/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17113550]

Why does the (((west))) like Buddhism so much?

[Anonymous No.17113559]

>>17113550
vague feelgood exotic spiritiality

[Anonymous No.17113560]

>>17113550
Hipsters with some weird neo-orientalism complex.

[Anonymous No.17113574]

>>17113550
I don't think it does. It is just heritage from new age movements of the 60s
As for why it was so prominent in those, it teaches to distance yourself from desire and materialism, and as such it is an acceptable enough response to rationalism for those who have rejected Christ but don't want to deal with everything that's shitty about the world from the age of enlightment onwards

[Anonymous No.17113576]

>>17113550
You can't kill the Indo-European spirit of South Asia and Europe.

[Anonymous No.17113578]

>>17113550
IT'S THE JEWS!!!

[Anonymous No.17113582]

vague enough to apply any fluid philosophical thought you like to it.

[Anonymous No.17113588]

I find it funny how Buddhism is now just bourgeois "keep working bro" in the West, with no spirituality. Really shows we're materialist bugmen.

[Anonymous No.17113599]

>>17113550
Zizek explained it here very well.

https://youtu.be/xb4jh306OGg

[Anonymous No.17113625]

Ecumenicism starting from the early 20th century had started a general introduction of demonic/pagan eastern philosophy to the west. Cultural/philosophical relativism had become popular in the 60s and the rest is history.

[Anonymous No.17113881]

what is it about westernized buddhist practices that make people seethe so much, why should i be mad if some woman derives benefit from practicing mindfulness or meditating in her living room after another day of wage slavery

[Anonymous No.17113922]

>>17113550
Because we got shafted by accidently adopting the perversion that is Christianity and now that Christianity is dead we want to see if there is actual truth out there.

[Anonymous No.17113940]

>>17113922
t. 60 IQ goy

[Anonymous No.17113943]

>>17113599

basado

[Anonymous No.17114009]

>>17113588
Not really. What you're describing just flat out isn't Buddhism. If your "Buddhism" is just a hoodwink to keep you being a wagie for Shekelwitz, you just flat out aren't a Buddhist.

[Anonymous No.17114043]

>>17113940
>the reason why Christianity completely and utterly collapsed is because people just don't understand Christianity!11!!

[Anonymous No.17114055]

>>17114043
Except it didn't collapse, the west adopted something that looked like Christianity beginning with Catholicism, and finally ending with the protestants movements.

Read a book nigger.

[Anonymous No.17114060]

>>17114009
That's what I'm saying. Buddhism in the West doesn't reflect actual Buddhism.

[Anonymous No.17114429]

>>17114055
>real christianity have never been tried!1!!

[Anonymous No.17114451]

Nepali and Northern Indians are not anything like street shitting Dravidians.

[Anonymous No.17114759]

>>17114060
how so? what are the irreconcilable differences?

[Anonymous No.17114766]

>>17113550
What the fuck do Jews have to do with Indians?

[Anonymous No.17114790]

>>17114766
>What the fuck do Jews have to do with Indians?

[Anonymous No.17114801]

>>17114759
I think he's talking about self-identified "Buddhists" vs actual adherents.

[Anonymous No.17114849]

>>17113550
It poses no threat to Capital, unlike Christianity or Islam when taken to extremes. Buddhism can be entirely commodified and its most extreme adherents will just set themselves on fire if you make them too mad, which is no issue.

[Anonymous No.17114887]

>>17113881
Californian pop-buddhism is popular among normalfags and /lit/ being a bunch of bitter pseuds, they need to have a kneejerk reaction against it even though they have absolutely no clue what it's actually about and never bothered learning about it
Case in point >>17113559

[Anonymous No.17114927]

i think the less cynical take is just that buddhism ,as understood by normies, provides a toolkit of practices and ideas that are immediately applicable to people's lives

[Anonymous No.17114937]

>>17113550
New age confusion. Nihilism.

[Anonymous No.17114946]

Westerners are too lazy to read so they go with easy "go with the flow" beliefs instead of reading abrehamic or hindu aryan literature.

[Anonymous No.17114950]

>>17114937
>Nihilism.

grow up.

[Anonymous No.17114963]

>>17114937
>>17114946
You people are so fucking retarded I thought I was on /his/ for a second

[Anonymous No.17114976]

>>17114963
Go listen to a guided meditation and drink your matcha tea fren

[Anonymous No.17114983]

>>17114849
Shut up, Zizek. You don't know shit.

[Anonymous No.17115002]

>>17114976
>he makes up things in his mind to seethe about
Sad

[Anonymous No.17115019]

>>17114429
What is Orthodoxy. Real Christianity has hardly been tried in the West.

[Anonymous No.17115026]

>>17115002
You seem upset

[Anonymous No.17115027]

>>17114887
>/lit/ being a bunch of bitter pseuds, they need to have a kneejerk reaction against it even though they have absolutely no clue what it's actually about and never bothered learning about it
Why is the first response of Buddhists to always assume that people only dislike Buddhism who don't know what it is about? Is it really so hard to believe that someone could study Buddhism, and deeply disagree with the doctrines of its major schools for philosophical reasons?

[Anonymous No.17115039]

>>17115026
no u

[Anonymous No.17115051]

>>17115027
That would be understandable, but if you read this thread, you'll find that all the "criticism" formulated against Buddhism so far have nothing to do with the actual doctrine.
What do you disagree with, by the way?

[Anonymous No.17115055]

>>17113940
>worshipper of a Jew
>thinks he can call others goy

[Anonymous No.17115077]

>>17115027
marxists use the same cope, "if u don't agree with marx u just didnt read him!"

[Anonymous No.17115086]

>>17115027
>>17115077
In both cases, there is often an evident lack of familiarity on the part of critics. Of course, the True Scholar should be able to demonstrate this without making the accusation at random.

[Anonymous No.17115115]

>the west is one person

[Anonymous No.17115140]

>>17115051
>What do you disagree with, by the way?
I disagree with anatta because it doesn't align with how we experience sentience and I disagree with their denial of the universe being caused by an ultimate God and with their substitution of this cause with dependent origination in some schools because in my opinion when you rationally analyze this in the light of various cosmological arguments it makes no sense.

[Anonymous No.17115163]

>>17115140
you say you disagree fundamentally with the major schools, which of the minor schools do you have less disagreement with?

[Anonymous No.17115169]

>>17115140
>it doesn't align with how we experience sentience
Why?
I don't understand why you say dependent origination makes less sense than an ultimate God, I think it's the opposite. Which cosmological arguments are you referring to?

[Anonymous No.17115171]

>>17115115
The west is whatever enters my personal cognitive horizon

[Anonymous No.17115192]

>>17115171
oh i'll enter your horizon alright

[Anonymous No.17115229]

Why do people like soccer?
Why do people have children with partners they don't know?
Why do people watch TV?
Why do people join fraternities?

PEOPLE ARE DUMB SOCIAL ANIMALS AND BUDDHA IS #TRENDING

[Anonymous No.17115234]

>>17113599
Based

[Anonymous No.17115246]

>>17114849
Buddhism at its most radical is complete disenfranchisement, kings have left everything behind to join the nomadic groups. Wtf are you on about?

[Anonymous No.17115265]

>>17115229
I bet you felt very smug and superior when you made that post anon

[Anonymous No.17115272]

It really shocks me sometimes just how self righteously stupid some people who post here and how easily triggered they are by anything resembling religion, but especially Abrahamic religion and in particular Christianity. They truly know next to nothing and they know they know next to nothing, but for some reason will speak as if that’s not the case. If you’re a person like this, how do you even find this board? You should’ve been pulled in by the gravitational pull of leddit.

[Anonymous No.17115293]

>>17115169
>Why?
Because the identity and continuity of sentience from moment to moment is self-evident to me, and as it is this luminous sentience which apprehends everything else including one's own thoughts and perceptions, it seems obvious to me that the most natural and logical thing to do to accept this as the self. By the self, all else is apprehended.
>Which cosmological arguments are you referring to?
Primarily the ones which Hindus like Gaudapada and Shankara make directly against dependent origination in their works, but with a little imagination it's easy to see how the arguments of Aquinas, al-Ghazali etc and see how they apply as well. Some of the issues I have include that in the 12-fold chain of dependent origination beginning with Avijjā the individual links can only give rise to the next link, but they cannot account for the existence of the chain and for the aggregation of its parts into a relationship to begin with. If you try to say that the parts of the chain of dependent origination have always produced and accounted for the existence of each other that's like saying a daughter gives birth to her mother.

As Shankara writes:

"No one, they claim, can possibly deny this chain of causation beginning with nescience. And once the whole causal chain beginning with nescience is admitted to exist, and to be revolving continually like a wheel with buckets at a well, it is found to imply that the formation of aggregates must be possible. But this is not right, as the causes so far mentioned lead to production (of the next effect in the series) only (and not to aggregation of any kind). An aggregate could be admitted if an intelligible cause were assigned for it. But it is not. Nescience and the rest may cause one another mutually in your cycle, but they only cause the rise of the next link in the chain. There is nothing to show that anything could be the cause of an aggregate. True, you claimed that if nescience and the rest were admitted, an aggregate was necessarily implied.

To this, however, we reply as follows. If you mean that nescience and the rest cannot arise except in the presence of some aggregate and so are dependent on it, then you still have to explain what could be the cause of the aggregate. Now, we have already shown in the course of our criticism of the Vaisesikas that aggregation is unintelligible even when supported by such assumptions as that of the existence of eternal atoms along with eternal individual experiencers who serve as permanent loci for the conservation of the effects of past action. So it will be all the less intelligible in a theory in which only atoms of momentary existence are admitted, without any permanent experiencer or any permanent locus for anything. If the Buddhist now claims that it is this causal chain beginning with nescience that is the cause of aggregation, we ask how this causal chain could ever be the cause of aggregation when it depends on aggregation for its own existence."

[Anonymous No.17115316]

>>17115265
I am, unironically.
Not to sound like a fedora, but I am truly a wolf among sheeple. Most people are asleep and I'm awake and most people fall behind on the Bell Curve.

[Anonymous No.17115322]

>>17113550
It is a religion for a small-hearted broken people, like Christianity, but with more believable hocus pocus for a lot of modern people.

[Anonymous No.17115332]

>>17115272
This board used to be decent pretty much up until 8gag was nuked from orbit. Then all the retards from their /lit/ joined here and shat up the board up to the point of nonrecognition.

t. I found /lit/ in 2015 and used it off and on for 2 years and now I’ve joined back after 3 years to see all this shit

[Anonymous No.17115404]

>>17115293
Oh shit I should've known you were guenonfag
Merry christmas

[Anonymous No.17115415]

>>17115246
I'm just referencing a very well-known event. You're ignorant of it?

[Anonymous No.17115494]

>>17115332
I thought it was the screencap of /lit/ harassing that booktuber girl becoming popular that ended up dooming the board.

[Anonymous No.17115520]

>>17115415
his final words? 南無阿彌陀佛

[Anonymous No.17115673]

>>17115520
based

[Anonymous No.17115882]

>>17115229
>Why do people like soccer?
Because it's fun.
>Why do people have children with partners they don't know?
They typically don't.
>Why do people watch TV?
Because it's easy low effort entertainment.
>Why do people join fraternities?
Because it's easy connections and gets you into parties and jobs.

Go be an autistic sperg on /r9k/ or something.

[Anonymous No.17116047]

>>17115293
Can you recommend a good philosophical criticism of Buddhism apart from Sankara and Gaudapada? Preferably a modern one if possible. I've been studying Buddhism for a while now and I just can't buy it from the ground up aside from some basic stuff it shares with other philosophies anyway (even Christian philosophy). I'd like to be able to articulate my criticism better.

[Anonymous No.17116068]

>>17113550
Can't speak for other western nations, but in America it started with WWII soldiers who served in the pacific and continued with soldiers in the Korean/Vietnam war. They would come into contact with the religion while on leave.

[Anonymous No.17116093]

>>17114009
>>17114060
>>17114759
>>17114759
this >>17114801

He seems to be referring to white buddhist who self identify. I remember listening to a radio interview with a comedian (she was asian forget her name) and she talked about how she at one point wanted to leave everything behind and become a Buddhist nun so she went to what she thought was a Buddhist monastery in Oregon, which ended up being a bunch of white dudes larping as asians. They even gave themselves Japanese names after converting.

[Anonymous No.17116096]

>>17113550
keeps their slaves in line

[Anonymous No.17116479]

>>17115494
I’m not saying everything here was perfect and stoggy. I’m saying the level of dialogue wasn’t as shit when one word meme replies didn’t become universal and zoomers didn’t autistically identify with meme ideologies they found on the internet.

[Anonymous No.17116515]

>>17115055
Goyim means non-Jew.

[Anonymous No.17117216]

>>17113550
They don’t like BUDDHISM, they like McBuddhism TM. That doesn’t make the Dhammapada suddenly Jewish filth.