/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13569958]

Do we have a chart to start into Buddhism? If not, could you recommend some initial books for someone interested in?

[Anonymous No.13569963]

>>13569958
Yesplease

[Anonymous No.13570072]

Cmon ascended bros

[Anonymous No.13570087]

[Anonymous No.13570091]

[Anonymous No.13570105]

How people back in ancient times did it:
Read a copy of a sutra available at your local monastery, shave your head, become a monk, go into the forest, reach Enlightenment
How people later on did it:
Read ALL of the Tripitaka and a bunch of Mahayana sutras, go meditate, suffer, make yourself feel like a failure, beat yourself for it.
How Boomer stoners did it:
Go on a trip to India, smoke weed, listen to some advice from an Indian guru, go back to America, pretend you became a Buddhist and got "enlightened"
How /lit/ will tell you to do it:
Get tons of translated sutras and works from the Pali Canon, along with tons of secondary material written by Western academics, finish a few pages off several books, leave them sitting on your bookshelf for several years, try doing a bit of meditating or introspecting, proceed to fap to the latest Asanagi h-doujin.

[Anonymous No.13570120]

>>13570105
Nicely handled strawmen you've got there

[Anonymous No.13570128]

>>13570105
I just imagined the sound of one hand clapping and the color of wind. :^)

[Anonymous No.13570137]

>>13570091
links to accompany
https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~buddhism/docs/Bhante_Walpola_Rahula-What_the_Buddha_Taught.pdf
http://obo.genaud.net/backmatter/indexes/sutta/sutta_toc.htm
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/
https://suttacentral.net/
http://seeingthroughthenet.net/books/
http://www.buddha-vacana.org/
Also for meditation, it's not in the chart but check out TWIM:
https://library.dhammasukha.org/uploads/1/2/8/6/12865490/a_guide_to_twim.pdf
IMO it's most useful after you've gotten to the point where your mind rarely wanders and you're able to keep attention on the object of meditation most of the time. Then switch to it as a full-time practice.
It should take you through the first 3 or so Jhanas: when you get there contact the people at Dhamma Sukha https://www.dhammasukha.org/ they help meditators progress from there.

[Anonymous No.13570163]

>>13570137
based theory > praxis fag

[Anonymous No.13570191]

>>13570163
What would constitute practice that wasn't included?
Practice doesn't just mean meditation, if that's what you're implying. It encompasses a lot more than that (developing view, studying the suttas, developing virtue and morality, cultivating wholesome/skillful mental states, abandoning unwholesome/unskillful mental states, supporting the Buddhist community...etc). This is all of course laid out in the suttas.
Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration are only the final two out of six limbs of the Noble Eightfold Path. It is not the Noble Twofold Path.

[Anonymous No.13570200]

>>13570191
>final two out of six limbs
***final two out of eight limbs

[Anonymous No.13570203]

>>13570137
meditation is horseshit

show an actual scientific data providing results and we will see

meditation is just another form of prayer, there is no difference if you are praying or focusing on your breath, both are mildly relaxing at most and thats all the benefit you're gonna get

[Anonymous No.13570212]

>>13570203
This thread clearly isn't for you.

[Anonymous No.13570241]

>>13570212
Is there any point in getting into Buddhist literature except as a sort of heterophenomenological anthropological exercise?

[Anonymous No.13570260]

>>13570241
There is an entire religion of people who meditate as part of their religious practice which they do for soteriological purposes.
So yes there is a point. Even if you don't agree with it, other people do, and they make up the bulk of those who engage in exploring Buddhist literature.

[Anonymous No.13571015]

>>13569958
that's nagarjuna

[Anonymous No.13571111]

>tfw ywn be a chill pratyekabuddha in a future life
>tfw ywn wait for the giga chad samyaksambuddha to arrive while living in your hidden abode in a time when dharma has been completely lost to obscurity
>tfw ywn conglomerate with other pratyekabuddhas around a cool pristine lake ocassionally, share alms and have a mild discussion on meditation

[Anonymous No.13571115]

probably the best method, monsieur, would be to shoot yourself in the face while being ass raped by an uber driver

[Anonymous No.13571426]

>>13570105
So we should do it the way the ancients did it?

[Anonymous No.13571491]

>>13571111
there is a story in jakata where a paccekabuddha was a leper, then some plebean mocked him and he became a leper too

[Anonymous No.13571503]

>>13571426
How to use the 8FP for our liberation from dukkha is the challenge that everyone of us has to discover for him/herself.
The most important part of the path is to be critical of a method and avoid methods which do not lead to the result the buddha qualify as good or even as being enlightened.

The problem is that people do not know what the usual wording ''contemplating'' or ''perception'' of anatta or whatever, means so you have to find it for yourself.

[Anonymous No.13571618]

Don't become a California type Buddhist! You don't want people to cringe at you do you?

Become alt-Buddhist and both Enlightenment and Evropa can be yours.
>https://politicallyincorrectdharma.blogspot.com/

[Anonymous No.13572357]

>>13571618
that's still cringe

[Anonymous No.13572787]

>>13571618
cringe

[Anonymous No.13573160]

>>13569958
Steve Hagen - Buddhism Plain and Simple
Steve Hagen - Meditation now

Mental enlightenment through the knowledge of the Four Noble Truths and living the Eightfolded Path.

I figured these teachings about the Buddha-darma (Buddha's truth) is what's meant in the New testament as God and "being with god". Aka God = truth and God = reality. But that's just me thinking.

[Anonymous No.13574549]

>>13570203
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3679190/

>>13569958
Ignore anything that isn't Chan/Zen Buddhist, it's worthless.

[Anonymous No.13574559]

>>13570203
Anon, you are right and remarkably independent in your intuition telling you 'meditation' is questionable. But you might be interested in the exact mechanism. 'Meditating' morons' fundamental fallacy is that 'meditation' cannot be harmful, because it causes self-awareness and self-control, and as soon as you're self-aware and self-controlful, you are a priori going to be able to notice and counteract any negative effects it might have. This is superficially plausible, but the epitome of belief in free will also. Reality is, 'meditation', practiced enough, will have a host of negative consequences that you will not find negative because of the 'addiction making you believe it is a good thing' phenomenon (even more visible in case of 'psychedelics')--the ongoing practice will cause a shift in your perception of desirable and undesirable. For instance, 'calming your mind' will cause a subtle, but irresistible shift towards pursuit of said calmness--rather than see people's claims in terms of truth or vagueness or their causes or consequences, you will tend to, because of your increasingly 'introspecting' mind, subconsciously consider them in emotional, 'gain vs loss' terms of 'does this make me comfortable? does this help me keep my mind calm?'. To the detriment of your intellectual functioning. This is not something you can control. Or, it will cause you to, when you notice external stimuli, tend to dwell on them, 'let's just take in that birdsong', 'let's just take in that wonderful sight', rather than become impatient with the idle experience of the sound or sight, and try to either find some intellectual conclusions about it or shrug and leave.

Such, and more, are unspoken-of negative consequences of 'meditation', presented as positive.

[Anonymous No.13574602]

>>13574559
Just a friendly cognitive superlative reminder that ubuliant meditation is irresponsible for metapsychotics who describe it without self-referential dissonance to the PHYSICAL CONSEQUENCES of metacognition.

[Anonymous No.13574651]

>be stream entrant
>can't fly
>but is ok

[Anonymous No.13575983]

>>13570137
Mmmmmmhhhh....... so many links.... Thank you very much anon

[Anonymous No.13576460]

>>13574549
why?

[Anonymous No.13577192]

>>13576460
Because he's dumb.

[Anonymous No.13577205]

>>13569958
books about homosexuality

[Anonymous No.13577772]

>>13569958
https://youtu.be/HmrebXca-ZE

Unironically Alan Watts lectures would be a good supplement.

[Anonymous No.13577780]

>>13570203
>meditated once and nothing happened
>meditation is bullshit!
>i fucking love science!

[Anonymous No.13577950]

>>13577772
I'd be careful with him since he tends to take a very Zen approach (especially Soto Zen) which is often not very representative of most Buddhism (Zen itself is actually fairly advanced, usually not for total beginners).

[Anonymous No.13577968]

>>13570105
is this your lowkey way to shit on mahayana
god you're scum

[Anonymous No.13578074]

>>13577968
Probably not because his "ancient times" ideal involves reading "sutras" which begun with the Mahayana. If he was talking about pre-Mahayana he would've said "suttas."