It's a form of political protest which has also been preformed by non-Buddhists and usually only happens in extreme circumstances.

>>6742572
The Babylonians literally did nothing wrong. Same with the Romans and the modern "Babylon" Rastas complain about. The bad guys in the bible are always the most advanced and culturally diverse civilization on earth at the time. Says a lot about their priorities.

Reminder that Buddhism has the analogy of the raft going for it. Buddhism may be a way to reach enlightenment and happiness, but should be abandoned once that happiness is found. Attachment to Buddhism and meditation becomes a hindrance at that point.

>>6738953
>I can't into metaphysics.

>>6741902
I don't really get this question. If you disagree with rebirth, you disagree with the big picture of Buddhism.
You're not in a position to agree or disagree anyway, you can't do that unless you have perception of the process of rebirth or something similar. You can just believe or disbelieve after reading what is said about rebirth making a whole lot of sense.

>>6745185
>You do just die. And then your Karma causes people to be born in a similar position as you were.
No, it causes them (people or non-people) to be born in this or that way and with this or that personality trait according to what sort of karma ripens. Whether the karma is good or not depends on dharmic principles as explained by the Buddha, actions that overall are done with positive mind states, contribute to the establishment of further positive mind states, deepen one's wisdom and are of benefit to yourself and others yield good karma; the opposite of these yield bad karma. Whatever gets reborn has no connection with what it was before other than being part of the same stream of consciousness.
Eternal recurrence fits in only if you consider that since samsara has no beginning, it's possible that everything you've lived in your current life, you've lived them before, possibly countless times.