/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15969410]

Best books for getting into Buddhist thought?

[Anonymous No.15969494]

>>15969410
Here

[Anonymous No.15969508]

>>15969494
>no Siddhartha
umm sweaty

[Anonymous No.15969521]

>>15969508
Although is a good novel, that novel has little to do with the philosophy itself.

[Anonymous No.15969545]

>>15969508
fanfic isn't buddhist thought sorry

[Anonymous No.15969583]

>>15969410
currently reading siddhartha and what an oh so timely thread.
bump

[Anonymous No.15969626]

What The Buddha Taught, and In The Buddha's Words. Both are written by Theravada monks, for English speaking audiences. They explain the basics, expecting you to start from nothing. This is "who was the Buddha, and what did he teach" level stuff. It's not super galaxybrain, but that's good, because it's not supposed to be.

Red Pine's translation and commentary (his own, plus that of several other writers) is a good introduction to Mahayana Buddhism. The Theravada and Mahayana fundamentally agree, ignore online partisans, Theravada/Mahayana is nothing like Catholic/Protestant. The Heart Sutra is short, I can post it here and do a line by line analysis in the morning if you like. It's not a "book", it's closer to the Nicene Creed. This is an introduction to the specific genre of Prajnaparamita, the Perfection of Wisdom, which IS galaxybrain stuff.

Pick either ITBW or WTBT, then read Red Pine's Heart Sutra. Spread out from there, either Theravada (into the Pali Canon, a standardized literary canon) or Mahayana (which has numerous sutras, many of which are identical to those in the Pali canon, but many of which are self contained, such as the Diamond Sutra).

[Anonymous No.15969780]

Ignore all other posters.

Start with D.T. Suzuki's Introduction and essays in 3 volumes. These are by no means comprehensive or definitive in explication but there's enough breadth, and the fact that he often falls back on ineffability, that your beak will be wet and you'll be interested in reading more. Read the Mulamadyamikakarika followed by Huntington's introduction/translation of Chandrakirti. Read the cowherd essay collections and Garfield's philosophical primer book. Next move onto Tsong Khapa's Mula commentary and his central philosophy. Newman Glass' working emptiness is a short but stacked read. Read the books on Huayen, you'll know the ones because there aren't many. Next move onto Tiantai and again there's not much. You must read Ziporyn's entire oeuvre. Then the Mo-ho Chi-Kuan.

This is the floor. There is stuff I left out either for brevity (rando books) or redundancy (various sutras)

[Anonymous No.15969852]

>>15969780
No, everyone else is wrong. Here's what you have to do: go sit under a tree and breathe normally. When the breath is short, notice that it's short. When it's long, notice that it's long. That's it.

Or, read several thousand pages of Buddhist theory. For beginners, I recommend Dolpopa's Mountain Doctrine, it should be on libgen. That's probably the easiest one to understand, so it'd be up your alley for sure.

[Anonymous No.15969882]

Can some Buddhist chad explain what it means to have no self? Also what can be gained from accepting this as truth?

[Anonymous No.15969965]

>>15969852
>meditation
Fuck this materialist scum.
Do what he did, but focus on nothing, let all thoughts come and go, unless you're neurotic and mull over the same thing forever then go and focus on your breath. After an hour these thoughts will grow less, when they're less annoying, focus on your Self, your identity, your Individuality, recognize the funnel through which all these dreams flow through, but that they connect like smaller rivers away from a larger river, focus in this big river, this is the golden thread of the Soul, and what has moved to the main river from having jumped from one thought to the other is the Eye of the Soul. Stay on the golden river, it flows somewhere else. The other paths seem tempting. But hold on to the Golden Thread, don't let the other cords pull you away. The Gold is One, you are One, this is yourself. I do no know where your river flows, but it is Good.

[Anonymous No.15970009]

>>15969965
ill give you a golden river alright

[Anonymous No.15970015]

>>15969965
he asked for book recs not pablum, loser

[Anonymous No.15970103]

>>15969965
This sounds superstitious but meditation can go wrong if there is no one to guide you. The worst scenario is that it could shatter your self and you become a bit insane.
That's why meditation book exists as a guideline.

[Anonymous No.15970173]

>>15969882
dont think of no-self as a negation, but rather an expansion of being. the self tricks us into thinking that we are a single unit, some kind of unique rational being when in reality we are multiplicities. a good metaphor is India's bet in which your individual consciousness is like a jewel, woven into a tapestry along with every other consciousness in existence (I mean EVERY consciousness, yes a rock is a consciousness, so is the wind). each of these jewels reflects the ones adjacent to it and like so each microcosmic conscious is always made up of and in dialogue with every other one. the self is literally every thing that exists.

[Anonymous No.15970179]

>>15970173
I mean indra's net, dumb autocorrect

[Anonymous No.15970191]

>>15970179
>indra's net
is from hinduism and in buddhism it is 100% dukkha

[Anonymous No.15970197]

>>15970103
>>This sounds superstitious but meditation can go wrong if there is no one to guide you.
wrong mediation can go wrong, ie all the made up meditation by westerners and hindus and jains, but not right meditation

[jesus No.15970267]

>>15969410
ironically. not buddha thought, but buddhist thought, larp larp larp. all you need is larp.

[Anonymous No.15970292]

>>15970197
The thing is, it's not hard to accidentally step in a misdirection and makes error without realizing it.
You need something to guide you until it's too late. Not everyone possesses the wisdom to do every thing right. Meditation might sound simple on paper, but it isn't.

[Anonymous No.15970330]

>>15970197
How much have westerners bastardized Buddhism?

[Anonymous No.15970383]

>>15970330
The clearest example is taking "midfulness" meditation, disregard pretty much everything else, and use it as a productivity boost.

[Anonymous No.15970412]

I've been meditating 30 minutes every day for the past couple weeks. I read Mindfulness in Plain English. My goal is to experience the true nature of reality, I don't care much about theoreticals, dogma, etc. Is there anything else worth reading that will help me achieve my goal?

I've also started to read The Mind Illuminated which seems to have a lot of practical tips on the meditation process.

[Anonymous No.15970484]

I live in Vietnam and some celebrity monks can literally be millionaire (in USD). They commute in sport cars and eat at fancy (vegan) restaurants.
It's hilarious and sad at the same time.

[Anonymous No.15970488]

Hello frens, reposting some questions from another buddhist thread. I'd greatly appreciate any help.

Could a kind buddhistanon refer me to some literature that reads buddhism as phenomenological praxis? I read a book recently that hinted at this in ways that made it seem like other people have developed this idea

In particular it interested me that buddhists seemed to be interested in cataloguing and classifying phenomena according to how they affect the will, and what kinds (stages) of variously cultivated wills will be affected by different things to different degrees. This is the only time I've seen something like this and it floored me, like a real attempt to empirically explore the "inner world" of consciousness.

Also, any literature about other entities like jinns or angels in buddhism, and meeting such entities when exploring the inner space, would be great.

[Anonymous No.15970675]

>>15970103
Well that's why it is said to be Golden, the heart "knows" super-noetically, intuitively, that it is going the right way; but yes you can be fooled that you are 'there' since you've never been there before in this life. This is especially what drugs and their "ego-death" are.
I also only mentioned half the journey.

[Anonymous No.15971849]

There are three main schools of Buddhism, right? Which one should I follow?

[s10241875 No.15971872]

>>15969508
This is a good literary work, it has nothing to do with Buddhism.
>>15969626
>What The Buddha Taught, and In The Buddha's Words.
This.

[Anonymous No.15972003]

>>15969410

[Anonymous No.15972029]

>>15969410
read MahaPrajnaParamita-Sastra by Nagarjuna

[Anonymous No.15972107]

Hinduism > Buddhism

[s10241875 No.15972116]

>>15972003
Thank you, this is an interesting book. But this is for the researcher, not for the beginner.

[Anonymous No.15972162]

>>15972116

[Anonymous No.15972274]

>>15969965
Have you read Hakuin?

[Anonymous No.15972277]

>>15970191
Indra's Net as a concept is found in both the Mahayana and the Theravada. Lacking a Self, you must define something by its relation to everything.

>>15970488
This is pure Abhidharma. Abhidharma is a type of Buddhist scholasticism. They basically tried to create a theory of everything to understand the mind in order to create psychology that is actually effective. It's incredibly cool, and incredibly autistic.

>>15971849
Not quite. The Theravada/Mahayana distinction is largely one of textual history. Fundamentally, they agree on the important points. Make no mistake, they DO disagree, and where they do, it's important. But it's not like Catholicism vs Protestantism or Catholicism vs Orthodoxy at all. They don't even disagree about the validity of each other's scripture (the Theravada reject certain Mahayana sutras, but most Mahayana stuff is totally valid). Vajrayana, then, is a tradition WITHIN the Mahayana (its considered its own for various reasons).

There are numerous schools and traditions within Mahayana, Theravada, and even Vajrayana. Zen, Pure Land, Nichiren, Shingon, and Tendai are all within Mahayana, for example. As for which is best for YOU? Do your research. Many Americans are attracted to the simplicity and austerity of the Theravada. Consider them all. Unless you're a monk, it's sort of a moot point to say you're an "X-Buddhist".

[Anonymous No.15972302]

>>15970412
>Is there anything else worth reading that will help me achieve my goal?
There's actually not that much reading that reading can help with what you're trying to do, in my opinion. If you keep at it long enough and take your practice seriously enough, you might find that a lot of Buddhist literature starts to make more sense purely on the merits of your meditation. A significant portion of Buddhist thought is stabbing in the dark at a kind of experiential modality which largely defies being expressed in language. Buddhism is interesting in that all the dogma tends to be an attempt at expositing and guiding students towards an observational reality that can be neither exposited readily nor directly guided to.

[Anonymous No.15972315]

>>15970412
Look into Access to Insight. They have plenty of meditation manuals.

Also I should discourage not learning theory and doctrine. Right View is part of the Noble Eightfold Path.

>>15970330
The Average Westerner has no fucking clue what Buddhism is, and thinks it's some weird combination of Hinduism and Jainism, founded by a fat smiling guy. Having said that, most Westerners also gladly reject that fake-Buddhism when they see what actual Buddhism is.

>>15969882
Everything changes. Everything is composite. Everything has a cause, and an end. There are no "Platonic Forms" or "Prime Movers". Things come from Things. You are real, but there is no tiny man in your head piloting you. The Buddha says "You cannot find a Self". A Self (big S) is an unchanging eternal discrete uncaused unending atom in you that, if it were placed elsewhere, would make whatever it were placed "you". This is not a denial of the soul, but rather, that the soul is not a Self, it is not eternal, and it too is made up of parts.

Emptiness is not a view, or an opinion, or an ideal, it's just a statement of fact. If you say you've found a Self, it'll turn out that you have not. You'll get sad, freak out, and then try and find another. You will fail again, and again, and again. Nihilism and Eternalism are a pendulum, you cannot have one without the other (Nihilism is being sad because you WANT a Self, you just get upset because you can't find it, and in doing so you end up reifying Selfs by saying you have one, but oh no, it doesn't get to live forever!). What do you gain?

An end to that silliness.

[Anonymous No.15972491]

>>15971849
This is the wrong question for a variety of reasons. I'll give you two. First, the Buddha taught multiple exoteric paths to nirvana and was deliberate in teaching differently to different audiences, due to his complete understanding of the conditioning and actions of all sentient beings. The different schools of thought are the necessary consequence of putting the Dharma to words. Second, we live in an age of unprecedented accessibility to texts, which will be lost on most people anyway. There is no need to confine yourself to a single historical tradition in Asia to the exclusion of all others. You should aim to be well read and study as much as possible, while at the same time avoiding the kind of hyperprotestant biblical supremacy that comes with Anglophone cultural conditioning. Once the river is crossed, one no longer needs to carry the raft.

[Anonymous No.15972554]

>>15970488
I think you've got your wires crossed here
>>15972277
This poster is correct that you seem to be referring to Abhidharmika classifications of things, but that isn't a pure 'phenomenology' because theyassert that irreducible dharmas are building blocks of everything. If you are looking for phenomenology you are going to find that in the Yogachara/vijnana-vada (consciousness only) school.

[Anonymous No.15972602]

>>15969410
>has eyes on feet
Fucking footfags I swear

[Anonymous No.15972604]

>>15972315
>there is no real you you're just a bunch of random bumping particles and mental aggregates
>t-this is not nihilism though
Why are Buddhists like this?

[Anonymous No.15972656]

>>15972604
The random particles is your own projection. Random particles is the burned-out postmodern explanation for existence since all narratives are abolished (except nihilism). Karma in Buddhist thought doesn't allow for arbitrary randomness; there can be an appearance of randomness for the unaware but that isn't absolute truth

[Anonymous No.15972683]

>>15972656
It's all nonsense. Just like how Buddhist ethics makes no sense.
>subscribe to our extreme form of slave morality so that y-you... I mean... nothing... i mean... a bunch of stuff can get a better life when you die.... or if you are really good then y-you... i mean nothing gets Nirvana

[Anonymous No.15972712]

>>15972683
read Maha-Prajnaparamita-Sastra by Nagarjuna

[Anonymous No.15972809]

>>15972604
Nihilism is stating that there is a lack of objective truth, and objective morality. Buddhism says that there is objective truth, and objective morality. So, right at the get go, it's not nihilism because it's literally not nihilism. The statement that you made denies neither of these things.

Secondly, the Two Truths Doctrine solves your problem. Yes, the statement that you made is true, we're all just particles bumping around, and we're just clumps of mental aggregates. This is the Ultimate Truth. It's also true that you're a human being that eats, shits, pisses, has thoughts, feelings, dreams, crippling autism, and emotions. This is the Conventional Truth. We can reach the Conventional Truth via the Ultimate Truth, but that takes a long time. Imagine describing a table by describing the relation of each atom constituting it in relation to every other particle in the universe; you could do it, but that level of precision is needless.

This is why Buddhism is not physicalism: physicalism denies the human experience. The human experience is real. You being a bunch of particles is real. That, ultimately, is the point of Emptiness: that reality is far more complex than the simple concepts we make and use to communicate make it seem. Emptiness is about accepting reality as it is, not as you make it out to be in your head. There's a saying by a Zen master:
>When I started my practice, the mountains were mountains
>Then, as I advanced, the mountains are no longer mountains
>Then, when I became a master, the mountains were mountains
The second line is understanding that everything is just particles and aggregates. The third line is accepting that that is true, and that everything is also more than just particles and aggregates.

How is living in a fantasyland in your head and believing that the only things that matter and are real are the fleeting illusions behind your eyes not nihilism? At least I accept that mountains and people are real, you believe nothing is.

[Anonymous No.15972861]

>>15972683
I'll bet you haven't even read Nietzche and are just regurgitating

[Anonymous No.15972911]

>>15972315
>Buddhism is basically atheism with extra steps
thanks for saving my time lol

[Anonymous No.15972941]

>>15972911
No, it isn't. At all. How is it atheism if there's gods and demons and hells and ghosts and spirits and Bodhisattvas and Buddhas? The goal is a transcendental state of limitless freedom and bliss beyond all limitation.

Or are you just doing that thing where "atheism" just means "whatever I don't like"?

[Anonymous No.15972972]

>>15972941
>The goal is a transcendental state of limitless freedom and bliss beyond all limitation
So non-existence. Because thats what limitless freedom is. Freedom from existence.
Basically your afterlife is the atheist afterlife.
Also how are you not an atheist if evevrything is just reduced to components? You should have something irrreducible (God) in order fot you not to be atheistic.
Sure you just said that people are more then the sum of their parts but why even bother with that step if you will reiterate that somehow this doesnt even matter? Why shouod anyone care about the afterlife if we dont even exist? There is no self after al.

[Anonymous No.15972987]

>>15972911
Atheism as commonly understood is a consequence of monotheism. Buddhism is outside of this discourse as the possibility of an eternal omnipotent sentient creator is categorically excluded from the start by the teaching on dependent origination. There is no capital-G God in Buddhism but the existence of suprahuman beings vastly longer lived and more powerful is accepted, and to be reborn as one is possible but not the ultimate end.

[Anonymous No.15973016]

>>15972972
Limitless freedom is freedom from existence, yes. It's also freedom from non-existence. That's sort of the point of "limitless freedom". So, right off the bat, you're wrong because it's not just annihilation, it's more than that. Secondly, you're just redefining atheism to be meaningless at this point. You're throwing out random buzzwords and hoping one sticks, so you can tip your fedora and say
>heh, well, nice argument you have there, but that's NIHILISM/ATHEISM/TRANSPHOBIA/ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM so I don't have to take you seriously *tips*

>There is no self after al.
There is no Self (colloquially; the proper term is "You cannot find a Self", as "there is no Self" is too limiting, but that's besides the point). There are many, many selfs. A Self =/= a self. See >>15972315. You exist. When you get angry, that anger is real. Part of it is chemicals and aggregates in your head, but part of it is also much more, and very much outside of your head. If anger was just in your head, you could never get angry enough to punch a wall. If anger was just chemicals, you would not feel angry. To use Western terms, qualia are real, and although are LINKED to the chemicals, are not just the chemicals.

You exist. You're just misunderstanding how you exist.

[Anonymous No.15973071]

>>15972972
Obsession with the afterlife assumes a permanent self to enjoy the afterlife. If you think critically about it there are so many problems with the afterlife that it ends up becoming undesirable in itself. Is everyone in their physical prime in the afterlife or are they eternal cadavers? Do you get some kind of radiant angel body and fly around in the clouds until the end of time? Do you get to live in a paradise where you do nothing all day except be a hedonist? Is the afterlife specifically tailored to each person such that it becomes a kind of solipsistic existence where you enjoy everything without limit and no one is adversely affected? Do you live in a pile of dozens of nubile women who don't even have identities; they are just nameless sensory automata for you to masturbate yourself in? How could this self we claim to have possibly be made eternal when we know it comes out of another terminal life? And why would we want to bring it with us into the next life if it is so subject to decay and decline? By what means would we perfect this self into something it isn't, a perfect eternally unchanging body, if it isn't one to start with?

[Anonymous No.15973115]

>>15972277
For me, it's wild drunken orgy Buddhism.

[Anonymous No.15973124]

>>15972987
So none of the gods of Buddhism are God but somehow you claim its not atheism because superpowerful individuals exist. So atheists are not atheists because they believe in Marvel superheroes?
Seems like sematics to me.

>>15973016
>It's also freedom from non-existence.
And thats where you lose me. Nonexistence isn't a thing, therefore one can not be free of it, or to put it in other terms, one is always free of it merely due to the fact that it's not a thing.
Only being exists, so if you liberate yourself from that, you would become nonexistant which is impossible. Therefore liberation from being is not possible. If you said liberation from illusion or maya or whatever, thats more acceptable, however I didnt see you state that by nonbeing you mean illusion and ignorance.

>There is no Self
>There are many, many selfs
Again, I cant decide if buddhists just make edgy statements to backpedal from right after or you just cant properly express what you mean?
Yes I have a self and I am a Self. So then what is the point of saying there is no Self? If you want to tell me I shouldn't identify with my body, then say that, but don't fucking deny the obvious.

[Anonymous No.15973141]

>>15973071
I dont know man, but what's the point of any afterlife if Im not me anymore? I surely dont give half a fuck, under the condition of "no self"

[Anonymous No.15973157]

>>15972911
Not pnly is it atheism, ot is also protomaterialism. Buddhism is the religion of pseuds

[Anonymous No.15973172]

>>15973124
The Adi-Buddha is the capital-G God. We are all emanations of his dreaming. Nothingness is obviously silly, there must be a ground of Buddhaness, a first mover of Buddhahood, the Buddha from whom all other beings can supervene upon, the Ur-Buddha, the Adi-Buddha.

[Anonymous No.15973184]

>>15973141
You wouldn't make it as a Platonist then. Henosis is assimilation to God too. How would you become God-like while maintaining a separation from God?

[Anonymous No.15973200]

>>15973184
No-one is separate from God lmao. Even Christians don't believe this.
>You wouldn't make it as a Platonist then.
Why the fuck would I want to?

[Anonymous No.15973203]

>>15973157
Only in the sense that a warrior aristocrat is not a member of the priestly caste

[Anonymous No.15973205]

> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nn5uqE3C9w

[Anonymous No.15973218]

>>15973200
Your identity is a separation from God. If you shared the same identity with God (henosis) then you wouldn't be seperate.

[Anonymous No.15973225]

>>15973124
No, you are not a Self. You cannot find a Self, so how could you be a Self? There is a difference between a self and a Self (this is an issue of translation, yes, Buddhism is saddled with many of these, it is very unfortunate). A Self is an unchanging eternal discrete uncaused (most religions that posit Selfs actually do allow for Selfs to be created by a Prime Self, but reject the notion that a Self can die, so while God can make your soul, it won't go away afterwards; this is cope) atom. A self is just an arbitrary lump that we entirely arbitrarily define a thing as. Your self is your body, your thoughts, your mind, your soul, your spirit, your actions, etc etc etc. Or maybe it's none of that, it's just a referential. It's changing, it's temporary, it will all die eventually (whatever that means for an action to "die", but you get the point), so really it's just referring back to you in some way.

>non-existence is not possible
Correct.

>only being exists
Incorrect. Change is. Everything is changing. Becoming is.

If you want me to go line-by-line through the Heart Sutra, which elaborates on what you're talking about here, I could. If you want "philosophy with arguments" (I've seen people get autistic about Eastern philosophy not having "arguments", so I use that term out of clarity, I guess), then check out Nagarjuna's Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way, which is a treatise all about knocking down arguments in favor of Selfs. I cannot go line-by-line through this, it would take far too long.

>>15973172
As I understand it, that's wildly unorthodox, even when it comes to adi-Buddhas. Could you elaborate on where you got this from?

>>15973157
This was already addressed, see >>15973016. Your fedora is on too tight, dude.

[Anonymous No.15973263]

Can someone in the know tell me if Zen Buddhism is basically just ancient Lacanian metaphysics (I know I shouldn't use that word to describe Lacan but you know what I mean).

Because if so that's extremely based.

[Anonymous No.15973265]

>>15973157
No that was Carvaka, a school of materialism. The Buddha refuted him.

[Anonymous No.15973280]

>>15973124
>semantics
Yes I know it's challenging but being precise is significant. If Buddhism is an atheism, it is only in a very specific sense of non-eternal godhood, not the "there is no God, nothing more than man, and nothing matters except me" way.
>>15973141
Right, there is no point in desiring an "afterlife" if that is simply another impermanent rebirth to be gone through all over again. If one is to be reborn one is going to have to work at becoming liberated again or slip further into the cycle.

[Anonymous No.15973295]

>>15973225
Kulayarāja Tantra of Dzogchen. "The King Who Creates Everything". Adi-Buddha is Buddhist monotheism.

[Anonymous No.15973305]

>>15973263
There's a lot of similarity between Buddhism and Post Modernism, but there are also REALLY big differences. The key difference is that Buddhism actually does affirm that truth exists, and has a soteriology to extricate us from the problems of Samsara. Post Modernism rejects truth (or rather, rejects that we can FIND it, depending on the thinker in question), and rejects soteriology entirely.

So while Buddhism and Post Modernism both would agree that, say, gender is a social construct, Buddhism would say that there is also some aspect to which gender is not only a useful construct, but is also still descriptive of reality, if just imperfectly, and that we shouldn't ditch it because to do so would cause suffering (remember, the Buddha outright says that if you're not a monk, you should be making constructs that serve to reduce dukkha). Post Modernists, thus, can only really react to constructs as being ALL bad and ALL wrong, and can only really offer Communist Revolution as a bandaid on the problem.

This is why the Buddha spent forty years happy and teaching before peaceing out to Nirvana, while essentially every Post Modern thinker spends their intellectual lives suffering, unhappy, and dies painfully, usually by suicide.

[Anonymous No.15973306]

>>15973218
Thats is dumb because you can have a connection via relation. Even denial is a relation.

>>15973225
>Change
change is potentiality manifesting into actuality
potentials exist therefore they have being, therefore only being exists

>Self is an unchanging eternal discrete uncaused
So consciousness

[Anonymous No.15973325]

>>15973295
>Dzogchen
Thank you for this. I'll look into it.

[Anonymous No.15973364]

>>15973305
The final form of post-modernism is returning to the ancient views of a world veiled by false appearance obscuring the underlying Absolute, which Buddhists will take to mean different things than the god-centric religions. It follows that if everything is just appearance without given structure, as in postmodernism, we should be skeptic of even that. How are we supposed to trust that we can't trust what we are seeing without knowing why it shouldn't be trusted? Postmodernism cannot supply the why but it has certainly helped break up all the debris that has silted up around us after two thousand years of believing we were chosen by heaven to be rescued.

[Anonymous No.15973383]

>>15973305
There is a suprising amount in common there with Lacan (and Deluze who I'd say furthered his ideas) but yeah it's quite a gap from the mainstream postmodernists (I'm thinking mostly of Focault, Derrida and Baudrillard).

Deluze explicitly rejects deconstruction as a useful tool in philosophy. And the Lacanian concept of the Self and the Other seems very similar to the Buddhist counterpart.

[Anonymous No.15973389]

>>15973280
>Right, there is no point in desiring an "afterlife" if that is simply another impermanent rebirth to be gone through all over again. If one is to be reborn one is going to have to work at becoming liberated again or slip further into the cycle.
Exactly, which is why the best religion is christianity, because Jesus paid the price for our sins and delivers us from suffering. It's better then Buddhism because 80 IQ retards are saved as well, not only the top 1% of IQchads

[Anonymous No.15973405]

>>15973280
You see, God is actually a well defined thing, and if Buddhism doesn't have a being that satisfies the definition of that than its right to call Buddhism atheistic.
For reference, I recommend reading The Experience of God by David Bentley Hart which is a book dedicated to providing the aforementioned definition from a christian and eastern perspective.

[Anonymous No.15973424]

>>15973225
>Change is
Therefore change has being, and being is more fundamental then change, ergo all that exist has being as such only being exists.

[Anonymous No.15973429]

I could never get behind a religion so life-denying that the ultimate end-goal of it is nothing itself.

[Anonymous No.15973433]

>>15973225
>A self is just an arbitrary lump that we entirely arbitrarily define a thing as. Your self is your body, your thoughts, your mind, your soul, your spirit, your actions, etc etc etc. Or maybe it's none of that, it's just a referential. It's changing, it's temporary, it will all die eventually
So then what is reborn?

[Anonymous No.15973455]

>>15973225
>this is cope
Excuse me, but what does it matter if its cope or not? If the existence of an eternal Self is the precondition for a lot of people to care about your shitty system, its probably not a bug, but a feature.

[Anonymous No.15973535]

>>15973429
This is why I'm a Buddhist. The life-denying nature of other religions is just... boring.

>>15973433
Big brain: Exactly.

Small brain: The constituents of the lump. It's rebirth, not reincarnation. There is no Self to reincarnate, but there is a bunch of stuff to get reborn.

>so then why should I care if it won't be me?

Because it will be you, it just won't be the entirely temporary composite sense of continuity ("the ego"). This sense of continuity has causes, and will cease. But to say that you won't continue (albeit in pieces) after you die is just solipsism, as if the world would stop for others when you died.

>but thats athe-
Mental phenomenon and the soul make up "you" and keep going after death. The Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, is an instruction manual for what to do in between bodily death and rebirth.

>>15973455
The Cope is not the existence of the Self, but the nature of it. Abrahamism and Hinduism (which are the religions that Buddhism has, intellectually, had most of its contact with) both affirm that there's only one true Self, God, and that he made everything. But if that's the case, then no, you have no Self, there's just a Self that you can cozy up to in order to live arbitrarily long. You can still die, God could erase you at a whim, if he "left" (whatever exactly it means for an omnipresent being to "leave") then you'd poof out of existence. Indeed, if God created your soul, then your soul is not a Self at all, because a Self has to have always existed in order to be eternal and unchanging. If it could begin, it could change. Anything with a start, has an end.

We could say "yeah, the idea of Selfs period is just cope", and that would be entirely accurate according to Buddhist theories of the mind, but that's not specifically what I was talking about in that post.

[Anonymous No.15973602]

>>15973389
The lowborn will be 'saved' eventually but they have a long way to go. A poor starting position in this life spiritually is not eternal condemnation.

[Anonymous No.15973652]

>>15973405
Looks interesting; I'll add it to my list. That said, the common understanding of atheism is rooted in monotheism, which leads to misunderstanding outside of that context. Since all suprahumanity is aggregated into one eternal omnipotence, a full spectrum of possibilities are denied in the denial of "God" that would exceed god(s).

[Anonymous No.15973760]

>>15973535
>It will still be you but actually it wont be you
So then what accumulates Karma?

>But if that's the case, then no, you have no Self, there's just a Self that you can cozy up to in order to live arbitrarily long.
That makes no sense. If there is no me, then what cozies up to God?

>You can still die, God could erase you at a whim
No, actually. God can do everything that is possible to do that is why he is omnipotent. He can't make me nonexistent because that state is not a thing.

>a Self has to have always existed in order to be eternal
If God is all knowing and eternal (and He is by definition), he has known me eternally. As such I have always existed in the mind of God.

[Anonymous No.15973826]

>>15973760
Karma doesn't accumulate, it's not a "thing" like it is in Jainism/Hinduism/Sikhism. Karma is just "actions". You don't "have" it. It's almost something you do. Your actions will cause a being to be born in certain conditions. Perhaps those conditions will be nice, perhaps they will be bad, perhaps they will be conducive towards enlightenment, perhaps not. Some amount of you will go on to become part of that being.

And as for your other three comments, yes, precisely: the entire concept of a Self is totally incoherent, and has to result in all sorts of silliness that is just obviously not how the world works. So, given that you have not succeeded in finding a Self, and have spent many lifetimes unsuccessfully trying, and can spend an infinite number of lifetimes trying and will never succeed because you cannot, it's best to just accept reality and ditch the entire cope that is a Self.

[Anonymous No.15973860]

>>15973652
Polytheism is logically unsustainable. Monotheism was a natural upgrade. Monotheism took over everywhere because it's true. Hindus, greeks, jews, christians, even fucking tengri pagan retards arrived at monotheism or monism after a while.
That is, there must be a One, God upon whom all other gods are dependent. You can still have deities but even those deities are contingent beings that will one day die. Monotheism or monism don't say those gods are not real, it says that they either don't deserve the title of "god", or they are contingent upon the One, and yes, they are. Abrahamics religions differ because they proclaim that only the One is worthy of worship.
In christianity for example, Saints may be venerated but only God can be worshipped. In hinduism, all gods can be worshipped from the lowest to the highest.

[Anonymous No.15973881]

>>15973826
The problem with that is that I do have a self, God does exist and he has the attributes I described, so I would be a fool to ditch them and act like they were false.

[Anonymous No.15973888]

>>15969780
>start with zen cult charlatan
no

[Anonymous No.15973914]

>>15973881
Then I'm just going to ask that you read Nagarjuna's Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way, because he is far better at critiquing the idea of Selfs than I, and I feel I cannot do an entire book's worth of arguments justice. I must ask though, why are you in this thread then? Just curiosity?

[Anonymous No.15973918]

>>15973826
>the entire concept of a Self is totally incoherent
>Buddhism is about gaslighting people into denying their fundamental reality
lmao

>obviously not how the world works
kek

>ditch the entire cope that is a Self
>implying that the real cope is not the denial of the Self

[Anonymous No.15973938]

>>15973918
>gaslighting
damn man, are you feeling down? you usually start out strong with the same eight screencaps of walltext. rough day?

[Anonymous No.15973990]

>>15973914
I love to test my mettle against buddhists. Misunderstandings usually break down into ill defined concepts and unjustified assertions. Buddhist arguments often operate on describing a logically unsustainable entity as "something that is a thing".
By and large, the Western tradition is intellectually superior and way more precise, but I always enjoy investigating Eastern thought because I learned quite a few things that reinforce my wordview.
As an atheist, I began studying confucianism, daoism and taoism and it convinced me to become a christian because its more coherent and precise. But there is always room for deepening my understanding.

BTW my brother is a buddhist monk and has been one for 12 years. He claims that we all have a self that we discover upon entering Nirvana.

[Anonymous No.15974000]

>>15973938
>being so paranoid that you think everyone is Guenonposter

[Anonymous No.15974022]

>>15973990
>BTW my brother is a buddhist monk and has been one for 12 years. He claims that we all have a self that we discover upon entering Nirvana.
If you're referring to the Dharma Body, you should ask your brother to explain it better to you because that's not a Self. It's not even really a "body" in the sense of a physical body, its closer to a "body of work" (the other of two bodies, the Reward Body, isn't a body either, but the actual Physical Body is indeed... a physical body).

[Anonymous No.15974038]

>>15974022
No, he was referring to the real self that is achieved by abandoning egoic identity.

[Anonymous No.15974047]

>>15974038
Really? What tradition does he follow?

[Anonymous No.15974082]

>>15973860
Arriving at monotheism and monism are very different things; monotheism produces a violent true/false religion dichotomy whereas monism can be expressed in pantheism or the interpretatio graeca of Classical polytheism. Sainthood in Christianity is a concession to efforts at converting polytheists more than an expression of monism. Many early saints are just rebuilt 'pagan myths,' and in some cases the churches are (re)built on top of former cult sites. Catholics in particular get into a gray area with their statues of Mary the 'mother of God.' If God has a mother, surely that is a goddess. So much for inevitable monotheism

[Anonymous No.15974104]

>>15973990
>I love to test my mettle against buddhists
this is the single most autistic thing you've ever said, and you're the guy who claims that the buddha plagiarized a man born 1300 years after his own death

[Anonymous No.15974141]

>>15973990
>the Western tradition is intellectually superior and way more precise
What is it able to be more precise about exactly? What superior precision are you getting if we are all working with our inexact senses to grasp and overwhelmingly vast manifold?

[Anonymous No.15974158]

>>15972911
Based retard.

[Anonymous No.15974162]

>>15974104
Guenonchad here, I know that it's hard for you pea-brained Buddhists to believe, but there are actually multiple people on /lit/ who think that Buddhism and its philosophy are often laughably stupid. The other anon who is debating you guys and who says he is a Christian is not me.
> you're the guy who claims that the buddha plagiarized a man born 1300 years after his own death
I have never said that Buddha plagiarized Shankara, I've maintained that Buddha got many of his ideas from the PRE-BUDDHIST Upanishads which had been circulating throughout northern Indian for centuries before Buddha lived, the same pre-Buddhist Upanishads that Shankara based his theology on

[Anonymous No.15974188]

>>15974162
So then your brother isn't a Buddhist monk.

I genuinely don't get this. Every time Buddhism is mentioned, you throw an autistic fit. Surely, you can't think that this is a good way of spreading your religion. Nobody is going to see some manchild pulling "well my dad works at nintendo :^)" and think "ah yes, this will convert the heathens!"

[Anonymous No.15974220]

>>15974188
>So then your brother isn't a Buddhist monk.
That was a separate poster who was arguing with you who wrote that, the post you just replied to was my very first post in this whole thread. He coincidentally also happened to accuse you of gaslighting, just as I did in another thread yesterday, perhaps because it's what you actually do.
>Every time Buddhism is mentioned, you throw an autistic fit.
More like I come in and debunk all the fallacious reasoning and claims that Buddhisms propagate

[Anonymous No.15974244]

>>15974220
There you do it again. You claim that this is your first post in the thread, then you say you were arguing with some dude the entire time, and allege that everyone who disagrees with you is just one person out to get you. Why would anyone take your schizo rambling seriously?

You make Shankara and Guenon look bad by doing this. Are you just doing deep cover gayops to smear them? Why would anyone want to look into anything these two have to say if you are the kind of person that they attract?

[Anonymous No.15974266]

>>15974162
>>15974220
I'm >>15974047, you still haven't told us which tradition your brother follows. Or were you just making that up?

[Anonymous No.15974278]

>>15974244
>There you do it again. You claim that this is your first post in the thread
Yes
>then you say you were arguing with some dude the entire time,
Wrong dumbass, I said "in another thread yesterday" because I have not argued in this thread before that post but someone who *is* in this thread yesterday was posting the same inane nonsense about Nagarjuna and no-selves in the Shankara thread yesterday where I BTFO'd all his arguments and all he had left was "j-j-ust read Nagarjuna and y-ou'll see I'm right..." He was the one who posted this >>15973225 the paragraph there about non selves he just copies and pastes in many threads despite it being BTFO'd repeatedly.

>and allege that everyone who disagrees with you is just one person out to get you.
No I'm not the one doing that, the people who whine about muh Guenonfag everytime someone points out that Buddhist philosophy is fallacious are the ones who actually do that. I'm only saying that I know that the same person is in the thread today and yesterday because he copies and pastes the same stupid paragraphs full of nonsense

[Anonymous No.15974285]

>>15974104
Absolutely not, I am not guenonposter. Im sorry.
>>15974141
It has more clarity about anything it talks about, really.
>>15974162
I didnt write this.

[Anonymous No.15974292]

>>15974266
>you still haven't told us which tradition your brother follows. Or were you just making that up?
Again, I'm not the poster who said he was Christian and who said his brother was Buddhist.

[Anonymous No.15974332]

>>15974292
But you just said you were, here >>15974220. You said you came in to "debunk" (whatever the fuck that means) Buddhism.

[Anonymous No.15974351]

>>15974332
In that post which you just quoted I specifically said that I was not the Christian anon, can you even read properly? I wasn't speaking specifically of this thread when I spoke of debunking Buddhism but was just generally alluding to how I often enjoy pointing out the holes in Buddhism when I see people pushing it in various threads

[Anonymous No.15974374]

>>15974351
Why?

[Anonymous No.15974388]

>All this arguing
Doesn't it all boil down to what you believe is true/what sounds reasonable to you?
I don't get the point of arguing between Buddhism and Christianity, or Buddhism and Hinduism.
Since the beginning, each group has a different set of axioms anyway and no matter how much you write, you can't convince the other.
I can just say that I believe lives are utterly worthless and no amount of convincing could work on me. But then again, you can use the same argument for your school of philosophy.

[Anonymous No.15974447]

>>15974388
On a simple level, yeah, it's just shitflinging. The Vedanta vs Buddhism "debate" (it's not really a debate, because Buddhism has never really cared about Advaita Vedanta, and Vedanta never really cared about anything outside of India, and Shankara was born a few centuries after Buddhism had died out in India) is largely over Brahmanism. That is to say, Buddhism, like Jainism and Sikhism, rejects the authority of the Brahmin Caste. Brahmins have, historically, maintained power in India through what >>15974104 points out here that Guenonfag does:
>X was just copying Hinduism!
>but really, they were just saying exactly what was in Hindu scriptures!
>So, X was really just a Hindu!
>So you have no need to read anything X said, just be a Hindu!

Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism all reject the Brahmin caste's authority, for varying reasons, and all three diverge so wildly from Hinduism that it's just comically aburd to say that they were "plagiarizing" it. The Brahmins, being first and foremost concerned with the maintenance of their own power (the continued existence of the Brahmin caste is necessary for the maintenance of the cosmos, you see), try to snuff out any threat to their caste's existence.

In Pakistan, the elite are all Brahmins. Among Indian Christians, the elite are all Brahmins. In both cases, Hinduism is ACTUALLY just Christianity and Islam, which are ACTUALLY just Hinduism. Why? To maintain the authority of the Brahmins.

[Anonymous No.15974625]

>>15974447
>Brahmins have, historically, maintained power in India through what points out here that Guenonfag does:
>X was just copying Hinduism!
>but really, they were just saying exactly what was in Hindu scriptures!
>So, X was really just a Hindu!
>So you have no need to read anything X said, just be a Hindu!
Complete nonsense, Buddhism died out in India after it's philosophical claims were heavily criticized by Shankara and others and both the masses and intellectuals of India abandoned Buddhism to instead follow Hindu teachings with more logical underpinnings. Buddhists have some weird cognitive dissonance complex about this event though and prefer to ignore the long history of Hindu philosophers debating with Buddhism and instead make up some silly story about how the Brahmins won everyone back by telling them X was actually Hinduism (you are inadvertently calling Buddhists retarded if you think they would fall for this)

In the modern Buddhist mind everything from Muslims to conniving Brahmins was responsible for Buddhism dying out, everything but the Buddhists themselves, just like how Jews blame everyone else for how people treat them and studiously ignore Jewish responsibility. Medieval Buddhists did not have this cognitive dissonance though and freely admitted that they got their ass handed to them in debates, for example the Buddhist historian Taranatha admitted a bunch of Buddhist thinkers lost debates to Hindus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kum%C4%81rila_Bha%E1%B9%AD%E1%B9%ADa

>Some believe that this contributed to the decline of Buddhism in India,[5] because his lifetime coincides with the period in which Buddhism began to decline.[1] Indeed, his dialectical success against Buddhists is confirmed by Buddhist historian Taranatha, who reports that Kumārila defeated disciples of Buddhapalkita, Bhavya, Dharmadasa, Dignaga and others.[6]

And after Kumarila Bhatta, Shankara came around shortly afterwards and greatly expanded upon Bhatta's critiques while adding some ingenious ones of his own especially against Yogachara, when Shankara's lengthy criticisms soon began to be copied and circulated around India that become the deathknell for Indian Buddhism.

[Anonymous No.15974732]

>>15974388
Some people enjoy debate, perhaps especially if they do not agree with one another. But neither the axioms nor their adherents are truly as static as we might take them to be. The cultural insecurity in particular felt by western Christians has probably prompted many to reconfigure what parts of Christianity they emphasize online while yelling at strangers. The western Vedantins and Buddhists too are part of this transforming Christian context, likely being lapsed themselves or from families where their grandparents were the last practioners. So they will emphasize other elements of Christianity, and do the same with their new religion, which is as much a self-creation as that of the cybercath

[Anonymous No.15974731]

>>15974625
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Buddhism_in_the_Indian_subcontinent
>The decline of Buddhism has been attributed to various factors, especially the regionalisation of India after the end of the Gupta Empire (320–650 CE)

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Shankara
>Late 20th-century and early 21st-century scholarship tends to place Shankara's life of 32 years in the first half of the 8th century.[25][26] According to the Indologist and Asian Religions scholar John Koller, there is considerable controversy regarding the dates of Shankara – widely regarded as one of India's greatest thinkers, and "the best recent scholarship argues that he was born in 700 and died in 750 CE".[27]

So, not only did the Buddha travel forwards in time to plagiarize Shankara, as you claim, but Shankara actually traveled backwards in time to destroy Buddhism.

[Anonymous No.15974743]

>>15972809
Yeah there is literally no difference between this and the average understanding of your typical modern materialist.

[Anonymous No.15974754]

>>15974731
>when your philosophy gets retroactively refuted over a thousand fucking years in advance that you have to defend it using fucking time travel
the absolute fucking state of vedanta holy shit lmfao

[Anonymous No.15974757]

>>15972712
give epub

[Anonymous No.15974796]

>>15974743
if we're using daniel dennett as an example of a "typical modern materialist", then no there's actually a big difference. namely, dennett and friends deny objective truth and objective morality, they deny nirvana, they deny that meditation has any effect except for producing feel good chemicals, and they deny that qualia exist and that mental phenomena occur (anon's "anger is outside your head" thing is in direct disagreement with dennett's belief on this).

and none of this brings up the whole "ghosts, gods, spirits, demons, bodhisattvas, buddhas, and rebirth" thing that buddhists believe in, which modern materialists all deny outright

[Anonymous No.15974811]

>>15974625
>some guy winning a few debates killed off a whole religion
How can someone uncritically make this claim? Royal patronage was the basis for all religion in India, and this took place in an increasingly fractious environment under steady encroachment by genocidal monotheists. Obviously there is more at work here than the Vedantin debate team. Why was he able to "defeat" the Buddhists, who had been dominant for all those centuries? Had their intellectual tradition declined and atrophied while that of the brahmins was rising? If so, why? What wider forces were at work here than the great man comic book hero version of history?

[Anonymous No.15974837]

>>15974811
You're talking to someone who uses time travel to defend his arguments, dude. It's well known that Shankara never actually read any Buddhist texts or conversed with Buddhists, and it's well known that by the time Shankara was born Buddhism had basically died off due to lack of royal patronage. The man claimed that the Buddha explicitly reified the existence of Selfs.

Meanwhile, back in reality, the Buddha literally calls a monk a moron for saying that shit to his face.

[Anonymous No.15974839]

>>15974754
I think they did that in the latest Marvel movie. Shakara created a separate timeline where Buddhism took place after him since you can't actually go to the past.

[Anonymous No.15974920]

>>15974837
>The man claimed that the Buddha explicitly reified the existence of Selfs.
No he didnt you moron, Shankara BTFO'd Buddhists in his writings for their nonsensical doctrine of no-self (pic related for example)

[Anonymous No.15974994]

>>15974920
I'm sorry anon, but the Buddha preemptively refuted Shankara. Thus, you sir, have been RETROACTIVELY REFUTED.

[Anonymous No.15975009]

>>15974920
lmfao holy shit you literally cannot help yourself, can you? you're actually, legitimately mentally ill.

>>15974393

[Anonymous No.15975036]

>>15974994
>but the Buddha preemptively refuted Shankara.
source?
>>15975009
When there are so many Buddhist crossposters from reddit on /lit/, why should I contain myself to only one thread in my efforts to combat their falsehoods and gaslighting?

[Anonymous No.15975100]

>>15975009
>you're actually, legitimately mentally ill.

[Anonymous No.15976062]

Why did the thread die all of a sudden, lads?

[Anonymous No.15976077]

>>15976062
Seems like people realized it had all already been retroactively refuted.

[Anonymous No.15976090]

>>15970412
Not Buddhist but will help you on your way.

[Anonymous No.15976378]

>>15976062
>>15976077
Should we start over? I don't think people should actually start with Nagarjuna for Madhyamika. I think the Bodhicharyavatara, Aryadeva's 400 Verses, and Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Pyrrhonism should be read first.