/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16297224]

What are your experiences with Buddhist literature? Has your study of Buddhism improved your life? Where should I start

[Anonymous No.16297239]

>
>Buddhist literature
That's just commentaries where monks do metaphysics, which is garbage in buddhism and ends up being hinduism, like mahayana

[Anonymous No.16297243]

>>16297224
>What are your experiences with Buddhist literature?
read the suttas
https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/index.html
skip commentaries

[Urantia No.16297266]

>>16297224
Dhammapada is a great starting point

Lotus Sutra
>'Sūtra on the White Lotus of the True Dharma'

Diamond Sutra
>Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, "Vajra Cutter Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra" or "The Perfection of Wisdom Text that Cuts Like a Thunderbolt"

Heart Sutra
>The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom

[Anonymous No.16297285]

>>16297224
i started by reading some memoirs (guy goes to zen monastery etc), then i began reading the sutras, when i discover Yuttadhammo Bhikku, i stopped reading book after book and focused more on practice...though i'm attempting to translate an as-yet-untranslated sutra, it's enjoyable getting intimately acquainted with a sutra, you realize the little things you pass over when reading in translation sometimes are of great significance

most of all it taught me not to cling to things and to note when i fall back into that bad habit, i'm still not a good meditator

but from what i've seen on /lit/ most people who interact with buddhism become seething npcs who cling to impermanence more than ever... notice how none of the above posts answers the first two of your questions, all they care about is forcing their views on you READ X

[Anonymous No.16297318]

I read a lot of biographies and the sutras. I never started practicing because I found a lot of Buddhist's to have an emptiness about them. I guess they are supposed to? I don't think Buddhism gels well with a lot of Western upbringings, it sedates the Western mind. It seems to sedate, slightly, irritatingly so, never enough. I notice some westerners who become depressed when studying Buddhism. I know a few have taken really well to it. For me, I stopped trying to practice after spending some time considering it, reading about it, meditating and going on forest walks. It did not resonate for me.

As far as spirituality goes for me now, I am trying to read about Christianity, I was born a Catholic. I thought maybe I should explore the faith that raised me. In addition, a lot of what Rupert Spira says resonates with me, a lot of Ramana Maharshi resonates with me. I feel like UG Krishnamurti is going to get me soon.

Worse comes to worse, at the end, when it matters, I can just become a Pure Land Buddhist! Anon, I wish you luck on your journey!

[Anonymous No.16297322]

>>16297224
I seemingly came to all the conclusions of buddhism by myself when I was in a dark but manageable period of my life. Of course they are not word for word, but the whole middle path, awareness, foregoing desires, etc etc, noticing I was only feeling pain cause I was constantly overvaluing happiness and sadness. I realized for most suffering there is a way to use these ideas and live a much more balanced and peaceful life.
Then my quality of life deteriorated much more due to chronic illnesses and other shit and that cope was not enough anymore and I attained a deeper level of understanding that most buddhists refuse to acknolwedge (although there are suttas where arahants commit suicide after becoming extremely ill and people seem like they don't like to acknowledge this).

When I was told my ideas were similar to buddhism I basically read a mixture of the suttas by themselves with no commentary, a bunch of zen koans, some modern Thai buddhism that foregoes of any esotericism, and some western critique on western buddhism. I think it's a great philosophy/religion/whatever you want to use it as if you are at a level of suffering that can be managed by this. It has ideas that may help a lot of people. Just don't fall for the egotistical "I'm so enlightened right now" shit that most western buddhists like to do.

[Anonymous No.16297326]

>>16297224
Mr Watts said you won't get it from a book

[Anonymous No.16297346]

You can discard a lot of Buddhism in the same way that you can discard a lot of what constitutes Abrahamic religions. Reincarnation is about as defensible as the idea that Moses moved trillions of gallons of water or that Mary was a virgin. The real interesting parts of Buddhism have to do with its ontological and metaphysical considerations. There's a substantial amount of deliberation as to the fundamental nature of reality, and some of the Vedic musings address topics Enlightenment thinkers and theologians would independently discover many thousands of years later.

As an aside, the focus on meditation has cemented Buddhism as the ONLY religion whose practice has been definitively proven to have statistically significant positive outcomes in terms of mental health. It's been secularized, in the form of the mindfulness paradigm which dominates contemporary psychology. We still don't understand exactly why mindfulness meditation works, but it lends the religious practices from which it sprung a particular gravitas completely absent from the Abrahamic shit.

Start with the Upanishads, with a focus on the metaphysics.

[Anonymous No.16297355]

>>16297346
I wouldn't be so confident in stating that Buddhism is the only religion that has statistically "significant positive outcomes" or that "mindfulness meditation works." Not very precise.

[Anonymous No.16297371]

>>16297224
just read MahaPrajnaParamita-Sastra by Nagarjuna is enough

[Anonymous No.16297373]

>>16297346
impressive ignorance. almost every word you typed is incorrect
you read like an acolyte of sam harris

[Anonymous No.16297380]

mayahana is protestantism, it's not real buddhism

this is bait, i'm baiting you

[Anonymous No.16297429]

I cannot shake the Western/Nietzschean view that Buddhism is essentially nihilism. This philosophy of non-grasping and receptivity is no more than a coward's choice, submission, a bowing, the surrender of the will for the suffering investment in the world necessarily brings. The void is no less than the reduction of all values to zero, to ease the divestment of all one in the exercise of their will could hope to gain. It seems repugnant to me as a philosophy for life, an ultimate Bad Faith and opiate of the masses and slave morality par excellence. Not for me! Give me suffering, give me struggle, give me the total sublimity of life and death.

[Anonymous No.16297448]

>>16297346
>Start with the Upanishads
cringe...

[Anonymous No.16297495]

>>16297429
>essentially nihilism
This is reductionism to the point of absurdity, and casually disregards literal millennia of ontological consideration in favor of a cursory allusion to Nietzsche.

[Anonymous No.16297602]

>>16297495
I think I make my case quite clear.

>casually disregards literal millennia of ontological consideration
I disregard what is not useful to me. You are making an empty appeal to the authority of the past and anyways an absurd demand of requisite knowledge. But of course you fit right in with the image of the selfless Buddhist. You are afraid of making a wrong move, bound in the fear of wronging the past and so you make none at all.

[Anonymous No.16297830]

>>16297429
>This philosophy of non-grasping and receptivity is no more than a coward's choice
Philosophy of carpe diem while ignoring death and futility of grasping at things is a cowardice almost all people on Earth partake in. Buddhism is a direct counter to that.
>Not for me! Give me suffering, give me struggle, give me the total sublimity of life and death.
You clearly experienced none of these. People in non-modern times never doubted the undesirability of suffering.

[Anonymous No.16297926]

>>16297266
Based anon. Great advice. After these I'd recommend moving into Dogen or Joshu.

[Anonymous No.16298051]

>>16297602
>You are making an empty appeal to the authority of the past
>You are afraid of making a wrong move, bound in the fear of wronging the past and so you make none at all.
These two statements are made with such specificity from a near-complete paucity of actual information that I can only conclude you're talking about yourself.

[Anonymous No.16298109]

If you go by the date of the textual material, indian history begins with the pillars of asokha, year -250.
Ashoka talks about himself mostly and reading some sutras from the pali canon.

Then you go directly to the year +50--+150 with the gandhari buddhists sutras and garbage Mayana suttras and some chinese translations of those.
Then you go directly to year +400 with some more chineses travellers translating some buddhists sutras.

All thats stuff is based on carbon dating and chinese records of the dates of the translations.


The oldest texts are not the Vedas, contrary to what the poos say. It even gets worse. There are 3 vedas and they
-don't have ignorance
-don't have karma
-don't have rebirth
-don't have meditation
-are 100% ritualistic and killing animals to please the gods, like all the other retards did. Hindus are horse sluts. literal women.

The poos are still SEETHING to this day that the buddhists and jains contradicted their garbage vedas.
The poos had to change all their vedic crap in the commentarial upanishads where they still talk about doing rituals & symbols but started to talk about karma, rebirth , meditation and ''muh killing animals is bad bro, god was joking in vedas teehee''

You have the same problem with greeks history. The earliest date for the materials is year +XXX, even though the texts itself says it is about some dudes living in year -300 [like alexander]

The only way to have the usual timeline hindus->hindus+jains+buddhists is through the ''linguistic analysis'' meme.
The major problem of the textual analysis is that putting a date on group of texts with this is fruitless. The best those people can do is throwing a number like year -500, but it could have been -450, -400, or -600 or even further away than this.
The other major problem with textual analysis is the ''oral transmission'' meme: people change the texts all the fucking time, some times on purpose to make it seem older or younger, whatever suits them.

[Anonymous No.16298164]

>>16298109
These are the suttas recommended by emperor Ashoka.
>https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/asoka.html
New Buddhist sect that only accepts these as canonical when?

[Anonymous No.16299340]

>>16297224
Its very interesting, although I found myself unable or unwilling to accept it as completely convincing. I'd say yes it has improved me though. Start here: http://www.buddhanet.net/audio-lectures.htm
Other stuff that I thought was good was the three pillars of zen, if you want mayahana, also zen flesh, zen bones. Also good mayahana is thic naht nahn.

[Anonymous No.16299379]

>>16297429
I challenge you to undergo the struggle of overcoming desire.

[Anonymous No.16299562]

>>16297429
>Give me suffering, give me struggle, give me the total sublimity of life and death.
From your mom's basement? I don't think so desu

[Anonymous No.16300001]

>>16297926
Dogen is a boner killer.

Joshu rules!

[Anonymous No.16300363]

>>16299562
kek

his post wasn't bad though

[Anonymous No.16300490]

>>16297346
I genuinely don't get how you can NOT believe in rebirth at some level. Do you just believe that atoms are created when babies come out of the womb?

>>16297429
Buddhism denies neither objective truth nor objective morality. What you mean by "nihilism" is that it says that mere material gain is irrelevant. In that sense, every philosophy, religion, and ideology except Liberalism and Communism are nihilistic, even your pseudo-Nietzschianism.

Physical things will never make you happy, and they will never make you suffer. You don't have to become a monk, but then, you won't stop suffering.

[Anonymous No.16300502]

>>16298109
>>16297495
>>16297448
>>16297429
>>16297371
>>16297355
>>16297346
>>16297326
>>16297322
>>16297318
>>16297285
>>16297266
>>16297243
>>16297239
>>16297224

Gautama, Siddhārtha. Dislike him. A cheap nihilist, insipid and foolhardy. A pied piper, pathological narcissist and a cloying moralist. Some of his modern disciples are extraordinarily amusing. Nobody takes his claims about remembering past lives seriously.
Majjhima Nikāya. His best work, though an obvious and shameless imitation of Yājñavalkya's "Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad"
Dīgha Nikāya. Dislike it intensely.
Dhammapada. Dislike it intensely. Ghastly rigmarole.

[Anonymous No.16300821]

>>16300001
Agree Dogen can be boring AF but I sort of like that, personal taste I guess.

[Anonymous No.16300863]

>>16300502
kek

[Anonymous No.16300876]

>>16300821
Dogen isn't only boring, he is a plagiarist and started a dogmatic sex cult. Joshu's zen and Dogen's zen are not the same.

[Anonymous No.16300921]

>>16300876
Fine fine, I take back Dogen, just read Joshu OP.

Maybe some Derek Parfit if you're into modern stuff.

[Anonymous No.16301067]

>>16300490
>I genuinely don't get how you can NOT believe in rebirth at some level. Do you just believe that atoms are created when babies come out of the womb?
I was thinking about this the other day, reading Schopenhauer (Principle of Sufficient Reason). If all we are able to explain in terms of cause and effect are changes in state of existing matter, everything does indeed endlessly depend on something else (pratityasamutpada) in order to appear to change to us. There is no creation ex nihilo, so birth is a reconfiguration of already present matter. The mother converts energy to tissue.

[Anonymous No.16301093]

>>16297429
>This philosophy of non-grasping and receptivity is no more than a coward's choice, submission, a bowing, the surrender of the will for the suffering investment in the world necessarily brings. The void is no less than the reduction of all values to zero, to ease the divestment of all one in the exercise of their will could hope to gain. It seems repugnant to me as a philosophy for life, an ultimate Bad Faith and opiate of the masses and slave morality par excellence.
Think hard about how your alternative leads to being a demonic consoomer bound to the product cycle of striving to be excited for the next sensation. You are the real NPC here.

[Anonymous No.16301134]

>>16297224
>>>/x/

[Anonymous No.16301149]

>>16301067
That's exactly my point. Even from a highly materialist perspective (that I personally do not take), Rebirth is just obviously how the world works because the parts that make us up are recycled. There's no reason that memories of past lives can't happen, it's just an argument over what a "memory" is and how one would go about transferring a memory. Saying you couldn't put a memory of yours in someone-else's head is like saying you can't do a liver transplant: it's on its face absurd.

Even from Dualistic perspectives, Rebirth must be the case to explain the body. Even if the soul is created anew, the body is recycled, so Rebirth is still present, it's just there are parts of you that don't get reborn. Which, really, is just the first paragraph, wherein we're arguing about what specifically get transferred and how.

Also, I fucked that post, that last line should read "they will never make you NOT suffer".

[Anonymous No.16301186]

>>16301067
>and effect are changes in state of existing matter, everything does indeed endlessly depend on something else (pratityasamutpada)
you can accept this, or you can accept the common Buddhist axiom that nothing or no phenomena have undecaying, independent and eternal existence, but you can’t have both at once or it becomes a contradiction, if dependent origination is the cause of samsara, than the totality of samsara becomes an eternally existing and undecaying thing sustaining itself independently without any external accessory through dependent origination

[Anonymous No.16301240]

>>16301186
What describes individual phenomena does not necessarily describe the totality of all phenomena (as a whole, ie the world, and I perhaps should have said every_thing instead of everything). Any attempt to explain this totality will run into contradictions and be forced to invent its way out of infinite regress, which is of course why samsara is not identified with any sort of creation or ishvara.

[Anonymous No.16301317]

>>16301149
>Even if the soul is created anew, the body is recycled, so Rebirth is still present, it's just there are parts of you that don't get reborn. Which, really, is just the first paragraph, wherein we're arguing about what specifically get transferred and how
One of the positions the Buddha opted to be silent on, though later developments in Buddhism have tried to elaborate on the process. I have found the Yogacarin explanation to be the most convincing, ie. that the alaya vijnana (storehouse consciousness) contains all the seeds of karma which ripen into various births, without there being a permanent, personal self carried over from birth to birth. Alaya could be read as a recycling consciousness.

[Anonymous No.16301328]

>>16297602
Based brainlet Chad disregards knowledge and yet lays out universal axioms and truths with full confidence in their veracity.

[Anonymous No.16302672]

my experience is that the whole buddhist project centers on the veracity of rebirth, which I don't believe in

without rebirth, nibbana is just your nervous system dying. there's no point to buddhism if you can just suicide and have the very same outcome that buddhist monks spend their lives trying to acheive (nibbana without remainder).

And so then it becomes of question not of how to autistically avoid karma magic and future rebirths in hell realms, but rather what should I do with this one life, that will end forever?

1st noble truth is definitely right though. all conditioned phenomena are ultimately dukkha. for that reason alone we shouldn't procreate.

[Anonymous No.16302748]

Made my anxiety much worse, gave me dissociation and panic attacks.

[Anonymous No.16303036]

>>16300502
you sound angry. you should learn to let that go.

[Anonymous No.16303049]

>>16299562
lmao

[Anonymous No.16303170]

>>16297429
Lol. Buddhism isn't nihilism. Schopenhauer is nihilism. Nietzsche confused Buddhism and Schopenhauer.

Anyone experienced enough with Buddhism can tell you that Buddhism isn't nihilism

[Anonymous No.16303316]

>>16303170
>Anyone experienced enough with Buddhism can tell you that Buddhism isn't nihilism
Answer my puzzle and you'll make Buddhism more understandable! Buddhists deny that Parinirvana is an eternal extinction of the individual soul, because preaching that others should eternally annihilate themselves makes Buddhists seem like dumb assholes. But of the Buddha's teachings if this is not the interpretation, then in consigning consciousness to transient aggregates and in denying that anything of the being continues on into Parinirvana why did he imply that this was indeed the meaning of his dictations?

[Anonymous No.16303433]

>>16303316
You realise the extinction of the soul is the reunion with the ultimate. Even Neoplatonism says the same thing, that the individual soul is destroyed/extinguished when united with the One.

[Anonymous No.16303441]

>>16303316
You've misunderstood Nirvana as nothingness. It's not nothingness. It's freedom from rebirth and karma and being reborn into the absolute without a self.

[Anonymous No.16303454]

>>16303316
For more info in a short while literally just read the Wikipedia page for Nirvana. I just checked it after my post to see what it says and it says the same

[Anonymous No.16303457]

>>16303316

the nirvana as annihilation argument is explicitly denied by buddhists. nobody is going to do any work for you if you want to be proselytized

[Anonymous No.16303573]

A must read is the empty mirror: experiences in a zen monastery. Kinda changed my life.

[Anonymous No.16304256]

>>16300490
>Physical things will never make you happy,
So you're giving up without trying. You are presupposing your own worthlessness, your own inability to rise to the call of reality. Very pathetic.

>>16301093
>Think hard about how your alternative leads to being a demonic consoomer bound to the product cycle of striving to be excited for the next sensation. You are the real NPC here.
Stupid. There are other relationships with the material word. I wouldn't be surprised if a Buddhist were unaware.

[Anonymous No.16304314]

>>16303573
zen is not buddhism

[Anonymous No.16304336]

>>16303316
>Buddhists deny that Parinirvana is an eternal extinction of the individual soul, because preaching that others should eternally annihilate themselves makes Buddhists seem like dumb assholes.
This is false.

[Anonymous No.16304345]

>>16302672
Nagarjuna and Milarepa said that nirvana and samsara are the exact same thing. Rebirth like heaven in Christianity is "upaya".

[Anonymous No.16304428]

Thoughts on Shentong buddhism? Give me recommendations please.

[Anonymous No.16304445]

>>16303433
wrong, platonism is not such a crass nondualism like advaita vedanta

[Anonymous No.16304750]

>>16300502
seething

[Anonymous No.16304758]

>>16297243
/thread

[Anonymous No.16305438]

>>16304345
>Nagarjuna and Milarepa said that nirvana and samsara are the exact same thing
Sounds like nihilism to me.

[Anonymous No.16305675]

>>16297318
Read Hakuin you imbecile

[Anonymous No.16305718]

>>16301186
>or it becomes a contradiction

The idea of a "contradiction" is a fascist ideology descending from the Greeks. There are no so-called contradictions. It is a mental error -- perhaps the most fundamental such error.

[Anonymous No.16305834]

>>16297429
We all want to toughen ourselves up by taking suffering head on, especially in this modern world where most of us is detached from true suffering of great magnitudes.
I recommend you read more about Buddhism and Taoism, the latter also gets falsely disregarded as nihilistic from time to time.

[Anonymous No.16306740]

>>16305834
Taoism is wrong view, so useless in Buddhism.

[Anonymous No.16306766]

>>16297224
buddhism is great and enlightenment (significant better/ "crisper" consciousness) is real. You can read the mind illuminated as a practical guide to getting there.

>>16304314
yes it is

[Anonymous No.16306798]

>>16304428
Dolpopa's magnum 'Ocean of Definitive Meaning' has been translated by Jeffrey Hopkins and released under the title of "Mountain Doctrine: Tibet's Fundamental Treatise on Other-Emptiness and the Buddha Matrix", you can find it on lib-gen

[Anonymous No.16306806]

>>16306798
*magnum opus

[Anonymous No.16306882]

>>16306740
How is that so when Zen Buddhism was strongly influenced by Taoism?

[Anonymous No.16306893]

>>16302748
Stop running from being uncomfortable or you'll remain the same forever.

[Anonymous No.16307002]

>>16306893
Not that anon but it's not necessarily running from being "uncomfortable". There are documented cases of Westerners having very negative reactions to Buddhist literature and teachers, usually because it's a religion that revolves strongly around depersonalization and this is an aspect of life that is really not part of the Western tradition. It's a process treated almost like a mental illness by some psychologists. Forcing a Westerner to depersonalize can be very upsetting, it's like taking a gear and using it in a spot it wasn't designed for because "It's still a gear, right?". Sometimes it might work but sometimes it just grinds and falls apart.

[Anonymous No.16307065]

I have trouble understanding where the distinctions between Nikaya/Hinayana and Mahayana originate.
The first schism was supposedly over the Sthaviras wanting to add rules to the Vinaya.
The Mahāsāṃghika school is supposedly the predecessor to Mahayana.
The Theravada school is traced to the Sthaviras (Sthavira > Vibhajyavāda > Tāmraparṇīya > Mahāvihāravāsins > Theravadins)
The Buddhism of Gandhara is said to have been composed largely of Dharmaguptakas and Sarvāstivādins who are also traced to the Sthavira school. Why despite this is the Buddhism of Gandhara regarded as Mahayana?

[Anonymous No.16307240]

To really accept what Buddhism is saying is a pretty scary thing. When I stopped reading Buddhist texts and quit meditating, it was like a load off my shoulders in the sense of the freedom to enjoy what I like and hate what I don't like again. Practicing Buddhism is essentially trying to rewire your understanding of the world at a very basic level, and in the process will wipe away most of what you believe you as a person are. I think a lot of people understand this scholastically but it's a bit of a terrifying idea if you dwell on it. No surprise most people never go into it that far.

[Anonymous No.16307538]

>>16303036
it's a funny shitpost in good humour, there isn't anything angry about it. why are all Buddhist posters on this board such bitter people?

[Anonymous No.16308939]

>>16306766
no it's not. zen is not buddhism, but you cannot say what Zen is? zen teaches nothing of buddhism. read a book

[Anonymous No.16308991]

When I try to actively practice buddhism, everything loses its point, I for example don't see why I should read a book if it is as much immersed in the conditioned as eating a cake. It seems like the point becomes to go back to practicing meditation or reading sacred texts.

[Anonymous No.16310252]

Controversial opinion, but I think a good starting point from the West would be Huxley's Island. I found it interesting to attempt to reconcile certain aspects of modern culture while bringing other parts into direct contention with Eastern spiritualism. Overall, for a Westerner who is interested in Buddhism it provides a nice bridge. There's also Hesse's Siddhartha, which is more like a historical philosophical fictional piece. It's generally appreciated as a piece of classical literature, so I won't comment further. I think it's a bit difficult to recommend strictly Buddhist literature because in my opinion you could quickly run into issues of what /school/ of Buddhism one should study (i.e. Mahayana / Theravada, or branches such as Zen). I would recommend before getting into the teachings you actually learn some of the history of India (or more pertinent, the history of Buddhism) since it will probably make it easier for you to digest. Michael Wood has some readily accessible intro materials on Indian history, idk any specific Buddhist history texts off the top of my head. But alongside the history you should probably read bits of the canonical works (i.e. the Pali Canon). I think that Buddhism is something that doesn't translate well to written language and works much better in terms of experience, hence why yoga/meditation is very important, so perhaps you should keep that in mind as well. You probably won't achieve enlightenment by reading.